Sinister Forces blog

       Before anyone accuses me of being irresponsible or of having lost my mind completely, let me preface these remarks by stating that I am offering them as a kind of goose-bumpy thrill ride into the House of Horrors that has become the American political discourse during this campaign season. We have all heard that Barack Obama is either a Muslim (so what if he was? But he is not); a guy who “pals around with terrorists” (well, he doesn’t, but his opponent did pal around with G. Gordon Liddy), or is actually a socialist or a communist (fat chance) or, at best, anti-American (how does that work, actually?).

      What if the alternative theory is true? What if everything they are saying about Barack Obama was actually true about his opponent (except, maybe, the Muslim thing)?

Think about it. John McCain was a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. He was held in a North Vietnamese prison for years. Given an opportunity to leave before his comrades, he did not. As everyone who has spoken about McCain – whether for him or against him – has pointed out, John McCain is a genuine American hero.

Except, of course, that is precisely what was said about the Manchurian Candidate.

       Recently, documents relating to the treatment of American prisoners of war in Vietnam were declassified by the CIA. They make interesting reading, specifically because they treat of the same time and place where McCain spent his years of captivity. They speak of the need – expressed by the North Vietnamese – to use these prisoners for propaganda purposes. Of the need to brainwash them. To convert them to the North Vietnamese, i.e. Communist, point of view.

They express the desire of the NVA officials to treat the American prisoners of war – especially the pilots – humanely. Reports came back that indicated these particular prisoners looked healthy and well-treated on the rare occasions they appeared in public. That is not to say they were not tortured at other times and treated hideously. But, as we know, torture is another form of psychological warfare and brainwashing.

       In John McCain, we have a senator who has represented the Bush doctrine on many occasions and who – to quote his own words – really doesn’t know much about economics. McCain supported the vote to go into Iraq. He supported tax benefits for the wealthy and for the corporations. He collaborated in the overall demise of American power and hegemony in the world, and famously expressed the desire to stay in Iraq for as long as it takes to achieve victory.

Where Obama is concerned, he and his campaign have recently characterized him as a socialist and a communist, as well as a terrorist and anti-American.

       I urge my readers to re-read the Condon novel, The Manchurian Candidate, or to watch the original film version starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and Angela Lansbury. The parallels are astounding.

John McCain was an American military officer, captured in Asia and kept as a prisoner by a Communist regime that used brainwashing, torture, and psychological warfare on their prisoners. He returned to America, where he was routinely characterized as a great American hero and where his years of captivity in a Communist prison have become a kind of no-fly zone where his reputation and his integrity are concerned. If we think he is fine now, that the horrendous years of enslavement in Vietnam did not affect him mentally, emotionally, psychologically, or spiritually (not to mention physically), then we are not in touch with reality ourselves.

        Is John McCain a Manchurian Candidate? Most probably not. But he must be the first candidate for the Presidency who was a prisoner-of-war and who was subjected to mind control techniques and brainwashing efforts by a Communist regime. That means we have to at least consider the compelling parallels and wonder what the truth about McCain may be. Will a McCain presidency preside over the transformation of America into the world’s first, truly functional, Communist regime (if we believe Marx)? We are already nationalizing some of America’s financial and manufacturing assets, albeit in a “soft” way. Either America is in a pre-fascist state, or it is moving towards a communist one; either way, it will result in a national socialism. And McCain does represent the image of a man who would like to see a greater unity between the state and corporate power: the key indicator of a communist regime as well as of a fascist one.

       The “big government” versus “small government” argument that has been used to differentiate Democrats from Republicans respectively is a misleading one. In the first place, government has grown enormously under the Bush administration, a situation which is already counter-intuitive. In the second place, however, it’s not necessarily the size of the government that is critical to how a nation is run, but the degree to which government and corporate powers become virtually identical. A small government that is allied to large corporate interests is just as inimical to the welfare of the state as a large government with few corporate ties; but a large government that is allied to large corporate interests becomes a juggernaut against which the average citizen is relatively powerless.

       The essence of a Manchurian Candidate is not whether he or she is a Communist by conviction, but whether or not the Candidate is subject to control by other forces. In that sense, one could argue that every presidential candidate is a Manchurian Candidate, of course; but in the example we are exploring, we have a candidate for president who has spent time in a Communist prison as a POW and was exposed to brainwashing technology. In the novel (and film) the actual presidential candidate is a strong anti-Communist. A former Korean POW has been brainwashed to commit an assassination, thus paving the way for a Communist to become president. With the rising temperature of this campaign, and the underground whispers about the possible assassination of one of our candidates, we have a nearly perfect Manchurian scenario with a modern twist.

       As a student of history and popular culture, I felt the need to mention this (surprised that no one else has noticed the similarities). In my next posting, I will remark on the similarity in style and populist approach between Sarah Palin and … Evita Peron!

Those of you who have read my Unholy Alliance as well as Sinister Forces are aware of the documented support of fascism by certain elements in our own country.

I covered the relationship of the Bush family to the Nazis in Sinister Forces, citing the available -- declassified, unclassified, readily-available -- documentation.

Today, in the wake of the obscene statements by President Bush before the Israeli Knesset concerning "appeasement", there appeared in the Huffington Post a recap of everything I have been saying. Except it was not written by me, but by Larisa Alexandrovna.

Please give it a look:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larisa-alexandrovna/all-the-presidents-nazis_b
_102022.html


Thank you!

Okay, enough.

I have been silent for a while, largely due to my unwillingness to contribute to the overheated political rhetoric that dominates our media during this dysfunctional primary season. It’s not my place to try to tell you who to vote for, or even if you should vote. I realize that many of my readers are thoroughly disenchanted with the political system in this country (as how could you not be after Florida in 2000?), and consider politicians from both parties to be equally corrupt and the difference between the parties largely one of cosmetics and spin and not one of substance.

But I have been writing about political and historical issues for some time, and the events of the past few weeks have caused me some kind of psycho-spiritual embolism, so in order to relieve the astral pressure on my embattled cranium I feel the need to vent.

Issue Number One:

Watching MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann tonight (Thursday, April 24, 2008) I was startled to learn that yet another Republican has decided to meet with Nazis. Olbermann prefaced his remarks by saying, in effect, that one should resist any attempt to link Republicans with Nazis as a matter of course. I only wish the Republicans exercised the same restraint. Readers of my books are aware that the Republican Party has a long history of tolerance where Nazis and other assorted fascist fellow-travelers are concerned. It’s a matter of documentation, Keith, and for some reason damned few Democrats feel the need for the same warm and fuzzies that only a leather jackboot and a cracked monocle can provide. We can talk about the World Anti-Communist League; about Ronald Reagan’s wooing of anti-Communist ex-Nazis; of Richard Nixon’s defense of Romanian Nazis; etc. etc. Check out Sinister Forces, or Unholy Alliance. I’ve laid it all out there.

But today we have a new crease in the uniform. A Republican candidate for the Indiana State Congress – Tony Zirkle – has attended a meeting of the American National Socialist Workers Party in Chicago on April 20 of this year: Hitler’s birthday. Photos of the event show Zirkle standing before a painting of Hitler, making his own speech. Naturally, the GOP has called this “repulsive” and “nauseating,” but the damage is done. Now, we might be tempted to give Zirkle the benefit of a doubt: maybe he was trying to convince the Nazis to leave the Dark Side and embrace the Light. He did, after all, talk about Jesus and Christianity. However, Zirkle has also suggested in interviews with Indiana newspapers that “segregating African-Americans in separate states” is something that should be discussed. Thus, one more Republican name is added to the list of those who had tacitly or implicitly supported Nazism, a list that begins with Prescott Bush and Herbert Walker in the 1930s …

Issue Number Two:

I can’t even begin to express my disbelief at the fact that Richard Mellon Scaife has endorsed Hillary Clinton for President ... and that Mrs Clinton has apparently accepted the endorsement after criticizing Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement of Barack Obama.

Anyone who has read Sinister Forces knows the story of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” against Bill Clinton that was financed and spearheaded by Scaife and all the dirty details surrounding this national scandal.

I’m speechless. Just … without words to express the surreal nature of this scene. Is this Hillary’s way of getting back at Bill for his infidelities, by waving Richard Mellon Scaife in his face? I dunno.

So, America, this is why you are so cynical, I guess.

