Existentialist Cowboy Archives

AA Exposes Bush's 'Big Lie': Flight 11 DID NOT FLY on 911!

2009-07-02T05:01:00.000-07:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

American Airlines itself is the source for information that AA Flights 11 (North Tower) and 77 (Pentagon) did not fly on 911. These flights are critical to the the government's crumbling cover up! Bush's 'official conspiracy theory' of 911 is, therefore, a lie! If either of those 'flights' were mothballed on 9/11, then Bush's 'big lie' --the official conspiracy theory --is not merely false, it is a bald-faced lie!

Conan Doyle, the brilliant creator of the character Sherlock Holmes, said: "When you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains however implausible must be the truth!" You can, therefore, eliminate Bush's official conspiracy theory of 911! It is not only impossible, it's absurd and insulting to intelligent people!

The Bush Conspiracy Theory is a Lie

If neither flight was in the air as American Airlines itself has so stated, then numerous 'official versions' of the 'official conspiracy theory' are but a pack of malicious lies. There is, then, probable cause to indict Bush and his co-conspirators for the crimes of mass murder and high treason. See: U. S. Codes, Title 18, Section 2441. That includes every statement made by Bush.

WikiScanner discovered that it was American Airlines itself which changed their Wikipedia entry to state that Flights 11 and 77 did not fly on 9/11. The original entry was as follows:

Two American Airlines aircraft were hijacked and crashed during the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack: American Airlines Flight 77 (a Boeing 757) and American Airlines Flight 11 (a Boeing 767).

New entry [as of the date of this article] is as follows and includes the bolded text below:

Two American Airlines aircraft were hijacked and crashed during the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack: Flight 77 (a Boeing 757) and Flight 11 (a Boeing 767).

Although these flights were daily departures before and a month after September 11, 2001. Neither flight 11 nor 77 were scheduled on September 11, 2001. The records kept by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (www.bts.gov/gis/) do not list either flight that day.

--Wikipedia

To make the point: the source for these change is American Airlines by making changes to Wikipedia. The 'story' is not Wiki. The story is not about Wiki. The story is about how AA 'corrected' a wiki entry. The story is about the fact that the evidence that Flights 11 and 77 were not flying on 911 comes from American Airlines itself.

According to a Freedom of Information Act reply from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), the last known pre-9/11 flights for three of the four aircraft involved in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 took place in December, 2000, nine months before the attacks, while no pre-9/11 final flight information was provided for American Airlines flight 77 (N644AA).

However, a discovered searchable online BTS database produces the following search results for three of the four 9/11 aircraft on September 10, 2001:

AA 11 departs San Francisco (SFO): AA 09/10/2001 0198 (flight number) N334AA (tail number) BOS (destination) 22:04 (wheels-off time)

UA 175 departs San Francisco (SFO): UA 09/10/2001 0170 (flight number) N612UA (tail number) BOS (destination) 13:44 (wheels-off time)

UA 93 departs San Francisco (SFO): UA 09/10/2001 0078 (flight number) N591UA (tail number) EWR (destination) 23:15 (wheels-off time)
--911 Blogger, UPDATE: U.S. BTS FOIA Records For 9/11 Planes Differ From BTS Online Database [The records were obtained by Adrian Monaghan]

The question is raised: how do we know who made the changes to Wiki? Everyone logged on to the internet does so from an IP address. In this case, the IP is that of American Airlines. It's traceable.

My own WHOIS lookup as well as my Google search of the IP address proves conclusively that it was --indeed --American Airlines that made the change. It is, therefore, American Airlines that has said that neither Flight 11 nor Flight 77 were in the air on 911.

Therefore, the Bush theory of 911 is a deliberate lie.

My look up returned the following:

WHOIS - 144.9.8.21

Location: United States [City: Ft. Worth, Texas]

OrgName:    American Airlines Incorporated
OrgID:      AMERIC-112
Address:    P.O.Box 619616
Address:    MD 5308
City:       DFW Airport
StateProv:  TX
PostalCode: 75261
Country:    US

NetRange:   144.9.0.0 - 144.9.255.255
CIDR:       144.9.0.0/16
NetName:    AANET
NetHandle:  NET-144-9-0-0-1
Parent:     NET-144-0-0-0-0
NetType:    Direct Assignment
NameServer: DNS-P1.SABRE.COM
NameServer: DNS-P2.SABRE.COM
NameServer: DNS-P3.SABRE.COM
NameServer: DNS-P4.SABRE.COM
Comment:
RegDate:    1990-10-31
Updated:    2002-06-27

RTechHandle: OG60-ARIN
RTechName:   Gelbrich, Orf
RTechPhone:  +1-817-931-3145
RTechEmail:  ************@aa.com

OrgTechHandle: ZW72-ARIN
OrgTechName:   WARIS, ZISHAN
OrgTechPhone:  +1-817-967-1242
OrgTechEmail:  ************@aa.com

# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2008-06-29 19:10
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN's WHOIS database.

One of Many Fatal Holes in the Bush Official Conspiracy Theory

The many lies (many referenced in previous EC articles; see links below) are probable cause to begin a Federal Grand Jury investigation of George W. Bush's role in 911. Bush should be compelled by subpoena and Federal Marshals to testify under oath before an independent Federal Grand Jury. The AA revelations demand it!

Bush lies have the effect of covering up the truth, protecting the guilty and obstructing justice. The lies are an insult to the families of 911 victims, victims dishonored by the continuing cover-up! Bush's lies aggravate the crimes of mass murder, terrorism and high treason for which the penalty must surely be death.

911 did not happen as we have been told.

Bushco's 'official conspiracies theory' of 911 is full of holes. Flights 11 and 77 are essential ingredients in the 'official conspiracy theory' of 911. That AA claims that neither 11 nor 77 were in the air that day sinks Bush's theory.

More importantly, however, it should get him an 'invitation' to appear before a Federal Grand Jury to answers charges that he betrayed his nation and waged war upon the people. Clearly --the official theory is a lie, an intentional cover-up. Cover-ups imply guilt! Otherwise --what is there to cover up? The official 'lie' goes like this:

At 8:20, Flight 11 stopped transmitting its transponder signal, and veered northward and departed dramatically from the westward heading of its planned route. The controllers concluded that the plane had probably been hijacked. 4 5 At 8:24, the following transmission was reportedly received from Flight 11: We have some planes. Just stay quiet and you'll be okay .. we are returning to the airport.
..Nobody move. Everything will be okay. If you try to make any moves, you'll endanger yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet. Nobody move please we are going back to the airport .. don't try to make any stupid moves. 6
Neither of the pilots pressed the distress call button. At 8:28 controllers reportedly watched the plane make a 100-degree turn toward the south. 7 Presumably, Flight 11 continued south along the Hudson River until it reached the World Trade Center, though documentation of this is sparse given the lack of public information.
According to NORAD's September 18 timeline, the FAA did not notify NORAD of the signs that Flight 11 was hijacked until 8:40, 25 minutes after the first signs of trouble. 8
--Flight 11, The First Jet Commandeered on September 11th, 911 Research

Simply: if AA Flight 11 was not in the air, it could not have struck the towers; ergo: the Bush theory is false!

The house of cards collapses.

Assertions that Flight 11 struck the North Tower that are utterly baseless, if not a deliberate and criminal lie! If neither Flight 11 mor 77 was in the air that day, the Bush administration's version of events must be utterly discarded.

If flights 11 or 77 did not fly on 911, officialdom must come up with another explanation to explain the the events of 911.

No wreckage traceable to a 757 was ever found at the Pentagon.

One would not expect to find wreckage of a flight never flown. What is significant with respect to the changes to Wiki with respect to BTS/NTSB records is that the burden of proof is now placed upon Bushco to prove its theory --or shut up and face charges resulting from the probable cause that Bush himself and high ranking members of his administration participated in the crimes of mass murder and high treason!

Photos of an engine rotor appear to depict an engine used in the Global Hawk, a payload carrying missile that was, according to Britain's International Television News, flown from the US to Australia completely by remote control. "A robot plane has made aviation history by becoming the first unmanned aircraft to fly across the Pacific Ocean."

