Yes i promise this is the last reference to massumi (i cant help it, i just think the article is WOW)
“Dispossessed people like the Palestinians or the people in Irian Jaya just can’t argue their cases effectively through the mass media, which is why they’re driven to violent guerilla tactics or terrorism, out of desperation. And they’re basically theatrical or spectacular actions, they’re performative, because they don’t do much in themselves except to get people’s attention — and cause a lot of suffering in the process, which is why they spectacularly backfire as often as not. They also work by amplifying fear and converting it into group pride or resolve. The resolve is for an in-group and the fear is for everybody else. It’s as divisive as the oppression it’s responding to, and it feeds right into the dominant state mechanisms.”
“The September 11 terrorists made Bush president, they created President Bush, they fed the massive military and surveillance machine he’s now able to build. Before Bin Laden and Al-Qaïda, Bush wasn’t a president, he was an embarrassment. Bin Laden and Bush are affective partners, like Bush Senior and Saddam Hussein, or Reagan and the Soviet leaders. In a way, they’re in collusion or in symbiosis. They’re like evil twins who feed off of each other’s affective energies. It’s a kind of vampiric politics.”
The ending of No Man’s Land (side track, these 2 are links to interviews with the director)
(http://www.iofilm.co.uk/feats/interviews/d/danis_tanovic.shtml)
(http://www.indiewire.com/people/int_Tanovic_Danis_011205.html)
*ending, was particularly heartbreaking as the man with the bomb under him was left alone, i was silently cursing. The unfairness of such situations where a human life is sacrificed and the pompus a*ses like the UN director in the film. Its frustrating to think of how things can escalate and render us helpless or really.. ARE WE?
i would like to think (when i am not busy being negative and cynical) that we can in our own way start with trying to be aware and spreading the awareness, and HOPE that some how the people with the power, money, to do something to make a difference will hear and make the necessary changes…
cliche as it may be , i still think it is true that in whatever way, big or small, every contribution, every piece of drawing, writing, expression may just create a miracle…
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