Not P just Dylan's latest by indirection

[gary webb]

"Our city-look around you, see with your own eyes-our ship pitches wildly,
cannot lift her head from the depths, the red waves of death...Thebes is
dying. A blight on the fresh crops and the rich pastures, cattle sicken and
die, and the women die in labor, children stillborn, and the plague, the
fiery god of fever hurls down on the city, his lightening slashing through
us-raging plague in all its vengeance, devastating the house of Cadmus! And
black Death luxuriates in the raw, wailing miseries of Thebes" - Sophocles,
Fagles translation (pg.160)

The Kennedy nostalgia is definitely generational... I think culturally,
Americans see the early 60s, Pre-November 1963, through this weird Happy
Days / American Graffiti lens...

Most Americans don't know how violent and dangerous the early Post War Era
was... Robert Caro has given us magisterial books on the life of LBJ, and
really some such treatment is needed for JFK, most Kennedy mainstream
history books are hagiography, or stupid Conservative hit pieces... which
is why books like American Tabloid and Libra are so good, and so
necessary... Fiction has to smash the shield...

Was Joe Kennedy Sr. a bootlegger? And, more specifically, what were his
ties to organized crime? Most Kennedy people deny til red in the face these
allegations, and they're right in the sense that there isn't much evidence
to corroborate... just hearsay from people like Frank Costello and Meyer
Lansky...

"Freedom, oh freedom, freedom over me
<https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-murder-most-foul-lyrics#note-19399828>
I hate to tell you, mister, but only dead men are free
Send me some lovin', then tell me no lie
<https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-murder-most-foul-lyrics#note-19399908>
Throw the gun in the gutter and walk on by
<https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-murder-most-foul-lyrics#note-19466776> "

Throw the gun in the gutter and walk on by...  was this a mob hit?

Also, read Timothy Wiener's Legacy of Ashes... the title comes from a
statement made by Eisenhower to Allen Dulles over the U2 Spy
program...shortly before he left office...

Americans call the early post War period the "Cold War" knowing full well
it was anything but... Most of the world was on fire... China, Korea,
French Indochina, South America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and
Africa (especially France v. Algeria at the time)...

Kennedy inherited Cuba, and his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis no
doubt angered the Hawks hellbent on war (Viz. Dr. Strangelove...), it
angered the Mob who lost untold fortunes due to the triumph of Castro, and
Dulles was sent packing after the Bay of Pigs... What was the connection
between American Organized Crime and the CIA/FBI?

The Camelot thing, to me at least, is easy to dismiss as sort of a Joe
Sr/Media/Hollywood Psy-Op... JFK was a venomous entitled playboy and a very
frail physically sick man... and Kennedy never had the political will to
pursue civil rights (See Baldwin/Kennedy meeting below)... LBJ deserves
some credit on this point... I don't buy that he was "Their" man... despite
his voluminous faults, and his obsession with the Kennedy ghost...(Like
Hamlet, to some extent...)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin%E2%80%93Kennedy_meeting

Verse 2 is Dylan at his best. He's always tried to remove himself from 60s
pop culture, even though he to some extent created it...

I'm goin' to Woodstock, it's the Aquarian Age
Then I'll go over to Altamont and sit near the stage
<https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-murder-most-foul-lyrics#note-19406769>
Put your head out the window, let the good times roll
There's a party going on behind the Grassy Knoll
<https://genius.com/Bob-dylan-murder-most-foul-lyrics#note-19397997>

I think that is is best line in the song. Even though Dylan was living in
Woodstock in 69, and the Aquarian Age was desperately seeking him as their
spokesperson/savior it is remarkable how much he rejected this label. Read
Dylan's words about his state of mind during his sojourn in Woodstock (pg.
116, Chronicles:Volume 1):
"Moochers showed up from as far away as California on pilgrimages. Goons
were breaking into our place all hours of the night. At first, it was
merely nomadic homeless making illegal entry-seemed harmless enough, but
then rogue radicals looking for the Prince of Protest began to
arrive-unaccountable-looking characters, gargoyle-looking gals, scarecrows,
stragglers looking to party, raid the pantry...."

pg. 117:

"These gate-crashers, spooks, trespassers, demagogues were all disrupting
my home life and the fact that I was not to piss them off or they could
press charges really didn't appeal to me. Each day and night was fraught
with difficulties. Everything was wrong, the world was absurd. It was
backing me into a corner. Even persons near and dear offered no relief."

