The Dan Brown of 1796?

Some years ago, when everybody else was was reading it, I read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. It was pretty ridiculous, but it had an uncanny ability to keep me turning the pages to find out what was going to happen. (RAW fans will recall that the main source material for the book also was used in RAW's earlier novel, The Widow's Son. Dan Brown's lawyers apparently missed the chance to use The Widow's Son as part of their defense in plagiarism trial.)

A few days ago, British writer Sean Gabb talked me into reading The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis. I asked Dr. Gabb why he listed Lewis as one of his favorite writers, and he replied, "The Monk is a gloatingly lurid tale of lust and horror. Lewis was seventeen when he wrote it. I was that when I read it. Unable to put it down, I took it into an A Level Mathematics exam. Dickens and Wilkie Collins much admired it. My mother read it some years back, and was surprised when I showed her the publication date."  So I read it (or more precisely, listened to the free LibriVox audiobook, ably read by James K. White.) I thought it was ridiculous, but I was hooked. I had to keep going to find out what would happen to its poor, tormented characters.

From what I gather, from reading about it and from an amusingly rude introduction by a Mr. E.A. Baker from the edition that White apparently used, Monk took the elements of a Gothic novel and turned it into a lively page-turner with plenty of sex, violence and grotesque horror.

It apparently wasn't terribly original, but as Brenton Clutterbuck observed in a blog posting that I wrote about a couple of days ago, originality isn't always rewarded. After Wilson and Shea built up the Bavarian Illuminati mythos in Illuminatus!, "This mythos would appear to have gone on to influence the modern pop-cultural idea of the Illuminati, from books such as Umberto Eco’s conspiracy classic Foucault’s Pendulum  to the pop-culture runaway successes of Dan Brown’s novels The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, and the film adaptation of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, though Wilson’s influence is seldom credited."

Thursday links

Advance copies can now be ordered for Adam Gorightly's upcoming book, Caught In The Crossfire: Kerry Thornley, Oswald and the Garrison Investigation.

Oz Fritz in Morocco. 

Justin Raimondo reviews the new book on the Koch brothers.

How to get the NSA to monitor you.

Markoff Chains explained. Hat tip, John Merritt.

Is jazz a Masonic conspiracy?

Brenton Clutterbuck on the Illuminatus! play

Mr.  Clutterbuck, "Outside the house where Adam Weishaupt was busy conspiring with his Illuminati pals."

Brenton Clutterbuck has posted another episode of his "Chasing Eris" Odyssey, his ongoing worldwide quest to discover the intersection of Discordianism and popular culture, which he plans to turn into a book.

The new episode discussed the young Australian's trip to Brighton and London, where he nosed around for information about Ken Campbell's theatrical production of Illuminatus! back in the 1970s. He sheds new light on a story that will be familiar to many who read this blog, rummaging around in the National Theatre Archive's collection of documents about the production to find nuggets like these:

I pulled out several newspaper articles. Most were reviews, but a small number stood out in particular as bizarre oddities that contributed an additional layer of weirdness to the already larger than life Illuminatus! saga.

One article was titled “Horror Mission of an Actor Obsessed with the Occult” from the Daily Mail, dated September 7, 1982 about Illuminatus! cast member Chris Taynton whose roles included the pimp Carmel and Robert Putney Drake, the head of the American Crime Syndicate. The article told of how Taynton, believing he had been overcome by alien forces, attacked Adrena Smith, a 57-year-old lady, by stabbing her multiple times. He blinded her in one eye, and killed her pets, including cutting the ears off her dog. Taynton’s involvement in the Illuminatus! play was raised in court by his defense lawyer, Patricia May, specifically in regard to the play’s supernatural and occult themes.

“Having taken an extremely exciting part in a somewhat bizarre play he became more and more involved in the principles that were propounded in that play,” said May.

There are other strange anecdotes, with balancing information about performers who went on to a better fate.

Julia Angwin's 'Dragnet Nation'

I've just finished Julia Angwin's Dragnet Nation, which turned out to be one of the best nonfiction books I've read in awhile. She's a journalist, currently with ProPublica. In the book, she chronicles her efforts, sometimes successful, sometimes not, to use the Internet and her cell phone without being spied on by corporations or the government.

There's a section of the book which describes the plight of Gulet Mohamed, a U.S. citizen who was arrested in Kuwait and tortured; although he apparently never was charged with a crime, he is not allowed to fly on an airplane. He has not been able to find out why he is on the no-fly list. Angwin writes,

This is the worst kind of abuse of personal data; Mohamed was tortured and to this day cannot board an airplane, for reasons he does not know, and he is told he cannot challenge those reasons in a court of law. Not all data abuses are as dreadful as in Mohamed's case, but his plight reminds me how important it is to have a mechanism to allow people to see the data that are used against them. 

There is more information about the book here. Angwin's article giving advice on how to protect your privacy online is available here. 

Illuminatus online reading group, Week Twenty

This is an actual logo for a U.S. spy satellite. (Article here.)

