… Thomas M. Disch, the great and too much unsung author of The Genocides, Camp Concentration and 334 who on this day two years ago declared his own independence from a  world he could no longer endure by opening up his skull with a liberating blast from a gun.

Mr. Disch, your prose was pure, joyous darkness and your poetry was damn fine too. I still visit the ghost ship you left us from time to time.

Rest in peace.

One of the reasons for which we can be grateful for the 2008 election campaign is that it revealed to young people who might have been contemplating a few years at journalism school what a waste of time, money and effort such an ‘education’ represents. How embarrassing it was to watch America’s finest representatives of the 4th Estate collectively exceed the credulity of a lobotomized Moonie as they heaped encomiums upon Mr. Obama’s as yet totally untested head. Why spend all that time ‘learning’ the ‘craft’ of journalism if servile worship of a messiah figure is what it ultimately amounts to? Better to become a carpenter. Worst of all was Evan Thomas, the boot-licking editor of Newsweek who once infamously described Obama as ’sort of God’ ’standing above us all’- although in all fairness he later helpfully explained that it was only a metaphor. Gee, thanks.

Anyway, I thought the worst of all that was over. But now, just in case any young people have forgotten the lessons of 2008 and are wondering whether to sink their cash into such a useless qualification, here comes Time managing editor Richard Stengel to the rescue. Writing in the introduction to a new self help book he declares:

It is impossible to write about Nelson Mandela these days and not compare him to another potentially transformational black leader, Barack Obama. The parallels are many. … And while it took twenty-seven years in prison to mold the Nelson Mandela we know, the forty-eight-year-old American president seems to have achieved a Mandela-like temperament without the long years of sacrifice.

Just think of all the stories you have to file, all the ass you have to kiss, to be appointed  managing editor of a purportedly reputable journal such as Time. And this is what he comes up with. Astounding.

O children, waste not your money on the ‘education’ that produces the Stengels and Thomases of this world. Spend it on something more useful instead. Like candy floss. Or tickets to the zoo. Or packets of Philips Colon Health.

H/t: Radley Balko

A month or so back via my connections in the nefarious literary underground I was offered a pre-publication copy of the first Lady Gaga biography, Behind the Fame by Emily Herbert. Not the kind of thing I usually read I must admit, but that’s why I wanted to read it, because there was no reason to read it. Follow me? No, I’m not sure if I do either. Let me add that I’m not remotely interested in Lady Gaga, but that only increased my desire to read about her. I’d heard a few of her tracks, and they were better than average electronic dance music, with a few clever/provocative lyrics. Well not really clever, just cleverer than average. So really here was a phenomenon that I just couldn’t understand. Why did anybody care? What was all the fuss about? Perhaps the book would help me find out. Not that I cared, of course.

Well, the book got off to a good start, sort of. Cunningly written in the style of a high school project, every sentence contained multiple clichés (”In the heyday of the 1980s, before it all came crashing down a few years later, it was a joy to be alive’); nevertheless, thanks to Ms. Herbert I rapidly learned some things I had not hitherto known such as:

1) Lady Gaga’s real name is Stefani Germanotta.

And

2) She attended the same elite Catholic school as Paris Hilton.

Again: not that I cared, of course. It began to get mildly interesting when I learned that upon graduation from high school Lady Gaga had worked as a ‘gogo’ dancer and spent a summer out of her tree on drugs. However as she got off the drugs almost immediately, it was clear that she was not really out of her tree on drugs, but interested in seeing what it felt like to be out of your tree on drugs, in an abstract, self-analytical kind of way, almost as a homage to artists who really were out of their tree on drugs, like David Bowie or Lou Reed. At the same time, however Ms. Herbert also reminded us that even when out of her tree on drugs, Lady Gaga was still a very moral Catholic girl at heart, which is good to know.

Anyway, after establishing these vital facts the book explored Lady Gaga’s long struggle to become famous. To be honest it didn’t seem like she struggled very hard, or that it took very long. Lady Gaga quite rapidly met some producers and image makers who put her in touch with the right people, and before long she was writing songs for pop stars like Britney Spears and New Kids on The Block. I think she was around 20/21 at the time, although Ms. Herbert strives valiantly to makes it seem like a Charles Bukowski-esque four decade struggle with poverty and obscurity before finally hitting the big time. Simultaneously Lady Gaga was pushing her own material and quite quickly scored a record deal. Her records took off in the UK first where kitsch, camp disco stuff is perennially popular, before exploding stateside. And that brings us to the present day where she bestrides popular culture like a tiny colossus.

Was the Lady Gaga phenomenon explained by the book? Well, over and over again, Ms. Herbert uses the phrase ‘post modern’ as an all purpose signifier of arch cleverness on Lady Gaga’s part. Also over and over again she quotes interviews in which Lady Gaga is waffling on about her ‘art’, her desire for greatness, her refusal to behave like a normal person, her grandiose plans, and- Andy f*cking Warhol. That wig-wearing Slovak has a lot to answer for, friends. What becomes clear is:

1) Lady Gaga is fairly intelligent
2) Lady Gaga is extremely pretentious
3) Lady Gaga is immensely self conscious and has done a great deal of thinking about fame and how to manipulate the media.

OK, OK… but what is most interesting is how well tested- shopworn even- her tactics for manipulating the media are. For example, apparently there has been a lot of media blather about her supposed bisexuality. I can understand why this was a controversial topic in the early 70s when Bowie and Lou Reed were cavorting with both sexes, but today? Her constant shifting through images recalls Madonna or Bowie or Michael Jackson, only at a greatly accelerated pace. Speaking of Madonna, she also did that girl on girl thing a few years back when she kissed Britney Spears on stage, only that incident also included the frisson of gerontophilia, a shock as yet absent from Lady Gaga’s repertoire. As for mildly risqué lyrics and running around in her underpants … well we’ve had all that since at least the late 70s, only Debbie Harry was infinitely sexier and sang better songs. And so on. Gaga herself is aware that she is merely recycling pre-used shock tactics but her self-awareness only adds to the press’s fascination.

So anyway, that’s what I extracted from the book- now available in shops everywhere! Just as I was finishing it meanwhile the controversy over the video for Telephone erupted. A hysterical blog in the HuffPo accused Lady Gaga of all manner of filth and depravity, asking what was next- a snuff film? Reading the piece I realized it was a dreary recital of ‘liberal’ political prudery - very similar to other strands of prudery only dressed up in 60s/70s era political jargon about sexism, feminism etc. So I watched the video, and noted that it was made by a tiresome prankster from Sweden- Jonas Akerlund. Over ten years ago he shot a video for the Prodigy track Smack My Bitch Up which also featured girl on girl soft core action, violence, nudity, and attracted almost identical complaints from the same ‘liberal’ quarters. I’d at least commend him for getting up the noses of the sanctimonious ‘left’ if his bag of tricks wasn’t so predictable (last year he shot a tedious hardcore porn video for the otherwise sublime German heavy metal band Rammstein).

In fact, the Telephone video is only violent in the context of other pop videos. Any number of cop shows that are broadcast on cable at the same time as kid’s cartoons are infinitely worse. It is also less sexist than almost every rap video ever made. And while Ms. Herbert likes the word ‘post modern’ and Lady Gaga herself is fond of citing Warhol, well to me it’s all much more like a kabuki play, a ritualistic repetition of words and deeds that are in turn ritualistically accepted as shocking by the media, when in fact… nobody is really shocked. The Lady Gaga phenomenon is rather a weird acting out of now traditional gestures, largely emptied of their meaning, in which hacks longing for the genuine outrages of yesteryear settle for her ersatz reproductions. The interplay between Gaga and the hacks is itself a giant performance, much bigger than the songs, videos and concert tours, orchestrated and conducted by the Lady herself.

As for me, well when she gets round to stripping naked and rolling around in broken glass and bodily excretions like the late GG Allin, that’s when I’ll start paying attention- ersatz reproduction or not.

