What happens to a conspiracy revealed?

Wed Mar 12 07:19:40 CDT 2014

Luc Herman & Steven Weisenburger, _Gravity's Rainbow, Domination &
Freedom_, p. 197:

The rocket not only defies national borders and oceans, it knows neither
race, gender, nor class (excepting perhaps special dispensations for Them).
"It's eminently fair," says Roger Mexico to Jessica Swanlake early in the
novel. "Everyone's equal. Same chances of getting hit. Equal in the eyes of
the rocket." Roger is riffing on the phrase "equal in the eyes of the law,"
signifying on how the rocket has *become *the law, sovereign unto itself.
As Enzian's fellow trooper Christian insists nearly seven hundred pages
later about life under the rocket: "what protection *is *there? what can
protect us from *that?" *And just before Christian poses those questions,
our narrator has insisted that "heretics" re-fusing this new rocket state
sovereignty "will *all *be sought out. Each will have his personal rocket,"
programmed with his or her vital signs so that "each Rocket will know its
intended and hunt him." Just so. In September 2011, a CIA-controlled drone
aircraft launched a Hellfire missile that obliterated a car racing across
the desert of Yemen and carrying a U.S. citizen named Anwar al-Awlaki in
addition to several top Al Qaeda militants. The killing sparked a heated
debate over what the *New York Times *story framed as "the legality--and
morality--of putting an American citizen on a list of top mili-tants marked
for death." The state's killing of a citizen without due legal process puts
before one a problem for U.S. and international law. The *idea *of this, as
Pynchon well understood in 1973, involves other magnitudes of in-quiry. The
questions at stake are not only legal and moral but ontological, in-volving
an order of quasi-beings, or programmable (even, decision-making) robots,
to do Their killing. Thus also at stake are matters of political theol-ogy,
entailing what if anything a sovereign power may *not *do, a question of
just whom executive authority may count as having reached a degree-zero of
humanity, a rightsless condition warranting enslavement or killing. The
mat-ters at stake are also theological, as new practices of utterly
inescapable and seemingly random "death from above" tend to signify. The
Calvinist Jona-than Edwards, who famously sermonized on "Sinners in the
Hands of an Angry God" (1741), understood quite well the holy terror of
such a death.

On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 3:31 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

> Sure, countries have their reasons. Why judge them? If British
> intelligence thinks they've spotted an al Qaeda cell in my neighborhood,
> and accidentally drops a bomb on my house, why judge them? Hey, it was a
> judgment call. Average people around the world have good reasons for doing
> what they do. Why judge them for murder, for rape, for torturing babies?
> They have their reasons. Who are we to judge? Law is a ridiculous
> imposition of some people's morality on someone else. Why even bother with
> it?
>
> Laura
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: rich
> Sent: Mar 10, 2014 3:05 PM
> To: kelber
> Cc: "pynchon-l at waste.org"
> Subject: Re: What happens to a conspiracy revealed?
>
> when you know they have been or are actively engaged in planning terrorist
> operations like Awalaki? i have no problem with that frankly. russians have
> been doing it so has iran iraq, the UK, Israel, etc. thats what cover ops
> is about. is it moral? can we judge what countries do in moral terms? i'm
> not so sure
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 2:47 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>> It is all out in the open. See: Jeremy Scahill's book (or documentary
>> version) Dirty Wars. That was my original point: it doesn't change anything
>> when these clandestine activities are aired.
>>
>> So, Rich, when the US perceives someone's rhetoric as a threat, it's OK
>> to go into whatever country houses them and murder them, collateral damage
>> be damned? I assume then, that this response is also OK for Russia, for
>> Iran, for North Korea, etc.?
>>
>> Laura
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: rich
>> Sent: Mar 10, 2014 2:33 PM
>> To: Monte Davis
>> Cc: kelber
>> Subject: Re: What happens to a conspiracy revealed?
>>
>> u expect all this to be out in the open? all we can hope for is proper
>> oversight. and I do trust our current President on this.
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 2:26 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Sorry, Laura, that's classified. As is the process by which the
>>> decisions were made. As is the modified revised extended FISA protocol by
>>> which you will be put under surveillance -- well, *more* surveillance -- if
>>> you keep asking.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 1:59 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Which were warranted?
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: rich
>>>> Sent: Mar 10, 2014 1:45 PM
>>>> To: kelber
>>>> Cc: "pynchon-l at waste.org"
>>>> Subject: Re: What happens to a conspiracy revealed?
>>>>
>>>> some of those "murders" were warranted. just saying
>>>> Look, I get the concern here but I also think that total transparency
>>>> is just as dangerous. Not sure the snowdens and assanges really get that.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 1:33 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Acceptance from the right-wing is a given. It's harder to take from
>>>>> people, politicians and newspapers who present themselves as thoughtful and
>>>>> socially progressive.
>>>>>
>>>>> LK
>>>>>
>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: Monte Davis
>>>>> Sent: Mar 10, 2014 1:25 PM
>>>>> To: kelber
>>>>> Cc: "pynchon-l at waste.org"
>>>>> Subject: Re: What happens to a conspiracy revealed?
>>>>>
>>>>> Casual acceptance, hell -- rousing ovations! Check out Charlie
>>>>> Pierce's coverage of star speakers at CPAC over the last few days:  Ollie
>>>>> North, Scooter Libby, Bernard Kerik...
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/crooks-at-cpac-2014-030714
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 12:59 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> What happens when a conspiracy is revealed to the public? Not much.
>>>>>> What about anything has changed since Snowden's revelations? The shadowy
>>>>>> group journalist Jeremy Scahill was investigating, Joint Strategic
>>>>>> Operations Command - responsible for thousands of covert murders across the
>>>>>> globe - was revealed and publicly lauded in the midst of Scahill's
>>>>>> investigation. What happened? Nothing.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Today, another conspiracy is cheerfully reported in the NY Times in
>>>>>> the guise of a story about business prowess:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/business/staking-1-billion-that-herbalife-will-fail-then-ackman-lobbying-to-bring-it-down.html?hp&_r=0
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Which leads to the question: is it still a conspiracy if it's
>>>>>> completely out in the open? Isn't the excitement of delving into a
>>>>>> conspiracy the stray hope: "once people find out about this ..."
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Not sure that Pynchon answers this fully in any of his books. Sure,
>>>>>> he points to a lot of tips of icebergs and facades: industry as the front
>>>>>> for something much more sinister, on an almost metaphysical plane. We
>>>>>> understand that his "They," while they may have specific servants, don't
>>>>>> exist in any tangible form. Can't un-elect them, can't storm their
>>>>>> chateaux. But the problem is, when "They" get too metaphysical, they start
>>>>>> blending in with the metaphysical scenery - God, Nature, The Universe, Fate.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But what would happen if the really sinister characters were
>>>>>> revealed? If there was a complete analysis of Scarsdale Vibe's or Brock
>>>>>> Vond's doings on the front page of the paper of record, and it was treated
>>>>>> as a celebration of ingenuity, rather than an indictment or a
>>>>>> history-changing moment? To me, this is scarier than any "They" in
>>>>>> Pynchon's writings, because this is really happening today here in our
>>>>>> world. Pynchon's always known about these people. We all have. It's the
>>>>>> casual acceptance of them that comes as a shock.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Laura
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -
>>>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>  - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>  - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>  - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
>
>  - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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