are not in Egham, I started working in the UK, some things have happened, but I will not go into details. I am in Pisa - some would say unemployed - but I prefer to call it a cooling-off period. Or a technical test of retirement ...
In the meantime, I found myself completely unprepared - as many - in the face of what's happening in the Middle East. This is because basically the Middle East, few know anything, except that it is the largest oil reserves, and terrorism on the planet.
And is not that we do not care that much, as long as the petrol shortages, and that the refugees do not land on Lampedusa.
When the story is set in motion, often soothing certainties of intellectual surrender, you are hopelessly late, and we hastened to catch up.
then I try to document, anywhere, of course, because as soon as you tune on the news starting to sound the fanfare for the triumph of Western values \u200b\u200bof freedom and democracy, or the death knell of the bogeymen of Islamic fundamentalism and migration flows. Then I read
Uriel, who, I repeat, is one of the most intelligent in circulation: more intelligent and more intolerant, often with results delusional, but recognize the thickness not equivalent to agree.
I read stuff like this: http://www.wolfstep.cc/2011/02/liberta-e-democrazia.html
is this: http://www.wolfstep.cc/2011/02/la- death-of-building-democratico.html
Then I find this: http://www.blogstoria.it/2011/02/04/cosa-sta-succedendo-in-egitto-una-rivolta-compressa-tra- i-myths-delliran-of-the-Khomeini-and-fall-of-the-wall-of-berlin /
and even that, for Zizek, who now does not seem to have distinguished themselves by such fanfare: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2011/feb/10/egypt-miracle-tahrir-square
Other research in English, but give too many results, it becomes exhausting and discard the huge pile of garbage. Things like: Christianity, Islam is defeated.
forget to look Grillo's blog, I do so at the last minute and point out this: http://www.beppegrillo.it/2011/02/lo_stomaco_e_rivoluzionario/index.html
accept other reports (I read in 4 cats, I know, but you never know)
Here are some food for thought: Let's
- good for the authenticity of the protests, in the sense that, at least initially, seem to emerge directly from the company without manipulation or internal policies foreign. After this minimum level of understanding, there would soon be cleared which subsets of society are mobilized, it is the understanding of what you can begin to glimpse the possible outcomes of the "revolutions". For example, in Egypt it seems that students and intellectuals are the engine of the uprising, and this seems confirmed by the fact that among the key demands will be those of freedom of expression and democracy. While most of the Egyptian population lives in poverty, however, that the protest did not appear to have the characteristics of a revolt by starvation
- that will have just returned from Thailand and the Philippines, respectively presidential republic and constitutional monarchy, is that I have lived 5 years in UK and Ireland, and instead I found the energy wasted decorated with bows, instead of the arbitrary hidden meritocracy, but I agree with Uriel when it says there confuse democracy with economic prosperity. And when he says that democracy requires accountability to exist, otherwise infruibilità, the proliferation of an endless series of statutory prohibitions that limit the freedom theoretical and decay into something that retains only the name of democracy emptied sense. Obviously they are not more when he states his preference for a strong state to Putin; quando vuol crescere sua figlia all’estero per colpa della magistratura italiana che viola la privacy individuale – strana storia quella della magistratura italiana, è vero, che viene di volta in volta dagli stessi disprezzata o osannata, a seconda di chi è oggetto delle sue indagini: l’autonomia della magistratura dal potere politico serve proprio a limitare l’inevitabile discrezione che un giudice non può fare a meno di esercitare anche quando applica leggi uguali per tutti -; e quando erge la capacità individuale a misura di tutte le cose e ne deduce un bel darwinismo sociale senza scrupoli. Caro Uriel, per i rapporti tra il personale e il politico ti consiglio di rileggerti le pubblicazioni della Scuola di Francoforte (incluso Wilhelm Reich), e per quanto riguarda i limiti alla libertà individuale, beh, non è che se ti scopi un bambino, consensiente per 5 dollari, nel privato della tua abitazione, puoi ritenerti ingiudicabile: dei valori, per quanto frutto di convenzione e soggetti a mutazioni storiche, sono necessari, e non è il fatto di essere cresciuto nella provincia bigotta, a giustificare il tuo rifiuto concettuale di tutto ciò che può essere definito valore morale (valori che peraltro hai - perché non mi sembri affatto un debosciato, uno stronzo sì, ma non un debosciato - ma di cui non parli mai, perché non rientrano nel tuo schema concettuale). Come diceva Gaber: “no non fa male credere, fa molto male credere male”. I am not willing to dismiss the concept of value secular, if anything, is to fight the case for imposing new ones.
