Subject: re 9/11/01
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 06:24:58 -0500
From: "Steve Brockbank" <sbrockbank-AT-masergy.com>


Matthew

Tempting to respond to your statements. Eric's statement is quite mild
compared to some of the anti-religous/anti-spiritual comments I've made
in the past. But as you raise the issue... The amount of murderous
violence currently being committed in the name of some god or other,
usually through the false identification of race, culture and religion
is high enough to make me view your suggestions with some suspicion...
More seriously however the notion of globalisation that you are
producing below does not take into account the post-modern economic
structures from the international organisations, the G8 and G14/G20
groups of countries and the growing changes in development and the
techno-scientific structures. The end of the pax-americana which you
refer to as 'we purposely put Japan and Europe in a position to compete
with us financially...' was not deliberate but resulted from the end of
one economic period and the transition into the post-modern economy.

The return to traditional Muslim values is related to this, not through
'mystification' but through what constitutes one possible Islamic
postmodern project as  proposed by Akhbar Ahmed. Islamic fundamentalism
is postmodern insofar as it rejects the tradition of Islamic moderism
which was simply  the assimilation of European/American hegemonic
values, postmodern values in the Islamic world mean a reversion to
traditional Muslim values.... Nonetheless this
is only really postmodern when considered in global terms - for as part
of the Islamic fundamentalist position is the refusal of the new global
economic world
order, it is a rejection of the world market... The sheer scale of the
internal Islamic conflict has to be considered as well, not just the
current rulers of
the Islamic world versus the fundamentalists but also the extent to
which it is possible to deny the success of consumption based
capitalism.

The fundamantalist strategy is not new for it is the strategy that
Facism, in its German and Italian varieties engaged in during the 1920s
and 1930s as they
rejected the modernist doctrines of American Capital and Soviet
Communism.

Remember also that it is the losers in the processes of post-modern
globalisation, those who have been subordinated and excluded who are the
ones who are the most fertile field for the fundamentalist ideologies...

The desire for death is extraordinary...

regards
sdv