Operation Gladio

"Deception is a state of mind and the mind of the State" - James Jesus Angleton, Head of CIA Counter Intelligence 1954-1974

Originally aired on BBC2 in 1992, 'Operation Gladio' reveals 'Gladio', the secret state-sponsored terror network operating in Europe.
Director Allan Frankovich:
This BBC series is about a far-right secret army, operated by the CIA and MI6 through NATO, which killed hundreds of innocent Europeans and attempted to blame the deaths on Baader Meinhof, Red Brigades and other left wing groups. Known as 'stay-behinds' these armies were given access to military equipment which was supposed to be used for sabotage after a Soviet invasion. Instead it was used in massacres across mainland Europe as part of a CIA Strategy of Tension. Gladio killing sprees in Belgium and Italy were carried out for the purpose of frightening the national political classes into adopting U.S. policies.

Italian Prime minister Giulio Andreotti (DC) publicly recognized it on October 24, 1990, though naturally spinning a very soft-focus version of its nature, and spoke of a "structure of information, response and safeguard", with arms caches and reserve officers.
Actions carried out by Gladio in particular included the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing, the 1972 Peteano attack by Vincenzo Vinciguerra and the 1980 Bologna train massacre.
State-sponsored terrorism, the simple purpose being to carry out terrorist attacks, blame them broadly on the forces you wish to attack, and also carry out the consequential strict internal measures/states of emergency necessary to protect the public from the dreadful people carrying out these attacks. The state attacks its citizens, therefore give the state more power to protect its citizens. Very simple and effective as shown in more recent examples of the same methods.

Needless to say, not made by the recent BBC Conspiracy Files team. More information on Gladio here.

Michelangelo

I can't say I'm the greatest fan of much of Michelangelo's work with paint- grand scale kitsch as it often is; see above. Even at best his figures clearly would prefer to be incarnate in the form of sculpture rather than the painted image, and it no surprise that sculpture was by far Michelangelo's preferred medium, given his passion for monumentally physical figures of not particularly subtle or vivid inner lives. "All so tediously, relentlessly, bloody epic," as someone famous and brilliant might have once said. The Charlton Heston of Western art perhaps? And to be honest, the figures in the famous Sistine Chapel below seem to me to be simply peeled off and stuck on to the scene. As a display of skill in figurative technique it may be outstanding, and the sheer scale of the accomplishment overpowering, but as a unified painting it's dreadful.



Compare to the previously posted Burial of the Count of Orgaz by El Greco, for a similarly densely populated painting, but the work of an artist working in his natural medium. Greco is recorded as saying of Michelangeo, "A good man, but he can't paint."


And below, Titian's Rape of Europa, whose presence I justify with the slightly dubious excuse of showing a painting as a whole unified work of art as opposed to an excuse to gather a group of majestically proportioned humans together under the one roof, or on the one ceiling as the case may be.


Portrait of Andrea Quaratesi shows Michelangelo working in a medium more suited to his genius and character, ie drawing as opposed to paint, where it is a relief to see the humbler pretensions of pencil and chalk allow his admittedly and thankfully humbler subject to breathe with real inner life.

Dostoevsky on Possession

"It was not you that ate the idea, but the idea that ate you."

From Demons, also known apparently less accurately as The Possessed.

While in the territory, a great line from The Brothers Karamazov uttered as a throwaway by Dmitri Karamazov, and a kind of prefiguring on the philosophy of the societal mechanisms of control in the technological era:

"Man is broad, too broad even. I would narrow him down."

A System

William Blake wrote "I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's." Though whether a system is self-created or created by another is irrelevant to the nature of a system and one's place within it.
The self as a cursor within a computer programme.

A Little Chinese Art- Early Spring by Guo Xi, and Luoshenfu by Gu Kaizhi

A Little Japanese Art

Pine Trees - above and below- by Hasegawa Tohaku: The Dragon of Smoke Escaping from Mt Fuji by Hokusai.

