Tonight i went to hear the presentation by the Retort group of their new book on the empire and its course since 9/11 at Black Oak. The group is Iain Boal, TJ Clark, Joseph Matthews and Michael Watts, all at UC i believe. They espouse "situationist" politics, contend that 9/11 was an effective attack on the empire (with airliners detourned into bombers), that the US isn't really fighting in Iraq for oil but for enriching the military industrial complex, that Peak Oil is a myth, and of course that people need to overthrow capital. I asked the first question, brought up the work by situationists Sanguinetti and Debord in exposing Italian state terrorism in the '70s, pointed out some evidence re 9/11 being an inside job, and asked why they accept the official story. Joe Matthews simply said "Because it's true", drawing some laughs from the audience, and went on to the next question. Several questions all followed, none challenging the team in any way, seemed like the audience was made up of academic and political friends of theirs for the most part. Then Dave Heller from the 9/11 Physical Evidence group asked some questions about the PE, and was told to talk to me, chuckle chuckle, on to the next question, he and i tried shouting about the question not being answered but were ignored. One of their friends, a woman, then said she didn't think ignoring us was a good tactic, and the panel all took turns asserting that it didn't matter whether the gov't did it or not, and that the evidence for "conspiracy" is thin, and much stronger evidence exists for 9/11 being an outside attack, again without any such evidence being presented. No one really wanted to discuss the matter, it seemed. And several people in the audience who i know think like us stayed silent. One woman, as the crowd was leaving, told me she thought their reaction was stupid, she heard Webster Tarpley a few weeks before and found the inside job evidence overwhelming, someone else talked to Dave and told him he couldn't explain the physical evidence. Eddie Yuen, a big figure in the Retort crowd, whom i used to know in anarchist politics in the '80s, told me he couldn't disprove/dismiss the inside job view, but didn't think it made a difference now after the fact, and ten quickly excused himself. A very well dressed, basically self-satisfied smug Berkeley crowd. Interventions in such a situation (interventions is what situationists used to do in various contexts, this was what creating "situations" was about) would require more than 2 people to carry out, and we didn't have critical mass tonight, way too many people eager to follow the "authority figures".
Jeff
--"The future's here, we're it, we're on our own"--John Barlow and Robert Weir, 1982.
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