Mr. Cushing Wishes You All The Best For The Holidays Beth Bonanno photograph, December 10, 2009

Christmas In India
Rudyard Kipling, 1886

Dim dawn behind the tamarisks--the sky is saffron-yellow--
As the women in the village grind the corn,
And the parrots seek the river-side, each calling to his fellow
That the Day, the staring Eastern Day, is born.
Oh the white dust on the highway! Oh the stenches in the byway!
Oh the clammy fog that hovers over earth!
And at Home they're making merry 'neath the white and scarlet berry--
What part have India's exiles in their mirth?

Full day behind the tamarisks--the sky is blue and staring--
As the cattle crawl afield beneath the yoke,
And they bear One o'er the field-path, who is past all hope or caring,
To the ghat below the curling wreaths of smoke.
Call on Rama, going slowly, as ye bear a brother lowly--
Call on Rama--he may hear, perhaps, your voice!
With our hymn-books and our psalters we appeal to other altars,
And today we bid "good Christian men rejoice!"

High noon behind the tamarisks--the sun is hot above us--
As at Home the Christmas Day is breaking wan.
They will drink our healths at dinner--those who tell us how they love us,
And forget us till another year be gone!
Oh the toil that knows no breaking! Oh the heimweh, ceaseless, aching!
Oh the black dividing Sea and alien Plain!
Youth was cheap--wherefore we sold it. Gold was good--we hoped to hold it,
And to-day we know the fulness of our gain!

Grey dusk behind the tamarisks--the parrots fly together--
As the sun is sinking slowly over Home;
And his last ray seems to mock us shackled in a lifelong tether.
That drags us back howe'er so far we roam.
Hard her service, poor her payment--she in ancient, tattered raiment--
India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind.
If a year of life be lent her, if her temple's shrine we enter,
The door is shut--we may not look behind.

Black night behind the tamarisks--the owls begin their chorus--
As the conches from the temple scream and bray.
With the fruitless years behind us, and the hopeless years before us,
Let us honour, O my brothers, Christmas Day!
Call a truce, then, to our labours--let us feast with friends and
neighbours,
And be merry as the custom of our caste;
For if "faint and forced the laughter," and if sadness follow after,
We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.

[END]
*Heimweh-Ger. homesickness

This poem is commonly found online chock full of transcription errors, notably in the first stanza. "The staring Eastern Day" is inevitably presented incorrectly as "Easter Day." I have corrected these errors to the best of my ability based on the printed text in my library. This poem was originally published in Departmental Ditties and other Verses, 1886.

Quotes Of The Day

"One can, perhaps, place Kipling more satisfactorily than by juggling with the words 'verse' and 'poetry', if one describes him simply as a good bad poet. He is as a poet what Harriet Beecher Stowe was as a novelist. And the mere existence of work of this kind, which is perceived by generation after generation to be vulgar and yet goes on being read, tells one something about the age we live in."

"Although he had no direct connexion with any political party, Kipling was a Conservative, a thing that does not exist nowadays. Those who now call themselves Conservatives are either Liberals, Fascists or the accomplices of Fascists. He identified himself with the ruling power and not with the opposition. In a gifted writer this seems to us strange and even disgusting, but it did have the advantage of giving Kipling a certain grip on reality."

"Kipling sold out to the British governing class, not financially but emotionally. This warped his political judgement, for the British ruling class were not what he imagined, and it led him into abysses of folly and snobbery, but he gained a corresponding advantage from having at least tried to imagine what action and responsibility are like."

All from George Orwell's 1942 review of T.S. Eliot's A Choice of Kipling's Verse in the literary journal Horizon. This essentially (and a little surprisingly) sympathetic essay may be read HERE.


Final lines of Kipling's drinking song "The Young British Soldier" (from Barrack-Room Ballads 1892, 1896))

If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white,
Remember it's ruin to run from a fight:
So take open order, lie down, and sit tight,
And wait for supports like a soldier.
Wait, wait, wait like a soldier . . .

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier of the Queen!

William Kemp Performs the Morris Dance, from the frontispiece to his book Kemp's Nine Daies Wonder, Performed in a Daunce
Morris Dance-1458, moreys daunce "Moorish dance," from Flem. mooriske dans, from O.Fr. morois "Moor." Unknown why the Eng. dance was called this, unless in ref. to fantastic dancing or costumes (cf. It. Moresco, a related dance, lit. "Moorish," Ger. moriskentanz, Fr. moresque).-Online Etymology Dictionary

The Nine Days Wonder

A story from July of this year, "Tracking The Life And Death Of News"by Bill Steele LINK gives a scientific gloss to the notion of the "Nine Days Wonder". Jon Kleinberg, Tisch University Professor of Computer Science at Cornell, has tried to quantify what we know to be an ancient concept. However, the term 'Nine Days Wonder' is not explicitly used in Steele's story.

But, First Things Come First: Where does the term "Nine Days Wonder" originate? And what does it mean? I am convinced it is a very ancient thing, which had its birth in the days before we had the means to write about it, or even before we could articulate beyond excited grunts and gesticulations. But here is one account from phrases.org.uk

"In 1600, William Kemp, an Elizabethan clown actor, who is thought to have been the original Dogberry in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, danced a morris dance between London and Norwich. He took up the challenge for a bet and covered the distance of a hundred miles or more in nine days (spread over a few weeks). Some doubted that he had achieved this and, to quell dissent, he wrote 'Kemps nine daies vvonder' published in 1600:

"Wherein euery dayes iourney is pleasantly set downe, to satisfie his friends the truth, against all lying Ballad-makers; what he did, how hee was welcome, and by whome entertained."

There is little doubt that the event did take place. The ample evidence to support it includes the 17th century records of the Norwich Town Council, which lists the payment of his prize money.

So, we have a well-authenticated historical event called 'Kemp's Nine Days' Wonder', dating back to 1600. That might be thought to be enough to establish Kemp as the source of the phrase.

Actually, he wasn't. The phrase dates from well before the 17th century. As well as the date, there's the meaning of the phrase, which isn't 'something wonderful that took nine days to achieve', but 'something which becomes boring after nine days'.

The earliest citation, in Old English, is in the 'Harley Lyrics', circa 1325. The earliest record in print that most people today would be able to decipher is in 'Poems written in English during his captivity in England, after the battle of Agincourt' by Charles, Duke of Orleans, 1465:

"For this a wondir last but dayes nyne, An oold proverbe is seid."

The first record in print of the phrase as we now use it is from Jane Barker's Patch-work Screen for Ladies, 1723:

"The Parents were very well content, only wish'd she had proceeded otherwise, and not made herself the Publick Subject of a Nine Days Wonder."