Britain's ITN continued:

"The Global Hawk, a jet-powered aircraft with a wingspan equivalent to a Boeing 737, flew from Edwards Air Force Base in California and landed late on Monday at the Royal Australian Air Force base at Edinburgh, in South Australia state... It flies along a pre-programmed flight path, but a pilot monitors the aircraft during its flight via a sensor suite which provides infra-red and visual images."

ITN quoted Australian Global Hawk manager Rod Smith: "The aircraft essentially flies itself, right from takeoff, right through to landing, and even taxiing off the runway."

'The Missile that Struck this Building'

The Global Hawk is a much better candidate for what Rumsfeld called '...the missile that struck this building' than a 757. Here's what you need to know about the Pentagon.

Only minutes after the strike, [see pic above] there is no sign of an airliner at all!!
No wreckage traceable to a 757 was ever recovered.
Only ONE engine rotor (seen in photos) was recovered! This rotor is about one third the diameter of a 757 rotor, i.e about the size of a U.S. Global Hawk rotor.
A 757 has two rotors, each of which are nearly three times the size of the SINGLE rotor located at the Pentagon. Again --only one rotor was found in Pentagon debris.
Engine rotors are made of a Steel/Titanium alloy to withstand high temps inside jet engines and would have been found had they been there.
Flight 77 could not and did not crash into the Pentagon.

No Arabs Were on Board 77

If no Arabs were on board Flight 77, Bush's theory must be trashed! There is not only no evidence to support the theory that Arab terrorists hijacked 77, there is every reason to believe that none of ever got on board. There are no Arabs on the only Pentagon 'evidence' that is admissible in court: the 'Official Autopsy Report' of Pentagon victims. The autopsy report was released to Dr. Olmsted in response to his FOIA request. In a 'neat' cover-up, a 911 memorial lists all victims of whatever it was that crashed into the Pentagon. At the same time, 77 victims were said to have been buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Where, then, are the passengers buried? I will surprised to learn that there were passengers on a flight that cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to have existed.

Whatever crashed into the Pentagon was described by a witnesses as looking like a 'hump-backed whale'. Rumsfeld himself called it a missile: Below: a US Global Hawk painted to look like an AA airliner. It is both a 'missile' and it also has a hump back!

The photo below does not purport to be the craft that would ultimately crash into the Pentagon. It merely demonstrates how easily such a 'paint job' could dupe those who are 1) not experts on aircraft 2) saw it only for a second or less as it scooted across the Pentagon lawn as NO 757 could possible have done 3) were, in any case, caught off guard.

Recognizing lies for what they are is a part of the process of growing up! America, it is time to grow up! It is time to confront this heinous pack of lies! It is time to insist that the Obama administration begin a REAL investigation of 911.

It is time to insist that a Federal Grand Jury investigate every count of high treason, mass murder and domestic terrorism that was perpetrated upon the people of the US by the Bush administration, his collaborators in the Pentagon, K-Street, the Congress and the leadership of the Republican party, Marvin Bush's 'Securacom', Larry Silverstein who ordered WTC 7 be 'pulled', General Myers, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and, of course, George W. Bush who was, at the time, the 'Commander-in-Chief' and ultimately responsible for the orders given the US military to 'stand down'.

By Donald Rumsfeld's own admission, he was unaware of any threats to the Pentagon -- the building where he was located during the September 11th attacks -- until an aircraft crashed into the side of it, and he ran out "into the smoke" to see if it might be a "A bomb? I had no idea." (ABC News This Week, Interview 9/16/01).
Well, that's a pretty tall tale by any standard. The New York Times reported that by 8:13am, the FAA was aware of the first hijacking out of Boston. The Pentagon explosion, which Donald Rumsfeld claimed he had "no idea," did not occur until approximately 9:37am, nearly an hour and a half later, this after two of the tallest buildings in the world were devastated. Note that a plane hijacked out of Boston can reach Washington D.C. as easily as it can reach New York City.
It was widely reported that Pentagon personnel were indeed aware of the threats to their security, and they took security measures on that morning. But not the "Secretary of Defense." Why should the man charged with defending the United States of America concern himself with hijacked aircraft?
There is a set of procedures for responding to hijackings. In particular, these procedures were changed on June 1, 2001 while Rumsfeld was in power as our Secretary of Defense, in a document called: "CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF INSTRUCTION, J-3 CJCSI 3610.01A"

The video asks: "Was 911 a Conspiracy?" That is NOT the question. Even Bushco claims that it was a conspiracy, a conspiracy of 19 Arab Hijackers who could not possibly have pulled it off. It is, frankly, a stupid scenario! Without the shock and awe campaign, no one would have believed it. The questions, rather, are which conspiracy and who were the conspirators? It was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes who said that when you have eliminated the impossible what remains however improbable MUST be the truth!

ADDENDUM:

There has been a spate of fallacious comments of the form: "...uh...what happened the passengers, dude?". A few points:

the 'question' is, in fact, an implied statement and ASSUMES there were flights! In a court, it would be said that the statement 'assumes facts NOT in evidence'!
absence of evidence is not evidence in support of anything, let alone Bush's idiotic, fallacious and pernicious lie! ! The 'absence of bodies' is not evidence of a crash of any sort; only the presence of bodies traceable to the alleged flights are evidence supporting Bush's unsupportable thoery.

The only available evidence, moreover, disproves the Bushco conspiracy theory of 911. There is no evidence whatsoever that there were --at any time --any Arabs of any sort (terrorist or otherwise) on board Flight 77, a flight for which there is no evidence whatsoever.

The AFIP suggest these numbers; 189 killed, 125 worked at the Pentagon and 64 were "passengers" on the plane. The AA list only had 56 and the list just obtained has 58. They did not explain how they were able to tell "victims" bodies from "hijacker" bodies. In fact, from the beginning NO explanation has been given for the extra five suggested in news reports except that the FBI showed us the pictures to make up the difference, and that makes it so.
Now, being the trusting sort, I figured that the government would want to quickly dispel any rumors so we could get on with the chore of kicking Osama/Sadaam's butt (weren't these originally two different people?). It seemed simple to me. . .produce the names of all the bodies identified by the AFIP and compare it with the publicized list of passengers. So, I sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the AFIP and asked for an expedited response, because we were getting ready to send our boys to war on the pretext that Osama/Saddam had done the deed. Fourteen months later, a few US soldiers dead, many Iraqi civilians pushing up daisies, and I finally get the list. Believe me that they weren't a bit happy to give it up, and I really have no idea why they choose now to release it.
foia-10003.jpg
No Arabs wound up on the morgue slab; however, three ADDITIONAL people not listed by American Airlines sneaked in. I have seen no explanation for these extras. I did American the opportunity to "revise" their original list, but they have not responded. The new names are: Robert Ploger, Zandra Ploger, and Sandra Teague. The AFIP claims that the only "passenger" body that they were not able to identify is the toddler, Dana Falkenberg, whose parents and young sister are on the list of those identified. The satanic masterminds behind this caper may be feeling pretty smug about the perfect crime, but they have left a raft of clues tying these unfortunates together.
--Thomas R. Olmsted, M.D., Autopsy: No Arabs on Flight 77

Worth repeating and in summary: the last known pre-9/11 flights for three of the four aircraft involved in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 took place in December, 2000, nine months before the attacks.

Unaccounted for passengers is among the biggest holes in Bush's cover story

If Bush cannot explain the absence of airliner wreckage or the alleged 'missing passengers', then his official theory must be discounted as utter bunkum, a pack of malicious lies. Unlike wine, neither crap nor propaganda improves with age.

Anyone believing that there were such flights AND that there were passengers on board should insist that a Federal Prosecutor put Bush on the witness stand in front of a federal grand jury where the question is put to him: 'what was the fate of the passengers on flights 77 and 11?'

It would be very interesting to learn how he might manage to escape his experience without indictments for

PERJURY
OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE
MASS MURDER

Concerning possible charges of 'high treason' against Bush: was it not Bush who declared that we were at war? Was it not Bush and his shills who insisted that the US attack, invasion and occupation of Iraq was in response to an 'attack' upon the US? Have not Bush partisans insisted, from the 'gitgo' that the US attack, invasion and occupation of Iraq was part and parcel of the US 'war on terrorism'? That being the case, Bush's complicity in the events of 911 are most certainly acts of betrayal against a sovereign in a time of war and, therefore, high treason.

