Kitty Wellls 2

Sublime....

the one and only..

Sun Ra solo

blame it on the boogie

Davy Graham

some tough jams..

Hot Rats

Sir David Attenborough was my first childhood hero. "Life On Earth" was the first tv show I remember watching, and I still go back to it at times. Even thirty years ago, Attenborough had perfected the kindly school teacher/grandfather/ country veterinarian archetype, a perfect tour guide through the wonders of nature's creation. Perhaps I found it a bit odd to discover that botanists on an expedition in the Philippines have named a new species of carnivorous plant the "Nepenthes Attenborughii" in his honor. (As an aside, and no disrespect to the very dead Carl Linnaeus, but do we still need Latin nomenclature for all wildlife?)
The newly discovered bit of flora is a variety of pitcher plant which traps rodents and slowly dissolves them with flesh eating enzymes. There are many varieties of Nepenthes (Greek for "without sorrow") plants, mainly found in the Southeast Asian Malay archipelago. They tend to lure their prey in with flowers and nectar and trap them in their long pitchers. Insects are the usual fare but several kinds including the newly coined one for Sir David are known to devour mice and rats.

Jack Rose

Many many people were shocked and saddened by yesterday's news. Jack Rose has gone on to the next worlds, carried by his amazing and powerful music.
I didn't know Jack personally, other than having met him a few times at shows. Three years ago, Chris Davis booked a show in my basement with Jack, Fursaxa, The Cherry Blossoms, and myself. It was a pretty special night and personally very significant spiritually for me. The first and only other time I saw Jack live, it was at another show Chris had booked at Springwater. This was about six years ago...At the time I was only dimly cognizant of the solo guitar universe. Obviously I had been trawling through record bins for Takoma titles and what not, but the world of Fahey, Bull, and Basho seemed quite distant, almost like the pre-modern artists that they were channeling originally. Seeing Jack play that night at Springwater was one of those fulcrum moments that the more I look back on it, honestly changed the musical and spiritual path I was personally on. It moved me deeply.
There are many people who had the privilege of being close to Jack and my thoughts are with them right now. As I said before I am simply grateful for being able to see him play and I will continue to cherish his music.

yep...it's a classic

a star is born.

georgia on my mind

throwback circuits

Yep, this was the one I started out on as well....Maybe Friendster still works on 'em.

a portrait of nixon in four colors, all black

paper hats in frankfurt

Giacinto Scelsi, "Uaxuctum"

I was unfamiliar with this Italian composer until the last Paper Hats tour. My friend Thomas owns an antiquarian book shop in Frankfurt and is an avid collector of modern classical music. Big discoveries of late night "plisener schallplatten party" at Thomas's crib were Jurgen Karg and this guy. Massive, massive stuff here, the work "Uaxuctum", from 1966, is based around the legend of a Mayan city which "destroyed itself for religious reasons". In fact, the real city is called Uaxuctun, and its ruins are located in present day Guatemala. Scelsi's work, and its stunning use of choir and percussion, immediately brings Ligeti to mind but damn this stuff is something else. Heavy days indeed with these grooves. I would call this "2012 ready" for sure, put this on when Popol Vuh is making you feel a little too happy.

gavin bryars plays satie's "vexations"

This is Gavin Bryars' turn at the bench for the Tate Modern's 18 hour presentation of Satie's "Vexations". Satie's instructions were to play the one sheet of manuscript figure 840 times, presumably as an meditative exercise. However the piece was discovered by John Cage after Satie's death, and since then it has been performed very rarely in its entirety. It is a deceptively simple piece yet its dissonant counterpoint nature makes it hard for the player to memorize, perhaps deliberately on Satie's part.

Joseph Roth and the Radetzky March

I feel guilty about admitting it, but I don't read as many novels as I should. It's too easy for this camper to get bogged down, or at least submerged ( to use a less defeated sounding intellectual-undertaking-as-water-crossing metaphor) in non fiction tomes, the weightier the better. So of course as the Paper Hats tour winds to a close, I am gleefully lost in the first volume of Shelby Foote's three part opus on the American Civil War.
But I am so glad that "The Radetzky March" came into my life. This is a stunning novel, full of humanity, sadness, bleak humor, and an unhappy terminus. Penned by the great Austrian-Jewish novelist Joseph Roth, "Radetzky" covers the waning years of the Hapsburg empire and the decline and fall of one its aristocratic families, the Trottas.
Brought to fame by military glory in the mid 19th century, by the dawn of the 20th the heir to the Trotta dynasty is a n'er do well named Carl Joseph who dreams of imperial glory but loses himself in sordid romantic affairs, gambling, and alcoholism while stationed at a border town in the far eastern stretches of the empire. I couldn't help but see traces of W Bush in Carl, weak headed and easily guided by emotion or urge, yet holding the name of a once illustrious family.
Roth himself grew up in eastern Galicia, one of those European geographic stretches lost to historical memory. Growing up, Roth was surrounded by Polish, Yiddish, German, Slovakian, and Ukrainian culture, all held together by the almost ethereal guiding hand of the Hapsburg monarchy. Like most young men of his time, Roth served in World War One and emerged from it alive, while the empire he had been born into did not. The fall of the Hapsburgs was to inform his writing in a lasting way; Roth was able to foresee that reactionary nationalism would replace archaic imperialism with haste and impetuousness, and minorities such as his would be the brunt of the fury. He was a successful journalist in Berlin until the rise of the Nazis forced him into exile in Paris, where he quite literally drank himself to death, Keith Whitley style. His beloved wife had succumbed to schizophrenia years before, and less than a year after Roth's untimely death, she was killed by the Nazis as part of euthanasia experiment.
So while Roth's life was quite as tragic as his novels, it added to my emotional response while reading "Radetzky", as I am quite sure it has for many readers. His descriptions of the lonely drinkers, the hopeless lovers, the fathers impotently reaching out to help their tragic sons, the old men watching their way of life fade into the dust of the country roads; it is evocative writing that reminded me of the righteous anger and bleak humanity of Celine's "Long Day's Journey Into Night" or Doblin's "Berlin Alexanderplatz".

