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Former Merry Prankster's Connection to Dan White's "Twinkie Defense"

J. I. Rodale, health food and publishing magnate, once claimed in an editorial in his magazine, Prevention, that Lee Harvey Oswald had been seen holding a Coca-Cola bottle only minutes after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He concluded that Oswald was not responsible for the killing because his brain was confused. He was a "sugar drunkard." Rodale, who died of a heart attack during a taping of The Dick Cavett Show -- in the midst of explaining how good nutrition guarantees a long life -- called for a full-scale investigation of crimes caused by sugar consumption.

In a surprise move, Dan White's defense team presented a similar bio-chemical explanation of his behavior, blaming it on compulsive gobbling down of sugar-filled junk-food snacks. This was a purely accidental attack. Dale Metcalf, a former member of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters who had become a lawyer, told me how he happened to be playing chess with Steven Scheer, an associate of Dan White's attorney.

Metcalf had just read Orthomolecular Nutrition by Abram Hoffer. He questioned Scherr about White's diet and learned that, while under stress, White would consume candy bars and soft drinka. Metcalf recommended the book to Scherr, suggesting the author as an expert witness. In his book, Hoffer revealed a personal vendetta against doughnuts, and White had once eaten five doughnuts in a row.

During the trial, one psychiatrist stated that, on the night before the murders, while White was "getting depressed about the fact he would not be reappointed [as supervisor], he just sat there in front of the TV set, bingeing on Twinkies." In my notebook, I immediately scribbled "the Twinkie defense," and wrote about it in my next report.

This was the first time that phrase had been used, and it was picked up by the mainstream media.

In court, White just sat there in a state of complete control bordering on catatonia, as he listened to an assembly line of psychiatrists tell the jury how out of control he had been. One even testified that, "If not for the aggravating fact of junk food, the homicides might not have taken place."

(excerpt) 

Paul Krassner
Behind "the Twinkie Defense"
19 November 2008

Full Article:

http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?entry_id=7544

Related Archive:

Ba-Raq O-Ba-Ma Assassinated by Associated Press

Associated Press photograph, circa May 2008. A shotgun wound to the chest area or glitch in the newspaper printing process?

The Origins of PERMINDEX

After [Clay] Shaw's arrest, Jim Garrison received from Ralph Schoenman, philosopher Bertrand Russell's secretary in London,  copies of a series of articles published in an Italian newspaper of the independent left called Paesa Sera. The articles had been assigned six months earlier to expose the CIA's pernicious attempt to influence European electoral politics and to thwart the democratic process in more than one country. They focused on 'Centro Mondiale Commerciale,' the world trade center in Rome, as a CIA front, one modeled, according to a 1958 State Department document, on the original CIA-created International Trade Mart in New Orleans. Paese Sera, of course, did not possess this document. Its evidence came first hand.

Contro Mondiale Commerciale was, by the US government's own admission, a CIA front, channeling money not only into legal political parties, but also into right-wing movements. Among them was the virulent paramilitary OAS (Organisation Armée Secrète) in France, which employed terrorism to oppose the independence of Algeria, and was among the 'most notorious fascist organizations in French history.' In New Orleans, Guy Banister and L.P. Davis had been OAS supporters.

The most notorious OAS-sponsored effort was the attempted assassination of Charles de Gaulle in 1962. Banister operative Tommy Baumler remarked that 'those who killed John F. Kennedy were those who wanted to kill de Gaulle.'  He was referring to the CIA, Clay Shaw, Banister, and Centro's parent organization, PERMINDEX (Permanent Industrial Exhibition), based in Switzerland.

Having been accused of 'shady speculation' by the Swiss, PERMINDEX had created the Centro Mondiale Commerciale in Rome, ostensibly to develop industry and trade in Italy. The Centro, however, was a trade association that rarely if ever organized an exhibit; it facilitated no commercial transactions.

CIA had, in fact, founded PERMINDEX to organize its political policymaking. In Italy, this had meant opposition to a coalition of socialists and communists that would have resulted in a majority government. The CIA preferred the Christian Democratic Party and so CIA  Counter Intelligence chief James Angleton filtered ten million dollars of CIA money to the Christian Democrats. In Les Echos newspaper,  de Gaulle named PERMINDEX as having been involved in the attempt on his life. The French, no less than the Italians, considered PERMINDEX a 'subsidiary of the CIA.' Paese Sera would call PERMINDEX  ' a creature of the CIA...set up as a cover for the transfer of CIA funds in Italy for illegal political espionage activities.'

