Something Is Happeing Part II --Updated 4/21

It seems like twilight language and synchronicities abound everywhere nowadays. President Barack Obama and a senator named Wicker (who resides in Tupelo, Mississippi, most famous for being the birthplace of Elvis Presley) both receive letters allegedly containing the poison ricin from an individual known to perform as an Elvis impersonator from time to time. The letters were sent from Memphis, Tennessee, the city associated with the death of two kings in the American consciousness: Elvis and Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated on April 4.

alleged ricin mailer and Elvis impersonator Paul Kevin Curtis (top), Senator Roger Wicker (middle) and the notorious Wicker man (bottom) which the senator's name invokes

Elsewhere a fertilizer plant explodes in West, Texas, a small town located roughly 20 miles north of Waco, Texas on April 17th. This is precisely two day shy of the twentieth anniversary of the final day of the Waco siege, which occurred on April 19. Stranger still, the fertilizer storage facility contained ammonium nitrate, the same substance used in the Oklahoma City bombing (which also occurred on April 19).

the West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion (top), the final day of the Waco siege (middle) and the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing (bottom)

And then of course there's the whole thing playing out around the Boston area.

an image from the bombing

As I'm sure many of you are aware by now the two chief Boston Marathon bombing suspects are Chechen brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the former of whom having already been killed during a dramatic shootout around Cambridge with authorities on the night of April 18 (or possibly in the early hours of April 19) while the latter was arrested barely alive as I was writing this blog.

the Tsarnaev brothers, Tamerlane (left) and Dzhokhar (right)

The Boston Marathon bombing itself was riddled with twilight language, especially in terms of the dates and location (Boston was one of the first and most significant Masonic cities in the United States) which I already discussed in depth here and will not regurgitate presently. The brothers themselves also presented several interesting instances of twilight language. Dzhokhar apparently became a naturalized US citizen on September 11, 2012, which is both the 11 year anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks as well as the day of the Benghazi attack in which US Ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed.

9/11 (top) and Stevens body in Benghazi (bottom)

The last name of the brothers, Tsarnaev, features the words Tsar, the title of the Russian Emperor. The word Tsar was in turn adapted from the Latin title Caesar, the name of the Roman dictator (who was assassinated on March 15) as well as a title later adopted by Rome's emperors. The older brother's first name, Tamerlan, is likely taken for the historic name for Timur, a Turkish ruler who founded the Timurid dynasty. Thus the brothers, but especially Tamerlan (who appears to be the only one to have died) have an association with royalty, emperorship and even kingship. And when such memes appear in a series of events such as these I can't help but be reminded of James Shelby Downard and Michael A. Hoffman's legendary but highly controversial 'Killing of the Divine King' concepts, famously expressed in the essay "King Kill 33."

Naturally both are Muslims, a revelation the media has been telegraphing since practically the beginning of this whole affair. That they are Chechen is especially interesting. Of course Chechnya has been the site of an ongoing civil war between the Chechens and the Russian Federation practically ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This conflict has witnessed several high profile terror attacks, which included the 2002 Moscow theater incident in which militants took some 800 people hostage for two days. The incident ended with Russian special forces raiding the theater, resulting in the deaths of 41 hostage takers and 129 hostages (many of whom were allegedly killed by the gas used by Russian forces). Even more notable was a 2004 incident in which Chechen insurgents took hundreds of hostages in the Russian town of Beslan. This siege also ended two days later, this time with some 330 people (about half of whom were children) being killed.

an image from the Beslan school incident

While many are perplexed by Russia's obsession with such a seemingly insignificant country Chechnya has in fact become a highly strategically important region for Russia in the modern era.

"In a similar vein, for centuries the definition of Russian national greatness was equated with the acquisition of territory, and even at the end of the twentieth century, the Russian insistence on retaining control over such non-Russian people as the Chechens, who live around a vital oil pipeline, has been justified by the claim that such control is essential to Russia's status as a great power."

(The Grand Chessboard, Zbigniew Brzezinski, pg. 37)

As such it would also seemingly have strategic value to the United States as well and indeed the Russians have alleged from time to time that the US intelligence community has been involved with militant groups in Chechnya. In 2009 Ramzan Kadyrov, the Russian-backed head of the Republic of Chechnya, denounced a CIA presence among the militants within his nation. Reuters noted:

"Former rebel-turned-Moscow-ally Ramzan Kadyrov said in comments to Zavtra newspaper reprinted on his official website that he had seen the U.S. driving license of a CIA operative who was killed in a security operation he led.

"Chechen authorities have previously said insurgents following the radical Wahabist form of Islam receive support from international Islamist groups sympathetic to al-Qaeda, but have not accused the West of instigating violence.

"'We're fighting in the mountains with the American and English intelligence agencies. They are fighting not against Kadyrov, not against traditional Islam, they are fighting against the sovereign Russian state,' he said. 

"The West sought to attack both Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the country as a whole by targeting the country's weakest regions, Kadyrov said in the comments republished prominently on www.chechnya.gov.ru.

"Kadyrov was appointed by Moscow as a bulwark against separatist rebels in the mainly Muslim province, but rights activists say he flouts federal laws and is himself responsible for much of the violence that has grown in recent months. 

"'The West is interested to cut off the Caucasus from Russia. The Caucasus - a strategic frontier of Russia. If they take away the Caucasus from Russia, it's like taking away half of Russia.'

Ramzan Kadyrov

What the long-term implications of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects being Chechen is impossible to say at this point but such a revelation has the potential to seriously strain US-Russian relations more so than they already are. At worst it could be a rationalization for militarily intervening in the Caucasus, an action that would instigate the Cold War Part II (at best).

