Call of doody

This photo, snapped in Mali by Agence France-Presse photographer Issouf Sanogo, has caused the French military to pitch a fit.

"This is unacceptable behavior," Col. Thierry Burkhard told the French paper Liberation in Paris. "This image is not representative of action by France in Mali."

Because nobody's dying or killing there, see, they're using water balloons and spitballs.

Apparently the brass are working hard to identify and one would imagine, reprimand this soldier.

The photographer, meanwhile, seems to hope he hasn't caused the lad any grief:

"I don’t know the identity of the soldier in the scarf and I’d have a hard time recognising him even if I did see him again....I think -- and I hope -- that it’s impossible to tell who he is. I’m not even sure if he knows what people are saying about him."

In an interview, he stressed that the soldier wasn't posing, but merely protecting himself from dust, which is clearly quite heavy in the air behind him.

What strikes me is that in almost every article I've read on this, in English and French, the mask is said to evoke the character Ghost from the Call of Duty video game....a game that's been in the news quite a bit lately.  Newtown shooter Adam Lanza, for example was said to be have played it obsessively.

Interesting that once again the press is linking real and imaginary violence so quickly.

I'm a fairly pacifist guy, so I don't go around glorifying war or soldiers, but hell, their job sucks, they have to kill people.  Why not, as William Burroughs explained regarding the title of Naked Lunch, let everyone see exactly what it is on the end of the fork....or rifle, as it were.

What do people think the French doing in Mali, anyway, building latrines and teaching hygiene?

Like an old LoS pal once remarked about the totenkopf on SS uniforms.  "Hey, at least they were putting it right out front there."  Not comparing the French army to the SS, mind you, but hell, let's not candy-coat the facts.  In an age where we've sanitized war reporting, where in the US they tried to ban the images of coffins coming home at Dover  for concerns of "sensitivity" and "privacy"--not of course out of the fear people would see concretely what it's all about and start to question why.

The totenkopf, btw, features in a wide variety of military insignia.  Wikipedia shows a variety of pre-Nazi (18th, 19, 20th century) uses from France, Spain, Prussia and Poland.  Even the USAF 400th Missile Squadron used a totenkopf with crossed missiles as an alternative insignia up until 2005 or so.  The photo you can see on the Wikipedia pages even includes a death's head scarf or ascot of some kind.

Why?  Cuz it's badass, that's why.  Why do you think pirates used it?  If you're going into battle, why not look fearsome?  Easier than painting yourself blue like some latter-day Pict!

Personally, if the French military are serious about rooting out al-Qaeda fighters, they should probably spend more energy looking for 'em than searching for this guy in a skull scarf.  If they're so concerned about their image, I'd suggest re-thinking the stupid raids they do every once in while that either lead to the deaths of their commandos (Somalia, 2013), or the hostages they're supposed to rescue (Niger, 2011).

SS-Gruppenführer Hans Heinrich Lammers , 1938, looking all Nazi n' shit

Source:  http://blogs.afp.com/correspondent/?post/2013/01/22/Unmasking-a-controversy-in-Mali

Here's lookin' at you, kid!

Eye of Horus in the Sky

I'm once again led to a post by Guffey's Cryptoscatology; this time it's a passing reference to the phrase "Eye in the sky".

In addition to being the name of a novel by Philip K. Dick, who later in life thought he might be the subject of government mind control experiments involving the use of satellites, this expression, says Cathy O'Brien (Trance-Formation of America), was used by her handlers (including Temple of Set founder and Army intelligence officer Michael A. Aquino) to refer to the network of satellites that monitored her every move.  For mind-control purposes.

I immediately thought of the hit song of the same name by The Alan Parsons Project; Eye in the Sky is the group's only hit, from the eponymous album.

Now, these lyrics are a goldmine for anyone who wants to see a revelation of the method by a cryptocracy bent on implementing the New World Order.  Themes of surveillance, mind-reading, lies and illusion.  I could quote specific lines, but the whole song is rife with weirdness, if it's to be interpreted as something other than an out-of-love song.  The second and last verses and the chorus are pregnant with meaning:  "some of the lies" are "worth believing".  "Don't leave false illusions behind."

What always got me is not that the eye can see every move you make (the refrain of a mega-hit song from an album entitled Synchronicity by the Police!), but can also read your mind.  Whose mind?  We don't know.  The "you" could be "us".

I am the eye in the sky
Looking at you
I can read your mind
I am the maker of rules
Dealing with fools
I can cheat you blind

Arrogance of a cryptocracy?

The album cover features the eye of Horus and was designed by a graphic design team known as Hipgnosis.  Great pun.  "Hip" means "in the know" and "gnosis" refers to "hidden knowledge".  And of course it refers to hypnosis.  Trance-Formation, anyone?

Alan Parsons also made a solo album called The Time Machine, based on the book by H.G. Wells.  Wells also wrote a book in 1940 called The New World Order in which he promoted the idea of a single world government in order to end war and lead to peace.

The Eye in the Sky Album has some other evocative song titles:

1.     "Sirius"      
2.     "Eye in the Sky"      
3.     "Children of the Moon"
4.     "Gemini"
5.     "Silence and I"      
6.     "You're Gonna Get Your Fingers Burned"      
7.     "Psychobabble"      
8.     "Mammagamma"      
9.     "Step by Step"      
10.    "Old and Wise" 

Sirius has been linked with Lucifer and is the subject of enormous speculation.  Robert Anton Wilson has a lot to say about it, and it is the subject of a book by Robert Temple called The Sirius Mystery:

Temple's book and the debates that followed its release publicized the existence of the Dogon tribe among many New Age followers and proponents of ancient astronaut theories. Speculation about the Dogon on numerous websites is now mingled with fact, leading to wide misunderstanding among the public about Dogon mythology.

Of these, I would propose that songs 1-7 are especially resonant with regard to NWO conspiracy theory.  Number 9 as well, as most agree that gradualism is part of the program.  Whazzat you may ask.  It's like the metaphor of the frog in hot water.  Throw a frog in boiling water, he jumps out.  Throw him in cold gradually and gradually turn up the heat, he notices nothing and eventually boils to death.