- And yet it must be called into question the equivalence between democracy and economic prosperity. Take any index, for purposes of illustration and the last Democracy Index, 2010: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index . The Philippines is regarded as a Flawed Democracy (could be translated: a democracy failed) the same way as Italy, but it does not seem right that economic conditions are the same. Or Sri Lanka, other Flawed Democracy, I do not think that is richer than Qatar, ranked Authoritarian Regime. Of course you can also say, starting from the same index, which tends democratic countries also coincide with the more affluent countries, but this has little value without examining the economic history of the world system . After all, calling into question the ' equivalence between democracy and economic well-being, means to deepen the relationship, for example, to accept that global capitalism has no need for democracy to thrive, maybe democracy is the only form that is defendant for a certain historical period, but that the defendants are just as authoritarian regimes, which in general is seeing a decline in the level of democracy in times of economic crisis, and other heretical amenities.
- Well, I think there are huge possibility that what is happening in the Middle East, is absorbed by governments that will not be able to feed more people than the previous ones. While the riots are usually dictated by short-lived hunger, it is also true that those in the name of abstract ideals are unlikely to affect the essential. And the main thing is to improve the material conditions di vita . Perché, diciamoci la verità, la libertà di espressione senza pane in tavola serve a poco. Mi è rivenuto subito in mente il 1989, la caduta del Muro: a 22 anni di distanza, come ignorare che le popolazioni di molti dei paesi dell’est Europa si sono riversate all’ovest in cerca di lavoro? Senza contare la guerra nei Balcani, e i deliri nazionalisti dei Serbi non più tenuti a bada da Tito. Baudrillard, un puro genio, così ha parlato dell’89 in una intervista:
“PP: Perhaps. But you can't deny that communism has failed and the collapse of the Soviet system has actually occurred!
JB: The communist system and the Berlin Wall didn't fall outwards, as a mark of openness and freedom, but inwards, as a mark of disintegration and of a dismantling that was violent, but had no liberatory consequences. They self-destructed, leaving behind an empty space, as when buildings implode. The only thing that collapse released was the contagious germs of collapse. And this, in fact, is what happened with the USSR: what immediately gravitated, or radiated, out from there were ferments of deliquescence and disappearance , or of blackmail by threat of disappearance, which the East European countries have joyously exported to the West, in exchange for which they have, in the guise of freedom, earned themselves irradiation by free-market capitalism and a system of values much more efficient than their own, but one that is equally deliquescent . An exchange of courtesies in which we can see that the Wall protected the West from the East as much as the opposite. In which we can see that communism at least preserved the fiction of Western values. Which might make one hope for its rehabilitation, or its return, or something equivalent - as a last-ditch measure for repolarizing the world.
PP: In the meantime, what is happening?
JB: The two systems are contaminating each other. The one sends the other its technologies and markets; the other sends back its pollution , viruses and angst. Things aren't finally settled, but I think what has triumphed isn't capitalism but the global, so to speak, and the price paid has been the disappearance of the universal in terms of a value system. We are, admittedly, seeing a kind of excrescence of human rights and democracy, but only in so far as their efficacy has long since disappeared. We're no longer in a power struggle between two systems, but in a kind of negative competition to see who'll be first to get their hands on their own values and sell them off - it's a liquidation race. Communism and its marvellous, life-size collapse - that is to say, its collapse on a grand historical scale - is the liquidation of the social, of the political as idea, as value, as utopian ideal, in the disaster of achieved utopia. But isn't it the same in the West: the life-size failure of the achieved utopia of happiness? The collapse of the Western value system is precisely correlative with the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. Western stupefaction, that of a happiness fuelled by hormones and animal feed, this flabby, technological ecstasy, this interactive virus we pass over to Eastern Europe in exchange for its opening-up to democracy, is even worse than the opposite contagion of totalitarianism, of rigid control and bureaucratic inertia. It's the corruption of the visible, as against the corruption of the hidden, the secret, the repressed. The year 1989 can be seen to have marked the beginning of the immense reciprocal contamination of the two worlds. And perhaps the deliquescence, the distintegration of the capitalist world, of its principles and values, even preceded that of socialism in the East? Perhaps this latter fell into line with the Western world's indifference to its own values - no longer having before it any ideology, any political will worthy of the name? All that's different is today forced to capitulate before the undifferentiated universe. Entropy has won, the entropy of the market and democracy, pulling irresistibly towards a generalized exchangism of all values. Hence the wave of revisionism sweeping across a Western world conscious of this irresistible degradation, and tempted finally to restore some good old values (including that of communism) to rescue its own identity. Here we have communism at last become a humanism!”
