What Future Holds

There is a new World Order which demands a completetly different intervention - no intervention at all but a the greatest pristine revolutionarly narrative of brave men and women liberating themselves.

Since I came back to Egypt I sensed a change in the air, palpable change. It is with great pleasure I report on Egypt coming back from the dead, rising from ashes. First in national phsyche, putting behind it years of humiliation, defeat and corruption. People are happy and relived but concerned.

Hope it will lead to a better tomorrow, where it will lead to real changes in economics, soceity and politics. It must take a long time and will not be without set-backs but leader of the Arab world has now arrived. Egypt is a true star and along Turkey and Iran is the country which defines what Middle East will be like in next decades. As they said, future of the region is not decided in Tripoli or Tel-Aviv or Riyadh, it is being made in Cairo.

Democracy has been delayed in the Middle East for years due to several reasons but history should become normalized now - as Friedman puts it - the Arab world will return to history. I will not list these well known reasons, but just note how critical this change is.

"No leaders should think that they could rule forever" - this is another new idea, dawning on Muslim world for probably the first time.

All the while, western myths - and I for years argued and described them as such - about Middle East were put to dustbin of history. Europe now stands humiliated and confused, paralyzed by fear of the post-crisis future and incipient racism, United States also stands compromised and indecisive. Both of them will be unable to master a responce to the Arab spring, neither raising to the challenge nor able to fight the outcomes. And yet the values these regions represent to the world, others still hold dear - not western phenomena, really.

So who will lead the Arab spring from beginning into fruition. What is the journey to be undertaken, a journey which FOR THE FIRST TIME in 100 years will be wholly unique.


There are several key elements to how this can play out:

1. Democracy and advance of human social rights across region must push the policies of regional integration. It can not be that the potential of region is stifled, it can not be that they trade with Europe more than each other. Arab block was a sham, now it must become a region of common trade and visa-free travel.

2. Liberalization of economies of the region and free trade between countries in the region.

2. Flow of ideas and people across the region must be unhindered, this process must include translations of foreign books en masse, many educational projects and nurturing civil and religious activism into a force for good different in tone from western concepts, but related to them.

3. Infrastructure, education and science projects financed by rich Arab surplus money - this money has to be wrestled out of the useless Gulf monarchies.

2. Turkey, now banished from European Union. must play a key role in shaping the new middle East. Iran must not play this part, unless it stars playing constructively

3. And finally Israel must abandon its protector and attempt reconciliation and join regional integration in good faith. It must do so by abandoning its current protector and putting trust into her current enemies. No more unwinnable wars- just trust, or otherwise it will be left out of the region forever.

The unity which will reconcile such irreconcilable entities will be another bold step which I term New Eurabia. This will- with a leap of faith - involve integration of Europe and Muslim Middle East into a single entity.

How? We will talk about it in due time.

Egyptian Nation, We salute you..

The spirit of Egyptian revolution is making air in Cairo cleaner, and it is easier to breathe. The nation of Egypt has risen from ashes and while there is still lot more to do but I have no doubt that Arab nations are undergoing the profound change, which will not be easy and there are many tough years ahead. All possibilities for derailment exists, but we should also be admiring possibilities of change for the better.

Economic reforms can not come soon enough; if all Arab countries can start on the road for the unified economic zone with free movement of labour, ideas and goods, anti-corruption drive and real market, only then we can define revolution as success. HOW this will be achieved I do not know, for there will not be any helpers to Arab nation in this quest.

For those who are not here and want to understand the spirit please look at the video we have uploaded during the Revolution Festival last Friday...

Legality of the raid

The UN Charter on the Law of the Sea says only if a vessel is suspected to be transporting weapons, or weapons of mass destruction, can it be boarded in international waters. Otherwise the permission of the ship's flag carrying nation must be sought. The charter allows for naval blockades, but the effect of the blockade on civilians must be proportionate to the effect on the military element for the blockade to be legally enforceable. A ship trying to breach a blockade can be boarded and force may be used to stop it as long as it is "necessary and proportionate". The Israeli Defense Forces say soldiers acted in self-defence. An investigation, either by the UN or by the ship's flag-carrier Turkey, is required to find if the use of force was proportionate to a claim of self defence

Montazeri

Reprinted from Weekly Standard) Reuel Marc Gerecht is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When I first encountered the Persian word mofangi, I struggled to grasp its meaning. It implies a certain timidity, physical weakness, and awkwardness. Seeking to put some flesh on that definition, my language tutor told me to envision Grand Ayatollah Hosein Ali Montazeri. "He's more than a little mofangi," remarked the tutor, expressing the condescension that well-educated, leftwing Iranians often have for the clergy who stole their revolution.