In addition to the handy "every move you take" stalker element of the song, the group has acknowledged it was inspired by the constant surveillance described in 1984.  Songwriter and vocalist Eric Woolfson (Wolf's son?) was also an avid gambler and was fascinated by the surveillance cameras in the casinos he frequented; you know the type, I imagine, inverted smoked glass domes that hide the camera?  They call 'em an Eye in the sky....

Woolfson?  Parsons?  Widow's son?  Alan Parsons, Jack Parsons?  Gemini was a support project by NASA to get men to the moon....

Ah, games of chance where the house always wins, corralled into a dayless/nightless consumption machine, all watched over by machines of loving grace.  The casino is almost like the NWO engineer's wet dream.  A milking mechanism for money.

So, enjoy that song next time ya hear it.  I quite like it myself, but it'll never sound the same after this....

Lyrics:

Don't think sorry's easily said
Don't try turning tables instead
You've taken lots of Chances before
But I ain't gonna give anymore
Don't ask me
That's how it goes
Cause part of me knows what you're thinkin'

Don't say words you're gonna regret
Don't let the fire rush to your head
I've heard the accusation before
And I ain't gonna take any more
Believe me
The sun in your Eyes
Made some of the lies worth believing

Chorus:
I am the eye in the sky
Looking at you
I can read your mind
I am the maker of rules
Dealing with fools
I can cheat you blind
And I don't need to see any more
To know that
I can read your mind, I can read your mind

Don't leave false illusions behind
Don't Cry cause I ain't changing my mind
So find another fool like before
Cause I ain't gonna live anymore believing
Some of the lies while all of the Signs are deceiving

Get yer cryptocracy on, muthafuggas.  I'm drunk, I'm stoned, I'm Irish.  Balls out balls to the wall; we got yer New World Odor, right here. Meh. Blah.  Unfold.

Fold.

P.S.  The next day.  Forgive my drunken ending.  Thought it might be worth adding this photo of Alan Parsons from 2006.  Apparently, his fascination with the eye hasn't diminished over time.  Also, in 1978, his Egyptophilia shone through once more with an album entitled....Pyramid.

Don't have a cow, man

The Inspector, Karen Liebowitz

And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, This is the ordinance of the law which the LORD hath commanded, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke — Numbers 19:1-2 (KJV)

Robert Guffey's Cryptoscatology turned me on to the bizarre and frightening story of Clyde Lott, cattle breeder and fundamentalist Christian, who is seeking to breed an unblemished Red Heifer in order to bring about the construction of the Third Temple which will then bring about the Second Coming of Christ, along with the end of the world as we know it.

Why the Red Heifer?

The red heifer or red cow (Hebrew: פרה אדומה; parah adumah) was a sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible the ashes of which are used for the ritual purification of an ancient Israelite who had come into contact with a corpse.

....

In Daniel 12:10, God tells Daniel that in the last days, "many shall be purified and made white"; a reference to the purification ritual of the Red Heifer, "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow" (Isa 1:18, Num 19:6). The analogy appears to relate to a partner of the returning End Time messiah.

....

The absolute rarity of the animal, combined with the detailed ritual in which it is used, have given the Red Heifer special status in Jewish tradition. It is cited as the prime example of a khok, or biblical law for which there is no apparent logic, and is therefore deemed of absolute Divine origin. Because the state of ritual purity obtained through the ashes of a Red Heifer is a necessary prerequisite for participating in Temple service, efforts have been made in modern times by Jews wishing for biblical ritual purity and in anticipation of the building of The Third Temple to locate a red heifer and recreate the ritual.

....

The Temple Institute, an organization dedicated to preparing the reconstruction of a Third Temple in Jerusalem, has been attempting to identify Red Heifer candidates consistent with the requirements of Numbers 19:1–22 and Mishnah Tractate Parah.

....

During a March 2010 radio interview a Temple Institute representative claimed that there is now "definitely a kosher red heifer here in Israel."

....

The non-canonical Epistle of Barnabas (8:1) explicitly equates the Red Heifer with Jesus.

....

Some Fundamentalist Christians believe that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ cannot occur until the Third Temple is constructed in Jerusalem, which requires the appearance of a red heifer born in Israel. Clyde Lott, a cattle breeder in O'Neill, Nebraska, United States, is attempting to systematically breed red heifers and export them to Israel to establish a breeding line of red heifers in Israel in the hope that this will bring about the construction of the Third Temple and ultimately the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

Not forgetting that for fundamentalist Christians such as Lott, the Second Coming will be preceded by the reign of the Antichrist.  The Second Coming will result in the Last Judgement, the end times thought by some to be described in the Book of Revelation.

His is what would be generally described as a "futurist" interpretation of Revelation:

Futurist interpretations generally predict a resurrection of the dead and a rapture of the living, wherein all true Christians and those who have not reached an age of accountability are gathered to Christ at the time God's kingdom comes on earth. They also believe a tribulation will occur - a seven-year period of time when believers will experience worldwide persecution and martyrdom, and be purified and strengthened by it. 

Those not included in the rapture will be condemned to hell on earth, forever.  Which is actually probably pretty accurate, for the reconstruction of the Third Temple must be on the Temple Mount where we currently find the Dome of the Rock, the second holiest site in Islam.  Destruction of this mosque would lead to such a violent Holy War that it could easily finish in nuclear holocaust.  Even after the Israelis trounced their Muslim adversaries in the Six Day War, they left the Temple Mount in the hands of their enemies.  Even in victory, they couldn't risk the all-out Jihad of the entire Muslim world should they have chosen to occupy it.

So breeding the Red Heifer is just one way to bring about the Apocalypse.

La vache qui rit

 

One happy heifer

Being the goofball I am, the words "red heifer" made me think of the only red heifer I know about: La vache qui rit, aka The Laughing Cow. (Red Bull energy drinks don't count, a heifer is a female, a bull, a male!)

This brand of cheese dates to 1921, when brothers Leon and Jules Bel founded the company and created the first spreadable cheese found in individual, foil-wrapped portions.

The cow itself was trademarked in 1921 by Leon, becoming France's first brand-name cheese.  In 1924, friend Benjamin Rabier created the caricature of the cow which is pretty much the same version we see today.

Obviously, this jovial bovine is not the Red Heifer of the Book of Daniel.  For starters, her nose and hooves have white hair; according to the stringent standards of the rabbis, this disqualifies the Laughing Cow as a sacrificial candidate.  Furthermore, it's a cartoon character.

