nettime's_rescue_squad on Thu, 13 Sep 2001 11:46:35 +0200 (CEST)


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<nettime> things fall apart digest [x6]


John Armitage <john.armitage@unn.ac.uk>
     Delirious New York
Douglas Rushkoff <rushkoff@well.com>
     Life Below 14th Street
Phil Duncan <PDuncan@AggregateStudio.com>
     On Retaliation
Harsh Kapoor <aiindex@mnet.fr>
     Laura Flanders - Live reports from Manhattan
Bruce Sterling <bruces@well.com>
     NASDAQ Physically Collapsing
david turgeon <david.t@steam.ca>
     kaboom

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From: John Armitage <john.armitage@unn.ac.uk>
Subject: Delirious New York
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 20:29:09 +0100


"With the New York bomb [in the World Trade centre, 1993], we thus findourselves faced with the latest escalation in the kind of military-political
action that is based simultaneously on a limited number of actors and
guaranteed media coverage. It has reached the point where soon, if we don't
look out, a single man may well be able to bring about disasters that were
once, not long ago, the province of a naval or air force squadron."

"Indeed, for some time the miniaturisation of charges and advances in the
chemistry of detonation have been promoting a previously unimaginable
equation: One man = Total war."

Paul Virilio, "Delirious New York", 30 March 1993.

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Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 15:40:59 -0400
Subject: Life Below 14th Street
From: Douglas Rushkoff <rushkoff@well.com>

Tuesday morning: 

Thanks for all the concern and well wishes. Yes, I'm fine. Thousands have
perished, no doubt, and many of them, I'm sure, were friends.

I live high up, on 9th Street, and watched the whole World Trade Center
disaster unfold from my windows. Excruciating to witness. More on that in
the coming days.

I don't think it's the adrenaline of the moment leading me to believe the
world is a different place, now. This is an event beyond the scale and scope
of Pearl Harbor -- and one that changes everything.

Most likely, it will lead to some startling escalations, particularly now
that the White House is characterized more by demonstrative action than
effectiveness. The dancing in the streets of Palestine isn't a particularly
good public relations move, either.

Brace yourselves. America is at war, and the world is a smaller place.

Love and condolences to all.

--
Tuesday evening:

Things are strange here in lower Manhattan. Word has it the
neighborhood (south of 14th street) will be sealed off by
morning. I assume this means we can get out, but not in.

Media reports have been sketchy, and I can't help but conclude
we're not being told much. One building I know of, far from the
WTC, was evacuated, and the drivers of a truck presumably
carrying explosives were arrested. It hasn't been reported. No
news, either, confirming earlier reports that the Pennsylvania
plane that crashed had been shot down by our own missiles
before it reached its target. Even denials would be nice, but no
one is asking such questions.

Perhaps this 'cooperation' by the media is for our own good,
calculated to maintain morale. Time will tell.

I'm also disturbed by the reactions of many friends to the
prospect of going to work tomorrow. Some of them work at
AOL/TimeWarner magazines - recently budget-slashed and
overly corporatized. There's no impulse to 'hang in there,' show
up at work and get the news out. I don't blame them; they've been
mistreated, and the souls of these periodicals have been slowly
killed over the past months. Crises like these tend (and are
intended) to expose the stresses in our relationships to
institutions. So far, they're not pretty.

The images of the exploding and crumbling buildings, as well as
the screams of onlookers on rooves, still resonate. Some
neighbors who made it back describe Private-Ryan-level
carnage -- falling limbs and torsos, burning bodies, people
leaping out of 70-story windows.

People are quite calm, but they're also in shock. I'll be doing
some NPR (national public radio interviews) tonight, but I'm not really sure
what I can add of value. I'll answer their questions.

I received a widely-broadcast letter from John Barlow, who is very
concerned that this tragedy could lead to a willful disintegration
of American freedoms. He believes we will surrender precious
rights that were hard-won. I hope not; nor do I believe so.

I think we'll value the freedom we have all the more, now that we
have a taste of how tenuous such freedoms are in a truly global
reality. And what a terrible demonstration of remote high
leverage points in a networked system. Sometimes people learn the hard way.

It's one for all and all for one, at this point.

