Islam, Peace, Justice & Dialogue

Maulana Wahiduddin Khan

Maulana Wahiduddin Khan's Interaction Interaction with a group of Catholic priests and nuns, New Delhi

Q: You give great importance to peace. Can you share some of your insights on this issue?

A: I am a born pacifist. Peace is an issue that is very dear to me. After long years of study, I discovered that in Islam, peace has the status of the highest good or the summum bonum. Many people in the West think that freedom is the summum bonum, but I don't agree. It is peace that is the summum bonum, the highest good.

Why, you might ask?

The answer is that because without peace, there is no progress. You can't engage in any normal activity, whether religious or secular, if there's no peace.

That said, it is very unfortunate that Muslims don't know the importance of peace. They know only the work of jihad—in the sense of confrontation with others. Some of them are actively engaged in fighting others, while some are engaged in the same thing but passively. Yet, according to my study, peace is Islam's greatest concern, as it should be of every person, no matter what her or his religion, who sincerely wants to bring about real and meaningful change in the world.

Q: In a society characterized by injustice and conflict, how do you think peace can be established?

A: That's a very good question. We all want peace, and so we need to be clear as to the right way or method through which peace can be established.

There is a widespread belief that peace cannot be established without justice. People who advocate this approach argue that, first of all justice must be established and then only can you have peace. And so, they talk of a ‘just peace'.

This is precisely what Muslims everywhere argue—in Palestine, in Pakistan, in Iran or wherever. They say, “Give us justice, and only then will there be peace. Only then will we agree to lay down arms and enter into a peace agreement.”

This type of thinking, however, is completely wrong. According to my understanding, justice is not part of peace. Peace should not be bracketed with justice, or with anything else. If you try to do so, it will only prolong conflict and war, and then peace will become impossible. It is putting the cart before the horse.

This is my experience.

The proper approach in this regard is to accept peace for its own sake, and not to link it with anything—with human rights or justice or whatever. Once there is peace in society, peace between former opponents, existing opportunities can be availed of. After that, gradually, justice may also be established.

This principle is exemplified in the life of the Prophet Muhammad. He and many of his companions were proceeding towards Makkah in order to perform the ‘minor pilgrimage', when they were stopped by their Makkan opponents at a place called Hudaibiya. The Makkans did not let the Muslims proceed to Makkah. At this time, the Prophet entered into a peace treaty with them, which included conditions that were clearly weighed heavily in favour of the Makkans. Yet, the Prophet accepted this peace treaty.

Some of the Prophet's companions wanted to first solve the problems that existed at that time between the Makkans and the Muslims, instead of first accepting peace. The Prophet did not agree with this approach. Instead, he unilaterally accepted the conditions of the Makkans. The Hudaibiya peace treaty thus became possible only because the Prophet accepted all the conditions of the other party and did not insist on justice.

This shows the importance of peace for its own sake in Islam, not linking it to, or predicating it on, justice or human rights. This is expressed in a phrase that appears in the Quran (4:128): As-sulh khair, which means ‘reconciliation is best'. 

Peace at any cost is, thus, a key principle. After long study, I have discovered that peace is the basis of all kinds of positive, constructive activities—educational, economic, social, cultural religious, and so on. And the only way to establish peace is to adopt the formula of ‘Peace for the sake of peace', without attaching any conditions to it.

This formula, I must stress, is not my invention. Rather, it is taught by Islam.

Q: The Prophet's attitude, as reflected in the example of the treaty you mentioned, reflects a deeply spiritual approach, accepting all the conditions of his opponents for the sake of peace. It certainly isn't easy.

A: The choice is actually always between peace without any conditions, and no peace at all. There is no third alternative, such as peace with justice or a ‘just peace', that some people, including many Muslims, insist on.

This is my experience.

I can't think of any society that has been able to establish real peace if justice is insisted on as a necessary condition for it. This sort of condition only leads to the prolongation of conflict, and only further hampers prospects for establishing genuine, sustainable peace.

The Arabs, for instance, seem to believe in this principle of peace-with-justice, and that's why they seem to be perpetually fighting. And because of this, they keep failing, losing everything and not gaining anything at all. This is because this formula of peace-with-justice is simply unworkable in the real world. It might seem alluring or attractive to some, but it is actually completely impracticable.

Q: Ignoring justice in order to establish peace gives the impression that one is indifferent to the injustices that prevail in this world. What do you have to say about this?

A: According to my experience, it is simply impossible to have ideal peace or ideal justice in this world. This has never happened. I believe in workable peace and workable justice, not ideal peace or ideal justice, in this world.

As I mentioned earlier, many people bracket peace and justice, but I disagree with this approach completely. Peace for the sake of peace is workable, but not peace for the sake of justice. This does not mean that I am indifferent to justice. My point is that once there is peace, one can avail of existing opportunities and engage in constructive and positive activities, and then you may be able to secure justice.

Consider the Indian case, for instance. I enjoy perfect peace in India, although there are many Indian Muslims who are negative about India. They say that they are oppressed, that they face discrimination. They talk of communal riots. And so, they are not living in peace. Instead, they are ridden with tension, anger, and hate, and with the desire for revenge.

But take me—I live with complete peace of mind. It is because I am not hankering after ideal justice. I am content with workable justice. Not complaining about this and that has given me the mental peace I need to avail of the many opportunities that abound in India.

Because I was not agitated, demanding ideal justice and protesting against this and that, and because I was content with workable justice, I was able to discover these opportunities and avail of them. This approach led me to be grateful for the many opportunities that exist here.

I think India is a unique country. The Hindus are the only people who believe in the concept of the many-ness of reality. This is a unique concept. The Hindus believe that all religions are true, that I am true and so are you. All other people believe ‘I am true and you are wrong'. They believe in the oneness of reality, that there is only one truth, while the Hindus believe in the many-ness of realty. This concept gave me a wonderful opportunity, to work for my religion, and my work is deeply appreciated by many Hindus, too. This kind of opportunity is absent in other countries.

So, to reiterate a point I made earlier, I always live with peace of mind, because I never claim that justice has been denied to me. When I know that only workable justice is possible in this world, why should I demand or expect ideal justice and complain that it doesn't exist? If I enjoy workable justice, why clamour for something that doesn't and cannot exist in this world?

Q: But what about justice? Ignoring it for the sake of peace might mean legitimizing injustice, isn't it?

