Pardon Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden

 

Julian Assange (Creative Commons photo by David Silvers)

Matt Taibbi has a great article on Assange, and on the kinds of people who actually get pardons in the U.S.:

Our invasion of Iraq had been a spectacular failure — unlike pictures of returning coffins, that couldn’t be completely covered up — and Americans learned about grotesque forms of war profiteering. These included the use of mercenaries to whom the taxpayer unknowingly paid lavish sums, to commit horrific war crimes like the Nissour Square Massacre, also known as “Baghdad’s Bloody Sunday.”

One of Donald Trump’s most indefensible (and bizarrely, least commented-upon) acts was the pardon of the four Blackwater guards who shot and killed those seventeen Iraqi civilians, including women and children. The New York Times story covering the Blackwater pardon spent just four paragraphs on the case, sticking it below apparently more outrageous acts like the pardon of George Papadopoulos.

Read the whole thing. 

The 108-year Rosicrucian Cycle

As I wrote recently, I really enjoyed Znore's new book, Death Sweat of the Cluster.

The book opens with an essay on "The 108-year Rosicrucian Cycle," and you can read the online version to see what I am talking about here. 

The essay argues that a 108-year cycle began with 1904, which Znore links with the transmission Aleister Crowley received in 1904, launching the Age of Horus. June 16, 1904, is also the date for all of the events in James Joyce's Ulysses. The cycle ended in 2012. Znore ties 2012 to Terence McKenna's suggestions about the importance of the date.

"There is some evidence that Robert Anton Wilson also was aware of the 108-year cycle from 1904 to 2012," Znore writes. "Cosmic Trigger, first published in 1977, was one of the first books to feature an analysis of Terence McKenna's speculations about 2012."

It amused me to think that if Znore's theory was correct, I ought to be able to tie other important cultural events to 1904 and to 2012.

It seems to me 1904 is important as the first year of aviation. The Wright Brothers first flew their airplane in December 1903,  so 1904 was the first entire year there was such a thing as an airplane. 

I can certainly argue that 2012 was important, too, particularly for Robert Anton Wilson fans. That's the date that a court decision paved the way for the creation of the Robert Anton Wilson Trust. According to RAW's daughter, Christina Pearson, "The Trust was initiated as part of the probate court judgment that finally closed the RAW estates probate in October of 2012. The court required a Trust to be created, and assigned me as Trustee. The RAW Trust was established in January of 2013 with the responsibility of protecting Bob’s literary legacy (his only resource)."

All of the activities of the Trust, including the establishment of Hilaritas Press and that small press' efforts to preserve Wilson's literary legacy, can be dated to that 2012 court decision.

Prometheus Rising exercise and discussion group, Week 14

 

Well, I finally found my second quarters.

On Saturday, I had a good-sized glass of iced coffee sitting by my chair in our living room, and one of my cats was in my lap. I don't know I can really blame the cat or whether it was all my fault, but the glass was knocked over, spilling the coffee.

This launched a cleanup effort from both myself and my wife, and after the chair I was sitting in was moved forward, a coin hoard was discovered, of coins that had apparently slipped from my pocket over months or even years and landed underneath the reclining chair.

My wife told me to take the coins and put them in a piggybank, and I belatedly realized later that as I put them in, I noticed that some of them were quarters.

It wasn't how I envisioned finding them when I did the visualization exercise, but I think it counts as finding quarters. Of course, I have seen quarters around the house from time to time, such as on a counter after I empty my pocket, but this was completely a surprise discovery. 

And I'm pleased that with the task of finding quarters finally out of the way, I can move on to the other exercizes.

As I was struggling to find the quarters, Eric Wagner was offering me advice on the topic, which I pass on to you. Eric tells me he does not consider it "cheating" to go to drive-through fast food places when they are closed, perhaps early in the morning, and look on the ground where drivers are likely to drop coins. This seems like especially good advice when many of us are curtailing trips to the store, removing ordinary opportunities to look on the ground for coins. I was planning to do that until I stumbled into the quarters under my chair.

How are the rest of you doing? I plan to re-read the first chapter and move on to the other exercises. 

Prop Anon launches podcast

Prop Anon, who recently announced he has found a publisher for his biography of Robert Anton Wilson,  has been working to get his Patreon account established. He has just launched a podcast and has posted a new video, about 42 minutes long, "The Death of Qanon and the Age of Prop Anon,."

