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[ by Charles Cameron — a dayalong cabinet of curiosities, really — the essence of creativity, paradox, and America, via conspiracies this way and that, contrasts between clearances, and key Rwanda para from the NYorker ]
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Here’s a Diary — a miscellaneous catch-all for today :

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Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminatus saga stumbles along:

Wilson and Shea derived much of the odder material from letters sent to Playboy magazine while they worked as the editors of its Forum.[19] The books mixed true information with imaginative fiction to engage the reader in what Wilson called “guerrilla ontology”, which he apparently referred to as “Operation Mindfuck” in Illuminatus!

Wilson and Shea mashed up the ten thousand conspiracies and facts of their times to create one fact-spattered fiction, the Illuminatus! trilogy — one from many, e pluribus unum ahem! — whereas in our own day the inventors of QAnon invoked a massive outpouring of different conspiracies within conspiracies:

In November 2017, a small-time YouTube video creator and two moderators of the 4chan website, one of the most extreme message boards on the internet, banded together and plucked out of obscurity an anonymous and cryptic post from the many conspiracy theories that populated the website’s message board.

Over the next several months, they would create videos, a Reddit community, a business and an entire mythology based off the 4chan posts of “Q,” the pseudonym of a person claiming to be a high-ranking military officer. The theory they espoused would become Qanon, and it would eventually make its way from those message boards to national media stories and the rallies of President Donald Trump.

From many, one, and from one, many — Pythagorean sacred mathematics, America, expansive and synthetic thinkjing, the origins of paradox, essence of creativity — between one and many, it’s all there..

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Quick thought:’

We’ve seen Jared Kushner having his clearance restored, and John Brennan having his clearance withdrawn, but just fr the record, they bear considering in tandem, DoubleQuote style.. Right here I’m making the connection.

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Rwanda:

Key NYorker para on Rwandan warning to Kofi Annan, upon whom be the peace, requiescat in pace, a reminder:

Annan then wrote, “We do not recall any specific reports from Kigali to this effect.” A review of the peacekeeping files, he wrote, had turned up only four cables from Kigali in the months preceding the genocide that mentioned “ethnic tensions as being possibly related—or not related—to specific incidents of violence.”

But, in reality, one of the four cables Annan listed consisted of an alarmingly specific report of preparations for the genocide, sent by his force commander in Kigali, the Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, in January of 1994. Dallaire had heard from a trusted informant on the payroll of Rwanda’s ruling party, who described plans to “provoke a civil war,” and to kill Belgian peacekeepers in order to scuttle the U.N. mission. The informant himself said he was involved in drawing up lists of Tutsis in Kigali, and Dallaire wrote, “He suspects it is for their extermination. Example he gave was that in twenty minutes his personnel could kill up to a thousand Tutsis.” Dallaire asked for permission to act on this information by raiding and seizing illegal arms caches. Annan’s office replied at once, in a cable under his name, and signed by his deputy, telling Dallaire not to act but, rather, to follow diplomatic protocol and share his information with Rwanda’s President—the head of the party that Dallaire wanted to act against. Three months later, in April of 1994, everything that Dallaire described in his warning took place, and in the course of a hundred days around a million Tutsis were massacred.

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Ordinary:

Lovely prose, extraordinary normalcy in the New Yorker, Hearing Aretha Franklin’s “I Say a Little Prayer” in the Soviet Union

I was gazing ahead, out the half-shaded window, sitting in the diffuse circle of warm light from a tall floor lamp to the left of me, with my elbows propped on the table and my head resting in the palms of my hands, in front of a half-empty bottle of an acrid, half-dry Bulgarian red called The Evening Bells and a white faience teacup with a chipped rim. In the boreal darkness outside, there was nothing for me to perceive but an irregular checkered pattern of blue- and yellow-lit windows in the apartment building across the way.

Beyond those windows, perfectly and naturally unaware of my existence, ordinary Soviet citizens like me silently lived their ordinary human lives: hugging or ignoring one another, standing still in their kitchens in tank tops and nightgowns and saying something silently to someone unseen, flinging angry words at one another, gesticulating broadly and opening and closing their mouths, drinking tea, eating something greasy from an aluminum pan on the stove, or just staring into the night’s emptiness with unseeing eyes, their foreheads pressed against the windowpane, a slow-burning cigarette squeezed between their pressed lips.

It is into such lives, among so many, that Aretha’s voice penetrates. Whenever we consider any of this world’s painful pasts, dire future threats, and potent presents, we should quickly run them up against all those audiences, normal and overwhelmingly influential, who may be affected.