A: If you think in terms of ideal justice, you may feel that I might be denying the importance of justice. The fact, however, is that ideal justice is simply impossible in this world. Only workable justice is possible here. To be at peace, you need to recognize this and accept it as a fact of life, as a reality. But if you don't, and if you keep chasing the elusive dream of establishing ideal justice, you will only harm yourself, and others also. You will destroy your peace of mind, and that of other people, too.

In every country, one can enjoy workable justice. And if you cheerfully accept this as a fact of life and live peacefully, you can, as I said, discover and avail of the many opportunities that exist to progress—in both the religious and secular spheres. This will help promote justice, too—but this happens gradually and indirectly, and not by demanding and insisting on justice along with peace.

My point is that according to my definition of justice, only workable justice is achievable in this world, not ideal justice. Workable justice is achievable in any and every country. So, no one can live with the claim that he was denied justice, because workable justice is available everywhere.

Q: But there is so much discrimination, which leads to injustice. What does ‘workable justice' mean in this context?

A: The term ‘justice' itself needs greater clarity. It needs to be more clearly defined. For example, many Muslims complain that in India they are denied justice, that during communal violence, the police acts against them. And so on. 

According to my knowledge, however, Muslims are to be blamed. They are paying the price for their stupid policies.

Q: If ideal justice doesn't exist in this world, and only workable justice does, should we then just forget about ideal justice? Or, should we make efforts to transform workable justice into ideal justice?

A: As I indicated earlier, establishing ideal justice in this world is simply impossible. According to Islam, and also according to Christianity, we have been put in this world as a test. Man is born free, because without freedom, there is no test. God has made us as free creatures, creatures with free-will. And because we are free, we are free to misuse our freedom, too, and this leads to injustice. Since some people are bound to misuse their God-given freedom, this makes it impossible to establish ideal justice in this world.

In fact, ideal justice in this world is not in the Creation Plan of God. Islam accepts this point. In the Quran, there is no verse that says that we have to establish ideal justice. This fanciful notion of establishing ideal justice in this world, through force if necessary, is only the product of some fertile imaginations—as for instance, the Egyptian Islamist ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, who wrote a thick volume on this thesis, titled Social Justice in Islam, wherein he insisted that Muslims must establish a system of ideal justice on earth.

This approach, however, is not Islamic. It isn't practical either.

Q: If ideal justice is not achievable in this world, does it mean we should stop talking about it?

A: I would say that ideal justice in this world is not only not achievable, but that it is also not good for human beings.

Why, you are bound to ask?

This is because if there is ideal justice, there will be no challenge, no competition, no differences, and this will stop the process of intellectual development. Inequalities and absence of ideal justice work as such a challenge. Establishing ideal peace or ideal justice is tantamount to abolishing such challenges. And that, in turn, is tantamount to putting a break in human progress.

You might have heard of the British historian Arnold Toynbee. He wrote a 12-volume treatise, titled The Study of History. There, he talked about a basic law of nature based on the challenge-response mechanism. Challenges, he pointed out, lead to responses, and this leads to human progress.

I fully agree with this thesis. If you are able to establish ideal peace or ideal justice, it means that you have put an end to challenges, and, hence, to human progress. This type of peace or justice has no value really, because challenges are necessary for all kinds of progress, in both the secular as well as religious fields

Q: What do you think is the role of forgiveness in establishing peace? I think it is something that is important.

A: You may be right, but my aim is quite different. I use the term ‘avoidance', rather than ‘forgiveness'. By ‘avoidance' I mean avoidance of clash or confrontation with others.

Avoidance of clash or confrontation is a general principle. When you are driving a vehicle, you have to avoid crashing into another vehicle if you want to be safe and happy. So, too, in society. You need to learn to avoid stepping on other people's toes if you want to be happy and achieve your goals

Forgiveness is, of course, good, but with regard to peace, I would particularly stress the importance of avoiding confrontation with others.

Q: So, if there is peace, it brings about a conversion of hearts, which then might bring about justice?

A: Yes. That's true. That said, I want to reiterate that the concept of justice is not well-defined. People often use it in a very vague way. For instance, I feel that in India, I enjoy justice in the complete sense of the term. But some other Muslims claim that they do not enjoy justice here. So, ‘justice' and ‘injustice' are not well-defined terms. It is your perception that determines if you think you are living with justice or with injustice.

I have never complained that in India I am denied, or have been denied, justice. I believe that I have got justice in India. I also believe that I have more justice in India than Muslims do in the almost 60 Muslim-majority countries that exist. I have visited some of these countries, and so I know this as a fact. I speak from personal experience. India is better than all these countries on the basis of my definition of justice. In Muslim countries, I don't hope to find justice, because in every one of them there is extremism and there's no openness, while in India there is tolerance, there is acceptance, there is openness. According to my definition of justice, I am enjoying justice in India and I have no complaints at all.

Q: I think dialogue between Muslims and Christians is very important. But when I advocate this sort of dialogue, some of my fellow Christians bring up the question of the law against apostasy from Islam in certain Muslim countries. According to this law, if someone abandons Islam, he should be killed. This law, which its advocates say is sanctioned in Islam, doesn't help Christian-Muslim dialogue. In fact, is a major obstacle to such dialogue.

Catholics have now accepted the right of people to choose to follow their conscience. And so, if a Catholic converts to some other religion, he won't be killed. His right to follow his conscience will be respected.

What are your views about the apostasy law in some Muslim countries?

A:  The true Islamic position on apostasy is reflected in this verse of the Quran (2:217):

Whoever of you turns back from his faith and dies as a denier of the truth will have his deeds come to nothing in this world and the Hereafter, and he will be an inhabitant of the Fire, to abide therein forever.

This verse refers to someone who abandons Islam and dies. It mentions that after he dies, God punishes Him in the Hereafter. This indicates that such a person dies a natural death, and is not killed for apostasy. So, this verse clearly shows that capital punishment for apostasy from Islam is not sanctioned by the Quran.

It was only later, maybe two hundred years after the Prophet, that Muslim fuqaha or jurisprudents, devised this law that apostates from Islam should be killed. These fuqaha emerged in the Abbasid period, in the period of Muslim empires. This law that they devised has no sanction in the Quran. It was formulated by the fuqaha, and I don't believe in the fuqaha on this matter.

There is total religious freedom in Islam.? I've written a book in Urdu on this subject of the law of apostas?y?. In that book, I have shown that the punishment of death that is prescribed by fuqaha for apostasy is not Islamic. 

