Mea Culpa: I edited a post

UPDATE: Mea culpa edit time. I stand by this analysis as written about Jim Carrey’s art, however I edited this post on 9/20/2018 to remove a persuasive passage in the conclusion which included what might be construed as advocacy for the deceased Cathriona White; Jim Carrey’s lover who apparently killed herself by drug overdose in 2015 after alleging Carrey had introduced her to sexually transmitted diseases, drug abuse, and mental abuse. She died from a combination of medications which had been prescribed to a fake name used by Carrey, but which Carrey alleged had been stolen from him. The removed passage from the blog was taken from the context of the below text as allegedly exchanged between White and Carrey in 2013.

I was inclined at first to totally believe her claims. However, Carrey’s lawyers were able to get a civil suit dismissed which had been brought by the decedent’s legal husband as represented by so-called “Nostradamus of the legal scene” Michael Avenatti after demonstrating that medical records which showed evidence of sexual disease had likely been faked.

But what is perhaps most concerning to me in regards to this is what is apparently Ms. White’s long-term connections to Scientology, which apparently existed prior to her coming to the US in 2009. At the same time, Carrey had allegedly been a target of Scientology recruitment since 2001 (an association which Michael Avenatti himself has had to brush off on multiple occasions from a client and jurisprudence perspective due to the association with the Cathriona White civil lawsuit as brought by her Scientologist husband Mark Burton). At the time of her death, there was photographic evidence that White was going through the so-called Scientology ‘SRD (Survival Run Down). Continue reading “Mea Culpa: I edited a post”

Baba Yaga the ‘Bony Leg(s)’ Russian Witch

As a kid, I read the book “Bony Legs” but did not pay much attention to it being based on the Russian witch archetype ‘Baba Yaga’ (I didn’t know it was a banned book either!!!). Baba Yaga literally means ‘Grandma bony legs’.

Baba Yaga may have parallels with pre-18th century feminist paganisms and she is noted as a dualistic figure who vacillates between good and evil. She is clearly an important figure in Russian folklore too from the 18th century onward; although it is unclear how much of that perspective was informed by prior mythical beliefs. The above link which seems like a credible book review of a history of Baba Yaga points out her interoperability with other witches in such tales.  

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Was Russia a Factor Behind the Boxer Rebellion?

I continue my research into “MMA culture and propaganda”, now being built out in a working paper entitled “In Submission to Male Nationalist Identities: MMA’s War of the Worlds“. It is turning into a bigger project than I anticipated. In the process of my research, I have come across very interesting observations which fit the contours of my emergent theory on Russian propaganda — not the least of which is that the original name for UFC was actually going to be “War of the Worlds“! But today I want to talk about the Boxer Rebellion.

Before it was renamed the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the promoters branded it “War of the Worlds”. (This may complement the anti-fascist subtext of many of John Milius’ scripts.)

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Words on Words: Vaclav Havel

Editorial: One of the names I considered for this blog was ‘wordswords(com)’ – which could be read as both ‘word swords’ and ‘words words’ (it wasn’t available and I am ultimately glad). As the below 1989 speech by Vaclav Havel shows, words can be dangerous, and they can also be redeeming. We need to be careful about the words we believe, and the words we use. We need to be careful how they can be used or changed in ways they are not intended to. I have always felt I have been very careful about how I choose words – despite my sometimes dyslexic tendencies towards syntax and grammar. That said, I am somewhat like a bull in a Chinese propaganda shop so we’ll see how that turns out. 

The following speech is one of the best ‘sermons’ I have ever read and is filled with many relevant quotes for our age (some of the best I’ll highlight to ease visual scanning). I generally like to use my exclusively own opinion to avoid bias, but to be honest I have come to so many of the same conclusions independently of Havel from a moralistic standpoint (if not a historical one — since I am not fully educated on all of the matters of history which he references) that I have few if any reservations about putting his opinion forth as representative of my own. (This appeared originally in the NY Review of Books.)

