Sunday, May 29, 2022

All in the Family: Poets and Writers

 
I published my novella The Ice Mine in 2018, but my great-aunt Alice Adkins beat me to it by 84 years.
 
Alice was a badass. She was blind, yet traveled to Africa, Asia, Australia, the Arctic Circle, and of course, Europe.  She translated from the French and also spoke German, I believe.  Family letters show a woman who was kind, whip-smart, cultivated, and unstoppable.  Her husband was a geographer of some note (part of the delegation which hammered out the Treaty of Versailles, for example), Douglas Johnson, and apparently she was a woman who could go toe-to-toe with him on any day of the week.
 
She published Fog Phantoms and other Poems in 1934.  This slim volume contains original poems and translations from the French.  Here's one of her poems from her school days, 31 years prior: 

from Adytum, 1903:
 
The Secret 
 
The wind is whisp'ring thro' the leafy trees; 
The rippling brooklet answers to the breeze. 
Fleecy clouds across the sky are trailing, 
In the sea of sunshine slowly sailing; 
 
And the ferns and grasses swing and sway; 
While the birds make music all the day. 
Birds and brooklet — tell me what you sing, 
You and yonder bubbling little spring, 
 
Is it on the past you're fondly dwelling, 
O'er and o'er some simple story telling? 
Won't you tell me clearly, all the tale, 
All the secrets of this dreamy vale? 
 
Ah ! But they are secrets, every one, 
Many, many ; but we tell to none; 
 
For the youths and maidens often wander 
To the fatal tree and boulder yonder, 
Tho' we listen long it is in vain! 
We only know they leave thro' lover's lane.
 
-------- 
 
I don't know when he wrote it, but my great-grandfather Alvin Adkins (1853-1926) wrote the following poem, probably close to his death.  Alvin was a farmer, but he was an intellectual man as well.  His wife Emily was descended from Dutch settlers who'd established farms in what is now Brooklyn as early as the the 1650's.  Through her, I am a distant relative of Humphrey Bogart. 
 
Bury Me on the Hill Top High

Under the blue and starlit sky,
Placing my feet towards Sun Rise Street
Placing my head where sun sets meet,
Leaving one hand next to the Northern Light
Placing the right toward the South land bright.

Leave my soul in the care of God
Bury my hopes where Christ had trod,
Think of the Christ who died for me
Think of the Christ who made men free
Give to the world the best of will
Render to man ill for ill.

Forget me not in life's years
When time has dried your loving tears
Enrich the land that gave us birth
Make more happy this home of earth,
Honor the God whose land ye till,
Seeking the best your mission fulfill.

But when you bury my body in the hill top high
Under the blue and starlit sky,
Bury my love in the love of my friends
Letting it live there till Christ descends
Let it grow through eternity's end.


Alvin, along with his dad Isaac and his son Elgin, my grandfather, also have the distinct honor of having been arrested for attempted murder!  How now, Caravaggio?
 
-------- 
 
My most renowned in ancestor, writing-wise, was my great-aunt, from my mom's side, who was a successful romance novelist. Her name was Tilly Armstrong, but she published under other names as well.  Tilly served terms as both Chair and VP of the Romantic Novelists' Association (UK).  Before her writing career, she'd worked for the World Health Organization in Geneva, and later, for 18 months in Canada.  At some point she became the personal secretary to the Chairman of British Steel, Lord Melchett.  Quite a woman. 
 
.
As Tilly Armstrong
  • Lightly Like a Flower (1978)
  • Come Live With Me (1979)
  • Joy Runs High (1979)
  • Limited Engagement (1980)
  • Summer Tangle (1983)
  • Small Town Girl (1984)
  • Pretty Penny (1985)
As Tania Langley
  • Dawn (1980)
  • Mademoiselle Madeleine (1981)
  • The London Linnet (1985)
  • Genevra (1987)
As Kate Alexander
  • Fields of Battle (1981)
  • Friends and Enemies (1982)
  • Paths of Peace (1984)
  • Bright Tomorrows (1985)
  • Songs of War (1987)
  • Great Possessions (1989)
  • The Shining Country (1991)
  • The House of Hope (1992)
  • Voices of Song (1994)
  • The Anthology of Love and Romance (edited, 1994) (including stories by Rosamunde Pilcher, Georgette Heyer, Edith Wharton et al)
  • Family Trees (1995)
  • Love and Duty (1998)
So, there you have it. Go Tilly! Some of my literary antecedents. 
 
