AtDDtA: A World-Wide, Never-Ending State of Siege

[Dave Monroe]

"When the Sieges ended, these balloonists chose to fly on, free now of
the political delusions that reigned more than ever on the ground,
pledged solemnly only to one another, proceeding as if under a
world-wide, never-ending state of siege.
   "'Nowadays,' Penny said, 'they'll fly wherever they're needed, far
above fortress walls and national boundaries, running blockades,
feeding the hungry, sheltering the sick and persecuted ... so of
course they make enemies every place they go ...'" (AtD, Pt.I, Ch. 2,
p. 20)


>From Paul Virilio, "Deset Screen," The Virilio Reader, ed. James Der
Derian (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 155-64 ...

   Are we about to witness a return to inertia, to the blockade and
therefore to the state of siege, as in the most distant past of the
city?  If we consider the role played by the United Nations throughout
the course of 1990--this is what seems most likely--we can see that
all of the Security Council resolutions, which imposed embargoes first
by land, then by sea and then by air, were all heading in this
direction.

[...]

   And so, following upon the great wars of movement and the advent of
a total war involving the progressive militarization of science and
the economy of nations, we would be providing for a paralysis: a polar
inertia of total peace guaranteed by the UN.
   This would mark a return to the point of departure of history,
where the 'state of siege' would again find its strategic primacy, no
longer on the level of the city state, of the threatened region or
nation state, but, this time, on the level of the entire world....
with the logistical importance accorded to weapons of mass
communication over that of mass destruction, the logic of war becomes
paradoxical.  Everything depends henceforh on verisimilitude or the
lack thereof, information and disinformation renewing the duel between
arms and armour. (p. 161)

http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/book.asp?ref=9781557866523&site=1

Virilio, Paul.  Desert Screen: War At the Speed of Light.
   Trans. Michael Degener.  New York: Continuum, 2005.

http://www.continuumbooks.com/Books/detail.aspx?ReturnURL=/Search/default.aspx&CountryID=2&ImprintID=2&BookID=123563