Issue Number Three:

Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I hate having to contribute to this brouhaha, but here it goes:

Hillary has attacked Barack Obama because of his pastor, Rev.Wright, who – in snippets of a sermon that showed up on YouTube – made the controversial statement “God damn America.” This is an issue that will probably dog Obama for the rest of the campaign, and it’s pathetic. Leaving aside all the arguments about this for just one moment, though, let’s look at another piece of evidence.

What about all the psychotic fanatics of the religious “right” that surround Republican presidential hopeful John McCain? Why is that not an issue? Not for McCain or for Hillary Clinton?

Well, it isn’t, I guess. It’s different. If John McCain has a weird pastor, that’s just eccentric. If Barack has a weird pastor, well … Barack is black, you see … and had an African father … who was a Muslim … and … and … and Barack lived in Indonesia for a few years as a child … so … it’s like … it’s like … well, it’s just different, that’s all. Black men with weird pastors are scary. White people with weird pastors are funny and kinda cute.

This whole campaign is starting to look like outtakes from Blazing Saddles.

Issue Number Four:

Barack Obama is not a Muslim.

Issue Number Five:

Barack Obama is not a Muslim.

Issue Number Six:

Barack Obama is not a Muslim, but I kinda wish he was. You want to keep America safe? Elect a Muslim president. That’s gotta make the Al-Qaedas of the world sit back and take a breather. How would they react to that? The Great Satan with a Believer president? Yikes.

But the fact is, he’s not. And you would not believe how many people I come across who think he is! It’s beyond belief and, once again, I am rendered speechless over the incredible stupidity of so many of my fellow Americans over this issue.

Jack Kennedy was a Catholic. No matter how you felt about Catholics and a “world-wide Catholic conspiracy” in 1960, at least you started from an incontrovertible fact: John F. Kennedy was undeniably a Catholic.

But Barack Obama is not a Muslim. His father was a Muslim.

I am not a segregationist. My father was a segregationist, though, as you can read in the declassified FBI documents reprinted in The Sinatra Files and in books about the Gary School Strike of 1945. My father was a John Birch sympathizer. He was also a Goldwater Republican (which actually looks sane compared to the neo-cons who’ve been running this country for the past seven years). But I am not a segregationist, and Barack Obama is not a Muslim.

Sorry to disappoint everyone (including Hillary, who cynically expressed some confusion on this point about a month ago).

Issue Number Seven:

Blue States. Red States. Enough already.

This dualistic characterization should have been jettisoned a long time ago. This is the one point – and the only one – on which I find myself in agreement with Lyndon LaRouche. It’s antiquated and meaningless, especially when you can no longer identify which party is more left or more right anymore. True conservatives despise the Bush administration and all it has done to damage the country by employing non-conservative principles: big government, big spending, invasion of privacy, etc. So … is the Bush administration really, really a right-wing administration? I dunno. Is fascism right-wing, or is it a radical deviation from the right? Doesn’t the right need a left in order to be right? Where is the left wing in America? It sure isn’t the Democratic Party. Not anymore.

So forget Blue States and Red States. It’s only a device to make us feel complacent about our differences which – using this system – seem mythically insurmountable. This is not the Civil War. This is America trying to understand itself, and figure out a way to survive with honor after two terms of dishonor and incredible breaches of the Constitution, in spirit if not in the letter of the law. We will disagree, that’s what happens when people are allowed to express their differences. But that does not mean we have to be divided, like children in kindergarten, into two separate camps and made to take naps while the “teachers” plot the rest of their afternoon.

On Henry Clay’s tombstone, you can read the following inscription: “I know No North -- No South -- No East -- No West.” Amen to that, brother.

As for me … no, I will not tell you whom I am voting for, or if I am voting. I don’t want to influence anyone in either direction. I realize you all have good reasons for voting – or not voting – the way you do. You can be participants, or observers. Or both. That’s your choice.

It’s up to you. Just don’t bitch about the outcome later if you are only an observer. Otherwise, you’ll start sounding like a commentator or a pundit, and we really don’t need any more of those. Right?

Left?

As you have all probably heard by now, Norman Mailer has died.

Some of you may remember that Mr Mailer very kindly supplied a foreword to my Unholy Alliance;  that foreword became part of his chapter on the occult in his book about writing, The Spooky Art. 

What you may not realize, however, is that I had known Mr Mailer over a period of almost thirty years, since the time he began writing The Executioner’s Song.  That was because a friend of mine –  the late Judith McNally – became his assistant then (the mid-1970s).  We all lived in Brooklyn Heights in those days, and Mr Mailer’s brownstone was across the street from where Judith lived and about a block from my apartment. 

This was not a relationship I deliberately cultivated, largely because I was certain that a lot of would-be writers were always trying to get him to read their manuscripts or open doors for them in the publishing world, or maybe they just wanted his autograph.  Instead, I maintained a kind of professional distance from a man I admired greatly (hey, I’m a New Yorker and that’s pretty much what we do!) but helped out from time to time:  when his printer wasn’t working, or by locating some research materials he needed to which I had access.  I would meet him and his wife Norris Church on those too rare occasions and they were always gracious and charming. 

When Unholy Alliance was first published in 1994, however – as a rack-sized paperback – I found I had attracted a fan.  Although my friend Judith would opportune him occasionally by pushing one manuscript or another of mine in front of him – those of my (still) unpublished novels – and he would always react favorably, I was still very shy of actually seeking his advice on anything I was working on.  After all, the gulf between his craft and mine was considerable.  I knew I still had a lot of work to do. And,as one of the most prolific authors I had ever known, he was always very busy.

But Unholy Alliance got his attention.  He has stated publicly that he read the book three times, and I can assure you that is so.  Mailer was not the sort to hand out praise where it wasn’t due, or to suffer fools gladly (as anyone who has read his work will realize at once).  I am not putting all this down to brag;  far from it.  What I want to emphasize is the nobility of a writer of his stature in dealing with a relative unknown.  Because what is not discussed in the obituaries you will read this weekend is his kindness and generosity towards other writers.  And I am not the only one, not by far. 

I admired his political position on the Vietnam War and, later, on the Iraq War.  I admired his approach to culture and the politics of culture.  I admired his lack of fear in approaching everything he thought worthwhile, whether it was running for political office or directing films or making his contribution to the JFK assassination literature.  If you doubt he was a great writer – probably the greatest American author of our generation – you need only pick up An American Dream,  Of A Fire on the Moon,  The Armies of the Night, Miami and the Siege of Chicago … or just read the first page of The Gospel According to the Son.  Only Mailer would dare to write in the first person as Jesus one day, and as the Devil the next (The Castle in the Forest).   Questions of life and death, God and the Devil, good and evil, and the war between the sexes occupied him for most of his life but especially in the last twenty years or so.  He became almost a Gnostic in the way he dealt with these issues.  He could cut through a theological argument with a mind sharpened on first-hand experience of war, marriage, politics, and of course literature.  His novel of the CIA – Harlot’s Ghost – is truly one of his best works and very probably the best novelization in existence of the CIA and its history up to the Kennedy election and the Bay of Pigs invasion.  Again, I ask you to suspend any disbelief for a moment and go back and read some of Mailer.  You will be struck by a kind of weird nostalgia for a time when values were being earnestly discussed – not from a tediously dogmatic religious position, but – from the perspective of a cultured, literate, author who wrote as easily in fiction as in non-fiction and for whom fiction was just another way of writing non-fiction.  The noise that passes for debate in the dawn of the 21^st century is all form and no substance – cotton candy and Wonder bread – when set against the red meat of Mailer’s journalism.  He takes no prisoners;  not even as a Prisoner of Sex, a book that caught the most flack from the feminist movement even as he believed himself to be a defender and apologist for women and women’s rights. 

But it is the man I knew in the past few years that I memorialize here.  Visiting him in Provincetown during the annual Norman Mailer Conference, reacquainting myself with his accomplished wife and children, I was able to have some long conversations with him on a wide range of issues.  The first year I attended the conference, Judith McNally – who was still working for him all these years, more than 25 as I recall – was there and in fine form.  We sat and listened to him discuss the ancient Egyptian concept of the soul, talking about all of this in detail, off-the-cuff and without notes, in the Provincetown Theatre before an audience of his close friends and admirers before reading some pages of Ancient Evenings, his sprawling novel of death and reincarnation.  It was an event that still resonates with me, several years after the fact:  Norman Mailer, in person, talking about Egyptian religion, mummification, and the ka.

By the same time next year Judith had died, tragically young.  Preceding him in death by only eighteen months, I like to think that she has been making arrangements for Norman’s reception in the Afterlife (a suggestion for which I am sure my ears will be boxed when it is my turn to ascend the Chariot!).  