My great-uncle Homer Burton Adkins was an author of scientific textbooks, and was a leading organic chemist of his time.  The Adkins Catalyst and Adkins-Peterson reaction bear his name.  My second cousin Roger, Homer's son, worked in the Office of Management and Budget, working face to face with Presidents from Eisenhower to Clinton.  Roger was not a "front office" guy, but Google the OMB and his name and he's all over the place.
 
One day, I'll get into all these things, but just wanted to name-check some of the literary ancestors I never knew existed when I started writing as a teenager....

Wednesday, May 25, 2022

Ω

✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝ ✝

Tuesday, May 24, 2022

Camus' Son is a real Mothertucker

If you read this blog now and again you know we are interested in political extremism, conspiracy theory, and fascism.  We are not political extremists, conspiracy theorists, or fascists.
  
I can read Mein Kampf and not be a Nazi, and I can read The Communist Manifesto and not be a Marxist.  I can watch Fox News and...well, no.  I can't watch that (not-so-crypto)-fascist gibberish.  Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Tucker Carlson.  A Trinity of SWM outrage.  Fair and balanced commentary in a methane atmosphere.  TV emissions from a herd of swine.  

When Anders Breivik shot 67 and wounded 32 teenagers on Utøya Island after his bomb rocked Oslo, killing 8, I was horrified.  Two more people died during the massacre, attempting to escape.  77 people murdered in the name of the Great Replacement.

But his "manifesto" intrigued me.  His claim to be a Freemason (which he was, and was summarily expelled), his claim to be a member of a neo-Templar network (he wasn't)....all those elements made me curious as to what his influences were. Not from prurient interest, but as an historian, and as a writer with a long-standing interest in the radical right, Freemasonry, the Knights Templar, and the effects of the rabbit-hole of conspiracy theory.

I try to understand these things, not to glorify them, but to decrypt them, to find the dog-whistles, and, hopefully, make them easier to identify.  I don't feel I need an agenda to justify researching and writing about the things I find interesting (and deeply troubling), but it helps to announce that your intentions aren't nefarious.  For those unused to the codes of this milieu, it's easy to overlook the things obvious to those who are not.  When Carlson says "replacement," to most it's just a word.  For some, the works of French writer Renaud Camus come to mind.  

Christchurch, 2019.  51 dead.  El Paso, 2019.  22 dead.  Buffalo, 2022.  10 dead.  All mass shootings whose perpetrators cited the "Great Replacement" as a motive for their terrorism. Unite the Right rally, Charlottesville, 2017, Tiki-Time:  "Jews, will not, replace us!"

I understand why people don't want to spread the writings of white supremacist terrorists.  Breivik's 2083 is a rambling screed of 1000+ pages.  Mostly copy-pasted from online sources.  Gendron's document is much shorter, but is also cobbled together in the same fashion.  Both use the Great Replacement conspiracy theory as a justification for their actions, and their fury lies as much with the left-wingers who "enable" it as the "replacers" themselves.  Breivik, if you recall, murdered leftist white youths, not minorities.  People he called "Cultural Marxists."  Another far-right conspiracy theory. Standard Carlson rhetoric, by the by.

Briefly stated, the Great Replacement theory was first articulated in print by French writer Renaud Camus in books dating back to 2010 and 2011:  L'Abécédaire de l'in-nocence (Abecedarium of no-harm) and Le Grand Remplacement (The Great Replacement).  

Camus wrote that French elites on the left, the Gauche caviar ("Caviar left"), are encouraging immigration and suppressing white birthrates in order to create a base of left-wing voters. These immigrants, he says, are easier to manipulate, and naturally more sympathetic to the left.

The American far right is obsessed with overturning Roe v. Wade for more reasons than a "Christian" belief in the "sanctity of life."
 
Check out this NYT special report.  It identifies 400 occasions on which Carlson cites Great Replacement.

Although Buffalo terrorist Payton Gendron disparages Fox News itself, his "manifesto" makes it clear he was motivated by the Great Replacement theory.  Since Camus' books have never been translated into English, somehow I doubt he got it from the original source.  As he says; he got it online.  I'll go out on a limb and say that Carlson had a great deal to do with getting the idea out there.  He is America's most-watched pundit, after all.  Carlson has mainstreamed far-right conspiracy theory.  Backtrack all you want, Tucker, but there are ten people dead in Buffalo you need to answer for. You cant feign ignorance of a theory you pushed in 400 segments (CNN)

I understand why people don't want to allow Gendron's screed to be made available.  Some people will get a kick out of it, and who wants to feed into perversity and racism?  Some feel it might spread his "ideas."  I would say that this argument is not valid.  Gendron was radicalized online:  these ideas are already out there, in many places, forever.  And what effect would it have compared to the effect Tucker Carlson has, with a regular audience of millions?

