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.

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 method.  Dalí 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!

Footsie

7 February 2021 More than a dozen feet in shoes have washed up on B.C. beaches — and 1 case remains unsolved

 

1 March 2021 How 21 feet washing up on Canadian shores may provide clue in Caddick case

 

15 March 2021  How science solved the mystery of feet washing ashore in the Pacific Northwest

Las Vegas Mass Murder

Back when I first head about the horrendous mass shooting at the concert in Las Vegas I immediately honed in on a few details I knew the synchromystics would be exploring.  I abandoned that article because it seemed to me that it would be pointless.  Lots of "true believers" would be hard at work decrypting the "twilight language" and finally, it seemed to be in bad taste.  I'd already pretty much decided to leave synchromysticism behind and focus on history, public art, and folklore, but even there I've flagged.  I spent the better part of 2017 working on a novella (which will be published by an honest-to-God publisher -- Whiskey Tit -- in 2018) and have since been working on a full-length novel.  Hence the paucity of posts and their brevity.

But I didn't want to bin these notes so I'll just post them here for the heck of it.  Strangely, when looking at the link for the 23 enigma, I saw a link to a phenomenon named after an old Texas joke:  A guy shoots a slew of rounds into the side of a barn, then paints a target around the densest cluster of hits....then claims to be a sharpshooter!  The fallacy is defined thus:

[The] Texas sharpshooter fallacy is an informal fallacy which is committed when differences in data are ignored, but similarities are stressed. From this reasoning, a false conclusion is inferred. This fallacy is the philosophical or rhetorical application of the multiple comparisons problem (in statistics) and apophenia (in cognitive psychology). It is related to the clustering illusion, which refers to the tendency in human cognition to interpret patterns where none actually exist.

I've always thought synchromysticism to basically be a form of apophenia or clustering illusion, but it was startling to hear this term used after years of looking at synchromysticism in the context of America's deadliest mass-shooting.  

Also reminds me of a witty remark apparently made by my great-uncle Homer B. Adkins: 

Basic research is like shooting an arrow into the air and, where it lands, painting a target.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What the synchromystics will be looking at:

The gunman fired from the Mandalay Hotel, referencing a city in Burma/Myanmar.  A country expelling Muslims.  A "person of interest" -- a girlfriend or roommate -- was sought, described as "Asian", named "Marilou Danley".  Perhaps Indonesian, a predominantly Muslim country. [She is in fact Australian-Filipina]  She is no longer a person of interest in the case.

Concert venue dominated by Luxor Hotel with its giant pyramid and obelisk.... (Masonic symbolism)

Shooter was described as firing from the 32nd floor....

23 arms were found in shooter's room.... 

The shooter's father was a notorious bank robber on the FBI's "most wanted" list....

Aucamville Project 13: Accursed Houses

Aucamville has been around a long time.  Bronze coins found here attest to a Gallo-Roman presence.  I'm not sure exactly if this is early or late Gallo-Roman, but if we just leave it in the air we can still safely say the village is between 1500 and 2000 years old!

Who know what weird things have gone down in these past two millennia?  Is it at all surprising that the village features at least one haunted house?  What surprises me is that there aren't more legends of hauntings and weird happenings.

The house isn't actually tilted, the spirits have fuggered the image!

This house was apparently used as a barracks by the German Army during the occupation.  It's a grand house and now in a total state of decay.  It's quite dangerous and threatens to collapse into its large basement any time now.  I'm surprised I hadn't heard of this until just the other day, but apparently villagers swear it's haunted.  No apparitions or cold gusts of wind, though.  Just the sound of boots, dead German soldiers, tramping through the ruins.  I've cruised by this place in the dead of night, three sheets to the wind and haven't heard any tramping boots.  Just one latched shutter somehow got open and hasn't budged since.  But rest assured!  I'm on the case, Egon.

And there is another house, which isn't said to be haunted....but to my mind it is.  Just across the road from where I live there is a handsome house which has been empty since I moved here in 2007.  It's progressively fallen into greater disrepair; in 2005 there was a fire and for a short while some people seemed to be actively dismantling it, although that seems to have ceased.  It used to be a rather elegant tavern named the "auberge de Tail"  but people now call it the "Auberge Rouge" or "Red Tavern."  "Red" as in "Blood"....