Funny thing though, is the name of the founders:  Bel.  Bel and the Dragon is an apocryphal book of the Bible, chapter 14 of the extended Book of Daniel, the very book in which the Red Heifer makes an important appearance in an end of days context.

In Bel and the Dragon, there are, curiously, two incidents related to food.  In the first, Daniel challenges the Persian King Cyrus's belief that his idol is a living God.  Cyrus says his proof is that the God consumes a ritual meal overnight.  By scattering ashes on the floor, Daniel is able to prove that the meal is in fact consumed by the priests who hide inside the statue and come out at night to gobble up the ritual offerings; their footprints give them away.  Cyrus then has the priests, their wives and their children killed on the spot and allows Daniel to destroy the idol.  Yahweh is a jealous god and when affronted, thinks nothing of allowing the murder of women, children, etc.  Remember the Apocalypse!

In the brief but autonomous companion narrative of the dragon (14:23-30), "there was a great Dragon, which they of Babylon worshiped."....  Daniel slays the dragon by baking pitch, fat, and hair (trichas) to make cakes (mazas, barley-cakes, but translated "lumps") that cause the dragon to burst open upon consumption.

So, given the family name and the centrality of food in these two stories, is it not possible the Bel brothers chose the Red Heifer as a sly nod to the Book of Daniel?

Also interesting is that Bêl is not a name but a title meaning "Lord" or "Master".  Feminized, it's Bêlit, meaning "Lady" or "Mistress".  As in....the Scarlet Lady?  More on that later.

I iz not the Red Heifer you iz looking for

L'Homme qui rit

The Man Who Laughs in French, L'Homme qui rit (1869) is one of Victor Hugo's more obscure novels, written after he had embraced Spiritist and Deist religious views.

Is it also possible that the vache qui rit is a comical nod to Hugo's novel?  The first major character in the novel is a snake-oil salesman who "dresses in bearskins and calls himself Ursus (Latin for "bear"). His only companion is a large domesticated wolf, whom Ursus has named Homo (Latin for “man”). 

I was only attracted to the novel because the title was an echo (or vice versa) of our lovable cow, but I was surprised that this animal/human transvestism is a feature of the novel, because what is the Laughing Cow but an anthropomorphized animal?

The second major character is a starving boy lost in the snow.  He encounters a hanged criminal, and takes the dead man's shoes.  He then walks some more and encounters another corpse, a women in rags, frozen to death.  He discovers an infant child clutching at the woman's breast, from which hangs a single drop of frozen milk. (OK, not to take things too far, but milk?  And cows?)   He realizes the girl is blind. He eventually stumbles upon the caravan of Ursus, the animal man.

A flashback later in the novel reveals that in this first encounter, Ursus thinks the boy is laughing as he holds the nearly dead blind girl; upon closer look, he sees the boy's face has been mutilated into a clown's mask, carved into a smile.  He is l'homme qui rit, Gwynplaine.

The girl is eventually named Dea (Latin = "goddess").  Due to her blindness, she can't see Gwynplaine's deformity and the pair fall in love.

As it turns out, Gwynplaine was the victim of court scheming, sent off to a group of kid traffickers who disfigured him in order to sell him as a freak to a travelling carnival or circus.  After intrigue involving an arranged marriage and investiture as the rightful Lord Fermain Clancharlie, Marquis of Corleone, he is ordered to take his seat in the House of Lords. "But, when the deformed Gwynplaine addresses his peers with a fiery speech against the gross inequality of the age, the other lords are provoked to laughter by Gwynplaine's clownish features."

Gwynplaine/Lord Fermain (fer = "iron" / main = "hand") renounces his peerage and returns to search for Ursus and Dea, who he eventually finds.

Dea is delighted that Gwynplaine has returned to her. She reveals her passion to Gwynplaine, and then she abruptly dies. Gwynplaine then walks, as though in a trance to the edge of the ship, speaking to Dea, and with the reflection of a distant light in his eyes, though the sky is starless. He throws himself into the water, and is thus reunited with Dea in death. When Ursus, who has fainted in Dea's last moments, comes to his senses, Gwynplaine has vanished, and Homo is staring mournfully over the ship's rail, howling into the sea from which Gwynplaine will not return.

So, the deformed clown is united with the goddess by throwing himself in the water, and the wolf/man mourns their death.  This paring of a laughing man and a goddess, whom Christians would automatically label a false deity, may have some importance in our unfolding poetic discourse.

Gwynplaine incarnated by Conrad Veigt

Don't forget the Joker

Hugo's novel and it's various filmed versions have inspired several Batman comics over the years:

• 1940. Jerry Robinson borrows the physique and grotesque grin of Gwynplaine as his inspiration for the Joker, something revealed by Bob Kane in later interviews.
• 1998. Artist Brian Bolland is inspired by The Man Who Laughs film for Batman: The Killing Joke.
• 2003. In the "Wild Cards" episode of the Justice League animated series, the Joker uses "Gwynplaine Entertainment" as an alias.
• 2005. Batman: The Man Who Laughs.
• 2008. The Dark Knight. The Joker's permanent grin appears to be caused by a mutilation to his face.
• 2011. Batman and Robin, writer David Hine introduced a deformed French supervillain named the Man Who Laughs. His backstory states that his father, a fan of classic art and literature, carved a smile onto his face as an intentional homage to Hugo's novel.

The only reason these Batman references jumped out at me is because of the Aurora shootings, to which a host of Batman references have been associated by various Internet synchromystics, conspiracy theorists and people who pay attention.  Holmes himself said:  "I am the Joker" before opening fire on the apostolic dozen of victims.  This feeds back to our Red Heifer because I've recently run across a lot of references to a woman in red, but more specifically, with regard to Aurora shooter Robert Holmes:

Loren Coleman has been writing about the symbolism of a "lady in red" (Holmes' Harlots, July 30, 2012).  He links several appearances of the red woman to the Aurora shootings in Colorado, itself one in a series of shootings with patterns pointing to what Coleman calls "Red Dawn" scenarios.  This follows a post of July 22, Blood Red Movie Massacres.  Back on May 3, The Sink Hole's Will Morgan devoted a post to the topic, unrelated to shootings, entitled....Lady in Red.  Morgan links the red lady to the Sacred Whore of Babylon.  Coleman links her to prostitution.  Old acquaintance Tate Bunker, who I haven't actually spoken to in 20 years or so, premiered his first feature film, Little Red at the Milwaukee Film Festival (September 30).

