Alain Badiou finally catches up with Alex Jones

[David Rose]

Alain Badiou finally catches up with Alex Jones!

"Didn't you know that the French and British secret services have been
organising the fall of Gaddafi since last autumn? Alain Badiou

http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/463-alain-badious-open-letter-to-jean- luc-nancy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1qlB61mmFg

An open letter from Alain Badiou to Jean-Luc Nancy

By Sarah Shin / 04 April 2011

Alain Badiou responds to Jean-Luc Nancy's Libération article “What the
Arab peoples signify to us”:

Yes, dear Jean-Luc, the position you adopt in favour of ‘Western'
intervention in Libya was indeed a sorry surprise for me.

Didn't you notice right from the start the palpable difference
between what is happening in Libya and what is happening elsewhere?
How in both Tunisia and Egypt we really did see massive popular
gatherings, whereas in Libya there is nothing of the kind? An Arabist
friend of mind has concentrated in the last few weeks on translating
the placards, banners, posters and flags that were such a feature of
the Tunisian and Egyptian demonstrations: he couldn't find a single
example of these in Libya, not even in Benghazi. One very striking
fact about the Libyan ‘rebels', which I'm surprised you didn't note,
is that you don't see a single woman, whereas in Tunisia and Egypt
women are very visible. Didn't you know that the French and British
secret services have been organising the fall of Gaddafi since last
autumn? Aren't you amazed that, in contrast to all the other Arab
uprisings, weapons of unknown origin emerged in Libya? That bands of
young people immediately began firing volleys in the air, something
inconceivable elsewhere? Weren't you struck by the emergence of a
supposed ‘revolutionary council' led by a former accomplice of
Gaddafi, whereas nowhere else was there any question of the masses who
had risen up appointing some people as a replacement government?

Don't you realise how all these details, and many more, chime with
the fact that here, and nowhere else, the great powers were called in
to support? That such riffraff as Sarkozy and Cameron, whose aims are
transparently sordid, were applauded and worshipped—and you suddenly
give them support. Isn't it self-evident that Libya provided an entry
for these powers, in a situation that elsewhere totally escaped their
control? And that their aim, completely clear and completely classic,
was to transform a revolution into a war, by putting the people out of
the running and making way for arms and armies—for the resources that
these powers monopolise? This process is going on before your eyes
each day, and you approve it? Don't you see how after the terror from
the air, heavy weapons are going to be supplied on the ground, along
with instructors, armoured vehicles, strategists, advisers and blue
helmets, and in this way the reconquest (hopefully a fitful one) of
the Arab world by the despotism of capital and its state servants will
recommence?

How can you of all people fall into this trap? How can you accept
any kind of ‘rescue' mission being entrusted to those very people for
whom the old situation was the good one, and who absolutely want to
get back into the game, by forcible means, from motivations of oil and
hegemony? Can you simply accept the ‘humanitarian' umbrella, the
obscene blackmailing in the name of victims? But our armies kill more
people in more countries than the local boss Gaddafi is capable of
doing in his. What is this trust suddenly extended to the major
butchers of contemporary humanity, to those in charge of the mutilated
world that we are familiar with? Do you believe, can you believe, that
they represent ‘civilisation', that their monstrous armies can be
armies of justice? I am stupefied, I must confess. I ask myself what
good is philosophy if it is not immediately the radical critique of
this kind of unreflecting opinion, moulded by the propaganda of
regimes such as our own, which popular uprisings in regions strategic
for them have put on the defensive, and which are seeking their
revenge.

You say in your text that it will ‘later' be up to ‘us' (but who
is this ‘us', if today it includes Sarkozy, Bernard-Henri Lévy, our
bombers and their supporters?) to make sure that oil and arms deals,
and the like, don't make their return. Why ‘later'? It is now that we
have to make sure, by stopping the great powers as much as we can from
interfering in the political processes under way in the Arab world. By
doing all that is possible so that these powers, fortunately out of
the picture for a number of weeks, cannot reintroduce—under the
damaged name of ‘democracy' and the moral and humanitarian pretexts
that have been used ever since the first colonial conquests—oil and
other deals, which are quite simply the only deals that these powers
and their states are interested in.

Dear Jean-Luc, in circumstances of this kind it makes no sense for
you or me to go with the grain of the Western consensus that says: ‘we
absolutely have to remain in charge of everything happening'. We have
to make a stand against the grain, and demonstrate that the real
target of Western bombers and soldiers is in no way the wretched
Gaddafi, a former client of those who are now getting rid of him as
someone in the way of their higher interests. For the target of the
bombers is definitely the popular uprising in Egypt and the revolution
in Tunisia, it is their unexpected and intolerable character, their
political autonomy, in a word: their independence. To oppose the
destructive interventions of the powers means supporting the political
independence and the future of these uprisings and revolutions. This
is something we can do, and it is an unconditional imperative.

With friendly greetings,
Alain