Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Revolution in Tunisia & Egypt, Protests in Libya, Bahrain, Oman & Yemen

roachboy · 02-16-2011, 09:15 AM

your aversion to complexity makes of you a dull boy, ace.

i have a friend who's a trader who argues similar things after 5 or 6 beverages---"watch their feet" he says. he calls me comade. i call him my favorite reactionary. when we push off that har-de-har stuff, it's possible to have conversations about things in which, to both our surprise, we often actually agree about some things because working with a common data set is like that.

you have set up some arbitrary division between economics and politics.
you have done it in a way that seems almost set up to grind discussion to a halt.
you pretend that you're refuting some claim i've made, when reality is that i've said over and over there's nothing to the split you're arguing for outside your simplifying imagination.

yet you continue.

the thread is about the revolts that are happening across the region and not about aceventura's inability to think in terms of complexity.

=====

speaking of which, here is an interesting interview (in french, sadly) about the situation in algeria at the moment.

http://www.liberation.fr/monde/01012...soit-trop-fort

the woman being interviewed is a researcher at the cnrs who was in oran last week when the protests happened in algiers. she talks about how difficult it is to get a sense of what "the situation in algeria" really is, that what it appears to be varies by geography and social group/community...so its not one thing, "the situation"---she talks about the presence of the kabyle population and its political mobilization, which has had the effect of making protest into "a kabyle thing" in some areas.

but mostly it's about the divergent history of algeria, which had open elections in 1988 in which the fis (islamic salvation front) won---the result of that was almost a decade of civil war.

her main point is that things are building---something is going on---and a lot of younger folk (from her perspective of course, but she says as much) are interested in leaving the country on account of it because the experience of civil war raises the possibility that the price to be paid for revolt may be too high.

it's interesting, i think.

there's more in the interview...

02-16-2011, 09:15 AM	#244 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	your aversion to complexity makes of you a dull boy, ace. i have a friend who's a trader who argues similar things after 5 or 6 beverages---"watch their feet" he says. he calls me comade. i call him my favorite reactionary. when we push off that har-de-har stuff, it's possible to have conversations about things in which, to both our surprise, we often actually agree about some things because working with a common data set is like that. you have set up some arbitrary division between economics and politics. you have done it in a way that seems almost set up to grind discussion to a halt. you pretend that you're refuting some claim i've made, when reality is that i've said over and over there's nothing to the split you're arguing for outside your simplifying imagination. yet you continue. the thread is about the revolts that are happening across the region and not about aceventura's inability to think in terms of complexity. ===== speaking of which, here is an interesting interview (in french, sadly) about the situation in algeria at the moment. http://www.liberation.fr/monde/01012...soit-trop-fort the woman being interviewed is a researcher at the cnrs who was in oran last week when the protests happened in algiers. she talks about how difficult it is to get a sense of what "the situation in algeria" really is, that what it appears to be varies by geography and social group/community...so its not one thing, "the situation"---she talks about the presence of the kabyle population and its political mobilization, which has had the effect of making protest into "a kabyle thing" in some areas. but mostly it's about the divergent history of algeria, which had open elections in 1988 in which the fis (islamic salvation front) won---the result of that was almost a decade of civil war. her main point is that things are building---something is going on---and a lot of younger folk (from her perspective of course, but she says as much) are interested in leaving the country on account of it because the experience of civil war raises the possibility that the price to be paid for revolt may be too high. it's interesting, i think. there's more in the interview... __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 02-16-2011 at 09:33 AM..