William S Burroughs, Al-Hashishin and the GWOT

by **ce399** » Fri Nov 25, 2005 4:12 pm

The Secret Order of Al-Hashishin (Part One) Top Secret - Classified - For The Board - The Elite - The Initiates - Are these the words of the all-powerful boards and syndicates of the earth? These are the words of liars cowards collaborators traitors. Liars who want time for more lies, Cowards who can not face your "dogs" your "gooks" your "errand boys" your "human animals" with the truth, Collaborators with Insect People with Vegetable People. With any people anywhere who offer you a body forever. To shit forever. For this you have sold out your sons. Sold the ground from unborn feet forever. Traitors to all souls everywhere.You want the name of Hassan i Sabbah on your filth deeds to sell out the unborn? What scared you all into time? Into body? Into shit? I will tell you; "the word." Alien Word "the." "The" word of Alien Enemy imprisons "thee" in Time, In Body. In Shit. Prisoner, come out. The great skies are open, I Hassan i Sabbah rub out the word forever. If you I cancel all your words forever.  --William S. Burroughs, Nova Express (1964) The Hashshashin (also Hashishin, [haššāšīn]), or Assassins were a religious sect (often refered to as a cult) of Ismaili Muslims from the Nizari sub-sect with a militant basis, thought to be active in the 8th to 14th centuries as a mystic secret society specializing in terrorising the Abbasid elite with fearlessly executed, politically motivated assassinations (the word "assassin" is generally thought to derive from their name). Their own name for the sect was al-da'wa al-jadīda which means the new doctrine and they called themselves fedayeen from the Arabic fidā'ī which means one who is ready to sacrifice their life for a cause — that term has the modern connotation of "freedom fighter". The name Hashshashin was given to them by their Muslim enemies. Their Muslim contemporaries were extremely suspicious of them; in fact they were described in terms (Batini) which suggested they were only nominally Islamic. This constant religious estrangement would eventually see them go so far as allying with the Occidental Christians against Muslims on a number of occasions. It is even suggested that they attempted to negotiate their own conversion to Christianity with Amalric I of Jerusalem, but were foiled by Templar machinations, perhaps on the basis that this would exempt them from onerous taxes on non-Christians in the Holy Lands, which were profitable for the knightly orders. Plainly, their connection to mainstream Islam was tangential at best. The group transformed the act of murder into a system directed largely against Seljuk Muslim rulers that had been persecuting their sect. They were meticulous in killing the targeted individual, seeking to do so without any additional casualties and innocent loss of life, although they were careful to cultivate their terrifying reputation by slaying their victims in public, often in mosques. Typically they approached using a disguise; their weapon of choice a dagger, rejecting poison, bows and other weapons that allowed the attacker to escape. However, under no circumstances did they commit suicide, preferring to be killed by their captors. [...] Although apparently known as early as the 8th century, the foundation of the Assassins is usually marked as 1090 when Hasan-i Sabbah established his stronghold in the mountains south of the Caspian Sea at Alamut. A Yemeni emigrant and an Ismaili Shiite, Hasan set the aim of the Assassins to destroy the power of the Abbasid Caliphate by murdering its most powerful members. Hasan ibn Sabbah was also known as "The Old Man of the Mountain", however, this is likely to have been a mistake in translation, since "Old Man" is the literal translation of "Sheikh". Much of the current western lore surrounding the Assassins stems from Marco Polo's supposed visit to Alamut in 1273, which is widely considered mythical (especially as the stronghold had reportedly been destroyed by the Mongols in 1256). Benjamin of Tudela who traveled one hundred years before Marco Polo mentions the Al-Hashshashin and their leader as "the Old Man." He notes their principal city to be Kadmus.  The group inspired terror out of all proportion to their scant numbers and territory. The members were organized into rigid classes, based upon their initiation into the secrets of the order. The devotees constituted a class that sought martyrdom and followed orders with unquestioned devotion, orders which included assassination. Because of the secretive nature of the order, it has often been invoked in conspiracy theories. Most of the victims of the Assassins were Sunni Muslims. There were some extremely highly placed victims including Nizam-ul-Mulk. It is known that Saladin, incensed by several almost successful attempts on his life, besieged their chief Syrian stronghold of Masyaf during his reconquest of Outremer in 1176 but quickly lifted the siege after parley, and thereafter attempted to maintain good relations with the sect. The sect's own extant (and doubtless embellished) accounts tell of the Old Man himself stealing into Saladin's tent in the heart of his camp, and leaving a poisoned cake and a note saying "You are in our power" on Saladin's chest as he slept. Another account tells of a letter sent to Saladin's maternal uncle, vowing death to the entire royal line, perhaps no idle threat; whatever the truth of these accounts (and likely it will remain a mystery) he clearly heeded their warning, and desisted. Alone amongst the Islamic heretics Saladin so despised, the batinis would be granted leeway. Christians were largely untouched by the depredations of the Assassins; it was not until the middle of the 12th century that they had even really heard of them, although Raymond II of Tripoli and Conrad of Montferrat, King of Jerusalem, were victims. The Assassins of Conrad may have even been hired by Richard the Lionheart. The power of the Hashshashin was destroyed by the Mongol warlord Hulagu Khan, but several Ismaili sects share something of a common lineage, such as the sect led by the Aga Khan. During the Mongol assault of Alamut, the library of the sect was destroyed, along with much of their powerbase, and thus much of the sect's own records were lost; most accounts of them stem from the highly reputable Arab historians of the period. The word "assassin" in the English language has come to denote a murderer, usually with a political motive. Although Legends states that Hasan-i Sabbah, original leader of the Nizari Isamailies, used Hashish to grant "visions" of paradise to his followers, it is highly unlikely, given the fact that the use and effects of Hashish were well known during that time period, and frequent subjects of Imams in the Mosques. Marco Polo, who traveled through the area, gave an account similar to this: Recruits were promised Paradise in return for dying in action. They were drugged, often with materials such as hashish (some suggest opium and wine as well) then spirited away to a garden stocked with attractive and compliant women (houris) and fountains of wine. At this time, they were awakened and it was explained to them that such was their reward for the deed, convincing them that their leader, Hassan-i-Sabah, could open the gates to Paradise. In the very beginning Hasan was not likely to use doped and kidnapped individuals, as their fundamentalism prevented them from using any kind of drug, or making misbelievers become martyrs, as his operatives. But as Ismaili power grew and several Fortresses and their accompanying villages came under Ismaili rule, Hasan and his followers are believed to have begun recruiting and training assassins from birth. Some commentators make comparisons between the historical Assassin movement and Al Qaeda, noting the similar tactics of terror, political assassination, the promise of reaching paradise, as well as the cult-like mysticism around Osama Bin Laden [ also a Yemeni ]. Al Qaeda is also a secret society, with its leaders purportedly hiding in mountain hideouts. Martyrdom is also a key aspect of Al Qaeda's tactics. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashshashin">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashshashin</a> <a href="http://ce399.typepad.com/weblog/">ce399.typepad.com/weblog/</a> (archive) [More to follow...]

by **ce399** » Sat Nov 26, 2005 5:21 am

“Get some bulldozers in here. Clear out all this crap…” […] The definite article THE. THE contains the implication of one and only: THE God, THE universe, THE way, THE right, THE wrong. If there is another, then THAT universe, THAT way is no longer THE universe, THE way. The definite article THE will be deleted and the indefinite article A will take it’s place. The whole concept of EITHER/OR. Right or wrong, physical or mental, true or false, the whole concept of OR will be deleted from the language and replaced by juxtaposition, by AND. […] Much of the force of the reactive mind also depends on the falsification inherent in the categorical definite article THE. THE now, THE past, THE time, THE space, THE energy, THE matter, THE universe. Definite article THE contains the implication of no other. THE universe locks you in THE, and denies the possibility of any other. If other universes are possible, then the universe is no longer THE it becomes A. The definite article THE in the proposed language is deleted and replaced by A. […] I have frequently spoken of word and image as viruses or as acting as viruses, and this is not an allegorical comparison. It will be seen that the falsifications in syllabic western languages are in point of fact actual virus mechanisms. The IS of identity the purpose of a virus is to SURVIVE. To survive at any expense to the host invaded. […] The categorical THE is also a virus mechanism, locking you in THE virus universe. EITHER/OR is another virus formula. It is always you OR the virus. EITHER/OR. This is in point of fact the conflict formula which is seen to be archetypical virus mechanisms. The proposed language will delete these virus mechanisms and make their formulation impossible in the language. William Burroughs. Electronic Revolution. Expanded Media Edition. 1986. Brion Gysin’s dazzling anecdotes and inspired digressions form the matrix for a very precise cosmology. Brion does not identify himself with any codified, preconceived religion, philosophy, or system of thought. His thinking does not derive from Islam, Buddhism, Chinese or Zen formulations, and is categorically divorced from any Western religion. Churches, he says, should be taxed out of existence. He speaks of Hassan i Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain, as one of his sources, but Hassan i Sabbah left no written teachings or doctrines. The library that was supposed to have been stored at Alamout has never come to light. Brion, who has visited the fortress of Alamout, observed that there would not have been room to store such a library - reputedly consisting of 200,000 books. He surmises that the books, like the Garden the Old Man showed to his followers, were not of this world. Since so little is known about Hassan i Sabbah and the training his followers received at Alamout, any thought system that derives from the Old Man must be made up of suppositions. When we consider the inferential sources of Hassan i Sabbah’s thinking, we see that he has much in common with the Manichaean or Zoroastrian concept of Good and Evil, in a conflict the outcome of which is uncertain. The Old Man taught that assassination was an act of spiritual liberation, removing obstacles between the initiate and the Garden.  