L'Auberge Rouge

The full story is a bit hazy, but for an unknown period of time a homeless guy by the name of Georges Haurdine lived and worked at the auberge.  Proprietor Altobella Capelleri had lured him to the auberge with promises of work, room, and board, but neglected to mention the regular beatings.  Described as "slow", Haurdine was exploited by Capelleri, and through a combination of intimidation and violence she was able to keep him like a slave.  Apparently a "family friend" was filmed raping him on several occasions and there were even rumors of sadistic parties involving public officials, but that seems par for the course in France.  Not the parties, but the rumors.  Not so surprising when you consider that this is the country which gave us Gilles de Rais and the Marquis de Sade.  Unlike Gilles de Rais, however, these tales were (probably) either deliberately fabricated to smear the political class or got mixed up in the popular imagination with the "Affaire Alègre" in which Toulousain serial killer Patrice Alègre claimed he organised S+M orgies for public officials and killed on their instructions to cover things up.  Eyes Wide Shut, wot?

Mr Haurdin's body was never found.  As the story goes he was beaten and left for dead by Capelleri herself.  She then had her husband and son bring the body to the pigs, then afterward to a well, where it lay rotting for 6 months.  Unhappy with the progress of decomposition, they retrieved the body, burnt it in the tavern's kitchen chimney and then disposed of the ashes in various trashcans throughout Toulouse.

Maybe the house isn't haunted....but I certainly am....

An earlier article with a few remarks on the Capelleri story.

Where have you gone, James DiMaggio?

A slightly interesting bit of name gamery going on in the case of the California teenager (Hannah Anderson) found this week in Idaho, recovered unharmed after her abductor James DiMaggio was shot and killed.

The area:  Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness.  Indeed.

Weird thing is this obscure area of the country was in the news a few months ago.  A Twin Falls (Twin Peaks) animal shelter counts 34 dogs missing in February and March in the area an hour or so south of where DiMaggio, Joltin' James, took his victim.  All of the dogs vanished without a trace.

The area:  Magic Valley.

On March 12th, the body of a German Shepherd was found covered in a purple sheet, its head smashed to bits with a lump of concrete found at the scene.  The possibility of ritual killing and/or animal sacrifice was entertained.  This was in a place called Devil's Corral....

All Dogs Go to Hell.

Apparently, there's some doubt as to whether the number of missing dogs is in fact higher than the amount of missing dogs in previous years.

Still, we loves us them evocative names and when I saw the report about Anderson, the missing dogs immediately came to mind because well, usually all we hear about Idaho involves potatoes and survivalists.

Still, this is pure Baader-Meinhof.  Reminds me of a paragraph in the article I wrote about in my last post: 

One way to illustrate this [the filter theory of selective attention] to yourself is to experiment with a magical technique described by William S. Burroughs called, “Walking on Color.”  Pick a color and take a walk in an area that is familiar to you, choosing to only allow objects of that color to draw your attention.  You will quickly find yourself noticing things you’ve never paid attention to before.  Those things were always there, but your consciousness was editing them out, because it deemed them unimportant.

A few words by Burroughs himself can be found here.

But wait, what the hell, DiMaggio was killed 18 years to the day that his father, James Sr., committed suicide, not long after he'd held another girl, also 16, hostage.  Twin falls....

In another odd but as of yet inconclusive tidbit: 

The riders who spotted Hannah with DiMaggio earlier in the week said she appeared healthy and safe at the time, leading Sheriff Gore to conclude: 'As far as we know, it didn't appear she was being held against her will.'

The area has also been rife with alleged cattle mutilations. Since the 70's, a biggish wave has hit the state every 5 or 6 years. To the south-east of Magic Valley, 30 cattle were mutilated in 1989-90. In 2007, two bulls had their sexual organs removed. This was a bit farther north, in Clark County. (source)

A string of mutilations and shootings took place in 2010 on the other end of the valley in Gem County.

In any event, there's been no more news about the dogs since March.

BTW, Anderson is a name meaning son of Andrew, a name derived from the Greek for "man". Son of Man?  Baader-Meinhof nourishes my own suffering little girl/Jesus narrative.

This is a bit about how I interpret the "news" and construct poetic narratives out of random facts (alleged).

