I wonder how Britney would feel
60 years ago if she lived in the Third Reich. Would she just trust Hitler
in every decision that he makes and just support it herself? Actually,
most likely! She’s a Teutonic-looking Barbi doll, so Der Fürrer
would probably approve her “singing” career, provided she could rap
and choreograph to Deutschland Uber Alles. Or maybe Baby Baby
One More Time could become France-Invading One More Time, and Oops I
Did It Again could apply to a whole lot of things...
Still, I was originally appalled by this
obey-like-a-sheep statement from a flavor of the month whose taste expired well
over fifteen minutes ago, but then I got to thinking: that mentality is exactly
what she’d espouse as a self-imposed
“role model,”
since it is precisely
what her career hinges on. Let’s face it: Britney Spears has no
talent, so the only way she can maintain her popularity is through a culture of
blind obedience. Millions of robot teenagers submissively swallow the
swill that she’s all that and a bag of chips, without actually doing some
comparative shopping in the music market to see that there’re much better bands
out there. No sir: just trust in the A&R/pr men in every decision they
make about what they think America’s youth want to hear, and they should just
buy that.
And come to think of it, so does
Bush’s.
At least until the next election.
In September, former General
Wesley Clark became the latest of the lichen-like bacteria to toss their hat
into the ring of presidential wanna-bes. Roughly one-fourth of our
presidents had formerly been generals (if you’re wondering: Washington, Jackson,
both Harrisons,
Taylor, Pierce, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, and Eisenhower) and
of these only two (Jackson and Taylor) were Democrats. Granted that, it may
seem a bit unusual that Clark would choose to go Donkey, especially given the
pattern since the Nixon administration that the Republicans were the military’s
best friend. Plus, since Clark has retired, he is a consultant to several
investment firms with strong ties to the Bush family.
However, Clark claims he felt snubbed
after 9/11, when GWB didn’t ask him to join his anti-terrorism task force.
Allegedly, Dubya’s main political schemer, Karl Rowe, was the person who nixed the
idea. As Clark later told the story, “I would have been a Republican
if Karl Rowe had returned my phone calls.”
Maybe there was a good reason
that Rowe cock-blocked, or in this case, Clark-blocked Wes: even by GWB
standards, the guy is a raving maniac.
While commander of U.N. forces in
Cosavo, Clark had Belgrade invested, with the objective of capturing the
city. He knew troops would have to be used, but Clark delayed the invasion
several days because he was waiting for the press
corps to show up. He knew a photo op when he saw it. In the meantime,
Russian troops (ostensibly working with the U.N.) went in on their own and
captured a key piece of real estate: the Pristina airfield. Infuriated, Clark
issued the order that troops under his own command go in and forcibly expel the
Russians. Damn Rusky bastards were stealing his thunder, by gum! Fortunately, one of his subordinates, British General Sir Michael
Jackson, disobeyed, saying “I will not start World War Three for you.”
And this guy wants to be
President, eh...
The Belgrade debacle isn’t the
only blemish on his record, though. Let’s look at
Clark’s résumé for a
second, and that’ll actually get us back to the title and point of this piece:
Wes Clark’s connection to Waco.
In 1993, General Wesley Clark was
in command of the First Cavalry Division of III Corps, stationed at Ft. Hood, Texas, just outside Waco.
When the ATF was planning the initial raid on the Branch Davidian complex to
search for weapons and arrest David Koresh, they first went to Ft. Hood to
procure materials and assistance. Despite being a brazen violation of the
Posse Comitatus Act (which specifically prohibits the military assisting in police actions)
they received the equipment they asked for, and the Ft. Hood facilities were
even used to build a little mock-up of Mt. Carmel for ATF training
purposes. The person authorizing use of all this was Clark’s
second-in-command.
It stretches credulity to think
Clark was unaware of this and didn’t give his subordinate the go-ahead.
President Clinton himself later said “The first thing I did after the ATF
agents were killed, once we knew that the FBI was going to go in, was to ask
that the military be consulted because of the quasi-military nature of the
conflict.” After the
stand-off ensued and Janet Reno began soliciting options to forcibly end the
stalemate, she ultimately settled on the disastrous concept of gassing the
Davidian building to force the inhabitants out. However, she did get a
second opinion on it.
Two army officers were
dispatched to D.C. on April 14 to give a critique of the Gas Plan. The two
were Col. Gerald Boykin and his superior, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the head of
Fort Bragg Special Forces. Boykin had come directly from Waco, where the
day previously he was reconnoitering the compound. According to the
subsequent Justice Department investigation, the two loved the FBI gas plan, and
enthusiastically offered suggestions to fine-tune it to their own overkill specifications.
During the meeting, one of the officers told Reno that if the military had been
called in to end a similar situation as part of a military operation in a
foreign country, it would focus its efforts on “taking out”
the leader of the operation.
Although the advice came from Ft.
Bragg, the troops and material that implemented it came from Clark’s Ft.
Hood. The Justice Department report on the
disaster gives the specific inventory:
Unlike the previous go-round with
the initial raid, this time the military advice and supply was obtained legally: Clinton had signed a
temporary waiver of Posse Comitatus to allow the help in this specific instance. As precedent, he cited Reagan
doing the same thing in 1987 to allow Delta Force to suppress a riot at the
Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta.
Anyway, Janet Reno later attempted to
explain the FBI using Army gear as the equivalent of a “Rent-a-car”
arrangement.
It’s a bit difficult to believe
that Clark, the commander loaning these things, did so blithely without wanting
a more “hands-on” role in the happenings. How much more,
of course, is open to debate, and doubtless the General denies everything.
There’s a lot of circumstantial
evidence that Clark was more involved in Waco that he wants to acknowledge, but
I’m the first to admit most of that is speculative at best. Some writers
even more paranoid that I am (gasp!) see the chain of circumstance
to be enough to “prove” that Waco was a military operation run
by Clark himself and using the FBI as a smokescreen scapegoat. I don’t buy that for
a second, though of course you’re welcome to read their arguments and draw your
own conclusions: here
is a piece typical of such train of thought. Then again, I’ve also seen
“proofs” that Hillary was the secret brain behind Waco, so I take it
all with a gram of flax powder.
Still, there is no question that Clark was at least tangentially involved in the Waco debacle, which is
enough for me to put his picture up on my dartboard for fifteen minutes.
One of the things he was able to
hear was a snipplet of dialogue from an unidentified male speaker: “He’s
in Georgetown with Richard [unintelligible – sounds like ‘erd’] right [unintelligible – sounds like, ‘now’],
[unintelligible – sounds like ‘unless’].”
