a thread about the civil unrest in egypt (& elsewhere in 'the region' if necessary)

Mordy if he did say that i think it's pretty weak - maybe dictators have to be more directly responsive under certain gamed conditions but it's only once every twenty years or so, and the status quo is brutal repression, no social mobility, no independent labor unions, etc

part of what he may be trying to get at is the difference between the Repressive and the Ideological State Apparatus - the former is club clonking you in the head: it's clear who's wielding it and you are free to hate them (but not free to successfully do anything about it); with the latter, your thoughts are brought into line at "the root", so the clonking club never needs to make an appearance. it's tempting to "prefer" the first because revolutionary ideology is thwarted rather than rendered nonexistent in the first place

Tories in receiving money from craven businessmen shockah?

I think it's well understood that the West preferred stability-through-Qadaffi to other options in Libya. But once the shit hit the fan, I don't see any evidence that Cameron (or his business-partner supporters) care about anything except getting the country stable ASAP (probably with the minimum loss of life). So it's not as if Cameron's still in Qadaffi's pocket.

have never understood why anyone on this board gives two fucks about Zizek.

And I'm not sure what's wrong with being "somewhat sympathetic to" Mao tbqh

don't even know how to respond to this really.

Blair's been a bit quiet this week...

i liked the sulky libyan exile on al-jazeera two nights ago who when asked what the west should do about libya said "just stop buying oil from them. for like three days. just three days."

have never understood why anyone on this board gives two fucks about Zizek.

i find his writing really interesting + provocative and i took him in grad school

ah. academia. that explains it.

i took him in grad school

Must have been quite an experience.

BOOM

i mean that sincerely

xp it was pretty wild. he was team teaching the course with avital ronell and she was constantly reeling him in from being totally inappropriate

squee

seems like the The_Wests credibility re: democracy/values "promotion" was erased long before the iraq war

lol @The_West

avital ronell! there's a name to conjure with. she was a star to me. i quoted liberally from "the telephone book" in any paper i could.

I am trying to figure out if Mordy is encouraging us to make horrible 3-way jokes or if he's just ignoring that side of the conversation

i'm just trying really really hard to ignore the prospect of ronell/zizek slash fic

I am trying to figure out if Mordy is encouraging us to make horrible 3-way jokes or if he's just ignoring that side of the conversation

― DJP, Wednesday, February 23, 2011 11:19 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah team-teaching was a bit of an open goal there

Re: the plane which crashed after refusing to bomb Benghazi, it sounds like the pilots bailed out w/parachutes and crashed it intentionally.

Also this:

1635: New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof tweets: "#Libya military officer tells me 3 naval ships ordered to sail to Benghazi to attack it. Crew torn about what to do."

BreakingNews Breaking News
Gadhafi regime controls $32 billion, had turned down offer to invest Libyan funds with Madoff - Wikileaks cable http://on.msnbc.com/fHHuJa
8 minutes ago

all the news stories in one^

huh.

kind of funny that Gadhafi had the sens to avoid getting in bed with Madoff!

Wikileaks also revealed that Gadhafi's son paid Mariah Carey $1 million to sing at his St. Barts party. Then did the same thing for Beyonce and Usher the following year. Blood concert!

that's appalling

i love when the journalistic universe starts to collapse in on itself like that

Watson Supercomputer Defeats Mubarak in Wisconsin Protests

I think we should finds somewhere else to talk about Zizek, but the quote from him I saw about communism was of the "you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs" type, explicitly condoning mass violence in the cause of building a better tomorrow.

Do you reckon Gaddafi will still be alive in a week's time?

man, where will we ever find a This is the thread where we talk about Slavoj Zizek... ???

Do you reckon Gaddafi will still be alive in a week's time?

I wouldn't be surprised if he met the same fate as Arcesilaus IV.

okay even I had to look that one up

BBC:

There are two Libyan naval vessels that have been sighted since yesterday, parked sideways facing Tripoli.

People here believe they are gunships on stand-by.

This seems headed for civil war. Already is? Maybe the country will split east / west? The character of this uprising seems majorly different from Tunisia and Egypt.

dees otm
http://www.sl-webs.com/custimages/dd395-opec-site.jpg

gonna be a short civil war in Libya is my guess, ending with Qaddafi dead.

we should do a poll: "in what manner will Qaddafi get killed?"

Wish he just flees. Guy is a goldmine of hilarious quotes and UN trolling. But also evil (downside).

pack up his tent and fade into the desert

road trip with chavez and bob mugabe

could be taking kim jong un out to lose his virginity

Maybe they could both get haircuts for the sake of humanity

"Bye, guys, me and Kim are just going out for haircuts."

*Looks at Kim, winks*

Wow, did not realize:

Have you ever used a Libyan domain name? If you've linked to anything on Twitter, you probably have. The .ly suffix, beloved of those who want to shorten their links (usually to bit.ly), belongs to Libya, and according to "policy wonk" Jerry Brito writing in Time's Techland section, it faces an uncertain future.

ha yes there was a big collective freak out when a couple months ago kadafifi was all you know i can do w/whatever i want w/these .ly domains right

iirc he handed a foreign owned .ly domain over to libyan cause they asked or it

mitt romney stopped using mitt.ly a few months ago

and some "sex positive erotica blogger" or some such had her url shortner suspended

lol

the internet

lol mitt.ly

yeah all that real.ly made me laugh i gotta say

i had not realized until a news story last night that Q is really close with berlusconi? npr described some scene where silvio paid a room full of models $100 a head to sit for a lecture from mr. libya about the virtues of islamic civilization. i don't live under either man but that kinda makes me think "worth it".

And I'm not sure what's wrong with being "somewhat sympathetic to" Mao tbqh

lol saw this quoted after the skip

cannot wait to see who posted it!

seems like the The_Wests credibility re: democracy/values "promotion" was erased long before the iraq war

― max, Wednesday, February 23, 2011 5:11 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

not rly dealing in absolutes here. look at the competition. by the highest standard the_west has always been a criminal enterprise whose power rests on a laughable simulacrum of consent. but it isn't universally seen that way in europe, eastern europe, etc. they probably take a different view in south america, south east asia, the middle east...

by the highest standard the_west has always been a criminal enterprise whose power rests on a laughable simulacrum of consent

oh, so there IS one thing we might possibly agree on