Saturday, October 14, 2006

Necromocracy (Part One)



"Across history, other nations had gone insane. Other movements had been evil or tried awful wizardries. But none perpetrated murder with such dedicated efficiency. The horror must have been directed not so much at death itself, but at some hideous goal beyond death."
- David Brin, The Life Eaters

When I was taught history in high school, Athens was a favourite historical analogue for the United States. Both were considered accidental empires and, for the most part, benign necessities of their dangerous times. (For America, this was the period of its so-called soft power, even though its application often felt hard as hell away from home. But Mossadegh and Allende could tell you better.) The self-celebrating mythology of America's global reach was always democratic, and its extended aspects - its colonies, though they would never be called such - were assumed to be dependencies by choice. America's Athenians were regarded as individuals, and its military the champion of an individual's liberty. Unlike the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union, whose subjects and armed forces were thought more comparable to the severe and undifferentiated Spartans.

But in wartime, and in a time of re-mythologizing war, America's mythmaking undergoes a radical makeover to favour Sparta and the 300 of King Leonidas. It's too tempting a story to resist, because no matter its overwhelming might, it seems that for the good of its soul America must also, at least in its fiction, regard itself as the underdog. (You could perhaps sense something of this in the relish with which supporters of the Iraq war recounted America's "abandonment" by its traditional allies and the United Nations. "Going it alone" never felt so good.)

A new film treatment of the Battle of Thermopylae, 300, will be released early next year, and it looks like just the ticket to introduce the legend of Sparta to America's popular culture of perpetual war. Particularly appropriate, since Persian arms are once again the perceived enemy, and the few who stand against them now are Rumsfeld's 150,000. (And that reminds me: do you remember reading how, "in the summer of 2001, when security agencies were regularly warning of a catastrophic attack by Al Qaeda, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s office 'sponsored a study of ancient empires—Macedonia, Rome, the Mongols—to figure out how they maintained dominance,' according to the New York Times"?) This latest, and most extreme version is based upon the work of graphic novelist Frank Miller, of the admirable Sin City, but who is also an unabashed propagandist for the White House shooting script. His next project is Holy Terror, Batman!, in which bin laden targets Gotham City and the Dark Knight "kicks al Qaeda's ass."

An inspiring defeat is sometimes worth more to a military and its masters than a sure victory, just as allowing an attack to happen can be of greater long-term benefit than its prevention, and through the centuries the blood of 300 soldiers has probably nourished a thousand campaigns. Perhaps, recalling this post, some of the same soldiers, over and over again. General George Patton was persuaded he was one, as dramatized here ("I fought in many guises, many names. But always me.")

Reincarnation aside, there's a certain necromancy here, in romanticizing the deaths of those long dead in order to stir the living to want to join them. A similar working was accomplished with the 3,000 dead of 9/11 who, though representing many nations, after death all somehow became alchemical Americans. Not only by the Let's Roll! stage-management of their unoffered sacrifice were many thousands more inspired to enlist, die and suffer grievous injury, but their blood is deemed sufficient to cover that of 655,000, and the murderers of Iraq and their enablers still enjoy untroubled sleep.

Call it what you want, but that's some strong magic.


By the way, this may be old news to some, but if you haven't viewed BBC's nearly three-hour documentary from 1992 on Gladio and NATO's secret fascist armies, please do. You can find it in three parts on Google Video. The first segment establishes the context of history and the prominent role played by future CIA wizard James Angleton, and features interviews with William Colby and Licio Gelli; the second examines the Bologna railway station bombing, and the third the Brabant Massacres and the assassination of Aldo Moro. Perhaps because it's another British production from the early 90s, or because it's a history that's largely unknown to North America, or because William Colby appears in both shortly before his likely murder, it has a strong Conspiracy of Silence vibe about it. And I mean that in the best possible way, about the worst possible truth.

65 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain."

How unlike the animals we became, when we grasped at the knowledge of Good and Evil. Gifted with massive telencephalons, our cortex capable of framing poems, symphonies, spaceships, cyclotrons, our pride echoes shamelessly across the ages. But O what a terrible limbic system! What animal, what reptile, gorges on such slaughter? What species would hoist machetes and slaughter hundreds of thousands in Rwanda, as ours did in Rwanda? Or operate with such consumate skill the machinery of madness at concentration camps? What other species tortures, delights in torture, organizes whole cathedrals of torture? How clever the bomb-builders, the Maxims Krupps and Oppenheimers! What a genius for destruction!

What other creature kills for plunder, for bloody lucre, heedless of the deaths of so many to attain it? Is this what free will has brought us, lo these many centuries? A murderous grasping for loot? When humans elevated their will above that of God, what did it bring them? "Surely you will not die."

"Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passes the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you."

This stuff of matter, frozen light walking, has risen to such heights! Serving under the Lord of Lies, he showcases his evolution by indulging in mass murder! His temple is Ypres, Hiroshima, Gallipoli, Andersonville: jewels of Empire! See them gleam blood-red under the horrified moon.

And the psychopathic leaders goad the unthinking masses to ever-greater levels of hatred, so as to accomplish their vile ends. The current spate of movies, video games, and shows just more in a long line of war-drum propaganda, "stirring the blood," recruiting for the Legions of Hell. Glorifying the blood-sponge rock called Iwo Jima, the "heroes" who, driven by unseen psychopathic leaders hurl themselves like rabid dogs against one another. Like fighting cocks driven mad by starvation and abuse, whole peoples are made to do the bidding of necromancers.

Always we return to Conrad's words: The Horror, The Horror.

There is only one way to end it, dear readers: Blessed are the peacemakers.

"Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih"

10/14/2006 08:19:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The quote is from T. S. Eliot, The Wasteland.

10/14/2006 08:49:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Great post.

Interesting link on Patton.

George was to pay with his life for not following orders.
A staged accident?
He outlived his usefullness either way.
He wanted to do things differently.
The Allied High Command saw a loose cannon.
He wanted to go after the Soviets.
Not part of great masonic plan?
To have a cold war instead.

Patton reminded me of ole Boxer the hardworking draft horse from Orwell's Animal Farm.

It is sad that many people believe in myths wholeheartedly.

Blind to any who oppose the war machine.

Preparing to give their full support and lifeblood to a system that cares not.

Boxer is the tragic avatar of the working class, or proletariat: loyal, kind, dedicated, and strong. He is not very clever and never progresses beyond the fourth letter of the alphabet. His major flaw, however, is his blind trust in the leaders, and his inability to see corruption. He is used and abused by the pigs as much or more than he was by Jones. He fights bravely in the Battles of the Windmill and the Cowshed but is upset when he thinks he has killed a stable lad. His death serves to show just how far the pigs are willing to go — when he collapses after overstraining himself, the pigs supposedly send him to a vet, when in fact he was sent to the knacker's yard to be slaughtered in exchange for a case of whiskey for the pigs. A strong and loyal draft horse, Boxer played a huge part in keeping the Farm together prior to his death. Boxer could also represent a Stakhanovite. His name is a reference to the Boxer Rebellion. His two mottos "I will work harder" and "Napoleon is always right" sum up the double side of his character.


Stakhanovite = model worker

10/14/2006 09:16:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Patton was planning to take Prague, Czechoslovakia, when the forward movement of American forces was halted. His troops liberated Pilsen (May 6, 1945) and most of western Bohemia.

After the surrender of May 8, 1945 extinguished the common threat of Nazi Germany, Patton was quick to assert the Soviet Union would cease to be an ally of the United States. In fact, he urged his superiors to evict the Soviets from central and eastern Europe. Patton thought that the Red Army was weak, under-supplied, and vulnerable, and the United States should act on these weaknesses before the Soviets could consolidate their position. In this regard, he told then-Undersecretary of War Robert P. Patterson that the "point system" being used to demobilize Third Army troops was destroying it and creating a vacuum that the Soviets would exploit. "Mr. Secretary, for God’s sake, when you go home, stop this point system; stop breaking up these armies," pleaded the general. "Let’s keep our boots polished, bayonets sharpened, and present a picture of force and strength to these people the Soviets.

This is the only language they understand." Asked by Patterson — who would become Secretary of War a few months later — what he would do, Patton replied: "I would have you tell the Red Army where their border is, and give them a limited time to get back across. Warn them that if they fail to do so, we will push them back across it."

The international bankers (ptb) wanted him stopped instead I now believe and he was killed.

10/14/2006 09:25:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well.....there's one way to prevent the ritual slaughter, an yes, I do believe there is an Occultist Element to the perpetuation of war....at least for those who demand it, but don't necessarily execute it.

Don't support the soldiers doing "their" bidding. Make it socially unacceptable. Ostracize them, if they continue to pull the triggers and drop the bombs and sacrifice the innocents. Embrace them when they refuse.

It's that simple.....and yet we can't seem fit to do it.

10/14/2006 09:56:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The only way to stop the madness is in terms of a spiritual awakening in each and every individual, as opposed to any type "religious" experience. Only when people start to accept that reincarnation is a fact thru direct experience not "belief" or "faith", and see that we all have a soul which is a part of the "fire" of "God", the "Divine", the "Eternal" - - whatever you want to call it, only then will humans have the self esteem, and lose the incredible fear they have of almost everything, to stop following the orders of the deluded, insane, greedy, and evil - - nothing else will work.