An unhappy list

Hoffman

The following list of US mass shootings comes from a post entitled The massacre of the children of America by Michael Hoffman.  I have to add that I don't agree with this editorial post, in which Hoffman condemns things such as usury, abortion and homosexual marriage and which one must presume are believed by Hoffman to be part of the cause of this massacre.  That said, it's a concise list of the "major" mass shootings in America since 1966; there is a stark power in seeing it laid out so dry:  date, place, number of casualties.  The tempo definitely seems to be increasing....

I'd like to see some data on mass-shootings prior to 1966.

Timeline of U.S. Massacres

Compiled by Michael Hoffman 

Compiler's note: All of the deaths listed are homicides, except in the case of a casualty statistic compiled by the media that groups a perpetrator who allegedly committed suicide, with the victims. Almost all of the deaths are by gunfire. I do not claim that this list is exhaustive. In almost all cases I have only listed as a "massacre" multiple deaths that occurred within a 24 hour period.

1966: Fifteen people are shot to death on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin.

1966: In Chicago, Illinois, nine nurses are massacred.

1982: Eight workers are shot by a co-worker at a Florida machine shop.

1984: Twenty-one patrons of a McDonald's restaurant are killed in California.

1986: Fourteen postal employees are killed by a co-worker in Oklahoma.

1990: Nine people are killed at a GMAC loan office in Florida by a co-worker.

1991: In Michigan five people are killed.

1991: 23 people are killed in Luby's Cafeteria in Texas.

1993: 8 people killed in the San Francisco, California financial district.

1993: Six people killed on a Long Island, New York commuter train.

1997: Three students killed by a fellow student at a high school in Kentucky

1998: Five people killed (four girls and a teacher) at an Arkansas Middle School (the killers were two children, age 13 and 10).

1999: Coumbine High School, Colorado: 13 people killed by two students.

1999: Nine people killed in the financial district in Atlanta, Georgia

1999: Seven people killed at a church in Texas.

2000: Seven people killed Dec. 26 at an Internet company in Massachusetts.

2001: 2 students killed and 13 wounded by fellow student in California

2003: Five killed at a Mississippi aircraft plant by a co-worker.

2005: Five students and two others killed by another student in Minnesota.

2006: Five Amish children killed at their Pennsylvania school by a truck driver.

2007: Five killed at a shopping mall in Utah. An off-duty policeman exchanges gunfire with the perpetrator, preventing more killings.

2007: 32 students killed at Virginia Tech by a fellow student.

2007: Dec. 5 - eight people killed at a Nebraska shopping mall.

2008: Five people killed at Northern Illinois University.

2009: Ten people killed in Alabama.

2009: Thirteen people killed in a Binghamton, New York immigration center.

2010: In Manchester, Connecticut a co-worker kills eight people.

2011: Six people killed in Tucson, Arizona; among the eleven who are wounded, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is shot in the head but survives.

2011: Eight people killed at a beauty salon in California.

2012: A former student kills seven students at Oikos University in California.

2012: 12 people killed at a "Batman" movie in Aurora, Colorado.

2012: Six people killed at a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin.

2012: Five people killed in Minnesota by a co-worker.

2012: Three people killed at a beauty salon in Wisconsin.

2012: Dec. 11 - two people killed at an Oregon shopping mall.

2012: Dec. 14 - 27 people killed at a Connecticut grammar school, including twenty children.

We'd like to stop being reminded of this quote now, please

He who bestirs himself is lost.

 L'acte surréaliste le plus simple consiste, révolvers aux poings, à descendre dans la rue et à tirer au hasard, tant qu'on peut, dans la foule.  Qui n'a pas eu, au moins une fois, envie d'en finir de la sorte avec le petit système d'avilissement et de crétinisation en vigueur a sa place toute marquée dans cette foule, ventre à hauteur de canon. 

[C]et acte que je dis le plus simple, il est clair que mon intention n'est pas de le recommander entre tous parce qu'il est simple et me chercher querelle à ce propos revient à demander bourgeoisement à tout non-conformiste pourquoi il ne se suicide pas, à tout révolutionnaire pourquoi il ne va pas vivre en URSS. 