That both brothers apparently lived in Cambridge is also interesting as this whole area, due in no small part to the presence of Harvard and MIT, has witnessed more than a few nefarious activities by the US intelligence community over the years. In fact, at least one other well-known terrorist had connections to the area: Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber. Compelling evidence has emerged in recent years that Kaczynski participated in the notorious MK-ULTRA experiments, possibly having been recruited by Dr. Robert Hyde.

"As a result of the research by Alston Chase, we know today that Hyde recruited Harvard University students, possibly including notorious Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski, for a series of CIA-funded LSD experiments that spanned at least two years. Chase reveals that in the spring of 1945, Hyde paid a group of six Harvard seniors $15 an hour to participate in the experiment using a drug they had never heard of, 'lysergic acid.'"

(A Terrible Mistake, H.P. Albarelli, pg. 299)

Ted Kaczynski

Indeed, Boston was a kind of ground zero for LSD. The individual generally credited with first bringing LSD into the United States was a Boston Psychopathic Hospital-based neuropsychiatrist named Max Rinkel. In 1949 he administered the substance to Hyde, who would become a CIA consultant in several years, marking what was the first reported acid trip on domestic soil.

Shortly over a decade later Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert famously began their entheogen ventures while working at Harvard University. Also making the scene was Harvard professor and psychologist Dr. Henry Murray, who had served in the OSS during World War II conducting inquiries into potential "truth drug" serums. He studied the effects of the hallucinogenic scopolamine in this endeavor, among other things. Murray was also reportedly involved in the LSD experiments that featured Theodore Kaczynski.

But Harvard wasn't the only university in the Boston area getting in on the fun -- MIT also developed a very close (and highly lucrative) relationship with the US intelligence community.

"Academic scientists were largely untapped by government before the period leading up to World War II. Today, it is hard to believe that colleges and universities once feared and resisted the intrusion of the national government in their research priorities. This attitude changed drastically in the late 1930s as new academic leaders welcomed government support as a largely unexplored source of income but tried to minimize interference in scientific work, with mixed results. No institution exemplified this new cooperative spirit between government and the  academy more than the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which, under Karl Compton, devoted itself to the application of physical theory in solving a host of engineering challenges. Harvard President James B. Conant, a chemist by training, and MIT Provost Vannevar Bush, an early computer scientist who became president of Washington's Carnegie Institute, led the Roosevelt administration's crash program to realize the benefits of scientific research for the war.

"Bush led the White House's Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), which infused millions of dollars into scientific research during the war, mainly through the Committee on Medical Research (CMR). The CMR's projects included several that involved human experiments with conscientious objectors, prisoners, and persons with mental retardation. The OSRD was also a crucial player in the  Continuous wartime discussions about whether the nation's atomic energy resources would eventually be under civilian or military control or some combination."

(Mind Wars, Jonathan D. Moreno, pgs. 23-24)

Vannevar Bush

This snug relationship between the defense establishment and MIT continues to this very day.

"As a result of this consistent commitment to science through all presidential administration since World War II, the military-academic complex is now an integral element in the economics of our leading research universities. The Association of American Universities reported in 2002 that nearly 350 colleges and universities receive Pentagon research contracts, 60 percent of basic research funding. Leaders were the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which was scheduled to receive half a billion dollars from DoD contracts in 2003, and John Hopkins, which was to get $300 million."

 (ibid, pg. 20)

This makes the appearance of the Tsarnaev brothers at MIT where they murdered campus police officer Sean Collier on the night of April 18 all the more curious. Neither apparently had any ties to the university, with the media claiming that Dzhokhar attended the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and thus far authorities haven't given any indication as to their motives for appearing there.

Finally, there are those peculiar photos that have appeared online showing two people dressed almost identically, sporting earpieces, and carrying backpacks. Initially the conspiracy media alleged that these individuals were Navy SEALs but close-ups of one of the individual's ballcap reveals a logo similar to the one used by Craft International, a private military company. This outfit was in the news of late when its founder Chris Kyle, a former Navy SEAL with the most confirmed kills of any sniper in US military history, was murdered on a shooting range in Texas by a fellow veteran.

the Craft International logo (top) and the alleged Boston Marathon bombing private contractors (bottom) 

Of course it's recently been acknowledged by Blackwater founder Erik Prince that his former company developed a very close relationship with the CIA but close ties between PMCs and the US intelligence community go back years. Some researchers have alleged that this network of PMCs and the like has become a kind of "shadow" CIA known as "the Enterprise," among other names.

"... a shadow network called The Enterprise, a cluster of private intelligence organizations (PIOs) and private military firms (PMFs). These were staffed by former CIA and Pentagon officers who saw themselves as Paladins of the Cold War. Many PIOs and PMFs got their start in the 1970s during shakeups at the CIA. They must mushroomed in the 1980s after Jimmy Carter stirred up the anthill, and strongly motivated men had to continue their careers elsewhere...

"Many of these clever and aggressive men regrouped privately, with funding from hard-right organizations like the Birch Society, Moonies, World Anti-Communist League, and wealthy tycoons... The Enterprise grew into a powerful and influential network during the late 1980s. Although they were private citizens, these men continued to have close ties with serving military officers, to top men in the CIA and the armed services. This overlap made it nearly impossible to distinguish between official US government operations and those that had private objectives. This was especially true because so many of these individuals had long experience in covert operations, deception, and the clandestine use of government resources and secret funds. They were accustomed to working with CIA proprietaries that had every appearance of being legitimate companies in private industry but were actually Trojan Horses for the intelligence community and, by extension, for the armed forces. In fact, some of the PMFs were little more than fronts set up so that generals, admirals, and former spooks could continue to draw salaries and pensions as if they had never left government service. Many CIA agent spent years or even decades under various covers, so it was hard to establish beyond any doubt whether they ever left the Agency, or merely went underground."

