por August West

“No centro desta incomum reacção da esquerda está a negação. Inúmeros activistas encararam as questões, pensaram um bocadinho nas respostas, e recuaram horrorizados perante as implicações das mesmas. Se o governo teve conhecimento prévio e deixou que os ataques acontecessem, ou pior, se tomou parte activa na execução desses ataques, isso significa que o estado americano é muito mais perverso do que eles podiam ter imaginado. E assim sendo, o que teria acontecido a quem o divulgasse?
Escusado é dizer, isto obrigaria a uma projecção da acção política muito para além do nível relativamente superficial a que muitos esquerdistas operam. Deixariam de poder continuar a viver como até aí, como um espectador cuja vida passa essencialmente por trabalhar/comprar/entreter-se, com a ocasional manifestação, leitura ou filme para apimentar as coisas e fornecer uma sensação de envolvimento político. Estas pessoas, e mesmo outras mais regularmente empenhadas em reformas políticas, deixariam de poder acreditar na possibilidade de mudar para melhor a situação política através de pequenos passos, num plano a 100 ou mesmo 500 anos. Esta perspectiva é absolutamente perturbadora, e é mais fácil lidar com ela mediante uma total negação.

Por baixo das motivações inconscientes encontram-se também algumas agendas ocultas. Aqueles que na esquerda deram o seu “apoio crítico” a uma “resposta limitada” de teor militar [no Afeganistão e no Iraque] não quererão de modo algum ver exposta a sua bancarrota política. Mas mesmo a maioria dos que se opõem à guerra, acolheram a ideia de que os EUA foram atacados por um inimigo perverso. Para alguns, isto representa uma oportunidade para promoverem a sua abordagem moralista: respondamos duma forma moral e não-militar. Outros, como Chomsky, Michael Albert, Howard Zinn e Alex Cockburn, limitaram-se à tese do efeito bumerangue: este horrível ataque aconteceu porque a América se tem portado muito mal, não nos deu ouvidos (marotos, marotos!), e o melhor é começar a mudar as suas políticas (como se um império pudesse ser governado com meiguice!).”

Retirado daqui

(Um post carinhosamente dedicado aos nossos blogues de esquerda de mais categoria: Cinco Dias e Arrastão)

(Actualização)
Em poucas palavras, o que Obama fez foi aprovar a Lei Marcial nos EUA, que permite a detenção por tempo tempo indefinido e sem acusação de qualquer pessoa que o presidente considere suspeita de apoiar organizações “hostis” aos Estados Unidos, o mesmo é dizer, ao governo dos EUA. Na prática, está suspensa a garantia constitucional e legal a que o direito chama “habeas corpus”. Seria de pensar que uma medida legislativa desta gravidade estivesse nas capas de todos os jornais. Mas não, a ponto de até o Guardian considerar o facto chocante.

David Ray Griffin – The New Pearl Harbor Revisited
Russ Baker – Familiy of Secrets
John Pilger – Hidden Agendas
Ian Kershaw – Hubris
Sheldon Wolin – Democracy Incorporated
Peter Sloterjdik – Crítica da Razão Cínica
Vários – História da Vida Privada em Portugal
Slavoj Zizek – Da Tragédia à Farsa
Richard Sennett – A Cultura do Novo Capitalismo
Philip Agee – Inside the Company: A CIA Diary

LITERATURA E AFINS

George Eliot – Middlemarch
Robert Walser – Jakob von Gunten
William Trevor – The Stories
Stendhal – O Vermelho e o Negro
William Maxwell – So Long, See You Tomorrow
Reiner Stach – Kafka, The Decisive Years
Andres Trapiello – Apensas Sensitivo
Ian Hamilton – Tne Book of 20Th Century Essays
Tony Harrison – Laureate’s Block and Other Poems
Edmund White – City Boy

Sobre o mesmo assunto (as ligações da família Bush com a CIA e o envolvimento desta no assassínio de Kennedy), leia-se Family of Secrets de Russ Baker, uma investigação explosiva (ou que seria explosiva se os donos da informação não tivessem tudo muito bem controlado).

Para o Diogo

Retirado daqui.