There
were only two members of Peoples Temple named Richard: Richard Clark (who escaped and
survived) and Richard Janaro, who was away from Jonestown on a boat when things
went tragic.
Again,
I only ask that rhetorically, as we are still unsure what is being said on the
tape. Given the unintelligible after “Richard,” my guess is
that it is not Dwyer being referred to. Use of a first name
indicates familiarity with the person, and I have been unable to determine how
Richard Dwyer referred to himself or how his associates referred to him (ie:
Richard, Rich, Dick, etc.) Again, we currently do not know who “Richard”
is. Mr. Dieckman comments:
Most intriguing. This
becomes yet another reason why it is necessary to figure out just when the tape
was made. Dwyer, along with other survivors of the turkey shoot that
killed Congressman Ryan, was rescued from the Port Kaituma airstrip and flown
back to Georgetown. Was there time for this to have happened, and would
the people on the tape have known this? Again, time-stamping the tape could
solve this, as well as numerous other problems, but would also open up a slew of
other uncertainties.
So would the
identity of the
“He” that is referred to as being
“in Georgetown with Richard.” Who “he”
is is unknown. Curiously, there is
another mysterious, unnamed person referred
to on the tape, though it is unclear who the comment is referring to.
Specifically,
“He
was the, uh, executor of the, uh, settlement in Costa Rica, right? He’s the
big wig.”
Again, most intriguing. Details as
they become available.
Thanks; Evil Matt aims to maim. Several other people have verbally expressed similar sentiments to
me about the necessity for something such as the G’EM. The Bible is a
big-ass book, and reading it can be a chore. Not only that, but there are so
many nuances and redundancies in it that it is often possible to lose sight of
the Big Picture it does present. Hopefully this helps put things back into
perspective, or at least serves up a few continuity clues.
I am not familiar with the book you mention, ‘the Bible as Fact,’ but I have
seen and read a number of substantially similar tracts. Personally, I think
to nit-pick the Bible on purely historical/“factual” grounds
misses the point. I strongly doubt the Bible was intended to be read as
history, even though it does contain a good chunk of it. Most of that was
written after the fact, of course, and smacks of revisionist history with a
theological agenda. As saint is fond of saying, ‘if the Bible was dictated
by God, then God is at best incompetent and at worst schizophrenically insane.’ Still, saint has Faith and can get past that, which I think is a
good testament to the correct way to approach the Bible: with an open mind and a
Lot’s Wife-sized pillar of salt. Joseph
Campbell spent most of his career arguing against such literalist
interpretations, not only for the Bible but any religion, and I think he had the
right idea there.
Interestingly, a few (well,
saint) had mixed praise and concern about the Gospel According to Evil Matt. Specifically, saint was
upset at the lack of information on a number of important books in G’EM.
For instance, saint was rather troubled that all the books of Prophets — almost half the Old Testament — get distilled to a throw-away summation:
‘various prophets arose at this point,
warning that if Israel didn’t get its shit together, bad things would
happen.’ I see saint’s point, but I also see Evil Matt’s: those same
prophets all basically say the same thing, which EM sums up rather eloquently.
saint
also thought it was scandalous that the Book of Job was completely
missing. After all, Job is one of the most theologically challenging books
of the bible, and raises some damned disturbing questions about the nature and
personality of God that are actually enough to make one loose their faith!
Yet not a single mention is made. EM replies that he was shooting for more
of a chronological effect, and since Job is a timeless moral lesson, it didn’t have a home in
the G’EM format.
Still,
Evil Matt acknowledges saint’s point about the importance of Job. Therefore,
the two have collaborated to bring it to you in a more appropriate place:
Tucked
in the middle of the Old Testament, almost as if in hopes that no one would
notice it, is a curious book called Job. Almost nothing is known about its
history,
including who wrote it, or even when and where. At forty-two chapters, it is one
of the longest books of the Bible, which is my theory on why it tends to get
skipped over a lot. That is certainly too bad for a number of reasons,
first and foremost this:
Job
is a book that either strengthens your Faith or destroys it: it raises
disturbing questions about the nature of God, and it specifically doesn’t
answers
them. Intellectually, this is one of the most challenging books of the
Bible. It deals with one subject: suffering, but presents a number of
conflicting views on the theme, all of which have merit and none are to be
deemed preferable over the other. It also has one of the most ambiguous
endings ever devised in literature.
For
those unfamiliar with the plot, here’s
the deal (as paraphrased by Evil Matt):
Obviously,
with a plot like that, you can see why Job gets skipped over a lot in Sunday
School.
The
moral is two-fold but otherwise fairly obvious: the Lord works
in mysterious ways, and more importantly, if you persevere through a time of trial while keeping
faith in the Lord, you will come
out ahead in the end.
Well,
that’s the theory, anyway, but I have some obvious problems with this whole
thing.
First
and foremost, what kind of God is this that would torture a poor, innocent
man over what is essentially a celestial bet about bragging rights? God’s
done some pretty sick and twisted shit in His time — He wiped out the entire
world except for one family with a Flood — but I think this little scene takes
the top prize for cruelty.
This
is a damned disturbing glimpse into the mind of God. In fact, I will go so
far to say that it is one of the best proofs that the Gnostic concept of God is
more accurate that the Orthodox: God is phuqing nuts. The only other
conclusion would be to simply dismiss Job as an apocryphal tale with no basis,
but this itself raises a creepy thought: some scribe actually sat down, thought
this shit up, and considered it an acceptable portrait of the Lord.
Not to mention the generations of rabbis (and subsequent Christians who
ultimately accepted the Hebrew Canon as the prelude to their own) also
apparently had no problems with it.
I
guess if one wants to rationalize it all — and this assumes you accept Job as
fact — the best recourse is to consider God’s response to Job. He doesn’t have to answer to
us mortals. After all, nothing I’ve done can compare to the vast catalogue
of God’s accomplishments, so who the Hell am I to question this?
Besides,
if God were the kind of Guy who would allow His only living son to be crucified
to death as long as it worked out for the best, then He wouldn’t
think twice about torturing Job if the bragging rights about it were worth
it. One could even read shades of Abraham having to sacrifice Isaac,
except this time God went through with actual suffering and death.
Still,
if you’re going to walk in the way of the Lord,
it’s a good idea to know a bit about the Figure making those footsteps
you’re following. I think all will agree: the Book of Job offers a
disturbing glimpse of this.
Then
again, that’s just my conclusion; read it yourself and draw your own.
Feel
free to .
shade’s
peshar
Back
when I was at FSU, I was taking a class on the Holocaust. It was actually
a religious class, taught by a former rabbi named Dr. Richard Rubenstein.
