The First Trip (Tales Of Illuminatus Soundtrack)

From RAWILLUMINATION interview last year.

Musician, writer and world traveler Steve "Fly Agaric" Pratt, 47, aka Steve Fly, aka Steven James Pratt, is a native of Wordsley, England, who for many years has lived in Amsterdam. He was a competitive swimmer in his youth but soon developed an interest in jazz and other forms of music. See this biography emphasizing his musical interests. 

Steve's newest project is The First Trip,  a music album focusing on Robert Anton Wilson and Illuminatus!, issued in conjunction with Bobby Campbell's ongoing Tales of Illuminatus adaptation of the Illuminatus! trilogy. You can find the album on Bandcamp.  Note that as with most other Bandcamp releases, you can play the tracks before you decide whether to buy the album. When you buy an album on Bandcamp, you can download the tracks to keep them and also stream it from the website or from a smartphone Bandcamp app. Steve's album is priced in pounds; it cost me about $10. 

Over the years, Steve's projects have included the Robert Anton Wilson meets Steve “Fly Agaric” Pratt album, which features Steve's interview with Robert Anton Wilson, with music from Steve Fly, Tim Egmond, Martin "Youth" Glover, Rick Rasa, Hagbard Celine, Garaj Mahal.

His books include World Piss, a collection of early writings; Fly On The Tale Of The Tribe: A Rollercoaster Ride With Robert Anton Wilson  (see this review by Oz Fritz), and Deep Scratch Remix. Browse more titles here. 

Steve has so many interests and so many creative projects that any interview with him is going to be a snapshot in time, although there is continuity in his work. Here is my 2012 interview with Steve, focusing on his interest in Robert Anton Wilson. Here is my joint interview with Steve and Peter Quadrino over Waywords and Meansigns, the project to set Finnegans Wake to music/adapt it to sound. 

I really enjoyed listening to The First Trip and Steve agreed to take my questions for a new interview focusing on the new album. 

Steve with his handmade IRL Pyramid Speaker by Hans Speijer and his piratable-turntable.

RAWILLUMINATION: How did the album The First Trip come about? How does it relate to Tales of Illuminatus? 

STEVE PRATT: Due to Bobby's tireless organizing for Maybelogues 2024, we got chatting in early June about new music I was working on, I sent some examples. I'm not sure who ignited the conversation about music and TOI [Tales of Illuminatus] but it was floating in the air between us. With an equally enthusiastic go-ahead from team TOI, I started producing the music for The First Trip.   

RAWILLUMINATION: You describe The First Trip as a concept album. I think I figured it out: All of the listed bands on the album are bands listed in Illuminatus! as being booked to perform at the rock festival in Leviathan. So the concept is that all of those bands really exist? And that's why the music is so different from track to track, because you are creating different "bands"?

STEVE PRATT: Yes, exactly. I created the lyrics to help fold them into the TOI universe, and in some sense I co-arranged and co-produced the music, but the precise description of what I did, distinguished from what the A.I. did, is tricky to distinguish. A.I. songs are like laws, which are like sausages, in that it's better not to see how they're made.  

RAWILLUMINATION: Are you the only human who worked on the album? There's a pretty wide variety of vocals and instruments on it.

STEVE PRATT: Yes, I'm the only human who worked on the album. Or the only interacting brain body nervous system that feels fully convinced he's human ;-) 

RAWILLUMINATION: I have been trying to think of how to describe the album, maybe "subversive pop"? How do you describe it to people who have not heard it? Some of it seems like Frank Zappa, but without the snarkiness.

STEVE PRATT: It's fitting you reference Zappa. And a very generous comment about less snarkiness. "Snarkiness" works well to describe a lot of current A.I. songs, which to my ear lack nuance and subtlety...lyrically speaking. 

I've been mulling on A.I. generated music, humour in music and so, the music of Zappa (perhaps the most "consistent" example) who has ajacencies with TOI music and with RAW (and Shea's) sense of humour, satire, pacing, style, comedic strategies...I touched on some of this in my essay about SUN RA. Very generally, to my mind, it comes back to the mosaic method of McLuhan, the Hologrammic prose of Joyce, Burroughs and Wilson, the holo-sonic music of Johan Coltrane, the participatory relationship between the parts and the whole. Unity, the Tao, epiphany (with a healthy reminder that these 'impressions' are non-simultaneously apprehended events). The songs from this album ,cover a part of a broader spectrum, which will be revealed as TOI progresses. 

