RAWilsonfans.com, the best collection of Robert Anton Wilson material on the Internet, has been revamped with a new look and new material. As Mike Gathers notes in a new posting on the site, it will continue to be a work in progress. Thanks to everyone on Twitter who spread the news about the relaunch.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Friday, March 30, 2012
RAW on Irish politics
Jesse Walker, hard at work in the stacks of the University of Michigan library as he toils on his upcoming book, The United States of Paranoia (see my interview with Mr. Walker) took time to share part of a letter with me that Robert Anton Wilson wrote to Don Werkheiser. The letter is dated Jan. 6, 1985, and was written in Dublin. The excerpt:
Irish politics: Garrett Fitzgerald is the current Taoiseach (pronounced tea-shuck, roughly). His policies are remarkably like those of Reagan and Thatcher. He has a Ph.D. in economics and is a monetarist. Charlie Haughey is the leader of the opposition. He wrote the law under which writers are exempt from income tax so, against my better judgement, I like him. He stood trial in 1970 for running guns for the I.R.A. but was acquitted; “everybody says” he was guilty as hell, but the jury was pro-I.R.A. in those days. He has tapes of the whales singing off the coast of his Kerry home, and other voices singing back at them; he claims the other voices are faeries. Neither Fitzgerald nor Haughey ever disagree with the Catholic hierarchy about anything, although they disagree about everything else. Dick Spring is the head of the Labour Party and does disagree with the Church, but guardedly (“We need to rethink the question,” etc.) The head of the Workers Party gets so little publicity that I have forgotten his name; he damns and blasts the Church openly, when he can get the press to listen. He is a Marxist, and former head of the I.R.A., although no longer friendly with them; they call him a “Stalinist stickie,” i.e. lost in the past. The head of the Sinn Fein (shin fayn) party is one Gerry Adams, who is widely believed (I might say universally believed) to be the head also of the I.R.A., although it is libelous to say so explicitly. There is actually a law against interviewing him on television (!) although he may paradoxically be interviewed in newspapers (!!). He says the Church sucks, capitalism sucks, all the other parties suck, and “armed struggle” is the only answer, although he denies that he is involved in it. There is also an Ecology Party and an Ecologist Party, but they get so little publicity that I have not discovered what vital ideological difference distinguishes them.
Whatever one thinks of all this, it is at least less monotonous and more entertaining than the two-party system in the U.S.
Werkheiser, by the way, is mentioned in this interview with Robert Anton Wilson.
Irish politics: Garrett Fitzgerald is the current Taoiseach (pronounced tea-shuck, roughly). His policies are remarkably like those of Reagan and Thatcher. He has a Ph.D. in economics and is a monetarist. Charlie Haughey is the leader of the opposition. He wrote the law under which writers are exempt from income tax so, against my better judgement, I like him. He stood trial in 1970 for running guns for the I.R.A. but was acquitted; “everybody says” he was guilty as hell, but the jury was pro-I.R.A. in those days. He has tapes of the whales singing off the coast of his Kerry home, and other voices singing back at them; he claims the other voices are faeries. Neither Fitzgerald nor Haughey ever disagree with the Catholic hierarchy about anything, although they disagree about everything else. Dick Spring is the head of the Labour Party and does disagree with the Church, but guardedly (“We need to rethink the question,” etc.) The head of the Workers Party gets so little publicity that I have forgotten his name; he damns and blasts the Church openly, when he can get the press to listen. He is a Marxist, and former head of the I.R.A., although no longer friendly with them; they call him a “Stalinist stickie,” i.e. lost in the past. The head of the Sinn Fein (shin fayn) party is one Gerry Adams, who is widely believed (I might say universally believed) to be the head also of the I.R.A., although it is libelous to say so explicitly. There is actually a law against interviewing him on television (!) although he may paradoxically be interviewed in newspapers (!!). He says the Church sucks, capitalism sucks, all the other parties suck, and “armed struggle” is the only answer, although he denies that he is involved in it. There is also an Ecology Party and an Ecologist Party, but they get so little publicity that I have not discovered what vital ideological difference distinguishes them.
Whatever one thinks of all this, it is at least less monotonous and more entertaining than the two-party system in the U.S.
Werkheiser, by the way, is mentioned in this interview with Robert Anton Wilson.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Prometheus Rising and the "rat race"
San Francisco attorney and NLP practitioner Elizabeth Coleman is reading Prometheus Rising, and the book inspires a blog post on the "rat race" and being goal-oriented as opposed to enjoying life as you live it. See also her post "De-bunking Plato: Math is an invention, like language," which relates nicely to what Robert Anton Wilson wrote in Natural Law, among other places.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
An unusual lawsuit
Here is an unusual lawsuit, reported by the Courthouse News Service:
MANHATTAN (CN) - An American expatriate in Bulgaria claims the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, the Office of International Treasury Control and the Italian government conspired with a host of others to steal more than $1.1 trillion in financial instruments intended to support humanitarian purposes.