Rubenstein got a lot of shit in Judaic circles back in the early ’50s by
basically being the first rabbi to publicly ask, “where was God during
the Holocaust?” He mused on this question for a decade or so, and
finally came to the conclusion that the Holocaust was actually nothing special,
in that history was full of programs of what he called “redundant
population reduction.” Basically the only claim the Holocaust could
make was that such a program had never been enacted on such a scale.
Dr.
Rubenstein spent the first half of the semester giving examples of such
programs, and spent the back half focused on the Final Solution. In that
part, he did get back to the question that had raised the ire of his colleagues,
“where was God during all this?”
Having
finally broached that all-important question, he began to answer that in a
Biblical context by first quoting from the Old Testament. I forget what,
exactly; one of the Prophets.
I had
been pretty quiet that semester, but finally raised my hand.
“Excuse
me; I’m sure I’m jumping the gun here, but if you are going to discuss Biblical
justifications for the Holocaust, I would have thought you’d have started with
Job. In Job, an innocent person not only suffers, but innocent people die.
Job had a family, and that was the first thing he lost. However, Job persevered
through his suffering, and ultimately came out for the better. I would
think the parallels to the Holocaust would be obvious. The Jews, through
no fault of their own, suffered Auschwitz, but were ultimately rewarded with the
return of the Nation of Israel.”
There
was a long pause. Remember: I hadn’t said a word all
semester. Not only that, but I had long hair, wore cut-offs and death
metal shirts; hell, half the time I didn’t even wear shoes to class, yet
here I was, asking an insightful question. He clearly wasn’t expecting it
from me.
“Excellent
question!” he finally cries, and then answers me. His take was that
the suffering of Job was not on the same level as the suffering of the Jews in
the death camps. I forget his reasoning at this point; I understood
it, but did not actually agree with it.
Likewise,
I also understand saint’s problems with the moral dilemma that Job raises, but
don’t necessarily agree with it.
I
find it ironic that the book of Job has the effect of making the reader suffer along
with it’s protagonist. Most people want to think that God is a nice Guy,
full of love, etc. and would never do anything like this. Just as
Job is tested to see if he can get through his suffering without losing faith in
God, so the reader must as well.
...anyway,
enough theology; back to World Domination...
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shade this is very important for your knowlege
Find out about the
Protocols of The Learned Elders Of Zion. -'Nuff said.
—ImageFuse
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I’ve actually read excerpts from
the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (hereafter PLEZ for
convenience) twice, back when I was at FSU. One class requiring it was
the above-mentioned class on the Holocaust, the other a history class called “Hitler’s Third
Reich.” Since most
anti-Semites view PLEZ as the smoking gun proving that they are “right” about
“the Jews” being evil and secretly running everything, it was viewed necessary by both teachers to give us a
sample of this piece of “literature” to help get us into the mindset
that embraced and enacted The Final Solution. Both professors also
discussed the origins of the document as best reconstructed by scholars, plus
its dissemination around the world. Henry Ford was key in spreading PLEZ
across America. Not surprisingly, Adolph Hitler had a large portrait of
Ford in his office.
My recollection of reading PLEZ,
or at least the chunks and synopses offered, were that it was a very elaborate,
paranoid concoction cooked up by someone with a fertile imagination but no
functional knowledge of Judaism. Use your head: if “the Jews”
had world domination on their agenda, they would have succeeded several thousand
years ago, because God was on their side. However, the Old Testament is
pretty specific: the Lord
was only interested in giving them a Promised Land, and there were never
any campaigns by David or subsequent Israeli/Judaic monarchs to bring the rest of the
world under the Yahwist yoke.
Presumably the author(s) of PLEZ
wish us to believe that these, then, are essentially “renegade Jews”
turning their backs on such scriptural basis, not content with a Biblically
sanctioned homeland but setting their sites on the whole globe. Worse, we
are expected to believe that the Learned Elders in PLEZ represent all Jews, and
not a specific cabal within.
The only Jewish conspiracies I am
aware of that come even close to this are those who wish to see a restoration of
the Kingdom of Israel, as prescribed in the Bible. Admittedly, there are
ultra-conservative factions in Judaism who wish to kick out all the
Palestinians, rebuild the Temple, and return to running things as were done back
in David’s day. I would imagine such groups already have a candidate set
aside for the role of King (ie: a messiah,) as that is a necessary prerequisite to such a
scheme. However, restoration of Israel is a far step from taking over the
whole world.
There may very well be specific
sects within Judaism who wish to take over the world, but I do not think these
are by any means representative of all Jews, as PLEZ wants us to
believe. By the same token, there are
also groups within Islam, Catholicism, Mormonism, etc. who have identical
goals. That said, you cannot blame an entire group for the problems of one
small faction within it.
The evidence is pretty
compelling that PLEZ is a cross between a hoax and deliberate misinformation,
basically an anti-Semitic forgery whipped up to fan the flames of Jew-bashing
hysteria. Of course, proponents of PLEZ see such evidence as part of the
conspiracy: Jews attempting to cover their tracks once they had been caught.
Back when I worked in a
bookstore, on two different occasions I had customers come in and ask if we
had copies of it. We didn’t, and I recommended that they check some type
of college university library. I also recommended that they make sure
they read the introduction to the thing, as any good copy would give the
history of the document, along with the proof and evidence that PLEZ was
nonsense. These people were shocked by such a suggestion that PLEZ was
bullshit, and their response on both times was essentially, “well, if
this is a fake, then why is so much of it true?”
If that’s your mind-set, then
nothing anyone can say will dissuade you.
Still, I think it says
something that the only groups out there pimping PLEZ as actual fact are
those with
distinctly anti-Jewish agendas, such as Aryan Nation and Hamas. If one
reads PLEZ objectively, there is a point early on where even the densest brain
should realize this is bullshit. PLEZ continuously uses such verbiage as
“we are cruel,” “we are evil,” “(people) are stupid
cattle,” etc. to describe its alleged authors and their agenda. If you
honestly think that the “Elders” would not only describe
themselves thus but be dumb enough to write all this shit down, then you get
what you deserve.
Still, the author of the email to me
suggested I find out everything I can about it. Since my memory on the
subject is a bit rusty, this is a valid challenge. Besides, I was
actually curious to see what type of proof PLEZ’s proponents offered that it
was a bona fide document, and what they could do to discredit the
evidence that it wasn’t. It’s a hefty topic, one worthy of an entry in
the Update. After all, the thesis of PLEZ is that Jews are scheming to
take over the world; that’s a religious conspiracy, and such is the holy grail
of Updates.
That said...