As usual, the technique consists of a theory of Baudrillard pataphysics (pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions invented by Alfred Jarry, a precursor of surrealism, to the theater) that the real challenge, that it iperbolizza traits, it is mentioned as an event, and then disappears. The n pataphysical Baudrillard is both the stage reached by the system, close to perfection and collapse, and the level must be set theory to account for the hyper-reality that is facing . Elsewhere, Baudrillard even say that communism has won with 89 ; communism wins through its dissolution, escaping to the role of imaginary enemy conferred by the West, on which it bases its identity in some way 'throws in the towel' and trimming the West the task of managing its failure, there insinuates itself as a highly destructive virus :
" The most enjoyable aspect of the whole thing, the irony of the end, is that communism has collapsed just as Marx had predicted for capitalism, with the same lightning speed, and with such ease at the end of that imagination was not even affected. The fact that Marx was wrong winner does not diminish the accuracy of his analysis, since the objective simply adds to the irony that she was missing. We thought the fate . "
- also Zizek, who is a communist, a communist future, tells us about Egypt, welcome sign and hope that is happening, and tells us that the whole protest movement would be betrayed by any form of compromise with the existing government, that it simply has to go. And more or less explicitly tells us that Western governments, primarily the United States, which have so far endorsed or supported various local dictators for reasons of realpolitik may not have hesitation. And he's right. But I, perhaps urged on that side of me that can not overcome fear, try to imagine the after . And, alas, after not tell me the next thing, I do not say a transition to democracy is the necessary condition for the peoples of the Arab countries can ensure better living conditions. He says instead: the delay of a century of such democratic movements than the West, means that at best these countries become part directly in a world system in which wealth is highly polarized, and of course as you enter taillights. Unless ...
- The Gini coefficient is a method used to measure the distribution of wealth, usually among the population of a country. It is calculated as follows: take an index of concentration of wealth as described here: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indice_di_concentrazione if they have the Lorenz curve plots the graph on a Cartesian has the cumulative frequency on the x axis and y axis on the accumulated amount, then divide the existing area 45 ° between the line of perfect equal distribution and the Lorenz curve for the entire area designated by the same line of equidistribution, which, being half of a square, can be considered equal to ½. Thereby resulting in a value between 0 and 1, indicating more equal distribution such as the value is close to 0. I know it is not clear a saw. We are an example: let's take a country where the total wealth is measured 100. Suppose that 20% of the population owns 10 "wealth", another 50% have a total of 30 "treasures", and of course owns 100% of 100 total wealth. Performing a summation of (indicated by the symbol Σ in mathematics), we can say 20% of the poorest people have the wealth of 10/100 = 10%, 70% (20 +50) has the poorest individuals (10 +30) / 100 = 40% of the wealth and the remaining 30% own 60% of the wealth of course. Represented on the chart mentioned, you get something that I can not reproduce here, but that looks like what you find here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient . Although this index is made up of numbers, which are notoriously stupid without adequate reflection on the method (see advantages and disadvantages, on the same page), and yet makes you think.
- Unless, said ... Unless it is recognized next to the problem of freedom also that of 'equality , a general problem redistribution of wealth, the need to balance both global and local capital accumulation with a equity policy. The West is no longer a model, if it ever was, the resources are low, now is the time of the decrease and also that of sharing. Anything but Realpolitik. Next to freedom of expression and information, there are the good old rights to a dwelling, not to die of hunger and thirst, health. And frankly at this point I do not care if the advice is to assure the Soviets, an enlightened ruler, or a spiritual leader with secular powers. Just that we do not lose sight of priorities. The rest can be discussed.
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