OVO

Kate Mather, The Oregonian:

Daniel Rafatpanah thought he was going to die. A jittery gunman was marching the 29-year-old and two of his Southeast Portland housemates upstairs to the attic, a handgun aimed at their backs. None of them knew the man, who demanded Popsicles and alcohol before taking them hostage Monday afternoon. But when he placed the gun under his foot to change into a new pair of pants, they knew it was their only chance. “Everything’s in slow-mo, and I’m like, ‘It’s go time.’ It’s time to fight this guy,” Rafatpanah said.

Jonathan Mooney, 26, bearhugged the gunman from behind. Robert Steinfeld, 21, broke a beer bottle over his head. And Rafatpanah started throwing punches, his hands bloodied by the shattered glass. Everyone reached for the gun as the man fell. The man fired a shot as the struggle continued. Rafatpanah’s right hand got sliced open by the gun’s mechanism, and blood poured everywhere.

A neck hold wasn’t working. Not knowing what else to do, Rafatpanah bit the man’s ear. “Let go of the gun, let go of the gun!” he yelled through clamped teeth. “Let go of my ear!” the gunman responded. The two tore apart, and Rafatpanah spat out a bean-sized piece of ear.

“I tasted the blood of my enemy in my mouth,” he said. “And so at that point you realize the stakes have gone so much higher because blood is being drawn – my blood, his blood.”

Rafatpanah lunged toward the gun and wrestled it away.

Article continues, with video.

Previously at OVO:

Trevor Blake: Time Machine (after The Invisibles by Grant Morrison). June 2011. Model: Danny Chaoflux.

The USS Oregon was launched in 1893 and served until 1919. The battleship’s crew saw action in five wars. The Oregon was scrapped in 1956. The bow, mast and anchor chain of the Oregon are in Tom McCall Waterfront Park, near SW Pine and Naito. One mile north is the Albers Mill Building. The smokestacks of the Oregon were in a Liberty Ship memorial park where this parking lot is now. The Willamette River Greenway Trail runs next to the Building. Walk along it until you find a wall running into the Willamette River. On the other side of this wall are the remains of some Liberty Ships that had been made in Portland. This is what remains of the Liberty Ship memorial park.

Music: Aeolian Piano Roll – Phantom Patrol (1903)

Learn of thousands of other memorials in Portland Memorials by Trevor Blake.

Image c/o Retronaut.

Thanks to the following for linking to OVO.

Eithin links to Liberating Wednesday.
Monday Vatican links to The Concordant Story.
Financial Advices Blog links to The Bonus Army.
Rambone at Indiana Gun Owners links to The Bonus Army.
The American Book of the Dead links to Unspeakable Horrors.

Today, 25 November, was a special day in the life of Yukio Mishima.  May you have a special day as well.  I don’t want to do what Mishima did, I want to do what I do as fully as he did what he did.

“Young people get the foolish idea that what is new for them must be new for everybody else too. No matter how unconventional they get, they’re just repeating what others before them have done.” – Yukio Mishima, After the Banquet.

OVO triumphus for Yukio Mishima for 2010.
OVO triumphus for Yukio Mishima for 2009.
OVO triumphus for Yukio Mishima for 2008.

… and more.

Those who long to live in 1911 choose that year – really any year from 1890 to 1914 would be equally ok – just because it’s safely in the middle of that long lingering last “decade” of the long 19th Century – which was also the first heroic decade of true modern radicalism – e.g. – the Wandervogel, Stirnerite anarchism, the IWW and Jim Larkin, Ascona, Sex Radicals & Nudists – etc.  And still far removed from the future of total war & totalitarianism to come – a time of utopian revolutionary hope.

Also of course it’s the Age of Decadence – final year of the Manchu Dynasty – opium ten cents a bottle at any country store – the Paris of J. K. Huysmans.  Gaslight.  Also: the last gasp of true agrarianism in the USA – age of Populism, the Grange, Farmers Alliance – the last rural decade.

But there’s another reason we choose 1911 (or thereabouts) for our little Golden Age. It has to do with technology. In 1911 almost all the actual conveniences of modern tech already existed: the car, the telephone, the electric bulb, the phonograph… Now we Luddites do not approve of cars or any of these inventions, which all subtract from the quanta of Imagination available to individuals & to the Social. But we have to admit – they’re convenient. In their primitive forms they’re almost likable. The only real convenience invented since then – the electric refrigerator – can be replaced by an Amish-built propane refrigerator – OR – we could re-invent the ice-box. We hope someday to learn to sing again, but till then we can accept a few hand-cranked shellac records (but no radio or TV). Computers are NOT in any way part of a revived 1911 however. It’s time to wake up & smell the rot of technopathology.

The telephone easily corrodes social presence & reduces selves to disembodies “voices of the Unseen,” as the Arabs called the invention. But again the primitive version, with its “party lines” & snoopy local Operators, had a social aspect now completely leached out of the medium. If we must be thus haunted let it be via one of these elegant sinister objects – a real murder weapon.

Full play of Imagination becomes possible only without modern technology, because tech has become the heartless operation of Capital, which hates all forms of sharing. Let’s work for a secular Anabaptism, bold enough finally to refuse everything back to the steam engine – at least. Whereupon we may resume human life.

Bear (detail). May 2011. Pen and Pencil.

Bonus Army protest, Portland Oregon USA August 1932. SW 4th and Main Street.

Occupy Portland protest, Portland Oregon USA October 2011.  SW 4th and Main Street.

Smedley Butler, author of War is a Racket, addresses the Bonus Army.

Occupy Portland protest, Portland Oregon USA October 2011.

October 2011 photographs by Trevor Blake.  Public Domain.

On the morning of Sunday, September 11th 2011, I will be drinking coffee with sugar and cream and eating a croissant. I will do this in commemoration of the victory of the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth over the Ottoman Empire near Vienna on September 11th, 1683.

Wikipedia: Battle of Vienna Culinary Legends

Several culinary legends are related to the Battle of Vienna. One legend is that the croissant was invented in Vienna, either in 1683 or during the earlier siege in 1529, to celebrate the defeat of the Ottoman attack of the city, with the shape referring to the crescents on the Ottoman flags. This version of the origin of the croissant is supported by the fact that croissants in French are referred to as Viennoiserie, and the French popular belief that Vienna-born Marie Antoinette introduced the pastry to France in 1770. [...] After the battle, the Viennese discovered many bags of coffee in the abandoned Ottoman encampment. Using this captured stock, Franciszek Jerzy Kulczycki opened the third coffeehouse in Europe and the first in Vienna, where, according to legend, Kulczycki himself added milk and honey to sweeten the bitter coffee, thereby inventing cappuccino.

I might have a side of bacon, too.

See also Trevor Blake: 9/11 Timeline.

Since the colonial period, the United States has been fighting to control currency. In fact, this battle was part of the foundation of the country. Prior to 1764, colonists issued “Bills of Credit” to deal with a shortage of hard currency. Some were issued by “land banks” and backed by the value of land. Others were merely promises of credit. [1] In 1764 the British Parliment passed the Currency Act, which prohibited the use of these Bills of Credit. This caused significant economic hardship for the colonies, and helped set the stage for the Revolution. [2]

In an 1883 paper called “Ideas for a Science of Good Government,” Peter Cooper wrote (emphasis mine):

After Franklin had explained this [the use of paper money] to the British Government as the real cause of prosperity, they immediately passed laws, forbidding the payment of taxes in that money. This produced such great inconvenience and misery to the people, that it was the principal cause of the Revolution. A far greater reason for a general uprising, than the Tea and Stamp Act, was the taking away of the paper money. [3]

Although Cooper was in favor of government issued currency, he saw the British outlawing of the Bills of Credit as a problem. He opposed the use of these local currencies, but saw them arising out of a failure of the government: “Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, raised his voice against the curse of the local banks, which were allowed to come into being by the neglect of the Government in the performance of its duty.” [3]

Today, a host of independent currencies are available: from small and local to big and global, and they are all issued to solve perceived problems with government issued currency. But it appears that the government is none too pleased with this competition.

