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8/22/2011

I Don't Care if Libya Does Make Cameron Look Like a Bigshot

I said it before and I'll say it again. I don't care if Cameron gets a boost in the polls because of Libya. No more than, as a descendant of Welsh miners and railway workers, I care that history will remember Winston Churchill for his war record - or that in 1945 he was rejected by a British people unified by their struggle and collectively dedicated to their own version of the future. Just like Libya now.
So there won't be any tribal blood-bath or civil war. Libya will emerge as a functional state, as independent as any state can be, and possibly more than most. In the last 6 months, Libya has forged a unique solidarity which will allow them to progress in their own way - whatever NATO, China, Russia or even Walmart wants for it.
Libya has possibly the best chance of any new country in history, and is therefore in a unique position, and bears a new responsibility, but not to any existing ideology or creed. The only thing it can do is progress. It is a blank slate, and the much-sneered at absence of a 'Leader' is therefore perfect. There is no law that the states of the future should have the same kinds of 'leadership' we have been accustomed to since the great age of steam.
The age of mass instant digital communication liberates Libya from the administrative and political shackles of the past. In an age when a Masai tribe can radically benefit from mobile phone technology, surely Libya can also find an imaginative use for this new power. It played a key role in the creation of Free Libya, it should do the same in its future - if only to create the instant involvement of all the Libyan tribes, for a start.
Those who think that NATO can control the future of Libya sound more and more like a morbid bunch of spolit teenagers sulking because their parents stopped them painting their bedrooms black. Miserable, slinking, self-pitying creatures, unable to take pleasure from the most basic human virtues.

Revolutions never happen by the book. So the nerds will always object that it can't be working in practise because it's not supposed to work in theory. In other words, they're not politicians but theologians.
There are many theories about why there was so little resistance to the liberation of Tripoli. Sending the Tripoli Brigade in first seems to have been crucial. Libya proved the point again, people won't shoot their own. The sons of the city came home, and brought freedom with them. Human values triumph again.

Of course, the Denialists are in more than one pickle after this reversal. If everything they claim about the FF is true, then they should now be seeking protection for Libyan civilians under UN1973, as enforced by the hated NATO. IF anything they have been saying is true. Bit of course they know it's not, and so can still go on railing against NATO even though logically and legally it is now on their side.

And here we come to another Denialist Nightmare. Assad. Syria. Gadaffi Junior. If Gadaffi was the bee's knees, then Junior must be worth a punt, even if his eyes are too close together for dry land. But Assad is killing as many innocent civilians as Gadaffi. So are ALL the protests a criminal conspiracy, funded by the CIA and ALQaida? Looks like it. If you're crazy enough it does. 

Possibly the most irritating twerpery of all comes from the Lady Bracknells: who are worried about who these rebels are. All they know is that amongst them are pro-West, neoliberal, Islamist and even monarchist elements.. Do we even know these .. people? You mean that they don't all believe the same thing!!!!?? Isn't there a law against that or something? Oh no, hang on, that was when Gadaffi ran the joint. People are allowed to be different now. It's called freedom. It's what they fought and died for together. Ex Al-Qaida Iraq veteran alongside software engineers. 
Condemning the revolution because of the Iraq war is sheer perversity. They might just as well condemn the entire Freedom Force because it contained ex- Gadaffi fanatics. Or the entire US infantry because it contains fascists, paedophiles, psychotics and drug-addicts. There is a classic reactionary blind-spot for humanity, which fails to understand how actions and co-operation forge new identities for people, and new bonds between them, more meaningful and productive than any superficial tribe or creed. That's what Activism means. 

HILARIOUS QUOTE OF THE DAY
'China respects the choice of the people'.
 I'd rather be Homer Simpson's brain than that of a Chinese apparatchik. Like being a tightrope-walking juggling dog. In a hat.

1 comment:

  1. flashdance8:55 pm

    Right on the button Rob. And all those pathetic individuals who picked up their politics in Freshers Week care of the SWP and cannot even accept the evidence of their own eyes, now busily
    waving their flaccid pubenda in the air and calling on Marx to get them off the hook. Marx would have understood perfectly the importance of the Libyan revolution as a vital jump forward in human social development. Human beings, acting without fear in their own best interests. The world is never going to be the same.

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