The party behind the Grassy Knoll. It's the distraction...Every moment from
the 60s like the moon landing or Sharon Tate's murder... They all have this
weird conspiracy nexus... Operation Paperclip... Operation Artichoke
(MK-Ultra)... was anything real?

Murder Most Foul is the unanswered questions... maybe even unanswerable..




On Sat, Apr 4, 2020 at 12:46 PM ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:

> What will happen in the poor nations of Africa?
> Will Chinese soft power save the poor blacks, a new paternalism?
> We must have comedy and satire so we can dismantle the conflicts, the
> fights, the wars, so that dialogue can begin laughing on our knees. As
> Bill Withers sez, Lean on me. We got to lean on and we got to stop
> trying to make the best political use of a crisis.
> Surely, comedy is better than the bickering, finger pointing, the
> political revisionism, and the fog.
>
> Chomsky, I say,  would get it.
> Like how we learned to love the plague.
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 4, 2020 at 12:37 PM ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Not an American, so your 45 not mine, but no. He's spot on.
> >
> > Good to call to the German government on selfishness. Open the purse
> > Andrea and spend to support the PIIGS.
> > Spend to support the the world. But Germany, with its fetish for the
> > Zero, though reluctantly has let a few moths out of the purse, is
> > looking out for Germany.
> >
> > Thus far, the worst by, far is the USA. Not surprising.
> > Though Brazil may take the biggest loser prize yet. A trillion BRL is
> > a drop in the bucket.
> > They are behind the curve big time.
> > Pity the Latin American Nations with no chance and winter on the way.
> > Disaster made worse because the USA and Japan ans Europe, the wealthy
> > nations, WHO...etc....fumbled and, not to mention the assholes trying
> > to win oil market share.
> >
> > Shocking, indeed.
> >
> > What can we do? Laugh though our hearts are breaking.
> > But let us not let Chomsky or anyone else off the hook.
> > This is not a war. He condones the military language. BS. This is a
> > pandemic not a war.
> >
> > War is not the answer, Brother.
> >
> > On Sat, Apr 4, 2020 at 11:58 AM Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > Is he so wrong, calling your President a sociopathic buffoon?
> > >
> > > "In Europe, to some extent, it's happened. Germany ... did have spare
> diagnostic capacity and was able to act in a highly selfish fashion, not
> helping others but for itself at least, to evident reasonable containment.
> > >
> > > Other countries just ignored it. The worst was the United Kingdom and
> the worst of all was the United States.
> > >
> > > One day he says, 'There is no crisis, it's just like flu.' The next
> day, 'It's a terrible crisis and I knew it all along.' The next day, 'We
> have to go back to the business, because I have to win the election'. The
> idea that the world is in these hands is shocking."
> > >
> > > No?
> > >
> > >
> > > Am Sa., 4. Apr. 2020 um 16:55 Uhr schrieb ish mailian <
> ishmailian at gmail.com>:
> > >>
> > >> In the classical tradition, Sophocles and Thucydides have been
> > >> mentioned here, and I would add Aristophanes.
> > >> Aristophanes?   Plague jokes? Yeah, we need a comic look at all this.
> > >>
> > >> How bad is this: Watching old man Chomsky try to tie Event 201 to
> > >> Neoliberalism? Can we make fun of Chomsky? The disease is everywhere
> > >> and it stains everything, even our greatest intellectuals.
> > >>
> > >> "This coronavirus pandemic could have been prevented, the information
> > >> was there to prevent it. In fact, it was well-known. In October 2019,
> > >> just before the outbreak, there was a large-scale simulation in the
> > >> United States - possible pandemic of this kind," he said, referring to
> > >> an exercise - titled Event 201 - hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center
> > >> for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and
> > >> the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation."
> > >>
> > >> On Sat, Apr 4, 2020 at 8:47 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > >> >
> > >> > "Stan Brakhage, the filmmaker, once banned the newspaper from his
> house and
> > >> > substituted Tacitus, which he read to his family daily. He had
> reached the
> > >> > assassination of Caesar on November 22, 1963."
> > >> > --
> > >> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> > >> --
> > >> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>