Q: You have contacts with Christian leaders who are interested in Muslim-Christian dialogue. What do you see as the common grounds that Muslims and Christians have to work which can form a basis for them to work together for peace?

A: There is a great common ground in Jesus Christ's commandment to love one's enemies. The Quran (41:34) gives the same teaching, in these words:

Good and evil deeds are not equal. Repel evil with what is better; then you will see that one who was once your enemy has become your dearest friend […]

This Quranic verse indicates that your enemy is your potential friend.

I love the formula ‘Love your enemy'. It's the only formula that can give you positivity. If you love your enemy, it means actually that no one is your enemy, and that you can live in positive thinking. This is really very important in life. Negative thinking is the greatest evil, and positive thinking is the greatest good. And this formula, of loving your enemy, is the only workable formula for positive thinking and positive living.

Q: Christians and Muslims both talk of striving to do God's will. This seems to be major common ground between the two. What do you say?

A: Yes, this can serve as common ground, but there's a problem here, because the concept of doing God's will is differently understood by Christians and Muslims. This is related to their different understandings of God, because of which God's will is also interpreted differently. Stressing this as common ground, then, might create contradictions between the two while engaging in dialogue. And that is something that we must stay away from. Unfortunately, Muslims generally don't do that. Instead, when dialoguing with others, they try to impose or establish their point of view. Because of this, they simply aren't competent to engage in such dialogue.

In contrast to this, the approach I advocate steers clear from contradictions and controversies, and this facilitates, rather than hinders, dialogue and understanding between people of different faiths.

Q: I guess many Christians suffer from the same sense of superiority. They, too, want to prove that they are right and others are wrong.

A: But I, for one, don't do that, I can confidently say. I don't believe in any such superiority or inferiority. I never use these terms. The Quran doesn't say that Islam is a superior religion. This sort of claim is alien to the Quran. The Quran (2:285) tells us that all the many messengers of God are equal and that we should not make any distinction between them. None is superior to the others.

Q: Christianity gives great stress on love. I've read the translation of the Quran, but I've never seen the word ‘love' there. So, is it possible to talk of love as encouraged by the Quran, or is it something else that replaces love and that is central to Islam?

A: The word ‘love' doesn't appear in the Quran, but in its place the Quran uses another word—nush or nasih (For example, 7:62, 7:68). It denotes well-wishing. It is used in the same sense as love is used in the Bible.

Christianity says that we should love our neighbour, and Islam says that you should be your neighbour's well-wisher. Both mean the same thing really. In fact, you should love all and be a well-wisher of all. 

The importance Islam places on love or well-wishing for one's neighbour is indicated, for instance, in this beautiful saying, attributed to the Prophet of Islam:

Gabriel counselled me so persistently about the rights of the neighbour that I felt he was going to declare him an heir.

(Interaction with members of the Islamic Studies Association at the Islamic Centre, New Delhi, 1 March, 2013)

The Healing Power Of Meditation

William T. Hathaway

I suffered a brain injury at birth. An EEG test showed chaotic, abnormal brain waves, and in school I had attention deficit disorder. I couldn't concentrate and my thoughts were cloudy. My grades were mediocre, and I flunked out of my first university. I wanted to become a writer, but my writing was disorganized and unclear. In despair I took marijuana and other drugs, but they made my thoughts even foggier.

Then I started Transcendental Meditation. My thoughts became clearer, and I didn't want drugs anymore. I could concentrate. And I could write. One of my essays gained me entrance to a much better university, Columbia in New York City, and this time my grades were so good I received a scholarship. My first novel won a Rinehart Foundation Award, and I became a professor of creative writing. I've now published eight books and many shorter pieces.

My EEG now shows normal, orderly brain waves with no sign of damage. TM healed my birth injury and gave me access to my talent and mental abilities. Without meditation, this change would not have occurred.

How did it happen? Physiologists have discovered that during Transcendental Meditation nourishing blood flow to the brain increases by 20%. Our brain waves become more coherent, synchronizing and coordinating across both hemispheres, an indication of more integrated mental functioning. The whole brain becomes more activated, and that gives us access to more of our potential. In the blood stream arginine vasopressin, a hormone that improves memory and learning ability, increases, as do serotonin and melatonin, hormones that indicate relaxation and well being. Adrenalin, cortisol, blood lactate, and blood pressure decrease, indicating lessened anxiety. TM produces mental and physical rest that is twice as deep as in sleep, although we're fully awake. This rejuvenating state enables the body's self-healing mechanism to repair the damage from traumatic events and illnesses. With these blockages gone we are more able to develop our full capabilities.

For more information on the effects of TM on attention deficit disorder: http://www.davidlynchfoundation.org/schools.html.
Research on the physiological changes:http://www.truthabouttm.org/truth/TMResearch/TMResearchSummary/SummaryContinued/index.cfm - physiology.

Howling in Donetsk

Pepe Escobar

I’ve just been to the struggling Donetsk People’s Republic. Now I’m back in the splendid arrogance and insolence of NATOstan.

Quite a few people – in Donbass, in Moscow, and now in Europe – have asked me what struck me most about this visit.

I could start by paraphrasing Allen Ginsberg in Howl – “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.”

But these were the Cold War mid-1950s. Now we’re in early 21st century Cold War 2.0.

Thus what I saw were the ghastly side effects of the worst minds of my – and a subsequent – generation corroded by (war) madness.

I saw refugees on the Russian side of the border, mostly your average middle-class European family whose kids, when they first came to the shelter,  would duck under tables when they heard a plane in the sky.

I saw the Dylan of Donetsk holed up in his lonely room in a veterans’ home turned refugee shelter fighting the blues and the hopelessness by singing songs of love and heroism.

I saw whole families holed up in fully decorated Soviet-era bomb shelters too afraid to go out even by daylight, traumatized by the bombings orchestrated by Kiev’s “anti-terrorist operations”.

I saw a modern, hard-working industrial city at least half-empty and partially destroyed but not bent, able to survive by their guts and guile with a little help from Russian humanitarian convoys.

I saw beautiful girls hangin’ out by Lenin’s statue in a central square lamenting their only shot at fun was family parties in each other’s houses because nightlife was dead and “we’re at war”.

I saw virtually the whole neighborhood of Oktyabrski near the airport bombed out like Grozny and practically deserted except for a few lonely babushkas with nowhere to go and too proud to relinquish their family photos of World War II heroes.

I saw checkpoints like I was back in Baghdad during the Petraeus surge.

