Posted by Sean on October 15, 2006
Sometimes I come across articles that are so compelling, I have to mention them whether they are about Russia or not. Patrick Cockburn’s article “Iraq: The Reality” published in the Independent UK on October 12 is one of them. The article is an edited extract from his book The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq published by Verso.
Here is a passage:
High rank was no defence against violence. The Iraqi police general in charge of the serious crimes squad was shot through the head by an American soldier who mistook him for a suicide bomber. President Jalal Talabani’s head of protocol was not with him when he visited Washington to see President Bush. Instead he was in a Baghdad hospital with a broken arm and leg after a US Humvee rammed his vehicle.
So many people were being killed in Iraq every day for so many reasons that the ..read more
Posted by Sean on October 15, 2006
Revolution are often written backwards. An event may be declared a revolution from the outset but whether that event actually becomes the social phenomenon we call “revolution” can only be assessed after the fact. The result of narrativizing revolutions backwards has left us with very few revolutions in human history. For example, the French Revolution of 1789 was a major revolution, if not the model for the world. But the French Revolution of 1852 appears to us now as a blip on the historical screen. It is interesting for sure. After all it inspired Marx to write one of his most beautifully written and analytically difficult texts, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. However, 1852 is so forgettable because it was a restoration rather than a revolution. Because of, rather than despite of mass peasant revolt, Louis Napoleon became Emperor of France. ..read more
