ECONOMY OF FEAR
What we are witnessing after September 11 seems to be, above all, an enormous effort to radically intensify the societies of control, an attemt to skip several stages in their development, to accelerate them through five-yearplan- like state-financed operations, to ultimately tighten the networks of security on every front. But obviously, to radicalize control also means to radicalize its inherent contradictions. The concepts of "infinite justice" and "enduring freedom" will create infinitely small but enduring glitches and holes, both ideologically and practically. Paranoia has been finally globalized: we are facing a new kind of war that no longer makes any distinction between the interior and the exterior, and that, by its very own definiton, can never stop. But if now the apocalypse may even come as a single envelope in tomorrow's mail, then doesn't it look like the societies of control and their economies of fear have already reached one of their absolute limits? And if so, then: what next?
In this section we tried to not to explain anything but to allow an overview about a range of diagnosises. You can fast forward and 'fly' over the media scenery which opened after the events of september 11. A certain mix of voices helps to examine in which way the economy of emotions arround these events can lead to specific politics. The meaning which might be produced nbetween is dependent on the order of reading and other external factors, introducing an actualized reading of the following textes of this reader. We do not think that now, everything has to be fundamentally different, but tried at least to reduce for you the ammount of repetition. In any case there is more material at www.textz.com or www.nettime.org.
A man can be jailed in Afghanistan if his beard is not long enough. President Bush's Address to Congress and the American People Thursday, Sept. 20, 2001 http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/ 2001/9/21/02114.shtml
For the last, you know, 50 years, action movies have been in and if they are well-made people will go in to see it - I mean, I don't think that - if there's any indication that this terrorist attack happened because of some of the terrorist movies that were made, then that's one thing, but that's definitely not the case. Arnold Schwarzenegger http://www.screenwritersutopia. com/script_reviews/ collateral_damage.html -
In global capitalism, the State, which tends to be unemployed, seems now to have found a permanent job [...] As the towers were a symbols in a (postmodern) world where symbols (supposedly) can be moved around independently from their referents, now all discourses are stamped by a rhetorics of emergency, which in its argumentation will rarely keep its rhetorical promise: that now everything has to be seen differently. Since most authors argue: Now everything is different, that's why everything i have always been saying is true. Diedrich Diederichsen: Das WTC hat es gegeben http://www.taz.de/pt/2001/10/06/a0100.nf/text.name,ask8hcbmM.n,1
Viral power is understandable only in the language of the media: the twin spectacles of sadness and terror; the doubled language of fascination and dread. In the days ahead, the media spectacle will shift to the viral language of rage and revenge. [...] It is a micro-power, not a superpower. It is low tech, not high tech--and thus invisible to the optical scanners of the ruling technological regime. Paradoxically, the (technological) weakness of viral power is its strength. Arthur and Marilouise Kroker: Terrorism of Viral Power http://www.ctheory.net/
For a few hours or days there appeared no official spin on the event, no slogan/logo in the media, no interpretation, no meaning. We watched the cloud drift around the city, first to the East over Brooklyn, then up the west side of Manhattan, finally over the east side as well. With the smell and the poisonous haze around the moon came a nightmare about the occult significance of the cloud: -- angry bewildered ghosts in a vast white cloud. And we breathed that cloud into us. We'll never get it out of our lungs. What the cloud wanted was an explanation, a meaning. (Sept. 18, 2001) Peter Lamborn Wilson: 9/11 and the Crisis of Meaning http://slash.autonomedia.org/article. pl?sid=01/10/09/169203
It is precisely now,when we are dealing with the raw Real of a catastrophe, that we should bear in mind the ideological and fantasmatic coordinates which determine its perception. If there is any symbolism in the collapse of the WTC towers, it is not so much the old-fashioned notion of the "center of financial capitalism," but, rather, the notion that the two WTC towers stood for the center of the VIRTUAL capitalism, of financial speculations disconnected from the sphere of material production. The shattering impact of the bombings can only be accounted for only against the background of the borderline which today separates the digitalized First World from the Third World "desert of the Real." It is the awareness that we live in an insulated artificial universe which generates the notion that some ominous agent is threatening us all the time with total destruction. Slavoj Zizek: Welcome To The Desert Of The Real Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 00:49:43 +0100 http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/ nettime-l-0109/msg00106.html
