nettime's_wilderness_of_mirrors on Sat, 15 Sep 2001 04:07:14 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> a very reflective digest [lichty, guderian, gh, schaefer, fry] |
Patrick Lichty <voyd@voyd.com> Two quick WTC reflections Carl Guderian <carlg@vermilion-sands.com> Crime, not war gh@popstar.com Tribeca report Franz Schaefer <schaefer@mond.at> stopping the madness. how do we prevent even more harm... "Nicholas C. D. Fry" <fried.nicky@virgin.net> <Reflections on this week's terrorist attacks in USA.> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 11:49:00 -0700 From: Patrick Lichty <voyd@voyd.com> Subject: Two quick WTC reflections I was thinking about the response that Bush has announced on CNN et al, and the inpression that comes to mind are the paradox of violence and the fall of the nation state, The Paradox of Violence in American Culture America is a culture of violence and tragedy. On televised programming, gunshots ring out, heads explode, and sex is reduced to jiggle tactics for our 'tit'ill-ation. The most popular video games are typically the most violent (besides Myst), and everything in AMerican culture has to be 'extreme'. Have you seen the new 'Extreme' tampons? (Just joking). However, amidst all of this, large amounts of effort are expended to instill conflict resolution techniques in American schools. The philosphy taught is that if you're hit, you have to take a moment and consider your actions. In the case of the WTC, within minutes Bush was announcing "terrorist" actions perpetrated upon the American public, and within 24 hours, the American war machine's hammer is cocked, ready to respond before a clearly defined adversary known. To me this smacks hollow with the restraint we try to teach our kids. The Nation-less State. Here's the problem: The US government's rhetoric has repeatedly tried to equate its response with nation states. Their Harbors will not be safe, they say. This once again returns to the affiliation with a nation state. The problem is that there is a high degree of probability that all of this is privately funded, not affiliated with any nation state, and operations are likely to have taken place in many of the US's allied nations. The network of terrorism is also likely made up of hundreds of individuals operating in independent 'cells' all over the world. This is La Femme Nikita vs. Get Smart. The American rhetoric is still plugged into the old model of organization - the nation-state. In this case, an overlay of highly mobile, independent alliances and cartels are made evident, much as in a cyberpunk novel. The target moves, and its nature can change dynamically to adapt for contingencies. When the regimented, hierarchical structure of conventional nation-states are confronted with this agile enemy, they struggle to comprehend the paradigmatic shift that has happened. Sure, the US might wish to eliminate harbors for terrorism. So then, should the Air Force bomb the flight academies in Florida that trained some of the WTC terrorists? If, as one TV rumor puts it, there was a Germany-based cell involved, should Germany be bombed back to the Stone Age? Hardly. New realities are being made evident, and extant structures are trying to deal with them in traditional terms. Until the powers that be understand that these new agile and stealthy operations operate in ways and structures perviously alien to them, the possibility exists that such events are possible, even likely in the future. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 11:57:43 +0200 From: Carl Guderian <carlg@vermilion-sands.com> Subject: Crime, not war It's probably too late, but this should have been treated as an international crime, not as the start of a war. Terrorism--the real kind, not Black Bloc anti-capitalist brawls labeled as such by politicians--is already considered international crime. It's just that some countries couldn't be bothered to get involved. With bin Laden's previous atrocities, Afghanistan only suffered small retaliatory strikes. All the rhetoric about "just deserts" falls flat when it's this bad, though I do hope it will cause certain people to rethink the policy of keeping evil people on the payroll. Treat it as a crime and Afghanistan has a duty to extradite bin Laden when the US succeeds in tracing the attack to his organization. The Taleban may now be coming around to this way of thinking, if it's true they've got him under house arrest. Label bin Laden a criminal and you strip him and his followers the status of warriors. Rutger Hauer said it best in the cardboard epic "Wanted Dead or Alive" (since movies metaphors are lately flying thick and fast) when he told the terrorist played by Gene Simmons (of KISS): "You're a fly, buzzing around a piece of shit." Arrest bin Laden, preferably with the cooperation of the