(Gold Warriors, Sterling & Peggy Seagrave, pgs. 186-187)

another image of the alleged Craft International employees at the Boston Marathon

This makes the possible presence of such an organization at the Boston Marathon bombing compelling but not necessarily damning. The 2012 London Olympics, for instance, initially tried to use private security firms for the bulk of the security for the event. That the Boston Marathon may have brought in some private contractors to beef up the security would hardly be unusual. Thus, the earpieces the guys in the photo appear to have do not necessarily have a nefarious purpose, but the backpacks are a bit harder to explain.

an image from the London Olympics

Still, I find the possibility that Craft International or some like organization actually carried out the attack to be unlikely because of the low death toll --If nothing else, these organizations are very good at killing people and have a lot of experience at it. On the flip side of the coin they would make excellent handlers for the Tsarnaev brothers due to the whole plausible deniability thing (which is why a lot of the more nefarious aspects of intelligence work were outsourced in the first place).

And it is here that I shall wrap things up with a few closing thoughts. Despite the low loss of life the present psychodrama has cast a wave of paranoia and fear upon the American consciousness. The specters of Elvis, the MLK assassination, Waco, the Oklahoma City bombing, 9/11, Benghazi, MK-ULTRA, the Unabomber and Blackwater linger over present events like some type of shadow Americana. These are the hungry ghosts of the American soul, empowered in no small part because many of the above mentioned events were never thoroughly investigated and resolved. And more of the same already seems underway in regards to the Boston Marathon bombing and surrounding events.

I can only marvel at the power the prior mentioned events have had on our collective conscious as a nation and shudder at the thought of where we are going from here. In recent days we have been presented with images of an America that more closely resembles Iraq or Afghanistan then the nation many of us remember from our childhood --Human limbs blown off from makeshift bombs, a city in total lockdown, paramilitary forces patrolling the streets in heavily armored vehicles, gunfights in the streets.

Where do we go from here?

 

 

UPDATED 4/20:

 

 

The synchs just keep coming: Late on April 19 Abdella Ahmad Tounisi of Aurora, Illinois was arrested by the FBI as he prepared to board a plane at Chicago O'Hare international Airport bound for Turkey. Apparently Mr. Tounisi planned to join up with an Al Qaeda-linked cell in Syria. Mr. TounisiIs also allegedly a friend of Adel Daoud, an individual who was accused last year of trying to stage a bombing outside of a Chicago bar. Naturally the individual who recruited Mr. Tounisi into this terror cell was an undercover FBI employee. The city from which Mr. Tounisi hails of course synchs with Aurora, Colorado, the site of the 2012 Aurora theater shooting.

 

alleged Aurora theater shooter James Eagan Holmes

 

Then on April 20 shots rang out at a Denver 4/20 rally that organizers had expected to draw some 80,000 cannabis proponents. Ultimately three people were wounded, one man and one woman both being shot in the leg while a third individual was grazed by a bullet.

 

one of the individuals shot at the 4/20 rally in Denver

 

April 20 is the date on which the Columbine school shooting occurred in 1999 at Columbine, Colorado, a suburb near the Denver-Aurora area. As noted above, the Boston Marathon bombing saga featured the mysterious shooting of an MIT police officer near the campus, invoking any number of horrific American school shootings in recent years.

 

4/20 has become something of a holiday in cannabis culture over the past few decades. The Denver rally was the first large-scale holiday celebration since cannabis was legalized in the state of Colorado during the 2012 election cycle. The origins of the 4/20 celebration are murky at best and potentially rather sinister. 4/20 was of course a major holiday in Nazi Germany as it was the birthday of Adolf Hitler. I've written much more on this topic before here.

 

None the less, in honor of this celebration I give you Freedom Hawk's "Bandito." Enjoy.

 

 

 UPDATE II 4/21:

 

 

The plot continues to thicken. The FBI has acknowledged that they had contact with Tamerlane Tsarnaev prior to the Boston Marathon bombing via a 2011 interview that they allegedly conducted of behalf of a foreign government concerned that he was a "follower of radical Islam." Tamerlane's mother has alleged that the FBI's contact with her son went we beyond a mere interview. The UK Guardian reports:

"One of the two men suspected of being behind the Boston Marathon bombings was under FBI surveillance as a suspected 'extremist' for at least three years, according to his parents.

"As questions were raised about how well known Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were to federal investigators, their mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, said that the FBI had spoken to the family regularly: 'They were telling me that Tamerlan was really an extremist leader and they were afraid of him. They told me whatever information he is getting, he gets from these extremists' sites.' She added that the police were monitoring her son 'at every step'...

"The revelation that the FBI was monitoring the elder Tsarnaev brother will lead to a debate over whether the attack could have been prevented. The men's father – who claims that his sons have been framed – supplied more details about the FBI's interest in Tamerlan in a telephone interview with the Wall Street Journal. Anzor Tsarnaev said that agents had talked to Tamerlan in 2011. They described him as a "person of interest".

"'Yes, I was there. It was in Cambridge [Massachusetts]. They said: "We know what sites you are on, we know where you are calling, we know everything about you. Everything".' He added: 'They said we are checking and watching – that's what they said.' In a message to his son, he said: 'Tell police everything. Everything. Just be honest.' 

"The parents' claims appear to contradict a statement by the FBI saying that, after checks on Tamerlan and his family, along with a review of travel records, internet activity and personal associations, it 'did not find any terrorism activity'. Officials have added that the brothers had not been under surveillance. 

