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Gaddafi is stronger than ever in Libya | Richard Seymour | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/29/gaddafi-libya-nato

It’s important to bear in mind what this means. Both Ben Ali and Mubarak had the support of the US and its major allies – especially Mubarak. They had considerable resources for repression, and there was financial aid being channelled to them, talks aimed at offering reforms to the opposition … and in the end they proved too brittle, too narrowly based, to stay in power.

The state apparatus began to fragment and decompose. The protests kept spreading, and withstood the bloodshed. Nothing they could offer or threaten was sufficient. Gaddafi, on the other hand, has hung on in the face of not only a lack of support from his former imperialist allies, but active political, diplomatic and military opposition. That he did so to a considerable extent through sheer military superiority doesn’t mean that the regime hasn’t a real social basis.

Norway attacks: Anders Behring Breivik will join history’s human monsters | Henning Mankell (The Guardian)
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/25/norway-attacks-anders-behring-breivik

Henning Mankell

What MI5’s records on my father tell us about the uses of surveillance
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/28/mi5-security-service-records-my-father-surveillance
“I was two years old when my activities first came to the attention of MI5. In 1952, nothing if not thorough, a security service officer carefully filed a copy of an article written by my father in the Daily Worker about the books good Communists should encourage their children to read.”

Norway attacks: Anders Behring Breivik will join history’s human monsters

►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/25/norway-attacks-anders-behring-breivik

“The 32-year-old Norwegian who has confessed to killing more than 70 people requested two things for his court appearance: he wanted to wear a uniform, and he wanted the hearing to be open.”
#henning_mankell

Anders Behring Breivik had no legitimate grievance | Gavan Titley and Alana Lentin | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/26/anders-behring-breivik-multicultural-failure?CMP=twt_gu

Despite the fact that Anders Behring Breivik was not permitted to publicly justify his actions in public on Monday, a scrambling defence of his repertoire of prejudice is already in full swing. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Bruce Bawer, who is quoted by Breivik in his manifesto 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, emphasises his repeated warnings that a rightwing extremist may use violence to address “legitimate concerns about genuine problems”. Bawer blames mainstream politics for failing to address the corrosion of Europe by Islamicisation and multiculturalism, meanwhile The Jerusalem Post cautions that “Oslo’s devastating tragedy should not be allowed to be manipulated by those who would cover up the abject failure of multiculturalism”.

Racism is often justified as an aberrant reaction to understandable provocation; the focus on “multiculturalism” in the aftermath of the Oslo tragedy draws attention to contemporary racism’s most elastic alibi. The “failure of multiculturalism” is an article of faith in European politics and, like all acts of faith, it depends on the acceptance of an underlying mystery. Despite the denunciations of this “failed experiment”, there has never been a time in Europe where multiculturalism was the dominant ideology. As Ralph Grillo has argued, state practices, in the few countries that have adopted them, are characterised by a “weak” patchwork of policy initiatives and aspirational rhetoric. Yet critics have consistently assumed the damaging existence of a coherent “strong” form, which is always “unbridled”.

US and Pakistan: The rocky AmPak affair | Tariq Ali (Relevé sur le net)
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/15/us-pakistan-rocky-affair

While US threats to hold back aid mean little, its hunting on Pakistani soil is heightening tensions (...)