From The Passenger to Terror Inc.
Recently finished Chris Petit’s excellent novel about the Lockerbie air crash, entitled The Passenger. I’ve long meant to read Petit’s fiction. I’ve long enjoyed his reviews in the Guardian, and his films, including the footage he shot of Ed Dorn which I’ve been wanting to get a look at for some time now. But if you want any answers about Lockerbie from The Passenger, you jdon’t exactly get them. But, then, why should you? After all, it’s the New World Order, which means that official versions are, by definition, wrong. But Petit raises some interesting questions, while creating a labyrinth of possibilities, none of them, I’m glad to say, linked to the official version. Like the event and its unending aftermath- 9-11, the war on terror, etc.- the novel is a dream from which only Petit’s protagonist has awakened. What bothers me is that, while Bush always reminds me of the evil antagonist from one of Madeline L’Engle’s early children’s novels, to over metaphorise him or the situation is to evade the issues. Interestingly, at the end of the book, Petit cites, in the Acknowledgements, Loretta Napoleoni’s book about the economics of terrorism, “Terror Inc.” (Penguin, UK). For some reason, it was a title that had escaped my noticed, so I decided to track it down, and, in doing so, discovered an interview by Andrew Lawless from 2004. According to Napoleoni, the concentration on Al-Qaeda as strictly a fundamentalist organisation is missing the point. They have proven very sophisticated in the way they have been able to manipulate US markets, making a nice sum of money on futures in the wake of 9-11, and, so inextricably linked to US markets are such organisations, that if Bushocrats ever did succeed in their war on terrorism- which they clearly won’t, nor have much intention of doing- the US economy would face collapse. Expecting the book any day now. More on the subject at some point in the near future.