In class yesterday, I came up with what I thought was the zaniest possible conspiracy theory about the recent bombings in India, Georgia, and elsewhere … only to have a student immediately point out that the Iranian government was way ahead of me. (via kohenari)
I want to remind you all of the great Mossad shark conspiracy,
Mohamed Abdel Fadil Shousha, the governor of South Sinai, told the state news websiteegynews.net: “What is being said about the Mossad throwing the deadly shark [in the sea] to hit tourism in Egypt is not out of the question, but it needs time to confirm.” Egyptian television broadcast claims that Israeli divers had captured a shark with a GPS unit planted on its back. Describing the theory as “sad”, Professor Mahmoud Hanafy of the Suez Canal University pointed out that GPS devices are used by marine biologists to track sharks, not to remote-control them.
Wasn’t that part of the plot to Austin Powers?
(via kohenari)
Salon’s just all sorts of awesome.
Once again, CNN
philanthropistjournalist Erin Burnett has used her show to give voice to the voiceless, to seek out the powerless to offer opinion on the day’s news. She debuted her show “OutFront” in early October by mocking Occupy Wall Street and defending the industry that destroyed the economy.On Monday night Burnett gave a platform to a man almost as loathed as his Wall Street buddies, former Vice President Dick Cheney. And Cheney, predictably but contemptibly, took the opportunity to bash President Obama for not authorizing “a quick air strike” to retrieve a predator drone that was recently downed in Iran.
It was left to CBS Early Show co-anchor Rebecca Jarvis this morning to ask the follow-up question Burnett did not: “Would not, though, an air strike on Iran have potentially led us into a war with them?”
I love the Think Progress commentary Joan links. How about a quick refresher Mr. Cheney?
Iran Wins [Haaretz]
Whoa.
LRB Throwback: What do Iran, Kung Fu Panda, Niels Bohr and Silvio Berlusconi have in common?
Kung Fu Panda, the 2008 cartoon hit, provides the basic co-ordinates for understanding the ideological situation I have been describing. The fat panda dreams of becoming a kung fu warrior. He is chosen by blind chance (beneath which lurks the hand of destiny, of course), to be the hero to save his city, and succeeds. But the film’s pseudo-Oriental spiritualism is constantly undermined by a cynical humour. The surprise is that this continuous making-fun-of-itself makes it no less spiritual: the film ultimately takes the butt of its endless jokes seriously. A well-known anecdote about Niels Bohr illustrates the same idea. Surprised at seeing a horseshoe above the door of Bohr’s country house, a visiting scientist said he didn’t believe that horseshoes kept evil spirits out of the house, to which Bohr answered: ‘Neither do I; I have it there because I was told that it works just as well if one doesn’t believe in it!’ This is how ideology functions today: nobody takes democracy or justice seriously, we are all aware that they are corrupt, but we practise them anyway because we assume they work even if we don’t believe in them. Berlusconi is our own Kung Fu Panda. As the Marx Brothers might have put it, ‘this man may look like a corrupt idiot and act like a corrupt idiot, but don’t let that deceive you – he is a corrupt idiot.’
Berlusconi in Tehran, Slavoj Zizek. From the London Review of Books, July 2009.
![Tehran, Iran - Iranian women gather in front of the Swiss Embassy in Tehran to show their support of anti-Wall Street demonstrators in the United States on October 22, 2011. UPI.Maryam Rahmanian [source]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltulocu2BN1qzs6yjo1_1280.jpg)
Tehran, Iran - Iranian women gather in front of the Swiss Embassy in Tehran to show their support of anti-Wall Street demonstrators in the United States on October 22, 2011. UPI.Maryam Rahmanian [source]
The take away message, no politician is perfect. This is particularly true for Progressive candidates who are perfectly fine with taking “nothing off the table” in their support for military action against Iran.
How did I miss this?
Many commentators are comparing Egypt to Iran of 32 years ago, mostly to warn of the risks of the country descending into some sort of Islamist dictatorship that would tear up the peace treaty with Israel, engage in anti-American policies, and deprive women and minorities of their rights (as if they had so many rights under the Mubarak dictatorship)
[…]The following description, I believe, sums up what Egypt faces today as well as, if not better, than most:
“It is not a revolution, not in the literal sense of the term, not a way of standing up and straightening things out. It is the insurrection of men with bare hands who want to lift the fearful weight, the weight of the entire world order that bears down on each of us – but more specifically on them, these … workers and peasants at the frontiers of empires. It is perhaps the first great insurrection against global systems, the form of revolt that is the most modern and the most insane.
One can understand the difficulties facing the politicians. They outline solutions, which are easier to find than people say … All of them are based on the elimination of the [president]. What is it that the people want? Do they really want nothing more? Everybody is quite aware that they want something completely different. This is why the politicians hesitate to offer them simply that, which is why the situation is at an impasse. Indeed, what place can be given, within the calculations of politics, to such a movement, to a movement through which blows the breath of a religion that speaks less of the hereafter than of the transfiguration of this world?”
The thing is, it was offered not by some astute commentator of the current moment, but rather by the legendary French philosopher Michel Foucault, after his return from Iran, where he witnessed firsthand the intensity of the revolution which, in late 1978, before Khomeini’s return, really did seem to herald the dawn of a new era.
Foucault was roundly criticised by many people after Khomeini hijacked the revolution for not seeing the writing on the wall. But the reality was that, in those heady days where the shackles of oppression were literally being shattered, the writing was not on the wall. Foucault understood that it was precisely a form of “insanity” that was necessary to risk everything for freedom, not just against one’s government, but against the global system that has nuzzled him in its bosom for so long.
‘The Shaping of a New World Order’ by Mark LeVine [Al Jazeera], February 6, 2011.
