Re: cyberwars / cybertruth

[Zeynep Tufekcioglu <zeynept@xxxxxxxx>]

Adolfo, I knew I could trust you to know Khayyam. Doug informs me that there
is an English translation of "Rubaiyat". There is one verse, which if it
really does belong to him as there are some counter claims, means that
Khayyam pre-empts Berkeley by a good few centuries.

When I'm not there, nor are these roses, these cypresses
Nor red lips, nor the wines with the aroma so gorgeous
Nor are mornings and evenings, nor sadness and hapiness
While I think does the world exists, I don't then it doesn't

I remembered Khayyam because I was thinking of the futility of trying to
prove the truth within "cyberspace", as Engels had said somewhere (I'm sure
you'd know where I don't remember) "test of the pudding is eating it". Some
questions will be solved in life, in practice. Khayyam thought, that if the
truth is so elusive, let us indeed just enjoy without expecting the
cyberspace to provide us with but a limited, twisted mirage of reality.

>Omar Khayyam may say "with a loaf of bread and a jug of wine and thee, under
>the bough":

So let it be for cyberspace.

>>Don't put the drink down if you have any trace of a brain
>>In this darkness, what if you are drunk and what if you are sober?
>
>
>And that may be "happiness enough" for an XI Century philosopher, and
>matemathician enjoying the Persian Court's favour.  He was great and
>admirable and wondrous in his time no doubt.  But we, who are indeed
>fighting for a better world in the here and now and for all humanity, may
>counter, what if you are a Marxist, and what if you are not?  It is not all
>the same to people, you must admit!
>
>Because we do (hopefully) have a trace of a brain, we shall rather not open
>the champagne bottles until the fight is over.  And it will be over when is
>over.  Don't you think?

Anyway, Khayyam was indeed great as he contributed significantly to
astronomy and mathematics, theory of numbers and algebra especially.

As for the champagne bottles, I do prefer wine as Khayyam did. I don't think
the there will be a point in which we will be able to say the fight is over.
A bigger one starts when this one is over. I believe life deserves
celebrating as we live, and is not fighting for a better world one damn good
way of celebrating life? So, with due apologies, I won't advocate abstinence
>from wine or champagne!

Ok. Let me just add a thought. (a bait?) What do you say to this: I would
posit that the articulation and merging of the existing pre-capitalist modes
of production with the capitalist mode of production by the brutal, yet
speedy hand of imperialism is what produces the "coproratist bureaucracy" (I
don't remember what you called it, I remember you referring distinctly to it
for Peru) that at once seems independent and really like a class-in-itself,
as distinct from a governmental bureaucracy in the emergence of the
nation-state in Europe, as only a strata that is "relatively autonomous" (no
Althusser reference, just that it happens be the right word) can manage this
transformation. Would this not help us explain the never-ending-coup cycles
of Latin America? I don't think the military or the "state class" is just a
"puppet" of imperialism, it is that at once, but it also has a dynamic and a
life of its own.

This question for me has relevance concerning political islam. Hot new topic
regarding Turkey, which I am getting around to a post. <where have I heard
this one before, comments listfolk>

Zeynep



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