Well-Made World 23

Today, one-half of No Empires attended a lecture by Slavoj Zizek at the Birkbeck Institute of the Humanities in London. We normally reserve little sympathy for Zizek's popular obtuseness--not to mention his deplorable rock star-cum-intellectual demeanor--but he remains a powerful and intellectually responsible force of the Left. We bring to you Zizek's piece from today's Guardian, which gives, in crystallized form, the basis of today's lecture. Zizek in person, incidentally, is sloppy as fuck, and given to any number of distracting nervous tics.

Tariq Ali weighs in on the bloodshed that awaited Benazir Bhutto's return to Pakistan, pointing out not only the vanity that characterized her 'show of strength' in the streets of Karachi, but also the outstanding charges of corruption against her which may yet find her serving time behind bars, to the hypocritical pleasure of the Musharraf government and its demand for "justice."

In an incredible interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais, the recent Nobel-prize recipient Doris Lessing called out Americans for failing to view 9-11 in the context of the "terrible" actions of the IRA in England. After making this somewhat far-fetched comparison (and without making allowances for the differences between sustained colonial resistance that, as this article from the Guardian points out, resulted in the deaths of more than 3,700 people over thirty years, as opposed to terrorist acts that killed almost 3,000 people in one day), Lessing went on to praise Lee Bollinger's treatment of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, calling it "marvelous!" Uh, well done, Doris.