EDITOR—Garland and Laith discuss the latest developments in the Middle East, and Israel’s outrages, now working feverishly to convert the West Bank into another Gaza, a genocide writ large, none of which attracts the criticism of Western “leaders”, who may have hitched their wagon to a vehicle —Zionism—that may eventually accelerate their historical demise. Laith comments that in the current confrontation, the Empire’s navy is no match for the stubborn commitment of the Houthis, Hezbollah, and other members of the Resistance Axis, and that the US and other members of the alliance may have to withdraw from the region or face a severe military and financial setback. Equally interesting, the Zionist fanaticism of Israel may be condemning Jews, in general, to an ugly backlash around the globe, including in the West itself, since, contrary to protestations, it was the millennia-old brutal persecution of Jews in the “West”, culminating in the Nazi horror, that made the idea of a “Jewish haven” an ideal worth pursuing in Palestine.
HISTORY
-
-
J. PAUWELS —In comparison with other capitals, Paris looked über–bourgeois after 1871. It is hardly surprising that the city was admired, visited, and praised by bourgeois women and men, young and old, conservative as well as avant-garde, from all over the world, that is, the “Western” world that was becoming increasingly industrial, capitalist and, indeed, bourgeois. From the four corners of the earth, well-to-do burghers converged on Paris like Catholic pilgrims converge on Rome or Muslim pilgrims on Mecca. Conversely, a bourgeoisified Paris, most effectively symbolized by “Haussmannian” town planning and architecture, migrated to cities all over the world where the bourgeoisie likewise triumphed politically, socially, and economically.
-
BRUCE LERRO—Nationalism is one of those words that people immediately think they understand, but upon further questioning we find a riot of conflicting elements. There are three other words that are commonly associated with nationalism that are used interchangeably with it: nation, state, and ethnicity. But these terms raise the following questions:
What is the relationship between nationalism and nations? Were there nations before nationalism? Did they come about at the same time or do they have separate histories? Can a nation exist without nationalism? Can nationalism exist without a nation? Ernest Gellner (Nations and Nationalism) thinks so.
-
Losurdo, Chomsky, Brar: Highly Recommended Books & Documents
13 minutes readEDITOR—In Stalin: History and Critique of A Black Legend (2008), Losurdo stimulated a debate about Joseph Stalin, about whom he claimed is built a kind of black legend intended to discredit the whole of communism. Losurdo clearly saw that the nonstop demonisation of Stalin was simply the utterly cynical propaganda part of the West’s multidirectional war on the Soviet Union, a war that the collective West had been waging on the Bolsheviks from the moment the revolution came to power in 1917.
-
RAMIN MAZAHERI—What an objective view reveals is this: Revolutionary France saw not just one but seven “Coalition Wars” to restore monarchy, privilege, feudalism, torture, inequality, racism and the oppression of an aristocratic elite. From 1792-1815 Europe’s elite refused to make peace with the socio-political advances of the French Revolution, which the French people democratically chose again and again and again. England was the only nation which participated in every war, and it repeatedly paid off other nations to join them.