RAWILLUMINATION: It's interesting you mention Burroughs, because Zappa was really into the cut-up technique. And as for the band names: I like the fact that "Nirvana" is in there, somehow Wilson and Shea named the last great rock band!

STEVE PRATT: Great analysis, I concur. Cut-up is also a large component of good turntable routines, "needle drops" are like cut-up in that you kind of throw the dice where the stylus needle will land, which groove...and take it from there.

A recent photo of Steve "Fly" Pratt. 

RAWILLUMINATION: I bought The First Trip on Bandcamp, where I have bought quite a bit of music. I know your music has been available at other places -- I bought the "RAW meets Steve Fly" album on Amazon -- but are  you selling your music only at Bandcamp now? How do you think Bandcamp serves artists and listeners? 

STEVE PRATT: Yeah, I rate Bandcamp, currently, as the best platform for artists to get paid, and without any ads. Bandcamp Fridays, where 100% of sales go to the artist, is a future friendly scheme. I'm not using Spotify, but you'll probably find some of my music there.

RAWILLUMINATION: You have been a prolific recording artist. Is there an album of yours that you think was particularly successful, and/or was a particular hit with listeners?

STEVE PRATT: That's kind of you to say, but, not really, I've had little success or sales, let alone a hit. Most of my work has been collaborations, I've yet to release what I'd call a proper solo album, but I'm ready...after 3 decades of practice. Most tracks released on bandcamp are my home productions, some using an APP and now A.I. Mohawk (with John Sinclair) received some good reviews, and is perhaps my most popular project/album, not many picked up on the fact I played all the music on that album (with overdubbing). 

RAWILLUMINATION: "Jump Into My Submarine" is a standout track, I congratulate you on that track. Do you want to tell me anything about it? Are there other tracks you want to call particular attention to?

STEVE PRATT: Yeah, there's a yellow submarine docked at NDSM, Amsterdam Noord, I was right there today, and this fact, together with the Leif Erikson and that 70s funk submarine vibe, down periscope...all contributed to my audio-vision for 'Jump Into My Submarine'. I've no other emphasis on any track.

RAWILLUMINATION: How many instruments do you play? I know you are a turntable player and a drummer, but I heard guitars and all sorts of instruments on the new album.

STEVE PRATT: I do indeed play drums, turntables and a smidge of guitars. I also make noises with my mouth. I hate to burst the bubble of wonder for you, but I did not play any instruments on First Trip. Everything you hear is by Fuckup, Sol and Udio. I'm simply a producer, arranger, lyricist and co-song writer. A curator (much like a DJ) These distinctions are fuzzy at best. My M.O was to imagine music that might raise at least a smile, or belly laugh, from Bob.

Illustration by Bobby Campbell 

RAWILLUMINATION: What part did you play in the music for the Cosmic Trigger play?

STEVE PRATT: As music director I had a hand in composing some of the music, but there were contributions from other musicians and producers....plus the previous musical director had written songs. During the stage performances I played drums for scene transitions. I have a lot of unused music and sounds from the play that I hope to revisit in the future.

RAWILLUMINATION:  The Internet archive has a collection of live recordings bythe jazz fusion band Garaj Mahal. Is there any easy way to find the recordings that feature you on turntable performing with them?

STEVE PRATT: Yeah, put "Fly Agaric 23" in the Archive search window, for a selection of my live turntable jammin' in the U.S. (2000-2005) Keep your ears peeled for the new album by Garaj Mahal with some very special guests ;-) 

Also, this show was a particularly good one imho (with special guest Leo Nocentelli from my fav. funk band of all time....The Meters!)   

https://archive.org/details/garaj2003-10-31.flac16   (Avalon Ballroom Halloween 2003).

RAWILLUMINATION: What do you want people to know about The First Trip that I neglected to ask about? 

STEVE PRATT: There will be more trips, tracks and albums as the TOI project progresses, some will be made using Fuckup/Sol/Udio A.I., others will not. Whatever it is, it's gotta' be funky with an accent on the FUN part.

