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August 31, 2005
Cabinet of Wonders
This new fortean-oriented message board has gone on line and already looks promising.
Check it out here
Posted by Mark at 03:44 PM | Comments (0)
August 30, 2005
Life After Doomsday
Couple offer lessons in life after doomsday
Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Tuesday August 30, 2005
from The Guardian
While world leaders squabble about whether climate change is real and what action to take, one couple has retreated to rural Wales to help humanity plan for what they believe will be a dark future.
Bob Smith and his partner Jules Wagstaff are convinced that time is short after reading the science and the signs of increasing temperatures and severe weather.
They have set up a school to teach age-old skills of coppicing, green woodworking to make furniture and tools, shelter construction, and alternative business models such as cooperatives.
Their tools are not computers but rope, lathes and hand axes.
Wales, which is used to local people practising alternative lifestyles, has not been entirely welcoming. Both the Welsh assembly and the local authority, Ceredigion council, regarded this vision of the future as eccentric and until the past few weeks had no place in their apprenticeship schemes or training programmes for it.
But Mr Smith and his family, and local people acting as trustees for his Deassartation School, are patient people. Understanding almost lost craft skills and adapting the design of Mongolian yurt shelters to suit the British climate took time.
"The fact that we spent five years living in a yurt meant at first people did not take us seriously, but you have to do that to get the design right," Mr Smith said. "At present we live in a cottage while the Cilgerran school uses the yurt as an outside classroom, so we are temporarily respectable, but I am going to build more yurts soon so we can teach other people how to do it."
One of the couple's two children was born in the yurt. "It takes some getting used to living in a yurt and I think you need two, even three, for a family," Mr Smith said.
"They are roomy but you often need somewhere separate to go and work, sleep and to cook and eat."
Ms Wagstaff has a postgraduate teaching qualification and while Mr Smith ran short courses in rotation coppicing, hedgelaying and stone walling, she began getting the school on a more formal basis so it could offer apprenticeships in craft skills to survive in the later 21st century.
The couple have a large stretch of woodland to manage for a local farmer, to provide material for yurt making and a training area for woodland skills.
Ms Wagstaff said: "The problem is that the current system is geared towards a highly educated workforce to meet international competition with paper qualifications and numeracy rather than practical skills. What we want to do is rekindle craft skills so people can make the countryside productive and, if current society breaks down, use the same skills to survive."
Instead of teaching people who already have paper qualifications, the couple plan to take the long-term unemployed and teach them to earn a living hedgelaying, producing charcoal, coppicing, stonewalling and using other craft skills now back in demand.
Matt Flye, the Welsh assembly spokesman, said Wales was proud of its sustainable development policy but admitted that the idea of craft skills was outside the role of its apprenticeship schemes and education system and it had been unable to help.
"The Welsh assembly government does not offer direct grants to support this kind of development," he said.
Posted by Mark at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)
August 29, 2005
"I could now kill a critic, any critic, in seconds"
"I'm not actually a violent person but I had to learn to kill with my bare hands to make this movie [A History of Violence ]. So I could now kill a critic, any critic, in seconds. It'd be so fast people wouldn't know why he dropped to the ground. And I'm tempted to sometimes."
David Cronenberg interviewed at Toro
"Take naps, wear good shoes on the set, and calm down."
Thanks to Adi Tantimedh
Posted by Mark at 06:33 PM | Comments (0)
August 26, 2005
More animals join the learning circle
New Scientist
Betsy Mason
KILLER whales and chimpanzees both pass on "traditions" to other members of their group, according to two separate studies of feeding behaviour. The findings add to evidence that cultural learning is widespread among animals.
One study involved killer whales at Marineland in Niagara Falls in Ontario, Canada. An inventive male devised a brand new way to catch birds, and passed the strategy on to his tank-mates. The 4-year-old orca lures gulls into his tank by spitting regurgitated fish onto the water's surface. He waits below for a gull to grab the fish, then lunges at it with open jaws. "They are in a way setting a trap," says animal behaviourist Michael Noonan of Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, who made the discovery, "They catch three or four gulls this way some days."
Noonan had never seen the behaviour before, despite three years of observations for separate experiments. But a few months after the enterprising male started doing it, Noonan spied the whale's younger half-brother doing the same thing. Soon the brothers' mothers were enjoying feathered snacks, as were a 6-month-old calf and an older male. Noonan presented the research this month at the US Animal Behavior Society meeting in Snowbird, Utah.
Wild dolphins off the west coast of Australia were the first marine mammals in which cultural learning was observed. They apparently learn from group-mates how to use sponges to protect their snouts while scavenging (New Scientist, 11 June, p 12). But the evidence from killer whales is much more conclusive because the process was observed from start to finish.
Some researchers have suggested that many purported examples of cultural transmission can instead be explained by individuals discovering the skill on their own rather than following another's lead. But because the gull-baiting behaviour is so unusual, "it would be hard to argue that it is individual learning", says ethologist Janet Mann of Georgetown University in Washington DC, one of the authors of the dolphin sponging study. Behavioural scientist Andrew Whiten of the University of St Andrews in the UK agrees, "This is a particularly clear set of observations."
Whiten and his colleagues have meanwhile shown in a separate study that when chimpanzees learn a skill from their peers, they tend to stick with that method even if it isn't the most effective. Whiten's team taught two female chimps how to get food from a complicated feeder using a stick to move a barrier. One chimp learned to lift the barrier while the other was taught an apparently more efficient poking method. The chimps' group-mates were then allowed to watch their respective experts at work.
The chimps followed the lead of their own expert chimp - the poker's group preferred to poke and the lifter's group lifted (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature04047).
And even when some lifters learned to poke, the majority reverted to the group's original lifting strategy.
Getting the message
Chimpanzees appear to be capable of communicating using sounds that refer to specific objects, according to a study of sounds made in response to different foods. It is the first time this ability has been demonstrated in chimps.
Primatologist Katie Slocombe of the University of St Andrews, UK, recorded the grunts made by chimps at nearby Edinburgh Zoo as they collected food at two feeders. One dispensed bread, considered a high-quality treat, and the other doled out apples, a much less sought-after snack.
Slocombe then played back the recordings and watched the reactions of a 6-year-old male named Liberius. The results were striking. After hearing a bread grunt, Liberius spent far more time searching around the bread feeder, while an apple grunt would send him hunting under the apple feeder. Slocombe presented the work at the US Animal Behavior Society meeting in Snowbird, Utah, this month.
This is the first convincing evidence of "referential communication" in chimps, says primatologist Amy Pollick of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Earlier research with a close cousin of the chimpanzee - a male pygmy chimpanzee, or bonobo, named Kanzi - showed that he made specific sounds for four different things: bananas, grapes, juice and yes. But the researchers did not test if the sounds conveyed any meaning to other bonobos, and the same experiments have never been done in chimpanzees.
Liberius, on the other hand, was able to take cues from apple and bread grunts made by at least three different chimpanzees.
Slocombe plans to expand her study to include chimps at the Leipzig Zoo in Germany and hopes to confirm whether the grunts refer to specific foods or to their relative quality.
Betsy Mason
Posted by Mark at 02:43 PM | Comments (0)
August 25, 2005
Utah rave raid
SWAT teams raid what, according to the promoters, (though not the police) was an authorised rave in the Utah mountains, using helicopters, heavy weaponry, tear gas and some good old fashioned police brutality...
There's a video of the raid, including what looks like some serious SWAT vs raver action, here or mirrored here. (These are downloadable video files, 8MB in size)
And compare it to the Official Version from the TV News. (This is a Real media file)
First up is the Wikinews version of events, then from one of the DJs' POV.
Thanks to Bentropy...
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About 90 law enforcement officers from multiple agencies broke up what they said was a rave party on public and private property in the Diamond Fork area of Spanish Fork canyon, an hour outside of Salt Lake City, Utah, at about 11:30 p.m. Saturday (5:30 Sunday UTC).
