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Despite the present administration 'war on terrorism' it appears that the Al Queada network is by far getting larger and even more dangerous. The recent planned yet failed and thwarted attack in the kingdom of Jordan would have been so devastating that as many as 80,000 lives would have been lost and perhaps close to 200,000 injured. Now from all this, that supposed all that we know and hear about Osama Bin Laden is that he is hiding in the mountainous caves and cavern somewhere in Pakistan or Afghanistan and has occassionally sent a video tape of how he likes to destroy and annihilate the West but in particular the United States and Isreal.

The thing that must be realized about the Al Queada movement is that its growth has become bigger more or less because what is in vogue these days in the world of politics is what you call anti-state movements. By that I mean, not only is there fallen or 'deteriorated' states in many parts of the region of the world but for good and for bad, even here in the United States alone, that what is effecting both social and global problems(in the latter case a question of hegemony) exists outside the confinement anything conceivable of the state itself.

Prior to the September 11th attacks the Al Queada network existed side by side or co tangent with the then Taliban regime. Even though the Taliban controlled everything and instituted a strict code of Islam, it was the Al Queada newtork inside that country that used training camps for terrorism that until that fateful day undermine any hopes or glimmer of perceived global peace after the fall of the USSR. It has in essence legitimize to an extent that regime.

Yet with the fall of Afghanistan has come another problem and that is a surplus of cheap heroine that has flooded the world market forcing the price of street heroine to as little as ten dollars which is enough for a good fix. Issues like this has made reconciliation among American domestic problems to be viewed in light of world trade and in cases of the issues of poverty and social justice might have to be remedy in accords with international treaty.

Even this economic age we live in which is not only post-industrial but also a hive of one form of information age dominating the other. (It is crazy to assert that we live in a post-industrial age in the first place as though industry and factories and the vestiges of the past hundred or so years has completey dissappeared. That is perhaps going contrary to what mostly people believe as the information age continues squeeze whatever field or institutional structure there is to have a market and a in loco parentis government to regulate such exchange. In fact the comeback of the past will be stronger and quite a different and evil guise without anything to watch over them.)

The money in this new economy knows very little borders much less faces. Terrorist groups might harbor the West for its educational and economic resources but it can quite easily as I see go elsewhere with thier money as the type of economy we live is co-dependent on the values that makes up what we call a post-Soviet society much less individual. It is here that Al Queada grows stronger by the minute. It is not another from of Hitler or Stalinism for these movements relies on and is strictly dependent on a primordial state. Al Queada goes in and outside the state like we never seen before. In fact states as we know it these days doesn't exist anymore as we can concievably understand it as tecnological advances continues to grow day by day at geometrical and astounding rates so the movement encompassing the Al Queada network does so itself. It is this energy that continues to build up and exhaust itself tht pushes itself into new ages at a faster rates. This explains that these would be attacks if they were ever carried out are much larger and perhaps in some ways more significant than that of the World Trade Center Attacks. Not only again Al Queada grows faster but any arm or political movement that has such a desire against the US grows larger; in other words, wait until this movement spreads to other fringe political groups. Not to mention the terror or harm that will sooner or later embrace the world.

The attacks are largely occuring outside the US mainly for two reasons. One of them is that to weakened the US is to take advantage of frail states by simply destabilizing them to a point that they are being overthrown. The case in Spain masks the same appearance except in the post-institutional age what was hijacked was the political process itself. Once this is done American hegomony is weakend both physically and morally. If America can't fight a war in Iraq or in Afghanistan on principles that appears to the rest of the world that doesn't exist, then it is fair to say that they just don't exist anymore. It is here that America becomes weakened or destroyed for its so called universal democratic society has no roots and its growth depends on its ability to project itself in such a fashion.