There is really too much to say and I am rambling, I know.  My condolences go out to Norris, Norman’s wife for twenty-seven years, and to the rest of his family, his friends, to Mike Lennon his archivist and biographer, to Dwayne who was Judith’s opposite number in Provincetown and a writer himself, to the members of the Norman Mailer Society, and to all those readers and fans who recognize that a giant has passed among them, and disappeared … only to leave his writing as testimony to his genius.

During my last conversation with him, he expressed a desire to know how many more years he had to live.  He had just finished writing The Castle in the Forest – a novelized biography of Adolf Hitler, told from the point of view of a Demon – and it was designed to be the first volume of a proposed four-volume work.  He said that if he knew he had five or six more good years, he would take that time to finish the other three volumes.  If he knew he did not, then he would do other things.

He did other things.

Good-bye, Norman.  Thank you for everything.  It has been a privilege to know you. And a great loss to lose you.  Say "Hi" to Judith for me.

The latest edition of Time magazine has just appeared, dated April 30, 2007.� (Walpurgisnacht, the Witches� Sabbath made famous in the Bram Stoker novel, Dracula, for anyone interested in the resonances.)� And the cover story is about the Virginia Tech massacre, with the caption �Trying to Make Sense of a Massacre.��

It�s about what you would expect of Time.� Pious musings, faux sensitivity.� There are some unintentionally ironic moments, however.� The court-ordered evaluation of Cho following his stalking incident in November of 2005 bore writing by a judge who claimed that Cho posed �an eminent danger to self or others�.� Eminent, not imminent.� Cho strove for both.

In addition, his first victims in the classroom shootings were students attending a German language course;� next on the list was the engineering class being taught by a Romanian Holocaust survivor who lost his life while heroically saving those of his students, so many years after his survival of the death camps and on the day known as Yom ha-Shoah, �Holocaust Remembrance Day�.� Thus, as in every such event, synchronicities pile up.

But what was annoying were the reflections by Jeffrey Kluger and David von Drehle, which focused on the narcissistic aspects of the crime and the criminal who committed them.��� Kluger � in �Why They Kill� � begins by asking �If you want a sense of just how terrible Monday�s crimes were, here�s something to try: imagine yourself committing them.��� His point is that it is easier for us to imagine ourselves as victims than as killers.� I guess Kluger has never played a violent video game.� I guess Kluger never served in the armed forces.� I guess Kluger is not old enough to remember Vietnam�s My Lai massacre in which young, red-blooded American boys with automatic weapons � told to �shoot anything that moves� � did just that.� Of course, Kluger might respond, that was war.� This is different.� This is peacetime.� A college campus.� No �eminent� threat.�

With the increasing � the exponentially increasing � amount of technology available in our materialist society and the proportional lack of spiritual or moral elevation, we are reduced to using this technology to visualize fantasies of pornographic violence.� In these fantasies we are rarely, if ever, the victims.� We are usually the perpetrators.� Of course, in these fantasies we wear the white hats.� We are killing drug dealers, or terrorists, or gang members.� During basic training our men and women are taught that the enemy is a target, an object, not a human being.� No one accuses our troops in Iraq of being narcissists, though.

Our technology has enabled us to create powerful works of art, vast multi-media creations linking music and image and text into spiritually-elevating experiences that demonstrate our love for culture and artistic expression � except that, well, we don�t use it that way.� Instead, we project our own homicidal impulses onto the computer screens and with virtual Glocks murder hundreds, thousands, of virtual � whatever, whomever.� For some of us, this represents a safety valve, a release of these impulses and tensions as they are grounded in a virtual world where no one really dies and no one is really to blame.� For the rest of us, though, it�s training.

Kluger emphasizes � as does von Drehle in his article �It�s All About Him� � the role that narcissism plays in the minds of mass murderers and serial killers.� As usual, the mass murderer and the serial killer are conflated, taken to be representative of the same violent impulse when of course they are not.� The serial killer is a �lust killer� in the old terminology;� the crime has a definite sexual element.� The dead body itself is an object of desire, a focus for sexual acts and fantasies.� The mass murderer, however, is not concerned with the bodies he (it�s usually a male) creates.� He�s not concerned with quality, only with quantity, like a solder on a battlefield or a gamer at the controls.� The people he kills are not people; they are objects and not even sexual objects.� Instead, they represent the nameless and unnamable forces arrayed against him.�

To relegate the entire phenomenon of mass murder� to one of narcissism and clinical depression is to miss the point.� Narcissism and depression are not the cause, they�re the symptoms of an underlying disorder.� Narcissism is a defense mechanism, a way of keeping the identity intact in a world that has lost its moral compass; and by �moral� I don�t mean only knowing right from wrong (although that would be a welcome development), but something deeper than that.

In the United States, a country made up of people from virtually every country on earth, we have lost a shared sense of connection.� We don�t know to whom we belong:� what family, what race, what ethnicity, what religion � what history.� An immigrant from South Korea in 1992, how could Cho be expected to identify with the American Revolution, or Lincoln�s Emancipation Proclamation, or the inaugural address of President John F. Kennedy?�� Yet he did identify with the assassinations of Marilyn Monroe and John Lennon.� Pop icons took the place of cultural identification.�� �American� was probably an artificial identity for Cho; as was Virginia Tech.� None of these things � social and cultural constructions invented by white people � provided any kind of real human connection for Cho.� It�s hard enough for the rest of us, those of us born and raised here, to claim American �roots�:� the whole idea is pretty problematic, especially if your ancestors were slaves, or illegals, or Nazis brought in under Operation Paperclip � My own ancestors showed up here from Eastern Europe in the first decade of the twentieth century.� How much of American history, then, do I share with my neighbors?

The whole point of America was to do just that:� to create an artificial environment that would guarantee a certain level of freedom for all its citizens regardless of their background; a country removed from considerations of monarchy and therefore from considerations of hierarchies, classes, even race, religion and family.� It was an escape route from religious and political persecution in Europe.� Well � for white people, anyway.�

According to the statistics published in this issue of Time, most mass murders are carried out by men, both black and white (about evenly divided).� In dissecting the mentality of mass murderers, though, the articles in question focus on the idea of narcissism and avoid questions of race and ethnicity.� It is assumed that the motivation for one is the motivation for all, regardless of race.� That seems intellectually dishonest to me.�

Further, von Drehle compares Cho to Ted Bundy, and this is where his analysis starts to spring leaks.�� Bundy was a serial killer, a sexual psychopath and sadist, who killed women by first convincing them that he needed their help and then taking advantage of their kindness by knocking them out, kidnapping them, and then killing them.� He was handsome, charming, with an easy smile and ingratiating manner.� To all intents and purposes, he was socially integrated.� Cho was anything but.� While Cho may have had psycho-sexual problems � as seems evident from his stalking of women, and taking photos of them with his cell phone when they weren�t looking � the murders he committed had none of Bundy�s sexual dimensions (unless, of course, all murder is to be considered in terms of a sexual impulse).� Von Drehle, however, sees the narcissistic impulse as the core impulse, the unifying characteristic, of both killers.��� He writes �Only a narcissist could decide that his alienation should be underlined in the blood of strangers.��

Let�s take a look at that.� In the first place, who gave us the term �alienation� and how was it used?� Probably the first time it was employed in any kind of a methodical way was by Erich Fromm.� In The Art of Loving, he writes:�

Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature. He has been transformed into a commodity, experiences his life forces as an investment which must bring him the maximum profit obtainable under existing market conditions.

Alienation, therefore, is the result of a materialist society that turns human beings into commodities, i.e., objectifies them so that they have lost their essential humanity.� By directing one�s �life forces� into materialist goals, a human robs himself or herself of basic humanity, becomes � in Holden Caulfield�s words � a �phony�.� In order to sell oneself, one has to be concerned with packaging, with advertising, with spin:� these are all concepts we have inherited from World War II and its aftermath, from a black art known as �psychological warfare� but which has come down to us as �communications science� and its ugly offspring, advertising.� We live in a culture where people no longer communicate with people, they no longer touch;� instead, you read my ad and I read yours.� My people will call your people.� We�ll do lunch.