Brion Gysin / Terry Wilson. Here to Go: Planet R-101, Preface by WS Burroughs. <a href="http://www.creationbooks.com/text-gysin.html">www.creationbooks.com/text-gysin.html</a> Secrets of the Assassins By Peter Lamborn Wilson  Fascinating material on the Ismaili sect and on Hassan i Sabbah... the only spiritual leader who has anything significant to say in the Space Age. - William S. Burroughs, in a review of Peter Lamborn-Wilson's Scandal: Essays in Islamic Heresy. After the death of the Prophet Mohammad, the new Islamic community was ruled in succession by four of his close Companions, chosen by the people and called the Rightfully-guided Caliphs. The last of these was Ali ibn Abu Talib; the Prophet's son-in-law. Ali had his own ardent followers among the faithful, who came to be called Shi'a or "adherents". They believed that Ali should have succeeded Mohammad by right, and that after him his sons (the Prophet's grandsons) Hasan and Husayn should have ruled; and after them, their sons, and so on in quasi-monarchial succession. In fact except for Ali none of them ever ruled all Islamdom. Instead they became a line of pretenders, and in effect heads of a branch of Islam called Shiism. In opposition to the orthodox (Sunni) Caliphs in Baghdad these descendants of the Prophet came to be known as the Imams. To the Shiites an Imam is far more, far higher in rank than a Caliph. Ali ruled by right because of his spiritual greatness, which the Prophet recognized by appointing him his successor (in fact Ali is also revered by the sufis as "founder" and prototype of the Moslem saint). Shiites differ from orthodox or Sunni Moslems in believing that this spiritual pre-eminence was transferred to Ali's descendants through Fatima, the Prophet's daughter. The sixth Shiite Imam, Jafar al-Sadiq, had two sons. The elder, Ismail, was chosen as successor. But he died before his father. Jafar then declared his own younger son Musa the new successor instead. But Ismail had already given birth to a son - Mohammad ibn Ismail - and proclaimed him the next Imam. Ismail's followers split with Jafar over this question and followed Ismail's son instead of Musa. Thus they came to be known as Ismailis. Musa's descendants ruled "orthodox" Shiism. A few generations later, the Twelfth Imam of this line vanished without trace from the material world. He still lives on the spiritual plane, whence he will return at the end of this cycle of time. He is the "Hidden Imam", the Mahdi foretold by the Prophet. "Twelver" Shiism is the religion of Iran today. The Ismaili Imams languished in concealment, heads of an underground movement which attracted the extreme mystics and revolutionaries of Shiism. Eventually they emerged as a powerful force at the head of an army, conquered Egypt and established the Fatimid dynasty, the so-called anti-Caliphate of Cairo. The early Fatimids ruled in an enlightened manner, and Cairo became the most cultured and open city of Islam. They never succeeded in converting the rest of the Islamic world however; in fact, even most Egyptians failed to embrace Ismailism. The highly evolved mysticism of the sect was at once its special attraction and its major limitation. In 1074 a brilliant young Persian convert arrived in Cairo to be inducted into the higher initiatic (and political) ranks of Ismailism. But Hasan-i Sabbah soon found himself embroiled in a struggle for power. The Caliph Mustansir had appointed his eldest son Nizar as successor. But a younger son, al-Mustali, was intriguing to supplant him. When Mustansir died, Nizar - the rightful heir - was imprisoned and murdered. Hasan-i Sabbah had intrigued for Nizar, and now was forced to flee Egypt. He eventually turned up in Persia again, head of a revolutionary Nizari movement. By some clever ruse he acquired command of the impregnable mountain fortress of Alamut ("Eagle's Nest") near Qazvin in Northwest Iran. Hasan-i Sabbah's daring vision, ruthless and romantic, has become a legend in the Islamic world. With his followers he set out to recreate in miniature the glories of Cairo in this barren multichrome forsaken rock landscape. In order to protect Alamut and its tiny but intense civilization Hasan-i Sabbah relied on assassination. Any ruler or politician or religious leader who threatened the Nizaris went in danger of a fanatic's dagger. In fact Hasan's first major publicity coup was the murder of the Prime Minister of Persia, perhaps the most powerful man of the era (and according to legend, a childhood friend of Sabbah's). Once their fearful reputation was secure, the mere threat of being on the eso-terrorist hit-list was enough to deter most people from acting against the hated heretics. One theologian was first threatened with a knife (left by his pillow as he slept), then bribed with gold. When his disciples asked him why he had ceased to fulminate against Alamut from his pulpit he answered that Ismaili arguments were "both pointed and weighty". Since the great library of Alamut was eventually burned, little is known of Hasan-i Sabbah's actual teachings. Apparently he formed an initiatic hierarchy of seven circles based on that in Cairo, with assassins at the bottom and learned mystics at the top. Ismaili mysticism is based on the concept of ta'wil, or "spiritual hermeneutics". Ta'wil actually means "to take something back to its source or deepest significance". The Shiites had always practised this exegesis on the Koran itself, reading certain verses as veiled or symbolic allusions to Ali and the Imams. The Ismailis extended ta'wil much more radically. The whole structure of Islam appeared to them as a shell; to get at its kernel of meaning the shell must be penetrated by ta'wil, and in fact broken open completely. The structure of Islam, even more than most religions, is based on a dichotomy between exoteric and esoteric. On the one hand there is Divine Law (shariah), on the other hand the Spiritual Path (tariqah). Usually the Path is seen as the esoteric kernel and the Law as the exoteric shell. But to Ismailism the two together present a totality which in its turn becomes a symbol to be penetrated by ta'wil. Behind Law and Path is ultimate Reality (haqiqah), God Himself in theological terms - Absolute Being in metaphysical terms. This Reality is not something outside human scope; in fact if it exists at all then it must manifest itself completely on the level of consciousness. Thus it must appear as a man, the Perfect Man - the Imam. Knowledge of the Imam is direct perception of Reality itself. For Shiites the Family of Ali is the same as perfected consciousness. Once the Imam is realized, the levels of Law and Path fall away naturally like split husks. Knowledge of inner meaning frees one from adherence to outer form: the ultimate victory of the esoteric over the exoteric. The "abrogation of the Law" however was considered open heresy in Islam. For their own protection Shiites had always been allowed to practise taqqiya, "permissable dissimulation" or Concealment, and pretend to be orthodox to escape death or punishment. Ismailis could pretend to be Shiite or Sunni, whichever was most advantageous. For the Nizaris, to practise Concealment was to practise the Law; in other words, pretending to be orthodox meant obeying the Islamic Law. Hasan-i Sabbah imposed Concealment on all but the highest ranks at Alamut, because in the absence of the Imam the veil of illusion must naturally conceal the esoteric truth of perfect freedom. In fact, who was the Imam? As far as history was concerned, Nizar and his son died imprisoned and intestate. Hasan-i Sabbah was therefore a legitimist supp-orting a non-existent pret-ender! He never claimed to be the Imam himself, nor did his successor as "old Man of the Mountain," nor did his successor. And yet they all preached "in the name of Nizar". Presumably the answer to this mystery was revealed in the seventh circle of initiation. Now the third Old Man of the Mountain had a son named Hasan, a youth who was learned, generous, eloquent and loveable. Moreover he was a mystic, an enthusiast for the deepest teachings of Ismailism and sufism. Even during his father's lifetime some Alamutis began to whisper that young Hasan was the true Imam; the father heard of these rumors and denied them. I am not the Imam, he said, so how could my son be the Imam? In 1162 the father died and Hasan (call him Hasan II to distinguish him from Hasan-i Sabbah) became ruler of Alamut. Two years later, on the seventeenth of Ramazan (August <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/glasses.gif ALT="8)"> in 1164, he proclaimed the Qiyamat, or Great Resurrection. In the middle of the month of Fasting, Alamut broke its fast forever and proclaimed perpetual holiday. The resurrection of the dead in their bodies at the "end of time" is one of the most difficult doctrines of Islam (and Christianity as well). Taken literally it is absurd. Taken symbolically however it encapsulates the experience of the mystic. He "dies before death" when he comes to realize the separative and alienated aspects of the self, the ego-as-programmed-illusion. He is "reborn" in consciousness but he is reborn in the body, as an individual, the "soul-at-peace". When Hasan II proclaimed the Great Resurrection which marks the end of Time, he lifted the veil of concealment and abrogated the religious Law. He offered communal as well as individual participation in the mystic's great adventure, perfect freedom. He acted on behalf of the Imam, and did not claim to be the Imam himself. (In fact he took the title of Caliph or "representative".) But if the family of Ali is the same as perfect consciousness, then perfect consciousness is the same as the family of Ali. The realized mystic "becomes" a descendant of Ali (like the Persian Salman whom Ali adopted by covering him with his cloak, and who is much revered by sufis, Shiites and Ismailis alike). In Reality, in haqiqah, Hasan II was the Imam because in the Ismaili phrase, he had realised the "Imam-of-his-own-being." The Qiyamat was thus an invitation to each of his followers to do the same, or at least to participate in the pleasures of paradise on earth. The legend of the paradisal garden at Alamut where the houris, cupbearers, wine and hashish of paradise were enjoyed by the Assassins in the flesh, may stem from a folk memory of the Qiyamat. Or it may even be literally true. For the realized consciousness this world is no other than paradise, and its bliss and pleasures are all permitted. The Koran describes paradise as a garden. How logical then for wealthy Alamut to become outwardly the reflection of the spiritual state of the Qiyamat. In 1166 Hasan II was murdered after only four years of rule. His enemies were perhaps in league with conservative elements at Alamut who resented the Qiyamat, the dissolving of the old secret hierarchy (and thus their own power as hierarchs) and who feared to live thus openly as heretics. Hasan II's son however succeeded him and established the Qiyamat firmly as Nizari doctrine. If the Qiyamat were accepted in its full implications however it would probably have brought about the dissolution and end of Nizari Ismailism as a separate sect. Hasan II as Qa'im or "Lord of the Resurrection" had released the Alamutis from all struggle and all sense of legitimist urgency. Pure esotericism, after all, cannot be bound by any form. Hasan II's son, therefore, compromised. Apparently he decided to "reveal" that his father was in fact and in blood a direct descendant of Nizar. The story runs that after Hasan-i Sabbah had established Alamut, a mysterious emissary delivered to him the infant grandson of Imam Nizar. The child was raised secretly at Alamut. He grew up, had a son, died. The son had a son. This baby was born on the same day as the son of the Old Man of the Mountain, the outward ruler. The infants were surreptitiously exchanged in their cradles. Not even the Old Man knew of the ruse. Another version has the hidden Imam committing adultery with the Old Man's wife, and producing as love-child the infant Hasan II. The Ismailis accepted these claims. Even after the fall of Alamut to the Mongol hordes the line survived and the present leader of the sect, the Aga Khan, is known as the forty-ninth in descent from Ali (and pretender to the throne of Egypt!). The emphasis on Alid legitimacy has preserved the sect as a sect. Whether it is literally true or not, however, matters little to an understanding of the Qiyamat. With the proclamation of the Resurrection, the teachings of Ismailism were forever expanded beyond the borders imposed on them by any historical event. The Qiyamat remains as a state of consciousness which anyone can adhere to or enter, a garden without walls, a sect without a church, a lost moment of Islamic history that refuses to be forgotten, standing outside time, a reproach or challenge to all legalism and moralism, to all the cruelty of the exoteric. An invitation to paradise. From Peter Lamborn Wilson's Scandal: Essays in Islamic Heresy, published by Autonomedia, PO Box 568, Williamsburg Station, Brooklyn, NY, USA <a href="http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/Articles/Secrets">www.newdawnmagazine.com/Articles/Secrets</a> of the Assassins.html

by **ce399** » Mon Nov 28, 2005 6:08 am