The other reason is that the so called technological revolution these days has post-institutional effect on the way war is fought. If wars of the future will be marked by one thing, it will be marked of an armyless society. It will be a reinvigoration of the enchantments of super soldiers or high tech knights. Think of what the US Defense department has lined up with army suits made out of nannotechnology that allows supposedly a soldier to become partially invisible, jump over a 20 feet wall, and being able to heal itself. More recently take the instance of the vestige of whatever is left of conventional warfare how intelligence agancy were able to block the sale of SA-7 that can be carried on someone's shoulder and being able to shoot an airplane or helicopter easily out of the sky. At any rate some dangers has been avoided but others has been re aligned with the past and just goes what unkowingly way it has to go.

Either way the threat posed by Al Queada is pretty interesting. It takes a lot of vision and foresight to see what is going on. The strength of Al Queada what few peoople are able seem to grasp is the internet itself. It is not just that the Al Queada leaves plans to blow up and wreak havoc on a popular chat line or on an online classified ads; it has more to do with what the internet is and what it is about to be. The internet itself serves as a convenient force to disseminate information and to make transactions simpler and perhaps affordable. Yet the information is nothing more than a bloodbath of transferring and storing information in some shape or form that is able to create some type of rift between the real and virtual world. It is here in all of its aspects we have what is known as the digital divide. Al Queada surprisingly isn't on the other end of the digital divide--having been left out. They are the movers and shakers behind the digital divide. As the internet in the name of relieving the pressures of so many people and so many different type of people occupying the same space, it crushes old institutions turning them into dinosaurs(imagine as online shopping and networking gets bigger will happened to the local bookstore or mall, their need will be minimized and even altered to the extent that you will see the post-institutional effect of blight). Yet the internet itself is not completely devoid of the physical world. It has an appetite marked by the computers and microchips that enable people like us to view through a browser what is happening online. It takes huge plants to process these microchips somewhere out West or in some other country. As these computers gets faster the environmental consequences becomes greater and precarious. So the internet by feeding itself in a sense destroys itself in effect becomes something new. There are political consequences as is commonly known as state deterioration. It is here where Al Queda becomes stronger being not just able to utilize the resources associated doing stuff online but being able to get a feel on how to move about the world as though they are online. The more advance and stronger technology is the more we have to change our custom, mores, and beliefs. Yet online activity or the whole technology about itself represents the ability to dispense, organize and distribute information and processes that will take had it been tried in the past generations to accomplish in a relatively shorter period of time. The Al Queada ability even to garner a would be suicidal attack with 20 tons of explosive only shows how from a simpler start of car bombs not only maybe a decade ago be a highly accomplished feat to something extraordinary as anything like this. If what is carried out is by far greater than what it has been so in the past, then what is left out, excluded, contrived, or 'structurated,' is 'by far' being 'zoomed out' having other reprecussions.* So along with the Al Queada increased ability to carry out some attacks comes out the increased dimensions being spread to other forums and areas of the world. So what we have to realize that we are living in an age that we must test how astute we are in a lot of other fields.

So the Al Queda network is growing bigger something that American intellingence and intellect movement haven't foreseen. Among the ways we them is in the case of the Madrid attacks about a month ago in splinter groups who are in themselves share the same purported goal of humiliating and weakened the West with terror; the other is the Al Queada themselves not necessarily in the US or Europe but in parts of the world like the Middle East and Far East Asia themselves: and finally a growth or an offshoot that is at best phenomenonal as the fittest way to vent anger and frustration at such as lackluster world we live in today.

*This is a pretty interesting fact I read in Dr. Gray's article in the New Statesman. According to Gray many of the so 6 billion people in the world are illiterate which as he points out Hell's Angel in Thailand sporting Bin Laden logos. So in essence it doesn't mean that you have to stop the internet or control what people read to deter terrorism. It just that you cannot have a de facto block or population segment that can a priori speaking legitimizes the causes of extremist groups. I guess the best way from all of this it is a matter of how you look at things. In the US case a stringent labor policy and minimalist welfare state can have this same disturbing effect despite all the efforts of the Patriot Act of re inviting terrorist activities unexpectedly back in the US. What should be looked at is the moral and cultural degeneration US labor policy has on the US amidst the Post-September 11th attack.

