Monarchists and Mercenaries: Say hello to the American Police Force

Remember them militarized police explorers? If that worried you than this'll surely get your (pet) goat: "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. APF's own website links itself to the U.S. Training Center operated by Xe--the private military security firm formerly known as Blackwater--but the link has been denied by Xe spokespeople. Ditto APF's claims to have worked with the U.S. government. Founder Michael Hilton, a U.S. citizen apparently originally from Montenegro, has a long criminal record which includes real estate scams, misdirection of funds and writing bad checks. A shady character indeed. Xe is almost certainly being truthful on this one. The Raw Story blog studied Burke's Peerage and came across the fact that the APF coat of arms seems to be very similar to Serbian Prince Aleksandar Karageorgevich. (Born in White Lodge, England!) In fact, save the yellow border on the shield, replaced in the APF coat with two yellow fleurs-de-lis, and some variations in the crown, they are identical. The coat of arms also figures on the national flag of Serbia. Although the coat of arms of Montenegro is very different, its flag and coat also feature a crowned double-headed eagle. 

Blackwater itself has been linked to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, a link strenuously dismissed as conspiracy theory by both Blackwater (Xe) and the Knights of Malta. An official European Parliament report claims that Blackwater used Malta as a base of operations in support of CIA-rdered rendition of suspected terrorists. The SMOM coat of arms also bears a resemblance to the APF/Alexander K. coats--ermine cape, crown, white cross, but then again, many other share these elements as well. It appears as there is a rather tangled history between the Yugoslav royal family and various Orders of St. John, and the SMOM, as a descendant of the Knights Hospitaller are also called the Order of St. John. The patron of Freemasonry is St. John and the double-headed eagle is used as the symbol of the Scottish Rite. It is suggested that this is an alchemical symbol of the union of male and female elements in the personality. In Orthodox countries it symbolizes the dual sovereignty of the Emperor--religious and political--or his dominance over East and West. Which would lead chilling resonance to its use by APF...if it were indeed a Xe front. Blackwater is accused of having a secret crusader doctrine and a goal of establishing Christian supremacy in the Middle East. Former Blackwater exec Joseph Schmitz is an honorary member of the SMOM. Blackwater was named by a wealthy scion by the name of Eric Prince. Evocatively named, reclusive, ultra-conservative, convert to Roman Catholicism, Prince has donated generously to Republican and conservative Christan organizations. It has been said that Prince "“views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe...To that end, Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades”." Xe strikes us as an unusual name. We can only find one other use--it the abbreviation for Xenon--a noble (haha) gas. It is colorless, odorless and heavy. Not a bad symbol for a covert police force! The name is Greek and means "foreign(er)", "strang(er)" or "guest." But the claims made by APF which link themselves to the U.S. Training Center and Xe appear to be perfidious. Their use of Yugoslav royal heraldry remains a mystery. Not knowing where to go with this info, we emailed both Xe about their name and APF for some clarification about the coat of arms.

While we're waiting also though we'd post this nifty image from the APF of an earth tessellated for use as a giant chessboard because it meshes nicely with recent posts. While we are eagerly awaiting a response to our inquiries, we hope it's not a jack-booted mercenary parachuting through the skylight. A simple email will suffice! We're not so worried though, APF appears to be a clever scam rather than some far scarier Xe shenanigan. But with Mr. "Hilton's" Montenegrin background, there may be some other weird Byzantine politics at play. But long after the wool comes up and the APF exposed, Xe will still be lurking out there, odorless, transparent, heavy. Even scarier still, people like those in Montana will find nothing wrong in welcoming them with open arms, as long as some jobs are involved.

France as Hexagon

We have already seen how Napoleon's regime reorganized France according to Enlightenment principles in order to impose a more rational order upon nature. We have interpreted this as a great chessboard and have linked it to the destruction of traditional regions in order to facilitate trade and commerce through homogenization. It linked imperial, cultural and revolutionary ideals with science and measurement.

Being more or less agnostic in all our ventures, we began to doubt ourselves.