Steven James Pratt bibliography

Spore of the Words/Shanigums Wave (2011)

Fly: Selected Poetry 2001-2017 (2017)

Cannabis Coffeeshop Journal (2018)

Sounds Fly: Music Writing (2018)

Big Chief: Getting High With John Sinclair and the Fly (2018)

Silent But Dudley: Writings on the Black Country (2018)

Flying: Selected Writing (2018)

Passport to Poetry: Brexit (2018)

Fly on the Tale of the Tribe: A Rollercoaster Ride With Robert Anton Wilson (2019)

Fly Papers: Cannabis Writing 2018-2020 (2020)

2020 Squintin Quartino (2020)

Deep Scratch: Novel (2020)

Flyku: Poetry (2020)

Corona Slayer: Poetry (2021)

Prose Piracy: Selected Writing (2021)

New Growth: Selected Writings (2022)

Deep Scratch Remix (2023)

Steven James Pratt Discography 

Robert Anton Wilson meets Steve “Fly Agaric” Pratt (2016)

They Came to Starburg (2016)

Corona Slayer (2022)

Deep Scratch Remix (2023)

Deep Scratch Vs. Udio: Round One (2024)

Deep Scratch Vs. Udio: Round Two (2024)

Deep Scratch Vs. Udio: Round Three (2024)

Deep Scratch Vs. Udio: Round Four (2024)

Deep Scratch Vs. Udio: Round Five (2024)

Deep Scratch Vs. Udio: Round Six (2024)

Folkin' Around Elections (2024)

Deep Scratch Vs. Udio: Round Seven (2024)

The First Trip (2024)

Coronavirus Conspiracies - #CoronaMoron #Xenophobia

“Never underestimate the stupidity of people in large groups”


It is man-made in lab


It is man-made in


It is man-made


It is man -


It is


It

I

No matter where you are on earth, I sincerely wish you good luck with tackling this new virus, and that you can help work together with everybody else in defeating it, slowing the spread, flattening the curve, keeping a two-meter distance between each other, not to overcrowd or stress the already...stressed medical services.

Sadly, yes... I’m sure you've seen and heard the tsunami of conspiracy theories based around the novel coronavirus. I’m usually in a more playful mood to tackle these difficult issues, with luck, bringing clarity to the situation, while at the same time defining my thoughts and educated guesses, and exploring my prejudice. Excuse me while I hold my nose and swim in the sewage and report back.

I noticed that groups who previously held particular beliefs modified and updated them to now feature Covid 19. A new reason to hate foreigners or to connect and love your neighbours. One example is the far-right Italian politician Matteo Salvini, who was quick to point the finger at immigrants, missing the fact it was religious tourists (if you were to make a sweeping generalization) who were, statistically, responsible for the rapid spread in Italy. Two of his own bodyguards were reported to be infected with the virus.

If I were to examine myself, I can track a similar train of thought but following my thoughts to the Conservative Party and their VoteLeave campaign and Brexit...existing systems of beliefs. I have constructed models over the last four years from which I can now build my conspiracy theory. And I admit it, it’s a theory, right. One example involves alt-right Pound shop Machiavelli Dominic Cummings, the brains behind both VoteLeave and Herd Immunity. Millions of people have raised huge concerns about Boris Johnson’s Chief advisor who, like American far-right one-time advisor to Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, leaves a trail of destruction, lies and disinformation only topped by Putin himself. How this disinformation compares with that of China must be evaluated by that great Disinfo-meter you have in your shed! A hell of a lot of liars on the world stage, let’s settle at that. So who do we trust? Stephen Fry, James O’Brien or other reliable upstanding Brits, capable of listing this giant ball of dung? No, many slouch toward Farage and those very scoundrels who sold you the lies that now, have increased the probability that you or your friends or your family could die as a result.

My own guess at a conspiracy, if I were to be so stupid as to use that term these days, or my series of not too well known guesses, goes like this: the third week in November 2019 a novel coronavirus jumped from either a bat or pangolin, or chimera of the two, to humans, probably due to the horrific conditions found at exotic meat-markets in the Wuhan district of China. The Chinese authorities, like most but not all across the planet in 2019, acted slowly and in secrecy at first, shutting down whistleblowers and any who tried to spread the news about how dangerous this new strain is, or any dissenters. Right here...I ask myself if it would have broken out in a disgusting meat-processing plant in Britain how would the response have been? Far far worse in my opinion, based on Brexit, the 2019 UK general election and the current foggy moggy guidelines Cumming, out of number 10.