After the bombing in Spain, authorities in France and Great Britain were able to avert more terrorist events that would have been worse. One of the lessons to be learned from 9-11 and the Madrid attacks is that we must not forget that the way terrorist acitivities are orchestrated are by far complex and advance, using the internet and high tech means of communicating and leaving its footprints and being able to amass funnel and wire money electronically from place to place.


Of course what is forgotten is a closely watched place and that place is Iraq and sometimes can be argued Afghanistan;borrowing from the tenets of Giddens in his earlier book Beyond the Left and Right, that the advent of industrialization and a' priori speaking globalization diffused the grip that the state has in controlling its borders and making state institutions nothing more than an artificial entity. The question in any type of foreign policy I see would be not necessarily what is the best state but more so what is left of the state and what to call it. This would apply not only to rebuilding of fallen and delapidated regimes around the world such as Iraq but also to the so called First World countries as well such as the United States

Defining the state these days isn't as simple as anyone would like to believe. The first thing that must be made clear of what constitutes a state is the embodiment of the "rule of law' among its institutions and the second is the means in which the state must use to maintain order.

As a noted scholar once wrote:
"It is a phenomenon general enough and distinctive enough to suggest that, what we are seeing is not just another redrawing of the cultural map--the moving of a few disputed borders, the marking of some of a few disputed borders, the marking of some more pituresque mountain lakes--but an alteration of the principles of mapping. Something is happening to the way we thing about the way we think"*

One of the element that controls the order and destiny of the state is the element of time. If we can say that there has been nothing much of a cultural or political revolution until the last days of Dr. King during the 1960s or even FDR's courage and fortitude in shaping a post-Great Depression which hits on both sides of domestic and international identity then how much time is left before a new order of things will take place.

It could be understood that institutions themselves are fast deteriorating and becoming if not anything a memory and a historical annoyance. The internet itself has in the last decade has accelerated the the breakdown of the hopes of religious and social institutions as providing any form of stability and national prosperity unlike before. What underline the institutional order of things which was peaked during the post-Depression era and the Cold War was the structural shifts that entail both its inclusions and exclusions. The success of one form of welfare or social policy hinged on the same underlying arguements that was left out of the previous ones. It is no wonder how such conservative programs such as school choice programs and empowerment zones has made itself to the head of the debate but likewise they too will fall. Not just because there will be bound to have rifts that leaves others out but the base and institutional structure will no longer be there. Three events or factors are perhaps responsible for this. The first two are the more tragic events such as the World Trade Center attacks and the sniper shootings in Virginia. The latter manage to shut down society itself which is ominous to the institutional order of thing and the former was able to show the world how vulnerable in some shape and form the most powerful nation on earth is.

It is the internet itself(the third factor) that is fast placing a more powerful role than ever. The internet does so by the fact by not only as a tool of convenience but also much more so as a tool that alters and very much so destroys physical and real institutions in the hopes of propagating its forms but at the same time destroying itself, radically changing itself to some new form that only years will tell of how the internet will look or how it will be.

The internet acts in harmony and acts dependent of the forces and energy that propagates technoligical advancement. If it is to assert that the rate of technological increase is dependent on the resources and the vast array of knowledge that mankind has understanding the universe which reflects in the way laws are passed, society is governed, how wars are fought, basic needs and wants are met, then it is no telling or even reason to deny that such knowledge brings about advancement that will surpass all other avenues in which mankind affirm and reiterate himself. This is the concept of the Age of Supertechnology. The arguement is the one and the same as the so-called post-institutional effect. The difference however is that the age of Supertechnology only places an arena and obstacles the we must deal with and that a post-institutional effect is the mere convenience that we must find other alternatives as far as things that we must deal with. What runs the course of a post-institutional society is the structuration of the fact that there are those who will find themselves included or better off than before and at the same time worse off and excluded but adding to what Gray say this does not mean that we are living in a zero-sum world in which the trade off stands unrebuked. Just because the structuration exists in a post-institutional society does not mean that is what a post-institutional society. If anything it is just a rejection of such. Take for instance Reality TV. The whole concept of Reality TV is based on as it seems to me on John Rawls concept of democratic talents via of democratic equality as to focus on tapping onto talents that is far removed from aristocratic talent or notions of aristocratic equality. Yet the problem of the fans of the Reality TV might not like to hear is that it is difficult to contend what constitutes aristocratic versus democratic talent. Its effect might be meaningless as you have cultural and population strains to view aristocratic preferences in lieu of protecting an imaginary elite class versus a populist class that has no coherence much less cohesion to invite the word democratic much less popular. The social strains of the future will be more or less internal just because we have that much more people and much more different types of people in whatever certain location or locale. The same contestants and winners from American Idol or a Survivor series who comes out of nowhere which is inconsistent with the 'democratic' and 'liberal' arguements from a universal point of view of maintaining some sort of affirmative action in any types of institution or setting. Indie labels and Kazaa.com will do more to undermine and promote the same point-- if we can decipher what points reality TV is trying to promote--in both cases.

