[Nettime-bold] a little bit of optimism?

[Liz Turner <liz@ephidrina.org>]

It's becomming increasingly clear that no-one knows what to do next.
But two courses of action seem to present themselves.

One: NATO declares war on their invisible enemy. The Middle East is
carpet-bombed, and Pakistan and India are dragged into the conflict
with potentially disastrous consequences. Can we trust these guys not
to commit global suicide? I, for one, hope that they haven't been
reading Nostradamus and taking it seriously.

Two: The international community chooses pragmatism over war and
agrees to rout out and bring the perpetrators to trial for crimes
against humanity. An International Commission is set up against
terrorism, support for state-sponsored terrorism (including that
perpetrated by Israel) is universally condemned, and a meaningful
dialog pursued betweeen the Israelis and Palestinians.

One hopes that this could be an opportunity for peace rather than war
in much the same way that Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended WW2. Now that
the US has an idea of what the rest of the world has been going
through for the last 50 years, is it possible that they could
treat this as a learning experience, rather than an excuse to bomb
more innocent people? All-out war would surely be a victory for the
terrorists, who clearly want to provoke some kind of action.

I just read something comparing this situation to the Cuban Missile
Crisis, rather than Pearl Harbour. That was a far more serious
stand-off against a more powerful enemy, and the US administration
appears (from where I'm standing) to be still reviewing its options.
Outside Afghanistan, the winds of fundamentalism are blowing
themselves out, as we can see from countries like Iran. So why
perpetuate conflict in a region which is struggling for stability?

I fear the worst, but I still hope for the best. After all, much of
the international press, not to mention a small but significant
portion of the political class, are calling for caution and reflection
rather than immediate retribution. Perhaps it's time we stopped
emailing and took to the streets.

I leave you with this piece, written by a well-respected British
historian resident in NYC:

"So instead of listening to cowboy pieties, or endlessly respooling
video horror, or seeing in our mind's eye those twin towers as
phantom, 110-storey tombstones, we turn to those who do, miraculously,
know what they're supposed to say, feel and do: to Jeremy Glick who
phoned his wife from the hijacked plane over Pennsylvania to tell her
there had been a vote of all the men aboard to try to overpower the
hijackers, even though they knew it would cost them all their lives,
and who saved who knows how many other lives by doing just that; to
the son and daughter of one of the dead passengers letting themselves
be interviewed on morning TV so they could appeal to the airlines to
get their sister, marooned in London, back to the States for their
father's funeral; to the handful of politicians who know when to
speak and when to shut up; to all those in this suddenly, shockingly
loving town who understand, especially when they hear the word "revenge"
thundered out by talk-show warriors that the best, the only revenge,
when you're fighting a cult that fetishises death, is life."

Simon Schama

full text:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,551614,00.html


bye
liz
(who rediscovered her brain after 3 days' panic)
mailto:liz@ephidrina.org



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