If you will, the Whore of Babylon is also known as the Scarlet Woman. Interesting that the red women in Coleman's post are harlots, or whores. Echoing Hugo's "Dea" and the stories of Daniel, the word translated here as "whore" can also be translated as "idolatress." Is the Scarlet Woman the "partner of the returning End Time messiah" referred to in Daniel 12:10? Hard to say. "Apocalypse" initially meant revelation, prophetic literature. Like most prophecy, it's pretty garbled stuff, encoded, cryptic. Fun stuff, but this tends to lead to as many interpretations as there are interpreters. So really who knows what the fuck Daniel or St. John were on about. Different Christians traditions have different interpretations. Funny thing is, we've got synchromystics going on about the current ubiquity of a Scarlet Woman, many appearances pointing back to the Batman mythos. So, from the Scarlet Heifer of Daniel to the Laughing Cow, thenceforth to the Laughing Man and finally to....the Joker and the Scarlet Lady. But where is the Antichrist?

Heath Ledger as the Joker

Enter Obama

A short time ago we posted Barack Obama is the Antichrist. We don't think he is, of course, but a lot of people do. www.beastobama.com may just be the best domain name, evah. We also looked at how Obama was depicted as the Joker in a post about the Batman links to Aurora (20 rosy fingers). This was all in the context of mass shootings, which for many on the conspiratorial right, are merely false flags to scare the sheeple into accepting gun control laws they might not otherwise push for or accept (see Cold, dead fingers). In fact, Obama has begun the process of issuing executive orders to regulate the access to firearms, a fact not lost on the right, to be sure. This is all a prelude, according to the BA is the AC crowd, for the pacification of the people, one more step towards One World Government/Religion and the New World Order of the Antichrist.

Batrack Obama as the Joker

If I don't get into whole Whore of Babylon thing, it's because no one knows for sure who exactly she is....each sect takes its prejudice and runs with it. Likewise the New World Order. Suffice it to say that for true believers, everything these days is a step towards that nefarious goal.

I have no conclusion here, but it was an interesting trip down the path of association. From the Red Heifer to Barak Obama, via cheese, Victor Hugo and the Joker. Not too shabby!

“How much of what she says do you think is true?”

Today I hopped over the the Dangerous Minds website to look at an old Devo video and I see a link to:  Brice Taylor: Mind-controlled Sex Slave of the CIA, Bob Hope and Henry Kissinger.  How timely, eh?  And by utter chance. The Unseen Hand guided me there....God obviously wants me to spread the word....

The following video is available on You Tube and was originally made for Richard Metzger's Disinformation TV show.  His background coments are enlightening.

Enjoy the weirdness!

Savile Row

Our original photo for this post apparently violated Google's AdSense Policy, so I replaced it.  You can see the original here.

Satanic abuse is in the news again, and I aim to take a little peek under the covers and see what lies beneath.  Well, not really, how could I do that from my desk in a small French village?  But I can give a few comments and examine some precedents and hey, the topic was recently mentioned here on ye olde blogge.  This time the alleged Satanist is disgraced English icon Jimmy Savile.  But before we get to him, let's step back a few posts....

In a comment on my post Life imitates conspiracy theory as art...., LoS fellow traveler T.A.WILSON remarked:

Also I feel compelled to mention: you may be missing a lot of fun -- conspiracy-wise -- by sidestepping all the Monarch Programming/Imperial Conditioning angles

Well T.A., this Bud's for you!

What is Monarch programming? Author Cathy O'Brien claims that Project Monarch was a part of the CIA's MKULTRA and Project Artichoke.

In two books--Trance Formation of America (1995) and Access Denied: For Reasons of National Security (2004)--O'Brien has claimed:

to have a recollection of child abuse - of her and her daughter - by international pedophile rings, drug barons and satanists, as part of a sex slave aspect to her 'trauma based mind control programming'.

Independent research has produced no evidence of these claims nor that Project Monarch ever existed.  But it really doesn't have to.  As far as nefarious schemes go, MKULTRA and Artichoke were pretty detestable.  Mind control experiments were in fact part of these programs, which used techniques including hypnosis, the use of drugs, sensory deprivation, torture and sexual abuse.

O'Brien goes a bit farther than the historical record on these programs and implicates Gerald Ford, Dick Cheney, Bushes Sr. and Jr., Sen. Robert Byrd, Charley Pride, Tommy Lasorda, Nolan Ryan, Boxcar Willie, Jimmy Buffett, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton....

A bit beyond the already twisted reality of MKULTRA.

But O'Brien is not alone. Dig if you will Brice Taylor (pseudonym of Sue Ford). She has also written a couple of books detailing her life as a mind-control sex slave:

I am a ritual abuse, government mind control survivor, and I have spent since 1985 working to heal from that and documenting what I was involved with at the highest levels within our government and internationally as the people's leaders are invested in bringing in the New World Order. 

As with O'Brien, this is a family affair; with her parents cooperation, Taylor/Ford was ritually abused by Satanists in the military and government. 

A propos of nothing, I can't help but notice that the names Taylor and Ford are both associated with mass production: 

Fordism is "the eponymous manufacturing system designed to spew out standardized, low-cost goods and afford its workers decent enough wages to buy them" 

whereas with Taylorism: 

Its main objective was improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity.

Fordism and Taylorism would seem to be related, and they are; it appears, however, that each was developed independently of the other. This of course, doesn't relate to Satanic ritual abuse, of course, but one could make a case that both theories played an important role in the development of the global economy conspiracy theorists would describe as being part of the "master plan" to inaugurate the New World Order.

But what's up with this Satanic sex abuse stuff? It's such a widespread meme that sociologists have blessed it with an acronym: SRA, Satanic Ritual Abuse. It doesn't take a genius to see precedents for all this in medieval witch hunts, which contained strong overtones of sexual activity, witches' orgies and mating with the devil and all that, but also with Blood Libel, the medieval belief that Jews kidnapped Christian children to use as sacrificial victims.

