[spectre] From Kosovo to Lebanon (Baudrillard, in Lib é ration, 1999)
Deal all, The question of Lebanon after the cease-fire getting more confuse than never during the war, any reflections are coming soon... On one hand: Besides to notice that Wolfowitz, emergence of the Defence of the United States today in the head of the World Bank, has accompanied Rice on the meeting of Rome, declaring that the World Bank would pay. On the other hand, same declaring a bit further to the Press that the United States did not honor any more their part of contribution for compensate the cancellation of the debt of the poor countries that linked to the result of 2006 G8 of St Petersburg having dissociated itself from its engagement from rich to poor countries, we indeed wonder which ( who ) will pay the reconstruction of the Lebanon under the poster of a generous American donation for the reconstruction of the Lebanon, declared by mister Bush, otherwise the World Bank - that is, essentially the tribute of Europe if American participation in this frame is obvious by no means. May be the profitable vicious recycling: unless the fit of Arabian petrodollars for Texan profit at Wall street, thanks the war, to return in the Middle East after the war... At whom do they laugh? On the other hand: I looked in vain for a translation in English of Jean Baudrillard's second text on the war of Kosovo, out in the French newspaper Liberation issue of April 29, 1999. On the contrary, I found requests asking for information on this text, in the university and critical reference sites on Internet. Omitting that Baudrillard is not more an adept of the States as of nationalisms, just at the moment this article was writing, it made a sort of scandal by misunderstanding the objects (may be the cause that it has not been immediately translated). Today reading this text, as we know how Balkans become after all, obviously it is mostly predictable of the western cultural and political hegemony submitted by US domination. Finding that this French-speaking original version of 1999 is relevant to look at the way the current war of the Lebanon turned since the cease-fire, among which the evident exclusions of the allied nearby countries of Lebanon, ( Syria whatever a laic country, Iran whatever the nuclear ), of Palestine ( the prisoners of Gaza ), and of Lebanese Hezbollah, as well as Moslem countries which are not allies of Israel , in the international process of order delivery to Lebanon, under the allegiance of its colossal debt for capital assigned to its reconstruction, I thought useful to put back online this francophone text, so that English-speaking friends maybe can translate it correctly for an original publishing online to the common. That does not tell all but mostly a part from a certain point of view. L. Here it is: - Partout en Europe, les minorités ethniques sont en voie de disparition. Tous les Etats en tant que tels ne peuvent qu'être fondamentalement complices de Milosevic. Duplicité totale de cette guerre Par JEAN BAUDRILLARD Le jeudi 29 avril 1999 Il faudrait quand même extraire les raisons cyniques de cette «guerre», les raisons inavouées de cette intervention qu'on dit être un échec, qu'on dit catastrophique sur tous les plans. Et justement, c'est là où nous vient un doute cruel sur toute cette mise en scène. Tant d'erreurs accumulées, tant de tergiversations et d'actes manqués doivent bien avoir un sens, et cette persistance dans la confusion tactique, dans cette guerre velléitaire qui rate comme délibérément sa cible (je parle des Occidentaux: Milosevic n'a pas raté la sienne), tout cela ferait douter de la définition même de la guerre: la poursuite de la politique par d'autres moyens. Si cette définition vaut encore, alors tous nos stratèges et nos politiciens occidentaux sont idiots, ce qui n'est pas à exclure, mais avant d'en arriver à cette extrémité demandons-nous s'ils ne sont pas au contraire en train de mener à bien et de réussir une opération parfaitement programmée, qui en tout cas se déroule comme si elle l'était. On dit: l'Otan ne fait que des erreurs. L'Europe est incapable d'avoir la moindre politique concertée. Mais NON, c'est exactement le contraire. Que fait Milosevic? Il élimine ses minorités, en particulier bien sûr la minorité musulmane, ce en quoi toute la Yougoslavie «blanche», catholique ou orthodoxe, est derrière lui. Mais pas seulement la Yougoslavie. Toute l'Europe est derrière lui. Tous les Etats nationaux européens ont des problèmes avec leurs minorités de souche ou immigrées qui ne vont pas s'exténuer bien au contraire. Partout les minorités ethniques, linguistiques, toutes les singularités sont en voie de disparition ou d'élimination. Milosevic est le porte-drapeau de la purification, mais elle est partout à l'¦uvre dans une perspective politique, au-delà de toutes les rodomontades sur l'autonomie et les droits de l'homme, tous les Etats européens en tant que tels (je ne parle pas des populations, mais
[spectre] De Balie Sept 1-3: The Public Desire - in search of new forms of public culture...