As a practical matter this can only come about thru thru meditation, and true yoga leading to mystical experience of the true non-changing "reality" . . . upon this humans will no longer fear death nor will they be so caught up in "desires" for the material . . . unfortunately, time is running out on this planet at this level of reality for the majority of us here to make progress . . . I recommend reading Dr. Brian Weiss' books reflecting his experiences discovering past lives during regression therapy and his new work in progression therapy, and the incites as to why we are here . . . this is a link to a good interview w/him for an overview:

www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1430/is_n7_v16/ai_14932644/pg_3 - 27k

10/14/2006 10:23:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

just as allowing an attack to happen can be of greater long-term benefit than its prevention

You almost slipped that by, Jeff. Am I to infer that you believe 911 was LIHOP, for lack of a better term?

I submit that given the facts, and not those that entrap, like Pods and Contolled Demolition, there can be no distinction between LIHOP and MIHOP. "They" had to be involved in the planning, if only to ensure the damage was halfway predictable and contained. Why else would Rumsfeld have so altruistically risked his life in the aftermath of the Pentagon Destruction. That coward would have been hiding under his desk with shit in his drawers (the one's he was wearing....although, one could argue that he metaphorically has shit in the drawers of his desk) if he didn't have prior knowledge about the Pentagon Destruction. He wasn't under his desk....instead he was out on the lawn playing Donald Nightingale....because he knew there would be no more activity at the Pentagon that day.

MIHOP=LIHOP....there is no distinction.

Either way, I agree with you that it serves no purpose to dwell unnecessarily on the specifics. 911 was just one more event in a series of events that harken back to you name the date. And, there have been other events since....and there are, no doubt, others in the pipeline ready for delivery, as we speak.

10/14/2006 12:02:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff:

How do you that "the murderers of Iraq and their enablers still enjoy untroubled sleep," hmmn?

Do you commune with them regularly?

10/14/2006 12:25:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Voice of Conscience said...
Jeff:

How do you know that "the murderers of Iraq and their enablers still enjoy untroubled sleep," hmmn?

Do you commune with them regularly?

10/14/2006 12:26:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Shrub said, "MIHOP=LIHOP....there is no distinction."

Ah yes, the position of a disinformationist or a moron. Likely both.

10/14/2006 12:28:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Visionary novelist C.S.Lewis had all of this down nearly 70 years ago in That Hideous Strength, the third volume of his sci-fi trilogy for adults, which is also intended to stand on its own as a single work in its own right, and is easily read as such.

Some of the facets of the novelist's portrayal of a fully corporatized England and U.S. (the U.S. is referenced as being taken over by the same N.I.C.E. corporation) include engineered false-flag terrorism, draconian security laws, the takeover of police functions by private corporate owned militia, and an occult back-story of luciferians who wish to remake themselves as gods.

To offset their nightmare of immortality they begin to cull the population, dispossessing people from their land and their children, using the suspension of habeus corpus with secret arrests, detentions and executions.

All of that, and more.

That Hideous Strength was published in 1942. The title comes from a poem about the fall of the Tower of Babel.

And, it's quite a suspensful page-turner. A good read.

Highly recommended.

10/14/2006 12:43:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Going against the grain a bit--and not just because it feels good, or in some transparent attempt to be provocative--all that Miller and the Pimps of War are doing is what has always been done to fire up the troops and throw another body on the fire: lying about the nature and necessity of war. This they do because they have to, since we would always choose peace, given the chance. Please don't throw up your hands and indulge in symphonies of grief over man's beastly nature because that just spreads the lie even further.

Most of us are familiar with the famous quote from Göring on the ease of manipulating domesticated herds into warlike formation. Here's the real source and context of that quote, from the Urban Legends Reference:

"The quote...does not appear in transcripts of the Nuremberg trials because although Göring spoke these words during the course of the proceedings, he did not offer them at his trial. His comments were made privately to Gustave Gilbert, a German-speaking intelligence officer and psychologist who was granted free access by the Allies to all the prisoners held in the Nuremberg jail. Gilbert kept a journal of his observations of the proceedings and his conversations with the prisoners, which he later published in the book Nuremberg Diary. The quote...was part of a conversation Gilbert held with a dejected Hermann Göring in his cell on the evening of 18 April 1946, as the trials were halted for a three-day Easter recess:

We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Göring shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

The only left question appears to be why it's so "simple" to do this--that we're neurological putty, infinitely malleable, is one common explanation; that we're so used to being led by the nose, so trained and domesticated is another common response--but these explanations ignore the the naked truth that stupid fat Göring revealed: that, despite the multi-million Mark propaganda machinery of the 3rd Reich (and the most terrifying "hard" tyranny in history), the people still "don't want war." Think about the effort put into modern propaganda, from the Army's new $200,000,000-a year recruiting slogan ("Army Strong") to graphic novelist Frank Miller's pathetic self-packaging (from the 9/11 fifth anniversary NPR "interview"):

"For the first time in my life, I know how it feels to face an existential menace. They want us to die. All of a sudden I realize what my parents were talking about all those years. All of a sudden, I had a patriotic epiphany which illuminated the beauty of war and blinded me to the continued manipulation of the masses by the leaders, aided by lying, soulless whores like me who prostitute ourselves for money, for pleasure, for innumerable ignoble 'reasons'."

Okay, so I added a few words to Miller's "authentic emotions," like maybe the whole second all-of-a-sudden sentence, but the point is that no matter how much money, time, and miseducation Goebbels and his heirs pour into turning us into mindless killing machines, it never connects with the core of our being and always wears off or is washed off with one reading of All Quiet on the Western Front or Johnny Got His Gun or any of the true representations of war that have come out in the last hundred years, because it is alien to our nature. It is inimical, not identical. The problem, of course, is that the programmers are not big fans of peacenik literature. Video games, with the exception of the Civilization games, pretty much toe the bloodsport line. Still, Göring's observation stands: no matter what they do to indoctrinate us in servility and savagery, we are social beings who have evolved (and survived) far more through cooperation than competition.

Jeff started the post off with a quote from David Brin--his books, and those of many other sci-fi writers, provide an alternative to the retro-neanderthalic Army Strong! programming that floods the media. Maybe such fare will provide some defense against the dark arts of Miller and his ilk. Maybe--like Göring's "poor slob on a farm"--we don't really need it, since we can still smell shit, even though we've been told it's something else entirely...

10/14/2006 12:58:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Call 'em as I see 'em said...
Shrub said, "MIHOP=LIHOP....there is no distinction."

Ah yes, the position of a disinformationist or a moron. Likely both.


Sometimes I wonder if you are Hugh. Are you? I know who is a firm believer in Controlled Demolition, whereas, I am an Agnostic. I'm not an Agnostic when it comes to the Official Version of 911. There is no doubt, in my mind, that it is a sham. Either they did it, or they didn't.....and we know it's not "they didn't."

There is no middle road on this one. It's MIHOP, or no complicity. LIHOP doesn't fit the facts.

Even if you're not Hugh, I will use Hugh's latest admonition of PP. You have decontextualized my words, and in that sense, you are the disinformationist.

10/14/2006 01:28:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The god that loves the smell of burning flesh

It was during their reign as the Holy Roman Emperors that the Habsburg family came into possession of the Spear of Destiny, or the Holy Lance. This is said to be the same spear with which Longinus pierced the side of Christ as he hung upon the cross, and it had a nail supposedly from the cross stuck into the blade. Later it got into the hands of another Roman centurion, Mauritius, who clasped it as the Emperor Maximian beheaded him and his legion in 285 for refusing to worship pagan gods. From there it made its way to Constantine the Great, who wielded it as a scepter, and was bearing it when he declared himself “the thirteenth Apostle.” The Spear is believed to possess magical powers, and whoever possesses it can rule the world (or at least significant portions of it). When Charles Martel (“Carl the Hammer”) took over Dagobert II’s position as King of the Franks, thus beginning the Carolingian dynasty, he used the Spear as a symbol of his power, and so did his grandson, Charlemagne, who became Holy Roman Emperor in 800. The Lance supposedly gave him clairvoyant powers through which he discovered the grave of St. James in Spain, and predicted events. He slept with it near him every day of his life. For the next thousand, until the Holy Roman Empire’s collapse in 1806, the Spear of Destiny was its royal insignia. In that year, Napoleon abolished the throne of the HRE, but he made a point of marrying into the Habsburg family via Marie Louise of Austria, and frantically sought the Spear of Destiny for years, but never found it. It is believed that it was purposely hidden from him by conscientious Habsburgs. He did, however, manage to get his hands on Childeric’s golden bees, which he had affixed to his coronation robe, as well as that of his wife. (He also commissioned a compilation of Merovingian genealogies, to determine whether or not the bloodline had survived the fall of the dynasty.)

In 1913, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany tried to obtain the Spear before launching a war. He sent a letter to Habsburg Emperor Franz Joseph in Vienna, asking to borrow it, as well as the Crown of the Holy Roman Emperor, for an exhibition in Germany. His request was wisely denied. One year later, Franz Joseph’s nephew, Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated on June 28, 1914. Franz Joseph declared WWI to avenge the death. He died in the middle of the war and Charles I took over. It was him who was forced to abdicate the throne in 1918, having lost the war.

