by
Salvage
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One requires a general analysis of Islamism as a phenomenon of late late capitalism. At the end of the 1980s Chris Harman, then pre-eminent theorist of the International Socialist Tendency, sought to elucidate such a Marxist position on Islamism, which came to be politically relevant, especially in Egypt (the country in which he was to die suddenly, by cardiac arrest, in 2009). His starting point – that analysis should start from the political economy of capitalist imperialism, and the relations between dominant and dominated classes rather than an opposition in thought between belief and un-belief – holds true. However, the argument that follows from that starting point must necessarily change as the external world does.
More than the expression of the politics of a particular class, ISIS are the noxious by-product of the ‘common ruin of the contending classes’. The political project of disaster.
It is unfortunate that the myth of ISIS as US creation has spread so widely, since it forces serious discussion of the topic to begin with a lengthy rebuttal. More fruitful is to understand the organisation through the political theology it practices, its relationship to the state and exploiting classes in the countries in which it operates, and the lineage of Islamism from which it both derives and departs. But to begin with the necessary myth debunking.
[...] into a very large long room, in the middle of which was a gleaming oval table of the size which makes one think at once of the factory there must be somewhere whose whole business it is to create immense tables, long or oval or round, for the use of international conferences.
lol
Well of course it was ridiculous to expect her, Kate, to turn herself into an old woman just because … Soon she discovered that if she wanted to be alone, she should sit badly, in a huddled or discouraged posture, and allow her legs to angle themselves unbecomingly. If she did this men did not see her. She could swear they did not. Sitting neatly, alertly, with her legs sleekly disposed, she made a signal. Sagging and slumped, it was only when all the seats in the coffee room were taken that someone came to sit near her. At which time it was enough to let her face droop to gain her privacy again, and very soon.
It was really extraordinary! There she sat, Kate Brown, just as she had always been, her self, her mind, her awareness, watching the world from behind a façade only very slightly different from the one she had maintained since she was sixteen. It was a matter only of a bad posture, breasts allowed to droop, and a look of “Yes, if you have to …” and people did not see her. It gave her a dislocated feeling, as if something had slipped out of alignment. For she was conscious, very conscious, as alert to it as if this was the most important fact of her life, that the person who sat there watching, shunned or ignored by men who otherwise would have been attracted to her, was not in the slightest degree different from the person who could bring them all on again towards her by adjusting the picture of herself—lips, a set of facial muscles, eye movements, angle of back and shoulders. This is what it must feel to be an actor, an actress—how very taxing that must be, a sense of self kept burning behind so many different phantasms.
[...] The pain was more what some part of her which she felt she ought not to approve of believed was owed to the situation. But the marriage continued quite well. To the surprise of them both, since they were surrounded by divorcing couples, marriages which had not been able to withstand an infidelity … at this point, the pattern of Kate’s thought, or memories, quite simply dissolved. Some of it was true: they had been right in making sure they did not expect too much from each other, or from marriage. But for the rest—the truth was, she had lost respect for her husband. Why, when he was doing no more than “everyone” did, men in his situation? But she was feeling about him, had felt for some time, rather as if he had a weakness for eating sweets and would not restrain it. He was diminished; there was no doubt about that. She felt maternal about her husband; she had not done so once. To have fallen in love, and painfully—that she could understand, she had done the same herself. But to arrange his life, consciously and purposefully, as he had done, “clearing it” with her, of course, while he did it, so that he might have an infinite series of casual friendly sexual encounters with any young woman who went by—that made him seem trivial to her. And the way he had been dressing and doing his hair—when he came back from abroad somewhere, the first time, having tried to turn the clock back by at least fifteen years—she had suffered a fit of trembling anger and disgust. Soon, of course, she had been persuaded—not least by what Michael was not saying so much as indicating—that she was envious: it was petty of her.
But from the time she understood that this was what he was doing, and that this was what she could expect until old age did for him—unless, like a granny who dyed her hair and wore short skirts so that people could admire her legs, still unchanged, he would keep on till he died—she felt that her own worth, even her substance, had been assaulted. There was no explaining this, but it was a fact. Because her husband—who was in every possible way a good and responsible husband—had decided to experience an indefinite number of “affairs” that were by definition irresponsible, and would have no point to them but sex, she, Kate, felt diminished. She would have preferred him to confess—no, insist, as his right, on a real emotion—a real bond with some woman, even two or three women, which would deepen and last and demand loyalty—from herself as well. That would not have made her feel as if a wound had been opened in her from which substance and strength drained from her as she sat in her house in South London, knowing him to be (only in the intervals of his real work, his real interests, of course) pursuing this or that sexual titillation. She felt about him—against all reason and what her carefully constructed blueprints told her she could feel—as if he had lost his way, had lost purpose.
honestly relatable
On the way to the exit, they pass the barn where the impregnated females are kept. Some are in cages, others lie on tables. They have no arms or legs.
aghhh this image
[...] He said that his boss forced him to sell diseased meat covered in yellow spots, which he’d had to remove. The employee wanted to leave, to get a job at the Cypress Processing Plant, since it had such a good reputation. He just wanted to do honest work so he could support his family. He couldn’t take the smell of bleach, the stench of rotting chicken made him vomit, he’d never felt so sick and miserable. And he couldn’t look the customers in the eye, the women who were trying to make ends meet and asked for whatever was cheapest to make breaded milanesas for their children. If his boss wasn’t there, he gave them whatever was freshest; otherwise he had to sell them the rotten meat, and afterward he couldn’t sleep because of the guilt. This job was consuming him little by little. The employee told him all this and he talked to his father, who decided to stop selling meat to the butcher shop and hire the man to come and work for him.
[...] It’s known that in public nursing homes, when the majority of seniors die, or are left to die, they’re sold on the black market. It’s the cheapest meat money can buy because it’s dry and diseased, full of pharmaceuticals. It’s meat with a first and last name. In some cases, seniors’ own family members authorize a private or state-owned nursing home to sell their bodies and use the proceeds to pay off any debt. There are no longer funerals. It’s very difficult to ensure that a body isn’t disinterred and eaten. That’s why many of the cemeteries were sold and others abandoned. Some still remain as relics of a time when the dead could rest in peace.
[...] He thinks it’ll be cause for concern when the man stops looking at him this way, when the hatred doesn’t keep him going any longer. Because hatred gives one strength to go on; it maintains the fragile structure, it weaves the threads together so that emptiness doesn’t take over everything. He wishes he could hate someone for the death of his son. But who can he blame for a sudden death? He tried to hate God, but he doesn’t believe in God. He tried to hate all of humanity for being so fragile and ephemeral, but he couldn’t keep it up because hating everyone is the same as hating no one. [...]
Esteban is his sister’s husband. Whenever he thinks of his brother-in-law, he sees a man hunched over, with a face full of contradictions and a half smile that’s an attempt at hiding them. He believes Esteban is a man trapped by his circumstances, by a wife who’s a monument to stupidity, and by a life he regrets having chosen.
She takes him to a room on another floor where the specimens, all males, are sitting on seats similar to those found in cars. They’ve been immobilized and their heads are inside what look like square helmets made of metal bars. An assistant pushes a button and the helmet-like structure moves very fast, striking the specimen’s head against a board that senses and registers the quantity, velocity, and impact of the strikes. Some of the specimens appear to be dead because they don’t react when the assistants try to revive them. Others look around disoriented, and have pained expressions on their faces. Valka says, “We simulate automobile accidents and collect data so that safer cars can be built. That’s why we need more male specimens, strong ones, so that they can withstand several trials.”