BEg2 chapter 10 opening the brief,

[Mark Kohut]

That talking federal penis is key to a major part of Maxine's character,
her very being erotically. We've been here in allusive conversation.

*Opera* is a form of theatre <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre> in
which music <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music> is a fundamental
component and dramatic roles are taken by singers
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singing>, but is distinct from musical
theatre <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_theatre>.[
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera#cite_note-1>
"It's all theater now"---GR

TOSCA:

It contains depictions of torture, murder, and suicide, as well as some of
Puccini's best-known lyrical arias.

. *Tosca* premiered at a time of unrest in Rome, and its first performance
was delayed for a day for fear of disturbances. Despite indifferent reviews
from the critics, the opera was an immediate success with the public

Musically, *Tosca* is structured as a through-composed
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through-composed#Opera_and_musicals> work,
with arias <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aria>, recitative
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recitative>, choruses and other elements
musically woven into a seamless whole. Puccini used Wagnerian
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wagner> leitmotifs
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitmotif> to identify characters, objects
and ideas. While critics have often dismissed the opera as a facile
melodrama with confusions of plot—musicologist Joseph Kerman
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kerman> famously called it a "shabby
little shocker"[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tosca#cite_note-1>[2]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tosca#cite_note-2>[3]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tosca#cite_note-FOOTNOTETommasini2018370-3>—the
power of its score and the inventiveness of its orchestration have been
widely acknowledged. The dramatic force of *Tosca* and its characters
continues to fascinate both performers and audiences, and the work remains
one of the most frequently performed operas. Many recordings of the work
have been issued, both of studio and live performances.