Like the Kaiser before him, Adolf Hitler was also obsessed with the Spear of Destiny, and sought it for both it’s magical and symbolic power: Its symbolic power as the sign of the Holy Roman Empire, which he hoped to resurrect, and its magical powers, enabling it’s possessor to conquer the world. There are even rumors that he saw himself as a reincarnation of Klingsor, the antagonist in Richard Wagner’s Parzival who uses the Lance for evil intent. Some say that Hitler would spend hours at the Habsburg’s Hofburg Museum in Vienna, meditating on the Spear. On Oct. 13, 1938 (the same date that Philip la Belle pf France began his persecution of the Templars), after invading Austria, Hitler took the Spear and the Crown of the Holy Roman Empire back home to Nuremberg. They were both eventually found by the Allies in a tunnel beneath Nuremberg Fortress on April 30 1945 (Walpurgisnacht), in the very same hour that Hitler took his own life. They were both soon returned to the Habsburgs, to whom they belonged. Today the Spear of Destiny and the Crown of the Holy Roman Empire are back on display at the Hofburg Museum.

10/14/2006 01:35:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Iridescent Cuttlefish, pronouncer of the Internal Flame, please tell me where you stand on support of the soldiers. Do you support them as they murder Iraqis and Afghanis on a daily basis?

I would really like to know....because, IMHO, this is truly where Progressivism fails. You can't solicit Mammon to destroy Mammon.....but, rather, you must refuse to be Mammon's tool, especially when it comes to killing your fellow human beings.

Your own words, please, without references.

10/14/2006 01:39:00 PM  
Blogger allan said...

Jeff:

How do you know that "the murderers of Iraq and their enablers still enjoy untroubled sleep," hmmn?

Do you commune with them regularly?


I would say that if they were troubled by the murder and mayhem, they would take steps to lessen it. Because they only seem to do things that increase the murder and mayhem, it is likely that they either simply do not care or they approve of the violence.

10/14/2006 01:55:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oarwell,
thank you for your beautiful, and terrible poem. I am deeply moved by its truth and its eloquence.
Thank you again,

T.

10/14/2006 02:15:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Shrub,
? Do I support our troops? I'm flabbergasted. Me?! Okay, howsabout this formulation: I support out troops by demanding that they be re-assigned to rebuilding the infrastructure in a sustainable fashion. Furthermore, I propose to ensure their safety by confiscating their guns and shipping them to Canada. The officers will be screened for war crimes and then made into goodwill ambassadors by "volunteering" to clean latrines and sewer systems in the former colonial outposts. (After sentencing, all members of the BushCo Team will join them, without mosquito netting.)

10/14/2006 03:18:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thrace:

(Smacks head) How different my world would be, if I had written those lines. But, as someone else noted, the author was T.S. Eliot, in 'The Wasteland.' The first part of the poem, 'The Burial of the Dead,' comprises Eliot's dark fugue on the reverbations of World War One, "the war to end all wars," a "killing field" non pareil. He dedicated the poem to Ezra Pound, "il miglior fabbro," the "better craftsman." (Pound got Eliot to edit out half of what he'd written, according to Hugh Kenner.)

They used to teach 'The Wasteland,' and Joyce's 'Ulysses,' to college undergrads--I don't know if they still do. The canons of High Modernism seem to have been replaced, in the 21st century, by internet essays. 80 years ago men like Eliot and Pound pretty much determined what got published in the way of 'Kulchur.' I guess in today's jargon they would be called "gatekeepers." But they weren't that at all; they were editors, men who were widely read, who had a deep understanding of what in Western Civilization was worth keeping. Today we find ourselves confronted with Instaculture, whatever drivel can make it briefly onto YouTube's top 100, whatever crap flows from David Brook's ass or Sean Hannity's blowhole.

So many good men were mowed down at Ypres, at Verdun. One shudders at what the world lost because of that terrible, stupid war (fought, in fact, for control of oil--nothing new under the sun). One of the finest books I've ever read is Paul Fussell's 'The Great War & Modern Memory," well worth a read (And I second the mention above of Lewis' 'That Hideous Strength." Prescient, indeed.)

Anyway, sorry to be a Blog Hog, but here's a bit more from Eliot's masterpiece:

"One must be so careful these days.
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: 'Stetson!
'You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
'That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
'Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
'Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?"
(1922)

10/14/2006 03:24:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

A quick thought, since the word of the day is 'Necromancy.'

Like in 'The Monkey's Paw,' the conjurers may not know what rough beast they are summoning. King Saul, consulting the witch of Endor, is told only of his doom. Our "leaders" may be in for a bit of a shock--you might call it "Wicker shock."

The bible forbids necromancy, but it never says it doesn't work.

Is Cheney a revenant, an animated corpse sent to haunt the living? Rumsfeld? Are revenants nourished by the blood of those they kill?

"Many stories were documented by English historians in the Middle Ages, as examplified by William of Newburgh who wrote in the 1190s "one would not easily believe that corpses come out of their graves and wander around, animated by I don't know what spirit, to terrorize or harm the living, unless there were many cases in our times, supported by ample testimony"."

"The chronicler Walter Map, an Englishman writing in the 12th century, tells of a "wicked man" in Hereford who rose from the dead and wandered the streets of his village at night calling out the names of those who would die of sickness within three days. The response by bishop Gilbert Foliot was "Dig up the body and cut off the head with a spade, sprinkle it with holy water and re-inter it"."

(Almost Halloween)

10/14/2006 04:09:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

When is torture not torture? Apparently, when it is
pornography depicting torture

We are certainly entering the realms of despicable doublespeak by those who seek to justify the sickness and the carnage.

10/14/2006 04:14:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

By the way, Mr. Shrub, I have to agree with you that the distinction between LIH and MIH is pretty meaningless, since knowing about it, in any sense and to any degree, is the same as being in on it. The "terrorists" automatically become "agents," in much the same way as the quietly authorized terrorists of Gladio carry out the plan of the masters.

10/14/2006 05:32:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The average knob "likes" war because it gives him a chance to lunge at the end of his chain, barking and snarling and foaming at the mouth, like a crack dealer's pitbull, at anyone TPTB sics him on.

At our lower, primal, basic level, it just plain feels good. Pitbull doesn't care if his owner is a Bad Guy siccing him on a cop or bystander. Pitbull doesn't care if his owner is a Good Guy siccing him on a burglar. Pitbull just knows it feels good and Master approves.

So the average knob can take a dark path of hatred, laziness and ignorance and get the double treat of internal pleasure and external reward. Never mind that his barking and slavering enable Master to loot and depopulate someone else's home. Never mind that he's guarding the White House door while the burglars steal our government.

TV, video games, advertising, all our media "culture" is just a handy dandy training aid, like a clicker or choke chain. And Pitbull sapiens has taken to his training well.

10/15/2006 12:02:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Humans aren't natural killers. My cat can go out for an evening's stroll and bring in two dead shrews and a baby bunny without thinking twice about it. But humans have to work themselves up to kill anything -- have to get into a state of absolute hysterical frenzy before they're able to wreak the sort of mayhem that cats dispense dispassionately.

This is as true of aborigines going out to hunt kangaroos in the bush as it is of modern soldiers. It takes a lot of peer pressure, and collective brainwashing, and continuing rituals to bring humans to that necessary state of blood-lust and then keep them there for an extended period.

It's not just post-traumatic stress that bedevils veterans. It's the inability to turn off the battle-frenzy when it's no longer needed.

This is a bad thing in that once you turn on the blood-lust, it can be very hard to turn it off again -- so you get things like the Rape of Nanking. But it's also potentially a good thing, in that if we just stopped doing that to ourselves we could have an essentially peaceful world. (Give or take the occasional fist-fight or deranged psychopath, of course -- but that's what law enforcement is for.)

The key to stopping it, I suppose, is to make the deliberate evoking of blood-lust as unthinkable as, say, human sacrifice or slavery. Or, if you will, to make people aware that turning decent young men into killers is as much a form of child abuse as any of the forms of mind control or sexual molestation that are regularly discussed at this site.

For it really is all the same thing. In fact, the idea of "exploitation" -- of using other humans as objects, and abusing or distorting them to make them more suitable objects -- covers most of what we currently find most despicable in human society.

- It covers human sacrifice and slavery.

- It covers all forms of child abuse.

- It covers the breaking down and psychological manuipulation of young people to turn them into professional killers.

- And, of course, it also covers the traditional Maxist sense of treating workers as robotic machines rather than as persons.

Since the Enlightenment, it's been possible to entertain the idea of the inviolable personhood of every individual. The concept of unalienable rights is based on that idea. We're not yet living up to it very fully -- but we're getting there, in the sense that it occupies more and more of a central place in our public discourse.

If you doubt it, think about this: Every one of the political debates going on currently, from torture to gay marriage, turns on a division between those who believe in the inviolability of personhood and those who don't. I don't think there's ever been a time in the past when that was true.

As another example, consider the recent preoccupation with the destructive psychological impact of war on the soldiers. That didn't use to be the case. The World War II veterans weren't encouraged to talk about the horror of killing -- they were indoctrinated with the idea that the manly thing was to keep it to themselves, even if it woke them up with nightmares for years afterwards. There's still some of that attitude around, but it's changing very rapidly.

So not only is the game well launched -- but the side of decency holds all the cards. The side of abuse has nothing left but hysteria -- and hysteria always burns itself out in the end.

10/15/2006 12:50:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oarwell, I think you'd also appreciate Khalilullah Khalili, the late poet laureate of Afghanistan...


The Slaughter of Man is claimed to be 'politics'

The destruction of the world is said to be 'wisdom'

And under the guise of goodwill towards mankind,

They wrought havoc; this is competence!

10/15/2006 01:41:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well, now I need to find me a copy of That Hideous Strength...

