back like cooked crack

of course Zizek is on Twitter. what did you think it was gonna be?

in other worrisome news, we might be running out of ready-to-wear zizek iconography on the web and might have to resort to our own labor in the near future. damn it.

the roof vamoose, like a magic show

Illusions


Clipse & Kanye West: "Kind of Like a Big Deal"

so cool you might have to zip your jacket up

n+1: He's always billed as "Slavoj Zizek, Philosopher and Psychoanalyst." That made me wonder, is he really a psychoanalyst in the sense that I could be his patient?

AT: Absolutely not. And he's never successfully gone through analysis. He tells this story about how he lied his way through a few sessions with Jacques-Alain Miller, Lacan's son-in-law. He would invent dreams, tell Miller he was having sexual fantasies that he was making up.

and I still don't know if I want to see Examined Life or not

Carnegie Corp of NY's Scholarships Promote Sharia Law, Islam

This is an actual headline that appeared on Campus Watch. The title links to an article from something called Creeping Sharia. This is the type of thing that appears on Campus Watch all the time and no one seems to care, but I think its important that we stop for a second and think about how ridiculous it is. Money quote,

Two other topics funded: "What's Missing When We Say Shari'a" and "Islamic Law and Legal Change". Get the idea?

Remember when there was a concern that Campus Watch was the beginning of a serious attempt to run critical scholars out of business? It's great to see that now its purpose has been reduced to reposting articles from slightly crazier blogs. Also, the image which perfectly matches the message of the Campus Watch/Creeping Sharia article is from the website of the "Whites only" British National Party.

ati alan ortadogu'yu gecmis sen hala komplodasin pc'desin

from Visa for top Netenyahu aide in question

U.S. officials are also likely to find Arad, a long-time Netanyahu loyalist, difficult to deal with, apart from his intelligence past. Like Netanyahu, he opposed Israel's pullout from Gaza and as recently as last month suggested that he was against any territorial compromise with Palestinians, telling one television interviewer, "We want to relieve ourselves of the burden of Palestinian populations, not the territories."

...

For all of his academic and professional accomplishments, however, Arad showed remarkably poor judgment in his meeting with Franklin at the cafeteria in the Pentagon "on or about February 20, 2004," (...) In that meeting, according to the indictment, Arad ("...a person previously associated with an intelligence agency of Foreign Nation A") and Franklin discussed "...a Middle Eastern country's nuclear program."

In 2003-04, Lawrence Franklin had been the Iran specialist in the Department of Defense Policy Division headed by Undersecretary Douglas Feith, himself a long-time Likud supporter. Franklin worked in a unit called the Office of Special Plans (OSP), which was tasked, among other things, to make the case that Iraq posed a major - and soon-to-be-nuclear - threat to the U.S.

As that case fell apart in the aftermath of the 2003 U.S. invasion, Israel began warning about Iran's alleged nuclear-weapons programme, which was apparently the subject of Arad's tete-a-tete with Franklin, who was under covert surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Reading a Crappy Book on the Subway

Today, on my way out to work I was browsing my bookshelf for something to read on the subway. I needed something literary, since reading anything theoretical/academic at that hour is a proven way of putting me to sleep, and I decided to give a shot to Reading Lolita in Tehran, purchased not by me - thank Allah.

I say that because right now I am on page 16, and somewhere around page 10 I started contemplating whether I have to actually finish this book to be able to opine on how self-congratulatory, blah and almost carelessly malicious it is, all at the same time. While I am tempted to think that Oberlin trained me well, this is so blatantly a pile of orientalist bullshit (so much that it excuses employing the otherwise exhausted o-word) that its lack of sincerity should be clear to all, save for white book club ladies and Christopher Hitchens.

You and the people you write about say "Islamic Republic of Iran" every time you refer to your country, really?

Here's the extreme Hamid Dabashi critique:
Native Informers and the Making of American Empire

Here's the idiotic Christopher Hitchens critique:
The Captive Mind Now (I want to believe the whole essay is an exercise in sarcasm, but it might not be)

Here's the one I tend to agree with, mostly because Dabashi's anger is very similar to Finkelstein's too careful study of "Of Time Immemorial"; the book is dishonest alright, but it is also so horrible as literary work that the anger is not worth it:
Pawn of the neocons?

Note that in life reaching total happiness is impossible and thus the last article too manages to fuck up in its last sentence. Which makes me go full circle and end up with Dabashi.

Lastly, for our following immersed in academia:
Reading Nafisi in the West: Authenticity, Orientalism, and "Liberating" Iranian Women

Hamish: New York Times Bestseller don't mean shit.

For the record

I said that I want you all to know that my pariticpation was at the invitation of the University of San Francisco and that I strictly adhere to the boycott of Israel and I call on them all to boycott Israel at all levels. I told them that I met I(armed) Israelis first under occuapation in South Lebanon in 1982, and I resolved then that I would meet them only on my terms. I explained to them that I am strict against terrorists and terrorism: that I am opposed to any deal or negotiations with Al-Qa`idah or with Bin Laden and accordingly, I am opposed to any deal or compromise with the state that pioneered the practice of terrorism in the region.

-As'ad AbuKhalil