That was in the mid 1980s, and Montazeri was the number two cleric in Iran, a mullah who once passionately believed in exporting Iran's revolutionary tumult and was instrumental in building the institutions of Islam's first theocracy. Yet, unlike his former teacher and friend, the formidable Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Montazeri didn't scare anyone. With his big owlish glasses, squeaky voice, and sartorial dishevelment, Montazeri was clearly a man of the people--to the extent that any accomplished Shiite jurist can be an ordinary man.

Yet in the end Montazeri, who died last week at 87, caused, and will continue to cause, untold trouble for the regime. By the end of his life, he had come to represent the fusion of three unstoppable ideas: that the Islamic Republic as built by Khomeini and led by Khamenei is illegitimate; that only democracy can redeem the republic and save Islam as a vibrant faith capable of shaping society's mores; and that clerics who support Khamenei are intellectual dullards and moral reprobates. It was Montazeri's religious passion, his argumentative rigor, his common-man roots, and his courage that drove the regime nuts. His disciples are everywhere.

No outsider can precisely date an inner change of such consequence, but it appears that Montazeri began to lose his faith in what he'd built when the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) started consuming tens of thousands of young men--the faithful for whom Khomeini never once wept. After Iran's defeat, Khomeini "defrocked" Montazeri for having the temerity to question his execution of thousands of jailed Iranians. Under house arrest, Montazeri became the leader of the dissident clergy.

Fallen from power, Montazeri wrote a six-volume critique of the velayat-e faqih, the "regency of the jurisconsult," or "office of supreme leader," which allowed first Khomeini, then Khamenei, dictatorial control of the state. Although Montazeri never took issue with the idea that clerics should have an important role in government, he relentlessly pursued Khamenei for his lack of religious qualifications and for the very idea that the supreme leader is unelected and not subject to law and tradition.

For Montazeri, the Islamic Republic was born in sin because the velayat e faqih was not prescribed by Shiite tradition. Montazeri put forth the notion, later refined and lethally sharpened by Mohsen Kadivar, a dissident cleric and probably the greatest orator of the opposition, that only religious leaders who are elected possess legitimacy. Iran's religious political system, accordingly, must be transformed into a velayat-e entekhabi e moqayyadeh, an "elected, limited regency of jurists," where ultimate political power rests with the people and their parliament, and not with mullahs. Montazeri is best seen as an iron prow, crashing into and splintering Khomeini's state. And in Montazeri's wake, democratic dissidents of all stripes--from the religiously inclined to the religion-hostile--have grown strong.

Montazeri's most lasting achievement may prove to be the deepening marriage between religious -democrats and increasingly nonreligious, Western-style democrats. He didn't intend this when he first started challenging the regime's legitimacy. But Montazeri evolved, as has the entire Iranian democracy movement--now easily the dominant intellectual force in the country. Indeed, this rapid evolution is perhaps what is most striking about Iran's leading religious democrats--Montazeri, Kadivar, former president Mohammad Khatami (in office 1997-2005), and the lay philosopher/sociologist Abdul Karim Soroush. They have become much more explicitly democratic as they have reflected on the revolution. And they have become more tolerant of dissident ideas and people. On his deathbed, Montazeri remained deeply traditional, yet he was not the man he had been even in 1988 when he expressed his outrage at the casual killing of Iranian "political" prisoners. He had become, in his own very clerical way, a progressive.

And those to the left of Montazeri, which includes almost everyone in Iran's
democratic movement, have in turn moved farther left. ("Left" and "right" are tricky terms to apply to the Islamic Republic, but their Western meaning is increasingly apt.) What Khomeini feared most--the satanic whispering of Western ideas that transforms good Holy Law-abiding Muslims into inquisitive, disrespectful devils--is happening. Thirty years of theocracy has been a powerful teacher.

It was just six months ago--on June 11, 2009, the day before the Iranian presidential election--that American officials, government analysts, and a good slice of the journalistic and academic community downplayed the idea of a powerful anti-regime democratic movement in Iran. For these folks, Montazeri was a has-been, if not something of a crank. They saw an Iran where opposing regime loyalists argued essentially about little pieces of the pie, and the population went along for the ride, accepting the regime's inadequacies as it had the failure of Khatami to change the system.

But this analysis was ten years out of date. Behind the scenes, among intellectuals, academics, and an ever-larger slice of the educated youth, the advocates of democracy actually grew stronger as President Khatami got politically stuffed. Montazeri knew this and played on the growing dissatisfaction--which is why he became even more influential in the second decade of his opposition than he had been in the first.

Iran is an odd place, where old men can become beloved by the young, where youths who don't have a religious bone in their bodies and wouldn't give clerics the time of day, can nevertheless be deeply respectful, even impassioned about, a grand ayatollah who fought the good fight against tyranny.

