************ Sebastian Lütgert ************ ************ REWIRED March 27, 1999 ************ REWIRED March 29, 1999 ************ CTHEORY Event-scene 76-Fast War/Slow Motion ************ Re: :::recode::: infowar 101 ************ REWIRED March 27, 1999 REWIRED March 27, 1999 Living in Bombland: A Serbian Diary by Vladislava Gordic -- Vladislava Gordic is an assistant professor of American and English Literature at the University of Novi Sad. We met in Ljubljana nearly two years ago, poking around for literary resources on the Web. We'll be updating Rewired with her diary entries as they come in. /dwh -- Living in Bombland Date: Sat, 27 Mar 1999 06:21:43 I'm writing this as the morning breaks; the third night of NATO aggression over Serbia is over. The restless night, which I mainly spent in ups and downs -- running down to the shelter, then every two hours up to my apartment, where the first thing I grab is not food or water but -- the keyboard of my computer... As long as we have electricity, as long as phone lines, my modem (which is quite an oldie) and my swollen tooth permit, I will keep on writing, taking this down. Taking this disaster down. Remembering a Kate Bush's song, which goes, "as people around me grow colder, I turn to my computer..." What is to be said about the coldness of people? It is just that somebody with a big dick and a cold heart decided to become (luke)warm-hearted and prevent a humanitarian catastrophe by creating a greater one... It is just that somebody decided to turn this sanctionland in which I live into a bombland. When they first threatened to bomb Serbia last September, people from Belgrade made a joke about how the city will become renamed -- it will be called BOMB-ay. That is precisely what happened on the night between Friday and Saturday -- Belgrade was bombed, the very heart of the city, blazing in flames, the poisonous gasses started leaking out of demolished factories on the outskirts of town. Burn, baby, burn -- that's what probably was ringing in the ears of the aggressors. Children have been killed, Serbian medieval monasteries (which are under the protection of UNESCO) were hit yesterday, the university campus in Nish, a town in southern Serbia, has also been bombed. The bombs fell on the student dormitory; museums and schools have been shelled as well. What a nice cluster of military targets. Burn, baby, burn. I'll be back with you, as soon as i can. I'll try to rest for a while, to refresh myself before the next attack starts. -- Date: Sat, 27 Mar 1999 10:56:29 Bombland Revisited The morning of March 27th, 11 am CET. We are here fearing the next emergency siren, which will take us into damp, uncomfortable shelters with no air conditioning and no furniture. I seem to be catching a cold to accompany my swollen tooth which is inoperable now. We are fearing further attacks, because CNN seems to take for granted rumours of ethnic Albanians killed in Kosovo. They obviously need a further excuse to bomb schools, petrol stations, picnic areas, factories. CNN reporters lament on clouds which hampered harrier planes to be even more destructive. Shall we here, frustrated and traumatized civilians (soon to be poisoned, since they did their best to hit the chemical factories near Belgrade) confide only in bad weather to stop the NATO invasion? I try to read, but I cannot. My father takes shelter in a book by Roald Dahl, called _Stories of the Unexpected_. The proper title, that is. -- Date: Sat, 27 Mar 1999 11:00:24 NATO bombed the Serbian medieval monastery Gracanica, which is under the protection of UNESCO. -- Elsewhere: Michael Bliss, who teaches history at the University of Toronto, writes: "Having no brief for Slobodan Milosevic and his policies, I hope that he and other Yugoslavian leaders decide that the cost of resisting NATO assaults is too high, that they return to the table, and that the fighting, by all parties, ends quickly and permanently. But even if that most desirable outcome takes place, the world is going to pay a serious price for such a Kosovo settlement. "The price involves what we have done to NATO and what we are doing to the rule of law." http://www.nationalpost.com/commentary.asp?f=990326/2414199.html -- To subscribe, send email to rewired-news-request@rewired.com with the message: subscribe To unsubscribe, send email to rewired-news-request@rewired.com with the message: unsubscribe If you have subscription problems, send mail to the human at: owner-rewired-news@rewired.com ************ REWIRED March 29, 1999 REWIRED March 29, 1999 Living in Bombland: A Serbian Diary, Part 2 by Vladislava Gordic -- While we were discussing the email version of the first