Indie currency

Activists on both the far left and far right of the political spectrum work to create government independent currency solutions, but it seems that the left tend to prefer local currencies. “Community currency is a tool that can help revitalize local economies by encouraging wealth to stay within a community rather than flowing out,” Susan Meeker-Lowry wrote for Z Magazine. “In many communities around the country people are taking control by creating their own currency. This is completely legal and, as organizers are finding, often very empowering.” [4]

The Local Exchange Trading System (LETS), developed in British Columbia in the 80s, is one widely used system. LETS does away with the need for a printed money, acting instead as an interest free credit system. Michael Linton, a computer programmer, created LETS to solve a simple problem: community members “had valuable skills they could offer each other yet had no money. He also saw the limitations of a one-on-one barter system. If a plumber wanted the services of an electrician, but the electrician didn’t need plumbing help, the transaction couldn’t take place.” [4]

LETS solves the problem by issuing credit within the system. In the above example, the plumber would owe a debt to the LETS system, and electrician would be issued credit from the system. The electrician would be able to redeem the credit from another LETS member who is either in debt or wanted credit, and the plumber would be required to make his services available to other LETS members. [4] Many variations of Linton’s original system have been created, and several “how to” kits and manuals are available for purchase, or to download for free from the internet. [5]

Shifting the focus away from the US for a moment: during the Argentine financial crisis, the national currency of Argentina became practically worthless. [6] To help meet their needs and keep the economy working, many people turned to barter or to local currencies such as the “credito.”  [7] The credito was based, amongst other things, on LETS materials translated into Spanish. Transactions were originally recorded in a notebook, as in LETS, but eventually paper certificates were needed. By 2000, circulation of this currency had reached the equivalent of about $5 million a year. [8]

Argentina illustrates the usefulness of independent currencies when central banks fail. Local currencies, which tend not to cross state lines, seem not to get much attention from the government. I don’t know of any cases of local currencies being shut down by the government.

Towards a more perfect capitalism

Right wing proponents of alternative currencies, however, tend to favor more global forms of exchange. Advocates of “free banking” propose the dissolution of central banks like the Federal Reserve in favor of private banks issuing competing currencies. [9]

The founder of the internet payment solution PayPal, Peter Thiel, envisioned PayPal as a way to create a more free exchange of currency globally. Thiel hoped people in foreign countries with restrictive money export laws could use PayPal to hold their currency in dollars or other more stable foreign currencies, such as the US dollar [10]. But the proprietors of precious metal backed digital currencies like e-Gold and the Liberty Dollar are more even more ambitious.

Thinkers ranging from Ron Paul [11] to Alan Greenspan [12] advocate a return to the gold standard. But some entrepreneurs act directly by issuing digital currency backed by gold, silver, or other precious metals.

Dr. Douglas Jackson founded e-gold, the first internet currency backed 100% by precious metals, in 1996. Jackson cites gold’s stability as a currency and the internet’s natural openness as the reasons for creating an internet based gold currency. He believes e-gold is currency perfected: stable and market driven. In an interview in Wired in 2002 he called e-gold “probably the greatest benefit to humanity that’s ever been thought of.” [13]

The Liberty Dollar, backed mostly by silver but also by other precious metals, is sold by National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and the Internal Revenue Code (NORFED). Founder, and former mint master of the Royal Hawaiian Mint Company, Bernard von NotHaus conceived of the currency to compete head-on with the Federal Reserve:

For years America was saddled with a slow, poor postal service. Finally, Federal Express brought competition to this heavily subsidized government agency that no one though could change. And it responded and improved noticeably. NORFED emulates this model by bringing a superior product to America’s monetary system, its currency. [14]

NORFED offers coins, certificates that look like something like dollar bills, and an internet backed currency. Coins and certificates are available through “Regional Currency Offices,” and NORFED actively encourages Liberty Dollar enthusiasts to open their own RCOs and recruit others. [15]

Financial Jihad

Outside the western left / right political spectrum is the another global cultural force: Islam. While the founders of Pay Pal, e-gold, and NORFED believe themselves to be perfecting capitalism with their digital services, the Islamic founders of e-dinar, who formed a partnership with e-gold and at one point hosted 50% of e-gold’s reserve at their vaults in Dubai, believe they are destroying it. [13]

The founders of e-dinar are members of the Murabitun movement, a peculiur form of Sufism. Murabitun followers believe that paper money is haram, unlawful, according to Islamic faith. The founder of the Murabitun movement, Sheikh Abdalqadir, says: “A true study of the Qur’an and the Sunna shows us that capitalism will not be abolished on the battlefield but in the marketplace where it is practiced.” [13]

“Fatwa Concerning the Islamic Prohibition of Using Paper-Money as a Medium of Exchange,” a Murabitun text by Umar Vadillo, states: “After examining all the aspects of paper money, in the Light of the Qur’an and the Sunna, we declare that the use of paper money in any form of exchange is usury and therefore haram” because paper money (and, by extension, credit and debit cards) is “nothing but a pure symbol with no reality attached except the imposition of law.” [13]

Vidillo says: “You want to be radical? You don’t need to blow up the bank, just burn your bank account. For that you need an alternative. What is the alternative? E-dinar.” [13]

The current status of e-dinar is a bit mysterious. e-gold used be partners with e-dinar [13], but according to e-dinar’s web site e-dinar officially split with e-gold in 2004 after being acquired by an unnamed “Large International Corporation” in 2003. [16]

The state responds

It would seem, though, that the larger reach of global alternatives lead to larger interventions by the government. Of all the major players in independent currency game, e-gold has probably had the worst legal trouble. “In December 2005, the Secret Service and FBI raided the company’s headquarters and seized roughly $800,000 in assets,” according to the Washington Post. [17] This lead e-gold to beef up their security measures, even creating new software designed to detect e-gold customers committing crimes. [18] The new security measures didn’t stop a federal indictment from being leveled against the company in April of 2007. The company was served with four indictments, including operating an illegal money transfer operation and money laundering. [17]

Then, on Wednesday May 9th, 2007 the United States government seized the holdings of 58 e-gold accounts, forcing 48 bars of gold to be redeemed for approximately $77 million dollars. As of this writing, all the funds are still in in the US government’s control pending the outcome of lawsuit filed against e-gold’s parent company. [19] However, e-gold and its subsidiary Omnipay maintain business.

In 2006 The United States Mint issued a press release stating that circulating Liberty Dollars is a federal crime. The press release implies that Liberty Dollars are deceptively similar to US currency, and that NORFED intends them to be used as legal tender. [20] As of this writing, I am unaware of any case against any persons in the United States for using the Liberty Dollar.

NORFED responded with a civil lawsuit. On March 20, 2007 von NotHaus filed against the US Mint, asking “the court to declare that the use of the Liberty Dollar is not a ‘federal crime,’ as claimed by the U.S. Mint. And the organization further asked the court to enter a permanent injunction against the U.S. Mint requiring it to remove any reference that the use of Liberty Dollars is a federal crime from its website.” [21 As of this writing, the case remains unsettled. But on November 14th, 2007 the situation took another turn: the FBI raided Liberty Dollar on charges of circulating illegal currency, mail fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. The affidavit also described Liberty Dollar as a "multi-level marketing scheme."  [22]

Von NotHaus has described the raid as “a direct assault against the US Constitution and your right to own and use gold and silver in any way you chose” and dismissed the mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering charges as fantasy. [23]

Pay Pal, eventually burdened with legal problems, banned the use of PayPal for gambling, pornography, and several other uses in 2004. [24]

Conclusion

It is important to note that e-gold and NORFED may well be guilty of the crimes it has been charged with.  It remains to be seen how they will come out in court. NORFED and e-gold have many competitors, so the international, gold back internet currency business continues. However, the struggles of these companies, and the fact that they are being held liable for what their customers use their services for, is illustrative of the control the US government exerts over currency. If the Federal Reserve were held accountable every time legal tender were used in criminal transactions, surely the Fed would have been shut down by now. Why are companies like e-gold held to a different standard? Why are they asked to act as de facto law enforcement?

And all of this raises the question: why is there such a demand for alternative currencies? Shouldn’t the state be spending its time trying to correct the problems the Fed (or shutting it down), instead of trying to shut down those who are trying to solve problems the government is not?