Among a growing number of links back to this article is this excellent expose of the Flight 77 fraud:

According to the official story, AA Flight 77, a Boeing 757, took off from Dulles Airport in northern Virginia at 8:10 a.m. bound for Los Angeles, with between 50 and 58 passengers. It flew west for about 45 minutes, making a curious detour to the north, west and south, before turning around and flying for another 45 minutes back to Washington. Why hijackers would allow a jet which they planned to crash into a target in Washington to fly for 45 minutes away from its target is not explained. Why did they not commandeer the plane ten minutes after takeoff when the plane was only ten minutes flying time from its intended target? The official story ignores this question, as it does all other questions.

As reported by the New York Times (International Herald Tribune, 2001-10-17, p.8), as AA 77 approached the Pentagon it executed a 270-degree 7,000-foot descent over Washington while flying at 500 mph. It approached the Pentagon on a horizontal trajectory so low that it clipped the power lines across the street then (so the story goes) it smashed into an outer wall of the Pentagon.

We were told (and, of course, expected to believe without question) that this maneuver was executed by an Arab pilot, Hani Hanjour, who in August 2001 was judged by the chief flight instructor at Bowie's Maryland Freeway Airport as not having the piloting skills required to fly a Cessna 172 solo. (Is there something fishy here?)

In contrast to the attention given to the collapse of the Twin Towers, the attack on the Pentagon received little attention until in February 2002 a French website (by Thierry Meyssan) appeared which reproduced images obtained from U.S. Army websites: Hunt the Boeing! These images cast doubt upon the official story that the Pentagon was hit by a Boeing 757 jetliner. For example, here is a picture of the Pentagon crash site taken about two hours after the impact, with the fire still burning. Can you see any remains of the approximately 100 tons of metal (including engines, wings, and tail section) which makes up a Boeing 757? ...

--Pentagon Official Story Hoax

Following is a reader's playlist. I recommend it.

September Clues
Or --How to Fake a Terrorist Attack with an off-the-shelf video editing suite, a sound effects library, some audio samples and an utter lack of conscience or humanity!

911: Inside Job!

Additional resources:

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The Quality of Mercy

2008-11-27T06:33:00.000-08:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

"The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes"

—Portia, The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare

Another right wing hypocrisy exposed:

Of Darwinism and Social Darwinism

by Robert B. Reich

The Conservative Movement, as its progenitors like to call it, is now mounting a full-throttled attack on Darwinism even as it has thoroughly embraced Darwin’s bastard child, social Darwinism. On the face of it, these positions may appear inconsistent. What unites them is a profound disdain for science, logic, and fact.
...
The modern Conservative Movement has embraced social Darwinism with no less fervor than it has condemned Darwinism. Social Darwinism gives a moral justification for rejecting social insurance and supporting tax cuts for the rich. "In America," says Robert Bork, "‘the rich’ are overwhelmingly people – entrepreneurs, small businessmen, corporate executives, doctors, lawyers, etc. – who have gained their higher incomes through intelligence, imagination, and hard work."
...
The only consistency between the right’s attack on Darwinism and embrace of social Darwinism is the utter fatuousness of both. Darwinism is correct. Scientists who are legitimized by peer review and published research are unanimous in their view that evolution is a fact, not a theory. Social Darwinism, meanwhile, is hogwash.

"Bastard Child" at the very least! Social Darwinism does not follow from "Darwinism" and, worse, it attributes to Darwin positions he never took. Interestingly, the term "survival of the fittest" was never used by Darwin. Though it has been variously attributed, Hofstadter traced the phrase to rail road men and other early 'robber barons':

Railroad executive Chauncy Depew asserted that the guests of the great dinners and public banquets of New York City represented the survival of the fittest of all who came in search of fortune. They were the ones with superior abilities. Likewise railroad magnate James J. Hill defended the railroad companies by saying their fortunes were determined according to the law of survival of the fittest.

—Hofstadter, Richard; 1959; Social Darwinism in American Thought, Braziller; New York.

Elsewhere, the term is attributed to Herbert Spencer who clearly inspired a generation of radicalized, latter-day 'industrialists' all of them lacking the "...quality of mercy" so immortalized with but a few words by Shakespeare:

[Herbert] Spencer said that diseases "are among the penalties Nature has attached to ignorance and imbecility, and should not, therefore, be tampered with." He even faulted private organizations like the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children because they encouraged legislation.

—Social Darwinism and American Laissez-faire Capitalism

An equally fallacious corollary to "Social Darwinism" is often phrased: the rich are rich because they are better, work harder and are more intelligent. To be expected, George W. Bush put it more crudely: “The poor are poor because they are lazy!” In the same vein, the conservative economist Joseph A. Schumpeter likened recessions to a "douche" leaving us to wonder just who is "douched" and how? He might have been accurate had he used the word: 'flushed'. More importantly: who gets to make those life and death decisions? Only sociopaths could believe that a tiny and shrinking elite be empowered to the exclusion of everyone else to decide matters of life and death. It unconscionable that by its pursuit of obscene riches, just 1 percent of the nation may with its purely fiduciary interests decide matters of life or death for millions, indeed billions all over the world. It is difficult not to conclude that New Orleans after Katrina is but the disastrous consequence of this kind of "blame the victim" thinking. It is insane to believe that because short-sellers, quick buck artists and robber barons have gotten in front of a wave that they are justified in asserting a right, by virtue of wealth, to make decisions that threaten human life, indeed, a global future.

It is not surprising that Spencer's influence continues, not in the field of biology, but in economics, specifically those theories most often associated with the right wing: the American apologists, William Graham Sumner and Simon Nelson Patten.

No doubt, Spencer’s ideas received a major boost after Darwin's theories were published, but it was at the very outset that the issues were muddied and have been ever since. It is unfortunate that the application of the terms "adaptation" and "survival of the fittest" to social thought became known as "Social Darwinism".

More recently, the work of John Nash, recently the subject of the motion picture, A Beautiful Mind, argued persuasively that not only games but societies and economies benefit more from cooperation and community than from competition. Spencer, and Social Darwinists after him, took another view. And that is unfortunate.

Spencer believed that because society was evolving, government intervention ought to be minimal in social and political life. Nevermind that government is but a function of society and responsible to it. Influenced by Spencer, many describe American capitalism in terms of the “rational man” making rational decisions in not only a free market but a 'rational' one. In practice, however, economic decisions may or may not be rational and free markets are merely hypothetical. It is a mistake to believe that "rational self-interest", said to work collectively behind Adam Smith's "invisible hand", has had anything but an irrational effect in most cases.

'Social Darwinism' and other defenses of robber baron practices may sound good 'in theory' but are, in fact 'bad theory though conservatives have worked mightily to force reality into a mold. That’s bad science; models must describe reality —not the other way round. Nash proved that cooperation is often more successful than competition, leading to the inevitable conclusion that societies which rationalize discrimination, income disparity, and social injustice on such a fallacious basis as Social Darwinism, are apt not be so successful themselves.

In A Beautiful Mind, Nash, portrayed by Russell Crowe, is in a favorite watering hole with two colleagues, later termed "negotiants" in his theories. The three young males were distracted by three unattended and comely females and among the three, a blonde, was seen to be the most desirable. Nash immediately saw a mathematical certainty of failure should all three males "hit on" the most attractive female. Equally certain, mathematically, was rejection by the remaining unattended females who would then be insulted, having become "second and third choices." Some fifty years later, Nash still polishes and refines the mathematics behind the only chance that three "geeks" might have with three comely young women--cooperation rather than competition:

...it is more desirable to be accepted than to accept (!), so with there being reduced pressure to avoid the penalty of the {0,0,0} payoff when there is failure at the first step then the players naturally adapt at equilibrium by becoming "less accepting" and "more demanding." (The demand parameters...rise as the acceptance rate quantities decrease, but this turns out to be at a logarithmic rate).

...the players can be viewed as in a sort of "continuous auction" process where...the players are able to "bid"...and get into the process of cooperation. And this continuous version of the voting process seems probably to be good for generalization to any number of players.
[John Nash from a published email; emphases mine, LH]

The word "theory" is either misunderstood by the right wing or the term is perverted for it's propaganda value. There is nothing wrong with "theory" per se, though the word is consistently used by the right wing in a pejorative sense except, significantly, when it is applied to Spencer and, more recently, Milton Friedman or Arthur Laffer. Accurately, the negative connotations implied are simply not to be found among those who use the word "theory" --academically or in science. This linguistic abuse smacks of propaganda.