On Sun, Dec 19, 2021 at 6:46 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> Nice essential summary. Did leave out the talking federal penis aspect of
> the dream though. Probably not key to the plot.
>
> Nessun Dorma’s melody is so Roy Orbison. He did a song to the melody
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hQAAes036c <
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hQAAes036c>
>
> Ernie is an old art-loving lefty with a knack for getting on the same
> wavelength as his grand kids( space ghost) and Maxine despite her lack of
> opera fluency.  Can’t help but identify with him.
> Ernie didn't care for Windust.
> “This is 2001, Maxeleh,” Ernie now shaking his head back and forth, “the
> Cold War is supposed to be over, how can these people not have changed or
> moved on, where is such a terrible inertia coming from?”
> “You always used to say their time hasn’t passed, it’s yet to come.”
>        That’s a pretty foreboding and accurate prediction.
>
> I was intrigued at how Elaine shifted her thinking slightly about Windust
> by considering Tosca. This body of operatic art has become a common
> language shared between Ernie and Elaine. The King James Bible used to
> serve a similar broad cultural role along with Shakespeare and some other
> texts. That has disappeared in the course of my life and people have less
> and less cultural common ground and what there is is often distorted.
>
> I really liked the scene when Maxine goes out following the Sappho quote
> when it has just begun to rain and has uplifted the mood on the streets.
> This is something I have seen in San Francisco, Berkely and NYC where the
> mood, sounds and sights shift with the weather. It's a special thing you
> don’t get in a rural or suburban community, at least in anything like the
> same intensity.
>
> umbrella contact can be erotic.
>  “If it’s the right umbrella, you’re saying,” Heidi once sought to
> clarify.
> “Picky Heidi, any umbrella, what would it matter?”
> “Airhead Maxi, it could be Ted Bundy.” Which this evening turns out to be
> something like that, actually.
>
> It is hard to know the actual intent of Windust’s visit. After ordering
> morir sonando ( with a tilde on n)which translates as  sleeping death and
> is known to Maxi to be blended creamsicles, he focuses in on Promis,
> particulalry its promotion by Mossad and though he didn’t directly  say Avi
> worked on Promis in Israel, he suggests the possibility that Avi is
> possibly a Mossad sleeper.
>      But he also asks her about her work looking into hashslingerz.  Maxi
> wants to know how he knows this and he says something about no keystroke
> left behind. 2001 was the year the No Child act was promoted and became
> law. The freedom to secretly follow keystrokes without warrant was not
> officially accomplished until Obama, though Cheney promoted it as TIA.
> Pynchon has the agency which is purportedly worried about Promis using it
> or something more invasive rather early in the known survellance timeline.
>
> what follows isfrom Whitney Webb writing about Promis, Mossad, Robert
> Maxwell.( Most of these figures also knew and/or worked with Jeffrey
> Epstein.)
> https://unlimitedhangout.com/2019/08/investigative-series/mega-group-maxwells-and-mossad-the-spy-story-at-the-heart-of-the-jeffrey-epstein-scandal/
> <
> https://unlimitedhangout.com/2019/08/investigative-series/mega-group-maxwells-and-mossad-the-spy-story-at-the-heart-of-the-jeffrey-epstein-scandal/
> >
>
>
>     Maxwell was also a close associate and friend of Israeli “superspy”
> Rafi Eitan, who, as previously mentioned, was Jonathan Pollard’s handler
> and who had previously worked directly with Meyer Lansky. Eitan had learned
> <
> https://books.google.cl/books?id=2wlXxBhEMpMC&pg=PA210&dq=funeral+%22robert+maxwell%22&hl=es-419&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiGseit2eTjAhXwH7kGHUn6AvAQ6AEINTAC#v=onepage&q=PROMIS%20maxwell&f=false>
> of a revolutionary new software being used by the U.S. government known as
> “Promis” from Earl Brian, a long-time associate and aide to Ronald Reagan.
> Promis is often considered the forerunner to the “Prism” software used by
> spy agencies today and was developed by William Hamilton, who leased the
> software to the U.S. government through his company, Inslaw, in 1982.
> According to author and former BBC investigative journalist Gordon Thomas,
> Brian was angry <
> https://books.google.cl/books?id=2wlXxBhEMpMC&pg=PA210&dq=funeral+%22robert+maxwell%22&hl=es-419&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiGseit2eTjAhXwH7kGHUn6AvAQ6AEINTAC#v=onepage&q=PROMIS%20maxwell&f=false>
> that the U.S. Department of Justice was successfully using Promis to go
> after organized crime and money-laundering activities and Eitan felt that
> the program could aid Israel. At the time, Eitan was the director of the
> now defunct Israeli military intelligence agency Lekem, which gathered
> scientific and technical intelligence abroad from both public and covert
> sources, especially in relation to Israel’s nuclear weapons program.
>
> A plan was hatched to install a “trapdoor” <
> https://books.google.cl/books?id=2wlXxBhEMpMC&pg=PA210&dq=funeral+%22robert+maxwell%22&hl=es-419&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiGseit2eTjAhXwH7kGHUn6AvAQ6AEINTAC#v=onepage&q=PROMIS%20maxwell&f=false>
> into the software and then market Promis throughout the world, providing
> the Mossad with invaluable intelligence on the operations of its enemies
> and allies while also providing Eitan and Brian with copious amounts of
> cash. According to the testimony of ex-Mossad official Ari Ben-Menashe,
> Brian provided a copy <
> http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?inslawpromis_the_inslaw_dispute_and_promis=inslawpromis_oversight_by_congress&timeline=inslawpromis>
> of Promis to Israel’s military intelligence, which contacted an Israeli
> American programmer living in California who then planted the “trapdoor” in
> the software. The CIA was later said to have installed its own trapdoor in
> the software but it is unknown if they did so with a version of the already
> bugged software and how widely it was adopted relative to the version
> bugged by Israeli intelligence.
>
> After the trapdoor was inserted, the problem became selling the bugged
> version of the software to governments as well as private companies around
