Tuesday, April 27, 2004
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.
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.
# posted by Jamie @ 2:11 PM 