edition of Vladislava Gordic's diary, a friend wrote, "I think that during this war we are going to see more and more commentaries where you read along and agree, agree, and then, whoa! -- where did that come from, and so on." The Net is currently awash in first person narratives coming from all sides of a messy and tragic conflict. Personal email, mailing lists and Web-based forums are flooded with individual voices expressing fear, anger, concern and support, often in strange and seemingly incongruous combinations. Like no other medium, the Net provides an opportunity for these voices to be heard in full. In these forums, no one has selected the most sensational quotes, or the ones they're most comfortable with, and no one cuts to the next camera angle or back to the news desk. Just as there can be no doubt that emotions were running high long, long before the first NATO plane entered Yugoslavian air space, there can also be no doubt that since the bombs began falling, a full-scale war has been unleashed, and with it, a dramatic escalation of emotion. And emotions, of course, are almost by definition confusing, irrational, and often come in conflicting batches. Speaking for myself, I'm angry. I'm angry at NATO for rendering the UN practically obsolete for the foreseeable future, setting a hideous precedent, and for achieving what Milosevic couldn't have achieved on his own, what another friend calls the "homogenization of the Serbian political landscape." I'm angry for the all but immediate effects of NATO's action, the dislocation of families, the loss of culturally and historically significant property, but most of all, I'm angry at the killing. That seems simple enough on the face of it, but of course, anger is anything but a simple emotion with an easy remedy. Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo. Clearly, the easiest remedy, revenge, is also the most disastrous. When this war is over, when we have counted and buried our losses -- their losses -- we will have no choice but to pick up the shreds of what is left and rebuild. And we will begin by listening. -- Date: Sun, 28 Mar 1999 11:08:04 Sunday, 28 March. We are almost all the time on alert. Many civilian targets shot and people, angry and unnerved, ready to make human shields all around Yugoslavia. This is awful, barbarous.... Date: Sun, 28 Mar 1999 11:20:04 Now I am writing online, since who knows when and how I can get the Internet connection. Please, whoever reads this, do something to prevent this apocalypse. By doing all this, NATO is endangering NATO countries first and foremost. Do not expect to breath clear air when this war ends. Off the record reports say that NATO throws cluster bombs, which are forbidden by UN conventions, kill civilians, and a slight increase of radiation is reported. Please, this is destroying Europe. Yugoslavia will die, maybe, but see that this may be an inoperable cancer on the body of Europe. Date: Sun, 28 Mar 1999 13:00:04 Peace protests are rising -- theatres will continue showing performances (in day time, of course), and in Belgrade, there will be a rock concert every day at noon. What else is there to do? The first waves of shock, fear and frustration seem to be over. These feelings are replaced by spite -- now people want to be proud and dignified. I myself do not fear that much, at least in day time. Still, we have all become sound-sensitive. I jump at every sound and buzz, at every door slamming. Date: Sun, 28 Mar 1999 17:57:14 There was a magnificent concert in Belgrade at noon. Thousands of people came with badges in the shape of target on their coats. They had banners saying, "Sorry, we did not know it was invisible," referring to the fallen F-117A stealth bomber. I was completely swept with emotions. No matter how deep and serious our scars may be, people find strength to endure and to show their energy and spite. After the first shock, a different feeling came, a flow of vitality and strength. My depressive feelings wane. I see that people in my shelter are slowly coming back to their senses. Nobody panics; women leave the shelter after the all clear sound to prepare a quick meal and to manicure their nails, believe it or not! After 21 hours of being on alert, this is hard to imagine. To be sincere, I still sometimes mistake my heartbeats for faraway explosions. But today I managed to find my facial wash in Mum's bags! Tomorrow, I'm putting my make-up back on again. I promise. Somber feelings pervade when we hear of another medieval monastery damaged -- the monastery Rakovica, near the town of Knezevac, was hit last night in its supporting wall. And schools and kindergartens, which are also