AtDTdA (9): 245 [Today's kick-ass, pt 1] ]

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

          Fidgety:
          Todays kick-ass essay question:
          So who issues the Chums' orders? Some government 
          or commercial entity? Something beyond Earth, beyond 
          time, God? What does it say about the Chums that they 
          don't know? And what does it mean that they are 
          beginning to ask questions? People interested in 
          connecting AtD with other works by the same author 
          might do well here; fortunately, I'm not one of them 
          (heh, sic).

"They" issue the orders [of course, you T.W.I.T.] and in Pynchonlandia "They"
are the usual suspects, the Plutocrats playing "The Great Game". Said game
being played now at the White House having more involvement than you (in 
your pre-paranoid state) might imagine. Recall, that the Chums, on one level,
are an exciting new espionage tool. Recall, as well, that we are witnessing 
newfangled forms of espionage throughout Against the Day, reaching their 
most hysterical and O.T.T. forms with the Chums (recall Dr. Mikimoto's pearl 
[with intelligence instructions waiting to be extracted in some highly 
improbable fashion from some 'agent' at a Javanese fish market] to be 
de-crypted on page 113/114).

On one level or another, Pynchon is always looking at "Central Intelligence",
and for some reason is looking at "Central Intelligence" from a variety of
angles. I was introduced to the work of Charles Hollander this year, and note
his take on Pynchon's novels and "Them":

          Pynchon, concerned with history as he is, often writes 
          about the sadness, the tristesse, of the disinherited, 
          the victims in the various situations of his fictions–the 
          Ojibwa, the American blacks, etc. In The Crying of 
          Lot 49, Pynchon writes with a spooky reluctance, as if 
          certain things can not be spoken of, as if they had no 
          name, as if the naming of historical names will go on 
          only through cognate and metaphor, corruptions and 
          low puns which might contain high magic. Indeed, one 
          character is named John Nefastis, “nefastus” meaning 
          nefarious, and a cognate, “nefandous” meaning not to 
          be spoken of. Of the real historical figures alluded to in 
          his mock Jacobean revenge drama, The Courier’s 
          Tragedy, Pynchon says, “It is all a big in-joke. The 
          audience of the time knew.”

          The audience of our time knows too. Joseph Borkin, 
          Leonard Mosley, Cleveland Amory, Ferdinand Lundberg, 
          Victor Perlo, Harvey O'Connor, William Manchester, 
          Anthony Sampson, Morton Mintz, Peter Collier, David 
          Horowitz, Woodward and Bernstein have all made 
          careers out of naming names. Pynchon, by writing 
          “Secretaries James and Foster and Senator Joseph” 
          (Lot 49), when he means us to know that it is Secretary 
          of Defense James V. Forrestal, Secretary of State John 
          Foster Dulles, and US Senator Joseph McCarthy he is 
          discussing, uses technique we would expect of a 
          terrified Russian dissident. (And, speaking of paranoia, 
          both Forrestal and McCarthy spent their last days 
          suffering from mental illness, with Forrestal leaping to 
          his death at the US Naval Hospital, Bethesda, Maryland.) 
          Pynchon writes as though he fears for his life, though 
          we seldom hear of writers being incarcerated for their 
          political views (except perhaps Ezra Pound), let alone 
          being assassinated in this country. . . .

          . . . .We have seen that in Pynchon disinheritance leads 
          to paranoia leads to apocalypse, or at least a wish for 
          retaliation. We have groups planning for their moment 
          of opportunity such as The Sons of the Red Apocalypse, 
          The Schwarzkommando, The Tristero, etc. We have 
          seen that Pynchon’s family was aligned with the old order, 
          the J. P. Morgan group, and that Pynchon. & Co. was 
          brought down at the time of the stock market crash in a 
          way that cast some suspicion on the Chase National 
          Bank, one of the Rockefeller banks. We find Pynchon, 
          not in the mountains leading insurrection, a modern 
          “El Desheredado,” an American Che; but at his typewriter 
          seeking revenge.

http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/inferno.htm

There is much more to be found in Hollander's essays, but what I noted 
was a tendency to hover around such concepts as: ". . . .Chase National 
Bank, one of the Rockefeller banks. . . .", forcing us to have a close look 
at “the century’s master cabal,”:

          In Gravity’s Rainbow, Pynchon has to bring up the 
          long ago relationship between Standard Oil and the 
          I.G. Farbenindustrie. Standard Oil and I.G. Farben 
          did arrange to share world markets in 1936, and as 
          an act of good faith, they exchanged some 2,000 
          patents just prior to World War II. Their multinational 
          character forced them to make arrangements for the 
          contingencies of war.