In the ranks of PERMINDEX were actual Nazis and neo-Nazis, terrorists and Mafia operatives. Typical was Prince Guterez di Spadafora, a former Mussolini undersecretary, whose son had married the daughter of Hitler's finance minister, Hjalmar Schact, tried for war crimes at Nuremberg. The leadership of PERMINDEX included a long-time asset of CIA Deputy Direct of Plans, Frank Wisner. His name was Ferenc Nagy, and he was the president of PERMINDEX. Nagy had been chairman of the Hungarian's 'People's Party' or  'Independent Party of Small Holders.' Briefly, in 1945, he had been prime minister of Hungary. But it was Nagy's CIA history that catapulted him to the leadership of PERMINDEX. Its general secretary, Bela Kovacs, was also a CIA asset. Kovacs had been arrested by the Soviet security police and charged with spying for 'a Western intelligence service.'

Nagy had been on Frank Wisner's list of the individuals with whom his office would 'have dealings in connection with our authorized activities' since September 22, 1948. Wisner then had been Assistant Director of CIA as well as 'Assistant Director for Policy Coordination.' Nagy had been a 'cleared contact of the International Organizations Division of the Agency,' among Wisner's most trusted Eastern European contacts.

Nagy's history with the CIA dates from its beginnings and links to PERMINDEX with the Agency's clandestine services. Confirming de Gaulle's thesis that PERMINDEX funded the OAS is that Nagy was a 'munificent contributer'  to Jacques Soustelle, former professor at the École pratique des hautes études and former Algerian governor general. Soustelle became an OAS supporters, and his organization, Conseil national de la resistance, was all but identical to OAS. In 1960, Soustelle met in Washington, D.C., with Richard Bissell, then heading the CIA's clandestine services. A year later, Soustelle went into exile to avoid being arrested by de Gaulle's police. Two years after that he would be accused of colluding with OAS in the attempted assassination of de Gaulle. S Soustelle had openly 'advocated over throwing de Gualle,' while condoning OAS violence.

In New Orleans, Delphine Roberts identified Nagy from his photograph as someone she had seen at Guy Banister's office.

Nagy's partner in the leadership of PERMINDEX was Giorgio Mantello, aka George Mandel, who during World War II had traded in Jewish refugees, profiting handsomely from their misery from his perch at the consulate of El Salvador in Bern.  It was Mandel who had been the official founder of PERMINDEX. CIA kept silent, but the State Department learned that, as 'Georges Mandel,' Mantello had been engaged in the 'wartime Jewish refugee racket' until he was expelled from Switzerland.

Although Centro Mondiale Commerciale refused to reveal the origins of its vast income, the paper trail leads to a Miami bank, Astalde Vaduz, and to the CIA front 'Double-Chek.' CMC was connected as well to L.M. Bloomfield in Montreal, and to the Seligman banking family in Basel; Seligman banking in turn was allied with Sullivan and Cromwell, the law firm of CIA Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles. 'My parents are very interested in PERMINDEX,' Peter Seligman-Schurch wrote to Clay Shaw.

In Switzerland, PERMINDEX soon aroused 'widespread public suspicion.' Nagy and Seligman stonewalled the concerned American consulate in Bern after the Swiss complained they had 'insufficient confidence in the business integrity'  of PERMINDEX.

In the spring of 1958, Enrico Mantello, the vice president of PERMINDEX and brother of Giorgio, visited New Orleans. Touring the Trade Mart, he invited Clay Shaw to join the board of directors as a means of defusing the criticism of PERMINDEX; its critics by now included the State Department itself. Nagy appeared at the American Embassy in Rome to announce that he intended 'to strengthen US control in PERMINDEX by adding to its Board of Directors a Mr. Shaw, who is in charge of the New Orleans, Louisiana permanent exhibit.'

Nagy claimed that Shaw 'had from the outset great interest in the PERMINDEX project,' and Shaw did use the term 'delighted' in his cable of acceptance. He made plans to visit Italy, then canceled. despite Mantello's urgings. When he added his PERMINDEX directorship to ' Who's Who in the South and the Southeast,' the Department of Commerce warned Shaw about 'this shadowy organization.' But, as in all his CIA assignments, grateful for the career CIA made of him, Clay Shaw honored his obligation.