george lakoff

I just finished "Metaphors We Live By" on tour, very evocative reading. I finished an email this morning with, "I'm sure our paths will cross again", thereby playing into Lakoff's "Life is a Journey" paradigm.
I am fascinated with the rather acrimonious dialectic that arose in regards to Chomsky's generative grammar vs Lakoff and the school of "generative semantics", an issue close to my heart. I see the rich exploration of metaphor by Lakoff, Johnson and others as closer in spiritual kinship to the pre-Chomsky structuralism of Sapir, Whorf and the early modern linguists. The different metaphors we use vary from culture to culture and when employed, especially as they are countless times each day, they do shape our worldviews in sometimes radically disparate fashions. Maybe Lakoff wouldn't welcome the company of Whorf, but I see in Lakoff's work an attempt to regain some humanity and perspective from the rather cut and dry objectivist approach of Chomsky and his acolytes. To be honest I don't think the syntactic science favored by Chomsky, Pinker, Mark Baker, and the overwhelming majority of academic linguists need be in opposition to the richer interpretation of Lakoff. It's different layers of the same onion, to employ a much abused metaphorical turn.
The video above is from a lecture Lakoff gave on the subject of political rhetoric and how the framing of the debate, the metaphorical parameters perhaps, are often the key factors in "winning" the argument. ( I know, I am getting carried away with self analyzing my own metaphors here)

happy birthday Phil Niblock

San Zhi

A futuristic tourist resort built in Taiwan in the eighties, the strange pod like buildings of this town, long abandoned, are a testament to stunted progress.

terminal house party

wow...ten bands, seven hours....i am going to miss the Vine Ridge House but I think there are enough friendly spirits in the walls now for years to come.

kitty wells

The one and only

Skotography

"Skotography" was a term coined in the 1920's to describe supernatural or spirit photography. "Skotos" is Greek for "darkness" and "graphein" means "to write". The authenticity of such spirit photographs is highly dubious of course but they are fascinating documents.

Tilahun Gesesse

mark turns

http://lilgoat.com/

This man is amazing. He is to love poetry what Darrell Bluett is to comedy. Thank you again Mr Chusid for bending my ears in a eminently rewarding direction.

Mad Mel

Fans of such archaic languages as Aramaic and Mayan have been rewarded by the strange directorial output of Mel Gibson. But my suspicions that Mel may be an amateur linguistics fan have seemingly been proven correct when I learned recently that he has purchased the rights to the story of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Honestly I am waiting for him to do a historical toga pic with all Etruscan dialogue, or at least "Beowulf" in Old English. I know, I know, he has kind of been beaten to the punch on the Beowulf tip. Maybe at least a remake of "Caligula" in Latin...

The Beast in the Ether

You may have noticed something peculiar in America lately.
Crowds of middle class Americans liberally exercising their first and second amendment rights; descending on town hall meetings and angrily confronting their congressmen. Crowds of angry citizens that are actually swaying public opinion away from the ruling administration's agenda, which is something more than can be said for the Iraq war protests.
Normally this kind of spontaneous populism would have me excited, but of course it all is about opposing health care reform. And the United States is entwined in a health care system so insane and awash in greed, so singular in its lack of fairness to the majority of its citizens, that I am not surprised at the violent wave of opposition to changing it. What I am surprised at is the opposition coming from the ground up.
We know that the health insurance companies and their shill non profit front groups are recycling a lot of false propaganda into their own echo chambers, generating a great deal of this supposed righteous popular indignation. But to dismiss these town hall saboteurs as paid agitators serves only to legitimize their angry protests, these dismissals coming themselves from media talking heads and Democratic politicians. Of course, these mobs are anything but spontaneous, and of course they are receiving a great deal of marching orders from the worst kind of lobbyists and political action committees. But it doesn't change the fact that these bizarre legions of white middle class near-geriatrics, many of them in fact on government health care already, are truly and incontestably angry. Its their anger than interests me, not their claim to truth.
In America today, there is a complete distrust of all the traditional institutions, and this cynicism has bred two kinds of reaction: fatigued detachment and vitriolic anger. Many in my generation have merely shrugged and turned away from caring about the shabby state of our nation, their brooding ennui punctuated of course by last year's over earnest rush into the embrace of Obama. On the other side of the equation, there is a seething anger ready to be seized upon by any savvy politician, be they Hillary, Obama, Palin, Rush Limbaugh, etc. We know that something is very wrong in our country and the need to point the finger in some direction can lead to people being led in disparate but equally outraged directions. Obama rode this wave of anger into the White House. The Republicans and their allies in the health care industry are now attempting to ride this anger into a complete demolition of health care reform in the autumn.
This anger is not hard to understand. We have been led in the last ten years into a deceptive and costly war in Iraq. Our real estate market and a large sector of our economy has collapsed in a speculative bubble whose transparent greed and unsustainable growth are only reinforced by the likes of Madoff, Enron, and other cases of brazen fraud. Our priests are now suspected of molesting children, we are not surprised at being spied on by our own law enforcement agencies, the toys and pet food we import from other countries may be fatal, we are running out of oil, our athletes are on steroids, and our television is dominated by crime dramas. We as a people have never been in a position quite like this; at the peak of our power and yet the dawn of our decline. Everything we consume is imported, our chief national export is now our debt, people work harder and longer hours for less and less, and we are bombarded by more information 24 hours a day than any other people in the history of the world.
What has emerged then is a sort of reactive anger that lingers in the air, something easily called upon for service by any politician or public figure savvy enough to seize it. I call this the Beast in the Ether. It is a beast because it is uncontrollable once summoned, and while as strong as steel, it is as tenuous as clouds. It lives in the ether, no one can quite speak its name, and yet we all feel its shadow.
In the 1976 movie "Network", the fictional news caster Howard Beale directed his audience to walk to the window and shout "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" as if the words themselves were a sort of talisman. From time to time, people will get so exhausted, so choked from the bullshit, that they will indeed shout at the sky, they will band together for no other reason than to make the outside world aware of their anger, what comes of it be damned. It has happened so many times in history that it is barely worth reiterating, from 1848 to 1968 and all points in between.
I believe we as a nation are at a very dangerous crossroads. Our president is also our first president of color, and his only tragic flaw may be giving too much credence to the innate rationality of his citizens. As people like Wilhelm Reich have demonstrated in "The Mass Psychology of Fascism", the anger of the mob dwells in a murky, subliminal and even psycho-sexual realm of the collective unconscious. To the savvy leader, this is a wellspring of primal fear and insecurity waiting to be tapped. It is truly ironic that all this talk of "Nazi" policies is being hurled at Obama's health care legislation with absolutely no ground to stand on, almost as if the word "Nazi" itself is potent enough of a missile to bring down any semblance of opposition. The true fascist tactics are of course being utilized by the right wing to discredit this noble yet anemic attempt at bringing some sort of science of sanity to our crippled health care system.
While we are busy drumming up Hitlerian comparisons on both sides I think it is worth remembering one of the more savvy things the disaffected Austrian rabble rouser said once. He remarked to the effect that the bigger the lie, the more people are willing to believe it. Well, the spasms of possessed anger greeting these town hall conclaves are a testament to the truth of Hitler's statement. When people are upset, they are very willing to follow the most outrageous lie thrown down before them, and run with that lie until everyone else either believes them or has been silenced. It is our duty now as citizens to guarantee that the Beast in the Ether not escape our watch, and begin to rule tyrannically over our confused land.