According to the county, the Sheriff's Office had been investigating similar parties since the beginning of the season. In a press release from the Sheriff's Office in Utah County, the department states that previous allegations of sexual abuse at other raves, as well as various firearm and theft violations, were reasons for the investigation. The release continues on to state that the proper permit was not obtained before the event started. The promoters deny this allegation and insist that all permits were legally obtained before the event.
Armed with semi-automatic assault rifles and tear gas, the police used dogs to sweep the crowd for narcotics. At least one helicopter was used in the operation, which served as a large spotlight for the ground teams. Prior to raiding the show, several unnamed police informants had reportedly told police that they had observed some "illegal activities".
The promoter says the party took place on private property, named Child's Ranch, with express permission from the owner. The property owner has apparently had at least one previous lawsuit with police over a similar event. Utah County requires a permit, bond and county commission approval for all gatherings with more than 250 people present. According to a DJ at the event, "They presold 700 tickets and they expected up to 3,000 people total." He added that by the time police arrived "the crowd was about 1500".
The police have publicly stated that only a permit from the health department was obtained, and that a Utah mass gathering permit was needed. The promoters have stated that they had the required permit, and have given a permit number (# 2005-11). Jay Stone, who handles mass gathering permits for the Utah County Health Department’s Bureau of Environmental Health Services, has confirmed that the permit was applied for and granted for the party. Officials also claim that the party had spilled over onto public land, and that more than 60 arrests were made in total - for weapons offenses, driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, underage drinking, drug possession and distribution, resisting arrest, assault on a police officer, and disorderly conduct. Among the confiscated items and drugs found were cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana, mushrooms, alcohol, and drug paraphernalia. Some of the drugs may include those confiscated from attendees by private security guards - who were also arrested.
Amateur video from the scene shows a number of SWAT police (Sheriff's press release places the figure at 90) screaming orders at the DJs to "Shut it down now!" and yelling at others to "get out now, or I'll kick your ass in jail." Armed police are also seen tackling two attendees, Alaisha Matagi and Paul Maka. It is unclear from the video footage whether these actions were provoked or not. However, those shown on the two-minute long footage that are being forced to the ground do not appear to be resisting arrest. Both Matagi and Maki are charged with failure to obey a police officer and resisting arrest - Paul is also charged with interfering with police. Sheriff Jim Tracy stated in an email that both of them were tackled and arrested after assaulting a deputy, however, neither of them are being charged with assaulting a police officer.
A first hand account from a DJ booked to play at the party stated that while police were arresting a man accused of possession, the suspect was beaten to the ground and continually "kicked in the ribs" by four armed "soldiers" dressed in camouflage. The item was not shown on the video footage. According to the account, nobody resisted the policemen, and the crowd was orderly, but tear gas was thrown at the partiers as they attempted to leave as instructed. The DJ also states that police were attempting to confiscate video equipment, but an amateur video has still surfaced on the internet (see sources below). The video appears to have been taken near the DJ stand before it was moved to show more of the action.
Several attendees felt they should have the right to attend an event where drugs may be present, so long as they don't personally use them. "While it may be true that some individuals choose to take drugs at said events like this, myself as well as many others choose to go for the music. Just like anything, you have bad apples, but you shouldn't cut down the tree," said one attendee. "Raves are not the only musical gatherings where drugs are used and distributed," said another.
Other event-goers felt that the use of force in the shutdown was excessive - numerous eyewitness accounts by concertgoers describe people being beaten, tasered, or attacked with dogs. One account from an attendee, identified as "Colby", states:
"I saw at least two people being beaten on the ground while barking, snarling dogs are held just a few feet from them. Weapons were being pointed at unarmed, peaceful civilians. A friend of mine was forced at gunpoint to put his hands on his head and turn around, because he asked if he could get his things from the tent."
Utah County sheriff's Sergeant Darren Gilbert also alleged that a 17-year-old girl was found overdosed on ecstasy, and was treated and released to her parents. According to an advertisement for the event, an attorney was present at the party. The local sheriff is scheduled to appear on Utah TV.
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AND here's a separate POV from one of the DJs at the event:
"Last night, I was booked to play an event about an hour outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. The hype behind this show was huge, they presold 700 tickets and they ex! pected up to 3,000 people total. The promoters did an amazing job with the show.. they even made slipmats with the flyers on them to promote in local shops.So, we got to the show around 11:15 or so and it was really cool. It was all outdoors, in a valley surrounded by huge mountains. They had an amazing light show flashing on to a mountain behind the site, the sound was booming, the crowd was about 1500 people thick and everything just seemed too good to be true really.
Well...At about 11:30 or so, I was standing behind the stage talking with someone when I noticed a helicopter pulling over one of the mountain tops. I jokingly said "Oh look, here comes big brother" to the person I was with. I wasn't far off. The helicopter dipped lower and lower and started shining its lights on the crowd. I was kind of in awe and jus! t sat and watched this thing circle us for a minute. As I looked back towards the crowd I saw a guy dressed in camoflauge walking by, toting an assault rifle. At this point, everyone was fully aware of what was going on . A few "troops" rushed the stage and cut the sound off and started yelling that everyone "get the fuck out of here or go to jail". This is where it got really sticky.No one resisted. That's for sure. They had police dogs raiding the crowd of people and I saw a dog signal out a guy who obviously had some drugs on him. The soldiers attacked the guy (4 of them on 1), and kicked him a few times in the ribs and had their knees in his back and sides. As they were cuffing him, there was about 1000 kids trying to leave in the backdrop, peacefully.
Next thing I know, A can of fucking TEAR GAS is launched in! to the crowd. People are running and screaming at this point. Girls are crying, guys are cussing... bad scene.Now, this is all I saw with my own eyes, but I heard plenty of other accounts of the night. Now this isnt gossip I heard from some candy raver, these are instances cited straight out of the promoters mouth..- One of the promoters friends (a very small female) was attacked by one of the police dogs. As she struggled to get away from it, the police tackled her. 3 grown men proceeded to KICK HER IN THE STOMACH.- The police confiscated 3 video tapes in total. People were trying to document what was happening out there. The police saw one guy filming and ran after him, tackled him and his camera fell, and luckily.. his friend grabbed it and ran and got away. priceless footage. That's not all though! . Out of 1,500 people, there's sure to be more footage.- The police were rounding up the staff of the party and the main promoter went up to them with the permit for the show and said "here, I have the permit." The police then said, "no you don't" and ripped the permit out of his hand. Then, they put an assault rifle to his forehead and said "get the fuck out of here right now."Now.. let's get the facts straight here.This event was 100% legal. They had every permit the city told them they needed. They had a 2 MILLION DOLLAR insurance policy for the event. They had liscenced security guards at the gates confiscating any alcohol or drugs found upon entry (yes, they searched every car on the way in).
Oh, I suppose I should mention that they arrested all the security guards for possession. Oh another interesting fact.. the police did not have a warrant. The owner of the land already has a lawsuit against the city for something similar. A few months ago, she rented her land for a party and the police raided that as well. And catch this, the police forced her to LEAVE HER OWN PERSONAL PROPERTY. That's right. They didnt arrest her, but made her leave her own property!!!Don't get it twisted, this is all going down in probably THE most conservative state in the USA. And this is scary.. a gross violation of our civil liberties.
The police wanted this party shut down, so they made it happen. Even though everything about this event was legal. The promoters spent over $ 20,000 on this show and did everything they had to to make it legit, only to have it taken away from them by a group of radical neo-con's with an agenda.This was one of the sca! riest things I have ever witnessed in person. I can't even begin to describe how surreal it was. Helicopters, assault rifles, tear gas, camoflauge-wearing soldiers.... why?
Was that really necessary? They broke up a party that was 100% legal and they physically hurt a lot of people there at the same time. The promoters already have 6 lawsuits ready to file with their lawyers and the ACLU is already involved.I'm sure some pictures (and hopefully some video) will surface soon. I'll make sure>to post them up here on 404, so you can see the Police State of America at work."