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I’m reminded..

Okay, I saw that New Yorker piece today on the penetration of Aretha‘s voice into a bloc of Soviet flats in Leningrad, Hearing Aretha Franklin’s “I Say a Little Prayer” in the Soviet Union, and reading it, I’m reminded of the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo and its interest in nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

You’ll remember they attained world notoriety after attacking the Tokyo subway system with sarin gas.. Specifically:

Aum dabbled in many different biological agents. They cultured and experimented with botulin toxin, anthrax, cholera, and Q fever. In 1993, Ashahara led a group of 16 cult doctors and nurses to Zaire, on a supposed medical mission. The actual purpose of the trip to Central Africa was to learn as much as possible about and, ideally, to bring back samples of Ebola virus. In early 1994, cult doctors were quoted on Russian radio as discussing the possibility of using Ebola as a biological weapon.

So, here’s my take:

Some journo sending an early report on the Ebola outbreak was read by someone involved in the Aum Shinrikyo chemical weapons team, who thereupon suggested a trip to Africa to Aum’s guru, Shoko Asahara. I’m sure the journo concerned wasn’t thinking that some member of a a relatively obscure Japanese cult would read their report! — but news ripples out to obscure corners of the world, Aretha‘s voice reaches Leningrad, news of an outbreak in Africa reaches Tokyo, more generally the world is porous, and these things have consequences…

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The world is porous, and there are causes and consequences…

[ by Charles Cameron — one of those happy chance coincidences, no conspiracy intended ]
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Welcome to the Storm:

Welcome to QAnon, sometimes referred to as “the Storm.” It’s a conspiracy theory that’s swept social media and is starting to break into the mainstream, with Trump rally attendees in Florida on July 31 holding signs and wearing T-shirts emblazoned with “We are Q” and the conspiracy theory’s main catchphrase, “Where we go one, we go all.”

What we say to QAnon and the Storm:

Detroit Mass Choir – The Storm Is Passing Over

Thank you, good-bye.

[ by Charles Cameron — an interdisciplinary meditation on what falls like rain — savor these two at a time, and take your time ]
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Gary BB Coleman:

Guillaume Apolinnaire:

Prose version, Roger Shattuck:

It’s raining women’s voices as if they had died even in memory
And it’s raining you as well marvellous encounters of my life O little drops
Those rearing clouds begin to neigh a whole universe of auricular cities
Listen if it rains while regret and disdain weep to an ancient music
Listen to the bonds fall off which hold you above and below

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Clearly drums fall like rain. Hammer blows?

C.B. Cook and gang:

Tangle Eye:

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Portia, in Merchant of Venice:

The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:

Eddie Turner:

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Like I said, listen to these, two by two —

The second one here, at four hours, will likely outlast you — but do listen to a minute or three..

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And a grace-note, gifted us from Friday’s New Yorker:

As my fingers began to manipulate over keys, words began to fall in place on the melody like drops of water falling from the crevice of a rock,” Dorsey later said. He gave the first performance of “Precious Lord” at his church shortly after his wife and baby’s death, and the act of uninhibited spiritual praise was forever changed.

Here:

[ by Charles Cameron — a cascade from dangerous words to deathly deeds ]
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There’s this tweet from Donald Trump, and it’s one among several like it:

The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2017

Certain media outlets are listed as enemies, which is pretty close to calling them targets..

Remember Nixon‘s enemies list?

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Okay, then there’s this tweet, from Alex Jones of InfoWars:

On Periscope, which is owned by Twitter, Alex Jones tells supporters to get their “battle rifles” ready against antifa, the mainstream media, and “Chicom operatives” https://t.co/OBHSFc3ofC pic.twitter.com/ntQbh9IKxz

— Media Matters (@mmfa) August 14, 2018

Let’s give that a little more context — Alex Jones ups the ante:

We’re under attack and you know that, and you pointed out mainstream media is the enemy.

But now it’s time to act on the enemy before they do a false flag. I know the Justice Department’s crippled, a bunch of followers and cowards. But there’s groups, there’s grand juries, there’s — you called for it and it’s time politically and economically and judiciously and legally and criminally to move against these people. It’s got to be done now. Get together the people you know aren’t traitors, and aren’t cowards, and aren’t hedging their frickin’ bets like all these other assholes do, and let’s go, let’s do it. Because they’re coming. Now, in your wisdom you may be playing possum and waiting for them to come in. But America needs to know that they’ve got their little pathetic commie red teams ready. And they’ve got their targets picked out: the sheriffs, the judges, the police chiefs, the patriots, the veterans, the talk show hosts, everybody. And everyone’s going to be amazed when they come and when those cowards come and it’s going to hit in the middle of the night, and they’re coming. And they’re coming. And they’re coming.