In more recent years, more than one rock band has adopted the phrase as a self-deprecatory name. That's more likely as an allusion to another phrase with a related meaning - one hit wonder, than it is a homage to the dancing Kemp. Some of them have lasted several years."-http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/nine-days-wonder.html

An Anecdote Of Kemp's Morris Dance

It seems that the jestmonger Kemp's Morris Dancing wager was a more arduous task than we might imagine. It may have been as taxing as break dancing a hundred miles. But it did have its rewards. Here he describes an episode from his dance when spectators, including a lusty wench, joined him in his "pace of dauncing" which "is not ordinary". I have provided a link at the end of the passage for a PDF copy of the 1840 reprint courtesy of the Internet Archive.

"In this towne of Sudbury there came a lusty, tall fellow, a butcher by his profession, that would in a Morrice keepe mee company to Bury: I being glad of his friendly offer, gaue him thankes, and forward wee did set; but ere euer wee had measur'd halfe a mile of our way, he gaue me ouer in the plain field, protesting, that if he might get a 100 pound, he would not hold out with me; for indeed my pace in dauncing is not ordinary.
As he and I were parting, a lusty Country lasse being among the people, cal'd him a faint hearted lout, saying, "If I had begun to daunce, I would haue held out one myle though it had cost my life." At which wordes many laughed. "Nay," saith she, "if the Dauncer will lend me a leash of his belles, He venter to treade one mile with him my selfe." I lookt vpon her, saw mirth in her eies, heard boldnes in her words, and beheld her ready to tucke vp her russet petticoate; I fitted Vier with bels,which [s]he merrily taking, garnisht her thicke short legs, and with a smooth brow bad the Tabrer begin. The Drum strucke ; forward marcht I with my merry Maydemarian, who shooke her fat sides, and footed it merrily to Melfoord, being a long myle. There parting with her, I gaue her (besides her skinfull of drinke) an English crowne to buy more drinke; for, good wench, she was in a pittious heate : my kindnes she requited with dropping some dozen of short courtsies, and bidding God blesse the Dauncer. I bad her adieu; and to giue her her due, she had a good eare, daunst truely, and wee parted friendly. But ere I part with her, a good fellow, my friend, hauin writ an odde Rime of her, I will make bolde to set it downe.

A Country Lasse, browne as a berry,
Blith of blee, in heart as merry,
Cheekes well fed, and sides well larded,
Euery bone with fat flesh guarded,
Meeting merry Kemp by chaunce.
Was Marrian in his Morrice daunce.
Her stump legs with bels were garnisht,
Her browne browes with sweating varnish [t] ;
Her browne hips, when she was lag
To win her ground, went swig a swag;
Which to see all that came after
Were repleate with mirth full laughter.
Yet she thumpt it on her way
With a sportly hey de gay:
At a mile her daunce she ended,
Kindly paide and well commended."
-From Kemp's Nine Daies Wonder, Performed in a Daunce PDF LINK

Who can doubt that the crowd's enthusiasm for the fanciful, spectacular story of questionable significance yet overwhelming short term interest goes back to the beginnings of language or even before? Human beings are attracted to new things. Homo sapiens' behavior is not limited to specific modes. We adapt and we are always on the alert for the novel because our large brains can potentially learn useful things from unusual occurences. We demand that others examine these new wondrous events. Two heads (or more) are better than one and the group as a whole can analyze "the wonder" to extract useful information. Most of the things that elicit immediate excitement turn out to be of little long term utility and we lose interest.

The "Nine Days" is an approximate, but accurate enough length of time for the growth, development and death of the whimsical interest in these stories. For the study cited at the beginning of this post Cornell scientists tracked over 1.6 million online news sites and "a vast array" of blogs to track 2008 election stories.

Perhaps the election is not insignificant enough to constitute a Nine Days Wonder story.

Oh, Great Caesar's Ghost! I recant. What is a political campaign but a furious repetitive comical Morris Dance performed solely for entertainment purposes by clown actors? I get a decisive feeling that the Nine Days Wonder phenomenom has a practical use to certain parties as a distraction from more important issues. I cannot help but wonder if some of these media events are manufactured for the purpose. By the way, does each revelation of a new mistress in the employ of Tiger Woods deserve its own nine days?

"They found a consistent rhythm as stories rose into prominence and then fell off over just a few days, with a "heartbeat" pattern of handoffs between blogs and mainstream media. In mainstream media, they found, a story rises to prominence slowly then dies quickly; in the blogosphere, stories rise in popularity very quickly but then stay around longer, as discussion goes back and forth. Eventually though, almost every story is pushed aside by something newer."
-"Tracking The Life And Death Of News"by Bill Steele

This chart generated by Kleinberg's research LINK shows the life and death of stories in the period prior to the 2008 elections. The parabola of popularity does indeed seem to track about nine days from birth to death. In Kemp's time the Nine Day Wonder would have been a local phenomenom, but today, instant universal communications have synchronized the effect world wide.

Oldest Potential Quote Yet of Nine Days Of Wonder

Don't envy men
Because they seem to have a run of luck,
Since luck's a nine day's wonder,
Wait their end.
-Euripides (mid fifth century BC)


This quote is widely attributed to Euripides. William Safire in his book Words of Wisdom: More Good Advice reproduces it without a specific work cited. I am always suspicious when a quote, no matter how widely spread, has no work cited by anyone. If you know the source of the Euripides quote please communicate with me.

Other and Newer Quotes

"Ek wonder last but nyne nyght nevere in towne."-Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde (1380's)

I was seven of the nine days out of the wonder before you came;
for look here what I found on a
palm-tree: I was never so berhymed since
Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat, which
I can hardly remember.-Shakespeare, As You Like It, III.ii Rosalind

"Nothing is talked about here today except the strange coincidence. The officials of the Board of Trade have been most exacting in seeing that every compliance has been made with existing regulations. As the matter is to be a 'nine days wonder', they are evidently determined that there shall be no cause of other complaint."-Bram Stoker, Dracula, on the arrival of the derelict ship, Demeter

"God the Compassionate and the Merciful, Tolerance incarnate, allows Mammon to have his nine days' wonder."-Mahatma Gandhi



First Snow

Last night the first real snow of the season fell. About six inches covered the land. Here is this morning's view outside my study window. Of course, 2AM heralded the first appearance of the snow plow. My mailbox is now lying in that snow and I go now to place it back on its stand. Yea, I shall move the stand even further from the road and the depradations of the plowman.
Further Note: The mailbox has been moved 3 1/2 feet further back from the road. If the plowman is to try to hit it now he will find that the wheels on the right side of his truck will drop into a drainage ditch. My mailbox was one of many knocked down last night by the nefarious and obviously drunken plowman.