No, releasing it wouldn't have many ill effects. I'd say allowing people the opportunity to read and discuss it may in fact bear positive results.  If we hear someone discussing certain themes or using certain expressions, we might be alerted to their meaning among extremists, having been exposed to them by reading Gendron's drivel.  And if it's not too late, you might be able to get through to them somehow.

I've heard this described as a free speech issue, but I'm not sure how the 1st Amendment applies here exactly.  I know a direct and specific call to violence is not protected.  But I don't know if a general or vague appeal is, or not.  I don't know where the legal line is drawn.

A comment on a site I saw a few days ago about a video of someone reading from Gendron's screed being withdrawn from YouTube has (had?) a valid link to the PDF (yeah.docx.PDF), and I acquired a copy.  I haven't read all of it yet.

I will, though, and you can bet it echoes Fox News' fascist pundit Tucker Carlson.  You ever wonder why America is such a steaming mess?  Try starting with this: The country's most widely-watched TV host uses the language and pushes the conspiracy theories of neo-fascists.  Theories which have indisputably motivated terrorists in Oslo, Christchurch, and now Buffalo.

I think this document is important for sociologists, psychologists, law enforcement officers, historians,  journalists, political scientists, etc.  I'm not saying it has any intrinsic value, but when a guy kills ten people due to their race, and has a long list of recent antecedents, we need all the insight we can get into the messed-up minds of the right-wing mass-shooters who are paradoxically both lone wolves and a movement.

Carlson, you're one big mothertucker.  Dangerous, deadly, and crazy like a Fox.

Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Cops and Robbers and Robbers and Cops

 

What is up with people impersonating cops?  And getting away with it?  To the point of duping actual law enforcement officers, sometimes at the highest levels?  

On April 30th, I read a strange article about a pair of guys, Arian Taherzadeh and Haider Ali, who had a company they wanted to register as "United States Special Police" but were obliged to officially call "USSP" due to fears that they might be confused with a legitimate police service.

Well-grounded fears as it turns out. Some time back the pair were arrested for impersonating law enforcement officers.  When arrested they were found to have all manner of guns and ammo, bulletproof vests, tactical gear, uniforms and insignia, handcuffs, breaching gear, etc.

They'd been living in a swanky apartment complex, The Crossing, whose residents included Secret Service agents, powerful lawyers, and people connected in various ways to the military.  They claimed to work for Homeland Security and leveraged it to get free rent in expensive apartments.  They had access to areas normally off-limits and openly carried sidearms at they "patrolled" the residence.  One time, a neighbor had occasion to enter their flat and saw a number of firearms and tactical gear, in addition to rows of computers with live feeds from all over the complex.  The number of guns, he said, was "staggering". 

Taherzadeh had access to the building's security system and binders full of details about the residents.  No one knows exactly yet what their motives were, but they lavished gifts upon many of their neighbors, including one Secret Service agent assigned to protect the First Lady.

Bribery?  Power?  Something else?

The Crossing wasn't the first place; they had finagled themselves into two other apartments and their paper trail dates back for at least three years.  Several lawsuits show a trail of creditors, lawyers, and unpaid rent.

Websites note that the USSP has several addresses and people on its board, but in a raid on one address in early April, no office was found, and a receptionist just shrugged her shoulders at the name USSP.  The lease for The Crossing lists a Kevin Fuller as the renter, but Taherzadeh later testified that Fuller was pure fiction.

Taherzadeh was denied a permit to carry a gun in 2019 due to a prior conviction for domestic assault, but in 2020 he reapplied, and got it.

According to the Post article:

....it remains unclear what, if anything, the men wanted from the federal agents in exchange for their gifts....Taherzadeh said he had “no intention of compromising any federal agent” and acted out of a “desire for friendship”; while Ali said he had gotten carried away in a scheme he did not fully understand and believed he was working for a legitimate security company....

The Secret Service has downplayed any risk to national security, but several former Secret Service officials stressed that the alleged ruse reveals vulnerabilities among employees who are supposed to be trained to spot scammers or spies but instead were apparently tricked.

Some links to third-party websites:  

https://brandfetch.com/ussp.us 

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/united-states-special-police


In 2015, another group brazenly went around posing as legitimate LEO's; this time it was the Masonic Fraternal Police Department and its accompanying bogus Masonic Lodge (LoS)

These guys

....walked around L.A. claiming to be cops and had acquired an impressive collection of weapons, uniforms, law enforcement-type vehicles....which is why I can't quite ken why members actually went around to various police stations and introduced themselves and their mission.  "Call on us" they announced and left their calling cards, literally....