I saw the main trauma doctor at the key Donetsk hospital confirm there has been no Red Cross and no international humanitarian help to the people of Donetsk.

I saw Stanislava, one of DPR’s finest and an expert sniper, in charge of our security, cry when she laid a flower on the ground of a fierce battle in which her squad was under heavy fire, with twenty seriously wounded and one dead, and she was hit by shrapnel and survived.

I saw orthodox churches fully destroyed by Kiev’s bombing.

I saw the Russian flag still on top of the anti-Maidan building which is now the House of Government of the DPR.

I saw the gleaming Donbass arena, the home of Shaktar Donetsk and a UFO in a war-torn city, deserted and without a single soul in the fan area.

I saw Donetsk’s railway station bombed by Kiev’s goons.

I saw a homeless man screaming “Robert Plant!” and “Jimmy Page!” as I found out he was still in love with Led Zeppelin and kept his vinyl copies.

I saw a row of books which never surrendered behind the cracked windows of bombed out Oktyabrski.

I saw the fresh graves where the DPR buries their resistance heroes.

I saw the top of the hill at Saur-mogila which the DPR resistance lost and then reconquered, with a lone red-white-blue flag now waving in the wind.

I saw the Superman rising from the destruction at Saur-mogila – the fallen statue in a monument to World War II heroes, which seventy years ago was fighting fascism and now has been hit, but not destroyed, by fascists.

I saw the Debaltsevo cauldron in the distance and then I could fully appreciate, geographically, how DPR tactics surrounded and squeezed the demoralized Kiev fighters.

I saw the DPR’s military practicing their drills by the roadside from Donetsk to Lugansk.

I saw the DPR’s Foreign Minister hopeful there would be a political solution instead of war while admitting personally he dreams of a DPR as an independent nation.

I saw two badass Cossack commanders tell me in a horse-breeding farm in holy Cossack land that the real war has not even started.

I did not see the totally destroyed Donetsk airport because the DPR’s military were too concerned about our safety and would not grant us a permit while the airport was being hit – in defiance of Minsk 2; but I saw the destruction and the pile of Ukrainian army bodies on the mobile phone of a Serbian DPR resistance fighter.

I did not see, as Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe international observers also didn’t, the rows and rows of Russian tanks and soldiers that the current Dr. Strangelove in charge of NATO, General Breedhate, sees everyday in his exalted dreams invading Ukraine over and over again.

And I did not see the arrogance, the ignorance, the shamelessness and the lies distorting those manicured faces in Kiev, Washington and Brussels while they insist, over and over again, that the entire population of Donbass, traumatized babushkas and children of all ages included, are nothing but “terra-rists”.

After all, they are Western “civilization”-enabled cowards who would never dare to show their manicured faces to the people of Donbass.

So this is my gift to them.

Just a howl of anger and unbounded contempt.

Surviving Climate Disaster in Africa’s Sahel

Thomas C. Mountain

For over 30 years the great Sahel Desert region in Africa has been a harbinger of the coming climate disaster our planet is facing and surviving such has become a national priority here in Eritrea on the eastern end of the Sahel.

Remember Michael Jackson and the great Ethiopian drought and famine of the early 1980’s? That was just the beginning. In 2003 and 2004 we here in Eritrea next door to Ethiopia suffered the first two year drought in history, followed in 2008 and 2009 by another back to back drought. Including the failure of the rains in 2013 Eritrea suffered 5 years of drought in a single decade.

This isn’t climate change, this is climate disaster and science tells us that the world should be preparing for even worse things to come. Thanks to the mainly western countries contribution to rising CO2 levels heating up the planet droughts will test the very ability of our species to survive, something we here in Eritrea know all to well.

After the droughts of 2003 and 2004 the government here initiated a major water conservation plan that along with reforestation and soil conservation is a template for other countries to use to prepare for the climate catastrophe being predicted.

What this means is that everywhere possible micro dams, dams and major water reservoirs are being constructed to capture the rains that do fall and use them to irrigate our fields, beginning to break the age old dependence on rain fed agriculture.

Disastrous drought interrupted by record breaking floods is what is being foretold by scientists and the only way to survive these man made disasters is recognizing what needs to be done and then busting ass to see it gets accomplished.

This may explain why Eritrea’s President is away from his office for weeks at a time overseeing the construction of major water reservoirs around the country. And all this hard work being lead from the very top has paid off for when the rains failed in 2013 we here in Eritrea had enough to eat while in much of the rest of the Sahel hundreds of thousands starved to death.

Water conservation is critical but so is reforestation and soil conservation, for without trees to help absorb the water and hold the soil in place and terraces to catch the soil the floods wash away our water reservoirs will fill with silt and undo all our hard work. As a result our school children spend a month every summer planting trees and communities alongside the national service army regularly schedule work days to build stone wall terraces to trap the soil run off.

Colonialism and deforestation go hand in hand everywhere for forests are the natural sanctuary for rebels fighting their colonial masters so whether in Haiti or Eritrea cutting down trees became a weapon against insurgency by our western colonializers.

When the Italians began to colonize Eritrea in the 1880’s over 30% of our country was forested. By the time Eritrea won its independence on\ the battle field in 1991 less then 2% of our forests remained. This man made environmental holocaust left Eritrea very little in the way of reserves to survive the CO2 driven climate disasters we have since faced and forced our leaders to sacrifice a lot of other development projects that would have raised the standard of living for our people in our need to prepare for worse disasters to come.

Some years back the Eritrean President was ridiculed in the western media for calling for ten years of grain reserves being kept in storage, but today his plan is making all to much sense. Only time will tell if all our hard work will be enough to prevent the worse climate disasters foretold from wreaking havoc on this country but what choice do we have?

Hopefully Eritrea’s efforts will provide a role model for other countries around the world and help prevent untold suffering by our brothers and sisters internationally.

A Season in Hell (or Longer)

Adam Warren

Et le printemps m’a apporté l’affreux rire de l’idiot.
And the spring brought me the terrible laughter of the idiot. 

Rimbaud’s crisis is that of oppositions. Materialism v the imaginary/poetic. The so-called moral and civilised v the (again, so-called) immoral and barbarous. The industrious v the poetically languid. Oppositions which ultimately tear apart in the poet’s experience of his world along the fault line between a scientific/capitalist/imperialist West and an East which constitutes both an imaginary ‘elsewhere’ and a very real place suffering the ravages of European imperialism.

