Zone/911 - 24 October 2001

[Doug Millison]

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Zone/911 - Pynchonian Echoes in the Current Situation - 24 October 2001
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"The 400th anniversary of the acceptance in China of the Italian Jesuit
missionary, Matteo Ricci, is being celebrated in Rome and Beijing this
month. [...] "
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1616000/1616591.stm

* * *

"The longer the bombing goes on, the more susceptible we are to criticism,
justified and unjustified, in the Islamic world," he [Sen. Joe Biden,
D-Del., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee] said.  "With every
hour that passes, the United States pays an escalating price in the Arab
world, and faces complaints that it is a high-tech bully that only attacks
from the air."
http://www.drudgereport.com/flash2.htm

" [...] as the Afghan refugees turn up in their thousands at the border, it
is palpably evident that they are fleeing not the Taliban but our bombs and
missiles. The Taliban is not ethnically cleansing its own Pashtun
population. The refugees speak vividly of their fear and terror as our
bombs fall on their cities. These people are terrified of our "war on
terror'', victims as innocent as those who were slaughtered in the World
Trade Centre on 11 September. [...] once the winter storms breeze down the
mountain gorges of Afghanistan, a tragedy is likely to commence, one which
no spin doctor or propaganda expert will be able to divert. We'll say that
the thousands about to die or who are dying of starvation and cold are
victims of the Taliban's intransigence or the Taliban's support for
"terrorism" or the Taliban's propensity to steal humanitarian supplies.
[...] The figure of 6,000 remains as awesome as it did in the days that
followed. But what happens when the deaths for which we are responsible
begin to approach the same figure? Refugees have been telling me on the
Pakistan border that the death toll from our bombings in Afghanistan is in
the dozens, perhaps the hundreds. Once the UN agencies give us details of
the starving and the destitute who are dying in their flight from our
bombs, it won't take long to reach 6,000. Will that be enough? Will 12,000
dead Afghans appease us, albeit that they have nothing to do with the
Taliban or Osama bin Laden? Or 24,000? If we think we know what our aims
are in this fraudulent "war against terror", have we any idea of
proportion? [...] Sure, we'll blame the Taliban for future tragedies. Just
as we've been blaming them for drug exports from Afghanistan. Tony Blair
was at the forefront of the Taliban-drug linkage. And all we have to do to
believe this is to forget the UN Drug Control Programme's announcement last
week that opium production in Afghanistan has fallen by 94 per cent,
chiefly due to Mullah Omar's prohibition in Taliban-controlled areas. Most
of Afghanistan's current opium production comes - you've guessed it - from
our friends in the Northern Alliance. This particular war is, as Mr Bush
said, going to be "unlike any other" - but not in quite the way he thinks.
It's not going to lead to justice. Or freedom. It's likely to culminate in
deaths that will diminish in magnitude even the crime against humanity on
11 September. Do we have any plans for this? Can we turn the falsity of a
"war against terror" into a war against famine and starvation and death,
even at the cost of postponing our day of reckoning with Osama bin Laden? "
http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=100895

"The Pentagon has hired a well-known Washington public-relations firm to
help it explain U.S. military strikes in Afghanistan to global audiences,
U.S. officials confirmed Thursday. [...] The firm, the Rendon Group, has
worked in the past for U.S. government agencies, including the CIA, which
paid it to boost the image of the Iraqi National Congress, a U.S.-backed
group of Iraqis opposed to the rule of President Saddam Hussein. That
effort in the mid-'90s ended with an investigation by the CIA's inspector
general over how a reported $23 million was spent on behalf of the Iraqi
National Congress and its leader, Ahmed Chalabi, current and former
intelligence officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity.
For the anti-terrorism public-relations war, the Pentagon is paying Rendon
to monitor news media in 79 countries; conduct focus groups; create a
counterterrorism Web site that will provide information on terrorist groups
and the U.S. campaign against terrorism; and recommend ways the U.S.
military can counter disinformation and improve its own public
communications. [...] Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said earlier this
week, ``To the extent we need to do a better job to make sure that people
are not confused as to what this is about, then we darn well ought to do a
better job.'' [...]
http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/nation/docs/pr19.htm

* * *

"POLITICAL ELITES PROTECT THEMSELVES FROM ANTHRAX BUT GIVE SHORT SHRIFT TO
ORDINARY POSTAL WORKERS
(Washington, D.C.) Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that
investigates and prosecutes government abuse and corruption, reacted with
disbelief today at the news that D.C. federal postal workers were not
treated with antibiotics for anthrax exposure at the mail facility at
Brentwood, resulting in two deaths so far, but that Congressmen who had
less direct potential exposure on Capitol Hill obtained a month's supply of
Cipro. [...] "
http://www.judicialwatch.org/press_release.asp?pr_id=1688

* * *

"Through the miracle of mutual funds, the little old lady or gentleman down
the street may own shares in a Brazilian TV station or a South African
brewery. Now, if their fund holds shares in Nortel Networks, they may have
a stake in China's suppression of its citizens. In the global economy, 1984
is a buying opportunity. According to the respected Canadian human-rights
group Rights and Democracy, Nortel is selling China the technology to use
the Internet to spy on its citizens, in part by enabling police to monitor
the use of Web sites considered inappropriate by the state."
http://www.globeandmail.ca/servlet/GIS.Servlets.HTMLTemplate?tf=tgam/search/tgam
/SearchFullStory.html&cf=tgam/search/tgam/SearchFullStory.cfg&configFileLoc=tgam
/config&encoded_keywords=china+nortel&option=&start_row=1&current_row=1&start_ro
w_offset1=&num_rows=1&search_results_start=1

[watch the url wrap; search the Globe and Mail site for "China Nortel",
article published 19 Oct 2001]

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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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