Other relevant literary works:

Doris Lessing's Memoirs of a Survivor
Goethe's Faust

10/15/2006 01:52:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

p.s. ..thank you thank you starroute for that reminder of the rights of man, as tom paine put it...

...we need that reminder often... "they" oppress "us" by cutting off their own best parts...

To describe the current clowns running for re-election sinking in one scandal after another faster and faster every day (and soon every googolplexth of a second), I paraphrase Albert Brooks - desperation is NOT attractive.

10/15/2006 01:57:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Terry "NRBQ" Adams says...

The Village Vanguard was packed with people waiting to hear Thelonious Monk. By the time I got there, the only seats left were the chairs lined up against the wall on stage. That night, the tenor saxophonist in the Quartet was Pat Patrick, a friend of mine from Sun Ra's Arkestra. He was sitting next to me with horn in hand waiting for the leader.

After about ten minutes, we saw Thelonious across the room, wasting no time heading for the stage. As he was passing us to hang up his coat, Pat gave him the familiar greeting, "Hey, what's happenin'?"

"Everything is happening all the time" Monk said, continuing his forward motion toward the closet behind the drums. Then, turning around with raised index finger, he added "every googleplexth of a second!"

10/15/2006 02:45:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You know, for all the mention of Crowley in this blog, you'd think I'd also see the more intriguing (and reputable, if that's the right word) Fulcanelli mentioned, but I don't think I ever have...

10/15/2006 03:26:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is an odd one...

"Bush Buys Land in Northern Paraguay

Buenos Aires, Oct 13 (Prensa Latina) An Argentine official regarded the intention of the George W. Bush family to settle on the Acuifero Guarani (Paraguay) as surprising, besides being a bad signal for the governments of the region.

Luis D Elia, undersecretary for the Social Habitat in the Argentine Federal Planning Ministry, issued a memo partially reproduced by digital INFOBAE.com, in which he spoke of the purchase by Bush of a 98,842-acre farm in northern Paraguay, between Brazil and Bolivia."

http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp
?ID={EBA55617-2676-4091-ABBC-20650EB6FEE1}
&language=EN

Was there not a story on here about Rev Moon buying a large tract of land near the columbian border? I wonder if this property will be used as a smugglers gateway as well?

10/15/2006 05:10:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

WATER THE NEXT OIL

CONTROL AND POWER

Guarani aquifer one of the worlds largest sources of fresh water.


"Since 1999, Rev Moon has built his personal empire which begins on the marshy banks of the River Paraguay and stretches beyond the hazy, level horizon through 600,000 hectares of arid land - equivalent to more than two Luxembourgs - punctuated by solitary clusters of withered trees and sad bushes which struggle desperately for air.

The scorching sun beats relentlessly on one of Latin America's most desolate zones. It is here in the northern province of Chaco, directly above the Guarani aquifer, the largest resource of fresh drinking water in the world, where Moon's associates claim he wishes to build an ecological paradise.

Nevertheless, national Senator Domingo Laino sees a different pattern in Moon's acquisitions. "There are two principal branches to Moon's interest in Paraguay," he said, "control of the largest fresh drinking water source in the world and control of the narcotics business", which is so prevalent in this area. "President Lula told me that Brazil took serious measures to curb Moon a few years back as it became evident that he was buying up the border between our two countries," said the senator.

Allegations from local law enforcement officials support this claim. The so-called Dr Montiel, Paraguay's drugs tsar from 1976-89, said: "The fact that they came and bought in Chaco and on both sides of the Brazilian border is very telling. It is an enormously strategic point in both the narcotics and arms trades and indeed the available intelligence clearly shows that the Moon sect is involved in both these enterprises." "

Exerpt:

"Not content with expanses of potentially invaluable land, Rev Moon has also taken over entire towns, including factories and homes. In Puerto Casado, tensions between Moon disciples and locals led to violent confrontation over the last year following the closure of the only source of work, a lumber factory, and the dismissal of 19 workers who tried to form a union in order to demand an eight-hour day and the national minimum wage of GBP80 sterling per month.

According to Senator Emilio Camacho: "The Moon sect is a mafia. They seek to subvert government control and are effectively building a state within a state. I believe they are hoping the local population will leave so they have unquestioned authority in the zone and are free to do whatever they want."

Drugs and black money bankrs and control of the absu.

10/15/2006 08:06:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

For Christopher Shays to say that Abu Ghraib is more about pornography than torture is like saying that Auschwitz was more about weight-loss than killing. Shays ignores the fact that people were killed at Abu Ghraib, some of the photos were of the dead. And remember, the public never got to see many of the pictures and videos, which included scenes of children being tortured in front of their parents.
(Source: Hersch)

Not the United States I grew up in. More like some reanimated corpse of the U.S., risen from the grave to haunt the world.

Starroute, did you mean 'Marxist', not 'Maxist?' As for humans not being natural killers, this is probably true, although it's interesting to discuss what allows the "thin veneer of civilization" to persist. The literature on socio/psychopathy suggests that 4% of the population lack a normal conscience, and often aggregate towards fields which allow them control: law, politics, media, business ("Snakes in suits"). A guugle search on 'Ponerology' brings up some interesting articles on how sociopathic leaders bring evil political systems into being. It seems to be a good working model: a few rotten apples foster rot throughout the barrel.

I'll throw a question out: what if it were possible to identify with precision, using functional MRI, sociopaths? Would it be legitimate, then, to prevent those individuals from becoming "leaders?"
Should candidates for high office undergo fMRI as a screening procedure? (And would'ncha just love to scan Bushboy and Charnely?)

To Anon: I've pulled up some Quatrains of Khalili, will peruse. Thanks for the lead.

To all: Peace, Shantih, yes.

10/15/2006 08:21:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Starroute,

I have to give you credit. Your words have an appealing fluidity, and you speak with a confidence that convinces those too weak to test said words against reality.

However, as much as my ramblings fit a general theme, so do your's. Your theme seems to be that we have witnessed the steady march of progress, and that progress will continue until we finally reach the promised land. I'm not surprized you feel and think that way.....afterall, from what little I have gathered from your personal life, you were raised, and thus indoctrinated in the Eastern Liberal Tradition, which persistently espouses such views. I take it you were extremely fond of JFK and RFK, and, no doubt, your parents, or grandparents were strong supporters of Roosevelt?

I contend that what is perceived to be progress (technological advances and so-called quality of life improvements) is a double-edged sword.....the opening of Pandora's Box, if you will. The long-term was sacrificed for the short-term.

At least the cat doesn't spend its waking hours in the lab, racing against time, to develop a weapon that will destroy its enemy and everything else on the planet, in the process.

You give humanity too much credit. We are so utterly arrogant.....and so completely blind. We're not that great....when you look at it without the rose-colored glasses....and we're not going to be around much longer. But, alas, the Universe will go on, and our existence will be but an insignificant, routine event in its vast history.

And the existence of our Universe may be but an insignificant and inconsequential event in the history of all the Universes, when considered in their totality....if there is a totality....which I'm increasingly inclined to believe there is not. Like Fractal Geometry.....it just keeps going on, forever.

10/15/2006 09:51:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey, Shrub, don't knock the Eastern Liberal Tradition until you've tried it. There was a hope of better things once, and the fact that that hope has been systematically trashed over the last 60 years by the financial elites whose dominance it threatened doesn't mean it wasn't real. If anything, just the contrary.

What I *have* been wrestling with during the last several decades is understanding what "progress" may actually mean in real-world terms. Clearly not any sort of upgrade in human nature, as was hoped by the 19th century utopians. And not technological advancement either, since that, as you point out, is and always has been a two-edged sword.

My best answer at this point would be that it has to be with synergy, emergent systems, non-zero sum games, all that stuff. Ultimately, progress is no different than evolution. Both have to do with the creation of increasingly complex systems that make it possible for new and more subtle aspects of existence to manifest themselves and -- dare I say it -- enable the ongoing spiritualization of matter.

And that, whether you agree with it or not, is a long way from the Eastern Liberal Tradition -- which at this point continues to serve me as a reference point and a reason for hope in dark times rather than as anything I actively endorse.

On the other hand, progress as we will, we still remain fools -- albeit fools on a higher and more capable level. Matter, I think, is the joker in the pack here -- we might postulate that matter really doesn't much want to be spiritualized and is fighting back with every weapon in its possession. But that isn't a cause for despair -- only for humility and patience.

Reality is messy, shrub. But that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

10/15/2006 11:05:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Under the direction of Yaweh/Jehova, knowledge of the original Gods and the methods for humanity to achieve equality with the Gods was destroyed. Many ancient libraries, millions of scrolls, tablets and books were burned. The xian church has worked overtime at suppressing the truth, through intense indoctrination and through resorting to torture and mass murder when proselytizing and coercion failed. Humanity is nowhere near Godhead. These religions have prevented us from evolving in the area of mind ability and power. Most extra-terrestrials are highly adept and they have us over a barrel.

Very few people have the ability to manipulate their environments using only the powers of their mind. The human race has a major disadvantage that renders us helpless against other beings and entities that are highly evolved and adept in the uses of their brains.

10/15/2006 11:18:00 AM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Shrub & starroute "represent" two branches of the same thought tree. For starroute, there does seem to be some kind of spirit moving through history, or, if not something so blatantly Hegelian, than at the very least a sort of cultural evolution taking place, regardless of the evil of the overlords and the baseness of the oppressed masses. For Shrub, the universe is supremely, coldly indifferent--if we blow ourselves up, no tear will be shed. Right at the end of Shrub's credo, however, is the link that connects him back to starroute:

Like Fractal Geometry.....it just keeps going on, forever.