Quote of the Day

Machinery of a mass electrical dream! A war-creating Whore of
Babylon bellowing over Capitols and Academies!
Money ! Money ! Money ! shrieking mad celestial money of
illusion ! Money made of nothing, starvation, suicide !
Money of failure ! Money of death !
Money against Eternity ! and eternity's strong mills grind out
vast paper of Illusion !
-Allen Ginsberg, final lines from "Death To Van Gogh's Ear", Paris 1958

The Original Ronaldo, not to be confused with the pretty Cristiano Ronaldo.

Sorcerer Pepe Curses the Wrong Ronaldo?

Ronaldo, who plays for Brazil's Corinthians, was injured against Flamengo two weeks ago. He will miss the final match of the season Sunday against Atletico Mineiro. The injury is not deemed to be serious. But how is a sorcerer to keep track of his futbol curses when so many players, especially the good ones, go by one name? Here's my advice to all mononominal futbol players. Stop it. You are confusing old witch doctors and sorcerers. You may get a curse intended for another.

Quote of the Day

"There is a growing conviction that if the true nature of Rosicrucianism were divulged, it would cause consternation, to say the least."- Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

Human Terrain System

The HTS patch is a shield that prominently shows a determined Pegasus, wings elevated and displayed, soaring sinister over the globe on which he casts his shadow.

Pegasus was a son of Medusa and Poseidon. He was born, full grown, from the dead body of his mother with his brother Chrysaor (which roughly means 'the one of the golden sword') after the hero Perseus had decapitated her under Athene's guidance and assistance. Shining-eyed Athene had held a grudge against Medusa for her beauty. Discovering the long-tressed woman entwined in the act of love with Uncle Poseidon (who may not have been in his accustomed form and may have been committing rape) in a Temple dedicated to the warrior goddess' worship proved to be more than Athene could bear. Immediately, Athene turned the lovely Gorgon girl into a snakey-haired monster whose gaze petrified anyone mortal who dared look upon her face. We must assume only mortals were affected else Poseidon himself would have been transformed into a priapic statue! There would be no more lovers for that hussy Medusa!

"Her [Medousa's] beauty was far-famed, the jealous hope of many a suitor, and of all her charms her hair was loveliest; so I was told by one who claimed to have seen her. She, it's said, was violated in Minerva's [Athena’s] shrine by the Rector Pelagi (Lord of the Sea) [Poseidon]. Jove’s daughter [Athena] turned away and covered with her shield her virgin's eyes. And then for fitting punishment transformed the Gorgo's lovely hair to loathsome snakes. Minerva [Athena] still, to strike her foes with dread, upon her breastplate wears the snakes she made." - Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.790

Pallas Athene, by Tavik Frantisek Šimon [1877-1942] depicted in an unusually contemplative mood. Note her breastplate adorned with snakes.

But obviously, that hideous transformation wasn't enough punishment to satisfy the vengeance of the rambunctious Pallas Athene. She would soon contract the intrepid Perseus, who had his own congruent agenda, to assassinate this Gorgon who had desecrated the virgin goddess' holy place.


Perseus, Athena and the Head of Medusa, Krater, 400-385 BCE, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

“Perseus took flight and made his way to the ocean, where he found the Gorgones sleeping … All who looked at them were turned to stone. Perseus, therefore, with Athena guiding his hand, kept his eyes on the reflection in a bronze shield as he stood over the sleeping Gorgones, and when he saw the image of Medousa, he beheaded her.” - Apollodorus, The Library 2.37-41

We also see on the HTS shield a two-handed sword (perhaps the golden sword of Pegasus' non-identical twin brother Chrysaor?) hovering sinister above the Earth with the thunderbolts of Zeus superimposed ready to strike.

The motherless Athene was said by Hesiod to have sprung fully grown from the brow of Zeus. After an illustrious term of service with the ill-fated Bellerophon, Pegasus flew on to Olympus where he became the lightning-bolt carrier to Uncle Zeus. Neither Pegasus nor Athene, cousins, ever passed through a childhood.


Medusa by Caravaggio (1571-1610)

Just a thought: As I consider the compromised mind-numbing, bureaucratic maze that will be the politically crippled government option in the planned-to-be-bad health care "reform" proposal, I realize there can only be one name for the program: MEDUSA. You tell me what words underscore the acronym. [Later note: No government option after all. This health care reform is little more than socialism for the vampiristic medical insurance corporations, AKA corporatism, AKA fascism. Our taxes and fees will ensure their profits.]


Medusa's son Chrysaor He of the golden sword. From the Temple Of Artemis, Corfu

Help Wanted

Our Military in Afghanistan and elsewhere is using anthropologists in a controversial program to win the hearts and minds......no wait a minute, that was Vietnam, to snitch on the populace.... no, not exactly, to use their special... uh, let's go to the horse's mouth.
From the Human Terrain System LINK website:

"HTS is a new proof-of-concept program, run by the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), and serving the joint community. The near-term focus of the HTS program is to improve the military’s ability to understand the highly complex local socio-cultural environment in the areas where they are deployed; however, in the long-term, HTS hopes to assist the US government in understanding foreign countries and regions prior to an engagement within that region."

Here's one of their job descriptions:

Employment Opportunities

Field Social Scientist

Field Social Scientists, as members of an HTT, represent the voice of the local community on the brigade staff. The expectation is that the Field Social Scientist’s knowledge, combined with that of the other team members, will allow the commander to make decisions that will increase the security of the area, allow other organizations (local and international) to more effectively provide aid and restore the infrastructure, ensure that US efforts are culturally sensitive, promote economic development, and help the local population more effectively communicate their needs to US and Coalition forces.

In recent decades scholarly access to military operations has been limited to those in uniform and a select handful of insiders. Working on an HTT offers a rare and unique opportunity to help reshape the military's execution of their mission by offering them a much greater appreciation of existing socio-cultural realities and sensitivities in the countries where they are operating. This position also offers an opportunity to develop new methods for field research and data analysis. Field Social Scientists will be able to write about their experiences and otherwise contribute to the academic literature in their field after participation, subject to standard security review.

