Terrorisms: On the Other Terrorists of France

The victims of the much discussed attacks in Paris are those French people who lost their lives. But there are two perpetrators according to Baudrillard. On the one hand there are the 3 or 4 gunmen involved. On the other hand is the French government. You see they sacrifice their population to their power games in which Western elites connect with each other in profitable attacks on the Arab world. This is the other terrorism, the one not talked about by the talking heads. France on Libya (what did Libya ever do to them?), Spain on Iraq, Kenya in Somalia, and so on. These governments know that they are putting their populace at risk. It all seems so far away, so harmless. What matters an air raid here, a special forces attack there? And so when the blow comes, like in Paris, it seems to arise out of the blue, which is precisely the definition of terror. Witness the recent raid by US forces in Yemen. A private ransom deal was about to be worked out the next day. Instead, in a cynical move, the US tries to free the hostages by force and they die instead. Sacrifices all; often for causes that are not even in the national interest. This is the other terrorism citizens face.  

War of Peoples: On the new violence in Palestine

The war of peoples is on (in contrast to the old clash of civilizations idea)! The recent spate of clearly unofficial acts of war between Palestinians and Israelis signals a war of peoples. These governments do not want total war (if you can call these strange entities governments, the PA and Likud). But the Peoples are not so disciplined and some want and draw upon the idea of war to act out.  The War of Peoples is the effect of the End of Representation. It stems from the effect that the myth or illusion or possibility of representation is finally dead. Just as delegates no longer represent constituents (not with districts so gerrymandered) and votes no longer register preferences (votes are stoked through data mining) nor purchases represent desires (consumers purchase a thing due to advertisements) and governments no longer represent interests, people are no longer represented by ‘their’ government. Peoples have then become an independent, even hostile, political force. Governments will do and seek one thing (no war, in this case) and Peoples will do and seek another outcome. The war of peoples, which takes the apparent form of tit for tat murders, is one effect of the End of Representation. This is true divergence and nothing that governments can do anything about. Unlike Machiavelli’s modern notion that government should initiate or be aggressive as a general rule in their acts and policies, governments must now also be regularly reactive and backpedal out from the dizzying ‘out of control’ vortex that disrupts their carefully laid goals. 

Why Kobani? It's all about the Image, stupid

The role of image and its interplay with power is a major theme of postmodern thought. Image is Power.

Kobani is interesting only because for once in this peculiar war the world can see it. Kobani is located on the border between Syria and Turkey. So unlike Raqqa or Hit or these other places that have supposedly been bombed by the United States, Kobani can have big cameras on it (not only little phone camera which allow videos to be posted somewhere online for a few terror experts and enthusiasts to watch). There are networked cameras that can transmit the image broadly.

This puts the contending parties in an interesting, postmodern war. One side or the other may win this worthless border crossing. It will at that point be demolished and essentially useless to the victor. But the fight and the image of this fight can go on for some time. At a low cost to ISIS, the long-running image of fighting for that particular place can be spun usefully in many different ways.

How this war-event is interpreted over time will be what matters, not who has more jets. The battle for Kobany is entirely image, notwithstanding the carnage.     

On Exploratory Wars

IR specialists are confounded today by the actions of nations not following their national interests. This is especially required, they say, in cases of war. But now and in the future, war will happen for a different, non-rational reason. 

Instead war will be exploratory. It will be waged to shake things up. Because the postmodern age offers no grand ideals, not even nationalism, to fight for (yes I know of Ukraine so don't contradict yet). There is little to guide big moves in a postmodern world. Random shocks can arrive but they will not be new. Progress as Hegelian rationality is well done.

Postmodernism is a fast world but a slow one too. Change becomes the result of accretion of mass, of events unrelated which gather but which press history forward in no particular direction. Postmodernism condemns us to repetition of familiar events that pop out of the mass briefly (witness the terribly derivative Hong Kong occupy movement). 

Wars are now efforts to effect desired change in an era that works against such desire. In the face of the ongoing, massive accretion of many, less weighty, events, then wars will be waged to shake loose the status quo in a favorable direction. But be assured that national interests will not be served by it today.      

Obama's World War preparations

Don't believe for one minute the narrative that the USA is threatened by ISIS and seeks to destroy it. The real target is Assad's Syria, a Russian ally. (Why? some say that Assad/Russia is what prevents a gas pipeline running from Qatar to Europe but that seems farfetched to me).

The stupid concentration of NATO/Saudi forces plus Israel is going to provoke Russia and Iran to concentrate their forces there too. They are not going to let Assad get Gaddafied.

And the compelling national interest reasons for this buildup are nonexistent.

Ferguson as the end of politics

Ferguson: An event that signals the emptiness of a political system. One of the most surprising features of this event was the escalation of force. Much has been made of the use of military hardware by the local police. But that has been known for awhile and merely accelerated since the Patriot Act. But it was shocking to see this duel on the streets at night grow and grow. Like a cancer it had no rules to regulate its growth.

Is this the kind of duel envisioned by Baudrillard, the seduction of a new politics born of a politics that otherwise proceeds nowhere?  You could say that local police provoked a population under siege to rise in anger; a siege that had become too blatant to be tolerable. Race issues too. That narrative was part of it.

But I was taught that martial law, which this was, is always the signal of the failure of politics and I read Ferguson as such. There was nothing left to say or rather nothing left to represent or believe, for both sides. I think more of such unexpected events, based upon the same premise, will be forthcoming. It will not take the same form of an uprising...that’s done. But they will surprise.

War on Islamic State: What is President Obama really up to?

[Just heard the O. speech...yes indeed Syria/Assad/Putin is THE target NOT ISIL, stopping the 'bad guys' is just an excuse to get more involved there. Proof? Obama's claim to arm the Free Syrian army and other 'moderate' Syrians to take on ISIL...but they are ISIL] 

Prediction: The United States government will push Islamic State back into its hole in Syria so it can wreak its terror there. It is not that the US cares deeply for Iraq, mind you. Iraq for US policymakers has now been classified as lost to Iran, a part of their growing Shiite empire. Expect the US Air Force to 'persuade' IS to go back into Syria and do its pro-Sunni thing there. It will be a tricky move because Saudi Arabia probably likes what is happening, more or less. But Kerry will have to convince them to give up on their dream of a Sunni recovery of Iraq, for now. Expect more refugees, more distraction from domestic problems, and more US sales of armaments. In short, what was once called a jolly good war.

This is the zeroth degree of politics. The hateful but prescient Carl Schmitt said politics is defined by the friend-enemy distinction. But the Islamic State is not the natural enemy of the US the way France was for Schmitt’s Cromwell. And moving against IS has little to do with national interests of the US. So this seems to be ‘play politics’ or politics for its own sake with NATO opening up a new Southern front against Russia, to best Putin perhaps.