….to continue, by February, Dominic Cummings has done his sickly sordid homework and consulted his network of suicide-germ-bombers (possibly including his Russian and American equivalents) and is fully prepared to propose Herd Immunity strategy to the Tory party and only the Tory party. Unwilling to share ANYTHING with other scientists, health professionals, data analysts, security analysts, MI5? 6? Either way, his Herd Immunity was taken as the policy for weeks and weeks, and arguably, right there, his work is done. That’s the conspiracy. My best guess, from a UK perspective, of the probable conspiracy to cull the population of Britain. Just like America. There is one man at the epicenter, his name is Dominic Cumings. May future generations never forget this man, and how he was let into power over the realm and how he may have single-handedly murdered somebody you knew. Okay. As you were.

A Chinese telecommunications giant, Hwaiwai, has been in the news long before Covid-19 adding to any existing Xenophobia and racism, in Britain. I repeat...existing racism and Xenophobia. Together with the proposed introduction of 5G networks across Britain and the world over the last three years or so, has come a gaggle of conspiracies. Many of which are pushed by popular mouth-pieces, now legendary for their big claims and little scientific criticism, both of the material and themselves. The alt-right and some other outliers, have already got behind such spurious claims like 5G networks send out frequencies that mess with your cells and immune system. Nonsense as far as I can tell, but a vacuum of nonsense where many fear to tread, and where the alt-right recruit the gullible and angry and nasty to do their bidding to stay stupid.

What is the alt-left conspiracy? The WHO and the UN and the E.U and NATO and Russia and China? Soros? Corbyn? Every and any major power structure that is not, alt-right or under control of the far-right...is to blame. Soros and Hilary and the Democrats and Bernie and Corbyn and...Macron? Merkel? How many power structures and deep-state forces? How many are wrestling for battle space supremacy now? Complexity and chaos upon the complex and disorder. Who are you? Are you equipped to reach a meaningful conclusion? And me? Here we are, each and every one of us trying to unravel world history and the cause and effect and the blame and emotions fight, to suppress suspended judgement and the urge to act.

The same liars and morons who sold Brexit and VoteLeave have sold Herd Immunity too. Many of those currently grazing, based on scenes around Dudley...are sadly going to physically feel the effect of their lack of critical thinking and that old nugget, common sense. The anger and frustration is in the fact that many others will suffer and die due to this thick-as-two-short-planks approach championed by the Vote Leave campaign.

That same Xenophobia and racism is still alive and kicking, quickly mutating hate faster than the virus itself, switching to projecting their own insecurity to Asians and those communist Chinese. Some of the stupid and nasty alt-right “I’m all right Jack” “Take back control” morons in the UK are adopting the blame China gang. With a degrading flurry of conspiracies that point the finger at any and all who are not them, the 5G conspiracies and the Wuhan bio-weapon conspiracies, and then the deep-state model that fits their view of the world. The Russians did it, the Chinese did it, the Americans did it. Each of these conspiracies disregards the fact that the virus, most probably, jumped from animals to humans in late November 2019. I guess the reason is in part anthropocentric, putting MAN at the centre of all things. Joining the fundamentalist religious people in blind-faith, unable to come up with a design science solution, or take on board the probability that nobody, no group, is IN CONTROL. Uncertainty rules okay.

People in the UK spitting at Police and Doctors, and purposefully spreading this virus, they are the same right-wing hooligans who have been fucking up the country for years. They must be stopped, quickly. NO left-leaning political activist or Labour-supporting activist I know would ever SPIT at somebody to give them a life-threatening virus and help spread it. This suicidal approach is the domain of the alt-right, from my experience with the psychology of these selfish morons, together with pushing fake news and computer-viruses and other tools of chaos and disruption, thinking that they are “sticking it to the elites” when really they are sticking it to their own grandparents and perhaps the whole family, who knows?

I do not know either, these are my educated guesses. I’ll get back to poetry and prose rich in happy optimistic thoughts now I have got some of this gunk off my chest. I sincerely hope this does not end up like the purge, however, I can bet you that in the UK and the USA some but not all news outlets will cover stories as if it were.