Internal evidence that PERMINDEX was a CIA front emerges in the fact that the CIA included PERMINDEX materials in its asset Clay Shaw's files, three years before as well as after the Kennedy assassination. One of these documents, dated March 16, 1967, reveals that at the time of his arrest Clay Shaw was working with Domestic Operations Division of the CIA's clandestine services. This was only a seeming contradiction since the CIA's operational component in New Orleans had resided under the umbrella of the Domestic Contact Division, at least since November 19, 1964, according to a CIA document on 'Garrison and the Kennedy Assassination,' MEMORANDUM No.8.

'Most of us consider the CIA with abhorrence,' Shaw wrote in his Diary for the record, with his customary dark laughter.

In 1962, Centro Mondiale Commerciale was expelled from Italy, ostensibly for financial malfeasance, and specious real estate dealings, but actually for subversion and illegal intelligence activity. 'Who was giving money to the CMC and what was it being used for?' Paesa Sera demanded. PERMINDEX relocated to a more compatible political venue, apartheid South Africa. Clay Shaw remained on its board, providing space at the Trade Mart for a permanent PERMINDEX display.

The editors of Paese Sera were astonished when their March 1967 publication date for the series on PERMINDEX coincided with the arrest of Clay Shaw. They had been working on the series for months, former editor Giorgio Fanti says. Now they headlined Clay Shaw's involvement in PERMINDEX, with a subhead revealing that he had been arrested by Jim Garrison in New Orleans. Paese Sera noted that Shaw's name had first appeared in connection with the machinations of the organization. He had gone to Rome 'during the time preceding the disbanding of the CMC,' Shaw admitted to a Paesa Sera interviewer. Paesa Sera wondered, too, about Shaw's leaving the United States two days after the assassination, remaining abroad for two years with only intermittent visits to America.

Shaw affected his customary disdain. He had agreed to be on the PEMINDEX board, he claimed, because 'a young Italian came to see me in New Orleans and told me about a world trade center that was being planned in Rome.' He also told the Paese Sera interviewer that he 'accepted the position in exchange for two New Orleans-Rome air tickets.' Even his closest friends were appalled. 'There must have been blackmail - they're very famous for that, the CIA,' Patricia Chandler says.

Jim Garrison had charged that the CIA had plotted the assassination of John F. Kennedy, for which they were aided and abetted in New Orleans by their operative, Clay Shaw. Thirty-five years later, a series of attacks on Paese Sera began to appear, accompanied by an excoriation of Jim Garrison. Among the publications sanctioning these attacks was the CIA's own web site, 'Studies in Intelligence.' Journalist Max Holland repeated in a series of magazine articles the erroneous thesis that the only reason that Paese Sera believed that the CIA was behind PERMINDEX was that the newspaper was the victim of KGB disinformation. Jim Garrison, therefore, had connected the CIA to the Kennedy assassination and to Shaw only owing to a KGB lie. 

Rather, Garrison's attribution of the planning of the assassination to the CIA was based on his discovery of the CIA connections of Lee Harvey Oswald, and not those of Clay Shaw, an inconvenient detail Holland omits. The truth is that Garrison had focused on the CIA in December 1966  and January 1967, well before the March publication of the Paese Sera articles.

A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK's Assassination, and the Case that Should Have Changed History. by Joan Mellen. Pgs. 136-140.

"Here is..."

True force. All the king's men...cannot put if back together again.

القوة الحقيقية. جميع الملك الرجل... لا يمكن ان تضع اذا معا مرة اخرى الى الوراءء

"A Zipper Hidden in the Arm"

The First JFK Assassination Bulletin

"...the zipper holding the hood in...because it's easier to put the hood on and off with the zipper than it is with the snaps...then there's zippers up the sides, so that the jacket will fit tightly around the hips, keeping that straight and sleek look that it should have...and very often you'll find a zipper hidden in the arm..."

The Alpine Schnapps Steinbeisser

In Heaven, Everything Is Fine

David Lynch's German Guru Angers Students with Goebbels Rallying Cry

"...Business as Usual"

 













"Lobbyists Foresee Business as Usual"

Interesting juxtaposition between image and text in the page layout of the Washington Post online, Monday, March 20, 2006--the third anniversary of "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

Former Washington Post publisher Philip Graham "believing that the function of the press was more often than not to mobilize consent for the policies of the government, was one of the architects of what became a widespread practice: the use and manipulation of journalists by the CIA" (*81). This scandal was known by its code name Operation MOCKINGBIRD. Former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein cites a former CIA deputy director as saying, "It was widely known that Phil Graham was someone you could get help from" (*82).

Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis.

-Donald Rumsfeld . March 19, 2006

Joan Mellen: A Farewell to Justice Lecture

A tremendous thank you to Maria Gilardin at TUC Radio for selflessly providing these excellent and inspirational radio broadcasts and archives. Keep up the incredible work Ms. Gilardin.

TUC Radio does not accept funding from government agencies or corporations. There is no radio station or even a non-profit institution backing us financially. TUC Radio is free to air what we believe you find important. PLEASE support us with your donation.

A FAREWELL TO JUSTICE: Jim Garrison, John F. Kennedy's Assassination, and the Case That Should Have Changed History - a new investigation of the assassination
by Prof. Joan Mellen

New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison was the only public official to have indicted a suspect in President John F. Kennedy’s murder. Biographer   Joan Mellen met Garrison in 1969. His relentless search for the truth about   who killed President Kennedy made a deep impression upon her. In 1997, five   years after Garrison’s death, Mellen started to work on the story of his  life. Her biography turned into a new investigation of the assassination itself.

Joan Mellen spoke in New York in January 2006 - a few weeks after the release  of her book: A Farewell to Justice. She found new evidence in the National  Archives' JFK Assassination Records Collection and conducted more than one  thousand interviews, with many witnesses speaking out for the first time.  Joan Mellen names those responsible for the assassination and shows how the  cover-up began in New Orleans months before President Kennedy was shot in  Dallas.

Joan Mellen is professor of English and creative writing at Temple University   in Philadelphia. She is the author of seventeen books, ranging from film criticism to fiction, Latin American studies and biography.

Thanks to the New York Sound Posse for the recording.

For more information:

Joan Mellen

The Revised Boy Scout Manual

REVOLUTIONARY WEAPONS AND TACTICS

Since World War I, revolutionary weapons and tactics have undergone a biologic mutation to survive the invention of heavy weapons. Anyone can make a sword, a spear, a bow and arrow in his basement or spare room workshop. He can make the approximation of a small arm. He cannot make automatic weapons, tanks, bombers, fighter planes, destroyers, artillery. These heavy weapons are in the hands of reactionary forces, which give them an overwhelming advantage in direct combat. With heavy weapons five percent of the population can hold down ninety-five percent by sheer force. This advantage, which did not exist before heavy weapons, must now be taken into account.

A belated development to be sure. the stupidity of the military mind is unbelievable. Toward the end of the Civil War in the United States, a crude machine gun and a crude tank were rejected by President Lincoln's military advisors as impractical. Now these weapons were primitive to be sure, but quite usable, and all the elements were there. In World War II, General Gamelin thought that tanks were unimportant until they poured around the end of his Maginot Line. General Gamelin did not like tanks.

So, plinking around the streets with a Barretta .25 is little to the purpose. And still less a Colt Army .45, a handgun so inaccurate it is more dangerous to friend than enemy - your friends being closer to it. It is a very myopic handgun. Bombs, in the post office and the police stations - what is this, the IRA in 1916? Blow up the Statue of Liberty would you? Have you any idea how much good gelginite it would take to explode that old beast? The same explosive material, discreetly placed, could bring down the economic system of the West. The Boy Scout Manual will show you how...

The extent to which revolutionary theory and tactics is disadvantageously shaped by opposition is something few revolutionaries like to think about, being for the most part as bigoted and impervious to facts as those whom they think they oppose. In 1848, a worldwide liberal movement was ruthlessly crushed in Europe and vitiated in South America. Consider how present day revolutionaries are being Che Guevara'd back into the nineteenth century to repeat the mistakes of Garibaldi and Bolivar. Bolivar liberated a large section of South America from Spain. He left intact the Christian calendar, the Spanish language, the Catholic church, the Spanish bureaucracy. He left Spanish families holding the wealth and the land.

He must have loved the conquistadores in some corner of his being to treat them with such exemplary consideration. It is a familiar pattern: the oppressed love the oppressors and cannot wait to follow their example. Morocco, independent from France, takes over the inefficient French bureaucracy. Arab countries liberated from England retain the barbarous English method of execution. Cannot a revolution make a clean sweep of all this old garbage.