(This week: Page 194: "The sub's engine was vibrating pleasantly" to "when you're lost out here," Page 204.)

This week, we get a good dose of the paranoia about government in Illuminatus! in the form of a lecture that Hagbard Celine gives to George.


"But they can rule by fraud and eventually acquire access to the tools they need to finish off the job of killing off the Constitution."

"What sort of tools?"

"More stringent security measures. Universal electronic surveillance. No-knock laws. Stop and frisk laws. Government inspection of first-class mail. Automatic fingerprinting, photographing, blood tests, and urinalysis of any person arrested before he is charged with a crime. A law making it unlawful to resist even unlawful arrest. Laws establishing detention camps for potential subsersives. Gun control laws. Restrictions on travel. The assassinations, you see, establish a need for such laws in the public mind. Instead of realizing that there is a conspiracy, conducted by a handful of men, the people reason -- or are manipulated into reasoning -- that the entire populace must have its freedom restricted in order to protect the leaders. The people agree that they themselves can be trusted." (pages 197-198).

Illuminatus! was written in 1969-1971 (allowing for late changes during the editing process), but this passage still has bite:

"More stringent security measures" -- Obama's efforts to control leaks 'most aggressive since Nixon', report finds. (Nixon of course was the president when Illuminatus! was written.)

"Universal electronic surveillance." The NSA collects telephone call records for almost everyone inside the United States.

"Government inspection of first class mail." Email is what most people use today for first class mail. If you encrypt your email, to try to preserve the same sense of privacy a first class envelope is supposed to provide, the NSA will store a copy of your message. 

"Restrictions on travel." The U.S. government maintains a no-fly list and does not allow people to challenge it or find out why they are on the list. 

Honestly, wouldn't it be great to read a passage from Illuminatus! and say, "Man, things were bad under Nixon, but it's lots better now."

Tethys, page 196, ancient Greek goddess of the sea.

"Here they suckered the middle class, whose true interest law in laissez faire free enterprise, to follow the Weishaupt slogan of 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.' The catch, of course, is that where equality and fraternity rule, there is no liberty." Pages 199-200. Hagbard sure sounds like a hardcore libertarian here.

"They bumpted him off after it was published, you know." Page 200. George Orwell was only 46 when he died from tuberculosis.

"Legion of Dynamic Discord," page 203, a real Discordian group created by Kerry Thornley (citation).

(Next week: Page 204, "Behind the golden door stood the lovely black receptionist," to page 214, "And speaking of war, the enemy lies ahead.")

Cosmic Trigger play update

The Cosmic Trigger play fund raising drive at Indiegogo has finished. It was a huge success, raising £25,468, well above the £23,000 goal.

Congratulations to Steven Pratt, who has come aboard the project as musical director. You can listen to an interview with Steve and Daisy Eris Campbell at this podcast.

Reading this blog could make you an NSA target

Boing Boing, one of my favorite blogs, has a post up from Cory Doctorow headlined, "If you read Boing Boing, the NSA considers you a target for deep surveillance."

Citing an article in a German magazine (English translation here), Cory's post explains, "According to the story, the NSA targets anyone who searches for online articles about Tails -- like this one that we published in April, or this article for teens that I wrote in May -- or Tor (The Onion Router, which we've been posted about since 2004). Anyone who is determined to be using Tor is also targeted for long-term surveillance and retention."

I don't know anything about this beyond what's in Cory's post and in the German magazine article, but if reading about Tails Linux or Tor is enough to get you on the NSA's watch list, then it's possible my blog could get you into trouble, too. I did a fairly lengthy blog posting about Tails Linux.  (My lead sentence was, "Want to surf the Internet without being  spied on by the NSA or big corporations?") I also mentioned Tails in passing in a couple of links roundup posts.

Here is an interesting sentence from the magazine article: "It [the NSA] also records details about visits to a popular internet journal for Linux operating system users called 'the Linux Journal - the Original Magazine of the Linux Community', and calls it an 'extremist forum'."

If simply using Linux can get you marked as a troublemaker, then I guess this posting on PGP didn't thrill the folks from the NSA, either. (The posting is a little out of date. If you send me an encrypted email, I would rather you send it to my Gmail address, tom.jackson (at) gmail.com. The public key block is available at the MIT keyserver.)

Kind of interesting I'm writing this blog post on Independence Day, when Americans celebrate freedom.

Another article on this is here.  The Wired magazine piece on this is here. 

Cory's post also reports that there may be a second NSA leaker, e.g. in addition to Edward Snowden.

Cosmic Trigger play campaign reaches goal

The Cosmic Trigger play fund raising campaign has met its 23,000 pound goal! If you want some RAW goodies, there are still about a day left (as of Friday morning) to make a donation.

Many of your who read this blog have helped, so here's a little bonus: The above artwork was Tweeted out Thursday by hagbard celine. 

