Reddit reviews The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World

There’s a book about the CIA is Organized Crime.

https://www.amazon.com/CIA-Organized-Crime-Illegal-Operations/dp/0997287012/ref=nodl_

Thanks for the comment, very interesting stuff. Like all these other comments it's making me really look forward to reading the rest of Against the Day.

In general I am the same in that I don't generally feel the need to discuss it, and forums like these are incredibly restrictive for such things. My thinking with this post and the other I did was to give people who haven't read his stuff much a bit of a starting point and save them some time -- it took me five reads of Gravity's Rainbow before I felt I really had a decent understanding of what's going on, let alone the surrounding material/psychoanalysis/science/history, and I'm very aware that most people don't have anything like the time to do that.

It's the political/historical importance of some of his work that makes me feel most obliged to make these posts (hence my username) because I think too many people, especially somewhat complacent critics who write the reviews, are far too quick to say "conspiracy theory" without delving fully into some of the really nasty and real history it refers too. Of course his use of things like Hollow Earth/UFOs/Atlantis is a little different, but I do think it's crucially important for people to read and spread proper history books like The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America's Secret Government or The CIA as Organized Crime not only to help them understand Pynchon's work better, but also actually do their bit in doing something about the bad stuff going on in the world.

After all that term "conspiracy theory" was heavily promoted by the CIA to begin with, it's the definition of a weaponised term, and I think the more we can get away from phrases like that the better (not saying we should accept ridiculous lizard people stuff or anything of course).

Along with the Byron the Bulb stuff in GR, there's some little bit in Bleeding Edge about "secret anarchist code messages" and later on, the Global Consciousness Project. And I think people are generally becoming more conscious of all this hidden history. Though perhaps this is just a way for me to rationalise spending so much time reading him, by convincing myself that it's politically useful.

I've rambled as well. Here are the rest of the letters in that set, since you liked that one. It was a collection someone posted on 4chan a while ago as I recall.

https://imgur.com/r/ThomasPynchon/P1Cwr

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1510703365

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0997287012

It's not a grand conspiracy that capitalist nations and their ruling classes and rich people seek to demonize socialism with all means available, including convincing everyone of what should normally seem to be absurd lies -- it's what you'd expect, and they of course own all of these news media. That the the state department, CIA, and other foreign policy organs of imperialism promotes false information expecting it to get uncritically reported by the mass media is plainly visible once you understand how it works and it's also completely unsurprising.

All I see are Uncle Sam's Yanqui-Doodle Martyrs Brigade.

Kinda funny how these "protesters" are shooting people with arrows, beaning people with bricks, setting shit on fire and attacking anyone who disagrees with them, even after obtaining their stated goals of stopping the extradition bill.

It's almost as if the Yanqui Doodle Regime Change You Can Believe In Machine decided to double-down, having zero fucks to give about its "shina" pawns.