demolished, but their images cannot be seen on CNN. "After the pain, a formal feeling comes," writes my favourite American, Emily Dickinson. I adore teaching her to my students, especially the poem beginning with, "Our lives are Swiss." Read it for me some time. As for the formal feeling, that seems to be a vital exuberance here, in Serbia, now, in the late 20th century. Date: Mon, 29 Mar 1999 11:18:21 It's getting worse. Hospitals are bombed in Kosovo. Civil victims reported. The condition is awfully bad there. Vojvodina -- so and so, more a kind of psychological war. My friend from Sombor reported that bombs are falling even when there is the all clear sound. But I keep my promises. I put my make up on today. Life goes on. President Clinton gave his statement yesterday, followed by his dog. I wish it was his only follower... Date: Mon, 29 Mar 1999 16:13:54 "Serbs die singing," says a banner shown at a protest folk concert in Belgrade. The concert started at noon sharp, and fifty thousand people came, not fearing any surprise attacks from the murky sky. This is the second of such concerts in a row. The slogans people carry are sharp and witty -- on one of them, President Clinton was renamed as Bill Clitoris! The other says, "Serbia is not Monica." I watch this on Serbian TV, live; I swiftly shift channels, only to find monstrous discussions on CNN and Sky News in which politicians and warmongers want to prove that air strikes are not enough and that ground troops are necessary. I cannot believe this. Bombs destroy Serbian schools and monasteries, apartment buildings and places for refugees, they kill Serbs (and Albanians as well, since bombs and missiles fallen on Kosovo do not distinguish between nations), in order to protect Albanian terrorists. But NATO just can't get enough, obviously wanting to parch the whole country. In my email, there are numerous letters from abroad expressing support, anger and bitterness. people send good wishes and lots of faith. The bitterness of the Yugoslav people is immense, but the vitality and spite grow every minute. Differences in opinions diminish, and people are getting together on the simple basis -- united against the immense injustice done to Yugoslavia. >From today, when running down to the shelter on the sound of emergency sirens, I'm taking books with me. Of course, books by authors from NATO countries -- William Shakespeare, Gilles Deleuze and Heraclitus. I ran into a wonderful fragment of Heraclitus today -- "sun is as big as man's foot." Sad but true, some people think that they can stop the sun from shining, that they can hide it. But the sun cannot be hidden, not even by a wing of a F117A plane. Do not count on that. -- Elsewhere: Noam Chomsky, "The Current Bombings: Behind the Rhetoric" http://www.zmag.org/current_bombings.htm Via Nettime, a valuable collection of links compiled by Stefan Wray. http://www.nettime.org/nettime.w3archive/1999/03/msg00122.html Help Radio B92 http://helpB92.xs4all.nl Broadcasts of Radio B92 from Public Netbase in Vienna on AM 1476, hopefully also receivable in FRY. http://akut.t0.or.at -- To subscribe, send email to rewired-news-request@rewired.com with the message: subscribe To unsubscribe, send email to rewired-news-request@rewired.com with the message: unsubscribe If you have subscription problems, send mail to the human at: owner-rewired-news@rewired.com ************ CTHEORY Event-scene 76-Fast War/Slow Motion _____________________________________________________________________ CTHEORY THEORY, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE VOL 22, NO 1-2 Event-scene 76 99/03/29 Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker _____________________________________________________________________ FAST WAR/SLOW MOTION ==================== ~Arthur and Marilouise Kroker~ "The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist - McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps." "...Americans are in the odd position now of being held responsible for everything, while being reluctant to die for anything. That's why in the globalization era, counterinsurgency is out; baby-sitting is in. House-to-house fighting is out; cruise missiles are in. Green berets are out; U.N. blue helmets are in." -Thomas L. Friedman, "A Manifesto for the Fast World" _The New York Times Magazine_, March 28, 1999 It's Friday night in Washington and Clinton has taken to the Internet for a direct cyber-pitch to the citizens of Belgrade. He bites his lower lip in that poll-tested, focus-grouped facial gesture and looks into the eye of the cyberball, courtesy of real video-streaming. With mock sincerity, he says it's too bad about the