The Protocols of
the Learned Elders of Zion
First and foremost, in the
interest of “think for yourself,” if you would like to read this
exciting piece of conspiracy lore and see what the fuss is about, a number of
sites have it posted on line, including here.
The Cliffs Notes version,
however, is that PLEZ purports to be the outline adopted by the highest ranking
Jews for their strategy to take over the world. They have a 24-point program to subject the
“goyim,”
which is the usual vagueness about controlling money, governments, and
information. No
real blueprint is offered on how to actually achieve these goals, of course, but
it fits in with the traditional stereotypes of some secret cabal doing such
stuff. Freemasons are mentioned a number of times throughout, and are
pegged as the middle-men carrying out the dirty work in all this.
I looked rather extensively on
the Net for any evidence offered by proponents who buy into PLEZ’s legitimacy
that the thing is a factual document. Mostly I found the same old
arguments: “if it’s a hoax, why is it true?” The closest any could offer
as evidence to its truthfulness were the fact that at one point it was banned
in post-Revolutionary Russia — presumably to keep the people from finding out “the truth”
— and also the British Museum has an early copy on
display. Proponents wonder why a museum would display such a thing,
unless it were real. With logic like that, of course, the Fiji Mermaid
that P.T. Barnum had on show must also have been real, too.
Then again, Barnum made an
excellent observation about a certain exceptionally credulous demographic’s
birth rate, and I think this goes far in explaining why PLEZ continues to find
an audience.
PLEZ first made its appearance in
Czarist Russia around the turn of the 20th
Century. The man
largely responsible for its dissemination was a mystic monk named Sergius Nilus.
Russia had just lost a war with Japan — largely through its own military
ineptitude — and Nilus was one of the many wondering how a divinely guided nation like Mother
Russia could lose to an “obviously” inferior foe. His conclusion
was that Russia was ‘stabbed in the back’ by Satanic forces, specifically “the
Jews.” Curiously, this same train of thought appeared about twenty years
later, when a lot of Germans wondered how they could have lost World War One,
and rather than blame themselves, looked for a scapegoat.
Nilus did not
write PLEZ, but it fit in with his ‘stab in the back’ theory, so he happily
spread it around. It is not known who originally wrote PLEZ, but several
Barons and Counts in the Czar’s court usually show up on the short list of
candidates, as (most frequently) do the Czar’s own secret police. The motive cited for the
last is usually a gambit to strengthen the Czar’s position by creating a “boogeyman” to distract attention away from the
Czar’s own
shortcomings.
PLEZ was originally
exposed as a fraud by British journalist and diplomat Lucien Wolf in 1920.
PLEZ proponents gleefully point out that Wolf was Jewish, and is thus in their
minds suspect for credibility. Whatever the case, Wolf, and
subsequent scholars looking into
the origins of PLEZ, have found two primary sources that it borrows from, often
line for line:
1) The
conspiracy writings of Abbe Augustin de Barruel. Barruel was an embittered French
Jesuit of the early 1800s who could not understand how the French Revolution had
happened, and ignoring the social situation of the time, decided that there must
be some sinister secret society behind it all. Barruel ultimately wrote a
five-volume magnum opus, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du Jacobinisme
(or Memories to be used for the history of Jacobinism) explaining all this. His first guess was
that it was an offshoot of Freemasonry pulling the strings, specifically the
just-disbanded Bavarian Illuminati (eweige blumenkraft!) but half way
through his manifesto his theories began to evolve. Soon it was the
Knights Templar behind the Mason, then sinister Satanic Moslems behind the
Knights. Ultimately, Barruel claimed to have met an insider by the name of Captain
Simonini who convinced him that “the Jews” were behind everything. Whether there actually was a Captain
Simonini or if Barruel just made him up to give his ranting the appearance of
truth is still debated. Whatever the case, Simonini claimed to have
infiltrated the highest circles of Judaism by merely pretending to be Jewish,
and since Jews were stupid, they bought the charade and gleefully told him
everything, and Barruel dutifully recorded this.
2) A novel
called Biarritz by the rabidly anti-Semite German journalist (and
secret police spy) Hermann Gödsche.
In one chapter of Biarritz, a group of 12 rabbis meet in a Prague cemetery at midnight,
essentially have a Black Mass, and then give Satan a progress report on their
plans to take over the world. Biarritz
itself was heavily influenced by a previous work, a satirical essay called “Dialogues in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu” by Maurice
Joly. In this rant, Joly serves up a harsh portrait of Napoleon III and
other members of the French aristocracy as being malignant blood-sucking
sociopaths who (gasp!) don’t really have the best interests of the
populace at heart and are merely out to manipulate them for their own personal
gain.
As said, a close
textual comparison between PLEZ on the one hand and Barruel and Gödsche on the
other shows some suspicious similarities, and since Barruel and Gödsche both
predate PLEZ, whom is dependant on whom source-wise should be pretty obvious.
Curiously, a third
source for PLEZ has been suggested by Michael Baigent et al in their
infamous best-seller Holy Blood, Holy
Grail. For those unfamiliar with
this curious work, it is a convoluted conspiracy theory that essentially argues that a)
Jesus and Mary Magdalene had children, b) these children are the true
“Holy Grail,” c) this extended family had some great sway in
European politics and history over the subsequent millennia, d) the
Knights Templar were the original bodyguards of this family, and e) after
the Knights got beat down by Philip the Fair of France, they reorganized under
the name Priory of Zion. Holy Blood, Holy Grail makes many interesting
claims throughout, but one of the most unusual has to do with PLEZ.
Although Baigent and crew document the above-mentioned two sources and denounce
PLEZ as an anti-Semitic hoax, they also suggest that it may not be so much a forged
document as an altered document. They point out that parts of PLEZ
fit more in with what they have reconstructed about the Priory of Zion (which is
obviously a thoroughly Christian conspiracy) than with what most people accept
as Judaism. In other words, they suspect that the original framework of
PLEZ was a Priory of Zion manifesto that had the Barruel and Gödsche elements
tacked on later. As with almost all of the other conclusions in their book, I
don’t really buy that, but
admit it’s an interesting theory.
Like I said, almost nobody takes
PLEZ seriously, and with good reason: it is not only a hoax, but a damned
poor one at that. If you actually buy into it, I have some real estate in
southwest Florida you should look at.
As for the claim that “if it’s a hoax, why is it true?”, well,
that’s subjective. Admittedly, a
few aspects of it have come to pass. My personal favorite is:
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We further distract them with amusements, games,
pastimes... soon we shall begin through the press to propose competitions
in art, in sport in all kinds: these interests will finally distract their minds
from questions in which we should find ourselves compelled to oppose them.