Montazeri's humanity and religion came together to create in him a profound respect for popular government, with all its enormous flaws (which Montazeri himself bitingly enumerated). What the regime perhaps detested most about Montazeri is that he made arguments and emotional appeals aimed directly at well-educated clerics and peasant believers alike, encouraging their spiritual migration away from Khomeini's state to an imagined new Shiite republic where basic decency could be seen in the conduct of officials.

Inspired by experience, inspired by Montazeri, millions of faithful Iranians have put their affections and hopes beyond the reach of the regime.
The massive turnout for Montazeri's funeral, and the palpable nationwide sense of loss, are likely to be just the first tributes that a democratizing Iran will pay to Khomeini's most beloved student. In Iran the dead live on through their disciples, through the honor and duty that the young owe to the old, that the untested owe to the fearless. Once provoked and outraged, Iranians, who often dismissively refer to themselves as sheep, can turn into lions.

Montazeri was one of the lions of modern Iranian history. With his writing and his oratory, he unrelentingly challenged what he'd once held holy. His disciples--the army of Iranian intellectuals who've been for twenty years quietly obliterating the legitimacy of Khomeini's state--and the democratic dissidents who've poured into the streets since June 11, now command the high ground. Though the regime continues to rule because the Revolutionary Guard Corps hasn't (yet) cracked, Khamenei and his office have permanently lost their religious credentials.

With his unrivalled stubbornness and scholarly reach, Montazeri deserves much of the credit for the regime's predicament. Americans, who generally don't have an acute appreciation for Islam's religious authorities or the tumultuous debates about popular sovereignty inside Iran's clergy, owe Montazeri a great debt. Not a lover of the United States, its all-consuming popular culture, or its indefatigable ally in the region (Israel), he would not expect a word of thanks. Nevertheless, we should pay homage where homage is due. He earned it.

Saviours

Sorry for this break in creative writing, but I just got married. This i fervently wish to all of you - woman is a wonderful creature. Let she be blessed as a saviour of men. Let she be worshipped. Any woman, not disfigured by sin, jealousy or unhappiness is worthy of worship. A real woman is a saviour for all mankind.

Woman needs to remember she is such. I like women but I love a woman!

The Power and the Intellectual.

The dictatotial Power - one that rules over many nations - usually has very ambivalent relationship with the Intellectual. Whereas, the duty of justice-seeking Intellectual could be -in famous quote from Edward Said - "to speak truth to Power", it is doubtful how much can be achieved in a closed and repressive society by this stance. In truth, the Power does not rely on the Intellectual for active support, in which as a propagandist he (or she) is inept and shameful, but it relies on him (or her) by what he (or she) is. When he is physically in support, pay or lip service to such a regime, its legitimacy is shored up a bit, although one should not overstate one's own importance to Power.

The survival of any dictatorial regime depends not only on security apparatus or repression, but mostly on explicit or implicit support of the majority, and active support of few groups. Fear of losing the implicit support of the masses and fear of mobilizing these masses against the Power are main challenges that need to be prevented. That is why any regime, even one relying on ideology of God-given righteousness like in Iran, craves legitimacy, for open dictatorship will only rely on brute and hated force.

The Intellectual, through his mental capacity, has analytical powers to assess situation and arrive to conclusions on justice in society. He may even express them openly to Power but on conditions, in which this expression will be in the language not understood by masses. The Power, concerned about progress, education and science needs Intellectual for his mental powers, and his powers of analysis, but precisely these qualities can make him go out of control and should be feared. The Intellectual is like a feared but craved pet lion in Shah's private zoo; a source of pride but with a bite. Domesticated Intellectual could be a source of great value and is very sought after species.

The masses on the other hand may not be feared until their grievances are articulated, for then they may unite and rise up. If the Intellectual crosses a line from "speaking to Power" towards "speaking to Masses", he ceases to be harmless. He may become a Reformer, or worse - a Revolutionary.

An empty shell...

"In a sense, in a democracy, the ordinary citizen is effectively a king, but a king in a constitutional democracy, a king whose decisions are merely formal, whose function is to sign measures proposed by the executive. The problem of democratic legitimacy is equal to the problem of constitutional democracy: how to protect the dignity of the king? How to make it seem that the king effectively decides, when we all know this is not true? What we call the ‘crisis of democracy’ isn’t something that happens when people stop believing in their own power but, on the contrary, when they stop trusting the elites, when they perceive that the throne is empty, that the decision is now theirs. ‘Free elections’ involve a minimal show of politeness when those in power pretend that they do not really hold the power, and ask us to decide freely if we want to grant it to them. It is a shell."

