[Nettime-bold] Empire, before striking back

["Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>]

In past week of 24/7 news broadcasts on all networks and with no 
advertisement we witnessed a nationalism/patriotism build-up in 
the U.S. akin to that in former Yugoslav states of Serbia, Croatia 
and Bosnia bracing for war with each other. The flags. The vigils. 
The "make no mistakes" speeches by the leaders. The 
heartbreaking stories.

The only things that are missing, it seems intentionally, are the 
pictures and addresses of the 'enemy' population in the tabloid 
media, which plagued post-Yugoslav societies. Another interesting 
thing is that releases of violent movies are postponed. So, there is 
nationalism, but no rage, and ideally there would be a support for 
America's actions at home and abroad, but no vigillante killings of 
Arabs in the American cities. Of course, what is ideal may not 
happen, but at least, it is encouraging that the U.S. took that path 
consciously.

Still, if you are an Arab in the U.S. today you must feel uneasy. 
And the sooner the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks are 
brought to justice the better for everybody, but particularly for Arabs 
in the U.S. Yesterday I saw two young Arab men on NY subway. 
They blend well into the incredible diversity of NY population, but in 
the less diverse places they may dengerously stick out. Inevitably, 
I thought whether those nice two smiling young men could at one 
point take the box-cutter knives out of their pockets and take over 
the train. Once we know that the terrorist network is wiped out, 
such thoughts would, hopefully, vanish.

We already know that about 500 British citizens died in the attack. 
Once the death-toll will be complete, it would be interesting if NYC 
would be able to give us the ethnic and racial breakdown of the 
victims - I bet we will have members of hundreds of nations among 
the victims, making this attack an attack on the world, on the 
humanity at large. It was far from the desperate suicide bomber 
attack. The perpetrators lived and trained for this very moment in 
the U.S. for years. And the alleged mastermind is essentially an 
arrogant, rich, spoiled brat with the illusions of grandeur complex. 

Destruction of WTC was an overkill - hitting Pentagon would satisfy 
the terrorist goal of showing America that it indeed is not all-
powerful - the WTC was done purely for his amusement. He even 
sold the re-insurance on stocks, making profit of this tragedy. He is 
despised by most of the mainstream Arab leaders, as he does 
Arab cause more harm than Zionism (did anybody notice how 
Israel took over Jenin and Jericho, quietly, amidst all the WTC 
hoopla?). He could have spent his fortune more wisely by helping 
Taliban fight drought, disease and famine in Afghanistan. Also, 
other rich people pick up less dangerous hobbies than setting up a 
world-wide terrorist network. What, did he find golf too boring?

New York city bounced back to relative normalcy quite quickly - in 
less than a week the downtown re-opened, except for now 
localized area around the crash site. Subways are running and all 
but one bridge and two tunnels are re-opened (the Battery Tunnel 
to Brooklyn I don't see re-opening very soon since the WTC stood 
right on top of it). The smell is largely gone. The fires don't burn any 
more. And tons of debris are slowly hauled away. The pictures of 
missing are on all subway stations - the more downtown you go, 
the more pictures you see. Some of them simply vaporized, so the 
bodies might never be found. The undeclared martial law is 
becoming less visible. Police removed the barricades and ID check-
points. The homeless are back on the streets begging - I have no 
idea where did they hide for past five days. And New Yorkers are 
back to partying.

Still, the US might never be the same after this: there will be more 
emphasis on security, on intelligence, on control. That's not 
something that any of us welcomes. But since the alternative is 
grim, people are ready to accept that. The infiltration of the terrorist 
network was so deep and intractable, that citizens are apalled. 
This could not happen in any other society - both Germany and 
France control their immigrant population much tighter, for 
example. Now that you can't carry any knife on the airplane - 
passengers should think of what can they carry with them to be 
able to overwhelm possible terrorists (so they have to try to 
imagine what would the terrorists be armed with), before the F-16s 
have to take down the plane. Air travel within the U.S. is becoming 
quite an adrenaline thrill. And I can't possibly convince my mother 
to visit me - I just succeeded after 8 years of trying - and now she 
says that she would die a thousand deaths each minute on the 
airplane if she goes - she still has nightmares from German 
bombing of Belgrade in 1941 when she was 12.

The other thing is that US might start to think about their 'allies' - 
they build those comic-book anti-heroes around the world like 
Milosevic, Thaci, Noriega, Hussein, Bin Laden, they nurture them 
while they need them and then they just drop them. All those guys 
in the end become trouble for the U.S. Former Soviet Union had 
similar habit of 'cultivating' pawns like that - only when the SU didn't 
need them any more, two fat KGB guys would terminate their 
contract with three bullets. Congress may allow for such lay-off 
procedure in the future, given the overwhelming data supporting 
such a decision.

A few days ago I was at the party where crowd was overwhelmingly 
Serbian, from Belgrade. They were all really surprised with the 
event. They told me that Americans hit the building of the 
communist party in Belgrade - a 20+ stories skyscraper - with two 
cruise missiles, and the building is still standing. And those two 
110 stories high-rises collapsed. Well, that just testifies that cruise-
missiles, while very precise, are far less formiddable weapon than a 
passenger plane full of fuel. There is a general feeling among 
people from Belgrade that Americans are not something special, 
some unique and perfect snowflakes that can't possibly be hurt. 
But Belgrade citizens here resent that Yugoslav government 
decided not to mourn the WTC tragedy with the rest of Europe 
(Belgrade was the only capital in Europe with no organized 
mourning on Friday), because they realize that now it would be 
much harder to claim for Belgrade that it is a part of Europe.

ivo

ps - A young friend of mine from Sarajevo, who lost two ribs to a 
sniper bullet, told me how he knew a pay-phone in the WTC plaza, 
that was broken in a way that he could make calls anywhere in the 
world for free. He and his family in Bosnia are definitely going to 
miss that phone, which is now buried under tons of debris. I mean, 
this just illustrates that everybody in New York lost something in 
this attack.


_______________________________________________
Nettime-bold mailing list
Nettime-bold@nettime.org
http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold