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).

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. 

"The Pearl of Africa's Crown"

"One man said he had clients who had captured children and taken their blood and body parts to his shrine, while another confessed to killing at least 70 people including his own son."

Yikes.

The U.S. produces the like of Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and Anthony Sowell--not to mention estranged husbands, a stunning variety of sociopathic criminals, gang-bangers and Blackwater.

Uganda needs an anti-human sacrifice and trafficking task force.

Which country actually has more murders per capita each year? On this list of 62 countries, the U.S. is #24. Uganda isn't even on it.

Just in case you were wondering, 84% of the population of Uganda considers themselves Christian. Not that we're implying anything, nothing whatsoever.

Incidentally, a recent bill introduced to the Ugandan parliament--Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009--suggests hanging gay men and women. This came one month after three American evangelicals came and presented a three-day series of talks about the evil homo agenda to destroy the traditional African family.

That is all.

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....

More than one way to skin a cat

25 September 2017:  I still think this post is an interesting experiment in "twilight language exegesis" and synchromysticism, but I'd be remiss not to follow up on a recent comment and point out that all charges were dropped against Tyler Weinman after it was determined the cats he was charged with killing were in fact killed by another animal.  I should have emphasized he was innocent until proven guilty.  The poetic exploration is remains valid even though Weinman is innocent, maybe especially so....

We often come across interesting blogs during our various researches, some of which we've linked to over there on the right. While we might not subscribe to their particular viewpoints, we include them because they explore themes and events so often explored here on LoS.

One thing that binds these blogs together is that they attempt in one form or another to decode what is referred to in the business as "twilight language."

Huh? you may ask. As far as we know, the concept of twilight language first appeared in the works of James Shelby Downard, one of the most elaborate and fantastical conspiracy theorists in recent memory. An example of his methodology can be found online in the introduction to the classic King Kill-33. Follow that link and take a look-see. You won't be disappointed. His self-avowed acolyte Michael Hoffman continues the Downardian exegesis in his regular columns and in his book Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare, a book LoS chum TA Wilson refers to as "one of the greatest novels ever written."

So, again, what is twilight language? Twilight language can be viewed as a series of triggers or cues for subliminally-primed patsies and the public at large. It takes the form of number symbolism, suggestive names and symbolically charged events. It is alleged to induce anxiety, dread, panic, even upsurges in seemingly random violence. Twilight language is a tool of psychological warfare much akin to disinformation. Fact and fantasy are mixed up and released upon the unsuspecting public to create confusion, fear and paranoia. So much doubt about seemingly straight-up occurrences is created that the general public has a hard time separating fact from fiction, even when facing seemingly incontrovertible truths. Twilight language is both subliminal and overt, hidden--like the purloined letter--in plain sight, but it works best when the maximum number of people can see it, whether it consciously registers or not.

But this begs the question: by whom is it used?

Downard and Hoffman point to what they call "the cryptocracy": the hidden elite. It should come as no surprise that this hidden elite is comprised of some of the usual suspects: the Rabbis, of course, and their minions the Freemasons. For a better understanding of these ideas, we recommend reading Hoffman directly, but be forewarned: although unarguably a brilliant writer and an erudite mind, he may leave you convinced he's a raging anti-Semite.

Some may write-off the decryption of twilight language as paranoid raving and--in the sense of Salvador Dalí's "paranoiac-critical method"--it is. Dalí called his method a "spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectivity of the associations and interpretations of delirious phenomena."

André Breton, the magus of Surrealism, said it was and "instrument of primary importance" that "has immediately shown itself capable of being applied equally to painting, poetry, the cinema, the construction of typical Surrealist objects, fashion, sculpture, the history of art, and even, if necessary, all manner of exegesis." (Boldface added)

We suspect that consciousness itself, the process of forming a world view, is more or less a kind of paranoia. Think of perception itself as an organizing process. Metaphor, simile and symbol, the archetype. All are fundamentals of imagination and thinking, not to mention seeing. When it gets out of control--pathological--it may be a kind of mental illness, paranoid schizophrenia. Or it may be as simple as calling a cut fingernail a crescent moon.

We propose that the paranoid germ lies in every mind and when properly cultivated and trained, can become a valuable exegetical tool. At the very least it enables us to riff on current events and if not contrive a coherent conspiratorial narrative, at least make some interesting and beautiful noise. Like Burroughs said of his cut-up method, anyone can do it, but it may only be interesting in skilled hands. Both Burroughs and Woody Allen also point out that paranoia is merely knowing all the facts.

Which brings us to the story of Tyler Hayes Weinman.

Weinman is the South Florida teen arrested on 14 June for a series of cat killings/mutilations which had left at least two communities, in the words of one headline: "Frightened and Paranoid."

Now, why we were drawn to this case probably has to do with our series of posts about animal on human and human on animal violence. We were of course using irony as a weapon of satire in these posts, but it kind of kept us on the lookout for more of the same. Now, this here is a pretty brutal and extended series of mutilations, so we're going to avoid being snarky. If--and we reiterate the big "if"--this kid is guilty, we're looking at a pretty disturbed young fellow.

So, what does all of this have to do with twilight language? First of all, as the the headline says, residents were getting paranoid, many even speculating if this was all the prelude to the working of a serial killer of humans. And serial killers are the most fertile subjects imaginable for the weaving tales of conspiracy theory. There are also some other very suggestive features of the case. So lets decrypt a few things here and see what happens.

First of all the name: Tyler Hayes Weinman.

In Freemasonry, the Tyler is the guardian of the outer door of the Lodge. The word "tyler" or "tiler" initially meant a doorkeeper at an inn. As the Freemasons initially met in taverns and inns, they adopted this title. This is also why Freemasons were at some point characterized as drunkards, as in Hogarth's engraving Night where it is the Tyler who helps a drunken Mason to his home. Obviously, any evocation of Freemasonry, no matter how tenuous, will set of alarm bells in the would-be exegete.

Take note also of the many strange and incongruous images of fire in the engraving, as well as the general tone of panic and discord.

Hayes is an English or Scottish place name for a man who lived near a "haeg" or "heye", that is to say the enclosure around an area of forest designated for hunting. The name is said to have entered the language via Norman French and indeed, "haie" in modern French is the word for "hedge."

"Hayes" in Ireland is an Anglicized corruption of the Gaelic "Ó hAodha", or descendant of Aodh, a name meaning "fire." Aodh was the name of several early Irish saints and in pre-Christian times the name of more than a few Celtic divinities in some way associated with flames, fire or the sun.

I suppose it would be remiss not to point out that Florida is the "Sunshine State" (and the original homeland of your LoS writers!) More evocative perhaps is that the name is associated with hunting, which is what our cat-killer was doing, after all.

Weinman is a German/Ashkenazic Jewish name. It means exactly what it sounds like: "wine-man"; it is an occupational name for a viticulturalist or wine merchant. In Middle High German it was wīnman, In German: Weinmann.

This hearkens back to the original meeting places of the Freemasons and for the racist conspiracy theorist has the dubious "bonus" of in some way implicating the Jews, as some sort of barely-suppressed or even overt blood libel. This is risky territory because even though we're not promoting anything of the sort, we don't want to inadvertently provide any ammunition for anti-Semites. Don't feed the animals. Too late. They're already chunky and frothing for more.

So, on with the riffs.

In Classical mythology, Priapus was the guardian of vineyards. Ovid relates a tale where Priapus attempted to rape the sleeping nymph Lotis but was thwarted by a braying ass, which caused him to lose his erection and also woke the nymph. She fled and was eventually turned into a lotus plant by the gods, in order to save her from the pursuing Priapus. After this episode, Priapus hated asses and became happy to see them killed in his honor.

In Bulgaria, an important saint and guardian of vineyards is Trifon Zarezan. Among other anecdotes it is said that once--while pruning his plants--Trifon mocked the Virgin Mary as she passed his vineyard. She cursed him and had an accident--his new nickname became Trifon the snub-nosed!

So when we riff on tyler (guardian) with weinman (viticulture) we find at least two mythological vineyard guardians which evoke animal sacrifice and human mutilation.

Now, ABC reports--oddly precise compared to other sources--that 33 cats were killed in two towns near Miami (also known as The Magic City). Number symbolism is an omnipresent warning bell among aficionados of twilight language. Anything which has 33 in it will automatically be associated with Freemasonry because in the Scottish Rite, 33 is the ultimate degree. Now if 33 were all we had to work with, it might be less convincing. Add to it that the kid bears the name of a Masonic officer and there's a lock on it. The headline of that ABC report includes the following phrase:

Killings Had Stumped Police, Left Miami-Area Residents Frightened and Paranoid

Which is exactly the purpose for which twilight language is purported to be employed: to spread fear, confusion, paranoia. Oddly, we don't find this 33 figure in other reports.

Recall for a moment Saint Trifon. The legend says he mocked the Virgin Mary, but is it so outlandish to wonder if the mockery was in fact some kind of lewd remark or proposal? Did he make a wolf whistle? Her rebuff and the subsequent curse which caused him to cut off his nose would both be a kind of symbolic castration. Obviously though, he was reborn--the cock will rise again, after all--or he would not be venerated as a saint today in important Bulgarian fertility rituals clearly dating back to pre-Christian times.

In Classical Greece Priapus served as a protector of vineyards and was an important fertility figure. Priapus is recognized by his permanently engorged phallus. What may be less apparent is that these organs were more a source of frustration than pleasure. Indeed some tales have it that his member was made of wood, impressive but otherwise useless. Ovid's tale is one of thwarted rape and in many tales Priapus' unbounded sexual desire is met with equal doses of sexual frustration. Sounds like many guys we knew in high school.


In Sexual Personae Camille Paglia devotes a few paragraphs of her analysis of the famous Nefertiti bust to the worship of cats in ancient Egypt. She equates the cat with chthonic, womanly forces. Paglia also points out that cats were hunted and killed in the Middle Ages during periods of witch hysteria. It has long been assumed that witch hysteria in some aspects represents the struggle of the masculine Christian faith over the remnants of goddess worship. Psychologists also note that fear of witches also may be simply an expression of the fear of feminine sexual power. Tales of witchcraft invariably speak of naked orgies, copulation with the devil and flying about on poles greased with ointment.

In the following chapter of her book, Paglia equates many of the legends surrounding Greek goddesses as a fear of castration. Without being crass it may also be worth re-stating what every grade-schooler knows, that the word for a female cat--a pussy--is also slang for the vagina, a rule which also holds true in French with the word "chatte."

Paglia also explores the significance of the androgyny of the Olympiad. This was often expressed in the transvesticism of both divine beings and their worshipers. Dig if you will these comments on the alleged perpetrator's Facebook page:

-- "niggercake. you're a freaking bisexual."

-- "i think u look like a chick...u cross dressing freak from HELL!!!!!!!\"

The occult associations of cats and cat sacrifice are worthy of a book in and of itself. But perhaps the following examples might be of interest.

Robert Talen, in Voodoo in New Orleans (1994) claims that 19th-century voodoo rituals involved killing cats by dunking their heads in boiling water. The cats were then skinned and eaten and the bones divided among the celebrants. The purpose of this was to ingest the power thought to reside in the bones.

George C. Horst's Deuteroscopie (1830) describes a ritual called the Taigheirm practiced in the Scottish Highlands intended to invoke evil spirits by sacrificing cats in the cruelest of manners, including burning them alive. The last of these was held in the mid 17th-century. The ceremony is believed to have originated as a sacrifice to subterranean--that is to say chthonic--divinities. The benefits of these invocations could include second sight, fortitude and courage.

John Richard Stephens, author of The Enchanted Cat, relates that cats not only were sentenced to die in witch trials but sometimes involved in non-occult litigation.

The following passage is instructive:

"There are various aspects of the cat's close association with fire. Sometimes it guards the fire; sometimes it is transformed by the fire or burnt in the fire; at other times, as in the case of the Celtic myth of Maeldune, it is the fire....In so far as the cat was other than the fire, it was destined to be destroyed by it. It was as an incarnation of the god of the setting sun, for ultimately, the sacrifice people make is always of a god to a god. As the head and tail of the White Cat had to be burnt, in order that the maiden should regain her natural form, so the solar cat had to be sacrificed in order that it should rise again and its worshipers be reborn.

The spiritual significance of such a ceremony was so manifest, that in later times, the pagan rite of cat sacrifice had the full support of the Christian Church. At Aix, in Provence, on Corpus Christi [in 2009 it fell on June 11], the finest tom cat in the country was chosen each year and wrapped in swaddling clothes like an infant. It was then exhibited in a beautiful shrine for public adoration. People burnt incense, strewed flowers and bent low before this incarnation of the solar god. When the sun crossed the meridian, the feted cat was placed in a wicker basket and thrown alive into a huge bonfire in the city square. During the sacrifice of "the dying god," priests sang anthems and when the ceremony was complete, they marched off in solemn procession."

A few weeks ago on the blog Twilight Language, self-described "synchromystic" Loren Coleman made a post describing "an ongoing war that seems to be going in both directions." This was entitled Cat People: Enemy Action? This so-called war caught our attention due to its thematic similarity to our own series of (satirical) posts which at one point led us to write: "In the apparently escalating war between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom...."

What all this means, however, is still an open question. There is a seemingly weird series of coincidences, perhaps even synchronicity, which lead us down various avenues. Can we psycho-analyze from afar? Was Weinman simply a sexually frustrated youth? A foot soldier in this war between humanity and its feline neighbors? Is Weinman merely a modern Priapus? Permanently ready to go without a pussy in sight and, thus thwarted, primed to take out his energies on the hapless neighborhood cats which mocked him from their pampered pedestals, arrogant, maybe even inviting? In the Magic City of the Sunshine State, is there some pale echo of archaic rituals to the sun god?

Apparently, Weinman did in fact have a girlfriend. To speculate upon the sex lives of two 18-year-old kids we've never met goes beyond absurdity and risks being perverse, but in the world of twilight language, her name is suggestive.

In the ethnic crucible of Miami, it would be absurd to say what constitutes a "normal" name or not. But this girfriend, even among such a flurry of diversity, bears the strikingly evocative name of Valentina Contesse.

Valentina is a feminine is a feminine form of the Roman name Valentinus and derives from the Latin word "valens" meaning "healthy" or "strong." For the modern reader the name will of course evoke Valentine, the Saint associated with romantic love.

In the Golden Legend of St. Valentine, the hapless saint was set to be be executed for refusing to deny Christ before the Emperor Claudius. Before having his head cut off, Valentine is said to have restored sight and hearing to his jailer's daughter. Valentine's Day is mostly a 19th-century invention, but Valentine's feast day is said to have become associated with romantic love among Chaucer and his pals, who elaborated upon the Golden Legend in order to celebrate the virtues of courtly love.

In the U.S. Sat. Valentine's day is on February 14. Remember Saint Trifon? That wine man is celebrated on February 1, but many people prefer to repeat their rituals on February 14.

A Contesse is of course a "countess"--the wife of a count, a word which ultimately derives from the Latin comes meaning "companion".

The object of courtly love was more often or not a woman that could not be had, but an ideal woman. She was often an aristocratic figure, well above the station of the troubadour. In the heyday of courtly love, this might have been a source of suffering but it was a noble suffering. But in the affluent suburbs of Miami, in a culture of instant gratification and hyper-sexuality, it might just cause a young man to go off the rails.

Our post has already made an reference to Poe's Purloined Letter, but it's appropriate here to summarize the plot of The Black Cat. In this tale an alcoholic and unreliable narrator tells us that he (like friends say of Weinman) was an animal lover with many pets, among them a black cat named Pluto. Pluto is of course the Roman god of the underworld, a subterranean, chthonic force. The man and his cat are perfect pals until one night our narrator comes home drunk and, in a fit of rage over a perceived slight, gouges out one the cat's eyes with a knife. This of course ends the friendship and not long after--overwhelmed by a spirit of "perverseness"--the narrator takes the cat out and hangs it from a tree, where it dies. That night, his house is destroyed by fire.

You will recall, no doubt the passages we cited about the association of cats with fire. Paglia's discussion of the cat comes at a moment when she is discussing the aesthetic and sexual meaning of the famous bust of Nefertiti.; one point she dwells upon is that the Nefertiti bust is missing an eye.

In Poe's tale, he eventually finds another cat which resembles Pluto in every detail, even down to the missing eye. He takes the cat in but soon begins to hate the creature. One night it gets underfoot and he stumbles on the stairs. Enraged the narrator grabs an axe with which to kill the cat and his swing misses; he plants the axe in his wife's head instead.

