It immediately crystallises awareness when in the age of panapocalyptic austerity and fictional accounting calculus someone is trying to strike a big deal with the fascist state. Not that the topic of prisoner release was not a fertile field for direct action, as any targeting of the cancer which is eating up imperialism from within, but an expectation based on the mutual balance of demands seems quite odd in regard to states which cannot even balance their own currencies, budgets and economies. Any concept of a rational state or remnant thereof from the past has long devolved into a mud hole of infantile dementia with no other agenda than sabotaging every political alternative to it. What is the point in asking a mud hole to release prisoners?
The escalation of the North American drone war in the shadow of the Libyan flop, the European paradigm shift to the armed support of blatant militarism, a policy hitherto left to the North Americans and Arabs, the clumsy distractions played among European nations to normalise that decision for approval by an entrapped public, the melodramatic Al Qaeda revival just as if tailored to lure antiimperialists in Europe to reciprocate - from the distance of weeks already the failure of the Egyptian campaign to generate a higher public approval for the treason of the Ikhwan than there had been for the Libyan Jamahiriya seems to be a watershed event.
Clearly the policies of the various imperialist factions are getting worse, but they are doing so because they also are becoming less efficient, the latest surge of militarism only being the most visible expression of the cramp. The El Amenas action appears like a renegade echo of the Paris assassinations by Gladio death squads in revolt against their parent state. Whether it was in fact military resistance, or an entrapment case dragged into unrelated namespace, had it been rooted in a genuine struggle against the prison system other forms thereof could be perceived as well. In any case, the armed freedom fighters out of the mystical gas bottle of the desert legend narrative are a symptom of a much wider conflict over the African continent.
In a death cramp of monstrous proportions, imperialist states strangled by their dwindling economies attempt to exploit the unification process of a vulnerable culture for the ill-spirited goal of their own continuity. Yet in contrast to the border drawing conferences of the 19th century, this time the interest to be needed is not only a blind passenger in the imperialist diplomacy but its outspoken figurehead. Even before the predictable greed, this war is all about creating false needs for militarism.
At the time the military coup in Mali would not have been possible without the incentive of the Bahrein massacre, which aroused the expectations of hitherto shunned small oppressors to receive imperialist military support when their terror against the people puts themselves at risk. While such spending is a fata morgana in the fictional mathematics of the state budget, its consequences are quite real – such as the increased brutality inserted into a situation of predictable incompatibility with said goal, as was already the case with the North American and European arms deals concerning Bahrein and others.
According to this prototype, not only imperialist policies became more suicidal, but also Africa more exploited. If not already by the European policy shift then by the El Amenas attack it has been thrown into a transnational war which will either result in the death of imperialism or that of Africa, or both, with no cordial agreement imaginable since even declared consent cannot prevent the situation from cramping.
In a more broad perspective, the imperialist assault against Africa also reflects the fact that Europe has itself become a "Third World" state or group thereof, both economically and human-rights-wise, and both in the financial and the political geography. Maybe the international institutions should have warned Africa against the harsh landing of degraded colonialists among "Third World" ranks, but that again would be a demand to imperialist legacy, any making of which can only be an unspecific cultural misapprehension. There is no meaningful demand to imperialism but the unspoken expectation for it to destroy itself, and the currency failures are its prototypes.
Yet as in every instance of lethal militarism, it is any possible non-military opposition against its false and predatory ideologies which is most at danger of exploitation and abuse. The political situation has deteriorated to the level that most people cannot even put their fingers on the pulse of the capital without having to confront systematic oppression, with the local nation state rarely being the only accomplice in it. By taking this war to Africa, imperialism came to the conclusion that its internal economic crisis cannot be resolved peacefully, because it is a systemic crisis of its war industry.
In the best case, the sudden rise of militarism in Europe will accelerate rather than prolong the demise of its regime(s). In the worst case it might be fanning a competition among the rest of the world accelerating the exploitation of Africa. So why is this about prisoners? The drone war which takes no prisoners has escalated the conventional war to the same level - prisoners are from before that, and their liberation is the most useful asset to deconstruct the big prison projected by the killer robots before everyone on the planet has become a prisoner. As imperialism is dying from technological overkill and human goodwill elimination, prisoners are the first ones it threatens to take with it, to the disadvantage of anyone interested in the future.
Clearly the policies of the various imperialist factions are getting worse, but they are doing so because they also are becoming less efficient, the latest surge of militarism only being the most visible expression of the cramp. The El Amenas action appears like a renegade echo of the Paris assassinations by Gladio death squads in revolt against their parent state. Whether it was in fact military resistance, or an entrapment case dragged into unrelated namespace, had it been rooted in a genuine struggle against the prison system other forms thereof could be perceived as well. In any case, the armed freedom fighters out of the mystical gas bottle of the desert legend narrative are a symptom of a much wider conflict over the African continent.
In a death cramp of monstrous proportions, imperialist states strangled by their dwindling economies attempt to exploit the unification process of a vulnerable culture for the ill-spirited goal of their own continuity. Yet in contrast to the border drawing conferences of the 19th century, this time the interest to be needed is not only a blind passenger in the imperialist diplomacy but its outspoken figurehead. Even before the predictable greed, this war is all about creating false needs for militarism.
At the time the military coup in Mali would not have been possible without the incentive of the Bahrein massacre, which aroused the expectations of hitherto shunned small oppressors to receive imperialist military support when their terror against the people puts themselves at risk. While such spending is a fata morgana in the fictional mathematics of the state budget, its consequences are quite real – such as the increased brutality inserted into a situation of predictable incompatibility with said goal, as was already the case with the North American and European arms deals concerning Bahrein and others.
According to this prototype, not only imperialist policies became more suicidal, but also Africa more exploited. If not already by the European policy shift then by the El Amenas attack it has been thrown into a transnational war which will either result in the death of imperialism or that of Africa, or both, with no cordial agreement imaginable since even declared consent cannot prevent the situation from cramping.
In a more broad perspective, the imperialist assault against Africa also reflects the fact that Europe has itself become a "Third World" state or group thereof, both economically and human-rights-wise, and both in the financial and the political geography. Maybe the international institutions should have warned Africa against the harsh landing of degraded colonialists among "Third World" ranks, but that again would be a demand to imperialist legacy, any making of which can only be an unspecific cultural misapprehension. There is no meaningful demand to imperialism but the unspoken expectation for it to destroy itself, and the currency failures are its prototypes.
Yet as in every instance of lethal militarism, it is any possible non-military opposition against its false and predatory ideologies which is most at danger of exploitation and abuse. The political situation has deteriorated to the level that most people cannot even put their fingers on the pulse of the capital without having to confront systematic oppression, with the local nation state rarely being the only accomplice in it. By taking this war to Africa, imperialism came to the conclusion that its internal economic crisis cannot be resolved peacefully, because it is a systemic crisis of its war industry.
In the best case, the sudden rise of militarism in Europe will accelerate rather than prolong the demise of its regime(s). In the worst case it might be fanning a competition among the rest of the world accelerating the exploitation of Africa. So why is this about prisoners? The drone war which takes no prisoners has escalated the conventional war to the same level - prisoners are from before that, and their liberation is the most useful asset to deconstruct the big prison projected by the killer robots before everyone on the planet has become a prisoner. As imperialism is dying from technological overkill and human goodwill elimination, prisoners are the first ones it threatens to take with it, to the disadvantage of anyone interested in the future.