Lest someone think I am going off the deep end here, let�s look at Cho�s writings.� He blames the rich and the decadent.� His focus � self-serving and narcissistic or not � was precisely materialism. �To go back to von Drehle�s statement above, we would have to characterize virtually all revolutions, all civil wars, all wars in general, as acts of narcissism.� They all promote one identity above all others; one nation, or race, or religion, or political philosophy.� We belong, you don�t.� We are the solution, you are the problem.� You are standing in the way of my happiness.� You enslave me, if only with your thoughts; �your way of life;� the way you pray; the way you vote.���

The difference between acts like Cho�s and � let�s say � the Russian Revolution led by that great narcissist V.I. Lenin is that Cho�s alienation is a symptom of spiritual disconnectedness, of spiritual impoverishment.� In order to survive the slow death of one�s identity � the inability to frame one�s identity in terms of status goods, or credit cards, or nice hair � one focuses on one�s identity, creates an enhanced identity that is consistent with one�s inner life, one�s inner anger and hatred.

As I mentioned in the previous post, suicide bombers share more than a little in common with Cho.� Are they also narcissists?� Isn�t that a simplistic characterization of their motivations?� A suicide bomber is a mass murderer who ends by killing himself or herself in the process.� A suicide bomber leaves a video or written testimony and mails it to the press. Complains about oppression.� Kills innocent people.�

I submit that my linking Cho with suicide bombers is just as valid a comparison as that used by von Drehle and Kluger in their articles.� Using �narcissism� and �depression� as reasons for what happened at Virginia Tech is lazy and facile;� pop psychology masquerading as insight.�

Cho was sick, no doubt about that.� He was mentally ill.� But those are terms whose meaning we no longer recognize because they are labels that can be applied so easily it�s a wonder they don�t come with a solvent, just in case.� Cho was a �crazed, lone gunman� to be sure; but that doesn�t answer any questions, doesn�t solve any problems.� All the work the government tried to do in the wake of the Columbine massacre resulted in not very much, because the perspective was all wrong.� As usual, we like to focus on symptoms and not on root causes.� We could have prevented VT with � what?� A pill?� If only Cho had taken his meds �

Years ago, R.D. Laing wrote that schizophrenia was a spiritual disorder that should be respected as such.� His approach made some headway until it was discovered that schizophrenia could be treated with chemotherapy.� With drugs.� Schizophrenics were no longer wandering the streets, mumbling to themselves, hearing voices.� As long as they took their meds, we were safe from them.� So, Laing�s work became discredited, a quaint reminder of the kind of thinking that went on during the Sixties.� But what do the drugs actually do?� It is recognized that they do not cure schizophrenia, they only mask or reduce the symptoms so that schizophrenics can function in society, enabling them to bring themselves �the maximum profit obtainable under existing market conditions�.�

Yes, Cho was ill.� Dangerously, radically ill.� But by dismissing his case as easily as do Kluger and Von Drehle, we run the risk that other Chos will rise, enabled by his example;� because those market conditions still exist and alienated narcissism is the only survival mechanism available to those who can�t quite make a sale.

I suppose I am expected to comment on the past week�s notorious Virginia Tech massacre.� It seems that there has been enough media coverage of the event that for me to add anything would be entirely superfluous and unwelcome.� Be that as it may, there are some angles to this event that need examining.�� If you are a student at VT, though, you are encouraged to surf somewhere else.� You don�t need the aggravation.

I have not been able to see the documentation that Cho sent to NBC, beyond whatever has already been broadcast which � of course � is partial and heavily edited.� Therefore,� there is a lot I cannot address as yet.� I did read the famous play, in which he accuses a stepfather of abusing him and then eventually winds up killing him after attacking him with a variety of weapons.� I also read in the same play references to the Marilyn Monroe and John Lennon assassinations:� events I cover in Sinister Forces.� That Cho, at twenty-three years old, would even care about these last two events is in itself surprising.� (I know a lot of twenty-three year olds who would not know the relevance or the make the connections.)�� In that same play, there is language reminiscent of the writings of Sirhan Sirhan in the days prior to his assassination of Bobby Kennedy (�Kill!� Die!�) which made me think, for a moment, of Cho as a programmed killer.� But sometimes the difference between deliberate brainwashing and what occurs in our society naturally is very fine, very thin.

The association with the John Lennon assassination is startling, for it brings to mind the circumstances surrounding his killer.� Mark David Chapman was married to a woman of Japanese ancestry from Hawaii;� he was a mental patient for awhile;� he carried a copy of Salinger�s The Catcher in the Rye with him when he went to assassinate Lennon.� He identified with Holden Caulfield in the novel, a young man who was obsessed with what he called �phonies�: the insincere people he met at his school and in his environment generally.� I think we can see that Cho also identified with this idea when he castigated his schoolmates as rich, decadent individuals.

A generation of us growing up in the 1950s and 1960s also identified with Holden Caulfield.� The ongoing popularity of Salinger�s novel is evidence that this identification has not waned with the passing of time.� What worries me is that Cho will become a kind of pop icon in the years to come.� Just as Charles Manson has his own groupie following, a website, recordings of his songs for sale, and some loyal Family members still supporting him, Cho will become as strong in the underground due to his media-savvy approach to his own legend.� He produced a multi-media package of photos, writings, and video that he sent to NBC in the two-hour period between the shootings.� It is said that he also was influenced by a famous Korean film, The Old Boy, which I watched last year on DVD.� More about that later.

Cho lived within a violent fantasy, this much is certain.� He purchased handguns and then filed off the serial numbers (for what possible reason?� Did he intend on killing people, then dumping the gun somewhere to avoid detection and prosecution?� Not likely.� He wanted the notoriety and the attention.).� My impression is that he was following a scenario learned from television or film.� If one is a bad-ass killer, one files off the serial numbers of one�s gun.� Simple as that.� A ritual, not a strategy.

As a Korean living in the United States � who emigrated to this country when he was eight years old � he would have felt alienated and alone for awhile, especially as it seems he was not part of a local Korean community or culture. This alienation seems to have continued long past its expiration date, though.� �Did he blame his parents for bringing him to the United States?� Possibly, which would account for his accusations of child-abuse (if, indeed, he was not actually abused).� There were other Asian students at Virginia Tech; quite a number of them, actually.� He did not seem to have formed any relationships with them.� Of course, there are many different cultures and ethnicities in Asia and it is possible he found no one particularly compatible.� Or vice versa.

The stories we hear about Cho from roommates and other students fits the profile we have come to expect of the crazed, lone gunman:� the Lee Oswalds and Sirhan Sirhans.� The Mark David Chapmans.� He is being described in the media as a loner who did not talk, did not socialize, and who was sick, insane, twisted and all the other terms we ordinarily do not use of the mentally ill anymore but which are acceptable when we describe someone who has been responsible for the worst mass murder in America�s recent history (that is, if we don�t count the Jonestown massacre of 1978 or, dare we say it, the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001).� Cho identified with the Columbine killers in his writings, two young men who planned � after their shootings at the high school � to hijack a plane and fly it into � the World Trade Center.

We now have to realize that we are dealing with a specific type of event and a specific demi-monde.� From Holden Caulfield to Mark David Chapman, to Columbine, to Virginia Tech, among others not so well-known or so flamboyant in their acts of violence.� We have created a world of the disenfranchised and the problem is we don�t recognize this level of spiritual poverty since we are blinded by material wealth.� As our country moves slowly into a deeper and deeper state of fascism, we will be leaving behind those children who are not followers, who are not joiners, who are not jocks, who do not �fit in� with the social stereotypes we have come to expect.� Children are naturally cruel to other children;� young adults can be, too.� But when the overall environment � the habitus as Pierre Bourdieu would say � emphasizes uniformity and calls it �patriotism�, and denigrates differences of opinion and calls it �treason� or, at best, �misinformed�, then we are creating more and more Chos and Chapmans.

When Salinger was writing in the 1950s, his was the handwriting on the wall.� It was the era of the man in the grey-flannel suit, the corporate ad-man, the ranch-style home, Arrow shirts and Camel cigarettes, Suzie Homemaker and Leave It To Beaver.� And the CIA (CIA was apparently recruiting at VT).� And the Cold War.� �Holden Caulfield was the archetypal alienated teenager, but he was unarmed.� He went insane, instead.� Had a nervous breakdown.

