Zone/911 - 22 October 2001

[Doug Millison]

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Zone/911 - Pynchonian Echoes in the Current Situation - 22 October 2001
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http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2001350021-2001364909,00.html
FBI considers torture as suspects stay silent
FROM DAMIAN WHITWORTH IN WASHINGTON
AMERICAN investigators are considering resorting to harsher interrogation
techniques, including torture, after facing a wall of silence from jailed
suspected members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, according to a
report yesterday.  More than 150 people who were picked up after September
11 remain in custody, with four men the focus of particularly intense
scrutiny. But investigators have found the usual methods have failed to
persuade any of them to talk.  Options being weighed include "truth" drugs,
pressure tactics and extraditing the suspects to countries whose security
services are more used to employing a heavy-handed approach during
interrogations.  [...]

"The needle slips without pain into the vein just outboard of the hollow in
the crook of his elbow:  10% Sodium Amytal, one cc at a time, as needed."
[GR 61]


* * *


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20011022/aponline001453_000.htm
Protesters Attack Coca-Cola Plant
By Omer Farooq
Associated Press Writer
Monday, Oct. 22, 2001; 12:14 a.m. EDT
HYDERABAD, India -- Maoist guerillas protesting the U.S. strikes against
Afghanistan attacked a Coca-Cola plant in southern India on Sunday,
blasting dynamite and causing significant damage to the facility.
Elsewhere around the world, protests against the American military campaign
were more peaceful, with demonstrators filling streets and crowding
mosques. Thousands turned out in Spain, Thailand, Indonesia and other
countries. [...] The attackers left a note that said America is the biggest
terrorist state and is trying to dominate all other countries, according to
Police Superintendent A. Purnachandra Rao. [snip details of  protests
against the War in Madrid ; Indonesia; Thailand; Pakistan, London, Berlin,
Greece]

"the year theAmerican Food and Drug people took the cocaine out of
Coca-Cola, which gave us an alcoholic and death-oriented generation of
Yanks ideally equipped to fight WW II"  [GR 452]

* * *

http://www.observer.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1501,578103,00.html
UN set to appeal for halt in the bombing
Jason Burke, Peshawar
Sunday October 21, 2001
The Observer

The United Nations is set to issue an unprecedented appeal to the United
States and its coalition allies to halt the war on Afghanistan and allow
time for a huge relief operation.

UN sources in Pakistan said growing concern over the deteriorating
humanitarian situation in the country - in part, they say, caused by the
relentless bombing campaign - has forced them to take the radical step. Aid
officials estimate that up to 7.5 million Afghans might be threatened with
starvation.

'The situation is completely untenable inside Afghanistan. We really need
to get our point across here and have to be very bold in doing it. Unless
the [US air] strikes stop, there will be a huge number of deaths,' one UN
source said. [...]

* * *

http://www.observer.co.uk/waronterrorism/story/0,1373,577765,00.html
Who's having a good war?
The UK stock market has already recovered from the US attack, says Heather
Connon. And in the aftermath of terror, some industries are positively
booming
Sunday October 21, 2001
The Observer
[...] In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks, stock markets
across the world fell, culminating in a 2.7 per cent drop on 21 September,
as investors pondered what the event meant for economic growth. The
consensus seems to be that it was actually good news. In the following four
weeks stock markets in developed economies have recouped all the losses
suffered in the aftermath of the attacks, although some emerging markets
remain depressed. [...] John Hatherly, head of global analysis at M&G, is
cautiously optimistic that 21 September marked the bottom of the bear
market, which lasted 18 months. 'If so, we had a nice, neat bear market.
All the world's markets fell and, if they have now bottomed, there could be
a strong reaction upwards. We may now be in the foothills of the next bull
market.'

* * *

http://www.counterpunch.org/
The "Patriotic" Attack on
Democracy and Higher Education

By Robert Jensen

Based on the mail of the past month, a lot of people still want me fired
from my teaching position at the University of Texas for my antiwar
writings in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

Many accuse me of being "anti-American," but ironically it is their call to
limit political debate that is anti-American, for it abandons the core
commitment of a democracy to the sovereignty of the people and the role of
citizens in forming public policy.

[...]

In several essays between Sept. 11 and Oct. 7 (posted on CounterPunch and
at the No War Collective site, I (along with many others in the antiwar
movement) argued against military retaliation, on moral and practical
grounds -- innocent civilians abroad likely will die, making future
terrorist attacks more likely by deepening the anger and resentment against
the United States in the Arab and Muslim world. Once the war began, I
continued to oppose the reckless Bush policy that has created a
humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan as the war blocks significant food
distribution and the civilian death toll mounts. Events in the world
suggest this analysis coming from opponents of the war has been painfully
accurate.

Throughout, I have suggested that Americans should confront the ugly
history of U.S. attacks on civilians in such places as Southeast Asia,
Latin America and the Middle East to understand why so many around the
world see us not as the defender of freedom but as a violent bully.

If I had supported the president's decisions and endorsed a military
strike, would anyone have suggested I should be fired? Clearly not; many
academics have done that without criticism.

Whatever the merits of either the prowar or antiwar position, one thing is
inescapable: Both are political. So, my correspondents' real objections
cannot be that I am political, but instead that my political ideas are
unacceptable to them. That means their actual argument is that in times of
crisis, certain analysis and ideas are not acceptable and certain views
should be purged from public universities, which sounds pretty
anti-American.

[...]  the foundation of the U.S. system is (or should be) an active
citizenry; being a citizen should mean more than just voting every few
years. We have the right -- maybe even the obligation -- to involve
ourselves in the formation of public policy, and in that process no one can
claim that some proposals cannot be voiced.

If that's true, then those calling for my firing are anti-American to the
bone; their patriotism is supremely unpatriotic.

[...]

If they want to punish the exercise of citizenship, what is left of democracy?

Robert Jensen is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at
Austin, a member of the Nowar Collective and author of the forthcoming book
Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream.
He can be reached at rjensen at uts.cc.utexas.edu.



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Zone/911 is an occasional enewsletter published by
www.Online-Journalist.com. It seeks shards of  the shattered geopolitical
crystal palace loosely linked by tangential threads that lead, eventually
and sometimes in very roundabout ways to the works of Thomas Ruggles
Pynchon. Article excerpts appear without prior authorization of their
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post-911 Situation. Feedback:  bozo at online-journalist.com.
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