Then we came across this map on the Strange Maps blog, provided by Valéry Didelon.


"Squaring the circle is a proverbial way of describing something impossible. Jacques-Guillaume Thouret set himself an even more daunting task: squaring the hexagône – in French, that word is shorthand for describing the roughly six-sided shape of France."

"Thouret (1746-1794) was born into a bourgeois family in the French département of Calvados. Back then, in the Ancien Régime, there was no such territorial unit. The area was still part of the old province of Normandy. It was Thouret himself who instigated the change from provinces to the new system, still en vogue today."

"The French Revolution also entailed a revolution of measurements. The revolutionaries were obsessed with standardising, and replaced traditional, often regionally variable measurements with a universal metric system. Sometimes the changes proved to be a bridge too far: the revolutionary calendar was abolished after only a few years; and Thouret’s square départements – reminiscent of the rectangular methods of the Land Ordinance Survey [LoS!] in the US (see post #120) ... – never made it off the drawing board."


Now dig the official French explanation of the Hexagon.

"Centralisation is a feature of the organisation and management of France that goes back to the monarchy."

"Even the French Revolution did not dismantle this structure. Indeed it accentuated it."

"In the name of equality, provincial features were repressed, including regional languages."

"In 1792, the provinces were replaced by départements....This egalitarian treatment has been maintained, even after regions were created much later, and French people feel at least as much attachment to their département as to their province and its traditions."

"This concept of equality is combined with a strictly hierarchical management of the whole country. Each level has specific responsibilities within a hierarchy."

According the Wikipedia

"Like squares and equilateral triangles, regular hexagons fit together without any gaps to tile the plane (three hexagons meeting at every vertex), and so are useful for constructing tessellations. The cells of a beehive honeycomb are hexagonal for this reason and because the shape makes efficient use of space and building materials."

So as Thouret tessellated France, France itself becomes one more tile in the larger mosaic, towards and ever-expanding macrocosm. Think Risk, Imperialism and the acquisition of land. Think of Europe; the currency's in place, but the old regions will die hard.

France has a vision of itself and its place in the world at large aligned with Napoleon's imperial ambitions. This is inherent in it's omnipresent symbolism. It would seem, though, that absent any significant military and philosophical dominance, it would garner this influence via Science, Technology and Commerce. It allies itself mystically with geometry and mythically with its founding dynasty. The hexagon is the central unit of the bee's hive, and the bee was the symbol of the Merovingians. Napoleon had himself painted wearing ermine adorned with golden bees.

Napoleon.org has this to say:

"Symbol of immortality and resurrection, the bee was chosen so as to link the new dynasty to the very origins of France."

Another article asserts:

"Napoleon was initiated, passed and raised into an Army Philadelphe Lodge of the Ecossais Primitive Rite of Narbonne between 1795 and 1798. Considering Napoleon’s interest in things Egyptian, his reason for adoption of the bee symbol can only be a subject of supposition."

The article goes on to insist that his use of the bee had no link with Freemasonry, which uses the beehive as a symbol of discipline, order and industry.

We would posit that there is a link, but that this not be read as wild-eyed conspiracy theory. Our recent posts, however, can elucidate this better than yet another repetition.

The Battle of the Pyramids

Cold, dark tomb

Now this here pyramid can be found on the Place de L'Europe as a monument to specific battalions of war dead from WWI and WWII as well as Indonchine aka Viet-Nam. In our survey of pyramids in the Toulouse metropolitan area it is the first which serves an explicit funerary purpose.

The Place de L'Europe, like the Place Capitole at the literal heart of the city, is decorated with a large Occitan cross.

Now, we've always felt that whatever it was Jesus was teaching and whatever it was the early Christians thought he was on about, by the time Constantine gave a nod towards recognizing it some three plus centuries later Christianity had acquired a lot of the trappings of a mystery religion, or as some might have it, a death cult. Thus it's fitting that the pyramid and the cross should be so combined.

The Occitan cross in this plaza links Europe to Toulouse; one could argue that's the point. Local and continental become as one; this very Toulousain and regional symbol becomes associated with Europe as a whole. Wherever you go, there you are. It decorates the center of Toulouse and again in a place named after Europe. Symbolically Toulouse asserts a European prominence.