As the spring approaches, we find ourselves faced with a world set on a similar (and potentially disastrous) course for rupture along increasingly volatile fault lines. Divisions, again, largely between an overbearing, imperialist West and a much broader geographical and ideological ‘elsewhere’. As we try to make some sense of the unfolding situation, a few parallels between Rimbaud’s crisis and our own.

Le monde marche! Pourquoi ne tournerait-il pas?
The world marches [forward]! Why might it not turn?

The European/Western mindset is still largely defined by what might be termed an obsessive teleology. Perhaps the result of a haphazard marrying of Aristotle’s idea of ‘the good’ as ‘that to which everyhing aims’, and a Christian sort of ‘kingdom come’ eschatology. In any case, the West is still clearly driven by the sense that this mess is all leading somewhere. And that they are still the agents that should be leading us there.

Of course, as is all too tragically clear, this warped and obsessive sense of self has only succeeded in leading the West (and the rest of the world unwillingly with it) into chaos. From the horrors of European imperialism to the ongoing disasters of a seemingly unflagging US exceptionalism.

Rimbaud’s typically ironic pronouncement reveals something of the disastrous continuity of this obsessive mindset. It points also to a possible alternative. A world that ‘turn[s]‘ rather than ‘march[ing]‘ endlessly towards some absolutist end. For Rimbaud, it was perhaps a reference to an ‘Eastern’ cyclical conception of things, as opposed to the doggedly linear/teleological orientation of the West. For us, this alternative might well be the conception of a more ‘multipolar’ world being proposed today by newer emerging powers. A new perspective, however, that is meeting increasingly violent opposition from the current hegemonic order. An opposition that lies behind the major tensions currently threatening to rupture along the world’s geopolitical fault lines, form Ukraine and the Middle East to the Americas.

Les blancs débarquent. Le canon!
The whitemen disembark. Cannon-fire!

Sadly, little has changed here. And, with increasing signs of the US and NATO getting into belligerent mode, there appears to be little hope for change in the near future. Leaving us in the short term with the prospect of an even more war-torn world.

Rimbaud, out of an apparently instinctive disgust for this sort of civilisational, militarist arrogance, chose to set himself in oppositon to it, largely through associating himself with the oppressed and maligned ‘other’ that was the victim of European imperialism. For him this was to a certain extent an imaginary/poeticised ‘East’ that he had inherited from his predecessor, Charles Baudelaire. An East which, again, like Baudelaire, he infused with the imaginary languor of an anti-industrious dandyism. Which in itself constituted a stand, if somewhat self-indulgent, against the industriousness of the modern capitalist/industrialised West.

It was also a stand, however, that he made through deconstructing the essentially racist ideology of imperialism and turning it against the imperialists themselves, revealing them to be the truly ‘barbarous’ and ‘uncivilised’.

Depressingly, the old imperialist, civilisational (and ultimately racist) rhetoric is making an ugly come back in the West, revealing, yet again, that Empire has changed little since the ravages of its ninteenth century power. Nor, clearly, have the motivations of those driving it.

Et je redoute l’hiver parce que c’est la saison du comfort!
And I dread the winter because it’s the season of comfort!

Today’s Western imperialism, like capitalism in its current neo-liberal form, rests fundamentally on its ability to maintain a false sense of consumerist comfort back home. Whatever misery this imaginary comfort is founded on is to be concealed at all costs, whether that suffering is being inflicted abroad or closer to home. To this end, the powers that be have cynically learnt that an absolute control of the media, by one means or another, is paramount. An end they have largely succeeded in reaching.

Rimbaud’s statement is again full of his characteristic irony. At the same time acerbic and oxymoronic, it conveys something of that ‘terrible laughter’ with which we started. A laughter, and a deeply critical voice, that cut through the hypocrisy of a nineteenth century bourgeois society founded on the horrors of imperialism. As it cuts through the same hypocrisy of our own.

A “Good Day” for NATO?

Gregory Elich

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) proclaims its “commitment to maintaining international peace and security.” Mainstream media rarely, if ever, look beyond Western self-justifications and bland assurances of moral superiority, and little thought is given to what NATO’s wars of aggression might look like to those on the receiving end.

During the first two weeks of August, 1999, I was a member of a delegation travelling throughout Yugoslavia, documenting NATO war crimes. One of our stops was at Surdulica, a small town which then had a population of about 13,000. We initially met with management of Zastava Pes, an automotive electrical parts factory that had at one time employed about 500 workers. In better days, annual exports from the plant amounted to $8 million. Western-imposed sanctions had stopped export contracts and prevented the import of materials, forcing a 70 percent reduction in the workforce and a decline in the local economy.

Staff at Zastava Pes told us that bombs and missiles had routinely rained down upon their town.

We were first taken to a sanatorium, located atop a heavily wooded hill overlooking the town. The sanatorium consisted of a Lung Disease Hospital, which also housed refugees, and a second building that served as a retirement home.

Shortly after midnight on the morning of May 31, 1999, NATO planes launched four missiles at the sanatorium complex, killing at least 19 people. It was not possible to ascertain the precise number of victims because numerous body parts could not be matched to the 19 bodies. Another 38 people were wounded. We were told that the force of the explosions had been so powerful that body parts were thrown as far as one kilometer away. Following the attack, body parts were hanging in the trees, and blood dripped from the branches. By the time of our visit, the area had largely been cleaned up, but we could still see torn clothing scattered high among the branches of the tall trees.

Although only one missile struck the nursing home, it caused enormous damage. We walked around to the back, on the building’s southwestern side. A section of the second floor had collapsed, and the entire side of the building was extensively damaged, with mounds of rubble at the base of the building. On the northeast side of the complex, the building that housed refugees and patients bore a gaping hole in its façade, from which a river of rubble had poured like blood from a wound. We clambered up the mound of rubble and made our way into the building. Debris littered the hallways and in several rooms we found scorched mattresses, clothes and damaged personal belongings jumbled together in disarray. Bricks and chunks of concrete were strewn among the rubble, and a loaf of bread rested against a child’s shirt. In another room, teenage magazines and a child’s textbook were mixed among the wreckage. In the center of the room was a child’s teddy bear.

Rear of nursing home in Surdulica. Photo: Gregory Elich.

According to the on-site investigation report of June 3, it took three days to dig the bodies from the rubble. The yard outside the Special Lung Hospital “was covered with parts of human bodies, torn heads, arms and hands as well as bodies partly covered with rubble material, dust, broken bricks” and debris from the building. “A torn-off head of a man, approximately 70-years-old, was found outdoors. North from this head, there was another body covered with debris and a torn arm.” Three bodies were a short distance away, including one with a partially damaged head. “Brain tissue…could be seen on some parts of the building ruins,” the report continued.