The "trend" or drive or maybe even "progression" toward increasing complexity is the signature of the ruthless process of evolution: the primeval soup has given rise, fractal-wise, to ever more complex, interrelated systems. The barren seas of the young Earth are not the teeming ecologies of today (although greed and stupidity are certainly threatening to bring back the first conditions.) The thing that will save us, if anything, will be this complexification in all its fractal splendor, and here's why.

The first "stage" of evolution was genetic--the process and pressures of natural selection were intense and seemingly devoid of any "higher purpose," driven, in Richard Dawkin's expression, by the selfish gene, whose only concern was to replicate itself, whatever the cost to the host organisms. Life truly was "poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

But then came a second replicator: memetics, the propagation of thoughts, ideas, technologies--even those annoying songs that attach themselves, virus-like, to the inside of your skull. all of which is based upon the nearly uniquely human capacity to imitate. Memes are somewhat like genes, in that their sole concern is replicating themselves, but they have had an enormous impact on humans because memetics now drives genetics. This is why we have 3 times the brain mass of our nearest cousins, this is why we have language: to better spread these memes, for whom we are merely hosts. The drive toward complexity is (at least) three million years old and has changed us from mute, barely upright hominids into biological machines capable of imagination, which Karl Popper described as the ability to let hypotheses die so we don't have to.

So here's the logic of optimism in this. It doesn't serve the interests of the still essentially selfish coevolution of memes & genes for conditions of disease, privation and political tyranny to obtain. In order for the explosion of human evolution to continue, quite different conditions must be secured: the neanderthals are doomed. They might take a lot of us with them, but they are a constipation and will soon be expelled. The trajectory of our unavoidable, unconscious destiny is clear: our descendants will be to us as we are to Australopithecus. Could Lucy, the most famous individual of that era, have imagined what we would be like? I often like to think that we can somehow take control of our own destiny, but the forces at work here are so large as to be indifferent to our puny will, as Shrub correctly sees it, and also ultimately benevolent (if inadvertantly so), as starroute intuits it. ¡Viva La Evolución Cósmico!

10/15/2006 11:22:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dolphins and Alien intelligence

The controversial neurophysiologist John C. Lilly has argued1 that dolphins represent a non-human form of intelligence on this planet with which we might learn to communicate. If he is right then the fact that intelligence has evolved at least twice on Earth increases the chances that it might be common elsewhere. Additionally, our efforts to understand the complex language of dolphins may help prepare us for the problems we may face when attempting to communicate with an extraterrestrial race. Lilly's claims for dolphin intelligence are supported by the remarkable learning skills and playful, inventive behavior of these animals. In recent years, researchers have observed bottlenose dolphins and beluga whales in captivity creating underwater rings and helices of air for their own amusement.
dolphin blowing a ring
A particularly strong "ring culture" has developed at Sea Life Park Hawaii, where the tradition is passed down from experienced adults to novices.

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/D/dolphins.html
dolphins, as a form of alien intelligence

10/15/2006 11:22:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Lilly comments on religion.......

I went to confession the following morning, and the priest said, "Do you jack off?" I didn't know what he meant; then suddenly I did, and I said, "No." He called it a mortal sin. I left the church thinking, "If they're going to call a gift from God a mortal sin, then to hell with them. That isn't my God, they're just trying to control people."

~What is your personal understanding of God?

John Lilly: When I was seven years old I had a vision alone in a Catholic church. Suddenly I saw God on his throne; an old man with a white beard and white hair surrounded by angels and the saints parading around with a lot of music. I made the mistake of asking a nun about the vision and she said, "Only saints have visions!" I assumed that she thought I wasn't a saint.

So I kept that in memory, and on my first acid trip I relived it completely to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. And suddenly I realized that I, as a little boy, had constructed this to explain the experience I had. I realized that one has to project onto an experience if one is going to talk about it, because the experience itself can't be said in words. But if you are going to talk about it, you choose words which you feel are most appropriate. I saw an old man with white hair because the pre-programming was there.

~Has your understanding or idea of God evolved over time as a result of your changing experiences?

John Lilly: Well, when I started going out on the universe with LSD in the tank, I'd come to a certain group of entities and I'd say, "Are you God?" And they'd say, "Well, we say that to some people, but God is way up there somewhere with the angels." And it turned out no matter how big they were, God is bigger. So finally I got to the Starmaker. But as Olaf Stapledon says in his book, it's impossible to describe the Starmaker in human terms. He was well aware of the bullshit of language.

I call God ECCO now. The Earth Coincidence Control Office. It's much more satisfying to call it that. A lot of people accept this and they don't know that they're just talking about God. I finally found a God that was big enough. As the astronomer said to the minister, "My God's astronomical," The minister said, "How can you relate to something that big?" The astronomer said, "Well, that isn't a problem, your God's too small!"

http://peyote.com/jonstef/johnlilly.htm
John C Lilly

10/15/2006 11:33:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Lynndie England reveals a culture of warped violence

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/October2006/151006England.htm

10/15/2006 05:18:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff tries to make a connection between the development of a movie based on Frank Miller's "300" comic book series and the idea that a sinister shadowy cabal controls the world and wants to engineer a constant stream of war films for you to see.

Hey Jeff, you idea is full of nuts (and not the good kind.) There are plenty of war themed comic books, novels, TV shows and so on out there NOT being developed into movies, and some of them even have Persians as bad guys...for example check out Kim Stanley Robinson's alternate history books. But you won't because in your worldview you really think that there is a sinister connection to a "300" movie and an elite conspiracy behind the world.

Could it simply be that those in power want to make money off of easy entertainment memes like violence and action? Could it simply be that the "300" movie got greenlit because of the financial success of other ancient history action films like "Troy" and "Gladiator"?

Instead of gabbering at shadows, offer tangible proof of who these people are that you say control the world and greenlight films like "300", otherwise your theories sound as solid as the existance of Batboy.

-- This message approved and paid for by your local shadowy cabal chapterhouse

10/15/2006 05:35:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Anonymous,
So, there's no distinction to be made between "war-themed" movies and explicit propaganda? You want "tangible" proof? Of what, the existence of the cabal, or of the conspiracy, or of the uses to which officially (if discretely) sanctioned propaganda can be put? Or did you have signed confessions in mind? If such things were going on in the world, why would the perps be interested in revealing their diabolical machinations?

How about this, instead. Follow the lines of tangible proof that Jeff has dotted for you, starting with the Gladio business, and see if the world still operates on the same mundane level which you so securely posit. It shouldn't take too much effort to realize that there are two levels on which these things function--the official version of events (you know, spreading democracy, protecting our freedoms, nothing there in the dark that's not there in the light of day), and the covert assignations of the real workings our splendid, liberty-promoting democracy. You, too, can transform before your own eyes from an amazing Randi to an I.F. Stone. (Or you can maintain your blustery realism; illusions are precious, as you know.)

10/15/2006 06:08:00 PM  
Blogger Jeff Wells said...

"Jeff tries to make a connection...

What I was trying to do was more nuanced than what you think I was doing. It's a matter of riding the zeitgeist. You know enlistment went up 400% on account of Top Gun? It wasn't conceived in the Pentagon, but that didn't stop the Navy from setting up recruitment tables in theatre lobbies. Perhaps we should take note of a big budget Persia Attacks! tale based on the work of a War on Terror propagandist, because the Pentagon likely already has.

10/15/2006 06:25:00 PM  
Blogger djpoptart said...

from Notorious State Torture Actor Lyndie England's first print interview from the brig in the US edition of _Marie Claire_:


At Pilgrim's, England helped oversee the marinating and packaging of chicken. "Not long after I started working there, I noticed some chicken parts were discolored and diseased-looking, but the workers still sent them down the line at the plant," she tells me. "I told my supervisors." They ignored her. One night in July 2001, several months after she'd started her job, England got fed up. She walked over to her sister and took off her smock.

"What are you doing?" Jessie asked. "We've only been at work for an hour."

"I quit," England said, and walked out the door. "I didn't like the way management was doing things," England explains. "People were doing bad things. They'd let bad chicken go through the line — chicken that still had blood on it — and look the other way. Management didn't care."

Three years later, employees at England's plant were secretly videotaped throwing live chickens against a wall, twisting the neck of one until its head popped off, stomping on the animals, and suffocating them, according to a PETA investigation. "Besides being overly gross," says Jessie, "it was, like, morally wrong." Several employees were fired. England, then, was a whistle-blower. "A lot of people complained about it," she says defensively when I point this out. "It wasn't just me." Did it ever occur to her, I ask, to protest two years later, when things seemed wrong on the job at Abu Ghraib? She looks down at her hands and doesn't answer.

"Yeah, I thought it was weird," England says eventually. She's describing the human pyramid that was built in the hallway of Abu Ghraib and then photographed. As she talks, she's watching Carter play with a picture book. "We were told we were supposed to do those things. They said, 'Good job. Keep it up.'"

10/15/2006 07:52:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yeah....we're not so different than the cat, afterall. Like the cat, we slaughter our prey with impunity and not an ounce of remorse. The retail outlets are brimming with their disected and repackaged remains.

Too bad the animals on which we prey don't have a say as to whether, or not, we double our population.....for all of you who think overpopulation is a sham.