Posted by Mark at 09:39 AM | Comments (0)
August 24, 2005
East & West: How we see things differently
Westerners and Easterners see the world differently
22:00 22 August 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Zeeya Merali
Chinese and American people see the world differently – literally. While Americans focus on the central objects of photographs, Chinese individuals pay more attention to the image as a whole, according to psychologists at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, US.
“There is plenty of anecdotal evidence suggesting that Western and East Asian people have contrasting world-views,” explains Richard Nisbett, who carried out the study. “Americans break things down analytically, focusing on putting objects into categories and working out what rules they should obey,” he says.
By contrast, East Asians have a more holistic philosophy, looking at objects in relation to the whole. “Figuratively, Americans see things in black and white, while East Asians see more shades of grey,” says Nisbett. “We wanted to devise an experiment to see if that translated to a literal difference in what they actually see.”
The researchers tracked the eye-movements of two groups of students while they looked at photographs. One group contained American-born graduates of European descent and the other was comprised of Chinese-born graduate students who came to the US after their undergraduate degrees.
Each picture showed a striking central image placed in a realistic background, such as a tiger in a jungle. They found that the American students spent longer looking at the central object, while the Chinese students’ eyes tended to dart around, taking in the context.
Harmony versus goals
Nisbett and his colleagues believe that this distinctive pattern has developed because of the philosophies of these two cultures. “Harmony is a central idea in East Asian philosophy, and so there is more emphasis on how things relate to the whole,” says Nisbett. “In the West, by contrast, life is about achieving goals.”
Psychologists watching American and Japanese families playing with toys have also noted this difference. “An American mother will say: ‘Look Billy, a truck. It’s shiny and has wheels.’ The focus is on the object,” explains Nisbett. By contrast, Japanese mothers stress context saying things like, “I push the truck to you and you push it to me. When you throw it at the wall, the wall says ‘ouch’."
Nisbett also cites language development in the cultures. “To Westerners it seems obvious that babies learn nouns more easily. But while this is the case in the West, studies show that Korean and Chinese children pick up verbs – which relate objects to each other - more easily.
“Nisbett’s work is interesting and suggestive,” says John Findlay, a psychologist specialising in human visual attention at Durham University, UK. “It’s always difficult to put an objective measure on cultural differences, but this group have made a step towards that.”
Nisbett hopes that his work will change the way the cultures view each other. “Understanding that there is a real difference in the way people think should form the basis of respect.”
Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (vol 102, p 12629)
Posted by Mark at 12:32 PM | Comments (0)
August 23, 2005
19th Century Anarchist Jihad
via Tim Chapman...
For jihadist, read anarchist
Aug 18th 2005
From The Economist print edition
Repression did little to stop anarchist violence. But eventually the world moved on and the movement withered
BOMBS, beards and backpacks: these are the distinguishing marks, at least in the popular imagination, of the terror-mongers who either incite or carry out the explosions that periodically rock the cities of the western world. A century or so ago it was not so different: bombs, beards and fizzing fuses. The worries generated by the two waves of terror, the responses to them and some of their other characteristics are also similar. The spasm of anarchist violence that was at its most convulsive in the 1880s and 1890s was felt, if indirectly, in every continent. It claimed hundreds of lives, including those of several heads of government, aroused widespread fear and prompted quantities of new laws and restrictions. But it passed. Jihadism is certainly not a lineal descendant of anarchism: far from it. Even so, the parallels between the anarchist bombings of the 19th century and the Islamist ones of today may be instructive.
Islamists, or at least those of the Osama bin Laden stripe, have several aims. Some—such as the desire “to regain Palestine”, to avenge the killing of “our nation's sons” and to expel all “infidel armies” from “the land of Muhammad”—could be those of any conventional national-liberation movement. Others are more millenarian: to bring everyone to Islam, which, says Mr bin Laden, “is the religion of showing kindness to others, establishing justice between them, granting them their rights, and defending the oppressed and persecuted.” All this will come to pass once everyone is living in an Islamic state, a caliphate governed by sharia law. Hence “the martyrdom operations against the enemy” and the promise of paradise for those who carry them out.
Anarchists have always believed in the antithesis of a Muslim state. They want a world without rule. Their first great theoretician, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, wanted to abolish centralised government altogether. This, though, would not bring the chaos with which the word anarchy is often considered synonymous. On the contrary, a sort of harmonious order would ensue, the state being replaced by a system of autonomous groups and communities, glued together by contract and mutual interest in place of laws. Justice, argued this essentially non-violent man, was the “central star” governing society.
Though Proudhon is remembered for the dictum, “Property is theft!” he actually believed that a man had the right to possess a house, some land and the tools to work it. This was too much for Mikhail Bakunin, a revolutionary nationalist turned anarchist who believed in collective ownership of the means of production. He believed, too, that “the passion for destruction is also a creative urge,” which was not a description of the regenerative workings of capitalism but a call to the barricades. Regeneration, however, was very much an anarchist theme, just as it is a jihadist one. As one of anarchism's leading interpreters, George Woodcock, has put it, “It is through the wrecks of empires and faiths that the anarchists have always seen the glittering towers of their free world arising.”
What prompts the leap from idealistic thought to violent action is largely a matter for conjecture. Every religion and almost every philosophy has drawn adherents ready to shed blood, their own included, and in the face of tyranny, poverty and exploitation, a willingness to resort to force is not hard to understand. Both anarchism and jihadism, though, have incorporated bloodshed into their ideologies, or at least some of their zealots have. And both have been ready to justify the killing not just of soldiers, policemen and other agents of the state, but also of civilians.
The heads roll
For anarchists, the crucial theory was that developed in Italy, where in 1876 Errico Malatesta put it thus: “The insurrectionary deed, destined to affirm socialist principles by acts, is the most efficacious means of propaganda.” This theory of “propaganda by deed” was cheerfully promoted by another great anarchist thinker, Peter Kropotkin, a Russian prince who became the toast of radical-chic circles in Europe and America. Whether the theory truly tipped non-violent musers into killers, or whether it merely gave a pretext to psychopaths, simpletons and romantics to commit murders, is unclear. The murders, however, are not in doubt. In deadly sequence, anarchists claimed the lives of President Sadi Carnot of France (1894), Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, the prime minister of Spain (1897), Empress Elizabeth of Austria (1898), King Umberto of Italy (1900), President William McKinley of the United States (1901) and José Canalejas y Méndez, another Spanish prime minister (1912).
Such assassinations, it may be argued, were less similar to al-Qaeda's than to those of the Narodniki, the members of the Russian Party of the People's Will, who believed in “destroying the most powerful person in government” to undermine its prestige and arouse the revolutionary spirit. This they had undoubtedly done in 1881 by murdering Tsar Alexander II, even though he had been a reformer and, indeed, a liberator of the serfs. In truth, the practice of assassination is as old as the hills, though it got its name only in the 11th-13th centuries when it was followed by the Nizari Ismailiyun, a Shia sect that considered the murder of its enemies—conducted under the influence of hashish (hence assassin)—to be a religious duty.
Mr bin Laden would surely delight in some dramatic assassinations today. Presidents and prime ministers, however, do not nowadays sit reading the newspaper on the terraces of hotels where out-of-work Italian printers wander round with revolvers in their pockets, as Cánovas did, or walk the streets of Madrid unprotected while looking into bookshop windows, as Canalejas did. So Mr bin Laden must content himself with the assertion that on September 11th, “God Almighty hit the United States at its most vulnerable spot. He destroyed its greatest buildings...It was filled with terror from its north to its south and from its east to its west.”
The anarchists, too, were happy to resort to more indiscriminate acts of terror. “A pound of dynamite is worth a bushel of bullets,” said August Spies, the editor of an anarchist newspaper in Chicago, in 1886. His readers evidently agreed. A bomb thrown soon afterwards was to kill seven policemen breaking up a strikers' gathering in the city's Haymarket Square.