The Huntington/CIA Clash of Cultures model of Islam proposes it as a kind of disease that has to be kept isolated & confined. The neo-liberal "Global Market" model of the "Orient" views it as a source of raw material (such as black gold) and cheep labor that must be exploited. The resources are to be taken away, the labor is to be kept in place. Obviously Moslem immigration to the "North" does not fit well with either of these models. If Islam is a "disease, then "refugees" are a virus, penetrating borders like immune systems. But then disruptions are also inevitable, given the "logic of the Market". (NYC, Aug 16 1997) Hakim Bey: Islam and Eugenics http://www.hermetic.com/bey/islamandeugenics. html
It was not just the head, it were the twins. David Lynch's "Twin Peaks", one of the most successful TV series of the last decade, referred to two hills around which the american phantasy circulated. Twin Peaks, these were the breasts of the raped daughter, the negative phantasy of threatening and abuse. It's positive counterpart are the Twin Towers, the double dick, erected as a powerful symbol among all the loathsomeness and violence of the others, of the negatively assigned plane of Twin Peaks. The Twin Towers mirror America's narrative of success, supremacy and audaciousness, and anyone who has ever been in New York has seen them, or has even been on the top, via one of these high-speed lifts, and seen the panorama of the city as american nature. The assault against this double phallus was, trivially said, a kick in the balls, which was also aimed at the head. Insofar this assault was perfectly planned: Its goal was not only to hit the symbolic center, but also the one of the very real power. (19.09.2001) Interview mit Klaus Theweleit: Innere Panzerung wre die Idiotenlsung http://www.taz.de/pt/2001/09/19/a0117.nf/ text
Then when things seems to get back in some type of order again from the chaos that just happen, then Boom. Evil hits again Media sets you to takes sides, people set you to take sides, everyone is looking to whom to blame, but no one is be a thinker and no one is annualizing and no one is seeking out the facts to get to the truths of what has happen. What was the cause that gave these effects,what are the actions we take now after we find out the cause,the effects to bring about justice. So now the hate is back in after we all just went through our sorrows,so we back to racism, evil hate the same crap from the last millennium in this millennium. Negative energy grabbing at Humans to destroy Humans, animals, lands Mother Earth. Afrikaa Bambataa: A Wake Up Call To All Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 19:03:49 +0000
Inevitably, then, collective passions are being funnelled into a drive for war that uncannily resembles Captain Ahab in pursuit of Moby Dick, rather than what is going on, an imperial power injured at home for the first time, pursuing its interests systematically in what has become a suddenly reconfigured geography of conflict, without clear borders, or visible actors. Manichaean symbols and apocalyptic scenarios are bandied about with future consequences and rhetorical restraint thrown to the winds. Edward Said: Islam and the West are inadequate banners The Observer, Sunday September 16, 2001 http://tesa.leb.net
Hackers face life imprisonment under 'Anti-Terrorism' Act: Justice Department proposal classifies most computer crimes as acts of terrorism. Hackers, virus-writers and web site defacers would face life imprisonment without the possibility of parole under legislation proposed by the Bush Administration that would classify most computer crimes as acts of terrorism. The Justice Department is urging Congress to quickly approve its Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), a twenty-five page proposal that would expand the government's legal powers to conduct electronic surveillance, access business records, and detain suspected terrorists. Kevin Poulsen Sep 23 2001 11:00PM PT http://www.securityfocus.com/news/257
Remember that the goal of terrorism is to create increasingly paralytic totalitarianism in the government it attacks. John Perry Barlow Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 04:14:25 -0400 http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/ nettime-l-0109/msg00107.html
