----- Original Message -----
From: "Dominic Fox" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, July 10, 2005 12:06 AM
Subject: Re: London calling


If someone declares war on you, you can't just undeclare it.

I'll repeat what I said "the root of the problem is accepting the basic
proposition of a war against terror" because your response reiterates the
proposition

As to the waving of a magic wand, I do realise that this is a figure of
speech; but there is so thoroughly no magic wand that I cannot help thinking
that any use of it is going to be misleading.

If you are saying that generally drugs policies are wrong, ok. But it isnt a
war. If it's a war then it's wrong

As a thought experiment in an intellectual entertainment, ok to waving
wands - if you get off on the observation that all hemlock users are mortal;
but much entertainment entrenches abusive institutions, parasitic extensions
of the state; corrodes liberties, corrupts language, and distorts social
relations. And I would hope we can do better than entertainment

No magic wands. No such power over not just the wars but the processes which
are described as being wars.

We do not have that kind of power. And the destructive idea that we *can
actually exercise destructive power for good is reinforced by such talk

Now _war on terror_. Whose terror? The USUK et al approach is that only
their terror is terror whereas ours is [insert your favourite cliché]

_Terrorist bomb_ is ok in terms of low level classification. e.g. I don't
expect generally there to be any likelihood that a police or army bomb will
damage me here. But I don't necessarily feel the same about police or army
in the sense of the danger of being run over, caught in crossfire etc. So
_Terrorist bomb_ is of limited applicability. And living in London _bomb_
will do perfectly well; so _terrorist_ is redundant.

If I lived in Iraq or Afghanistan or Kosovo, especially during the period of
the active informal NATO-UCG alliance, _bomb_ might be all that I could
know. It might be that what blew up could be identified as USUK because it
fell from the air, while one group or another would drive up alongside and
press the button

But so what? We get into satirical territory if we care inherently which
side killed us

The treatment of Iraq over recent years is terror. Where does that leave the
supposed war on terror? Not unfortunately in the film of Casino Royale -
this gun shoots backwards and I just shot myself

Keeping Saddam Hussein in power was terror. Funding bin Laden was terror.
The first 9/11 was terror. The king david hotel was terror

ad high levels of nauseam

and if I am going to litter myself with tags, one that seems appropriate to
me - through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault

It is the result of "our" policies

the terrible suicides in Vietnam or in Charles Sq in Prague - and I have
neither the courage nor the belief - are nearer to making peace than the
supposed war on terror

I heard Aaronovitch attacking, not least by shouting him down, Tariq Ali
recently

Ali had an analysis, not one I'd endorse, but an analysis. Aaronovitch,
having demolished Ali, as he thought he had, could only propose that people
wanted to commit murder. An end in itself.

There are such and many "terrorists" and soldiers are infected with that
desire. yet it does not explain 9/11 or London etc. Theyre evil says Tony
Bush. You, Dominic, call it malice. As a condemnation that's fine if you
like it; as an explanation it's nowhere.

How did it start? An infinite regression awaits of course, but asking where
the self-apologists draw the line, and why, is always an interesting
question.

And then another question becomes not why they havent caught bin Laden but
why they were talking to him; not what to do with Hussein, but why he was
there

What USUK calls terror, it does itself as "covert operations"

It is all a psychosis and the belief in enemies etc as "an objective fact"
part of that psychosis

I am not at war with terrorists.

I am opposed to them. I am not at war with them. To declare oneself t be at
war with them is to be one of them, certainly willy-nilly

We agree about the demonisation of Bush and Blair; as I have always been
puzzled by condemnatory slogans addressing them by name - "Give em the money
Maggie" e.g. Why Maggie?

Why identify these two sad powerful men as the root cause; when they are
front men as well as leaders. I don't want to punch them on the nose. I don'
t want to blow them up. I want to lock them up for crimes.

I see you are still pursuing your hate campaign against Galloway. Political
excresence operates at many levels and can be practiced with great aplomb
even as a solitary vice. But demonising Galloway is as pointless as
demonising Bush - it's an extension of saying my terror isnt terro

It gets us nowhere. Demonising " groups like the SWP" is as beside the point
as demonising Trash and Blur or stringing together words into phrases like
"defeating jihadist terrorism in our lifetime."

There is no war on terror. It's Oceania v Eurasia with the powers
effectively blowing themselves up. Don't be part of it