To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt.
Mikhail Bakunin

08 September 2007

let's all be soldiers

I have the solution to the Pakistani Army's habit of meddling in the civilian domain. Every adult - male or female - should try to get a replica/imitation of the soldier's uniform, if possible with fake copies of all the medals and badges and start wearing it as often as possible. Just to walk around in a public place. That will make the whole adult population look like the army and render the significance of the real army useless. If everyone looks like a soldier, then a soldier's nobody special, is he? This is the only way to introduce democracy to the Pakistani Army -- outnumber them with the sheer multitude of imitation/simulated soldiers. If they can imitate the role of the presidents, the governors, the vice chancellors of public universities, then the public should imitate the armed forces. This is the only real solution. This is the subversive potential of the simulacrum. At last, the good old (and now dead) Baudrillard's theory can be put to a radical use by a country's entire (70 % illiterate) population.

The Wikipedia entery on Nom de Guerre

Nom de guerre

Pseudonyms are adopted by resistance fighters, terrorists and guerrillas often to make enquiries more difficult, to create and maintain an aura of mystery, and to protect their families from reprisal, although other reasons often may exist. The expression nom de guerre (/nɔ̃ də ˈgeʀ/, "name of war") is often used for such pseudonyms, though this expression is rarely actually used in French. It is occasionally used as a stylish substitute for nom de plume.

Noms de guerre were frequently adopted by recruits in the French Foreign Legion as part of the break with their past lives. Pseudonyms used by some members of the French resistance were integrated into their last names after World War II; for instance, Jacques Delmas, alias Chaban, became Jacques Chaban-Delmas.

Another famous nom de guerre is Willy Brandt, adopted in 1934 by a German resistance fighter named Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm who had fled Germany for Norway. After his return to Germany, he had the name Willy Brandt officially recognised. He later became mayor of West Berlin, West German foreign minister and West German chancellor under that name.

The legends of Robin Hood, among others, frequently indicate that the names of Robin and his Merry Men are not their "real names"; for example, Robin was supposedly born as Robert Fitzooth or Robert of Locksley. In legend as in history, outlaws may call themselves by noms de guerre to avoid identification by those who outlawed them.

Within Communist parties and Trotskyist organisations, noms de guerre are usually known as party names or cadre names. This took hold because revolutionaries were often persecuted by states (and also, in the case of Trotskyists, by pro-Soviet communist parties).

Hello, world.

The aim of the blog is to resist state oppression in Pakistan and to disseminate critical information. The Critique Aggregator is maintained by concerned activists, academics, some of them of Pakistani origin, some non-Pakistani but concerned with the situation in Pakistan, living wherever they are.

It is a viral movement. We want to publish fearless stories.
Individual opinions. Cutting-edge reports. Protest tactics. We are
trying to become the faceless multitude. The flash protest. The
autonomous movement of resistant strategies.

If you send something to us for publication and it has your REAL
name on it, we will change the name. So it is better if you use a
consistent nom de guerre / pen name for yourself. It is even better if
this name is symbolic or figurative so that there is no accidental resemblance with any real person. We can give due credit to your nom de guerre.

This blog will be maintained by volunteers and many people already
know the password. So if one or two persons are removed or hunted
down by the agencies, it will not be silenced. It is a work of a multitude and all of them use the same username and password.

Yours in solidarity.

The Human Text Collective
Lahore, Islamabad, Paris, Berlin, New York, London