—Protocol 13:3
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Hell, I’ve been saying sports
was a conspiracy for years...
...and
speaking of bad forgeries...
shade plagiarized?!?
Okay, so one night back in August
I’m minding my own business, when I get a curious piece of email in the
in-box...
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SIR,
There are several excerpts in your dissertation (found
here http://www.angelfire.com/yt/branchfloridians/thomas.html) which are
highly similar to a dissertation written by Dr. Elizabeth Millikin in
2001. Can you give me a little information on how your formed the paper
and from whence it came?
Thanks.
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The mail was from someone named
Chris PpAaPpAaSsAaDdEeRrOo, who I had never heard of. I had never heard of this Dr. Millikin, either. Still pondering this, I received a second email about an
hour later:
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Hi Shade...
re: The History and Nature of the Gospel of Thomas at http://www.angelfire.com/yt/branchfloridians/thomas.html
Real sorry to bother you, but a guy on a design board I
frequent posted a segment of the above page to thead as an example of his
own work. I googled and found your page and then confronted him with the
original source, to which he says...
"Whoa, I didn't even see that angelfire link. That IS our
dissertation, however. I have contacted the man, he IS in the same area
that Dr. Milliken currently is a professor. Very interesting. Like I said,
anyone with an ePAD signon can grab it..."
Now, I'm prety sure IT is your document; the guy on the
board Chris
PpAaPpAaSsAaDdEeRrOo
is a notorious blowhard so his behavior wouldn't
suprise me. Any chance you could E me back and let me know. I can send you
links to the discussion in question if you'd like...
All the best,
John
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Hmmmm, the plot thickens...
So I emailed them both back with
the scoop. I indeed wrote the article back in either late ’93
or early ’94 for a thoroughly Christian friend of mine [for those who have read Lady
Gretta’s Discovery, the friend in question is Beth.] In early ’97, I
spruced it up, removed all (well, most) of the in-jokes, and submitted it (under
my pen name Matthew Thomas Farrell) to Stevan Davies, who runs an excellent Gospel
of Thomas website. In late 2000, I again revised it and resubmitted
it, where it is still posted.
However,
I migrated a copy of the original draft to the cyber-compound, under the address
both gave in their e-pistles. I admitted that I had never heard of Dr. Millikin, but since my article was provably published in 1997 and her
dissertation came out in 2001... well, kids, do the math. Ironically, I
concluded, my article was also referenced in an on-line
academic style guide for how to cite footnote references and quote sources
(for the entry ‘An Internet Publication Without A Print Counterpart’.)
That, I told them both, was my
story, and I still stick to it.
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Matthew,
Thanks for the thurough reply.
As it turns out, the dissertation was quoting your
website in reference to the Nag Hammadi Codices. It was a paper written
_under_ Dr. Milliken by one of her students, but was properly sourced and
referenced. Sorry for any inconvenience.
-cp |
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You can probably guess who this
unnamed student “_under_” Dr. Milliken was...
The second person, John, also wrote back with thanks, and included a link to
the thread in question. It was on a board called Yay-Hooray (yeah, I’d
never heard of it either): http://www.yayhooray.com/thread/28920.html
Curious to see what the fuss was
about, I checked it out.
Now I should digress a moment to
point out that I try to avoid such discussion boards, as the issues involved
almost always become polarized and rather than rationally discuss issues, the
warring factions inevitably resort to name-calling and fecal slinging.
This particular thread on the board had to do with the recent ordination of a
gay bishop, so you can probably see the dark clouds forming on the horizon
already. The camps formed along the lines you can well imagine, with one
side citing Bible references condemning homosexuality. Chris
PpAaPpAaSsAaDdEeRrOo was firmly entrenched on that side. The other camp was more tolerant and
rational, and was championed by the other person to email me (operating in
the thread under the name ‘Jand’).
In an effort to establish his
self-ordained superiority on the subject,
PpAaPpAaSsAaDdEeRrOo had made this comment:
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I have written numerous papers on the translation of
the biblical and gnostic texts, and am considered an equal amongst
professors in my area, on the matter.
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Jand asked him to back that up
with some examples of stuff he’d written. Papa replied:
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They're available on request from www.lib.pdx.edu/
only, or if you've got access to the ePAD library. If you're a student,
you can get free access (because your school probably has an account with
them)
I don't have them because I don't own them. Here's an
excerpted quote, however, on the Gospel of Thaddeus taken from a
dissertation by Dr. Elizabeth Mulliken:
"But whatever effects gnosticism had on the New Testament, the New
Testament clearly had an effect on the gnostics. They quoted from it (or,
at least, what would become it) as often as they quoted from their own
materials. I find it interesting, by the way, that nothing from the New
Testament was found at Nag Hammadi. But then again, at least three of the
codices were burned as fuel for the stove, so there is no way of knowing
what was lost."
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That “excerpted quote”
in italics, of course, is verbatim from my own piece on the Gospel of Thomas.
I find it interesting, by the
way, that Papa attributed it to a paper on the Gospel of Thaddeus. Here’s
why it’s interesting: there are no known copies of the Gospel of Thaddeus in
existence. The only reason we even know it existed was because the title
appears on a few ancient lists of heretical gospels that various Church fathers
advised should be avoided. Other than that, we know nothing about it.
If Papa wrote a paper on the Gospel of Thaddeus, it would be a damned short one,
like two paragraphs, and apparently one of those paragraphs was lifted out of
context from my own piece on the Gospel of Thomas.
Unfortunately for Papa, Jand did
some homework...
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@paps: checked with our library people and they
couldn't find your articles - are they referenced under your name? Have
you an article ref?...
My librarian did dig out this on the Web ..
- www.angelfire.com/yt/branchfloridians/thomas.html
-
which she says contains the excerpt you posted up there but the author
dosen't look right....
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Papa’s reply:
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Whoa, I didn't even see that angelfire link. That IS
our dissertation, however. I have contacted the man, he IS in the same
area that Dr. Milliken currently is a professor. Very interesting. Like I
said, anyone with an ePAD signon can grab it...
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In other words, he is sticking to
the story that he came up with the quote, and has just accused me of
stealing from him!
While it is true that Papa did
contact me, I have no idea how he determined I am “in the same area as Dr.
Milliken.” I noticed, by the way, he is inconsistent with the
spelling of this Doctor’s name (Millikin vs. Milliken) but was unable to find any
information about Herr Doktor (however it is spelled) on the net.
Curiously, I later learned one of Jand’s
friends was able to track her down, and it turns out she is in
Oregon. Yeah, BadAss, Arizona is really “in
the same area...”
