{"id":165607,"date":"2020-07-27T12:00:53","date_gmt":"2020-07-27T11:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=165607"},"modified":"2020-07-25T06:27:26","modified_gmt":"2020-07-25T05:27:26","slug":"masked-homeless-and-desolate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/07\/masked-homeless-and-desolate\/","title":{"rendered":"Masked, Homeless, and Desolate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u201cPersonality is <\/em>persona, a mask\u2026The mask is magic\u2026<\/em>Larva means mask; or ghost\u2026it also means mad, a case of demoniacal possession.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u2013 Norman O. Brown, Love\u2019s Body<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

25 Jul 2020 – <\/em>Walk the streets in the United States and many countries these days and you will see streaming crowds of people possessed by demons, masked and anonymous, whose eyes look like vacuums, staring into space or out of empty sockets like the dead, afraid of their own ghosts.\u00a0 Fear and obedience oozes from them.\u00a0 Death walks the streets with people on leashes in lockstep.<\/p>\n

That they have been the victims of a long-planned propaganda campaign to use an invisible virus to frighten them into submission and shut down the world\u2019s economy for the global elites is beyond their ken.\u00a0 This is so even when the facts are there to prove otherwise.\u00a0 It is a clear case, as Peter Koenig tells Michel Chossudovsky in this must-see interview<\/a>, that is not a conspiracy theory but a blatant factual plan spelled out in the 2010 Rockefeller Report<\/a>, the October 18, 2019 Event 201<\/a>, and Agenda 21<\/a>, among other places.<\/p>\n

Who can wake the sleepwalkers up in this cowardly new world where culture and politics collude to create and exploit ignorance?<\/p>\n

Fifty-five years ago on July 20, 1965, Bob Dylan released his song \u201cLike a Rolling Stone<\/a>.\u201d It arrived like a rocking jolt into the placid pop musical culture of the day. It was not about wanting to hold someone\u2019s hand or cry in the chapel. It wasn\u2019t mumbo-jumbo like \u201cWooly Bully,\u201d the number one hit. It wasn\u2019t like the pop pap that dominates today\u2019s music scene.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t Woody Guthrie in slow time.<\/p>\n

It beat you up.\u00a0 It attacked.\u00a0 It confronted you. Maybe, if you were alive then, you thought Dylan was kidding you. You thought wrong.\u00a0 Bitching about his going electric was a dodge.\u00a0 He was addressing all of us, including himself.<\/p>\n

Still is. But who wants to hear his recent \u201cMurder Most Foul<\/a>\u201d and read Dylan\u2019s scathing lyrics<\/a> about the assassination of JFK, the killing that started the slow decay that has resulted in such masked madness.\u00a0 \u201cAnd please, Don\u2019t Let Me Be Misunderstood,\u201d he tells us in capital letters for emphasis.\u00a0 Exactly what all the mainstream media have done, of course, and not by accident.<\/p>\n

There are no alibis.\u00a0 \u201cHow does it feel\/To be on your own\/with no direction home\/A complete unknown\/Like a rolling stone?\u201d<\/p>\n

It was in the mid-1960s when confidence in knowing where home was and how to get there disappeared into thin air.\u00a0 If you left mommy and daddy, could you ever get back from where you were going?\u00a0 Who had the directions?\u00a0 Absolutes were melting and relativity was widespread.\u00a0 Life was wild and the CIA was planning to make it wilder and more confusing with the introduction of LSD on a vast scale. MKUltra was expanding its scope. Operation Mockingbird was singing so many tunes that heads were spinning, as planned. The national security state killers were in the saddle, having already murdered President Kennedy and Malcolm X as they sharpened their knives for many more to come.\u00a0 The peace candidate, Lyndon Baines Johnson, had been elected nine months earlier with 61.1% of the popular vote and went immediately to work secretly expanding the war against Vietnam.\u00a0 War as an invisible virus.\u00a0 Who knew? \u00a0Who, but a small anti-war contingent, wanted to know?\u00a0 War takes different forms, and the will to ignorance and historical amnesia endure. War is a disease. Disease is weaponized for war. In 1968 Richard Nixon was elected on a \u201csecret plan\u201d to end the Vietnam War and then ramped it up to monstrous proportions, only to be reelected in 1972 by carrying 49 out of 50 states.<\/p>\n