Excerpts from "Here to Go - Planet R 101" by Brion Gysin and Terry Wilson  p. 64-65 Where would you put a library of 200, 000 books? T What about Hassan i Sabbah, the Assassins ? ... These were sexual techniques ? . . . Yesterday a thousand years ago, Hassan i Sabbah, a Persian by birth and school-chum of Omar Khayyam, walked by accident (as if there were any accidents) into the studios of Radio Cairo to find all the cats bombed. He realized like a flash that he could SEND, TOO. He took the mike to an unheated penthouse called Alamut near the Caspian . . . his original station nearly a thousand years ago could broadcast from Alamut to Paris with Charlemagne on the house phone and as far as Xanadu East. Today the same lines have been proliferating machine-wise and a stray wire into the room I am in . . . Well, you figure it out . . . (BG, Minutes to Go) B Uh ... presumably .. . ummmm I've written a piece which has gotten lost; I've sold it to a collector instead of getting it published . . . it wasn't a very good piece, it was funny . . . essentially not a very funny subject . . . but, uh, I made a pilgrimage to Alamout, the castle of the Assassins . . . uh, in the summer of 1973-and I know less than when I started . . . that's it . . . I know less than when I started . . . I know a lot more than any book that I've read about it . . . there are maybe better books, and I understand that Professor Corbin is bringing out new material which he got through the Aga Khan, who is said to be a descendant-in fact the Aga Khan's vast wealth and spiritual authority depends on being a descendant of a captive and then eventually reigning Old Man of the Mountain, and a Fatimid, descended from the Prophet's own daughter Fatima, who was chosen by the British to be a great leader who was not a territorial prince-the British in 1885 realized that they were having such terrible trouble with the Indian princes who were territorially based, that they had a sort of competition which was judged in British fashion by a British court in Bombay, in which they put to trial the Sufis as represented by the great-grandfather, or certainly the forebears of Idries Shah, and his rather kind of sloppy commercialized Sufism that he's trying to push in England right now . . . And, uh, they lost and the Aga Khan won, and the Aga Khan, curiously enough, was a descendant of the last Old Man of the Mountain . . . and the Ismaelis had papers and documents which have recently been handed to, or been given for study by French authorities such as Corbin . . . and I'm sure he knows a great deal more about the Old Man of the Mountain than I do . . . although I think he's not been to the Castle, which is a very extraordinary experience, it's only one of a great series of castles in the mountains to the south of the Caspian Sea . . . and, uh, one learns a great deal from actually visiting such a place, as I suggested you might visit Genet's castle of Fontevrault that he wrote The Miracle of the Rose about, and would learn a great deal from just being at base itself . . . Uh, some of the conclusions were practical-like, uh, it must be fucking cold up there in the wintertime, and this area is so small where would you put a library of 200,000 books; there isn't enough room to put away 200 packages of vitamin B-1 .. . uh, very tiny, very small, very dangerous, cold and uncomfortable sort o5-spot . . . which I guess Hassan i Sabbah dug a lot, and he must've been very hard to live with is all I can think of . . . (laughing) end of that-push the button . . . (tape stops)  p. 96 - 97 The salacious stories, what did they involve? T "Nothing is true . . . " B (laughing) "Nothing is true, everything is permitted" . . . not everything is permitted in the village, it's not true . . . alas .. . it's not really Hassan i Sabbah's village, but another . I went to Hassan i Sabbah's Alamout, as you know, I wrote a rather poor piece about it that nobody even bothered to turn down, it just sort of came back to me some way without any proper refusal from whoever I sent it-oh, Rolling Stone, I think .. . must've been quite shocked by it . . . The story of going to Alamout with a very charming and witty, rather campy American friend, and, uh, that may've been too much for them, I don't know . . . T It was just that that was too much for them? B Well, maybe they just didn't . . . no, it wasn't their sort of thing at all, in fact they, they're not publishing things like that, they're into politics . . . Watergate-type, CIA . . . T Fear and loathing at Alamout . . . B (laughing) Yes, fear and loathing . . . hmmm . . . T It must've been quite an experience to be there? B Overwhelming. Very difficult physically and psychically. I had asthma, mountain sickness, and sheer funk . . . uh, wearing town shoes, climbing up to those really extremely inaccessible spots . . . where there are traces of the fortifications and, uh, whether they date from the time of the Old Man himself one doesn't know, but the castle was utterly destroyed by the Mongols . . . one can judge that it must've been an absolutely impregnable place, but really very small, too small to hold a library such as he was said to have possessed ... the Mongol conqueror was accompanied by a historian who claims that he actually saw such a library, that it was destroyed or utterly dispersed at that time . . . uh, recently French scholars have claimed to have come up with original manuscripts which are in the hands of Ismaeli followers of the Aga Khan, who had settled in Bombay several centuries ago, and Corbin has recently published some material here in France; but I haven't had the official version of that, because he was scooped by a journalist who runs a pseudo-psychic magazine and managed to get hold of Corbin's papers and produced a rather ludicrous account of what was supposed to be in them . . . I think we're going to have to wait for the documents to be properly published, but there may still be written information that we don't know about with regard to the organization of the Assassins . . . T In terms of the cut-up technique, being in direct line from- B Ah well, Hassan's private story . . . was that he went to school in, uh-y'got any more squeaky tape here, or you running out?-he went to school near Meshad, in eastern Iran, at the University of Nishapur a century or so after the Turk invasion of that part of the world, and he found that he had to share a room with two other boys; one of them was Omar Khayyam, who became the great mathematician, astronomer and poet, whose Rubaiyat everybody knows in the Fitzgerald translation, and the other boy ... p. 98 - 99 He was the victim of a cut-up . . . ... became the prime minister of that whole vast empire . . . and they took a schoolboy oath that they would always help each other in later life . . . And after they left school Hassan i Sabbah went back to his native town, which doesn't exist anymore; it was south of where Tehran is today, and, uh, the oldest of the three became prime minister and gave the job of court astronomer, which was a lifetime sinecure, to Omar Khayyam . . . and Hassan i Sabbah then presented himself at court and asked for an equivalent position and was given the direction of the finances . . . And he found when he came to deliver his speech on the exchequer that his manuscripts had been cut in such a way that he didn't at first realize that they had been sliced right down the middle and repasted-books were individual folios that were pasted into bindings at that time, or else one great big roll out of which one read . . . All of his material had been cut up by some unknown enemy and his speech from the Woolsack was greeted with howls of laughter and utter disgrace and he was thrown out of the administration . . . So he was the victim of a cut-up, and that was the reference that you remembered, in fact . . . T And you suddenly found yourself in line from that . . . you produced cut-ups and it tied you in even more so than you had been- B Huh. I don't know that I really wanna be tied into anything . . . T Whether you wanted to or not . . . B I found it very disturbing when I was at Alamout, to imagine .. . uh, find myself under strong psychic attack - whereas the friend with whom I was traveling went scampering around the precipices like a goat, I suddenly was attacked with vertigo, which I hadn't ever experienced before in my life, and altitude fever - it's very high, it's about 10,000 feet, perhaps more . . . so that there was some physical reason for that . . . But I also felt psychically attached to the place as I have never felt before in any other spot in my travels . . . T These effects perhaps could give some indication as to what actually was the state of mind of those adepts there, rather than hashish- B I felt that I was somebody that'd been pushed over the precipice, and I wasn't certain that I wanted to be a victim to such an old scene . . . T (pointing finger at him) B Yeah, long pointed (laughing) William on top of the tower pointing a long bony finger-and there was I tumbling into the precipice - no, that's not the way I wrote this at all . . . I refuse this version . . . T Brion, what I was thinking of before, orgasm to produce events - could that be a finger or a penis- B Oh, I haven't followed you on that one at all! Whaddyamean? T The techniques taught or used there . . . it was an all-male community. . . ? B Yes, yeah . . . although other people have now said that it wasn't, but it must have been; physical possibilities are such that it must have been a monastery-fortress-as there were many others in Islam, it was not a new invention. A Ribat, or Rabat, such is the name of the capital of Morocco, originally means a monastery where warrior-monks were gathered, who were pushing Islam . . . T I was just trying to tie in the- B The exact methods-we don't know enough, there aren't enough documents. <a href="http://www.inter-zone.org/hassan3.html">www.inter-zone.org/hassan3.html</a>

by **ce399** » Mon Nov 28, 2005 8:05 pm

"A transcript from The Revised Boy Scout Manual, a novel in the form of three one-hour cassettes. Copyright 1970 by WilliamS. Burroughs. Our thanks to W.S.B. and James Grauerholz for permission to excerpt..."  THE REVISED BOY SCOUT MANUAL REVOLUTIONARY WEAPONS AND TACTICS Since World War I, revolutionary weapons and tactics have undergone a biologic mutation to survive the invention of heavy weapons. Anyone can make a sword, a spear, a bow and arrow in his basement or spare room workshop. He can make the approximation of a small arm. He cannot make automatic weapons, tanks, bombers, fighter planes, destroyers, artillery. These heavy weapons are in the hands of reactionary forces, which give them an overwhelming advantage in direct combat. With heavy weapons five percent of the population can hold down ninety-five percent by sheer force. This advantage, which did not exist before heavy weapons, must now be taken into account. A belated development to be sure. the stupidity of the military mind is unbelievable. Toward the end of the Civil War in the United States, a crude machine gun and a crude tank were rejected by President Lincoln's military advisors as impractical. Now these weapons were primitive to be sure, but quite usable, and all the elements were there. In World War II, General Gamelin thought that tanks were unimportant until they poured around the end of his Maginot Line. General Gamelin did not like tanks. So, plinking around the streets with a Barretta .25 is little to the purpose. And still less a Colt Army .45, a handgun so inaccurate it is more dangerous to friend than enemy - your friends being closer to it. It is a very myopic handgun. Bombs, in the post office and the police stations - what is this, the IRA in 1916? Blow up the Statue of Liberty would you? Have you any idea how much good gelginite it would take to explode that old beast? The same explosive material, discreetly placed, could bring down the economic system of the West. The Boy Scout Manual will show you how... The extent to which revolutionary theory and tactics is disadvantageously shaped by opposition is something few revolutionaries like to think about, being for the most part as bigoted and impervious to facts as those whom they think they oppose. In 1848, a worldwide liberal movement was ruthlessly crushed in Europe and vitiated in South America. Consider how present day revolutionaries are being Che Guevara'd back into the nineteenth century to repeat the mistakes of Garibaldi and Bolivar. Bolivar liberated a large section of South America from Spain. He left intact the Christian calendar, the Spanish language, the Catholic church, the Spanish bureaucracy. He left Spanish families holding the wealth and the land. He must have loved the conquistadores in some corner of his being to treat them with such exemplary consideration. It is a familiar pattern: the oppressed love the oppressors and cannot wait to follow their example. Morocco, independent from France, takes over the inefficient French bureaucracy. Arab countries liberated from England retain the barbarous English method of execution. Cannot a revolution make a clean sweep of all this old garbage. To achieve independence from alien domination and to consolidate revolutionary gains, five steps are necessary: 1) PROCLAIM A NEW ERA AND SET UP A NEW CALENDAR, 2) REPLACE ALIEN LANGUAGE, 3) DESTROY OR NEUTRALIZE ALIEN GODS, 4) DESTROY ALIEN MACHINERY OF GOVERNMENT AND CONTROL, 5) TAKE LAND AND WEALTH FROM INDIVIDUAL ALIENS. Suppose that Bolivar had followed this program: 1) He sets up a new calendar with no reference to A.D./B.C.. No saints days, no Christian holidays, no more Semana Santa. 