They’re Coming 4 U

The latest viral paranoia to arise in the globe’s social-media petri-dish, is the

5G Coronavirus Conspiracy !!

So far, the epicenter of this new infection is the UK and Western Europe, but no doubt it will reach our shores in time, just as the Wuhan virus did.  In the meantime, to limber up your mental faculties, read up on this earlier conspiracy,

The Vatican goes after the Lone Star State !

https://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2015/05/jade-helm-eyeball-zombies-overrunning.html

This craftly plot was first outed nearly a century ago.  As:

The plans of the Pope for the conquest of the planet  were not known in detail, except in some specially well-informed wooden villages of the Middle West;  but instant precautions were taken to prevent the celebrated Papal Galleys, rowed by thousands of slaves, from penetrating as far as Omaha or Kansas City.

-- G.K. Chesterton, The Resurrection of Rome (1930)

Pitfalls of Polysemy

In the context of Philosophy of Science, we have previously posted essays on the theme “Discovery versus Invention”, tracking more broadly with (Platonic) Realism vs. Nominalism.    A rather recondite subject, but which you may read about here, if so inclined:

    https://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/search/label/discovery

Yet now, jarringly, in the day’s headlines, one reads of the fostering and festering of conspiracy theories to the effect that Covid was a deliberate laboratory product (a familiar meme, historically -- Ebola and whatever else).  To which the obvious logical response (distinct and independent from the many empirical shortcomings of such theories) is:  Cui prodest?  (Or, more forcefully, Cui effing prodest??!??)

Reportedly, something over a quarter of Americans believe this.  But what caught my eye is that nearly such a proportion of Frenchmen believe this;  and that, moreover, part of the genesis of this delusion stems from a semantic misapprehension:   an alleged polysemy of the word invention in French:

26 % des Français estiment ainsi que le SARS-CoV-2, le virus responsable de la pandémie actuelle, a été créé par l’homme. Aux Etats-Unis, selon une étude de journalism.org, ils sont même 29 % à adhérer à cette thèse pourtant battue en brèche par toutes les publications scientifiques.

Mi-mars, un internaute français scandalisé se filmait en train de commenter un brevet en virologie de l’Institut Pasteur portant sur « l’invention » (le terme juridique pour une découverte) d’un coronavirus de 2004. Bien que très mal renseignée, sa vidéo d’inspiration complotiste a été partagée plusieurs millions de fois avant d’être supprimée par Facebook.

--

https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2020/03/31/l-etrange-obsession-d-un-quart-des-francais-pour-la-these-du-virus-cree-en-laboratoire_6035093_4355770.html

Now, my trusty old two-volume Harrap’s (French => English) does report such a use of invention in specialized areas:

A[rchaic]: finding, discovery (still used in (a) Ecc]lesiastic]) : Invention de la (Sainte) Croix, Invention of the Cross; (b) Jur[istic]: invention d’un trésor, finding of a treasure trove.

We are put in mind of the old anecdote about the floorplan of the (American? British?) embassy in Berlin, during the 1930’s, whose floor-plan (obtained by the Germans) listed one room as a “powder-room”.  German intel (not philologists, it seems) interpreted this as designation a secret chamber  in which the devious Anglo-Saxons were storing gun-powder.

~

Historical note:  ‘finding’, rather than ‘creating’,  is in fact the oldest attested sense of the English word invention.  We still see something of the original sense in our word inventory.

Footnote:  Example of a (presumably) non-linguistically-based instance of Corona-Conspiracy pathology:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-01/man-charged-derailing-train-hospital-ship-mercy

monostich of preternatural detection

“Lately  I get the feeling

someone is messing

with my investigation.”

-- Laird Barron,  The Imago Sequence (2007), p. 134

~

For hard-noir detective stories,
try these:

I Don't Do Divorce Cases

Murphy on the Mount

~

.