Rhys Chatham: A Crimson Grail

I was so moved and honored to take part in the American debut of Rhys Chatham's concert for 200 guitars. My eternal gratitude to Rhys, Regina Greene, David Daniell, and everyone else who took part. One of the most powerful and meaningful musical and personal experiences I have ever had. Here is the finale, "youtube" style.

where's my tea party?

Call them the flea market fascists. I started to wonder when gun sales skyrocketed after Obama's election. Then came the "tea parties". Now the errant modern day Sons of Liberty have taken up the cause of health care reform as their latest foment of outrage. I find it truly stupefying that even a meager attempt at addressing the absolutely corrupt and morally crippled state of our health care system draws the ire of the "masses". Every developed nation in the world possesses a more sane method of public health care than the United States and yet this bizarre and highly suspect "outburst" of public protest over health care overhaul solidifies my belief that many Americans are just waiting for an angry coach to tell them which way to charge. Of course this time it's insurance companies and private health care firms bursting with dollars from record profits, profit margins that are breaking the bodies, spirits, and pockets of millions of Americans. But the ever ready red flag of "socialism" is thrown asunder and the peculiar geriatric platoons fall out in angry protest. How many of these town hall upsetters are actually concerned citizens and how many are just paid shills of the lords of industry is quite obviously open to query. I feel that either way I remain cynical at the American people's tapeworm like appetite for bullshit, when shoveled by smooth gloved hands. Well, you get what you deserve. And when these pathetic saps are stripped of their fancy privatized health care plans by employers they will be the first in line for whatever the big bad government is willing to hand them. Or maybe their irascible eruptions will disrupt whatever calm and patient attempt we have at trying to cure our cruelly diseased system. Either way the pioneers of popular unrest, from Sam Adams to Bill Haywood, must be shuddering from the great beyond.

the musical scores of milan adamciack

I was blessed to be able to play a set of music at one of Milan's openings in Bratislava this spring. His work is largely unknown outside of Slovakia but he rubbed shoulders with John Cage et al for a while. What an amazing spirit.
He had a great anecdote about the first time he came to New York in the mid sixties to pay a visit to Cage. When he disembarked the plane, he proceeded through customs where he was asked if he was importing any food or produce. He then replied to the customs officer, "No, I am sorry. Are you hungry?"

innovative right wing bumperdom

I was stuck behind this guy in traffic. Not sure where he stands, right?

boccherini's quartet in e

I have been searching for this piece of music for some time now! Thought it was a Mozart piece for the longest time...

James Shelby Downard

A lot of my favorite conspiracy theories are the most improbable ones, and the more imaginative the better. I happen to be one of the millions of Americans who think the Warren Commission has as much substance as phyllo dough but I have never really settled on who the likely culprit in the Kennedy assassination was. Perhaps Howard Hunt's deathbed confession held the key to the answer, maybe the Corsican Mafia hitmen fingered in the BBC documentary "The Men Who Killed Kennedy". Maybe it was Mr Oswald all along. Who knows? I think the mystery, or at least the perceived mystery of the Kennedy murder, exists as an extension of our mass unconscious myth web. There will never be a "case closed" book on this subject; I think a lot of Americans would rather embrace the certainty of uncertainty about the actual killers and actual motives than to shrug and admit that the Warren Commission had it right from the beginning.
Within this miasma of creative scenarios, the writings of one James Shelby Downard stand far apart for me. Downard was one of those speculative writers who was able to spin paranoid tales so rich in detail and so bold in their impetuous ingenuity that, while hard to digest as truth, still draw you in as a snare.
Downard's essay "King-Kill: 33", published in the original edition of the "Apocalypse Culture" anthology, portrays the shooting of JFK as a sacrificial Freemason killing. His frantic writing style is a distillation of a brilliant, troubled mind, foraging for synchronicities that could very likely be coincidence or could be purposefully symbolic. It doesn't matter that much if you buy into his worldview, it is enough to read his ramblings and come away intoxicated with the originality of Downard's vision, as linear as it may be deranged.
Simply for the sake of convenience I am posting the full text of "King-Kill" below. Please peruse at your leisure.

"King-Kill: 33 degrees"
The information I present in these pages on the Kennedy assassination is well-known to certain news agencies who have chosen to suppress it, just as the motivation for the assassination has been plunged into cryonic secrecy. Masonic betrayal of the "common man" involves archetypes of fertility and death symbolism seemingly motivated to bring about syncretism in opposing principles in order to green Israel, rebuild the Temple of Solomon and establish a One World government.

It is by way of Masonic sorcery that the union of opposing principles is supposed to be brought about. The criminals who stage-managed Dallas in the killing of Kennedy have controlled the American people's will in exchange for a sleep without nightmares. I publish this in the wake of the situation Charles Seymour alluded to: "The moralist unquestionably secures wide support; but he also wearies his audience." Most Americans are beyond being tired; the revelations have benumbed them.

Most Freemasons apparently have no idea of the evil that is part of Masonry, and if they do know about it they don't believe it. The same holds true for most members of the "Clandestine Lodges" and Masonic-oriented fraternal organizations as well as Androgynous Masonic Societies.

It is certain that onomatology, or the science of names, forms a very interesting part of the investigations of the higher Masonry.... --(Encyclopedia of Freemasonry)

When the ancients saw a scapegoat, they could at least recognize him for what he was: a pharmakos, a human sacrifice. When modern man sees one, he does not, or refuses to, recognize him for what he IS; instead he looks for "scientific" explanations-to explain away the obvious.

--Thomas Szasz, (Ceremonial Chemistry)

The "science of names" word wizardry forms only one segment of the science of symbolism used by Masons. The JFK assassination encounters this science in a decisive way and contains a veritable nightmare of symbol-complexes having to do with violence, perversion, conspiracy, death and degradation. These elements are important not only as cause-and-effect in the murder of a president but in the ensuing reaction of the people of America and the world.

The fertility and death symbolism in the "Killing of the King" rite which is part of Greening Ritualism that has to do with JFK, has been suppressed because examination of it must necessarily link it to "Freemasonry" and its mysticism, as well as to the political influence it exerts. Obviously this would do some damage to public confidence in:

a. Masonic progressivism. i.e. Iiberty, equality, fraternity.

b. Those who have shielded the conspirators.

c. The entire mental concept that passes for knowledge about the genuine nature of the government of the United States.

Mystical Toponomy

Mystical toponomy incorporates word wizardry (onomatology) and the Masonic science of symbolism. In considering my data it would be helpful to consider a dictum of Einsteinian physics: "Time relations among events are assumed to be first constituted by the specific physical relations obtaining between them."

My study of place names imbued with sorcerous significance necessarily includes lines of latitude and longitude and the divisions of degrees in geography and cartography (minutes and seconds).

Let us take as an example the "Mason Road" in Texas that connects to the "Mason No El Bar" and the Texas-New Mexico ("The Land of Enchantment") border. This connecting line is on the 32nd degree. The 32nd degree is the penultimate Masonic degree awarded. When this 32nd degree of latitude is traced west into the "Land of Enchantment" it becomes situated midway between Deming and Columbus, New Mexico.

