What happens to a conspiracy revealed?

[Joseph Tracy]

 You can make things look good if you externalize and hide the costs. Bernie Madoff and Goldman had some real smart people believing them too. The point of BE is that we sure as hell aren't gonna allow some skeptical smart mother to do the numbers. I may be a preacher and a loose, wiggly and speedy fish but I sure as hell am not some kind of true believer in the kindness  abundance and goodness of your beloved empire. I will leave that to those in the missionary position or on their knees.    I have 2 older friends, the Kahns, who live inNorth Bennington; he taught school in Brooklyn most of his life, she worked at the UN then the Frick. They started out loving Obama and now are crushed by what they see. Once in Friends' meeting they said that after years in NYC they decided to come to Vermont and vote against progress. I'm with them.
On Mar 14, 2014, at 8:55 AM, alice malice wrote:

> Here is a good example of the decline theory from Robert J. Gordon.
> 
> Global growth is slowing - especially in advanced-technology
> economies. This column argues that regardless of cyclical trends,
> long-term economic growth may grind to a halt. Two and a half
> centuries of rising per-capita incomes could well turn out to be a
> unique episode in human history.
> 
> What Gordon's Malthusian projections ignore is the lag in Technology,
> a lag that is about 20 years, so the current Revolution has not yet
> experiemced the growth that the new technologies will add to GDP. And,
> of course, the Great Contraction has distorted the data to the
> downside. It is interesting that the Americans both ignore the fact
> that they live in the Wealth Empire, and take the bemnefits of it at
> the expense of the rest of the world, and that they keep predicting
> its end, fall, collapse. Meanwhile, it goes on and on like the
> Energizer Bunny.
> 
> http://www.voxeu.org/article/us-economic-growth-over
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 8:36 AM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The arguments about the greed machine that is Amerika often ignores
>> the simple facts. Like the fact that US has tons of land and
>> resources. It has a domestic service economy driven by consumption. So
>> a 17 trillion $ economy (25% of world GDP)  with only 1.5 trillion in
>> exports, with 35% going to Canada and Mexico, another 5% to Japan. The
>> US has managed to maintain steady GDP growth, with a fairly constant
>> per capita growth, and a higher standard and quality of living for a
>> growing population for a century. Impressive by any measure. At what
>> cost? To the world, the planet, etc....? Sure, but just want toget
>> those basic, usually ignored facts into the argument.
>> 
>> 
>> On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 5:21 AM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Other than Guantanamo, the net effect is not the same. And, the fact that
>>> the US Empire is a wealth empire, that is, from the end of WWII, when the US
>>> assumed the role of Empire, a position, contrary to decline and collapse
>>> theories, and despite the Bush administrations response to 9-11, that it has
>>> a firmer grip on now, makes it different from Russia, from Israel...etc.
>>> it's not just a matter of style. Grabbing land in the 21st century is
>>> counterproductive. War is also counterproductive. Both weaken the wealth
>>> empire.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Thursday, March 13, 2014, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Guantanamo where we took part of the island, Iraq where we felt our
>>>> national interests threatened ( probably by the possibility of movement to
>>>> another currency for trading oil), Iran where we have planted military bases
>>>> on every border. Our style is different but the net effect is the same . For
>>>> years we had a thing called the Monroe doctrine which is a version of the
>>>> same thing.  Do we endorse rigged Mexican elections for political reasons?
>>>> Lots of Mexicans think so.  Under Reagan The US aided Iraq in its attempt to
>>>> seize territory from Iran giving them chemical weapons and other weapons. If
>>>> they had succeeded, would the US have then insisted they return the land
>>>> because it was illegal under the UN charter?  We continue to aid Israel
>>>> despite violation of UN and US official opposition to the occupation of the
>>>> west Bank.
>>>>  Look, I think Putin violated agreements with Ukraine in seizing Crimea
>>>> but when you overthrow a government, can you expect agreements that were
>>>> made under that government to stand what? What are the rules for armed
>>>> takeovers as far as ok for some , not for others. We also have violated many
>>>> agreements in our wars.  The idea that the US plays by the rules is clearly
>>>> unsupportable.
>>>> 
>>>> I suppose if the Ukrainians of bot regions play their cards right they can