He explains, "This is my inaugural extemporaneous video "lecture" about how I view the last four years while providing information about Propaganda Anonymous, the philosophical and artistic concept that I created in 2001."

I've embedded the video here; if you enjoy it, please check out his Patereon. 

Welcome to 'Starseed Academy'

 

Confusingly, there us more than one "Starseed Academy" out there on the Internet. and I am not in a position to help you sort through them. But this one seems to be one put together by an entity and entities who have read their Leary and Wilson.

"The binary star system of Sirius is at the core of many calendars, texts and sacred knowledge of many ancient, advanced civilizations such as Lemuria, Atlantis, Ancient Egypt, Sumeria and many indigenous tribes around the globe." That's from the "Starseeds and Galactic Civilizations" section.

I can't find an "About" area claiming authorship for the site.

Hat tip: Charles Faris. 

Article on 'Starseed," Eight Circuits and Clare Graves

An article at Medium, "Tim Leary, Robert Anton Wilson and Developmental Psychology," posted last month by Don Dulchinos, discusses The Starseed Signals, the Eight Circuit model and the psychology system of Clare Graves (which I know nothing about). 

Excerpting a couple of paragraphs may provide an idea of what the article focuses upon:

I was inspired by Mike Gathers’ recent essay, Freud, Jung and a Platypus Get an MRI [PDF here] to take another look at the 8 circuit model (BTW, shout out to Mike in the 303 — I’m in Boulder.) Leary came of age professionally in the 1950’s, when psychology was undergoing an encounter with behavioral psychology, notably B.F. Skinner, and the reaction was humanistic psychology — Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and others. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has become iconic, but wasn’t the only such model.

Mike’s piece was especially interesting to me as I’ve been doing recent work on a developmental psychology system put forth by Clare Graves, also starting in the 50’s, and known under the popular title Spiral Dynamics. Graves taught psychology at Union College in Schenectady, NY, where he consulted in organizational psychology at General Electric’s world headquarters, and where I studied briefly with him as an undergraduate.

Podcast news of note [UPDATE]

1. Robert Fay and our friend Roman Tsivkin from the Feeling Bookish podcast appear on the new "Should You Read Before You Die?" podcast, to discuss whether you should read James Joyce's Ulysses.  

2. Znore discusses his new book, Death Swear of the Cluster, which I've recommended on this blog (and which I just finished.)

I've provided links but the usual podcasting apps on your smartphone should work. (Search for "Sync Book Radio" for the Znore podcast). 

UPDATE: Daisy Eris Campbell will appear on the Feeling Bookish podcast on Feb. 28 and the recording will be released the next day, Roman Tsivkin reports.  More on that soon. 

Tweet I enjoyed with all of the bad news

 

Trance Medium: Whom do you wish to contact on the otherwise?
Me: Mr Robert Anton Wilson.
Trance Medium: I call upon Mr Robert Anton Wilson to come forth and communicate with us now, Mr Wilson, are you present?
R.A.W: Maybe.

— Don of The Witch Mafia✴ (@PeterBecause13) January 4, 2021

RAW writes a movie review

Another find by Martin Wagner: "The Burning Gorilla" by Kevin O'Flaherty McCool ("mosprobably Robert Anton Wilson," Martin says), ostensibly a review of the movie Morgan -- A Suitable Case for Treatment, also seems to be a commentary on the Vietnam War. It was first published in the East Village Other in 1966. Excerpt:

Breathe deeply, from the gut. Do you smell it? It’s blood and napalm. The stink, the pornographic, stench of blood and napalm is all over the country. People are falling in the streets. They call it smog, air pollution, a million lies. I tell you it is blood and napalm. There are stains on the Constitution, and the officials try to tell tourists that it is the mildew of age but it is really blood and napalm. Look at the skirts of Liberty standing there in the harbor. They try to tell you that it is rust that you see. No. No. It is blood and napalm.

Prometheus Rising exercise and discussion group, Week Thirteen

 

The late Andrea Dworkin 

Chapter One “The Thinker and The Prover”

By Apuleius Charlton Special guest blogger

I guess for the next few paragraphs I’ll equivocate, as always, with what the Grand Old Man has to say about the Thinker and the Prover. Namely, while I agree with the general treatment, I don’t believe the model is infallible. The Thinker does Think but the Prover doesn’t always do the trick without drugs, trauma, or psychosis. 