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Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 01:16:03 +0100
From: Phil Duncan <PDuncan@AggregateStudio.com>
Subject: On Retaliation

I am an American watching the attack from Scotland.
Willa Cather saw WWI end with the world split in two.
The assassination of JFK was the end of Camelot.
Innocent notions of sovereignty, security, and supremacy
died coterminously in twin implosions.
Castration of global economic colonization.

I was paralyzed as I watched the live television images.
I am devastated by the violent change in my skyline, and the
destruction of icons of the economic and political tyranny I have
had the freedom to openly criticize.  I am devastated by the
extreme obscenity of the destruction of innocent civilians by an
overt war crime.  The willingness to send a human payload,
as a weapon, to a fiery and vicious death, causing the deaths of
more humans is an atrocity that is reprehensible.
I feel a frustrated rage against an unseen, unknown enemy.

After feeling these emotions,  reading the commentary from sources
like the Washington Post, and hearing rumors of near riotous,
fever pitched bloodlust for revenge, I feel quite wary about any
retaliatory actions of the Bush administration setting off a blood feud:
a new (order) crusade.

Out of my anger and frustration I would like to offer these thoughts:

--
On Retaliation:

Now is a time to seriously lay to heart
the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions;
to look with compassion on the whole human family,
to take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts,
to break down the walls that separate us,
and work through our struggle, fear, and confusion.

How can the nations of the world find guidance
into the way of social justice,
and establish peace from the fruits of love,
which are stronger than hate?

We were once asked to love our enemies.
We search for the strength to lead them and ourselves
from hatred, cruelty, prejudice and revenge
to find a way to peacefully coexist
in the new world order initiated 11Sept2001.
--

Excerpted from a prayer by Fr. Sam Portaro,
Episcopal Chaplain of Brent House at the Univ. of Chicago,
and edited by me for theologic neutrality.

If you are interested in receiving the full text by
Fr. Portaro, please reply with your request.

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To: <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 15:25:07 -0500
Subject: The View From Chamnbers Street

Nettimers,

Since I have neighborhood ID, the authorities let me go downtown, at 
noon, as far as Chambers Street, which is where the troops hold a tight 
line, only three or four blocks north of ground zero. After the first 
barrier on Houston St., Soho is totally closed for business, and 
deserted. Too bad for Dolce and Gabbano!  I take some perverse pleasure 
in walking down the center of West Broadway in broad daylight, something 
I'm unlikely to be able to do ever again. A stray cop actually does 
mutter something about jaywalking.  And I actually do say ,"You gotta be 
kidding." He smiles, a little reluctantly.  So do I. 
						
Past the checkpoint on Canal St there are some bizarre sights, like the 
crushed cars piled on top of one another that have been dumped outside 
one of Tribeca's fanciest restaurants. The local bourgeoisie is nowhere 
to be seen, and the folks on the streets are artsy, indie types–the kind 
of folks who used to live here. I run into some people I haven't seen in 
ten years.  Everyone else on the streets is wearing some kind of uniform 
or official ID.  The thick white dust thickens as you get near to 
Chambers Street, which is where it begins to look like an urban 
battleground.  I've been struck in moving around downtown over the last 
24 hours how many weird paramilitary vehicles are on the streets–very 
strange-looking vehicles (with unfamiliar acronyms on the side, if they 
are at all identified) of the sort we don't see on civilian streets but 
which are clearly the property of civil authorities.  Down at Chambers 
Street, all of the marks of authority--city, county, state, and 
federal--begin to merge, alongside fringe, paramilitary organizations 
like the Salvation Army and the Guardian Angels (New York City's version 
of vigilanteism, circa 1980).  

It's an intensely active scene, with crews of relief workers and firemen 
marching back and forth, and trucks of all shapes and sizes weaving in 
and out of the convoys of official vehicles parked on  Hudson and 
Greenwich St.  To the south, when the smoke and fumes momentarily 
clears, I can see the mangled wreck of the towers, and every so often, 
the sunlight catches what looks like a flame.  South of Hudson Street, 
the pile is about fifty or sixty feet high, much less to the south of 
Greenwich where the tower leaned when it fell.  Even so, it's a 
surprisingly well-contained area of damage.  Hoses are trained 
everywhere. I manage to get access to the bridge over the highway that 
links BMCC to the Stuyvesant school.  For as far as you can see north, 
the West Side Highway is crammed full of heavy trucks of all shapes and 
sizes, waiting to cart off the shrapnel.  The yachts off the piers are 
bobbing merrily. The trees in Washington Market Park and snow-white with 
dust. Someone has traced out graffiti in the dust on the bridge: "Fuck 
Woodstock! Time to Fight!"  A sentiment to which the decent New Yorker 
can only say,  Oy! 					