--André Breton

The simplest Surrealist act consists of hitting the street, revolvers in one's fists, and firing wildly into the crowd as much as one can.  He who hasn't felt, at least once, a desire to thus end the petty system of abasement and cretinization in effect clearly belongs in this crowd, with a gun-barrel at his gut.

A footnote adds:

This act I call the simplest, it is clearly not my intention to recommend it from among all others because it is simple, and to look for a quarrel with me about this is like condescendingly asking every non-conformist why he doesn't commit suicide or every revolutionary why he doesn't go live in the USSR.

--André Breton 

Getting lost in Mexico City after nobody had turned up to meet him at the airport, Breton famously declared:  "I don't know why I came here. Mexico is the most surrealist country in the world". This was in 1938, so he can be excused for not predicting that in 2012, by his own definition, this dubious honor would clearly belong to the United States of America.

This despite the curious time I  saw two wild dogs, like something from a film by Buñuel or Jodorowsky, fighting over a severed burro's head in the unpeopled desert somewhere between Monterrey and Matehuala.  But that's another story.

For a bit about the Francis Picabia quoted on Breton's sandwich board.

Rub-a-Dub-Dub

On a visit today to the Church of the Assumption in nearby Savenès, I once again grokked a curious Saint and, having failed in times past to discover who it was, decided today was the day.  It wasn't so hard, actually.  I can only assume that before, I was an idiot who couldn't use the Internet, or that there was less info available the first time I had a look.  Or maybe I was simply lazy.

Entering the nave, the first chapel on the left offers sculptures of Jeanne d'Arc and Thérèse de Lisieux, as well as a statue of another saint, obviously a bishop due to his crosier, miter and gesture of benediction.  What struck me, though, was the little tub at his feet, with three cloyingly adorable, pudgy children gazing upwards with a look of gratitude:

 

Now, to my mind, this is both comical and weird.  I think a thought-bubble with "WTF?" appeared over my head, but no one actually saw it.  So, how to begin?  I Googled a few things and finally discovered this was Saint Nicholas.

Now, these pudgy kidlets refer to a legend wherein three children, traveling in famine-struck Myra, stopped to ask a butcher for lodging.  He let them in only to chop them into pieces, placing their remains into a barrel of brine to cure them.  His idea was that given the famine, he could pass them off as ham.  St. Nick, later visiting the region to care for the hungry, stopped at the butcher's.  The latter offered him something to eat, cured kid, but St. Nick saw through it.  Now, some versions of the tale have the butcher fleeing, or being stoned to death, or even being transformed into a kind of slave to St. Nick.  Some versions favor the three travelers to be clerks or scholars.  Whatever the case, St. Nick raises his hand in benediction like his gesture above, makes the sign of the cross and resurrects the children.

According to the St. Nicholas Center,  a song about this legend dating back to 17th-century Champagne (the region which gives bubbly its name) ends in one version with the kids saying:

Le premier dit, "J'ai bien dormi!" 

Le second dit, "Et moi aussi!"
A ajouté le plus petit,
"Je croyais être en paradis!"

The first said:  "I slept well!'

The second said  "Me too!"

The littlest added,

"I thought I was in Paradise!"

Another version can be found here.

Now, searching for more info, I came across a website which states baldly that this legend is thought to be the origin of the nursery rhyme that begins "Rub-a-dub-dub three men in a tub...."  And that may be so, I just haven't come across anything which corroborates the claim.

It may be, however that this tub tale is was at some point conflated with another St. Nick legend.  In this second tale, a poor man had three daughters he couldn't marry off for a lack of a dowry.  This meant spinsterhood or the likelihood they would end up as prostitutes.  Nicholas heard of this and decided to help out by secretly taking the family three purses of gold and tossing them through an open window into the house.  Of course, variations and details abound:  not three purses at once but one a night for three nights, or even one a year for three years on the night before each daughter came of the age to marry, etc.  Sometimes Nicholas is confronted by the poor man, at others he avoids the man and drops the gold down the chimney.  One version of this chimney tale is that a daughter had hung her stockings to dry by the chimney and the gold landed in them.  Which should sound familiar.

Now, the tub tale and the three daughters tale could in fact be conflated in the Rub-a-Dub rhyme.  Wikipedia provides some history.

The most well-known version goes like this:

Rub-a-dub-dub,

Three men in a tub,

And how do you think they got there?

