Re: Libération article on Edwin Black

[Richard Fiero]

jbor wrote:
>I don't think that it matters whether or not the computers were located
>on-site at the Lagers or in Berlin. The line of argument goes something like
>this: establish a connection between a company (eg IBM), a political figure
>or family (eg the Bushes) . . .

Thanks to jbor for bringing in Bush although somewhat 
unintentionally. If we actually read the Pynchon essay "Is it 
O.K. to be a Luddite?" we do see a perfect fit. Bush is 
apparently a born again ex-drunk who has stolen the US 
Presidency by some machinations and may be just the kind of 
zealot that Pynchon's essay warns about. A Christian zealot 
yearning for the rapture of God's will expressed in the 
Armageddon of a World War III. Extreme Right Wing + Christian 
Zealot = Fascist? The Bush family wealth being partly obtained 
through Adolph is of course irrelevant. Or is it?

>. . . The hidden agenda is in the promotion of some alternative
>company or political figure/clan or critic or interpretation (or, indeed,
>simply the author of the alleged exposé himself.) The Nazis were "evil"
>therefore IBM ( ... etc ) is "evil". QED. It is a strategy which is
>simplistic and manipulative and quite offensive in its reduction of WWII and
>its consequences to the status of rhetorical instrument, to the mouthpiece
>of propaganda.

We'll have to see the book. I recently sold off my IBM stock.

>And, it is, of course, far removed from the sophisticated spectacles of
>history revealed in Pynchon's novels, the way in which technologies and
>multi-national corporations and social and political systems generated from
>the "Industrial Revolution", for example:
>
>     "By 1945, the factory system - which, more than
>      any piece of machinery, was the real and major
>      result of the Industrial Revolution - had been
>      extended to include the Manhattan Project, the
>      German long-range rocket program and the death
>      camps, such as Auschwitz.It has taken no major
>      gift of prophecy to see how these three curves
>       of development might plausibly converge, and
>                 before too long. ... "
>                                  (T. Pynchon, 1984)

Pynchon draws no distinction between sabotage and Luddite 
attacks on machines. Tossing a sabot into the owner's machine 
to halt it rather than break it is a worker's response.
Surprising that the list hasn't mentioned the the climax of Pynchon's essay:
"If our world survives, the next great challenge to watch out 
for will come -- you heard it here first -- when the curves of 
research and development in artificial intelligence, molecular 
biology and robotics all converge. Oboy. It will be amazing and 
unpredictable, and even the biggest of brass, let us devoutly 
hope, are going to be caught flat-footed. It is certainly 
something for all good Luddites to look forward to if, God 
willing, we should live so long."
Humans have suffered the great mischiefs of religious zealots 
and then nationalist zealots and now what -- free-market 
zealots? The post-humans perhaps.