Combray & Comintern

We earlier reported an uncanny intersection of the Côté de chez Swann and the Komintern, from the private files of the Riemann Conspiracy :

   Il y avait déjà bien des années  que, de Kronstadt …

And, seemingly unrelated, Kafka’s little-known one-night sojourn in Room 1408  of the Hotel Lux:

   ohne mich zu begrüßen,  schräg gegenüber

Yet now there appears the missing link that connects them, from the pen of the “Mata Hari of the Rote Kapelle”:

Die Zeit, da man noch offen von ihm sprechen konnte, ihn zitieren,  sich mit ihm  auseinandersetzen durfte,

gehörte  schon seit Jahren  der Vergangenheit an,

als er   eines Nachts   vor meinem Couchbett stand,

und mich aus einem Alptraum  aufweckte.

» Schweißgebadet«,  wie es das geläufige Epitheton
zu lähmender Angst ist,

sah ich die gespenstische Erscheinung   im Halbdunkel:

vielmehr bloß den Kopf   mit der hohen gewölbten Stirn,

blitzenden Augengläsern  und einem spanischen Spitzbart --

das einzige Bild von Trotski …

-- Ruth von Mayenburg, Hotel Lux (1978), p. 149

[For earlier antecedents of the Conspiracy in Mitteleuropa, try this:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/12/viennese-street-scene-1926.html ]

Riemann Conspiracy denialism

The evidence for the existence of a vast, tentacular nexus known to insiders as the “Riemann Conspiracy”  (that is just a cover-name, but it’ll do) has been growing now daily  for several years,  and is far too powerful to ignore.

Just this morning -- front-page headline in the Washington Post:

In N.H., wary voters reject the status quo

Evidence suggests that times are good, yet many voters said their dominant emotion is fear — and the sense that somebody is keeping them in the dark.

Of course they are:  they don’t want U 2 know !!

And yet, despite all that, some people are still in denial:

Riemann conspiracy denialists

The latest twist in this intricate saga  appeared this morning on the front page of the business section, in the New York Times:

Hong Kong’s Disappearing Publishers

The story concerns the shadowy (and absurdly named) “Mighty Current Media” (the tongue-in-cheekily unidiomatic business-name will remind insiders of the “Foreign Excellent Trenchcoat Company”, run by another Riemann operative, Leopold T.).  It reveals that, since October, no fewer than five of its top operatives have physically vanished.

That in itself might raise eyebrows, though you might just shrug and turn the page, under the misimpression that “disappearing” referred merely to hard a financial climate forcing some media outlets to fold.   But now look at how, in the Times website, the headline has already been censored-down (doubtless in response to a frantic call on the red phone) to the yawn-inducing

In China, Books That Make Money, and Enemies

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/business/international/in-china-books-that-make-money-and-enemies.html?ref=international

This, citizens, is how the truth gets deep-sixed !

     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causeway_Bay_Books_disappearances

The real story, to the extent that we are permitted to reveal it (names, dates, and facts have been changed) is that a small, fly-by-night Hong Kong publisher, whose public string-pullers are British and Swedish (fronting for the real owners), operating under regulations different from those on the mainland, masquerading as but a tabloid outlet of the gutter press, has managed to release, hidden in a forest of ridiculous check-out-counter-style “exposés”,  which no serious person would so much as glance at, some genuine inside dope that goes to the heart of one of the Riemann sub-conspiracies.   (That clever scenario is reminiscent of the “Six Days of the Condor” caper, where the truth had been hidden in the form of a novel.)  The book, disguised as a sort of Harlequin-romance-cum-international-thriller, was titled

Whirling Shadows of Spies

(Again:  A deliberately idiotic title, to deflect suspicions from the real intent.)

The moment the authorities got wise to this, they raided every distribution point and pulped the entire edition.   And then -- in a twist that only happens in real life, being beyond the capacity of potboiler-writers to imagine -- they themselves issued a contrary book with an identical title  and distributed it widely, so that anyone attempting to research the issue will find his queries flooded with references to this red herring.  (The New York Times, for example, was completely taken in.)

