Re: <nettime> The Temporary AlQaeda Zone

[Ed Phillips <ed@cronos.net>]

That is grimly funny.

What immediately jumps out of this and that poor grim guy John Robb's book
is the absence of any appreciation for the "political" and dare I say
cultural aspects of conflict, of mobilization, and even of the organization
of states and white markets, and the organization of black markets as well.

These bufoons in their literalism and their inability to understand or
imagine anything beyond charts that outline "security" in terms of targets
and jihadis, completely miss the fact that all markets, white or black are
organized. Robb and his ilke homologues of the fundamentalists. But that
kind of literalism is endemic to global capitalism and that may be the only
sense in which the world is flattening.

What John Robb misses here is that the criminal networks are a form of
globalization, with local forms, local interests and local effects.  The
war in Iraq is "political." Iran knows that even if the DOD makes every
attempt to avoid that conclusion.

Robb's book looks like a fundraiser and a consulting gig. He'll make a
living helping people forget the naked political power of Empire, helping
them avoid the fact of "politics."

On Wed, Jul 02, 2008 at 04:21:00PM -0400, Jonathan Lukens wrote:

> In brief: Amir Taheri article from the NYPost re:
>   "Governance in the Wilderness" (Edarat al-Wahsh) a new book of  
> jihadi tactics by Sheik Abu-Bakar Naji.  AL QAEDA'S PLAN B By AMIR TAHERI
> http://www.nypost.com/seven/07012008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/al_qaedas_plan_b_117936.htm
> 
> via John Robb's Global Guerrilla's blog:
> http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/
 <...>


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