Fang

[Mark Kohut]

a little more Nixon from "Nixonland":

Even I remember his 'controversial' trip to China as President, but what I did not know was how often he made Asian trips before that.

He went a number of times for the Eisenhower administration and, when out
of office, it was major travel for his law company work.

And, speak of paranoia? Nixon, for his own political self, of course, seemed to be as paranoid as ANYONE in GR---

Nixonland focuses on the politics of resentment in recent America ---Nixon able to identify with it personally, so see and use it politically. The author reminds us that his Checkers and "Won't have me to kick around anymore" speeches, which firmed all "liberals" against him---he was much more liberal than Goldwater, say----had a huge sympathetic response from 
the fellow-victim-feeling, so to speak, out in America. 



--- On Sat, 10/17/09, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
> Subject: Re: Fang
> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Saturday, October 17, 2009, 12:27 AM
> 
> On Oct 16, 2009, at 11:34 PM, Richard Fiero wrote:
> 
> > Joseph Tracy wrote:
> >> . . .
> >> Interestingly the KMT was a major player in opium
> distribution which
> >> after after retreating to Taiwan was shifted from
> Sichuan &Yunnan to
> >> Burma where they had a stronghold from fighting
> Japan In Burma. This
> >  . . .
> > I think we know that the Kuomintang was fascist,
> killed 10M people and split to Taiwan with the treasury.
> Eisenhower referred to Chiang Kai-shek as "cash-my-check."
> The evidence supporting the assertions in the indicated post
> is entirely missing.
> 
> Sorry. I read it in several sources so assumed it to be
> reliable. A Kuomintang Golden Triangle  search will
> turn up plenty.  Or Kuomintang opium. The CIF(Chinese
> irregular forces) a breakoff  of KMT was also a major
> player. The trouble with this stuff is that much of the
> information comes from ex CIA, ex trafficers,  ex
> military and writers interested in the great game. 
> Drugs, the U.S., and Khun Sa  by Francis W.
> Belanger;  Opium: A History By Martin Booth
> 
> The following passage is from The politics of heroin in
> Southeast Asia ( Harper &Row)
> by Alfred W McCoy     -McCoy (born June
> 8, 1945) is a historian and a Professor of History at the
> University of Wisconsin–Madison. He earned his B.A. from
> Columbia College[1], and his Ph.D in Southeastern Asian
> history from Yale University. The CIA bought up a bunch of
> copies.
> "The precipitous collapse of the Nationalist Chinese
> (Kuomintang, or KMT) government in 1949 convinced the Truman
> administration that it had to stem “the southward flow of
> communism” into Southeast Asia. In 1950 the Defense
> Department extended military aid to the French in Indochina.
> In that same year, the CIA began regrouping those remnants
> of the defeated Kuomintang army in the Burmese Shan States
> for a projected invasion of southern China. Although the KMT
> army was to fail in its military operations, it succeeded in
> monopolizing and expanding the Shan States’ opium trade.
> … With CIA support, the KMT remained in Burma until 1961,
> when a Burmese army offensive drove them into Laos and
> Thailand. By this time, however, the Kuomintang had already
> used their control over the tribal populations to expand
> Shan State opium production by almost 1,000 percent-from
> less than 40 tons after World War 11 to an estimated three
> hundred to four hundred tons by 1962. From bases in northern
> Thailand the KMT have continued to send huge mule caravans
> into the Shan States to bring out the opium harvest. Today
> [1972], over twenty years after the CIA first began
> supporting KMT troops in the Golden Triangle region, these
> KMT caravans control almost a third of the world’s total
> illicit opium supply and have a growing share of Southeast
> Asia’s thriving heroin business.
> 
> 
> > P has pulled this Chinese trick a couple three times.
> > Once in AtD pg 336-339 in Dally's White Slavery acting
> job. Pg 338 "'Mock Duck's boys,' Katie whispered. 'The real
> article. Not like the play-actors you'll be playing with.'"
> > This may have been inspired by Herbert Asbury's
> "Barbary Coast" (1933 Garden City Publishing) which is
> essential reading for AtD if one doesn't know that a
> "deadfall" is an establishment where drinking and gambling
> take place.
> > "Barbary Coast" about San Francisco's Chinatown
> 1875-1910, pg 166: "Many of the places where opium was
> smoked, or was supposed to be smoked, were fakes,
> tourist-shockers conducted by the professional guides to the
> quarter, who were licensed by the city and were organized as
> the Chinatown Guides Association.  These abodes of
> synthetic sin were invariably in dank and dreary cellars,
> dangerous underground passages.  In many of these dimly
> lighted ways evil-looking Chinamen, in the employ of the
> guides, slunk back and forth, carrying knives and hatchets
> and providing atmosphere and local color. . . . This fancy
> persisted until the district was destroyed in 1906
> [earthquake].  While it lay in ruins, the whole area
> was carefully explored and mapped. Not a single underground
> passage was discovered, and few cellars larger or deeper
> than are commonly found under dwellings and business
> houses."
> 
> 
>