2) There are thirty-five mutually incomprehensible Indian dialects in Peru alone. South America constitutes a Tower of Babel. Unifying language is essential but not the colonial languages Spanish and Portuguese. Bolivar decides that the language of South America will be Chinese. Several considerations dictate this choice. He has been impressed by the equanimity of the Chinese, their quiet self-possession in the dreariest and most forbidding places. There is a town in the high Andes, a gloomy windy pass. Thin air like death in the throat. From the low sod huts with no chimneys the sullen bestial inhabitants peer out, eyes red with smoke. No trees, windswept grass, little terraced fields above which the mountains tower to stone and snow. The proprietor of the one general store, an old Chinese. He has been there many years you can tell. Unmarried and old, he fills the order for provisions. All places are alike to him. This quiet possession of his own space can only be attributed to the structure of the Chinese language. There are also aesthetic considerations. A river town in coastal Ecuador malarial faces like dirty gray paper. Down the mud street steps a girl naked to the waist black as ebony with fine Mongoloid features straight hair. Negro and Chinese full calves zowie! Chinese characters look better on signs or on a printed page. His main consideration is to build up the economy by attracting the frugal and industrious Chinese settlers. Chinese will be taught in all schools. Place and street names will be Chinese. 3. It is not necessary to track whiskey priests through the brush. Lands and property of the church confiscated. No religious instructions in schools. Simply make it disadvantageous and unattractive to be a Catholic. 4. The Spanish bureaucracy, which starts with one incompetent, lazy, dishonest, superfluous bastard who then fills an office with all his incompetent relatives all filling out senseless forms, must be attacked at its roots. All forms and records to be destroyed. 5. Land and property of resident Spaniards confiscated. Those who choose to remain must integrate into the working community. Their children will not speak Spanish or kneel in any Christian church. So the face of history has changed. To return in this illustrative fantasy, consider the weapons and tactics available to present-day revolutionaries in the West: small arms and similar weapons. Most useful all around hand gun is the pig .38 Special. Anyone with reasonable coordination can be taught in twelve rounds to hit a foot-square target at thirty feet. And that's practical pistol shooting! the lightweight models with two-inch barrels are quite accurate, which makes this gun one of the lightest and most compact of all powerful handguns. Handguns can be traced. Possession is a crime and serves as a provocation. Homemade weapons are useful and every good scout will be tinkering with crossbows and rubber band guns, homemade flame throwers and laser guns, cyanide injectors and blowguns. Matchlock and flintlock pistols shooting a load of crushed glass and cyanide crystals are quite effective at six feet. The simplest cyanide injector has a large plunger that can be grasped in the whole hand. You shove the needle in and push the plunger home in the same thrust. A more sophisticated model looks like a toy pistol. Needle is unscrewed from end of barrel, the pistol cocked by drawing back spring attached to plunger. A sponge soaked in cyanide solution is inserted in the barrel, the needle and cap screwed back into place. When trigger releases the spring, a massive dose of cyanide solution is squeezed into the flesh causing instant death. When not in use, needle is capped by a Buck Rogers death ray. If you can catch the target, with mouth open, you can jet it in from ten feet like a spitting cobra. This is not hard to do. They are always ranting on about permissiveness, marijuana, anarchy, ill-bred attacks on Her majesty, bring back hanging, bring back flogging, heavier penalties for drug offenses, ban smut, etc. And of course the injector is at home in bars and restaurants. Instead of canard a l'orange he gets a mouthful of prussic acid. A bolo made from a bicycle chain with lead weights at each end...knives with a blade that flies off propelled by a power charge or a powerful spring in the handle...and vibrating knives with a vibrator in the handle. A double-edged knife on a spring that can be whipped back and forth. Ingenuity will turn up many novel designs. Crossbows...rubber band guns powered by a powerful rubber band can shoot a lead slug with considerable force and accuracy up to twenty yards...long-range blowguns, etc. These weapons are useful for individual assassination.  ASSASSINATION BY LIST (ABL) So who do you assassinate by list? Not the obvious targets the politicians narcs and pigs. They are servants who obey orders. So the targets are not the front men but the higher-ups behind the scene. You announce that you have a list of these secret controllers and that they will be killed one after the other. The list is guesswork of course but the real higher-ups will soon expose themselves. So for a start we assassinate a Swiss banker never wrong on that. Just get a list of high Swiss bankers and pull his name out of a hat. This is Assassination By List (ABL.) The rich and powerful cower behind guards and electric fences.  RANDOM ASSASSINATION (RA) Ingenious concept of random assassination has been proposed by Brion Gysin. Five people a day in five districts of the city are killed. Category of person and district are determined by lot. One way would be to shuffle a pack of cards listing various categories housewife bowler-hat-and-umbrella nun meth-drinker lavatory attendant anyone driving or riding in a Bentley etc. The shuffle another pack of city areas arranged into districts that do not correspond to the actual boroughs or wards. Since the choice is completely random there is no pattern and the assassinations cannot be predicted or anticipated. Exempt from this daily lottery are the police and the military. The reason: they are accorded this position of privilege to stir resentment in the populace and so set the stage for a subsequent accusation that rightist plotters carried out RA to create an emergency and seize power. RA applied to group units could paralyze the economy of the West and this brings us too...  BOMBS AND EXPLOSIVE DEVICES Post offices, public buildings and monuments are quite useless targets in most cases. With less risk and less outlay of material you could paralyze the whole communications system. Like this: two Israeli passenger planes recently exploded, probably as a result of bombs planted in freight of luggage by terrorists. Already these lines are banned and nobody will fly on the planes. Now suppose you plant five bombs a day at random. How long before no one flies or ships freight by air? And you won't have to do it all yourself...you will find anonymous little helpers who will start planting bombs on planes just for jolly - wouldn't you after reading all about it? They know it's the thing to do. And every device intercepted increases the terror. Then you hit trains and ships, buses and subways inside the cities. You make truck driving the most dangerous profession, with special attention to food trucks. Then you can hit the power stations and water reservoirs.  CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS For random terror attacks, gas bombs are often more effective than explosives. They're also cheaper and easier to make. A container of sulfuric acid concealed in package or briefcase. You press down a plunger which drops sodium cyanide into the acid and leave your package in the subway at the rush hour or in a theater or political rally or revival meeting. Chemical and biological weapons could be made in the basement lab if you know how. In The Wild Boys I proposed to transfer desirable species of plants, animals, fish and birds from present distribution to other areas where conditions are sufficiently similar to insure growth and reproduction. Look at the map and always remember your subjects may be more adaptable than you realize. Consider the walleyed pike, which is not a pike. The species is a perch and undoubtedly one of the greatest freshwater pan fish. Found in the lakes of Minnesota and Canada and in the clear clod streams down into Missouri and Arkansas. And consider the small-mouthed black bass of similar distribution. Both species would live in cold water anywhere. They would thrive in the lakes and rivers of England and Scotland and Northern Europe. The large-mouth black bass tolerates quite warm water and could be extended to the vast waterways of the Amazon basin to the lakes of Africa and Southeast Asia. The yage vine could grow in the jungles of Southeastern Asia, in Africa and probably in Louisiana, Florida and Texas. The delicate lemurs of Madagascar, shy little wood spirits, would enhance any rain forest. Certainly the enchanting flying fox deserves wider circulation. Look at the map again. Introduction of a new species into an area where they were hitherto unknown can have far-reaching consequences. This aspect of biologic warfare has been neglected. Here is the bushmaster from Panama south through the Amazon basin. He may reach a length of fourteen feet and attack a human, twisting about his thighs while he strikes at the chest and throat walking his great fangs that can shoot half a glass of venom. No amount of anti-venom can save him - there isn't time for it to act. Florida, East Texas, Louisiana, jungles of Africa, Southeast Asia, the East Indes and back along the same trade routes...the Black Mamba of Africa that will also attack unprovoked, sliding down from trees. Leopards and tigers released in South America would soon be driven to man-eating by the scarcity of game, and they would eat the CIA men first since they are bigger and slower.The good gray lard they call it, licking the blood off of each other's faces. Plentiful, helpless, no fur - the ideal food animal. The fresh water shark of Nicaragua and the piranha fish would do well in the lakes and rivers of Africa in the southern United States and in Southeast Asia. For arid regions, the desert cobra, the rattler and the gilla monsters, and the incomparable tiger snake of Australia. And Wolverines for Siberia - they are a perfect curse, known to trappers as "the little fiend." And microscopic and sub-microscopic life of course, which brings us back to... BIOLOGIC WARFARE PROPER The deadly Naga virus is up for grabs. Nobody knows how it is transmitted, and that gives the virus an advantage which any virus knows well how to take. You immunize your own boys and turn the virus loose. Then another...another...until you make the world safe for men of your caliber. No, you don't have to dream up anything from science fiction - the old standbys will go a long way...cholera, typhoid, hepatitis. It was General Hepatitis who stopped Rommel in North Africa in World War II. There are cartoons depicting General Mud and General Mountains. General Mud, if I remember correctly, was supposed to stop Hitler in Poland, but his performance was not impressive. Consignments of ticks carrying Rocky mountain spotted fever, typhus lice, and of course you go on looking for the big one - Australian smallpox which thrives on vaccination. Or, suppose you could speed up the time of the process. Instead of symptoms spread over a week they are compressed into hours. People swell up with cancer and rot with galloping leprosy on commuter trains... And now, introducing two promising newcomers that deserve your attention...easily and cheaply assembled...readily available materials: Infrasound for Infrasound, and DOR - opportunity knocks.  INFRASOUND This weapon is fully described in The Job, published by Grove Press of New York. So much for the commercial. Infrasound is sound at a frequency below the level of human hearing which sets up vibrations in any solid obstruction including the human body. Professor Gavreau who discovered this novel weapon says that his installation which resembles a vast police whistle eighteen feet long, can kill up to five miles in any direction...knock down walls and break windows, and set off burglar alarms for miles around. his device is patented and anybody can obtain a copy of the plans on payment of two hundred francs at the patent office. So why be a small-time sniper?  DEADLY ORGONE RADIATION (DOR) ...Produced when any fissionable material is placed in an orgone accumulator. An orgone accumulator is constructed by lining any container with sheet iron or steel wool. The container must be full of organic material, and for full concentration many alternative layers can be used. For full description see the collected works of Dr. Willhelm Reich. In the chapter entitled "Orgone Physics" Reich says "There is no protection whatsoever against DOR since it penetrates everything, including lead or brick or stone walls of any thickness." A criminal hater of mankind or a political enemy, if he knew about this, and if the USA did not know about it or did not study these effects, could easily drop activated orgone devices looking simply like metal lined boxes. These could infest a whole region if not a whole continent. Each person falling ill would react to his or her specific disease or disposition to disease, driving the symptoms to high acuity and then curing them if properly and conscientiously applied. However, if used with malignant intent, such infestation of the atmosphere would surely kill or at least immobilize many people. Exposure on a gradient scale gives immunity. Be prepared!  