Nobody has enjoyed a late career renaissance like Johnny Cash. The series of collaborations he made with Slayer producer Rick Rubin reignited critical interest in his work at a time when Cash believed he was destined to become a touring nostalgia act. The first of these, American Recordings is a fantastic album — raw, dark, stark, stripped down to the Man in Black’s voice and primitive guitar playing. Cash had never sounded young, and he’d always been good with death, but I was shocked by the simplicity of the first lines, the frank, naked, blasé expression of brutality:

Delia, O Delia
Delia all my life
If I hadn’t have shot poor Delia
I’d have had her for my wife

Whenever I play American Recordings I find that opening as startling as when I first heard it well over a decade ago. Cash could get close to the darkness without screeching or posing. He was already there. He just started singing in that rumbling bass-baritone and you believed. It’s so powerful that you forget he could also be funny — and indeed, the last track on American Recordings was a joke song, The Man Who Couldn’t Cry.

Later I discovered that Delia’s Gone was an old song, that Cash was covering himself. The American series always relied less on Cash’s abilities as a songwriter and more on his skills as an interpreter, even if he was reinterpreting an earlier version of Johnny Cash. Some of the songs covered were selected by Cash, others by Rubin. It was easy to tell which was which: Cash’s sensibilities were steeped in the broad country, gospel and folk tradition, while Rubin favored a narrower palate of heavy metal and alt rock. The miraculous thing was that it worked, most of the time. Cash could invest the adolescent self-loathing of Trent Reznor’s Hurt with the same authority and sincerity as an ancient standard like That Lucky Old Sun, a mournful lament for the difficult life of a working man. The songs on these records sat comfortably alongside each other because Cash’s experience, persona and interpretive gift enabled him to uncover the shared themes of God, pain, redemption, love, violence and longing in the unlikeliest bedfellows.

The peak of the Rubin mix n’ match approach was reached on American III: Solitary Man. Cash’s versions of Nick Cave’s The Mercy Seat and Will Oldham’s I See a Darkness are revelatory, as good as if not better than the originals. By the time of American IV however the alt-pop covers were starting to sound like novelties. Personal Jesus is a trite rather than inspired song selection while even the much vaunted version of Reznor’s Hurt gains much of its power from the harrowing video. American IV is also marred by some disastrous appearances by celebrity guests. Nick Cave strangles I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry to death on his first verse, and then, as if unsatisfied, repeatedly kicks the corpse in the head before the song ends. Fiona Apple rots like a dead whale on Bridge Over Troubled Water. By far the best track on the album is Cash’s apocalyptic The Man Comes Around, which is as good as anything he ever wrote. When I play that album now I skip the corny covers and concentrate on Cash’s choices.

Anyway, Cash died before Rubin could throw Lady Gaga’s Poker Face at him and as a result the two albums culled from his final recording sessions are much lighter on the reinterpreted heavy metal/gothic pop factor. American V, released posthumously in 2006, was a decidedly stripped down affair. Recorded in the aftermath of June Carter Cash’s death, Cash was himself teetering on the brink of eternity. The album has an intimacy that can be painful, even claustrophobic. It is mournful and sad, and Cash’s once booming voice is reduced at times to a croak, almost a whisper. Unlike its predecessor however, it feels like a whole; and yet it wasn’t, not really — because Rubin had a sequel planned.

Which brings us to American VI: Ain’t No Grave. I had some anxiety about this record: as somebody who loves Johnny Cash’s music, I wanted it to be more than just good. It needed to cap not only the American series but also Cash’s career, reaching all the way back to his Sun recordings (best experienced in the excellent Bear Family box set). And after a few listens I’m starting to think that — just maybe — Rubin and Cash pulled it off. Although American VI like its predecessor finds Cash in frail voice over subtle, spare arrangements, the tone is different. Cash’s body may have been shattered, and he may have been in mourning for his beloved wife but the record sounds calm, almost transcendent. On the title track he sings:

Well there ain’t no grave
Gonna hold my body down
Well there ain’t no grave
Gonna hold my body down
When I hear that trumpet sound
I’m gonna get up out of the ground

The song mixes defiance with a joyful declaration that death is not the end. And it is this bedrock of religious faith that liberates Cash from fear and informs the rest of the album. This is the sound of a man at peace with himself, with his life, who is ready to meet his Redeemer. Indeed, he’s so at peace he can take a Sheryl Crow track, Redemption Song and make you forget about her musings on toilet paper and suspect for the first time that she might actually have some talent. Then he takes Kris Kristofferson’s For the Good Times — basically a song in which a horny bastard tries to emotionally blackmail his ex into giving him some pity sex — and turns it into a moving reflection on a long life nearly at its end. The fourth track, 1 Corinthians 15:55 is the last song Cash ever wrote and begins with the famous lines from scripture:

Oh Death where is thy sting?
Oh grave where is thy victory?

Before Cash continues with a plea to God for shelter, guidance, forgiveness and mercy; but it’s a plea given in the certainty that God is merciful, delivered over a cheerful waltz. Cash knows that if he asks, he shall receive.

American VI is Cash’s final articulation of his faith, his life’s experience, his long dying. At times it sounds like a ghostly transmission from the beyond. Some critics have complained about the emphasis given to Cash’s frailty and mortality on the last four American records; others have even accused Rubin of exploiting him, as if Cash was the sort of man to allow himself to be thus used. Other critics complain that the gothic darkness of the American series overshadows the richness of his persona, obliterating memories of the speed freak Cash, the rockabilly Cash, the historian Cash, the comedy Cash, the socially conscious Cash.

They are wrong. Forget my crack about Lady Gaga on the way in: Rick Rubin deserves only praise for seeing the potential that still lay untapped in the old country music warhorse when everybody else thought he was washed up. Cash was lucky indeed to have found such a great collaborator in his last decade, although he probably didn’t think it was luck. The other, younger Johnny Cash still exists; his records are out there, and are being rediscovered all the time. Nobody else has such a rich discography — thematically at least — for Cash could become a killer, a child, a dispossessed Indian, a randy husband and yet always remain Cash. But it’s the emphasis on mortality that makes the American albums unique and adds to rather than subtracts from that richness. Cash was strong enough to be honest in his expression of weakness. If it makes us uncomfortable then that’s our fault. Cash showed us how it’s done, this business of dying, and he did it in song. Let us all hope that when we get there we can do it with the same dignity, resolve and peace of mind as the Man in Black.

It is a noble thing to dedicate your life to educating the young, even if our society doesn’t value teachers the way it should. And yet at the same time, teaching can also provide a shelter for all manner of time-servers, frauds, phoneys, creeps and even perverts.

As for Konstantin Shumkov of the East Siberian city of Irkutsk, well– he really wanted to mold young minds. For him it was a passion. We can see this because after he flunked the entrance exam to the local teacher training college he nevertheless formed a youth club to give the local kids something to do. Working as a DJ at night, he dedicated his free time to expanding the horizons of his young friends in the evocatively named ‘Blood Magic Gang’.

Wait a minute, that doesn’t sound very good. And indeed, upon closer inspection we can see that Shumkov had some strange ideas as to what kind of activities were fitting for a youth club where the members were all 14-15 years old. RIA Novosti reports:

After drinking heavily and taking drugs, Shumkov and the teenagers set out to look for victims, beating them with metal poles and dropping rocks on them. They are known to have burnt at least one person to death. Most of the gang’s victims were homeless people.

But wait– there’s more:

In May 2008, the group’s acts reached their gruesome pinnacle when the body of a vagrant was cut up into dozens of pieces and dumped on the grounds of local schools. The man’s head was left impaled on a fence.

When questioned, one of the teenagers said they initially wanted to leave the body parts on the territory of a city police station, but decided against it. He also said the group had left the head on the fence “for a laugh.”

As for Shumkov, he comes across as rather more pretentious, conjuring up whiffs of Nietzsche, Dostoevsky and Aleister Crowley to explain his deeds:

“I was interested in how a person dies. How it happens. It was something personal. Knowledge,” Shumkov was quoted by regional media as saying last year.

“I did what I wanted to. I wasn’t hung up on any morals,” he said. When asked if he considered himself a psychopathic maniac, he replied in the affirmative.

Following that confession, a crack squad of highly qualified experts have confirmed that Shumkov is indeed rather wicked:

A court psychological evaluation determined that Shumkov, who admitted cutting off the fingers of one victim, keeping them in his flat along with the eye of another, displayed “cruel and sadistic tendencies.”

Investigators also claim that like many notorious murderers, the killer DJ began his life of violence by torturing and cutting up small animals.

So there you have it. Unlike in another recent Russian orgy of darkness, Beelzebub does not appear to have been involved. But that’s no comfort really. Meanwhile this past Tuesday Shumkov was sent to prison for 25 years, while his youthful charges have been given from six to nine years in juvenile correction facilities. As for the butchered vagrants, they remain dead.