France, too, had its dynamitards. One of their bombs blew up the Restaurant Véry in Paris in 1892. Another, some months later, which was destined for a mining company's offices, killed six policemen and set off a flurry of wild rumours: acid had been placed in the city's water supply, it was said, churches had been mined and anarchists lurked round every corner. A year later a young anarchist, unable to earn enough to feed himself, his lover and his daughter, decided to take his own life—and at the same time make a protest. Ready to bomb but unwilling to kill, he packed some nails and a small charge of explosive into a saucepan and lobbed it from the public gallery into the Chamber of Deputies. Though it caused no deaths, he was executed—and then avenged with another bomb, this one in the Terminus café at the Gare St-Lazare which killed one customer and injured 19. The perpetrator of this outrage, designed to “waken the masses”, regretted only that it had not claimed more victims. A popular street song boasted:
It will come, it will come,
Every bourgeois will have his bomb.
And many were inclined to agree. Four more bombs went off in Paris in the next two months.
Other countries were hardly more peaceful. A bomb was lobbed into a monarchist parade in Florence in 1878, another into a crowd in Pisa two days later. In 1893, two bombs were thrown into the Teatro Liceo in Barcelona, killing 22 opera-goers on the first night of the season. A year later a French anarchist blew himself up by accident in Greenwich Park in London, presumably on his way to the observatory there. Two years later, at least six people taking part in a religious procession in Barcelona were blown to bits by an anarchist bomb. Countless attempts were also made on the lives of bigger names, such as King Alfonso XII of Spain (1878), Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany (May and June 1878), Andrew Carnegie's business partner, Henry Clay Frick (Pittsburgh, 1892), a Serbian minister (Paris, 1893) and King Alfonso XIII and his English bride (Madrid, on their wedding day, 1906). In this last incident alone 20 bystanders died.
Then, as now, alarm and consternation broke out. Admittedly, violent attacks on prominent figures were quite frequent: one American president had been assassinated in 1865 (Lincoln) and another in 1881 (Garfield), and seven attempts were made on Queen Victoria's life before her reign ended in 1901, none of them by anarchists. Even so, governments could hardly do nothing. The response of some was repression and retribution, which often provoked further terrorist violence. Germany arrested 500 people after the second attack on the kaiser, many for “approving” of the attempts on his life. Spain was particularly prone to round up the usual suspects and torture them, though it also passed new laws. After the Liceo bombing, it brought in courts-martial for all crimes committed with explosives, and only military officers were allowed to be present during the trial of the supposed bombers.
France, too, resorted to unusual measures. After the bombing of the French Chamber of Deputies, 2,000 warrants were issued, anarchist clubs and cafés were raided, papers were closed down and August Vaillant, the bomber, was tried, found guilty and sentenced to death in a day. An apologist who declared that not a single man in France would grieve for the president if he confirmed the sentence (as he did), and then was assassinated (as he was), was jailed for two years for incitement to murder. The French parliament made it a crime not just to incite sedition but also to justify it. Criminal “associations of malefactors” were defined by intent rather than by action, and all acts of anarchist propaganda were banned.
Similarly, in Britain soon after last month's bombings, the prime minister, Tony Blair, announced that “condoning or glorifying terrorism” anywhere, not just in the United Kingdom, would become a crime. Places of worship used as centres for “fomenting extremism” are to be closed down. Measures will be taken to deport foreigners “fostering hatred, advocating violence to further a person's beliefs, or justifying or validating such violence.” Naturalised Britons engaged in “extremism” will be stripped of their citizenship.
Jihadists, of course, cross borders, and many are presumed to be indoctrinated by foreigners, even if they commit their deeds at home. So it was too with the anarchists, even though they often plotted and acted alone. Many of the ideas came from Russia. Besides Bakunin, Russia also produced Kropotkin, “an uncompromising apostle of the necessity of violence”, according to Barbara Tuchman in “The Proud Tower”.
Italy, by contrast, produced many of the assassins: for example, those who killed Carnot, Cánovas, Empress Elizabeth and King Umberto. It also exported utopians who founded anarchist settlements like the Cecilia colony in Brazil. Germany, too, had its share of fanatics, including Johann Most, the editor of an incendiary New York newspaper, Freiheit, and many of the Jewish anarchists who congregated in London's East End. France also sent anarchos abroad: a prominent theorist, Elisée Reclus, taught in Brussels. The man who shot McKinley was the child of Polish immigrants to America. And Switzerland, like England, played host to exiles who came and went with considerable freedom.
No wonder, then, that anti-foreigner feeling ran high in many places. In the United States, President Theodore Roosevelt asked Congress to exclude anyone who believed in “anarchistic principles” and, by treaty, to make the advocacy of killing an offence against international law. Congress duly obliged with an act that kept out anyone “teaching disbelief in or opposition to all organised government”.
By then an international conference had been held (in 1898) at the behest of Italy to seek help in fighting anarchism. The Italians did not get all they wanted: Belgium, Britain and Switzerland refused to abandon the right of asylum or to extradite suspected anarchists. But in 1893, just after the Liceo bombing, Britain had reluctantly banned open meetings of anarchists after the Liberal home secretary, H.H. Asquith, had come under attack for allowing an anarchist meeting to commemorate the Chicago Haymarket martyrs.
The vast majority of anarchists, like the vast majority of Islamists, were not violent, and some of those who once believed in bloodshed, notably Kropotkin, were to turn against it in time. But those who relished indiscriminate violence used an argument with striking similarities to that used by Mr bin Laden. Thus Emile Henry, who had left the bomb in the café at the Gare St-Lazare, was to justify his act by saying that those in the café were all “satisfied with the established order, all the accomplices and employees of Property and the State...There are no innocent bourgeois.” For his part, Mr bin Laden, in his “Letter to America” of November 2002, justifies the “aggression against civilians for crimes they did not commit” with a slightly more sophisticated variant. They deserved to die, he said, because, as American citizens, they had chosen “their government by way of their own free will, a choice which stems from their agreement to its policies.”
Such sentiments recall the characters of Conrad's “The Secret Agent” and Fyodor Dostoevsky's “Devils”. Inspired by 19th-century anarchist intellectuals and events, they describe men of almost autistic lack of empathy and contorted moral sense. For Conrad's protagonist, nicknamed the Professor, the world's morality
was artificial, corrupt and blasphemous. The way of even the most justifiable revolutions is prepared by personal impulses disguised into creeds. The Professor's indignation found in itself a final cause that absolved him from the sin of turning to destruction as the agent of his ambition. To destroy public faith in legality was the imperfect formula of his pedantic fanaticism; but the subconscious conviction that the framework of an established social order cannot be effectually shattered except by some form of collective or individual violence was precise and correct. He was a moral agent—that was settled in his mind. By exercising his agency with ruthless defiance he procured for himself the appearances of power and personal prestige. That was undeniable to his vengeful bitterness. It pacified its unrest; and in their own way the most ardent of revolutionaries are perhaps doing no more but seeking for peace in common with the rest of mankind—the peace of soothed vanity, of satisfied appetites, or perhaps of appeased conscience.
Anarchists like the Professor, a quiet man who went round with a bomb in his pocket that he could detonate with the squeeze of a rubber ball should he be arrested, were difficult to detect and impossible to deter. So why did their wave of terror pass? Not, it seems, because of the measures taken to deter them. The main reason, rather, was that the world became consumed with the first world war, the Russian revolution, the fight against fascism and the struggles against colonialism. Another was that, after a while, the more rational anarchists realised that terrorism seldom achieves the ends desired of it—as the IRA has recently acknowledged.
But in truth the wave did not entirely pass; it merely changed. The anarchist terrorists of 1880-1910 were replaced by other terrorists—Fenians, Serb nationalists (one killed the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and thus sparked the first world war), Bolsheviks, Dashnaks (revolutionary Armenians), Poles, Macedonians, Hindu nationalists (among them the killers of Mahatma Gandhi), fascists, Zionists, Maoists, Guevarists, Black Panthers, Red Brigades, Red Army Fractions, Palestinians and even al-Qaeda's jihadists. Few of these shared the anarchists' explicit aims; all borrowed at least some of their tactics and ideas.
And the world went on. It probably would even if yesterday's dynamitards become today's plutoniumards. But terrorism is unlikely to be expunged. As long as there are men like Conrad's Professor, there will be causes to excite them, and therefore deeds to terrify their fellow citizens.
