Zone/911 - 23 October 2001

[Doug Millison]

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Zone/911 - Pynchonian Echoes in the Current Situation - 23 October 2001
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http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_430550.html?menu=news.latestheadlines

"Astronauts on a Russian spacecraft bound for the International Space
Station will feature in the first Japanese television advert to be shot in
space. [...] Two Russian astronauts on board will film themselves drinking
Pocari Sweat, a soft drink produced by Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co."

* * *

http://www.pacificnews.org/content/pns/2001/oct/1022disunited.html

"[...] In today's nation of wartime unity, television comedians, newspaper
columnists, Berkeley politicians and everyday loonies -- indeed, anyone who
might voice an eccentric opinion about Sept. 11 and our government's
response -- have been called down be their fellow Americans as unpatriotic.
[...] When I was a boy in the 1950s, I remember hearing adults talk
nostalgically about the way the country had been united a decade earlier.
Americans in World War II had been galvanized by a sense of a shared enemy,
a common purpose. "You wouldn't believe it," a neighbor lady said to me.
But in the peacetime America of the 1950s, America was drawing new worlds
to itself -- drawing my Mexican family to itself, even while the country
was finding its meaning in its disunion. By the late 1950s, rock 'n' roll
jack-hammered a channel we named the "generation gap." [...] I loathe bin
Laden -- may his tribe decrease. I resent him most because he had taken
away my America at peace, at frenzy, and has replaced it with a nation of
uniform opinion and too little sense of its greatness.  [...] "

* * *

http://www.monbiot.com/


America's Pipe Dream

The war against terrorism is also a struggle for oil and regional control

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 23rd October 2001


"Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child here," Woodrow
Wilson asked a year after the first world war ended, "that does not know
that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial
rivalry?" [...] The invasion of Afghanistan is certainly a campaign against
terrorism, but it may also be a late colonial adventure. British ministers
have warned MPs that opposing the war is the moral equivalent of appeasing
Hitler, but in some respects our moral choices are closer to those of 1956
than those of 1938. Afghanistan is as indispensable to the regional control
and transport of oil in central Asia as Egypt was in the Middle East. [...]
pipelines through Afghanistan would allow the US both to pursue its aim of
"diversifying energy supply" and to penetrate the world's most lucrative
markets. [...] Soon after the Taliban took Kabul in September 1996, the
Telegraph reported that "oil industry insiders say the dream of securing a
pipeline across Afghanistan is the main reason why Pakistan, a close
political ally of America's, has been so supportive of the Taliban, and why
America has quietly acquiesced in its conquest of Afghanistan". Unocal
invited some of the leaders of the Taliban to Houston, where they were
royally entertained. The company suggested paying these barbarians 15 cents
for every thousand cubic feet of gas it pumped through the land they had
conquered. [...] In September, a few days before the attack on New York,
the US energy information administration reported that "Afghanistan's
significance from an energy standpoint stems from its geographical position
as a potential transit route for oil and natural gas exports from central
Asia to the Arabian sea. This potential includes the possible construction
of oil and natural gas export pipelines through Afghanistan". Given that
the US government is dominated by former oil industry executives, we would
be foolish to suppose that such plans no longer figure in its strategic
thinking. As the researcher Keith Fisher has pointed out, the possible
economic outcomes of the war in Afghanistan mirror the possible economic
outcomes of the war in the Balkans, where the development of "Corridor 8",
an economic zone built around a pipeline carrying oil and gas from the
Caspian to Europe, is a critical allied concern. [...] If the US succeeds
in overthrowing the Taliban and replacing them with a stable and grateful
pro-western government and if the US then binds the economies of central
Asia to that of its ally Pakistan, it will have crushed not only terrorism,
but also the growing ambitions of both Russia and China. Afghanistan, as
ever, is the key to the western domination of Asia. [...]


* * *

http://www.newsguild.org/2edged.php

"[...] The Newspaper Guild-CWA, representing men and women employees in the
newspaper industry throughout the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico, has long
championed the unique role of a free press in a democracy. That role
includes the right, obligation and necessity of free inquiry, of the
uncensored exchange of news and information, and of vigorous debate and the
exchange of conflicting views and opinions-the very essence of democratic
self-governance. The importance of this role does not diminish in times of
national crisis: indeed, because such crises may result in the expenditure
of huge sums of money, national effort and human lives, it becomes even
more critical that those who speak with a different voice be heard.
Therefore, it is with great concern that The Newspaper Guild-CWA notes
these situations where those in the mass media whose views don't agree with
the conventional wisdom have been punished. We believe such a reaction is
un-American; it threatens to transform us into precisely the kind of
zealots whose intolerance for other values and ways of life resulted in the
deaths of more than 6,000 people on Sept. 11. [...]

[This site includes links to current stories about press freedom
post-911.-Editor]


* * *

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_430921.html

"Clergymen in Romania have joined demonstrations against government
plans to build a Dracula theme park. [...] A protest statement read: "The
Christian city of Sighisoara cannot accept and tolerate a Dracula Land. The
name of Dracula does not let any doubt about what is all about. The park
will be the kingdom of evil." [...] Another priest said: "If the park is
built, I am afraid that vampirism and blood sucking will become a society
game." [...] The plans for Dracula Land have already run into copyright
problems. The country's Tourism Ministry admitted last month that the
Dracula made popular by Hollywood films - including the black cape, deathly
pale skin and fangs - was an image owned by a film studio and they would
probably have to pay royalties to use it."




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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
originating publications under established "fair use" principles. The
Editor encourages readers to click on the enclosed urls and read excerpted
articles in their entirety, monitor a broad spectrum of information
sources, and use their brains to integrate their own understanding of the
post-911 Situation. Feedback:  bozo at online-journalist.com.
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