The far-right alt-right elements, and all political extremism and ideological racism need to be considered a top priority by any government interested in its future. These people and their toxic ideology need to be quarantined indefinitely, the safety and future of all humanity depend on it. Emergency services across the world need to be prepared for such a violent outbreak and have detention centres equipped to deal with these lunatics separately to others who may have caused disturbances or broken curfew rules but are not CRAZY enough as wanting to infect everybody, based on the Cumings/Bannon Herd Immunity strategy.

How do you tell them apart? Mostly male, between ages 30 and 50, have a potbelly, balding and have tattoos and/or football tattoos, speak in paraphrases from the Daily Mail and The Sun newspapers. Have a tendency to wear baseball hats and flat caps, often items of Stone Island clothing, or Louis Vitton, may wear black sunglasses of the small “data from star-trek” variety. Shouting “take back control” “we’ll be okay, the spirit of the blitz.” I’ve rolled up all my own prejudice and translated them into non-scientific observations based upon my own experiences. No science here. This is my prejudice on show. 

Naked, I stand before you. This is my conspiracy theory, my best-educated guess. What's your's? Weapons lab in China....what?  Usually, and most of my days I write and play music and make music and share music and art...my best guesses lead me to invest time in creating light and sweetness and beauty in the face of ugliness and pessimism and anger, leading to hate...you know how it goes.

Forgive my prejudice and give me the strength to forgive any of those I deem responsible.
I love you all, just not equally, and some of that love I hope makes some of you feel uncomfortable in your skin knowing you let it sit dormant, my love can come with fierce blessings.

"Glove all the people"
"Don't stand so close to me"
"Nazi punks fuck off"

#CoronaMoron
#Covidiot
#Brexit
#HerdImmunity
#AltRightSpit
#NaziPunksFuckOff
#Racisim
#Xenophobia
#Prejudice

Benevolent Conspiracy - A Robert Anton Wilson Quote

The Panamamamatrix: Tsarists and Nazis and spooks, oh my!

The CIA Nazi Tsarist Alliance, rolled in Panamamamatrix.

The Panama papers are hitting headlines everywhere, hard, from the tabloids to the more respected journals, to the underground. It seems to me that the 99 % of humanity are justified in the distrust of the 1%, or to narrow it down further, the inner secret sanctuary of international unrestricted finance. The racket, robbing the world, cheating the rest of the 99% of the worlds population out of their equal share of the worlds resources, technological innovations and freedom.

Long before the Panama papers hit town, and before Bernie Sanders called out Panama as a bit of a dodgy 'offshore' financial operations centre, the late great Robert Anton Wilson spent a lifetime tracking the worldwide cabal of cheats, spies, financiers and all-around-the-world liars, he might refer to this topic of his research as the CIA Tsarist Nazi alliance. The alliance between spooks, Nazi’s like General Reinhardt Gehlen, American’s like James Jesus Angleton and J. Edgar Hoover, Brits like Kim Philby, and Russian’s such as General Vlasov. If nationality were to be the main method to categorize these global fire starters, and precursors to the skull-duggery revealed in the Panama papers.

Dr Wilson liked to source and reference all of his sources, and interestingly, his ‘historical illuminatus’ fiction, contain an equal amount of reliable, documented and published sources, with a particular bearing on the current story of the Panama papers, and the Tsarist Nazi CIA connections, plus the Vatican, Mafia and The Knights of Malta, for good measure. The murder of Lady Diana too, if you follow the Kashoggi trail.

The Panama papers, if they are what they claim to be, are outlines of a global conspiracy, a new ‘Octopus’ conspiracy. Kinging the network of deceit, and putting together some-but-not-all of the previous major themes of conspiracy theory, into a new map, self-evidential, well sourced context. In a nutshell, the secret financial elite at the heart of the scandal have Nazi, CIA and Tsarist affiliations, well documented all about the internet. “Ah-haa’ the Internet, i hear some skeptical voices say, anything is true on the internet!” Yeah, anything is true, false, meaningless and indeterminate both on, and off the web. Think for yourself. My best advice.