Sources:
“Anarchism”, by George Woodcock, Pelican Books, 1962.
“The Anarchists”, by James Joll, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1964.
“The Proud Tower”, by Barbara W. Tuchman, Macmillan, 1962.
“How Russia Shaped the Modern World”, by Steven G. Marks, Princeton University Press, 2003.
“East End Jewish Radicals 1875-1914”, by William J. Fishman, Five Leaves Publications, 2004.
“Violent London: 2,000 Years of Riots, Rebels and Revolts”, by Clive Bloom, Sidgwick & Jackson, 2003.
Posted by Mark at 04:01 PM | Comments (0)
Iran rocks (quietly)
Iran's 'culturally inappropriate' rock hopefuls struggle to be heard
Robert Tait in Tehran
Tuesday August 23, 2005
Guardian
The soaring guitar solos and haunting keyboard melodies owe more than a nod to Pink Floyd, Yes, Deep Purple and other ageing icons of 70s British rock.
But while they may have emulated their heroes' musical virtuosity, the members of Norik Misakian Band are unlikely to follow their path to world fame and fortune. As one of hundreds of Iranian rock acts springing up despite official disapproval, the group has never been able to experience playing a live gig in even the smallest setting.
And far from coveting the hedonistic lifestyles of western rock stars, its four members have all but given up hope of earning a living from their music. Now they are trying to breach the cultural and bureaucratic barriers separating them from an audience by seeking permission to release their first album.
They are doing so in the face of mistrust from Iran's Islamic authorities, who see rock as a symbol of western decadence and political protest.
"We are swimming against the tide and we anticipate that it might be impossible," said Misakian, 34, the band's lead guitarist and songwriter. "There are so many problems in trying to gain permission to release music and very often bands give up. But we won't give up. What's important for us isn't the financial issue but going beyond the boundaries and ensuring the album is available in music shops."
The ministry of culture and Islamic guidance has already rejected the 10-track instrumental album - carrying the English title Trails of the Soul - saying western rock is the product of drug addicts.
Undaunted, the group has reapplied for permission in what will be an important test of the cultural climate under Iran's ultra-conservative new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. To do so, its producer is trying to persuade the authorities that its aims are purely musical, not political.
The album is the product of two and a half years of writing and recording in a tiny basement studio in the capital, Tehran.
If it gains official approval, the band intends to distribute the album as a DVD to Europe, the US and Gulf states, as well as outlets in Iran.
Without that approval, it will never be allowed to perform on stage. Only artists allowed to release CDs can seek permission to play live. "It's impossible to make a living from rock music in Iran," said Edvin Markarien, 30, the bass player. "You are playing for yourself. It's art for art's sake."
The band's plight reflects that of dozens of rock acts across Iran, only a handful of whom have released their music commercially.
The culture ministry vets all proposed releases for musical and lyrical content. To allay its suspicions, some groups, such as the Norik Misakian Band, write songs without lyrics. But the ministry, which does not officially recognise rock in its permitted music categories, frequently rejects such work as culturally inappropriate.
Some artists have responded by setting up websites to distribute their material. Denied permission to perform live, others organise secret concerts in makeshift venues such as private homes or underground car parks, risking punishment by lashing if caught.
The restrictions, however, do not appear to have deterred the artists. A contest organised by an unofficial cultural website, Tehran Avenue, to find the most promising new Iranian music acts has attracted 86 entrants, more than 80% of whom are rock bands.
"Most of these bands are underground, with little chance of getting their work released, but their number is rising," said the website's founder, Sohrab Mahdavi. "It makes sense. The young generation is with us. Around 70% of Iran's population is under the age of 35 and so many of them are inclined towards rock music."
The trend is a remarkable transformation since the 1979 revolution, when all music, except revolutionary and religious songs, was banned. The embargo was partially lifted after a ruling from Iran's late religious leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, which permitted traditional folk music.
Rock, which was popular before the revolution, began a comeback in the 1990s after a cultural thaw introduced by the then president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and extended by his reformist successor, Mohammed Khatami.
As a result, a wide selection of previously forbidden music, from artists such as David Bowie, Led Zeppelin and Radiohead, is legally available. But acts such as Madonna and Abba are ruled out by the Islamic ban on the female singing voice.
Posted by Mark at 09:50 AM | Comments (0)
August 21, 2005
France vs colossal frogs
From the Independent
French countryside hit by a massive invasion of frogs
By John Lichfield in Paris
Published: 21 August 2005
A campaign in France to exterminate frogs may sound like the beginning of a civil war, but these are no ordinary frogs.
Hunters working for the government's wildlife agency will be stalking ponds in south-west France this weekend, aimed with flash-lights, rifles, silencers and night-vision sights.
They have been mobilised for the most intensive effort so far to terminate a plague of giant Californian bullfrogs which is threatening to disrupt the ecology of the Gironde, Dordogne and several other départements.
The aggressive and voracious bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana), introduced illegally 37 years ago, can grow to more than 4lbs in weight and almost 2ft long. It consumes other frogs, fish, lizards and even small birds.
Since the frogs were first released, as a joke, on a private pond near Libourne in 1968, they have colonised ponds, lakes, marshes and gravel pits all over the département of the Gironde. They have been found in the Landes area to the south and in the Dordogne, Lot-et-Garonne and Loir-et-Cher départements, further north.
Ecological groups have been warning for years that they must be eliminated to prevent the destruction of indigenous species. Had they been a delicacy for humans, the American interlopers might have been tolerated. Unfortunately for them, they are inedible (even their enormous legs).
Destroying the frogs is not easy, however. The Gironde fisheries protection association attacked a pond full of bullfrogs with electricity a few years ago. The frogs fought back. The hunters battled with them for two hours. They killed just one frog before they gave up.
Assaults on the frogs have also been made with nets and by draining ponds, to little effect.
Game-keepers and volunteers working for the Office National de la Chasse et de la Faune Sauvage (National Hunting and Wild-life Agency) have now developed night-fighting techniques. The frogs are easier to locate at night because their eyes reflect torchlight.
"Shooting them with rifles is the most effective method we have found," said an environmental campaigner, Luc Gueugneau.
"It seemed like a rather mean-spirited approach at first but we found that it was the best way of killing all the adults."
Even so, experimental attacks on ponds and lakes over the past 11 months have killed only 120 frogs. A much bigger offensive, starting this weekend, aims to exterminate all the bullfrogs in France within five to 10 years.
Posted by Mark at 11:57 AM | Comments (0)
August 19, 2005
God, guns and skydiving
"Imagine a group of today's youth standing around with their skateboards and piercing's [sic], when all of a sudden, one of them looks up and sees an aircraft at 12,000 feet, with a smoke trail.† What appear to be 5 human beings have exited the airplane, all of them trailing a stream of smoke.† Nearly a minute later, brightly colored parachute with the single word, "FORCE" boldly visible, begin to open...†"
Welcome to Force Ministries...
And this story from The Economist provides some interesting background. (Via Tim Chapman)
The jock-in-chief
Aug 11th 2005
An old English idea has been reborn in the Bush White House
THE phrase “muscular Christianity” is more resonant of Victorian England than modern-day Washington, DC. The idea was invented by British public-school headmasters (most notably Thomas Arnold of Rugby) who believed that a combination of sport and religion could develop the all-important quality of “character”. And it soon inspired generations of Englishmen to bring God and team sports to “lesser breeds without the law”. But today anybody looking for muscular Christianity would be advised to try the capital of the new American empire.
George Bush's well-known enthusiasm for God goes hand-in-hand with an equally well-marked enthusiasm for muscularity. Mr Bush is in “superior” physical condition, according to his annual medical. He can bench-press 185lb five times in a row; and, before a recent knee injury, he could run three miles at an average pace of six minutes and 45 seconds.
