Foreword: "Even fascists have needs"

[pynchonoid]

 "Controlling desire, however, is more problematic.
[...] Even fascists have needs, which, at least so
they dream, the enjoyment of limitless power will
allow them to indulge. [...] The point that sexual
desire, taken on its own terms, is _inherently
subversive_ is pursued here by way of Julia, with her
cheerfully lustful approach to life. "
--Thomas Pynchon, Foreword to _1984_

Another of Pynchon's many "dual-use" passages in the
Foreword, serving his analysis and interpretation of
_1984_ and almost ringing a bell in its direct
reference to his fiction, in particular the S&M sex in
GR and elsewhere.  

Re Blicero in the latest battle of the War that never
ends:

"Military police are questioning a British soldier
about photographs of alleged "torture" of Iraqi
prisoners of war, including one gagged and bound, and
dangling in netting from a fork-lift truck. 

Other photos allegedly show soldiers commiting sex
acts in front of captured Iraqis. [...]"

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,967528,00.html>

....And, speaking of Supreme Court-approved torture
here in the good ol' US of A, Amy Goodman facilitated
a good discussion of that recent decision on her radio
show, Democracy Now!, yesterday, 30 May 03. It
includes broadcast of the tape recording of the man a
police officer interrogated in the ambulance and
emergency room after he had been shot 5 times.  And,
speaking of doublethink, the police officer's lawyer
claims his client was engaged in an act of
"compassion", not torture; he made this claim as
Goodman played the tape of the victim's screams on the
broadcast yesterday:

<http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/30/1610234>




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