Labour policy is fast changing, as I have often times read, with virtual companies and even virtual forms of making contracts and livelihood that will cause shifts and division in the labor market in years to come, and at the same time making other parts of the country appears backwards and slow with their so called 'redundant jobs.'

What is overlook in both cases is the nature of the institutions and a post-Soviet look at people. The nature of instituions aside from its post-institutional effect is the radical changes in them. Take for instance the internet, the access of the internet is now mostly dial up or DSL or cable modem but the very changing of them to--let us say-- wireless and 'free' wireless connection is bound to catch up in a matter of a couple of years uprooting internet access and for that matter any types of access whatsoever. You can read about this type of stuff in Jeremy RifkinsThe Age of Access. The post-institutional effect would assume that despite the wider access of internet through wireless and 'free' wireless connections and there will bound to be some time in the future an undoing the internet and replace it with something else like the animated world of the motion picture 'Minority Report.'

If anything Reality TV itself will be a relic of the 1990s and the early 2000s that has nothing to say much less to impact anything worthwhile. The only consistent thing about Reality TV episodes is that it is consistent with the Post-Soviet way of looking at people such that there exist a strong need for poeple to assert or re-assert their identity and a forum to have such but a post-Soviet way of looking at people is not the opposite of a Marxist and Leninist way of looking at men in which people might have souls and traditions and a culural heritage. A post-Soviet way of looking at people is one in which it will be useless for good or for ill, to look that way, to leave it alone and realize that to maintain equality and foster social harmony is to leave room for individuals should they or should they not assert their individual identity. If anything a post-Soviet looking at individuals is looking at individuals as a complex part of mankind minus the humanist attachment. Instead of finding things that will nurture the soul it deals with how each individual can walk and thrive in a internet based world or a world where the human soul exist outside itself in energy and time elements embodying among them the internet itself. It must assume certain facts about people and that one of them that they must have equal access to the internet world but if that it is an impossiblity have equal notification that the world they live in is being determined very quickly and at astonishing rates by the amount of information that is being horded by de novo institutions as the internet.

If we can apply this to civil rights we can use a case in point of the arguements in eliminating affirmative action or 'turning back the clock'. First of all, the latter stuff is real. Reducing universities and business roles in having a say as what type of policy to promote diversity is really 'turning the clock' by the decades. More importantly, there is not a world without sometype of affirmative action. Reality TV shows is affirmative action for a lot of non-minorities or alumni scholarships at the university. Everything has its preferences. Yet my arguement inlcuding a post-Soviet look at mankind is that society despite how you measure it in terms of rights or justice can in due course violate sensibilties of 'rule of laws' and pervert 'a reasonable persons sense of fairness' which cannot but help to say that society such as California cannot be excused that its anti-affirmative action laws is not creating a society in the vision of what a few or a harmful fringed groups wants society purposely to be. It also runs against the grain that in a post-Soviet society there exist a post-instituional force or pull that exist outside ourselves and the tradional state.


*Geertz,Clifford Local Knowledge--Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology(Basic Books Inc New York, 1981)