Duties:

• Designs research and analysis protocols
• Oversees and tasks the entire research and analysis process in coordination with the Team Leader and Research Managers.
• Analyzes the available body of relevant scholarly literature and gather additional data from a variety of sources operating in theatre (conventional military patrols, non-governmental organizations, international organizations, Civil Affairs units, Special Forces, local communities, etc.)
• Assists commanders in understanding the operational relevance of socio-cultural information as it applies to the military decision-making process

Qualifications:

• US citizen
• PhD in anthropology or related field such as international relations, sociology, political science, history, economics, public policy, social psychology, or area studies. An MA with extensive applied experience is also acceptable.
• Experience living or working overseas for extended periods
• Experience conducting field research
• Ability to travel to Afghanistan and/or Iraq
• Posses a DoD secret security clearance or be eligible to acquire a secret security clearance
• Ability to work in a team environment
• Ability to work with people trained in other disciplines
• An open-minded attitude towards a variety of concepts and methods
• Willingness to work with the military
• Ability to tolerate adverse weather conditions
• Ability to work with little sleep or rest for extended periods of time while producing both physically and mentally challenging projects
• Physically capable of carrying up to 50 lbs of equipment for long periods of time while deployed
• Under 40% body fat
• Possess computer literacy for on-line research and desktop office applications
• Medically qualified for deployments to Iraq for 6-9 months
  
  

Desired skills:

• Experience living, working or conducting research in the Middle East and/or Central Asia
• Regional language capability
• Geospatial Information Systems (GIS)-competent or conversant

Start date:

• Open, but dependent on training cycle start dates

Salary:

• Equivalent to GS14 or GS15 salary, depending on experience and qualifications, with
  multipliers for hazard pay, hardship pay and overtime.

CLI Solutions, is a private contractor associated with HTS. This illustration "Navigating The Human Terrain" is from their website.

The American Anthropological Association has not looked on this program with approval. They point out in their official statement LINK on HTS that anthropologists deployed with military forces are indistinguishable from them, that their obligations to the military and the populations they study may conflict under the AAA code of ethics, that “voluntary informed consent” under that same code is impossible when the interviewed person is confronted with armed soldiers, the AAA code stipulates that no harm may come to populations studied as a result of information obtained via fieldwork, and that activities of HTS anthropologists may endanger the lives of non-HTS anthropologists. Therefore the AAA disapproves of the HTS program.

When I contemplate the work of Anthropologists it is difficult to conceive of any value it may possess to the Military or to the Corporations that does not compromise the Anthropologist and harm the populations of indigenous peoples who are the object of study and manipulation. It is useful to remember that the requirement for a top secret clearance allows the military to classify all the work of these "anthropologists" which makes scholarly transparency and peer review impossible. The HTS project in part, attempts to transform anthropologists into a more sophisticated kind of missionary. And missionary work in Afghanistan has been a profound failure since the days when Koran bearing Arabs entered the country.
It is reassuring to know that so-called primitive peoples around the world have been bullshitting anthropologists from the beginning. I always imagined guys sitting around a hut laughing their asses off after Professor Kopfinhinterbacken finished his interviews and left.
And... isn't referring to humans as "terrain" a bit of a malapropism? Humans are not terrain. Humans are not mere geography. That is a dehumanizing way to look at culture and those who live it. But I think that dehumanizing the locals is exactly what HTS wants to do.

"It’s not that anthropology and warfare haven’t merged before; they have fatefully merged in all sorts of ways that have been historically documented. One stark difference is that today’s counterinsurgent abuses of anthropological knowledge occur after the discipline of anthropology has clearly identified such activities as betraying basic ethical standards for protecting the interests and well-being of studied populations. Anthropologists’ professional activites in the Second World War occurred without the existence of professional ethical codes of conduct, and it was a direct result of anthropological misconduct during the Vietnam War that the American Anthropological Association developed its first formalized Code of Ethics in 1971. It insisted that anthropologists’ primary loyalties be to those studied, that research not lead to events harming research participants. There was to be no secret research. There were mandates for voluntary informed consent. That HTS throws up weak sophistic arguments claiming that their involvement in warfare reduces harm changes nothing."
-David Price, see link below for full story

HTS Story Links:
Female HTS personnel threatened and put at risk by male Human Terrain Team (HTT) officers.
Jeff Stein at Huffington Post on AAA disapproval of HTS.
David Price, Counterpunch December 1, 2009 article on anthropologists in Afghanistan
You Tube Video on HTS Anthropologists (from two years ago)
Wikileaks on Human Terrain System Handbook
When Scholars Join The Slaughter In Iraq and Afghanistan

"Ne pas envoyer votre système perfide ici!" - Mr. Moon
(Don't send your damn system here!)

"Le Voyage dans la Lune" (1902) by Georges Méliès, the first cinematic master of special effects

I've noticed that there is a meme going around that the illuminati, or what ever you choose to call them, want to collapse the system in order to bring about "world government". I wonder about that. The system is totally in their hands already and it appears that the course towards world government is smooth. No one is out in the streets complaining about this multifarious disaster we are observing. They like this system. I think the system needs to collapse. The system is a monster sucking the life force out of the world. They are desperately trying to keep it going. Please collapse already.

Quote of the Day

"Every man thinks his own burden is the heaviest."- Seneca (and Bob Marley)

"Three Rowboats", Appledore Island, New Hampshire, John Bonanno Photograph

Yes, I am reluctant to admit it but Google is fun. Lately I have been setting up custom news feeds for my Google News page.
You can see them here. LINK
It is an interesting mind game setting up keyword links for subjects that keep stories on topic.
Hint: avoid words with many meanings and high use words.

"Art has to do with the arrest of attention in the midst of distraction."
-Saul Bellow

"Concentrate: you can't have it all."
-Twyla Tharp

Ronaldo and Paris who said, it was said, that he was "too gay" for her after, it was said, he rejected her.

It seems wizards all over the world have been taking up the cause of Ronaldo to fight the curse of Pepe. Never underestimate the power of futbol and the love for sports in all walks of life, including those who practice the esoteric arts. We found the following story from 23 October on ESPN Soccernet Global:
LINK

"A few weeks backs we reported that a voodoo priest named Pepe had been hired to use his black-magic to injure £80 million Real Madrid star Cristiano Ronaldo, who is now sidelined for a month with an ankle injury, and the crocked forward has now become the centre of a magical war. A Portuguese wizard, named Fernando Nogueira, had a crack at healing his countryman last week but with Ronaldo still sidelined it seems he failed to dispel the magic of Pepe, who has since responded to Nogueira's challenge by saying he will cast a spell that will end the World Player of the Year's career.
But all is not lost for our hero as a group of Peruvian Shamans decided to ride to Ronaldo's rescue and gathered outside the Spanish Embassy in Lima this week to perform a cleansing ritual, involving a bizarre combination of swords and maracas, to lift the curse.Goodness knows if any of it worked but following a clinical examination and MRI scan Real Madrid's medical report revealed that "the minimum estimated [recovery] time is three to four weeks"."
-Dominic Raynor

Meanwhile here is an interesting quote from Pepe speaking to El Mundo in September:

"I'm not antimadridista. I have nothing against this great club.... I am a professional and someone has paid very well for me using my powers. I have been hired to make Cristiano Ronaldo suffer a serious injury."

This is the public admission of a fool.

William Jennings Bryan

"Mr. Jefferson, who was once regarded as good Democratic authority, seems to have a different opinion from the gentleman who has addressed us on the part of the minority. Those who are opposed to this proposition tell us that the issue of paper money is a function of the bank and that the government ought to go out of the banking business. I stand with Jefferson rather than with them, and tell them, as he did, that the issue of money is a function of the government and that the banks should go out of the governing business. ..."-William Jennings Bryan, The "Cross of Gold" Speech, 1896 Democratic Convention

"Depressions may bring people closer to the church but so do funerals."- Clarence Darrow

William Jennings Bryan (not to be confused with the American poet William Cullen Bryant) is remembered, if at all today, as the confused old fool who prosecuted the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial and allowed himself to be mercilessly cross-examined by Clarence Darrow in defense of the Bible. Yes, Bryan did win the case, though Scopes' conviction was vacated on a technicality. Clarence Darrow cleverly quit while he was ahead asking the court to convict his client, avoiding closing arguments. Darrow knew that Bryan would shine if allowed to speak and tarnish Darrow's triumph over the old man in cross examination. Bryan was sick with diabetes and the stress he experienced at this media circus probably hastened his death on July 26 of 1925 as he napped. He did complete the eloquent closing argument that he had not been allowed to deliver before the court at the end of this unusual trial a few days earlier.
Interestingly, Bryan presented assertions against evolution that are still repeated today:

"Evolution is not truth; it is merely a hypothesis - it is millions of guesses strung together. It had not been proven in the days of Darwin - he expressed astonishment that with two or three million species it had been impossible to trace any species to any other species - it had not been proven in the days of Huxley, and it has not been proven up to today. It is less than four years ago that Professor Bateson came all the way from London to Canada to tell the American scientists that every effort to trace one species to another had failed - every one. He said he still had faith in evolution but had doubts about the origin of species. But of what value is evolution if it cannot explain the origin of species? While many scientists accept evolution as if it were a fact, they all admit, when questioned, that no explanation has been found as to how one species developed into another.
Darwin suggested two laws, sexual selection and natural selection. Sexual selection has been laughed out of the classroom and natural selection is being abandoned, and no new explanation is satisfactory even to scientists. Some of the more rash advocates of evolution are wont to say that evolution is as firmly established as the law of gravitation or the Copernican theory. The absurdity of such a claim is apparent when we remember that any one can prove the law of gravitation by throwing a weight into the air and that any one can prove the roundness of the earth by going around it, while no one can prove evolution to be true in any way whatever."

Bryan on Evolution LINK
Full Text of Bryan's Closing Argument with Darrow's reply LINK

The 1960 film production "Inherit The Wind" based on the 1955 Broadway play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee presented Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond and Frederic March as Matthew Harrison Brady, representing the actual protagonists of the trial, Clarence Darrow (Tracy) and William Jennings Bryan (March). Gene Kelly plays flippant reporter E. K. Hornbeck, modeled after H.L. Mencken. Clarence Darrow was perhaps the premier defense attorney of his time, having defended thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in 1925.
But Bryan was much more than the confused fundamentalist who couldn't accept that man descended from apes. He was a religous man, a sincere Christian, and a great populist Democrat of the Gilded Age. Many of his progressive causes were later implemented by some of the same men who mocked and feared him. He was nominated for President three times and lost. He was flawed; he was beloved; he was despised. His greatest weaknesses in my opinion were: (1) he tended to react to problems after solutions had become impossible and (2) his implicit support of racist Jim Crow laws, which came with being a Democrat at the time. He was a kind of progressive reactionary who would rail on about the open barn door long after the cattle had all been stolen. The obvious example is his donning the free silver mantle long after the cause was essentially lost. His wonderful progressive vision included his monetary policy, female suffrage, anti-imperialism, trust busting, abandoning states rights to control the depredations of corporations and the big banks, and sadly, prohibition. But his belief in an America based on equality did not include the African-American, which may not have been surprising since most of his support was found in the South. The election maps of the time reveal that today's Red States, now voting Republican, were predominantly supporting the Democrat Bryan.
In this space, over time, we shall examine the career and the ideas of this man. His supporters would be characterized today as the same kinds of people who inhabit the Religious Right many of whom are their great grandchildren of various degrees. Yet, they were Progressives then who despised the Capitalists. What happened to contort the descendants of these most religious American Christians of the 19th Century into the stiff-necked, hidebound, money-loving, Plutocrat-worshiping, prosperity theology preaching hucksters we know today?

H.L. Mencken (not sympathetic to Christianity and Bryan by any means) gives us a hint about the answer to that question. He noted that to the Christian, the end justifies the means, especially to the strong aggressive man, like William Jennings Bryan (ironically a very Darwinian approach to things). But Bryan was fighting for a cause beyond his own selfish interest. We note that these modern mammon seeking Christians have internalized their idea of Jesus so much that they have finally identified their own selfish needs as their God's. Many of them have in fact accepted, without conscious knowledge (and in a very superficial erring manner) the occult teaching that they are gods.

"The best Christian among us is inevitably the most shameless hypocrite. There is probably no man in America who harbors a more genuine belief in the Christian doctrine of brotherhood and good will than the Hon. William Jennings Bryan, and yet it would be difficult to find a man who has devoted a larger part of his life to furious and merciless combat, or who seeks with greater ardor to rout, cripple and destroy his enemies. The whole uplift is Christian in theory, and yet the whole uplift is inordinately savage and vindictive in practice." - H.L. Mencken, "Transvaluation of Morals", March 1915

No matter where one stands on Bryan, Darrow, or Mencken, this trial was, in the end, about freedom of expression and whether any of us or any group among us should have the power to suppress any other opinions.

"True enough, even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge. Did Darrow, in the course of his dreadful bombardment of Bryan, drop a few shells, incidentally, into measurably cleaner camps? Then let the garrisons of those camps look to their defenses. They are free to shoot back. But they can't disarm their enemy."
-H L Mencken, "Aftermath" (coverage of the Scopes Trial) The Baltimore Evening Sun, (September 14, 1925)

H.L. Mencken

P.S. An Observation On the Misanthrope Mencken from Gore Vidal

"... A babble of words that no one understands now fills the airwaves, and language loses all meaning as we sink slowly, mindlessly, into herstory rather than history because most rapists are men, aren't they?
Mencken is a nice antidote. Politically, he is often right but seldom correct by today's stern standards. In a cheery way, he dislikes most minorities and if he ever had a good word to say about the majority of his countrymen, I have yet to come across it. Recently, when his letters were published, it was discovered that He Did Not Like the Jews, and that he had said unpleasant things about them not only as individuals but In General, plainly the sign of a Hitler-Holocaust enthusiast. So shocked was everyone that even the New York Review of Books' unofficial de-anti-Semitiser, Garry Wills (he salvaged Dickens, barely), has yet to come to his aid with An Explanation. But in Mencken's private correspondence, he also snarls at black Americans, Orientals, Britons, women, and WASPs, particularly the clay-eating Appalachians, whom he regarded as subhuman. But private irritability is of no consequence when compared to what really matters, public action.
Far from being an anti-Semite, Mencken was one of the first journalists to denounce the persecution of the Jews in Germany at a time when the New York Times, say, was notoriously reticent. On November 27, 1938, Mencken writes (Baltimore Sun), "It is to be hoped that the poor Jews now being robbed and mauled in Germany will not take too seriously the plans of various politicians to rescue them." He then reviews the various schemes to "rescue" the Jews from the Nazis, who had not yet announced their own final solution."
-Gore Vidal, Forward to Marion Elizabeth Rodgers' The Impossible H. L. Mencken

Ronaldo, blissfully unaware (as are most of us) of the dark forces arrayed against him.

Pepe, a 58 year old Mexican trained sorcerer from Malaga, Spain has taken credit for football star Cristiano Ronaldo's recent injury and threatens to end his career in the near future. Pepe claims to be working for a former girlfriend who paid him 30,000 EUR to destroy the Real Madrid star.
LINK
In September, Jose “Pepe” Ruz, 58, of Malaga had written to Florentino Pérez, President of Real Madrid: “I have been contracted so Cristiano Ronaldo suffers a serious injury. I can’t promise when that will be, but I can say he will be injured for more time than he plays,” 
Ronaldo knows which former girlfriend is responsible for hiring this bold evil witch. It has been established that it is the ever-ready Paris Hilton. Pepe says he has prepared a voodoo doll of Ronaldo that he shall soon be stabbing with pins. The voodoo doll is a very crude magickal tool. But if Pepe had a sample of Ronaldo's hair or seminal fluid (which the acquisitive powers of Miss Hilton could easily have obtained) it could be effective, although I doubt he learned this trick from his Mexican teacher, if one exists. Perhaps Pepe is providing the voodoo doll story as misdirection from the truly evil rituals he plans. It is the foolish sorcerer who reveals his plans to the world.  Usually a sorcerer for hire (or any other kind) keeps a low profile. Pepe's big mouth could be evidence that he is a fraud; or, it could be a reflection of his overweening pride. It is obvious that Ronaldo has some powerful spiritual allies; anyone in his position would. He needs to be more attentive to them.

How fleeting is love!

Ronaldo's mother, Dolores Aveiro, has hired a "white magician" to protect him from this curse. But we all know there is no such thing as a "white magician". Anyone who presents himself as a "white magician" is attempting to fool his clients or is deluding himself. Cristiano Ronaldo needs to hire a more competent sorcerer. He has the money to hire the best. Ronaldo, get the biggest, baddest, black magician to kick Pepe's ass. Do it now before you regret it.
What this world needs is more Witch Wars out in the open so we all can enjoy them.

If the reader is unaware of this man's skills, see Ronaldo in action here. We note that Ronaldo's former team, Manchester United, was prominently sponsored by the cash-strapped and disgraced AIG. M.U. sold Ronaldo to Real Madrid for £80m in June 2009.


“I can’t stand it when someone is mean, I want a man anyway, not someone who runs about like a little girl. He’s a wimp!”-Paris Hilton, revealing her animosity for Ronaldo in Life & Style 

Quotes from Carlos Castaneda (who, as we all know, was a fraud and a poseur...but who is not?) 1925-1998

"A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war: wide-awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance. Going to knowledge or going to war in any other manner is a mistake, and whoever makes it might never live to regret it"


"Malicious acts are performed by people for personal gain … Sorcerers, though, have an ulterior purpose for their acts, which has nothing to do with personal gain. The fact that they enjoy their acts does not count as gain. Rather, it is a condition of their character. The average man acts only if there is a chance for profit. Warriors say they act not for profit but for the spirit."


“A warrior considers himself already dead, so there is nothing to lose. The worst has already happened to him, therefore he's clear and calm; judging him by his acts or by his words, one would never suspect that he has witnessed everything.”


“A warrior doesn't know remorse for anything he has done, because to isolate one's acts as being mean, or ugly, or evil is to place an unwarranted importance on the self.”


“A warrior lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting.”

The Battle of Money Versus Law Is Over
(Guess Who Won?)

Illustration: Screen grab from Cecil B. DeMille's 1921 movie "The Affairs of Anatol" showing the vamp Satan Synne (Bebe Daniels) in the wonderful Octopus Cloak.

"The bold effort the present bank has made to control the Government, the distress it has wantonly produced,. . ., are but premonitions of the fate that awaits the American People should they be deluded into a perpetuation of this institution (The Bank of the United States), or the establishment of another like it. ''
-Andrew Jackson
December 2, 1834

"This Act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President signs this Act the invisible government by the Money Power, proven to exist by the Money Trust Investigation, will be legalized. The new law will create inflation whenever the trusts want inflation. From now on depressions will be scientifically created."
Congressman Charles A. Lindburg, Sr. on the passing of the Act that created the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913

"As the Culture rises to its height, these two primary urges trend widely apart, and hostility develops between them. The history of this hostility is almost the same thing as world-history. From the feeling of power come conquest and -politics and law; from that of spoil, trade and economy and money. Law is the property of the powerful. Their law is the law of all. Money is the strongest weapon of the acquiring: with it he subdues the world. Economics likes and intends a state that is weak and subservient to it. Politics demands that economic life shall adapt itself to and within the State Adam Smith and Friedrich List, Capitalism and Socialism. All Cultures exhibit at the outset a war- and a trade-nobility, then a land- and a money-nobility, and finally a military and an economic war-management and a ceaseless struggle of money against law."
-Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, first published 1918

Notes on gold:

Dubai Dubai Doo
After a Wednesday record price of $1186.90, gold closed at $1,177.63 in London today on thin trading recovering about half of its loss after the strong commodities market of recent months was affected by a stronger dollar in the wake of Dubai's announcement of a six month moratorium on debt obligations! (I wish I could do that.) In other words, the world financial markets are still spinning out of control and the dollar was somehow seen as a safer haven than gold by some investors. Others moved in late and scooped up gold as a bargain.

Sorry, No Gold Or Silver Here. Who Do You Think We Are? The Mint?
The U.S. Mint has suspended sales of precious metal coins, citing depleted inventories. LINK

Take This Gold And Shove It!
HSBC Holdings has told retail clients that it will no longer store their precious metals in its huge 5th Avenue Vault in New York. HSBC states it needs the space in the vault for its lucrative business with large institutional customers. It seems investors of all kinds are demanding to take actual possession of gold rather than just being satisfied to hold a contract that states they have the right to it. There is, therefore, a shortage of vault space. In a July letter HSBC told selected (petty) clients to arrange alternate storage of their precious metals or their holdings "will be returned to the address of record... at your expense" LINK

How Can You Assume A Crime Has Been Committed Just Because A Ton Of Gold Is Missing?
Speaking of vault space, in this case, we spy a country to the North with extra vault space. In June Canada announced that over a ton of gold (17,514 troy ounces) was missing from the Royal Canadian Mint. That would be about forty-four 400 ounce bars. Last week we noted stories that a huge quantity of 400 ounce gold bars on the world market were discovered to be gold coated tungsten. LINK Logically one could speculate that perhaps Canada had run afoul of some of these bogus bars. This week the RCMP announced that after a thorough investigation the results do "not support further effort in the continuance of a criminal investigation into this matter" and furthermore "there was no theft from the mint. An external review has gone on that provides an explanation of the unaccounted-for-gold". But the RCMP must be given credit for the difficult achievement of proving a negative. And what is the explanation for the unaccounted gold? No one really knows. You just have to take their word for it. Maybe it was accounting errors. Perhaps it was a loss of concentration by a gold counter. Another report speculated something about under-estimating "shrinkage" during processing which is an astounding thing for gold to do. (Unless it was coating tungsten.) Maybe it is an unexpected effect of the Large Hadron Collider? No, it couldn't be; they just turned that thing on. The RCMP found nothing untoward so nothing untoward could have happened. Right?
But if you carefully read the RCMP verbiage, they do not address whether the mint may have obtained some of those bogus tungsten bars. They state there was no theft from the mint that would support a criminal investigation. What one does not say is as important as what one says. LINK

Surprise Surprise
It appears that all sources of value in the world are under attack. With the run on physical gold we shall soon find out if the gold business has indeed turned into a shell game as so many believe. There have been persistent stories of banks having difficulty producing gold on demand. As I have argued in this space, there is not enough physical gold to run a world economy; there probably never has been enough gold to act as a currency for the world. The banks know this better than anyone. As investors continue to lose faith in fiat money we shall eventually reach the point at which the supply of physical gold, hidden away in vaults, runs out and demand cannot be met. What happens then will surprise and amaze us.

Sexy Bebe Daniels displays the spectacular Octopus Hat of Satan Synne while making love to early Hollywood heartthrob Wallace Reid playing Anatol Spencer. Reid would have been heavily dosed on morphine at the time, acquiring the habit after suffering an injury in a train wreck during the filming of The Valley Of The Giants in 1919; he would be dead by late 1922.

W.H. "Coin" Harvey

Housekeeping:
A Little Bit On W.H. Harvey

Coin's Financial School
In my recent discussion with Keith Hansen on his Think Or Be Eaten Program [LINK] I mentioned the impact of the "Coin's Financial School" pamphlet published in 1894. This work by W.H. Harvey ( born in Buffalo, West Virginia 16 August 1851 – died 11 February 1936 Monte Ne, Arkansas) extolled the beauties of bimetallism and its beneficial effects for the average working person, while criticizing the gold standard proponents.
It was published more than twenty years too late.
Unfortunately, bimetallism had been just about left for dead by 1894. The official placement of the tombstone over the corpse of Silver would finally occur in 1900 with the Gold Standard Act.
But this pamphlet is an interesting read, put in the form of a young lecturer addressing classes consisting of various familiar and famous characters of the late 19th Century on bimetallism and the monetary system. "Coin" Harvey, as he came to be known, made his reputation and a fortune with this pamphlet. His experiences as a Chicago lawyer and running the Silver Bell Mine in Colorado informed his approach to the subject.

Snake Oil And Politics
He also became a classic snake oil salesman, marketing his own patent medicine called, appropriately enough, "The Elixir of Life" to supplement his income once the price of silver began to fall in response to legislation designed to demonetize the metal.
He was associated with William Jennings Bryan's 1896 Presidential campaign. He may not have been an asset to that campaign. See this link: "Threatened to Mob 'Coin', W.H. Harvey Calls Gens. Sickles and Alger "Old Wrecks." New York Times, October 6, 1896 article [LINK]

Get Your Kicks At The Lost City Of Monte Ne
He established a health spa in Monte Ne, Arkansas. Harvey imported a large gondola from Venice to  transport visitors from the station of his private railroad spur across the lake to the resort. An enclosed lagoon for swimming was a popular feature. He also built the first golf course in Arkansas.
He founded the "Ozark Trails Association" which promoted the construction of a road system from Missouri to New Mexico. The highway known today as Route 66 is the direct result of Harvey's plan. Harvey hoped to increase traffic to Monte Ne from the West. His association erected several obelisks to mark the fledgling road.
At the end of his life he obsessed on the coming "end of the world", hallucinating, or more accurately, projecting, as so many do confronting their own mortality, that the signs of his own demise, combined with such hardships as experiencing the untimely death of a son, divorce, financial distress, the rejection of his monetary ideas, and the advent of the Great Depression (perhaps perceived as a result of that failure of acceptance) must herald a General and Universal End.
I call it the "How can this world go on without me?" effect.

Harvey's planned 130 foot "pyramid" or, more accurately, an obelisk. Harvey's bankruptcy delayed and his death finally ended the project.

He began to erect a giant obelisk in Monte Ne, "The Pyramid" that would contain a time capsule to memorialize civilization at its height, as he saw it, before its final destruction. He died before completing the task. Monte Ne was flooded by the waters of Beaver Lake after a dam was built in the 1960's.

"Beautiful Monte Ne, God's gift to man they say
Health resort of all the world is beautiful Monte Ne
Rosy cheeks and purer blood they gain there day by day
in mountain air water rare at beautiful Monte Ne"

-from "Beautiful Monte Ne" by Edward Wolfe, a theme song for the resort commissioned by W.H. Harvey, copyright 1906

President Harvey?
He ran for President in 1932 under the banner of his own Liberty Party, which held its convention at Monte Ne. He lost.

Links:

"Coin's" Pamphlet is available here at the Internet Archive:
[LINK]

Here is an overview of Harvey's time in Monte Ne from the Rogers Museum:
"Buried Dreams: 'Coin' Harvey and Monte Ne" [LINK]

More on the "lost resort" of Monte Ne: [LINK]

The Young W. H. "Coin" Harvey

My post on bimetallism from last week. [LINK]

Quote of the Day

"Money breeds insensitiveness."- Aldous Huxley

Post Script (Speculation, Rag Time, Shooting Off At The Mouth, etc.):
Do I think bimetallism is a solution for our monetary problems today? Probably not, although I haven't looked at the possibilities seriously. There is just too much of a need for large quantities of a medium of exchange in a world of 6 billion souls to rely on metal. However, the leap from bimetallism to the gold standard in the United States was no solution for anything at the time. The only parties who benefited were those bent on imposing a world wide monetary system using the gold standard to centralize power and as a transitional means to actually devalue real circulating currency to the point where we now have a purely symbolic fiat currency, a kind of magical script, totally in the control of the financial elites, beyond the purview and notice of the (to use a Marxist term) masses.

I do believe that any solution to the problems of the monetary system as it now exists must include the removal of the private banks from the process of the creation of the means of exchange. It may be most efficient that the government directly issue fiat money retaining a portion via a set formula for operating expenses in lieu of tax collection. This would free up vast human energy from the tasks of collecting, paying, and avoiding taxes; and lobbying government for favors in the tax code. Some form of metallic, or other valuable (goods or services) conversion of the currency under law may add stability to such a system.

Who Is Harming The People?

Yes, I distrust the government. But I distrust the government inasmuch as it has come to represent what I distrust even more, those private institutions of power such as the banks, the corporations, and the foundations that extremely wealthy people have at their disposal, and in which the people have no significant vested interest or direct means of control. The privileged, predominantly hereditary minority behind these entities has seized de facto control of the government via the anonymity they receive hidden within, and the responsibility deflecting character of, these legal fictions in which they have pooled and aggrandized the power of their wealth. The government, as shabby and impotent as it has become, is the only potential tool the people have to protect themselves from the anarchic rapaciousness of these institutions, save direct action via Revolution.
If you doubt this just ponder on a government that pours trillions of dollars of taxpayer obligations into saving the financial institutions of these plutocrats while unemployment surges because of the uncontrolled exportation of jobs and the real economy shrivels as the demand for skilled, higher paid labor disappears, all as a result of the greedy machinations of these same coddled respected men. A democratic government has at least a gossamer thread connecting it to the people's control. One good thing about hard times is that they do promote interest and concern among the people about the doings of a government gone very bad. There has been such a vast flood of programming and propaganda inflicted on the people by the corporate controlled mass media over the generations it is by now doubtful that enough of our citizens can overcome their implanted beliefs that all is as it should be; we may now be past the point of no return.

All public institutions may have to collapse before they can be renovated or replaced by the people whom they have nominally represented .

The collapse of any huge privately held institution should be welcomed as a boon to human freedom, not feared as an economic threat.

To paraphrase Baudelaire's anecdote about the devil, the greatest trick of these conspiracies of the powerful is to convince you they don't exist.

Elle ne se plaignit en aucune façon de la mauvaise réputation dont elle jouit dans toutes les parties du monde, m'assura qu'elle était, elle-même, la personne la plus intéressée à la destruction de la superstition, et m'avoua qu'elle n'avait eu peur, relativement à son propre pouvoir, qu'une seule fois, c'était le jour où elle avait entendu un prédicateur, plus subtil que ses confrères, s'écrier en chaire:
«Mes chers frères, n'oubliez jamais, quand vous entendrez vanter le progrès des lumières, que la plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas!»


He did not complain in any way about the bad reputation he enjoyed all over the world, assured me that he himself was the person the most interested in the destruction of superstition, and admitted to me that he had only been afraid for his own power one time, and that was the day when he had heard a preacher, more subtle than his colleagues, shout out from the pulpit:
"My dear brothers, never forget, when you hear the progress of enlightenment vaunted, that the devil's best trick is to persuade you that he doesn't exist!"
"Le Joueur généreux," pub. February 7, 1864; translation by Cat Nilan, 1999 [LINK]

And here is a contemporary example of the tale:

He is supposed to be Turkish. Some say his father was German. Nobody believed he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could have worked for Söze. You never knew. That was his power. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. One story the guys told me — the story I believe — was from his days in Turkey. There was a petty gang of Hungarians that wanted their own mob. They realized that to be in power you didn't need guns or money or even numbers. You just needed the will to do what the other guy wouldn't. After a while they come to power, and then they come after Söze.
-Verbal Kint on Keyser Söze, "The Usual Suspects" screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie

But if you begin to suspect that these evil forces do exist they will immediately try to convince you that they are on your side.

Timmy and Ben get "grilled" by Congress back in March.

"Savoir dissimuler est le savoir des rois."
Knowing How to Dissimulate is The Kingly Knowledge.
-Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu

The government "watchdog" report to Congress on the AIG bailout has been released by Special Inspector Neil Barofsky. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, while acting as head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has been fingered as costing the taxpayers 85 billions of dollars in the initial bailout in September of 2008 while he directed the Panic Express Money Pinata courtesy of the pliable Congress and an oh so reluctant and now repentant President Bush to the worthy executives of Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms, substantially to ensure that bonuses would be paid. Can anyone have any doubt at this time that the Federal Reserve cares not a whit for the public interest or that it is at all affiliated with the interests of the Federal Government as a manifestation of a Democratic People? I am sure Geithner misrepresented on paper or electronic document what he was actually doing in his reports to the rump Congress when he was costermongering AIG. If so, that is a felony under federal law.
The first (rhetorical) question that comes to mind is how could Obama select such a man to run Treasury?
Geithner should be immediately fired and charged so that we may enjoy the sight of him and his cronies making an orange-suited perpetrator walk. I dream, I dream.
But the truth is: after a few moments of appropriate outrage the entire incident will be swept under that lumpy lumpy rug.
Yes, yes this is boring the shit out of you. I know. Me too. Go back to sleep.

"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle."-Thomas Jefferson to J. Norvell, 1807

An excellent chart placing the Goldman Sachs henchmen who have infiltrated government.
[LINK]

E.D. lets us (and Conan O'Brien) know where she stands.

Dollhouse Canceled

Well, it will finish this season's thirteen episodes. I'll miss it and not just for the wonderful Eliza Dushku (another Boston kid). This program was basically about beautiful people who have sold themselves for big cash to have their minds utterly programmed to have their bodies perform any function for rich people. It is a Parable of the World.