As refugees from Croatia, nineteen-year-old Milena Malobabich, her mother, and two brothers stayed in the sanatorium. The entire family was killed in the attack. During the air raid, panic-stricken, Milena ran from the building, clutching a notebook in which she had written poetry. The examiner of Milena’s body noted: “The brain tissue is completely missing, and there is only dust and sand in the cranial cavity.” Blood had flowed from behind the right ear. Milena’s ribs were crushed, and her abdomen and left leg were lacerated. Her notebook was found near her body; on one page she had written in large letters, “I love you, Dejane!” The brain that composed poetry and cherished a man named Dejane was scattered in pieces throughout the yard.

We next visited a residential neighborhood that was completely wiped out by NATO missiles. As we had seen in other towns, a remarkable reconstruction effort was underway. Responsibility for national reconstruction was assigned to the Directorate for National Recovery, which was formed just ten days into the war. An energetic program was soon launched, and destroyed neighborhoods were cleared of debris and construction of new homes began even as NATO continued its attacks.

By the time of our visit, every trace of rubble had been removed from this neighborhood, and the earth smoothed over. A bulldozer and grader were parked nearby, and construction of two new homes had begun. Surviving residents approached and talked to us, showing us photographs they had taken in the immediate aftermath of the bombing. The level of destruction shown in the photographs was appalling, a jumbled riot of debris where several homes once stood.

We visited a second neighborhood obliterated by NATO missiles. Here too, reconstruction was underway. Smashed automobiles and partially roofless homes bordering the area were the only physical reminders of the tragedy.

In the first neighborhood, a man named Dragan told us that the homes were hit as a result of errant missiles. “They were trying to hit the water supply plant nearby, with two missiles.” Another survivor, Zoran Savich told us that sirens sounded every day, and the town was bombed on multiple occasions. Four months had passed since his neighborhood had been hit, but Dragan’s son was still so terrified that he fled into the basement every time he heard the sound of an airplane overhead. Quite a long distance away was another of NATO’s targets, an army barracks that was abandoned during the war. I climbed atop a large mound of dirt to view the barracks from afar, and saw that it too was damaged. NATO sprayed its bombs and missiles liberally around Surdulica. The destruction of an empty barracks was of doubtful military utility. The targeting of a water supply plant was cruel, but there were no words to adequately characterize the destruction of entire neighborhoods, as we had repeatedly witnessed in our travels. By the end of the war, NATO had destroyed about fifty homes in Surdulica and damaged around 600 more.

One of the bombed homes belonged to Radica Rastich. In a deposition, her neighbor Borica Novkovich recalled, “The sound was like a huge blow on the head. Everything turned over and rolled down the hill. Radica was screaming, screaming, when we came to help her. She was taken from the house all twisted and bent over. She was shaking and shaking; her hands were pressed tight over her ears.” Another survivor, Perica Jovanovich, stated, “I’ll never forget the strange voice of the bomb. When the plane is flying and drops the bomb the noise changes. It’s awful. It’s like the static on the radio but so loud, and then there is this awful crash and pressure and everything moves and boils up.”

It was a clear day on April 27 when the first neighborhood was bombed. On Jovan Jovanovich Zmaj Street, children were happily playing outside when NATO warplanes made their approach. Hearing the wail of air raid sirens, the children ran into the home of Aleksandar Milich, where they took refuge in the strongest basement in the neighborhood. It was not long before two NATO missiles sailed into that very house. The sound of the blast was deafening, and smoke and dust filled the air. Every home in the area was destroyed, and survivors were screaming as they struggled to escape from under the rubble.

Stojanche Petkovich reported that after hearing the first explosion, he rushed into the Milich home. He was in the upper cellar and about to descend into the lower cellar when the next missile hit the house, hurling him against a wall. “I covered my mouth with my hand to prevent the dust to enter, because there was a cloud of smoke and dust in there. When I recovered a bit after the second explosion, I called out to those from the second basement, but no one answered me. I could see that the ceiling in that part of the basement had collapsed.” Moments later, Petkovich heard blocks falling and looked up to see “the ceiling above my head coming down on me. The concrete ceiling was now down, pinning my right lower leg. I was watching the other end of the ceiling also coming down on me, and I saw the iron bars in it stretching. Then everything stopped.” It took two hours to pull Petkovich out, the lone survivor from the Milich home. Blood was spattered all around where the cellar had once been, and the smell of burning flesh filled the air. Every victim was decapitated and dismembered. “Bits of them were all over the road,” one man was reported as saying. “We found the head of a child in a garden and many limbs in the mud.”

When 65-year-old Vojislav Milich heard the air raid sirens that day, he ran to his home. He was about 100 meters away when he saw the two missiles exploding on his home. “When the smoke vanished, I saw just ruins of my house. It had been razed to the ground, completely torn down. I presumed that all of the members of my family and all of the people from the neighborhood got killed, which unfortunately proved to be true.”

The morning after the attack, I read the news on a Yugoslav internet site. There was a photograph of the back of an ambulance, its doors thrown open. Inside were piled chunks of shapeless human flesh, still smoking – remains of the eleven victims, the youngest of whom was only four years old.

Four hours after the attack, the British Ministry of Defense announced that it had been a good day for NATO.

Muslim vs. White Mass Murderers

Matt Peppe

In the early months of 2015, there have been two separate mass murders inside France that have generated headlines worldwide for their brutality and disregard for human life. In early January, brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi entered the Paris offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and gunned down 11 employees, and shot dead one police officer on their way out. Last week, in an act of mass murder with more than 12 times the number of victims, 27-year-old pilot Andreas Lubitz intentionally guided the plane he was flying straight into the French Alps and killed all 150 people on board. Yet it is only the former murderous act that has been described by politicians and portrayed in the media as an existential threat and an example of terrorism.

The coverage of the Kouachi brothers downplayed their humanity by describing them as calculating, rational, indifferent killing machines. A New York Times article, titled “From Amateur to Ruthless Jihadist in France,” describes “two jihadists in black, sheathed in body armor” who “gave a global audience a ruthless demonstration in terrorism.” The “hardened killer(s)” were said to walk “with military precision,” and “nonchalantly” take a phone call.