Cho was being treated for the Holden Caulfield disease.� With drugs.� That�s all we know how to do anymore.� Either that, or Dr Phil.� But Cho had one thing Holden did not:� access to a Glock nine millimeter and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.� Holden wanted to be the Catcher in the Rye; he wanted to save the children.� Cho wanted to kill them.� Cho says, basically, that time has run out.�

In this, he is joined by another subculture, another demi-monde: that of the suicide bomber.�

These are children who strap explosives to their chests and commit mass murder, and they do it in the name of the disenfranchised.� They do it in the name of people they know, people they grew up with, people they have seen arrested, tortured, murdered in the streets.� And their names and photos later adorn posters, collectible cards, and other media as they, too, become pop icons.� I am not trying to moralize about this, or point fingers, or say who started it, who fired the first shot � who is right and who is wrong.�� My concern is not with being a god-like observer on a hill, looking down and parting the Red Sea � Regardless of who has politics and history on their side, children are dying.�

The suicide-bomber expresses a form of solidarity with the disenfranchised through the violent act of murder.� To those who do not have access to television stations, podcasts, and newspaper publishers, a gun and a bomb are cheap, efficient alternatives.� Their despair is twofold:� despair at the inhumanity and horror they have witnessed, and despair that they are unable to stop it, to cure it, to heal the wounds.� They can�t even hold a press conference, or appear on talk shows.� So instead they choose the next best thing to make their point.

Cho, however, did not witness anyone being murdered, tortured, dragged off the street to face an uncertain fate.�� He grew up in America.�

But he saw the same news we have all seen.� He saw Abu Ghraib.� He heard about US soldiers in his home country, in Korea, being accused of rape and assault and avoiding punishment.� He listened to the President of the United States lie about reasons for invading Iraq.� He saw young men and women � his own age, and younger � being given automatic weapons and sent to a foreign country on false pretenses.� He knew something was wrong.� Very wrong.�

His mental illness may have been related to what we used to call existential angst.� We don�t use that terminology anymore, since we have come to the conclusion that much mental illness is the result of chemical imbalances that can be corrected with the right drug.� But what came first, the angst or the imbalance?� It is the opinion of this writer that there is a symbiotic relationship between the two.� Just as stress exacerbates all sorts of nervous and somatic disorders, so does angst contribute to the development of chemical imbalances.� Treating the chemical imbalance does not, in my view, treat the underlying psychological or � I am going out on a limb, here � spiritual disorder.� It masks it;� forces it underground where it lurks in our psychic basements, collecting weapons and writing manifestos while all the time we appear to be �under control�.� This spiritual disorder is of our own making;� it is standing behind us, large and looming, and we chatter on as if it isn�t there.� Not there at all.� What, me worry?

Cho is no hero, and I will not dignify his actions by calling him a victim.� Nor will I say that he was simply sick and deranged,� the �crazed, lone gunman�.� Rather, he is a symptom.� He is the malignancy that has spread throughout America�s system, the ghost in the machine, the haunting of our house.� He was a tumor that attacked one of our organs before it surgically removed itself.

There are others out there.� The malignancy has spread.�

--

Yesterday, on Countdown with Keith Olberman on the MSNBC cable network, former presidential counsel John Dean appeared to comment on the Alberto Gonzales case and on the recently exposed situation that hundreds of thousands of US government documents in all areas of life have �gone missing�.� That Freedom of Information Act requests are being answered with a �can�t find it� letter in more than 70 percent of cases.� That our government is now hiding whatever it can, whatever it wants to, from its own people.�� Dean brought up as an example what happened during his time in the Nixon White House, when an important Oval Office tape was shown to have 18-1/2 minutes �missing�.�� Dean said � and as I write in my own work � when Alexander Haig was asked who was responsible for erasing those missing minutes, he responded �A sinister force�.

To quote Edward R Murrow and Keith Olberman on this, the anniversary of the Columbine massacre, �Good night, and good luck.�

Diane, whenever two events happen simultaneously pertaining to the same object of �inquiry, we must always pay strict attention!

����������������������������������������������� -- Special Agent Dale Cooper, Twin Peaks

Sharp-eyed readers of this site have noticed a confluence of events has taken place in the last week that bears closer scrutiny.

I�ll be brief.

A few days ago, it was reported in the Los Angeles Times that the sons of the late convicted Watergate Plumber and CIA agent, E. Howard Hunt, revealed that their father admitted that there had been a conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.� According to their statement, Hunt had been approached by a �rogue element� within the CIA that wanted to kill Kennedy during a stopover in Miami.� Hunt declined to participate, but he evidently did not warn anyone about the plot.� Hunt, due to his involvement with the failed Bay of Pigs operation and his close friendship with many prominent anti-Castro Cubans in Miami, hated Kennedy and was probably not too sorry to learn of his assassination.� Many conspiracy theorists, in fact, insist that Hunt was in Dallas that day and, indeed, Hunt had always been somewhat vague as to his actual whereabouts that afternoon.

Readers of Sinister Forces will remember that Hunt had written several occult novels and one in particular that was a thinly-disguised attack on the Kennedy family.� Readers of Sinister Forces may also recall the name Charles Harrelson.

Charles Harrelson was the convicted and imprisoned assassin of a US District Court Judge in 1979, in a case that made national headlines.� He is the father of actor Woody Harrelson (of Cheers fame, among many other appearances on television and in film).� Charles Harrelson, shortly after his arrest for the murder of Judge Wood, admitted his involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, stating that he was the shooter on the infamous Grassy Knoll.� He later retracted that statement and would say no more about it.

Charles Harrelson died in prison on March 15 at the age of 69, evidently of natural causes, although his death was not reported until today, March 21.�

That both of these events � the revelations about Hunt and the death of Harrelson � would take place in the same week raises eyebrows.� As I have written extensively in Sinister Forces, this type of coincidence may be evidence of the operation of deeper, darker forces at work in history and behind the flimsy screen of reality.� And the fact that this is all taking place against the backdrop of what is now taking place in Washington, DC and with the bizarre reincarnation of Watergate counsel Fred Fielding taking the legal reins at the White House, indicates to lovers of dietrologia that, as Inspector Clouseau would say, �Sinister forces are at work!�.�

Ladies and gentlemen, we live in dangerous times.� The future of our Republic is at stake, as I�m sure most of you already realize.� The excesses of the present administration concerning the abuse of the Patriot Act, illegal wiretapping, and prisoner abuse and torture, all lead us to consider that what is going on today in Washington is, as former White House counsel John Dean has written, �worse than Watergate�.� My initial response � in learning that Charles Harrelson had died on virtually the same day that the Hunt sons had revealed their father�s pre-knowledge of the Kennedy assassination � was to suspect foul play.� As Hunt�s family came forward � I thought � they got rid of the one man who claimed, with some credibility since he was already a convicted political assassin, that he had been the shooter on the Grassy Knoll.� Tying up a loose end.�

And it all takes place in the open, albeit not on the network news programs swamped as they are with the far more important speculation concerning the paternity of Anna Nicole Smith�s child.� There are times when I feel like Mel Gibson�s character in Conspiracy Theory, clipping newspaper articles and showing how seemingly disparate information is related.�

In the immortal words of Edward R Murrow (and Keith Olbermann):� Good night, and good luck.

Over the past 48 hours I have received numerous emails advising me of the death of Robert Anton Wilson.�� It seems important that I say a few words here about a man I never met, but who had a tremendous influence over the spiritual, cultural and psychological development of many of my friends over the years.

Wilson was the co-author, along with Robert Shea, of the Illuminatus! Trilogy.�� This series of paperbacks came out in the mid-1970s at a time of tremendous social upheaval in the United States.�� We had just come out of Vietnam, Watergate was in full-swing, and the various Intelligence Committee and Assassination Committee hearings were informing us of the extent to which our government had spied on its own citizens, committed assassinations, and conspired in all sorts of mayhem at home and abroad.� At the same time, neo-Paganism was growing in popularity, in particular the version known as Wicca:� the Witchcraft movement.

For many of us at the time, neo-Paganism was seen as an anti-intellectual, purely right-brain kind of environment: the epitome of what we would call the New Age.� Those of us who tended more towards the left-brain, ritual magic environment found ourselves without a real group or society that measured up to our standards of serious scholarship and committed practice.� There was the Church of Satan, which was seen as little more than a club for ex-Catholics (!) and of course the OTO.