"Since his death, it has been revealed that a YouTube account believed to be managed by Tamerlan linked to online material concerning radical preachers, terrorism and a religious prophecy supposedly popular with al-Qaida followers. The motives behind the brothers' attack remain mysterious. Although Tamerlan had been described as becoming more religious in recent years, acquaintances of the brothers described a pair whose behaviour was often at odds with strict Islam, including Dzhokhar's fondness for hip-hop and skateboarding and consumption of soft drugs."

The Guardian article also reveals that Dzhokhar apparently ran over Tamerlane with a car after his older brother had been wounded in a shootout with police that erupted after the bizarre killing of a cop on the MIT campus. I can't help but feel the MIT incident is crucial to understanding this whole saga.

It also warrants noting that almost half of the terrorism-related cases the FBI has prosecuted in the wake of 9/11 involved the use of informants, many of whom were working for the FBI for money or to avoid criminal charges. Of 158 prosecutions carried out 49 defendants participated in plots arranged by said FBI informants. Did the FBI assist the brothers Tsarnaev in plotting the Boston Marathon attack?

For some strange reason I don't think Congress will be investigating such possibilities to thoroughly, especially after the FBI's interrogation "specialists" start working out a motive with Dzhokhar (who is naturally being denied his Miranda rights for his initial interrogation with the Feds).

There's More Than One of Everything

Recent headlines keep bringing me back to a phrase the would become essential to the plot line of the synchromystic TV series Fringe: There's more than one of everything. This was of course the name of the finale of the first season and would prove to be quite a literal declaration. As the series unfolds the viewer learns that there at least two alternate realities happening simultaneously in different universes and that there are doubles of virtually all of the characters that appear on the show.

Olivia of Fringe and her double (right)

Increasingly, when it comes to high weirdness at least, it also seems though there's more than one of everything. Probably the most notable incident of this of late are the two salon shootings that occurred within days of one another. The first happened on Thursday, October 18, in Casselberry, Florida. The shooter was an African-American male spurred on by a breakup with his girlfriend, who worked at the salon. MSNBC reports:

"Police have identified 36-year-old Bradford Baument as the gunman who stormed a Florida hair salon, fatally shooting three women and injuring a fourth before killing himself at a friend’s home, police said.

"Police say the deadly rampage appeared to part of a domestic dispute.

"The Salon’s manager, Marcia Santiago, who was also Baument’s ex-girlfriend, had filed a restraining order against Baument, according to WESH-TV in Orlando.

"About two hours before a court hearing on the restraining order was to start, Baument stormed Las Dominicanas M & M Salon in Casselberry, northeast of Orlando, and opened fire, police spokeswoman Sara Brady said.

"Santiago was critically injured in the shooting. Officials identified two of the slain as: Noelia Gonzalez-Brito, 28, an employee, and Gladys Cabrera, 52, a customer. Identity of the third slaying victim was not released. Two others escaped injury by hiding in the bathroom, WESH-TV reported."

Casselberry shooter Bradford Baument

The second salon shooting occurred on Sunday, October 21. It occurred in Brookfield, Wisconsin, near Milwaukee. In this case an African American male killed three people including his ex-wife, who had recently filed a restraining order against the shooter, before killing himself. MSNBC notes:

"A man who was ordered last week to turn over all his weapons in a domestic dispute opened fire Sunday at his estranged wife's workplace near Milwaukee, killing three women and injuring four others, authorities said. He then apparently shot himself to death, police said.

"The suspect was identified as Radcliffe Franklin Haughton, 45, of Brown Deer, Wis., said Brookfield Police Chief Daniel Tushaus, who said Haughton was found dead in the building, a 9,000-square-foot, two-story salon and day spa across the street from a busy mall...

"Milwaukee County court records show that Haughton's wife, Zina Daniel Haughton, filed for a restraining order on Oct. 8...

"Police said the shootings began at 11:09 a.m. (12:09 p.m. ET) at the Azana Day Spa, across Moorland Road from Brookfield Square mall in Brookfield, about 10 miles west of Milwaukee. The mall was closed as SWAT team members scoured the area for Haughton."

Wisconsin shooter Radcliffe Haughton Jr.

The similarities between these two events go beyond creepy. As noted above, both shooters were African American males who ultimately committed suicide after the murders. The initial targets in both shootings were seemingly the former significant others of either shooter. Both women were in the process of filing restraining orders against the men who would ultimately kill them. Both shootings happened in salons and the total number of deaths in each was three victims plus the shooter. What's more, Radcliffe Haughton Sr., the father of the Wisconsin shooter, currently lives in Florida, in Winter Garden, none the less. For those of you who don't live around here, Winter Garden is a little over 20 miles from Casselberry.

What's more, this is the second time the Milwaukee area has been the site of a high profile shooting in a little less than three months. In early August white supremacist Wade Michael Page murdered several people at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. I and several other bloggers believe that this may have been a quasi-copycat of the more notorious Aurora shooting that took place just a little over two weeks before the Sikh temple shooting. I've written more on this topic before here.

Wade Michael Page

These are hardly the only doubles I've stumbled upon lately. Indeed, the headlines have been riddled with them. Consider the case of the University of South Alabama student who was gunned down by police while totally naked. MSNBC reported that said student, named Gil Collar, was tripping on LSD when said incident unfolded:

"A nude University of South Alabama freshman had taken LSD and assaulted others before he chased the campus police officer who fatally shot him, authorities said Tuesday, though the student wasn't armed and didn't touch the officer."

Mr. Collar is not the only naked individual to be killed by the police of late. For the most recent incident, which occurred about two weeks after Mr. Collar's shooting, we return to Florida once again. There, near the Tampa area, two off duty police officers killed a naked woman. Again with MSNBC:

"Two off-duty Florida law-enforcement officers fatally shot an armed, naked woman who confronted them at a social gathering Saturday, authorities said.