References:
1. ushistory.org “Currency Act,”  http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/related/currencyact.htm Retrieved 10/30/07.
2. u-s-history.com “Currency Act,”  http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1212.html Retrieved 10/30/07.
3. Cooper, Peter. “Ideas for a Science of Good Government,”  http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1212.html Retrieved 10/30/07.
4. Meeker-Lowry, Susan. “The Potential of Local Currency,”  Z Magazine, July 1995. http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/july95lowry.htm Retrieved 10/30/07.
5. Wikipedia. “Local Exchange Trading System,”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Exchange_Trading_System Retrieved 10/30/07.
6. Ballvé, Marcello. “Silent Revolution,”  Orion Magazine, July 2006. http://thetake.org/media/The%20Silent%20Revolution.pdf Retrieved 10/30/07.
7. Katel, Peter. “Argentina: the Post Money Economy,”  Time, February 2002. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,199474,00.html Retrieved 10/30/07.
8. DeMeulenaere, Stephen. “Reinventing the Market: Alternative Currencies and Community Development in Argentina,”  International Journal of Community Currency Research, 2000. http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/ijccr/pdfs/IJCCR%20Vol%204%20(2000)%203%20DeMeulenaere.pdf Retrieved 10/30/07.
9. Greaves, Bettina Bien. “Market Money and Free Banking,”  The Freeman, October 1999. http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=4946 Retrieved 10/30/07.
10. Bodow, Steve. “The Money Shot,”  Wired, September 2001. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.09/paypal_pr.html Retrieved 10/30/07.
11. Ludwig von Mises Institute. “The Case for Gold.”  http://www.mises.org/store/Case-for-Gold-The-P386C0.aspx?AFID=1 Retrieved 10/30/07.
12. Greenspan, Alan. “Gold and Economic Freedom.”  The Objectivist, 1966. http://www.321gold.com/fed/greenspan/1966.html Retrieved 10/30/07.
13. Dibbell, Julien. Wired, January 2002. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.01/egold.html Retrieved 10/30/07.
14. Orzano, Michele. Coin World Magazine, October 1998. http://www.libertydollar.org/news-stories/pdfs/1164902714.pdf Retrieved 10/30/07.
15. Liberty Dollar web site. “Regional Currency Office.”  http://www.libertydollar.org/ld/rco/index.htm Retrieved 10/30/07.
16. e-dinar web site. “History.”  http://www.e-dinar.com/html/3_4.html Retrieved 10/30/07.
17. Krebs, Brian. washingtonpost.com, “U.S.: Online Payment Network Abetted Fraud, Child Pornography,”  May 2007. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/01/AR2007050101291.html Retrieved 10/30/07.
18. Zetter, Kim. Wired News, “E-Gold Gets Tough on Crime,”  December 2006. http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/12/72278 Retrieved 10/30/07.
19. “US Government Forces E-gold Redemptions – Seizes Gold,”  Money Net News, May 2007. http://www.moneynetnews.com/articles/54/1/US-Government-Forces-E-gold-Redemp Retrieved 10/30/07.
20.US Mint web site. “Liberty Dollars Not Legal Tender, United States Mint Warns Consumers.”  http://www.usmint.gov/pressroom/index.cfm?flash=yes&action=press_release&id=710 Retrieved 10/30/07.
21. Liberty Dollar web site. “Legal Updates.”  http://www.libertydollar.org/ld/legal/updates.htm Retrieved 10/30/07.
22. Taylor, Jeff. Reason Magazine web site,”Your Liberty Dollar Raid Update.”  November 2007. http://www.reason.com/blog/show/123553.html Retrieved 7/24/07.
23. Liberty Dollar web site. “FBI Raid on the Liberty Dollar.”  November 2007. http://www.libertydollar.org/ld/legal/raid.htm Retrieved 7/24/07.
24. Balko, Radley. Reason Magazine,”Who Killed Pay Pal?”  August 2005. http://www.reason.com/news/show/33114.html Retrieved 10/30/07.

from OVO 18 MONEY (April 2008).  Revised for technoccult (November 2008).  Reprinted in Digital Gold Currency Magazine (January 2009).

House of the United States of America:
Warbucks Intra-Family Communique

I know that you don’t like to think this, but we are much like humans. We are subject to the human frailties. We forget. We get slip-shod. We fall short of our disciplines. You have selected me to be the family coordinator and I agreed to be, at least until someone better comes along. So that’s why I’m now reminding you of some of our basic principles for handling slaves.

Our slaves can get bored easily. When bored, they get restless. They start thinking, and questioning order. Therefore it is necessary for us to direct their thinking into areas which keep them dependent on our leadership. We must make them feel dependent on society for all their needs. Make them feel important to the Great Whole to which they belong. Keep them too deep in debt to have any spare time to experiment with principles of self-sufficiency, or even just getting out of hole.

A few of the slaves who refuse to conform are squatting in various places and planting their apple seeds, plum pits, grape seeds, avocado pits, orange seeds, nuts of all kinds and vegetables. They are not using our hybrid seeds. They found organic natural seeds more productive. They are creating Gardens of Eden, with free food, no rent and and acceptance of the Golden Rule instead of Government. So far, only a few of the smarter nonconformists are doing this. This gets them off our case; however, we must not give them any publicity, as it might encourage more our workers to not conform.

The family came up with a great innovation when they first decided to “allow” the peons to “own” land. Ownership gives them roots ties them down and makes it a easier to find them. It also gives us a classification of slave known as landlords. They serve us by forcing people to pay them rent in order to have a space to sleep on this planet. Thus they all work for us for the rest of their lives. We must always make them think that this is normal and that everyone has always had to pay rent and that they always will.

If the slaves deviate from present thought patterns, they might think it strange that they “agree” to work for us for 30 years to buy a place to sleep. They might wonder why some “primitive” people are able to build their homes from the material at hand in a couple of weeks and have no mortgage to pay. They might even find it simpler, more enjoyable and even more adventuresome to walk to where they wish to go instead of working for us to earn money to make perpetual car payments to us, so that they can get to a job to make the money to make their car payments. To say nothing of the car maintenance costs and depreciation. We must constantly entice them to buy. They make much better workers if are always in debt.

If we allow them space to think, they may question the vehicle with which they are killing themselves: 50,800 persons dead and 1,900,000 disabled in 1981 in the United States alone.They may see how machines and their present manufacturing processes are destroying their life-support system. They may see that all the processed junk food we’re selling them is making them sick and costing them more; see that their boring, unsatisfying jobs are driving many of them crazy. They might even discover the simplest unprocessed foods which are cheap and healthful.

As it is recorded in our family archives, one of our forefathers, Galus Julius Caesaer once sald: “Give them breed and circuses, to keep them from rebelling.” It is a simple matter to give them food, but it takes a little more imagination to give them circuses. I guess this is the creative part of being slave masters – to create diversions to keep their gullible little minds busy.

Our Watergate Scandal was a fine circus. It kept them thinking and talking along safe lines for years. We are still getting some mileage out of the Kennedy Assassination and they still aren’t sure whether we shot the real Kennedy, his double or a dummy. We have fine show going on Central America and in the Middle East, some still lingering in Germany, others in Vietnam, the USSR and China.

We may use the recent invasion to start another World War. It will be a challenge to attempt to involve our sheep in another big war, so soon after the last one. However, we may be able to pull it off, to get them angry enough to fight. We wouldn’t need to use the older nuclear bombs, as they could be dangerous to our families’ health. We might use a few of our cleaner H-Bombs. It will be a creative, fun time for us. Wars are truly the sport of kings. They are more fun to stage and run than chess games, or are hum-drum activities of production or politics.

Creating straw men for slaves to knock down is one of our best numbers. We set it up and let them tear it down. It diverts much of their creative energy. We create another excellent diversion by resisting their efforts to tear it down.

We learned long ago that people can think only one thought line at a time. We feed them thoughts and they either fight them or go along with them.

Music has always been an effective tool for setting their moods, their pace and leading their thoughts. While dancing they learn to step to the beat of our drummer and keep the pace we set. This teaches them to obey orders. The drum has always been useful for this. We let them touch each other during the dance. They seem to enjoy touching and they feel successful when they keep in step, so this training process becomes self-perpetuating. It also serves as an excellent distraction.

They must occupy their minds with keeping in step to the beat and with how they are going to entice their partners to deb. If they are constantly bombarded with distractions they will have no time to do any real thinking. They will only be aware of that which we make them aware.

Our closest guarded secret is the fact that slavery still exists in every country on this planet.

Laborers, farmers, traders, professionals, managers, directors and presidents – all take pay, so they must obey our orders. They are not aware of their bondage. Some are vaguely aware of the idea that “big money” runs everything. But they are unable to relate to the idea that they are part of that “everything.”