Rembrandt- Saul and David

Art doesn't get much more profound in terms of psychological/spiritual portrayals than Rembrandt's anguished Saul, full of conflicting emotions, about to strike at the David to whom God has transferred his favour, due to Saul's falling from the righteous path into the deadness of selfhood. I'm pretty sketchy of the biblical narrative, though the art needs no external reference, and stands on its own pure existential ground as a mining of the depths of existence. Could any other artist reach this level of incision into the human soul?- probably not.
Though with the usual proviso that you'd want to see the painting in much closer detail than here to start to experience it as is, though with the counter-proviso that a couple of clicks does enlarge the image a degree.

U2 News

Almost as exciting as the Rolling Stones documentary film news is the information that U2 have announced a new tour which will be their most spectacular to date, to be called "The Corporate Rock Multi-Media Tour". The band will close the world-tour with 77 sell-out shows in Madison Square Gardens, compered by a laughing Bill Clinton, whose heavy-weight political presence will add even more cutting-edge rock credibility to the band's already immense cutting-edge rock credibility. Bono and his ego will travel to the shows in separate vehicles "for security reasons," revealed a figure well-placed within the band's coterie.

Their new single, Politicians Are Great Guys Once You Get To Really Know Them, comes out on July 4th, when the band play an intimate gig, beamed across America, before an audience of close friends in the White House. Excitingly, music legend Christina Aguileira shares singing duties on the single, while consumers who purchase U2's newest product will also be treated to the revamping of an old favourite, "All-American Irishman", containing a spoken-word intro "rap" by British PM Gordon Brown.

Line a Shite

Martin Scorcese has released a documentary film on The Rolling Stones, Shine A Light comprised largely, possibly solely, of contemporary concert footage of the deceased rockers. When asked why make a film on a band who have long ceased to have anything artistically of interest to say, Scorcese responded, "It is their very irrelevance that makes them so relevant."
When asked what this meant, Mr Scorcese said, "Watch the film."
Mr Scorcese refused to confirm or deny claims that he tried to persuade the band to be fronted by acting legend, Leonardo di Caprio, in the role of Mick Jagger.
"Though what if I did," responded an irritated Scorcese. "He's a great actor."

Music legend Christine Aguilera brings a mix of gravitas and glamour to proceedings with her stunning collaboration with the deceased rockers. When asked why the group decided to perform with someone so musically uninteresting, Scorcese responded, "She's very famous."
A laughing Bill Clinton appears at the concert, and adds real cutting edge credibility to proceedings, not that the deceased rockers and Christina Aguileira need any injection of cutting edge credibility.
All the audience thoroughly enjoyed the shows, but for one unfortunately over-sensitive fan who had to be rushed to hospital, where she was diagnosed as having been "choking on the fetid vapours of mutual vanity."

Virtual Reality

A refugee camp for hunted souls fleeing reality. All are welcome.

The Iceberg

For every action is an equal and opposite reaction. As a psychological variant or distortion of this, the more infantile or unnaturally jocular someone is, the more opposite to this can be inferred their true nature, or the nature that appears to be his true nature to himself. Hence the necessity for the false front- not to be confused with a natural healthy sense of humour. Similarly, the inane and insane celebrity 'culture' being foisted on the people of the west by the state - in the broad sense of the working systems of control - implies a vastly different deeper inner essence to such a culture. God is not mocked and neither is human reality; our reality doesn't get erased so easily. Like an iceberg, from the very existence above water of the saccharine celebrity culture can be inferred a great dark mass below the surface, balancing and sustaining this external portrayal. The primal source of the Brave New World culture of inanity is America, and that the same place spreading succcessfully the virus of this vacuous infantilism to the wider world- which is to slur infants- simultaneously employs the death penalty, is torturing people without charge, engaged in aggressive wars, etc- I leave it to the reader to conclude the unhappy tedium of the sentence- is far from a contradiction to being the source of this mindless 'happy' culture, but instead the natural corollary of such a false degradation of being. The inevitable seven eighths of the state that the visible fragment does its best to conceal. The vile tabloid culture of Britain is perhaps more honest in that the nature of missing seven eighths is more truthfully reflected by the polluted nature of the visible, though this is far from a virtue; perhaps just adaptation to different cultural conditions. This more ugly Janus face more suited to the British nature than the American, where more in the way of innocence and love of the celebrity is required. Though this innocence inevitably comes to be made more cynical and defiled the longer the false culture is propelled; reality not being mocked. An image relating to this is Mark Gerlter's The Merry Go-Round below, painted during the more or less orchestrated slaughters of World War 1, and the painting's sinister essence often interpreted as a kind of analogy to that war. However, it seems a more natural parable on the entertainment industry, where to use the language of the moment, entertainment is manufactured by the entertainment industry to be consumed by the consumer. The greater the number of consumers who consume the manufactured entertainment, the more successful the entertainment in having provided the greatest entertainment to the greatest number.