I remember the 1980's very well, the great satanic panic, where conservative Christians were making accusations left, right and center.  But it wasn't just the fringe.  Geraldo Rivera made a TV special which supported the idea of a nationwide Satanic network, highly organized and underground, with a membership upwards of a million acolytes!  This wasn't some televangelist on an obscure Christian cable network, but a once-serious journalist on broadcast TV.  I don't recall the network, though. 

Rivera:

"Estimates are that there are over 1 million Satanists in this country...The majority of them are linked in a highly organized, very secretive network. From small towns to large cities, they have attracted police and FBI attention to their Satanic ritual child abuse, child pornography and grisly Satanic murders. The odds are that this is happening in your town." 

That's some serious shit, eh?  Problem is, it's entirely unfounded.  And dig this retraction from 1995: 

"I want to announce publicly that as a firm believer of the 'Believe The Children' movement of the 1980's, that started with the McMartin trials in CA, but NOW I am convinced that I was terribly wrong... and many innocent people were convicted and went to prison as a result....AND I am equally positive [that the] 'Repressed Memory Therapy Movement' is also a bunch of CRAP..." 

Too late for Genesis P-Orridge.  Genesis may not be known to you, but s/he is a legend in the underground scene.  A lesser person would have been destroyed by what happened in 1992: 

On the 15th Feb. 1992, 23 officers of the Obscene Publications Squad entered the Brighton home of Genesis P-Orridge, artist, musician and founder of Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth [TOPY]....The police were acting on evidence of organised ritual child abuse consisting of a video and the testimony of a witness who claimed to have been involved in the making of the video. In the next few days the Observer carried a piece on the "first evidence of ritual abuse" and Channel Four's Dispatches aired edited highlights of the video and interviews with a woman who claimed she had sacrificed her daughter and undergone an abortion for the sake of a Psychick Youth Ritual.

 ....Within one week the origins of the video were exposed in the press. It was, in fact, part of a film, commissioned by Channel Four in 1980, featuring Derek Jarman, and designed to explore the power of editing the visual image. The female witness was exposed as a "professional victim", born again Xtian, and ex-member of a charismatic Xtian sect. She had no conscious memory of the ritual events, the murders and abortions, they had been conveyed to her, (from her subconscious memory I presume), by one of the Fundamentalists. Her testimony was shown to be factually incorrect. The programme makers were a Xtian company, the presenter had just published a book exposing the Satanic network in Britain.... 

So this nonsense isn't limited to America.  Genesis has lost an extensive selection of his archives, including unique avant-garde film and literature, lost his home and lost his country.  In Tibet feeding lepers and refugees at the time of the raid, he chose exile in the US as opposed to returning to the UK, facing possible jail time and the certain loss of his children, to foster homes, at least in the short term. 

Now, I'm an open-minded cat, but even among the underground, Gen is an odd duck, so way out that s/he makes an easy target.  But if you read up on the case, you an see the "evidence" is a sham.  "Travesty of justice" comes to mind.  In photos of Gen s/he's usually grim-faced and dour, almost hostile.  But there's one photo of Gen with both daughters, and s/he looks positively radiant, the joy of being a parent.  There's something to that, I think.

But where are we at with Satanic panic these days?  Surely we've evolved since 1992, no?  (wink)  No.  Enter Jimmy Savile.  Sir James Wilson Vincent "Jimmy" Savile OBE is an English icon:  DJ, TV presenter and philanthropist.  In this latter capacity he chose hospitalized children to be the beneficiaries of his largesse.  But like the Penn State pedophile Jerry Sandusky, his charity work allowed him to molest and abuse children for years.  In Savile's case, hundreds have come forward and it seems pretty unlikely all these people are in cahoots to libel the once-beloved icon.  In short, he was a pedophile who abused the trust and the bodies of hundreds of kids.  For this, he is a motherfucker of the highest order.  He was also an establishment darling.  So: outlaw artist gets raided and robbed of civil liberties, banal media figure and intimate of the royal family gets a free pass, despite rumors and investigations that were shelved for "lack of evidence."  In Gen's case, the lack was even more flagrant, but then again, s/he was a "freaky dude."  (BTW, for an explanation of why I use s/he for P-Orridge, begin here).

But what started this post off was the following headline: Jimmy Savile Was Part Of Satanic Ring.  Howzat?  Yes indeed, all the familiar elements are here: 

The girl kept her torment hidden for nearly 20 years before finally opening up to therapist Valerie Sinason.

Dr Sinason told the Sunday Express she first spoke to the victim in 1992. “She had been a patient at Stoke Mandeville in 1975 when Savile was a regular visitor." 

She recalled being led into a room that was filled with candles on the lowest level of the hospital, somewhere that was not regularly used by staff. Several adults were there, including Jimmy Savile who, like the others, was wearing a robe and a mask.
 ....
"She was molested, raped and beaten and heard words that sounded like ‘Ave Satanas’, a Latin­ised version of ‘Hail Satan’, being chanted. There was no mention of any other child being there and she cannot remember how long the attack lasted but she was left extremely frightened and shaken.” 

But that's not all.  A second victim came forward, according to the same therapist: 

Five years after the hospital attack, he abused a second victim during another black mass ceremony held at a house in a wealthy London street.

The woman was 21 at the time and was made to attend an orgy, which later took on a darker twist.

Dr Sinason, director of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies in London, said: “A second victim approached me in 1993. She said she had been ‘lent out’ as a supposedly consenting prostituted woman at a party in a London house in 1980.

"The first part of the evening started off with an orgy but half-way through some of the participants left.

“Along with other young women, the victim was shepherded to wait in another room before being brought back to find Savile in a master of ceremonies kind of role with a group wearing robes and masks. She too heard Latin chanting and instantly recognised satanist regalia. Although the girl was a young adult, who was above the age of consent, she had suffered a history of sexual abuse and was extremely vulnerable.”

Both victims contacted Dr Sinason, who is president of the Institute of Psychotherapy and Disability, while she was involved in a Department of Health-funded study into sexual abuse committed during rituals and religious ceremonies. She said: “Both these witnesses did speak to police at the time but were vulnerable witnesses and on encountering any surprise or shock did not dare to give all the details.” 