To achieve independence from alien domination and to consolidate revolutionary gains, five steps are necessary:

1) PROCLAIM A NEW ERA AND SET UP A NEW CALENDAR,

2) REPLACE ALIEN LANGUAGE,

3) DESTROY OR NEUTRALIZE ALIEN GODS,

4) DESTROY ALIEN MACHINERY OF GOVERNMENT AND CONTROL,

5) TAKE LAND AND WEALTH FROM INDIVIDUAL ALIENS.

Suppose that Bolivar had followed this program:

1) He sets up a new calendar with no reference to A.D./B.C.. No saints days, no Christian holidays, no more Semana Santa.

2) There are thirty-five mutually incomprehensible Indian dialects in Peru alone. South America constitutes a Tower of Babel. Unifying language is essential but not the colonial languages Spanish and Portuguese. Bolivar decides that the language of South America will be Chinese. Several considerations dictate this choice. He has been impressed by the equanimity of the Chinese, their quiet self-possession in the dreariest and most forbidding places.

There is a town in the high Andes, a gloomy windy pass. Thin air like death in the throat. From the low sod huts with no chimneys the sullen bestial inhabitants peer out, eyes red with smoke. No trees, windswept grass, little terraced fields above which the mountains tower to stone and snow. The proprietor of the one general store, an old Chinese. He has been there many years you can tell. Unmarried and old, he fills the order for provisions. All places are alike to him. This quiet possession of his own space can only be attributed to the structure of the Chinese language.

There are also aesthetic considerations. A river town in coastal Ecuador malarial faces like dirty gray paper. Down the mud street steps a girl naked to the waist black as ebony with fine Mongoloid features straight hair. Negro and Chinese full calves zowie! Chinese characters look better on signs or on a printed page. His main consideration is to build up the economy by attracting the frugal and industrious Chinese settlers. Chinese will be taught in all schools. Place and street names will be Chinese.

3. It is not necessary to track whiskey priests through the brush. Lands and property of the church confiscated. No religious instructions in schools. Simply make it disadvantageous and unattractive to be a Catholic.

4. The Spanish bureaucracy, which starts with one incompetent, lazy, dishonest, superfluous bastard who then fills an office with all his incompetent relatives all filling out senseless forms, must be attacked at its roots. All forms and records to be destroyed.

5. Land and property of resident Spaniards confiscated. Those who choose to remain must integrate into the working community. Their children will not speak Spanish or kneel in any Christian church.


So the face of history has changed. To return in this illustrative fantasy, consider the weapons and tactics available to present-day revolutionaries in the West: small arms and similar weapons. Most useful all around hand gun is the pig .38 Special. Anyone with reasonable coordination can be taught in twelve rounds to hit a foot-square target at thirty feet. And that's practical pistol shooting! the lightweight models with two-inch barrels are quite accurate, which makes this gun one of the lightest and most compact of all powerful handguns.

Handguns can be traced. Possession is a crime and serves as a provocation. Homemade weapons are useful and every good scout will be tinkering with crossbows and rubber band guns, homemade flame throwers and laser guns, cyanide injectors and blowguns. Matchlock and flintlock pistols shooting a load of crushed glass and cyanide crystals are quite effective at six feet. The simplest cyanide injector has a large plunger that can be grasped in the whole hand. You shove the needle in and push the plunger home in the same thrust.

A more sophisticated model looks like a toy pistol. Needle is unscrewed from end of barrel, the pistol cocked by drawing back spring attached to plunger. A sponge soaked in cyanide solution is inserted in the barrel, the needle and cap screwed back into place. When trigger releases the spring, a massive dose of cyanide solution is squeezed into the flesh causing instant death. When not in use, needle is capped by a Buck Rogers death ray. If you can catch the target, with mouth open, you can jet it in from ten feet like a spitting cobra. This is not hard to do. They are always ranting on about permissiveness, marijuana, anarchy, ill-bred attacks on Her majesty, bring back hanging, bring back flogging, heavier penalties for drug offenses, ban smut, etc. And of course the injector is at home in bars and restaurants. Instead of canard a l'orange he gets a mouthful of prussic acid.

A bolo made from a bicycle chain with lead weights at each end...knives with a blade that flies off propelled by a power charge or a powerful spring in the handle...and vibrating knives with a vibrator in the handle. A double-edged knife on a spring that can be whipped back and forth. Ingenuity will turn up many novel designs. Crossbows...rubber band guns powered by a powerful rubber band can shoot a lead slug with considerable force and accuracy up to twenty yards...long-range blowguns, etc. These weapons are useful for individual assassination.