They think that they are free people, making all their own decisions We allow them to make the unimportant ones. The important ones we cover in their laws, and in their customs and religious and moral codes. We have even trained them to punish their own kind when they do not conform.

We have been masters for a long, long, time. We teach kids how to work, to be submissive and to obey orders. These kids grow up to he good slaves, like their parents. Most of the parents even go so far as to break their own kid’s spirits. So by the time they are of work age, them are docile, gullible and easy to manipulate.

Through all our media, including books, we give them a substitute for living. For example, we encourage them to live vicariously through the exciting adventures of fiction. This puts their fantasy life through an exciting energy drain which seems to satisfy some of their emotional hunger.

This substitute fills one of those spaces in time which they might have used to go out and experience life first-hand. Distractions keep them from discovering the bondage they are in. We must continue to titillate them to want to watch television and movies, to read newspapers, magazines and books to listen to radio and music.

We use the mass media not only for a distraction but also to help create their basic beliefs and expectations. Of course, the schools and churches serve this purpose too, as do popular songs and music. We use the media to create the desire to buy. In this way we motivate them to work for us.

They continue to administer to our needs as they did to Caeser’s and as they did for the priests in the time of the great pyamids. Our ancestors really knew how to handle people! As slaves get more education it takes a little more finesse to keep on top of them; however, it’s basically the same even today. Keep them fearful; fearful of death, fearful of pain, fearful of each other. Always encourage competition: it’s like fighting, separates people and keeps them fearful of losing.

We have made them afraid of death by telling them that they have spirits which live on after their death. If they obey our rules, which we tell them were inspired by God, their spirits will be assured entrance into Heaven or reincarnated into a better existence, depending on which of our religions they have chosen. This makes them afraid to die, because they know they haven’t obeyed all the rules (which we deliberately made too difficult to always be obeyed). If they can be kept afraid they are more easy to manage. Then they look to us for guidance and protection.

Promoting fear of pain is another distraction we have always used. We must not give them time to discover that pain is their body’s method of alerting them to the fact that they are doing something wrong to it. So before they can check out the reason for the pain, we channel them to a doctor who will attempt to numb the pain. The doctor will take up time and money doing so. It creates a great diversion, and debt. Some people talk about their pain constantly. The patients’ pain will usually return (sometimes to a different part of their body) after their cure. Doctors usually don’t remove the cause of pains. This would put them out of business.

We hire some of the slaves to act as police and soldiers so that we can threaten to inflict pain and imprisonment on the others. They literally enforce their own slavery when they take jobs in law enforcement and the military. We keep them too busy and too broke to realize this.

Sports and gambling have always been good spectacle. Sex may rate second place, drugs third. We have achieved a sort mass hypnosis by using movies, TV and music, with which we have been able to implant suggestions and beliefs without their being aware of it.

We may need to give our ecology program front page coverage again soon. It can take up the Slack to hold their attention in case it is untimely to start a war now.

Remember, the Warbucks family has ruled on this planet for six thousand years, so it is our right and destiny to continue doing so. Keep up the good work and if you have any problems, contract Alexandria or Ernest, as I’m taking a little vacation.

- Cleopatra Warbucks

from OVO 11 CONTROL (September 1991)

See also:
OVO 2 (1987)

Wikipedia: Mike Diana

Michael Christopher “Mike” Diana (born 1969) is an underground cartoonist who became the first artist ever to receive a criminal conviction for obscenity in the United States.

In the early 1990s, Mike Diana, a young man from Tallahassee, Florida, began producing the adult comic book Boiled Angel. This amateur comic contained graphic depictions of a variety of taboo and gory subjects, and it was distributed to only a handful of retailers. In 1991, while investigating a Florida murder case, a police officer discovered an issue of Boiled Angel and, desperate for clues, contacted Diana, informed him he was a suspect, and requested a blood sample. The real killer was soon apprehended, and Diana was not pursued. The officer in question, however, collected additional issues of Boiled Angel and sent them to the State’s Attorney’s office where they went on file. Two years later, the Assistant State’s Attorney, Stuart Baggish, came across the books and sent Diana a certified letter that said he was being charged with three counts of obscenity pursuant to Florida Statute § 847.011(1): one for publishing the material, one for distributing it, and one for advertising it. At this point, Diana contacted the non-profit First Amendment organization the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF), which provided him, free of cost, with the services of several prominent defense attorneys and expert witnesses.

Diana was employed as an elementary school janitor at the time of his first notoriety. He had used the school’s copier to reproduce some of his comic books representing crude, graphic drawings of sexual molestation and limb severing. Some of the material was allegedly left there, and Diana was fired.

On June 4, 1996, after a brief trial, Largo, Florida, Circuit Judge Douglas Baird declared the comics Boiled Angel #7 and Boiled Angel #ATE to be obscene, stating that he found them to be “patently offensive,” and that “The evident goal of the appellant’s publication is to portray shocking and graphic pictures of sexual conduct so it will be noticed. If the message is about victimization and that horrible things are happening in our society, as the appellant alleges, the appellant SHOULD HAVE created a vehicle to send his message that was not obscene.” Diana was found guilty on all three counts, and was sentenced to a three-year probation, during which time his residence was subject to inspection to determine if he was in possession of or was creating obscene material. He was to avoid all contact with children under 18, undergo psychological testing, enroll in a journalistic ethics course, pay a $3,000 fine, and perform 1,248 hours of community service. He was also ordered to cease drawing for personal use, and his place of residence was to be open to inspection by the police, without warning or warrant, at any time, for illustrations violating this ruling. He was not sentenced to any jail time, but spent four days in jail between the dates of the verdict and the sentencing.

To fulfill the requirement of undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, Diana was informed that the doctor whom he would see charged $100 an hour, which he would have to pay for himself, and that his evaluation would take two hours. After the evaluation, Diana was informed the session would cost $1,200 because the doctor claimed to have spent 10 hours reading Boiled Angel in preparation. Out of funds, Diana was unable to pay, and the doctor refused to give her evaluation to the court, effectively making him in violation of his probation.

Two appeals to the State Appellate Court failed to have the case reversed or reheard in Florida. During the first appeal process, the prosecution used evidence gathered after the original trial, a move that, according to the CBLDF, is usually considered unethical. The only count of the three under which Diana was convicted that was judged incorrect was the conviction for “advertising obscene material.” The Court agreed that it was improper to convict someone for advertising material that had not yet been created since Diana could not, at the time, know the nature or character of the work. The courts refused to accept an amicus brief submitted by the American Civil Liberties Union, and responded without comment to the second appeal. On June 27, 1997 the United States Supreme Court denied Mike Diana’s petition for a writ of certiorari without comment, effectively ending his legal options in his battle to overturn his conviction.

Diana moved to New York, where he was granted permission to serve out his sentence, and fulfill his community service obligation through volunteer work for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

OVO was one of the handful of publishers that printed Mike’s work before his legal troubles. My only trouble connected to Mike’s work was having OVO removed from the shelves of a magazine store in Knoxville, Tennessee. Mike also contributed original art to OVO 15 SPERM (February 2005).  Compare the style and content of Mike’s work in 1990 with the 2007 television program Superjail [wikipedia][google video].  What Mike paid the price for, Cartoon Network makes the profit from.

Mike Diana
http://www.testicle.com/mikediana.htm

(from OVO 10 MAYHEM July 1991)

Sondra London is a publisher and author.  Her publication history has included original fiction, non-fiction and art by convicted serial killers.  A solicitation letter for OVO 10 MAYHEM received this reply. In this letter, Ms. London makes reference to having dated Gerard John Schaefer in high school. Schaefer went on to become a serial killer, and Ms. London published his book Beyond Killer Fiction. My first book credit was writing the back cover blurb for Beyond Killer Fiction.  Ms. London was also instrumental in my publication of The Dreadlock Recollections by Kerry Wendell Thornley.

“I’d like to know what you mean about supporting serial murder and glorifying crime.  I’m sorry if it appears that the work I publish implies in any way that I condone violence, and if so I must take steps to correct that impression.  If you only knew what pitiful lives these killers live, you’d realize there’s nothing attractive about it, nothing that deserves to be emulated.  The essence of my quest is to make sense out of a tragedy that fate has made a part of my life.  I need to study the whole broad topic of violence and it’s roots in order to bring this research to bear on the man whose tears of rage, frustration and fear have wet my face.  I’m learning to see the world through the tears of a serial killer, and I’m hoping that the original material I have obtained will be used as a significant part of the quest to understand this very dangerous pathology.