One person who exchanged cards with these "Masonic police" was an aide to the state AG, and the card he used was from the AG's office.  That AG, BTW, is none other than....Kamala Harris.

There is even a video "made in the wake of the demonstrations following the Zimmerman verdict, [in which] a group of Masons stands with an L.A.P.D. spokesman to call for peace and calm."

See the link above to grok that appeal to calm....

Then again, back in 2009, we wrote about the American Police Force. (LoS)

"Residents of Hardin, MT, were alarmed last week when executives from the firm, American Police Force, showed up in the town, which does not have its own police department, with Mercedes SUVs bearing City Of Hardin Police Department decals." The company is close to closing a deal which would give it control of a jail in the small Montana town in order to build a police training facility.  

Given all the double-headed eagle talk here on LoS, this one has a layer of coincidence beyond the fake LEO angle.

The APF was founded by Michael Hilton, a U.S. citizen originally from Montenegro. Hilton's long criminal record includes real estate scams, embezzlement, and writing bad checks. A shady character indeed. 

Regarding that double-headed eagle, back in 2009 The Raw Story blog studied Burke's Peerage and found that the APF coat of arms is almost identical to that of Serbian Prince Aleksandar Karageorgevich. (Born in White Lodge, England!)  Serbia denied any link to the APF.

Wikipedia has a page on the APF here.

So?

I don't have any deep insights into these stories, just find it odd that these scammers and shady characters decide to impersonate police officers and then seek the company of real ones.  They have uniforms, vehicles, firearms, tactical gear, and all manner of other equipment.  The APF was close to closing a deal to create a police training facility in a decommissioned jail until their web of deceit began to unravel.

These pseudo-agency stories aren't exactly ubiquitous, but three cases in 12 or so years is still pretty remarkable.  Hell, even one was remarkable enough for me to uh, write a few remarks about it.

Part of the strangeness is the question "Why?"  Just a perfect alibi, so to speak?  A way to hide one's crimes under the perfect cover?  Is there mental illness at play....high-functioning sociopaths who half believe their own stories? Through a Police Band Scanner Darkly, wot?  Crazy, or crazy like a fox?

In the above stories, no real harm was done.  Cheesy logos, mimicking the real thing, and names which seem straight out of a child's imagination.  Some embarrassed cops who got taken.  

But playing cop can have deadly consequences.

I recall that when Anders Breivik landed on Utøya Island, he got access to the ferry and was welcomed at first because he was posing as a police officer, heavily armed, with all the gear to play the part.  

This weekend, another manifesto-writing white supremacist carried out an attack against his perceived enemies. Another disturbed, young, white male, radicalized online, and resorting to terrorism.

Impersonating a police officer is a crime, but all the tools necessary to do it convincingly are freely available.

Maybe people are so easily taken because genuine military sub-contractors have become so ubiquitous.  The US used them extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Russians are currently using them in the a Ukraine.  Privatizing law enforcement and the military is bound to bring about all sorts of unintended consequences.

2009, 2015, 2022...if the pattern holds we'll be back to this topic sometime in 2030....

Monday, May 16, 2022

Putin's Rasputin: Further Encounters with Fascism and the Occult

Hot on the heels of our posts about A) fascism and the occult and B) Putin as Czar, along comes a WaPo editorial discussing Russia's pretensions to an imperial lineage, the "3rd Rome" etc. and the right-wing occultist stoking those ideas.

Just as we wrote: ultra-nationalism, fascism and the occult.  Bloop!  Meep!  Tailor-made for my memespiracy....The far-right mystical writer who helped shape Putin’s view of Russia.  He may be full of pooh, but the pooh flows, and Poot listens, apparently.

We shouldn't over-emphasize the occult aspects of Hitler or Putin's ideology, but shouldn't ignore them, either.  The "why" is self-evident:  we need to understand Putin both in terms of rational realpolitik and, well, his nuttier concerns.

Putin's Rasputin's a dude named Dugin (say that 3x, fast), and "back in the day" he mixed with Satanists and punk-rockers before becoming a reactionary who embraced the Nazis to a certain degree.  He helped to found a Party called the National Bolshevik Party (aka the "Nazbols").  Their flag is a hammer and sickle, but the color scheme is pure Nazi.   The allusion is clear.

 

Glory be!  Mother Russia.  Strange how Dugin's time with occult circles and Satanists meshes so neatly with my last post about fascism, the occult, and Satanism.  Somehow, despite a call to the religious values of times past by these jackals, they are not only willing to countenance occultists among their ranks, but Satanists.  Strange bedfellows indeed!