The wind starts to shift the fumes towards us, and since I don't have a 
mask, this sorry dude beats a retreat.  Why did I go down there?  I 
wanted to test out my right to the streets in my own neighborhood. What 
does it feel like to be a member of the public under such circumstances? 
What does the "official city" look like, under such circumstances?  What 
I found, other than the carnage,  was a loosely coordinated overlap of 
authorities, and a veritable army of working class folks in one uniform 
or another (the city's public workers for the most part) putting their 
guts into a horribly grim job.  Sound familiar?  This loose coalition, 
with its lumpen workforce, was making the most of a bad scene, and their 
labor is a study in contrast to the unhinged sabre-rattling of the 
nation's policy establishment.  (At the other end of yesterday's chain 
of events were the workers paid a measly minimum wage by the airline 
companies to guarantee our safety at airports). Yet I have to shiver 
when I think of how this same coalition, under different circumstances, 
might conceivably be, and sometimes is, turned against the citizenry.  
On the subway this morning, the vibe was dead mute–-a mood I could only 
compare to another NYC subway ride I took the morning after the Rodney 
King-inspired insurgency.  As for the air billowing out from DC, that's 
a nasty whiff.  If you find that smell disagreeable, you're likely to 
find the city streets even less hospitable in the months to come.

I'd once spent a long time researching the Twin Towers for a book 
chapter, "Bombing the Big Apple," that I wrote several years ago.  As it 
happens, I'd recently done a word search through all of those digital 
files. I was looking for any mention of Osama bin Laden. from media 
reporting of the 1993 bombing and the immediate aftermath. For what it's 
worth, the search came up negative.   

 

Andrew Ross
Professor and Director
Graduate Program in American Studies
New York University
285 Mercer St. 8th Floor
NY, NY 10003
tel 212-998-8538
fax 212-995-4803

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Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 01:53:42 +0100
From: Harsh Kapoor <aiindex@mnet.fr>
Subject: Laura Flanders - Live reports from Manhattan

Laura Flanders Filed 1:05 p.m. EST Wed.
         WorkingForChange.com

Live reports from Manhattan -- A WEB LOG

The headlines roar war.

"This battle will take time and resolve, but make no mistake about it we
will win,said George W. Bush a few hours ago. By that time, Senator Joseph
Lieberman, loyal opposition Democrat, had already chimed in: "An act of
war was committed against us. It's more than a crime. It's certainly at
least a war crime. And I think Congress has to effectively declare war
against terrorism." On ABC's Good Morning America, the Secretary of State,
Colin Powell said, "The American people have a clear understanding that
this is a war. That's the way they see it." Does he see it that way? He
was asked. "I do."

I beg to differ. In Manhattan, we aren't in a state of war, we're in a
state of mourning. And for the whole country to join us right now would be
a really good idea.

They're calling it "The Pit" where the World Trade Towers were. "You don't
want to get too close," Pvt. Maldonado of the National Guard told
downtown-dwellers as we maneuvered through the multiple checkpoints in our
neighborhood. "1,400 National Guardsmen are down there," said Maldonado.

On Lafayette Street, at the neighborhood firehouse, the Stars and Stripes
flies at half mast. The local crew, among the first to go to The Towers,
is missing six members. A rack of dusty coats and rubber knee-highs hangs
by the station door.

The Washington politicians' talk about war is helping some people to vent,
to rage, to rally to kill more innocent civilians -- is that what we're
going to do -- kill them back? And the revenge talk is reaping a harvest
of hate.

An Iranian-American friend received an email yesterday, from a volunteer
at a Moslem Mosque in Los Angeles, with disclaimer that "these are the
letters of hate my dad's mosque in LA got just in the past few hrs...

Excerpted:

"Go back to the middle east before you get burned at the Stake, who the
fuck do you think you guys are coming to our communities and bringing your
dirt with you? Muslims and their hate are not wanted in LA"

"Fuck you all for bringing your mud dirt people to our country and after
that bringing your evil uncivilized ways here to harm and hurt our people.
Watch out because we know who you are and we know where you live and we
will make sure that you pay for all those American lives lost"

"Fuck Muslims and fuck you, you will die for doing this"

"You middle eastern mud people need to die and pay for what you did."