bombs, laser missiles, stealths and electronic pulses in the Serbian night, but America's got a mission and NATO is on its side. Nothing personal. Just get rid of Milosevic or force him back to the bargaining table and things will be all right. Maybe Clinton has read an advance copy of Friedman's "A Manifesto for the Fast World" because that's exactly what he's preaching: a little Buchanan-style war fever nationalism mixed up with high tech cyberwar gaming strategies as the winning formula as America takes up its "new burden" of enforcer to the world. Meanwhile, the major networks have plugged into the energies of the war machine with all the desperation of parched-out desert walkers wandering around the electronic void without aim after the fatal implosion of the impeachment story-line. Manic media anxiety field-reverses immediately into a bogus war spirit. CNN comes on the air every minute to announce that "It's only two hours to bombing time." CBS trumps the all-news networks by actually taking a cyber-ride in a B-2 bomber simulator, telling us with unabated enthusiasm that it's all so realistic that "you can actually feel the simulated rocking of the B-2 when it has fired off its (simulated) payload of sixteen independently targeted missiles," just eugenically delivered from Whiteman Air Force Base safe in Missouri to a Belgrade suburb. Local weather stations, catching the drift, start patching in weather forecasts for Belgrade and Pristina and Sarajevo, with American weather patterns, giving opinions grave and military-sober whether it's "good bombing weather or not." AMC does a quick program change, rushing Patton to the air, complete with George C. Scott railing against the forces of fascism and communism, and speaking bitterly of the future of techno-war as a "war without heroes." And even MTV gets into the killing game, matching Patton with images of KISS singing of a future without heroes as a "world without the sun." And still Stealths take off from Aviano and cruise missiles burst from the deep waters of the Adriatic in the morning's clear air and General Clark does a rant from NATO headquarters about "degrading and destroying" and arrests by the Serbian security police intensify and killings, by knife, rope and sometimes by guns, accelerate in Kosovo. But the DOW is almost at 10,000 and sun-bathers in Boca Raton, Florida tell reporters that "oh well, I guess we should know something about this" and just once in every great while the media blah-blah quiets down, and you can almost hear those other silent intimations of a war machine running on cyber, whispering in the camera's eye, that this is all about beta testing: systematic program testing of virtual warriors in their virtual flying machines in "real" battlefield conditions, of futurist scenarios of "degrading and destroying" command, control and communication structures, of testing the newly upgraded computer systems of the B-2s on a night flight to the Balkans. And so, you sit there in a no-name coffee shop on a no-name day in a no-name street, trying to find some satisfactory moral meridian but finding only ambivalence instead. The cyber-war machine has system-installed itself for the day, but when the virtual testing is over, you just know it'll all be shut down immediately. Not another word about "moral imperatives" or "degrading or destroying" and not even any more local weather reports from Belgrade and Pristina. And even KISS will go back to their one true moment of bewilderment at being a 4th order simulacra when in the same MTV docu-feature they look out at their audience and suddenly see families - Mommy and Daddy and babies most of all - dressed up in face paint and slithering tongues and beautiful drag, and sigh to themselves where did it all go wrong. Now, some members of KISS went numb for survival with drugs and alcohol and always lots of jaded, hard-assed sex, but those that didn't still are out on the road living the life of the new regime of signs without referents. And maybe the fate of KISS is an AWACS warning of the destiny of the cyber-war machine in the spectacle of Operation Allied Force - war as a cybernetic testing procedure always running on (moral) empty. A sign without a referent, a world with only virtual heroes. A double triumph of cyber-skies (without casualties) and ethnic slaughter (with flesh) as the ambivalent sign of Allied (moral) Weakness. Because the one real-time truth of the cyber-war machine is that it is allergic to casualties on the ground. Never flesh, never blood, never human, cyber-war is fast war. Always in motion, always approaching the speed of light, always war at a telematic distance, virtual