feeding hungry people

[MalignD at aol.com]

Some questions:
  
<<...  what I have found to be sickening and disgraceful cheerleading for 
what I am certain will be viewed, by civilized people... >>

Those who disagree with you, who believe a military response necessary, and 
say as much (some what:  94% of the American citizenry?), are engaged in 
sickening and disgraceful cheerleading and will be found by history to live 
outside the "civilized"?  Your opinion, of course, but do you believe this is 
stimulating discussion and providing an opening to civilized discourse; i.e., 
different from the posts of others on this list you so vehemently (and 
regularly) decry?
   
<<... as another criminal war that serves primarily to protect corrupt 
governments and earn profits for multinational corporations  (anybody else 
notice that Wall Street is back to pre-September 11 highs).>>

You would have one believe that, in light of the horrific events of September 
11, the military response is yet "primarily" an opportunistic ploy to earn 
profits for corporations?  Do you have any facts to back this up?  What facts 
show this to be the cause of Wall Street's recent upturn (as opposed to a 
returning of consumer confidence generally?)  Is it not possible that there 
might be no causality?  I.e., a nation going to war will be economically 
stimulating to those industries that fuel the war effort; it doesn't 
logically follow that those industries applaud the war or have played a role 
in shaping the course of it.  One doesn't need logic, of course, if one has 
evidence.  Perhaps you do?

<<I remain astonished that people could claim to understand Pynchon and at 
the same time defend-- not to mention the cretins who crow and drool over the 
blood --  these attacks on Afghanistan.>>

One cannot "understand" Pynchon and yet find a military response to the 
current situation ("cretins who crow and drool over the blood," in your 
quotable prose) warranted and necessary?  "Understanding" Pynchon requires 
agreement with a perceived notion of what Pynchon would think now, based on 
things he wrote prior to the events, in some cases over thirty years prior?

<<...  frustrated once again that a compliant corporate media is pounding us 
with government propaganda ...>>

Do you believe that the "corporate media" is monolithic in action and 
opinion?  In editorial lockstep?  The Times and Wall Street Journal, for 
instance?  Can you show specific evidence of compliance?  What is the 
"corporate media"?  The Village Voice?  The New Yorker?  The Nation? 
 
<<... if Bush has his way and follows through on his promise to expand and 
prolong the war.>>

Has he made such a "promise"?  Perhaps he has, somewhere (and you'll cite 
it), although all I've heard are generally careful and sober warnings that 
the nature of the situation will likely preclude a swift end.

<<I think this is not completely unlike the kind of situation that made 
Pynchon -- confronted with an America in which a "silent majority" and a 
criminal government (no exaggeration, that -- both Nixon and Agnew had to 
resign in the face of criminal charges, not to mention the disgusting crimes 
of the CIA and other intelligence services) supported a war against the 
Vietnamese people that has been judged by history to be criminal -- angry 
enough to write GR and condemn and the War that never ends and demonstrate 
how multinational corporations profit from the deaths of innocents in war.>>

This seems a conflagration of mixed and dubious assertions--what prompted 
Pynchon to write GR (you have no idea); that the current situation and the 
people involved, in their motives and actions, are analogous to those of 
thirty years ago; that this is somehow evidence of what Pynchon would think 
of the current situation.  All speculation, no?