The 111-page federal complaint involves a range of entities common to conspiracy theorists, including the Vatican Illuminati, the Masons, the "Trilateral Trillenium Tripartite Gold Commission," and the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Plaintiff Neil Keenan claims he was entrusted in 2009 with the financial instruments - which included U.S. Federal Reserve notes worth $124.5 billion, two Japanese government bonds with a combined face value of $19 billion, and one U.S. "Kennedy" bond with a face value of $1 billion - by an entity called the Dragon Family, which is a group of several wealthy and secretive Asian families.
More here.
The article says that Keenan is represented by William H. Mulligan Jr., of the law firm Bleakley, Platt and Schmidt, located in White Plains, N.Y., who apparently is a real lawyer. Neil Keenan's Facebook page is here.
Hat tip, John Merritt.
MANHATTAN (CN) - An American expatriate in Bulgaria claims the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, the Office of International Treasury Control and the Italian government conspired with a host of others to steal more than $1.1 trillion in financial instruments intended to support humanitarian purposes.
The 111-page federal complaint involves a range of entities common to conspiracy theorists, including the Vatican Illuminati, the Masons, the "Trilateral Trillenium Tripartite Gold Commission," and the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Plaintiff Neil Keenan claims he was entrusted in 2009 with the financial instruments - which included U.S. Federal Reserve notes worth $124.5 billion, two Japanese government bonds with a combined face value of $19 billion, and one U.S. "Kennedy" bond with a face value of $1 billion - by an entity called the Dragon Family, which is a group of several wealthy and secretive Asian families.
More here.
The article says that Keenan is represented by William H. Mulligan Jr., of the law firm Bleakley, Platt and Schmidt, located in White Plains, N.Y., who apparently is a real lawyer. Neil Keenan's Facebook page is here.
Hat tip, John Merritt.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Bookplate blog talks to Bobby Campbell
Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie's latest confession is that he's interviewed Bobby Campbell. The topic at hand is the bookplate Bobby did for Robert Anton Wilson's library.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Dan Brown's lawyer: No RAW defense in plagiarism trial
Dan Brown, author of the mega-bestselling The Da Vinci Code, was sued for plagiarism by two of the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the conspiracy theory book which claims that the Merovingian dynasty in France was descended from Jesus Christ. The judge ruled that as Holy Blood claimed to be history, Brown had the right to base a historical novel on it, just as any novelist might use history as part of his material.
I have wondered for awhile now whether Brown's lawyers cited The Widow's Son by Robert Anton Wilson as part of their defense. After all, The Widow's Son also bases much of its plot on Holy Blood, Holy Grail and Wilson cited the book in the novel's footnotes.
If the authors of Holy Blood believed that basing a novel's plot on their book was "plagiarism," then why didn't they object to The Widow's Son? Could it be, perhaps, that their objection to The Da Vinci Code was not based on principle, but on a desire to seize some of Brown's profits?
Via the Internet I tracked down John Baldwin, a British lawyer who is an expert on intellectual property and who represented Brown in the plagiarism lawsuit. I explained my interest in the case and asked Baldwin if The Widow's Son had come up during the trial.
Baldwin kindly took the time to email a reply to me. "As far as I can recall, Mr Wilson’s book was not brought up during the Da Vinci Code trial," he wrote.
I have wondered for awhile now whether Brown's lawyers cited The Widow's Son by Robert Anton Wilson as part of their defense. After all, The Widow's Son also bases much of its plot on Holy Blood, Holy Grail and Wilson cited the book in the novel's footnotes.
If the authors of Holy Blood believed that basing a novel's plot on their book was "plagiarism," then why didn't they object to The Widow's Son? Could it be, perhaps, that their objection to The Da Vinci Code was not based on principle, but on a desire to seize some of Brown's profits?
Via the Internet I tracked down John Baldwin, a British lawyer who is an expert on intellectual property and who represented Brown in the plagiarism lawsuit. I explained my interest in the case and asked Baldwin if The Widow's Son had come up during the trial.
Baldwin kindly took the time to email a reply to me. "As far as I can recall, Mr Wilson’s book was not brought up during the Da Vinci Code trial," he wrote.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Two images
Via the Rev. Dr. Narot on Twitter, a photo of a "secret UFO Illuminati painting," taken at a Starbucks at 11331 Camarillo St. in North Hollywood, Calif. (Hat tip, @narot23)
Jesse Walker, also via Twitter, has a daily feature called "Your morning image," and here is an image he shared on Dec. 29 on the structure of freemasonry. Click for larger image. (He's @notjessewalker).
Jesse Walker, also via Twitter, has a daily feature called "Your morning image," and here is an image he shared on Dec. 29 on the structure of freemasonry. Click for larger image. (He's @notjessewalker).
Saturday, March 24, 2012
'I post probabilities, not certainties'
Belatedly, I have discovered the blog Dedroidify, heavily influenced by RAW and devoted to exploring consciousness and conspiracy research. Lots of postings, and lots of links to other blogs I had not heard of before. There's also a video cache. I am sure I'll be exploring this blog as time permits. The guy who does it says he lives in Belgium. His list of blogs that he follows omits mine. Perhaps I am too prosaic, but I am surprised he does not follow The Oz Mix.
