Newmedia on Mon, 17 Sep 2001 17:03:59 +0200 (CEST)


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[Nettime-bold] Babylon


Folks:

I wonder what any and all of you might have been thinking about "Babylon?"

Babylon, an important historic city in the Tigris/Euphrates river-plain (yes, in present day Iraq, which, in turn, was once known as Chaldea) is also a name that has been "metaphorically" applied to a few other places . . . like "New York" and "Hollywood," for instance . . . and, as an archeological "reconstruction" the original site of the city is reputed to be the largest (and current pet) project of Saddam Hussein, the most-probable "author" of the recent WTC attack.

To get you started, here's what a few people have had to say about "Babylon":

"This is Babylon.  This is the capital of the Beast.  And if you want to do something about the Beast, this where you have to do it.  To the extent that people want to slay dragons, New York is the obvious battlefield."  

(Mark Stahlman, "Digitial Hustlers," Page 192, 2001)

"Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvelously: for *I* will work a work in your days, *which* ye will not believe, though it be told to *you*.

"For, lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, *that* bitter and nasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land, to possess the dwelling places *that are* not theirs."

(Habakkuk, the Book of, King James Version, 1:5-6, written sometime probably around 600 B.C., just before the sacking of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.)

Best,

Mark