Just by random chance I just won a French history magazine in a pub quiz and it's all about Russia, including the idea that Russia considers itself a "third Rome" after Byzantium.  This is not a new idea.  The Duke of Muscovy married the niece of the last Byzantine emperor, and so the Russians adopted the double-headed eagle of the divided empire, their Cyrillic alphabet is based not on Latin but Greek letters, and they adopted Eastern Orthodoxy, not Roman Catholicism.  "Czar" means "Caesar," after all.  Moscow has long seen itself as the new center of the Roman Empire, the true inheritor of the Byzantines.

Dugin is a Russian Steve Bannon, a once-fringe thinker elevated to the center of power; someone scorned in the past but whose words now echo in Poot's speeches, and have a real effect.  This is not abstraction.  This is how mystical thinking ends up meaning 1000's of civilian casualties in an ill-conceived invasion to rebuild Novorossiya, the "New Russia."  The annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine.  All of it explained by Putin using Dugin's language and mystical vision of a Russia reborn.

Occultists, fascists, Satanists.  And the enemies are, chiefly, the USA and Britain.  

Stay tuned.  Commies cum Nazi-loving, nationalist mystics.  It is worth studying Marinetti and D'Annunzio because the SAME THING IS HAPPENING TODAY (shouting).

Merde, Goddam, and fuck.  Here's a Nazi emblem turned "Soviet" and "Czarist".  It seems at once completely incoherent yet somehow, a "logical" conclusion of what has come before....

_

Tuesday, May 3, 2022

Tracy Twyman & the Exile of Belief

 
It was the turn of the millennium.  I had just read Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and, like many, became fascinated with the mythology surrounding Rennes-le-Château.  I became a Freemason like generations of my family before me (four, at the very least).  I was deeply into making electronic music, reading and writing "avant-garde" poetry, studying esoteric and Masonic literature, and drinking.  Lots of drinking.  I was also working at Cornell University's Olin Library, and Cornell has an extensive collection of Masonic books.  Thousands.  Literally.  I was like a pig in shit, but to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, my snout was pointed at the stars.  And France.  I moved here in 2002.

A friend of mine, a short-term former bassist of Galaxie 500, worked in a kind of head shop-slash-porno outlet-slash-occult bookstore, and turned me on to The Black Flame and Dagobert's Revenge magazines.  

At the time, I had been working on a lengthy article about the connections between Freemasonry and Scouting, and more specifically, the BSA honor society called the Order of the Arrow.  I submitted that article to DR with high hopes; it was rejected.  But Twyman liked it and published it online.

Twyman also inducted me into a fledgling esoteric order, now defunct, called the Ordo Lapsit Exilis -- the "Order of the Fallen Stone," as a 1st° "Legionnaire."  Motto:  Ab initio (“From the beginning...”).  I   thought it a bit odd, never took it very seriously, but was still rather chuffed.  God knows why.

I don't know if the OLE ever existed beyond a website, a mission statement, and a series of written degrees, but I think Twyman had founded the Order with Boyd Rice and Vadge Moore, occultist and former drummer of The Dwarves. 

(Off-topic, if you get a chance to see them live, do it!  Singer Blag Dahlia probably has a rep as a madman, but when I met him, he was a soft-spoken and very nice dude).

Years passed.  I read at some point the OLE had folded.  Like with many Rice collaborations, it seems to have been an acrimonious parting.  The list of disgruntled Rice collaborators is long:  Giddle Partridge, filmmaker Larry Wessel, (perhaps?) Douglas P. of Death in June....etc.  It didn't surprise me.  Back then, Rice accused Twyman of turning the OLE into a money-making scheme, a scruple he didn't seem to apply to Anton LaVey.  Twyman, I learned much later, accused Rice of being lazy and riding on her shoulders.  Qui sait?

As I continued my esoteric studies over the years, I frequently came across Twyman's work.  Some of it looked interesting.  Some of her associations, like the so-called "Dragon Court" and Dragon bloodline, seemed like utter bullshit.  They seem like people who confuse the SCA with reality.

Everyone wants to imagine their ancestors were Princes or Dukes, or a least minor Lords.  But alas, most of our ancestors were peasants, anointed more with pig shit and flies than the holy oils of Merovingian fish-men.