"The shooting occurred at about 1:15 p.m. Saturday in Hernando County, north of Tampa. The county sheriff's office said in a news release that the men were approached by an 'armed, naked and irrational female.' The news release does not identify the weapon, but it says 'one or both of the law enforcement officers fired their weapons, striking the female.' She died at the scene."

Naturally police are refusing to reveal the weapon this woman had that was so threatening to the off duty officers. It'll be most interesting to see what they come up with and what, if anything, was in this woman's system at the time of the shooting. If she was also using psychedelics, then she would be the third individual of late to be involved in a fatal incident while tripping. In addition to Mr. Collar's fatal run in with campus police, a man from Clay, New York has recently admitted to killing his own father while under the influence of magic mushrooms. The Post-Standard reports:

"A town of Clay man admitted in court today he intentionally killed his father but was acting under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs at the time.

"Herman Tolbert Jr., 24, pleaded guilty before state Supreme Court Justice John Brunetti to a reduced charge of first-degree manslaughter in the death of his 68-year-old father, Herman Tolbert Sr.

"The elder Tolbert was found dead in his home at 4977 Moses Drive in Clay, on Aug. 4, 2011. He died from a single stab wound to the chest from a butcher knife...

"In court, Doran said Tolbert had a history of paranoid schizophrenia that was exacerbated by his use of drugs. At the time of the crime, Tolbert was under the influence of hallucinogenic mushrooms, the prosecutor said."

The implications of these two deaths, and possibly a third in Florida, are most interesting to me. At present I don't have time to go in depth into these events but I've dabbled with the notion that what one experiences on psychedelics are more than hallucinations before here. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

One final double I would like to briefly address before wrapping things up are a series of non-fatal (for now) shootings that have broken out in Michigan near the I-96 corridor. Apparently someone has been shooting at various motorists across a series of roads from a car. There have been 16 reported shootings so far. When I first read this story I was immediately reminded of the D.C. sniper shootings that occurred along the Beltway area. These shootings were of course far more lethal than the ones in Michigan have proved to be thus far. What is unsettling about the Michigan shootings are the dates. The D.C. sniper shootings occurred over a period of three weeks in October 2002. This is almost exactly ten years to the day that the Michigan shootings started.

There's more than one of everything in deed.

The Reality of Reality

Regular readers of this blog know that I am quite fascinated by the nature of reality. I have in fact argued that the true essence of magic is reality, the manipulation of which constituting a magical working. Much more on this topic can be found here. Of course, many will scoff at the notion that reality is malleable thing, as though it can be shaped like a piece of metal. But at the end of the day, reality is only what we tell one and other that it is. This was a concept not lost on the CIA as they boldly embarked upon a kind of 'world view' warfare against the Soviet Union in the wake of WWII.

"All of these techniques -hallucinogenic drugs, hypnosis, acts of terrorism, disinformation -share an ontological purpose: to manipulate perceptions, to recreate reality. As we noted above, the German word for psychological warfare translates as 'worldview warfare': a battle of perceptions, of consensus realities... As the men of the OSS, CIA, and military intelligence developed from the armchair scholars and academics that most of them were before the war years into soldiers fighting the Cold War on fronts all over the world, they became -in a very real sense -magicians. As we will see, the CIA mind control projects themselves represented an assault on consciousness and reality that has not been seen in history since the age of the philosopher-kings and their court alchemists."
(Sinister Forces -Book One: The Nine, Peter Levenda, pg. 144)

As the years advanced, this 'worldview warfare' has spread to every aspect of society long after the Soviet Union was cast into the dust bin of history. Case in point, the 'War on Terror.' We tell one and other that terrorism constitutes the greatest threat to modern society in the world today, and that at any given any one of us could find ourselves under siege. This was the meme that was getting a lot of play on February 17th, anyway, when it was announced that the FBI had foiled yet another terror plot, this one revolving around an attempted bombing of the Capital. This was the headline that I saw scrolling across MSNBC when I awoke that morning, anyway, and that is the reality to countless Americans. But when one actually considers the specifics of this terror plot, its much harder to tell who the real terrorist is: the Moroccan man arrested for the plot, or the F.B.I., who engineered it. MSNBC 'reports':

"Within the last week, authorities say, Amine El Khalifi's plan to wreak havoc was proceeding as hoped: An al-Qaida associate handed him an automatic weapon to kill security officers inside the U.S. Capitol. A bomb-laden vest would detonate the building. He would die as a martyr. 

"But there was a problem: The explosives were inert, the gun inoperable and the supposed al-Qaida member was actually an undercover officer, according to court documents. 

"El Khalifi was arrested Friday in a parking garage on his way to carry out an attack the FBI says he kicked around for months, even detonating a practice bomb in a quarry, all with varied targets in mind. 

"An FBI affidavit traces the evolution of the plot from a vague plan to prepare for the 'war on Muslims' to more clearly articulated visions of attacking a restaurant and synagogue to, finally, a goal of obliterating the seat of American government. The document alleges a weeks-long flurry of final activity by El Khalifi, monitored by the FBI and coordinated through an undercover agent, to scope out the building, train in explosives and arm himself for a suicide attack."

Mr. Khalifi

Springing this plot on the 17th was an especially nice touch. Regular readers of this blog know that the number 17 is extremely important in the occult. It has special significance in Islamic strands.

"In Islamic tradition, seventeen is the number of the liturgical gestures (rak'a) employed in the five daily prayers and it is also the number of words used in the call to prayer. In Muslim folklore, the symbolic number seventeen constantly recurs, especially in legends, 'more particularly the seventeen pieces of advice whispered into the king's ear during his coronation and the seventeen components of the standard...' 