Slightly to the north of the town of Columbus are the Tres Hermanas (three sisters) mountains. It is approximately 32 miles between Deming and Columbus. The Three Sisters mountains are a minute and some seconds south of the 32nd degree line. When this line is traced further west it passes the ghost town of Shakespeare at a distance south of the town which is roughly equivalent to the distance which the 32nd degree line passes north of the Three Sisters mountains. The names "Shakespeare" and "Three Sisters" find a connection in the tragedy Macbeth which comprises such a large part of JFK assassination imagery.

When this 32nd degree line is traced a little distance farther west, into Arizona, it crosses an old trail which meandered north of what is now another ghost town but which at one time was called the town of "Ruby." Part of the old winding trail became known as the "Ruby Road." The town of Ruby acquired its name officially on April 11, 1912, and was notorious for many brutal murders which had ritual aspects. Four of these homicides occurred in a store attached to the post office which had been erected over the grave of a Catholic priest.

Continuing on with mystical toponomy, one encounters the fact that Ruby road twists north into the area known as the Kennedy and Johnson mountains.

Johnson Mountain is supposedly named after the general manager of the Peabody Mining Company who also had a town named after him which was the location of the Keystone and Peabody copper mines. The 32nd degree of latitude is but a few seconds from Johnson. In this frontier town on a December evening, 1883, a Colonel Mike Smith and a man Mason were ambushed by gunfighters described as being of questionable reputation and questionable character. These terms are employed in Masonic writings:

He [Captain William Morgan, victim of an early 19th century torture-murder by Masons] was a man of questionable character and dissolute habits, and his enmity to Masonry originated in his refusal of the Masons of Leroy. (Encyclopedia of Freemasonry).

A "keystone" is the designation for which, when set in place, "keys" or locks the whole. A symbolic keystone is vital to the legend of the Masonic Royal Arch Degree of York. The earliest known record of such a degree is in the annals of the city of Fredericksburg, Virginia, on December 22, 1753. Fredericksburg is also the location of the "House of the Rising Sun," a masonic meeting place for such notables as founding fathers George Washington and Benjamin Franklin (of Hell-Fire Club fame) and George Mason.

The Killing of the King

Never allow anyone the luxury of assuming that because the dead and deadening scenery of the American city-of-dreadful-night is so utterly devoid of mystery, so thoroughly flat-footed, sterile and infantile, so burdened with the illusory gloss of "baseball-hot dogs-apple-pie-and-Chevrolet" that it is somehow outside the psycho-sexual domain.

The eternal pagan psychodrama is escalated under these "modern" conditions precisely because sorcery is not what 20th century man can accept as real. Thus the "Killing of the King" rite of November, 1963 is alternately diagnosed as a conflict Needless to say, each of these groups has a place in the symbolism having to do with the Kennedy assassination.

But the ultimate purpose of that assassination was not political or economic but sorcerous: for the control of the dreaming mind and the marshalling of its forces is the omnipotent force in this entire scenario of lies, cruelty and degradation. Something died in the American people on November 22, 1963-call it idealism, innocence or the quest for moral excellence. It is the transformation of human beings which is the authentic reason and motive for the Kennedy murder and until so-called conspiracy theorists can accept this very real element they will be reduced to so many eccentrics amusing a tiny remnant of dilettantes and hobbyists.

President Kennedy and his wife left the Temple Houston and were met at midnight by tireless crowds present to cheer the virile "Sun God" and his dazzlingly erotic wife, the "Queen of Love and Beauty," in Fort Worth. On the morning of November 22, they flew to Gate 28 at Love Field, Dallas, Texas. The number 28 is one of the correspondences of Solomon in kabbalistic numerology; the Solomonic name assigned to 28 is "Beale."

On the 28th degree of latitude in the state of Texas is the site of what was once the giant "Kennedy ranch." On the 28th degree is also Cape Canaveral from which the moon flight was launched-made possible not only by the President's various feats but by his death as well, for the placing of the Freemasons on the moon could occur only after the Killing of the King. The 28th degree of Templarism is the "King of the Sun" degree. The President and First Lady arrived in Air Force One, code-named "Angel."

The motorcade proceeded from Love Field to Dealey Plaza. Dealey Plaza is the site of the Masonic temple in Dallas (now razed) and there is a marker attesting to this fact in the plaza.

Important "protective" strategy for Dealey Plaza was planned by the New Orleans CIA station whose headquarters were a Masonic temple building. Dallas, Texas is located ten miles north of the 33rd degree of latitude. The 33rd degree is the highest in Freemasonry and the founding lodge of the Scottish Rite in America was created in Charleston, South Carolina, exactly on the 33rd degree line.

Dealey Plaza is close to the Trinity River. At 12:22 p.m. the motorcade proceeded down Main Street toward the Triple Underpass, traveling first down ("Bloody") Elm St. The latter was the scene of numerous gun fights, stabbings and other violence, and it is the location of the Majestic Theatre, the pawn shop/negro district, and industrial district.

It was also the home of the Blue Front Tavern, a Masonic hangout in the grand tradition of "tavern-Masonry": Sam Adams and the Masons of the American Revolution did much of their conspiring at the Green Dragon Tavern in Boston. One of the many bars claiming the honor of being the first Masonic lodge is the Bunch of Grapes Tavern, also in Boston.

The Blue Front was the site of the "broken-man" ritual in which various members of the "Brotherhood of the Broom" swept the floor and tended some fierce javelino pigs. The Blue Front was once a fire-house and was still sporting its fire-pole in the late 1920s. This is extremely germane symbolism. The national offices of the Texaco Oil Corporation are located on Elm St., Dallas. Its chief products are "Haviland (javalino) Oil" and "Fire Chief" gasoline.

On the corner of Bloody Elm and Houston is the "Sexton Building." "Sexton" is heavily laden with graveyard connotations. It is closely associated to the beetles of the genus Necrophorus or Sexton Beetles, so-called because they bury the remains of tiny animals with their eggs.

Bloody Elm, Main, and Commerce form a trident pattern in alignment with the triple underpass as any Dallas map will show. Many analysts contend that at least three assassins were involved in the crossfire ambush of Kennedy.

It is a prime tenet of Masonry that its assassins come in threes. Masonic assassins are known in the code of the lodge as the "unworthy craftsmen." Because Masonry is obsessed with earth-as-gameboard (tessellation) and the ancillary alignments necessary to facilitate the "game," it is inordinately concerned with railroads and railroad personnel to the extent that outside of lawyers and circus performers, no other vocation has a higher percentage of Masons than railroad workers.

Minutes after John Fitzgerald Kennedy was murdered three "hoboes" ("unworthy craftsmen") were arrested at the railyard behind Dealey Plaza.

