Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 20:13:51 +0100
From: Steve Devos <steve.devos-AT-tiscali.co.uk>
Subject: Re: provocation


Reg

The virtual reality that Eric is discussing is rapidly coming to pass. It is
moving towards being actual at 40 knots as the ships move towards Afghanistan.
In what appears to be now almost classic postmodern terms they are attempting
to bring Afghanisatn back into the world economy. Such is the unconscious of
the G8 powers - but the question here is not the issue of Capital occupying the
whole world, but when the virtual transgresses into the actual will they be
victorious quickly and the G8 public ticker tape down the streets of New York
(pretending that terroism has been victorius) or will we be standing on the
streets protesting against the Afghan War in 5 years time...

Personally I'd bet on the latter but I hope that the cowboy understands
violence better than Clinton or Blair appear to and its something else...

regards

sdv



Reg Mifflin wrote:

> Eric,
>
> You ask the big question here:
>
> "It may sound like we've reached the reductio ad absurdum of my argument.
> I seem to be talking about fighting a war while trying to avoid
> antagonizing the enemy! But I submit that this is the weird new reality
> we face. And if the language we're using to describe that reality makes
> it seem inconceivable, then it's time to find some new language."
>
> I know this is hardly the time to sound flippant, but ...
>
> This new war is a crusade that can only be fought by soldiers not wearing
> uniforms. It is a crusade nevertheless because what is uniform to soldiers
> of both sides is a single defining characteristic - certainty in an
> afterlife, and that self-sacrifice will lead to a heavenly paradise. We
> haven't come all that far from the French romaunce, courtly love, the
> chivalric code.
>
> The answer, perhaps, to the dilemma you describe, of resisting panopticonic
> terror (they're watching us, we can't see them) without using a scatter
> gun, would involve military rationalization. Devolve the role of front-line
> soldier to one's own fundamentalist heaven-gazers. Their zealotry might
> easily be channelled into appropriate skills, razor and garrotte, and hand
> to hand combat with (and only with) others of their ideological ilk.
> Two birds one stone?
> Too cynical?
>
> Reg