El Greco

El Greco, for all the obviously genuine intenstity of his mystical vision, has been a very controversial figure in art, and even wallowed in obscurity for several hundred years, kept from view due to his presumed blasphemies perhaps both in the nature of his hallucinatory art and of his religious sensibilities. Notice, for example, the seductive manner in which the woman, presumably Magdalene, is holding the cross and looking towards Jesus and also the suggestively onanistic, orgasmic pose of the angel beside her.
(A couple of clicks to enlarge.)
And perhaps related to such unexpectedly sexual insertions within conventional Christian imagery, the painting below, The Knight with His Hand on His Breast, displaying a very obvious esoteric hand signal, meant presumably for those with eyes to see, not that it's exactly concealed.

And in the Disrobing of Christ below, Christ is displaying the same hand sign, as is the female in the left foreground.

And the same unnatural hand gesture recurs repeatedly through Greco's works, such as below in The Penitent Magdalene. Unnatural in the sense that is a consciously made sign, not a natural or comfortable spread of the hand.

Goya- The Dog

The Real World

The more sure someone is of living in the "real world" or "reality", the more certain his utter ignorance as to the nature of this reality within which he imagines himself to be living.

Great Words Greatly Used

I'm always on the look out for the successful implementation of language in the imparting of mental substance, and was pleased when opening the manual of my Roland JV1080 synth module, to be re-acquainted with the description of the demo song 1080 Rave by the composer, Ryeland Allison.

Ryeland arranges simultaneous manifold particle vibrations to proclaim "Resonance." Resonance is to some extent qualified to contented apportion within disassociative continuance, proceding space. When converged in a synchronous locus, he at once regenerates towards fluidic empathy.

He is honoured to introduce this to you.

Ryeland's proclamation of Resonance through the arrangement of simultaneous manifold particle vibrations is one of the great proclamations of our time, even if he is forced to qualify this proclamation to contented apportion within disassociative continuance, in itself proceding space. That Ryeland, when converged in a synchronous locus, at once regenerates towards fluidic empathy, is a relief to us all.
I pity the impoverished soul who is not acquainted with the great music of 1080 Rave to which this extraordinary passage refers, though even without the music to which the words refer, the words stand majestically as pure art in their own crystalline right.

Surprising

When conversing with a person of whom it would be fair to say was possessed of an unrefined intellect- or perhaps, was not possessed of a refined intellect- I ventured the following in the aspiration of helping along the intellectual proceedings at hand through aiding his realisation as to where matters stood regarding our mutual capacities for understanding somewhat abstract matters, and why he should place his trust in my deeper mental vision:

You won't mind my saying, you're obviously not very intelligent.

Ironically, in further incarnation of his unrefinement, he did specifically mind my saying that he was obviously not very intelligent. External life is an unpredictable minefield, be warned.

Seventh Day

And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
And Satan saw his opportunity, and created celebrities.

Goya- Great He-Goat/ Witches Sabbath

Bosch- Garden of Earthly Delights(Detail)

Paolo Uccello(1397 - 1475)

Battle of Romano, Niccolò da Tolentino leading the Florentines, and Episodes From a Hermit's Life. What a strange, and even a little nauseating and claustrophobic painting the final one is.

William Blake- The Ghost of a Flea

New New Labour

Sources have revealed that New Labour, in the interests of clarity, are set to change their name to Not Labour.

