nasty things

Nothing is therefore more important than a revision of the

concept of security as the basic principle of state politics.

European and American politicians finally have to consider the

catastrophic consequences of uncritical use of this figure of

thought. It is not that democracies should cease to defend

themselves, but the defense of democracy demands today a

change of political paradigms and not a world civil war which is

just the institutionalization of terror. Maybe the time has come to

work towards the prevention of disorder and catastrophe, and

not merely towards their control. Today, there are plans for all

kinds of emergencies (ecological, medical, military), but there is

no politics to prevent them. On the contrary, we can say that

politics secretly works towards the production of emergencies. It

is the task of democratic politics to prevent the development of

conditions which lead to hatred, terror, and destruction -- and

not to reduce itself to attempts to control them once they occur.