ASSASSINATION BY LIST (ABL)

So who do you assassinate by list? Not the obvious targets the politicians narcs and pigs. They are servants who obey orders. So the targets are not the front men but the higher-ups behind the scene. You announce that you have a list of these secret controllers and that they will be killed one after the other. The list is guesswork of course but the real higher-ups will soon expose themselves. So for a start we assassinate a Swiss banker never wrong on that. Just get a list of high Swiss bankers and pull his name out of a hat. This is Assassination By List (ABL.) The rich and powerful cower behind guards and electric fences.

RANDOM ASSASSINATION (RA)

Ingenious concept of random assassination has been proposed by Brion Gysin. Five people a day in five districts of the city are killed. Category of person and district are determined by lot. One way would be to shuffle a pack of cards listing various categories housewife bowler-hat-and-umbrella nun meth-drinker lavatory attendant anyone driving or riding in a Bentley etc. The shuffle another pack of city areas arranged into districts that do not correspond to the actual boroughs or wards. Since the choice is completely random there is no pattern and the assassinations cannot be predicted or anticipated. Exempt from this daily lottery are the police and the military. The reason: they are accorded this position of privilege to stir resentment in the populace and so set the stage for a subsequent accusation that rightist plotters carried out RA to create an emergency and seize power.

RA applied to group units could paralyze the economy of the West and this brings us too...

BOMBS AND EXPLOSIVE DEVICES

Post offices, public buildings and monuments are quite useless targets in most cases. With less risk and less outlay of material you could paralyze the whole communications system.

Like this: two Israeli passenger planes recently exploded, probably as a result of bombs planted in freight of luggage by terrorists. Already these lines are banned and nobody will fly on the planes. Now suppose you plant five bombs a day at random. How long before no one flies or ships freight by air? And you won't have to do it all yourself...you will find anonymous little helpers who will start planting bombs on planes just for jolly - wouldn't you after reading all about it? They know it's the thing to do. And every device intercepted increases the terror. Then you hit trains and ships, buses and subways inside the cities. You make truck driving the most dangerous profession, with special attention to food trucks. Then you can hit the power stations and water reservoirs.

CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

For random terror attacks, gas bombs are often more effective than explosives. They're also cheaper and easier to make. A container of sulfuric acid concealed in package or briefcase. You press down a plunger which drops sodium cyanide into the acid and leave your package in the subway at the rush hour or in a theater or political rally or revival meeting. Chemical and biological weapons could be made in the basement lab if you know how.

In The Wild Boys I proposed to transfer desirable species of plants, animals, fish and birds from present distribution to other areas where conditions are sufficiently similar to insure growth and reproduction. Look at the map and always remember your subjects may be more adaptable than you realize.

Consider the walleyed pike, which is not a pike. The species is a perch and undoubtedly one of the greatest freshwater pan fish. Found in the lakes of Minnesota and Canada and in the clear clod streams down into Missouri and Arkansas. And consider the small-mouthed black bass of similar distribution. Both species would live in cold water anywhere. They would thrive in the lakes and rivers of England and Scotland and Northern Europe. The large-mouth black bass tolerates quite warm water and could be extended to the vast waterways of the Amazon basin to the lakes of Africa and Southeast Asia.

The yage vine could grow in the jungles of Southeastern Asia, in Africa and probably in Louisiana, Florida and Texas. The delicate lemurs of Madagascar, shy little wood spirits, would enhance any rain forest. Certainly the enchanting flying fox deserves wider circulation.

Look at the map again. Introduction of a new species into an area where they were hitherto unknown can have far-reaching consequences. This aspect of biologic warfare has been neglected.

Here is the bushmaster from Panama south through the Amazon basin. He may reach a length of fourteen feet and attack a human, twisting about his thighs while he strikes at the chest and throat walking his great fangs that can shoot half a glass of venom. No amount of anti-venom can save him - there isn't time for it to act.

Florida, East Texas, Louisiana, jungles of Africa, Southeast Asia, the East Indes and back along the same trade routes...the Black Mamba of Africa that will also attack unprovoked, sliding down from trees. Leopards and tigers released in South America would soon be driven to man-eating by the scarcity of game, and they would eat the CIA men first since they are bigger and slower.The good gray lard they call it, licking the blood off of each other's faces. Plentiful, helpless, no fur - the ideal food animal.