war is one perspectival remove from experiencing the actual consequences of violence. The end of war, and the beginning of the arming of the vector. The end of (face-to-face) conflict, and the beginning of the virtualization of violence. At least, that's the illusion of Operation Allied Force. And why? Because Operation Allied Force is really about making the skies safe for NATO, and the ground a killing field for Milosevic. The more complex the diplomatic games of using NATO planes to nudge Milosevic back to the negotiating table, the greater the actual slaughter on the ground. The more sophisticated the cyber-apps of all those high tech, high velocity NATO planes, the more accelerated the genocide on the ground. Thus, in effect, Operation Allied Weakness with NATO trapped in a new field of (virtual) blackbirds. If NATO remains faithful to the air war, the more irrelevant it becomes to the actual fate of human beings in Kosovo. But if NATO were to take Milosevic's bait, responding to the genocide of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo with a ground war, what happened to those nineteen American marines in the streets of Mogadishu will be amped up Balkan style. Smelling the Serbian trap, one Texas senator stated on Sunday morning news that maybe the time has come for a ground war, but not with American troops. Allied Force is in the air. Allied Weakness is on the ground. Unfortunately for NATO, one intractable lesson from the diary of life is that in war as in politics the only thing that really matters in the end is what happens on the ground. The images and sounds of those Kosovo refugees, then, as simultaneously a human sign of NATO's failed (virtual) strategy, and an invitation to a return to a form of primitive (ground) war that NATO for all its technicity had thought itself liberated from forever. Meanwhile, folks are munching chips and sunning on the beaches, students are rioting in Michigan because of the loss of a basketball game to Duke, and the Orioles are playing baseball in Havana. AMC is recycling some old Western flics, Jon Waters is talking Divine on MTV, and still the killing and the knifing and the shooting and the burning and the refugeeing goes on in Kosovo. You can almost hear NATO planners wishing that Kosovo Albanians would mutate into stealth flesh and fly away from the scene, leaving NATO free to play its aerial games of B-2 tech. Fast War/Slow Motion. _____________________________________________________________________ * CTHEORY is an international journal of theory, technology * and culture. Articles, interviews, and key book reviews * in contemporary discourse are published weekly as well as * theorisations of major "event-scenes" in the mediascape. * * Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker * * Editorial Board: Kathy Acker, Jean Baudrillard (Paris), * Bruce Sterling (Austin), R.U. Sirius (San Francisco), * Siegfried Zielinski (Koeln), Stelarc (Melbourne), * Richard Kadrey (San Francisco), Geert Lovink (Amsterdam), * Lynn Hershman Leeson (San Francisco), Stephen Pfohl * (Boston), Andrew Ross (New York), David Cook (Toronto), * William Leiss (Kingston), Sharon Grace (San Francisco), * Marie-Luise Angerer (Vienna), Hans Mohr (Howe Island), * Alberto Perez-Gomez (Montreal), Robert Adrian X (Vienna), * Deena Weinstein (Chicago), Michael Weinstein (Chicago), * Patrice Riemens (Amsterdam), Andrew Wernick (Peterborough). * * Editorial Correspondents: Ken Hollings (UK), J. Peter Burgess * (Norway), Maurice Charland (Canada) Steve Gibson (Sweden). * * Editorial Assistant: phyla.exe * World Wide Web Editor: Carl Steadman ____________________________________________________________________ To view CTHEORY online please visit: http://www.ctheory.com/ To view CTHEORY MULTIMEDIA online please visit: http://ctheory.concordia.ca/ ____________________________________________________________________ * CTHEORY includes: * * 1. Electronic reviews of key books in contemporary theory. * * 2. Electronic articles on theory, technology and culture. * * 3. Event-scenes in politics, culture and the mediascape. * * 4. Interviews with significant theorists, artists, and writers. * * CTHEORY is sponsored by New World Perspectives and Concordia * University. * * No commercial use of CTHEORY articles without permission. * * Mailing address: CTHEORY, Concordia University, 1455 * de Maisonneuve, O., Montreal, Canada, H3G 1M8. * * Full text and microform versions are available from UMI, * Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Canadian Periodical Index/Gale * Canada, Toronto. * * Indexed in: International Political Science Abstracts/ * Documentation politique