So why is this man laughing?

]]> http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2010/03/03/evil-watch-quest-for-knowledge-leads-dj-and-teens-to-impale-human-head-on-fencepost-burn-man-alive/feed/ http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2010/03/02/tsar-watch-russias-murdered-royals-avenged-at-last-only-not-really/ http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2010/03/02/tsar-watch-russias-murdered-royals-avenged-at-last-only-not-really/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 17:13:58 +0000 Daniel Kalder http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/?p=2359
Shocking news from Russia: a man claiming to be a member of the Romanov dynasty recently tracked down and beat to death an 82 year old ex-KGB officer for his part in the murder of Tsar Nikolai II and his family. The only problem is that as the Tsar was murdered in 1918, the KGB [...]]]>

Shocking news from Russia: a man claiming to be a member of the Romanov dynasty recently tracked down and beat to death an 82 year old ex-KGB officer for his part in the murder of Tsar Nikolai II and his family. The only problem is that as the Tsar was murdered in 1918, the KGB officer in question could not possibly have taken part in the killings as he was still 10 years away from being born. Actually that’s not the only problem. The KGB officer was also the father of the enraged Romanov who killed him. What’s that? How can a KGB officer be related to the royal family? Well- he wasn’t. The killer was actually an outpatient from a mental hospital, a man identified in the Russian press only as ‘Alexander’. He didn’t really track down his father either. He was already in his East Moscow apartment. And when police arrived, summoned after a ’suspicious noise’ was heard:

Alexander was reciting poetry proclaiming his royal lineage. He had made no attempt to dispose of his father’s dead body.

So really, there’s no vengeance going on here. Well there might be- we don’t know if the KGB officer did other terrible things that we don’t know about. But in the absence of such information we are left instead with a sad tale of mental illness and pointless death. ‘It happens’, as they say in Russia.

Meanwhile in Turkey a sheep recently gave birth to a lamb with a human face. Honestly. Pravda.ru even has a picture.

It’s a wonderful, strange, terrifying world.

H/t: Marc Bennetts

When I originally saw the headline in Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper that President Asif Ali Zardari sacrificed a black goat a day in his presidential compound I was quite excited- could this be another entry for Lucifer Watch? After all the goat, especially a black one, is a beast often associated with the Lord of the Flies. But then again, Pakistan is a country which is 98% Muslim or thereabouts, and I just couldn’t see the people (or military) of that nation feeling all that comfortable with a leader paying tribute to the one they call Iblis; indeed I can’t see the people of any country feeling all that relaxed with a head of state openly in cahoots with Satan.

Then I read on and all was revealed. The sacrifice is not an invocation of the devil; quite the opposite- it is designed to ward off the influence of the ‘evil eye’ and ‘black magic’. The Dawn reporter then asked:

Does this, and the use of camel and goat milk, make the beleaguered president appear to be a superstitious man?

Well, not to his spokesman. “It has been an old practice of Mr Zardari to offer Sadqa (animal sacrifice). He has been doing this for a long time,” spokesman Farhatullah Babar told Dawn on Tuesday.

But his detractors, who want to see him out of the Presidency, would see in his new-found religiosity a sign of nervousness…

One thing is certain: Hundreds of black goats have been sacrificed since Mr Zardari moved into the President’s House in September 2008. His trusted personal servant Bai Khan buys goats from Saidpur village. The animal is touched by Mr Zardari before it is sent to his private house in F-8/2 to be sacrificed.

But all does not always go well in the world of incantatory magic:

Insiders say that when Mr Zardari moved into the President’s House, a flock of black partridges were introduced there for their supposedly magical effects.

Unfortunately, the whole flock was electrocuted when a live wire fell on their cage.

Fortunately Mr. Zardari’s lucky camel is well:

A camel, a cow and a few goats kept on the grounds of the presidency, however, survive and provide milk for its worthy resident.

Although it must be said that Zardari’s spokesman later denied to the Guardian that there was any lucky camel. He also clarified the nature of goat sacrifice:

“The main belief is that this practice invokes the pleasure of God. The corollary is that bad things will not happen, of course, but that’s a matter of interpretation,”

Before adding that Zardari’s late wife, the Harvard and Oxford educated Benazir Bhutto was also a big fan of ritual goat slaughter, performing sadqa regularly…

…after returning to Pakistan in late 2007, a few months before she was killed in a suicide attack.

Note that last detail- in spite of killing a lot of goats, Bhutto was still assassinated. Meanwhile regular animal sacrifice is not working that well for Zardari. The Guardian continues:

The goat revelations provide fresh meat for Zardari’s many enemies. With sections of the media and military openly arrayed against him, the president’s popularity ratings have plunged to the low teens.

Last week, long-standing corruption allegations resurfaced in the supreme court, where rivals appear to be preparing a legal attempt to oust him from office.

And let us not forget the apocalyptic state of the economy, the dependence on US aid, the presence of armed extremists within Pakistan’s borders, the chaos in the tribal regions, the deeply unpopular US drone attacks on Pakistani territory etc. Indeed, on the face of it, the goat killing just isn’t effective at all when it comes to incurring the pleasure of God. Perhaps then it would be better to move on to a more powerful magick, to graduate upwards to a higher animal? In Russia I once met a druid who told me that although his community regularly killed chickens and lower creatures for small blessings, every five years they would sacrifice a horse for the sake of the world.

Then again, it’s just possible that Pakistan’s problems are quite intractable and no amount of animal blood can help Mr. Zardari.

Ashtaroth!

]]> http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2010/02/17/goat-watch-president-of-pakistan-sacrifices-a-lot-of-bearded-animals-to-please-god-god-not-pleased/feed/ http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2010/02/15/messiah-watch-savior-of-all-mankind-already-on-tv-so-keep-your-eyes-peeled/ http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2010/02/15/messiah-watch-savior-of-all-mankind-already-on-tv-so-keep-your-eyes-peeled/#comments Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:35:51 +0000 Daniel Kalder http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/?p=2246
As we all know, the world is in a terrible state and likely to end very soon. That being the case, we should be well advised to keep an eye out not only for manifestations of Satan but also for possible messiahs who might extricate us from this unholy mess. Alas, with so many claimants [...]]]>

As we all know, the world is in a terrible state and likely to end very soon. That being the case, we should be well advised to keep an eye out not only for manifestations of Satan but also for possible messiahs who might extricate us from this unholy mess. Alas, with so many claimants to the title, how are we to know who is the real deal? According to Benjamin Creme we should all be watching our TVs very closely right now, because the ‘Maitreya’ (the coming future Buddha in Buddhist eschatology) has already appeared on our screens.

Creme– an artists/mystic from Scotland– has been keeping an eye out for the Maitreya for several decades. I first encountered his thinking in a free newspaper I found in a plastic box in downtown Austin, between another plastic box containing apartment listings and yet another plastic box containing a Spanish language newspaper. There was a strange photoshopped image on the front page of a vaguely Asian looking Jesus type figure in robes alarming a group of Indians. This, apparently was the Maitreya. According to Creme (who is in telepathic contact with those in the know) the messiah was already on earth and a new age of enlightenment was about to dawn, any day now. All very interesting.

Anyway, since then I hadn’t heard much but according to Britain’s Daily Telegraph, just before Christmas:

…Mr Creme announced that a “bright star” would shortly be appearing in the sky, heralding Maitreya’s first appearance on American television. Such is the purchase of his optimism that shortly afterwards, the internet was flooded by reports of the star being seen all over the world – most notably, for some reason, in Norway.

On January 14, Mr Creme announced that Maitreya had made his long-awaited television appearance. Maitreya, Mr Creme went on, had not been introduced by that name, “but simply as a man, one of us. He spoke earnestly of the need for peace, achievable only through the creation of justice and the sharing of the world’s resources.”

Cue a frantic search by Mr. Creme’s followers for who this Maitreya might be. The general consensus was that it was Raj Patel a writer, activist and academic who was spotted on Youtube talking about justice, equality, equitable distribution of resources, the rottenness of the free market etc while plugging his latest book, The Value of Nothing. (Praised by the tinfoil-hat wearing Naomi Klein but let’s not hold that against him).