The Internet, itself a key communications tool for terrorists, also facilitates high-volume piracy, with up to $11 billion in pirated software products sluicing through computer networks worldwide last year. McAfee, the Internet security services provider, warns parents on its kids Web site that organized crime "is very involved in Internet pira- ECONOMY OF FEAR What we are witnessing after September 11 seems to be, above all, an enormous effort to radically intensify the societies of control, an attemt to skip several stages in their development, to accelerate them through five-yearplan- like state-financed operations, to ultimately tighten the networks of security on every front. But obviously, to radicalize control also means to radicalize its inherent contradictions. The concepts of "infinite justice" and "enduring freedom" will create infinitely small but enduring glitches and holes, both ideologically and practically. Paranoia has been finally globalized: we are facing a new kind of war that no longer makes any distinction between the interior and the exterior, and that, by its very own definiton, can never stop. But if now the apocalypse may even come as a single envelope in tomorrow's mail, then doesn't it look like the societies of control and their economies of fear have already reached one of their absolute limits? And if so, then: what next? make world make world make world make world make world make world make world make world make world make world make world make world make world make world cy." The convergence of our economic security and our national security became starkly apparent on Sept. 11. The staggering economic losses to America's copyright and trademark industries - - alarming unto themselves -- now are compounded by the opportunistic trafficking in IP products to finance terrorism and other organized criminal endeavors. Roslyn A. Mazer: From T-Shirts to Terrosim http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/ A43957-2001Sep29.html
The net, the marvelous miracle of communication which might be some utopian reading of the situation, will never reach the other 99% of the world in time. The reason that it will never come to save the world, like a miracle, is that terrorists will invade the net. They will be representative of all of the outside, and the outside includes all the countries where the people don't even have telephones. This is all the outside, the outside is all demonic for the inside, and therefore the technology will not be transfered, because that would be asking angels to transfer their technologies to devils, from their point of view. Peter Lamborn Wilson: Islam and the Internet MetaForum II/NO BORDERS/Budapest Networking Conference Budapest, October 6, 1995 http://www.hermetic.com/bey/pw-islam.html
Well, why it's happening is that God Almighty is lifting his protection from us. And once that protection is gone, we all are vulnerable because we're a free society, and we're vulnerable. We lay naked before these terrorists who have infiltrated our country. There's probably tens of thousands of them in America right now. They've been raising money. They've been preaching their hate and overseas they have been spewing out venom against the United States for years. All over the Arab world, there is venom being poured out into people's ears and minds against America. And, the only thing that's going to sustain us is the umbrella power of the Almighty God. Pat Robertson: American Christian Coalition http:// www.pfaw.org/911/robertson_falwell.shtml
To illustrate the language of the major terrorists, Noam Chomsky quotes, St. Augustine telling the story of a pirate captured by Alexander the Great who asked him, How he dares molest the sea. How dare you molest the whole world?, the pirate replied: because I do it with a little ship only, I am called a thief; you, doing it with a great navy, are called an Emperor. (Pirates & Emperors: Int. Terrorism in the Real World). JSalloum@aol.com Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 06:01:19 +0200 http://amsterdam.nettime. org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0109/ msg00107.html
In this three-year period the Soviet Union has been unable to subjugate Afghanistan. The Soviet forces are pitted against an extraordinary people who, in their determination to preserve the character of their ancient land, have organized an effective and still spreading country-wide resistance. The resistance of the Afghan freedom fighters is an example to all the world of the invincibility of the ideals we in this country hold most dear, the ideals of freedom and independence. Ronald Reagan: Proclamation 5034 -- Afghanistan Day March 21, 1983
Can there be any hope left after having listened, hardly 36 hours ago, to the speech made the President before the U.S. Congress "We will use every necessary weapon of war." "Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen." "Every nation in every region now has a decision to make. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists." "I've called the armed forces to alert and there is a reason. The hour is coming when America will act and you will make us proud." "This is the world's fight, this is civilization's fight." "I ask for your patience... in what will be a long struggle." "The great achievement of our time and the great hope of every time, now depend on us." "The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain... And we know that God is not neutral." "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists." "We will use any weapon." "It will not be short combat but a lengthy war, lasting many years, unparalleled in history." "It is the world's fight; it is civilization's fight." "The achievements of our times and the hope of every time, now depend on us." Speech by President Fidel Castro Ruz President of the Republic of Cuba Havana, September 22, 2001 http://www.granma.cu/ingles/septiem4/discui. html