~

Well, I’ve got to sign off now -- someone is at the door.  (Which is puzzling, since nobody knows of my whereabouts at this isolated mountain retreat.)   More -- inshallah -- anon.

Meanwhile you can introduce yourselves to the basic outlines of the Riemann Conspiracy, via a series of revealing leaks, beginning here:

Riemann-Verschwörung

La conspiration Riemann

The Manchurian Kanzlerin

As Europe continues to stand paralyzed  in the face of the inrushing human tide, all an observer Stateside can do, is to wonder why they let it come about.

A percipient essay in today’s Die Zeit -- a prominent newspaper, and long among the cheerleaders of the Gutmenschen narrative, but at last having second thoughts -- analyzes the psychology of the Kuschel-klatscher:

Ich und mein Syrer

Nach dem ersten Begeisterungsschock herrscht eine merkwürdige Angespanntheit in Deutschland. Das hat einen Grund: Die Flüchtlinge sind immer noch da.

Von Nina Pauer

http://www.zeit.de/2015/41/fluechtlinge-hilfe-deutschland-integration

As for what motivates Merkel, it is anybody’s guess.   In her public appearances, she continues to offer calm and lucidly worded defense of a disasterous policy, with no intimation that she might ever change her mind.   (One must at least admire her composure, in the face of increasingly strident public criticism, and anguished appeals from her own party ranks.)  Personally, I suspect that her background as a pastor’s daughter may be in play;  but many are much less charitable.   Some posit an Atlanticist Conspiracy, and claim that she is taking orders from her American masters.  (If so, someone should alert those American masters.  Why the US should desire its European allies to descend into chaos, is never explained.)  

The most exotic of the Verschwörungs-theorien  is that the DDR-born Chancelloress, under the code-name “Erika”,  was an agent of the Stasi (indeed, a great many East Germans were, to one extent or another) and that -- wait for it -- she is still faithfully carrying out a long-ago-hatched Communist plan for the destruction of the West.

(Such, mutatis mutandis, is the plot of the classic Cold War novel, twice filmed, The Manchurian Candidate.  The eponymous protagonist is a sleeper agent -- though unwitting -- and his controller is his imperious Mutti  who, come to think of it, looks a lot like Angela Merkel.)

“Wir schaffen das …  Wir schaffen das … “

Well.  It is tempting to pursue that plotline satirically, as we have done with so much else.  But this is all too real, and inching towards tragedy (while, impassive on Olympus, the gods look on).    So if you’re hankering for some good old conspiracy-mongering, I refer you instead (though my heart is not in it) to our extensive files on …

The Riemann Conspiracy

(I earlier observed, that the self-satirizing antics of the Republican Presidential candidates  put credentialed satirists such as ourself  out of work.   But neither can we satirize a tragedy.)

[Update 18 Nov 2015]  Terror and Satire:  a contrary view.
http://www.focus.de/kultur/kino_tv/terrorismus-satire-in-terrorzeiten-ist-alles-erlaubt_id_5093192.html

Additional dots for “Blindspot”

[Appendices to this essay.]

(A)  Viewers have remarked how odd it is, that FBI Guy ends every other sentence addressed to Jane Doe with “… , Jane.”   Odd especially since that isn’t even her real name.

Concurrently, by chance, I have been listening to an audiobook of Jane Eyre;  and there, Mr Rochester exhibits the same the same vocative quirk, towards his coworker/love-interest.

In both cases,  the phenomenon is striking, owing to the utter asymmetry in vocatives:  the senior man regularly recurs to this first-name address;  the woman protege, never.

There is a slight syntactic distinction: FBI-Guy postpends the vocative ("I'm so sorry, Jane");  Rochester  prepends it.

(B)  More musings on the motif of the Verhängnisvolle tattoos:

Compare palmistry (or phrenology)-- the notion that your character or fate are written in your fingerprints, or the lines of your hand, or the bumps of your skull.