It must be noted that Einstein was, likewise, a "theorist"; so too, Newton. Einstein has been confirmed no more times than Darwin; Newton is close enough for mundane applications or "government work". Significantly, neither "theory" has been challenged in court —though both theories may one day be replaced or reconciled with a "theory of everything". But there is a political agenda behind the campaign of attacks on Darwinism even as the same constituency supports Intelligent Design which is supposed to 'sound Darwinian' but clearly is not!

Theories are never of a final form. Unlike ideology, real science is self-correcting as new facts emerge from research. Darwin's theories were confirmed by Mendel, accommodated Mendel which, in turn, tended to confirm Darwin. The science of genetics and the discovery of "mutations" confirm Darwin beyond any reasonable doubt. And, along the way, no one, no real scientist ever hired a consulting firm, a focus group, a PR agent or a K-street lobbyist.

Future discoveries will modify our view of Darwin, but that does not discount Darwin nor our views. Our view of Einstein, for example, is already modified but in no way discounted. In the main, he is confirmed. And when a unified field theory is achieved it will be the result of many scientists each of whom will owe much to Einstein.

No one has ever sued because Einstein is at odds with a particular dogma. And no one had dared picket a school for daring to teach 'Relativity'. It is certain, however, that no future discovery will confirm "intelligent design" —a logical fallacy on its face and quite beyond any confirmation of any kind!

"Facts" tend to be narrowly phrased; theories, by contrast, embrace a wide but finite set of related facts. Darwin and the sciences that followed him are entirely consistent with new discoveries in the field of genetics. [See: Science and Human Values, Jacob Bronowski]

Intelligent design is of a religious nature; people have a right to believe it, a right guaranteed them in the U.S. First Amendment. But 'intelligent design' explains nothing! Worse than circular argument is beyond proof, in fact, meaningless. Worse --it raises other issues, themselves either unexplained, meaningless of unexplanable. For example: who designed the designer? The question itself assumes a designer, It is, therefore, a circulus in probando fallacy. People are free to believe fallacies, but they must not be free to impose them upon other people at tax payer expense!

A fact, for example, is the equation that describes the acceleration of falling objects; examples of theory are both the Newtonian and the Einsteinian view of "gravitation" —though 'gravitation' is conceived of differently by both. The entire science of genetics confirms Darwin who, interestingly, did not have the benefit of Mendel's research when he wrote Origin of the Species and the The Descent of Man. It was Mendel's research that described the very mechanism by which Darwin’s “traits” are --indeed --passed on to succeeding generations. Darwin --despite the lies about this theory --has been confirmed! Evolution is an observable fact! Accurate predictions are, in themselves, evidence in support of theories. [See: Evolution in Action, Julian Huxley]

Evolution is simple. Any organism which survives long enough to procreate passes on its genes to a succeeding generation. Random changes in genetic code are variously attributed but are statistically significant, dictating the very speed with which evolution occurs. Every farmer who has deliberate bred for specific characteristics knows the truth of evolution. Every cowboy who has said 'Never kill a slow roach; you just improve the breed' knows the truth of evolution.

Take wheat! What is the origin of wheat? Wheat does not grow in the wild. If God effected a 'special creation' for every biological entity in his cosmos, how are we to account for wheat? Clearly --wheat evolved from early grasses. It was surely cultivated at some ancient date. The original ancestor became extinct --also an ancient and undocumented event.

Evolution is often considered to be so true as to be trivial: what survives survives. Critics of Darwin will often cite the tautology though it does not support them; it supports Darwin. Species which survive pass on their genes as well as mutations. This is quite beyond debate. Every farmer who has bred for specific characteristics knows the truth of it. And every cowboy will tell you that if you kill a slow roach, you improve the breed.

Adaptation! Natural Selection! Evolution!

Some of the more subtle critics of "Darwin" say that "survival of the fittest" is a circular argument: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest. There are a couple of problems with that:

Darwin never used the term "survival of the fittest"! That dubious honor belongs to Herbert Spencer, a "Social Darwinist" who never understood Darwin, nor was he "social"!

Even if the term "natural selection" is more properly substituted for the bogus term "survival of the fittest", the argument is circular only if the invalid conclusion that "only the fittest survive" is added! The invalid value judgment –survival of the fittest –is falsely attributed to Darwin.

There is nothing circular about the observable fact is that in any give generation, some organisms survive and procreate, other do not. Defining traits are thus passed from one generation to another. Over time great changes often occur over numerous, multiplying 'threads'. Over longer periods of time, greater changes are evinced. One of the greatest examples of 'evolution in action' was Carl Sagan's memorable episode in which he cited and demonstrated the example of the Heikegani Crab, native to Japan, having a shell resembling that of a human face, specifically, that of Samurai warrior.

The proponents of "intelligent design" have erected several huge straw men. Evolution, for example, has nothing to do with "coming down from the trees". [See: Richard Leakey's "The Origin of Humankind" ; also: Answers to Creationist Nonsense!]

It could be said, however, that no one has yet produced a new specie by selection. But they have indeed done just that! Consider wheat! Wheat does not grow in the wild. Related to ancient grasses, wheat is clearly the result of an ancient application of "artificial selection." Had wheat evolved naturally, it would be found growing wild like prairie grass. But it isn't and it didn't.

Social Darwinism, clearly, is one of many ideas that have harmed mankind. It has provided a rationalization for the perpetual and quite deliberate impoverishment of large segments of our society and, insidiously, it has done so with a baseless theory that is fallaciously associated with Darwin.

In simpler terms, the philosophical basis for the American right wing is this:

"Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons...then let them die and decrease the surplus population."

—Scrooge

Human DNA

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The Mask of Wotan

2008-11-26T08:42:00.000-08:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Jung's influence has been keenly felt among screenwriters, novelists, and 'literati' who often speak of a "character's shadow", one of several "archetypes", a mirror image of what writers call the "higher self".

Related to Jung is the work of Russian folk tale expert, Vladimir Propp, who thought of "archetypes" as "masks" deliberately worn by "characters". Masks are worn in both stories and in life for one of two purposes or both: to reveal and/or to hide.

In most cases a benign public mask is worn to hide facets of the personality with which the character has not yet made peace. It is a mistake, however, to equate "the shadow self" with evil. It is merely the hidden self —the object of one's search for oneself. All "quest" stories are symbolic of this process.

In both Propp and Jung, the idea is to peel away this "social facade", this "mask". The metaphor "peel away”, however; suggests that the process is an easy one but that is rarely the case. Masks are the gestalt of one's various defense mechanisms and unconscious anxieties. "Peeling them away" reveals an "authentic self" that is often difficult to reach and more difficult to confront or deal with. Throughout the 50's existentialists and other "beatniks" talked about getting down to one's "real self". Jung believed that this “real self” was the source of vitality and creativity lurking behind a "neurotic shield" —a mask!

Jung was influenced by numerous mystical religions and Taoism where terms like "inner room", "the great void," the "realm of essence," the source of things", the "It", the "Creative Unconscious" are common.

The biggest obstacle to objective truth is one's own self image or "mask". We are inclined to believe whatever is consistent with whatever belief system makes us feel good about ourselves. In America, an entire political party espouses what was once called “supply side” economics but now more often referred to as “trickle down” theory.

The theory is discounted by almost every reputable economist upon abundant objective and verifiable data. That this theory continues to be popular suggests that it's appeal does not lie in objective truth. “Trickle down” economics is most surely a convenient rationalization of an increasingly self-absorbed life style catered to by the mass media. Has modern America become a culture premised upon mass denial?

In 1936, Jung was trying to figure out what was happening in Germany —just as many are trying to understand what is happening in America today. Jung wrote an essay called "Wotan" and in it, he tried to understand developments under Hitler, in terms of the mythology of the god Odin, a.k.a. the Germanic god Wotan. Jung wrote: "We have seen him come to life in the German Youth Movement." I am not sure what "gods" have come to life in America —but I am more inclined to characterize them as fallen demigods, if not demons. Gods or Demons, they are but manifestations of the human personality. There may be a "Wotan" in all of us.