The fresh water shark of Nicaragua and the piranha fish would do well in the lakes and rivers of Africa in the southern United States and in Southeast Asia. For arid regions, the desert cobra, the rattler and the gilla monsters, and the incomparable tiger snake of Australia. And Wolverines for Siberia - they are a perfect curse, known to trappers as "the little fiend." And microscopic and sub-microscopic life of course, which brings us back to...

BIOLOGIC WARFARE PROPER

The deadly Naga virus is up for grabs. Nobody knows how it is transmitted, and that gives the virus an advantage which any virus knows well how to take. You immunize your own boys and turn the virus loose. Then another...another...until you make the world safe for men of your caliber. No, you don't have to dream up anything from science fiction - the old standbys will go a long way...cholera, typhoid, hepatitis. It was General Hepatitis who stopped Rommel in North Africa in World War II. There are cartoons depicting General Mud and General Mountains. General Mud, if I remember correctly, was supposed to stop Hitler in Poland, but his performance was not impressive.

Consignments of ticks carrying Rocky mountain spotted fever, typhus lice, and of course you go on looking for the big one - Australian smallpox which thrives on vaccination. Or, suppose you could speed up the time of the process. Instead of symptoms spread over a week they are compressed into hours. People swell up with cancer and rot with galloping leprosy on commuter trains...

And now, introducing two promising newcomers that deserve your attention...easily and cheaply assembled...readily available materials: Infrasound for Infrasound, and DOR - opportunity knocks.

INFRASOUND

This weapon is fully described in The Job, published by Grove Press of New York. So much for the commercial. Infrasound is sound at a frequency below the level of human hearing which sets up vibrations in any solid obstruction including the human body. Professor Gavreau who discovered this novel weapon says that his installation which resembles a vast police whistle eighteen feet long, can kill up to five miles in any direction...knock down walls and break windows, and set off burglar alarms for miles around. his device is patented and anybody can obtain a copy of the plans on payment of two hundred francs at the patent office. So why be a small-time sniper?

DEADLY ORGONE RADIATION (DOR)

...Produced when any fissionable material is placed in an orgone accumulator. An orgone accumulator is constructed by lining any container with sheet iron or steel wool. The container must be full of organic material, and for full concentration many alternative layers can be used. For full description see the collected works of Dr. Willhelm Reich. In the chapter entitled "Orgone Physics" Reich says "There is no protection whatsoever against DOR since it penetrates everything, including lead or brick or stone walls of any thickness."

A criminal hater of mankind or a political enemy, if he knew about this, and if the USA did not know about it or did not study these effects, could easily drop activated orgone devices looking simply like metal lined boxes. These could infest a whole region if not a whole continent. Each person falling ill would react to his or her specific disease or disposition to disease, driving the symptoms to high acuity and then curing them if properly and conscientiously applied. However, if used with malignant intent, such infestation of the atmosphere would surely kill or at least immobilize many people. Exposure on a gradient scale gives immunity.

Be prepared!

WEAPONS OF DISRUPTION, AGITATION AND SUBVERSION

A French revolutionary sets forth a method by which one man with an unlimited expense account can bring down a government. He invents an underground, planting stickers and slogans. Acts of sabotage at widely separated locations give an impression that the underground is widespread and well-organized. All disturbances, strikes, accidents, are claimed by the mythical underground. This method might work in an old-style dictatorship like Spain, Greece, Santa Domingo, Haiti. For the compels set-up in America and Western Europe, you need a whole script and eventually a whole film set.

NOTES ON WRITING WORLD REVOLUTION

(written March 25, 1970, Paris, France)

GENERAL PLAN:

1) An independent republican or reform party of exemplary behavior and moderation, staying always within the law. Personnel must be at all times above reproach, at least in the initial stages of the operation.

2) A terrorist underground complete with detailed personnel and methods of operation. Post films of underground drilling can be leaked to press. The police can be allowed to capture extensive files taken from a telephone book, and while they drag bewildered citizens from their beds, the underground which consists of a small group of expert saboteurs, can strike somewhere else.

3) A terrorist reich complete with personnel. Any outrage can be attributed to these characters. You can see how this works in present-time Brazil where any murder of underworld figures can be laid to the terrorist police organization. The script is different for every country or area of operation, but its always a one-two-three...

Here's the schema for the United Kingdom...

