<underfire> disappearance

[Brian Holmes]

Hello everyone -

Just to jump into this interesting thread, I'd suggest that 
on the one hand, there are the facts, and on the other, 
their public recognition within institutional frameworks of 
human rights and democratic governance. What really 
"disappears" is the public recognition. Take global warming 
in the US: it has been visible for at least a decade, it has 
recently even become visible to the US military and the CIA, 
but it is still not recognized in a way that would demand 
drawing the consequences. It disappears from the logic of 
the so-called democratic state, it is excluded from 
consideration by the institutional mechanisms that would 
otherwise be required to address it, assess its effects, and 
intervene.

Consider, for instance, the way the massive loss of life and 
destruction of poor people's property entailed by the 
invasion of Panama City in 1989 were for all practical 
purposes "disappeared." 24 US soldiers were killed, the 
Pentagon reports 314 deaths among the Panamanian military, 
and the new Panamanian Ministry of Health reported 201 
civilian deaths; while independent estimates range from 
1,000 to 4,000. The facts remain partially unknown; their 
causes remain entirely unrecognized; no consequences have 
been drawn. The US is said to have invaded Panama for a 
"Just Cause."

This situation is comparable, in kind if not degree, to the 
one in Argentina during the late 1970s. The people 
assassinated by the dictatorship were referred to as the 
"disappeared." That many thousands of people had died was 
known by a majority of the population. However it was not 
permissible to speak of it in public. The extraordinary 
thing done by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo was to bring 
portraits of the disappeared into the public space, and 
demand their "appearance with life." What reappeared was not 
the life of those who had been assassinated, but the life of 
Argentina as a possible democracy: and this entailed, not 
just public visibility of the facts of murder, but also 
legal procedures to draw the consequences (which were only 
partially completed, with a great many trials having been 
reopened very recently).

The idea of walking around the US with a picture of a 
murdered Iraqi is worth considering. I say considering, this 
is not yet a proposal for action. The question of how to 
make state murder appear in public is fundamental. And it 
involves a strauggle against other forms of visibility. 
Notice, for example, that the US Defense Department is 
currently funding highly visible studies for computer-driven 
vehicles:

"Sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency 
(DARPA), the Grand Challenge competition was created to 
answer a congressional mandate to convert one-third of 
military vehicles to driverless, computer-driven mode by 
2015. The objective of the competition is to have teams 
design a completely autonomous vehicle with no human 
assistance that can maneuver through an urban setting while 
avoiding obstacles. The technology developed for the race 
will help DARPA reach its goal of having the autonomous 
vehicles perform missions that currently put military 
personnel in harm’s way."

source: www.physorg.com/news82917173.html
also see: www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge

The future DARPA vehicle is already more than just visible: 
it's research and development phase is being celebrated with 
a popular track race, used as a biopolitical tool to 
generate excitement, cooperation and team pride, leading to 
new inventions that spring directly from the public realm. 
However, when the vehicle moves into military production and 
then deployment, its lack of human eyes will contribute to 
the disappearance of those whom it murders. When American 
lives are not lost, when Americans are not placed before the 
ethical dilemma of killing or not killing, the possibility 
of "disappearing" acts of murder becomes immeasurably greater.

"Appearance with life" is the fundamental demand of our times.

best to all, Brian