No Fucking Pasarán

Terry Glavin is still in Afghanistan.

Civilisation and Barbarism

1.

I see that Glavin is in Afghanistan. Good for him.

2.

I’ve just read the chapter on Sarmiento and Alberdi in Oscar Terán’s enormously instructive Historia de las ideas en la Argentina. Can anyone doubt what course of action Sarmiento would have recommended in Afghanistan? Can anyone doubt whether he’d have been willing to get his own hands dirty if necessary?

3.

Terán died in March this year and I found out from a mail that a friend forwarded to me. When I received it I was in the newsroom of a national newspaper. Nobody there had heard of him.

Resisting

Writing about in today’s Pagina/12, Juan Gelman says,

Pakistan itself is a British creation, a buffer state between India and Afghanistan, manufactured by London from Indian territory, of course.

Note well here that Gelman, a man of the  left and an enemy of imperialism, can’t  find it in himself to mention any other factor as being relevant in the foundation of Pakistan other than the will of the British. The desires and aspirations of the millions of Muslims who didn’t want to form part of what they thought would be a state dominated by Hindus, just don’t exist. And note something else; “Indian territory”, which Gelman obviously regards as being inviolable, was itself a creation of the British imperial presence. After trashing Pakistan as a nation state Gelman naturally goes on to laud the Taliban for resisting the presence of foreigners and the Pashtun people for their age old custom of giving hospitality to strangers. Some folk, it would seem, are just not suited to the  demands of the modern world and are at their best when enacting ancient customs and endlessly, ceaselessly resisting.

It might be said that I am placing too much emphasis on the use of one or two words but remember what Gelman’s day job is, he’s a poet and a winner of the Premio Cervantes, the most important prize in Spanish letters. He knows the weight of his  words and is not some harrassed hack throwing a column together as the newspaper’s deadline looms.

Buena Pregunta

¿algún intelectual progresista y democrático condenó en la Argentina las matanzas brutales de millares de árabes y musulmanes no árabes, consumadas por islámicos contra muchedumbres de peregrinos y habitantes pobres de incontables poblados en Irak, Pakistán y Afganistán y no, precisamente, por esbirros del imperialismo o de Israel?

Creo que la repuesta es “no”.  Seguir leyenda la columna de Eliaschev acá.

Elision

J.M. Muñoz uses the Winograd comission report to have a go at Israel for its use of cluster munitions during the Second Lebanon War. Fair enough, up to a point. I had my own say on the subject here. You’d never guess though from reading his article in the flagship of Spanish progressive opinion that Spain itself is a member of an alliance that used cluster munitions extensively in the Kosovo campaign and is a close ally of a country, the United States, that used them in both wars against Saddam Hussein and in the overthrow of the Taliban.