It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fulttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory with stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. The War Prayer Mark Twain http://textz.com/index.php3?text=twain+war
In 1993 and 1994, two terrorist bombs planted by the I.R.A. exploded in London's financial district, a historic and densely packed square mile known as the City of London. In response to widespread public anxiety about terrorism, the government decided to install a ''ring of steel'' -- a network of closed-circuit television cameras mounted on the eight official entry gates that control access to the City. Throughout Britain today, there are speed cameras and red-light cameras, cameras in lobbies and elevators, in hotels and restaurants, in nursery schools and high schools. There are even cameras in hospitals. [..] And everywhere there are warning signs, announcing the presence of cameras with a jumble of different icons, slogans and exhortations, from the bland ''CCTV in operation'' to the peppy ''CCTV: Watching for You!'' By one estimate, the average Briton is now photographed by 300 separate cameras in a single day. BEING WATCHED fwd by: Harsh Kapoor October 7, 2001 http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/ 07/magazine/07SURVEILLANCE.html#
In order to build the e-commerce economy that we thought was coming, billions was invested and lost in building up a delivery based economy, with dead companies like webvan set to take online grocery orders and deliver them. The influenza pandemic of 1918 killed as many as 40,000,000 people In 1918, sending everybody home meant they could do no work at all, see or hear no news (radios had been banned during the war!), do little but read and live in fear. Food delivery could have been arranged, but logistics would have been difficult without having people interact with one another heavily, and thus spreading disease. Today we might barely notice being shut in our homes. I work at home, and as such often find days may go by where I don't leave it. Today we even have the dawn of decent videoconferencing. From: Brad Templeton http:// www.templetons.com/brad
In 1979, after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the CIA and Pakistan's ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) launched the largest covert operation in the history of the CIA. Their purpose was to harness the energy of Afghan resistance to the Soviets and expand it into a holy war, an Islamic jihad, which would turn Muslim countries within the Soviet Union against the communist regime and eventually destabilise it. When it began, it was meant to be the Soviet Union's Vietnam. It turned out to be much more than that. Over the years, through the ISI, the CIA funded and recruited almost 100,000 radical mojahedin from 40 Islamic countries as soldiers for America's proxy war. The rank and file of the mojahedin were unaware that their jihad was actually being fought on behalf of Uncle Sam. Arundhati Roy: The Algebra of Infinite Justice Saturday September 29, 2001 http://www.guardian. co.uk/Archive/Article/ 0,4273,4266289,00.html
It is quite certain, with the cold and flu season almost upon us, that people will be flocking to their doctor when they get any sign of a cold of flu, to be tested, for ANTHRAX. IMAGINE, THAT YOU ACTUALLY HAD THE FLU, AND IT WAS ANTHRAX, AND YOU DIDN'T KNOW IT, AND YOU COULD NOT GET INTO YOUR DOCTOR FOR SEVERAL DAYS BECAUSE HE IS TOTALLY BOOKED UP BECAUSE OF PANIC. If you already are administering Cipro, it could make the difference between life and death. ARE YOU READY TO TAKE THIS CHANCE?? If not, please visit our website. You only need to fill out a simple form, and on approval from our doctors, you will have your Cipro, Gas Mask, or any of our other life changing products delivered to your door by FedEx in 2 days. Please, think about the safety of yourself and your family. Is it worth the risk not to? http://www.deskofgold. com/cindex.htm
Top 10 Gaining Queries - Week Ending Sept. 13, 2001 1. nostradamus 2. cnn 3. world trade center 4. osama bin laden 5. pentagon 6. fbi 7. american red cross 8. american airlines 9. afghanistan 10. american flag Top 10 Declining Queries - Week Ending Sept. 13, 2001 1. us open 2. aaliyah 3. hank the angry dwarf 4. irs 5. compaq 6. david blaine 7. shark attacks 8. anne heche 9. Carly Fiorina 10. kate winslet http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist/9-11- search.html
An elite press consortium made up of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and CNN also apparently handed the Bush administration another big favor this week when it indefinitely delayed making public the results of its Florida election recount. The long-awaited analysis of 200,000 disputed ballots from the presidential election was supposed to be published on Monday, but the Times quietly informed its readers in a Sunday essay by political reporter Richard Berke that the "move might have stoked the partisan tensions" and "now seems utterly irrelevant." A journalist involved in the project later told Inside.com, "There's a sense that now is not the time to be writing about something that might make it look like someone else should have been elected president." Salon.com, September 29, 2001 http://www.salon.