Read it all

A battle with the genes

Will a Man eventuall play God? Will Man be able to do so, will he create - through a sheer scientific ability - a Perfect Human . He may create a Perfect Genetic Man - but can he stop a human being from believing the impossible?

Gattaca is a 1997 science fiction drama film that presents a vision of a society driven by liberal eugenics. Children of the middle and upper classes are selected through preimplantation genetic diagnosis to ensure they possess the best hereditary traits of their parents. A genetic registry database uses biometrics to instantly identify and classify those so created as valids while those conceived by traditional means are derisively known as in-valids. While genetic discrimination is forbidden by law, in practice it is easy to profile one's genotype resulting in the Valids qualifying for professional employment while the In-Valids who are susceptible to disease are relegated to menial jobs.

The movie draws on concerns over reproductive technologies which facilitate eugenics, and the possible consequences of such technological developments for society. It also explores the idea of destiny and the ways in which it can and does govern lives. Characters in Gattaca continually battle both with society and with themselves to find their place in the world and who they are destined to be according to their genes.

Nationalism Explained

Some might refer to otherwise quite liberal me as a nationalist, which might have some truth to it, although i view things through a different prism.

While modern concept of nationalism is a European invention (or distortion), the old concept of family, clan, and blood loayalties and resulting sentiment of what one would call "soil nationalism" existed from the time immemorial and will always be with us. To deny your roots, your language and religion is a grave sin in the eyes of a nationalist.

What nationalism is remains a hotly contested subject on which there is little general consensus. The clearest example of opposition to nationalism is cosmopolitanism, with adherents as diverse as liberals, Marxists, and anarchists, who hold all people equal and strive to eliminate cultural and ethnic differences. On the other hand, main universal religions - Islam and Christianity, in particular - also to certain degree restrict modernist nationalism, while unwilling to restrict ethnic one.

Reliance on ethnicity to spread religion is a major boon. Nations that have fused religion into the sense of nationhood are almost unassailable - like Jews, Armenians or Iranians. They will have less internal conflict but will receive double reinforcement from the two powerful ideas: ideas of sanctity of blood and sanctity of Revelation. Nations where religious affiliations divide, generally fare worse - like Yugoslavia or Northern Ireland. So called post-religious Europe is in fact still very culturally Christian anywhere from a small hamlet to a big city (although maybe in denial of it).

In this sense true non-expansive and non-chauvinist nationalism is still a parochial force, for it does not strive for imposition of international values and is content to maintane values specific to a certain tribe or ethnicity. It carries no universal values and therefore does not clash with whatever other values a person can hold dear.

Recent non-western example of confusion between specific ethnic and religious sentiment is Pushtun problem hapless Americans now finding themselves in. The reason it may not be possible to fight Taliban in Pakistan or elsewhere it is because in a sense Taliban are Pathans, who are fighting for and within the bounds of Pushtunwali code and in this sense they are "freedom fighters", however barbaric they may be for Europeans. All should remember that Afghanistan is a gravesite for all of its invaders and occupants, irrespective of their might.

So what?

Apologies for not writing too much on my blog, but - as with any other novelty - it wears out. I have got other things on my plate, but will try to contribute as much as i can in the remainder of 2008. Wish all of you Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Back in Blighty people need to cheer up - things are not as hard as the media is now portraying. Just not so long go it was all hunky dory and get rich quick, but now all is gloom in doom and TV presenters are getting orgasmic discussing falling shares, tumbling banks and job losses. TV is truly disgusting thing. One cheerful thing of course was Dubya press conference, where he entertained us with successful boot-ducking. Good job George!

Here in Azerbaijan we are marching towards an uncertain future, happy an uninformed as we can be. Oil is still a blessing and not a curse for us at 50$ but can become a curse at 30$.

Barack Obama will be the President of The USA

One does not need to be too bright to see which way the wind is blowing on the campaign trail. Note please, that I do not support Obama (or McCain for that matter). The change that Obama will symbolyze will be only one of external projection, but for most of the World this will matter a lot. All major European news sources - including The Economist came out in support of Obama.

So it is no surprise that opinion polls show voters ready to punish the Republican party. Even if John McCain pulls off a surprise victory, beating Barack Obama to the White House, he will have to govern in deference to a Democratic Congress.

Conflicts need their McCains. In the eyes of American enemies McCain is a better adversary, tough - like them - strong and talking business. McCain will alienate fussy Europeans, and make Russia mad, won't he - and this should be good, they might reason. The adversary like Obama - the outsider - will be much harder to circumvent. It may well be that US will finally learn importance of being European - what it has forgotten since JFK and will go on the charm offensive. Sceptics, Eastern Europeans and most anti-Western Arab nations will be unswayed by displays of Western solidarity.