THIS JUST IN! In May 2005, I received a letter from
her. Click here.
Anyway, confronted with evidence,
Papa finally backtracks.
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I am amazed at what great lengths you've gone to
discredit me, jand. I am both flattered by the attention but also annoyed
at it's content. If you'll read the post, as above, you'll notice that I
do not claim the text to be my own but rather cite it as an
"excerpted quote" - it being the only text from the paper which
I have available to reference, as all other content is in the posession of
Dr. Elizabeth Milliken. The fact that the quote is a citation of another
man's article isn't something that I could help, however I did feel it
relevant to the discussion at hand.
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Maybe it’s just me, but I for one
fail to see how a quote on the influence of the New Testament on gnostic
literature is relevant to the subject of a gay bishop. Papa’s mind works
in lateral spheres I cannot reach...
Perhaps the death knell in all
this came from another poster, named SPUNKY:
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papa makes a ton of stuff up. I remember him trying to
tell people how he was a fluent french speaker before pasting a bad
babelfish translation later on in the same thread.
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Of course, if that was the death
knell, this final email to me from Jand was the obituary:
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...needless to say, Mr PapSmear is still flinging
insults over this; latest one is to label me an internet STALKER (a
younger me would laugh heartfully at this; an older me finds it distinctly
sad & insulting..)..
For instance as a private message I got this
"That guy you emailed, whilst in the
process of attempting to discredit me... has forwarded all the
corrsepondance you had with him. I am amazed to what length some
people go to. As I discovered, the quote that was provided to me from
the study I helped research is indeed a quite of his very
dissertation, of which there are numerous versions.
The 'score' is that I seemed to have picked up another internet
stalker. I'll just give you my address right now so you can come watch
me through some binocs, ok?"....
I'll keep you informed how this all turns
out....and Thanks so much for taking the time to get involved with this,
Matthew...<
Peace and Grace to you too, my friend...
John (jand)...
PS...Did I mention the guy is only 20?...(That old
cliche about a parent-living basement dweller fits him like a glove ..;)..
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Whew.
Papa is obviously living in his
own little world, as I have not forwarded anything to him, and the only thing I
have done to discredit him was to prove that I wrote my own paper.
And I thought I was paranoid...
Believe it or not, though, I take
heart from two aspects of all this:
- at least someone out there is reading my stuff, and
since Papa, by his own accord, is “considered an equal amongst
professors in my area, on the matter,” and since he is ripping my
own stuff off, then ergo it is I who am the equal among scholars.
Yippee! Hooray!
Victory dance!
saint would be proud of me.
This just in!
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From: Elizabeth Milliken
Sent: Monday, May 02, 2005 2:55 PM
Subject: its Dr. Milliken!
Hello
Shade,
At the risk of further muddying the waters of the the, already
considerable. murkiness of the Papa plagiarism saga, I thought I would let you know that
I am the Dr. Milliken who is in Oregon,
but I am NOT the Dr. Mulliken, Millikin, (whatever)
who has written on the Gospel of
Thomas. My dissertation was finished
back in 1994 and I have never written anything remotely related to
biblical exegesis (Gnostic or otherwise). I couldn’t quite follow
the whole scenario, but I thought it might be of some use to you to
know that the Oregon Dr. Milliken (me) is not
the person you were looking for.
BY the way—I agree that Ayn Rand’s work is swamp vomit.
Yours
truly,
Elizabeth
Milliken, PhD
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This Just In, Part II
In June 2005, Chris PpAaPpAaSsAaDdEeRrOo
wrote me and asked that I remove the above story, as well as any subsequent
references to him on my site. I politely declined, citing that the
incident was historically accurate and documented, and pulling it would amount
to revisionist history. I made it clear that my balking was based
more on aesthetics than any type of personal grudge I had at that point: the
infamous incident had become part of "Branch Floridian Lore" and
pulling it would be tantamount to removing a diary page.
CP replied that he understood this, but he also said that it was starting
to get awkward when potential clients or employers of his would Google his
name, find this [and subsequent] piece[s], and ask him to explain. He apologized
for the whole thing, said he has matured in the subsequent years, and deeply
regrets the incident. He didn't feel he should be haunted by an indiscretion
from several years ago that he insists he would not make today.
I’m cool with that, so an agreement was reached: I have revised all direct
references to alter the spelling of his name in such a way that it should be “Google-proof.”
The Ayn Rand
Rant
Part II
Back
about 8 months ago, we ran a piece (aka the Rand Rant)
exposing Ayn Rand for the philosophical vomit swamp she is. Let’s face
it, folks:
Ayn Rand sucks big, greasy donkey balls, and I still stick to my statement that
she is the ranch dressing of philosophical literature.
In
fact, from now on, I’m going to start calling her
Ayn
Ranch
.
Be
that as it may, Flaming Faggot recently passed on a piece out of Michael Shermer’s book Why
People Believe Weird Things, in which he exposes and deconstructs the bizarre
following that Ayn’s babbling has spawned: Objectivism. Shermer makes a good
point in that this is essentially a cult, and brought a couple things to my
attention that I was previously unaware of. The article is well worth
reading and is posted on-line,
but I will summarize and build upon his arguments in my own style.
In
other words, Shermer was too polite: I need to take the bitch and her
fans down a few pegs. And since I already think they’re at rock
bottom, I’ll need a pic-axe and pneumatic drill for this one...
First,
I admit it is unfair
to judge a product based on it’s audience. As saint is fond
of saying re: Biblical misuse, “I have no problem with Christianity, I just hate Christians.”
Well, I’ve already deconstructed Ayn Ranch’s Objectivist ideology for the
philosophical feces it is, so let’s turn our attention to the idiots who idolize
it. After all, if the product is shit to start with, the dung beetles
comprising the core audience can only make it worse.
Let’s
look at that core audience, especially in its earliest, and arguably most
fanatical form. Ayn
Ranch’s second in command and philosophical heir-apparent was Nathaniel Branden.
Branden achieved this position by writing Ranch a couple of letters with
questions about The Fountainhead that apparently impressed her enough that she
invited him over to chat one night. They struck up an intense friendship,
in my opinion because Ranch saw a malleable young mind willing and even eager to be
molded to her twisted visions. In 1989, he wrote his autobiography about
his years with Ayn Ranch, called Judgment
Day. In it, he modestly
describes himself as follows to a New York Times journalist who was writing a
piece on Ayn Ranch (who at that time had just died):
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The reporter
said she wished to check her understanding of certain aspects of my
relationship with Ayn Rand. Prior to the opening of the Nathaniel
Branden Institute, the organization I had created to teach her philosophy,
Miss Rand had been known exclusively as a novelist, had she not? I
told her that was correct. It was the Nathaniel Branden Institute,
founded in 1958 and closed in 1968, that effectively launched the
Objectivist Movement — and generated widespread awareness of Miss Rand as
a philosopher? It was. Could one state that America's third
largest political party, the Libertarian Party, was an important part, a
consequence, of the influence of Ayn Rand's work and that of the
institute? Yes. |
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In
other words, assuming you accept that modest, humble introduction as fact, this
is the guy to blame.