This “superior” condition is the result of an exercise regime that would have delighted Dr Arnold. Mr Bush's daily schedule is a secret, for obvious reasons; but whenever a calamity throws light on his routine he is invariably exercising. Earlier this year the White House was evacuated when an aeroplane wandered into restricted air space. Mr Bush was off mountain biking. In 2001, a lunatic fired shots at the White House. The president was working-out. In the morning before tragedy struck on September 11th Mr Bush had been running with a journalist who also happened to be a former All-American long-distance runner.
Mr Bush is a sports-fan as well as an exercise fiend. His greatest ambition, apart from being president, was to be baseball commissioner; his biggest, perhaps only, business success was as the managing partner of the Texas Rangers; and his favourite pastime is watching sports (he was watching American football when he had that bruising encounter with a pretzel). He is also keen on spreading his faith in physical fitness. In 2002, he launched a national fitness campaign by dragging 400 of his wretched staffers on a three-mile run.
Mr Bush is surrounded by fellow jocks. Donald Rumsfeld is a former Navy wrestling champion who, at 73, makes a habit of walking five miles a day through the Pentagon corridors. He also likes to challenge underlings to squash. Condoleezza Rice is a former competition-level ice-skater who rises at dawn to run on her treadmill. Margaret Spellings, the education secretary, is a weight-lifter. Even Alberto Gonzales, the diminutive attorney-general, is keen on golf and racquetball.
Enthusiasm for sport can be a ticket to Mr Bush's inner circle. Ms Rice works out with the president and spends time at Camp David watching baseball and football on television (apparently her most cherished dream is to be appointed the commissioner of the National Football League). And a poor physique can test the president's patience. When Mr Bush sacked Larry Lindsey, his portly economic adviser during his first term, he apparently complained in private about his failure to exercise.
Mr Bush's obsession was on full display during the search for a new Supreme Court justice. He apparently asked one candidate, Harvie Wilkinson, two tough questions: What is the most difficult decision you have ever made? And how much do you exercise? The 60-year-old Mr Wilkinson said he ran three and a half miles a day. But the president urged him to do more cross-training. “He warned me of impending doom,” Mr Wilkinson told the New York Times. In introducing the successful candidate, John Roberts, to the country Mr Bush highlighted the fact that he had been captain of his high-school football team—as if this made up for the fact that he was a swot at Harvard Law School.
Onward Christian athletes
The contrast with Bill Clinton could hardly be greater. You could hardly imagine Mr Clinton introducing Stephen Breyer or Ruth Bader Ginsburg as his Supreme Court nominees by citing their hockey skills. As for the president himself, his jogging was mostly for show, and a hefty hamburger would often be consumed afterwards. Mr Clinton much preferred nerds to jocks, and even gave the Pentagon to slouching Les Aspin.
Mr Bush's own likings are par for the course in his party. Look at the Republicans on Capitol Hill. Dennis Hastert, the House speaker, made his name as a high-school wrestling coach. Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, is a keen marathon runner who takes his staff on workouts around the Mall. Another senator with presidential ambitions, George Allen, was a college sports star (and the son of a famous Redskins coach). And Arnold Schwarzenegger is, well, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Or look at Republican voters. If the Democrats have an impregnable lead among the country's PhDs, the Republicans have a lock on the NASCAR crowd. For Democrats the main qualification for a top job is “intelligence”—hence their constant complaint that Republican presidents are too dumb for the job. But for Republicans the most important qualification is “character”—by which they mean an ability to hit balls and bang heads.
Mr Bush's preferences are also rooted in his family history. The Bushes have always made a point of sending their offspring to East Coast boarding schools that were modelled on Thomas Arnold's Rugby, where the chapel and the playing fields were carefully designed to inculcate muscular Christianity. Mr Bush's grandfather and father were both athletic stars (the 41st president played in the College World Series in both 1947 and 1948). A day at Kennebunkport is a mini-Olympics of tennis, swimming, horseshoes and high-speed golf.
This is not to say that all Democrats are nerds (John Kerry is a superb athlete), nor that all Republicans are jocks (Karl Rove is many things; athlete is not one of them). But therein lies the rub: unlike Democrats, Republicans are happy to let the jocks take the glory while the nerds do their homework for them.
Posted by Mark at 12:37 PM | Comments (0)
August 15, 2005
Premature Illumination
A long feature on Robert Anton Wilson from the Santa Cruz Metroactive
Premature Illumination
Robert Anton Wilson, the iconoclastic genius behind the famed 'Illuminatus! Trilogy,' has a few thousand things he'd like to teach you
By Bill Forman
Decades before the crossover cult film What the Bleep Do We Know!? popularized the idea that the principles of quantum mechanics could be applied to the world at large, Robert Anton Wilson had laid out much the same theory in his book, Prometheus Rising. Venture further into Wilson's oeuvre and you'll find equally prescient material on longevity research; you'll likely even stumble across source materials that inspired Dan Brown to write The DaVinci Code.
"I think I'm the most ripped-off artist of our time," says Wilson, seated in the living room of a modest Capitola apartment adorned with an array of pookahs, Buddhas and at least one Loch Ness monster. "People keep coming out with books 30 years after--books on things I wrote about--and they all become bestsellers.
"I wrote about them too early," says Wilson, raising a thin arm and shaking his finger to emphasize his point: "Don't be premature."
Lance Bauscher agrees. "This whole DaVinci Code thing with Dan Brown, I mean, that's all Bob's material," says Bauscher, who directed a film about Wilson called Maybe Logic and also runs an academy through which Wilson's online course, "Tale of the Tribe," begins on Aug. 14. "Dan Brown has read all of Bob's books. But Bob doesn't really compromise his storytelling--not that Dan Brown does--but it's for a general audience, and Bob just doesn't go there."
Maybe that's because Wilson can't helping throwing his audiences so many curve balls, mixing esoteric facts with wild flights of imagination--and rarely revealing which is which. From self-destructing mynah birds to world domination enterprises determined to grant immortality to Adolf Hitler, the irascible Wilson's Illuminatus! Trilogy (written in the '70s with co-author Robert Shea) is a fun-house ride through every conspiracy theory under the sun--as well as a few that appear to have been hatched in some far distant solar system.
At age 73, Wilson's body and voice have both been weakened by post-polio syndrome, but his brain and his humor are as sharp as ever.
"His humor is constant and people are never sure if he's being serious," says Bauscher of Wilson's intellectual gymnastics. "I mean, the Illuminati: is it a joke or serious? And Discordianism: is it a joke disguised as a religion, or a religion disguised as a joke?"
All of which helps explain why Wilson's name doesn't frequent bestseller lists, nor is he routinely credited for the insights that are beginning to capture the public imagination decades later.
In fact, one day this past spring, after Santa Cruz moviegoers had lined up to see What the Bleep Do We Know!? in sufficient numbers to justify its three-month run, Robert Anton Wilson was lying alone, conscious but unable to move, on the floor of this one-bedroom Capitola apartment for 30 hours.
"It really didn't seem that long," says Wilson of his collapse, which ended when his daughter arrived and broke down the door. "And I remember thinking, as I'm lying there trying to move and unable to move: Hey, I may be dying now. And it didn't frighten me or bother me at all."
Wilson's subsequent trip to the hospital, the first of his adult life, was a different story altogether.
"The worst thing about hospitals," says Wilson, who was rescued when his daughter managed to break into the apartment, "is that all the rights guaranteed in the first 10 amendments are immediately canceled. You have no civil rights whatsoever. And the second thing is, all the ordinary rules no longer apply--you are no longer a person deserving of kindness, you're a disobedient child who has to be reprimanded and herded around. My God, I don't know why people put up with such treatment." Wilson, we can presume, doesn't particularly like being told what to do.
"Not by people who treat me like an idiot. Not when I'm 73 years old, I have 35 books in print, I supported a wife and four kids for most of my life. I do not appreciate being treated like a disobedient 4-year-old, the way they treat everybody in the hospital."
Of course, you don't have to go to a hospital to be treated like that, but Wilson's on a roll ...
