IBM & Nazis

[Cat Hamilton]

Excuse me for asking but what does "Go Saoraid, Eri Cros..." mean? Is it 
Gaelic?

--Cat

>From: Eric Rosenbloom <ericr at sadlier.com>
>Reply-To: "Discuss.List Pynchon" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>To: "Discuss.List Pynchon" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Re: IBM & Nazis
>Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 10:30:39 -0500
>
>Another story link, from Reuters:
>
><http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010211/ts/ibm_nazis_dc_2.html>
>
>Quotes: "IBM, as a nearly exclusive supplier of database equipment to the
>Third Reich, fed this hunger not out of Nazi sympathies per se but from
>a desire to dominate global markets for its products, Black argues."
>
>"Hollerith punch cards are the same technology blamed for the election
>counting breakdown in Florida last year."
>
>That desire to dominate the world sure is troublesome . . .
>
>Doug Millison wrote:
> > So, what does this have to do with Pynchon, at least one (and perhaps
> > more) of you will ask.  Good question. The Holocaust in GR' the
> > explicit link between the factory system, the German long range
> > rocket program, and the death camps that Pynchon discusses in his
> > Luddite essay, the computer imagery in COL49 (binary code, the kind
> > used to program computers), the role that computers play in the
> > arguably neo-Nazi resurgence that Pynchon depicts in Reagan-era
> > Vineland -- you get the picture.  Or not. For my money, it's
> > interesting to see Pynchon's popularization of the notion that
> > multinational corporations profited from the War -- in GR -- and the
> > Holocaust that was at the heart of that War (WWII, at least) borne
> > out by subsequent revelations by historians. Your mileage will vary,
> > of course.
>
>The use of advanced technology is what, I think, sets the Nazi death
>machine apart from other contenders for the genocidal record books (not,
>as your anti-semite would have it, because the Jews are now so powerful
>and make everyone else feel guilty). Everyone else, from the Ottomans
>and Stalin to the Khmer Rouge in my native country and the Hutu rampage
>against Tutsis in Rwanda, just killed. The Nazis used science, not just
>advanced tabulating machines and the latest poison gas, but also
>scrupulously planned cutting-edge psychological programs to prepare for
>and then mask the killing operation. That is what is so uniquely
>chilling. A crime of passion, stupidity, brutality is one thing; but a
>coldly planned long-term operation as the Nazis got going kinda shakes
>you up.
>
>Gravity's Rainbow may avoid the overt paths of the war and the holocaust
>but it drives right to the core of the horror -- that the culmination of
>Greek-Roman-German (Indo-European, or Aryan) culture is a program of
>mass death. Learning that multinational corporations transcended the
>war, maintaining shortages at home and profit arrangements behind enemy
>lines, serves to mock even further our vaunted civilization. Is Blicero
>our standard bearer, or . . .
>
>Go Saoraid,
>Eri Cros...
>
>
>
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