Taleban. Whatever they think of Americans, this is beyond the pale. If they won't help, we shoulder them aside and go after him ourselves. The world can tolerate black money, mafiyas (more or less), black money and a semi-wild internet, but not this. No sane government would hide someone who could do this. Put bin Laden in shackles and a prison orange jumpsuit and shave his beard to regulation prison length. Put him and his co-cospirators on public trial. No going out in a blaze of glory for bin Laden. This certainly tests the bounds of crime, but treating this as a criminal case instead of a war will do a lot to calm everybody down. It won't scare the crap out of friends and enemies alike. It won't put the US on a war footing, much less give legal cover to those with a hardon for emergency powers. It won't result in muzzling of the press (truth being war's first casualty) or bans of encryption. It won't result in the Cold War-style, "with us or against us" mentality that smothered dissent and excused the sort of idiocy that led to our cultivation of bin Laden in the first place. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From: gh@popstar.com Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 21:05:40 +0800 Subject: Tribeca report I live 8 blocks north of the world trade center. My view is south facing the towers. I saw and videtaped the whole thing. Its a video I'd rather not have. The Friday previous to the attack I was at the Trade center changing airplane tickets. One month ago I went up to the top with my brother-in-law, his teenage daughter and his wife. My Street Harrison Street is being used as a major staging area for the clean-up and rescue operations. Yesterday they were cleaning asbestos off emergency vehicles. The police have barricaded the cross street in lower Manhattan. You have show a photon identification to go back to your home. Twice when I tried to go through a barricade to get to my home I was turned away by a cop even though I had proper ID. We have no subway service. The grocery stores & restaurants are all closed. My car is parked on a pier below 14th street on the river. I don't know whether they'll let me get it. We are all in shock here. I walked my wife up to a working subway station in the village at 6th ave & Bleecker. The whole of 6th ave was lined with hundreds of dump trucks coming from New Jersey. They were pointed downtown ready to clear the debris. The street was lined with people who applauded and cheered on the men driving the trucks. -- _______________________________________________ FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup Talk More, Pay Less with Net2Phone Direct(R), up to 1500 minutes free! http://www.net2phone.com/cgi-bin/link.cgi?143 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 21:09:22 +0200 From: Franz Schaefer <schaefer@mond.at> Subject: stopping the madness. how do we prevent even more harm... a horrible tragedy. many innocent people died. but what is coming now could, in the long run be even more dangerous to all of us: 1) restriction of our freedom and privacy in the name of "protecting us". 2) it looks like bush and many others are planing violent retaliation. this would only advance the vicious circle of violence and counter violence. and that could eventually bring us WWIII. i believe each of us has the duty to do everything possible to prevent that. in order to couteract to lunactics like mister bush it would make sense to lean a bit more to opposing positions. here are a few ideas that might help us to do that: *) express solidarity with the victims and their relatives but strongly oppose bush right wing politics *) express opposition with the capitalist and imperialistic politics of the usa in general. *) point out that spending more money for (so called) "defense", espionage, and surveillance will not be useful instead that effort should go to helping development of 3rd world countries. as long as we build our wealth on the suppression of 2/3 of the world we should not be surprised by what happened on september 11. *) oppose the destruction of civil liberty. "Those who would trade liberty for security will get and deserve neither.". -- Benjamin Franklin *) show support for the freedom of religion and show special solidarity with the islamic religion. not every muslim is a fundamentalist just like not every christian is a fundamentalist. and even the persons who label them self fundamentalists are often not bad people. *) if your country tries to support bush and his insane ideas of war then organice protests against your local government NOW. ... add more to the list... greetings from vienna, austria. mond. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ . Franz Schaefer NEW Fingerprint: .. +43/676/3195231 +43/1/3178892 GPG: 57C2 C0CC ... schaefer@mond.at 6F0A 54C7 0D88 D37E ... http://www.mond.at/ C17C CB16 CFA2 F632 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 18:40:23 +0100 Subject: <Reflections on this week's terrorist attacks in USA.> From: "Nicholas C. D. Fry" <fried.nicky@virgin.net> Reflections on this week's terrorist attacks in USA. The recent events in USA have proved both terrifying and fascinating to anyone watching or listening from a 'safe' distance. Receiving such extraordinary events over the television made them perversely familiar. As a number of journalists have pointed out, the images resembled Hollywood's favourite, 'explosive' film dramas, with aeroplanes crashing out of control and enormous explosions sending cities into chaos; not unfamiliar fantasies. I imagine many people repelled by that kind of Hollywood drama would have felt some strange sense of satisfaction when witnessing what could be described as the world's most severe example of loss of innocence. Many news broadcasters drew attention to the fact that it was going to be another 'perfect day' in New York under clear blue sky; the sublime cleanliness of wealth and order. The certitude and pertinence of the multiple, terrorist operations resembled in some respects a most merciless chastising. The tarnishing of America's domestic innocence and economic sanctity was fast becoming an inevitable and, some may deem, necessary event in the unfolding history of global politics. The dramatic increase of activity by the western anti-capitalist/ anarchist movement, and the pronounced intensity of their actions has been a strong foreboding to anyone with any interest in diversity of political opinion and the conventional hypocrisy of enduring bureaucracies. It has become increasingly clear that changes across the world have to be made and that the governing bodies responsible for initiating these changes simply aren't effective. Since President G W Bush came to power on the backbone of his 5 billion dollar election campaign there's has been nothing but contempt for American foreign policy. He seems destined through stupidity to lead the entire western world even deeper into the hatred of middle eastern nations and currently, into an international exchange of body counts. But, I guess as Blair says it's the duty of the 'free and democratic world to eradicate' this new breed of 'Evil'... evidently we can conclude from this proclamation that, a) Western democracy is a farce, b) this so-called 'Evil' is indiscriminately infectious, and c) that logic is no longer something contained by the rules of language. All the Media lean in favour of preserving illusions of ideological invisibility; the terrible attack was a terrible attack, no more, no less. The media have predominantly failed to illuminate anything more than a powerful blow, there was apparently nothing of any educational value to be teased from the event. The sleeping lion took a blow to the head, and will, after figuring out what the hell happened, shortly begin flailing his drunken arms about in the vain hope of chancing upon his long-gone tormentor. The selected, media images emulated this paradigm in a number of peculiar ways. I was amazed at how little of the actual human casualty was televised. Images of the aeroplanes and buildings played (as we all know) over and over again like matchbox toys in a child's game; (a remarkable irony where the media suddenly found itself struggling to arrest it's incredible moving images, as if the video of the disaster, if it were played enough times, would establish itself as a static form. For as soon as the apex of an event (a crash) were set in motion, it would be over. The moving image, by it's temporal frivolity was inadequate, and the way in which the media looped the footage endlessly showed their fruitless attempt to evoke the unmoving historicism and unambiguousness of the Photograph.) The images were reassuringly ordered. And, although the most incredible and disastrous loss of life took place, there were very few images that explicitly revealed this fact. When the TV news broadcasters were attaining to shed some light on the history of Osama Bin Ladin and showed scenes of the destruction and carnage that ensued when the American embassies in Africa were bombed, countless images of mutilated, bleeding and dead Africans filled my screen. The gratuitousness of images representing African, Asian and Middle Eastern disasters strikes a stark contrast with the remarkable censorship pulled over White disasters. The veneer of control and orderliness sustained and maintained by Western Media held fast. We were yet again protected from the fact of Death 'in our own back yard', for the gratuitousness by which it is conventionally symbolized, was absent from this most coarse and tragic event of destruction. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net