No records of their identities have ever been revealed nor the "identity" of the arresting officer. All that remains of those few minutes are a series of photographs which have reached legendary proportions among persons concerned with uncovering the real forces and persons behind the assassination.

Dealey Plaza breaks down symbolically in this manner: "Dea" means "goddess" in Latin and "Ley" can pertain to the law or rule in the Spanish, or lines of preternatural geographic significance in the pre-Christian nature religions of the English.

For many years Dealey Plaza was underwater at different seasons, having been flooded by the Trinity River until the introduction of a flood-control system. To this trident-Neptune site came the "Queen of Love and Beauty" and her spouse, the scapegoat in the Killing of the King rite, the "Ceannaideach" (Gaelic word for Kennedy meaning "ugly head" or "wounded head").

The systematic arrangement and pattern of symbolic things having to do with the killing of Kennedy indicates that he was a scapegoat in a sacrifice. The purpose of such macabre ritualism is further recognizable in patterns of symbolism culminating in the final "making manifest all that is hidden."

Oswald

Oswald means "divine strength." The diminutive form of the word is "os" or "Oz": denoting strength. The role which "Divine Strength" played in the Dealey "Goddess Rule" Killing of the King ritual should be given careful consideration.

One should also note the significance of (Jack) Ruby's killing (destroying) of "Ozwald" in reference to the "Ruby Slippers" of The Wizard of Oz which one may deride as a fairy tale but which nevertheless symbolizes the immense power of "ruby light," otherwise known as the laser.

Oswald may have undergone biotelemetry implantation in the Soviet Union while a "volunteer" at a Behavior Control Center at Minsk. Oswald roomed with Cubans and was allegedly friendly with a Castro-man identified only as being "burly" and a "key man." "Burly" can mean burlecue, burlicue or burlesque. The "key," of course, is one of the most important symbols in Masonry and the symbol of silence.

If Oswald was the result of some Soviet Frankenstein process why did he have to travel several thousand miles for such treatment when it is a routine operation in America?

While such activities of the Mill-of-Dread are pro forma at a variety of institutions at the present, there was once a time when it was deemed necessary to do such work at Walter Reed Hospital.

These implants were back alley operations in which the victims were overpowered in some place or other, drugged and then dragged to this government hospital. They were operated on, continued on a heavy drug regimen and varied from somnolent to comatose for a number of days. The electrical function of the victim was recorded and monitored and the biotelemetry plant tested. Subsequently the victims were "brainwashed" and returned to the place where they had been seized. The targets then continued their existence, unaware of how their bodies had been invaded and their autonomy stolen.

Occasionally, victims were returned to Walter Reed because of abscesses at the incision or for the replacement of the obsolete device with an updated one. Biotelemetry implants were made in various parts of the body depending on the desired effect and function.

Like the disgraceful treatment of the autopsy of President Kennedy, Oswald's is similarly weird. Oswald was literally butchered in the "postmortem examination." Pieces were actually cut out of his body. The major incision in his torso resembled a huge "Y" which ran from the area of his groin to the solar plexus region. From there incisions were made to the right and left armpits. The so-called "two horns of the letter Y" supposedly symbolize the paths of virtue and vice: the right branch leading to the former and the left to the latter. The letter is sometimes referred to as the "Litera Pythagorae" (The Letter of Pythagoras): "Litera Pythagorae, discrimine secta bicorni, Humanae vitae speciem praeferre videtur" (The Letter of Pythagoras parted by its two branched division appears to exhibit the image of human life).

In the 47th Problem of Euclid lies a secret of the 3rd Degree of Masonry. Pythagoras is called by Freemasons "our ancient friend and brother." One of Pythagoras' main doctrines was the system of "Metempsychosis" which pertains to the passing of a human soul into the body of an animal. Perhaps this was the intention of the autopsy-by incising in Oswald's body the "Letter of Pythagoras" they sought to expedite transmigration, and they may even have gone as far as feeding sections of Oswald's corpse to the intended animal, for this too is a practice of what used to be widely feared as necromancy.

Arlington Necrology

The Kennedy and Oswald burials were both at "Arlington": JFK at the National Cemetery near Washington, D.C., and Oswald at Rosehill Cemetery near Arlington, Texas. "Arlington" is a word of significance in Masonic sorcery and mysticism and it has a hidden meaning which ties in with necrolatry.

At the Kennedy gravesite there is a stone circle and in its middle a fire that is called an "eternal flame." The fire in the middle of the circle represents a point in the circle, the same type of symbolism that is recognizable in Kennedy's bier and cof fin being in the center of the rotunda in the Capitol. A point in a circle symbolized the sun in ancient sun worship. It was also a symbol of fecundity, with the point symbolizing a phallus and the circle a vagina.

At the Oswald gravesite stands a small tree. There exists an old belief that a tree which grows at or on a grave is embodied with the spirit-force of the person buried at that site, and that a twig or branch taken from such a tree has magical powers.

I suggest that Lee Harvey Oswald's mother should gently remove a twig from the tree at her son's grave and then at every opportunity touch FBI agents, CIA operatives, policemen, etc., with that same twig. Such a procedure couldn't help but be more efficacious in bringing the murderers of JFK to justice than the Warren Commission was.

Funerary Rites

John F. (Honey Fitz) Fitzgerald, the grandfather of John F. Kennedy, was elected mayor of Boston thanks in part to his "Wake House" campaigns which were much imitated. These consisted of a daily surveillance of the newspapers for announcements of deaths after which a discreet "sympathizer" would be dispatched and a good deal of political mileage accumulated in the bargain.

For a time the Fitzgeralds lived near the former site of the Green Dragon Tavern, established around 1680 and demolished for the widening of a street in 1820. The Fitzgerald home was on Hanover Street and the Green Dragon Tavern was on Green Dragon Lane (now Union Street). The tavern boasted the "first lodge room of Freemasonry in America," the St. Andrew Lodge located within the tavern proper.

In the mysticism of the Chinese tongs, the Green Dragon is a death symbol. A symbol of the dragon is worn on a ring or held in the hand of a "hatchet man." The Green Dragon is supposed to impart the notion of a "license to kill" for it signifies that the murder is an affair of "honor": the Green Dragon is the guardian of the god-with-a-thousand-eyes who protects the sanctity of the third heaven.