A “mask” is but the smiley face we show the world; it's origin is the lie that we tell ourselves. I recently watched a PBS documentary about a Japanese sergeant who "supervised" British and Australian POW's in Southeast Asia during WWII. Though he had been convicted of war crimes in connection with the treatment of the POW's, the man —some 55 years after the fact —still denied that thousands of POWs had been literally worked and starved to death under his supervision. He denied that he had beaten many of them himself with wire whips.

There is an old saying that the truth will set you free. But here was a man who by his denial had made himself prisoner to the lie —his own lie. In Jungian terms, his life --premised as it was upon the falsehood that he told himself --was "inauthentic".

Dr. Gustav Gilbert, the American psychologist at Nuremberg, came to some conclusions based on his experiences keeping Nazi war criminals alive until final sentencing could be carried out. He said that he had come to understand the nature of "evil". Evil, he said, was an utter lack of empathy. I might add: that empathy with another is only possible if one has come to terms with one's own "shadow", one's own "source of creativity", one's own humanity. One who cannot see humanity in him/herself or in another is a Nazi in spirit; and “Nazism” typifies what Jung would have called the "inauthentic" life, a life lived upon lies and denial. A life lived behind a false mask. ..

Route 66: An Existentialist's Journey

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Monsters from the Id

2008-11-26T08:12:00.000-08:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Forbidden Planet is a classic Sci-Fi tour de force staring Leslie Nielson, Walter Pidgeon, and Anne Francis. Released in 1956, it holds up surprisingly well against Star Wars, the Star Trek series and even the most recent digital entries into the genre.

The story of Dr. Morbius, re-discovering the technological marvels of a lost race of Krell on the distant planet Altair, is updated Shakespeare: The Tempest. Forbidden Planet excels in special effects, but it's enduring fascination is to be found in it story --a parable of technology vs its inventor, the monster vs Dr. Frankenstein, the enemy of our own making.

Forbidden Planet shows us the dark side of human kind, a forbidding gestalt of uncontrollable urges that lies within all of us --a monster from the ID! Even intelligence —seemingly papered over the more powerful id —cannot negate our darkest, deepest reservoirs. Just as Lord of the Rings depicts the absolute corruption of absolute power, Forbidden Planet confronts us with a question we would rather not answer: what are we to do with the physical manifestations of our inmost monsters?

Far fetched? Consider this: what are nuclear weapons if not the "physical manifestations" of our darkest, unconscious impulses?

Is "Terrorism" a Monster From the ID?

It was stated on the internet that the U.S. is hated by 100% of terrorists. Aside from being an amusing tautology, it misses the point. FBI statistics, for example, published by the Brookings Institution, utterly repudiate the political exploitation of terror. The FBI's own numbers are conclusive: while Ronald Reagan waged his famous "War on Terrorism", terrorist attacks against the United States actually increased. Terrorist attacks were times greater under Reagan than under Clinton. Yet Clinton is criticized for not having waged such a war, if war it is. It raises the question: is it preferable to wage a war and fail than to not wage a war and succeed?

Like Morbius of Forbidden Planet, we may be too late to recognize that the only demons that howl are of our own making.

Shakespeare's The Tempest deals with the same question: what does it mean to be human? The traditions of the enlightenment, and more recently, of existentialism, come down heavily on the side of the fully realized individual --free to be human within the context of a free society.

How oddly quaint and surrealistically naive that seems after a mere two years of debacle and the unleashed madness of the monsters from the Id.

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The Man Who Changed the Universe

2008-11-26T08:09:00.000-08:00

The year 1564 is noteworthy for several reasons. John Calvin and Michelangelo died. Shakespeare and Galileo Galilei were born.

It was Galileo, upon the shoulders of great Renaissance artists and Neo-Platonists who preceded him, who may have ignited the beginnings of the Scientific Revolution early in the 17th century. He did so by demonstrating the extraordinary effectiveness of the experimental observation of nature and coupling that observation with the analytical power of mathematics.

The revolution is still underway, still challenging entrenched orthodoxies, fallacies, and medieval mindsets.

Galileo believed that nature was inherently mathematical, that mathematics was the language of nature, and that mathematics was the key to understanding the reality behind the appearance of natural phenomena--for example, accelerated and parabolic motions.
--Prof. Joseph W. Dauben, The Art of Renaissance Science: Galileo and Perspective

A Revolution in Thought

Galileo revolutionized physics before Newton. He showed how observation and careful measurement may lead to "hidden causes". For Galileo, those "hidden causes" represented the pervasive mathematical unity underlying nature and, indeed, the Universe itself.

It is Einstein who is most often associated with the concept of the curvature of space-time. But, in fact, Einstein might not have thought about it so clearly had not Galileo laid down a framework, a 'scientific method', within which both Newton and Einstein flourished.

Consider, for example, Galileo's contribution to our understanding of the curvature of space-time. To do so, we must understand the "parabola:"

Parabola, plane curve consisting of all points equidistant from a given fixed point (focus) and a given fixed line (directrix). It is the conic section cut by a plane parallel to one of the elements of the cone. The axis of a parabola is the line through the focus perpendicular to the directrix. The vertex is the point at which the axis intersects the curve. The latus rectum is the chord through the focus perpendicular to the axis. Examples of this curve are the path of a projectile and the shape of the cross section of a parallel beam reflector.

Before Galileo, a cannon ball was thought to either fall abruptly upon "losing its impetus" or that it described "some sort" of curve but no one knew what kind of curve or even if it was a curve. It was Galileo who understood that a projectile fired from a cannon is a falling body. Significally, all falling bodies describe a specific kind of 'curve'. It is this insight that gives us a glimpse of the future.

A Glimpse of Space-Time

Galileo's work --his measurements of the rate of acceleration of all falling bodies --that made it possible to imagine orbiting bodies literally "falling" about a larger one in predictable orbits. The moon around the earth. The earth around the sun. The sun about the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way. All orbits can described and the results are consistent with Galileo's findings.

Fast forward to the 20th Century. Einstein's elegant equations equate gravity with the curvature of space-time, an insight that reprised in another context, another paradigm, Galileo's discovery that it the paths of missiles and projectiles are parabolas.

Einstein went cosmological, envisioning a falling elevator with a hole in the side admitting a beam of light. The graphed path of the traversing light beam --over the time it takes to traverse the falling elevator --is Galileo's parabola. Thus —in two monumentally important paradigm shifts —Galileo and Einstein —-we glimpse the very curvature of space-time itself.

Newton may have posited a "force" to explain "falling" but the equation describing the rate of falling bodies —a curve if graphed horizontally over time —is Galileo's. It was Einstein who understood that the same curvature may describe space-time and render moot Newton's "force", a force that literally reached out into space and acted upon another body instantaneously. For Einstein, gravity was not a forced that 'reached out an grabbed ya'; it was, rather, the very shape of space-time.

Of Space, Time & Einstein

With this insight, the Universe is changed —seen in a completely different way. This is important in at least two ways:

it changes our understanding of the Universe hitherto thought of as a clockwork in absolute space;
it illustrates the very nature of creativity.

Both Galileo and Einstein were able to perceive previously unknown relationships in seemingly unrelated phenomena.

The Big TOE of Science

The current search for TOE (Theory of Everything) is a culmination of this turn of thought. And the verdict is still out on whether the Universe is "closed" and will ultimately implode, or whether it will simply go on expanding forever. But these areas of inquiry would have been forever closed had not Galileo and others opened the door.

Renaissance artists, Leonardo da Vinci in Italy and Albrecht Durer in the North, had evinced an interest in the realistic depiction of nature from the early 15th century on. Leonardo's notebooks, for example, are a revelatory fusion of intuitive and cognitive thinking. Da Vinci was especially skilled at analytical and verbal descriptions of natural events while depicting them "artistically" in detailed sketches, paintings, and analytical diagrams.

It is the path from Leonardo to Galileo that unites the burgeoning interests in science and art under an umbrella of shared values: humanism. It is here that free thought flourished in the very shadow of ignorance, superstition, and the Inquisition. Were it not for that, even now, we could not walk in the sunshine.

Brian Greene on 'TOE', a Theory of Everything

Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership, Global Issues, Updated: January 02, 2009

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Staring at Hopper

2008-11-26T07:59:00.000-08:00

It could be a still-frame from an Alfred Hitchcock movie —a stately lighthouse towering above eyelevel. Were not the blues so beautiful and rich it would be bleak.