Republican administration had no chance in the Middle East - the Democratic one will have the appearance of a chance. I do not for the least think - as some on the right might - that Obama is some sort of hard lefty. In truth, the only instincts he has is to get elected and then he will witness many a turnaround. He will be another Clinton and may even end up with a stain.

Clintonian America of 1990s - when i lived there - was not too different from the one which is ther now. So, all will remain the same.

Three Prime Movers

There's plenty of worry around about our human condition. But give it a thought and you can find only three basic ideologies that cause people to move towards both violence and creativity in equal measure.

They are what one can call prime movers of societal forces that will not go away and shall stay with us as long as we are recognizably human. I would argue that they are basically critical for existence of our societies on all levels. Playing the role of Ibn-Khaldun I will try to elaborate description of all three.

First we have different nations, ethnicities, tribes and races –since the time immemorial, it is our longest living trait. We look, speak and behave differently which in itself a cause of both celebration and headache. Nationalism (sensu stricto) does not necessarily imply a belief in the superiority of one race, ethnicity or tribe over others, but in practice, many nationalists support racial or ethnic protectionism or racial supremacy. Such racism is typically based upon preference or superiority of the indigenous race or the nation. Nationalist and fascist movements in the first half of the 20th century often appealed to these theories. The Nazi ideology was probably the most comprehensively racial ideology in history, none can be compared to this. Ethnic cleansing is often seen as both a nationalist and racist phenomenon. It is part of nationalist logic that the state is reserved for one nation, but not all nationalist nation-states expel their minorities.

Secondly we have huge income inequalities within and among human societies, some are much worse off than others. The conflicts of have-nots against haves raged for millenia in different guises – from slave revolts of Egypt to French Revolution. All of us long for social justice, but unfortunately the illusory road to it can be covered by corpses. Of the solutions to this dilemma there was none more potent than redistribution of incomes – the old idea which was ideologized by Marx and his ilk. A hoody from the council estate redistributes incomes, when he mugs an office worker and thus acts as a revolutionary. Fair taxes and unfair taxes do the same for the State - there are socialist states that tend to force people to give up more of their earned wealth and there are more lenient states who do not.

Thirdly, we believe in different gods or appear to believe in different gods or no gods at all. Thus we all appear to possess different ideologies. That makes us all susceptible to interpret scriptures of these ideologies in such a way as to state a preference of one belief over another. From the statement of preference – which is not in itself a bad thing - some groups will make a leap towards religious supremacism and suppression of alien thought. Fires of inquisition, fiery fatwas and angry lynch mobs are unfortunate byproducts of righteousness. Some religious suppression often will have racist or nationalist, or – in case of Islamism – anti-capitalism undertones because of alignment of religion over ethnic or cultural lines or economic exploitation. It is hard to find purely ideological warfare caused by nothing else but the writ- Al-Qaeda may fall into that category.

Some are under illusion that these prime movers of the human condition can be stopped in our time. None the more potent than attacks on religions as the source of “all evil” – as if other two “evils” have disappeared. It is obvious from the cursory glance that the removal of one source, leaves out two others that will not hesitate to take space reserved for violence in the world. But worst of all removal of all three will make us into eternally content race of half-wits without belief, without justice and caring not for their roots.

The History Lesson?

Some mistakenly assume that the stockmarket crash of 1929 was the catalyst of the Great Depression. The crash in America came near the beginning of the Great Depression, a most devastating period of economic decline in the industrialized world.

Instead there were multiple causes for the first downturn , including the structural weaknesses and specific events that turned it into a major depression and like massive bank failures and the stock market crash, while economists - ironically - point to Britain's decision to return to the Gold Standard at pre-World War I parities. In reality, no one knows exactly why the crash has occured.

Ironically - like today - debt was one of the major factors of spreading the disease and deflation, not inflation was the plague. in the 1920s, American consumers and businesses relied on cheap credit. This fueled strong short-term growth but created consumer and commercial debt[ People and businesses who were deeply in debt when price deflation occurred or demand for their product decreased often risked default.Many drastically cut current spending to keep up time payments, thus lowering demand for new products. Businesses began to fail as construction work and factory orders plunged. Massive layoffs occurred, resulting in US unemployment rates of over 25% by 1933.

Banks which had financed this debt began to fail as debtors defaulted on debt and depositors attempted to withdraw their deposits en masse, triggering multiple bank runs. Government guarantees and Federal Reserve banking regulations to prevent such panics were ineffective or not used. Bank failures led to the loss of billions of dollars in assets.Outstanding debts became heavier, because prices and incomes fell by 20–50% but the debts remained at the same dollar amount. After the panic of 1929, and during the first 10 months of 1930, 744 US banks failed. (In all, 9,000 banks failed during the 1930s). By 1933, depositors had lost $140 billion in deposits- enormous figures for the time. Economic activity in US declined by 45%!

