A reflection on the Virilio interview: "Today, almost all-current technologies put the speed of light to work. And, as you know, here we are not only talking about information at a distance but also operation at a distance, or, the possibility to act instantaneously, from afar." -- Paul Virilio Speed is very important to resistance. The goal isn't to slay an anaconda without breaking a heel (meow!), but, rather, to break heels, empires (and the ocassional will) in the great babylons while not getting crushed by the heels of the powerful. Power has set up its mechanisms of eliminating and marginalizing the dissidents. Mainly it wears them down and then co-opts them in an apathetic haze. Resistance today means establishing small, even temporary, territorial spaces from which to launch it. That can be the classic guerrilla jungle terrain (where the anacondas are our friends -- Mother Nature's land mine for those who don't know the jungle) and it can also be a "cyber-territory," a web site, an email address, or a combination of them to speed up Virilio's concept of a nuclear-type chain reaction leading to the pulverization of established spaces of power. And, yes, it does mean out-running the fat and slothful beasts of institutional power. Marcos of the Zapatistas, to me, is the pioneer of applying the work of Virilio, of Deleuze and Guattari, even of poor old Baudrillard. "This is a war of words, not of guns," he said, but he had to use guns to establish the small piece of territory with which to launch his cyber-guerrilla. The Party of the State in Mexico pulverized, but that is only the first evidence of what the Zapatistas have brought about. More is on the way. Power knows it. Has anybody read David Ronfeldt's work at the Rand Corporation on net-war? It was the first attempt from the Cathedrals of Power to offer an intellectual response to the new tactics established by Zapatismo. And at the same time it was part of the pulverization process, as serious opponents of the system used Ronfeldt's work as a model to improve upon cyber-Zapatismo. The other brilliance of Zapatismo -- and here is where they apply another realm of Virilio's work -- was in the resurrection of ancient indigenous thought processes and war strategies using the enemy's technological info-weapons. "The war machine outside the state" is a term of Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze from their 1972 "Anti-Oedipus." Virilio and others later analyzed the system of indigenous tribal wars in the Amazon as forces that prevented State power from establishing domain over territory. Given that the latest turn in the conquest is Power's aim to conquer territory and sovereignty by eliminating them, as Virilio spoke about in that interview, the study and use of what are really indigenous technologies of war and revolution is increasingly important. In my times "on the mountain" I never believed for a second that I had anything to teach the Zapatistas. To the contrary, it is them who have everything to teach us. Speed is also important in defusing information bombs thrown against the resistance. My view is that at current rates of speed, one has 24 hours to defuse a lie once it is launched, before it reproduces and mutates in a thousand forms. Another interesting reading on these concepts, less stodgy than our dear French philosophers, is Douglas Rushkoff's "Media Virus" and his concept of replicating information "memes". Baudrillard's "The Gulf War Never Happened", I and II, I would posit, was also part of a pulverization. Of course that concept was ridiculous, as a million or more dead or suffering Iraquis, and some poisoned US Vets, know all too well. In 1996, I co-hosted a birthday party in NY before leaving the States. My friend Sylvere Lotringer of Semiotext(e) came by with Baudrillard and they sat down at a table. I snippet of the conversation will always stay with me: Sylvere: This is Jean Baudrillard. Penny Arcade: You're not Baudrillard! Baudrillard: (inaudible grunt) Penny Arcade: You're not Baudrillard because Baudrillard doesn't exist. He didn't happen! --- But Marcos, he is still happening. And I sometimes wonder why more people who've read those great French works remain armchair readers and don't apply them in a serious resistance to Power. I've developed a distrust of almost anyone who doesn't put their own "lives, fortune and sacred honor" on the line. Talk is cheap. And as the Zapatistas have shown, it involves a whole lot more than developing "a culture of technology." Asserting a culture of food, work, home, land, justice and re-imposing these more basic aspects onto the technological morass is where the resistance is found. Ruthlessness, cunning, patience and sweetness are the four attributes said Castaneda's don Juan. Incoherence is non-response. "Revolutionary coherence," as Guy Debord writ, is mandatory. And it drives the incoherent to distraction. Oh well, sun's coming up. I'm gonna go pick some oranges. Remaining in the armchair is consent and complicity, a reaction programmed upon too many by the very forces of Power they grumble against. These times are grave and demand more of us. from somewhere in a country called Am�rica, -a -------------------------- eGroups Sponsor -------------------------~-~> <FONT COLOR="#000099">eGroups eLerts It's Easy. It's Fun. 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