Tag: Antemedius

All-American Decline in a New World: Wars, Vampires, Burned Children, and Indelicate Imbalances

by Tom Engelhardt

This is a global moment unlike any in memory, perhaps in history.  Yes, comparisons can be made to the wave of people power that swept Eastern Europe as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989-91.  For those with longer memories, perhaps 1968 might come to mind, that abortive moment when, in the United States, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, and elsewhere, including Eastern Europe, masses of people mysteriously inspired by each other took to the streets of global cities to proclaim that change was on the way.

For those searching the history books, perhaps you’ve focused on the year 1848 when, in a time that also mixed economic gloom with novel means of disseminating the news, the winds of freedom seemed briefly to sweep across Europe.  And, of course, if enough regimes fall and the turmoil goes deep enough, there’s always 1776, the American Revolution, or 1789, the French one, to consider.  Both shook up the world for decades after.

But here’s the truth of it: you have to strain to fit this Middle Eastern moment into any previous paradigm, even as — from Wisconsin to China — it already threatens to break out of the Arab world and spread like a fever across the planet.  Never in memory have so many unjust or simply despicable rulers felt quite so nervous — or possibly quite so helpless (despite being armed to the teeth) — in the presence of unarmed humanity.  And there has to be joy and hope in that alone.

Even now, without understanding what it is we face, watching staggering numbers of people, many young and dissatisfied, take to the streets in Morocco, Mauritania, Djibouti, Oman, Algeria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Yemen, and Libya, not to mention Bahrain, Tunisia, and Egypt, would be inspirational.  Watching them face security forces using batons, tear gas, rubber bullets, and in all too many cases, real bullets (in Libya, even helicopters and planes) and somehow grow stronger is little short of unbelievable.  Seeing Arabs demanding something we were convinced was the birthright and property of the West, of the United States in particular, has to send a shiver down anyone’s spine.

The end of George Bush. The end of the Democrats. The end of Obama. The end of home ownership. The end of Hosni Mubarak. The end of the Amazon. The end of US agriculture. The end of the world food supply. The end of sanity. And the end of Advanced Civilization.

The Kinks. The end of Justice. And everything you always wished you never knew. It’s all here. 😉

Well… it’s been a long winding road with more then a few hundred potholes, speedbumps, flats, rolls, and poles hit along the way, but finally after three weeks of being buried up my eyeballs in code, there is a brand spanking new Antemedius 2.0 up live now on the web – converted from Drupal 5 to the latest stable Drupal 6.20 platform.

As the old saying goes – my head hurts, my feet stink, and I don’t love Haysoos, but for the most part – outside of a few bugs here and there that I can already see need fixing – much less than I anticipated there would be – amazingly the thing seems to actually work. And is a little faster too.

I’d really appreciate it if you’d test drive it and try out everything you can think of to make it fcuk up, and let me know if you see anything that needs repair or tuning? I’m sure you’ll find something… 😉