NP? (no Rand, either) Bush & 1984, & malleable facts, Osama the new Che Guevara, etc.

[pynchonoid]

"America always looks for an enemy. The country always
needs it. It has made Bin Laden the real brain behind
the attacks. Because it is easy and it makes us feel
good. But I think there is somebody else and Laden is
just a puppet.

You may think I am a paranoid. But it is not only me
to think like that. The NSA is supposed to watch
Laden, but I think it was not he alone responsible for
the attacks. I have an impression that Laden is just a
front-man. 

I wonder if those photos of Bin Laden on TV and
newspapers are the real him. Right after the attacks,
I remembered someone said " Come on, you want bin
Laden? We'll give you 20 of him."

After America kills a Bin Laden, there will be 19
more. Even there is only one Bin Laden, there are many
who want to succeed him.

If you look at it from another angle, Bin Laden is a
symbol rather than a human. It may be that no Bin
Laden ever existed. [...] 

We should not forget that many of bin Laden's brothers
were once the business partners of the Bush. [...]"

--Thomas Pynchon, Playboy Japan interview



http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,482-451301,00.html
"[...] For those with eyes to see and minds to
discern, these early months after that atrocity are a
fascinating and continuing case study in mass and
worldwide gestalt — the imposition of pattern on to
perception. We are puffing al-Qaeda into a vast,
mysterious and formidable spectre: fiendishly capable,
fabulously rich, incredibly cunning, a hidden hand
behind innumerable horrors. Al-Qaeda is becoming the
Dark Side, the Darth Vader of the modern world. 

And the picture we are creating has a terrible allure.
Do you not see the danger: the self-springing,
self-vindicating trap? We ourselves, we in the West,
are creating an icon. Osama bin Laden and his legacy
are becoming a legend, and soon it will not matter if
he exists, or ever existed, because he will be a
symbol to millions — no, hundreds of millions —
uniting their own myriad and diverse frustrations
behind the image of one charismatic figure: a fist in
the face of imperialism, wealth, perceived injustice,
Christian capitalism, government; a fist in the face
of ... us. 

Of course it is possible to link al-Qaeda to that bomb
in Bali. Of course it is possible to link al-Qaeda to
anti-Zionism in Iraq, Syria, Palestine or anywhere
else. Of course it is possible to link al-Qaeda with
Islamicist mutinies in the Philippines or Indonesia. 

Soon it will be possible to link al-Qaeda with
disaffection and violence of a broadly anti-Western
kind anywhere in the world, including in our own
countries. The very act of linkage — by us — serves to
build links where none existed. Osama bin Laden is
becoming the new Che Guevara. Al-Qaeda is cool.
“Shadowy” is a tremendously exciting word. Against
George Bush and, to a lesser extent, Tony Blair should
be levelled a grave charge: they are glamorising
“Terror”. 

All over the Third World there are now Osama T-shirts
on sale in street markets, displaying that strangely
beautiful face. The face alone, like Che’s, like
Castro’s, has become a statement. I found the T-shirt
this summer in São Tomé e Principe, peaceful African
islands in the Gulf of Guinea. I saw Osama dolls in
the market in Kiev last month. His face, and his
“network”, are beginning to represent, in the
imagination of the poor, the aggrieved and the
oppressed, defiance made flesh. And we are helping to
do this. We are constructing an enemy. We are
inventing a focus.[...]"





Bush channels Orwell:
http://www.tompaine.com/op_ads/opad.cfm/ID/6256



"For Bush, Facts Are Malleable "
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61903-2002Oct21.html



http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/20/barber-b.html
"[...] This is not the place to argue the merits of
going or not going to war -- although along with the
realists (who include the former chairman of the joint
chiefs of staff, as well as such conservative national
security stalwarts as Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew
Brzezinski), I am fully convinced that the argument
against can be made on prudential and realpolitik
grounds no less than on moral and legal ones. But
there is also a case for war, even a case for
preemption -- yet the debate between the two arguments
has not been meaningfully joined in the media or among
the general public. What is troubling is the absence
of a real debate in the Congress, in the media, in the
schools and the universities, and in the streets. 

Where are the teach-ins? During the Vietnam War,
Americans changed the policies of their government
and, in time, changed the government itself through
public debate, educational engagement and political
action that included mobilization, demonstrations and
civil disobedience. Is it because no conscript sons
and daughters of the middle class are at risk that the
thought of a tide of body bags leaves the progressive
movement cold? Or is it because smart weapons will do
the job of killing without putting too many Americans
at risk? 

There are myriad core questions that have scarcely
been asked by the American public (though some have
been gently posed in opinion-elite op-eds and
congressional hearings). Around such questions a
national debate about the future of America in an
interdependent world needs to be kindled. 

Policy debates are rooted in reasonable arguments and
prudent judgments, not science. There can and will be
differences among the goodwilled and fair-minded. But
until the hard questions are posed to and debated by
the American public and its representatives in the
media and the government, until the Bush
administration deigns to answer them other than by
impugning the patriotism of those who pose them, the
country surely cannot afford to enter into a war as
risky, potentially costly to ourselves and others, and
scarily precedent busting as this one. 

On one thing the president is right: We ought to
support vibrant democratic states throughout the
world. But perhaps we ought to start (as we do with
the fight on terrorism) at home. We've got the USA
Patriot Act; we need a USA Citizens' Act. We've got a
Department of Homeland Security; now we need a
Department of Homeland Democracy. In the 19th century,
critics of representation worried that electoral
democracy opened up an abyss between a people and
their delegates. At the moment of election, the
people's representatives started to become distanced
from them. By calling this the iron law of oligarchy,
they suggested that the process was inevitable. 

Our response must be to make democracy stronger, more
engaged and participatory -- especially when it is
under siege. This is merely to recognize that
democracy starts not with our leaders and
representatives and the quality of their
administration but with us, with the quality of our
citizenship. For my own part, I intend to wear a lapel
button that reads "WTPx2!" It'd be my way of saying,
"We the people want to participate!" You don't have to
be against war to wear it. You only have to be in
favor of debate and deliberation first. 
Benjamin R. Barber "





enjoy,

"pynchonoid"









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