WEAPONS OF DISRUPTION, AGITATION AND SUBVERSION A French revolutionary sets forth a method by which one man with an unlimited expense account can bring down a government. He invents an underground, planting stickers and slogans. Acts of sabotage at widely separated locations give an impression that the underground is widespread and well-organized. All disturbances, strikes, accidents, are claimed by the mythical underground. This method might work in an old-style dictatorship like Spain, Greece, Santa Domingo, Haiti. For the compels set-up in America and Western Europe, you need a whole script and eventually a whole film set.  NOTES ON WRITING WORLD REVOLUTION (written March 25, 1970, Paris, France)  GENERAL PLAN: 1) An independent republican or reform party of exemplary behavior and moderation, staying always within the law. Personnel must be at all times above reproach, at least in the initial stages of the operation. 2) A terrorist underground complete with detailed personnel and methods of operation. Post films of underground drilling can be leaked to press. The police can be allowed to capture extensive files taken from a telephone book, and while they drag bewildered citizens from their beds, the underground which consists of a small group of expert saboteurs, can strike somewhere else. 3) A terrorist reich complete with personnel. Any outrage can be attributed to these characters. You can see how this works in present-time Brazil where any murder of underworld figures can be laid to the terrorist police organization. The script is different for every country or area of operation, but its always a one-two-three... Here's the schema for the United Kingdom... 1) An English Republican Party (ERP). Offices in Bedford Square. Visible personnel must be above reproach. Appeal is rational, stressing economic factors. The monarchy is simply out of keeping with the realities of modern life. Time to forget a dead empire and build a living republic. Stabilize economy, cut expenses, especially defense. Let the Yanks and NATO carry that ball - it's to heavy for us. Build up tourist trade by giving them someplace to eat and room service 'round the clock and food fit to eat. Start bringing England into the twentieth century. Attract foreign capital, stabilize population by setting up liaison communities to facilitate immigration from the U.K. to South America, the only under populated country. Smooth patter, discreet lunches at Rules and Simpsons. Scrupulously abstain from any personal attack on the royal family. 2) We prepare a pamphlet with obscene cartoons covering the royal family with vile abuse. We send it out to members of all the best clubs, conservative M.P.'s, officers and gentlemen on Her Majesty's Service. The first wave takes a heavy toll in heart attacks and apoplexy in the halls of drafty clubs...muttering imprecations at yellowing tusks on the wall...walking down country lanes swinging umbrellas and sticks in the air. England is in ferment like a vast vat of bitters. 3) This vile attack on Her Majesty Put an end to permissiveness Bring back hangings Bring back floggings The piper plays "Bring Back My Bonnie To Me" on a tin flute down Kings Road. 1)ERP deplores pamphlets as sophomoric and calls on the invisible author to desist, which he does of course. The right hand sees what the left hand is doing. A lull, during which ERP consolidates gains. ERP ERP ERP ghoul expert patter belching it out all over England. After all why all this fuss about something left over from the Middle Ages? Just a question of getting people used to it like a new ten-shilling piece. I mean, when we can cut rates and give decent housing they'll forget all about it...the new generation never heard of such a thing. Turn Buckingham Palace into a luxury hotel, one of a chain...and that's where your firm comes in. The Royal family is to be absorbed into the diplomatic service which is also due for cutbacks and drastic overhaul. Old style diplomacy dates back to the eighteenth century. We want to see less goodwill tours and handshaking ad more understanding on basic exchange of goods and services. Yes the whole structure needs overhauling. Why not bring England into the twentieth century? Scrap the licensing laws - food and service 'round the clock. Good middle-priced restaurants like Horn & Hardest. ERP ERP ERP. Skinheads? Street gangs? We'll give them something better to do than Paki-bashing and fighting each other. There's useful work for these boys to do... 2) Infiltrate street gangs as first move toward taking over the streets. We send our boys trained in every technique of hand-to-hand fighting, the use of weapons and demolition procedures. Jimmy the doctor with a scalpel up his sleeve. Electric Kris ready in his boot. These boys assume leadership of street gangs. Why fight each other? Why not fight the bastards who keep you here in your cold gritty dank slums? I said, "BUGGER THE QUEEN!" and anybody doesn't like it just step forward and say so. These boys have a double mission: first, to put street fighters in the street when we give the word...riots burning cars broken windows. That is the work of the rank and file. Second, they will sift street gangs for the smartest, hardest boys to forge the SS, the Palace Guard of the ERP. The boys will be exhaustively trained in all fighting techniques, in psychological warfare, in crown control. At the right time they will be provided with uniforms, motorcycles, armored cars and automatic weapons. There is useful work for these boys to do.  START ASSASSINATION BY LIST We drop quite a few red herrings of course...always leave the door open to blame it all on rightist plotters. Besides, enigmatic assassinations are more upsetting, somehow. We have a tentative list of the real higher-ups in England. As we start working through it, other higher-ups will betray themselves to the trained observer, so the list keeps growing. We will need that list when the time rolls around for mass murder, mass assassination (MA), and we turn our boys loose. Now we need a scenario for the rightist plot. Officers and gentlemen, they call themselves (OG). Using American techniques of thought control they will make the Queen a goddess. Her power is absolute. Every citizen must display at all times on his lapel, hat band, shirt or other garment where it can be plainly seen, the Queen's Rating. QR determines position in her society...at all times. Her favorites all have "Top Rating." They can walk into any restaurant and the manager has to provide a table. They can walk into any hotel and ask for a suite and the manager has to move somebody out. Intolerable little Cockney faggot in eighteenth century costume with a powered blue wig and snuff box full of cocaine: "Get this low rate riffraff out of my suite!" And so it goes on down the scale to the dreaded pariah rating (PR) which is tattooed in red ink on the forehead like the brand of Cain. Anyone can refuse to serve food, grant lodging, or take in any public transport a PR. And so her loyal and loyalist subjects think twice about incurring her serene displeasure. And it is well to remember that her favor is not to be taken for granted but must be earned anew each day. Actually the Queen is simply a holograph symbol of subservience manipulated by American know-how. Vulgar chaps, by and large, but they do have the technology... Recent experiments with rhesus monkeys have demonstrated that fear, rage, excretory processes and sexual response can be brought under push-button control. The Chinese delegate screams his rage and shits in his pants on TV...the Soviet delegate masturbates uncontrollably...early answer to use on anyone considering to interfere. We set it all up with top secret documents, statements from a former CIA man who must for his own safety reasons remain anonymous. And we out our rumor boys into the streets with tape recorders. 1)England is taking orders from the CIA and the American narcotics department like a Central American banana republic. Wouldn't surprise me to see the marines land. Look at this drug problem they've dumped into our lap. Go after the pushers - you arrest one pusher and ten more will take his place. The one man the narcotics industry cannot do without is the addict on the street who buys it. Treat the addict in the street and you will put the pusher out of business. The apomorphine treatment started in England - why not give it a chance in England? And let's give these kids something better to do. Why not reverse the braindrain? It isn't just more money that takes our best research brains to America - its better equipment and opportunities for more advanced research. The new work in autonomic shaping carried out in America by Drs. Bernard Engel, Joe Kamiya, Neal Miller and Peter Lang. They are teaching subjects to control brain waves, rate of heartbeat, blood pressure, digestive processes and sexual response. This could lead to trips without drugs and solve the drug problem. Is England picking up? Is similar research being carried out?...the Bristol Neurological Foundation by Professor Grey Walter? If so we haven't heard about it. Is England afraid of any research that could turn up something basically new? Is England muddling through or simply muddling steadily downhill? Is the mismanagement we see here part of a deliberate plot? It's beginning to look that way. 2) Riots and demonstrations by street gangs are stepped up. Start random assassination. Five citizens every day in London but never a police officer or serviceman. Patrols in the street shooting the wrong people. Curfews. England is rapidly drifting toward anarchy. 3) We send out our best agents to contact army officers and organize a rightist coup. We put rightist gangs into it like the Royal Crowns and the Royal Cavailers in the street. 1. Time for ERP! 2. Come Out in The Open! The trouble in England is: it is run by old women of both sexes. we have a list of these people. We will not allow them to use the army to overthrow constitutional government and impose a dictatorship under pretense of controlling the disorders which they themselves have caused. It is time for young England to strike, and to strike hard. We turn our palace guard loose. An armored car draws up in front of Claridge's. Youths with tommy guns jump out and block off the street. A TV crew unloads. The whole scene goes out live on TV. Steps through the silent dining room...stop by a table. A burst of machine gun fire. A woman screams. "Shut up you whore! And now, will you all please stand up - that's right. Now all of you sing God Save The Queen. Boys, walk around the dining room. You there - louder...more soul!" The car stops in front of the best club of them all. It's not White's, I'm told, but we'll be around to White's later. They'll be waiting...the old gentlemen in their armchairs muttering about permissiveness...in the writing room writing letters toward the restoration if hanging and flogging. The boys leap out in their natty blue uniforms with the skull-and-crossbones at the lapel that glows in the dark. "Are you a member, sir?" The boy shoots him coldly in the stomach with a P-38 (it's nice for city wear, so much more elegant that a revolver). Quick purposeful young steps down drafty halls. Tussle over the wall...the improbable hyphenated names. The members are frozen. "What is this outrage? When a gentleman is reading his Times?" They expect the club steward to come in and throw the bouncers out perhaps it is even a case for the bobbies. The steps stop in front of an armchair. "Are you Lord Stansfield?" "I am." "He is the most intelligent person in the room. Intelligent enough to know that this is serious." The boy is very elegant and disengaged. Lord Stansfield decides to try a paternal approach. "Son..." The boy gives him a short burst across the chest. Diving bell from the nineteenth century shattered by a boy's bullets. The members are numb from the shock wave. TV camera, floodlights, the boy paces around the vast lounge looking at the pictures. He points the gun at a steward's stomach. "You there, bring champagne." "Champagne, sir?" "Yes, champagne. And glasses for all the officers and gentlemen, the servants as well, and don't be forgetting the military." The trembling steward passes around the clicking glasses. "You there! Pick it up!" Now the boy stands in front of the Queen's picture. He raises his glass. "BUGGER THE QUEEN!" He throws the empty glass at the picture, shards of glass sticking into the Queen's face. The members are frozen. The boy unslings the tommy gun and shoots down five members in a random sequence pivoting from the