The OTO at the time was in the midst of turmoil itself.� Some prominent members were switching sides from Marcelo Motta�s group � in the US, headquartered in Tennessee � and Grady McMurtry�s group � headquartered in California.� There were serious political and philosophical differences between the two groups and, unfortunately, they were the only games in town.� Most of the groups � whether pagan, Wiccan, or Thelemite � were arenas for cults of personality, and that diluted both the medium and the message.�

Then, suddenly, there was the Illuminatus! trilogy, and everyone had an alternative perspective, a weltanschauung that merged paganism, Thelema, and Asian religions with conspiracy theories, thousands of historical references and layers upon layers of meaning � all done in an exuberant, manic style that captured our imaginations and gave us a paradigm for our own cosmological and theological suspicions, amorphous as they were.� We identified so strongly with the ideas in the Trilogy that groups began to form based on the concepts we found there:� Discordians, Erisians, Hagbard Celine chapters of various cults, etc.� In addition, the ideas and thought of Timothy Leary were evident in all of Wilson�s writings and that led us to neurological (and dare we say pharmacological!) perspectives on the phenomena of initiation, illumination, and conversion.�

My own understanding of synchronicity, mind-control programs, and the link between government psychological programs and analogues with shamanistic practices and secret society rituals were mirrored in the Wilson-Shea Trilogy.�� Living in New York City at the time, I witnessed the emergence of an occult revival that took place in the bars, clubs, bookstores and apartments of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens � all of it tinged with the elements to be found in Illuminatus!.��

There will be those who will tell you to read Cosmic Trigger and the other, later, books by Wilson, and they are justified in doing so.� But I submit that you will never quite understand the context of Cosmic Trigger unless you read Illuminatus!.��� It will also take you back to a time when we, the people, felt we had a chance to own our own spirituality no matter what form it would eventually take.� It was the pre-AIDS, pre-Iran-Contra, pre-Iraq world:� a kind of interregnum between the end of Vietnam and the scandals of Watergate and the beginning of our Middle East adventure and the scandals of the Bush administration (replete with Fred Fielding, the same lawyer for both Nixon and Bush!).� It was the Carter era, and John Lennon was still alive.� Jonestown was in the wind, and so was the Son of Sam.� But we felt we were on the verge of a spiritual breakthrough, a group satori that would result in an explosion of illumination signalling the end of the Old World and the beginning of the New � or, as Wilson would say, the immanentizing of the eschaton.

God speed, Robert Anton Wilson.�� And thank you.

Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it.

-- Mephistopheles

Reality, what a concept!

-- Robin Williams

Greetings, children.� Sorry to have been absent lo! these many moons.� Truth to tell, I have been rocked by our common experience.� I have a growing sense of anxiety and unease � that maybe Speaker Nancy Pelosi will turn into a Woofer or a Tweeter, but not both.� Will the Democrats amplify our problems, or will� they become merely turntables, revolving doors of political insincerity and stupidity, such as we have come to expect? Weird, surrealistic visions arise of our potential future twisting slowly, slowly in the wind.� Why do I feel this way, when everything looks so promising (at least, for the next 100 hours)?

Last year probably ranks up there with 1963, 1968, and 1975.�� Government scandals, deaths, accusations, political upsets, and an ongoing war in a foreign country that is sapping American strength and testing American resolve � not to mention Iraqi strength, Iraqi resolve, and the deaths of tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands.�

At the funeral for Gerald Ford, our 38^th president, former President George W. Bush actually took a swipe at conspiracy theorists.� Did anyone catch that?� Why did he feel it was either appropriate or necessary to attack conspiracy theorists during Ford�s funeral?� Methinks the lady doth protest too much.� Let�s look at Gerald Ford briefly, and find out a few things they did not mention during the funeral or during the days of post-mortem (literally) that preceded it.

In the first place, Gerald Ford was a Freemason.� Okay, not much to work with there.� Just odd that no one mentioned it.

In the second place, Gerald Ford worked as a male model early on in his career.� Oops.� No mention of that during the funeral!�

But that�s not the most interesting part.� Ford was actually a business partner of Harry Conover, a well-known name in the modeling business in the post-World War II era, and the man credited for having discovered Candy Jones.� Candy Jones was one of his star models (and briefly his wife), and just incidentally a woman whose biographer � Donald Bain � claims was a Manchurian Candidate, i.e., a programmed assassin.� Ford-Conover-Jones.� Later, of course, Ford would find a berth on the Warren Commission, hence the jibe at conspiracy theorists by George W. Bush, himself an easy target due to his family�s notorious support of the Nazi regime both before and during World War II, and the fact that George Bush himself was once head of the CIA.

Donald Bain, of course, was one of the screenwriters for the popular television series Murder, She Wrote.��� That series starred Angela Lansbury as a kindly old writer of detective stories living in Maine.� Angela Lansbury, of course, also starred in the film version of the Condon novel, The Manchurian Candidate.�� The film also starred Frank Sinatra, not a stranger to byzantine plots and organized crime scenarios.� Most importantly, though, the film was directed by John Frankenheimer � the director with whom Bobby Kennedy had his last meal at Frankenheimer�s Malibu beach house hours before his assassination by a � programmed assassin.� Who were the other guests that evening?� Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski.� Roman Polanski was the director of the film version of Rosemary�s Baby (starring Sinatra�s wife, Mia Farrow).�� His wife, Sharon Tate, �would be dead a year later, murdered by Charles Manson�s minions.� As Ed Sanders would say, �ooo�eee-ooo�.�

That�s what happens when you pull at the thread of Gerald R. Ford.�

(In the interests of full disclosure, I was once interviewed by Candy Jones on her radio program, sometime in 1980.� At the time, I had no knowledge of her Manchurian Candidate status, or I would have been interviewing her.)�

All of this took place in the era known as the Sixties.� It was a time of an unpopular war in a foreign land;� political turmoil;� and the alienation of America�s youth.�� We have all the elements necessary for a revisit of that tumultuous time, except for the latter.� America�s youth are not marching on the streets, protesting the war, agitating for political change.� There is a reason for that, of course, and don�t think the Powers That Be are not aware of it.� There is no Draft.

Since America�s youth is not being directly confronted with the possibility of being called up and sent to die in Iraq, America�s youth is basically unconcerned about the entire event.� In fact, I am appalled by the total lack of interest in anything remotely political, foreign, or historical by these, our future leaders.� We have somehow managed to raise a generation of George H.W. Bushes.� And we saw how that turned out.

Naturally, the level of cynicism among the youth is what contributes to this startling ennui.� What else has happened this year?� We had an importart religious leader � the front man for the Evangelical movement � exposed as a man who frequented male prostitutes while doing crystal meth.� We had another religious leader call for the assassination of the president of Venezuela, the same guy who said that the people of New Orleans deserved Hurricane Katrina.� Our moral leaders are obviously emperors in new clothes, and our youth is smart enough to see that.

Today, in China, the Communist Party has lost its moral authority and that means great and terrifying changes will take place in that country until a new moral authority asserts itself.� What will happen to the United States if we lose our moral compass?� (I don�t mean if our political leaders and religious leaders lose their moral compass; that ship sailed a long time ago.)� I mean our people, our average people,� the people who make this country work.� Where will they turn?� If we can�t trust the priests or the ministers, the Catholics or the Evangelicals (and we are all scared to death of the imams, thank you Fox Network and the 700 Club) what options do we have?� Orthodox Judaism?� Perhaps.� It would be a refreshing change to see our youth studying the Torah and the Talmud; they might begin to understand Christianity a little better!� Buddhism?� Too � Beatles in the Sixties, right?� Santeria?� Macumba?� Palo Mayombe?� Voudon?� A little too � ethnic for Middle America?�

The problem may not lie in our religions, but in our religious organizations.� Here�s a thought:� what if our moral guidance did not come from human beings?� What if our moral compass was set not by the priests but by the texts themselves?� What if our only recourse was to the Bible, the Torah, the Quran, the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Analects of Confucius, the Dao De Jing � the Sutras �?�

Why, that would be like � like � actually referring to the Declaration of Independence, or the Constitution!� That would be like building our political viewpoint on those sacred texts!� What a concept!�

Too bad it wouldn�t fly.� Not in the America of the Patriot Act and Homeland Security, NSA wiretapping, extraordinary rendition, and Abu Ghraib.� Perhaps we will have to start meeting in secret, like the early Christians: in catacombs and cemeteries in the middle of the night, reading the forbidden books and dreaming of a utopia that once was, that might have been, that � who knows? � might still be in the distant future.

America.

What a concept!

I know many of you have been wondering where I have been these last months.� If it�s any consolation, so have I.

The press of various activities has left me rather beleaguered on all sides, and I have been investigating a rather complicated issue concerning spies who go sailing and then disappear off their boats.� (There has been something of an epidemic of this of late.)