The article explains how French security services were unable to prevent the attacks: “The brothers appeared so nonthreatening that surveillance was dropped in the middle of last year.” Yet they had a long history of being monitored by French authorities, evidenced by the “thousands of pages of legal documents obtained by The New York Times, including minutes of interrogations, summaries of phone taps, intercepted jailhouse letters.”

It is seen as a failure of the security services, who presumably should not have let the brothers out of their surveillance dragnet. Their “steadily deepening radicalism .. occurred virtually under the noses of French authorities, who twice had Cherif in their grasp.”

There is no blame attributed to the French socioeconomic system, which relegates most of France’s Arab population to a permanent underclass of unemployment and poverty. As racial minorities in a country that holds few opportunities for people with their background, the brothers worked dead-end jobs like delivering pizzas and fish mongering. They were not able to get jobs at French investment banks or in the fashion industry. Certainly this must have produced adverse mental health effects.

There is no discussion of whether destitution and marginalization contributed to the Kouachi brothers’ decision to use violence against people who, to them, apparently represented a source of their humiliation.

Neither is there blame on French foreign policy, which has been complicit in arming and funding Al Qaeda for many years in Libya, Syria and other countries. France’s support for violent extremism abroad and its potential to create blowback at home is likewise disregarded in media analysis.The murderous Germanwings pilot received a very different portrait in The New York Times. The title of a profile on Lubitz reads like a eulogy: “Andreas Lubitz, Who Loved to Fly, Ended Up on a Mysterious and Deadly Course.”

He has a name and a passion. And unlike the “ruthless jihadists,” who chose their path as criminals, Lubitz “ended up on a mysterious course” as if he was a passenger on the journey, rather than the instigator who drove 149 people intentionally to their death.

In describing the “mystery” behind Lubitz, the Times says that “the focus has turned to what had driven him to such an act – and to whether the airline industry and regulators do enough to screen pilots for psychological problems.” As was the case with Newton elementary school killer Adam Lanza, the problem is understood as one of “missed chances,” in the workplace or by social services, not the police and security officials.

CNN wrote that Lanza “was an isolated young man with deteriorating mental health and a fascination for mass violence whose problems were not ignored but misunderstood and mistreated.” Lubitz had reportedly been treated by psychotherapists for “suicidal tendencies” and possibly suffered from depression.

For white young men like Lubitz and Lanza, the problem was a failure of society – parents, teachers, employers, government regulators – to recognize and treat mental health problems. Implicitly they are people deserving help, not security threats deserving surveillance and monitoring. The mental health of the killers is understood to be a cause – if not the primary cause – behind their actions. They were victimized by their mental health, whereas the Kouachi brothers were rational actors responsible for their actions.

Near the bottom of the New York Times article, a surviving Charlie Hebdo journalist is quoted as saying that one of the brothers told her “We don’t kill women.” One of the brothers also reportedly told a salesman “We don’t shoot civilians.” They clearly did kill civilians, but unlike either Lubitz or Lanza, they did spare lives rather than kill indiscriminately. Yet only the Kouachis are described as “hardened killers.”

Why such different treatments of the massacres and the killers responsible for them? Simply put, the massacre by the Kouachi brothers can be attributed to “Islamic extremism” while the massacre by Lubitz cannot. Surely the passengers who “shrieked in terror” would not have considered themselves any less terrorized than employees of Charlie Hebdo witnessing the masked attackers with Kalashnikovs.

The Paris attacks were described by CNN, BBC, New York Times, NBC, and virtually every major Western news outlet as terrorism. But the Germanwings plane crash has not been called terrorism at all. USA Today reported that the FBI “has found no connection of anyone aboard to terrorism.” CNN reported that Lubitz “was not known to be on any terrorism list, and his religion was not immediately known.”

In other words, it was not immediately know whether Lubitz was a Muslim, and, by extension, whether he was a terrorist. This connection between religion and terrorism, used in the same sentence in the CNN article, demonstrates how terrorism in common usage is understood to be about who a person is rather than what he does. Two Muslim brothers of North African heritage are terrorists when then murder 12 people, while a white German is not a terrorist when he murders 149.

Terrorism is perceived as the most heinous type of crime. Terrorists are thought to be irredeemable, subhuman creatures who do not even qualify as legitimate members of society with rights. But there is no commonly accepted definition of a terrorist, so any terrorist label is completely arbitrary. Unsurprisingly, there is a racial and cultural bias for using such a label.

Media portrayals of mass murderers are a representation of the society’s attitudes towards the subjects they cover. That Muslims and Arabs engender an irrational fear is nothing new. As Edward Said explains in Orientalism, this has a long history.

“For Europe, Islam was a lasting trauma. Until the end of the seventeenth century the ‘Ottoman peril’ lurked alongside Europe to represent for the whole of Christian civilization a constant danger, and in time European civilization incorporated that peril and its lore, its great events, figures, virtues and vices, as something woven into the fabric of life,” Said writes.

This danger still manifests itself in the disproportionate reaction of Western nations and its people to crimes that can be attributed to Islam and Arabs. Even if, as is the case with the Kouachi brothers, they were born and raised in France, never having stepped foot in their parents’ native country of Algeria. But “Frenchness” is still widely understood to be the exclusive domain of the country’s Catholic population.

As Joseph Massad notes in The Electronic Intifada, French colonialists killed millions of people in Vietnam, Algeria and Madagascar, practicing inhuman forms of savagery and torture in the process. In this context, the Kouachi brothers and their accomplice should be compared.

“Despite the horrific magnitude of the three men’s deeds, their crimes remain numerically modest and pale in comparison to with the far more cruel French Catholic and ‘laic‘ monstrosities that have reached genocidal proportions across the globe,” Massad writes. “Had the Kouachi brothers and Coulibaly lived, however, they would have still needed many more lessons in cruelty and violent intolerance before they could become fully assimilated into true Catholic and laic Frenchness.”

After the Charlie Hebdo shooting, more than a million people marched in Paris with 40 heads of state “in the most striking show of solidarity in the West against the threat of Islamic extremism since the Sept. 11attacks,” according to the New York Times.

The marchers, “people of all races, ages and political stripes swarmed central Paris beneath a bright blue sky, calling for peace and an end to violent extremism.” This in the same city where six months earlier French authorities banned marches demanding an end to Israel’s massacres in Gaza, where nearly 2,200 people were killed by drone strikes, tank and naval shelling, artillery fire, and F16 bombings.