Who wants to know now?\u00a0 The historian Howard Zinn once said correctly that this country\u2019s greatest problem wasn\u2019t disobedience but obedience.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s behind the masks?\u00a0 The lockstep?<\/p>\n

On the same day that Dylan released \u201cLike a Rolling Stone,\u201d Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, just back from a \u201cfact-finding\u201d trip to Vietnam, recommended to LBJ that U.S. troop levels in Vietnam be increased to 175,000 and that the U.S. should increase its bombing of North Vietnam dramatically.\u00a0 This was the same McNamara who, in October 1963, had agreed with JFK when he signed NSAM 263 calling for the withdrawal of 1,000 military personnel from Vietnam by the end of 1963 and the remainder by the end of 1965.\u00a0 One of the moves that got Kennedy\u2019s head blown open.<\/p>\n

Poor McNamara, the fog of war must have clouded his conscience, confused the poor boy, just like Secretary of State Colin Powell holding up that vile vial of \u201canthrax\u201d at the United Nations on February 5, 2003 and lying to the world about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.<\/p>\n

Powell recently said, \u201cI knew I didn\u2019t have any choice.\u00a0 He\u2019s the President.\u201d\u00a0 How \u201cpainful,\u201d to use his word, it must have been for the poor guy, lying so that so many Iraqis could be slaughtered.\u00a0 Of course, he had no choice.\u00a0 These war criminals all wear masks. And have no choice.<\/p>\n

Masks, or demonic possession, or both.\u00a0 You?<\/p>\n

Also in that fateful year 1965, far out of sight and out of mind for most Americans, the CIA planned and assisted in the slaughter of more than a million Indonesians, led by their man, General Suharto.\u00a0 This led to the coup against President Sukarno, who two years earlier had been on good terms with JFK as they worked to solve the interrelated issues of Indonesia and Vietnam.\u00a0 Their meeting planned for early 1964 was cancelled in Dallas on November 22, 1963.<\/p>\n

And the politicians and media luminaries came out in their masks and told the public that communists everywhere were out to get them.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s tough being on your own.\u00a0 It hurts to think too much.\u00a0 Or think for yourself, at least.\u00a0 To obey an authority higher than your bosses.\u00a0 \u201cI was tricked\u201d is some sort of mantra, is it not?<\/p>\n

You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns<\/p>\n

When they all did tricks for you<\/p>\n

Dylan was lost and disgusted when he wrote the song. His own music sickened him, which, for an artist, means he sickened himself. He had just returned from a tour of England and was sick of people telling him how much they loved his music when he didn\u2019t.\u00a0 He needed to change.<\/p>\n

What else is the point of art but change?\u00a0 If you\u2019re dead, or afraid of getting dead, you aren\u2019t going to change.\u00a0 You\u2019re stuck.\u00a0 Stuck is dead.\u00a0 Why wear a mask if you know who you are?<\/p>\n

Knowledge, or more accurately, pseudo-knowledge or mainstream media lies, is a tomb \u201cthe mystery tramp\u201d sold to us, a place to hide to avoid pain and guilt.<\/p>\n

I have read more books than anyone I know.\u00a0 It sickens me.<\/p>\n

I know too much.\u00a0 That sickens me.<\/p>\n

I sicken myself. All the news sickens me.<\/p>\n

I know so much no one believes me.<\/p>\n

As Francesco Serpico once told me: \u201cIt\u2019s all lies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course.\u00a0 Dylan and Serpico are blood brothers.<\/p>\n

Only art tells the truth.\u00a0 Real art.<\/p>\n

Not bullshit pop art.\u00a0 Some say \u201cLike a Rolling Stone\u201d is about Edie Sedgwick, \u201cthe girl of the year\u201d in 1965 and one of Andy Warhol\u2019s superstars. Perhaps to a degree it is, but it\u2019s far more than that.\u00a0 It\u2019s about us.<\/p>\n

Poor Edie was poisoned by her wealthy family at a young age and barely had a chance.\u00a0 She was an extreme example of a rather common American story. People poisoned in the cradle.\u00a0 Thinking of her got me thinking of Andy Warhol, the death obsessed hoarder, the guy who called his studio \u201cThe Factory\u201d in a conscious or unconscious revelation of his art and persona, his wigs and masks and the hold he has had on American culture all these years. \u00a0Isn\u2019t he the ultimate celebrity?<\/p>\n