In addition, I�ve been researching some arcane �ascent� literature concerning attempts by our ancestors (European, Jewish, Arab, Asian, Latin American, Native American, African, Caribbean � so, yes, all of our ancestors!) to reach heaven through ritual and meditation.� It�s a continuation of some of the themes I explored in Sinister Forces, particularly in the (sold-out � what�s up with that? � and soon-to-be-reprinted) Volume 3, but in a heavier, purely academic, approach.�

In addition to all� that, I am also researching the connection between shamanism and the �terrorist� cults of the Middle East and Asia; especially the relationship between Indonesian concepts of dukun (a kind of shaman) and the leadership of the JI group that has claimed responsibility for the Bali and Jakarta bombings, among others.� My research is resolutely non-political;� I am looking for the application of �sinister forces� to the creation and maintenance of this type of cult.� (Yes, from my point of view, JI is a cult rather than a political party;� it�s programme includes establishing an Islamic state throughout Southeast Asia and as far as I am concerned that is a religious rather than a political platform � but, I could be wrong!)�

But � tomorrow is Election Day and I felt that some sort of message was called for and here it is:

Most of you are pretty cynical about the democratic process these days.� Why wouldn�t you be?� We are being lied to consistently and continuously by every branch of our government.� Our privacy has been invaded.� Habeus corpus has disappeared.� We are on the verge of becoming a fascist state.

I attended the Norman Mailer Society conference this year, held in Provincetown.� The keynote speaker was the novelist William Kennedy (author of Ironweed which was made into a film starring, I think, Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep).� At the end of his remarks, there was a brief question-and-answer period and, in response to one of the questions, he said that fascism was coming to America, and that it was brought not by Huey Long but by George W. Bush.�

You may be interested to know that many of our most influential thinkers are of the same opinion, but they are generally afraid to voice it.�

Maybe our votes don�t count.� (I live in Florida, so I know they don�t in this state!)� Maybe we are all being manipulated by one secret society that lives underneath the streets and counts the votes coming from machines that were designed and installed by Republican Party supporters.� Maybe there is no real difference between Democrats and Republicans.� Maybe even Ralph Nader is nothing more than a red herring.� Who knows?

But one thing is certain:� the parties are counting on us NOT to show up for Election Day.�� A massive voter turnout would throw all their nice statistics into complete disarray.� And they would learn that we are angry and onto their tricks.� That we are motivated.� That we are willing to take some kind of action, no matter how futile.

And that may result in more lack of privacy, more arrests of innocent persons, more home invasions � more fascism at home and imperialism abroad.� But not for long.

No fascist state can last for very long; it�s a one-trick pony, a shaggy-dog story.�

These past months we have been subjected to the bizarre sight of Republican Party stalwarts being caught as pedophiles, as bribe-takers, as closet-gay tweakers.� The Catholic Church must be breathing a sigh of relief as guys like the Rev Haggart are being outed, thus taking the spotlight off of Padre Pederastia for awhile.� The important message behind all of this is simple:� the emperor has no clothes (at least, not while he�s getting a massage from a gay escort�).� The moral high ground that the GOP has maintained it had over womanizers like Bill Clinton and Jack Kennedy has collapsed under them.�� So, they are desperately trying to focus our attention on the war in Iraq, which would be pretty funny if it wasn�t so � obscene.�

Not that the Democrats are coming out of this any better.� We all know they have no stones.� John Kerry can�t get a joke right, and that�s the joke right there.� The Democrats have been agonizingly slow to go on the offensive against the GOP, leading some of us to wonder if maybe there really isn�t a difference between the two parties.�

So � what should we do on Election Day?

Simple.� Vote.� It doesn�t matter who.� It�s the numbers that count.� Massive voter turnout would shake the oligarchy to their boots, whatever the party.�� It would upset the system, frighten people like Karl Rove, and give our enemies a few restless nights as they wonder what an energized voting American public will do in the future.

So, for once, let�s screw paranoia, and cynicism, and fear and the "dog and pony show".� Vote.� Vote for anyone.� Vote for Mickey Mouse.� Vote for your boyfriend.� Or vote against the existing oligarchy and replace it with the other one (my personal favorite; a Democratic Congress would prove, once and for all, whether or not the Dems really are the heterosexual wing of the GOP).

Just � vote!

�

A new radio interview with me concerning Nazis, Colonia Dignidad and Unholy Alliance is now available on-line at:

P.I.D. Radio 6/27/06: Peter Levenda - Nazis & the Occult (Part 1)

which is at:

http://pidradio.com/?p=268

This is the "Peering Into Darkness" website and the interviewer, Derek Gilbert, is one of the best. More installments from this interview will be made available on succeeding days.

Katie Holmes:� Gavin thinks some sinister force has taken over the Cradle�Bay�meatheads.

James Marsden:� A sinister force?

Katie Holmes: You know, evil. Nowhere to turn, no one to trust, altogether ooky.

--� from Disturbing Behavior (1998)

The TNT Network aired this otherwise forgettable film on Saturday morning.� Bleary-eyed,� I had just finished drinking what passed for coffee to jump start my frayed nervous system after a series of late nights spent researching another book, approving some text for the Spanish language edition of Unholy Alliance (coming out this summer), and compiling data on bureaucratic iniquity (a full time job, that).� Mindlessly, I turned on the mind-control device � I mean, the television � �to see if I could, once again, defeat its nefarious designs on my neuro-circuitry and what do I see?� A weird credits reel at the beginning of a film I had never heard of (I was out of the country when it opened in a handful of theaters to lukewarm reception), and the barely-legible title, Disturbing Behavior.�� The credits were easily the best part of the film.� Except, you know, for that bit about the �sinister force� � and the Addams Family reference �

In this teensploitation offering, James Marsden plays Steve, a newcomer to the Washington State village of Cradle Bay.�� His family has relocated there from Chicago after the suicide of Steve�s brother by self-inflicted gunshot wound.� The town of Cradle Bay seems bucolic enough until Steve�s first day at high school during which he meets Katie Holmes, looking like a dazed Gothess of seventeen-going-on-forty.� He also meets a gang of short-haired, neatly-groomed, blue-jacketed teens who form a kind of elitist clique at the school.� Stepford Sons and Daughters, basically.� Robotized teens who have been programmed by a guidance counselor via surgical implants and Clockwork Orange-style visual aids, beamed into their eyes with mad-doctor-like glee.

James and Katie must find a way to save themselves and the town � especially the other teens � from this horrible menace.� The town is all in favor of the �Blue Ribbons� as the Stepford Students call themselves, because it has meant a gross reduction in drunk driving, graffiti, angst, suicidal depression, heavy metal, pot-smoking, Star Trek allusions, and other forms of vandalism and creative disorder.�

Katie Holmes won an MTV Award for Best Breakout Performance in 1999 for this film.� (I keep wondering what she broke out of.) �Here she portrays an alienated teenaged girl, referred to as a trailer-park �slut� by other teens, who is eventually abducted by the Blue Ribbons so they can transform her into one of them, only to be rescued at the last moment by the Marsden character.� The only ones doing drugs in this film are the misfits, the ones targeted by the Blue Ribbons for either harrasment or treatment, and who wind up the heroes of the piece.� The Blue Ribbons themselves are, like Scientologists, drug-free.� They are fully-functioning, productive members of society who spend their free time in a yogurt shop.� They are marrying up, going to ivy league colleges, and moving out into the world to carry their Blue Ribbon message of �Go Forward� and �Be the Ball�.� The only one raising any alarm over this is the film�s token conspiracy theorist, �Gavin� (played by Nick Stahl, easily the best performance in this film), a teen who has witnessed murder at the hands of the Blue Ribbons: �murder that was covered up by the police.� He is eventually captured by the Ribbons and transformed into a viable member of society.�

Better living through surgery.

So, what did Katie Holmes learn from this story?

Nothing, apparently.� Since then she has gone over to the Dark Side and become one of the Blue Ribbons herself.� (Strangely, one of the identification symbols worn by the Blue Ribbons is a small, woven wool blue bracelet reminiscent of the Kabbalah Center�s red thread.)� One of the problems with the mind-control system developed by the school�s guidance counselor is a defect in managing conflicting hormone levels.� At times of arousal, the Blue Ribbon students could become violent and harm themselves or others.� Imagine two Blue Ribbon students having children.� In fact, imagine them attempting to conceive � the first scene of the film involves one of these �transformed� youth murdering a girl who was performing fellatio on him.� He had to kill her before he lost his precious bodily fluids (an accidental homage to Dr Strangelove?).�

I�m sure that Katie now interprets the film as an attack on the psychiatry establishment, except that the transformations experienced by the subjects were not caused by drugs � the anathema of Tom Cruise and his fellow robots � but by a surgical implant and the playing of a custom-made film that intersperses slogans (like �Go Forward�) with scenes of family values, school spirit, and the like.�� Think A Clockwork Orange meets Conspiracy Theory, and you get the idea.� Scientology is not against the idea of mind-control; it is, after all, what their system is based upon.� Instead, they are competitors with psychiatry, aiming for the same goals but using different methods. They began with Hubbard�s understanding of ritual magic as a system and technology for achieving psychological unity � what Jung called individuation � and they went from there to devise a never-ending system of degrees that has as its eventual �revelation� tales of alien visitations.� I mean, what good is a degree system that eventually � stops?� You have to keep adding more and more degrees to bilk the programmed members of more and more money, and this Scientology has done.

