Re: <nettime> Clay Shirkey on a Manhattan "Peace Park" digest [hettinga vs back]

["Russell L. Carter" <rcarter@pinyon.org>]

: Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2001 15:47:49 +0100
: From: Adam Back <adam@cypherspace.org>
: Subject: Re: Clay Shirkey on a Manhattan "Peace Park"...
: 
: On Sat, Sep 22, 2001 at 09:18:46AM -0400, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
: > At 8:49 PM +0100 on 9/21/01, Adam Back wrote:
: > > Err, are you sure the reason the US was attacked is isn't more to
: > > do with the interventionist US foreign policy, and past military
: > > action in, and sponsorship, arming, training etc. of Iran, Iraq,
: > > Israel, etc than to do with the the US TV news favorite mantra of
: > > "because the terrorists hate our freedom".
: > 
: > ...and of course, it has *nothing* to do with the fact that countries
: > like Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq, Syria, Lybia, et. al., are run by
: > patriarchal xenophobic racist totalitarians who support
: > mass-destruction and violence against their people while trying to
: > export it to the rest of the world, right? Nope. Not at all.
: > 
: > Of course, that's not a problem if they don't export that shit here
: > to the US, frankly. 
: 
: Exactly.  But I think they would not be exporting destruction and
: violence to the US if the US hadn't been meddling in their affairs and
: internal conflicts.

I thought so too, until September 14th or so.  In the intervening
three days, I read everything I could that the Islamic extremist
movements have published on the web.  Since then I have focused
on discovering exceptions to what my initial investigations revealed.
I have found none.  I wish it were not so.

What I concluded required a painful reversal of my beliefs.
I find this deeply unsettling even now.

This act has nothing to do with Israeli abuse of Palestinians or the
extraction of Gulf oil resources guarded by imported armed infidels. 

It is 100% attributable to a virulent hate for the stuff 
Barzun summarizes in the final 20 or so pages of "From Dawn to 
Decadence".  I am not an apologist for Barzun's observations,
but they happen to be the context in which everyone I know
exists, because that is what Western Society is.

Islamic extremists revile Western Society.  They're embarked
on a holy mission to fix things globally in their own image.  
They're out to kill anyone who disagrees, as they emphatically 
attest in their own words, repeatedly.

As I mentioned, in order to understand this most 
clearly it is best to pull away from corporate media (which ignores 
these fundamental notions entirely) and go directly to the 
original sources.

As noted previously, every "non-governmental organization" requires
a nation-state to allow it to exist somewhere legally.
The governments of nation-states that legitimize and harbor "patriarchical
xenophobic racist totalitarianism non-governmental organizations"
need to be replaced.  Soon.

I am appalled that I have to agree with the goals if not all of
the means of the current U.S. administration.

But unless I'm suicidal, as a member of Western Society, I must.

Russell

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net