hydrarchist writes: ".....check out this interview with Chomsky by Greg Ruggiero of Seven Stories Press .

INTERVIEW WITH NOAM CHOMSKY | October 5, 2001

Q: In order to shape an international alliance, the U.S. has suddenly shifted positions
with a number of countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, offering a variety of
political, military and monetary packages in exchange for forms of support. How
might these sudden moves be affecting the political dynamics in those regions?

CHOMSKY: Washington is stepping very delicately. We have to remember what is
at stake: the world’s major energy reserves, primarily in Saudi Arabia but
throughout the Gulf region, along with not-inconsiderable resources in Central Asia.
Though a minor factor, Afghanistan has been discussed for years as a possible site
for pipelines that will aid the U.S. in the complex maneuvering over control of
Central Asian resources. North of Afghanistan, the states are fragile and violent.
Uzbekistan is the most important. It has been condemned by Human Rights Watch
for serious atrocities, and is fighting its own internal Islamic insurgency. Tajikistan is
similar, and is also a major drug trafficking outlet to Europe, primarily in connection
with the Northern Alliance, which controls most of the Afghan-Tajikistan border and
has apparently been the major source of drugs since the Taliban virtually eliminated
poppy production. Flight of Afghans to the north could lead to all sorts of internal
problems. Pakistan, which has been the main supporter of the Taliban, has a strong
internal radical Islamic movement. Its reaction is unpredictable, and potentially
dangerous, if Pakistan is visibly used as a base for U.S. operations in Afghanistan;
and there is much well-advised concern over the fact that Pakistan has nuclear
weapons. The Pakistani military, while eager to obtain military aid from the U.S.
(already promised), is wary, because of stormy past relations, and is also concerned
over a potentially hostile Afghanistan allied with its enemy to the East, India. They
are not pleased that the Northern Alliance is led by Tajiks, Uzbeks, and other
Afghan minorities hostile to Pakistan and supported by India, Iran and Russia, now
the U.S. as well.

Max Kolskegg writes: "It would be hard to deny that the events in Genoa were, as
Starhawk has said, a major watershed in the history of the movement
to create a livable world. The repressive forces of capitalism were
in full display, so that even the most pacific of pacifists received
a salutary shock and have been forced to reevaluate the rationality,
if not the righteousness, of their strategy for social change. The
near-murderous assault on the sleeping place of the Genoa Social
Forum and the Independent Media Center on the 21st of July will go
down in infamy. The skulls cracked there may change more than a few
minds about who and what we're dealing with, and how best to
proceed.

Willard Uncapher writes: "I must admit that reading Naomi Klein or even Edward Said's comments, I
feel that they over-emphasize the US wardrums and ideological control
aspect of the media coverage. The truth, at least up here in Northern
California, has seemed more complex. As the public becomes more aware, or
rather concerned with the fact that we, as planetary citizens (and where
appropriate, as US citizens) are all inter-connected in complex global
socio-cultural-economic- political- technological webs or networks, the
more difficult it has becomes to posit problems (and 'enemies' as belonging
'over there').



This makes for an almost hitherto unique (at least in the US), but newly
emerging "network polity." Social-cultural attitudes and institutions can
change. This can be hard to see in networks. When you represent 'things'
that are networked together, a politics of approximation becomes more
important, a politics by which approximate processes are turned into
deliminated 'things' or categories seen or argued about from a 'higher
level' above the process. We move between levels, whether by means of
digital technology, social scientific investigations, cultural
interpretations, semiotic systemics, natural evolution, using mechanisms
'approximation.' Naomi Klein might be right about some of the edges, but
what does this imply about the bulk of activities it contends these events
represent? I think network epistemologies (and their associated politics
and arts) will deal with this issue more and more. In my view,
approximation is part of the process of representation, part of the pattern
of moving from one level to another. I would invoke von Neumann, G.
Bateson, or Anthony Wilden who look at the 'digital' as a mode of
approximation, of a necessary metonymy, as a perspective about a network,
but from a position that claims to be outside of it. Accepting an
approximation as a whole fact is part and parcel of the politics of
epistemology. Older dialectical logical forms, with their assumptions of
'ontology' over process cannot find a hold. At the same time 'systems
views' need a more realistic approach to the emerging dynamics of power and
surveillance. We are becoming a verb that needs a new focus. This is an
element of an emerging network epistemology and politics.