Louis le Brocquy- The Lads: Yeats, Joyce & Beckett

The only reason, by the way, Beckett is far larger, is simply that I can't get it to post in the same size as Yeats and Joyce...no implications of grandness of literary scale.

We Are Not Amused

Humour is not funny, claims a scientific expert. He says rigorous tests have proven that while humour may indeed exist, the existence of that which is called funny has not been proven. People do laugh and seem to derive amusement from what they imagine to be funny, he said, but this is merely a breakdown in the logical functions of the mind, which having exhausted its intellectual resources in searching for a rational response to the senseless irrationality of that which purports to be funny, results in the undignifed last resort of laughter, both auditory and silent inner amusement.

If reason is to triumph and the future to be as bright as it promises to be, this superstitious exercise in illogical ignominy must be overcome, he said. One day, he added, mankind will look back upon this period and experience whatever physiological process will have replaced laughter when reflecting on the childishness of the development of our reasoning powers.

Michael Parenti

Lots of links to political analyst, Michael Parenti, at the ever valuable Antagonist blog, worth dipping a toe or two into.

Edit: corrected link

Enhancement

Many of us( I'm using us in the hypothetical sense of an imagined readership as opposed to a statement of personal schizophrenia) will be familiar with the line from La Boheme, "Your tiny hand is frozen" by Puccini. I feel this line would be improved by an intensification of emphasis by the subtle alteration to: "Your tiny hand is fucking frozen."

Verocchio to Leonardo

The more clearly something approaches perfection, the more obvious its imperfections. The relative mediocrity of a work of art becomes exposed or imbalanced if an element of itself is of a distinctly higher excellence. The painting above, Verocchio's Baptism of Christ is to a large extent of interest due to the work of another hand on the painting, that other being the young Leonardo da Vinci, a student of Verocchio's. He is credited with the angel on the farthest left, and also the landscape above the angels' heads which is distinctly Leonardoesque, and would be echoed in later works such as the Mona Lisa. You can zoom in closer on the image, but unfortunately the resolution isn't high enough to do any real justice to the greatness of the art.

Verocchio is of course very famous in his own right and very far from mediocre, but look at the difference in the relatively heavy-handed rendering of John the Baptist's clothing compared to the drapery of Leonardo's far left angel. In a sense, the subject of the painting by which Leonardo's presence is announced on the artistic stage is extremely apt; it being the passing over from a strong and healthy, but ultimately more crude mode of being of the Baptist where man is bound by Law and obedience, to one of far deeper sublimity of consciousness of Jesus, and this movement into divinity echoed in the passing from the comparative crudeness of Verocchio's work to the perfection of Leonardo's.

Paul Klee- Cat and Bird

Andrei Rublev- Trinity

Jan van Eyck- Man in a Turban

Willie Nelson- 911 an Inside Job

One of America's living icons, Willie Nelson said in interview with Alex Jones: "I saw those towers fall and I've seen an implosion in Las Vegas - there's too much similarities between the two, and I saw a building fall that didn't get hit by nothing," added Nelson, referring to WTC Building 7 which collapsed in the late afternoon of September 11.
"How naive are we - what do they think we'll go for?"(Don't underestimate this naivety, Willie)
"They're trying to tell me that an airplane did it and I can't go along with that," said Nelson.
Nelson said that recent revelations concerning the impartiality of the 9/11 Commission and its close links with the White House did not surprise him.(One is tempted to say, No shit Sherlock)
"What does it take for us to realize we're having the wool pulled over our eyes one more time?" he concluded.
In December, former Italian President Francesco Cossiga told Italy's most respected newspaper, Corriere della Sera, that the attacks were run by the CIA and Mossad and that this was common knowledge amongst global intelligence agencies.
Former German Secretary of Defense Andreas von Bülow also went public in blaming American intelligence for instigating the attack. And recently, the main opposition party in Japan raised the question as to the perpetrators of the attacks in parliament. Here.

