<nettime> contra Barbrook digest [blissett, stahlman]

["nettime's_indigestive_system" <nettime@Desk.nl>]

    [nettime isn't the best venue for unsubstantiated claims
     that this or that person or organization 'really' works 
     for the CIA/MI6/etc, nor for propagating theories about
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Date: Mon, 29 Mar 1999 19:10:26 +0200
From: Luther Blissett <tom9351@iperbole.bologna.it>
Subject: Barbrook, the KLA and St. Anthony from Padua

I've just read Richard Barbrook's latest message on the KLA, and what I
*don't* understand is: 
Why is Barbrook in such a hurry all the time? 
Why not think twice before describing those who adverse the NATO bombings
as members of the Milosevic Fan Club?
Is Barbrook trying to acknowledge Wesley Clark as a good Marxist?
Didn't he mistook the KLA for the KLF?

I heard that Richard displayed the same haste at N5M3 when he spread some
funny disinformation about Toni Negri's "conversion" to Catholicism, by
handing out and attaching on walls a xeroxed britpress piece, so I take
this opportunity to specify.
The "primary" source is La Repubblica, but it's an utter fake which
originated from both Negri's early Eighties book *The labour of Job* (an
essay about patience he wrote while doing time after the 7 Aprile witch
hunt) and the fact that he's working on parole at Caritas (a network of
Catholic community centres) - at night he still sleeps at Rebibbia state
penitentiary, where he's got to re-enter at 10pm.
Actually Negri was a Catholic back in the Fifties - he's from Veneto (a
staunch Catholic region). To boot, he frequently wrote about theology (via
Spinoza). This is more or less what he stated when the hacks phoned him. I
can understand why Richard was so amused by these news, but there was no
"re-conversion". I experienced the "professionality" and "fact-checking" of
British journalists myself, so I can figure out what the news had become
when it reached the UK. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

From: Newmedia@aol.com
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 1999 11:14:15 EST
To: nettime-l@desk.nl
Subject: Re: <.nettime> hidden agendas and Kosovo

Richard:

<< Victory to the KLA!

Ha!  Silly boy, what do you know about the KLA?  Or, what do any of us know?
Why not parachute in and tell us what you find out?

It so happens that the superintendent of my office building and half the staff
in the building where I live are Albanian.  I've been talking with them all
for months about this and all the rest.  They do know something.  Hmmm . . .
what do they say?

They say the KLA *isn't* Albanian.  Their favorite view is that this is pure
CIA.  Their second favorite is that the KLA is British Intelligence.  It make
zero sense to any of them that the KLA is "indigenous."  Zero sense.  The
ALLIANCE accepts the signature of a 29-year-old on a "peace agreement"!   This
makes no sense.  To them, to their relatives, to anybody that they have ever
spoken with, it makes no sense.  The KLA is, as far as they are all concerned,
the creation of some outside power.  There just to stir things up.

Do you know better?  Do you know your Balkan history?  Do you really want to
defend WORLD GOVERNMENT?  We know that you defend Tony Blair but do you really
want to defend his NEW EMPIRE?  Who really backs the KLA.?  Victory to THEM?

The Balkans have long been a powerkeg, that we all are told.  Even people from
the Balkans themselves agree.  But, study the kistory and talk to the people
who have lived through it and a very uniform picture emerges.  The Balkans are
a powerkeg and are kept as a powerkeg for one reason -- because they are on
the border between empires.  EMPIRES.

They are a convenient powerkeg created by Nazi-precursor Karl Haushofer's
"geopolitics", by British Intelligence's playing of the "Great Game" and by
Kissinger's "balance of power."  Not because these proud people can't get
along with each other.  Phooey.

Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, British, Russian, Venetian, Khazar and you-name-it
empires all meet and have all met in the Balkans.  And, what are the empires
of today?  Well, there is WORLD GOVERNMENT, of course.  The ALLIANCE.  And,
then, there's anyone who opposes WORLD GOVERNMENT, like the Russians and the
Chinese.  Could they possibly be involved with this conflict?

With Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic joining NATO, Belarus re-joining
Russia and the Ukranian parliament voting to re-instate themselves as a
nuclear power and people attacking the American embassy in Moscow with rocket-
launchers, you think these events in Kosovo are really about the KLA or
Milosevic?

Come on!

There is absolutely no reason for any of us to support either "side" in the
Yugo/Serbia/Kosovo conflict.  No reason.  We simply don't know enough.  Do you
know about the rich gold-mines and other mineral deposits in Kosovo?  Did you
know that 40% of the electricity in the entire area (including Serbia and
Macedonia) comes from coal-fired plants in Kosovo?  Do you really want to try
to figure out who controls these resources and what the impact of this or that
"peace settlement" will mean for the populations involved?

That's the problem with all the chatter about this.  It's mindless.

It's just as mindless to say, "I was under the impression that the Left was
supposed to be in favour of the right of national self-determination upto and
including secession from the colonising power."  As it is to be caught
"regurgitating the old Stalinist jargon about 'defending socialism' against
yankee imperialism."  Equally mindless.

Step back.  Think.  What are the implications of a world with borders?  How
many times have you uttered "The Internet dissolves all national borders" or
some such doggerel?  What are the implications of the view that the nation-
state must be destroyed?  Consequences!  All of this has consequences.

Could it be EMPIRE?

Would you like to live in a world dominated by EMPIRE?  So few of us have even
tried to think these things through.  Do you know what a DARK AGE looks like?
Gee, I suppose it would be nice to be empress-for-a-day.  How . . . elite.

Are you ready for the NEW PLAGUE?  Are you ready for half the population of
the world to die a terrible death?  Too many people?  Kill 'em all . . . and
God will sort it out?

The bombs over Yugo/Serbia/Kosovo should also be a bomb in our own lives.  A
real life bomb.  Life is real, not virtual.  Suffering is real, not virtual.
Bombs are real, not virtual.

Take advantage of your confusion over all this.  Learn something you didn't
know.  Forget what you have been told.  Take charge of your own world.  It's
the only one you've got.

For the love of life,

Mark Stahlman

-----End of forwarded message-----
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