Much of Boston's Irish population arrived in American in what were nicknamed the "coffin ships." Members of the Kennedy family were acquainted with the "Coffin" family. The Reverend William Sloane Coffin was the son of the theologian Henry Sloane Coffin; the younger Coffin was a member of the Peace Corps Advisory Council that Sargent Shriver headed. "Shriver" or "Shrive" has the meaning of one who grants absolution to a penitent, and it was customary to call upon a shriver before death. If the shriver was not available, a "sin eater" was summoned. The old pious cry which was connected with the request for a shriving was "Shrive me O Holy Land and Give Me Peace." To this the shriver would respond "Pax Vobiscum":

...the spell lies in two words, Pax Vobiscum will answer all queries. If you go or come, eat or drink, bless or ban, Pax Vobiscum carries you through it all. It is as useful to a friar as a broomstick to a witch or a wand to a conjurer. Speak it but thus, in a deep grave tone, Pax Vobiscum! It is irresistible-watch and ward, Knight and squire, foot and horse, it acts as a charm upon them all. I think, if they bring me out to be hanged tomorrow, as is much to be doubted they may, I will try its weights upon the finisher of the sentence. ("Wamba, son of Witless")

Sargent Shriver, a Catholic and Kennedy by marriage, as head of the Peace Corps and in association with a Coffin, might be considered to be in a sensitive position in relation to mystical onomatology.

In the ancient mysteries the aspirant could not claim a participation in the highest secrets until he had been placed in the Pastos, bed or coffin. The placing of him in the coffin was called the symbolical death of the mysteries, and his deliverance was termed a rising from the dead; the "mind," says an ancient writer quoted by Stobaeus, is afflicted in death just as it is in the initiation in the mysteries. And word answers to word, as well as thing to thing; for burial is to die and death to be initiated. The coffin in Masonry is found on the tracing boards of the early part of the last century, and has always constituted a part of the symbolism of the Third Degree, where the reference is precisely to the same as that of the Pastos in the ancient mysteries. [My emphasis.] (Encyclopedia of Freemasonry)

President Kennedy sat at the head of a coffin table at the White House. To his back, over a fireplace, hung a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, an assassinated president. On either side of the picture were urns that resembled the type called "cinerary urns" which are vessels in which the ashes of the dead are kept.

A book about JFK was called Three Steps to the White House. In Masonry are what is known as the "three symbolical steps." "The three grand steps symbolically lead from this life to the source of all knowledge." (Encyclopedia of Freemasonry)

It must be evident to every Master Mason without further explanation, that the three steps are taken from the darkness to a place of light, either figuratively or really over a coffin, the symbol of death, to teach symbolically that the passage from darkness and ignorance of this life through death to the light and knowledge of eternal life. And this from earliest times was the true symbolism of the step. (Ibid.)

The body of President Kennedy was placed in a coffin which was positioned in the center of a circle under the Capitol dome. The catafalque was "a temporary structure of wood appropriately decorated with funeral symbols and representing a tomb or cenotaph. It forms a part of the decorations of a 'Sorrow Lodge.' " This Masonic Encyclopedia entry refers to the ceremonies of the Third Degree in Lodges of the French Rite.

Pictures taken of the Kennedy coffin and catafalque show these two props of the funerary rite as a point in a circle. Fecundity is the symbolic signification of the Point within a circle and is a derivation of ancient sun worship.

In the lore of mystery cults and fertility religions was invariably the legend of the death of the hero god and the disappearance of his body. In the subsequent search and supposed finding of the body we see the contrivance of an elaborate psychological ruse. The body was said to have been concealed by the killer or killers of the hero god. The concealment of the body was called "aphanism" and is a rite of the Masonic 3rd Degree. Anyone interested in comprehending the mechanics of group mind control would do well to study the 3rd and 9th degrees in particular, and all the grades of Masonry in general. The disappearance of the body, this aphanism, is to be found in the assassination of President Kennedy:

The President's brain was removed and his body buried without it ... Dr. Cyril Wecht, chief medical examiner of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, past president of the American Academy of Forensic Scientists, and a professor of pathology and law, received permission from the Kennedy family in 1972 to view the autopsy materials (at the National Archives) ... When he routinely asked to see the brain, Wecht was told it was missing, along with the microscopic slides of the brain. Marion Johnson, curator of the Warren Commission's material at the Archives said, "The brain's not here. We don't know what happened to it." (Los Angeles Free Press, Special Report No. I, pg. 16)

If and when the brain is recovered, the entire process will have been completed under the term "euresis." In the Masonic Mysteries are "symbolical ladders." On the Masonic tracing board of 1776 there is a ladder with three steps, a significant revision of the usual ladder in such references (seven steps).

There are of course all sorts of ladders: the Brahmanical Ladder (seven steps), the Kadosh Ladder (seven steps), Rosicrucian Ladder (seven steps), Jacob's Ladder (various numbers attributed), the Kabbalistic Ladder (ten steps); then there is old "Tim Finnegan's Ladder" which is known to some as the "Ladder of Misfortune," and it is seemingly comprised of one false step after another.

Tim Finnegan was an Irish hod carrier who fell off his ladder while drunk. Since he was apparently dead, his friends held a "Death Watch" (black watch or wake) at his coffin. This watch lived up to the traditional "liveliness" of these affairs and Mr. Finnegan was splashed with some vintage Irish whiskey (Fitzgerald's?) and resurrected. "Finnegan's Wake"...

After the Kennedy coffin was removed from the center of the Capitol rotunda circle, it was taken, with pageantry, to the street for viewing. The funeral procession made an "unplanned stop" on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the "Occidental Restaurant" and a picture was taken of the flag draped Kennedy coffin with the word "Occidental" featured prominently over it. In Masonry and in the lore of the Egyptian jackal-god Anubis, a dead person is said to have "gone west."

Several months after the Kennedy funeral, "Occidental Life," an insurance branch of the Transamerica Corporation, ran an advertisement for group life insurance which it proclaimed to be "new" but contained a turn that was indeed original: the inferential weird claim was made that "Until now there was only one way to cash in on Group Insurance" (my emphasis); apparently some rather profound changes were made in the manner of things-as-they-are after the "Killing of the King" had become a fait accompli.

The spontaneous stop was made because of the horse Sardar ("chief"), a gelding ("Castro"), which was wearing boots pointing around to the rear in the Kennedy funerary rite. Horses figure prominently not only in the pleasure of kings but in their murders as well. James Earl Ray was convicted partly on the evidence of a "white Mustang" (automobile), Sirhan Sirhan claimed to his psychiatrists, trance-like, that he shot Robert Kennedy "for a mustang, mustang, mustang ..."

John F. Kennedy had demonstrated affection for the performance of a lady who was a renowned ostrich-feather fan-manipulator (Norma Jean Baker a.k.a. Marilyn Monroe). In Egypt, lamenting girls with ostrich feather-fans sang a song of entreaty of the type that Nephthys and Isis reputedly sang as a dirge, before the partial resurrection and/or erection of Osiris. The sad dirge or lamentation has become known as a "Maneros" consisting primarily of the singers entreating the dead to return, by singing "come to my house" and then offering inducements of some type or other.

It is a damn pity that the ritualists didn't have Marilyn Monroe and Rosemary Clooney sing a Maneros at the JFK funeral, for Rosemary Clooney just couldn't believe that JFK was dead at the time, and Marilyn Monroe was killed because of JFK. In Ancient Egypt the entreaty to the dead of the type said to be performed by Isis and Nepthys was usually performed with a hawk-fertility-goddess statue present along with other funerary symbolism.