The Occitan cross is steeped in legend and of uncertain origin. Some assert that it's patterned on Celtic solar symbols; others that its twelve points represent the zodiac. Indeed, in the Occitan cross on Place Capitole, each point is decorated with an astrological sun sign. Others assert that it came back from the east with returning crusaders. (See La Croix Occitane by Raymond Ginouillac).

Napoleon and Egypt

Place de L'Europe is part of a larger complex of parks and office space, a school and a conference center called Compans-Caffarelli.

The first part of this name comes from Count Jean Dominique Compans. Compans joined the army as a volunteer upon the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789. He served as a General in the Napoleonic Wars and and rejoined Napoleon upon his return from exile during the perid known as the Hundred Days. He died in 1845 in Blagnac.

The Caffarelli comes from yet another noble family--Caffarelli du Falga. Three Caffarelli brother were Generals.

Youngest brother Marie-François Auguste (1766-1849), was loyal to Naopleon and among his service in Marengo and Austerlitz served with him in the Egyptian campaign. He became aide de camp to Napoleon in 1800, after having served the same function for General Dagobert de Fontenille starting in 1791. Dagobert was himself an early supporter of the Revolution, "rallying to the cause" alongside Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, a fellow noble and Gand Master of the Grand Orient of France.

Joseph (1760-1845) began his career as a naval officer but became an officer in the Army after the Revolution began. He too remained loyal to Napoleon during the Hundred Days.

Oldest brother Louis-Marie-Joseph-Maximilian (1756-1799) also accompanied Napoleon into Egypt (on a wooden leg, no less!) and later died from gangrene as a result of a bullet wound sustained during the assault on Acre. When he died Napoleon wrote:

"Our universal regrets accompany General Caffarelli to the grave; the army is losing one of its bravest leaders. Egypt one of its legislators, France one of its best citizens, and science, an illustrious scholar."

The Egyptian campaign, as we have mentioned in previous posts, helped set off a fashion in France for "oriental" and Egyptianate architecture which is probably why even after so much time the war memorial to the Caffarelli brigades is in the form of a pyramid.

What is also interesting about the Egyptian campaign is that it bore a veneer of scientific inquiry. There were apparently a large number of scientists attached to the invading armies. Some have interpreted this as a ploy to hide the real motives of the expedition, namely the extension of empire and the acquisition of land. But it is also true that Napoleon saw himself as a liberator and in service of the Enlightenment, a sort of light-bringer. In our ongoing thesis, this dedication to "illumination" through rational scientific inquiry is intertwined with revolutionary principles regarding government, especially as it relates to the repartition of territory. Indeed, Napoleon issued proclamations which portrayed him as a liberator from ancient tyrants the Mamluks. Fascination with geometry and measurement abounded.

Interesting for our discussion is that the beginning of the end for the Mamluks was at a battle Napoleon himself called "The Battle of the Pyramids" where his reputation for tactical brilliance was enhanced by his innovative use of massive infantry squares: moving tessellations for the literal control of space.

Naopoleon spurred his troops on with the cry: "Forward! Remember that from those monuments yonder forty centuries look down upon you."

History tells us the pyramids were barely visible in the horizon.

What We're Doing on the Internet--Right Now

Right now, we are doing four things on the internet:

1. Learning: more about the traditional Ghanaian ritual murder (and consumption?) of hunchbacks.
2. Using: beta Chrome, which is buggy (but beta, so expected & forgiven) -- but which also causes us to consider privacy.
   
3. Playing: chess (but not on Chrome, yet) -- probably the only thing of value on the internet today. (Hint: set the "Difficulty" to "Hard". If you win on "Easy", I'll shake your hand, but you'll be left questioning the value of your victory.)
   
4. Wondering: how one becomes nominated to run for the Vice-president of the United States of America? a) Call your future boss "articulate"and "clean" -- for an African-American; b) Sell a plane on eBay c) All of the above