“As to your question about why I’m doing what I am, I will close with a reference I hope you will understand.

‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’  Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?  And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, and when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say unto you, as you did unto one of the least of these my bretheren, so you did it unto me.’  Matthew 25:34-40

“Regards,

“Sondra London”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sondra_London
http://www.sondralondon.com/

(from OVO 10 MAYHEM July 1991)

Ginger Hutton was a friend of mine who worked in a used bookstore in Knoxville, Tennessee USA.

OVO: Who buys true crime books?

GH: Everybody, it’s the fastest growing section in the store. A lot of times people will come up with a handful of Harlequin and historical romances and true crime. There are a lot of 40-year-old women who are overweight unhappy-looking housewives who are reading historical romances and true crime, and obviously getting a kick out of both because they keep coming back. It’s mixed as far as male and female but I think women buy more. All ages although again it’s older people mostly.

OVO: Are there people who just get true crime or do most people get the romances as well?

GH: There are people who just get true crime. Most of them are very normal and conservative looking, they don’t look like the kind of people who are taking a book home to study from it. But I have had people come up to the desk and recommend stuff for me. “Oh, if you read that kind of stuff this one’s really good, he does it with an axe.” l’m not sure that they’re distinguishing between fiction and non-fiction. I’m not sure that its real to them. It’s entertainment. And that’s what’s happening with ell these TV shows, America’s Most Wanted, Emergency 911, you watch them go out and rescue people who got hit by cars. Suddenly sick voyeurism is socially acceptable. I’m not sure why that is. Part of it may be that the world is starting to fall apart in more obvious ways. Crime rates are up all over the place, the environment has become so bad that it can’t be ignored, and I think what used to be horrifying to people when compared to all the other problems in their life is not at all horrible. It diverts them. If they can read about a serial killer in Seattle they don’t have to think about the drug dealers in their neighborhood. I think American culture is sick and has been getting sicker for a long time, and is finally reaching a point where it’s not concealed any more. When I started reading true crime it was something you snuck out of the store, like sex books. Now it’s everywhere, there’s no stigma attached. Which you could say is good because its more open but its also an indication of a dangerous trend in American culture.

OVO: When did you start reading true crime books?

GH: I started reading them when I was about 14, reading Reader’s Digest which always condensed the best crimes. I read about Bundy right after he was arrested. It was very scary and very compelling and something you didn’t talk about and something your parents didn’t let you watch on TV. I have always been fascinated with death, and violent death is more interesting than other kinds. That’s why I was attracted to it.

OVO: Why do most people read it?

GH: Most people are afraid of dying and afraid of crime. That’s the big issue now. The government is really pushing that, as if crime is the worst thing we have to worry about, which it’s not. People are afraid and this is a way of confronting their fears or overloading themselves. If you read about something long enough its not shocking or frightening any more. Maybe its a way of desensitizing themselves.

OVO: Do most of the people who buy these books progress to the books with more graphic descriptions and violent deaths?

GH: l don’t know. They tend to buy them buy the bunch, six or eight at a time. People are demanding more graphic true crime books because if you look at the latest ones coming out (I get to see them all at work) the photos are getting more and more graphic. The ones that came out ten years ago had no pictures at all, or if they did they had pictures of the victim and the killer before they were victims and killers. Whereas now you get morgue shots of somebody’s face blown away. People won’t buy them if they have no pictures in them, they’re disappointed. l’m assuming that this trend in publishing is somehow related to demand.

OVO: Have you progressed in your reading, starting with Reader’s Digest, which is rather sanitized, and now you seek out things that are more extreme?

GH: Yes, but I don‘t do it to shook myself. What l do is find something that interests me, a particular serial killer or a particular method, and read everything I can get on that subject. And I prefer that it be more graphic because then you actually know what happened. I don’t like the sanitized version because in the back of my mind it’s still a confrontation with mortality and you have to look it full in the face to get anything out of it. If you’re going to start digging around to find reality then you have to look at the whole thing, and it’s not pleasant, but the less pleasant it gets, at least with crime, the more real and true it is. That’s why I do it, that may be true with other people. Seeing the people who buy it I don’t think it is.

OVO: Does true crime media contribute to a sense of jadedness and to crime?

GH: To jadedness, yes. I doubt that it contributes to crime but it makes crime so common that there’s no horror to crime any more, it’s entertainment. Its creating some disturbing attitudes. Reading about crime and being fascinated by crime is one thing but thinking of crime and murder as entertainment is something entirely different. Most serial killers don’t think of murder as entertaining and it’s disturbing that that’s how its being billed in America, and that’s how people tend to look at it. Its just a TV show with a bad guy and a nice dead person.

OVO: Why do you think it is that most of the people who get these books are women when most of the people described as victims in these books are women?

GH: If you look at it as confrontation with your own mortality then reading about your own sex being killed would be that much more disturbing and that much more of a confrontation. I think part of it is that they like to read about people who kill women, then get caught, then get killed. I think its a way of extending hatred. The way most true crime books are written you can direct all your hatred at this one bad man and you can believe that everything is caused by bad men. In a way you aren’t responsible, and no one else is responsible. They hardly ever dwell on the circumstances that led this bad man to be bad. It’s an outlet that women don’t have. Women don’t generally go out and beat each other up. They don’t have as much of an organized focus for hatred.

OVO: What are things going to be like in ten years?

GH: We can’t even begin to imagine the number of serial killers we’re going to have. It’s been doubling or more every year for years. Ten years ago l think there were six. Last year there were thirty-five known serial killers. These are the ones that we know about. There are people disappearing who are certainly being killed. It’s going to continue to go up because child abuse is on the rise. Our culture has accepted violence as entertainment. Now kids who were going to have problems anyway can sit around every single night and watch people kill each other on TV. In spite of the moralistic tone, TV is like hypnotism, you sit and absorb, and if you’re hearing about this guy who sliced up ten women and this guy who’s wanted for killing his wife and two kids it gets in your mind and becomes acceptable because its just a TV show. I think that will contribute to a lot of murders. I think everybody ought to be doing more reading and preparing themselves.

(from OVO 10 MAYHEM July 1991)

The cypher the Zodiac killer mailed in three parts to three San Fransisco area newspapers was solved within a month of being printed in August 1969. This is not an explanation of how the cypher was solved (that information can be found in Zodiac by Robert Graysmith) but instead how to use it.  This is the only time the means to use the Zodiac cypher has been published. I backwards-engineered the code from the description in Graysmith’s book. Since the letters J, Q and Z were not used in the initial Zodiac cypher, there is no symbol for them in this explanation.

1. Write the source message to be encyphered, using poor spelling occasionally.
2. Replace the letters of the source message with cypher symbols in an ordered rotation. For example, go through the source message until you find the first letter A. Replace the letter A with the first symbol for A. The second time the letter A appears, use the second symbol for A. After you have used all four symbols for the letter A, use the first symbol again. Proceed to the letters B, C, etc.
3. Very neatly copy the encrypted message into seventeen-character lines, omitting all punctuation and spaces. Add letters at the end or at random within the encrypted message to insure each line has seventeen characters. Divide into equal parts as desired.

(from OVO 10 MAYHEM July 1991)

As the pillars of Western culture collapse (replaced by institutionalized alienation) schizophrenia and violence cease to be deviations and instead become survival characteristics. The apocalypse culture has bred a new form of death, the multiple (serial or mass) murderer. Death sports, murder clubs and snuff art may have existed only in fiction or as isolated instances in the past, but accelerated decline in social order coupled with spectacular un-living creates new possibilities for such to flourish and federate. The multiple murderer is an agent from an increasingly inevitable future.

Heralding the multiple murderer is a support system of mayhem fetishists and media. This is not an exposure of deviants but a warning about what is to become as “normal” as any slasher movie, comic book or pornography.

Anyone seeking to understand the roots and effects of modern alienation would do well to study multiple murderers. There is a wealth of information about multiple murder in the mainstream and alternative press that has not been assimilated into an anti-authoritarian critique. This issue is offered as a summation of research into multiple murder from a variety of perspectives, as a contribution to the struggle against the apocalypse culture.