To hide the crime he conceals his wife behind a wall in the cellar. When the police come to investigate the wife's disappearance, they are convinced nothing is amiss until at the last moment a weird cry from the cellar draws their attention to the wall. Tearing it down they find the cat atop the body of his wife.

Now, an analysis of this tale is another essay in itself. We will merely point out that the cat is quite obviously a chthonic creature carrying the name of a chthonic god, which is ultimately associated with a cleansing fire. The cat is in a sense reborn yet this time a woman is killed in its place. The cat itself brings justice from the tomb. This cat and the woman are in a sense each others' surrogate. Paglia, in addition to equating Nefertiti (one-eyed) with the cat (one-eyed), also points out that the vagina is a kind of wound. It bleeds and as she reminds us--is often referred to as a "gash."

The tale is a more elaborate narrative to illustrate a principle defined more philosophically in The Imp of the Perverse. What is the origin of the perversity that afflicts our narrator? Alcoholism is often cited, but may it not also be sexual frustration? The cat becomes the focus but ultimately it is his wife who takes the axe. Could she have be the intended target all along? Had alcoholism rendered him impotent or at least repugnant to his wife, thus accounting for his otherwise inexplicable violent rage?

Remember also the name of the alleged cat killer in the Magic City, as it evokes by poetic association frustrated sexual desire, alcohol, fire and mutilation. We could also point out that Valentine, Trifon, Poe's woman, Nefertiti and Hiram Abiff all suffered some kind of death by a head wound or at least mutilation of the face.

When the narrator of The Black Cat walls his wife up in the cellar, one cannot help but think of The Cask of Amontillado, another Poe story in which a person is walled up in a cellar. Another unreliable narrator and a story of revenge. At one point In this tale the victim gives the Masonic distress signal, which the narrator doesn't recognize. The victim then asks: "You are not of the masons?" The narrator says he is and the victim is doubtful. The narrator then removes a trowel to show he is in fact a Freemason. It is this symbol of Freemasonry he then uses to conceal his victim behind the wall.
Themes of concealment and revenge, subterranean climax and of course drunkenness link these two tales. They also link back to the associations we have derived from the name of Tyler Weinman.

Remember also The Purloined Letter, in which an object is concealed in plain sight. Is this not in fact what the subliminal character of twilight language is purported to be? Isn't it also strange that Michael Hoffman--disciple of twilight language godfather James Downard--wrote one of his first books on Masonic Assassination (1978)--in which he purports to demonstrate that Poe was in fact killed by Freemasons?

What this post is not.

It is certainly not meant to be an endorsement of Weinman's guilt. The court of public opinion is a savage beast whose aggressiveness is matched only by its' ignorance. We have nothing but fairly scanty newspaper reports to go on and well, 'nuff said.

Questions of guilt and innocence aside, we don't think this is an alchemical psychodrama staged by the so-called cryptocracy. We're pretty much agnostic about the whole notion of a cryptocracy for that matter. Certainly there is at least one conspiracy floating around out there, attempting to manipulate people and events in pursuit of the obvious things: money and power. Maybe they do employ disinformation and twilight language. Maybe they just buy newspapers and television stations. One thing is for certain is that the stoking of and subsequent exploitation of peoples' fear is a time-honored way to assert authority, get laws passed, cause people to accept things they might never accept were the world a bit less menacing....

It also shouldn't be taken as an insult.

What it is.

We have already hinted that our take on "synchromysticism" is a poetic one. We're not even going to stick a toe into the epistemological minefield of determining what is "true." There are facts and there is interpretation. And for this interpretation we have chosen an associationalist methodology to explore indubitably weird stuff.

Do we believe in what we've written? Yes. And no.

Full disclosure: The author of this article is a Freemason, a modern drunkard, a sex-fiend and lives with a cat. A black one.

This article was pretty much complete a few days ago, but the most recent news focuses on potential accomplices. We'll go out on a limb and wager that a total of three ruffians are in on this....

[added July 20]

Check out the affidavit in support of Weinman's arrest warrant here.