How much of this does Katie Holmes actually know?� Does she know about the rituals in the desert with Jack Parsons?� About Hubbard�s bigamy?� His mental disorders (as revealed in his declassified military records)?� His constant whining (as revealed in declassified letters written by Hubbard to various individuals and agencies)?� The well-documented history of Scientology�s attack protocol on those who defect from them, disagree with them, or debunk their system � a la the concerted efforts of the Blue Ribbons to attack anyone who disagrees with them or who does not conform to their standards and values?� Ms Holmes has the background to understand the danger she is in, from having acted in a film that so clearly depicts the problem.

�So I guess the question is:� Where is James Marsden, now that we need him?

It�s a German neologism from the twentieth century: weltanschauungskrieg, or �world-view warfare�.� It�s what we English-speaking people refer to as �psychological warfare�, but the German is much more apt because it implies a �clash of civilizations� more than merely psyching someone out.�

And that�s what�s happening now.

I�ve been silent for a long time (again) due to many factors, among them preparations for the upcoming third � and final � volume of Sinister Forces.� This one is subtitled �The Manson Secret� and boasts a foreword by Paul Krassner.� This volume gives the show away, and ties together the various maddening threads of the previous two volumes.� Once you�ve read Volume Three, you can go back and re-read the first two volumes with a greater, and hopefully deeper, understanding.� It is a difficult theme, no question, because it calls into doubt our entire �world-view� concerning American history, the separation of Church and State (ha!), and the underlying campaign of psychological warfare that has been visited upon us by the very people we used to trust.�

Another factor has been the unexpected death of a close friend of mine, Judith McNally, to whom the third volume of Sinister Forces is dedicated.� I�d known Judith for more than 35 years, and her passing was a shock to all of us who knew her.� A former editor of Filmmakers Newsletter � who interviewed such luminaries as actor-director John Cassavetes, among others � she went on to greater glory as the personal assistant, researcher, and factotum for a famous American author, in which capacity she was notorious among the Manhattan publishing world.� She also briefly worked for Praeger Publishing, a company that has since been exposed as a CIA front; a revelation she considered amusing.� Considering that I worked for the Bendix Corporation (which trained troops in Saudi Arabia in the 1970s and functioned as a CIA front for many years all over the world) as well as a certain Israeli banking firm � both companies which have been identified by the LaRouche people as tentacles of the world-wide British Intelligence-Jewish-Masonic-Satanic conspiracy, or something � we pretty much had the Illuminati nailed between the two of us.� Now I�ve got to control the world by myself.� It�s a dirty job, but � well, you know.

Another factor is the ongoing investigation of Colonia Dignidad.� I was privileged in the past few months to have been in contact with the family of Boris Weisfeiler, the American math professor who went missing in the Andes Mountains in 1985 after being taken to the Colony by Chilean security forces while he was on an innocent hike in the forest.� Eyewitness testimony reveals that he was tortured and killed at the Colony, reason unknown.� Due to a general physical similarity between Weisfeiler and myself, it is a possibility that he was initially mistaken for me: a possibility that now is being considered by the Chilean judge in charge of the case.� A cache of documents has been uncovered at the Colony, including dossiers on their �enemies�, but these documents are not being made public at this time � and may never be.� There may very well be evidence in those documents of American complicity in the torture and interrogation of Chilean political prisoners in the immediate aftermath of the Pinochet coup of September 11, 1973, hence the backpedaling by Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice on this issue.�

Yet another factor is the news.� How can I compete?� The National Security Agency has built a database of every phone call ever made in the United States in the last few years.� The man who oversaw that program is President Bush�s nominee for head of the CIA to replace Porter Goss.� There is an investigation underway of Porter Goss�s hires at CIA, since some of them seem to be implicated in all sorts of unsavory practices.� The Watergate Hotel has re-entered the picture, replete with poker-and-prostitute parties.� Hmmm � let me see.� Domestic spying, an unpopular war, a President who claims he is above the law of the land, and the Watergate Hotel.� Does anyone remember Richard Nixon?�

And now � The DaVinci Code.�

To my mind, a poorly-written cut-and-paste job that hobbled together all the best bits of Holy Blood, Holy Grail.� For those of us who have already been down that road, there was no suspense or surprise in Dan Brown�s book:� we knew the secret from the first page.� I confess I stopped reading after the first few chapters.� Truth, after all, is not only stranger than fiction it is a good deal more entertaining.� It�s the fallout from this movie that interests me, however.

There has been a rash of documentaries on the History Channel in the past week or so that detail some of the controversies surrounding the Knights Templar, the Freemasons, Opus Dei, and all the other heavy furniture of The DaVinci Code.�� The programs were rather misleading; one had to watch all of them to understand how.� Interviews with Freemasons and Masonic historians would have us believe that there is no worldwide conspiracy of Masons;� fair enough.� They portray the Masonic Society as essentially a charitable organization with no hidden agenda.� Okay.� Then, they proudly discuss the history of the American Revolution and how the Freemasons were an essential element in the inspiration and success of that venture;� how Masonic lodges throughout the Colonies were a vital factor in bringing together the various factions of North and South in a concerted effort against the British;� how European Freemasons such as Lafayette and Pulaski were enlisted into the fight; etc. etc.�� The dichotomy between the above two positions makes my head hurt.� It�s as if the Masons of today are saying, �Okay, we were a worldwide conspiracy then, but not now.��

Actually, what is at stake here is something else, something far deeper which none of the documentaries dared to address.� The Freemasons who helped to found this nation included men like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, and even Paul Revere.� Their ideal � their dream � was to create a nation that owed no allegiance to kings or bishops but which was organized along scientific and rational lines (hence the separation of Church and State in our Constitution).� Ultimate authority in the new country would be reason and compromise � the rule of law and not of personalities.� They fought a revolution for these ideals and we have been fighting to preserve these ideals ever since.�

What we have now, however, is a spiritual and political crisis in this country.� We are being told that one religion takes precedence over all others and that Christianity � in particular a form of Evangelical Christianity � should determine the character and the laws of the land.� The current situation would make the Founding Fathers spin like grieving gyroscopes in their graves.�

What�s an American to do?�

Do we throw our support behind the Freemasonic ideal, or behind a questionable form of Christian conservatism?� Are these our only choices?

Are we truly witnessing a power struggle between the Christian Right and the secret society of Freemasonry � the latter which seems positively glorious by comparison?�

The central theme of The DaVinci Code is the purported marriage between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, and the idea that they had a child and that this child and its offspring represent a bloodline that exists today.� The Catholic Church, and other Christian groups and Church historians, insist that there is no evidence that such a liaison ever occurred, and therefore ridicule and castigate the book and the film as blasphemous, at worst, or simply bad scholarship at best.� In all the interviews I�ve seen or read on this subject, no one asks the Church apologists what seems to me to be the ultimate question:

What evidence exists that Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected a few days later?

You can�t have it both ways, ladies and gentlemen.� You can�t insist on hard evidence that Jesus and Mary had a child, but refuse to face the fact that there is no hard evidence for the core belief of your Church:� that Jesus rose from the dead.

It is said the Knights Templar denied the resurrection of Christ and that this may have happened as a result of their sojourn in the Muslim lands.� They either found evidence which proved this to their satisfaction during their habitation of Solomon�s Temple in Jerusalem � or they heard this from Islamic scholars � or they made contact with certain Gnostic and other heretical groups in the Middle East.� Whatever the reason, they were eventually destroyed by both Church and State and this alleged blasphemy was given as one count of the indictment.� The Freemasons are said to be descended, at least spiritually, from the Knights Templar and, indeed, there is a Templar degree in modern Freemasonry.

Did the Masonic insistence on a society of enlightened individuals who chose science over religion originate in the confrontation with the pagan impossibility of a dead and resurrected God?�

Is the conflict taking place in our own country today � and around the world, between Mu