Another image, Early Sunday Morning, is enigmatic
—a subtle study of the not so gentle play of early morning rays that rake the broken surface of a row of decaying, urban facades of a shade of burnt sienna so nearly the color of dried blood that we are discomforted. It is a building made surrealistically stark in the sunrise sidelight; we can only wonder —were these buildings ever inhabited?

And finally –a window lit interior reminiscent of Vermeer. But there are no rich tapestries, no virginals, no Sixteenth Century maps.

Just a woman staring blankly out the open window at, we uneasily suspect, nothing at all.

The artist is the quintessential American artist: Edward Hopper. One of his most famous paintings, Night Hawks, depicts a near empty diner in the wee, small hours of the morning. Night Hawks, painted in 1942, is a tour-de-force of American "film noir". The man in the fedora could be Sam Spade; his female companion —a leggy client. [See the detail view of Night Hawks]

It is fitting that this painting is parodied in an image that has become almost as famous as the original. In it, the diner is peopled by Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, and James Dean. Like these personalities both Hopper and his satirists have captured the essence of American alienation —people in public, together, but alone, and at night. If the street outside is not wet, it should be and will be, soon; if not tonight, some night! And in a black and white movie. Here’s lookin’ at you kid.

Hopper himself claims no such intentions. His purpose was merely to capture the play of light and shade. That he succeeded so brilliantly is undeniable. However, Hopper himself acknowledged viewers’ interpretations even if he did not agree with them. Of one of his paintings, he wrote:

The picture is an attempt to paint sunlight as white, with almost or no yellow pigment in the white. Any psychologic [Sic] idea will have to be supplied by the viewer.
—Edward Hopper

Unlike many another American artist, Hopper never intended to develop an “American” style; he did so in spite of himself. His goal was more modest.

“I guess I'm not very human. All I really want to do is paint light on the side of a house."
—Edward Hopper

He succeeded admirably. His painting of 1925, House by the Railroad, is a study of sunlight on the side of a house, to be sure, but much more besides.

The low vantage point, like that of his famous lighthouse, is as edgy as the Bates Motel. We are curious but not nearly curious enough to want to go inside. Like his silent, lonely human observers who stare into the void, the façade stares but at you!

Hopper’s compositions are minimalist. But it would be uncharacteristic of Hopper to have done so because he believed in a doctrine like "less is more".

No, Hopper was just being Hopper when in 1951, he returned to the open window to the sea theme. As if to underscore a recurring theme of emptiness, he left out the staring woman. We are left with the emptiness in a bare room.

Stare at a Hopper long enough and you will find yourself in Hopper’s universe beside the young woman staring out the open window, among the anonymous souls together and alone in the diner, like the stately lighthouse which regards a vast but empty ocean. Friedrich Nietzche said that if you stare into the abyss long enough, it will stare back at you.

Is that what it means to be alone?

Americana

What's in a Name?

2008-11-26T07:38:00.001-08:00

What we know about Christopher Marlowe is little more than we know about William Shakespeare. Marlowe is widely believed to have been among a group of writers, scientists and philosophers who had gathered around the Earl of Northumberland and Sir Walter Raleigh. Marlowe was the son of a shoemaker, christened in Canterbury, and attended Corpus Christi College, Cambridge on a scholarship. There is good reason to suspect that Marlowe was an Elizabethan "007" in service most probably to the Queen's master spy --Sir Francis Walsingham.

This association seems consistent with the belief that Marlowe was of humble origins like those of William Shakespeare, whom most believe to be the son of John Shakespeare, a "brogger", wool "merchant" and municipal official in Stratford. Walsingham most certainly did not recruit his agents from among the nobility, as evidenced by the likes of Ingram Frizer, Nicholas Skeres, and Robert Poley -con men, petty crooks, sting artists, and rat finks whose living consisted at least in part by "ratting" on Catholics.

Nothing about either Marlowe or Shakespeare can be understood without first grasping the divided loyalties, the relgious bitterness, the hidden agendas that characterized Elizabethan society. In a recent book, Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare, Clare Asquith makes much of Shakespeare explicable by merely putting it all in context.

For example, in "King Lear," two sisters, motivated by material gain, falsely promise that they will give all their love to their father. Their honest sister is exiled for saying she must divide her love for her father with the obedience she will owe her husband. Significantly, religious dissidents at that time were refusing to pledge fealty to King James over their faith and the pope. Similarly, when Elizabethan audiences watched Laertes protest the brief obsequies given his sister Ophelia, they knew that Catholics were furtively burying their loved ones with the old rites, while publicly holding fake burials with the "maimed rites." Violent quarrels sometimes erupted in churches, and zealous Protestants exhumed bodies in the night.
--The Washington Post's Book World

Marlow received his degree though he was absent his classes at Cambridge for a period of some two years or more. He was very nearly denied his degree amid suspicions that he had literally "gone to Rheims" and had become a "Catholic". His cause was taken up by the Privy Council in a letter signed by Cecil (later Lord Burghley) and supported by the Queen. The Queen herself ordered that Marlowe be granted his degree. The document is dated June 29th, 1587 [from the Public Records Office - Acts of Privy Council] . In a terse, personal note, Elizabeth stated that Marlowe had been involved in "affaires in the Queen's service" and implied that the nature of those "affaires" was of no concern to Cambridge.

One wonders --what "service to the Queen" had this Elizabethan "secret agent" performed while absent from his University studies? Had he literally "gone to Rheims" -a hotbed of Catholicism, a magnet for initiates? Was he undercover, an agent provocateur whose task it was to entrap the enemies of the Queen? That she intervened on his behalf seems to support that theory.

About William Shakespeare, we know little more, possibly less. Because William was the son of John Shakespeare, a known Catholic, we assume that William had been christened "Catholic" at the local parish church. In Elizabeth's England, Catholics still loyal to the Church in Rome practiced their faith literally "underground" in basements or cellars. This was so despite Elizabeth's famous statement that she had no wish to "...make windows into men's souls".

We know that Shakespeare's Stratford was a hot bed of resistance to the "new religion". William' father, John, left a written testament of his enduring Catholic faith. William Shakespeare's daughter, Susannah, was a "recusant" charged with refusing to attend Protestant services. We know that members of William's mother's family -the Arden's -had been executed cruelly for having adhered to the "old" faith of Catholicism. Edward Arden was executed in 1583 by the usual method: he was dragged behind horses, then hanged, cut down still alive, disemboweled and castrated before his heart was cut out. Death would have been a relief.

We know little more than that William's name appears on the First Folio not published until after his death. A recent development, however, holds promise. A cache of books, dating to the time of the Florentine Academy of Lorenzo di Medici has been found in Lancashire. Authors include Ovid as well as works by the foremost Plato scholar of the period --Marsilio Ficino. This "Plato Academy", the intellectual well-spring of the Renaissance, lived in the di Medici palace at the same time a young Michelangelo was honing skills as a sculptor under the tutelage of Bertoldo, the famous student of Donatello.

The book of near pornographic verses by Ovid is of special interest. The margin notes are said to be in a "...Shakespearean hand", perhaps the very thoughts of young William Shakespeare. The notes date to a time after Shakespeare left Stratford but well before registering his first play in London. If all is true, the margin notes are the only hard evidence of Shakespeare's "lost ten years".

Apart from the birth of his three children, absolutely nothing is known about Shakespeare's life between the ages of 18 and 28, but there are some intriguing clues. Wood first checks out a fascinating theory which takes young William up to serve in an old Catholic house near Preston in Lancashire. There Michael meets the Hoghton family, who believe a family will proves Shakespeare lived with them. Wood also investigates the possibility that Shakespeare first trod the boards in an ancient hall at Rufford near Liverpool.
Michael Wood's, In Search of Shakespeare

It is also interesting to find the name of William's Stratford school master, John Cottam, among the effects recently discovered in Lancashire. Cottam's name also appears in various histories having to do with the appearance on English soil of the "infamous" Jesuit, Edmund Campion. If little is known of Shakespeare, it may be because little is known of anyone forced by the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" to live literally underground, beyond the gaze of official religion or Elizabethan orthodoxy.