international; Sociological * Abstract Inc.; Advance Bibliography of Contents: Political * Science and Government; Canadian Periodical Index; * Film and Literature Index. _____________________________________________________________________ ************ Re: :::recode::: infowar 101 __________________________________________ "We no longer have roots, we have aerials." http://www.mcs.mq.edu.au/~mwark -- McKenzie Wark ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 10:14:30 +1030 From: Vicki Sowry To: recode@autonomous.org Subject: Re: :::recode::: infowar 101 >and maybe our outrage at obvious media distortions serves >to distract us...and maybe we find that we are impotent in the >face of all that is happening and maybe we don't like that... >even as I have absolutely no idea what to do about it or even >how to have a straightforward response. ..Coming in from a tangent.. Sarah's post got me thinking about a piece I wrote in 1992 about the B2 and stealth technologies and how to trace the flow on of these technologies into culture.. Below is a rough and longish cut & paste of that piece.. but i think it provides a jumping point to considering whether one's inability to have a straightforward response may be in part due to the technologies involved? vicki ----- An examination of the contemporary concerns of military research and development shows that a major tendency is to create war machines which attempt to achieve increased speed through invisibility, an invisibility not just to the human eye, "but above all to the piercing unerring gaze of technology." These are the technologies of stealth, encapsulated by the F-117A fighter and the B-2 bomber. In essence, stealth technologies are concerned with practices of invisibility, of what Virilio has called an "aesthetics of disappearance". This is currently acheived through a process of reducing what is termed the 'signature' of a given machine (or weapon). A machine's signature is determined by the emissions of its communications and propulsion systems, that is, by its radar, infrared, electro-optical, acoustic and electromagnetic emissions. The configuration of these emissions results in what is termed the machine's radar cross section (RCS). By utilising a vast array of measures it becomes possible to reduce a machine's RCS to the point that it becomes unrecognisable. An example of this is outlined in a House and Senate Armed Service Committee debate centred around the astounding reduction in the B-2's RCS: "When asked whether the B-2 RCS was most like that of aircraft, birds or insects, General Welch [Air Force Chief of Staff] replied that it is "in the insect category". He pleaded classification, however when asked which insect it resembled most." Within such a frame, spatiality is only ever talked of in temporal terms. Reducing a machine's signature is a gaining of time: "if you can reduce the RCS of your aircraft by 10db, you cain a seven second advantage in launching your missile against a non-stealth adversary". Modern warfare relies entirely upon the deregulation and the convergence of time and space. Another, equally increasing, convergence is that between the real/unreal - in this case, between what we perceive as 'ocular reality' and the instantaneous mediated representation of that reality. The ocular reality of the B-2 bomber is an airplane standing 17-feet high, 69-feet long and with a wing span of 172-feet. In its instantaneous representation on a radar screen this reality is totally displaced and the enormity of the B-2 has become no more perceptible than an insect - the B-2 can be apprehended as simultaneously real and unreal. An interesting sideline to this are the simulation technologies which have developed for testing the capabilities of the B-2 and F-117A. Currently, test pilots spend more 'flight-time' in the tactical simulator than they do in actual airspace. The repercussions of this situation, and its concommittant extension to notions of 'real' versus 'simulated' warfare, point to one area emerging as a site for analysis and possible intervention. The development of technologies necessary for the building of the B-2 began in the early 1970's, leading to the construction of the first operational prototype in 1978. However, the B-2's existence only became known to the public during the 1980 presidential campaign, and even then no more was known than that - any other information about the programme was unobtainable and this remained the case until November 1988 when the official roll-out ceremony took place. Even at this public 'unveiling' severe restrictions were placed upon what could be seen, and who could see it. [As a brief background, it had