The butcher, the baker,

The candlestick-maker,

They all jumped out of a rotten potato,

'Twas enough to make a man stare.

OK, haha, modern commentators can't help but see a homosexual connotation in this.  But apparently, the earliest recorded (i.e. published) versions have a very important difference.  Mother Goose's Quarto or Melodies Complete, published in Boston circa 1825, had the following version, apparently consistent with another from 1798:

Hey! rub-a-dub, ho! rub-a-dub, three maids in a tub,

And who do you think were there?

The butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker,

And all of them gone to the fair.

Again, according to Wikipedia "This led [folklorists] Iona and Peter Opie to conclude that they were three respectable townsfolk "watching a dubious sideshow at a local fair".

This version seems to have been edited to the version we know today.  I don't know in fact if the Opies' interpretation is correct, but several sources seem to think that the spectacle of three maidens (presumably naked) in a tub was a popular sideshow entertainment, like a hoochie coochie girl.  This is certainly the view being peddled by English author and librarian Chris Roberts (Heavy Words Lightly Thrown).  Yet in the NPR interview he is unaware of a common American version of the rhyme:

Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub.

And who do you think they be?

The butcher, the baker the candlestick maker.

Turn them out, knaves all three.

Which makes me wonder if his research is all that complete and if he's merely parroting the Opies' interpretation.  Not to fling mud at Mr. Roberts.  I think it's interesting that the earliest recorded versions do in fact have maids in a tub, not three men.  Maybe the idea of women was too offensive to the progressively prudish standards of the 19th century and the reference dropped; the earlier version might be indicative of some kind of  "sex show".

The parallels with the "pickled children" in theSt. Nicholas legend aren't so great.  Three people in a tub.  A butcher.  That's it, really.  But it may be that at some these elements were recycled into the more salacious (or not) rhyme we have today.  I think the other St. Nick Legend could come into play here.  Remember the three poor daughters, whose lack of dowry might have led them into a life of prostitution?  If there were women involved in naked tub shows, they were probably prostitutes as well, no?

This page also brings up stories of St. Nicholas saving three condemned men (depicted pretty damn smashingly by Russian artist Ilya Repin in 1888) and saving at least one sailor (whose rescue led to Nicholas' ordination as a bishop), wondering if the latter may somehow be related to resurrecting kids from a tub of brine.  "Brine", bear in mind, is a word not uncommonly used to mean the sea and "tub" being another word for a leaky ship....let alone the obvious repetition of three:  three condemned men, three maidens, three children....

My proposal is not a thesis insomuch as simply throwing an idea out there.  Not having all the facts, it would be silly to insist on anything one way or the other, but it's a tantalizing possibility to think the rhyme has some connection to the various Nicholas legends.  Still, there are many other possibilities.

This person writes: 

The “Rub-a-dub-dub” rhyme was referring to laundering money. The upper floors of candle stick shops were often used as poor tenant housing and “houses of ill repute” (prostitution), because the process of rendering tallow to make candles smelled so terribly that no one that had money / social standing would live in the space. Prostitution was looked on as poorly as it is today, so spending money gained from arranging such encounters was also looked down upon. As I always heard it, the butcher & baker were in with the candle stick maker, sending him clients for his tenants and laundering their share of the profits through their successful, legitimate businesses. When they were caught “cleaning” the dirty money, all three became public embarrassments! 

I wish I knew the origin of this theory.  I have only seen it listed in one place, whereas the peepshow version is widely circulated.  While adhering to no specific interpretation, it seems clear that there is some intimation of shenanigans going on behind a facade of the crafts-men's respectability.  They come from within a "rotten potato", they are "knaves," they're at the fair ogling maids in a tub.  Maids who might not have been there had their father had enough for a dowry.

Is there in these rhymes a critique of a system where wealth as opposed to a moral character ensures respectability?  I don't know, it would seem to be implied by the spectacle of "good" citizens, tradesmen, shamelessly ogling women who are there solely due to a lack of other opportunities.  The repetition of elements in the St. Nicholas legends suggest a conflation of detail to suit whatever specific rhetorical purposes bards required.

Anyway, that sculpture still has me giggling.  Those three little salted kids seem so pleased to be awake....

