What happens to a conspiracy revealed?

Wed Mar 12 11:46:32 CDT 2014

how would you suggest we deal with these people? Has the government,
particularly Cheney and Co., taken advantage of the situation to marshall a
brutal, illegal and rather unsubtle political strategy? Of course. But
dudes like Awlaki are still there, and some of them won't be playing nice.

I'm all for proper oversight. I doubt these decisions are made lightly.

On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 12:01 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

>
> On Mar 12, 2014, at 8:19 AM, Monte Davis wrote:
>
> > Luc Herman & Steven Weisenburger, _Gravity's Rainbow, Domination &
> Freedom_, p. 197:
> >
> > . "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.
>
>  I had written  this earlier: The largest consequence of conspiracies
> revealed and ignored is the replacement of law with violence and the
> replacement of original accountable individual language with ideological
> propaganda, self congratulation, passive acquiecence or social pleasantries.
>
> This Weisenburger quote has me further considering this issue of language
> and violence particularly in light of the way the individualized
> programmable robot bombers have become an actuality in the drone. Wow. The
> language that is deployed here is Orwellian, but the principle has been
> used by Nazis Romans and many others. The most effective violence is
> violence that goes unchallenged and gets internalized  in the minds of the
> population as 'safety' and is seen as  only relevant to distant anonymous
> shady dangerous people from an unpopular group.
>  Law is no longer seen as the product of Jeffersonian ideas about the
> consent of the governed but the internal imperial deliberations of a benign
> but angry God.
>
> > The idea of this, as Pynchon well understood in 1973, involves other
> magnitudes of inquiry. The questions at stake are not only legal and moral
> but ontological, involving an order of quasi-beings, or programmable
> (even, decision-making) robots, to do Their killing. Thus also at stake are
> matters of political theology, 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 matters at stake are also theological, as new
> practices of utterly inescapable and seemingly random "death from above"
> tend to signify. The Calvinist Jonathan 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
> >
> > -
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> >
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>
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