I later learned Twyman had gotten into QAnon-like researches into topics such as Project Monarch and CIA-sponsored kid-trafficking.  I've seen lots of this kind of stuff.  Before QAnon we had the "Satanic Panic" and waaaaay back, there were accusations that Jews trafficked kids for use in unholy rites.  Blood-libel.  The CIA certainly did some wacky mind-control experimentation back in the day, using LSD on unsuspecting soldiers, among other treats, but the idea that a "deep-state" runs a global ring of kiddy diddlers?  Weinstein and. Epstein are real enough, and add just enough fact to make such a scenario believable.  And hey!  The Jooz!.  (That's sarcasm, friends.  LoS don't truck with no Antisemites).  Just enough real shit to make the balderdash seem possible.

Disinformation.  Psy-ops.  If you prefer, Grade-A mindfuckery.

I don't know what it was I was looking for, probably something to do with recent posts about the Church of Satan and the 8-8-88 rally, ah yes, it was on Boyd Rice's Wikipedia page, where I read Twyman had died.

Searching "Twyman death" on Google I came across a couple of articles. Twyman had been researching sex trafficking rings involving the CIA and other such topics.  Not really new subjects, to be honest.  Cathy O'Brien is the fairy godmother of this bullshit.  Her TRANCE Formation of America is one of the "classics" of what can be called a genre.  Another is James Shelby Downard's Carnivals of Life and Death.

If the latter is an extended allegory, I don't know.  If meant to be a real recollection, then Downard is either a bullshit artist of the highest order, or a schizophrenic.

I'm still not entirely convinced Downard is even real, instead being a concoction made up by Michael Hoffman II and Jim Brandon, pseudonym of William Grimstad.  Both are Fortean types who are also Antisemitic firebrands.  Some even say Adam Parfrey was in on it, despite the fact he was half-Jewish.  Or wasn't.  He got pretty cranky when I mentioned it in a Facebook exchange, despite his claiming to be half-Jewish as a way of defending Boyd Rice against charges of being a Neo-Nazi.  But Parfrey is dead now.  

Not to speak ill of the dead, but his Feral House publishing concern is so frustrating.  A mix of truly interesting and informative books mixed with some of the biggest balls of bullroar on the market.  Downard's Carnivals, for one.  I must also mention Dick Hoagland's NASA "exposé" Dark Mission.  This latter book is such a rancid pack of nonsense it's almost criminal.  If I weren't such a free speech defender I'd advocate banning it just for being so insanely stupid.  Such is the mixed bag that is Feral House.

But I digress.  Twyman was looking into sex trafficking by the CIA before her death and ended up being found in her garage, an apparent suicide by hanging.  How could that not be conspiracy fodder?

I read some things about her death, and while I don't firmly believe Twyman was in fact murdered, there are enough suspicious facts to the case which warrant further investigation.

Before her death she talked of being stalked and threatened, both online and in the real world.  She even made a YouTube video about it.  And that video was here but "....is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Mystagogue Publications LLC."  But of course.

One could (and some people do) argue that this is evidence she was murdered.  It could also be used to prove that her mental state was deteriorating, that she was merely paranoid and losing the plot, breaking down.

I would urge anyone interested to read the testimonies of those who feel something is amiss (see below) and draw one's own conclusions.  I don't claim one thing or the other, but I do feel that if these testimonies are true, her suicide might be more that it appears.

I didn't know Twyman personally and I have no dog in this hunt.  Maybe the police did a proper investigation and she'd simply gone down the occult rabbit hole, never to emerge.  She always seemed to be a decent sort.  Bright, certainly.  Off-kilter?  Perhaps.  But that doesn't mean she was totally off her rocker.  Her interests were esoteric and she was prone to make connections I don't agree with.  But the only time I saw her bear into whack-a-doodle territory was with the Dragon Court nonsense, but I don't even know to what degree she actually believed it.

I don't want to intrude upon her family's grief and wander into what may just be the sad affair of a smart woman who lost her grip and ended up taking her own life.

But if there is something to the claims that she didn't kill herself, it merits a further look, ne c'est pas?

This post won't convince anyone, anywhere, of anything.  She was nice to me, and dug my work.  After DR I didn't follow or read her writings, but what she did in that magazine was remarkable and valuable, if only for the poetry it brought into my life.  For that, I salute her.

And I guess, in a way, I'm still a Legionnaire in the Ordo Lapsit Exilis, so in that small way, a brother of sorts.

Read the links I've posted below and decide for yourselves.  Here in France, I can do naught but salute her from afar.  Godspeed Tracy, whatever happened.    

 

1.  Who killed Tract Twyman?

The title already tells you the author's conclusions.  If any number of things alleged here are true, than an investigation is surely in order.  Thing is, are they true?  How could I know?  I'd like to know.  The post is actually an answer on Quora by one "Providence Athenaeum" who has made zero posts and only one answer on the site.  This one.  The Providence Athenaeum, btw, is a private library located in Rhode Island.  It was frequented, among others, by Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft, which somehow seems germane.