(from OVO 10 MAYHEM July 1991)

Stuart Swezey is co-editor with Brian King of the AMOK Fourth Dispatch, an essential guide to extremes in print. This interview was most kindly granted on the 23 May 1991, after many hours of miscalculation of time-zone differences between Knoxville and Los Angeles. I offer much thanks to Stuart for his patience and interest.

OVO: The next issue of OVO is not about multiple murderers but about people who follow them, either as sociological studies or evil heroes or somewhere in between, especially in print, like the MAYHEM section of the AMOK catalog. ls there an an average type of person who buys the books in that section?

SS: I don’t know. It could be everybody from people who are into it on an industrial music level to people who are Marines. We get so many different types of people its hard to say what the average is. This stuff is getting more and more popular. Every week there is a new TV movie about a murderer. Last Gasp carries true crime stuff and they never used to. So I guess it’s getting trendier than it used to be.

OVO: What about at the store, are a variety of people buying it there?

SS: We had a woman who worked for the coroners office come in when we had the John-Wayne Gacy paintings up. She thought that was pretty neat. I can’t really classify it at all. You should really talk to Brian, because he’s much more into this stuff than me. He’s working on a compilation of work by murderers writing and artwork that we‘re going to be putting out in a year or so.

OVO: Are there more mayhem books coming out now than ten year ago?

SS: There are definitely more of them. We’re not interested in many of them. A lot of them are in the genre of inter-family murders or the mob. Compilations from True Detective magazine and magazines like that. Definitely not good writing or good journalism. A lot of good stuff is coming back into print like the book on Albert Fish called Cannibal. It seems they’re reprinting more of the classic stuff.

OVO: Is this increasing in the small press as well?

SS: Maybe very peripherally. We carry a book called They Called Him Mister Gacy, which we think is put out by his attorney in Illinois, which is basically a photostat compilation of letters to Gacy. There was the Mansonfile book that Amok Press put out. There’s not a lot. I don’t see a lot of small press stuff put out along those lines. But something like Silence of the Lambs has become big business.

OVO: I was thinking of something more like PURE, something tiny and photocopied.

SS: On a Factsheet Five level.

OVO: Right.

SS: We don’t see a lot of that.

OVO: I just put out a few feelers out for that and it’s not stopping. There’s more of it out there than I ever wanted to know about.

SS: So what do you think of this stuff?

OVO: I think its indicative of what Colin Wilson was talking about when he said we’re entering the age of the psychopath. These people feel alienated and more aware than the people around them but they’re making a mistake when they think that these serial killers are “getting things done” and “manifesting their will.” l think they’re confusing random outbursts with a cognitive critique. Things that show up in the small press tend to come out in mainstream later, and I’ve seen so much of this in the small press – and in the mainstream media – that it indicates to me that it’s going to get even more common and acceptable.

SS: I never know but sometimes I feel like this serial killer stuff is going to be almost passé as a cultural thing, a rebellious stance. You better back it up by either killing somebody or cotton to the fact that it’s as trendy as anything else within a year or two. After Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer that’s not going to happen to every movie that comes down the line that deals with this subject mater. They’re not always going to praise what I think was a glorified student film as brilliant. The room for that is going to be gone. That won’t really effect the murderers. We’re really interested in the interplay between culture and the criminals. How Ed Gein could have inspired the Psycho book, which leads to a great film like Psycho, and how these murders do in certain ways have repercussions that are felt by everyone.

OVO: The success of Psycho led to the film Dementia 13, which was blamed for some murders.

SS: There’s a lot of that happening, but what about Catcher in the Rye inspiring Mark David Chapman to kill John Lennon? Who hasn’t read Catcher in the Rye?

OVO: What do you think the effects are of the increased accessibility of true crime books and other books formerly considered too graphic and horrendous to be read as entertainment?

SS: I think its pretty reasonable. I don’t think its necessarily unhealthy. People are fascinated with violence and to a certain extent the books are slanted in a way that something like PURE isn’t, in that they’re very moralistic. Cops are glorified, cops solve the crime, there are a lot of things the writers do to distance themselves and the reader from the murderer. People like the reassurance of that, that they didn’t do it. It gives them this titillation and a raw experience even if it is once removed. Kind of an “I can take it” thing. I think its weird that it’s cropping up at the same time as we‘re blowing up whole populations like in Iraq and you don’t even see it. I think that that’s a strange state of affairs that people are going out of their way to find this graphic violence and yet we’re not allowed to see as a national policy the kind of havoc that we wreak.

OVO: Do you think there are any trends that can be used to spot what kinds of books and magazines are going to come out in the future on this topic?

SS: Obviously there are some murderers that haven’t been completely covered. It took so long for a book to come out on Richard Ramírez. I think the idea of looking at the actual artwork and writing of these murderers as we’ll be publishing in Lustmord, that’s what a lot of these supposed experts have that you and I as individuals don’t have access to. It’s going to be an interesting twist to give people these actual crazed writings, to look at them as art brut, I think a lot of people will respond to looking through an alien mind in terms of their writing. Sometimes it’s insightful and sometimes it isn‘t but that‘s all you have to go on because no matter how many of these fanzines come along or how much violent fiction is sold the average person can’t even begin to understand the psychopath. This is just an attempt to try on people’s part, whether they do it in a sarcastic way or idealistic way or moralistic cop-loving way, it still shows the vast chasm between someone who can perform these kinds of things and someone who can’t.

OVO: Somebody who can buy a magazine about it.

SS: Right, and that’s all they’re doing. Violence is at the root of so much literature… Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, some violent act usually occurs. Somebody gets murdered in most of our supposedly great works, so there’s got to be something in this catharsis that we need as a culture. I find true crime is more informative than fiction but that doesn’t mean you have to identify with these people. It’s more tragic. If people enjoy that its not necessarily bad at all. It is mind boggling the extremes a human being can go to.

OVO: And survive.

SS: And justify to themselves in some bizarre manner.

I’ve been compiling photos from forensic journals for the AMOK Journal that I’m working on. I want to use them in the form that they’re found. I stayed away from murders to cover other terrains of really graphic bizarre shit like auto-erotic fatalities and things about amputation and self-mutilation, things people do to themselves. I find that is more disturbing for people to look at and talk about than murder for some reason. l’m very intrigued with what Ballard called the hidden literature of medical and psychiatric journals. There are great stories in there that will never see the light of day in an actual book. That’s why you get to the point of collecting medical books. We used to sell a lot of copies of The Color Atlas of Forensic Pathology, considering it’s a $70 book. Some do want to see more and more and more but I don’t know that the average true crime reader does. We just got a promo from a publisher about a murderer who was picking up Marines in Orange County and murdering them. In the book they used actual police forensic photos and I don’t remember seeing that in a regular true crime book before. You can’t get much more graphic than that. I don’t even begin to project where things are going. I just see things peek at some point, then people are saturated and they look for something else. A lot of people who are heavily committed to this will back off and say they weren’t really into it.

AMOK Books
1764 N. Vermont Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
United States

Fax: 323-550-8833

http://www.amokbooks.com/

(from OVO 10 MAYHEM July 1991)

American Renaissance: About American Renaissance (31 January 2011)

American Renaissance is a monthly magazine that has been published since 1991. It has been called “a literate, undeceived journal of race, immigration and the decline of civility.” We consider it America’s premiere publication of racial-realist thought [...] Race is an important aspect of individual and group identity. Of all the fault lines that divide society – language, religion, class, ideology – it is the most prominent and divisive. Race and racial conflict are at the heart of the most serious challenges the Western World faces in the 21st century. The problems of race cannot be solved without adequate understanding. Attempts to gloss over the significance of race or even to deny its reality only make problems worse. Progress requires the study of all aspects of race, whether historical, cultural, or biological. This approach is known as race realism.

Southern Poverty Law Center: Intelligence Report, Summer 2006, Issue Number 122 (2006)

American Renaissance, based in [editor Jared] Taylor’s home in Oakton, Va., also publishes frequent articles on the discredited field of eugenics – selective breeding to improve human genetic stock. The foundation has hosted biannual conferences since 1994, and its website, featuring stories on black crime and the like, recently rose to one of the top 20,000 in the world after a makeover. In recent years, Taylor has added several budding racist intellectuals to his staff, including Ian Jobling, the website editor and E-list moderator, and Stephen Webster, assistant editor of American Renaissance. Even before he started the New Century Foundation, Taylor wrote on race, penning a 1992 book, Paved With Good Intentions, that argued because sterilizing welfare mothers would not be publicly accepted, authorities should instead provide such women with “five-year implantable contraceptives.”

