rememberinggiap, a commentator on this blog since its first day, has just received a new computer. His old machine died some month ago. He has/had no money and his fascinating job (read down) did/does not nearly pay enough to get a replacement.
So after Conchita generously raised the awareness, some donors put up the needed money to get r’giap going again and regulars here donated, underlining their solidarity and spreading the burden. A big genuine "Thanks" to all of them!
Billmon once called r’giap a Stalinist fruit cake. The relevant dialog is here, here and here.
Nearly a year later, I today re-ask the question r’giap raised and was rebuked for.
Is the resistance to this stupid War of Terror a genuine native social one, or is this some wacko religious conflict?
My take is the first, Billmon seems to tend to the second view.
The countries and state-philosophies involved are on one side based on pure neo-lib greed (A) and on the other on a secular kind of socialism (Baathism) or a religion sourced duty to share wealth (B), i.e. socialism based on agnostic believe or some holy book.
In which conversion of your personal life, A to B or B to A, would you really be committed to resist?
That is still the much undervalued central question of the fight. But back to r’giap:
—
He just wrote:
the wonderful tool has arrived & with its maiden ecran – there will be much work done on them
i really, really want to thank all the comrades for their fraternity & generosity – i hope i am worthy of your efforts
here & elsewhere
as conchita knows i have a fascination with the tools of my labour
(perhaps even a little too much) but to be working on something that
only my own failure is exigante is important for methe conflation of my situation, the sickness being very heavy &
the pure absurdity of events – foreseeable events like the ‘resurgance’
of the ‘insurgents’ in afghanistan – where we have since the whisky bar
been most insistantthe plane affair become a sorry soap instead of the affair of state it is
from bint jbeil to wajiristan – the empire has understood nothing, absolutely nothing
& the mess they are making of it is enough it send us all to
hospital & sometimes it is hard to see through the mess &
sometimes i am unconvinced of friend slothrops sense that finally the
empire knows what it is doing even in chaoshaving been more or less a silent witness & overcrowded with
commentary &images during this ÊtÊ – i am convinced of only their
brutality & their stupidity& it is not flattery to say i come here for sense, common sense
& i find it
Welcome back r’giap. May steel win over gold.