At least the cat doesn't feel compelled to kill the shrew for a set of Shrewskin Boots.

And, Starroute, you're preaching to the choir about reality being messy.....that's been my schtickt all along.

By the way, I'm glad we don't agree on most things, because it's healthy to have differing views, as you well know.

Iridescent Cuttlefish,

That was simply amazing. Very well done.....and quite diplomatic, as is your tendency.

I appreciate your and Starroute's opinions tremendously, even though we don't always agree.

10/15/2006 08:44:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeff wrote:

"[i]What I was trying to do was more nuanced than what you think I was doing. It's a matter of riding the zeitgeist.[/i]"

"Riding the zeitgeist"? Come on Jeff, you're reaching and you're also bordering on the same territory that Hugh Manatee revels in on your message forum. By linking the "300" movie to some kind of hidden recruitment drive, you are also linking it to your theories on a secret government agenda that is out to bathe in the blood of innocents because they derive some kind of occult power from it. When I challened you on it, you now claim that your latest work is an expose on the military drive to recruit new cannon fodder through mainstream movies. Enrolement may have gone up 20 years ago when "Top Gun" hit theaters (and I repeat: that was two decades ago this year) but you're predicting that scores of young men and women will go see "300" and sign up for the military because we're at war with dark-skinned people in the middle east. Did recruitment goals go up after the weekend that "Troy" captured top spot at the box office 3 years ago? Did the Armed Forces meet or exceed their recuitment goals the year "Gladiator" swept the Oscars?

The people making "300" don't have a secret agenda any further than they want to make a lot of money. Frank Miller, talented guy that he is some of the time, also produces crap some of the time. Look no further for said Miller crap than his much-hyped sequel to "The Dark Knight Returns" which rode the wave of good will and buzz from his first Batman story. The sequel to "Dark Knight" turned out to be crap of the highest magnitude; it was savaged in the press and today no comic fans talk in hushed whispers about the greatness of the "Dark Knight" sequel because it's crap. Miller sold out, took a big paycheck from DC Comics, and is doing it again by making an al Qaida/Batman comic book. That's the end of the shadowy covert ops paper trail to the cabal that controls the world: one comic book legend that has seen better days sold out on the 9/11 terror hype and is making big bucks from it. Miller's "300" is rooted in his childhood appreciation for the film "The 300 Spartans". It has no connection to today's terror campaign or hype meter.

You're smarter than this Jeff. I like your take on certain subjects but right now I really do believe that you're reaching well past grounded facts and figures and into the land of paranoia.

-- Your shadow cabal fan

10/15/2006 08:53:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My dear Cuttlefish,

Love your comments and insightful talk in these discussions, but on this subject and your rebuttal to my post I have to disagree with you.

There is no more of a connection to any secret military agenda with the "300" movie than there exists with your typical Sandra Bullock romantic comedy. Hollywood makes war themed movies just as they like making copy buddy movies or gangbanger movies or watery feel-good romantic comedies or mindless science fiction testosterone films.

When the Pentagon (or NASA or any arm of the government) approves their cooperation in the making of a Hollywood motion picture, then there is some kind of involvement from big government but all they want is to come across as looking like the heroes. This is the reason why NASA grants access and their involvement with "Armageddon", a train wreck of a film that ignores common sense for the sake of pretty orange fireballs and a regurgitated classic rock soundtrack instead of a Werner Herzog film: they ride the PR and hype machine and don't want to look bad to the public, just like Greenpeace doesn't want to look bad or Benetton or The Gap or Johnson and Johnson. What gain does NASA get from allowing the makers of "Armageddon" to use their facilities and have some script approval? Do they suddenly experience a wave of astronaut recruits? LOL.

Face it: Hollywood uses the same story structure to make another buck: hero faces adversity, rises to overcome it (accompanied by a action montage set to a soundtrack) and ends the film as a hero. Rarely does it ever deviate from that format because mainstream movies are escapism. They do not show an accurate depiction of the way the real world works. They are still being written and created the way that BAD comic books from the 1950's were created. More care and thought about characterization goes into the average Marvel comic book these days than the average action/suspense/thriller coming out of Hollywood.

So when Jeff draws a connection between the creators of "300" and some shadow cabal pulling the strings of Hollywood, I scoff at it. And when you say "It shouldn't take too much effort to realize that there are two levels on which these things function--the official version of events (you know, spreading democracy, protecting our freedoms, nothing there in the dark that's not there in the light of day), and the covert assignations of the real workings our splendid, liberty-promoting democracy," that has nothing to do with the way that Hollywood movies are being made and sold to the masses and the way that real world policies are being implemented. There is a world of difference between the director of "300" trying to make the battles between the Spartans and the Persians look cool and Donald Rumsfeld waving away the killing of 300,000 Iraqis by American armed forces.

If you draw that thin a connection between "300" and the real agenda of Pax Americana you might as well lump Jeff's blog in with the counterculture anti-Semites that see a Jewish shadow cabal behind everything.

-- Your friendly neighborhood shadow cabal member

10/15/2006 09:07:00 PM  
Blogger Jeff Wells said...

Again, I'm not suggesting your "shadowy covert ops paper trail." The post was addressing a mass culture of mass death, upon which the Pentagon acts as an opportunistic parasitical leech. But since I need to explain what my point was, I must have failed. I'll try harder in the second part.

10/15/2006 09:36:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

shrub -

And I enjoy arguing with you, too. I think we speak the same language, even if we don't agree on the conclusions, and that keeps things interesting.

Parenthetically, I'm coming round to the opinion that being God has to be a lot like putting on birthday parties for four year olds. That is, barely contained chaos.


Anonymous -

Easy cynicism can far too easily serve as disinfo -- and "it's all a matter of profit" serves to cover over a lot of more malevolent and far more focused motivations.

When it comes to war movies ... one thing I've wondered about from time to time is why there was a sudden revival of World War II movies a few years back. That was a genre that was effectively as dead as the Western, maybe more so. And yet somehow, long about the same time as The Greatest Generation, it suddenly came back to life. Because we, like, all know how much the 18-24 year old demographic was jonesing for a fix of nostalgia for their grandparents' lives and times.

Yeah.

Then there was that small matter of the Sinbad cartoon a couple of years ago -- was it from Disney? -- that had somehow mysteriously gotten transplanted from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean, because you couldn't have an Ay-rab hero, even a thousand years in the past.

We have always been at war with Eastasia, right?

Sometimes a movie is just a movie, but in an industry as dependent on financing as Hollywood is, you really have to look to the question of where the money is coming from and where it's going. And in the case of expensively-produced historical epics that never quite turn out to be blockbusters, you have to ask all the more.

10/15/2006 10:42:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Shrub,
Thanks, and likewise. You ravish me with such lavish praise.

Jeff, you don't need to explain anything; your "friendly" antagonist is arguing the point, not seeking clarification.

Friendly Skeptic,
Thank you also for your kind words, but I still think you're missing, or maybe dodging the point here. As starroute said, simply ascribing the actions of Hollywood to chasing the almighty dollar wherever it might lead is to ignore the role that Hollywood plays in this society now. If Hollywood were the hardware industry, for example, okay; who could find sinister machinations in the selection of widgets for sale? That's an extreme example because Hollywood is in an altogether different "industry."

This thing we call reality is re-affirmed, packaged, sculpted, scripted, and yes, sold to us as the real thing. And who's massaging the message? Sure, the "news" media are the official mouthpiece of the government and the role they play in selling us this phony bill of goods is not inconsiderable, but Hollywood is the image factory. There is where our image-based reality rolls off in skeins of very real-looking skin.

Why do they engage in this elaborate pseudo-reality generation? For the profit, you say? To assume a conspiracy is to be delusional? Try turning the telescope around. There is a massive conspiracy afoot. Always has been. It goes like this: there's not enough to go around. We're doing the best we can, but you know what the Bible tells us--the poor will always be with us. Meanwhile, wealth needs to be generated by entrepreneurs with vision and guts and wisdom so that the wheels of industry can turn, and if we work hard and devote our lives to the pursuit of wealth, then its many benefits will accrue and bring us some measure of happiness in a wicked, fallen world.

We'd like to help the less fortunate, but we have to protect our interests--after all, can a weakened America really ensure that liberty and freedom survive the threat of those who oppose liberty and the pursuit of happiness (as we've defined it)? Some benefit does trickle down to the underlings, anyway: the more profit the wise and well-bred stewards of the Earth's meager resources can coax out of the free trade of goods and services, the more good (service) jobs can be created. And let's not forget that the free hand of the market ensures a fair deal for...Get the picture?

It's all lies. Every single word: every proposition, every image, every political platform. And who maintains this illusion? The speeches of politicians? Please. The only medium capable of such a vast and utterly false reality is the simalcrum factory we call Hollywood. If my contention is correct, then HW is complicit in this greatest of scams. Yeah, there's money in it for them, buckets, but the function of HW is to do what religion used to do: to opiate the masses while (through) giving them something to believe in.

Take your war-themed movie theme. Starroute was being kind. Saving Private Ryan, if it had been produced by an honest and independent film industry, would have been called Saving Private Power, and it would have told a very different story from the hundreds and hundreds of HW propaganda flicks which have "educated" generations about the Good War. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington? And explains the internet to Ted Stevens? Sells the government on the necessity of free and fair elections for an educated public whose will would then be enacted by honest lawmakers without ties that bind them to vastly powerful entitites who have enjoyed running the goverment "for, of, and by the people"? Now that's some fiction!