come to be seen as unfeasible to fly the B-2 only at night and only in remote areas. The Chiefs of Staff had decided to transfer the B-2 into an active flight test programme, that is, a programme where flights could be undertaken during daylight hours. It became a matter of political expediency, therefore, to provide the public with more information than had previously been forthcoming. ] This history is mirrored with the F-117A fighter. This aircraft first flew in prototype in 1977, entered production in 1981 and became operational in 1983. However its existence was not acknowleged by the Air Force until November 1988 - a full eleven years after its first flight. (And this of course does not include the length of time spent in development on R&D design databases). In this fog of secrecy one thing is clear - the ability of the military to classify security-sensitive technologies out of existence. Paradoxically, the 'being-seen' of the B-2 and the F117A, only highlighted the extent to which they remained unseen. (Haraway described something very similar, in referring to the cyborg: "They are as hard to see politically as materially"). This is certainly the case for the B-2 - although 'officially unveiled' four years ago, details about its yearly budget and production schedule still remain "black" (the questionable moniker for absolutely classified projects). The obvious reason for such a classification is that it gives the B-2 an advantage in Congressional debates concerning Defense Budget allocation. However, through such evidence we can see that stealth technologies - and their underlying tenets of disappearance, deceit and decoy - are having an irrefutable impact upon concrete political process, an impact which is rapidly gaining momentum. For example, the funding for "deep black" projects has substantially increased in the last ten years, and now makes up thirty-five percent of the total Air Force procurement budget. Secrecy has also distracted observers outside of the Pentagon. Shielded from the radar of a potentially critical public, the B-2 and F-117A projects elude being focussed upon to the degree of more visible programmes such as the Strategic Defense Initiative, thereby ensuring that debate is restricted to the armed services and appropriations committees. Such secrecy, however, provides some disturbingly ironic drawbacks - even for the pro-military politician. The same classification which guarantees the budget dollar also makes accountability for that dollar difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. This dynamic has been played out in the B-2 program with surprising force. In October, 1989 a false claims lawsuit was filed against Northrop Corporation - the prime industrial contractor involved in the project. The suit, brought by one current and five former Northrop employees, claimed that "the company wrongfully recieved more than $20 billion from the U.S. government...[and] that there was widespread and long-term mismanagement, fraud and abuse within the stealth bomber program that resulted in mischarging, false statements and misrepresentations to the Air Force concerning progress on the B-2." The suit was defeated, but it did raise serious doubts about the desirability of continuing with the program. Congress, backed against a wall, agreed to continue supporting the project, albeit in a severely curtailed way. At the time of the roll-out the Air Force was adament that an operational fleet of one hundred and thirty-two bombers was necessary for the success of the programme. In January, 1992 President Bush announced that the B-2 fleet would be held to twenty aircraft. This has required a redefining of, among other things, the proposed strategic role of the B-2. ..... By concentrating on the technologies of stealth favoured by the military it is possible to recognise some major operative trends which form the component parts of a framework around which a technics of domination is emerging. Noted above are some brief examples of ways in which stealth has impacted upon governmental process. Of far greater importance is the need to identify the ways in which stealth technologies will broaden their reach into the broader political and cultural realm. > - > # distributed via :::recode::: no commercial use without permission > # :::recode::: a mailing list for digital interrogation. > # more info: majordomo@autonomous.org & "info recode" in the msg body > # URL: http://systemx.autonomous.org/recode/ > # contact: owner-recode@autonomous.org ******************************************************************************** ROLUX h0444wol@rz.hu-berlin.de http://www2.hu-berlin.de/~h0444wol/rolux/