They think they can really take down America. And this is it. So, people need to have their battle rifles and everything ready at their bedsides and you got to be ready because the media is so disciplined in their deception. Antifa attacked all these people at the White House, beat up reporters, beat up women, children, no coverage. And they’ve got discipline folks, they’ve got criminal discipline because they’re a bunch of followers.

I’m suggesting with this DoubleTwweet that Alex Jones is the compulsive “id” of Trump’s repeated attacks on the “faux” media as “the enemy of the people” — essentially putting a target on the backs of those media listed, and their hournalists..

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In the historical background, almost buried in the hiss of defective memory, we hear the voice of Nikita Khrushchev. As the New Yorker points out:

Nikita Khrushchev, in his memoirs, observed that Joseph Stalin, his despotic and bloody-minded predecessor, referred to “everyone who didn’t agree with him as an ‘enemy of the people.’”

And here’s our chance to find out what that phrase, enemy of the people, may lead to:

“As a result, several hundred thousand honest people perished,” Khrushchev said, underestimating the number of dead from Stalin’s mass repressions by many millions. “Everyone lived in fear in those days. Everyone expected that at any moment there would be a knock on the door in the middle of the night and that knock on the door would prove fatal.”

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Now that’s a dangerous cascade, don’t you think, from Trump’s identification of certain “enemies of the people” via Alex Jones’ call for regular folks to have their “battle rifles” ready — via Khrushchev’s finding an earlier Russian echo of Trump’s phrase in Stalin’s, to Stalin’s tens of millions dead..

Take a deep enough breath..

Synonyms for shiver, the noun:

tremble, quiver, shake, shudder, quaver, quake, tremor, twitch

There’s quite a bit of poetry in that list. And..

Shiver, the verb:

shake slightly and uncontrollably as a result of being cold, frightened, or excited.

I’d say that cascade frightens me, with maybe some excitement peering out from behind the fright, just because in it there’s a premonition of conflict.. oh, and fright rhymes with excite..

Let me let you in on a secret: the poetry may be a distraction from the fright, but if so it’s a welcome distraction.

[ by Charles Cameron — an evening respite from Trump and co, to remember and celebrate a great voice ]
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If you have or can make the time to listen to one Aretha Franklin song this deay in which she died, let it be this — O Mary, Mary Don’t You Weep — you can follow along with the lyrics here:

The song tells the Gospel story of Mary, Martha, and their deceased brother Lazarus, whom Jesus calls by name back from the dead, first telling Mary “Don’t you weep” as though resurrection were the most natural thing in the world — Lazarus, returned from the dead, walked “like a natural man”. From the Torah, we find the sub-story — Pharaoh‘s army drowning in the Red Sea after it tried to pursue the fleeing Israelites. Aretha wants to stand on the rock where Moses stood, and witness the drowning.

Now the thing is, when the Israelites saw Pharaoh’s army drowning, they sing — as Aretha also sings.

Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.

The Israaelite’s song can be summed up by this line:

The Lord is a man of war: the Lord is his name.

Blam! Splat!

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The angels, who have been watching the whole scene from a higher perspective than the Israelites, are also about to sing — they are renowned for their choirs, and in the contest between Israel and Egypt, they’re distinctly pro-Israel — when the LORD intervenes:

How dare you sing for joy when My creatures are dying?

May I suggest that the angels are (not unlike music) like rivers passing through us, watering the souls of men, they are within us, and to the extent that we can partake of their refreshment we will be the better for it. Hopefully this metaphorical interpretation will avoid such vexed issues as mortal-like shoulder-blades supporting immortal shimmering wings and so forth —

— now the stuff of such commonplaces as greetings cards, to be reclaimed perhaps for their beauty, but not as definitions of “how angels look” — more as referring us to a higher octave of reality to which we may aspire, gracing us as grace responds..

Angels, not unlike music — hence the frequent references to angelic choirs.

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The weeping Madonna of Akita, Japan

As Wiki tells us:

A weeping statue is a statue which has been claimed to have shed tears or to be weeping by supernatural means. Statues weeping tears which appear to be blood, oil, and scented liquids have all been reported. … These events are generally reported by some Christians, and initially attract some pilgrims, but are in most cases disallowed by the Church as proven hoaxes.

O Mary, don’t you weep?

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O Mary, don’t you weep!

May Aretha flood our banks with her song.