(C)  Motivation for the master-conspiracy

One of the features I hated about “24” (which fortunately did not intrude to spoil the fun  until the final episodes of each season) was the bogus, ex-nihilo explanation of the vast, nation-destroying events, via a conspiracy by a tiny and ill-defined clique, whose motivation was simply unfathomable.  Often, all we learned about Mr Big  was that he spoke with a British accent (very suspicious!).

Oddly, and with a certain commendable candor, Episode 4 of “Blindspot” came forth with the motivation behind a horrendous global bioattack, right at the end of the episode in which it was introduced:  as a desperate, planet-saving move in the face of  Malthusian pressures.  To the average viewer, that must seem as far-fetched as the (even vaguer) motivations of the “24” arch-villains.   But actually, it is more firmly grounded in (at least psycho-social) reality than you might surmise.

(1a)  It is already a fact, that persistent, influential voices in Africa  aver that AIDS, and ebola, and probably much else, were caused -- deliberately -- by the West.

Similar conspiracy-theories thrive in much of the third world.

(1b)  Such fantasies have their American proponents as well. Thus, the P.C. anthropologists campaign against Napoleon Chagnon; or a certain tenured professor who toes the conspiratorial ebola-line.

(2)  In fantasy  though not in act, such ideas have indeed been entertained.

„Es zeigt sich, daß die ethischen Menschen nicht so viele Kinder haben und die Gangster sich unbegrenzt und sorglos weiter reproduzieren.“ Und: „… gegen Überbevölkerung hat die Menschheit nichts Vernünftiges unternommen. Man könnte daher eine gewisse Sympathie für Aids bekommen.“

-- Konrad Lorenz in einem Gespräch anlässlich seines 85. Geburtstags, in: Natur, Nr. 11, München 1988.

And, from a couple of years ago:

I watched in amazement as a few hundred members of the Texas Academy of Science rose to their feet and gave a standing ovation to a speech that enthusiastically advocated the elimination of 90 percent of Earth's population by airborne Ebola. The speech was given by Dr. Eric R. Pianka, the University of Texas evolutionary ecologist and lizard expert who the Academy named the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist.

One of Pianka's earliest points was a condemnation of anthropocentrism, or the idea that humankind occupies a privileged position in the Universe. He told a story about how a neighbor asked him what good the lizards are that he studies. He answered, “What good are you?”

Pianka hammered his point home by exclaiming, “We're no better than bacteria!”

[-- Rense.com]

Thus, the perpetrators of the “Blindspot”  terror-attack  were not so implausible, being  rather  analogs of the Oklahoma City bomber, or of Breivik

[Update 9 Nov 2015]   Takehome from the (otherwise unmemorable) Episode Eight:

Twofer is actually a Threefer (Urninde).

Homographs of the Day: ZOG/zog

Actually, these are not quite homographs, since one is capitalized and the other isn’t.  They are thus, rather, what I dubbed “Confusables” when introducing the feature of Confusables ® (paronym-disambiguation) into the Franklin spellers and dictionary products.    Anyhow, you probably haven’t heard of either;  but this one is a doozy.

(1)  The better-known of these is written in all capitals:  ZOG,  in line with its origin as an acronym.  It stands for “Zionist occupation government”;  and no, it does not refer primarily to the West Bank.   As to what-all it does refer to, you can easily find by googling (just be sure that you have your anti-malware software set on HIGH).

What is interesting about this is that it is among the very few terms -- and virtually unique among monosyllables -- whose mere utterance brands the utterer as a very particular political breed of beast.

These are harder to find than you’d think.  The only one that springs immediately to mind is “Social-Fascist” (and its German equivalent), whose use invariably revealed the user as a Third Period Stalinist (or at least someone parotting their patter).  The use of the term liberal as a sneer-word (as opposed to simply denouncing concretely various policies of liberals) does tell the listener quite a bit about the user, but of course the word is used objectively as well.  The term reactionary is almost always a sneer-word for conservative (thus revealing much about the speaker), but it can also be used, cavalierly, as a defiant synonym of laudator temporis acti (indeed, the historian John Lukacs self-applies the label).  The concept Antichrist makes sense only in a Christian context, but you can easily discuss the term (say, in comparing it to that of the Dajjâl ) without subscribing to any of the tenets of that belief-system.  ZOG is different.