This is a time to think about death and rage. To think about it for once,
and to pause. Will we too be burned at the stake or something similar if
we say that "terrorists" are people made by their circumstances, not born
hankering to kill or to kill themselves. And most of them believe they
have a cause -- political or religious. Will we too, the immigrants among
us, be banished for saying that the source of that belief is worth
thinking about? Do we risk becoming "harborers" of terrorists -- or
terrorist thoughts -- if we murmur anything about the U.S. bombing of
major cities: Hiroshima, Hanoi, Tripoli, Beirut, Panama City, Baghdad,
Khartoum, Belgrade? I wonder.

Meanwhile, in New York, we the people inhale the dust, gather at blockaded
streets and watch, and I've heard no hate. Not yet.

FILED 10:35 P.M. EST TUES.

President or Priest?

Some New Yorkers gathered around a television two hours ago, to hear words
from the only president we've got. Around the set were three people who
make movies who had a friend on the hijacked Boston-Los Angeles flight; a
painter and a poet whose home, a few blocks from ground zero, has no
electricity and no gas. Rumors of underground gas explosions swirl like
the dust-clouds.

A civil rights attorney was on her morning bicycle ride when she saw the
first plane hit the first Trade Tower. People have started calling them
"our towers" now. "It was so huge, so low." Many of us saw "our towers"
drop out of our sky before our eyes. A writer believes she saw a city
school bus pass her, filled ceiling-to-floor with body bags. So when the
only president we have talked to us about "terrible sadness" New Yorkers
weren't impressed. When he gave us cliches about the day's events many of
us were furious. "We know what happened, we weren't in a bunker," one
shouted at the set. As for the government functioning and the economy
continuing... "Who's he kidding? Wall Street is under dust." He asked us
to pray: "What is he," we said. "A president or a priest?"

In lower Manhattan at least, it's clear that this president has no idea
what happened today. "That's the scariest part of all," some people said.
There was no leadership coming from politicians tonight. Nor pundits, try
as they might. And no light of freedom shining 'round here except the
headlights of a thousand emergency vehicles and the reflective vests on
several thousand workers, heading back into the smoke-filled streets.

FILED 5:30 P.M. EST

Where do we turn in a crisis? To public workers, the ones we have left. I
just spoke to two dozen of them at an emergency staging area on
Manhattan's Avenue of the Americas. Bused in from as far away as Far
Rockaway, Queens they are massed here: the men and women of the New York
City Housing Authority with their blue suits, hard hats, city-issue
respirators and their 52 flatbed trucks lined up, awaiting the call to
head downtown to start the ghastly clean up.

Usually these people -- almost exclusively Black and Latino, mostly men
with a couple of women -- manage Manhattan's housing projects. Today,
they're coming to the World Financial Center's aid. Where are the
sanitation workers? Standard garbage crushers are poorly suited to the
delicate clean-up operation downtown. That's part of the story. Besides,
as one NYCHA worker put it, "The city's been getting out of the trash
business." It's true. More and more city garbage is picked up these days
by private contractors. These city workers, members of the Teamsters local
127, have been without a contract for a year.

"It's always police and hospital workers who get the credit, but we're
here when you need us," said union member Ray Garcia. It's true. Dark
skinned, blue collared, hot and waiting, these are emergency workers.
Workers we depend on in an emergency. Cut public spending on social
services? Think about it. Right now, chances are, I'd be looking at an
empty street.

FILED 1:56 P.M. EST

911.

It's the date. It is also the situation. At St. Vincent's hospital, where
there are some 180 casualties and two at last count dead, about 500 people
are waiting to give blood. Civilian cars are driving casualties to the
door. New Yorkers are turning out to help. That's the good news.

The bad news: on televison, reporters are fanning flames with
irresponsible reports. Just an hour ago, CBS Channel 2 in New York
interview with a transit employee who, with no evidence and no data, was
broadcast live, telling the already terrified public that biological
agents might be entering people's lungs.

