BEg2 ch- Who killed Traipse and WIndust

[Joseph Tracy]

     Who killed Traipse and Windust ?
 In many ways Bleeding edge is a murder mystery on very large scale combined with a local murder mystery that has  a strong relation to the larger crime. Fairly early in the book (pg 105)Maxi meets with Windust and he seems a bit obsessed with Israel’s role in the whole Hashslingers world, particulalry focusing on the very real Promis software whch I discussed a bit in an earlier chapter. He also suggests Avi may be a sleeper for Mossad.
Later (p 248)Avi D tells Maxine about how Ice came to Haifa to recruit him and she asks about the Promis software and he gets nervous but tells her a generic story about how back doors got incuded. On p 261 Windust gives Max a folder ‘revealing'  Ice is Jewish and later he says they( US gov) know Ice is diverting a lot of money through a halawa network and they are trying to understand why. 
  I would suggest that only Windust doesn’t know why, that in fact the transfers are approved at higher levels, but that he is already mostly rogue and knows something big is coming( 911) and hopes to do something about it.( perhaps the stinger on the Deseret roof was to shoot down planes) He wants to recruit Maxi to follow the money, and warns her that Misha and Grisha are graduates of KGB hacking cyberwarfare program. Is this recruitment effort an agency idea or his own? She points out that the agency has more expertise and access to information. 

  Obviously there is a lot of tension in the novel and in the world between classic antisemitic paranoia and the actual problematic( at least for hassidim, left leaning Jews, hard nose US patriots, human rights people) … the problematic nature of the state of Israel. He shows this in the tensions betwee Avi and Brooke and her family of lefties with no admiration for Israel  .  Obviously P is not an anti-semite but that does not mean he might not be probing at the question of Israeli involvement, direct or indirect in 9-11. 

One of the probable reasons for Windust's antipathy toward Israel and Mossad is the fact that they aided Rios Mont and supplied him with weapons to suppress the popular uprising in Guatemala. He likely also sees Ice with keen interest in the hiding-your-digital-tracks aspect of Deep Archer, hiring Israeli computer geek who he thinks was involved in Promis software, and concerned about what Maxine knows about the money shenanigans at hashslingerz. He also points out the Michael Pollan case as an example of Israeli double dealing with the US. 

Since Lester Traipse probably knew the most about the the diversion of money to salafists and whether there was participation of Israel in this operation it becomes not unlikely that Mossad agents killed Lester, since Ice seems mostly to want the money back, and Israel would be more concerned to cut off anyone that could point the finger at them. Lester was very secretive about what it was that he knew that had him so scared and who he was most scared of.  

So we know Windust was chasing the Israel  Ice connection, seemed to know ahead that an operation was planned involving the towers, and spent the last weeks of his life on the run, but we never get a clear picture of who was chasing him. I had assumed the CIA but it seems obvious that the Mossad is equally likely and it may amount to the same thing, contrary to his ultra patriot sense of who/what he was working for.

Sure, it’s speculative but today I asked the  question to myself of who killed Lester from Windust's POV and it made a lot of sense that it could be Mossad . 

I remembered the whole incident with the ‘Dancing Israelis’ and  looked for new info on the internet finding that FOIA request had in fact turned up some new information, released a few years ago. https://www.mintpressnews.com/newly-released-fbi-docs-shed-light-on-apparent-mossad-foreknowledge-of-9-11-attacks/258581/ <https://www.mintpressnews.com/newly-released-fbi-docs-shed-light-on-apparent-mossad-foreknowledge-of-9-11-attacks/258581/>
Neither I nor the article is saying Israel was responsible but there are several indicators that these men knew ahead what was coming, that some were Mossad,  that the moving company was not really what it seemed, and that they thought the attack would help relations with Israel. What I have always wondered about that was how could they have known that Arab terrorists would be identified as the planners on the day of the attack. 

I do not want to argue over who was behind 9-11 but it just seems to me that Pynchon has taken a unique direction by implicating big tech, US and Israeli intel along with salafists as involved and indicating  that people knew ahead ( the actual airline stock trading, the fictional scene on the roof of the Deseret). 9-11 was a turning point. The event led quickly to increased power and surveillance in the US, the demonizing of a religion, and wars that were wildly unrelated. The role of digital tech in all this change is as powerful as Pynchon suggests.




> On Dec 16, 2022, at 6:36 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> 
> What’s with the tracking chip implant for Ice employees: a plan that has become quite real with  cell phones and even further with the pandemic being used to push an all purpose single financial and travel card but there are those who like the idea of implants even more. Elon Musk has done experiments on monkeys toward brain EMF connection. I’m sure P is aware of the vision in Revelations of the NT  of the mark of the beast that no one could buy or sell without having. 
> 
> There are Chechens and there are Chechens.” “Some good guys, some not so good.”
> “So the money Lester was diverting from Ice—” “Was going to bad guys, by way of Wahhabist bullshit front. Igor knew how to reach money before it would get all mixed up in Emirates account. He expedites matters for Lester, takes little commission. Everything dzhef, till somebody finds out.” 
> “Ice?” 
> “Whoever is running Ice? You tell us.”
> 
> So Pynchon is saying not only that there are wahabbist Chechens who want Taliban/Isis style control of a new republic, a fact that is well established, but that they were being funded by the CIA with help from a high tech player.  I would say this is pretty significant if easily passed over. After all it is wahabbist extremists who are supposed to be behind 9-11. Windust clearly felt that the US was being betrayed with Israeli involvement. The wahabbists  were  funded in Afghanistan by the US, but this fire starting tactic  that  was  viewed as a great clever strategy has come under a lot of questions with millions dead and many burned by our clever games with matches. 
> 
> Much later there is a telling email published by Wikileakes from Jake Sullivan to Hillary Clinton saying "Al Qaeda is on our side in Syria.” In his book, The Management of Savagery, Max Blumenthal details the connections and different names assumed by wahabbist organizations in Syria, along with quotes by their leaders showing how brutal they were in their determintion to kill off Alawites, Shia and any other people regarded as heretics. He also shows how their funding and weapons came from Britain, the US and mistly Saudi Arabia. His description is based almost entirely on major news sources, state department and military statements and leaked documents. Many have criticized it but no challenges to facts cited.  The phrase the management of savagery is an Engish translation of a Wahabbist book with the same phrase as it’s title.
> here is a quote translated from arabic
>    "The management of savagery is the next stage that the Umma will pass through and it is          considered the most critical stage. If we succeed in the management of this savagery, that stage (by   the permission of God) will be a bridge to the Islamic state which has been awaited since the fall of the caliphate. If we fail – we seek refuge with God from that – it does not mean end of the matter; rather, this failure will lead to an increase in savagery!!”
> 
> Obviously Blumenthal is using the phrase to show how much the US Empire has come to resemble this aspiration.
> 
> I would like to see a peaceful democratic independent Chechnya since they are a unique majority culture,  and was very opposed to Russia during the conflict. But I would also like to see independent nations in Central and South America, the Caribbean, Iran Africa, Asia ... and just generally more boundaries based on culture and language and more . But until a more truly multipolar global balance is achieved, what we have  now are great powers, vassal states, and disputed areas  where nations seek greater autonomy  or are caught in the power struggle. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Dec 14, 2022, at 1:06 AM, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Having developed a distaste for the Deseret swimming pool, Maxine attends