It’s not just that most people don’t believe a “Zionist occupation government” (in the intended sense) exists.  After all, people use terms like Santa Claus, unicorn, phlogiston, Higgs boson, and will even predicate positive qualities of them (“Santa wears a red suit”, “the Higgs boson is necessary for the consistency of the Standard Theory”) without thereby making any existential commitment (Quine’s term) at all.

(2)  As a (somewhat nonce) term in physics, it is written in lower-case.  Here is the first (and only) passage in which I encountered the term:

Massive particles of spin 1 can be described as having three ingredients:  a left-handed zig (helicity 1), a right-handed zag (helicity -1), and a non-spinning ‘zog’ (helicity 0).

-- Roger Penrose,  The Road to Reality (2004), p. 653

Verschwörung !!

[Note: Verschwörung simply means ‘conspiracy’ in German;  but phonetically, it is a much cooler word -- literally, with a cool, dark, caved-dwelling stressed vowel, the sound of a wind  moaning in an unlit dungeon --  ö, with rounded lips half-closed, as in spooky -- subject to ghost-story woo-woo lengthening ad libitum: Verschwöööörung …

So!  Now that you’re in the mood …]

Can U say: Verschwööööörung

The details of the current front-page FIFA scandal  will not detain us;  in accordance with terms of our Junior Blogger’s License, we are not permitted to comment about things we know absolutely nothing about, such as sports;  but we are credentialed in chronicling the vicissitudes of the Société du spectacle, and shall do so here.

The outlines of this conspiratorial scandal are vague enough -- “corruption” (gotta luvvit) at the “highest levels” (involving people we’ve never heard of).   And the press, nowise behindhand,  duly trotted out a rogue’s-gallery  trombinoscope of the principle accused (arrested publically, with DSK-like drama, at their “luxury hotel” in Zürich):  as sallow a collection of mugs as you might ever fear to see -- toadlike, puffy, by turns sagging and distended, like mob bosses squinting against the unfamiliar light.    So, everyone assumes they’re all guilty of something;  and what, mediatistically, gives the story particular legs, is that its arrival coincided with the imminently impending re-election of FIFA’s controversial longtime head -- who carefully was not indicted, since then there would have no suspense:  the media is playing this thing like a soccer match.

~

Our focus is not on the specific content of the scandal, but the interface it presents to the rest of the world:  its crucial viral coating, as it were.  And indeed, like the proverbial elephant, this affaire presents multiple facets, to anyone with an ax to grind.

In particular, we have received a request from the Vatican(**) to comment on the conspiratorial aspects of the case.

(**:  Encyclical #3B-984-777-m)

These are not lacking.

(1) Vladimir Putin has publically charged that the indictments were trumped up to spoil the award of the upcoming World’s Cup to Russia.   On the face of it, that is very plausible, given the current diplomatic background -- if not as the whole explanation, at least one motivation.

(2) Others have claimed that the key to the whole thing involves FIFA’s political stance towards Israel, pointing out that a motion likes before that body  to censure Israel for its treatment of Palestinian soccer teams.  And indeed, Palestinian protestors were out in force in the run-up to the election in Switzerland.

Plausible enough.  The only problem is -- Is the investitagion a conspiracy against Israel, or for it?

(2a)  The most vociferous proponents of this theory champion the “for” camp:  destroy FIFA before it could censure Israel.

(2b)  On the other hand, in point of fact, the censure motion was merely a proposal, with little chance of passing, and indeed FIFA wound up refusing to endorse it;  therefore, the indictments were anti-Israel, attacking FIFA for failing to oppose Israel’s soccer policies.