The post claims she was murdered but is short on details.  It's well-written, but comes across as well....paranoid.  To say the least.

2.  Tracy Twyman, Targeted Indivdual (podcast)

So, around 8:20 Twyman suggests that a sophisticated AI had hijacked not only her computer, what she was seeing online, but had hijacked her mind.  That is to say, what she was seeing online was based upon what she was thinking.  Not what she'd already visited -- Google algorithms do that to all of us -- but what was in her head, "up to the minute" (her words).

Most people understand that this is the way the internet works.  Search for prices for plane tickets to Mallorca, and you start to see ads for flights to and hotels in....Mallorca.  This is the obvious part.  

What's less obvious is that your entire web history is used to point you towards things Google's AI thinks will interest you.  It's a well-known fact.  And problem.  Leftists get results that confirm their biases.  Right-wingers get results which confirm theirs.  This is not always so blatant, and there has been a lot of hand-wringing about how the increasing polarization of the political landscape is being entrenched due to search engine algorithms.

With confirmation bias or frequency illuisions, the paranoid mind kicks into overdrive. The brain's natural tendency to render perception itself an organizing process becomes a kind of apophenia.  With confirmation bias, the brain sees things that confirm pre-existing conceptions. You have a theory, start looking, and find plenty of data to support it, neglecting that which doesn't.  Frequency illusion is when you see a thing, then see it again, then start seeing it everywhere.  Like if I tell you the number 27 appears in a lot of media, you'll start seeing it everywhere (and trust me, in this case, you will).  Of  course, the 99 other times you don't see it won't be important, but the times you do:  Mind.  Blown.  Apophenia is when you start seeing meaningful connections in unrelated things.  (Sorry for these extremely simplistic explanations).

In many ways, this is normal, and helps us construct our relationship with reality.  For an artistic mind, it can be a very useful tool.  Surrealist aesthetics are in many ways controlled apophenia.  Salvador Dalí called it the paranoiac-critical methodDalí also said:  "There is only one difference between a madman and me.  I am not mad."  And that's the crux.  He did say paranoiac, but he also said critical.  I know confirmation bias, frequency illusion and even limited apophenia do not mean a person is crazy.  But when it gets out of hand, it's no longer an artistic tool or a thing that makes you go "hmm."  It could be the onset of schizophrenia.

What's more likely?  That an AI had gotten so sophisticated it could show Twyman things she had only just thought?  Or that her "perception organization tools" had gone wonky?  When she says her computer was telling her to kill herself, is it more likely the computer was saying she should kill herself, or that her suicidal ideations were being externalized?

At the end of the podcast, it is, as the podcaster says, pretty "far out."  Indeed, he says "....to me, at first, I think she's kind of flying off the deep end on some stuff that she's correlating to Biblical scriptures, and the Sumerian Bible texts, and the Book of Enoch, and some end days, uh, kind of virus versus flood, kind of scenarios, but this is the kind of research that she did, the kind of stuff she did...."

Believe what you want, I give you the choice.  But a few minutes into her discourse something seems off, even with the tone of her voice.  If she was being harassed, let's look into it.  But it may have all been in her head.  Some are claiming that the disappearance of her videos and other writings from the internet indicate a campaign to "erase" her from the internet (as if).  Could it be that a grieving family, overcome, simply wanted to take down the paranoid content of a beloved member of the family who killed herself as a result of schizophrenia or another psychosis?

Like I said, by all means, look into the allegations of harassment and any other potential suspicious details.  But make sure we're not twisting the data to "prove" something we've already come to accept as true.  Let's not succumb to confirmation bias and/or apophenia.

3.  Re-open the Investigation into Tracy Twyman and Isaac Kappy's Suspicious Deaths, a peitition initiated by Zachary Brian McQuaid.

If you think there is a valid reason to do so, sign the petition.  The name pretty much says it all.  The text accompanying the petition is awfully damning, though proves nothing.  Any of the claims could be the ravings of a liar, a madman, someone misinformed, or someone actually in the know.  If there's any truth to it, an investigation could verify or disprove it.  I am in no position to refute or confirm any of it, but it would be interesting to see what a proper investigation turned up....

