RE: state of memes

From: Vincent Campbell (v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk)
Date: Mon Oct 01 2001 - 15:07:55 BST

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    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 
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    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
    >
    >

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    =============================================================== 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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