hip. He picks up another glass. "And now all you officers and gentlemen, gather 'round here. That's right. I want to hear it, I want to hear it good and loud." "BUGGER THE QUEEN!" All over England, the elite guard carry the message of death. They have some natty uniforms with trick gadgets: a skull-and-crossbones in the lapel and a helmet that winks on and off, and blue revolving skull lights on the cars. And some frantic faggots get themselves up in skeleton suits of course. Sweeping down country roads thirty boys on motorcycles draw up in front of a stately home. "Yes sir?" "Where's the old bitch?" The butler's face does not change. "Mrs. Charington is in the garden sir." And there she is, in her trowels and slacks, digging away at her roses. "What do you want, young man?" She thinks he will quail before a good woman's gaze. He doesn't. "Lebenstraum, you old hag. You poison the air we breath." Mrs. Charington bleeds into her roses. The butler is busy with the wall safe... They sweep up to a baronial estate. "You'll have to wait, constable, the family is at dinner." "Good, we'll join them." He jabs the butler in the stomach with his tommy gun. The lord and lady die in the seats, faces in the grouse. the children, a boy of eighteen and a girl of sixteen, sit there, faces blank with shock. Slowly the boy's face glows and sharpens with calculation. his lips part and his eyes shine. "Due truths are told as happy preludes to the swelling act. And now for my unfortunate brother." Lead boy calls in two footmen. "Bring mattresses. You, and you, go along and see that they don't get lost. Television cameras set up. the mattresses brought in and dropped on the floor in front of the fireplace. Next scene shows the other boys gang-fucking the girl while the new boy tries on his uniform. All over England under the searching guns pubs echo with "BUGGER THE QUEEN!" Taken up by junkies, meth heads, hippies...played back on recorders...live on TV. "BUGGER THE QUEEN!" rises to the pale English sky. Whole regiments scream it out. "BUGGER THE QUEEN!" and murder their officers straightway. Boy packs with tommy guns march down the street and blast every shop window that bears the hated placard, "By Appointment to Her majesty the Queen." And everyone they meet had better scream it out loud... "BUGGER THE QUEEN!" They march into offices, schools, factories, department stores. "All right, all of you, stick your head out of the window and show some respect." "BUGGER THE QUEEN!" All over England heads pop out of windows screaming, "BUGGER THE QUEEN!" Languid young officers on flower floats through the streets as the delirious populace chants, "BUGGER THE QUEEN!" "Bugger the Queen!" is now the national greeting.. ERP occupies Buckingham Palace to protect and advise the Royal family. Decimated by assassination and deprived of psychic support, the army falters. The Queen abdicates, while the elite guard languidly polish their nails on skull lapels. And who is that...a very natty tailor-made uniform? ...I think there is a residue of fair-minded people in England who will read it as it is intended: as an empirical sociological observation. If an image or symbol is widely venerated in a population segment, the desecration and shattering of that image or symbol will shatter the social structure insofar as that structure is based on the image or symbol. It's a very old rule: shatter the idols and you shatter the social structure. The idols are not often as easy to find. "Bugger Nixon" just doesn't do it at all. No shock value there. The cut-ups date from the Dadaist movement and Tristan Tzara pulling a poem out of a hat. So you will see, this is actually a repetition of "Burn the Louvre!" And everybody says, "So who cares?" You don't have a basically important symbol. The tactic must shock and enrage, preferably to the point of madness. that is what this tactic is all about: desecration, madness. "No it was not a difficult decision to issue these licenses for rape and murder. Nothing more ominous than a difficult decision in the Pentagon. And nobody does more harm than he who feels bad about doing it. Sad poison, nice guy more poison than nice wept when he saw the Hiroshima pictures. What a drag. When we murder somebody we want to have fun doing it.." This license was dictated by a consideration taken into account by prudent commanders throughout history. You have to pay the boys off. Even the noble Brutus did it: "The town is yours boys." Tacitus describes a typical scene: "If a young girl or good-looking boy fell into their hands they were torn to pieces in the struggle for possession. And the survivors were left to cut each other's throats." Well there is no need for it to be that messy - why waste a good-looking boy? Mother-loving American army run by old women, many of them religious my god hanging American soldiers for raping and murdering civilians. "WHAT THE FUCKING BLOODY HELL ARE CIVILIANS FOR?" Old Sarge bellows from here to eternity: "Soldiers pay!" The CO stands there and smiles. Just ahead is a Middle Western American town about 200,000. Pretty town on a river, plenty of trees. The CO points, "He's all yours boys! Every man, woman and child of it. Anything in it, living or dead." "Now just a minute boys. Listen to Old Sarge. Why make the usual stupid scene kicking in liquor stores grabbing anything in sight. You wake up with a hangover in an alley, your prick tore from fucking dry cunts and assholes, your eye gouged out by a broken beer bottle when you and your buddy wanted the same one - no fun in that. Why not leave it like it is? They go about their daily tasks and we just take what we want when we want it, cool and easy, and make them like it. You see what I mean? Five thousand of us, two hundred thousand of them." The young lieutenant in camouflage sees what he means. Boys - school showers and swimming pools full of them... So we lay it on the line. "There's no cause for alarm, folks, proceed about your daily tasks. But one thing is clearly understood - your lives, your bodies, your properties belong to us whenever and wherever we choose to take them." So, we weed out the undesirables and turn the place into a paradise...getting' it steady year after year... (End of tape one, side B) <a href="http://www.artdamage.com/wsb/boyscout.htm">www.artdamage.com/wsb/boyscout.htm</a>

by **ce399** » Wed Nov 30, 2005 6:11 pm

Mind Control And Murder Cults The Assassins were members of an Islamic secret society born in the 11th century. Still shrouded in mystery nearly a millennium after its birth, members of the sect were known at the time as Nizaris. The name "assassin" was a European word coined to describe the sect. Its exact origin is uncertain, but legend holds that it meant "user of hashish," the drug rumored to be the secret of the Nizaris' fanatical and even suicidal fervor. Ruthless and stealthy, the Assassins were skilled in the use of fear and violence for political manipulation and to advance their radical Islamic theology. Their operatives would go deep undercover, sometimes waiting years for an order to strike. Members of the sect used only daggers, adding a ritual mystique to their work. They kept a roll of honor, listing the names of martyred assassins and their victims. The loyalty of the Assassins was legendary, and even suicidal in its intensity. The most famous story told of the sect dates to the 12th century, and various versions of the tale run through the Crusades. As related by Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis in his landmark study, The Assassins: The word (assassin) first appears in the chronicles of the Crusades, as the name of a strange group of Muslim sectaries in the Levant, led by a mysterious figure known as the Old Man of the Mountain, and abhorrent, by their beliefs and practices, to good Christians and Muslims alike. [...] "I shall now relate things about this elder," says the German chronicler Arnold of Lubeck, "which appear ridiculous, but which are attested to me by the evidence of reliable witnesses. This Old Man has by his witchcraft so bemused the men of his country ... (that) many of them even, when standing on a high wall, will jump off at his nod or command, and, shattering their skulls, die a miserable death. The most blessed, so he affirms, are those who shed the blood of men and in revenge for such deeds themselves suffer death." It's not difficult to see why the September 11 attack inspired a resurgence of interest in the cult, as publishers rushed to rebrand academic books on the Nizaris with titles like "The Assassins: History's First Terrorists," usually to the consternation of authors. Most of that initial surge quickly faded. For all their similarities, there were seemingly insurmountable obstacles that caused many to consider comparisons between the Assassins and al Qaeda to be more glib than accurate. But the practice of terrorism is as much about illusion and misdirection as it is about fear. At first glance, the comparison seemed valid. On closer examination, it didn't hold water. The reality is complicated. Without resorting to a simplistic view of "they're both Muslims and they both kill people," al Qaeda and the Assassins have interesting similarities in structure, theology, and history*. It's useful to begin with the structure. Both al Qaeda and the Assassins employ an a organizational chart drawn in concentric circles. The result is an organization that is extraordinarily efficient at manipulating its adherents, creating a loyalty so intense that soldiers gladly die for the cause, while entrenching an inner management that is extremely resistant to attack. *The religious parallels are the subject of al Qaeda as Ecumenical Outreach. The historical relationships are covered in Then And Now: The Missing Link. Circular Structures Similarities between al Qaeda and the Assassins are not surprising or significant in themselves. Both groups are religiously oriented secret societies on a wartime footing. It's natural that there would be some parallels. The question is how deep the similarities run. Governments tend to be organized in pyramids. An individual rules from the top, then a series of bureaucratic layers that fatten and sprawl as you get further and further from the leadership. In contrast, religious cults and secret societies tend to be organized in circles. These groups usually have a large outer circle, often consisting of people with only a casual interest in the society's goals. Within that circle are a finite number of increasingly exclusive degrees, made up from agents and members who are increasingly informed about the society's real goals and methods. Circular organizations are more resistant to assault than pyramid hierarchies, in part because their internal mechanisms are hidden. The point of a pyramid is to create a clear path to a visible apex, a single leadership position that dominates the structure. The pyramid structure is therefore largely transparent. Standing at the foot of a pyramid, you can see its tip. Circular structure hides and protects the center. Standing on the surface of a globe, you cannot see its center. It's difficult to strike at the center without burrowing into the structure. There are other advantages. Gravity, for instance, works to the advantage of a spherical structure, but acts to the detriment of a pyramid. When you attack the structure of a globe, everything falls in toward the center, consolidating strength at the middle and healing ruptures in the exterior, a mechanism which experts see working in al Qaeda as it recovers from a U.S. onslaught. In a pyramid, however, the vitally important apex rests on top of the subsequent layers. By hacking away at the middle, or the bottom, the structure can become so destabilized that the apex may fall.  