(3)  Some commentators have mentioned in passing, po-faced, that there might be some questions concerning the timing of the indictments.

Well, uh -- YEH-ah,  doh!!   This case has (incredibly) been on the FBI’s docket for over twenty years;  and then, right in the sweet spot of the news cycle, the Bureau releases this bombshell, smack on the eve of the FIFA elections.  Obviously they were targeting the head of FIFA (who has reigned for seventeen years, muffling repeated scandals) -- who is Swiss.   So, the whole thing is a conspiracy against Switzerland.    

However, on that account, you would expect the Swiss guy to be backed by Western Europe, while the Third World railed against the European Old Boy’s Club and demanded the election of one of their own -- who indeed was in the running, an Ali from Jordan.   But in fact, matters are exactly the opposite:  Europe opposed the Swiss candidate, while the Third World backed him (being utterly unfazed by charges of “corruption”, a concept foreign to their way of thinking, since corruption is simply their usual way of doing business).

It’s all very confusing.  And so -- in compliance with the Papal request -- we are asking you, our readers, to help us out here.   Here are some dots for you to connect:

Potential conspirators

* The NFL : jealous that, for everyone except Americans, “football” means soccer.

* The feminist lobby:  has it in for this utterly male-dominated sport.  Intends to replace it with field hockey.

* The Vatican.  (We here at the World of Dr Justice  explicitly rule out any such involvement by our sponsor  that entity.)

* Obama:  He’s behind every other scandal, probably this one as well.

* The World Bank:  Zürich -- banking;  the connection is obvious.

* The Bilderberg Group:  probably involved somehow, they usually are.

* The Illuminati [sorry, you are not cleared for this]

Their final goal:

* World domination

Of course -- ultimately, each of those interpretations contains but a fragment of the truth.  Ultimately it all goes back to…

~ The Riemann Conspiracy ~

(die Riemann-Verschwoerung)

(La conspiration Riemann)

[Update 1 June 2015]  Speak of the Devil!

The above was satire;  but these days, reality is usually not far behind.  And sure enough:  Right now NPR is running a program on how FIFA is evil because it doesn’t push women’s soccer the way it does men’s.  (Actually, it does push Third World soccer, tremendously;  which is why FIFA’s just-reelected president had the Third World votes sewed up.)  What we need is a different transnational complexus, call it FEMA or GIGA, which gives soccer fans, not what they want, but what Hillary Clinton wants them to want.

JADE HELM EYEBALL ZOMBIES OVERRUNNING TEXAS!!

Since the press, and even the MSM, has been giving extensive coverage to the ongoing ZOG invasion of the Lone Star State, code-named INFINITE BRISKET (the op designator JADE HELM  is purely for public consumption), we need not go into details here. 

Street scene from this morning, in Bastrop County Texas

(Note to the citizenry:  If you personally have any phoneshots of giant eyeballs in your own township, pls. forward to the tweetfeed #LonghornZombieAlert.)  Our only purpose is to note -- as few have publically noticed -- that Jade Helm is only the second leg of long-laid plans for alien conquest;  we reproduce below  our post from a couple of years ago, documenting Phase One.

++++ Original post from August 28, 2012 +++++

The blogosphere is ringing with increasingly frenzied reports of a planned invasion of Lubbock, Texas, by U.N. troops, led by the President himself on a white (! O, the irony!) charger.   Even the puling, sniveling-liberal New York Times (note codeword: New… York !!!) has finally had to admit as much:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/us/lubbock-official-tom-head-stirs-city-with-remark.html?hpw

Official Stirs Texas City With Talk of Rebellion

The county’s top elected official, County Judge Tom Head, made an appearanceon a local television station to generate support for the tax increase. He said he was expecting civil unrest if President Obama is re-elected, and that the president would send United Nations forces into Lubbock, population 233,740, to stop any uprising.

“He is going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the U.N.,” Mr. Head said on Fox 34 last week. “O.K., what’s going to happen when that happens? I’m thinking worst-case scenario: civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war, maybe. And we’re not talking just a few riots here and demonstrations. We’re talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms and get rid of the guy.”

