A puzzling war

[barbara100 at jps.net]

Yeah, like you said, only a piece of the puzzle.  Read what happened in
1997, just before Unocal's withdrawal.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4283081,00.html
'Brutality smeared in peanut butter'
Why America must stop the war now. By Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy
Guardian Unlimited

Tuesday October 23, 2001

[...]
"For some years now, an American oil giant called Unocal has been
negotiating with the Taliban for permission to construct an oil pipeline
through Afghanistan to Pakistan and out to the Arabian sea. From here,
Unocal hopes to access the lucrative "emerging markets" in south and
south-east Asia. In December 1997, a delegation of Taliban mullahs travelled
to America and even met US state department officials and Unocal executives
in Houston. At that time the Taliban's taste for public executions and its
treatment of Afghan women were not made out to be the crimes against
humanity that they are now.

Over the next six months, pressure from hundreds of outraged American
feminist groups was brought to bear on the Clinton administration.

Fortunately, they managed to scuttle the deal. And now comes the US oil
industry's big chance.

In America, the arms industry, the oil industry, the major media networks,
and, indeed, US foreign policy, are all controlled by the same business
combines. Therefore, it would be foolish to expect this talk of guns and oil
and defence deals to get any real play in the media. In any case, to a
distraught, confused people whose pride has just been wounded, whose loved
ones have been tragically killed, whose anger is fresh and sharp, the
inanities about the "clash of civilisations" and the "good v evil" discourse
home in unerringly. They are cynically doled out by government spokesmen
like a daily dose of vitamins or anti-depressants. Regular medication
ensures that mainland America continues to remain the enigma it has always
been - a curiously insular people, administered by a pathologically
meddlesome, promiscuous government.

And what of the rest of us, the numb recipients of this onslaught of what we
know to be preposterous propaganda? The daily consumers of the lies and
brutality smeared in peanut butter and strawberry jam being air-dropped into
our minds just like those yellow food packets. Shall we look away and eat
because we're hungry, or shall we stare unblinking at the grim theatre
unfolding in Afghanistan until we retch collectively and say, in one voice,
that we have had enough?"

[...]

----- Original Message -----
From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2001 8:11 PM
Subject: Re: A puzzling war


> Osama is only one small piece in this very big  puzzle.
>
> Here is another piece.
>
> http://www.unocal.com/uclnews/98news/centgas.htm
>
> Say Barb, ask your friend Dug if he thinks he is now the manager of the
> theatre.
>
> Stage Left:   (Dug fanning the air with a copy of GR, the yellow fog of
> propaganda  creeps across this screen)
>
>