According to Sinason: 

“Neither girl knew one another, they lived in different parts of the country and contacted me a year apart yet their experiences are very similar. Whether Savile was a practising Satanist or merely enjoyed dressing up to scare his victims even more will perhaps never be known but he left those two girls mentally scarred.”

At least Sinason puts in the caveat, but it still seems pretty fishy to me.  Hundreds of potential victims and two come up with the Satanic element, with the same therapist.  20 years after the fact?

Wikipedia has an interesting entry on Sinason: 

Valerie Sinason is a British poet, writer, psychoanalyst and psychotherapist who is known for promoting the ideas that the people with developmental disability can benefit from psychoanalysis and that satanic ritual abuse is widely practiced in the UK. 

Furthermore: 

In 1994, Sinason edited a collection of essays entitled Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse that claimed satanic ritual abuse existed in the United Kingdom and that she had treated victims. Satanic ritual abuse is now considered to be a moral panic. Despite this and a three-year Department of Health inquiry by the anthropologist Prof Jean La Fontaine into 84 alleged cases of ritual abuse that found no evidence to support such claims, Sinason claimed in 2001 and 2002 she had clinical evidence for the widespread practice of satanic ritual abuse in the United Kingdom. Her own report on the topic, prepared with colleague Dr Robert Hale, was funded as a pilot study by the Department of Health. It was never released to the public, and the Department of Health stated in response to an inquiry by a reporter that they do not believe the unreleased Sinason-Hale report rendered LaFontaine's published report invalid. LaFontaine commented on the story saying "It is not surprising to me that patients who are having treatment by Valerie Sinason would produce stories that echo such topical issues as the recent trial for receiving internet pornography and the publicity for the film Hannibal. There is good research that shows the "memories" of abuse are produced in and by the therapy." 

From The Telegraph (March 22, 2012): 

Miss Sinason, the main speaker yesterday, is on the record as saying that Satanists are breeding babies for ritual murder, a practice she described to the Catholic Herald as "an Auschwitz in peacetime".  Until now, not one body has surfaced to corroborate this theory.... 

The event at which Sinason spoke was organized in part by one Wilfred Wong, an evangelical and confirmed believer in SRA.

Another blog has a revealing post called Valerie Sinason's credibility takes a dive which is worth looking into. Perhaps the best line from the post is the following quote from a review of her book: 

'useful for anyone who needs a startling, clear demonstration of the amazing ability of 20th century human beings to persuade themselves firmly to believe in utter claptrap and nonsense.’

Back in the USA: 

A psychologist accused of hypnotizing a woman into believing she possessed multiple personalities and participated in satanic rituals may be sued by several others who say they were also told they had been a part of a satanic cult, according to a Missouri attorney.
....
The complaint alleges Nasseff's therapist, Mark Schwartz, "carelessly and negligently hypnotized [Nasseff]" while she was under the influence of "various psychotropic medications" to treat depression and anxiety. The hypnosis allegedly created false memories, including the belief that she was "a member of a satanic cult and that she was involved in or perpetrated various criminal and horrific acts of abuse."

One of those acts included participating "in a ritualistic eating of babies," according to Vuylsteke. 

As of Nov. 12, 2012, four lawsuits have been brought against Castlewood, accusing the staff of "brainwashing" and implanting memories. In a bit of the old name game, it's innarestin' to note that Schwartz is: currently the consulting clinical director for Castlewood and the Clinical CO-Director for Monarch Cove Treatment Center for Eating Disorders.

Monarch, eh? Schwartz, like Sinason, has an impressive CV. Unlike Sinason, I can't find any indication Schwartz is an evangelical; Sinason may or may not be, but she doesn't seem to have any qualms about speaking at their conferences (as above) or joining forces with evangelical activists to expose the alleged Satanic underground. One of these cohorts is a guy named Andrew Boyd. Boyd once produced a video called Beyond Belief.....the very same video used to launch a police raid on Genesis P-Orridge and TOPY! 

Boyd, despite his Christianity, appears to be rather ethically challenged: 

Beyond Belief....sought to prove that Satanic Ritual Abuse existed by portraying a piece of TOPY performance art as actual footage of the birth of a baby bred for sacrifice! Boyd admitted in the debate that he knew the TOPY performance art video connection before broadcast but went ahead anyway. 

And in the process totally fucked up P-Orridge's life!  Asshole.

And that's the problem.  This SRA BS is predicated on discredited therapeutic practices.  Recovered memory, repressed memory etc.  Most reasonable psychologists dismiss it out of hand as the worst form of snake oil with a large potential for harm to patients.

Not to mention artist/occultists.  The Religious Tolerance website gives an overview of Satanic Panic in the late 80's/early 90's, as well as a brief resurgence in 2002-2003.  Sinason was knee-deep in it, as mentioned, enabled by notorious Christian bigot Lord Acton.  At the meeting mentioned above featuring Sinason as key speaker, there was a lot of talk about hooded, chanting Satanists sexually abusing children in a Black Mass. 

Apparently, things haven't changed much in the interim. Sinason has come up with two more victims who attest to the very same tropes. Much of the same pops up in the work of Cathy O'Brien and Brice Taylor and even James Shelby Downard, whose Carnivals of Life and Death details the sex and death obsessions of the power elite. Satanism in this case is replaced by the KKK and/or Freemasons, but hey, what the heck, in the eyes of the believers, they're all heads of the hydra, n'est-ce pas? 

Dr. Richard B. Spence writes of Carnivals:  "I’ll confess that Carnivals was probably the only book I’ve actually thrown against a wall out of sheer disgust that anyone would expect me to swallow such a pile of horseshit." 

My sentiments exactly.  It seems to me that these allegations stem from the perverse need of (some) evangelical Christians to find evidence that Satan is conspiring all around them, perhaps to assuage the cognitive dissonance of being an establishment religion predicated upon being a persecuted minority.  What better than to insist that the real elite is Satanic and that Christians are still fighting the good fight?  Aided and abetted by a few dubious therapists and a scandal-hungry media, they succeed in inducing moral panic.  Which I suppose would be funny if it weren't for all the ruined lives left in their wake.  This goes beyond P-Orridge.  The accusers and the accused are all victims here, as well as the general public at large.  Dozens have been arrested and charged with ritual abuse and in each case the defendants had these charges dropped.  Meanwhile we all foot the bill in both economic terms and the price of a dumbed-down credulous public with no capacity for critical thinking.  Just Google "Jimmy Savile, satanist" and see how many people accept this as, well, gospel. 

