No Two Ruses Look the Same...

"The Monopoly Men" from 1999

Dark "Relapse"

Let's hope that Eminem's (MM) new Joker persona isn't going to have a severe street backlash...

http://splashpage.mtv.com/2009/05/16/eminem-as-the-joker-relapse-rapper-takes-cue-from-the-dark-knight-in-new-album/

by: Rick Marshall

Eminem’s new album, “Relapse,” hits shelves Tuesday, and it looks like the Punisher-themed promotional shoot he did for XXL Magazine a month ago isn’t the only comics connection in the album. Among the various imagery in the album liner is a shot of Eminem decked out like the late Heath Ledger’s award-winning interpretation of The Joker in “The Dark Knight.” The shot depicts Eminem with scarred grin, painted face and suit, holding a set of alphabet blocks that spell the word “KILL” — and appears in a collage of psych charts, pills and prescription forms at the center of the booklet.

Sure, the full album is available on MySpace right now, but “Relapse” will officially be available for purchase this week at shops. Check out MTV’s “Relapse” preview for some context on the album, as well as our extensive coverage of all things Eminem as we approach the May 19 release date.

Eminem will also be taking the stage during the 2009 MTV Movie Awards, and with so many comic book references in the time leading up to this album, there’s always the chance that we could see a few more call-outs to the comics world on Sunday, May 31.

Lunatic Fringe?

Paul Laffoley's Orgone Engine

This out of Africa...man, this guy really has all the answers. Wonder if he knows the meaning of life too?

http://allafrica.com/stories/200905070830.html

Analysis (?) by Paul Fauvet

Maputo — The four people accused by the Mozambican police of using a supposedly "highly corrosive substance" in an attempt to sabotage the Cahora Bassa dam are in fact members of a lunatic fringe group called "Orgonise Africa".

The four have now been named as Georg Ritschi (a German architect), Carlos Silva (a Portuguese hotelier), Tino Phutheso (a Botsanan aircraft pilot), and Joseph Ngusato (a South African self-styled "prophet").

There was nothing clandestine about this group's visit to the Cahora Bassa lake. They advertised it on their Internet websites, where they called the journey "Operation Paradise".

"Want to come on our next Zambezi expedition, April 2009?", asked Georg Ritschi on an "Orgonise Africa" blog. "Our next big expedition will be the continuation of our last great water gifting effort on the lower Zambezi", said Ritschi.

What can they possibly be talking about? Orgonise? Gifting?

It turns out that Orgonise Africa is a band of dedicated followers of the Austrian psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, who died in an American jail in 1956. Reich did some valuable work on human sexuality in the early part of his career, but in his later years switched his political allegiance from left to right, and showed signs of mental illness and paranoia.

He claimed that he had discovered a universal form of energy which he called orgone. This energy - undetected by science both then and in the 52 years since Reich's death - was responsible for everything from the weather to gravity and the formation of galaxies. Reich built machines called orgone accumulators which were supposed to concentrate orgone energy. This would be a good thing since, according to Reich, illness and diseases are caused by insufficient orgone.

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) correctly described the orgone accumulators as fraudulent, banned their sale and outlawed all "orgone therapy". Which was why, after he defied the injunction obtained by the FDA, Reich ended up in jail.

Reich's sexual libertarianism, his heterodox scientific and medical theories, and his apparent persecution by US government agencies turned him into something of a father figure for the 1960s "counter-culture", and for subsequent "New Age" cults. One of these, headed by a couple called Don and Carol Croft, spawned Orgonise Africa.

The theory espoused by this group is that everything wrong with the planet is due to a lack of orgone. To set matters right, the dedicated followers of Wilhelm Reich, engage in "orgone gifting". This involves dumping "gifts" of a substance called orgonite into the place - in this case, Cahora Bassa lake - that is to be cured of its orgone deficiency.

So that is what the four arrested "saboteurs" were doing - heaving lumps of orgonite from a boat into the lake.

Could this do any damage to the dam or to the lake itself? Helpfully, enthusiasts for orgonite tell us how to make the stuff on their Internet sites. It is just a mixture of fiberglass resin, metal shavings, and the inevitable New Age crystal (as any New Age guru will tell you, crystals have immense and mysterious healing powers).

What kind of metal? A site called organite.info tells us "Quarter-inch-wide aluminum curls are very common and very effective for use in orgonite, but any kind of copper, iron, brass (including brassed aluminum), bronze, nickel or even steel shavings will work fine. Just bring a bucket and some work gloves to a local machine shop and ask them if you can fill your bucket with metal shavings".

As for the crystal "Any funky, ugly, smokey pieces of quartz will work perfectly for orgonite field devices. You can usually find this grade of quartz crystal very inexpensively at most decent gem and mineral shops".

None of this stuff is remotely corrosive. Fish in the lake might object to a mouthful or fibre-glass, quartz and steel shavings, but it could not conceivably do any damage to the dam wall or turbines.

In short, orgonite is worthless trash, and the only crime the four seem to have committed is that of dumping rubbish in the lake.