5 human heads discovered in ice chests in central Mexico

Story Highlights:

• Grisly find appears to be latest sign of drug cartels in region fighting for supremacy
  
• Each head was found in a separate ice chest with eyes taped shut
  
• Chests contained messages such as: "Like these, I am going to finish everyone"
  
• Ice chests found under ficus tree beside road leading to city of Guadalajara

CNN article here.

Hunchbacks Cannibalized after CIA Assassinates Two Liberian Presidents

The Ugandan government recently issued a warning: Ritual murder is on the rise.

Within the last week, if we have successfully untangled several stories that may in fact be the same confused tale:

* In Bwaise, a suburb of Kampala, capital of Uganda, a witchdoctor was arrested (and has since died after being attacked by a mob) along with at least 9 others in connection with the ritual murder of 3 persons after severed legs were found in a latrine. Before dying, the witchdoctor, Musa Bogere, led police to a decapitated rotting corpse in a swamp where multiple dog carcasses were later discovered.

* In Sierra Leon, 14 people were arrested in connection with a corpse that "was missing its heart, tongue, breasts and sexual organs."

A special task force has been set up in Uganda to battle the troubling trend. Children, albinos, pregnant women, and hunchbacks are the favored victims, generally found with missing body parts that have been consumed in West African juju-marabou rituals.

Even more horrifying than last week's news: 3 people in Bibiani were arrested last August for eating a hunchback's "hump". Apparently, multiple victims were found, carved alive and bled to death.

In nearby Liberia, presidency comes with related risk. In 1980, President William Tolbert was either beheaded, disemboweled by future President Samuel Doe, or shot by the CIA, depending on which story you choose to believe. President Samuel Doe, in turn, was stripped naked and had his ears cut off before being murdered, all videotaped by captors sipping Budweisers -- captors supposedly let loose on Doe by, you guessed it, the CIA.

Now the world-weary authors and readers of LoS are probably not shocked by CIA incriminations nor bolted upright by tales of ritual murder (although the eating of hunchback humps while the victims lay bleeding to death is, you have to admit, particularly shocking), there is an element to all this that just doesn't seem to jive with our jaded attempts at understanding such depths of human horror.

Namely, cannibalism--like Holy Communion--is intended to convey some powers of the victim upon the consumer. Indeed, the idea behind the eaten victims detailed in this posting seems to be that the eater will be endowed some particular successes. In Tanzania, for example, "more than 40 [albinos] have been killed since 2007, sometimes right in front of their families, by gangs of men who hack off legs, heads or genitals and run away with them. In the last two years, rumors have spread in East [sic???] Africa that potions made with albino blood, shoes made of albino skin, tendrils of albino hair woven into fishing nets and amulets with albino body parts will make people rich."

Yet juju-marabou seems to single out albinos, hunchbacks, and the mentally disabled as proper ritualistic murder victims because they are believed to be evil.

How then, we wonder, does the consumption of evil bless the cannibals?

But before we get too smug in our attempts to outwit cannibals via logical debates on blogs, we should do well to remember that murder is leading cause of death of pregnant women in the U.S.A.

Release the hounds....

You may have heard of the case in LA where a man, Ervin Antonio Lupoe, apparently despondent over losing his job, killed his five children and his wife before turning his gun on himself. Sign o' the times indeed.

CNN is reporting that in a letter faxed to Los Angeles television station KABC before his suicide, Lupoe blamed his former employer for the deaths.

The letter claims the couple were being investigated for some kind of fraud or misrepresentation of their status for the purposes of getting better childcare.....something like that anyway, the quote provided isn't very clear as to what exactly Lupoe was accused of doing.

What we're interested in is the conclusion to the letter:

"Oh lord, my God. Is there no hope for a widow's son?"

Let the conspiracy theories begin, for what he writes is almost the Masonic distress call: "Oh Lord, My God Is there no help for the Widow's Son?

Look forward to all kinds of numerology, name analysis, date correspondences and the like. What we got here is obviously some kind of Masonic plot, probably linked to them dastardly Jewish bankers....

Oh shit, apparently we're already yesterday's news!

P.S. 2/11:

This guy's juxtaposition of Masonic imagery and a Kaiser Permanente publicity photograph--3 pillars and a rayed sun--is certainly amusing. Linking the Lupoe tragedy with the birth of octuplets--and the number 8 in general--is probably a wee-bit far-fetched, however....

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

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

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