<nettime> Names, projects and background [4x]

["nettime's_compiler" <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>]

Table of Contents:

   Re: <nettime> what's in a mission?                                              
     <ana.viseu@utoronto.ca>                                                         

   Background on Afghanistan                                                       
     cisler <cisler@pobox.com>                                                       

   Clay Shirkey on a Manhattan "Peace Park"...                                     
     "R. A. Hettinga" <rah@shipwright.com>                                           

   Re: <nettime> "Violence, old and new"                                           
     Michael Century <mcentury@music.mcgill.ca>                                      



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Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 10:18:21 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
From: <ana.viseu@utoronto.ca>
Subject: Re: <nettime> what's in a mission?

Hi,

i read today in the paper that the U.S. gov is actually going to change
the name of the (in)famous 'operation infinite justice' because its arab
and muslim 'allies' complained that 'justice' is something that only Allah
delivers.

Now we only have to hope that the same happens to the entire operation.

best. ana viseu



On Fri, 21 Sep 2001, Pit Schultz wrote:

> operation infinite justice
>
> somebody over here said immediatly: "bad ad agency..". *operation desert storm*
> had some kind of glory, a territorial reference and an intense temporality.
> today's mission title carries a new quality, one which is "beyond the art of
> war" and "beyond imagination" carrying a strange mix of biblical revenge and
> flashy totality.

<....>


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Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 08:39:47 -0700
From: cisler <cisler@pobox.com>
Subject: Background on Afghanistan

Most of us on nettime are not familiar with Afghanistan and surrounding
countries.  It is hard to think of a place that has received less recent
attention (up to now) than Afghanistan.  I have been looking at in depth
articles and essays from a variety of sources.

These are two I would recommend.

Limbs of no body: World's indifference to the Afghan tragedy by Mohsen
Makhmalbaf June 20, 2001

http://www.iranian.com/Opinion/2001/June/Afghan/index.html

Makhmalbaf is an Iranian film maker who made two films in Afghanistan.  
This very long (148 Kb) and rambling essay is more about the country and
its people, but it does include some of his experiences during the
filming.

Pakistan's Jihad Culture, by Jessica Stern (Nov/Dec 2000)
www.foreignaffairs.org/home/terrorism.asp

This is about the madrassahs or Islamic schools that proliferate in
Pakistan and Afghanistan.  It helped me understand the appeal they have
and the services they render to many very poor (and now starving)
villagers on both sides of the border.  It also discusses their role in
the fighting in Kashmir and with the Taliban and how the Pakistanis have
manipulated them (up to now!)


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Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 10:39:59 -0400
From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah@shipwright.com>
Subject: Clay Shirkey on a Manhattan "Peace Park"...


- --- begin forwarded text


Status:  U
Delivered-To: fork@xent.com
From: Clay Shirky <clay@shirky.com>
Subject: Re: Unconscionably Callous? New building proposal for WTC sight.
To: savamutt@hotmail.com (Tom Sweetnam)
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 10:21:43 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: fork@xent.com, savamutt@hotmail.com
Sender: fork-admin@xent.com
List-Id: Friends of Rohit Khare <fork.xent.com>

> Larry Silverstein, the man who owns the leasehold on the former World Trade
> Center complex, has apparently been very busy with his architects in the 10
> days since the worst act of terror in America history.

Go Larry!

Every major city in the world has a big, invisible motto hanging
overhead -- "Dream Factory", "You'll Leave a Winner!", "Laissez le bon
temps roulez", "We're still pissed about Elian."

Over New York City hangs the motto 'Business is business.'

It may be hard to understand if you don't live here, but after 10 days
where we've been out of our minds with grief and shock and disorientation,
living in a world where there are military checkpoints at Canal and
Broadway and phone booths turn into xeroxed shrines, the news that some
asshole developer isn't gonna let a little terrorism get in the way of his
trying to grab a few extra simoleons just means that we're back in
business.

The sound of breathtaking unsentimentality is the sound of NYC.

> The New York City Port Authority was quick to respond that it is "far too
> early" to consider any future plans for the sight, perhaps entertaining the
> radical notion that an international peace park and memorial...

Peace Park? *Peace Park*! Are you out of your mind? Do you have any idea
what real estate in Lower Manhattan is worth? You wanna build a park, go
to Nebraska -- I hear land is cheap there. Out here, we prefer to use our
land for the living.

> So if Mr.  Silverstein gets his way, has he proved the terrorists
> correct?

The terrorists *are* correct -- never forget that.

We are not being unfairly targetted here, as if this was all some sort of
misunderstanding. We are being targetted because we do exactly what they
say we do.

We are freedom loving, secular, democratic creators of a world where
people are allowed to do as they like to an extent unheard of in the
history of the world. That is so completely corrosive of any attempt to
corral a populace into a single way of living that we are hated by
everyone for whom cultural stasis is more important than freedom.

> I had to wonder on hearing Mr. Silverstein's pronouncement, if there
> might be some mystical plateau [...] before no consideration of
> profit would ever again be factored into considerations of what to
> do with the former World Trade Center site.

God forbid. Not in my town.

If you want to let al-Quida freeze you into some sort of contemplative
aspic, go ahead, but my homeboys ain't going out like that -- we got shit
to do.

- -clay



http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork

- --- end forwarded text


- -- 
- -----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'


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Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 11:59:40 -0400
From: Michael Century <mcentury@music.mcgill.ca>
Subject: Re: <nettime> "Violence, old and new"

Bauman's text already may be an anachronism, if unregulated free flows of
capital start to be regulated anew as part of the overall counterterrorist
campaign.  For a quite different assessment of the underlying economic
factors, see the following.

The Free Market Tide Has Turned: This crisis is fuelling economic 
activism and a Keynesian revival
http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,554867,00.html
(posted by Phil Agre  in his compendium of post-attack coverage)




At 12:15 PM +0100 9/21/01, John Armitage wrote:
>[Hi all, I came across the text below by Zygmunt Bauman, written in 2000.
>It may be useful for some in thinking about war, technology and where it
>looks like we are currently headed. Full reference below. John.]
>====================================================================
>[Extract from Zygmunt Bauman, "Violence, old and new"]
>----------------------------------------------------------------




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