Strategy of Deception - Hardcover

"One of the most original thinkers of our time."--"Liberation""A refreshing antidote to the 'global village' mantra of Net gurus, Virilio writes in the subversive tradition of Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard."--"Publishers Weekly""Virilio is an impressive commentator on the conditioning power of the mass media ... he has become essential reading for anyone trying to make sense of America's out-of-control war of prevention."--"Guardian"

This volume offers a denunciation of the Kosovo war which unites theory with a study of the conflict. Tearing aside the veil of hypocrisy in which the US and its allies wrapped the war, the author demonstrates that the nature of the bombing was set by strategic rather than ethical considerations. Beneath the humanitarian rhetoric, the author sees a sinister innovation in the methods of waging war: territorial space is being replaced by orbital space in which a system of global telesurveillance is linked to the destructive power of bombers and missiles. Governments, the military and the media are becoming part of a seamless and self-justifying process linked by new information and arms technologies. This book offers an examination not only of the war in Yugoslavia but also what the author calls our "fin-de-siecle infantilization" in which the reality of battle is reduced to flickering images on a screen.