Be that statement as it may, the meticulous and diligent research by Dr Wilson for over 30 years, before the world wide web went world wide, remains a critical body of work, documenting and following the shadowy trail of Nazi’s, spies and banker elites, before during and after the second world war, right up to the moment at which he was writing. Right up to January 2007, when he sadly passed away, and for the most part, ignored by the worlds journalists and scholars. Now, in April of 2016, his work still helps me and with luck you, dear reader, to cut through the fog of mainstream disinformation, and lead the reader into new perspectives and a broader understanding of The Panama Papers. Smoke Em' Out.


My research for this article was done on the web for the most part, and includes ideas from publications by Robert Anton Wilson. Might i sign off with an important reminder that, from what i experienced, that Dr Wilson liked to promote thinking in probabilities, and warn the reader/researcher to avoid thinking in certainties, and wherever possible, adopt a language that reflects this proba-ballistic thinking, rooted in ideas from Alfred Korzybski, the creator or the field of general semantics. Make up your own mind, do your own research, question everything, especially authority.

For the rest of this article i will provide quotes, and some embedded media. Thanks to all the software developers, open source advocates, Pythonians, bloggers and journalists everywhere for your shared tools and open ended questions.

Seth Blake on The United States of Paranoia : A Conspiracy Theory.

A great book, and the chapter 'Operation Mindfuck' of particular interest to RAW fans and heads. Enjoy, steve fly.



 http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/in-praise-of-cranks-jesse-walkers-the-united-states-of-paranoia/

Seth Blake on The United States of Paranoia : A Conspiracy Theory

Walker proceeds to lay out a general taxonomy of American conspiracy theories, “five primal myths […]  archetypes that can absorb all kinds of allegations, true or not, and arrange them into a familiar form.” These he distinguishes as “The Enemy Outside” (foreign actors who plot society’s downfall from a distance); “The Enemy Within” (domestic threats to the status quo); “The Enemy Above” (conspiracies of the ruling classes); “The Enemy Below” (conspiracies of the lower classes and social pariahs); and “The Benevolent Conspiracy” (a secret force working behind the scenes to improve people’s lives).

Enumerating examples of these five primal myths and how they have recurred and recombined throughout American history, Walker is able to convincingly illustrate how conspiracy narratives that may appear at first glance to be isolated, episodic interludes specific to the idiosyncratic circumstances of a particular era or social sphere, though distortions, are also real manifestations of enduring facets of a national consciousness. Conspiracy theories, according to Walker, and contra Hofstadter, are endemic rather than aberrant phenomena, and manifest at every level of American society.

In a particularly telling example, Walker traces the myth of The Enemy Outside from the period between the Pequot and King Philip’s wars (when English colonists’ fears of a “universall [sic] combination” of Indians lead them to form The New England Confederation) to the contemporary misunderstandings by US policymakers concerning the diffuse nature of al-Qaeda (Walker cites a Washington Post from 2012 that referred to Bin Laden as a “terrorist CEO in an isolated compound”). In both cases, an inaccurate but powerful metaphor — diverse and diffuse Indian societies likened to the absolute monarchies of Europe on the one hand, a diverse and diffuse terrorist network likened to a private corporation on the other — opened up a space for conspiratorial thinking and mythical misreadings that lead to reaction-formations with devastating real-world consequences. For infamous conspiracy theorist John Todd — who for nearly four decades beginning in the late 1970s, wound a crooked path across the United States, speaking at churches and community centers about the intertwining plots of the Illuminati, the Freemasons, witches, Jesus movements, and the music industry — the toll of belief came at a no less devastating individual cost: estrangement from his friends and family, frequent arrests, institutionalization, and an early death.

Walker’s chapter on conspiracy spoofs and spoofers is a more lighthearted counterpoint to the personal and political tragedies detailed in much of the book, and also may be his most effective. Here he discusses the Church of the SubGenius (a wicked send-up of New Age religions and self-help guides, ostensibly led by the beatific, pipe-smoking übermensch “Bob Dobbs”) and The Realist, a magazine that often printed earnestly submitted conspiracy theories alongside deadpan satires of the same. Just as science fiction author Robert Anton Wilson’s The Illuminatus! Trilogy came to serve as a sort of primary text for those who actually believe that its eponymous secret society manipulates global events, the communities fostered by these intended hoaxes were, in fact, very real. For a short time in the early seventies, Paul Krassner, the editor of The Realist, even became convinced that people were following him: as Krassner’s explains: “I thought that what I published was so important that I wanted to be persecuted, in order to validate the work.”

