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La Jornada Discerns Hegelian Dialectic (Conspiracy Nation, 10/22/01) -- The Mexico City daily newspaper, La Jornada, published an editorial on Oct. 21, 2001, suggesting the so- called "Hegelian dialectic." According to German philosopher Georg Hegel (1770-1831), "the world [is] a single organism developing by its own inner logic through trios of stages called 'thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.'" (New York Public Library Desk Reference) The Thesis: Terror Attacks on Sept. 11 as well as ongoing bio-terror. The Antithesis: USA responds in kind, terrorizing the terrorists. The Synthesis: Increased repression, here and abroad. "La distincion imposible en la logica del Imperio"("Impossible distinctions in the logic of Empire")by Angel Luis LaraTranslation by Conspiracy Nation follows below.----- Bush is categorically shown in the menacing axiom one sees on the global screen: either you are with us, or you are against us. The doctrine of rational choice which pervades economic manuals, translating from the logic of the market to all spheres of life, reappears moralized in a twisted flight of spectacular construction and reinforcement of the grand imperial simulacrum: in the war of good against evil, only one of the two extremes can be chosen. The *Libertad Duradera* (Lasting Liberty) which significantly embraces the criminal attacks on Afghanistan is a liberty of limited reach which reduces the possibility of movement to only two paths: prescribed roads and forbidden roads. In war, as in shopping, we can choose between two possibilities: good or bad, whole milk or skim milk, Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola, Bush or bin Laden. It is the same field of reduced choice offered by the electoral machinery: the illusion of binomial left/right hides the basic consensus between families. Restricted liberty in consumption and in war... also in politics as consumption and in the consumption of war. The powerful ones of both sides sow forgetfulness and they easily forget. In life, each act of decision ought to be preceded by an act of distinction between all the alternatives determining that act of decision. Forgotten are the distinctions and their basic premises. In this televised war, cynically polarized between Bush and bin Laden, we simply cannot choose because it has become impossible to recognize the distinctions. In the narrow logical limits of this apparently new warlike chapter of a war that is in reality permanent, there are no alternatives among which to distinguish: although the coin has two sides, it keeps being the same coin. In that sense it is worthwhile not to forget, among other things, that war is a form of understanding, perhaps the most perfect form of communication: in its exercise its agents fully share the same code. To kill according to the circumscription of its rules, one has to first understand it. Manhattan has lost the shadow of her two most significant skyscrapers so that now the whole planet suffers: Bin Laden and Bush are the two new Twin Towers of Empire. The political and media interpretation of this conflict tries to hysterically hide the identical character of the two so-called bands. So, they speak cynically and dangerously about a "Clash of Civilizations," a fight against terrorism, the defense of democracy. Lies and more lies. We serve a confrontation of elites defending their particular interests. The formal center of their discussions is the same: "In God we trust" or "Allah is great." Synonymous propositions, identical alibis. The diverse overseers of money bathe their strategies in the purifying waters of religion and morality. Like the politics of politicians, they offer pleasure in the State of Tomorrow. But tomorrow our pleasure will be in body bags. The bad guys of the beard and turban value their pocketbooks, arm themselves for fiscal paradise, and have a multi-millionaire for their accountant. The occidental good guys of the suit and tie have petroleum instead of blood: the blood will come from the people of Afghanistan. The *messieurs* of Washington are literally functionaries of the large oil companies; they are faithful servants of a suicidal and predatory mode of living: the American way of life, circumscribed by an energy limit. For them, Central Asia is only an oil well, a sea of black gold. In this context, U.S. military forces directly defend the interests of Empire and Capital. Neither national pride nor Yankee imperialism fully explains the complex situation. The Fatherland is the Money. In the so-called globalization, it is transnational enterprises which govern, not an autonomous United States government: the USA is only the *gendarme* of the Empire. In the march to World War III, the powerful subsume and redirect all processes. Terrorism is no different. Putting aside who actually was responsible for the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the dominant elites have converted it into their own instrument: war for the control of energy; war to brake the recession of an economic system whose motor is the arms industry; war to freeze the enormous democratic impulse which embraces Seattle, Porto Alegre, Chiapas and Genoa. Globalization has changed the chessboard. Coinciding with the de-territorialization of pockets of poverty is the de- territorialization of war. This propitiates the exception as the rule, panic as the everyday climate, the beginning of a permanent state of emergency. When information is propaganda, when the excuse of war curtails individual liberty and the exercise of citizenship, when fear is in the skin and every look constructs a suspect, can we keep speaking of democracy? To the disenfranchised, the only thing remaining is to say no to this war. Our wager is our hope: the collective living of an escape, an enterprising subtraction. Neither Bush nor bin Laden. To keep resisting new forms of subjugation, by new ways of living. Neither one nor the other, but instead the potential of multiple creativity. |