Sad that "stories of baby sacrifice borrowed from 19th-century anti-Catholic propaganda" and "anti-Semitic blood libel" are still being used today to whip up fury at the devil-worshippers that want your children, for sex or for dinner, sadder still that the tabloid press uncritically "reports" these stories.  Saddest of all is that people will continue to believe it.  They haven't looked at the history of an obsessed quack like Sinason.  That she is still permitted to treat people seems criminal.

She should probably be locked away in a convent, left to dream and pleasure herself with the sado-masochistic Satan fantasies she seems so eager to inflict upon the public.  More appropriate than being allowed to babble on in public like Leo Taxil! 

As for Jimmy Savile, the only pity is that his status and proximity to power protected him in life.  Now that he's dead, we can only piss on his memory; in life, the bastard molested and abused hundreds of kids....and got away with it.  If evil exists, I suppose that would qualify, but these SRA fanatics aren't talking in metaphors.  Meanwhile, Sinason will go on, every ten years or so making another attempt to link everything to, could it be....SATAN!?

As for the Monarch angles of SRA, Apocalypse Culture II is where I first read about O'Brien and Taylor in an essay by Robert Sterling entitled Uncle Ronnie's Sex Slaves.  Let me quote from his conclusion: 

Perhaps the NWO sex slave books are too kinky for tastes outside of Christian fundamentalism, but they certainly belong to high-quotient porno literature. The tales have many of the qualities commonly found in sado-masochistic bondage fantasies, which regularly depict women helpless as sexual perversions are committed upon them. 
.... 
It should be obvious to everybody that the NWO sex slave genre is nothing more than thinly veiled porno disguised as parapolitics. The most avid readers of these books are fundamentalist Christians, who cite the O’Brien/Taylor tales as proof that the New World Order is a Satanic plot. That the tales told in these books seem in so many ways inaccurate appears of little concern to these readers, who often repeat the many unsubstantiated allegations as fact.
....
As Freud would remind us, that which we vociferously condemn as deviant is also what we often secretly crave. The more something becomes a taboo, the more attractive it becomes. It is no surprise that many people will happily wallow in perversion if given an excuse to do so. Is the promotion of these sex slave tales in the conservative Christian community a way to subliminally revel in filth? Few dare call it conspiracy, but even fewer dare call it pornography.

On a final note, I went to one of my links to verify a quote and visited a link to The Process weblog. The "open letter" to Dr. Phil makes it clear the genre lives on. Apparently the bald TV shrink was planning to air an interview with the author of a book entitled 22 Faces that includes the following: 

Twenty-Two Faces describes that Jenny Hill was oppressed by an unlikely Jewish Nazi who worshipped Satan and was brought to the US from Germany under CIA sponsorship. Ludicrous as this alone is, Byington explains that this over-dramatized villain is careful to conceal his antics from Jenny Hill’s parents — returning her home on-time for supper, making sure her chores are finished before compelling her to return — yet we also learn later that Hill’s parents were in on the whole thing throughout. 

The whole gamut is represented:  repressed and recovered memories, SRA, government involvement, complicity of parents, etc.

Author Doug Mesner concludes: 

....Judy Byington herself makes clear that she considers Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder synonymous with Satanic Ritual Abuse, and you can hardly talk to her about one without addressing the other. To be clear, when Judy Byington talks of multiplicity and dissociative trauma, she is talking about a debunked conspiracy theory of satanic mind-control plots. That you should give such hysterical claims air-time — allowing a conspiracy theory to be presented as a diagnosis — on your widely viewed show is beyond irresponsible. It makes you a menace to the public mental health.

 Hear! hear! Doug. 

Old draft now posted....why not?

A little bit of dry humor from Wikipedia's Mound-builder article: "The Reverend Landon West claimed that Serpent Mound in Ohio was built by God. He believed that God built the mound himself and placed it in Eden, which apparently was in Ohio."

"You're Lost Little Girl...."

This is a (belated) tale of constructing "synchronicity", a piling-up of information with resonant themes.  In our case, instead of standing back and letting others go hog-wild with conspiracy theories, we freely admit that this is in fact, a construction.  Disparate, unrelated facts, brought together by the mind.  Perception as an organizing process.
 
On Dec. 20, I opened Firefox and my start page appears:  Google.  On this day the "Google doodle" was an interactive story board featuring the tale of Little Red Riding Hood to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Grimm's Fairy Tales.

I went to my Facebook page and on my newsfeed there was a blurb about the photobomb of Vicki Soto; behind her a man makes the "devil's horns" hand sign.  This led to a post (The Devil you say), but not before recalling that I had previously linked a "martyred" young woman to the tale of Riding Hood in a previous post entitled The dog is a domesticated form of the Gray Wolf.

In both Little Red Riding Hood and the Beauty and the Beast, there is an explicit danger in the forest. Folklorists tell us that this is a trope dating back to the Middle Ages where the forest--place of darkness and danger--is juxtaposed against the village as a place of safety. Put in other words, between the wild and the domesticated, the savage and the tame. In French we can speak of the dusk, or at times the dawn, as "entre chien et loup," literally "between dog and wolf." The night and all its attendant dangers versus the safety of the light of day. These liminal periods put in stark contrast the nature of the wild and the domesticated; they are transitions between states of being.

I Googled "origin of the name Soto" and found:  The Soto family originally lived in one of the numerous towns or villages named Soto. The place-name Soto is derived from the Spanish word "soto," which refers to a "thicket" or "grove." This word is itself derived from the Latin word "saltus," which refers to a pasture land containing a forest or wood.  (http://www.houseofnames.com/soto-family-crest)

So now, the link in my head between one "virgin martyr" and another has a kind of "objective" fact.

 

Flash forward nine days to Dec. 29.  At this point, the preceding text is a dusty draft, headed for the bin. However, as I'm organizing some stray folders, I come across the preceding three images.  I apparently scanned these images from a French magazine in April, 2012, probably struck by the fact they used the Little Red Riding Hood story in the sense I discussed in my own post on the tale (The dog is a domesticated form of the Gray Wolf, October, 2009); that is to say, the metaphor for sexual predation.

