"an arrangment of fetishes"

[pynchonoid]

General reverses his role 
by David Lazarus
Wednesday, February 26, 2003 

<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/02/26/BU48310.DTL>

The retired general tapped by the Bush administration
to oversee rebuilding of post-war Iraq was, until just
a few weeks ago, an executive at a leading defense
contractor working on missile systems that would be
used to bomb Baghdad. 

Although a Pentagon official said Jay Garner's new
role as head of the Office of Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Assistance does not constitute a conflict
of interest, ethics experts say the appointment raises
troubling questions. 

Why, they ask, would the White House pick a man from a
company directly concerned with attacking Iraq to
spearhead the country's aid and restoration? [...] "

"[...] this ex-refinery, Jamf Olfabriken Werke AG, is
not a ruin at all. It is in perfect working order.
Only waiting for the right connections to be set up,
to be switched on . . . modified, precisely,
deliberately by bombing that was never hostile, but
part of a plan both sides -- "sides?"-- had always
agreed on . . . [...] if what the IG built on this
site were not at all the final shape of it, but only
an arrangment of fetishes, come-ons to call down
special tools in the form of 8th AF bombers [...] It
means this War was never political at all, the
politics was all theater, all just to keep the people
distracted . . . secretly, it was being dictated
instead by the needs of technology . . . by a
conspiracy between human beings and techniques, by
something that needed the energy-burst of war, crying,
'Money be damned, the very life of [insert name of
Nation] is at stake," but meaning, most likely, dawn
is nearly here, I need my night's blood, my funding,
funding, ahh more, more. . . . The real crises were
crises of allocationa nd priority, not among firms--it
was only staged to look that way--but among the
different Technologies, Plastics, Electronics,
Aircraft, and their needs which are understood only by
the ruling elite . . . " 
(Gravity's Rainbow, p. 520-521)


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