"I was an editor of Playboy, for chrissake," he cries, as though that, if nothing else, should carry some weight in this culture. "I've had plays performed in England, Germany and the United States; my books are in print in a dozen countries. Why the hell do they treat me like a child? I refuse to tolerate it. If they won't treat me with dignity, I won't go anywhere near them, especially with all the goddamned germs they got floating around there. CNN did a report on it--the number of people who are killed by diseases picked up in hospitals is much greater than the number who are killed by cars.
"I'm never going to a hospital again. Never, never, never, never! I will lie on the floor and die before I go back to a hospital."
Maybe, Baby
A presumably less opinionated Robert Anton Wilson was born into this world--Brooklyn or Long Island, he claims not to remember which--on Jan. 18, 1932. Raised in an Irish-Catholic ghetto, he attended a Catholic school whose strict dogma and not exactly cheerful nuns helped inspire future rebellions. When he was 7 or 8, Wilson recalls in Bauscher's film, they told him there was no Santa Claus.
"I kept waiting for them to admit there's no God," says Wilson. "They never did."
Wilson attributes the curing of his childhood case of polio at the age of 4 to the Sister Kenny method of physical therapy, which in those days was regarded by the medical community as so much quackery.
Such formative events left Wilson with a high regard for experimentation and research, as well as a decided antipathy for faith-based and conventional wisdom.
"Faith-based organizations say we don't need any more research, we know enough now, we can be dogmatic, whereas researchers say we don't know enough now, investigate, research," argues Wilson. "Faith is a reason to become stupid: 'From this point forward, I will remain stupid.' To me, faith-based organizations are responsible for everything I see wrong with this planet. Research-based organizations are responsible for everything I like about it. Before the French Revolution, the average life expectancy was 37 years. Now it's 78 years. All due to research-based organizations. Not at all due to faith-based organizations. All faith-based organizations give you is George Bush. Research-based organizations give you cures for disease."
At age 17, Wilson was planning a career in electrical engineering when he came across a copy of Alfred Korzybski's Science and Sanity while perusing the library bookshelves at Brooklyn Technical High School. Korzybski--who will be featured in the "Tale of the Tribe" class along with other seminal thinkers like Giordano Bruno, Giambatista Vico, Friederich Nietzsche, Ernest Fenollosa, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Buckminster Fuller, Claude Shannon and Marshall McLuhan--had as profound an influence on Wilson's young mind as his work would have on that of later generations.
Wilson was particularly taken with the Polish semanticist's critique of newer European languages. "Korzybski suggested dozens of reforms in our speech and our writings, most of which I try to follow. One of them is if people said 'maybe' more often, the world would suddenly become stark, staring sane. Can you see Jerry Falwell saying: "Maybe God hates gay people. Maybe Jesus is the son of God.' Every muezzin in Islam resounding at night in booming voices: 'There is no God except maybe Allah. And maybe Mohammed is his papa. Think about how sane the world would become after a while."
Maybe it would.
"Well, yeah," says Wilson. "Maybe."
Some of It Has Got to Be True
The opening of the American mind, or at least the one belonging to Robert Anton Wilson, continued more-or-less unabated throughout the '50s and '60s. In 1958, he married Arlen Riley--who had worked as a scriptwriter for an Orson Welles radio show--and she went on to introduce Wilson to the work of Alan Watts. Friendship and collaborations with Timothy Leary followed, as well as experimentation with an array of drugs and mystic traditions. But it was in the decidedly secular surroundings of the Playboy editorial office, back in the late '60s, that two associate editors would hatch the idea of the Illuminatus! Trilogy, which remains Wilson's best-known work to this day.
"I'm sorry to disappoint you, but it was much like working at any other magazine," says Wilson, who never even got to visit Hef's grotto. "I mean, you went into the office, you did your job and you went home. The difference is that all the girls were good-looking. Of course, I was happily married and not fucking all the secretaries, I'm sorry to say."
Wilson and co-conspirator Robert Shea did borrow a few ideas from letters to the editor they received at Playboy, but most of the influence on their collaboration came from the broader gestalt of an era that was obsessed with esoteric arcana and increasingly paranoid about all manner of conspiracies.
"He and I were talking one night over bloody marys and peanuts," recalls Wilson, "and he says, 'What if every conspiracy theory is true?' It began as satire, but a lot of people were really scared by it. Which makes sense, because some of it has got to be true."
Careening wildly from detective story to first-person rant, from twisted history to apocryphal speculation, the Illuminatus works continue to influence the oddest assortment of young minds. Camper Van Beethoven were outspoken fans, as were the Seattle Posies, who paid tribute to Wilson on their first album. (Wilson says Guns 'N' Roses were also fans, but it's probably unfair to hold him responsible for them,) Author Tom Robbins is a Wilson devotee, as is Bay Area author R.U. Sirius, who took his name from Wilson's book, Cosmic Triggers, and went on to found Wired magazine precursor Mondo 2000. (Sirius is also one of the instructors at the Maybe Logic online academy, as are Dice Man author Luke Rhinehart; chaos magic godfather Peter Carroll; DePaul professor Patricia Monahan, who is also Robert Shea's widow; and several others.)
Wilson has also inspired at least two religions, or send-ups thereof: Discordianism took root in the immediate wake of the trilogy, while the Church of the Subgenius enshrined Wilson--in the form of pipe-clenching icon Bob Dobbs--as its figurehead some two decades later.
While introducing him at a convention, Subgenius founder and high priest Ivor Stang called Wilson "the Carl Sagan of religion, the Jerry Falwell of quantum physics, the Arnold Schwarzenegger of feminism" and "the James Joyce of swingset assembly manuals."
As the years went on, Wilson continued to write and speak with relentless energy. After he and his wife moved up to Capitola in the early '90s, he used an early incident here as a way to explain quantum physics.
"When I moved from Los Angeles I moved into what I thought was Santa Cruz," Wilson told a European audience during footage included in Bauscher's film. "Then we had something stolen from our car and we called the police, and it turned out we didn't live in Santa Cruz, we lived in a town called Capitola. The post office thought we lived in Santa Cruz, the police thought we lived in Capitola. I started investigating this and a reporter at the local newspaper told me we didn't live in Santa Cruz or Capitola, we lived in a unincorporated area called Live Oak."
"Now quantum mechanics is just like that," Wilson continues, "except that in the case of Santa Cruz, Capitola and Live Oak, we don't get too confused because we remember we invented the lines on the map. But quantum physics seems confusing because a lot of people think we didn't invent the lines, so it seems hard to understand how a particle can be in three places at the same time and not be anywhere at all."
The League of Armed Marijuana Patients
After 41 years of marriage, Wilson's wife and co-conspirator, Arlen, passed away in 1999, leaving Robert to continue on his own. The onset of post-polio symptoms has all but eliminated his speaking engagements, while making him a fervent proponent of the medical marijuana movement. "I'm a member of WAMM [Wo/Man's Alliance for Medical Marijuana] and of LAMP," says Wilson. "LAMP is the League of Armed Marijuana Patients. And also the Guns & Dope Party."
It was under the auspices of the latter party that Wilson ran as a write-in alternative to Arnold Schwarzenegger in the recall election, putting forth a platform that included the replacement of capitol legislators with ostriches. More seriously, he made a rare public appearance at a medical marijuana rally in Sacramento last month. "You know, at that WAMM rally the week before last, I was sitting up there and thinking, suppose some right-wing nut gets in and throws a bomb? Well, what the hell, I'd rather die for a cause then die for nothing. It didn't bother me at all. I can't frighten myself anymore."
But he can tire himself out. Not only is Wilson's mobility limited by post-polio symptoms, they also make him experience temperatures as 20 to 40 degrees colder than they actually are. "I was bitching to Lance about how post-polio problems are making it harder and harder to lecture, and he said, 'Well, why don't you start teaching online?'
"I enjoy feedback," says Wilson. "Intelligence is function of feedback. The more feedback you get, the more intelligent you become. The less feedback you get, the stupider you become."
Now, Wilson can use his iMac to communicate with the world outside--including students, fans and colleagues. Among the latter category are people like Albert Hoffman, the inventor of LSD as well as a drug called Hydergine, which Wilson describes as his "current panacea."
