<nettime> <Reflections on this week's terrorist attacks in USA>

["Nicholas C. D. Fry" <fried.nicky@virgin.net>]

Reflections on this week's terrorist attacks in USA.

The recent events in USA have proved both terrifying and fascinating to anyone
watching or listening from a 'safe' distance. Receiving such extraordinary
events over the television made them perversely familiar. As a number of
journalists have pointed out, the images resembled Hollywood's favourite,
'explosive' film dramas, with aeroplanes crashing out of control and enormous
explosions sending cities into chaos; not unfamiliar fantasies.  I imagine many
people repelled by that kind of Hollywood drama would have felt some strange
sense of satisfaction when witnessing what could be described as the world's
most severe example of loss of innocence. Many news broadcasters drew attention
to the fact that it was going to be another 'perfect day' in New York under
clear blue sky; the sublime cleanliness of wealth and order. The certitude and
pertinence of the multiple, terrorist operations resembled in some respects a
most merciless chastising.

The tarnishing of America's domestic innocence and economic sanctity was fast
becoming an inevitable and, some may deem,  necessary event in the unfolding
history of global politics. The dramatic increase of activity by the western
anti-capitalist/ anarchist movement, and the pronounced intensity of their
actions has been a strong foreboding to anyone with any interest in diversity
of political opinion and the conventional hypocrisy of enduring bureaucracies.
It has become increasingly clear that changes across the world have to be made
and that the governing bodies responsible for initiating these changes simply
aren't effective. Since President G W Bush came to power on the backbone of his
5 billion dollar election campaign there's has been nothing but contempt for
American foreign policy. He seems destined through stupidity to lead the entire
western world even deeper into the hatred of middle eastern nations and
currently, into an international exchange of body counts. But, I guess as Blair
says it's the duty of the 'free and democratic world to eradicate' this new
breed of 'Evil'...  evidently we can conclude from this proclamation that, 

a) Western democracy is a farce, 
b) this so-called 'Evil' is indiscriminately infectious, and 
c) that logic is no longer something contained by the rules of language.

All the Media lean in favour of preserving illusions of ideological
invisibility; the terrible attack was a terrible attack, no more, no less.  The
media have predominantly failed to illuminate anything more than a powerful
blow, there was apparently nothing of any educational value to be teased from
the event. The sleeping lion took a blow to the head, and will, after figuring
out what the hell happened, shortly begin flailing his drunken arms about in
the vain hope of chancing upon his long-gone tormentor.

The selected, media images emulated this paradigm in a number of peculiar ways.
I was amazed at how little of the actual human casualty was televised.  Images
of the aeroplanes and buildings played (as we all know) over and over again
like matchbox toys in a child's game; (a remarkable irony where the media
suddenly found itself struggling to arrest it's incredible moving images, as if
the video of the disaster, if it were played enough times, would establish
itself as a static form. For as soon as the apex of an event (a crash) were set
in motion, it would be over. The moving image, by it's temporal frivolity was
inadequate, and the way in which the media looped the footage endlessly showed
their fruitless attempt to evoke the unmoving historicism and unambiguousness
of the Photograph.) The images were reassuringly ordered. And, although the
most incredible and disastrous loss of life took place, there were very few
images that explicitly revealed this fact. When the TV news broadcasters were
attaining to shed some light on the history of Osama Bin Ladin and showed
scenes of the destruction and carnage that ensued when the American embassies
in Africa were bombed, countless images of mutilated, bleeding and dead
Africans filled my screen. The gratuitousness of images representing African,
Asian and Middle Eastern disasters strikes a stark contrast with the remarkable
censorship pulled over White disasters. The veneer of control and orderliness
sustained and maintained by Western Media held fast. We were yet again
protected from the fact of Death 'in our own back yard', for the gratuitousness
by which it is conventionally symbolized, was absent from this most coarse and
tragic event of destruction. 

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