My daughter loves Pizza Hut. A couple years ago I took her to Pizza Hut before going home after I had picked her up: now it is her favorite pizza. The town that she lives in and I grew up in doesn’t have a Pizza Hut which I can imagine adds exclusivity, most alluring of spices. One of her most successful birthdays was at a Pizza Hut. So, the other night I found myself shivering outside of a pick up window, on foot, waiting on Pizza Hut. 

The Hut nearest my home closed recently and when my daughter was with us over the holidays she was adamant that she needed some of that pizza pie. So I found the nearest franchise, placed an order for pick-up and drove there with my daughter. It was a relatively mild night so I only wore a cardigan and let my daughter go out without a coat. I tried the door of the restaurant and found out it was locked. Instead I asked an employee on a smoke break if I needed to go through the drive thru and she instructed me to just walk over to the window. I did so. 

For what must have seemed a longer span of time than it was, I stood there with Lucy as cars pulled up behind us. I felt like a dumbass standing in the spotlight of a Jeep’s headlights. Eventually Lucy got cold and I took off my cardigan. As I stooped to put it around her I saw that the ground was littered with coins. Of course, this is one of the most natural environments to find dropped change in but it struck my sense of synchronicity. As much as I ruminated on the possible significance and tried to stir up my courage, I couldn’t bend over and avail myself of any of the coins, I couldn’t even ask my daughter to pick one up because of the anxiety of standing in a drive thru with someone else looking on. Odd that no amount of will power or curiosity could cause me to break my societal (4th Circuit) imprints that 1) it is an intolerable offense to stand in a drive thru and be seen and 2) it is undignified to stoop to pick up change. 

It is amusing and tragic that my social-anxiety is brought on by the niggling idea that other people might be judging me in the same way I judge casual passersby. Instant Karma! When my car has broken down and I’ve either needed to change a tire, wait for help, or walk for service I am incredibly, cripplingly troubled by the eyes of those driving by. My thinker seems to occasionally be a Big Brother that doesn’t exist. I know on some level that the driver of the Jeep wouldn’t remember me grabbing one of the coins at my feet an hour later, on another I feared that they would to the core of my classist being. 

On the same token, RAW talks about the Thinker and the Prover in the societal terms of anti-Semitism and Feminism. I don’t agree about accusations of anti-Semitism, or its invasiveness in our society in the same way that politicos such as Ben Shapiro, Bari Weiss, or Brett“Bedbug” Stephens do- I am admittedly anti-Zionist and am married to a Jewish woman who feels the same way. It isn’t the golden calf of prejudice it was to many 20th century Americans (many of whom still gladly used the racist term “Jewed down”) and my Thinker and Prover show time and again that anti-Semitism is tied to wider racism on the right, instead of being a silent predjudice of the political left. At the same time I am as hostile as RAW was to certain forms of Feminism (Dworkin or other forms of radical, or anti-heterosexual feminism) but I also believe in its overarching goals and assessments of society. I consider myself, and all reasonable peoples, to be feminist. I would never identify with the Men’s Rights Movement no matter how much I believe that Robert Bly “got done dirty” (my beloved wife’s terminology). There are nuances and I’m not sure my Prover works as well anymore as my Thinker is constantly confused. I wish I had more convictions. 

My daughter loves Pizza Hut because of their stuffed crust pizza. Most of the time she only eats one slice and doesn’t touch the crust. The Thinker thinks and the Prover sometimes does its job. 

Steve Fly publishes new novel

Steve "Fly" Pratt -- writer, RAW expert, musician, website builder, artist, turntablist, James Joyce expert, world traveler and a few other things that I'm forgetting just now -- has just issued his new novel, Deep Scratch.

More information here. Available for $7.77 as a Kindle ebook, or you can get it by supporting Steve on Patreon.

In his foreword, Steve writes, "Sacrificing go-ahead plot and chronology for an experimental improvisational approach. Hang on in there. This novel is a work of fiction, any resemblance to entities either living or dead is purely coincidental (although often meaningfully synchronistic) that said, the author and the DJ would like to remind the reader to peek out the window and ask: am I living in a science fiction novel?"

Follow Steve on Twitter. 

Get a PDF of Bobby Campbell's Tarot cards, designed by Timothy Leary

 

Bobby Campbell created a set of Neuro Tarot Cards, based on designs by Timothy Leary, and has given me permission to share a PDF file of them. 