Aucamville Project 9.5: A resolution of sorts

The human forearm discovered two weeks ago in a wooded area near the chapel of Notre Dame de Boisville has been matched to its owner (see A gruesome discovery).

La Dépêche du Midi reports that the methodical search by gendarmes and military personnel yesterday has turned up a body.  The badly decomposed cadaver was found 500 meters away from the arm on a slope covered with dense underbrush.  A loaded pistol was at his side and a bullet was lodged in the skull.  The arm appeared to have been carried off by a wild animal, which the reporter adds parenthetically:  was "surely a fox."  How he knows that I'm not sure.

The identity of the man hasn't been released, but he is said to have been an 85 year-old who disappeared from Toulouse on the 28th of August, 2010.  He was known to have been depressed and  suicidal.  Before his disappearance he left a note:  "You will never find my body."  The only mystery left now is how he ended up in this relatively secluded spot.  Did he know the place?  How did he get here from Toulouse, 40 kilometers away?  Good questions.

This area has been inhabited since time immemorial, so it's no surprise this macabre story is not without precedent.

As I mentioned before, a religious hermit who had taken refuge in the chapel was murdered here by two brothers.  According to a monograph on the chapel in my possession, the chapel was guarded by a recluse by the name of Frère Paul, who lived from alms.  He had already been robbed of some money and two chickens when he was found murdered a few days before Easter, 1754, his body thrown into a ditch.

But there is a more recent and similar case.  In May, 1999, a group of schoolchildren and chaperons were doing Spring cleaning on the banks of the Garonne near this chapel and found....a human leg and part of its thigh.  And they were only looking for soda cans and other detritus.

It was never matched to a body.  The police speculated it had been washed down following the annual high waters of Spring resulting from the runoff caused by melting snow in the Pyrenees.  A week later all that could be said was that the person was between 1.69 and 1.76 meters tall, between 35 and 65 years old....and wore a size 44 shoe.  The leg was wearing a black one.

But it gets weirder.  Three months later, in Moissac, a spine, three ribs and strips of flesh were discovered near the river.  "WTF?" I ask.  The Dépêche noted at the time that "Nature regularly exhumes human remains.  Last May 29th a leg was discovered at Verdun.  The only certitude is that it was a man's leg.  Other than that, the coroner isn't able to give any more clues that might help investigators."  It furthermore noted that the leg had not been identified....I don't know about the Moissac remains.

That is definitely some weird shit.  I mean, a vertebral column?

And there is another story, this time in Aucamville proper.  Just across the road from where I live there is a handsome house which has been empty since I moved in, and is falling into disrepair.  It was a tavern named the "auberge de Tail."  The full story is a bit hazy, but apparently the owner Altobella Capelleri had "hired" a homeless guy by the name of Georges Haurdin.  Now, this guy was a bit slow and was subject to the worst abuse.  He was eventually beaten to death after having been kept like a slave for an unknown period of time.  During this period he was beaten regularly and also raped and filmed by a "family friend" on several occasions.  His body, however, was never found.  As the story goes he was beaten and left for dead by Capelleri herself.  She then had her husband and son bring the body to the pigs, then afterward to a well, where it lay rotting for 6 months.  Unhappy with the progress of decomposition, they retrieved the body, burnt it in the tavern's kitchen chimney and then disposed of the ashes in various trashcans in Toulouse.  (Full story here).

No wonder the house lays falling apart.  Cursed forever.

Although Capelleri concocted an elaborate tale of an "accident", a son from her first marriage testified to her sadism, which included burning his penis with a cigarette.  What horror for this poor boy and his siblings, revisited upon a hapless vagabond years later.  The exact date of the murder is unclear, however; sometime between October, 1993 and July, 2004.

People began thinking of this when the arm was discovered, despite the years separating the events.  In any event, Capolleri was sentenced to 20 years in prison last September.

So.  A dismembered forearm, a floating leg, flesh, ribs and spine....and then this horrifying tale.  Long-time readers of LoS will see many familiar themes here, but I'll leave that for you to ponder.

And everything seemed to be going "so well"....