Wikipedia: American Renaissance (Magazine) (31 January 2011)

American Renaissance is a monthly racialist magazine published by the New Century Foundation. The magazine and foundation were founded by Jared Taylor, and the first issue was published in November 1990. A main theme of the magazine is a claim that non-white minorities pose a demographic threat to the United States and other Western nations. The magazine argues that the United States’ major social problems are due to racial diversity and a weakening of the country’s white racial heritage by increased non-white immigration.

Charlotte Observer: White Nationalists’ Conference Stymied (26 January 2011)

When a white nationalist magazine announced a conference in Charlotte, anarchists and other groups vowed to protest or disrupt the gathering. But behind the scenes the conference apparently met an unexpected obstacle: Charlotte City Council member Patrick Cannon. On Wednesday, American Renaissance magazine said plans for its annual conference are now in limbo because the hotel where it was scheduled to take place canceled the reservation. An e-mail Cannon sent to a constituent early this week suggested he was lobbying local hotels to refuse to book American Renaissance. Cannon wrote that he had contacted hotels and that “they seem to be cooperating. An attempt was made for accommodations at another hotel but based on what I ask to take place they were denied again,” the e-mail said.

The Jewish Defense Organization: Death to Nazi Scum! (31 January 2011)

Charlotte City Councilman Warren Turner, Charlotte City Councilman Patrick Cannon and the NAACP plus other anti-racist groups have had the meeting of the American Renaissance Party cancelled. Councilman Turner sent out an email to all of the hotels in Charlotte informing them to alert the police if AmRen booked space with them. Councilman Cannon also advised these hotels to be in compliance with the law. When the Airport Sheraton Hotel checked its convention bookings it found that AmRen had booked under a different name for the dates in question. The Sheraton returned the deposit that the Shockleyite scum had put down to reserve the meeting room where the Nazi meeting was to be held. JDO is warning other hotels in the area to be on the lookout for anyone who tries to book for the same dates. JDO believes preaching racial inferiority can lead to lynchings, cross burnings and murder and mayhem.

The American Independent: White Supremacist Group American Renaissance Forced to Move Location of Annual Conference in Charlotte (26 January 2011)

Rev. William J. Barber II, president of the North Carolina NAACP, said of the planned visit to Charlotte by American Renaissance, “Racial hatred, and those who promote racial animosity, has no place in our American society. Certainly people have a First Amendment right to have their views, but we think people should stand up. We stand opposed to any groups that promote white supremacy.”

One People’s Project: Here We Go Again! (27 January 2011)

This time, it wasn’t us who mounted the campaign against AmRen. Sure, we were the ones who alerted the Southern Anti-Racism Network, who took the lead in opposing the 2011 American Renaissance Conference, which was slated to take place Feb. 4-6 in Charlotte, NC. And yes, we have been meeting and planning for our opposition since November (we were actually in one of those meetings when news of the Tuscon shooting broke – which Fox News tried to connect to AmRen). And yes, our plans are still going forward at this time, even though AmRen’s plans seem to be meeting the same fate as in DC last year – squashed. Nothing is etched in stone, however. Jared Taylor & Co. have not officially announced a cancellation (probably trying to see if a TGI Fridays would hook them up with a back room or something), so we are still waiting to see what comes of this. But while we sounded the initial alarm, this was all due to the efforts of the community saying no to Taylor and his New Century Foundation. It is now being reported by local press that the hotel that Taylor tried to keep under wraps had been discovered, the hotel bounced them out, and other hotels won’t accomidate [sic] him! And before you say it, everyone who opposes AmRen has freedom of speech and association too. People had a right to alert area hotels that this was going to take place and they might not want to have this going on. Hotels have the right to close their doors to unwelcome elements. And we have the right to say that it doesn’t matter where AmRen goes. We will always be there to sound the alarm.

American Renaissance: An Appeal to the City of Charlotte and to Mayor Pro-tem Patrick Cannon (31 January 2011)

On July 29, 2010, New Century Foundation signed a contract with the Sheraton Charlotte Airport Hotel to host the biennial American Renaissance (AR) conference. (New Century Foundation is the non-profit organization that publishes the monthly magazine, American Renaissance.) We explained to the Sheraton that many people think the ideas discussed in AR are controversial. We explained that in 2010 a hotel that had agreed to host our conference came under pressure and broke its contract with us. The Sheraton agreed that it was therefore important to keep the location of the conference confidential. Our contacts said they understood what was at stake and that they believed in free speech. On January 25, the Sheraton sent us a one-line e-mail message saying that because of “recent disclosures as to the nature of your event” they were breaking their contract. Since then, they refuse to speak to us. The pretence that it did not know what might be discussed at an AR conference is a pathetic, embarrassing lie. Perhaps what the Sheraton actually found out was that Patrick Cannon, Mayor Pro-tem of the city of Charlotte, does not want AR to come to Charlotte. In an e-mail message to a constituent he wrote: “I have all hotels, motels, and gotels [sic] on notice and they seem to be cooperating well still.” The date of this e-mail was January 25, the very day the Sheraton canceled its contract. We can only imagine that the Sheraton must have come under very heavy pressure to walk away from tens of thousands of dollars in revenues – 100 hotel rooms for two nights, a formal banquet, bar and meal tabs – and to subject itself to a five-figure cancellation fee. [...] At an AR conference, middle-aged men in suits give speeches to other middle-aged men in suits. We have nothing to hide. Our speeches are videotaped and made available on our website, amren.com. If our ideas are hopelessly wrong, they should be easy to refute. They should be a threat to no one. Why is Charlotte in a panic about this conference? It is because we disagree with certain prevailing views and we have the courage of our convictions. Your city is not even attempting to understand our views, much less debate them. You are trying to silence us and drive us away. Are your citizens proud of what you are doing? In an era that claims to value “tolerance and diversity,” why do you have no tolerance for the most precious kind of diversity of all: the diversity of ideas? [...] We think better of Charlotte than this. We call on Patrick Cannon and Warren Turner to consider how their actions soil the reputation of their city. We believe they should support free speech. We believe they should take a stand for genuine tolerance of a genuine diversity of ideas. We call on them to issue an apology to American Renaissance and to make a city-owned property available to us to rent for our conference. It is still not too late to encourage the qualities that made America great, not the totalitarian impulses that Americans – at least traditionally – have always despised.

Articles continue at links.  You know, it was only a few decades ago when I was the anarchist tearing down posters of groups I didn’t like from telephone poles.  I made collage art (that’ll learn ‘em!) from the posters I tore down.  And I was the anarchist preventing groups I didn’t like from marching in the streets.  I thought of myself as a champion of freedom and as a protector of the people.  But I wasn’t.  I was (very, very slightly) lessening the amount of freedom in the world.  If such a thing as “the people” exist, I did nothing to protect them.  Protecting people from ideas is not something I advocate today, although I confess I did decades ago.  I was (albeit with nearly no effect) close to the opposite of the person I thought I was.  And so today I take some pains to do penance.  I advocate freedom of thought and speech and assembly and association.  And I try to advocate these freedoms for those I disagree with with as much rigor as I advocate these freedoms for those who think like me.  Not as a natural right or as an American or as a Western man, but out of basic civility.  Don’t want to go?  Keep away.  Want to air your differences?  I’m guessing Mr. Taylor would be happy to debate you.  Vigorous protest are entirely appropriate, for or against the Sheraton Charlotte Airport Hotel and for or against American Renaissance, if you have some vigor in you.  Boycott or bankroll any group you see fit.  But don’t do like I did decades ago and be the bully you think you’re beating.

Today (25 November) was a special day in the life of Yukio Mishima.  And it happens that today is also the US holiday of Thanksgiving.

No higher honour could have come to me than to have been permitted to partake of his stewed chicken.  Every morning, with profound gratitude in my heart, I ate the gizzard and the tough parts of the liver.  He ate only the soft parts, and I ate the rest. – Mishima, Five Modern Noh Plays

May you have gratitude in your heart as you eat the gizzard and the tough parts of the liver.

OVO triumphus for Yukio Mishima for 2009.
OVO triumphus for Yukio Mishima for 2008.

Amnesty International has made its name as a champion of free speech, campaigning on behalf of prisoners who have spoken out against oppressive regimes around the world. But when it comes to speaking up about the organisation itself … well, that seems to be a different story.