Tom Brokaw on NBC can't get enough of State Department officials. For
hours this morning, NBC "reported" that the Democratic Front for the
Liberation of Palestine had "claimed responsibility" for the attack on the
World Financial Center. Brokaw's source, it turns out, was an anonymous
caller to Abu Dhabi television. By 9.58 EST, the Reuters newswire was
reporting that a senior official from the Democratic Front had denied any
connection to the attack:

"I emphasize that the story released on Abu Dhabi TV by an anonymous
person is totally incorrect," Tayseer Khaled, a senior official from the
DFLP politburo in the Palestinian territories, told Reuters. "The DFLP is
against hijacking planes and against endangering the lives of civilians
who are not connected with the struggle of this region," he said.

FILED 12:27 P.M. EST

It looks like nuclear winter out there. Police are trying their best to
close off all streets from my block south (Canal St.) I think of Baghdad,
Belgrade. Speculation on tv runs rampant. I am going now to St. Vincent's
hospital in Greenwich Village to give blood.

FILED 10:33 A.M. EST

The smoke is heading my way in lower Manhattan. I can see it. And I can no
longer see either of the World Trade Towers that were clearly visible from
my block as I walked home last night.

That's about all I can tell you about this morning's attack in New York.
In CNN's News Center in Atlanta, they know even less, but that isn't
stopping their talk.

Two hours after attacks on two U.S. cities, it's not clear how the
coverage will develop. There's no question, however, that TV speakers will
be filling the rest of the day with talk about an event that none of them
can explain. As the hours progress, "experts" will no doubt be
interviewed. Greta Van Sustern was already asked for her analysis. CNN's
legal expert talked from her vantage point at Washington's National
Airport.

We can't predict the coverage, but we can recall the past. Here, thanks to
our friends at FAIR, from 1995:

"Seldom have so many been so wrong -- so quickly. In the wake of the
explosion that destroyed the Murrah Federal Office Building, the media
rushed -- almost en masse -- to the assumption that the bombing was the
work of Muslim extremists. "The betting here is on Middle East
terrorists," declared CBS News' Jim Stewart just hours after the blast
(4/19/95). "The fact that it was such a powerful bomb in Oklahoma City
immediately drew investigators to consider deadly parallels that all have
roots in the Middle East," ABC's John McQuethy proclaimed the same day.

"It has every single earmark of the Islamic car-bombers of the Middle
East,' wrote syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer (Chicago Tribune,
4/21/95). "Whatever we are doing to destroy Mideast terrorism, the chief
terrorist threat against Americans, has not been working," declared the
New York Times' A.M. Rosenthal (4/21/95). The Geyer and Rosenthal columns
were filed after the FBI released sketches of two suspects who looked more
like Midwestern frat boys than mujahideen." There's been a tragedy. May
all of us in the media not add to it today.

======================

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Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2001 21:37:08 -0500
Subject: NASDAQ Physically Collapsing
From: Bruce Sterling <bruces@well.com>

*Okay, granted,  it's merely a staff headquarters of some kind rather than
an actual, physical Bourse, but it's a very Black September '01 moment
to have the ailing NASDAQ physically collapsing.  --  bruces


Wednesday September 12, 7:26 pm Eastern Time

Nasdaq headquarters on verge of collapse

NEW YORK, Sept 12 (Reuters) - The headquarters of Nasdaq is on the verge of
destruction on Wednesday evening as the building that houses the No. 2 U.S.
stock market was collapsing after an attack laid waste to the nearby World
Trade Center.

All 127 of the Nasdaq's staff were safely evacuated from One Liberty Plaza
after a second hijacked commercial plane crashed into the World Trade
Center, a company spokesman said. Witnesses told Reuters the building is
near collapse.

Nasdaq, which moved into One Liberty less than 6 months ago, is suffering
through a prolonged bear market that is cutting into revenues.

Equity trading on Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange, the world's
largest stock market, was shut down on Wednesday for the second straight day
after lower Manhattan was rocked by a pair of hijacked commercial planes
slamming into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

But Nasdaq is not a physical stock exchange like the NYSE, which is also
located near the World Trade Center. Nasdaq matches buy and sell orders from
various share dealers throughout the world.

Its New York staff -- which represents 10 percent of the company's work
force -- is being relocated to offices elsewhere in the U.S., a spokesman
said. Its other locations include offices in suburban Connecticut,
Washington, Menlo Park, California and Chicago, he said.

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Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 00:46:31 -0400
From: david turgeon <david.t@steam.ca>
Subject: kaboom

how does one unsubscribe from the USA?

~ david

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