If Walker has, as he claims, written a sort of contemporary American demonology, it is populated by demons of the antique tradition: not necessarily evil spirits, but ones capable, like the humans who invented them, of a wide range of behavior. Perhaps a better term to describe the form of The United States of Paranoia is a bestiary. What differentiates the bestiary as a form most from its more buttoned down cousin, the encyclopedia, is the transparency of its animating ethos. In contrast to the definitional, indexical project of the encyclopedia — whose scriptural tone foregrounds its status as the official book of record, as much as possible striving to erase the specter of human authorship — the bestiary is essayistic, speculative, and most importantly, allegorical. It is as much a work of moral instruction for the beasts that read it as the beasts with which it is ostensibly concerned.

Conspiracy theories, like religious beliefs, have the power to transfigure the believer, and our hardwired apophenia — our tendency to read meaning into random and meaningless data — may lead us to stretch even the most homely and harmless of these theories far past the point of credibility or charm. For all the scope of The United States of Paranoia, Walker’s moral is ultimately a humble one: as Kurt Vonnegut wrote, “we are what we pretend to be.”

http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/in-praise-of-cranks-jesse-walkers-the-united-states-of-paranoia/

RAW and the Ontological Status of Conspiracy Theory by Hakim Bey

Rather than speak of conspiracy theory we might instead try to construct a poetics of conspiracy. A conspiracy would be treated like an aesthetic construct, or a language-construct, and could be analyzed like a text. Robert Anton Wilson has done this with his vast and playful "Illuminati" fantasy. --http://hermetic.com/bey/conspire.html

Machiavelli Mafia Atoms and Oil (MMAO)

Bob's grand encyclopedic writings on the subject of conspiracies covered a hell of a lot of ground, in this interview with Richard Smoley for Gnosis magazine, he highlights some of the more probable conspiracy theories, that since the interview in 1998 have proved themselves to be accurate predictions, based on earlier theories of Buckminster Fuller and deployed in Wilson's species of Maybelogic.

Smoley: Of all the conspiracies you've looked at over the years, which ones are you most inclined to believe in?

Wilson: I put them on a scale from zero to ten. With the ones I put above five, I'm more inclined to give then credit than to doubt theta. The ones I put above seven, that's pretty close to belief, except I try to shy away from belief, I think it's a dangerous state to get into.

Bucky Fuller has a theory of the Great Pirates - the sociopathic types who have always been the dominant force in history. The Great Pirates in modern times make up a group the abbreviates "MMAO": Machiavelli, Mafia, atoms, and oil. It's the international banks, the Mafia, and the atomic and oil cartels. He doesn't claim they work together, but they more or less make a singular force. But he also says that they're so engaged in conflicts with one another that they're steering Spaceship Earth in 50 different directions, which is why we^'re going around and we^'re not getting anywhere. I tend to find that fairly credi­ble. A simplification of it is Carl Oglesby's theory of the Yankee and Cowboy War - the war between Western and old Eastern wealth. Those seem fairly credible to me.--Robert Anton Wilson, 1998.

Wikileaks and Umberto Eco

For the celebrated novelist and intellectual Umberto Eco, the Wikileaks affair or "Cablegate" not only shows up the hypocrisy that governs relations between states, citizens and the press, but also presages a return to more archaic forms of communication.

Umberto Eco

The WikiLeaks affair has twofold value. On the one hand, it turns out to be a bogus scandal, a scandal that only appears to be a scandal against the backdrop of the hypocrisy governing relations between the state, the citizenry and the press. On the other hand, it heralds a sea change in international communication – and prefigures a regressive future of “crabwise” progress.

But let’s take it one step at a time. First off, the WikiLeaks confirm the fact that every file put together by a secret service (of any nation you like) is exclusively made up of press clippings. The “extraordinary” American revelations about Berlusconi’s sex habits merely relay what could already be read for months in any newspaper (except those owned by Berlusconi himself, needless to say), and the sinister caricature of Gaddafi has long been the stuff of cabaret farce.