Jacqueline Kennedy was considered "fashionable, erudite, erotic and stunningly gorgeous." Mrs. Kennedy visited an exhibition of Egyptian funerary rite symbols at the National Gallery of Art where she was photographed with a depiction of the "hawk-headed divinity that was said to be named Hor-khenty-khem." Recently there was a traveling nightmare of funerary symbolism touring the country (the Tutankhamen exhibit of the National Endowment of the Humanities).

Before JFK began his Jornada del Muerto (Journey of Death), he was photographed with Yugoslavian dictator Tito on the winding stairs in the White House. Tito is a significant name in Masonry since it was the title given to Prince Harodim, the first Judge and Provost said to be appointed by King Solomon. The Tito was a reputed favorite of Solomon, whose temple was a hotbed of thievery, money-changing, male and female prostitution and sorcery. This ancient Tito presided over the Lodge of Intendants of this temple and was one of the "twelve knights of the twelve tribes of Israel."

Let me repeat, JFK was on some winding stairs with a man named Tito. Winding stairs are symbolically important in Masonry.

The degree of the winding stair is taught in the degree of Fellow Craft. This is the Second Degree, and a person at this grade is of course a candidate for the symbolic assassination, euresis, autopsy and coffin resurrection of the Third Degree.

The number of steps in the winding stair are "odd" although no less so than the fact that this Tito or Harodim is a name translating as "those who rule over" the activities of the temple Solomon.

The winding stairs of this temple, according to the Masons, begins at the porch and winds to a level purified by the Divine Presence (Shekinah) and dominated by the Divine Strength (Oswald).

President Kennedy preceded Tito down the stairs to a portrait of the assassinated President Garfield where he was photographed, and another picture was taken on the stairs before a picture of Lincoln (recall the black walnut rocker of JFK, comparable to the black walnut rocker Lincoln was assassinated in; the "Lincoln Continental" limousine in which Kennedy was shot and the dozens of other parallels between the two men). It's unfortunate that President Kennedy didn't trip Tito and then slide down the stair-rail, for he was in a very vulnerable position as related to Masonic sorcery, and such unorthodox action might have rattled the "Prince of Harodim."

John F. Kennedy, the one and only Catholic president of the United States, was a human scapegoat, a "pharmakos." "Pharmakos" or "Pharmak-vos" can mean "enchantment with drugs and sorcery" or "beaten, crippled or immolated." In alchemy, the Killing of the King was symbolized by a crucified snake on a tau cross, a variant of the crucifixion of Jesus.

Jesus Christ was tortured and murdered as the result of the intrigue of the men of the Temple of Solomon who hated and feared Him. They were steeped in Egyptian, Babylonian and Phoenician mysticism.

Masonry does not believe in murdering a man in just any old way and in the JFK assassination it went to incredible lengths and took great risks in order to make this heinous act of theirs correspond to the ancient fertility oblation of the Killing of the King.

I have stated that the three hoboes arrested at the time of the assassination in Dallas are at least as important symbolically as operationally and that they comprise the "Three Unworthy Craftsmen" of Masonry. This symbolism is at once a telling psychological blow against the victim and his comrades, a sign of frustrated inquiry-- the supposedly senseless nature of any quest into the authentic nature of the murderers--and a mirror or doppelganger of the three assassins who execute the actual murder.

As for the three assassins themselves:

Perry Raymond Russo told a New Orleans grand jury that [CIA agent David] Ferrie said [regarding the assassination of JFK] that "there would have to be a minimum of three people involved. Two of the persons would shoot diversionary shots and the third ... shot the good shot." Ferrie said that one of the three would have to be the "scapegoat." He also said that Ferrie discoursed on the availability of exit, saying that the sacrificed man would give the other two time to escape. (Quoted by W.H. Bowart in Operation Mind Control).

The Warren Commission

Gentlemen, don't pass me by!

Don't miss your opportunity!

Inspect my wares with careful eye; I have a great variety. And yet there is nothing on my stall.

(Witch in Goethe's Faust I, Walpurgis Night)

These are the thoughts of a huckster-witch which one need not search for dressed all in black with conical cap; instead, look among the gray flannel suits in the board rooms and offices of the newspapers, electronic media, government and advertising agencies-that is, those who are not busy working for the CIA or Naval Intelligence selling the public lies.

Mason Lyndon Johnson appointed Mason Earl Warren to investigate the death of Catholic Kennedy. Mason and member of the 33rd degree, Gerald R. Ford, was instrumental in suppressing what little evidence of a conspiratorial nature reached the commission. Responsible for supplying information to the commission was Mason and member of the 33rd degree, J. Edgar Hoover. Former CIA director and Mason Allen Dulles was responsible for most of his agency's data supplied to the panel.

Is it paranoid to be suspicious of the findings of the panel on these grounds? Would it be paranoid to suspect a panel of Nazis appointed to investigate the death of a Jew or to suspect a commission of Klansmen appointed to investigate the death of a negro?

Representative Hale Boggs, the only Catholic on the commission, at first agreed with its findings and when he later began to seriously question them he was "accidentally" killed in a plane crash.

HOODWINK. (Definition.) A symbol of the secrecy, silence and darkness in which the mysteries of our art should be preserved from the unhallowed gaze of the profane."-Dr. Albert Mackey, Mason, member of the 33rd degree, foremost Masonic historian of the nineteenth century, writing in the Encyclopedia of Freemasonry.

That is how they see us, as "profane," as "cowans" (outsiders), unclean and too perverted to look upon their hallowed truths. Yes, murder, sexual atrocities, mind control, attacks against the people of the United States, all of these things are so elevated, so lofty and holy as to be beyond the view of mere humans.

Ruby

On December 20, 1947, Jacob Rubinstein changed his name to Jack L. Ruby by decree of the 68th Judicial Court of Dallas, Texas. The etymology of the term "Ruby": (French) rubis; (Spanish) rubi; (Latin) rubinus, carbuncle.

ln old law books it was once the practice to print some of the titles of the statutes in red and these were termed rubrics or a ruby and hence any fixed, formulated or authoritative injunction of duty was apt to be designated as being a rubric or ruby.

As a rubinus or carbuncle Ruby is associated with the "Breastplate of Judgment" used by the Chosen Mispet (High Priests) of Jewish sorcery, enabling them to receive "divine" answers regarding the welfare of Judaism; some interpretations claim that the "Breastplate of Judgment" manifested the immediate presence of Jehovah and was also worn by Masons in Royal Arch chapters.

This "breastplate [which] contained twelve stones" each symbolized one of the twelve tribes of Israel. The carbuncle or ruby was connected to the tribe of Judah (Nohpech).