Intervenções de SpY. Achado aqui

Off Sight, de Maider Lopez. Achado aqui

Sept. 11, 2001, hastened a significant shift in our nation’s self-understanding. It became commonplace to refer to an “American empire” and to the United States as “the world’s only superpower.”

Instead of those formulations, try to conceive of ones like “superpower democracy” or “imperial democracy,” and they seem not only contradictory but opposed to basic assumptions that Americans hold about their political system and their place within it. Supposedly ours is a government of constitutionally limited powers in which equal citizens can take part in power. But one can no more assume that a superpower welcomes legal limits than believe that an empire finds democratic participation congenial.

No administration before George W. Bush’s ever claimed such sweeping powers for an enterprise as vaguely defined as the “war against terrorism” and the “axis of evil.” Nor has one begun to consume such an enormous amount of the nation’s resources for a mission whose end would be difficult to recognize even if achieved.

Like previous forms of totalitarianism, the Bush administration boasts a reckless unilateralism that believes the United States can demand unquestioning support, on terms it dictates; ignores treaties and violates international law at will; invades other countries without provocation; and incarcerates persons indefinitely without charging them with a crime or allowing access to counsel.

The drive toward total power can take different forms, as Mussolini’s Italy, Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union suggest.

The American system is evolving its own form: “inverted totalitarianism.” This has no official doctrine of racism or extermination camps but, as described above, it displays similar contempt for restraints.

It also has an upside-down character. For instance, the Nazis focused upon mobilizing and unifying the society, maintaining a continuous state of war preparations and demanding enthusiastic participation from the populace. In contrast, inverted totalitarianism exploits political apathy and encourages divisiveness. The turnout for a Nazi plebiscite was typically 90 percent or higher; in a good election year in the United States, participation is about 50 percent.

Another example: The Nazis abolished the parliamentary system, instituted single-party rule and controlled all forms of public communication. It is possible, however, to reach a similar result without seeming to suppress. An elected legislature is retained but a system of corruption (lobbyists, campaign contributions, payoffs to powerful interests) short-circuits the connection between voters and their representatives. The system responds primarily to corporate interests; voters become cynical, resigned; and opposition seems futile.

While Nazi control of the media meant that only the “official story” was communicated, that result is approximated by encouraging concentrated ownership of the media and thereby narrowing the range of permissible opinions.

This can be augmented by having “homeland security” envelop the entire nation with a maze of restrictions and by instilling fear among the general population by periodic alerts raised against a background of economic uncertainty, unemployment, downsizing and cutbacks in basic services.

Further, instead of outlawing all but one party, transform the two-party system. Have one, the Republican, radically change its identity:

From a moderately conservative party to a radically conservative one.

From a party of isolationism, skeptical of foreign adventures and viscerally opposed to deficit spending, to a party zealous for foreign wars.

From a party skeptical of ideologies and eggheads into an ideologically driven party nurturing its own intellectuals and supporting a network that transforms the national ideology from mildly liberal to predominantly conservative, while forcing the Democrats to the right and and enfeebling opposition.

From one that maintains space between business and government to one that merges governmental and corporate power and exploits the power-potential of scientific advances and technological innovation. (This would differ from the Nazi warfare organization, which subordinated “big business” to party leadership.)

The resulting dynamic unfolded spectacularly in the technology unleashed against Iraq and predictably in the corporate feeding frenzy over postwar contracts for Iraq’s reconstruction.

In institutionalizing the “war on terrorism” the Bush administration acquired a rationale for expanding its powers and furthering its domestic agenda. While the nation’s resources are directed toward endless war, the White House promoted tax cuts in the midst of recession, leaving scant resources available for domestic programs. The effect is to render the citizenry more dependent on government, and to empty the cash-box in case a reformist administration comes to power.

Americans are now facing a grim situation with no easy solution. Perhaps the just-passed anniversary of the Declaration of Independence might remind us that “whenever any form of Government becomes destructive …” it must be challenged.

Sheldon S. Wolin is emeritus professor of politics at Princeton University and the author of “Politics and Vision: The Presence of the Past” and “Alexis de Tocqueville: Between Two Worlds.”

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