Alas, although he might be out to save us, Dr. Patel makes no claims to being the messiah. Indeed, he quickly put up a witty post denying that he was the Maitreya but simply ‘a very naughty boy.’ As you can see from scrolling through the comments this enraged some of the disappointed believers, who accused Dr. Patel of being a false prophet, fake messiah, Antichrist and so on.

Benjamin Creme however denies that he ever pointed the finger at Patel. Again, from the Telegraph:

He (Creme) had never said, he told me, that Patel was Maitreya. Indeed, he had never heard of him until two weeks ago, when their names were linked on the web. “I’ve said all along, it’s not for me to say who is Maitreya. Raj Patel has said it’s not him, and that’s fine by me.”

In the meantime, he went on, the real Maitreya has made “several” appearances on American television, without declaring who he is: “It’s important that people follow him because they want what he is advocating for the world, rather than because they think he’s the Messiah.”

He had seen Dr Patel speaking on YouTube, he told me. “He’s very charming, very fluent… but to my mind he is not somebody who could be taken as the Messiah.”

Interesting. Thus there is no reason to lose hope– not yet at least. The Messiah is among us. Indeed he’s on TV. But which channel? Could it be him? Or him? Or why not a woman? Then again, none of them have spoken much about world peace and the sharing of resources.

Guess we’ve just got to keep looking.

]]> http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2010/02/15/messiah-watch-savior-of-all-mankind-already-on-tv-so-keep-your-eyes-peeled/feed/ http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2010/02/12/lucifer-watch-atf-looking-for-3-persons-of-interest-in-east-texas-church-infernos/ http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2010/02/12/lucifer-watch-atf-looking-for-3-persons-of-interest-in-east-texas-church-infernos/#comments Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:17:16 +0000 Daniel Kalder http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/?p=2227
Last week I mused in an entirely speculative fashion on who the culprits behind the recent spate of church burnings in East Texas might be, suggesting that the Feds might want to look for Lords of Chaos- reading, Burzum-listening, Satan-loving Black Metal fans. Others, less attuned to the dark arts than myself, have somewhat drearily [...]]]>

Last week I mused in an entirely speculative fashion on who the culprits behind the recent spate of church burnings in East Texas might be, suggesting that the Feds might want to look for Lords of Chaos- reading, Burzum-listening, Satan-loving Black Metal fans. Others, less attuned to the dark arts than myself, have somewhat drearily suggested Muslims or ‘Sarah Palin hating liberals’.

Since my post a further two churches have gone up in flames northwest of Tyler, bringing the grand total of officially connected fires to nine. A slightly out of date map here reveals the precise destinations of these acts of arson for those keen to visit the smoldering ruins in their imaginations. You can also read an eyewitness account here. Meanwhile the ATF have announced that they are looking for three persons of interest who- sorry Michael Cade- are definitely not this person. Tom Crowley, an ATF spokesman in Dallas was quoted by the AP as saying:

“We want to find out who they are, why they were around and who they know,” Crowley said. The men were spotted in an area related to the fires. Crowley declined to be more specific.

Sketches of the suspects have been made public:

The sketches released Friday depict one man with short hair and a flame-like tattoo on his neck, another short-haired man with an inverted cross on his left forearm from wrist to elbow, and a third man with longer hair.

An inverted cross? Long hair? A flame like tattoo? Not quite corpse paint, I’ll admit, but then that would really make you stick out in East Texas. You can see the artist’s impressions here…

Is the mystery about to be resolved? Are these three exceedingly moronic Black Metal fans, as suspected?? Will banging them up really resolve the ‘root cause’ of their crime, whatever the hell that might be??? Something tells me we are about to find out…

Ashtaroth!

As I am a foreigner, the first I ever heard about the Super Bowl’s tradition of mid-show entertainment was the now notorious Janet Jackson nipple incident whereby Justin Timberlake ‘accidentally’ unleashed Ms. Jackson’s breast upon millions of unsuspecting Americans. I was living in Moscow at the time and even the Russians were quite obsessed by the role of Ms. Jackson’s mammary glands in a sport none of them played or cared about.

Six years later and it is clear that the Super Bowl’s organizers are still terrified of Janet Jackson’s nipple, that it comes to them at night and haunts them in their sleep, threatening to embroil them in scandal and to lose them millions in sponsorship deals. For what else can explain the entertainment decisions made by the Masters of the Bowl ever since that fateful Sunday afternoon in February 2004?
Let’s take a look at who has played in the years since:

2005 Paul McCartney (Age: 67)
The less talented half of the Beatles songwriting team, more famous these days for his disastrous marriage to one-legged model Heather Mills. After spending years trying to promote his lackluster solo work he now dedicates most of his live shows to his 1960s catalogue, and has thus become a tribute act to his younger self. Not that he’s bitter or anything.
–

2006 The Rolling Stones (Collective age: 260+)
This once great ‘dangerous’ band, notorious for their decadent lifestyles and provocative antics, have long since been reduced to a semi-parodic tribute act to their younger selves. Their drummer is a skeleton with a few wisps of hair attached to his skull. Mick Jagger made a mockery of himself by accepting a knighthood after launching a sustained whining campaign in the aftermath of “Sir” Paul McCartney’s own ennobling. Then Keith Richards fell out of a tree.
–

2007 Prince (Age 51)
A spring chicken by super bowl standards (he was only 49 the year he performed), it’s been a long time since Prince thrilled, or indeed, entertained anybody. Furthermore, his performance at the Super Bowl came after he had joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses and stopped playing his more scandalous songs.
–

2008 Tom Petty (Age: 59)
Past it, middle of the road rocker whose interest in music began when he met Elvis aged 10: not exactly cutting edge, then. Is he a self-tribute act? I don’t know because like millions of others, I just don’t care. But I do note that he reformed his original band Mudcrutch in 2008 to pay homage to his younger self.
–

2009 Bruce Springsteen (Age: 60)
Past it, tedious, ultra-earnest screecher who recently won a prize for a song about a tired old wrestler. Even Springsteen admitted re: the Superbowl: “…if we don’t do it now, what are we waiting for? I want to do it while I’m alive.” I suppose Springsteen at least still tries to stay vital, and many music critics have responded to his more recent efforts by kindly pretending to like them almost as much as the albums he recorded 20-30 years ago.
–

2010 The Who (Pete Townshend 64/Roger Daltrey 65/Keith Moon- dead/John Entwistle-dead)

This year, clearly fearing that they were running out of heritage rock acts to hire, the Super Bowl organizers invited The Who to perform. Now I don’t mind a bit of The Who, they were definitely good about 40 years ago, possibly even still good 35 years ago around the time I was born, but ever since… well Who Cares? As they have only released one new record in several centuries they are perhaps the ultimate self-tribute band, not even interested in trying new things. Yawn.

So it seems that the rules if you want to perform at the Superbowl post- Janet Jackson are:
1. No breasts, and thus no women
2. If you are a man, then you must have a prescription for Cialis.

Now before anybody accuses me of ageism let me say this: I have nothing against venerable singers and guitarists, etc. A month or so back on this very site I sang the praises of King Crimson, who are very old indeed, if not exactly Super Bowl material. Johnny Cash did some of his best work in his 60s and 70s, although again I can’t imagine all that Rick Rubin produced death gospel going down all that well with the sponsors. Some people claim Dylan is still good, and although I’m not a huge Dylan fan, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. (I have grave reservations about Neil Young, however.) But there’s a difference between being old and vital and being The Who, or the Stones, or Paul McCartney. And while these acts can be entertaining enough even though they lost their mojo decades ago, too much heritage rock is a fairly awful, depressing, suffocating experience.

I’m also a bit suspicious that these geriatric Super Bowl acts are those bands much beloved of the dismal late 60s Baby Boomer generation that has had a death grip on Western culture since the 80s at least, forcing its own nostalgia for a long passed youth down everybody else’s gullet. These coots just won’t let go: ‘Teenage Wasteland’ indeed. It’s enough to make you nostalgic for Janet Jackson’s nipple.

Once you start keeping an eye out for Satan, he seems to pop up everywhere. Thanks to HP Lovecraft I now have a link to an English language report on the Satanists arrested in Yaroslavl in 2008. And here’s even more info on Russia’s cannibal Satanists. Foul stuff, indeed.