The term "Jack Ruby" was once used by pawnbrokers to indicated a fake ruby.

In iconography a ruby or carbuncle symbolizes blood, suffering and death.

Truth or Consequences

District Attorney for New Orleans, James Garrison, was supported by a "Truth or Consequences" Club and is alleged to have been an ex-FBI agent and to have been mentally disturbed at one time. Jim Garrison was an outsider in the Secret Society machinations of the FBI and may very well have been pharmacologically or hypnotically induced to set up his ill-fated investigation and the position he acquired in the "Truth or Consequences Commission."

Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, is a town located on the 33rd degree of parallel latitude, and near the same latitude John Fitzgerald Kennedy became an oblation and on the same latitude is the chief Temple on this planet in the minds of sorcerers, namely the Temple of Solomon at Jerusalem, which was once located there and is sworn to be rebuilt on this 33rd degree.

In a literal, alchemical sense, the Making Manifest of All That is Hidden is the accomplishment of the 3rd Law of the Alchemists and is, as yet, unfulfilled or at least not completed; the other two have been: the creation and destruction of primordial mater (the detonation of the first Atomic Bomb at the Trinity Site, at White Sands, New Mexico, on the 33rd degree of parallel), the Killing of the King (at the Trinity Site, at Dealey Plaza, Dallas, near the 33rd degree of latitude).

Only the repetition of information presented in conjunction with knowledge of this mechanism of Making Manifest of All That is Hidden provides the sort of boldness and will which can demonstrate that we are aware of all the enemies, all the opponents, all the tricks and gadgetry, and yet we are still not dissuaded, that we work for the truth for the sake of the truth. Let the rest take upon themselves and their children the consequences of their actions.

a musik instore

a few minutes of an instore i played at a musik in cologne

whoops apocalypse

some punishing cuatro

today's apple: the newton pippin

Cultivated by Jefferson at Monticello, this was the favorite apple of Queen Victoria. Granny Smith has usurped its rulerhood somewhat.

william walker

I have been rekindling my interest in William Walker, still the only native Nashvillian to ever serve as the head of state of any country. Though in his case, the country in question, Nicaragua, hadn't invited him to take over their affairs. He was a self proclaimed conqueror of the pre-Civil War era, an imperialist visionary who saw the future expansion of the slave holding South branching ever farther down into Central and South America. He was executed in Honduras in 1860, having run afoul of all of his benefactors, including Cornelius Vanderbilt, but he was a popular hero in the South. Most Americans today are probably only familiar with him as the subject of a failed late eighties Alex Cox flick starring Ed Harris, but in Costa Rica, the day of his defeat at the Nicaraguan town of Rivas is a national holiday. More on this loony soon.

the power of babel

The flag of constructed language enthusiasts

the first paper hats video

Today's Tocqueville Tidbit

Good essay here:

http://web.austin.utexas.edu/chenry/civil/resources/PittsAPSA.htm

A lot of great men have really bad ideas. Tocqueville was remarkable for his time in that he was a vocal supporter of American Indian rights and was justly horrified at American colonial expansion and Southern slavery. But even he wasn't immune from the appeal of empire building, specifically in regards to France's incursion into Northern Africa. At a time when bread was becoming the necessary worker food for the exploding factory culture of Europe and Northern America, empires of wheat were replacing empires of spice. America was the world's breadbasket but Tocqueville thought Algeria could be turned into France's breadbasket; that with a little bit of inventive agriculture this corner of the Maghreb could be transformed into a stretch of grain to rival the American midwest. To do this, Tocqueville had no problem in calling for the ruthless suppression/extinction of the native Arabs.
Remember, World War 2 and Hitler's wars of conquest were basically European colonialism turned in on itself. The genocide and oppression generated by the European scramble for Africa, both northern and Sub-Saharan, was ruthless and with little precedent.

leo live

the good old boys from Brazil

I was reading some track notes on a Mutantes cd recently and was reminded about the family history of Rita Lee. She was descended from a family of ex-Confederates who had emigrated to Brazil from the South after the Civil War. There were actually several thousand Southerners who left for Brazil in the post war years, remembered in the country as "Confederados". Some came because of Brazil's tolerant policy towards slavery, hoping that they could continue an antebellum lifestyle in the southern hemisphere. Others came simply to avoid being a part of the reunited United States. They were given generous tax breaks as immigrants, in part because Brazil had an eye towards recruiting experienced cotton planters.
Though they were a fairly small group they left a mark on Brazilian culture. One of Jimmy Carter's relatives was a Confederado in fact. There is still a town in Sao Paulo called "Americana", though Confederado descendants are a minority now.

Today's Tocqueville Tidbit

"A native of the United States clings to the world's goods as if he were certain never to die; and he is so hasty at grasping at all within his reach, that one would suppose he was constantly afraid of not living long enough to enjoy them. He clutches everything, he holds nothing fast, but soon loosens his grasp to pursue fresh gratifications."

david shire and the cinema of paranoia

One of my favorite composers of the seventies is David Shire, specifically for three films, "The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3", "All the President's Men", and "The Conversation". One of the more intriguing stylistic features of the so called "cinema of paranoia" era was a minimal soundtrack. Rather than creating tension through music the way old Hollywood films always had, many directors in the seventies chose to create tension by lack of music. I think of it as akin to taking a laugh track away from a comedy. It's treating your audience with more intelligence, allowing them to be guided by their own feelings pertaining to the action onscreen, rather than having to be forced into a certain mood due to the music in the background. Anyone doubting the effectiveness of this tactic should go back and watch recent flicks like "No Country For Old Men" or "Children of Men". As Kubrick figured out pretty early on, probably with "Strangelove", the strategic use of music rather than the constant need for it in a soundtrack elevates films above the fairly lazy studio templates employed for so long. It had been done in Europe for some time but its appearance in American cinema was one of the aspects of the late sixties sea change. Think about it: for all of the fame attached to the soundtrack in "Easy Rider", how much of the film's duration is occupied by music? Or "Five Easy Pieces"?
"The Conversation", documenting the activities of a surveillance expert played by Gene Hackman, used a fairly avant garde piano score to mirror the insular paranoia of the lead character. Strange sound effects drift in and out, and the mood reminds me a bit of the work Oskar Sala did on "The Birds". "All the President's Men" is supremely minimal, with only a couple of somber themes that reoccur with hypnotic familiarity.
Then of course, the soundtrack for "Taking of Pelham 1-2-3" has received a lot of attention. It's denser, with the gritty mid seventies edge; symphonic jazz with a nod to funk, the kind of thing Lalo Schifrin had perfected.
I also have to remember to mention "Taxi Driver" and its magnificent, supremely creepy jazz score by Bernard Hermann, his last. It's the aural equivalent of an expressionist painting, with tones and textures gathering strength deep underground, bursting forth suddenly with atonal violence, and retreating into dark, sullen beauty again.