Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA23146 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 1 Oct 2001 15:15:16 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3102A6D04E@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: state of memes Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 15:07:55 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Hi Ted,
This is useful for some teaching/writing I'm doing. Can you tell me what
paper/channel this was from?
Thanks,
Vincent
> ----------
> From: Dace
> Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2001 6:05 am
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: state of memes
>
> It wasn't just the Palestinians. What happened two weeks ago was much
> like
> the climactic scene of The Wizard of Oz, when the Wicked Witch of the West
> melts into a pool of water, and her servants rejoice at their sudden and
> previously unthinkable liberation.
>
> Here's the view from Mexico, by correspondent John Ross:
>
> Many Mexicans clearly do not display the same compassion as [President]
> Fox
> and [Foreign Minister] Castaneda for their nearest neighbors to the north,
> a
> world power that has repeatedly invaded, annexed, and vexed Mexico for
> centuries. For many Mexicans, despite the North American Free Trade
> Agreement and the Fox-Bush embraces, the United States of North America
> remains the Great Satan.
>
> Chilangos (Mexico City residents) followed closely the malignant events of
> Black Tuesday step by step as the two monopoly TV networks transmitted CNN
> saturation coverage with Mexican anchormen and women providing local
> color.
> Some of the commentators, such as Televisa's Joaquin Lopez Doriga
> unsuccessfully sought to conceal their glee as the twin towers crumpled to
> earth, burying thousands. "The symbol of world economic power is no
> more,"
> Doriga yapped excitedly over and over again as the re-runs reiterated the
> destruction on an endless tape loop.
>
> Later, the star newscaster would boast that prior to this terrorist Pearl
> Harbor, only Mexico had ever had the audacity to attack the United States
> on
> its own turf (Pancho Villa invaded Columbus, New Mexico for a few hours in
> March of 1916.)
>
> [...]
>
> I sat at my desk in the old quarter of Mexico City, staring in horror at
> the
> fuzzy black and whites of the destruction. Suddenly, a banda de guerra
> (brass band) from impoverished Oaxaca state began to aggressively blast
> away
> beneath my balcony. Joy was in the air.
>
> One activist got so giddy that he went to the U.S. embassy on Reforma
> Boulevard and handed out a list of Yanqui Imperialist war crimes that
> included Hiroshima and the genocide of North American Indians. In the new
> spirit of Mexican democracy, he was promptly hauled off by the police.
>
> I ran into Pepe G. in the Vascona panaderia (a local bread store.) I know
> Pepe from years of covering demonstrations in the great Zocalo plaza a few
> blocks away, in which he often participates. "Que Padre!" he was grinning
> from ear to ear. "How beautiful!" Pepe did not mean the roscas and the
> pineapple tarts and the creampuffs. "What balls the pilots had!" the
> small
> brown man raved on, "Que Chingones!"
>
> I have been covering social strife in Latin America for many years. I am
> tall and white and often distrusted and disliked by the small brown people
> whose story I am telling, as the gringo enemy. Indeed, when the
> companeros
> are friendly, I get suspicious. Such resentment, part historical, part
> class and race, is understandable and always a subtext to my reportage.
>
> Whenever Tio Sam stomps his seven league boots on the corpus delecti of
> Latin America, the hatred runs white hot. I watched my back during Playa
> Giron (1961) which the Yanquis fittingly tag the Bay of Pigs, or when the
> CIA and Bolivia's current ambassador to Mexico, Gary Prado, captured and
> executed Che Guevara in the Bolivian outback Oct. 8th 1967. When a lame
> news boy hobbled aboard a Cuzco-bound train in 1986 hawking a paper whose
> headline read "Yanks Kill Quadaffi's Baby!" the hatred in my
> fellow-passengers' eyes was unmistakable. And there was a lot of tension
> around the counter at the Cafe La Blanca on the morning the first George
> Bush took it upon himself to invade Panama (1989).
>
> This September 11th, George W. Bush was much too preoccupied to reflect
> upon
> the fact that the terrorist attack on the U.S. took place on exactly the
> same date as the 1973 overthrow of the legally elected Allende government
> in
> Chile by Henry Kissinger and the CIA, an event that was accompanied by a
> loss of life similar in numbers to the World Trade Center and Pentagon
> bombings.
>
> Terrorist revenge for perceived U.S. crimes against the rest of the world,
> and the unbelievable loss of life that accompanied it, is a catastrophic
> x-ray of the empire's vulnerability, and it is going to change
> Mexican-U.S.
> relations very quickly...
>
> [end of excerpt]
>
> This was written a few days after the event, when its tangible
> ramifications
> were being exaggerrated everywhere. Its real importance was more symbolic
> than substantial. For a moment we could see the reality submerged under
> the
> Pax Americana. Then the movie ended, and it was back to work.
>
> Ted
>
>
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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