This kind of spiralling may have turned a 1930 recession into a 1933 great depression. All hope was lost. Countries that suffered the most were the countries most integrated - USA, Britain and Germany depending on american post-war reconstruction loans managed by mostly Jewish bankers. Soon Germany was in turmoil (Hence, Hitler had an easy time: preaching to the choire). Britain was faltering, Latin America was in grip of revolutions. Communism of poor but rapidly industrializing Soviet Union suddenly became attractive for great variety of people in the West and in the future "Thirld World". This in turn increased fears of Communist revolution in the West, strengthening support for extreme anti-Communists, or other right-wing reactionary forces. The shaky liberal democracies were toppled in Central Europe one by one and the era of integralist dictators folloed.

THe crisis has eventually came to pass, however it had left indelible imprint on the political and economic models employed after it had passed. Among the conseuquences which was the abandonment of classic economic liberal approaches, which Roosevelt replaced in the United States with the New Deal. It was a main factor in the implementation of social democracy and planned economies in European countries after the war.

Ironically the massive rearmament policies of Nazi Germay and of other countriwa to counter the threat from Germany helped stimulate the economies of Europe in 1937-39. The preparation for total war provided a safe valve for the economies to stop their slide

By 1937, unemployment in Britain had fallen to 1.5 million. The
mobilization of manpower following the outbreak of war in 1939 finally ended unemployment.In the United States, the massive war spending doubled the GNP, either masking the effects of the Depression or essentially ending the Depression. People accepted rationing and price
controls for the first time as a way of expressing their support for the war effort. Cost-plus pricing in munitions contracts guaranteed businesses a profit no matter how many mediocre workers they employed or how inefficient the techniques they used. The demand was for a vast quantity of war supplies as soon as possible, regardless of cost. Businesses hired every person in sight, even driving sound trucks up and down city streets begging people to apply for jobs.

Kommunalka

As my Soviet life moves to a ever greater distance beyond the horizon, few things are worth remembering - or reminding myself about. Communal Aparments, while not personally experienced - as our family had managed to preserve a separate rump of a larger "capitalist" flat - were a great fixture of contemporary Soviet Life all the way into privatization of 1990s.

The communal apartment was the pièce de résistance in the chronicle of the miseries of Soviet everyday life. Contrary to the myth, they were not a product of collectivist ideology. Rather, they developed out of urban overcrowding and a Proletarian zealotry which made local authorities eager to punish the bourgeoisie, our family included, by forcing them to give up part of their apartments to the poor. A whole folklore exists about the humiliations, petty vindictiveness, fights and resentments associated with involuntary communal living. Michael Zochenko had developed a whole genre of satirical literature devoted to description of such a communal living.

Kitchens and bathrooms were the sites of epic battles over property (saucepans, washbasins) and use of space that could end up with a brawl or a bloodbath. Women, stay-at-home housewifes had it the worst, fighting it out with the neighbours all their lives. There are a few kommunalka memoirs that mention mutual support among neighbours and a feeling that one was part of an extended family where different classes, genders, nationalities and religions were all huddled together. Much more common was the sense that the family’s room, not the kommunalka as a whole, was home.

There wasn’t much room for possessions in the kommunalka, or even in the small separate apartments. This was just as well, as goods of all kinds, even basic necessities like food, shoes and clothing, were in short supply throughout the Soviet period. Yet shortages did not mean that Soviet citizens were indifferent to consumption. On the contrary, getting hold of scarce goods via connections and various under-the-counter arrangements became a Soviet pastime. Marxist ideology may have emphasised production, but in the Soviet Union it was hierarchies of consumption (based on preferential access to goods) that mattered.

While the Soviet regime may be said to have discouraged consumerism by keeping goods scarce, it was not ideologically on the side of asceticism, it promised us the Paradise on Earth. the meagre supply of goods in the present was only a harbinger of the abundance to come. I remember how potent was the symbol of Cornucopia with goods falling out from the sky - this was to be the future of the Soviet consumer, who had to persevere just a little longer to enter to paradise later.

Western consumer goods that were now known to exist but remined out of reach.
In the Soviet Union,the Western goods were veru coveted, and their arrival en masse with the collapse of the regime at first seemed like a miracle. The bitter pill that these consumers would have swallow as a price of free access to goods, and the coming of anarchy was neither predicted nor waited for.

Send him back...