The real deal is quite obvious, if you stop and think about it. Corporations will tell you their bottom line is their bottom line. Sure, responsibility to the shareholders, maybe even a little PR fluff about G.E. greening itself, but profit is what they're after. Profit is not motivated or informed by some trendy claptrap about fair trade. Corporations seek to enhance their profits by whatever means necessary. There's a reason why child labor laws, pensions, living wages, and basic worker protections had to fought for and eventually, belatedly won at great cost to those who led the fight. Did we imagine that the robber barons suddenly became enlightened when some meager concessions to human dignity were finally wrought? That they developed some sort of social conscience? Dope that good isn't sold where I live.

Instead of morphing into some benevolent enterprise for the good of humanity, the robber barons hired public relations firms to assure us of their good intentions--after all, what's good for G.E. is good for America--while they quietly acquired personhood in the U.S. so as to find representation, which they so sorely needed, and then transformed themselves into the many-headed hydra we know as international concerns. It's not hard to divine their concerns, either, since that never changed at all; the only difference was that they now had colonies to exploit ("outposts of democracy") and the constabulary to implement their schemes (covert interventions).

When we hear the CIA rationalizing its activities as "protecting American interests," do we picture brave men stopping wild-eyed assassins from targeting Dick & Jane in our Basal Readers, or do we conjure the fat cats of industry giving instructions to an institutionalized mafia to knock off any fledgling democracy that seeks to control its own natural resources for the benefit of its people? This is where it gets really conspiratorial: did anyone vote for these interventions? (And isn't that a kind word for nun-raping death squads?)

So what's the enemy of the corporation, the modern incarnation of the robber barons? Chaos? Unstable markets? How about the equitable distribution of wealth and resources? And what would they do to prevent such an abomination? Is money power, and does power corrupt? The main goal of power is to sustain, entrench and expand itself. Everything else is PR. Everything else is Hollywood. How about a quick and very classic example: the cannibis prohibition. Hemp was the most versatile crop known to man for the past 5,000 years, until it made certain upstanding titans of industry nervous.

Dupont was all set to unleash the wonderful world of plastics in the 1930s. The oil companies were just getting into bed with them on the project, and then coitus interruptus!! Some do-gooder engineers not on the payroll announce extraordinary breakthroughs in hemp fiber processing which would revolutionize several industries overnight! Hemp celluloid-based plastics; high volume paper pulp production (1 acre of hemp [six month crop] = 3 acres of trees [20 year minimum maturity]); hemp-fiber textiles are softer, stronger and last 10 times as long as cotton equivalents; hempseed oil is a non-toxic fuel and solvent, heavily relied upon in the paint industry; the hemp-composite car built by Henry Ford was far stronger than the traditional steel body construction...the list goes on and on. Really. And all of it with a benign environmental impact. Yep, those new processing breakthroughs were going to change the world. Except that plans for doing that were already on the board. What's an unscrupulous, power-mad Daddy Warbucks to do? Why, make more room in Dupont's bed, of course--a conspiratorial orgy.

Hearst was also upset by the impending Hemp Revolution, as he had just acquired, through very questionable means, large tracts of forest land with which to feed the newspaper industries (his own included, naturally.) So, quiet meeting here, quick sausage there, and it's Yellow Journalism Bonanza!

"Marihuana: Seducer of American Virtue!"

"Spread by Negroes, Mexicans, and Jazz 'Musicians,' Marihuana Corrupts Our Youth and Saps our Strength"

"Communists and Ax-murderers Use It"


An unprecedented wave of hysterical, unscientific, and patently ridiculous stories ran through American newspapers, but the public still wasn't exactly swayed, so the cabal (there it is--I used the word) turned to Hollywood to do its patriotic duty. Who hasn't smoked a little rope watching Reefer Madness? (Yeah, sure, 50 years later we got Up In Smoke, but the damage was long done.) Maybe Jeff could describe the exploits of Treasury Dep't gunslinger and appointee-by nepotism Harry Anslinger, who famously opined:

"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."
- Harry Anslinger, testifying to Congress, 1937

A great read on this whole sordid, pathetic, and (dare I say?) typical conspiracy is to be found in R. William Davis's Cannabis Hemp: The Invisible Prohibition Revealed, followed by his lively WWII expose:
The Shadow of the Swastika. This single conspiracy has so many threads in which we're still tangled up today that it's difficult to exaggerate its importance. War On Drugs, anyone? The larger point though is that this is how business is done here. Suppression, Repression, Murder and Mayhem. And Hollywood is used by those in power to further their ends, to paint the pretty picture that sustains the soft tyranny in which we live. Many, many books have been written on the endemic corruption of the Empire, from the collusion between pharma giants to the vise-like grip of the oil companies, but these are stories that apparently just don't sell--how else would you explain Hollywood not telling them?

10/16/2006 03:15:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anonymous One,some how I feel like the people that have come forward in the investigation of Princess Di.They reported shadows standing around the one side of the tunnel as they passed through in front of Di's car.Do any of you out there also see these shadows?WE are dancing with the devil and no one wants to admit it,the trouble is these sprits know where they are taking this planet,and we can't stop them,later.

10/16/2006 07:00:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Secret Cabal asked:

"What gain does NASA get from allowing the makers of "Armageddon" to use their facilities and have some script approval?"

Answer: The same gain companies get from product placements in movies, or from commercials: improved public perception. NASA, like any other bureaucracy, yearly must justify its budget, and argue for budget increases. Who funds NASA? Congress. Do you really believe that there is no gain from having Congress's constituents, ie., the public, link NASA to planet-saving heroics?

Long the history of government manipulation of scripts, fleshed out a bit more above by IC. A close examination of WW2 propaganda films (and there were many) reveals multiple instances of War Department "tweaking," as well as pressure on the finance side, because they wanted not the cash, but the propaganda. You really think there's no pressure at the studio/producer level to "send the right message?" Ask yourself: where's the film about the attack on the USS Liberty? Incredible heroics, nice dark background plot--where're the money guys on that one?

Oh.

I wouldn't know Frank Miller from Captain Kangaroo, so can't comment on his inking a Batman vs. Osama script (sounds kind of cool, actually, in a dadaistic way). Allowing for (healthy) contrarianism, your argument seems a little disingenuous, in light of history.

Or was 'Triumph of the Will' just an indy about guys who liked to wear black?

10/16/2006 09:13:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

IC wrote:

"...the hemp-composite car built by Henry Ford was far stronger than the traditional steel body construction..."

Really? Was there such a thing? All I can picture is Cheech & Chong tooling down Ventura Freeway, clouds of smoke billowing out, "Go Ask Alice" on the 8 track.

10/16/2006 09:22:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hollywood did recently make a film about evil Big Pharma: "The Constant Gardener."

10/16/2006 09:26:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

That NPR "This I Believe" piece he did was such pathetic crap.

I have to shut NPR off when that comes on, or just tune out, mentally. Same goes when they put Cokey Roberts on. Please!

Imus is a whole other story. Unbelievable that an idiotic dud and drunk can attain the status he has......then again, not unbelievable, in the least.

NPR had a piece on the former CEO of CitiGroup who allegedly built it into the Financial Empire it is today. The man is self-admittedly a technological retard, i.e. he can't even operate a computer or blackberry. The Interviewer describes him as an unremarkable man.

Of course he's unremarkable, you fucking idiots!! How can it be any surprize that this individual can't wipe his own ass and has been bottle fed by the many servants lined up to do so his whole life? He's a fucking monkey masquerading in a suit!! "They" don't want remarkable!! Remarkable is dangerous and unpredictable.

Believe me....I work with them every day. The Retarded Adults Richard works with are much more remarkable than these limp dicks, or so-called Tycoons of Business.

Yet, people are enamored with them. Jack Welch is teaching now....and students are clamoring to get in his classes. His book, unsurprizingly, is the only reading material on the syllabus.

If you lived in my world every day....you would understand my cynicism. It is extremely difficult for me to envision the momentum shifting when you consider the seemingly insurmountable enormity of it all.

10/16/2006 09:48:00 AM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Oarwell,
Since you ask, here's a quick sampling of hemp materials (no, I didn't include Cheech & Chong's hemp van, although, at the very end there's an amazing idea from MIT for a house grown from seeds, which, in a pinch, is edible. Smokeable cars, edible houses--the Wonka meme is immortal.)

Jeff,
This issue is a wagon waiting for a band--unveiling the conspiracy would have large, serial consequences, a veritable waterfall of cascading revelation and social change, in that it would unmask the machinery of conspiracy, undermine the entire War On "philosophy," and whet the public's appetite for the even less savory conspiracies that you've so bravely addressed. It's the ideal opening salvo in the war on the status quo. Any possibilities here for you? The hijinks of the Treasury Department and Hoover's FBI are fertile fields for minds like yours, you know...

Hemp Stuff:

The chemistry of hemp plastic (including Henry Ford's hemp car).
30 second film clip
The new hemp car.
Jim Hightower's Lowdown on Hemp
Hempen strategies from Ratical
Finally, the hemp omnibus: more sources, facts and plans than imaginable.

10/16/2006 11:38:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

IC:

Wow. Who knew? Would Ralph Nader still say "unsafe at any speed?"

Quote of the day, from Jim Hightower:

"It was Willie Nelson who first suggested to me that hemp is "not just for breakfast anymore."

