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| December 18, 2011 Tomgram: Engelhardt, Restless Planet
[Note to TomDispatch Readers: As the holiday season approaches, remember that TomDispatch has championed a number of wonderful books in the last months. In fact, I think it says something about this site that it’s associated with such a set of books. Among them: Adam Hochschild’s bestselling history of World War I, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 (front page rave by the late Christopher Hitchens in the New York Times Book Review and one book I’m definitely buying as a gift this year); State Department official Peter Van Buren’s widely praised, devastating account of the Iraq War up close and personal, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, a book far too honest for the government for which he works; the 10th anniversary reissue of Barbara Ehrenreich’s classic and all-too-up-to-date Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America;Ariel Dorfman’s moving memoir Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant Exile; Glenn Greenwald’s latest, With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, the book for our Occupy Wall Street American world (and speaking of Wall Street, don't miss Steve Fraser's now classic history of The Street, Every Man a Speculator); anything by Rebecca Solnit, but why not start with A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster; Andrew Bacevich’s all-too-on-target Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War; the latest from Frances Fox Piven -- the woman Glenn Beck loves to hate -- Who’s Afraid of Frances Fox Piven?; the incomparable Noam Chomsky’supdated 9-11: Was There an Alternative?; and one prophetic older book whose time -- with our new age of protest -- has finally come, Jonathan Schell’s must-read volume, The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People.
The Four Occupations of Planet Earth And that’s just to scratch the surface of TD-associated books this year. Finally, of course, there’s my new book, The United States of Fear (a signed copy of which can be had for a contribution to this site of $75 or more). If you are an Amazon buyer, click on any of the above book links, let it take you to Amazon.com, and pick up some of these books (or anything else, book or otherwise) and not only will you have a wonderful holiday gift to give, but you’ll have given a gift to TomDispatch. We get a small cut of your purchase at no cost to you. Tom] How the Occupied Became the Occupiers By Tom Engelhardt On the streets of Moscow in the tens of thousands, the protesterschanted: “We exist!” Taking into account the comments of statesmen, scientists, politicians, military officials, bankers, artists, all the important and attended to figures on this planet, nothing caught the year more strikingly than those two words shouted by massed Russian demonstrators. “We exist!” Think of it as a simple statement of fact, an implicit demand to be taken seriously (or else), and undoubtedly an expression of wonder, verging on a question: “We exist?” And who could blame them for shouting it? Or for the wonder? How miraculous it was. Yet another country long immersed in a kind of popular silence suddenly finds voice, and the demonstrators promptly declare themselves not about to leave the stage when the day -- and the demonstration -- ends. Who guessed beforehand that perhaps 50,000 Muscovites would turn out to protest a rigged electoral process in a suddenly restive country, along with crowds in St. Petersburg, Tomsk, and elsewhere from the south to Siberia? In Tahrir Square in Cairo, they swore: “This time we’re here to stay!” Everywhere this year, it seemed that they -- “we” -- were here to stay. In New York City, when forced out of Zuccotti Park by the police, protesters returned carrying signs that said, “You cannot evict an idea whose time has come.” And so it seems, globally speaking. Tunis, Cairo, Madrid, Madison, New York, Santiago, Homs. So many cities, towns, places. London, Sana’a, Athens, Oakland, Berlin, Rabat, Boston, Vancouver... it could take your breath away. And as for the places that aren’t yet bubbling -- Japan, China, and elsewhere -- watch out in 2012 because, let’s face it, “we exist.” Everywhere, the “we” couldn’t be broader, often remarkably, even strategically, ill defined: 99% of humanity containing so many potentially conflicting strains of thought and being: liberals and fundamentalists, left-wing radicals and right-wing nationalists, the middle class and the dismally poor, pensioners and high-school students. But the “we” couldn’t be more real. Click here to read more of this dispatch. |