Also,
with an opening like that, you can correctly guess the tone of the book: Judgment
Day is 436 pages of unabashed hero worship that praises Rand on just
about every page. There is also a subtle, insidious undertone between the
lines when her philosophy is expressed: if you don’t agree with this, you are
a fool. Then again, since 99% of the readers of this swill are
undoubtedly Ranch fans, they probably need such support and reassurance.
It’s
interesting to note, by the way, that Branden’s original name was
Blumenthal, but he changed it in the mid-’50s. He claims he chose the name
at random out of a phone book, but several people have noted that the name “Branden” not only contains
“Rand” but the remaining letters
(“ben”) in Hebrew mean “son of.” Branden dismisses
this semi-anagram as pure coincidence.
Sure.
Whatever
the case, Branden struck up a friendship with Rand. She and her husband
Frank even served as matron of honor and best man at Branden’s wedding.
Soon, Branden began to collect some like-minded friends who shared an
appreciation for Ranch’s work, which at that time effectively consisted of one
book: The Fountainhead (most, myself included, merely consider Anthem
and We
the Living as philosophical dry-runs.) Ranch called this little clique The Class of
’43
(with 1943 being the year of Fountainhead’s publication), though privately they
referred to themselves as The Collective. That was actually a bit
sarcastic, as Ranch’s philosophy is distinctly anti-collective. Personally,
since (depending how you counted) there were about twelve members of The
Collective, calling themselves The Apostles would have been more
appropriate. Extending this Biblical metaphor, Ranch would be Jesus,
and Branden would be Peter (who was given the Keys to the Kingdom and was the
Rock upon which Ranch built her church.)
Although
probably not
his intention, Branden’s descriptions of The Collective effectively paint a
portrait of a group of doting, sycophantic toadies who fawned over Ranch, told her how
wonderful she was, and how her current work-in-progress (Atlas
Shrugged) was the
best thing since sliced bread.
Not
surprisingly, Ayn ate it up. Branden made a comment that she had no social
life except for The Collective. I don’t doubt that this is because if she
actually hung around some real intellectuals, she’d need to wear diapers because
they’d rip her a new asshole. Still, she clearly thrived on the attention
and affection of her small core audience. Branden lets slip a telling incident that sums
her up:
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Ayn
once said to me, "If, by your own statement, I am the highest, most
consistent embodiment of your values, then I expect your first consideration
always to be given to me. I expect not just you but the whole collective
to make me their highest loyalty, so far as any other people are concerned, if
it ever comes to conflict. Otherwise, what do you imagine the principle of
loyalty to one's values means?" |
|
Adolph
Hitler made a similar statement once, but unfortunately I can’t find the exact
quote to run a comparison. Then again, I probably don’t have to...
Despite
her novels’ exaltation of the Individual over the Whole, the attitude of the
Collective almost from inception was one of totalitarianism, with any dissention outside of
Ayn’s ideology impermissible and even punishable by excommunication (which
occasionally happened.) Ayn’s role in the Collective quickly became a hybrid between
dictator and demagogue. Rather than think for themselves, members of the
Collective chose to let Ayn do their thinking for them. Branden makes a
very telling observation at one point, when pondering a discrepancy Ayn Ranch had in how she sweetly treated an
economist named Ludwig Von Mises in public versus the scathing comments about him
she’d
make behind his back:
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I was
troubled by the disparity between Ayn's behavior toward Von Mises and her
comments in the margins of his books. To accuse Ayn of hypocrisy would not
have occurred to me. But I recall discussing my confusion with Barbara,
who shared my reaction. We let the matter go, assuming that one day we
would understand -- and that of course Ayn would have a perfectly good reason
for her behavior. Today I recognize that it is of such attitudes that
cults are made.
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Anyway,
around
this time, Branden began having an affair with Ayn Ranch. It’s probably
worth pointing out that at 51 years old — 25 years his senior — she was old
enough to be his mother. It didn’t matter to either; they were in love. Unfortunately, both of them were also married. Here kudos must
be given to Ayn: she was able to convince both her husband Frank and Branden’s
wife Barbara that such love between the two of them was intellectually justified
and an affair between the two was completely rational and logical. The two
spouses bought it. Then again, Ayn is, if nothing, a masterful salesman:
she was able to sell her absurdist philosophy to the masses, so selling a sexual
fling to her hubby and Branden’s wife was a cakewalk by comparison. So,
with the mutual consent of her husband and his wife, Rand and Branden got to
shack up for some good lovins at least once a week.
The
side effect of this, by the way, was that Ayn’s husband Frank became an
alcoholic, and Branden’s wife Barbara began to have massive anxiety
attacks. Indeed, she would frequently call Ayn while her husband was over
there, saying “you know, I need to talk to you about this!” Ayn
would scream at her, “How dare you interrupt my time with Nathan!
That’s so unbelievably selfish of you!” Barbara would be cowed back
into place by this.
In
1958, Atlas Shrugged was published, and not surprisingly the book
(in its original form) had a dual
dedication: her husband Frank and lover Nathan. Also not surprisingly, the highest praise
came from members of The Collective, who viewed it as not only the best book
ever written but a milestone of human development and culture. Otherwise,
the rest of the world’s reaction was rather cool. Ayn was upset that
nobody of intelligence “got it.” My guess is, they “got it” just
didn’t “agree with it.” At that point, Branden
hit upon the idea of forming a little school that would teach her philosophy to
people interested in it. He scraped some cash together and did just that,
modestly calling it The Nathaniel Branden Institute.
The
NBI was not an immediate success, with but a class of twenty on it’s first
semester, but slowly it
caught on. Branden soon got the idea of taping his lectures and offering
these for sale, which helped spread The Message considerably. By 1968,
Branden claims there were NBI chapters in 80 countries, all teaching Ranch’s
Objectionable — I’m sorry, Objectivist
— philosophy.