Friday, March 23, 2012
RAW on death
I've been reading a series of posts at The Oz Mix, based on Oz Fritz's belief that "Some part of us can survive death. We call that part a bardo voyager." Elsewhere, he refers to "the radical idea that some part of us can be educated to survive the death of the body." Oz is a sound engineer, and he had to pause the posts so he could go to Milan, Italy, to work with a band that includes Bernie Worrell and Bill Laswell, but he has promised to resume the series at some point.
There is a section in the "Sirius Rising" chapter of Cosmic Trigger: The Final Secret of the Illuminati, which Oz Fritz probably understands better than I do, in which Wilson describes taking a "programmed trip," with interesting results:
"The Yogi entered Samadhi and believed, at last, that the wisdom of the adept is truly beyond the floating body-rapture of mere Hatha Yoga. Based on understand of and participation in a planet-wide Consciousness, Samadhi opens the neuro-atomic memory which is in all living beings, and in that dancing quantum energy mistaken called 'dead matter'."
A few graphs later:
"The Shaman lost all fear of death, knowing it to be literally impossible. He understood the wit of Yeats' fine line, 'Man has created death'."
There is a section in the "Sirius Rising" chapter of Cosmic Trigger: The Final Secret of the Illuminati, which Oz Fritz probably understands better than I do, in which Wilson describes taking a "programmed trip," with interesting results:
"The Yogi entered Samadhi and believed, at last, that the wisdom of the adept is truly beyond the floating body-rapture of mere Hatha Yoga. Based on understand of and participation in a planet-wide Consciousness, Samadhi opens the neuro-atomic memory which is in all living beings, and in that dancing quantum energy mistaken called 'dead matter'."
A few graphs later:
"The Shaman lost all fear of death, knowing it to be literally impossible. He understood the wit of Yeats' fine line, 'Man has created death'."
Thursday, March 22, 2012
New 'Historical Illuminatus' art
Artist Bobby Campbell has posted his new cover art for upcoming New Falcon editions of Robert Anton Wilson's three "Historical Illuminatus" books, The Earth Will Shake, The Widow's Son and Nature's God.
He says they are "coming soon from New Falcon and Amazon.com."
I asked if that meant there will be Kindle editions. He answered, "I'm not sure. I've made the case for why they should and even hooked em up w/ a service that'll convert everything. Here's hoping!"
He says they are "coming soon from New Falcon and Amazon.com."
I asked if that meant there will be Kindle editions. He answered, "I'm not sure. I've made the case for why they should and even hooked em up w/ a service that'll convert everything. Here's hoping!"
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Steven Pinker on ideology
I've been reading RAW's Natural Law recently, and that has focused me on the uses (and abuses) of ideology. In relation to that, here's a quotation from Steven Pinker, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined:
Individual people have no shortage of selfish motives for violence. But the really big body counts in history pile up when a large number of people carry out a motive that transcends any one of them: an ideology. Like predatory or instrumental violence, ideological violence is a means to an end. But with an ideology, the end is idealistic: a conception of the greater good.
Yet for all that idealism, it’s ideology that drove many of the worst things that people have ever done to each other. They include the Crusades, the European Wars of Religion, the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the Russian and Chinese civil wars, the Vietnam War, the Holocaust, and the genocides of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. An ideology can be dangerous for several reasons. The infinite good it promises prevents its true believers from cutting a deal. It allows any number of eggs to be broken to make the utopian omelet. And it renders opponents of the ideology infinitely evil and hence deserving of infinite punishment.
Via Supergee, an important part of my daily info-diet.
Individual people have no shortage of selfish motives for violence. But the really big body counts in history pile up when a large number of people carry out a motive that transcends any one of them: an ideology. Like predatory or instrumental violence, ideological violence is a means to an end. But with an ideology, the end is idealistic: a conception of the greater good.
Yet for all that idealism, it’s ideology that drove many of the worst things that people have ever done to each other. They include the Crusades, the European Wars of Religion, the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the Russian and Chinese civil wars, the Vietnam War, the Holocaust, and the genocides of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. An ideology can be dangerous for several reasons. The infinite good it promises prevents its true believers from cutting a deal. It allows any number of eggs to be broken to make the utopian omelet. And it renders opponents of the ideology infinitely evil and hence deserving of infinite punishment.
Via Supergee, an important part of my daily info-diet.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Monday, March 19, 2012
RAW archive on YouTube
A Mr. K.K. Padmanabhan has pointed me to a RAW Archive on YouTube. The Croaker seems to have found a lot of material. His alchemical archives blog is worth a look, too. He currently has 23 postings there tagged to Robert Anton Wilson.
NOTE: In the original version of this posting I erred and credited Padmanabhan for the archive and the blog, when I should have credited The Croaker.
NOTE: In the original version of this posting I erred and credited Padmanabhan for the archive and the blog, when I should have credited The Croaker.
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