The Czech Dream

Zizek made a rare appearance at a political rally in the Prague this winter, speaking out about the US proposal to build a missile defense shield in Europe. I hadn't realized this issue was so divisive in Europe; the criticism that it doesn't serve in much of Europe's interest is not one I have seen come up in the news here. The plan is to create a radar in Czechoslovakia in conjunction with several in Poland, but the plan is still unpopular with the Russian administration, who are stonewalling the plan.  The objection the Russians have it basically that our surveillance units in Czechoslovakia could be used to spy on Russian communications. 

I'm surprised Zizek showed up to do this thing, he apparently does not make many political appearances since his failed Presidential campaign in Slovenia in 1990.  He doesn't seem to be siding with the Russians or the U.S., and when he refers to the "enemies," he seems to be referring to the totalitarian/Stalinist agendas in both Russian and American admins.      
The residue on Youtube doesn't seem to represent the complete speech, just the end perhaps.Following is my transcript, or at least what I could hear:




I'm speaking the language of the enemy, but at least the enemy will have to understand us.
Old wisdom says, if you are caught in another person's dream, you are wrecked. Is this not the fate of us, in middle Europe, for centuries? Remember the start of the Austrian dream, The German dream, the Soviet dream, each worse than the others, the last one even claiming that it is really our dream, that they are realizing our own dream. Unfortunately, after the fall of communism the same story is going on. In the enthusiasm of 1989, we thought we finally realized our own dream. The morning after, when we woke up, sober, we realized that we were yet again dreaming another person's dream. The freedom we got is more and more the freedom to protect, the freedom to engage in a cruel struggle for success. Now, they want to protect this dream of theirs, by covering us with their protective umbrella of radars.

What about the U.S. protection? The United states went to Iraq to protect iraq from religious fundamentalism, and the result is that Iraq is, now more than ever, dominated by religious fundamentalism, that secular, educated classes are leaving iraq en masse. This is what you get from american protection. Recall the old Soviet joke on Radio Erevan. Did Radinovich really win a new car in the state lottery? In principle, yes he did. Only it was not a car, it was a bicycle; it was not new, it was used, and it was not won, it was stolen from him. Are we not exactly in the same situation? Will the Czech republic really get the U.S. military protection? In principle, yes, it will. Only, it is not a protection of our territory, but of the U.S. territoty. It doesn't protect us, but only it detects the threat, and this detection will only increase the danger for the Czech Republic.

Muslim Gauze

If religious politics is a slippery slope during election season, then the left seems to be flying down it as if they were on a slip-n-slide right now. This recent string of comments on left-leaning political blog Talking Points Memo reveals some of the main points of the argument on the left of whether of not Obama is, as a Clinton aid suggested in an email a couple of months ago, secretly (gasp) a muslim.  This seems to keep popping up, and what is most disturbing about it is the defense which it seems to prompt.  It is, of course, ridiculous to claim that Obama is secretly a Muslim, since there is so much evidence to the contrary, including his own public testimony to the role of Christianity in his life.  The defense is often simply outrage that the (internet trolling) people who make this sort of accusation could be so wrong, and not about the real pathological fixation it presents.  We should be asking why accusations of being Muslim are so effective, and why such a threat should be perceived as effective on the part of the Clinton campaign, albeit unofficially.  The surplus of "fodder" spilling out of the Clinton campaign, that Obama is secretly Muslim, may have been a drug-dealer, etc, may be just a warm up for the real racism that will be coming to light if Obama makes it past the primaries.  If Clinton's supporters see the light in these kind of baseless, prejudice-building insinuations, how will Huckabee or Romney's staff act?  It is difficult for me to imagine the GOP passing up the opportunity to racially slur Obama as much as possible without crossing the line--but the very act of approaching this line will be very telling as to what those lines really are.  Too often in debate, we pretend our political spectrum is mutli-cultural, enlightened, that these bounds don't even exist.

Given our country's position in regards to Iraq, it seems that such a campaign may actually be the best thing for this country.  The gauzy implication that being a Muslim is anti-American has been haunting the political dialogue for too long, and I think it is about time it is aired out and shown to be the ideological scapegoat it is.  While there are many reasons to be pushing for Obama or Hillary, this seems to me to be an increasingly  legitimate reason to favor Obama--it is only through his candidacy that America might have the opportunity to air these prejudices in public, and I think Obama is smart enough to be the beacon of multi-cultural tolerance his candidacy will position him as.  It will be important not only to assert the viablity of blacks, muslims, etc, in a cultural dialogue, but to point out that he has no choice--that these cultural constructions have been defining his candidacy form the very beginning.

Snapshots of a Ghost Ship

Jonathan Haeber (AKA Tunnelbug) Flickr-posted this amazing set of pictures he took on board the SS Oceanic Independence, a steam-driven luxury cruise ship which has been abandoned for years and sitting at a pier in San Francisco. The ship launched in 1951, and in some of the pictures you can see old 50's telephones in the turbine room ("Hear Here!"), and crew-drawn scrawls from sometime during the fifty years of the ship's life.  It has been host to two presidents (Truman and Reagan), the Saudi king and Lucille Ball.


The Presidential Suite

A ship is like a city in itself, prepared to account for the needs of hundreds of people for days or weeks. There is an inherent fascination for me in seeing the grease-framed phones in the engine rooms, the scrawls of grafitti from decades ago, the tunnels and cramped nooks that lead off into darkness, even the "Aloha" greeting booth still glittering through the dust, and the AA manual in the conference room. The ship is a tiny city that must develop its own history, its own smells and groove-worn memories. There is a strange hopefulness to cruise ships generally; they are designed to be familiar enough for people to feel comfortable, but unfamiliar enough offer a sort of modest utopia--a work-free space where the workers themselves are literally hidden below-decks. I wonder how similar this is to our society, if perhaps the gaudy focus were given free ideological reign. The time-frame of this ship in particular is fascinating-1951-2001, from the end of WW2 to the beginning of the war on terrorism, a veritable bridge of plastic lei's, rum margarita's, sea-gazing and AA meetings over the cold war, over rock n' roll.

I enjoyed looking at all of Haeber's industrial-set pictures on Flickr. Amazing!



(From the Telestar article.)