And if the president did send in United Nations troops, Mr. Head continued, “I don’t want ’em in Lubbock County. O.K. So I’m going to stand in front of their armored personnel carriers and say, ‘You’re not coming in here.’ And the sheriff, I’ve already asked him. I said, ‘You gonna back me?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I’ll back you.’

“Well, I don’t want a bunch of rookies back there,” Mr. Head said. “I want trained, equipped, seasoned veteran officers to back me.”

Mr. Head, a Republican who serves as the county’s emergency management director and presides over the commissioner’s court, made international headlines.

The only flaw in this analysis is that, um, the President, as such, does not have any actual U.N. troops at his disposal, unless he is somehow hiding some in the West Wing.  Even the United Nations  barely has troops at their disposal, apart from a ragtag band of hapless untrained ill-armed Africans.   And even these it typically fears to use, as witness the stirring rise of the self-proclaimed newly independent people’s Islamic popular Muslimist emirate of free and autarkic Azawad, whose doughty handful of tribal irregulars  bid defiance to the effete-hankie crumpet-munching ladies-debate-club on the East River.

Such awkward facts have led a deluded few to doubt the Absolute Truth of these Lubbockion allegations.   But the crack news team at the World of Dr Justice has nonetheless discovered -- in yet another exclusive scoop for WDJ -- that all that piffle about “U.N. troops” and what have you (which, really, shouldn’t fool a child) is a just a cover story for the REAL invasion plan:  a Democratico-Papistical conspiracy of the first magnitude.  And the insertion force is none other than the notoriously lethal and brutal Swiss Guards !!!  To be commanded by the Pontiff himself, riding at their van in the armored Popemobile !!!!!

The invasion force, drilling somewhere on the campus of Bryn Mawr

Buttressing the case (by now iron-clad), our HUMINT forces  have detected mad cackling laughter  emanating from the attics of the Vatican.

Our research staff has further discovered that the whole plot was hatched as part of the Riemann Conspiracy;  details available to our paying customers only.

For the inside scoop, enter your password, your passcode, and the even digits of your Social Security Number, and send us five hundred dollars in small-denomination nonconsecutive unmarked bills (ten-percent discount for readers of the Executive Intelligence Review);  then click here:

The Conspiracy

Manichean Mathematics

In overwrought politics and religion, it is commonplace to demonize some of one’s foes.  Thus, for Christians, the Antichrist;  for Muslims, the comparable Dajjâl.   On the cover of the current Time, Hilary Clinton appears with a pair of horns.  So it goes.

Although disputes exist (both personal and professional) within the ranks of mathematicians, you really don’t find that sort of thing, so far as I know.   About as far as it goes  is witty dismissals of some subdiscipline;  as, Cantor’s innovations in the transfinite, which some dismissed as “more theology than mathematics” -- theology, though, not diabolism.  Or Category Theory as “the higher macramé” (as wits had it back when I was in college.  Since then, the Category approach has knit -- or rather knotted, to continue the metaphor -- some quite interesting structures, that seem to hold.)

So it was with some surprise that I ran across this passage:

Euclid has been the evil genius … for the history of mathematics.

-- Imre Lakatos, Proofs and Refutations (1976), p. 140

(Having just the other day watched the old Fritz Lang film, “The Testament of Dr Mabuse”, this phrase delivered a particular chill.) 

In the course of his book, Lakatos does permit himself some unkind or dismissive digs at certain mathematicians, historians of the field, or styles of mathematizing, but this formulation seemed extreme.  Yet as the author’s footnote immediately reveals, it is taken straight from so sober a source as R. B. Braithwaite, who (in 1953) called Euclid the “evil genius of philosophy of science”  -- though, to be sure, the “good genius of mathematics" itself.   (One pictures twin miniature Euclids, one red with a tail, one white with wings, perched on Donald Duck’s shoulders and whispering conflicting counsels.)