A N N O U N C E M E N T The Public Desire In search of new forms of public culture... September 1, 2 3, 2006 De Balie, Centre for Culture and Politics Amsterdam Admission free – please reserve! http://www.debalie.nl/agenda After the age of individualisation, now the ‘public’ seems to be the focus of attention. In the first weekend of September (2006), De Balie, centre for culture and politics in Amsterdam, will explore the new forms of public culture, which we think we see emerging in all kinds of unlikely places around us - primarily by asking questions such as: Where are the new forms of public discourse and debate? Is a new shape of the ‘public’ without movements emerging? How does such a thing work? How important are the new forms of knowledge sharing such as Wikipedia and the various digital commons? How sustainable are they? How to handle public fear and the obsession for public safety and hyper-surveillance? How can we utilise public space in novel ways as a space of encounter and surprise, rather than an extended shopping mall (beyond ‘reclaim the streets’)? The challenge is to go beyond the eternal lamentations of the decline and fall of the ‘public” (public space / public man / public culture). Merely offering a critique is not enough. the critique needs to be updated and nuanced, public culture needs to be reinvented! There is such a thing as society! The 1990s are sometimes described as the era without social movements. In-between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the crash of Nasdaq many residents of Western countries lived in a happy illusion that liberalism and democracy had achieved their final victory (the illusion of the ‘End of History’). With this triumph public culture seemed a redundant anachronistic notion henceforth. However, recent events have shown that public culture is remarkably alive - from the World Social Fora, to the mass mobilisation against the CPE-labour laws in France and the on-going precarity debate, to the cultures of information and knowledge sharing of the digital commons in their various guises. The era without (the necessity) of social movements appears to be over, but the new social formations are unfamiliar, heterogeneous, puzzling, contradictory, in need of clarification... The Public Desire is a kaleidoscopic weekend program full of debates, conversations, performances, interventions, public cinema, art projects and discussions about old and new forms of public culture. Background materials, detailed descriptions and program information can all be found in the special web dossier on the Balie website: http://www.debalie.nl/dossierpagina.jsp?dossierid=51947 PROGRAM OVERVIEW (of English and ‘non-verbal’ programs - click the URLs for details or scroll below) * Saturday September 2 – from 13.30 hrs Radio Ballet LIGNA I Am[not]sterdam. 10 Exercises to get the City out of your Body” Link: http://www.debalie.nl/artikel.jsp? podiumid=politiekarticleid=62935 * Saturday September 2 - 15.00 hrs Issue Politics - From Parties to Issues Link: http://www.debalie.nl/artikel.jsp? podiumid=politiekarticleid=62483 * Sunday September 3 – 11.00 hrs Permanent Breakfast Link: http://www.debalie.nl/artikel.jsp? podiumid=politiekarticleid=62943 * Sunday September 3 - 15.00 hrs: From Open Source to Open Knowledge Discussion about the public accessibility of scientific knowledge Link: http://www.debalie.nl/artikel.jsp?podiumid=mediaarticleid=63175 * Sunday September 3 - 20.30 hrs Creative Class Struggles or Creative Precarity: On the creatives and their class consciousness Link: http://www.debalie.nl/artikel.jsp? podiumid=politiekarticleid=62459 Live webcasts: All these programs can also be followed live via internet as videostream and mp3 audio. For details please refer to: http://www.debalie.nl/live PROGRAM DETAILS: * Saturday September 2 – from 13.30 hrs Radio Ballet LIGNA I Am[not]sterdam. 10 Exercises to get the City out of your Body” The free radio group LIGNA exists since 1995. LIGNA consists of the media theorists and radio artists Ole Frahm, Michael Hüners, and Torsten Michaelsen, who since the early nineties have been working at the Freies Sender Kombinat (FSK), a public non-profit radio station in Hamburg. In several shows and performances they have been investigating the importance of dispersal in radio as well as of the radio. One of the main focuses is to refer to forgotten and remote possibilities of radio use in order to develop new forms of interactive practices. Another emphasis has been placed on the development of concepts and the production of performative audio plays in order to find out how radio can intervene in public and controlled spaces, so that its public nature reappears in the form of uncontrollable situations The “Radio Ballet” is an excellent example of the latter: it is a
