After Long Years | Page 5

do believe in common depravity, all-pervasive
venality and inescapable subornation of whole societies and of each of
the individuals who comprise them. I do believe in the osmosis of evil,
in the diffusion of villainy, in the corruption of the soul. In short: I do
believe in terminally sick societies, whose prospects of recovery are nil.
The only hope lies in their demise. Not in the abstract sense of the word
- but in the actual death and decomposition of each and every
individual until the whole "generation of the desert" is done with and a
new, less contaminated one, emerges to take its place.
This is why I believe that the future of Africa, the Middle East and the

countries of the CEE and NIS is, for the time being, behind them. Their
horizon is dim and empty. They are looking forward to the past. They
are the zombies of the international arena, the walking dead and it is
death that they multiply. Their growth is stunted, their speech is stifled,
their leaders a vicious lot, the states that they inhabit are dens of
barbarous criminality and lawlessness. Their institutions are a travesty,
their parties nests of avarice and vile. Their media prostituted and
defiled. The farce of elections and the newspeak of democracy and
human rights and freemarketry are props to hide the vast wilderness of
moral bankruptcy. These are Potemkin states run by Chicago mobs.
Instruments of extortion and coercion no different to their predecessors
- only they provide less security, both physical and economic. They
know no different. They think no different. They swear by their malaise
and by their malaise they shall die.
And die they shall. The signs are auspicious. Biology, the West and
international financial institutions all conspire to retire the beast. New
blood, new ideas, new hopes and aspirations are in evidence. Still
overwhelmed by the abrupt and cruel exposure of their elders, still
taken aback by the enormity of the project of rehabilitating the very
psyche of their people, still torn between illegal self enrichment and
service to their fellow citizens - but there they are, the young ones. The
battle is on. The consensus of the baksheesh and the political
assassination is replaced, ever so gradually, by the dissension of the
market place. Wars are fought with spreadsheets, experience imported
from afar, new knowledge craved, corruption decried. It is a refreshing,
gargantuan, change. And it will consume yet one more generation. But
it has started and it is irreversible. And it is in the eyes of the youth, a
flickering flame, so ephemeral, so vulnerable and yet, so irresistible.
This flame is called the future.
(Article written on January 15, 2000 and published January 31, 2000
in "Central Europe Review" volume 2, issue 4)
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The Caveman and the Alien

"'Life' must be curious, alert, erudite and moral, but it must achieve this
without being holier-than-thou, a cynic, a know-it-all or a Peeping
Tom."
(Edward K. Thompson, managing editor of "Life", 1949-1961)
When Chancellor Kohl's party and Edith Cresson are suspected of gross
corruption - these are labelled "aberrations" in an otherwise honest
West. When NASA in collaboration with its UK counterpart blow a
130 million US dollars spacecraft to smithereens having confused the
metric system for its pound/feet archaic predecessor - people nod their
head in disapproval: "accidents happen". When President Clinton
appoints his wife to suggest an overhaul of the multi-hundred billion
dollars US health system - no one thinks it odd. And when the (talented)
son of the police investigated, rumoured to be hyper-corrupt Minister
of Interior Affairs of Israel becomes a Minister himself, no one bats an
eyelash. Yet, when identical events happen in the decrepit countries of
Eastern, Central, or Southern Europe - they are subjected to heaps of
excoriating scorn, to vitriolic diatribes, to condescending preaching, or
to sanctions. It is, indeed, a double standard, a hypocrisy and a travesty
the magnitude of which is rarely to be encountered in the annals of
human pretensions to morality.
The West has grossly and thoroughly violated Thompson's edict. In its
oft-interrupted intercourse with these forsaken regions of the globe, it
has acted, alternately, as a Peeping Tom, a cynic and a know it all. It
has invariably behaved as if it were holier-than-thou. In an unmitigated
and fantastic succession of blunders, miscalculations, vain promises,
unkept threats and unkempt diplomats - it has driven Europe to the
verge of war and the region it "adopted" to the verge of economic and
social upheaval.
Enamoured with the new ideology of free marketry cum democracy,
the West first assumed the role of the omniscient. It designed ingenious

models, devised foolproof laws, imposed fail-safe institutions and
strongly "recommended" measures. Its representatives, the tribunes of
the West, ruled the plebeian East with determination