The Organization of the Assassins The Assassins, or the Nizaris, were a sect of Shi'a Islam founded in the 11th century by a charismatic religious leader named Hasan I-Sabbah. Educated in Egypt, Hassan formally founded the order around 1090, when he took control of the Persian fortress of Alamut (in what is now Iran). Religion and subterfuge went hand in hand for the Assassins from their earliest days. Legend has it that Hassan won Alamut by infiltrating the fortress with his missionaries, who converted and recruited the castle's guards to Hasan's version of Ismaili Islam. By the time the lord of the castle figured out what was going on, Hassan was already inside the fortress and in control of its army. Hassan reportedly paid off his predecessor to clinch the deal without a sword being drawn. According to legend, the Assassins famously relied only on their daggers to kill. They were said to be fanatically committed to their leader, Hasan, and his successors as Grand Master, and they considered martyrdom a great honor. Legend states that Nizari leaders drugged the Assassins with hashish in order to brainwash them into believing they would enter paradise as martyrs, but it's unclear whether that really happened. It's certainly feasible. The Assassins earned their fame with a series of political murders that helped reshape Persia and Syria during their heyday. The murders were accomplished by stealth and infiltration, and the Nizaris were said to have agents within the courts of many regional kings. They struck Muslims and non-Muslims alike, as it suited their needs. Although they are perhaps most known for their fight against the Crusaders, their "honor roll" of victims included more Muslims by far. The Assassins were structured as a secret society, or in religious terms, a mystery school. In this sort of structure, the flow of information is controlled by layers. A sect has different levels of initiation, circular layers that proceed from an outer shell to an inner core. As one progresses through the organization, one is initiated into each layer, or degree, with a ritual that culminates in the sharing of new and secret information. In the outer circles, the information revealed is often pragmatic -- codes, martial techniques, secret signals and the like. Deeper into the organization, the initiation information invariably becomes more important and more shocking, usually consisting of powerful religious content. Each degree of the Assassins' represented an increasingly sophisticated theological view, with corresponding increases in the presumed power and freedom of the initiate. The Nizaris employed a form of missionary known as a dai. The dais covertly traveled to Sunni Muslim areas and sought to convert selected individuals to their brand of Shi'ite Islam, known as Ismailism. Dais often practiced taqiyya, a religiously sanctioned form of deception under which they were permitted to disguise themselves as believers in non-Nizari sects or even to pose as non-Muslims. At one point, the entire sect virtually converted from Shi'a Islam to Sunni Islam in order to secure a political alliance and the safety of the Assassin fortresses. They reverted when the guise was no longer expedient. Much of the Assassins' own literature was destroyed when Alamut finally fell to a Mongol invasion in the 13th century. That defeat marked the end of the Assassins' visible power in the world. Many of the surviving documents are accounts written by the sects' Christian and Sunni enemies. Because of this, the description of the sects' inner workings should be taken with a large grain of salt. But enough data exists to approximate the beliefs and functions of each degree. While the surviving accounts likely don't reflect the exact beliefs of the ancient Assassins, they are probably close enough to be instructive. The following descriptions are culled primarily from Secret Societies by Arkon Daraul, and The Milita of Heaven, by James Wasserman. Their accounts were in turn derived from Crusader records and Sunni Muslim heresiologists. The source texts were written in the 14th century, but cited a supposed source from the 10th century. The outermost circle of the church, the first circle, relied on classic cult recruiting techniques to draw a prospect into the sect. Once a likely prospect was selected by the dai, the teacher launched an attack on his preconceptions, pointing out inconsistencies in the Koran and logical errors in mainstream theology. While undermining the recruit's confidence, the dai simultaneously indicated that the answers to these troubling questions lay within the sect, at a deeper level of initiation. And the subsequent degrees were designed to deliver on that promise. In the second through fourth degrees, initiates were introduced to increasingly complex explanations of the symbolism and prophecies of the Koran, including secret symbols, number codes and magical practices. In addition to unfolding levels of knowledge, the revelations of each degree further estranged the initiates from mainstream Islam, undermining and eventually flatly denying both Shi'ite and Sunni beliefs, and denying the truth of the Koran. In the fifth and sixth degrees, the instruction became densely esoteric, including teaching on astrology, kabbala, the calendar and Greek philosophy. More significantly, at the sixth degree, initiates were freed from the constraints of Shariah law, the fundamental code of behavior underlying Islam, which includes detailed instructions on fasting, prayer, pilgrimage and a multitude of other issues. The denial of Shariah was the ultimate in heresy, binding the initiate to the cult and alienating him profoundly from his fellow Muslims. Sixth degree initiates could become dais in their own right. It was an exclusive level of initiation. Few made it so far, and even fewer moved beyond. Sixth degree initiates could also be members of the class of Assassin warrior known as a fidai, an Arabic word meaning "faithful." The fidais are the classic Assassins, as the word is understood in modern usage. Fidais were dagger-wielding killers who would strike at the command of their Grand Master, embracing martyrdom without showing fear or doubt. No one knows how many fidais there were at any given time, which only made them more effective. They would spend years infiltrating the courts of regional powers, where they would simply wait for the command to strike -- no matter how long it took. Seventh and eighth degree initiates were the elite among dais. In the seventh and eighth circles, initiates were exposed to distinctly Gnostic concepts, including a Manichean view of a universe in which God and his creation are divided into two principles. This was a radical departure from the extraordinarily intense monotheism practiced in the outer Islam. The learnings at this level continued to become more and more esoteric, having less and less to do with the mundanities of daily life. Importantly, at the eighth level, according to Daraul, "The proselyte is also taught that a Prophet is known as such not by miracles, but by his ability to construct and impose in a kind of system at once political, social, religious, and philosophical." The eighth degree opened the door to a level of aspiration that was fantastically blasphemous to Muslims outside the sect, the notion that one could aspire to reach the status of a Prophet. The ninth degree, the final circle of initiation known to the outside world, was purportedly the introduction of the Antinomian heresy to the Islamic world. Those initiated to the ninth degree learned the ultimate secret -- that there is no sin -- and became pure Gnostics in the sense that all further wisdom was to be received directly from God. It's difficult to judge how truly accurate the accounts of the inner circles of the cult might be. After all, these accounts were written by the enemies of the Nizaris. It's not at all unusual for the victors in a religious conflict to characterize their enemies as Antinomians. And only a handful of extremely devoted and loyal subjects ever reached the seventh, eighth and ninth circles. Still, there is a powerful poetry to the quote famously attributed to the sect's founder, Hasan I-Sabbah, summing up the ultimate secret of the Nizaris' ninth circle: "Nothing is true, everything is permitted." That saying could be inscribed on the coat of arms for Al Takfir Wal Hijra, the Islamic cult that dominates the leadership of al Qaeda. (See al Qaeda as Ecumenical Outreach.)  The Organization of al Qaeda al Qaeda also uses degrees of initiation, but they aren't as clearly delineated to the outside world. With the perspective of history, it's easier -- and safer -- to speculate about the Assassins' secret teachings and methods. In the event of capture, Al Qaeda members are taught to encumber interrogation, providing mountains of trivia while misdirecting on key points. Nevertheless, a fairly coherent picture has emerged after years of arrests and indictments, with their mountains of evidence, testimony and seized documents. We can only estimate, but we can estimate fairly well. As with the Assassins, the exact boundaries of the degrees may differ slightly, but al Qaeda does use a few clearly defined levels of engagement, starting with casual alliances to running to the most fanatical of true believers, some of whom are still unknown to the West. From the outside looking in, it appears al Qaeda's degrees of initiation are arranged by function, rather than religious revelation. It's quite likely that this appearance is misleading or incomplete, but it provides a starting point for analyzing the terror network. According to the 9/11 Commission's final report, al Qaeda's "structure included as its operating arms an intelligence component, a military committee, a financial committee, a political committee, and a committee in charge of media affairs and propaganda. It also had an Advisory Council (Shura) made up of Bin Ladin's inner circle." Breaking the network down to its areas of functioning is useful, but only to a point. Most governments perform all of these functions (sometimes excepting religion), but a Communist dictatorship is dramatically different from a representative democracy which is different from a constitutional monarchy. The question is: How do the components interact? What is the shape of the network? Rather than trying to cram al Qaeda into a Western corporate model, as many observers do, it makes more sense to view it as a secret society with a circular structure of degrees, like the Assassins or the Freemasons. The degrees identified here should not be considered a complete list, nor should they necessarily be treated as the formal hierarchy used internally by al Qaeda. This overview represents one "best guess" attempt to divine the structure of al Qaeda from the outside. Much like the Assassins, al Qaeda identifies potential recruits through an evangelical religious program (see al Qaeda as Ecumenical Outreach). Some of these potentials become freelance operatives, financial supporters or simply sympathizers. This, the first degree is the outer ring of al Qaeda, consisting of casual helpers and interested parties. Often, these individuals will never move deeper into the group. There is no initiation at this level. Many members of the "media committee" fall within this circle, including a cadre of Webmasters, systems analysts and hackers who help disseminate terrorist messages. Some of these potentials are identified as having promise, and invited to attend indoctrination, which culminates in entry to the second degree. Everyone invited at this level is male, although a handful of women have worked their way into the organization through various unique avenues. Where the ancient Assassins had remote fortresses to indoctrinate new initiates, al Qaeda has camps. Qaeda training camps are fortified and as secure as any location in the modern world. Here, initiation into the core al Qaeda organization takes place. These camps are found all around the globe -- in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Philippines, Malaysia, the Sudan and Saudi Arabia, just to name a few of the most prominent locales. Some camps are even located in Europe and the United States. There were a few small training sites in Iraq before the U.S. invasion; now the camps are much bigger and more numerous. In addition to their practical utility in teaching the finer points of firearms, explosives and poisons, these camps served as isolation tanks. While in training, new recruits simply drop off the face of the earth. It's a classic cult technique, separating potential recruits from family and friends, moving them into an insular community with few outsider influences and strictly controlled communication with the outer world. According to accounts from captured operatives, these second-degree initiates are given false names (or real names that belong to other people). They are explicitly instructed on how to fit into Western societies, even at the expense of strict adherence to Shariah law. Members at this level usually meet with one or more members of the charismatic inner circle of al Qaeda, figures like bin Laden or Zawahiri. These meetings are important mostly for their psychological impact. At this level, members can be considered the equivalent of the fidais within the Assassins. Second-degree initiates can be selected for martyrdom missions, or sent to live abroad as a sleeper agents. These sleepers are sometimes exempted from Shariah requirements in order to successfully blend in. After indoctrination is complete, recruits are usually sent back out into the world. The second-degree members of al Qaeda are the footsoldiers of global terrorism. They carry messages and supplies around the world. They assist acts of terrorism, large and small. They perform reconnaissance, move money, and perform dozens of other pragmatic tasks. The third degree of al Qaeda consists of lieutenants, who direct the actions of the fidais. These trusted operatives are more thoroughly trained than the footsoldiers. Often, they specialize in certain kinds of terrorism, such as explosives or chemical weapons. Members