These images resonated so well with the themes in this draft that I resurrected this post.

Continuing with Victoria Soto: She is the only one of the Sandy Hook victims with her own Wikipedia page, the one victim for some reason CNN decided to focus upon (remember The Devil you say, December 29).  Soto is the only name I know from the massacre; I'm certainly not alone.

She has been widely hailed as a hero:  Shots and screaming were heard over the intercom system and Soto hid several children in a closet. When Lanza entered her classroom, Soto told him that the children were in the auditorium. However, several of the children then came out of their hiding places and ran. As they ran, Lanza shot them dead. Soto, fearing for the lives of her other students put herself between her students and the shooter who then fatally shot her.

There were, however, several other acts of this sort which could just as easily be labelled "heroic."  So why focus on Vicki Soto?  First of all, by most accounts she appears to have been a genuinely nice person.  Her actions that day were undoubtedly admirable.  It doesn't hurt that she was also young, full of promise and rather pretty.

I think the scope of this tragedy makes it difficult to focus on any one child....it would seem unfair in some way.  It's hard to remember so many names, there are no details of their short lives to stab our hearts with.  No individual face stands out.  So this young woman became a focus of attention.  The martyred young woman is a powerful archetype; in this case her youth links her to the children in a way an older, greyer teacher might not.  She serves as bridge between the children and the world.  By focusing on Soto, a fair choice is made to symbolize all the victims, all the horror distilled into one individual, bringing it all to a more digestible bit of news.  I don't see this as an engineered meme, but a kind of organic response, a feedback loop between popular emotional response, the recognition of her appeal and then, imitation, repetition, re-circulation.

Victoria Soto, facing down the wolf.  In Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf is disguised as Grandma.  I read the name Adam Lanza somewhere interpreted as "Man Lance" (as one other famous Lance is in the news again for doping, or "leg strong").  Adam Lanza also wore a mask.  "Adam (Hebrew: אָדָֿם) comes from the triliteral root אָדַֿם ( 'ADM ), meaning "red", "fair", "handsome". (!!)  And it appears that Lanza comes from Lancia, a name derived from a soldier or lancer.  There is an obvious metaphor here of sexual aggression, a "man lance", but the woman's name suggests victory over the forest, as with Riding Hood.

In some roundabout evocation, this goes back to the very real feeling of a kind of moral victory over Lanza/the Wolf; her humanity in the face of the horror is a kind of victory in death that goes down well in our Christian culture, what with Christ's example followed by numerous Saints among the Catholic martyrs.

(Follow the virgin martyr tag for an extensive selection of posts on the theme).

Loren Coleman has been writing about the symbolism of a "lady in red" (Holmes' Harlots, July 30, 2012).  He links several appearances of the red woman to the Aurora shootings in Colorado, itself one in a series of shootings with patterns pointing to what Coleman calls "Red Dawn" scenarios.  This follows a post of July 22, Blood Red Movie Massacres.  Back on May 3, The Sink Hole's Will Morgan devoted a post to the topic, unrelated to shootings, entitled....Lady in Red.  Morgan links the red lady to the Sacred Whore of Babylon.  Coleman links her to prostitution.  Old acquaintace Tate Bunker, who I haven't actually spoken to in 20 years or so, premiered his first feature film, Little Red at the Milwaukee Film Festival (September 30).  It's a modern re-telling of the tale with the Wolf as a sexual predator named Lou. Meanwhile, I have discussed Little Red Riding Hood as a cautionary tale against prostitution and a metaphor for sexual predation.

Soto is not Little Red Riding Hood, but there are definitely enough "syncs" around which to construct a synchromystic narrative.  The images I've posted are linked to sexual predation on the internet, not mass murder (though I'm sure a lot more could be said about the sexual aspects of murder and/or violence).  Fact is, though, I re-discovered 'em on the day I saw another Little Red link, a Satanic photobomb, and discovered that the photobombee's name meant forest.  By riffing a bit around that, a lot more connections come up.  Which sounds like a way of saying it's all in your head.  The facts are out there, but the nexus is the mind.

So, most of you will be saying, ok, so?  So nothing.  Synchromystics just keep piling this shit on and think they've discovered the entrails of God.  I'm just bored and detailing the tracks of my tears, and that rhymes with bears not beers, as in the the discrete rips at the edges of reality which allow us to think we've discovered something we in fact have built ourselves....and merely forgotten....

Mahna mahna

Next odd headline du jour:

Police: Holmes made puppets after Colo. shooting

Aurora shooter James Holmes, in the interrogation room, pretended two paper bags placed over his hands to preserve gunshot residue were puppets.

From the headline, I was hoping for something more, like maybe he'd actually put on an elaborate show with marionettes and other wooden automatons, but no, just a guy and two paper sacks.

Other odd behavior is detailed.  Huh.  Who'd a thought a guy disguised as the Joker that had just shot a dozen people in cold blood would be acting weird in custody?

Seeing is believing

Some people pictured are not really there.

WaPo reports:  Pelosi defends altered photo of Democratic women.  The four women somewhat noticable at the back of this group shop were Photoshopped in.

This would be a perfect opportunity for a high-minded and strongly-worded editorial of reproach, but I'll skip the fancy indignation and sum it all up in one word:  "No."

Good or neutral intentions aside, digitally altering photos of this nature and in this manner is a false record.  It is a lie.  Any attempt by government to jigger the historical record should be vigorously denounced.  If  Pelosi wrote that Senatrice X was present for an event and she wasn't, that would be false, either a lie or an error.

Why should the standard be different for photography?

I've long wondered about the increasing irrelevance of photography and video as evidence in a court of law, given the increasing quality of Photoshop and the skills of its users.  Maybe as evidence images will inevitably go the way of the dodo, but I'm not sure allowing the government to accelerate that evolution is such a good idea.

Actually, I'm quite sure.  Fail.  Remove.  Do not repeat.

There are certainly more outrageous and offensive things going on in Washington, but this paranoia-ratcheting mechanism seems relatively easy to fix.

BTW, know what a ratchet is?  A little bit bigger than a mouse shit.