Warhol once took my photo on a deserted street.\u00a0 His and my secret but this is the truth. \u00a0West 47th<\/sup> Street on an early Sunday morning, 1980.\u00a0 I guess he thought he was doing art or collecting images for his museum of dead heads.\u00a0 When I asked him why, he said I had an interesting face.\u00a0 I told him he did too, rather transparent and creepy, but I didn\u2019t want to capture him.\u00a0 He was a ghost with a camera, a face like a death mask, trying to capture a bit of life.\u00a0 I told him I didn\u2019t give him permission to shoot me, but he turned and walked away into the morning mist. \u00a0The shooters always just walk away in pseudo-innocence.<\/p>\n

I then went down the street to the Gotham Book Mart that was my destination and asked James Joyce why he had written \u201cThe Dead,\u201d and Joyce, secretive as ever, quoted himself, \u201cEd,\u201d he said, \u201cThink you\u2019re escaping and run into yourself.\u00a0 Longest way round is the shortest way home.\u201d\u00a0 Now that was direction.<\/p>\n

Only those who know how to play and be guided by intuition are able to escape the living tomb of so-called knowledge; what Dylan called, lifelessness.\u00a0 But that was from \u201cDesolation Row<\/a>,\u201d released as the closing track of Highway 61 Revisited<\/em> on August 30, 1965. \u00a0The only acoustic song on the album.\u00a0 Slow it down to make the point another way.\u00a0 \u201cLike a Rolling Stone\u201d was the opening track.<\/p>\n

Do you feel all alone or part of a masked gang roaming the streets incognito? Miss and Mr. Lonely, does that mask help?\u00a0 How do you feel?<\/p>\n

Desolation means very lonely. From Latin, de<\/em>, completely, solare<\/em>, lonely.<\/p>\n

Does that mask help?\u00a0 Do you feel alone together now, one of the crowd?<\/p>\n

Do you really want to know about desolation row?\u00a0 It\u2019s here. It was here in 1965, too.\u00a0 Only the true lonely know how it feels to really be all alone.<\/p>\n

The Umbrella People, those who some call the deep state or secret government under whose protection all the politicians work, say they want to protect us all from death and disease.\u00a0 They are lying bastards who\u2019ve gotten so many to imitate their masked ways.\u00a0 They can only sing a mockingbird\u2019s song.<\/p>\n

Listen to real singers. Dylan has arched the years, as true artists do. Who has paid close attention to what he said this year about the assassination of President Kennedy in his song, \u201cMurder Most Foul\u201d?\u00a0 Or were many caught up in the propaganda surrounding corona virus, and rather than contemplating his indictment of the U.S. government and its media accomplices, were they contemplating their navels to see if a virus had secreted itself in there. Viruses lurk everywhere, they say, and the corporate media made certain to circulate a vaccine about the truth in Dylan\u2019s song.\u00a0 This is normal operating procedure.<\/p>\n

We are still on Desolation Row.<\/p>\n

\u201cTake Off the Masks.\u201d\u00a0 That was the title of a book by Rev. Malcolm Boyd that I reviewed long ago.\u00a0 He was a gay priest who decided that his mask was a lie.\u00a0 He came out into the light of truth.\u00a0 He had guts.<\/p>\n

It is time for everyone to take off the masks.\u00a0 Escape from Desolation Row by seeing what\u2019s going on behind our backs.<\/p>\n

Listen to Dylan, long ago \u2013 today:<\/p>\n

At midnight all the agents
\nAnd the superhuman crew
\nCome out and round up everyone
\nThat knows more than they do<\/p>\n

And they bring them to the factory
\nWhere their heart attack machine
\nIs strapped across their shoulders
\nAnd then the kerosene<\/p>\n

Is brought down from the castles
\nBy insurance men who go
\nCheck to see that nobody is escaping
\nTo Desolation Row<\/p>\n

Praise be to Nero’s Neptune
\nThe Titanic sails at dawn
\nEverybody’s shouting
\n“Which side are you on?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

__________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely. He is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>. Website: <\/em>Behind the Curtain<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fear and obedience oozes from them. Death walks the streets with people on leashes in lockstep. That they have been the victims of a long-planned propaganda campaign to use an invisible virus to frighten them into submission and shut down the world\u2019s economy for the global elites is beyond their ken. This is so even when the facts are there to prove otherwise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":108249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}