of the third circle are military and political strategists; they often originate proposals for terrorist operations, sometimes working under general guidelines provided by the innermost circle. Terrorism experts sometimes refer to this circle as al Qaeda's military committee. Members of this circle have included Mohammed Atta, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and probably Ramzi Yousef. Third degree members are initiated, but they do not swear loyalty to bin Laden. When he was at large, KSM was commonly referred to as "al Qaeda's No. 3 leader." This was true in the sense that as a third degree member, he was two steps from the center. But many others share that status. Khalid's energy and creativity enhanced the appearance of his stature. But was not associated with al Qaeda's religious and theological activities. His role, while vitally important, was limited. Religion is key to advancement past the third degree, and thus evangelists, recruiters and financiers represent the fourth degree of al Qaeda membership. It's virtually impossible to separate the three functions. As practiced by al Qaeda, these roles are interdependent and interchangeable. These operatives are al Qaeda's dais. From a strategic viewpoint, the fourth degree is perhaps the most important level of the organization. The dais carry an evangelical message, sweetened with money and fortified with guns. In the modern world, dais work the networks and systems of mainstream Islam to their advantage. They have substantially infiltrated the world of Islamic charities, which provides multiple benefits to al Qaeda. Missionary status allows the dais to travel freely under the guise of charitable and religious work, and funds donated with good intentions, out of legitimate Islamic generosity, are misdirected to support al Qaeda's definition of jihad. There are at least dozens of fourth-degree initiates in al Qaeda's network; there may be several hundred or even thousands. Like the dais of the Assassins, these operatives are trained to hide themselves in sophisticated ways. Generally, only the major operators ever become visible. Likely members of the fourth degree include men such as Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, bin Laden's brother-in-law and allegedly a top Qaeda financier; Mohamed Loay Bayazid, a Qaeda moneyman accused of trying to buy uranium for a nuclear weapon; and Enaam Arnaout, head of the Benevolence International Foundation, an Islamic charity shut down by Western authorities as a major al Qaeda money laundering operation. Bayazid and Khalifa are still at large; Arnaout pleaded guilty to charges not related to al Qaeda and is serving time in a U.S. prison. Other operatives within this fourth circle may have include Hambali and Abu Bak'r Bashir. Either man could also have been part of the inner leadership circle. Despite the fact that both men are in custody, there is still much we don't know about their roles. While it's sometimes tough to keep score, it appears the U.S. and its allies have barely penetrated the fourth degree, including the financial and political committees. There have not been consistent reports of a formal initiation ceremony for second and third degree initiates, although one may well exist. In contrast, Western intelligence has learned that fourth degree initiates are required to formally swear loyalty to bin Laden (or another member of the innermost circle). This ritual is a variation on a traditional Islamic oath of loyalty called bayat (or bay'a) in Arabic. According to GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington, D.C.-area think tank, "bayat is the ritual of accepting (a) shaykh as guide and coming under the protection of the lineage of the order. The number of actual members pledging bayat is unknown, but al-Qaida is said to have trained as many as 5,000 militants in camps in Afghanistan and perhaps Indonesia." As observed above, not everyone who passes through the camps swears bayat. According to the Final Report of the 9/11 Commission, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed told his captors he refused to pledge fealty to bin Laden, despite being pressured to do so. While that may be a self-serving account, his "job" function fits with the third degree of the organization. While all second-degree operatives appear to have sworn bayat, some members of lower degrees also take the oath. What this means, to be strictly accurate, the actual gradation of degrees in al Qaeda is almost certainly more complex than the estimate presented here. bin Laden's personal bodyguards reportedly are required to swear bayat. Little is known of the actual ceremony. According to the Chicago Tribune, one captured fidai-level operative told the FBI that while he was at a training camp in Afghanistan, a group of initiates took the oath in a mountaintop ritual. (As a second-degree initiate, he was not among them.) The innermost circle of al Qaeda is its leadership, the fifth degree. The leadership of al Qaeda is commonly referred to as a council, or as the "Shura Council," a description first used in 1998's U.S. v bin Laden criminal case. Western authorities know virtually nothing concrete about the actual leadership of al Qaeda, a testament to the efficiency of the secret society organizational structure. They don't even know the size of the Shura Council for certain, but a common guess is 20 to 30 members. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are members of this innermost council. Beyond them, a handful of names are known and others may be inferred. Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban, is likely one of these core leaders. These leaders are considered warriors, and they directly contribute to Qaeda's military and financial functions, but their public importance hinges on religious authority. Some likely members of the Shura Council have been apprehended by the West, without significantly damaging al Qaeda's ability to function. The "blind Sheikh," Omar Abdel Rahman, currently in U.S. custody for his role in plot to destroy New York City landmarks, was likely part of al Qaeda's fifth degree leadership at the time of his arrest. Other names associated with this core leadership include Saif al Islam el Masry, currently believed to be an inmate at Camp X-Ray, and Mohammed Atef and Abu Ubaidah al Banshiri, both believed to be deceased. There appears to be one key difference between the Assassins' structure and the visible framework of al Qaeda -- centralized leadership. There is every reason to suspect that Osama bin Laden is not crucial to the survival and operations of al Qaeda. Hassan I-Sabbah, on the other hand, is believed to have been the absolute ruler of the Assassins, in both its inward and outward modes. The Psychology Of Structure All these gradations of knowledge and authority, combined with the specific training and initiation techniques, amount to a quick course in Mind Control 101. Both the Assassins and al Qaeda use tried and true methods to manipulate their members -- the techniques of a cult. The degreed initiation structure, and techniques applied to members entering each circle, is designed to create specific mental conditions that bind them more and more completely to the cult. Robert Lifton, an expert in cult psychology, outlined three defining characteristics of a cult in a 1981 article for The Harvard Mental Health Letter: 1) a charismatic leader who increasingly becomes an object of worship as the general principles that may have originally sustained the group lose their power; 2) a process I call coercive persuasion or thought reform; 3) economic, sexual, and other exploitation of group members by the leader and the ruling coterie. It's difficult to be sure, when so little is known about the fifth degree leadership, but it appears that there is not a solitary leader of al Qaeda akin to the President of the United States (or the Grand Master of the Assassins). But that's a purely structural consideration. On a practical level, Osama bin Laden is clearly the charismatic personality that al Qaeda revolves around, as Hassan I-Sabbah was to the original Assassins. The prevailing importance of martyrdom as a virtue in al Qaeda ensures that he can continue to perform that function, even in the event of his death. The cultish element of exploitation is arguable, given the enormity of the political and religious motivation that motivates many members of al Qaeda. In the final analysis, however, the recurrent use of suicide bombers to advance a political agenda is probably enough to qualify as Lifton's third criterion. That leaves us with the process of "coercive persuasion." Lifton details this phrase with admirable specificity. Coercive persuasion includes the following elements, according to Lifton: • Milieu control: Controlling every aspect of the initiate's environment. For the Assassins, it was a fortress. For al Qaeda, this means the training camp environment. In either case, the cult completely controls the setting under which indoctrination is performed, in the complete absence of outside influences. • Mystical manipulation (planned spontaneity): The instigation of a mystical-style experience through "religious techniques such as fasting, chanting and limited sleep." Lifton adds that "mystical manipulation may also legitimatize deception of outsiders," obviously a key element in both Assassin and al Qaeda practice. In one example, a document found in Mohammed Atta's luggage instructed the September 11 hijackers to prepare themselves by chanting specific verses from the Koran late into the night. • Demand for purity: Lifton calls this "a call for radical separation of good and evil within the environment and within oneself." It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see how this works in both cults. al Takfir Wal Hijra, believed to be the dominant ideology in al Qaeda, is Arabic for "excommunication and emigration." In its original incarnation, it was a separatist movement that demanded its followers remove themselves entirely from the corrupt secular world. • Purification: The document in Atta's luggage also contained detailed instructions on this topic. "Purify your soul from all unclean things," it exhorted in Arabic. "Completely forget something called 'this world.' The time for play is over and the serious time is upon us." While our knowledge of the Assassins is incomplete, the purification process appears to have been more symbolic and intellectual, a cleansing of the "impure" versions of Islam as represented in outer Sunni and Shi'a teaching. Both the Assassins and al Qaeda mix these techniques to maximum effect. The Assassins operated from remote fortresses in rural areas of Persia and Syria. While inside, initiates of the order were intensely manipulated. Consider this account from Daraul's Secret Societies: The ancient Art of Imposture, by Abdel-Rahman of Damascus, gives away another trick of Hasan's. He had a deep, narrow pit sunk into the floor of his audience-chamber. One of his disciples stood in this, in such a way that his head and neck alone were visible above the floor. Around the neck was placed a circular dish in two pieces which fitted together, with a hole in the middle. This gave the impression that there was a severed head on a metal plate standing on the floor. In order to make the scene more plausible (if that is the word) Hasan had some fresh blood poured around the head, on the plate. Now certain recruits were brought in. "Tell them," commanded the chief, "what thou hast seen." The disciple then described the delights of Paradise. "You have seen the head of a man who died, whom you all knew. I have reanimated him to speak with his own tongue." Later, the head was treacherously severed in real earnest, and stuck for some time somewhere that the faithful would see it. The effect of this conjuring trick plus murder increased the enthusiasm for martyrdom to the required degree. Complete milieu control allows you to pull off tricks like this, and the element of mystical manipulation is plain to see. While there are no reports of al Qaeda using quite so colorful techniques, the training camp setting is another example of milieu control. From deep in the mountains of Afghanistan, there is no opportunity to call home, check in with friends and family, or watch the game at a local pub. The end goal of these techniques is identical for both the Assassins and al Qaeda -- breeding fanatics. Both organizations used the techniques of a mystical secret society in order to command absolute loyalty and submission from their followers. That submission is then employed to advance a purely religious goal of sweeping scope -- a forcefully evangelical conversion of the entire world to their specific visions of Islam, and the extermination of those who stand in their way. <a href="http://www.rotten.com/library/conspiracy/al-qaeda-and-the-assassins/mind-control/">www.rotten.com/library/co...d-control/</a>