Hieronymous Bosch- Christ Carrying the Cross

Descent into Hell

Goya- Asmodea

El Greco- Can I Conquer Technology

A brave attempt to post an image subsequent to noticing something on the blog create post page. Edit: Success. Gazing at El Greco's Burial of the Count of Orgaz, one inevitably wonders as to whether there has been a more naturally, or supernaturally, gifted artist than Greco- Domenikos Theotokopoulosto give him his real name- with the possible exception of Leonardo, who unfortunately pissed away his genius on other less worthwhile pursuits.

Cruel But Fair?

Bono: the thinking man's idiot.

Conspiracy Theory

Conspiracy Theory- a form of hypothesis involving humans consciously conspiring to cause events such as wars, assassinations, terrorist attacks, as opposed to explaining said events by means of the Accident Theory, its close relation- the It Just Happened Theory, or the Natural Elements Theory/ Random Fluctuation of Matter Theory. Somewhat strangely, conspiracy theories seem to have a bad reputation as being naive and shameful to the intellect when used to explain events arising from human conspiring.
For example, the conspiracy theorist would explain the Iraq War as having occured directly as a result of certain individuals acting in unison to cause this war. The alternative non-conspiracy theory is a strange beast involving the war happening by some form of accident, or the it just happened hypothesis.
Similarly the events of 911 are explained by the various conspiracy theories as directly involving humans conspiring, this being the nature of acts of terrorism and war. Again, the apparently wise anti-conspiracy theory presumably involves the events of that day as being a coincidental series of accidents. Though if pushed most will accept that, yes, most likely the events of 911 did involve people conspiring to cause those events.

The common car accident is more natural territory to the anti-conspiracy theory, where humans are directly responsible, though not intentionally. A fight between two men on the spur of the moment after imbibing large quantities of alcohol occupies something of a theoretical middle-ground between the conspiracy and accident theories. The fight is not an accident, but is not the product of careful pre-planning and organisation. Though humans are directly responsible and it is no accident, it falls broadly within the It Just Happened bracket, though we shouldn't be too rigid with what is meant by "it just happened".

Contrarily a professional boxing fight would be explained by the conspiracy theorist as being no accident and not having just happened, but having been organised by persons known or unknown specifically with the intent of the fight occuring. This is an instance of the pure conspiracy theory in action.
Finally, the Natural Causes theory relates fairly self-evidently to events arising from natural causes, though even this field has been rendered more mysteriously complex with the development and refinement of technology such as HAARP (High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program) by the US military.

Ideally of course, the specifics of the Conspiracy, It Just Happened, Accident or Natural Causes Theory should consistently fit the events they are used to explain, as opposed to simply being convenient for some ulterior purpose such as the theorist's personal agenda or worldview, but inconsistent with the evidence at hand. A clear example of this being the hopelessly inadequate 911 Commission Report- official conspiracy theory- peddled by the authorities, to explain those events. As shown by David Ray Griffin in the following presentation, 911 Commission Report- Ommissions and Distortions.
As Griffin says "people might wonder is there anything in the 911 Commission Report that is untrue. Now that I've finished the book, my big question is can I find a true sentence in the book. This might sound extreme, but if you don't take this too seriously, and realise that a sentence is part of a paragraph which is part of an argument then it is very hard to find any truth there."

The believers of the conspiracy theory that is peddled by the authorities and their lackey media are examples of the much derided loony conspiracy theorists who ride roughshod over all evidence and use of reason, and in fact have no intention of looking at and thinking about the evidence. Their worldview is sacrosanct, and cannot by holy law be imperilled. In contrast, Aldous Huxley wrote that "Intellectuals are people who demand evidence and are appalled by logical inconsistencies." One will commiserate with Diogenes and his lamplit search for an honest man if one starts to search for too many examples of such honest intellectuals in the world of the mainstream press and politics.

American War of Independence

The conflict by which the US achieved independence from Britain. An achievement of which the natives are fiercely proud, and ever since the respective states have been fiercely independent of each other.

I've a niggling feeling that there's a problem somewhere within that statement, possibly hinging on the meaning of 'independence', but that whereof one should not speak, thereof one should be silent. So to reiterate, the American War of Independence was the conflict by which the US achieved independence from Britain. America and Britain. Independent of each other.

All the Words

All the words were gathered together and set alight. Soon only the ashes remained.