> the world, particularly in areas of interest. Brian first attempted to buy
> out Inslaw and Promis and then use that same company to sell the bugged
> version.
>
> Unsuccessful, Brian turned to his close friend, then-Attorney General Ed
> Meese whose Justice Department then abruptly refused <
> https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/may/16/FBI-promis-part-1/> to
> make the payments to Inslaw that were stipulated by the contract,
> essentially using the software for free, which Inslaw claimed to be theft.
> Some have speculated that Meese’s role in that decision was shaped, not
> only by his friendship with Brian, but the fact that his wife was a major
> investor <
> https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/may/16/FBI-promis-part-1/> in
> Brian’s business ventures. Meese would later become an adviser to Donald
> Trump when he was president-elect.
>
> Inslaw was forced to declare bankruptcy as a result of Meese’s actions and
> sued the Justice Department. The court later found <
> https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/may/16/FBI-promis-part-1/>
> that the Meese-led department “took, converted, stole” the software through
> “trickery, fraud and deceit.”
>
> With Inslaw out of the way, Brian sold the software all over the world.
> Eitan later recruited Robert Maxwell to become another Promis salesman,
> which he did remarkably well, even succeeding in selling the software to
> Soviet intelligence and conspiring with <
> https://www.wrmea.org/003-september/book-review-robert-maxwell-israel-s-superspy.html>
> Republican Texas Senator John Tower to have the software adopted by the
> U.S. government laboratory at Los Alamos. Dozens of countries used the
> software on their most carefully guarded computer systems, unaware that
> Mossad now had access to everything Promis touched.
>
> Whereas the Mossad’s past reliance on gathering intelligence had relied on
> the same tactics used by its equivalents in the U.S. and elsewhere, the
> widespread adoption of the Promis software, largely through the actions of
> Earl Brian and Robert Maxwell, gave the Mossad a way to gather not just
> troves of counterintelligence data, but also blackmail on other
> intelligence agencies and powerful figures.
>
> Indeed, Promis’ backdoor and adoption by intelligence agencies all over
> the world essentially provided the Mossad with access to troves of
> blackmail that the CIA and FBI had acquired on their friends and foes for
> over half a century. Strangely, in recent years, the FBI has sought to hide
> <
> https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/jun/28/sir-robert-maxwells-fbi-PROMIS/>
> information related to Robert Maxwell’s connection to the Promis scandal.
>
> According to journalist Robert Fisk <
> https://www.counterpunch.org/2004/03/26/the-ordeal-of-mordechai-vanunu/>,
> Maxwell was also involved in the Mossad abduction of Israeli nuclear
> weapons whistleblower Vanunu Mordechai. Mordechai had attempted to provide
> the media with information on the extent of Israel’s nuclear weapons
> program, which was eventually published by the Sunday Times of London. Yet,
> Mordechai had also contacted the Daily Mirrorwith the information, the
> Mirror being an outlet that was owned by Maxwell and whose foreign editor
> was a close Maxwell associate and alleged Mossad asset, Nicholas Davies.
> Journalist Seymour Hersh alleged that Davies had also been involved in
> Israeli arms deals.
>
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>    So even though Maxine is reading Windust's reference to Promis as a
> form of anti-semitic paranoia, some pretty serious issues of intellectual
> theft,  abuse of power, surveillance and blackmail are being brought into
> the picture by Pynchon. Also Windust probably knew Maxine was not going to
> cooperate in any information sharing about her brother-in-law Avi. So I
> read his primary interest  as hashslingerz and Maxine’s investigation.
> Is he offering hints for her research by talking about Promis? Is he
> interested  because she is too cose to some uncomfortable secrets
> surrounding hashslingerz?  Is there division within the agencies over
> Promise and Mossad? She asks if they are planning to pay her for
> investigative research or rely on charm? His only answer is to stick her
> with the check.
>
> The thumb drive  from Marvin the bike messenger( angel alsomeans
> messenger)indicates Windust is not FBI but was in Chile September 11 1973
> for Allende’s overthrow facilitated by CIA.  Not a trivial refrence.He was
> "spotting for the planes that bombed the presidential palace and killed
> Salvador Allende.” later jobs include “interrogation enhancement” and
> “noncompliant-subject relocation.” in Argentina. He also founded
> TANGOToward America’s New Global Opportunities and lectures on right wing
> forums including the infamous School of the Americas.( The only reference
> to a Tango I found was an Anonymous hack of the CIA disabling or disrupting
> their communications for a day in 2012) He has accumulated a lot of assets
> over the years but fails to cash in. " If one day, untypically idle, he
> should pull out his portfolio to see what he’s got he’d find himself with
> controlling interests in an oil field, a refinery, an educational system,
> an airline, a power grid,…. He has also killed and tortured many people.
>
>     So what are the erotic dreams about? And what is the Pynchon-trope of
> women attracted to fascists about?   Is this getting old? Does the
> allegorical value justify it?
>
>
>
> >
> > They really do go see Guys and Dolls at Kugelblitz.
> >
> > Elaine and Ernie, Maxine’s parents, invite everyone to their place but
> > Horst begs off.
> > Some animosity between Elaine and Horst.
> >
> > Discussion on best Nessun Dorma
> >
> > Elaine mentions Windust, purportedly FBI, coming around as part of
> Maxine’s
> > sister’s husband Avi’s security check, speaks very approvingly of him.
> >
> > And Maxine detects a bit of matchmaking on Elaine’s part, calling her on
> > it.
> >
> > Maxine and Windust meet up in the rain, touching umbrellas.
> >
> > They go to La Cibaeña, talk a little shop.
> >
> > She dreams about him.
> >
> > Next day a bike messenger delivers her a thumb drive with a bunch of info
> > about Windust.
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>