          When World War II erupted, their loyalties were so strongly 
          with each other that the US government had to bring legal 
          action against both the Standard Oil Co. (NJ) and I.G. 
          Farbenindustrie (see Pynchon’s list, Rainbow 538) for 
          illegal monopolistic practices involving gasoline, toluene, 
          and synthetic rubber patents. The US government seized 
          many of these patents ultimately. Standard Oil, it seems, 
          also gave Farben the technology, personnel and equipment 
          for the production of tetraethyl lead, without which there 
          would have been no high octane aircraft fuel, no luftwaffe, 
          and no war. Then Sen. Harry S. Truman, the investigating 
          committee’s chairman, viewed the relationship between 
          these multinational corporations as treasonable.

          By referring to this multinational liaison as “the century’s 
          master cabal,” Pynchon is suggesting more than corporate 
          cooperation. He is suggesting that World War II was part of 
          the “Plot Which Has No Name,” the concerted effort by the 
          new dynasty to bring down the old dynasty. This is hinted at 
          again and again in the book. Anyone can go to the 1942 
          yearbooks in any public library and get the information from 
          just about any newspaper. Anyone who’s interested knows 
          that John Foster Dulles's law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, 
          represented I.G. Farben during the war and after, as well as 
          the Vereinigte Stahlwerke, and the Shroder Trust, formerly 
          Hitler’s financial agent. It is all known, in the New York Times, 
          in the Senate hearings, in current books about that period.

Of course, Gravity's Rainbow was written many years ago. Still, considering just 
how many bad things Our Beloved Author has to say about the current 
administration (or, if you prefer, "this century’s master cabal"), it behooves 
us to read "American Dynasty" by Kevin Phillips and "The Secret War Against 
the Jews" by John Loftus and Mark Aarons. That continuing link between "the 
century's master cabal" and "this century’s master cabal" happens to be the 
Bush Administration. The connecting points happen to be I.G. Farben and 
Dulles, the C.I.A. and (of all things) Prescott Bush and George Herbert 
Walker. But that follow-up paper will have to wait, as I have to go to work and 
have o'erpassed the word limit for this day's essay anyway. Meanwhile:

          Allen Dulles
          (1893-1969)
          Chief Architect of U.S.-Nazi business and spy networks

          spy at the U.S. embassy in Bern, Switzerland, collecting 
          political data for the State Department on Germany and 
          the Austro-Hungarian empire (1916-1918)
          member, U.S. staff, Versailles Peace Conference (1918-1922)
          head, State Department's Near East Affairs division (1922-27)
          worked with brother John Foster Dulles, as lawyer and 
          international finance specialist for Sullivan & Cromwell, a 
          Wall Street law firm in New York (1927-1941). While there, 
          he worked with top Nazi industrialists and played a pivotal 
          role in promoting U.S.-Nazi corporate relations. Allen worked 
          with Prescott Bush (grandfather of President George Walker 
          Bush) and George Herbert Walker (Prescott's father-in-law) 
          who ran Union Banking Corporation for the Nazis. Allen was 
          legal counsel for Standard Oil and the Nazi's I. G. Farben, 
          co-owned by the Rockefellers. (Other U.S. millionaires allied 
          to the Nazis were: William Randolph Hearst Sr., Andrew 
          Mellon, Irenee du Pont, Henry Ford and J.P. Morgan. 
          Morgan, du Pont and others were even involved in a Fascist 
          plot to overthrow the U.S. government in 1934.)
          President Roosevelt, realizing Dulles was a traitor, had his 
          New York "Office of Coordinator of Information" wiretapped 
          (1941-42). Some Dulles-linked firms, like Bush's Union 
          Banking Corp., were seized under the Trading with the 
          Enemy Act (1942)
          Berne station chief, Office of Strategic Services (1942-1945). 
          Roosevelt's plan to charge Dulles with treason failed when 
          Dulles was warned and covered his tracks (1944). Roosevelt's 
          plan died with him (1945). 
          as OSS station chief in Berlin, Dulles negotiated the agreement 
          with General Reinhard Gehlen to establish a Nazi spy network 
          within the OSS (1945).
          Dulles helped in the development of the CIA (1947), became 
          its deputy director (1951) and its director (1953-1961).  He 
          oversaw numerous covert operations, such as election rigging 
          in Italy (1948), coups in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954) and 
          many other notorious operations described in this issue.
          When Union Banking Corp. was liquidated, Prescott Bush and 
          George Herbert Walker received $1.5 million (1951)
          was fired by President Kennedy after the failed invasion of Cuba 
          at the Bay of Pigs (1961)
          as a member of the Warren Commission, he promoted the theory 
          that a "lone gunman" assassinated John F. Kennedy (1963).
          Sources:

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/kbank/profiles/allen.dulles/
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/randy/swas1.htm

http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/gehlen2-a.htm