The California Inspector General has just released a "blistering" report (.PDF) which faults state parole agents, the department of corrections and law enforcement for gross negligence in supervising--or not, as the case may be--Philip Garrido. Apparently he was only supervised 12 of the 123 months he was supposed to be closely monitored. A list of bungled opportunities is cited and the conclusion is that "Despite numerous clues and opportunities, the department, as well as federal and local law enforcement, failed to detect Garrido's criminal conduct, resulting in the continued confinement and victimization of Jaycee and her two daughters...." (Summary here).


Meanwhile, over in Cleave-land, people are wondering how ex-Marine Anthony Sowell could have gotten away with murder for so long. Police only got interested in him a month ago after he was accused of rape and assault. Even then, when a naked woman fell from his window on October 20, firefighters came but no police. Another neighbor, the owner a chicken joint across the way, claims that some time ago he reported seeing Sowell naked, standing over a bloodied and naked woman in the bushes outside the infamous "horror house." Nothing came of it. Parole officers apparently last visited Sowell on September 22; despite reports of the overwhelming stench of rotting flesh dating back to 2007, so bad that it caused a local sausage factory to change its sewer line and grease trap--which did not alleviate the stench--no one thought about entering the home!

The bodies were finally discovered by the cops on October 27, and Sowell was arrested on Halloween. Cue theremin!

Incidentally, the police were responding to another attempted rape which occurred hours after Sowell was visited by parole officers on September 22. This attack took place nearly a month before they declined to show up after the naked woman took a tumble from his house....

The link between Sowell and Garrido is that they were both sexual offenders who'd been convicted, served time and upon release were insufficiently monitored. In one case a man got away with imprisoning a woman for at least ten years while he was being "supervised." Another murdered at least 11 women!

We're not the first to make the link. Here and here you can find articles wondering what went wrong.

We would propose that the problem is a mix of indifference and, in the case of Sowell, racism and class prejudice. Who gives a damn about poor, black crackheads? More to the point, however, is that the system is severely overburdened. Who has time to check up on all these convicted rapists when there are potheads to hassle? It is said that America has the highest per capita prison population on the planet after China. That means an awful lot of parolees.

Of course the easy response will be to call for more cops, more laws, tougher sentencing and tougher enforcement. We would replace the word "tougher" with "better." Ditto for the word "more."

Now, this would be loony tunes territory if not for the fact that we are simply making a poetic riff rather than a serious conspiratorial narrative.

Obviously, that Sowell was arrested on Halloween is a resonant fact. It's a time when we dress up as monsters, ghosts, killers, dead people. Tombstones and fake blood abound. The skeleton is ubiquitous.

The most commonly accepted theory of Halloween is that it derives from the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-an). Samhain marks the point at which the line between our world and the world of the living is blurred, allowing spirits to pass through. It was also a kind of temporal tessellation--regarded as a kind of "New Year as it separated the divide between the "light" and "dark" halves of the year. Black and white, yo.

Hallowe'en, from "All Hallows Even", or "All Saints Eve" is the Christian holiday grafted onto the pre-existing traditions. All Saints Day itself (in Mexico literally the "Day of the Dead"), is celebrated differently in various in Catholic countries including visiting the graves of deceased loved ones and leaving offerings and lighting candles or flowers.

The Sowell "horror house" (shades of Halloween) was located on Imperial Avenue. It's almost a cliché these days that America is like a new Rome: 200 or so years of Republic followed by a slide into Empire. In Sexual Personae Camille Paglia writes: "Our cold white Federal architecture is Roman. Banks and government buildings are vast temples of state, tombs and fortresses....Rome rediscovered the hieratic Egyptian funeralism latent in Greek Apollonian style....Egypt and Rome defined themselves by death-rituals of preparation or commemoration." (Italics added)

Terrible and commonplace as the crimes of Sowell and Garrido seem, fact is that most of us will never be touched by these things, even indirectly. The potency of the event however, is enough to give one pause, even fear the world around us. Hence, if America is slipping into something less than a democratic Republic, these are just the kinds of events that will push it in the "right" direction. More cops, more laws, more surveillance. Whatever keeps the kids safe.

Interesting in that the conspiracy theorist thinks this slide into Empire is not a natural phenomenon but one aided and abetted by an unseen had, elite figures such as those to be found as members of Yale's infamous Skull and Bones, perhaps. Figures such as dueling presidential 2004 candidates John Kerry and George Bush. The "Bonesmen" have a headquarters known as the "Tomb," where their basement initiations are said to involve members dressed à la Halloween in garish costumes, including robes, priestly vestments, Don Quixote, the devil, skeletons....Incidentally, Bonesmen assume fanciful names upon initiation and George Bush (Senior) was known as Magog.