~

This mild and forgettable aside  yet brought back memories of Berkeley days, when some of my friends were refugees from the group then known as the National Caucus of Labor Committees, a sect around the guru Lynn Marcus (later known as Lyndon Larouche).   That formation made diabolization a positive organizing principle of their style of thought.   What made it all so fascinating to follow, was trying to guess whom they would seize on to demonize: Zbigniew Brzezinski, all right, but -- the Queen of England?  (And that, lastingly.  Never was a doily of an old lady more improbably cast.)   And then things got really interesting when the dichotomization was extended to figures from intellectual history.   As, Plato they liked (yay, Plato);  but he appeared ever in a duality, contrasting with “the evil Aristotle”.

The NCLC even extended this perspective to mathematics, their particular hero being Riemann (again, hoorah hoorah).   Whom they chose as the anti-Riemann  I forget, but anyhow it was impressive that a group that was vying for converts in an arena crowded with such aggressively ignorant rival leftist sects (for the NCLC was formally of the Left at that time)  as the Weathermen, various Maoist groups, the "Symbionese" 'Liberation' '''Army''', the Black Panthers and so forth,  had even heard of such figures as Riemann, and deemed them of world-historical importance.

(Note:  It is by way of arcane allusion to that episode, that I titled my ongoing feuilleton of dark doings among the Illuminati, the Riemann Conspiracy.  Something like three people will get the joke.)

Is .... this .... the face of Evil ??

.

Cryptographic Challenge !

The fate of the planet may hinge upon this.

Can you crack the code?

Extraterrestrial invasion plans ?

Deadly curse from the pharaoh’s tomb ??

Something brewing at the Center of the Earth ???

~

[Update 4 December 2014]

A solution has just been submitted -- but in an indecipherable language;  or perhaps it is itself in code.  FWIW, we reproduce the text tel quel, exactly as received by the watch officer at our Geneva headquarters, ca. 0102Z :

L’histoire commence le 24 mai 1863 à Hambourg et plus exactement dans la rue Königstrasse, où est située la maison du Pr Lidenbrock. Le professeur, amateur de vieux livres, a acheté le manuscrit original d'une saga islandaise, Heimskringla, écrite par Snorri Sturluson au XIIe siècle. Il y découvre un parchemin codé, rédigé en caractères runiques islandais. Lidenbrock se passionne aussitôt pour ce cryptogramme et tyrannise toute la maison tant qu'il lui résiste. Axel, d'abord peu enthousiaste, se prend peu à peu au jeu et finit par découvrir la clé du message par un coup de chance. Le parchemin se révèle être un message d'un certain Arne Saknussemm, un alchimiste islandais du XVIe siècle, rédigé en latin mais écrit en runes. Celui-ci affirme avoir découvert un passage qui l'aurait mené jusqu'au centre de la Terre, via l'un des cratères d'un volcan éteint d'Islande, le Sneffels (l'actuel Snæfellsjökull).

The crack cryptographic team

at the World of Dr Justice,

unriddling the puzzle

with advanced methods

 

[Update 5 December 2014]

We are pleased to report that the complete solution has now been supplied -- oddly enough, by a little girl in pigtails with a physics text under her arm, and delivered another of our “black site” installations, one so secret that we ourselves are unaware of its existence.  The mysterious cipher, composed of twisting little stick-figures, in a variety of improbable postures, turns out to be none other than that of the Dancing Men, first encountered, and broken, by our good friend and colleague Mr Sherlock Holmes!  Cryptologically, the matter is thus completely resolved.

As for what the hidden message says … Unfortunately, here our spade is turned.  Fully deciphered, the plaintext reads:

F Y** CN RD THS,  U CN BCM * KR*PT*L*NG*ST & MK BG BK$$$

-- a string of apparently meaningless symbols that seem to mean absolutely nothing at all.   At yet, the decoding is correct:  simply, the wisdom that it encodes is not proportionate to our understanding.