>>>> get a kind of bidding war going for their ideological allegiance.
>>>> On Mar 13, 2014, at 5:58 PM, malignd at aol.com wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Give an example.  We would go into, say, Mexico, and annex some portion
>>>>> of it that is English speaking?
>>>>> The Russian actions in the Crimea are exactly what the US would do in
>>>>> similar circumstances.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
>>>>> To: P-list List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>>>> Sent: Thu, Mar 13, 2014 3:37 pm
>>>>> Subject: Re: What happens to a conspiracy revealed?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Snyder shows one side of the picture and i really believe it is true to
>>>>> many
>>>>> Ukrainians. Yanukovich was a greedy asshole.  But there were also
>>>>> killings of
>>>>> police, hardcore anti-semitism, the overthrow of an elected government
>>>>> and an
>>>>> unwillingness to negotiate a transition despite the closeness of the
>>>>> next
>>>>> elections. When you pursue the overthrow of a government, even one
>>>>> elected by
>>>>> majority vote, there is no place including the US where you will not
>>>>> find
>>>>> violent resistance by the authorities.  I have tried to listen to all
>>>>> sides of a
>>>>> story in a place that I don't know much about. What I have a hard time
>>>>> with is
>>>>> the US choosing a less than wildly popular central banker to be the
>>>>> "interim
>>>>> prime minister" . And I am skeptical that it was a truly democratic
>>>>> process  to
>>>>> endorse him. I hope for the best for a real revolution that makes a
>>>>> better
>>>>> society.  The Russian actions in the Crimea are exactly what the US
>>>>> would do in
>>>>> similar circumstances. They have been careful to avoid unneeded
>>>>> violence.  I
>>>>> think accepting this division is realistic and relatively harmless.  I
>>>>> predict
>>>>> it will stand with the approval of the Crimean majority and be
>>>>> inconsequential.
>>>>> I don't think Ukraine will have solved its problems by joining the EU if
>>>>> they do
>>>>> so. Happy to be wrong about that.
>>>>> 
>>>>> As to his last question the US was as diverse a population as anywhere
>>>>> on the
>>>>> planet at the time of the revolution though it was clearly led by
>>>>> millionaire
>>>>> merchants, land speculators etc. the soldiers were quite diverse as was
>>>>> the case
>>>>> in South American revolutions.  For me the question is more whether the
>>>>> revolutionaries represent a consensus of Ukrainians. I simply don't know
>>>>> and
>>>>> don't feel much effort has been made to really answer that question in
>>>>> an open
>>>>> honest way.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Mar 13, 2014, at 1:38 PM, rich wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> passion is one thing. Here's Timothy Snyder on the uprising in Ukraine
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/mar/01/ukraine-haze-propaganda/
>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 'In December the crowds grew larger. By the end of the year, millions
>>>>>> of
>>>>> people had taken part in protests, all over the country. Journalists
>>>>> were
>>>>> beaten. Individual activists were abducted. Some of them were tortured.
>>>>> Dozens
>>>>> disappeared and have not yet been found. As the New Year began the
>>>>> protests
>>>>> broadened. Muslims from southern Ukraine marched in large numbers.
>>>>> Representatives of the large Kiev Jewish community were prominently
>>>>> represented.
>>>>> Some of the most important organizers were Jews. The telephone hotline
>>>>> that
>>>>> people called to seek missing relatives was established by gay activists
>>>>> (people
>>>>> who have experience with hotlines). Some of the hospital guards who
>>>>> tried to
>>>>> stop the police from abducting the wounded were young feminists. '
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 'Who was killed? Dozens of people, in all about a hundred, most of
>>>>>> them young
>>>>> men. Bohdan Solchanyk was a young lecturer at the Ukrainian Catholic
>>>>> University,
>>>>> a Ukrainian speaker from western Ukraine. He was shot and killed. Yevhen
>>>>> Kotlyov
>>>>> was an environmentalist from Kharkiv, a Russian speaker from eastern
>>>>> Ukraine. He
>>>>> was shot and killed. One of the people killed was a Russian citizen; a
>>>>> number of
>>>>> Russians had come to fight--most of them anarchists who had come to aid
>>>>> their
>>>>> Ukrainian anarchist comrades. At least two of those killed by the
>>>>> regime, and
>>>>> perhaps more, were Jews. One of those "Afghans," Ukrainian veterans of
>>>>> the Red
>>>>> Army's war in Afghanistan, was Jewish: Alexander Scherbatyuk. He was
>>>>> shot and
>>>>> killed by a sniper. Another of those killed was a Pole, a me
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