"In Shi'ism, above all, and through its influence in the religious epic poetry of the Anatolian Turks,

a quasi-magical importance attaches to the number seventeen... Shi'ite mystics from a very early period held the number seventeen in veneration, a veneration stemming from far earlier Pythagorean speculations based upon the Greek alphabet... Seventeen was the number of those who were to be brought to life again, each of these individuals being bound to be given one of the letters of the alphabet from which the supreme name of God was composed."

 (Dictionary of Symbols, Jean Chevalier & Alain Gheerbrant, pg. 866) 

Perhaps the date then helped convince Mr. Khalifi that his resurrection was imminent, though I daresay he didn't come up with such an apt dating on his own. Sadly, this is hardly the only suspect aspect of Mr. Khalifi's 'terror plot.' Despite their best efforts, MSNBC can't cover up what a pathetic figure Mr. Khalifi truly is. Continuing from the MSNBC article:

"...Authorities have released only basic biographical details about El Khalifi and haven't described how they believe he became intent on destruction. He was born in Morocco and came to the United States in 1999, when he was 16, overstaying his visitor visa and remaining in the country illegally, court papers say. He is unemployed and is not believed to be associated with al-Qaida..." 

"The investigation that led to El Khalifi's arrest started last January on a confidential informant's tip to the FBI. The informant described a meeting inside an Arlington apartment, where a person who produced an AK-47, two revolvers and ammunition said the war on terror equated with a 'war on Muslims' and urged the group to prepare for battle. El Khalifi, the FBI learned, expressed agreement. 

"The FBI doesn't believe he was conspiring with anyone else, and court documents in El Khalifi's case don't give further details about the meeting in the Arlington apartment and the other people who were there. Police are investigating others with whom El Khalifi associated, but not because they believe the associates were part of a terror conspiracy, a counterterrorism official has told The Associated Press. 

"By December, authorities say the sting operation and El Khalifi's own plans were taking shape. 

"That month, he traveled to Baltimore with a man he knew as Hussien to meet a person who was introduced to him as an al-Qaida associate, authorities say. He told the man, Yusuf, that he planned to blow up a building just outside Washington in Alexandria, Va., that contained military offices. Handling the man's AK-47, he spoke of wanting to 'use a gun and kill people face to face,' according to the complaint. 

"Unbeknownst to El Khalifi, the man who called himself Yusuf was an undercover law enforcement officer. Hussien was an operative working undercover with investigators."

As one reads further into the saga of Mr. Khalifi, it becomes apparent that he was practically the only one involved in this 'terror plot' that wasn't linked to the F.B.I. or some other branch of US law enforcement. Essentially the F.B.I. found an unhinged Muslim immigrant, began indoctrinating him with radical Islamic beliefs, then suggested he begin plotting his own terror attack, which they were more than happy to provide him with the tools to do so.

This is of course a notion totally foreign to the average America who, thanks to hours upon hours of propaganda from film and TV, believes that the F.B.I. is an infallible organization, comprised of squeaky-clean agents working tirelessly toward their safety. But what other conclusions can one draw from the F.B.I.'s actions taken toward Mr. Khalifi? If Mr. Khalifi was truly a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off, then why not simply deport him to his native country and bar his reentry into the US? The man had only been living in the US illegally for over a decade, after all. Why wait an entire year for some kind of Byzantine entrapment ploy to unfold if Mr. Khalifi was such a threat to the average American?

What's more, this isn't exactly the first time the F.B.I. has been caught fanning the flames of Islamic terrorism. In actuality, many of their most celebrated terror busts over the past few years have followed a pattern similar to Mr. Khalifi's 'terror plot.' Consider a 2009 'terror plot' originating from the Bronx that has just recently gone to trial:

"Special Agent Robert Fuller hoisted a six-foot-long heat-seeking Stinger missile launcher onto his right shoulder, gazed through the eye piece and aimed the gun towards the back of the federal courtroom in lower Manhattan. 

"No one flinched. If anything, the jurors leaned in for a better look. 

"That’s because the military weapon resting on Fuller’s shoulder was fake — rendered inert by lab technicians in an FBI lab in Quantico, VA, and designed solely to fool four Newburgh men into thinking they were a step closer to shooting down military planes at Stewart International Airport last May. 

"Fuller said he paid a confidential informant about a $100,000 to help catch the men plotting to blow up Bronx synagogues and military planes last year. But defense lawyers say the FBI agent came up with the whole plot in the first place. 

"As the prosecution's first witness, Fuller told the court how he told that confidential informant, Shaheed Hussain, to visit a Newburgh mosque to find radical Muslims. Hussain frequented the Masjid Al-Ikhlas mosque in Newburgh, NY at least 12 times, and met defendant James Cromitie in June 2009. Fuller instructed Hussain to tell Cromitie he was an import-export businessman and a representative of Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistani terrorist organization. 

"Fuller testified on Wednesday that he coached Hussain to be 'passive' and 'ask open-ended questions' as he got to know Cromitie. But defense lawyers attempted to show on cross-examination that Hussain went much further than that and suggested that Fuller scripted out the crimes he wanted the defendants to commit.

"Over 11 months, Fuller testified, he supplied the four defendants — Cromitie, Onta Williams, David Williams and Laguerre Payen — with cars, cellphones, a handgun, digital cameras, three inert IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and two inert heat-seeking Stinger missiles. He located storage spaces for the weapons and held on to the storage key. Fuller also provided money to help the defendants — who were struggling with unemployment and have criminal records — with groceries, rent and cell phone bills. 

"That was the key, said Alicia McWilliams, the aunt of defendant David Williams. 'When you have ex-offenders coming home, and people don't have jobs, money plays a factor in our community,' said McWilliams, speaking with WNYC outside the courtroom. 'And the government should be ashamed.' 