Marlowe is believed to have been killed in self-defense by one Ingram Frizer in 1593. The location in Deptford is often called a "tavern" but was, rather, a government safe house. Just one week earlier a warrant had been issued for the Marlowe's arrest amid accusations of atheism, blasphemy, subversion and homosexuality. Marlowe had recently returned from Flushing where his "performance" seems in retrospect over-the-top, even by Marlowe standards. He had openly declared himself homosexual and atheist and reserved for himself the right to mint his own coins. His former roommate and fellow dramatist, Thomas Kyd, had declared under torture that a document denying the divinity of Christ belonged to Marlowe.

Frizer may have been Marlowe's "side-kick" in espionage, if not a partner in crime. Marlowe had been selected by Cecil to go to Scotland -perhaps to set the stage for James' assumption of the English crown upon the death of Elizabeth, a "virgin" Queen. But, as Marlowe came to the end of his life in 1593 and Elizabeth not until 1603, the planning was indeed farsighted. Does this have anything do with Marlowe's death? What is the motive for murder? Why would Marlowe move against a partner?

There is no denying, however, that within mere weeks of Marlowe's "death", Ingram, his "partner", was in Scotland. Only the incurious could not wonder who, in Scotland, did he meet? What did they talk about? Why were they talking at all? What did it all have to do with Marlowe, Shakespeare, indeed, the Queen herself?

In 1895, an American, William Zeigler, made what is still the most compelling case that Marlowe did not die that fateful night in Deptford but, rather, faked his own death and was aided in his escape by the very man who had claimed to have killed him in self-defense -Frizer. The idea that Marlowe had written Shakespeare was not new. In fact, Elizabeth I herself had raised that possibility when she raged against Richard II considered by her to be an indictment of her own dictatorial regime.

Though attributed to the Stratfordian actor, Shakespeare, Elizabeth charged that the play had been the work of Marlowe though Marlowe was widely believed dead at the time. Elizabeth would have known about Marlowe's death! Why then did she declare him alive by attributing to him a recent play? Elizabeth herself is thus the source of speculation that Marlowe, with a little help from his friends, faked his death. She is likewise the source of speculations about whether Marlow had written Shakespeare. Zeigler maintained that, contrary to earlier notions that "Marlowe" had been an early nom de plume of William Shakespeare, Shakespeare was, rather, the nom de plume of Christopher Marlowe.

But every coin has two sides. In Flushing, Marlowe, always over the top, exceeded his own reputation. Having become expendable as an agent in service to his Queen, Marlowe's performance was pure theater, characterized by blasphemies that he most certainly knew would be reported widely. His "performance" may have been in the language of espionage -a cover!

Perhaps the early theories were correct: that it was not Marlowe who wrote Shakespeare but Shakespeare who wrote Marlowe at a time when "Marlowe" was Shakespeare's "cover". We know that William Shakespeare was an actor. Perhaps Marlowe was his greatest role -a role he played when his very life was on the line. Perhaps the cover had been too successful. Perhaps the cover had acquired an uncomfortable life of its own. Perhaps, an Elizabethan James Bond wanted to "...come in out of the cold".

The time line may support this speculation. Within a week of Marlowe's "death" the very first plays to be attributed to Shakespeare were officially registered under the name William Shakespeare. Had the "cover" been laid to rest? Had its author reclaimed his life? In subsequent plays, "Shakespeare" alludes to Marlowe's fateful last hours in a "little room", upstairs in Deptford.

TOUCHSTONE: When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child Understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.
--As You Like It, III, ii, William Shakespeare

There is apparently no controversy about the image of Marlowe that tops this article. There is, however, a less well preserved image, a more humble visage from the same time period. It is tempting to see in it an aspiring poet/actor from Stratford before assuming the role of a lifetime, that of Christopher Marlowe.

Elizabeth's reaction to the political content of Shakespeare's Richard II is most certainly the source of speculation about the identity of whomever was said to have died earlier in Deptford. Uncertainties about succession had made Elizabeth uneasy about its subject matter though Richard II portrays Richard II more favorably than Bolingbroke aka Henry IV. "I am Richard II, know ye not that?", she asked the keeper of Tower records. Certainly, the play had been intended to facilitate a planned coup d'etat by the Earl of Essex. Essex was late for his own coup, having taken too long to select just the right shirt. His indecision would ultimately cost him his head.

It is difficult to imagine a self-absorbed monarch not being outraged by all of "Shakespeare" -- Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Richard III, Macbeth, et al. All seem to rage and none too subtly against the abuses of state power, monarchy, orthodoxy of any sort. Police states tend not to like the boat rocked and religious oppression is especially repugnant in that it is done in the name of deities. That it is done in the name of a deity identified with love, charity and mercy is especially troubling. In any case, it would have been difficult for the author of the plays attributed to either Christopher Marlowe or William Shakespeare to have remained in service to the Queen and still claim authorship publicly.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

—William Shakespeare, "Hamlet"

What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet! And then, in Shakespeare, is found this very clear warning of dangers that we face today:

...we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.

—William Shakespeare, "All's Well That Ends Well"

Whoever Shakespeare was, he would have been appalled to learn that in over 400 years all may not end well, all may not be true.

"It's Showbiz, Your Majesty"

Life, Logic and Meaning

2008-11-26T07:34:00.000-08:00

An ancient problem is unresolved by 21st Century technology: how can we as human beings learn to think better, to free ourselves from superstition and prejudice, to achieve the full potential implied in our very "humaness"?

Plato espoused an ideal Republic ruled by "philosopher kings". However, we don't live in an ideal society. We live in a imperfect democracy and, in theory at least, sovereignty resides with the people. We rule ourselves. So --if we are to achieve Plato's ideal, WE must become the philosopher-kings and achieve the enlightenment that is implicit in that concept. How is this possible in a demographically segmented society about which it is said that more and more people know more and more about less and less?

May I humbly submit a three-fold plan:

1. Clear Thinking.

Language, Truth, & Logic by A.J. Ayer should be required reading in American high schools. Language, Truth & Logic is the quintessential explanation of the "verifiability criterion of meaning" --the cornerstone of logical positivism, which, in turn, is, arguably the foundation of Western scientific inquiry just as the Russell/Whitehead Principia Mathematica sought to ground mathematics upon a foundation of pure logic.

Ayer identifies the characteristics of "significant propositions" -- propositions which purport to contain real and meaningful information about the world; information that is verifiable. It is the ability to state, at least in theory, the conditions under which a proposition may be shown to be either true or false that imbues that sentence with communicable meaning. In a world in which no one has a monopoly on truth and many are willing to pervert it, it is essential that verifiable statements be so identified.

2. Values.

However logical, Ayer's "Logical Positivism" is seen by many to be lacking the "human touch". It is thought by some to be untenable from a practical standpoint. Enter Jacob Bronowski whose critique of the "logical positivist" position in his Science and Human Values pointed out an underlying, unproved social injunction implied in Ayer's analytical methods. That implied imperative is:

"We OUGHT to act in such a way that what IS true can be verified to be so."

Ironically, Bronouski's critique may have saved logical positivism from its own inflexible consistency, placing its edifice not upon an unassailable axiom but rather upon an affirmation of values which will not admit of proof. What true and lasting ethic could not be based upon the pure pursuit of truth?

3. Responsibility.

Another well-thumbed book (at least in my library) is Jean-Paul Sartre's Existentialism and Human Emotion. It is all very well to think clearly and to pursue truth. Sartre, however, addresses a more fundamental issue. While traditional philosophy had asked: "What is the meaning of life?", Sartre phrased it in existentialist terms: "How am I to make my life meaningful?" He points out that quality of "humanness" that we spoke of is not given a priori. We invent it as we, in fact, invent ourselves. If life has meaning, it is the meaning that we make of it. As Sartre thus states existentialism's first principle: "Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself." True existentialism lies in freely choosing for ourselves what we shall become --and taking sole responsibility for that choice.

I see the faces of that human potential in an old Victorian photograph. It is of my grandparents positioned formally, masterfully in front of a painted background. A proud, pioneer spirit still lives in that picture. They still engage the viewer; they have paid for their simple wisdom with hard work, with their struggle to survive each day. You can see this in their eyes and earnest faces. They were old before they were young. They were scarred, but in healing, grew stronger. There is dignity here, and a feeling that they will arise at sun-up to do the chores, to tend the stock, to wash the clothes. They are worn but not beaten by life. In facing each day courageously, they have found something ...no! They have made their lives meaningful and worthwhile.

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Analysis and Review: Elizabeth (The Movie)

2008-11-26T03:23:00.000-08:00

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Thanks to digital technology anyone can make a movie. But what are the chances your movie will be seen outside your living room? That depends upon the script.