The group has also been accused of having the stolen skulls of Geronimo and Sancho Panza hidden in the Tomb. One of the macabre details of the Sowell case is that he kept one his victim's skull in a bucket in his basement. Talk about your New World Odor.

Regarding the Sowell case and what the it evokes, we here at LoS are not proposing any intentional twilight language or conspiracy theory but a case of interesting poetic resonance. Finally, though we hate to "play the race card," we concur with Black Voices in asking: "If this were a white neighborhood, I wonder if more extensive efforts wouldn't have been taken to identify the odor."

Then again, we don't want to contradict ourselves; we've already said the negligence may stem from agencies spread too thin or over-burdened. Garrido's crime went undetected for years, and he was a white dude. But one crime doesn't necessarily negate the other; Garrido's race doesn't necessarily disprove the racial context of the Sowell murders.


Perhaps these cases are a matter of the "class card." Perhaps it's all these things and more. Hundreds of girls in Juarez, Mexico have turned up dead, beaten and raped in the past 13 years and, after a "lull," at least twenty this year have simply disappeared. The American media deigns to cover it every once and a while. The Mexican government hasn't been very effective. Maybe it's indifference. Maybe it's helplessness. All pretty much par for the course.

Just stumbled across this article from Times Online by one Richard Bone!

d.a.levy their city is a fucking mess. Giving it back was the wisest move you could have made....

Jornada del Muerto

On Monday October 15, Howard Barton Unruh, the nation's "first single-episode mass murderer," died in a nursing home at the age of 88.

Because synchromystics and conspiracy theorists often claim that mass murderers and other ne'er-do-wells are in fact sleeper agents--victims of government mind control experiments--they are often on the lookout for twilight language, e.g. the names and numbers that to the observant reveal the methods of the cryptocracy.

That's why when we came across this article we felt compelled to comment on some of the names and numbers in the story.

On the morning of September 6, 1949, Unruh left his home and began his so-called "walk of death." He'd been planning the attack for a year and kept notes, so we know some of the victims were intentional, some were people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There is a strange symmetry to his victims: 5 men, 5 women and 3 children. 5 and 3 are already mystically resonant numbers. No need to point out that the total, 13, resonates all over the place; bad luck, witches' covens, American colonies, layers in the pyramid, etc.

Also interesting is the Masonic resonance. He left the house with a Luger and 33 rounds of ammunition. The shooting occurred in the area of 32nd St. and River Rd.

Further advancing the idea that he was some kind of sleeper agent is the fact that he was a WWII vet and an expert marksman in the Army.

The name is also interesting. "Unruh" is a Prussian or Pomeranian place name and is said to mean a quarrelsome or restless person; it comes from Middle German words meaning "unrest" or "disturbance". It can also mean "careless" or "negligent." An unruh in current German is a technical word meaning "balance wheel" in a watch. Our boy was anything but balanced, one supposes, but he may have been just another cog in the mechanism.

Howard is an Old English name which means "noble watchman." Haha! Time and observation meet in the pun of "watch."

Anyway, a day after yhis unruly German went on his spree, the Allies gave back to Germany the assets formerly controlled by the Nazi Regime. One day after that, the Federal Republic of Germany was officially founded.

Not that there's a link between one and another. 1949 was an especially transformative year in Geopolitics. Indonesia was recognized. The People's Republic of China was officially proclaimed. The Council of Europe was founded. Basically, a busy year in the ongoing sloughing-off of the old colonial order in the wake of the Second World War.

And the "first"American single-episode mass murder occurred; what was shocking then is now a staple of today's nightly news.

One must imagine that being regarded as the first crime of this sort is a result of the fact that the victims were European-Americans and on American soil.

Incinerating countless thousands of Japanese thousands of miles away apparently doesn't count.

Four years prior the route towards the mass murders at Hiroshima and Nagasaki began with the first atomic bomb test at the Trinity site--deep within the Jornada del Muerto, or "single day's journey of the dead man"--a name is said to have originated after a German man died there fleeing the Inquisition in the late 1600's.