This upsets me very much

Azerbaijan is secular state where - rightly or wrongly from conservative points of view - gays are not only not left to leave freely, they thrive in our environment. They occupy TV channels and own clubs - no officially sanctioned persecution is even on the cards. But of course we are Muslims, so we should be treating minorities badly, we are monsters. The one party that is truly persecuted in Azerbaijan is Armenians, for obvious reasons.

Of course, speculation on ethnic, political and religious persecution is rife, for poor and useless people to enjoy opportunities of the West. Recently I was approached by an future asylum seeker fromAzerbaijan who wanted to fake his nationality to become an Armenian.

Britain, send this guy back to Azerbaijan - or, maybe keep him - we have enough mouths to feed.

Forever

The time has come to declare that the modern society will never get rid of religion as practiced in any forms. We just have to distinguish between tradional and novel forms of it. People will pray, will live and continue to expect salvation for generations to come. Science and pure cold reason will never threaten most of humanity; humanists and fundamentalist atheists. have to beware they are going against basic human needs and desires. You will take one idol, and we believe in another. Globalization is no exception as this quoute says it all:

The greatest religion, the one which generates our whole way of life and – ncreasingly – death, is consumerism, the system by which we invest meaning and purpose in our purchases, center our dreams around them, measure our success by them. Interestingly, the capitalist acquisitiveness that we think of as materialistic has exploited our spiritual natures very effectively, albeit in a perverse way, and exploting our capacity for addiction at the same time.

The World is changing

The Russian tank columns rumbling into Georgia reveal the anger of a tiger finally catching the mouse that has teased it for years. The troubles in Georgia are not the equivalent of an assassinated archduke in Sarajevo. But historians may well point to this little war and the spectacular Olympic launch of resurgent China, as the start of the twilight of America's sole world hegemony and reassesment of the Western dominance as a whole. For example, if the second round of the Great Game is for the oil and gas in the heart of Asia, the West may be in the process of losing it - unless something is done to counter this trend.

To govern is to choose and to choose the West must - among option on all the fronts it is currently engaged (By west one means US – and not a Western Europe debilitated by inaction) . More at stake here, than some there realize; with each retreating move opposing sides get bolder and multipolar world moves closer into being. Power centers will form around China, Russia and they will start to attach client states around them. Even if countries like China and India declare themselves non-imperialist and tread very cautiosly on the World stage, their fast rise will force them to demand a change to current situation.

Why Western clientelle status is preferred for the former soviet satellites and ex-republics is quite simple. It boils down to access to cash, open trade, borders and intellectual resources, all unavailable from other sources. Ideas of democracy matter to a degree – but in the case of autocratic Azerbaijan and Central Asia less so. For Georgia, the West is also the only source of orientation that is hostile to Russian imperialism. Despite the unreliability of the West as a partner, and its failed attempts to spread democracy into unsuitable environments, it is still can be trusted more than Russia in matters of trade, economy and politics and relied upon as the only source of prosperity.

This Asian Century

The Asian Century may not bring the advance of the liberal democracy Sholto Byrnes writes in Guardian. The architect of Malaysian miracle – Dr Mahathir Mohammed - said once: ”In some countries sleeping naked on the beach is considered democracy – if that is democracy then it is not needed”.

What Asians value may not be necessarily what Europeans value. Westerners value the freedom and liberties of individual. For an Asian the values are for the government to be honest, effective and efficient. Ideas of Hobbs and Mills do not hold sway over the Eastern mind, and no local Peter Singer fights for the rights of animals to be recognized. Consensus and agreement is valued in the East above the conflict and antagonism. The source of the Asian culture system is directly from its beliefs and teachings – from the passivity of Buddhism, ingrained obedience of Confucian teachings and unconfrontational nature of South-East Asian Islam.

Europe and The Middle East may have lost its moral fiber and have become an area of confusion, depravity, war and disintegration but the Asia holds key to a virtuous future away from current conflicts. This Asia is now waiting to speak with one voice. Even the Islamic revival of the future will happen in Asia; and from Asia it will be preached to intellectually stagnated Arab and Persian-speaking world.

The West should recognize the fact that there may be autocrats out there with the real concern for the well being of their own people, concern they show in every action, deed and word. Not every Asian dictatorship is like Burma, for this to see one just needs to visit booming China, Vietnam, Thailand or Malaysia. The West has to stop criticizing and understand that there are nations out there with their own value systems that will not change, for they are perfectly happy as they are. Secretly it does.

My Answer to Rudyard Kipling

From Rudyard Kipling

Take up the White Man's burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.

Do not take up again this burden

Do not set forth your sons anymore

The World was the captive of the White Race once

But today we are free and chaotic - free like before

Your medicines may save our children-

But to you we are primitive beasts, half cooked, half raw

No desire we have to serve at your table

And dress in Western way, to cover our otherness more

Our otherness is in our souls - and not in ways we speak

Which you do not seem to comprehend, nor want to

So damn you with all your care and charity

And made up compassion for our suffering in peace and war

White Man - burden yourself with other problems

Of which you have plenty. Let us be ourselves, let us be ourselves.