Bobby emailed the file to some friends and explained, "Leary's bit about the Tarot cards being a neurogenetic script reminded me that several years ago I recreated a set of Neuro Tarot Cards he designed for The Game of Life, a PDF of which is enclosed.

"He layers in a bunch of different symbol systems on each card, outlining a pretty cool sci-fi mystic narrative, just saying absolutely anything he wants :)))"

Bobby has a Weirdoverse Patreon account.  You can also follow him on Twitter.

Books read 2020

 

As I have in past years, I am listing all of the books I read in the past year, including books I re-read and books I "read" by listening to audiobooks. 

Some things I noticed: I read (or-reread) five books by Robert Anton Wilson; much of my reading is "homework" in one way or another (books by local authors, or science fiction books I read in connection with the Hugo Award or Prometheus Award); I often read books because of interests that have little to do with this blog (e.g. aviation history, the later Roman Empire, Russian classical music.)

Although I didn't put it in my "top five" blog post, Pigspurt's Daughter by Daisy Eris Campbell is very good, and I suspect just about everyone who reads this blog would like it. So that's another Hilaritas Press book I bought and read! 

1. Radicalized, Cory Doctorow.
2. Monster Hunted Guardian, Larry Correia and Sarah Hoyt.
3. A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine.
4. The Widow's Son, Robert Anton Wilson.
5. Churchill, Hitler and "The Unnecessary War," Patrick J. Buchanan.
6. Moon Rising, Ian McDonald.
7. The Testaments, Margaret Atwood.
8. Ode to Defiance, Marc Stiegler.
9. The Good Luck Girls, Charlotte Nicole Davis.
10. Empire of Lies, Raymond Khoury.
11. They Will Drown in Their Mothers' Tears, Johannes Anyuru.
12. Jaguar in the Kitchen: My Life with Jungle Larry, Nancy Tetzlaff.
13. Atlas Alone, Emma Newman.
14. Ruin's Wake, Patrick Edwards.
15. Pigspurt's Daughter, Daisy Eris Campbell.
16. The Roman Empire in Late Antiquity, Hugh Elton.
17. Ishtar Rising, Robert Anton Wilson.
18. The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien.
19. Nonlocal Nature: The Eight Circuits of Consciousness. James Heffernan.
20. Fandom Harvest, Terry Carr.
21. Howard Hughes' Airline: An Informal History of TWA, Robert Serling.
22. The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E. Harrow.
23. The City in the Middle of the Night, Charlie Jane Anders.
24. The Light Brigade, Kameron Hurley.
25. Middlegame, Seanan McGuire.
26. The New Inquisition, Robert Anton Wilson.
27. Loserthink, Scott Adams.
28. Assateague Dark, Bob Adamov.
29. Gideon the Ninth,Tamsyn Muir.
30. Becoming Superman: My Journey from Poverty to Hollywood, J. Michael Straczynski.
31. The Lady from the Black Lagoon, Mallory O'Meara.
32. Joanna Russ, Gwyneth Jones.
33. The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein, Farah Mendelsohn.
34. The Deep, Rivers Solomon.
35. The Haunting of Tram Car 015, P. Djeli Clark.
36. This Is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.
37. In an Absent Dream, Seanan McGuire.
38. Nature's God, Robert Anton Wilson.
39. The Keep, F. Paul Wilson.
40. Remain in Love, Chris Frantz.
41. The World of Late Antiquity, AD 150-750, Peter Brown.
42. The Second Star, Alma Alexander.
43. Network Effect, Martha Wells.
44. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, Scott Adams.
45. Last Orders and Other Stories, Brian Aldiss.
46. Is My Child Next? The Alexa Brown Story, Jonathan Walsh.
47. Piranesi, Susanna Clarke. 
48. The End of Eternity, Isaac Asimov.
49. Watership Down, Richard Adams.
50. Attack Surface, Cory Doctorow.
51. Shostakovich: A Life, Fay Laurel.
52. The Starseed Signals, Robert Anton Wilson.
53. Mingo Town & Memories, Larry Smith.
54. A Time of Changes, Robert Silverberg.
55. Steel Rails and Silver Wings: The Lindberg Line to the Birth of TWA, Robert Serling.
56. Stilicho: The Vandal Who Saved Rome, Ian Hughes.
57. Assassin, Douglas R. Casey and John F. Hunt.
58. Plowing the Dark, Richard Powers.