Maybe Logic Academy history

Bogus Magus aka Jabba the Hutt

Bogus Magus has posted an "incomplete history" of Maybe Logic Academy. "The history of 'Academy 23' may never get completed but all suggestions, corrections, additions and links welcome."

Maybe Logic Academy seems pretty moribund these days in terms of offering courses. (Bogus lists a course entry for 2014, but I can't find it listed on the main site.) But the Bogus Magus chronicle is a  nice look back, and there are enough links and course outlines to provide some very interesting reading suggestions.

Assorted links

About two days left for the Indiegogo Cosmic Trigger campaign. If you want unique RAW goodies, best hurry.

Paypal froze payments for Proton encrypted email, demanding if the company has "government approval" to encrypt emails. Paypal later relented. 

Update: Jesse Walker points out that this old Reason article explains why Paypal sucks.

The president said he'd send "up to 300" troops to Iraq. The number is already up to 750. 

AP plans to use software to write some business stories. 

As Jeremy Weiland points out, It's getting harder to tell leftist screeds apart from satire.

ProPublica's chart of NSA revelations.

Adam Gorightly on Roger Lovin and other Illuminatus! elements

Adam Gorightly has posted on parts 17 and 18 of the Illuminatus! online discussion, focusing on Discordian Roger Lovin (alluded to in the text of Illuminatus!) Adam also reveals that he had recovered a very rare copy of the first edition of the Principia Discordia, and that it's reprinted in his new book, Historia Discordia. 

Illuminatus online reading group, week nineteen

Infinite Divisability by painter Yves Tanguy. 

(This week: Page 184, "MR. KHARIS: Does Mr. Celine seriously suggest..." to page 193, "Did it have anything to do with the weird dream he'd had of the temple in the Mad Dog jail?")

This section with Saul Goodman, apparently held captive in a hospital and being brainwashed by a doctor, seems to me to represent one of the themes of the work as a whole.

Saul is trying to figure out What Is Going On. He wants to know where he is, and who this "doctor" is. But in the rest of the trilogy, he also is trying to figure out what is going on, wading through a sea of information and theories. And many of the characters are trying to figure things out, too, although some, such as Simon Moon, seem awfully sure of themselves every time they open their mouth.

One point that RAW seemed to consistently teach over his lifetime was NOT to be sure of yourself, to keep trying to figure out what is going on,  to avoid all encompassing belief systems and instead to venture opinions, which can be discarded as new evidence appears. It's a teaching he offered over and over again. 

As an example, consider the New Libertarian Notes interview. Does anyone think he is only talking about politics?

I also read at least one periodical every month by a political group I dislike -- to keep some sense of balance. The overwhelming stupidity of political movements is caused by the fact that political types never read anything but their own gang's agit-prop.

Some notes on the text:

"Does Mr. Celine seriously suggest that the United States government is in need of a guardian?" page 184. It seems to me that one of the political debates in this country is between those who believe the government should be restrained by the rule of law, and those who see no need for any restraint, so long as their side is in charge.

"We believe we have shown that the resettlement plan offered by the government will be no hardship for plaintiffs," page 184. The place where I lived most of my life, Oklahoma, still has many Native Americans because they were "resettled" there. The western half of the state is mostly "Plains Indians" from the west, while the eastern half has Cherokees, Choctaws, Seminoles etc. shipped in from the eastern states.

"And I'm damned if I'll drive a broken-down jalopy that spends half its time in a garage being repaired merely because that would make me seem more 'dedicated' to you left-wing simpletons." Page 185. I love this sentence.

"Slavewagon," page 185. Volkswagen cars, associated with the hippie movement, had their roots in Nazi Germany. (As Simon Moon surely knew, hence he offers no rebuttal.)

LDD, page 186. Despite the jokes, what it really stands for is "Legion of Dynamic Discord." The legion was the basic military unit of the very un-Discordian Roman Empire, so the name is itself a joke.

"Proving that government is a  hallucination in the minds of governors," page 186. "There is no governor present anywhere," Chuang Tzu, quoted in Robert Shea's fanzine of the same name. Considered by some an early anarchist and skeptic.

Tanguy,  page 192. Yves Tanguy, a Surrealist, one of my favorite painters. Known for his eerie, other-worldly landscapes. 

"George had chosen to denounce the Crusades as an early outbreak of Western racist imperialism." page 193. Fair enough, I guess, but I always wonder why nobody notices most of the Muslim world was Christian until it was occupied by an earlier outbreak of Arab imperialism. It didn't start at the end of the 11th century. 

(Next week: Page 194: "The sub's engine was vibrating pleasantly" to "when you're lost our here," Page 204.)

Libertarian Discordians on Facebook

Via an invitation from Mr. Jake Shannon, I am now a member of a Facebook group called Discordian Libertarians. It is a closed group, requiring an invitation to join, but if I understand the rules correctly, I am now empowered to invite suitable others. If you want an invitation, email me. The other members appear to be, in fact, libertarians (Mr. Shannon is the former chairman of the Libertarian Party in Utah) so please bear this in mind when considering whether you want to be a member.