Meanwhile I was sent this video of some Black Metal enthusiasts performing a Satanic show and tell for their classmates which has to be seen to be believed. I’m a bit late on this one as it’s had over a hundred thousand hits. But better late than never:

It’s difficult to make out any of the words, but although I heard the odd “Satan” shrieked aloud, after a while I became suspicious, as the oft repeated ‘Nastya’ is a girl’s name. Then I found a translation of the lyrics:

Childhood, childhood, where are you running to,
Childhood, childhood, where are you hurry to.
I’ve not enough played with you
Childhood, childhood, where are you going to, wait.

I want, I want again
To run across the roofs, to scare pigeons,
To banter on Natashka, to niggle her braid,
To ride on bicycle across the yard.

Old ladies looking at us,
They don’t recognize yesterday prankster.
Me and Natashka going across the yard,
And we don’t care about anything else but us.

Not very devilish. Further detective work then uncovered this horror:

Yes, it’s the same song, performed by legendary Russian boy band ‘Gentle May’.

Thus our Satanic friends are actually taking the piss, and they’re not very Satanic at all. In fact, the original pop version is far more diabolical.

Ashtaroth!

H/t: Marc Bennetts

Following yesterday’s entirely speculative post related to the possibility of Black Metal fans burning down churches in Texas, news reaches us from deepest Russia of an actual, full-on Satanic cult engaged in foul deeds:

Investigators say that the Saransk-based Nobilis Ordo Diaboli group recruited young people from across the region between 2003 and 2009. The cult’s founding members, 24-year-old Belarus national Alexander Kazakov and 23-year-old local Denis Danishin, face a number of charges, ranging from the sexual abuse of minors to battery.

Prosecutors say potential members, many of whom were recruited via the internet and were of “good families”, were forced to take part in alcohol-fuelled orgies during which they pledged their souls to Kazakov. Investigators also suspect the group was preparing to carry out human sacrifices.

Apparently Kazakov, a medical student, was quite ambitious and even attempted to place members of his ‘Noble Order of the Devil’ in the local police force. However RIA Novosti reports:

The cult’s attempts to infiltrate the police are believed to have ended in failure, with at least one member rejected due to his “strange tendencies.”

Before dryly noting:

An article on the newsru.com website regretted that the Russian police force, whose officers have been charged with crimes ranging from burning suspects alive to beheading in the last 18 months or so, were not always so effective in weeding out sadistic applicants.

And whereas in the USA the anti-Satanic music campaign spearheaded by Al Gore’s wife and subsequent Satanic abuse scare of the 90s spearheaded by Geraldo Rivera may have led to greater skepticism of these kinds of devilish conspiracies, in post- soviet Russia they are taken very seriously:

In 2008, Interior Ministry experts announced that Satanism was a greater threat to the country’s national security than Islamic radicalism.

Indeed, after reading the RIA report I spent a few minutes searching through Russian news sites and discovered a report that in Yaroslavl in 2008 members of a different Satanic sect were arrested for the ritual sacrifice of four adolescents after spending a year or two working up to it by killing cats and dogs.

Sadly for these Satanists and also the latest batch in Saransk they seem to have forgotten that Lucifer is not known as the Father of Lies for nothing. For instead of acquiring great power from their dark master, they are destined to rot in Russian prisons, which are quite good at offering their inhabitants a little foretaste of hell on earth.

Ashtaroth!

]]> http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2010/02/05/lucifer-watch-satanists-attempt-to-infiltrate-russian-police/feed/ http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2010/02/04/burn-baby-burn-churches-go-up-in-flames-down-in-texas/ http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2010/02/04/burn-baby-burn-churches-go-up-in-flames-down-in-texas/#comments Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:49:48 +0000 Daniel Kalder http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/?p=2161
There was an interesting report on the AP today about a bunch of churches which have mysteriously gone up in flames down here in Texas since the new year. Well I say down here but actually it’s quite a drive from Austin to East Texas where most of the incinerated churches used to stand. According to [...]]]>

There was an interesting report on the AP today about a bunch of churches which have mysteriously gone up in flames down here in Texas since the new year. Well I say down here but actually it’s quite a drive from Austin to East Texas where most of the incinerated churches used to stand.

According to the AP:

Authorities determined seven of those fires were intentionally set and they are investigating one that broke out Thursday as a possible arson. There have been no reported injuries or arrests, and federal officials aren’t saying whether there’s a connection.

Most people in these parts can’t help but think they are.

“I think everybody is expecting more of these, to tell you the truth,” said pastor David Mahfood, whose Baptist church in Tyler was destroyed in a Jan. 16 fire. “I think the worst is probably behind Tyler, but I’d worry about other cities.”

Six of the seven arsons were just nine days apart, sending many congregations in east Texas scurrying to install security systems and prompting volunteers to keep close eyes on church properties from dusk to dawn. Federal and local authorities have released scant details and say they need more information.

Apparently whoever is burning the churches to the ground is an equal opportunities arsonist; he has no beef with any particular denomination, they’re all fair game. Pastor Mahfood thinks it’s a hate crime:

“I don’t really think you can look at this devastation and not realize this has hate as its impetus,” he said. “We have probably experienced every emotion possible.”

I suspect Pastor Mahfood is right as to the motives of the twisted fire starter. But who would hate Christianity so much that he or she would feel compelled to burn churches to the ground? Your bog standard angry atheist generally prefers to leave insulting comments on blogs, or talk appreciably about that Christopher Hitchens/Richard Dawkins book they just read. They’re not all that radical, regardless of the posturing.

What this story reminds me of is the spate of church burnings that occurred in Norway in the 1990s. I wrote a bit about it here, in a different context. In this case, some morons fired up on Satanic black metal got it into their heads that Christianity had been a disaster for Norway and it would have been a lot better if the Scandinavians had retained their loyalty to the old gods such as Odin, you know, and stayed vikings. Some of them also professed admiration for the Devil, although how you can accept the existence of Satan without also endorsing the rest of Christian theology is a mystery to me. And so they burned some beautiful old wooden churches to the ground to prove their point.

There are certainly plenty of disgruntled black metal kids knocking about in Texas, and as the church is pretty much ubiquitous away from big cities such as Austin, Houston and Dallas well — setting fire to a few houses of worship would be an ideal way to express your inchoate rage at life, authority, and the rest while getting a few kicks at the same time. And so my top tip to Pastor Mahfood and the federal authorities ‘looking for more information’ would be — look for the Burzum fan.

And having made one prediction, here’s another — if I am right, and this church burning thing gathers steam,  prepare for some really shit New York Times/60 minutes style ‘analytical’ pieces on Black Metal, written by the usual motley crew of humorless, pseudo-intellectual hacks.

Ashtaroth!

It’s impossible to avoid the apocalypse these days. Whether we encounter the End in the form of news reports on Global Warming, or fears of Iran getting the bomb, or plague panics such as H1N1, we seem to be living in a high point of apocalyptic anxiety, with horrible Doomsdays lurking round every corner. And yet, the End has never been so much fun. Roland Emmerich released his latest apocalyptic blockbuster 2012 in November, and since then we have enjoyed Zombieland, The Road, The Book of Eli, Legion and even Al Gore’s dreadful poem read aloud on morning TV in the presence of a fawning sycophant. Much more is to come, and this is to say nothing of video games, books, comics, or half the output of the History Channel.

What lies behind this fascination with the End? Dr. Richard Landes, professor of mediaeval history at the University of Boston, is a renowned scholar of apocalyptic movements who has been thinking about Doomsday for forty years. He is the editor of the Encyclopedia of Millennialism and author of the upcoming Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of Millennial Experience. Landes is an exceptionally interesting thinker who applies his knowledge of past apocalypses to our present fears, an analysis which frequently informs the articles he publishes at his website The Augean Stables.

Recently I phoned him from my base in Texas, to chat about mankind’s enduring love affair with apocalypse. I caught him in Tel Aviv airport at 2am: and it was then, against a backdrop of deepest night, that we spent two hours discussing the end of the world.

DK: With all these apocalyptic films coming out, and fears of Global Warming, plague and nuclear proliferation running rampant, do you think that we are living through an era of heightened apocalyptic anxiety?

RL: You know, that’s almost a precise paraphrase of what journalists were asking me in the 90s, while looking ahead to the year 2000. That was when we had all those movies about planet-destroying comets, and fears of the Y2K bug… There’s always an apocalyptic undercurrent in our culture, but sometimes it comes to the fore.

DK: Why is the pull of apocalyptic belief so strong?