"It's a dendrite stimulant," explains Wilson. "Your nervous system has more dendrites than muscles. I may be walking naturally again someday if it works as well as some claim. Albert Hoffman is going to have his 100th birthday in January after 25 years on Hydergine, and everybody says he looks as healthy as a 60-year-old."
Through the years, Wilson and Hoffman have stayed in touch. "He's a fan of my books," says Wilson, "and I'm a fan of his drugs."
Yes, but Are You Serious?
In spite of his physical infirmity, Wilson is extremely generous with both his time and his wisdom. Still, even after hours of conversation, there remains one mystery he has yet to address. Maybe it's like asking a magician to give away the tricks of his trade, but when exactly is Wilson kidding and when is he, you know, serious?
The question causes Wilson to pause for the first time in our conversation, and then--is it by chance or conspiracy?--his phone rings.
The caller asks for Arlen Wilson, wanting to know if "he" is available to come to the phone. Wilson says no, and the caller asks to whom she's speaking.
"This is Boris Karloff," says Wilson.
"I'm sorry," says the caller, "did you say Boris Karloff?"
"Yes, what can I do for you?"
"Is Mr. Wilson available?"
"No, he moved to Shanghai a few years ago."
The phone conversation comes to an abrupt end shortly thereafter.
A telemarketer? I ask.
No, jury duty, he answers.
OK, so at what point is Wilson kidding and at what point is he serious?
"The older I get, the less seriously I take anything," says Wilson. "The Chinese say the wise become Confucian in good times, Buddhist in bad times and Taoist in old age. I'm old enough to be a Taoist. I don't see anything very seriously." Not even, as it turns out, mortality.
"I know I'm going to die sometime soon: five weeks, five months, five years," says Wilson. "I don't know, maybe 50 years if stem cell research moves along. But I don't know and I don't care. And I can't take it seriously anymore. If George Bush is president of the free world, who can take anything seriously?
For more information on Robert Anton Wilson and links to his course, visit www.rawilson.com.
Posted by Mark at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)
Maharishi pulls out of "scorpion" Britain
All you need is love and peace - but not in destructive Britain, so maharishi pulls out
Followers split as 95-year-old guru ends meditation teaching in 'scorpion nation'
Mark Honigsbaum, Monday August 15, 2005, The Guardian
You can do it in peace-loving nations such as Ireland and Holland. And, despite its record in Vietnam and Iraq, you can still do it in the United States. But try meditating for a more enlightened Britain and you could find yourself accused of feeding "the destroyer of the world."
Nearly 40 years after he first turned the Beatles on to transcendental meditation at his Indian ashram - sparking an upsurge of interest in his philosophy across the world - the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has ordered his followers to stop teaching his advanced meditation and levitation techniques in Britain.
Disgusted at Tony Blair's support for the US in the Iraq war and the British electorate's failure to unseat the prime minister at the general election, the 95-year-old guru says there is no point continuing to waste the "beautiful nectar" of TM on a "scorpion" nation.
"The good effects of transcendental meditation - increased creativity and long life - should not be given to a dangerous country that is constantly busy destroying the world," said the maharishi, speaking at one his regular press conferences in the Netherlands. "TM is a gift from me to those who want to create peace and harmony in the world."
Although the maharishi's comments came before the July terror attacks on London, his declaration has divided followers in Britain and abroad concerned about his increasingly eccentric political views. In recent years, the maharishi, who broadcasts on a private satellite channel from a converted monastery in Vlodrop, in Holland, has proffered opinions on everything from crime to the Israel-Palestine conflict to how countries can best foster military defence.
More over at The Guardian
Posted by Mark at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)
August 13, 2005
Creature Wars
Shark vs Octopus (requires Real Player) and Praying Mantis vs Humming Bird.
Yikes!
Via Joe Mcnally and Corpus Mmothra.
Posted by Mark at 04:48 PM | Comments (0)
August 09, 2005
China's Anomalous Propaganda Unit in action?
Dragons in the Tibet Sky
Photo from dajiyuan.com
A photo of two peculiar dragon-shaped objects taken from a plane flying over Tibet’s Himalayas piqued many users’ interest when displayed on a Chinese website. The photographer is an amateur.
On June 22, 2004, the photographer went to Tibet’s Amdo region to attend the Qinghai-to-Xizang Railroad laying ceremony, and then took a plane from Lhasa to fly back inland. When flying over the Himalaya’s, he accidentally caught these two "dragons" in a picture that he took. He called these two objects "the Tibet dragons."
Looking at the photo, these two objects appear to have the characteristics of crawling creatures: The bodies seem to be covered by scales, the backs have spine-like protuberances, and also they have gradually thinning rear ends. Although the photo caught only a portion of the entire scene, it was sufficient create the appearance of two gigantic dragons flying in the clouds.
This photo, shown on some websites such as post.baidu.com and other forums, aroused the website visitors’ curiosity. One person commented, “No wonder that China is the homeland of the dragon! Nature is truly mysterious and powerful, it can always produce spectacular sights beyond people's expectations.”
More over at Epoch Times
Posted by Mark at 12:01 PM | Comments (0)
August 04, 2005
Sallekhana: beyond life and death
A deadly belief is reborn: Beyond life, beyond death
When Shradha Shri decided to starve herself to death hundreds came to watch. Fasting to achieve nirvana is one of Jainism's holiest rites and is making a revival, reports Justin Huggler from Vidisha
Published: 04 August 2005
In an upstairs room of a nondescript building down a narrow, winding lane, a woman died yesterday. For the past seven weeks she had been starving herself to death, and hundreds of visitors came to watch her slowly die. But it wasn't just morbid curiosity. Those who were allowed into the room knelt before the woman in reverence and touched their heads to the floor.
Shradha Shri was performing sallekhana, one of the holiest rites of the Jain religion: fasting to death. Jains, who, like Hindus, believe in reincarnation, believe that sallekhana can free a soul from the endless cycle of rebirth and death.
When The Independent visited Shradha Shri a few days before her death, she looked far older than her 60 years. Her cheeks were sunken, her teeth all missing. She was so weak she could not sit up without help, and lay motionless on a thin cloth spread on the floor while people crowded round her.
It was easy to find her. Everyone in Vidisha, a typical dusty Indian town with cows and goats wandering the streets, knew where the Jain woman was starving herself to death.
Continued at The Independent
Posted by Mark at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)
Monkey Medicine
I know what's good for me
Sick chimps will gnaw on just the right plants to make themselves feel better. And, says Laura Spinney, their self-medication could teach us a thing or two
Published: 03 August 2005
Chausiku, an adult female chimpanzee, wasn't well. She moved painfully slowly, lagging behind the rest of her group, and later lay listlessly on her bed of branches. Her appetite seemed to have vanished, except when it came to one particular plant: Vernonia amygdalina, or bitter leaf. Plucking the youngest stems, she removed the leaves and bark before chewing on bite-size portions of the inner pith. By the next afternoon she was up and running, apparently having made a complete recovery.
The primatologist on Chausiku's tail, Mike Huffman, was puzzled by her behaviour - which he subsequently saw repeated by other ailing chimps in the Mahale Mountains National Park, Tanzania. When his research assistant, Mohemadi Seifu Kalunde, mentioned that bitter leaf was used by local Tongwe people to treat malarial fever, stomach cramps and intestinal parasites, his puzzlement turned to excitement. Was Chausiku dosing herself for some intestinal malaise? The local people, he discovered, used the leaves, bark and roots of the plant, whereas Chausiku used the pith. Did she know something the Tongwe didn't?
Huffman made his observations of the sick Chausiku in 1987, triggering a new wave of research into the medicinal properties of bitter leaf - a plant that was already well-known to chemists. "This plant has been intensively studied for more than half a century," says Huffman, who is based at the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University, Japan. "But when we looked at the plant part that the chimps were using we discovered 13 new chemical compounds." Many of those new compounds turned out to have therapeutic effects, and that work created a flurry of excitement and helped to establish the new field of animal self-medication.
More at The Independent
Posted by Mark at 10:02 AM | Comments (0)