10/16/2006 01:57:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Since I have so many opponents that still believe that Hollywood is totally controlled by The Powers That Be, perhaps they would care to explain how films that paint big business, military and the government as evildoers like "Syriana" or "The Constant Gardener" "Lord of War", all recent pictures, get made and released into the mainstream population? Hollywood has decades of experience releasing popular films that swim against government/corporate ideology such as "Platoon", "Network", "Fight Club", etc etc etc. There are dozens of them that are well known and hundreds that are not as well known such as "Amazing Grace and Chuck". These producers, writers, directors and executives aren't taken from their million dollar Bel Air homes in the dead of night by black ops strike teams and told to drop their latest leftie leaning movie. The DVDs on the shelf at your local Best Buy don't mysteriously disappear from stock overnight and reappear in crates in a warehouse on Area 51 land.

Really, if Hollywood were that completely corrupt as to serve The Powers That Be, why would any of these films get made? Your theory of a secret conspiracy that owns all of Hollywood falls apart in the face of this reality.

If you want demostratable proof of what Hollywood will bend on its knees for every time, look no further than the quiet dismissal of Mike Judge's "Idiocracy" this past summer. That film was released on a scant number of theater screens and with no promotional budget behind it because it does the truly unspeakable: it makes fun of big businesses that pay to have product placement. Hollywood executives will fold just like television executives if their advertisers feel slighted or embarassed.

If The Powers That Be were as well connected as some of you like to daydream they are, there wouldn't be any George Clooneys allowed to make a film critical of the oil business. Entertainment gossip shows wouldn't devote five minutes to "Who Killed the Electric Car" coming out on home video soon. There are people in high positions of power that use their influence and money to brutalize the masses, but they don't own the movie making business. You give them too much credibility and power. Your paranoia clouds your vision. You all make it sound like none of the films that I mentioned ever came out or were even made.

Keep seeing phantoms where there are none and the true bad guys will always remain at the top of the food chain of humanity.

-- Your inside man at the shadowy cabal

10/16/2006 04:11:00 PM  
Blogger iridescent cuttlefish said...

Anonymous,
The answer is obvious, and I think you know it yourself. It's the difference between "hard" and "soft" tyranny. Is Bush a Nazi? Of course he is, but unlike the state of the propagandistic art in Goebbels' day, BushCo also has Orwell to inform policy. How better to enslave someone than to convince him he's free? Surely you won't disagree that it's all about image these days, and that the image is subtly, skillfully manipulated, from the carefully test group-formulated sound bytes to the mind-drilling slogans stenciled on the backdrop of the leader's speeches?

How reassuring that "dangerous" exposes like Syriana are allowed in the public domain. I wonder what a statistical analysis on the incidence of this sort of film among the torrent of the official line stories would reveal. Probably something similar to Democracy Now's analysis of the antiwar talking heads in the media's run up to war in 2003: 3 out of 394.

By the way, you didn't address in any way the role of Hollywood in maintaining the status quo, the lie we live by. I'd be interested to hear your take on this...Maybe the War On Terror and the War On Drugs would be good starting points, as they embody a great deal of the current deception.

10/16/2006 09:26:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

On the Shrub vs. starroute thing:

You give humanity too much credit. We are so utterly arrogant.....and so completely blind. We're not that great....when you look at it without the rose-colored glasses....and we're not going to be around much longer. But, alas, the Universe will go on, and our existence will be but an insignificant, routine event in its vast history.

A more subtle view is that the 'Shrubbageddons' get what they deserve--oblivion and burnout; and the 'starroute' side lives on simultaneously.


And I'm surprised of all this so 'shocked, shocked' kind of hostility to the conception that Hollywood is in bed with the U.S. military. Plenty of evidece for that:

1. Variety Magazine reported in the months after 9-11 that Rove and the Hollywood CEOs met twice (if I remember) over the months before December 2001 to plan a whole series of propoganda campaigns with war themes to plug into the empty minds and to create the brainwashing that the Bush Administration depends upon to float across the surface of the U.S. smoothly.

2. For over a decade the Pentagon has been connected to Hollywood.

There is nothing more amusing or tragic to see people who still see and think that the Mockingbird media can possibly house any sort of independent action from the State.

Boycott all Hollywood films.
Boycott all TV.

Can you do it? I've found that nothing unnerves people (at least the half thinking kinds) than saying that you are actively maintaining such a boycott.

quote from before:

PART SEVEN: PENTAWOOD AND THE FOURTH REICH: VISUAL PROGRAMMING BY THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL-ENTERTAINMENT COMPLEX

Pentagon Runs Hollywood
Ben Gunn, March 30th 1999

This is a translated article from the Swedish Newspaper "Hallandsposten", on March 26th 1999:

Military movies are popular right now, but it's not critical movies they are making in Hollywood. On the contrary, the American Military Headquarter Pentagon is often allowed to decide upon big parts of the manuscripts. This is revealed in the media magazine "Brills Content".

US Military has officers who's job is to discuss film projects with Hollywood. The military is allowed to read the manuscript in advance and often come up with suggestions on changes, especially when it comes to parts that give a negative picture of the military.

An example: In the script to the movie "Asteroid" an American space-shuttle is sent into space with nuclear weapons onboard for to burst the asteroid which threatens the world, into pieces. But Pentagon didn't like the idea, as USA had signed a treaty against nuclear weapons in space.

The military think they get so good promotion in the Hollywood films they choose to participate in, that they lend equipment and personnel for free. The only thing the film companies need to pay is extra costs like air fuel.

The air force gets about 100 film scripts into their hands every year, and in one single year they participate in around 30 projects. A liaison officer in Los Angeles is working actively to sell in the air force in Hollywood. Producers and directors are invited for demonstrations of new weapon systems.

Before the big movie "Armageddon" intensive negotiations were held between the air force, who wanted Bruce Willis to mould a retired air force technician, and the director Jerry Bruckheimer, who wanted him to be a former marine. As a compromise a new character was created, who was from the air force.

Sometimes the military offer their participation if they don't like the script. In "Broken Arrow" a nuclear weapon is stolen. The military saw this as intolerable, and Pentagon said no to give "full assistance" to the film team. Nevertheless the air force gave a limited help with information about uniforms etc.

The reason the producers agree to give the military such a big influence over the movies is that real military hardware is very valuable for the filmmakers. Nothing is better than a real fighter aircraft or a real hangar. The producers save lots of money if Pentagon lends them important properties for free. The alternative would be to rent expensive helicopters and other vehicles and re-paint them.

Before the big movie "Air Force one" the US air force lent six F-158 planes almost for free.

Israel as a Military Soundstage

The alternative would have been to move the production to Israel [figures!], where the military lends such air planes for around $ 25,000 an hour.

Karl Rove and the Pentawood Brass Meetings

And, Variety Magazine after September 11 reported that German heritage Karl Rove, the latter day Goebbels himself, met with top "Pentawood brass" [Hollywood CEOs] in the movie industry for scheduling a series of pro-military films after 9-11, which dutifully came out by December 2001 and onward.

The Third Reich was very much a film driven political and mass entertainment and indoctrination movement as well. The Nazis were interested in two forms of mind control: individual mind control as well as mass psychological mind control.

...

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2006/06/341573.shtml

10/16/2006 11:47:00 PM  
Blogger jules said...

I can't find the stuff I was looking for. Its an old (pre internet) photocopied thing.

It talks about the structure of symbols and capturing chi...

It was very complex, but really just another treatise on how to get power thru "black" magic.

Ties in to what you were saying about necromantic culture in a scary way.

Oh well.

What i remember about it that was weird ties in with the reincarnation thing.

The idea that you can undo a lifetime of work to advance through incarnations to higher levels of awareness through focussing on an animal at the moment of death.

The use of a symbol to focus the consciousness of someone who is about to die or dying into a prearranged trap.

I never really got to grips with it cos its not my thing, but it is pretty heavy, if you take it on face value.

Again nI dunno if it catches awareness, or is just a chi thing, somehow trapping whatevers left as a soul leaves a body (if there was ever a seperate thing.)

It is interesting tho in the context of Hollywood, especially the bloodlust that Hollywood's less pleasant tripe often inspires.

I am pretty sure on of the major points of "feeding" was via the kidneys, others at the wrists and ankles.

Along meridians but before the "bubbling spring" points.

10/17/2006 01:01:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

RAMONES
"Commando"

They do their best, they do what they can
They get them ready for Viet Nam

From old Hanoi to East Berlin
Commando - involved again

They do their best, they do what they can
They get them ready for Viet Nam

First rule is: The laws of Germany
Second rule is: Be nice to mommy
Third rule is: Don't talk to commies
Fourth rule is: Eat kosher salamis

10/17/2006 10:15:00 AM  
Blogger jules said...

Speaking of the Ramones Cbgb's is apparantly closing up shop in NY and moving to vegas.

10/17/2006 07:46:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Leonidas and his Spartans

I'm surprised no one has commented on that rather prominent Lambda that coalition armoured vehicles bear.

-Sepka the Space Weasel

10/18/2006 02:45:00 AM  
Anonymous wolfenstein said...

The home of the infamous european toxic clan, psycho urban fraggers that pawn the virtual return to castle wolfenstein enemy territory battlefields.

7/19/2010 10:48:00 PM  
Anonymous justpub said...

Just Pub, a dumb return to castle wolfenstein enemy territory comic strip by feuersturm.

7/19/2010 10:49:00 PM  

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