Every movie begins and ends with a script!

Great movies begin with a great script! If your movie is to be seen in theatres, on DVD or VHS, you need a great script. The best scripts --from Euripides to Shakespeare –fuse plot, character, and motive in what is called structure.

One of the best contemporary examples of such a structure is the motion picture Elizabeth, 1998, starring Cate Blanchett.

Act I: The Set-up

The first 30 minutes of a screenplay is called the Set-up. Even action movies, whose very first sequence may be action-packed, as in the Bond films, are merely expository for those first 30 minutes. In the first 30 minutes: we are introduced to the "hero" and other main and supporting characters; we are shown the setting and historical context --contemporary or period; we learn something of the "premise" or the "primary motives" of the main characters.

Consider, for example, how much we learn in only the first 30 minutes of Elizabeth:

England, under the rule of Queen Mary I, a zealous Catholic, is racked by financial and religious instability. The country buzzes with rumors of terror, conspiracy, and the burning of Protestants as Mary steps up her campaign to purge the country of heresy.

Mary is married to Phillip of Spain but it is doubtful that her marriage was consummated. Childless, her impending death will leave the succession in doubt.

We are introduced to the enigmatic, ruthlessly Machiavellian Sir Francis Walsingham –in exile during Mary's reign. We are also introduced to Norfolk, Sir Francis’ antagonist, who covets the throne. He shares with Spain a desire that England remain Catholic.

A plot to overthrow Mary and place Elizabeth on the throne is discovered and Elizabeth is suspected of complicity. While in the company of Lord Robert Dudley, of whom she is particularly fond, Elizabeth is arrested by Norfolk allies and imprisoned in the infamous Tower of London.

In a meeting with her half-sister, "Bloody" Queen Mary, Elizabeth affirms her loyalty and disavows any connection with plotters led by Thomas Wyatt. It is unclear whether her life is saved by her pleas of innocence or by the death of Mary who dies without naming an heir. Norfolk reluctantly orders that Elizabeth succeed to the throne.

Act II: The Game is Afoot

The Second Act then begins when the Crown is placed upon Elizabeth's head --an event which occurs at the end of a segment that is very nearly 30 minutes to the second.

The succession of Elizabeth to the throne is what author/script guru Syd Field calls the first "plot point". And it almost always happens within thirty minutes of the start of the film give or take a minute or two. I began timing Elizabeth from the opening titles in which "supers" provided some essential expository information. I would not have begun timing with titles over a black screen or other non-expository footage.

Plot Point #1 is the beginning of Act II. Act II is always characterized by what Lajos Egri (The Art of Dramatic Writring) calls rising conflict leading to Plot Point #2 one hour later, on page 90 of the script.

Pages 90-120 comprise Act III. By timing and analyzing many movies, I have found Field to be accurate, either because screenwriters have read and emulate Field or because good story structure seems to naturally fall into that pattern.

Although there is no denying Field's influence, many "older", pre-Field films are easily found to fall into this pattern. Casablanca, Psycho, Notorious, Rebecca, Citizen Kane, High Noon, Chinatown come to mind. It was, after all, Aristotle who first described the structure of a play: a beginning, a middle, and an end. Field’s theories are mere refinements of Aristotle.

Structure is story and story is character. Motivated characters act upon their motivations and equally motivated characters oppose them. Strong characters do not merely lock into siege; they attack and counter-attack. Stakes are constantly raised. A good story is an unfolding, universal dialectic as old as Socrates. And with Plot Point #1, the words of Sherlock Holmes apply: "The game is afoot".

It is not merely because it happens 30 minutes into the script that the crowning of Elizabeth is the first plot point. The first plot point is not simply defined as whatever it is that happens thirty minutes into the story. It is, rather, the very beginning of the story at the end of background exposition.

The "story" of Elizabeth is the story of her reign and how that reign changed her and the nation she ruled. That story must begin with her coronation. It is her coronation that is the catalyst for the rising conflict which propels the next one hour of film time. That conflict is nothing less than the conflict between those would plot to assassinate her and replace her with a Catholic monarch and Elizabeth's allies -- equally ruthless in her defense.

This is the stuff of high drama and it rarely gets better than this. It is, literally, a struggle of life and death, a drama of Shakespearean weight and profundity. Anything else is a "sub-plot" and, in this film particularly, the subplots are subtly interwoven into the main story line like a fine Belgian tapestry. They provide context, commentary, and perspective but also influence in subtle ways the main story line.

Syd Field attributes a "structure" to Act II:

a "pinch" on page 45;
a "mid-point" on page 60;
another "pinch" on page 75.

In my analyses, I have found the "pinches" to be more specific. An event on Page 45 almost invariably defines a serious complication or obstacle. In Elizabeth, the French "warrior queen" Mary of Guise, has amassed troops on the Scottish border and forty-five minutes into the film, Mary routs Elizabeth's soldiers in the field --a serious complication which threatens Elizabeth's tenuous hold on her throne, undermines her efforts to unite her deeply divided realm, and incurs the murderous enmity of Mary of Guise.

This event leads causally to the arrival of the Duke of Anjou. A marriage to the Duke, an alliance with France, is deemed necessary to secure Elizabeth's tenuous throne and repair the deteriorating relationship with Mary of Guise. All this is in reaction to the conflict in Scotland and sets the stage for the next big plot point of page 60.

The Point of No Return

Elizabeth angers Catholic partisans with the passage of the Act of Uniformity. This is, indeed, a point of no return for both England and Elizabeth. It is seen by the Vatican as heretical and sets the stage for yet another dialectical reaction. A Catholic plot, involving the Pope and local traitors, is hatched to assassinate and replace Elizabeth.

While Field recognizes an important "pinch" on page 75, I have found this point to be, in most cases, a "reversal of fortune". In Elizabeth, this occurs when Elizabeth, against the wishes of her loyal advisor, William Cecil, refuses the Duke of Anjou's proposal of marriage. Seventy-five minutes into the film, this move almost costs Elizabeth her life. Mary of Guise vows revenge.

When her attempt to murder Elizabeth with a poisoned dress fails, the Machiavellian Walsingham, who has become Elizabeth's "Master Spy" takes action. Walsingham –in response –tricks, seduces, and murders Mary of Guise. One enemy of the Crown --down! The stakes are raised and set up Plot Point #3.

Act III: It's Payback Time

Lesser movies bog down in Act III. Not Elizabeth, where Act III itself evinces three discreet sections of 10 minutes each. They flow seamlessly from one to the other. On page 90, Walsingham begins to fight back against the enemies of the Crown: the plotters who have conspired with Norfolk to install Norfolk as King.

Walsingham secures the remaining evidence of plots against Elizabeth. He does this by eliciting the cooperation of informers and by torturing a murderous priest sent by his "holiness" to assassinate Elizabeth.

Confronted with the evidence, Elizabeth gives Walsingham carte blanche to "round up the usual suspects". They are imprisoned in the tower until they can be tried and beheaded.

The final section I call the apotheosis of Elizabeth in which she becomes the Virgin Queen. The final section is worthy of note. Few movies have approached Elizabeth in the manner in which all the various threads, motivations and conflicts are resolved so profoundly, so poignantly, so tragically. Much of that effect is owed to the inspired direction. A montage of piked "heads" dissolves into Elizabeth in contemplation before the statue of the Virgin Mary.

The enigmatic, ruthlessly loyal Walsingham, appropriately distant from his Queen in the Cathedral shadows, addresses her in hushed tones. The people need the Virgin, he tells her; "They must be able to touch the divine!" The people, he says, have found nothing to replace her.

A moving crane shot makes it appear that the Virgin is leaning beneficently above Elizabeth. CUT TO: a reversing angle above Elizabeth who is symbolically shorn of her long, red, worldly hair. In a straight on head shot in which she looks like Joan of Arc, Elizabeth intones to her unseen companion, Kat Ashley: "Kat...I have become a virgin". Thus, in a Protestant nation, England will still "...touch the divine" but will do so via their Queen.

When Elizabeth appears in public, her court is awed, and as she passes among them, they bow to kiss the hem of her garment. She is transformed, deified, untouchable. She is the Virgin Queen.

Elizabeth with Cate Blanchett

Elizabeth, Part 12

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