Doubtless the arrests of the four will confirm Orgonise Africa in its conspiratorial mindset. They believe that the world is run by a sinister, occult elite, which they sometimes refer to as the Illuminati. The real illuminati were an 18th century German secret society, but the term has become abused (sometimes with anti-semitic overtones) to refer to an imaginary sinister cabal that is supposed to be manipulating world politics.

According to the Orgonise Africa website "an effort for total control and domination by a small "elite" of barren entropy minded people is being carried forward on all levels of human existence: Spiritual, mental, material, financial, political and military. The foundations of this "elite's" hypnotic spell over humankind are to be sought in its occult, ritualistic-satanic orientation and secret society network".

They resurrect the hoary claim that the pyramid shown on the back of the dollar bill is a "symbol of occult rule" and claim that a conspiracy is afoot "to move the world from a polycentric world of diversity to a 'One World Government' in a 'New World Order'".

They don't like cell phones either, and claim that "the ubiquitous microwave transmitters, sold to the populace as necessary for cell phone communications play a major role in the undeclared war against humankind".

Orgonise Africa declares that its mission is "to reverse the negative effects of entropic technology and secret bio-chemical warfare" on Africa. Its strategy is to lay down organite and orgone devices so as to "neutralise at least most of the entropy transmitters in one country and other obvious sources of negative energy such as battle fields, ritual murder sites, prisons, police stations and Masonic lodges".

Two things need to be said about this. First, it is nonsense. There is no such thing as "negative energy", just as there is no such thing as orgone. Equally imaginary are entropy transmitters and entropic technology. (Entropy is the scientific term for the amount of disorder in a system. There are no technologies designed to increase entropy). As for "secret bio-chemical warfare", there hasn't been any in Africa since the end of apartheid.

Secondly it is fairly harmless nonsense. The only damage done by meaningless waffle about "entropic transmitters" and "negative energy" is to the credibility of those who push such pseudo-scientific garbage. It has no capacity to destroy dams or anything else in the real world.

RED RIDER'S "Lunatic Fringe"

The Limits of Control

thanks to Erick Clapp for sending this along...!



By: William S. Burroughs

I

There is a growing interest in new techniques of mind-control. It has been suggested that Sirhan Sirhan was the subject of post-hypnotic suggestion, as he sat shaking violently on the steam table in the kitch of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles while the as-yet unidentified woman held him and whispered in his ear. It has been alleged that behavior-modification techniques are used on troublesome prisoners and inmates, often without their consent. Dr. Delgado, who once stopped a charging bull by remote control of electrodes in the bull's brain, left the U.S. to pursue his studies on human subjects in Spain. Brainwashing, psychotropic drugs, lobotomy and other, more subtle forms of psychosurgery; the technocratic control apparatus of the United States has at its fingertips new techniques which if fully exploited could make Orwell's 1984 seem like a benevolent utopia.

II

But words are still the principal instruments of control. Suggestions are words. Persuasions are words. Orders are words. No control machine so far devised can operate without words, and any control machine which attempts to do so relying entirely on external force or entirely on physical control of the mind will soon encounter the limits of control.

III

A basic impasse of all control machines is this: Control needs time in which to exercise control. Because control also needs opposition or acquiescence; otherwise, it ceases to be control. I control a hypnotized subject (at least partially); I control a slave, a dog, a worker; but if I establish complete control somehow, as by implanting electrodes in the brain, then my subject is little more than a tape recorder, a camera, a robot. You don't control a tape recorder - you use it. Consider the distinction, and the impasse implicit here. All control systems try to make control as tight as possible, but at the same time, if they succeeded completely there would be nothing left to control. Suppose for example a control system installed electrodes in the brains of all prospective workers at birth. Control is now complete. Even the thought of rebellion is neurologically impossible. No police force is necessary. No psychological control is necessary, other than pressing buttons to achieve certain activations and operations.

IV

When there is no more opposition, control becomes a meaningless proposition. It is highly questionable whether a human organism could survive complete control. There would be nothing there. No persons there. Life is will (motivation) and the workers would no longer be alive, perhaps literally. The concept of suggestion as a complete technique presupposes that control is partial and not complete. You do not have to give suggestions to your tape recorder nor subject it to pain and coercion or persuasion.

V

In the Mayan control system, where the priests kept the all-important Books of seasons and gods, the calendar was predicated on the universal illiteracy since they operate through the mass media - a very two-edged control instrument, as Watergate has shown. Control systems are vulnerable, and the news media are by their nature uncontrollable, at least in Western society. The alternative press is news, and alternative society is news, and as such both are taken up by the mass media. The monopoly that Hearst and Luce once exercised is breaking down. In fact, the more completely hermetic and seemingly successful a control system is, the more vulnerable it becomes. A weakness inherent in the Mayan system is that they didn't need an army to control their workers, and therefore did not need an army when they needed one to repel invaders. It is a rule of social structures that anything that is not needed will atrophy and become inoperative over a period of time. Cut off from the war game - and remember, the Mayans had no neighbors to quarrel with they lose the ability to fight. In "The Mayan Caper" I suggested that such a hermetic control system would be completely disoriented and shattered by even one person who tampered with the control calendar, upon which the control system depended more and more heavily as the actual means of force withered away.