McQuaid speaks of producing videos which he says, unbeknownst to him, were disinformation.  He names names.  I Googled his name, unusual enough, and came up with a reference on IMDb to an actor with a single credit to his name, an actor in an episode of the Goosebumps series.  Same dude?  I don't know.  But it could be an indication he had the means and skills to make the videos he claims to have been hired to make.  A person with the same name donated to Just Adopt, Inc. on on 12/25/2021. If it's the same guy, maybe it indicates he's a decent sort.  Then again, it's an organization for adoptions, and he does claim that trafficking children was part of the nefarious deeds of which his employers may or may not have been a part....

4.  Tracy Twyman Official Website 

The website is a single page with some odd graphics.  It also contains the Latin phrase Nemo me impune lacessit:  "No one provokes me without impunity.A death foretold?

It also includes an image with the motto "There is More Beyond."   This serves as the title for the selected papers of Gardner Murphy (1895-1979), published in 1989.  Murphy was a psychologist of some note, who in addition to more traditional psychology, researched parapsychology, that is to say, psychic phenomena.  Whether it's a reference to Gardner or not, I can't say, but given Twyman's interests, it's possible.  She was given to using the Latin phrase Plus ultra (on her website included), which means more or less the same thing.  It was also Sir Francis Bacon's personal motto, for whatever that's worth.

********************************

So, with lots of digressions, that's a brief account of my dealings with Tracy Twyman.  I don't know, and have no way of knowing, what happened to her.  But I was sad to learn of her death, and that it's become fodder for conspiracy theory.  It may be exactly what it appears, and her grieving family just wants it go away.  If that is the case, and any friends or family come across this post and are offended, my apologies. I liked our exchanges, and respected her achievements as a researcher, writer, TV presenter (In Search Of....) and the fact that she didn't just talk about doing things, she did them.

My respects Tracy, I regret that our brief encounter wasn't longer. Plus ultra!

Monday, May 2, 2022

All Wrapped up in Imperial Dreams

Why so glum, Vlad?   (WaPo source)

I was struck by how this photo frames Putin.  It at once emphasizes Russia's current isolation and the much-theorized insulation of Putin from anybody but the yes-men who might be leading him to believe that he a) made a sound decision invading Ukraine and b) that the people are with him.


Or is the big white area akin to a blank canvas upon which Putin can create something from nothing, imposing his will onto a white void?
 
Russia Map by Vemaps.com
 
Oddly, if the photo represented Russia, Putin's head would be approximately in the right position if it were to represent Moscow....roughly.

The double-headed eagle we see on the flag has long been a symbol imperial Russia.  Indeed, the double-headed eagle is described as a heraldic representation of the very concept of Empire.  As the single (Aquila) eagle represented The Roman Empire, when doubled it represented the division of The Empire into the Western (ie Rome) and Eastern (ie Byzantium) Empires in 285 CE.

The way Vlad's head sits squarely in it's center is a perfect metaphor for the man and his war.  It's as if his head is literally swathed in dreams of restoring Russia's old imperial glory
After the fall of Constantinople, the use of two-headed eagle symbols spread to the Grand Duchy of Moscow after Ivan III's second marriage (1472) to Zoe Palaiologina (a niece of the last Byzantine emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos)....

In effect its use links Russia back to the Roman Empire, as if Russia is its legitimate heir.  The double-headed Eagle was the principal element of the Russian Empire's coat of arms until the Revolution of 1917.  During the Soviet period, it was abandoned, but was restored in 1993, this time in gold rather than the imperial black of the last Czars.

It was first used by the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry as the emblem of the Kadosh Degree and was adopted as the emblem of the Rite itself in 1758 as the "Double Headed Eagle of Lagash."  I think.  Masonic history is complicated as it is, made more so by it's early secrecy.  

Originally, in French usage, Knight Kadosh was the 24th of 25 degrees under the jurisdiction of the "Council of Emperors of the East and West."

In 1801, the first of today's Supreme Councils was created with a system of 32 degrees; in this system Kadosh became the 30th degree.  In the US Southern Jurisdiction anyway. In the Northern Jurisdiction the 30th degree is called "Grand Inspector." 

But back to the photo, Putin doesn't seem all that happy....
 
I'm not sure if Putin is standing before the flag of the Russian Federation or the Presidential standard.  As far as I can tell they are pretty much the same, the difference being the Federation flag is rectangular and the President's is square.  (Anyone out there with a better grip on this than I?)

It's worth noting the following two images.  The first is the 17th C. Flag of the Czar of Muscovia.  The second is today's Russian Presidential standard.  Not such a great leap to say the Russian President is in effect, a Czar.  Judging by the current war, a Czar which hasn't given up on Imperial ambitions.  Oh, the irony. The ex-Soviet KGB-man takes up the symbol of the Soviets' nemesis....and those guys used to call the Americans "Imperialists"....

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