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“THE MIDDLE OF WHAT? EAST OF WHERE? THE REGION’S VERY name is based on a European view of the world, and it is a European view of the region that shaped it. The Europeans used ink to draw lines on maps: they were lines that did not exist in reality and created some of the most artificial borders the world has seen. An attempt is now being made to redraw them in blood.”

Quote by Tim Marshall

Book:Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics
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Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics

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Tim Marshall

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“Well, in my view what would ultimately be necessary would be a breakdown of the nation-state system―because I think that's not a viable system. It's not necessarily the natural form of human organization; in fact, it's a European invention pretty much. The modern nation-state system basically developed in Europe since the medieval period, and it was extremely difficult for it to develop: Europe has a very bloody history, an extremely savage and bloody history, with constant massive wars and so on, and that was all part of an effort to establish the nation-state system. It has virtually no relation to the way people live, or to their associations, or anything else particularly, so it had to be established by force. And it was established by centuries of bloody warfare. That warfare ended in 1945―and the only reason it ended is because the next war was going to destroy everything. So it ended in 1945―we hope; if it didn't, it will destroy everything.”

Nation States
Book:Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky
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“Page 165: A state is a legal-territorial concept referring to that set of structures and institutions that seek to maintain control over a population within a specific geographical area. A nation refers to a group of people who share culture, history and usually language in a specific territory and who give political expression to this common identity. A nation-state is a state in which national and political borders coincide. In most cases, they do not.”

NationalismNation StatesEthno Nationalism
Book:The Demographic Struggle for Power
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“We can look to Mexico, where a vision for social change has been powerfully affirmed by the Maya people of Chiapas. They named their vision "Zapatismo," in memory of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, and startled the world with an armed uprising on January 1, 1994. That day, and ever since, the Zapatistas have posed the basic problem: how to establish both identity and democracy? How to achieve a new life of dignity for indigenous people while also creating a Mexico of justice for everyone? Always the Zapatistas have said they do not want one without the other. At a 1996 meeting of Chicanas/os with some of the Zapatista leadership, Comandante Tacho began his presentation by saying: "We don't want power. What we want is decent homes, enough to eat, health care for our children, schools." At first I thought to myself: how can you gain those things without power? Then I realized that by power he meant domination. The Zapatista vision does not find the answer to injustice in the replacement of one domination by another, but in a vast change of the political culture from the bottom up that will create a revolutionary democracy.”

PowerDemocracyInjusticeHealth CareMexicoDominationMayaChiapasZapatistas
Book:De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century
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“We were born between blood and gunpowder; and between blood and gunpowder we were raised. Every so often the powerful from other lands came to rob us of tomorrow. For this reason it was written in a war song that unites us: "If a foreigner with his step ever dares to profane your land, think, Oh beloved motherland, that heaven gave you a soldier in each son." For this reason we fought. With flags and different languages the foreigner came to conquer us. He came and he went.”

Subcomandante Marcos
Author:Subcomandante Marcos
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“Then the lion stares at it. It stares at its prey. Like this.' (Old Antonio frowns and fastens his black eyes on me.) 'The poor little animal that is going to die just looks. It looks at the lion, who is staring at him. The little animal no longer sees itself, it sees what the lion sees, it looks at the little animal image in the lion's stare, it sees that the lion sees it as small and weak. The little animal never thought before about whether it was small and weak. It was just an animal, neither big nor small, neither strong nor weak. But now it looks at what the lion is seeing, it looks at fear. And by looking at what the lion is seeing, the little animal convinces itself that it is small and weak. And, by looking at the fear that the lion sees, it feels afraid. And now the little animal does not look at anything. Its bones go numb, just like when water gets hold of us at night in the cold. And then the little animal just surrenders, it lets itself go and the lion gets it. That is how the lion kills. It kills by staring.”

RevolutionFolktalesZapatistas
Author:Subcomandante Marcos
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“The autonomous municipalities established by the Zapatistas represent in many respects only the latest chapter in a long history of revolutionary dual power. In this respect they offer a contemporary example from which certain general lessons can be extracted, much as lessons might be taken from the experiences of the workers councils that sprung up across Europe in the wake of the First World War, or during the Spanish Revolution, or the Shanghai Commune during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.”

ZapatistasDual Power
Book:A New World In Our Hearts: 8 Years of Writings from the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation
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