The Age of Reason

It is always pleasant to learn something new in any area, but especially pleasant if it concerns Islamic history, onto which many in the West, so arrogantly pronounce judgements by assuming to know everything. Recently I have made an unexpected discovery while searching for the sources of Islamic Fundamentalism.

Islamic Reformism was a significant movement occupying minds of almost all ruling and clerical classes who clearly saw muslim countries lose superiority, economies and finally independence itself to the West. All leading voices of the 19 century argued for reform. The challenge of 19 century was crucial – how to compete with the West and yet stay independent, but the stakes went higher. It was obvious that Europeans would invade and rule directly, if urgent solutions were not found. While Ottoman Empire survived and staved off defeat, its Egyptian vassals under heirs of moderniser Muhammad Ali did not. After it had build the Suez canal, Egypt found itself – after heavy and indiscriminate borrowing – directly in depth to French and British banks and became insolvent. A military coup instigated by officers of newly modern Egyptian army was also the first attempt at nationalization to save Egypt from foreign creditors. It had failed and in 1882 British occupied Egypt under pretext of protection of Suez.

Basically it was becoming clear that despite its lip service to liberty for all, the West had no intentions to give liberty to other races and was on the road to enslaving them all. In these conditions there had to be two solutions: either to fight a losing battle of the sword or reform internally to be able to compete later. At the time answer was the latter, and beyond local battles with the West, there was no “jihad”-inspired backlash. Terror as the method of war was not yet born.

Two figures loomed large on the Sunni Islamic Reformism side in Middle East, and at the time quite known in Europe – like Tariq Ramadans of their day– Jalal-ad-Din Afghani and Muhammad Abduh.

Reformers like them said that Muslim societies had fallen behind the west because they had strayed from the core strength of Islam which celebrated science and reason and abhorred superstition. They had become antagonistic to change ossified and did not innovate with the result of the West racing ahead. There was generally little resistance to the idea that things had to change among all ruling classes and progressive clergy.

Abduh – who after being exiled and arrested by British eventually returned to become a Grand Mufti of Egypt – was also a consistent believer in the triumph of reason and berated a rigid ideology based on uncritical interpretations of hadiths, and went even further indicating importance of scrutiny and free speech to question many tenets. Both men strongly opposed irrational tendencies in Islam and opposed mystical Sufism which they saw as not scientific and full of ossified rituals. They have probably despised the folk religion with its cult of saints and holy places and thought of ways to challenge it through modernized education.

Now you might thing that the Islamic Reform movement was not opposed to the West, but it was not so. It was Sharia bound traditionalist headed by mainstream ulema, who in their stupor were ready to not only oppose but support foreign rule, provided their traditions were respected. Reformists invariably sided with nationalist cause. It was true in Russia (including my native Azerbaijan, whose Muslim democrat leaders eventually formed a republic in 1918), India and Egypt. Reformism in India created Iqbal and Ali Jinna and Turkish one Young Turks and their heir – Ataturk.

Reformists ultimate goal was the Islamic renaissance akin to the Arabic Golden age where spirit of scientific inquiry flourished; their future did not have not skimpily dressed women and binge drinking - they still saw the West as flawed in many respects. Afghani was also called a father of Pan-Islamism, which was a pro-Caliphate movement that can be constructed as a early version of Islamic “Fundamentalism” and Hizb-ut-Tahrir party. He toured many Muslim and European countries and served as an advisor to Ottoman Sultan and king of Afghanistan in their reforms.

Because some Reformists used to advocate a return to pious practices of Salafis – the early followers of the Prophet who, the Reformists believed, were guilded by Reason – these Reformists called themselves Salafis too, just like today’s West adversaries.

So in a twist of fate modernizers of 19 century became heirs to puritanical Salafis of today. Of course, on any Jihadi website the Reformists of 19 century are criticized as Jewish sell-outs – in one, Afghani is called a Judeo-Mason for example - but links between later Muslim Brotherhood and early Islamic Reform movement are obvious. Both were born out of desire to understand reasons for failure and derived their strength from critical and untraditional interpretation of the scriptures. However, the answers they have provided were different. There was the reason for the change of emphasis – it was because 20 century was a disaster and disappointment for Muslims, especially its second half, where it became clear that reforms had not worked and the West firmly and unconditionally established itself as the ruler of the World. Slowly but surely those who supported the modernism and innovation were tainted by association with the oppressors. This was the beginning of a new and more difficult chapter.