"The defendants were allegedly promised thousands of dollars more and even a BMW if they went along with the plan. 

"Thirty five meetings between Hussain and the defendants were recorded by the FBI, and the contents of those audio and video recordings have still not been played in court. When defense lawyer Mark Gombiner tried to have one 57-minute video played of an October 2008 meeting between Hussain and Cromitie, prosecutors objected vehemently, arguing that playing the video on the second day of the trial would disrupt the order of the whole proceeding.  

"Gombiner argued that the video will show Hussain pressured Cromitie from the start to wage jihad according to the government's well-scripted play — and that prosecutors shouldn't be trying to get defense lawyers to play along as well."

An artist depiction of Special Agent Fuller testifying

Keep in mind the bolded part about all the defendants in this case being ex-cons, as I shall return to it a bit later. Otherwise, there's not much to comment on here. Once again we see a well-funded F.B.I. informer posing as a member of an international terror ring and seeking out angry, disillusioned, and alienated individuals, the type of which is most susceptible to violent indoctrination, and preceding to fund and arm said individuals. In addition to a headline-grabbing arrest, the F.B.I. is able to further validate the right-wing belief that all Muslims are budding terrorists that simply need a good nudge to take up the jihad with these kind of PSYOPs.

But why should the ring-wing have all the fun?

In recent months the F.B.I. has been seeking out a brand of terrorist that is much more acceptable to the left-wing, namely individuals that full under such labels as 'sovereign citizen', 'white seperatist', 'Christian Identity movement', and the like. In fact, the F.B.I. was banging the drum of this menace about ten or so days before foiling Mr. Khalifi's 'terror plot.' RAW Story reports:

"The FBI has said it is monitoring a growing extremist threat from 'sovereign citizen' movements, and is targeting their activities to prevent a repeat of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. 

Followers of 'sovereign citizen' ideologies reject all government authority, refusing to pay taxes, not recognizing US currency, and sometimes engaging in acts of violence, FBI officials told reporters on Monday. 

“'They could be lone wolves, too,' said Stuart McArthur, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counter-terrorism division, who said it was the agency’s mission to 'deter and detect' potential acts of 'catastrophic violence...' 

"The FBI said the 'sovereign citizen' militants are distinguishable from other ultra-right extremists by their use of homemade license plates, documents and diplomatic credentials, as well as the terminology they use. 

“'The ideology itself promotes violence and encourages violence,' said special agent Casey Carty, who said the FBI had a duty to be proactive in dealing with the potential threat. 

"The number of convictions in 'sovereign citizen' cases rose from 10 in 2009 to 18 in 2010 and another 18 last year."

Sovereign citizen license plates, one of the high crimes the movement is accused of

Ten convictions to 18? Oh, the horror!

But this is nothing compared to the face domestic terrorism was sporting this past November. On November 1st exactly, the American public was given a glimpse of this latest threat. It was most curious to say the least, especially when one considers the date of the event. November 1st, All Saints Day, has a fascinating legacy in European paganism.

"Perhaps we may go a step further and explain in like manner the origin of the feast of All Saints on the first of November. For the analogy of similar customs elsewhere would lead us to suppose that the old Celtic festival of thew dead was held on the Celtic New Year's Day, that is, on the first, not the second, of November. May not then the institute of the feast of All Saints on that day have been the first attempt of the Church to give a colour of Christianity to the ancient heathen rite by substituting the saints for the souls of the dead as the true object of worship? The facts of history seem to countenance this hypothesis. For the feast of All Saints was instituted in France and Germany by order of Emperor Lewis the Pious in 835 AD, that is, about a hundred and sixty years before the introduction of the feast of All Souls. The innovation was made by the advice of the pope, Gregory IV, whose motive may well have been that of suppressing the old pagan custom which was still notoriously practiced in France and Germany. The idea, however, was not a novel one, for the testimony of Bede proves that in Britain, another Celtic country, the feast of All Saints on the first of November was already celebrated in the eighth century. We may conjecture that this attempt to divert the devotion of the faithful from the souls of the dead to the saints proved a failure, and that finally the Church reluctantly decided to sanction the popular superstition by frankly admitting a feast of All Souls on the calender. But it could not assign the new, or rather the old, festival to the old day, the first of November, since that was already occupied by the feast of All Saints. Accordingly it placed the mass of the dead on the next day, the second of November. On this theory the feasts of All Saints and of All Souls mark two successive efforts of the Catholic Church to eradicate an old heathen festival of the dead."
(The Golden Bough, James Frazer, pg. 385)

All Saints Day, a hold over from pagan times of the Celtic New Year?

If nothing else, 'festival of the dead' is an apt description of the alleged domestic terrorists the F.B.I. unearthed for the feast. MSNBC reports:

"Four Georgia men in their 60s and 70s were arrested Tuesday, accused of being members of a right-wing militia group that plotted to attack federal office buildings and to disperse a deadly biological poison in Atlanta. 

"Their alleged plot was revealed to the FBI by a confidential informant last spring, and members of the group have been meeting since May with someone they thought was a black-market weapons dealer but who turned out to be an undercover federal agent, according to court documents. 

"No attacks were ever attempted. Federal officials say the men were disrupted before they could act on the plot.

"The documents say the men, Frederick Thomas, 73, of Cleveland, Ga.; Dan Roberts, 67, Ray Adams, 65, and Samuel Crump, 68, all of Toccoa, called themselves 'the covert group' and began in March to talk about staging attacks against federal targets including the IRS.

"A confidential informant secretly recorded some of the meetings for the FBI."

Terrified yet?