VI

Consider a control situation: ten people in a lifeboat. two armed self-appointed leaders force the other eight to do the rowing while they dispose of the food and water, keeping most of it for themselves an doling out only enough to keep the other eight rowing. The two leaders now need to exercise control to maintain an advantageous position which they could not hold without it. Here the method of control is force - the possession of guns. Decontrol would be accomplished by overpowering the leaders and taking their guns. This effected, it would be advantageous to kill them at once. So once embarked on a policy of control, the leaders must continue the policy as a matter of self-preservation. Who, then, needs to control others but those who protect by such control a position of relative advantage? Why do they need to exercise control? Because they would soon lose this position and advantage and in many cases their lives as well, if they relinquished control.

VII

Now examine the reasons by which control is exercised in the lifeboat scenario: The two leaders are armed, let's say, with .38 revolvers - twelve shots and eight potential opponents. They can take turns sleeping. However, they must still exercise care not to let the eight rowers know that they intend to kill them when land is sighted. Even in this primitive situation force is supplemented with deception and persuasion. The leaders will disembark at point A, leaving the other sufficient food to reach point B, they explain. They have the compass and they are contributing their navigational skills. In short they will endeavor to convince the others that this is a cooperative enterprise in which they are all working for the same goal. They may also make concessions: increase food and water rations. A concession of course means the retention of control - that is, the disposition of the food and water supplies. By persuasions and by concessions they hope to prevent a concerted attack by the eight rowers.

VIII

Actually they intend to poison the drinking water as soon as they leave the boat. If all the rowers knew this they would attack, no matter what the odds. We now see that another essential factor in control is to conceal from the controlled the actual intentions of the controllers. Extending the lifeboat analogy to the Ship of State, few existing governments could withstand a sudden, all-out attack by all their underprivileged citizens, and such an attack might well occur if the intentions of certain existing governments were unequivocally apparent. Suppose the lifeboat leaders had built a barricade and could withstand a concerted attack and kill all eight of the rowers if necessary. They would then have to do the rowing themselves and neither would be safe from the other. Similarly, a modern government armed with heavy weapons and prepared for attack could wipe out ninety-five percent of its citizens. But who would do the work, and who would protect them from the soldiers and technicians needed to make and man the weapons? Successful control means achieving a balance and avoiding a showdown where all-out force would be necessary. This is achieved through various techniques of psychological control, also balanced. The techniques of both force and psychological control are constantly improved and refined, and yet worldwide dissent has never been so widespread or so dangerous to the present controllers.

IX

All modern control systems are riddled with contradictions. Look at England. "Never go too far in any direction," is the basic rule on which England is built, and there is some wisdom in that. However, avoiding one impasse they step into another. Anything that is now going forward is on the way out. Well, nothing lasts forever. Time is that which ends, and control needs time. England is simply stalling for time as it slowly founders. Look at America. Who actually controls this country? It is very difficult to say. Certainly the very wealthy are one of the most powerful control groups, since they are in a position to control and manipulate the entire economy. However, it would not be to their advantage to set up or attempt to set up an overly fascist government. Force, once brought in, subverts the power of money. This is another impasse of control: protection from the protectors. Hitler formed the S.S. to protect him from the S.A. If he had lived long enough the question of protection from the S.S. would have pose itself. The Roman Emperors were at the mercy of the Praetorian Guard, who in one year killed twenty Emperors. And besides, no modern industrial country has ever gone fascist without a program of military expansion. There is no longer anyplace to expand to - after hundreds of years, colonialism is a thing of the past.

X

There can be no doubt that a cultural revolution of unprecedented dimensions has taken place in American during the last thirty years, and since America is now the model for the rest of the Western world, this revolution is worldwide. Another factor is the mass media, which spreads all cultural movements in all directions. The fact that this worldwide revolution has taken place indicates that the controllers have been forced to make concessions. Of course, a concession is still the retention of control. Here's a dime, I keep a dollar. Ease up on censorship, but remember we could take it all back. Well, at this point, that is questionable.

XI

Concession is another blind. History shows that once a government starts to make concessions it is on a one-way street. They could of course take all the concessions back, but that would expose them to the double jeopardy of revolution and the much greater danger of overt fascism, both highly dangerous to the present controllers. Does any clear policy arise from this welter of confusion? Than answer is probably no. The mass media has proven a very unreliable and even treacherous instrument of control. It is uncontrollable owing to its need for NEWS. If one paper, or even a string of papers owned by the same person, makes that story hotter as NEWS, some other paper will pick it up. Any imposition of government censorship on the media is a step in the direction of State control, a step which big money is most reluctant to take.

XI

I don't mean to suggest that control automatically defeats itself, nor that protest is therefore unnecessary. A government is never more dangerous than when embarking on a self-defeating or downright suicidal course. It is encouraging that some behavior modification projects have been exposed and halted, and certainly such exposure and publicity should continue. in fact, I submit that we have a right to insist that all scientific research be subject to public scrutiny, and that there should be no such thing as "top-secret" research.