Embassies have morphed into espionage centres

The rule that says secret files must only contain news that is already common knowledge is essential to the dynamic of secret services, and not only in the present century. Go to an esoteric book shop and you’ll find that every book on the shelf (on the Holy Grail, the “mystery” of Rennes-le-Château [a hoax theory concocted to draw tourists to a French town], on the Templars or the Rosicrucians) is a point-by-point rehash of what is already written in older books. And it’s not just because occult authors are averse to doing original research (or don’t know where to look for news about the non-existent), but because those given to the occult only believe what they already know and what corroborates what they’ve already heard. That happens to be Dan Brown’s success formula.

The same goes for secret files. The informant is lazy. So is the head of the secret service (or at least he’s limited – otherwise he could be, what do I know, an editor at Libération): he only regards as true what he recognises. The top-secret dope on Berlusconi that the US embassy in Rome beamed to the Department of State was the same story that had come out in Newsweek the week before.

So why so much ado about these leaks? For one thing, they say what any savvy observer already knows: that the embassies, at least since the end of World War II, and since heads of state can call each other up or fly over to meet for dinner, have lost their diplomatic function and, but for the occasional ceremonial function, have morphed into espionage centres. Anyone who watches investigative documentaries knows that full well, and it is only out of hypocrisy that we feign ignorance. Still, repeating that in public constitutes a breach of the duty of hypocrisy, and puts American diplomacy in a lousy light.

A real secret is an empty secret

Secondly, the very notion that any old hacker can delve into the most secret secrets of the most powerful country in the world has dealt a hefty blow to the State Department’s prestige. So the scandal actually hurts the “perpetrators” more than the “victims”.

But let’s turn to the more profound significance of what has occurred. Formerly, back in the days of Orwell, every power could be conceived of as a Big Brother watching over its subjects’ every move. The Orwellian prophecy came completely true once the powers that be could monitor every phone call made by the citizen, every hotel he stayed in, every toll road he took and so on and so forth. The citizen became the total victim of the watchful eye of the state. But when it transpires, as it has now, that even the crypts of state secrets are not beyond the hacker’s grasp, the surveillance ceases to work only one-way and becomes circular. The state has its eye on every citizen, but every citizen, or at least every hacker – the citizens’ self-appointed avenger – can pry into the state’s every secret.

How can a power hold up if it can’t even keep its own secrets anymore? It is true, as Georg Simmel once remarked, that a real secret is an empty secret (which can never be unearthed); it is also true that anything known about Berlusconi or Merkel’s character is essentially an empty secret, a secret without a secret, because it’s public domain. But to actually reveal, as WikiLeaks has done, that Hillary Clinton’s secrets were empty secrets amounts to taking away all her power. WikiLeaks didn’t do any harm to Sarkozy or Merkel, but did irreparable damage to Clinton and Obama.

Technology now advances crabwise

What will be the consequences of this wound inflicted on a very mighty power? It’s obvious that in future, states won’t be able to put any restricted information on line anymore: that would be tantamount to posting it on a street corner. But it is equally clear that, given today’s technologies, it is pointless to hope to have confidential dealings over the phone. Nothing is easier than finding out whether a head of state flew in or out or contacted one of his counterparts. So how can privy matters be conducted in future? Now I know that for the time being, my forecast is still science fiction and therefore fantastic, but I can’t help imagining state agents riding discreetly in stagecoaches along untrackable routes, bearing only memorised messages or, at most, the occasional document concealed in the heel of a shoe. Only a single copy thereof will be kept – in locked drawers. Ultimately, the attempted Watergate break-in was less successful than WikiLeaks.

I once had occasion to observe that technology now advances crabwise, i.e. backwards. A century after the wireless telegraph revolutionised communications, the Internet has re-established a telegraph that runs on (telephone) wires. (Analog) video cassettes enabled film buffs to peruse a movie frame by frame, by fast-forwarding and rewinding to lay bare all the secrets of the editing process, but (digital) CDs now only allow us quantum leaps from one chapter to another. High-speed trains take us from Rome to Milan in three hours, but flying there, if you include transfers to and from the airports, takes three and a half hours. So it wouldn’t be extraordinary if politics and communications technologies were to revert to the horse-drawn carriage.

One last observation: In days of yore, the press would try to figure out what was hatching sub rosa inside the embassies. Nowadays, it’s the embassies that are asking the press for the inside story.