Also
by 1968, Branden’s marriage had ended and he was secretly shacking up with an
NBI student named Patrecia Gullison. The sexual aspect of his affair with
Ayn Ranch had long since cooled, but Ayn had been pestering him for several
years that it start up again. Branden was especially reluctant, in part
because she was now in her 60s. If Branden’s autobiography is to be
believed, he had been trying to drop the hint to her for some time that he just
wasn’t attracted to her except intellectually any more, but Ranch didn’t want to
hear it. Finally, he wrote her a letter explaining his feelings, hoping
they could still be friends, but he just couldn’t bring himself to stick his
dick in
her again.
To say the shit hit the
fan understates the matter: like a
spurned pre-teenager, Ranch publicly denounced Branden and kicked him out of her
little Objectivist circle. Amazingly, she did not
tell her followers the nature of the rift, only that he “...presented
me with a written statement which was so irrational and so offensive to me that
I had to break my personal association with him....”
Branden
split from the NBI, turned over his holdings to Ayn, and moved to California
with Patrecia, where he took up a psychology practice and began writing cheesy
books on self-esteem. Without Branden, the NBI foundered for about six
months and then folded.
Had
that not happened, I believe that Objectivism would be larger than it is today,
as the NBI effectively served as a “church” in everything but name, and
Branden functioning as prime proselytizer. Unfortunately, interest still continued in Ranch’s philosophy, which
picked up considerably after her death in 1982.
[note
to saint: think we should start celebrating March 6, 1982?]
Branden’s
autobiography, Judgment Day, came out in 1989, and while every page drips with
smarmy admiration for Ayn, I suspect much of this was an attempt to convey his
feelings at the time. Parts of it, especially the period of the rift,
portray Ayn very poorly. I already disliked primary aspects of her philosophy,
but after reading this, I genuinely disliked her as a person.
Without mincing words, and basing my opinion solely on the doting testimony of
her former champion, Ayn Ranch was an pompous, arrogant überbitch.
But
was she the founder of a cult?
I’m
sure she would be horrified by that charge, largely for linguistic reasons.
She insisted that she had started a philosophy, and being an atheist wanted
nothing to do with religion.
A
quick semantical digression. A philosophy is any system of beliefs that
attempt to explain why we are here and what we should be doing with out
lives. A religion is merely a philosophy that answers those questions with
some sort of reference to “the Divine.” The lines between
philosophy and religion are blurry anyway: is Taoism a philosophy or a
religion? Marxism would be another good example: although somewhere
between an economic system and a philosophy, in its most extreme its adherents frequently have the
same type of zeal that is found in Pentecostal churches.
With me so
far? Good.
Branden
himself addresses the issue of whether Objectivism was a cult or not, and his
testimony is worth quoting verbatim:
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There was an implicit premise in our
world to which everyone subscribed, and which we transmitted to our students
at NBI:
- Ayn Rand is the greatest human being who has ever
lived.
- Atlas Shrugged is the greatest human
achievement in the history of the world.
- Ayn Rand, by virtue of her philosophical genius, is the
supreme arbiter in any issue pertaining to what is rational, moral, or
appropriate to man's life on earth.
- Once one is acquainted with Ayn Rand and/or her work,
the measure of one's virtue is intrinsically tied to the position one takes
regarding her and/or it.
- No one can be a good Objectivist who does not admire
what Ayn Rand admires and condemn what Ayn Rand condemns.
- No one can be a fully consistent individualist who
disagrees with Ayn Rand on any fundamental issue.
- Since Ayn Rand has designated Nathaniel Branden as her
"intellectual heir," and has repeatedly proclaimed him to be an
ideal exponent of her philosophy, he is to be accorded only marginally less
reverence than Ayn Rand herself.
- But it is best not to say most of these things
explicitly (excepting, perhaps, the first two items). One must always
maintain that one arrives at one's beliefs solely by reason.
We were not a cult in the literal,
dictionary sense of the word, but certainly there was a cultish aspect to
our world (in the same way that one might speak, in the early years of
psychoanalysis, of "the cult of Sigmund Freud," or "the cult
of Wilhelm Reich"). We were a group organized around a
charismatic leader, whose members judged one another's character chiefly by
loyalty to that leader and to her ideas.
|
|
Those
bulleted points are well worth rereading, especially in the context that I am arguing
that Rand’s philosophical following is a cult. Reread them, and substitute
“Ayn Rand” with “Jesus” or “Mohammed”, and “Atlas Shrugged” with
“The Bible” or “The Quar’an”
and you’ll see what I mean.
Like I
said, folks: this is a cult. And a piss-poor excuse
for one at that. You’d have to go to Dianetics to get any worse.
Even then, at least Hubbard (if www.xenu.net
is to be believed) had the excuse of untreated syphilis to explain
Scientology. Ayn Ranch was just a pretentious, self-important nitwit who
wrote for a like-minded audience. And at it’s most extreme, those
like-minded lemmings would constitute a cult.
Click
Officer Barbrady for an apt commentary on Ayn
Ask Evil Matt
The Evil One fields your queries, as channeled by Sister Ob’dewlla ‘X’.
Q: Is the mule the only example of cross-species
breeding?
A:
Not at all. The list would be too long to produce; check out this site.
Even then, that’s just among mammals; the plant kingdom is
abundant with examples.
Got a question?
.
The Hedgehog Corner
By Harriet the Hedgehog
Hedgehog Astrology
Astrology is one of the oldest
studies practiced by you humans, but what is not widely known among homo sapiens
is that we hedgehogs invented it first and honed it to a fine perfection while
you were still swinging from trees in the Olduvi Gorge.
Every zodiac that is in practice
now is ultimately based on an earlier (and of course, superior) hedgehog
archetype. Of course, since humans think that they’re the hottest thing
on two legs, they merely ripped us off and retooled it to their own obscure
pantheon(s), but originally it all comes from hedgehogs.
The constellations that
represent each sign were originally in a hedgehog motif. Gemini was the Twin Hedgehogs, Aquarius was the
Water-bearing Hedgehog, etc. This extends
beyond the signs of the zodiac: Orion was Chuffie the Hunting Hedgehog, Pleiades
the Council of Seven Learned Hedgehogs, etc.
Here is a good example to prove
this, and its misuse by humans. Probably the most widely known
constellation in the sky, at least in North America, is The Big Dipper.
The Big Dipper is actually a subset of another constellation, Ursa Major, which
uses the Dipper as the Hind quarters and bushy tail of the bear. Of
course, bears don’t have tails, which just underscores my point
here that you humans are misusing our motifs without really understanding them.
The original schemata for this
constellation was Rufus the Confused (why he is confused is a lengthy
tale I’ll spare y’all) shown here courtesy FireMuse:
Anyway, hopefully the above
illustrations shows the general pattern that can be applied to all
constellations. Hopefully this clears up the confusion about how Astrology really works.
That’s it for now, folks;
