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<nettime> Press, Prayer and The South |
Table of Contents: GlobalWarPress.org viali@runbox.com A Kind Of Prayer Richard Evans <rje@well.com> The Rise of The South. Greenman <greenman@muti.tv> ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 13:14:32 GMT From: viali@runbox.com Subject: GlobalWarPress.org "We are at War!" they said. But it will be a non-traditional war. It will be a secret war! "America's "new war" against terrorism will be fought with unprecedented secrecy, including heavy press restrictions not seen for years, Pentagon sources said Monday". It will be a global war! Finally, they got what they wanted! A Global War! A war without borders! Against a global enemy! Their dream, finally, come true! The first war of the 21st century will be a global war. So,please, they say: No more information, please! No more rights, please! No more "other voices", please! There are many wars, we may talk about! Many Terrorisms! "Increased militarization, domestic regimentation, attack on social programs. That is all to be expected. Again, terror attacks, and the escalating cycle of violence they often engender, tend to reinforce the authority and prestige of the most harsh and repressive elements of a society". Noam Chomsky "If we are not careful, the deadly attacks on New York and Washington will lead to far worse secondary damage, if the U.S. Congress adopts "preventive measures" that take away the freedom that America stands for". Richard Stallman "On September 13, the Senate adopted legislation giving government agencies somewhat broader authority to conduct certain kinds of electronic surveilance. There is concern that serious erosions of liberty could follow". The Center For Democracy & Technology Today, September, 19, 2001: "The Justice Department has drafted legislation allowing the U.S. attorney general to lock up immigrants deemed to be terrorist suspects and order them deported without presenting any evidence". This is seem a War, too? And: "How may we forget corporate media's terrorism? A virtual terrorism, Info-terrorism". We need Independent Media. We need Independent Journalism. We need to defend our rights to exprime our point of view! We need to someone care about our work of Information. As the War, the global War, as a terrorist warfare, may we need a non-traditional stategy? A secret one, a global one? Or an open, independent, not for profit Project? Someone has registred the domain "www.warpress.com". "Domain created on 16-Sep-2001" www.WarPress.org or www.GlobalWarPress.org, or antiglobalwar.org is still available. Any suggestions? It will be a long war! g. viali@altavista.com - ----------------------------------------------- Runbox Mail Manager - www.runbox.com Free online email application ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 11:38:34 +1000 From: Richard Evans <rje@well.com> Subject: A Kind Of Prayer A Kind Of Prayer Written September 19, 2001. by Richard Evans May you die a thousand deaths runs the proverb, and so they have, those victims of the World Trade Centre terrorist attacks, their deaths replayed a thousand times on television, featured a thousand times on magazine covers and in newspapers, images which have now been collated into a distinct set, repeated. The news value of such images has long been expired as has the aspect of surprise, of instant shock and outrage: it is also reasonable to assume that everyone with television access has now seen footage of the fall of the Twin Towers more than once. But still those images are repeated every time the attacks are mentioned, even when the news story in question is about the traumatic effects of watching such images, especially in terms of the impact upon children, something I have now witnessed on more than one network on more than one occasion and which seems to reflect broader conventions regarding media treatments of tragedy rather than a response to the recent terrorist attacks per se. Something bereft of respect and dignity- or so it seems to me, when watching an interview with an Adelaide man about the death of his twin brother who was on the one hundred and third floor of the north tower of the World Trade Centre when the first plane hit, the news image cutting from a shot of the talking brother to the collapsing towers. And it was all too easy to imagine that twin brother, running up to the World Trade Centre roof, running through smoke and debris and the screams of fellow workers: it is all too easy to imagine such things without needing to watch the footage as well. The only reason that I can think of to show such footage in such a context is because that is how such news stories are treated: if someone is talking about a specific event and there is footage of that event then you show the footage irrespective of context. But just once it would be wonderful to see an interview which is just that, an interview with a person rather than a pretext to show yet another angle of yet another tragedy and part of the difficulty I've faced in trying to come to terms with such televised tragedies is trying to create a sense of personal space, a sense of balance between the image and the response, between information and empowerment, between what I have seen and what I can do. Which is not very much in the current case in terms of either preventing the recurrence of such terrorist acts or shaping the eventual response, which will almost definitely include some televised aspect providing yet another pretext to show the demise of certain buildings and this is not an anti-media rant but a plea for dignity and space and the attempt to distinguish between the necessary and the gratuitous. If there is anything I do not need to see ever again it is footage of all of those people in all those buildings, dying. And while the actual footage may very well show a building collapse what is also being shown is the death of an estimated five thousand people: our spectacle is their grave. copyright Richard Evans 2001 ______ Echoes: Words and Images By Richard Evans: http://www.well.com/user/rje/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 16:45:38 +0200 From: Greenman <greenman@muti.tv> Subject: The Rise of The South. I sit watching bits of news from the other side of the globe. The North looks like it's got trouble coming. In a few years time we'll be looking back, and Sept 11 2001 will have a nice big red circle around it. That was a big day, and where will it take us ? The North is set for paranoia. Osama is a scapegoat, but, I pretty much doubt that anyone will ever own up. The hunt for 'The Man' is just something to appease the public, it's not anything real. Soon enough everyone will accept this. Then they will start looking for other options. If you are not with them, you are against them. We can all see this. The paranoia that will not go away will keep giving the fatcats more opportunities to get hard on those with other ideas. The anti-globalism aspects of the destruction will make the 'black-block' even more of a target for the powers that be. Those with other ideas will be hunted, writers and artists will become suspects and the strengthened intelligence agencies will come knocking. There will be no peace. So, run away! Come to South Africa! The end of apartheid has left the country with one of the most open environments around. The new culture is beginning to emerge, a new pride is taking hold. Johannesburg has become the center of the New Africa, this is where black and white meet. Soon, I believe, it will be the center of the world. South Africa still hopes to achieve real freedom. The obsession is not to protect the freedom that used to exist, but instead, to get closer to the ideal. Inspiration is everywhere, Africa is rising. == [[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[M[[[[[U[[[[[]]]]T]]]]]]I]]]]]]]]]]]] == MILLIONS OF PEOPLE CAN'T BE WRONG Greenman Truth Manufacturing Consultant aitch tee tea pee colon slash slash muti dot tv F O R G E T H E F U T U R E ! ------------------------------ # 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