>> her sister Brooke’s health club, and finds March Kelleher puffing away on
>> cigarettes in the snack bar, using the free wi-fi.
>> 
>> March confides that she’s worried about her daughter Tallis, who’s been
>> dumped by son-in-law Gabriel Ice. She describes Tallis as “innocent” -
>> Maxine doesn’t address criminal culpability, but in solidarity of
>> motherhood, listens as March limns a picture of Taillis’s naïveté - and of
>> course, (“wo-mensch”?) offers to take a dekko.
>> 
>> 
>> Maxine finds Tallis in a tiny apartment in a hyper-modern building,
>> drinking Hpnotiq
>> 
>> http://www.hpnotiq.com
>> 
>> 
>> SINCE STEPPING ONTO THE SCENE IN 2001, WE BROKE THE MOLD WITH OUR
>> EYE-CATCHING COLOR AND PREMIUM BLEND OF EXOTIC FRUIT JUICES, FRENCH VODKA &
>> A TOUCH OF COGNAC. NOW, IT’S TIME YOU DISCOVERED THE ORIGINAL FLAVOR AND
>> SIGNATURE COLOR THAT CHANGED GAME.
>> 
>> 
>> Tallis starts giving Maxine the scoop: says it started when she had noticed
>> escalating trouble accessing anything online including necessary work
>> sites; fast forward to Gabriel Ice screaming at her and throwing her
>> possessions about, telling her to get out.
>> 
>> Then she starts reminiscing about their college days and a movie called
>> “The Geek Who Couldn’t Sleep” which the two of them used to pretend they
>> were in; eventually Tallis’s remembering hanging with Ice’s old roommate
>> Dieter at a post-9-11 funeral; Dieter’s bagpipes are experiencing high
>> demand.
>> 
>> Maxine gets Tallis to admit to the previously-clocked-by-Maxine affair with
>> Chaz Larday, & makes her aware - if she isn’t already - that Chazz is
>> working for Ice.
>> 
>> Maxine advises Tallis to call her mother, then notices a security cam
>> blinking in a corner. They bat the thing till it falls, but Maxine urges
>> that they get out immediately.
>> 
>> In the lobby, Dragoslav the doorman advises Tallis of two guys leaving word
>> that they’d be seeing Tallis.
>> 
>> Maxine figures Misha & Grisha. Presumably there to help, not harm? Or so
>> she spins it to Tallis, who’s beyond worried.
>> 
>> & just around the corner, there the plucky padonki are, bustling the ladies
>> into Igor’s ZiL. Apparently they were planning on holding Tallis as a
>> hostage to ensure Ice’s behavior while they do - something?
>> 
>> Tallis laughs while Maxine explains to the lads why Tallis isn’t a
>> realistic hostage candidate.
>> 
>> So it turns out they’re headed for one of Ice’s server farms upstate which
>> Tallis has been to & offers to draw them a map of. She has trouble with the
>> name of the property, Tewattsirokwas - and Maxine is hit with nostalgia for
>> the Trotskyite summer camp she attended at that exact spot.
>> 
>> Lake Heatsink nearby has the depth & coldness that make it a great spot for
>> a server farm.
>> 
>> They’ve got a vircator they are going to run a little test with, not
>> full-scale, “maybe 10%.”
>> 
>> Igor “doesn’t know about this,” and Maxine goes along but fishes for more.
>> Apparently Igor’s sympathies with the Chechens had caused his leaving the
>> Spetsnaz -
>> 
>> < this stuff really conveys a lot more to me lately, Chechnya’s laudable
>> aspirations of independence having been ruthlessly crushed at the
>> insistence of glabrous-domed villain Putin back in the 90s, whilst the
>> “free world” was reveling in the “peace dividend” - revealing his scabrous
>> nature & genocidal imperialism all the way back then>
>> 
>> <so Igor from at least some angles is a righteous dude, I knew I liked him
>> at least a little>
>> 
>> And thus, Igor was supporting Chechens financially with some of the money
>> Lester Traipse was funneling away from the Wahhabist prick-bastards that
>> Ice (& possibly the CIA) was sending it to.
>> 
>> <this has to be unknown to Putin, right? or otherwise, Igor would have to
>> be looking out for pointy umbrellas and so forth >
>> 
>> So it isn’t just revenge for Traipse - though that’s the part which
>> emotionally moved Misha & Grisha - but also for an interruption of funds
>> that Igor’s friends count on.
>> 
>> 
>> Poughkeepsie’s where M&G meet their contact Yuri with his generator for the
>> vircator (Maxine upon seeing the size of it has some doubts about the
>> “maybe 10%”) - and it’s where Maxi & Tallis get out of the ZiL & board the
>> 10:59 back to Manhattan.
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> 
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l