Bin Laden, Bush & Phylosophy

I like basic phylosophy. This guy is "Slavoj Zizek, Slovenian philosopher, psychoanalyst and cultural theorist. He is author of more than fifty books, including the forthcoming In Defense of Lost Causes."

Remember when I was on about Bin Laden long time ago?

Here I was talking about how Bin Laden said before the Afghanistan war that he will bankrupt North America by tying them into war which will never end.

Here I sited an article which appeared in here about the interaction of Bin Laden And Bush.

So now this Slovenian philosopher is saying what is apparent to most of us. He says:

"I recently interviewed Slavoj Zizek here in the firehouse studio, just before he spoke at the Left Forum in New York. I began by asking Slavoj Zizek to talk about how he saw the dynamic between President Bush and Osama bin Laden.


SLAVOJ ZIZEK: I think that this is a deeper problem, in the sense that, of course, it would be easy to say they need each other, and I agree, at some level of ideological functioning. If you were to ask me to do a simple caricature for a journal, I would do it—you know that famous Escher paradoxical drawing of one hand drawing—two hands drawing each other? Know? One hand is drawing another person whose hand is again drawing—I think there definitely is, in this sense of a relationship between the two of them, in a way structurally they, the two, need each other."

Is that the reason why Bush never authorise the capture of Bin Laden>

This man talks simple things like Clinton is too political and she will not be able to do any difference from the present regime, But Barack is new and he might do something unexpected like recognize Cuba. Its dagerous policy but he explains that as in the past Nixon went to China to the horror of everyone in the ruling classes, but it worked. "......it’s that a true act creates the conditions of its own possibility. That is to say, it appears impossible, you do it, and the whole field changes: it’s possible."

Talking about Israel Jes and the Palestinians he says:

"First, of course, I have all my sympathies for Palestinians and so on, and maybe what the American public—because I visited Ramallah and all those places—doesn’t know enough is, you know, you only get news here of terror and so on.

You know what was for me the most devastating, frustrating thing? Not the big terror. There, one has to admit it. OK, they have their dirty side, but I mean, let’s face it: Israelis, they are not Nazis. It’s ridiculous. I mean, no, it’s—all this idea, a new holocaust, it’s ridiculous. Israelis are nonetheless relatively civilized and so on. These comparisons are tasteless. But what is really breathtaking—again, if you really visit ordinary Arab villages on the West Bank—it’s these—how should I call it?—micro-political everyday, legal and other annoyances to make life difficult.

Just to give you an example, do you know that if you are a farmer, Jewish or Palestinian, on the West Bank, as a Palestinian farmer, you are allowed to dig a hole for water only three inches deep—if you are Jewish, you can do whatever you want—claiming the—I don’t know what’s even the idea, that you will dig some tunnels for terrorists or whatever? Or you know that on the West Bank the big problem is water. As a Jewish farmer, you get seven times more water per capita, because this has to be distributed to [inaudible]. So this is so frustrating about Palestinians. They admit it, my god. This is not Nazism. They are not just picking us up on the street and shooting, but they’re trying on this micro level to make things so frustrating, impossible to live."

Nicely put. Subtle or what? Then he talkes about real problems we all go through. For the first time I realised racism as a problem which is just tolarated by people. What is there to tolerate... you are racist or not. Here are his words:

"We can show where the problem—for example, maybe you know it. I’ll briefly repeat it, my ultimate example: Racism. Racism, and so on, sexism, this is a problem. But are we aware that it’s not self-evident? The way we approach today this problem, we automatically read it, interpret it as a problem of tolerance. Wait a minute. Racism is not in itself a problem of tolerance. I [inaudible]—look at Martin Luther King’s speeches, you know? He almost doesn’t use the term “tolerance.” For him, racism is a problem of legislation, laws, economic exploitation, and so on and so on. I mean, it would be ridiculous for his dignity of Martin Luther King to say “We blacks want more tolerance from the whites,” in the same way as—you know this as a woman—it would be a ridiculous [inaudible] thing to say “We women want more tolerance from men,” or whatever. It’s not that.

So where we can enter, philosophers, is to say, “Wait a minute. Racism is a real problem, or sexism or whatever. Why? Why do we treat it as a problem of tolerance?” And here, I have an answer, old-fashioned Marxist one. It has to do with this breakdown of this great leftist politics, social welfare, and so on. We live in, what I’m tempted to claim, post-political universe, where politics is more and more a matter of expert administration and so on. So all conflicts which remain are then translated into cultural problems, problems of lifestyle, and so on, but then all that remains is to play the problem of tolerance and so on."


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