Last week [February 2010] Gita Sahgal, a highly respected lifelong human rights activist and head of Amnesty’s gender unit, told The Sunday Times of her concerns about Amnesty’s relationship with Cageprisoners, an organisation headed by Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo internee.

Since his release in 2005, Begg has spoken alongside Amnesty at a number of events and accompanied the organisation to a meeting at Downing Street last month. Sahgal felt the closeness of the relationship between Amnesty and Cageprisoners — which appears to give succour to those who believe in global jihad — was a threat to Amnesty’s integrity. “To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment,” she wrote to Amnesty’s leaders following the Downing Street visit.

Feeling her concerns were not being addressed, she decided to go public. Hours after our story appeared she was suspended. Sahgal’s phone started ringing off the hook with news organisations seeking interviews. The story also lit up the blogosphere, partly because of Amnesty’s importance — it has some 2.8m members and a raft of glamorous supporters — but also because what Sahgal was talking about touched that raw nerve, the naivety of white middle-class liberals in dealing with Islamic radicals.

To say the past week has been a difficult one for Sahgal would be an understatement. She fears for her own and her family’s safety. She has — temporarily at least — lost her job and found it almost impossible to find anyone to represent her in any potential employment case. She rang round the human rights lawyers she knows, all of whom have declined to help citing a conflict of interest. “Although it is said that we must defend everybody no matter what they’ve done, it appears that if you’re a secular, atheist, Asian British woman, you don’t deserve a defence from our civil right firms,” she says wryly.

So no one in the human rights world wants to cross swords with Amnesty: that’s no surprise and least of all to Sahgal. “I know the nature of what I’m up against,” she says. “I didn’t do what I did lightly.” [...]

If the men incarcerated in Guantanamo were white fascists, she says, “I hope we would defend them. We would have to defend them — but we wouldn’t necessarily put them on 50 or 100 platforms after that”.

Article continues.

I place small value in knowing a person by the company they keep. Using myself as an example, what could you learn about me by way of my facebook friends? There you will find many men and women who have only myself in common. Were they ever to meet, they would surely wonder about the wretched company I keep. They are Christians and atheists, occultists and skeptics, anarchists and fascists, regular folks and weird artists, feminists and anti-feminists, gainfully-employed and work-free, family-types and libertines, and perhaps even yourself. I will gladly call all of them friend and count myself fortunate for being able to do so. It is also the case that (with luck and effort) people grow and change, old beliefs and identities no longer apply, and (with luck and effort) we can be forgiven for past mistakes. I certainly appreciate when I have been forgiven for my past mistakes, of which there are a few. When Ms. Sahgal questions Amnesty International for the company they keep, I can see some merit in the question but not much. I hope that Mr. Begg has turned the corner and abandoned the more loathsome aspects of Islam, and am willing to give him a chance to demonstrate this is true.

When Ms. Sahgal hopes that Amnesty International would defend white fascists as well as Muslims, she expresses a hope that was closed off years ago. Since February 2006, Amnesty International has adopted the policy that ‘freedom of speech carries responsibility for all.’ In September 2005 the newspaper Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoons depicting Muhammad in rejection of the self-censorship the editors saw among publishers afraid of Muslims. Muslims around the world protested in exactly the way they did not protest against 9/11. As quiet as the Muslim world was after 9/11 in which thousands were murdered, they rioted after the publication of twelve cartoons. Hundreds died and great economic damage through arson was done. Rather than commit itself to freedom of speech and the separation of state and superstition, Amnesty International gave the rioting Muslims what they wanted: submission.

Events of recent weeks have highlighted the difficult question of what should be the legitimate scope of freedom of expression in culturally diverse societies. [...] Newspaper editors have justified the publication of cartoons that many Muslims have regarded as insulting, arguing that freedom of artistic expression and critique of opinions and beliefs are essential in a pluralist and democratic society. On the other hand, Muslims in numerous countries have found the cartoons to be deeply offensive to their religious beliefs and an abuse of freedom of speech. In a number of cases, protests against the cartoons have degenerated into acts of physical violence, while public statements by some protestors and community leaders have been seen as fanning the flames of hostility and violence. [...]

The right to freedom of expression is not absolute — neither for the creators of material nor their critics. It carries responsibilities and it may, therefore, be subject to restrictions in the name of safeguarding the rights of others. In particular, any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence cannot be considered legitimate exercise of freedom of expression. Under international standards, such “hate speech” should be prohibited by law.

There’s the universal human right of free speech, and then there’s the publication of twelve cartoons in a newspaper. Don’t confuse the two.

Hate speech laws are a funny thing when it comes to religion. The United Kingdom’s Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 is an example. According to this Act, an offence has occurred if “a person who uses threatening words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening if he intends thereby to stir up religious hatred.” But if the “hate speech” is interpreted in the light of the Human Rights Act 1998, which guarantees freedom of religion and expression, then no offence has occurred. Consider the Criminal Code of Canada. It prohibits ‘any writing, sign or visible representation that advocates or promotes genocide [against] any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.’ But if the “hate speech” is made ‘to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text’ then the “hate speech” is exempt.

That’s right: religion is exempt from laws protecting religion, and “hate speech” done in the name of religion is allowed while “hate speech” critical of or outside religion is forbidden. This exemption is necessary to preserve and protect the “hate speech” found in the Bible and the Quran. This exemption suggests “hate speech” laws exist to protect religion from criticism, not combat genocide or uphold the universal human right to Not Have Your Feelings Hurt.

I was a member of Amnesty International for many years. I paid annual dues and held fund-raising events. I supported AI because I support freedom of speech. I support the immediate and unconditional release of all prisoners of conscious. AI began as a support system for prisoners of conscious, and some measure of that mission remains in place. But over time, AI has abandoned the success found in doing one simple thing very well in favor of doing a number of exciting things poorly. A few years ago the board of AI was populated by a group that supported adding “economic, social and cultural rights” to the mission of the organization. I will not argue the merits or demerits of these claims here, nor the merits or demerits of AI having a ‘gender unit’ (of which Ms. Saghal was a leader). I will say that advocacy of economic, social and cultural rights are adequately addressed by other organizations and by many millions of individuals. I wrote AI saying that these new goals were at odds with being able to offer support to some prisoners of conscious. I was told that I could get my donated money back but that the decision had been made by a vote to adopt these goals. I replied that the same vote that brought about these changes might bring other changes later on – but apparently not, as I got no reply, AI continues to list left, and with the support of “hate speech” laws AI has abandoned its original mission of supporting prisoners of conscious.

I’m not a believer in natural rights, but I do support laws respecting freedom of speech. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to be mistaken, the freedom to offend, the freedom to criticize, the freedom to inquire. Let Mr. Begg speak, and just as much let Jyllands-Posten publish. I do not claim Ms. Sahgal has been censored, as Amnesty International is not a government organization and did not use the force of law to enforce its way.

All that having been said, Amnesty International has erred by dismissing Ms. Sahgal. Any effort to defend freedom of speech must include a sound criticism of Islam and a record of its crimes. Ms. Sahgal touched the raw nerve, the naivety of white middle-class liberals in dealing with Islamic radicals. For that, she was dismissed from Amnesty International. I still get requests for money from AI. I consider bleeding them of the postage and printing it takes for them to send me these requests to be a small protest against what AI has become.

One of the great misfortunes of men who do not like democracy is surely that Hitler began his political action with nine comrades in the basement of a beer hall. Too many excellent young men have concluded that with a half-dozen pals and a mimeograph machine they were also going to seize power. Clarence, in spite of his excess enthusiasm as a neophyte, was a courageous and estimable young man. He had dared to sacrifice his career and, his comfort in order to protest violently against the Nuremberg trial, an indignation which was unwise at that time. He gave himself over entirely, without money, without support, to a difficult and hopeless apostolate. One does not meet very often men of that stamp. Why is it necessary that nearly all of them have in themselves a predisposition to a jealous and implacable despotism? I have known, after Clarence, very many “fascists,” for the race is not dead. Some of them had boots, they were familiar with the runes, and they camped out on the night of the solstice in order to sing under the stars the beautiful solemn songs of their ancestors. The others did not have boots, they held up their skinny reformers’ heads severely, they wore glasses, they collected cards, and they made furious speeches. All were poor, they believed, they fought, they detested lying and injustice.

quoted in Dreamer of the Day by Kevin Coogan.