Quote of the Week: Paul Virilio in Conversation with Sylvere Lotringer

States act like individual terrorists: there have been numerous examples since 1969.

Why 1969? 

Because it was the great beginning, the attack by Israeli paratroopers on Beirut Airport. The paratroopers destroyed planes and went home. And these acts of war without war, the equivalent of terrorist acts by one state against another, haven’t stopped since. All the way to the taking of the Falkland Islands by General Galtieri. The problem is not “who owns the Falklands?” The problem is when a state takes over the Falklands and says, “Now what are you going to do?” That’s State terrorism. 

— Paul Virilio and Sylvere Lotringer, Pure War. trans. Mark Polizzotti (Cambridge, MA: Semiotext(e), 2008), 40.