RL: Our love for the apocalypse is connected with our sense of our own importance. To live in apocalyptic expectation means that you are the chosen generation; that in your time the puzzle of existence will be solved. It appeals to our- by which I mean humanity’s- megalomania: we all want to believe we’re special, that God has given us a front row seat for the most important events in history.

DK: But where does it come from?

RL: The West is fundamentally an apocalyptic culture. It came with the first missionaries when they went north to convert the tribes in Europe. The old chronicles speak of ‘glad tidings’, which had to be news of Christ’s impending return. Do you know the French cartoon strip, Asterix and Obelix? Asterix had to drink the magic potion to become strong. Obelix fell into the cauldron when he was a baby, so he didn’t need to drink it. That’s the relationship between Western culture and apocalypse.

If apocalyptic fervor seems more intense now it’s because ever since the Industrial Revolution Western society has been built on the idea of constant change, and so we need to constantly be thinking about the future. Scenarios like the Millennium Bug or Global Warming thus have special appeal to secular minds because as they are situations we created ourselves, we think we can solve them.

DK: So we keep looking to the future, but as Western culture has always located an apocalypse in the future, this ‘looking forward’ inevitably stirs up ancient archetypes and fears regarding the End Times?

RL: It’s like an acid flashback.

DK: Which goes some way to explaining why the anticipation of doomsday constantly recurs- even though every prophet has been wrong…

RL: Well, we historians prefer to say that the prophets have been wrong so far. But the key point to make, and I stress- is that apocalyptic belief is never without consequences, even if it’s wrong. For example, an idea often associated with apocalypse is that of the millennium- a period prior to the end during which men and women shall live in heaven on earth. That can be pretty harmless in itself, but when people decide to pursue that goal, and make it happen instead of waiting on God, the results can be disastrous.

DK: Thanks to sects such as Jim Jones’ People’s Temple, Koresh’s Branch Davidians and Aum Shinrikyo in Japan End Times belief is often associated in the popular imagination with murder and mass suicide. Is it always dangerous?

RL: No rhetoric is more powerful than apocalyptic rhetoric, no greater motivation exists in the human repertoire than the belief that one’s every action is crucial to the final destiny of the human race.

Millennialism brings out the most noble and most base of human behaviour, from the genocidal rage of Crusaders and Nazis, to the extravagant love of a Francis or a Gandhi. If we don’t understand millennialism, we don’t understand a critical element of one of our culture’s greatest passions.

It is powerful and seductive; and yes, it can be incredibly subversive, incredibly dangerous. In 19th century China a village schoolteacher named Hong Xiuquan fused Christian tracts with native millennial traditions and formed the Taiping Heavenly Army. Up to 35 million died as Hong fought to establish paradise on earth. And this was in an age before modern weaponry!

I would argue that the Nazis and the Bolsheviks should also be understood as secular apocalyptic movements, further underscoring the potentially traumatic consequences of millennial belief.

DK: In The Apocalyptic Year 1000, which you edited, you argue that although the popular idea that there was mass panic in Europe on the eve of the first millennium is a myth, there was nevertheless a sustained apocalyptic period in the decades before and after the year 1000, evidenced by mass movements, signs and wonders in the sky, an increase in references to the Antichrist in texts etc. The year 2000 was likewise a dud- but do you think we could be experiencing a similar ‘long apocalyptic moment’ today? And if so when did it start? Was it in the 70s with Jim Jones and People’s Temple, or Hal Lindsey’s bestselling books of popular prophecy?

RL: That’s an interesting way to look at it. I’d take it all the way back to 1968, when many people in the West believed the world was going to change, that bomber jet planes were going to transformed into butterflies, and John Lennon was lying around in bed with Yoko Ono in the name of world peace. That was a classical millennial theme- admittedly in an unbelievably shallow form- that if you changed your life, you could change the world.

DK: What are the dominant apocalyptic scenarios today?

RL: The two most compelling contemporary secular apocalyptic prophecies of our time are Climate Change and Global Jihad. By secular I mean based on empirical evidence rather than heavenly visions and ancient texts. But still they follow the apocalyptic thread of destruction and rebirth and are ripe for transformation into millennial movements.

Global Jihad involves actors inspired by sacred texts, but the danger of what they can do is very real. It is unfolding in real time, thus we can see it, and make observations. And so I describe it as a secular apocalypse.

DK: Are there major differences between secular and religious apocalypses, other than the empirical/visionary divide?

RL: Yes, they are much more pessimistic. Global Warming promises destruction without a redemptive framework- except in certain New Age interpretations which add the promise that after the catastrophe, a more harmonious society will emerge, which will transition to ‘a new consciousness’.

I’m more focused on Global Jihad. Climate Change could take decades to take effect. In Global Jihad the timetable of danger is greater. If one of these groups gets hand on a nuke, then it could affect us in the here and now with disastrous consequences.

DK: It’s interesting that those who favor one apocalyptic scenario tend to deny or downplay the other. The ‘left’ usually believes fervently in Global Warming while attempting to dismiss Islamist terrorism, while the ‘right’ tends to argue in the opposite direction.

RL: Yes, and yet the two complement each other. In fact they go hand in hand. It’s our consumption of fossil fuels that feeds money to global jihad.

DK: If I can stay on Global Warming for a minute- it’s a common belief that apocalyptic ideas appeal mainly to the weak, the marginalized, and the oppressed. But Global Warming seems to appeal mainly to the elite- while the so-called ‘masses’ are frequently hostile or indifferent towards it. Is this unusual?

RL: That’s true, but in the past many leaders of apocalyptic sects were members of the elite, especially intellectuals who felt that they hadn’t found their place in society. For example Thomas Müntzer, who was a theologian and leader in the Peasant’s War in Germany in the 1520s, was a well educated man. Hong Xiuqan in China was also incredibly intelligent, a child prodigy, but he failed the civil service exams, which had something like a 98% failure rate, and after this rejection he embraced apocalyptic belief.

The leaders of Global Jihad are also well educated men from wealthy families. And make no mistake: Global Jihad is an absolutely apocalyptic movement- it was launched in 1979, the year 1400 in the Muslim world. There was revolution in Iran, and an uprising in Mecca led by a man who declared himself the Mahdi, the Islamic savior. And in Nigeria there was an uprising that killed 10000 people.

DK: But while the Iranian regime is explicitly inspired by a messianic Shiite ideology, Sunni terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda make no mention of the End or the Mahdi…

RL: They’re not apocalyptic in the sense that they talk about the end of time. But they are unquestionably millennial. In the 1990s Al Qaeda decided that it was possible to take over world, like a mirror of western globalisation. They dream of establishing Sharia everywhere, and are actively apocalyptic in how they go about it- they want to establish paradise on earth by first destroying the old world. This is a pre- modern movement with access to hyper modern technology. As I said, even if a tiny group gets its hands on nukes that could cause a catastrophe.

Islamic apocalyptic millennialism is what I call ‘active cataclysmic’- i.e. we are God’s tool/weapon for bringing about the devastation necessary for the millennial kingdom to be realized on earth. This is by far the most dangerous belief in the history of mankind. People need to understand the degree to which our unwillingness to talk about it actually encourages it.

DK: How long do you think the jihad movement will last? Other millennial-apocalyptic groups such as the Nazis had a relatively short lifespan. The Bolsheviks in the USSR were only truly bloodthirsty and millennial for about 30 years. Right now the regime in Iran appears to be in serious trouble. Won’t it also die out?

RL: Well perhaps, but there’s a big difference between our world today and the situation in the past. Thanks to the Internet the jihadis can draw upon a much bigger pool of potential recruits. There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. Thus Global Jihad has the potential to be infinitely self- regenerating.

DK: Dr. Landes, thank you.

RL: Thank you.

Until recently my favorite piece of Obama kitsch was unquestionably the mind-blowing, bizarre paintings of the president naked, astride a unicorn, fighting  a naked Sarah Palin or wrestling with a fat, naked Rush Limbaugh. If you have never seen them then I urge you to waste no more time and click on this link. the images will be seared onto your retinas forever.

Today however the unicorn pictures were knocked from their pedestal once and for all, courtesy of this  astonishing Youtube clip.