Československo / Praha – Pankrác / věznice: Václav Havel 1979

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Today’s Google Doodle: Sergei Eisenstein

Today’s Google Doodle is about the 120th Birthday of Sergei Eisenstein.

(c) Google

Sergei Eisenstein was an early-Soviet propagandist who is perhaps best noted for his trilogy of films: “The Strike“, “The Battleship Potemkin“, and “October” (“Ten Days that Shook the World“) about the 1917 Russian October Revolution. Eisenstein is a notable character for the n01r blog since he was set to direct an anti-fascist version of “The War of the Worlds” in the early 1930’s before he left the US to complete the pro-Communist propaganda film “Que Viva Mexico“. He was a strong career influence on both Francis Ford Coppola and Orson Welles.

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The new Newsweek’s first cover story in March 2014: Bitcoin

With all the talk about Korean market forces being a driving force behind the bitcoin, it is worth revisiting the origins of modern Newsweek. It is a potential conspiracy that interests me a lot. Is it interesting that when Newsweek returned to print in March 2014, that the first cover story was about bitcoin, then trading close to $500?

At the time, at least one Reddit user joked (?) this meant that David Jang (‘David’ Jang Jae-Hyung), a long-controversial “Christian” figure connected to the ownership of the ‘new’ Newsweek was actually bitcoin mastermind Satoshi Nakamoto.

March 2014 is obviously an important milestone in ‘Hybrid Warfare History’, and I have already connected bitcoin to Russian propaganda/intelligence. It bears worth asking if we can ‘mine’ for a connection.

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I guess Julian Assange can speak Spanish

Julian Assange has been granted Ecuadorean citizenship. I’ve often wondered if Julian Assange was the secret author of the 2001-era Sir Cam worm. Known as ‘the worm that spreads secrets‘ it came out in June 2001 and targeted the Government of Ukraine and the FBI. At the time, Assange was a pioneer in computer worms, and suspected in involvement in the 1989 WANK worm that attacked NASA’s Galileo mission. By 2001, Assange had already started WikiLeaks like platforms (leaks.org).

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Bitcoin is Video Game Money

One of the reasons I don’t invest time in money-generating side quests in video games is that the money isn’t real. Who cares if you have a million Gil, GP, ‘gold’, etc. but you drive a Hyundai Accent in real life?  (No offense intended —  I am so cheap I used to drive one by choice.) In one way, this is how the value of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies look to me.

Their hyper valuations seem to be based on nothing more than the collective imagination of a bunch of game players hunched in front of their computer screens, having traded World of Warcraft quests for hashing programs. In addition, cryptocurrencies are mined using graphics cards, and this is quite literally where they become “video game money”.

Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball for the Super Nintendo (1994) represents the era of the ‘baseball card bubble’ and is a useful ‘metaphor’ for the case for cryptocurrencies as ‘video game money’.

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A Political Model of Conspiracy Theory Serving a ‘Russian Perspective’

Here’s a little model I whipped up based on my recent findings on post-9/11 conspiracism. I would encourage you to read Ilya Yablokov’s paper: Conspiracy Theories as a Russian Public Diplomacy Tool: The Case of Russia Today (RT) for a greater understanding of how conspiracy theory can be used as an information weapon. Remember, some conspiracy theories ARE state-created.

This model isn’t implying all conspiracies are wrong, bad, or ‘delusional’. Some are real. Certainly, I think being opposed to white power movements is net a ‘good’ thing. But I am asserting that those kinds of beliefs in opposition to populist anti-minority conspiracism may form the basis for mutual counter conspiracism and social conflict/discord which can be cultivated in Russia’s political interest (for example, what happened in Charlottesville).

Also, I propose that the basis for conspiracism seems to be opposition to something which is different or perceived as hostile to the group who theorizes a conspiracy exists. Thus, conspiracy theories may be almost defined by what they are against (‘anti-everything’) — rather than being ‘for’ anything.

Download it as a PDF hereModel of Russian Conspiracism