AIG AND YOUR LYING EYES
[Ed. Note: See earlier entry for source list.]
"How could we possibly confront corruption and criminality of the state itself?" (Oglesby 154)
...Nevertheless, political criminality has been observed throughout political history, and conspiracy is the only way to hide criminality when it is done in the public eye. Other societies have been quite open about the existence of conspiracies. In France, Louis VI destroyed the Knights Templar for it. In Elizabethan England, anyone aspiring to a career in public office had to consider his odds: "...the majority of these men were to end amidst their own violence and rapacity...." (Eiseley 26-45). In Germany, the fabled Bavarian Illuminati were considered such a threat to the state that mere membership was a capital offense. Italian political life was informed by the writings of Machiavelli, which were guidebooks to conspiracy. Conspiracy, denied but evident, holds in recent years as well, witness the 24 assassination attempts on French President DeGaulle by the OAS (Special Army) and the expulsion from Italy of the P2 Masonic Lodge in the last decade, which was composed of ranking members of all the major social institutions, including the aristocracy. The charge was conspiracy. "This is not the best of centuries...politics is being criminalized, and vice versa...Political crime is everpresent and increasingly fashionable." (Schafer 7).
Though the scoffing persists, "the refutation of conspiracy is often no less sensational than the original charges" (Parenti 169). Given "the present, monstrous conditions of life" (London Times editorial, July 7, 1976), the denial of conspiracy flies in the face of the evidence, as the highest political figures in America are increasingly indicted or removed outright from office for illegalities in the commission of their office. In fact, there is an increased rate of political crime in the 20th century, a fact unmitigated by criminological studies, which rarely touch the subject, though available data is extensive and easy to interpret (Schafer 7).
The Guarded Moment
by Michael Zempter
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Michael --
Busy trying to keep my head above the waves, and sorry so long since an entry. With no time to sit and sift through your remaining letters for a passage of personal Mike-ism to print, it is going to be the continuing serialization of your book for the near future. Next excerpt to follow soon.
I was electrified last month, to learn a word I had never heard or seen before. That hasn't happened with my native language in so long I can't say. Turns out the word has been in use since the 1600's, so encountering it at last was a strong reassurance that world weariness is never appropriate. We may be weary of our particular world, but that doesn't mean we've seen everything yet. The word is "mulct."
But that is not what electrified me. I was seized about fifteen minutes after I encountered the word and began wonderingly rolling it around in my mind, by the idea that YOU NEVER KNEW THE WORD. I found a word you never heard. How can I be sure? I just feel such a likelihood you would have used it and I would therefore have known it, if you'd had any idea of it. Then, like a theme week, I encountered a phrase I was sure you would have liked, and again, having never heard it, I wondered if you ever did. To think you maybe made it from Mom's womb to the Earth's without ever hearing or using "mulct" or "posse comitatus"!
I read one of your earlier entries once, referencing a company called "Telesis." You were speculating on its purpose. I think of you now every time I drive past Telesis, because although out of communication with you, I also had been wondering about Telesis and its sister corporation, Infosight. I looked them up back when I first noticed them, all unaware that somewhere my estranged big brother was also checking into the subject. As I recall, Infosight had to do with electronic measurement and Telesis in a nutshell was about info transport. Now I cannot recall what you said Telesis was up to and no time to go back at present and read it again. So of course I think of you when I drive up 23 N and pass one building and then the other on the other side of the highway. I wonder if Infosight deals with those industrial-strength price checkers that catch planes on radar and read how much cash is on board by registering the informational filament implanted in our paper currency.
And then a month ago I went on a trip somewhere I'd never been. I passed this barn that was so odd it was disorienting. As unobservant as I naturally am, I had to really peer at it and ponder as I approached and passed it, but at last I hit on it: The barn was surreal because it was not shaped like a barn, and it was eerily new and pristine. It was made of board and was painted barn red and apple basket green, but it was shaped like Infosight - one floor, square, slightly sprawling, flat roof. And on the roof of the "barn," visible only from a slight distance, it said: "ITU Sight." Takes me back to when I worked for a Wyeth drug manufacturing plant in my youth and they delivered their drugs in a truck marked "Smith's Egg Farms." They told me when I asked that if the trucks said "Wyeth Drug Mfg." on the side, they'd get hijacked at every red light. I wonder what you know now about ITU Sight that I might find interesting....
Two other sights worth seeing since last we spoke:
1. April 7th -- solid grey cloud cover at 6 p.m. punctuated by one basketball of bright white cloud, floating like the moon in a snowstorm. That night, a full moon.
2. Parade of men in kilts playing bagpipes while a baton twirling man leads them from City Hall out of sight toward the state capitol, trailing maybe 55 followers in Sunday Best cloth coats. Later, faint bagpipe music begins to well. I watch as baton twirler leads troop back into sight toward City Hall, but stops a few doors short and, turning, twirls into a small saloon big enough for two booths and a video game. Twirler opens door and disappears into the bar, still twirling, and I think he is joking. But without missing a note the bagpipe and kilt brigade begin turning smartly right in parade step and disappearing through the door of the bar, until the last of the following crowd disappears inside behind them. The Clown Car in reverse.
Less savory but still a sight to behold, the federal government has taken a hunk of money bigger than many of us realized we'd given them, and has handed it over to some tanking banks and major corporations as a reward for prioritizing greed and stupidity so heavily they tilted the entire global economy off the rails. Many say it was necessary, and I know what you would say about it would surprise me if only because of the source list you'd be able to readily produce to support your position. For my money, when the banks, and car and housing industries tanked so badly we could not be safe and reasonably well anymore, we needed to just face that horror and commit to survive it if possible. I mean we should have done that INSTEAD of scooping up a few trillion additional dollars and trying to throw those at the problem to slow it down while we run away. As it is, it seems to me the country is a man who hurt his foot so badly it got gangrene. He needed to cut off the foot and try to survive and heal if possible, and look for alternative ways to be viable and fulfilled with only the one foot. Instead, the guy has perceived his foot has gone gangrenous, grabbed a roll of duct tape and taped it up real good. Now it is stinking and he is leaving a slime trail and there are red lines running up his leg, and he just keeps wrapping more duct tape around the duct tape already on there, to keep that rotting foot from falling off. In the end, I am thinking one-footed might have been the more prudent way to go..... But am I going to believe AIG or my lying eyes?