Play it and then play it again. And again. O my friend, your eyes and ears are not deceiving you! This Sunday the “Jahrhunderthalle” in Frankfurt am Main will premiere the spectacle of the century: Das Interaktiv-Musikal HOPE: Eine Neuen Generation, an all singing, all dancing staging of the 2008 election campaign. Hot damn but I wish I was in Deutschland right now so that I could shell out 151 Euro for front row seats for this technicolor car crash. I mean just listen to this:

“Seeing through the eyes of the inhabitants in an apartment-sharing community, we experience the American society which is distressed by the prevailing economical-political chaos, lost in social helplessness – disoriented. People of different origin and political parties find themselves united in the hope for a new beginning. Hence, the battle for the election of the 44th president of the US finds its way into their everyday lives and starts affecting the people in an unprecedented way, letting them share the hope for a better future, despite all the differences.”

Now that is some amazingly profound sheisse right there. And with rapping no less. Better yet, in a piece of totally berserk post-modern irony the woman who plays Hilary Clinton doubles up as Sarah Palin! Even the Reverend Wright gets a singing role! A song about his massive house in a gated community mostly populated by white folks?  Or maybe ‘them Jews’? Actually, in Germany- probably not.

But how? And why? What manner of madness is this? As a musical takes a long time to prepare my guess is that this genius idea was born when Obama did his messianic pre-victory rally in Berlin in July 2008, and became a lock when he won the election. If only the Germans had known then how he would snub them at the anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, sending a video message of congratulations, like Metallica do when they can’t be f*cked to attend a shitty awards ceremony in Estonia! But even then I don’t think that would have stopped them, not these fine damen und herren. No, this is the product of people caught in a weird, dreamlike trance, lost in music, caught in a trap!

But really, what is going on here? Some might hint at Germany’s history of irrational political enthusiasm. But I think that is much too dark an explanation. What it reminds me of is the peculiar German fascination with the American Indian, exemplified by the novels of Karl May. In these books, which were published in the late 19th century, the Indians are the heroes and the cowboys the villains. They sold millions of copies; spawned East German ‘Westerns’ and remain popular today. Hitler forced his generals to read them; when he shot himself in the bunker his shelves were lined with them. In East Germany, some people like to dress up as Indians and sleep in Teepees, but they model their fantasies on Karl May’s Indians and not the actual tribes that inhabit America today .

It gets better. You see, May only visited America once, at the end of his life, and even then it was for a couple of weeks and he never got further inland than Buffalo, NY. He never encountered any Indians; he never wanted to. He preferred the products of his imagination, as do his countrymen.

And thus I suspect that what we are looking at here is a similar dreamland Amerika, a dream Obama, a fantasy construct in which our German friends may lose themselves for a few hours. It is politics as play, as innocence, as a willful act of escape into fantasy land.  And in that sense, I suppose it is the very apotheosis of the 2008 election campaign.

Wunderbar!

The History Channel. Well, yes. If you love the apocalypse and Nazis, then you probably watch it a lot. Oh, and there’s also Pawn Stars. This weekend however they did something which had nothing to do with Nostradamus or death camps: they broadcast a weird, Beatnik-y concert performance entitled ‘The People Speak’, based on readings from Howard Zinn’s book A People’s History of the United States.

I’ve never read Zinn’s book although I hear it’s sold a lot of copies. Apparently it’s a history of America that gives voice to the voiceless, chronicling the struggle of the common man against the oppressor, allowing him to speak in his own voice. Theoretically that’s a very interesting project, the sort of thing I might enjoy. And yet I have to say, the film was utter crap — embarrassing even.

Let us count the strands of crapnis:

CRAPNIS #1: It was MC’d by a mumbling old duffer. Gradually I realized that this was actually the legendary Zinn himself. Of course, this means that he is directly implicated in the film and can’t make the usual excuse that his work was distorted.

CRAPNIS #2: Zinn’s thesis was essentially a crude Marxoid conspiracist reworking of the ancient myth of the Golden Age. In the beginning were the noble democratic ideals of the Declaration of Independence, and all God’s children were happy in the Garden of America. Then came the Fall, when the property owning elite drafted the constitution to keep the common man in his place (i.e. under the heel of the elite). Cast out from the Garden all history since then has been a saga of the noble oppressed classes’ struggle to attain the lost, true democracy represented by the Declaration of Independence.

Thus, as Tuco doesn’t say in the Good, the Bad and the Ugly (he’s much more sophisticated a thinker): “There are two kinds of people in the world, my friend. Those who oppress and those who fight oppression.”

CRAPNIS #3: To ‘prove’ his thesis Zinn would set up straw men — ‘Schools/films don’t tell you this!’ Before telling us something we all learned in school or saw in a film.

Of course a Manichaean interpretation of history which reduces the complex and chaotic mess of reality to a simple morality play has obvious appeal; which leads us to:

CRAPNIS#4: The participation of sundry Hollywood simpletons who performed the words of ‘the People’. I saw Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, a totally f*cked looking Danny Glover, Marisa Tomei (keeping her tits in this time), the dude who does Time Warner Cable ads, and lots of people I didn’t recognize, all emoting the words of ‘the People’ at the camera. I don’t think we need to dwell long on the heavy irony of a film dedicated to ‘the People’ turning out to be an example of naked celebrity worship, or indeed of individuals who usually encounter ‘the People’ as hookers, cooks, gardeners and indentured serfs suddenly getting down with the plebs, indulging in a spot of the old moral exhibitionism. You could see them enjoying it, that sense of moral weight and heft. Good for them, I hope they had a nice time.

CRAPNIS#5: There were also some terrible MTV unplugged style interpretations of old songs, which I wrote about here.

Thus far the show (and I do mean show) was tedious but mostly harmless. Armchair radical Zinn was clearly digging the company of his celeb pals, and they felt all big and serious next to him, so the film was essentially a giant wankathon, that is to say an orgy of onanistic self-congratulation. Nothing to get worked up about, just switch over if you don’t like it. I wouldn’t even have taken the time to write about it were it not for one detail.

Let us assume for a minute that Zinn is correct and that history really can be reduced to a moral fable of oppressed vs. oppressors. If that is the case, and you are telling the history of America then which oppressed people do you think you should include in your film? Slaves? Check. Women? Check. Factory workers? Check. OK, but isn’t there somebody else in there, another group we’ve forgotten, damn, who can it be?…. ah wait… I’ve got it: American Indians!

Last year I was out in West Texas and I got chatting with a chap whose neck was of the deepest crimson hue. He kindly listed for me the many minorities he wasn’t very keen on, but when it came to the Indians he held fire. Even he felt a bit guilty. But Zinn and his Hollywood pals? Apparently they don’t give a shit. They flashed a photograph of a dude in a headdress on screen for five seconds, and then moved swiftly on. No mention of broken treaties, of the Indian wars, or the massacre at Wounded Knee, or Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull or Tecumseh or any of it. Apparently some of that is in Zinn’s book, but when it came to the big screen adaptation — well, I guess that shit just had to go.

Well OK — I suppose they did have to leave enough room for the ads. I mean you’ve got to sell the Swiffer WetJet, don’t you? Sorry Indians, maybe next time. Hell, they don’t even have TVs on the reservations do they?

I think if you made a film about injustice in America and skipped slavery, questions could rightly be raised about the sincerity of your commitment to giving voice to the voiceless. And it is a dark irony indeed that by this editorial (or commercial?) decision Zinn and his celebrity buddies erased an entire people from the historical record. In doing so, they echoed the acts of the very oppressors they affect to despise.

2009 marks the 40th anniversary of many famous things, ranging from the mind-bendingly fatuous (John and Yoko’s bed in) to the truly historic (the moon landings) to the not as good as they used to be (Sesame Street), to the never any good in the first place (Woodstock). But in addition to all of the above, 2009 is also the 40th anniversary of something much less celebrated: a very strange record that only gets stranger with the passing of time, King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King.

Consisting of four skilled musicians plus one lyricist from England’s West Country (among them the now legendary guitarist Robert Fripp) King Crimson enjoyed a rapid ascent to fame and success. The band formed on January 13^th 1969; were declared the ‘best band in the world’ by Jimi Hendrix in April; played with the Stones at Hyde Park in July; recorded their first album In the Court of the Crimson King in July and August; released it to great acclaim in October; then played their last gig together on December 14^th in San Francisco, having imploded while on tour.

