This Baudrillard's small exercise in empathy and understanding
of people living under siege is exactly how Radovan Karadzic
described the superior feelings of his warriors, and his people.
"We [Karadzic's Serbs] are alive because we are in the absolute
need to do what we do, to do the right thing."
He expressed these views on more that one occasion...

I do not intend to analyse in extenso either Baudrillard's
empty rhetorical attrition, or Karadzic's self-righteous
immorality.
I shall just point out that both are the products of one
dimensional mental perspective - which, among
other things, expresses itself in the need to transform
people of one town into a conceptual notion (symbol?)
which can thus be manipulated according to manipulator's
purposes.
In one case this purpose is a justification of methodology,
while in the other the purpose was to justify murder.

Vukica Djilas


----- Original Message -----
From: JMC <[log in to unmask]>

Baudrillard says, 'The problem lies indeed in the nature of our reality. We have
got only one, and it must be preserved. Even if it is by the use of the most
heinous of all paroles: "One must do something. One cannot remain idle." Yet, to
do something for the sole reason that one cannot do nothing never has been a
valid principle for action, nor for liberty. At the most it is an excuse for
one's own powerlessness and a token of self-pity. The people of Sarajevo are not
bothered by such questions. Being where they are, they are in the absolute need
to do what they do, to do the right thing. They harbour no illusion about the
outcome and do not indulge in self-pity. This is what it means to be really
existing, to exist within reality. And this reality has nothing to do with the
so-called objective reality of their plight, which should not exist, and which
we do so much deplore. This reality exits as such - it is the stark reality of
action and destiny.

This is why they are alive, while we are dead. This is why we feel the need to
salvage the reality of war in our own eyes and to impose this reality (to be
pitiable) upon those who suffer from it, but do not really believe in it,
despite the fact they are in the midst of war and utter distress.'

Notice the opposition Baudrillard poses here: "they are alive" and the war for
them is real; that is, the war is a lived experience. We, however, "are dead" by
contrast. This war for us is not so much unreal as it is hyperreal: a simulated,
dead experience that we cannot bring to life even through our pity.