The media assures us that the senior brigade was a great threat to national security due to their backgrounds. Continuing with MSNBC:

"They allegedly obtained a silencer from the undercover agent and plotted to buy explosives. Crump claimed he could produce ricin, a deadly biological agent, and talked about dispersing it from a car driving on an interstate highway, according to court documents... 

"According to federal investigators, Crump had worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta in the past doing 'maintenance-type services' for a contractor, and Adams used to work for a U.S. Department of Agriculture agency called the Agricultural Research Service as a lab technician."

Yes dear reader, being a lab technician for the Department of Agriculture, or a glorified janitor for the CDC, apparently puts one in a unique position to create biological weapons. Thus, we as Americans must no longer live in terror simply of disenfranchised Muslims, but also of old, decrepit white people as well. The F.B.I. and its highly paid informants are no doubt hard at work recruiting the next right wing extremist and helping them plot their very own terror strike in the name of national security. Frankly, I'm surprised its taken this long for the militia meme to reenter pop culture considering how much mileage the Clinton administration got out of it. I suppose I should be thankful that this generation's Oklahoma City bombing hasn't occurred yet, anyway.

If recruiting unstable individuals and helping them mastermind various terror plots wasn't enough to ensure the War on Terror will groove right along, rest assured the F.B.I. is receiving ample help from local law enforcement to ensure that the well of recruits will not soon run dry. Consider this little nugget:

"Last year in three high schools in Florida, several undercover police officers posed as students. The undercover cops went to classes, became Facebook friends and flirted with the other students. One 18-year-old honor student named Justin fell in love with an attractive 25-year-old undercover cop after spending weeks sharing stories about their lives, texting and flirting with each other. 

"One day she asked Justin if he smoked pot. Even though he didn't smoke marijuana, the love-struck teen promised to help find some for her. Every couple of days she would text him asking if he had the marijuana. Finally, Justin was able to get it to her. She tried to give him $25 for the marijuana and he said he didn't want the money -- he got it for her as a present. 

"A short while later, the police did a big sweep and arrest 31 students -- including Justin. Almost all were charged with selling a small amount of marijuana to the undercover cops. Now Justin has a felony hanging over his head."

Justin's situation is even more dire than this article indicates. If he's convicted of a drug charge he won't be eligible for federally subsidized financial aid. Thus, his opportunities will be even more limited when he gets out of prison. Which will make it even more likely that he'll continue with a life of crime. And that will make him an especially appealing target to those highly paid F.B.I. informants, especially the ones that specialize in anti-government movements. Thus, not only is the American justice system turning a basically decent kid into a criminal, but its also putting him at risk of 'radicalization' (which American law enforcement officers are an ever growing part of). We already saw something similar to this play out in the Bronx 'terror plot' discussed above. And if the numbers are any indication, a rather large percentage of young Americans will know the ends and outs of the American legal system in the coming years. MSNBC notes:

 "Close to one in three teens and young adults get arrested by age 23, suggests a new study that finds more of them are being booked now than in the 1960s.

"Those arrests are for everything from underage drinking and petty theft to violent crime, researchers said. They added that the increase might not necessarily reflect more criminal behavior in youth, but rather a police force that's more apt to arrest young people than in the past."

Despite the fact that violent crime constitutes a low percentage of the total crimes the study researchers felt these arrests were essential to spot early warning signs of 'criminal behavior' in adolescents. Continuing from the same article:

"Though violent crimes might be on the rarer end of the spectrum of offenses, the study's lead author pointed to the importance of catching the early warning signs of criminal behavior in adolescents and young adults, saying that pediatricians and parents can both play a role in turning those youngsters around."

As an afterthought, these same researchers note that this may have a long-term effect on the prospects of the offending individuals.

"Arrests in adolescents are especially worrisome, he told Reuters Health, because many repeat offenders start their 'criminal career' at a young age...

"He pointed out that young people who have an arrest on their record might have more trouble getting jobs in the future. It's one thing if that's because they were involved in a violent crime, he continued, but another if their offence was non-violent, like drinking underage or smoking marijuana."

The numbers indicate that America is over run with hordes of marauding youth, yet violent crime has dropped to a 40 year low, according to the New York Times:

"The number of violent crimes in the United States dropped significantly last year, to what appeared to be the lowest rate in nearly 40 years, a development that was considered puzzling partly because it ran counter to the prevailing expectation that crime would increase during a recession.

"In all regions, the country appears to be safer. The odds of being murdered or robbed are now less than half of what they were in the early 1990s, when violent crime peaked in the United States. Small towns, especially, are seeing far fewer murders: In cities with populations under 10,000, the number plunged by more than 25 percent last year." 

I now return to the notion that I put forth in the opening paragraph about reality being subjective. The reality that mainstream media and authority figures wish the average America to believe in is that they live in a society breaking apart at the seams, where the scourge of drugs and terrorism are ever present, in which anyone, young or old, white or otherwise, could be a threat at any given time. But what are we to make of these threats? Could the destitute, often poorly educated Muslims the F.B.I. and like organizations parade before the American public in the latest terror plot have ever even conceived of such actions without the urging of federal authorities? Likewise for the geezers of the Georgia 'militia' and Justin, a lovesick 18 year old with less than a few grams of grass for sale. And what are we to make of a 40 year low in violent crime when indications, such as nearly one out of every three Americans under the age of 23 having a criminal record, point to crime being out of control. Is this truly reality?

Because it sure seems to me that the F.B.I., with its informant-laced terror cells, its money, and its state-of-the-art weapons, are a far greater threat than the rogue's gallery examined during the course of this article. But we all know that that can't be reality, just like all those fantasies about false flag terror attacks behind the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11. That simply can't be reality. TV says so, as my dad would say.

And that, dear readers, is magic at its finest.