In an farcical piece of irony, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who ordered and presided over the military assault was standing in the first row of world leaders demonstrating their “unity in outrage” during the staged march.

The framing of the Charlie Hebdo narrative as an assault by Islam against Western civilization misrepresents the violence as uniquely Islamic and uniquely evil. Any comparison of the media coverage of mass murderers must recognized that race and ethnicity drive the way those crimes are understood and portrayed. To American and European whites, Islam has always been perceived as a force that needs to be subdued and controlled, usually through violence. It is no surprise that crimes by “Islamists” are depicted by Western media through this lens, in ways that equivalent or more serious crimes by whites are not.

Cancer, Cola, Fries and Lies

Colin Todhunter

Benetton, Nike, Lacoste and a hundred other brand names, the holy scriptures of the shopping mall. Shop till you drop then shop some more. Burger respite provided, courtesy of ‘we clear forests in the Amazon for your delight’ and ‘we bring you more for less’ because ‘taste-free is us’, ‘quality-free is us’ and ‘trade union free is us’.

“Cancer with your cola, sir?” Is there a choice? Perhaps not if you are in the US where certain colas use syrup derived from crops containing genetically modified organisms. But you won’t know it because the GMO industry has spent tens of millions of dollars ensuring that the public remain blissfully ignorant of foods with GMOs. Labelling is out, duplicity is in.

During the 1980s, my hometown was described as the first post-industrial city. It lost much of its industry and it lost it quickly. Unemployment skyrocketed and people were forced to claim welfare. But they had to ‘prove’ they were ‘looking for work’ in order to get their unemployment benefits. Looking for work that no longer existed and had been outsourced abroad. The lies and futility of advanced capitalism.

In the 1960s, the city had undergone a slum clearance programme and had shifted whole neighbourhoods to newly built towns and housing projects beyond the city boundaries. There were already huge tracts of land lying empty as a result. With factories closing down in the 80s, even more land was freed up. Part of this land has now been covered with low density housing and trendy part empty debt-bubble apartment blocks, but large areas have been grassed over and ‘landscaped’ – the trendy euphemism for windswept urban wasteland.

Today, unemployment remains high and people are still being disciplined to look for jobs that have either long disappeared over the horizon to cheap labour economies, have been automated or, in these harsh economic times, are being slashed under the lie of ‘austerity’. Poverty means prosperity and misery equates with happiness. The bankruptcy of thought that says we must mortgage the present for a tomorrow that will never come and hammered home with the time-work discipline mentality of the Industrial Revolution. The devil finds work for idle hands, you know – but not for the criminal idle rich of course.

As if things couldn’t get much worse for those thrown on the scrapheap as their jobs were outsourced under yet another lie – this time ‘efficiency’, just about every aspect of society encourages the individual to indulge in an acquisitive materialism whose message is relentless. The thinking is that ‘you’ – the unemployed, the working classes, the great, great grandchildren of the cannon-fodder ‘heroes’ sacrificed en masse by the British Establishment on the blood-soaked battlefields of World War I – must aspire to live like a multi-millionaire footballer, even though you never will or can because we threw you overboard years ago. This was never intended by to be a ‘land fit for heroes’ of the working class variety (or for their offspring).

What lost opportunities. Those grassed-over wastelands could have been transformed into arable fields worked by local people to feed local people. What a lost opportunity for people to relearn the skills and cottage industries that industrial capitalism stole from local communities. Just imagine self-sufficient communities and localised economies specialising in developing their own wind and solar power, growing their own uncontaminated food using organic methods, making their own clothes and creating their own buildings.

A return to genuine community using modern technology to make life easier. Clean energy powered public transport, modern telecommunications used for the public good and self-education, rather than just used to bolster consumerism via online shopping or to enhance state control of the population.

Self-sufficient communities, not controlled by, reliant on or paying the price for Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Retail and Big Banking and the destructive meddling and military escapades carried out across the globe on their behalf. Not reliant on those industries that are from Europe to India in the process of colonising the world and stripping away ‘the local’, traditional agriculture, land rights, human rights, dignity and self sufficiency under yet another lie, this time ‘progress’.

And in many of those urban wastelands of England’s ‘green and pleasant land’, what we are left with are jobless people who, as Thatcher once encouraged us all to be, became good free market entrepreneurs by turning to the illegal drugs economy to make a living from supplying their wares to dull the misery of the masses.

The outlook is bleak. Many young people in these areas now growing up won’t have a job, a job of any meaningful form at least. They will be following in the footsteps of their fathers who did not have a job. They too will be stigmatised due to no fault of their own. And yet the moribund system’s mantra of endless growth based on consumerism and the need to engage in meaningless forms of work that the system demands necessary remains the Holy Grail, which is implicit within every mind-warp commercial, every politician’s cynical utterance and every highly-paid mainstream media political commentator’s solution for saving the nation.

It is implicit in every bourgeois judgement, innuendo, condemnation and insinuation directed towards a person who does not have a job or does not display the appropriate trappings of conspicuous consumption. To be called a ‘chav’ in Britain is to bear the brunt of such a tirade of negative evaluation. Chav represents a media-fuelled demonisation of sections of the working class who were three decades ago sacrificed on the altar of Margaret Thatcher’s treachery. The ‘undeserving poor’ that since Victorian times have hurt the unscrupulous, hypocritical sensibilities of England’s middle and upper classes who have led and supported more unimaginable butchery on the global battlefields of Empire than any number of working class people who have fallen foul of ‘Middle England’s’ sanctimonious bleatings about decency and morality.

But there is an alternative and it mirrors environmentalist Barry Commoner once stated aims of substituting green energy for fossil and nuclear fuels, substituting electric motors for the internal combustion engine, substituting organic farming for the chemical variety and using more metal, glass, wood and paper – recyclables, renewables and durables – instead of petrochemical products. And it also involves communal ownership of land and capital to serve the public good, rather than elite interests.

If there is to be a ‘saviour of the nation’ (of any nation) then this is where it begins. If there is to be some hope for urban wastelands then this is where it lies. And if there is to be an alternative to capitalism and oligarchy, this is where it is to be found. But as A.L. Morton’s classic text ‘A People’s History of England’ indicates, at no point whatsoever will it be handed on a plate courtesy of the bloodsuckers that are bleeding us all dry.

In the absence of this, what might be the alternative? Perhaps a thousand cities of the damned from blissfully unaware of ‘awareness’ and all sleepwalking to what could already be the genetically programmed Mac-mantra: “Fries with your cola, sir?”