To celebrate the band’s 40^th anniversary, ITCOKC has just been re-released in a deluxe, remastered edition. Playing it now, decades after its release, the record sounds ambitious, grandiose, with a majesty bordering on the utterly pompous — it could only have been made by very young men, absolutely confident of their abilities and vision. ITCOKC provides the listener with a gateway into a curious parallel universe where rock is not blues-based but rather European, avant-garde, jazzy, pastoral and apocalyptic. The most famous track is probably 21^st Century Schizoid Man, a blistering assault on the listener for its time. My own favorite however is the eponymous final track, which is ominous and foreboding and yet quite possibly about nothing whatsoever- and who can object to such a bizarre clash of meaning and meaninglessness? Not me. ITCOKC is a message from a lost world, where things were cosmic, and the world of popular music was filled with uncharted possibilities.

Audiophiles take note: the sound quality of the new edition (remastered from the original tapes) is excellent, and there is also a 5.1 stereo surround mix on DVD for those in possession of high quality sound systems. As is usual with re-releases there are various bits and bobs tabbed on as extras; however the best bonus is unquestionably the excision of 3 minutes of meandering improvisation from the track Moonchild.

Having disintegrated at the end of 1969, King Crimson went through a dizzying series of personnel changes over the next five years. Thus the second album in this series of anniversary re-releases Red, has an almost entirely different line up from the band’s debut. Reduced to a trio of Fripp (the only constant in the group’s history), Bill Bruford and John Wetton the band had actually ceased to exist when Red was released in 1974 The buzz prior to the breakup was that Crimson were about to achieve Pink Floyd levels of success, albeit with infinitely superior levels of musicianship. Fripp didn’t much care: he had experienced a spiritual awakening and believed the world was ‘coming to an end’.

Gone was all the florid stuff about purple pipers from ITCOKC; this King Crimson had a much darker, more brutal and yet still complex sound. Fripp’s guitar frequently had a harsh, grating quality; Wetton’s bass was incredibly heavy; Bruford’s drumming was jazzy and crisp. And yet in spite of this stripped down quality the record shows King Crimson still searching for new possibilities, exploring the space between jazz, improvisation and some alien form of the then embryonic heavy metal. The album’s finale, Starless is lyrical, melancholic, sinister, the sound of a man alone and adrift in the depths of space. It veers between mournfulness to terror and then back again. It is the sound of a last farewell, a slow descent into the abyss. It is also the rest of the record in microcosm, veering between aggressive assault and more delicate, exploratory passages. Red is one of the best albums of the 1970s. If you don’t own it, you should.

Once again the re-release features bonus tracks plus a 5.1 stereo surround mix; it also includes ultra-rare video footage of the band in action on a French rock show, complete with period visual effects.

King Crimson’s dissolution in 1974 was not final. Fripp returned with yet another configuration of the band in 1980 and since then King Crimson has materialized and dematerialized periodically, whenever — as Fripp puts it — there is music to be played that only King Crimson can play. A man of ferocious personal integrity, Fripp pursues his own path. Rumors swirl that he may reactivate King Crimson next year. If we are lucky, he will: for even after 40 years and nearly as many members the Crimson King sounds fresh, challenging, aggressive and uncompromising. The same cannot be said for any of Crimson’s peers who played at Woodstock, nor alas, for the works of the King’s other great contemporaries Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch. Although Oscar is still moderately aggressive, it must be admitted.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by this as humans are capable of doing/believing just about anything. But even so, I was a little caught off guard by this sad tale from Cornwall, one of the most beautiful parts of the British Isles, where the locals even have their own language. I will say no more; just click on the link and immerse yourself in the joys and sorrows of the poor soul who can only get his jollies via frolicking in a mound of rancid manure.

Mr. Truscott was a child once, innocent, dreaming of an exciting adulthood… I suspect that this was not what he had in mind.

H/t: Rod Liddle

Which modern day martyr do you think Huffington Post contributor and ‘philosopher’ Bernard Henri-Levy is talking about here?

“Nothing will repair the days he has spent in prison. Nothing will erase the immense, unbelievable injustice he has been subjected to. Nothing will take away the hysteria of those ones who have never stopped pouring contempt upon him, hounding him through hatred and asking for his punishment as if we were living the darkest and most ferocious hours of the McCarthy era all over again. At least the nightmare is about to end. At least the end of the hell is looming. And this, for the time being, is what does matter.”

One of the brave protesters languishing in an Iranian jail, perhaps? Perhaps Kian Tajbakhsh, the Iranian-American scholar who has been detained by the theocracy without access to an independent lawyer since July 9, 2009? No, can’t be him — the end of his hell isn’t looming. It’s just heating up.

Maybe Jian Tianyong, the Chinese human rights lawyer currently under intense scrutiny from the communist government? Nope — AFP reports that Obama declined to raise the issue publicly with Hu Jintao on his recent visit, preferring to whisper sweet nothings about ‘rights’ in his ear in private, possibly tickling him under the chin as he did so.  So Tianyong is still screwed, with no end to his hell in sight either.

I don’t know — is there some brave Russian dissident we haven’t heard about, losing his hair and teeth on a radioactive prison camp way out east? Maybe an Uzbek Muslim detained in Islam Karimov’s reopened gulag? Possibly some bold Burmese fighter for justice, who has stood up to his vicious thug rulers?

Nope. I’ll give you a clue, although you’re probably way ahead of me here. Think ‘McCarthy’. Think: wicked America, evil, puritanical Americans. Bad, bad Americans!

Got it yet?

But you knew already, didn’t you? Well, well, well. BHL — what a complete and utter dickhead!

Now excuse me, I must go and saw my own head off.

Hat tip: John Nolte

]]> http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2009/11/28/a-guessing-game-featuring-french-philosopher-bernard-henri-levy-and/feed/ http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2009/11/20/birthplace-of-democracy-abandons-democracy-electorates-yawn/ http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/2009/11/20/birthplace-of-democracy-abandons-democracy-electorates-yawn/#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:51:03 +0000 Daniel Kalder http://whenfallsthecoliseum.com/?p=1686
This Thursday the European Union elected its first president — well, sort of. Naturally the peoples of the 27 state bloc were not permitted to vote. They didn’t even know who the candidates were. Leaders decided to spare their electorates the trouble by making the choice for them behind closed doors. After early reports that Tony [...]]]>

This Thursday the European Union elected its first president — well, sort of. Naturally the peoples of the 27 state bloc were not permitted to vote. They didn’t even know who the candidates were. Leaders decided to spare their electorates the trouble by making the choice for them behind closed doors. After early reports that Tony Blair might win, it turned out that France and Germany were opposed to giving him yet another platform to strut about on, and he quickly faded from view. With 27 sets of national interests to balance, the final candidates were always going to be selected from the most bland and inoffensive countries in the bloc. Shortly before Thursday reports began to circulate that some Belgian was the front runner, although he refused to confirm that he was even in the race. Then there was a guy from Luxemburg who some analysts thought might win, even though Luxemburg isn’t a real country. And there was also a Dutchman involved.

Apparently the Belgian won. What he will do, who he is, few people know, or care.

Of course there was a good reason why the people of Europe were not permitted to vote for their very first president - they might have made the wrong decision. After all, France and Holland had already rejected the proposed European Constitution that created the post of president in referenda held years ago, which is why the ‘Constitution’ was renamed the ‘Lisbon Treaty’  – so that it could be voted into law by national parliaments without having to bother with plebiscites. Knowing Britons would reject the treaty in a popular vote Gordon Brown reneged on his promise to give a referendum and signed it into law. Only the Irish held a vote on the rebranded constitution and they rejected it; thus they were forced to vote again so that they could make the ‘right’ decision.

What would you say if a president lost a vote on amending the constitution to his benefit and then held another one and another one until he got the result he wanted — an end to term limits say, or the right to bring in Canadian judges to overrule decisions made in the Supreme Court? In self-righteous, civilized Europe, where democracy was invented, this ‘creative’ approach to determining the people’s will is par for the course. And nobody does anything. In the UK — where I come from — people grumble, and ridicule the system — but then they go back to sleep. The next day they wake up and another ‘directive’ has been issued by a shadowy, unelected committee, another power given away. Apparently in some countries people are allegedly quite excited by this new experiment in anti-democratic, ultra-bureaucratic corporatist government.

Can you imagine this happening in America? I can’t. The electorate would explode with rage, and rightly so. So in the spirit of Sean Cunningham’s post earlier this week, let me give you another reason to feel better about your government: you can kick it out. For the citizens of the EU that fundamental — and simple — right just got a whole lot more complicated.