1) An English Republican Party (ERP). Offices in Bedford Square. Visible personnel must be above reproach. Appeal is rational, stressing economic factors. The monarchy is simply out of keeping with the realities of modern life. Time to forget a dead empire and build a living republic. Stabilize economy, cut expenses, especially defense. Let the Yanks and NATO carry that ball - it's to heavy for us. Build up tourist trade by giving them someplace to eat and room service 'round the clock and food fit to eat. Start bringing England into the twentieth century. Attract foreign capital, stabilize population by setting up liaison communities to facilitate immigration from the U.K. to South America, the only under populated country. Smooth patter, discreet lunches at Rules and Simpsons. Scrupulously abstain from any personal attack on the royal family.

2) We prepare a pamphlet with obscene cartoons covering the royal family with vile abuse. We send it out to members of all the best clubs, conservative M.P.'s, officers and gentlemen on Her Majesty's Service. The first wave takes a heavy toll in heart attacks and apoplexy in the halls of drafty clubs...muttering imprecations at yellowing tusks on the wall...walking down country lanes swinging umbrellas and sticks in the air. England is in ferment like a vast vat of bitters.

3) This vile attack on Her Majesty

Put an end to permissiveness

Bring back hangings

Bring back floggings

The piper plays "Bring Back My Bonnie To Me" on a tin flute down Kings Road.

1)ERP deplores pamphlets as sophomoric and calls on the invisible author to desist, which he does of course. The right hand sees what the left hand is doing. A lull, during which ERP consolidates gains. ERP ERP ERP ghoul expert patter belching it out all over England. After all why all this fuss about something left over from the Middle Ages? Just a question of getting people used to it like a new ten-shilling piece. I mean, when we can cut rates and give decent housing they'll forget all about it...the new generation never heard of such a thing. Turn Buckingham Palace into a luxury hotel, one of a chain...and that's where your firm comes in. The Royal family is to be absorbed into the diplomatic service which is also due for cutbacks and drastic overhaul. Old style diplomacy dates back to the eighteenth century. We want to see less goodwill tours and handshaking ad more understanding on basic exchange of goods and services. Yes the whole structure needs overhauling. Why not bring England into the twentieth century? Scrap the licensing laws - food and service 'round the clock. Good middle-priced restaurants like Horn & Hardest.

ERP ERP ERP. Skinheads? Street gangs? We'll give them something better to do than Paki-bashing and fighting each other. There's useful work for these boys to do...

2) Infiltrate street gangs as first move toward taking over the streets. We send our boys trained in every technique of hand-to-hand fighting, the use of weapons and demolition procedures. Jimmy the doctor with a scalpel up his sleeve. Electric Kris ready in his boot. These boys assume leadership of street gangs. Why fight each other? Why not fight the bastards who keep you here in your cold gritty dank slums? I said, "BUGGER THE QUEEN!" and anybody doesn't like it just step forward and say so.

These boys have a double mission: first, to put street fighters in the street when we give the word...riots burning cars broken windows. That is the work of the rank and file. Second, they will sift street gangs for the smartest, hardest boys to forge the SS, the Palace Guard of the ERP. The boys will be exhaustively trained in all fighting techniques, in psychological warfare, in crown control. At the right time they will be provided with uniforms, motorcycles, armored cars and automatic weapons. There is useful work for these boys to do.

START ASSASSINATION BY LIST

We drop quite a few red herrings of course...always leave the door open to blame it all on rightist plotters. Besides, enigmatic assassinations are more upsetting, somehow. We have a tentative list of the real higher-ups in England. As we start working through it, other higher-ups will betray themselves to the trained observer, so the list keeps growing. We will need that list when the time rolls around for mass murder, mass assassination (MA), and we turn our boys loose.

Now we need a scenario for the rightist plot. Officers and gentlemen, they call themselves (OG). Using American techniques of thought control they will make the Queen a goddess. Her power is absolute. Every citizen must display at all times on his lapel, hat band, shirt or other garment where it can be plainly seen, the Queen's Rating. QR determines position in her society...at all times. Her favorites all have "Top Rating." They can walk into any restaurant and the manager has to provide a table. They can walk into any hotel and ask for a suite and the manager has to move somebody out. Intolerable little Cockney faggot in eighteenth century costume with a powered blue wig and snuff box full of cocaine: "Get this low rate riffraff out of my suite!" And so it goes on down the scale to the dreaded pariah rating (PR) which is tattooed in red ink on the forehead like the brand of Cain. Anyone can refuse to serve food, grant lodging, or take in any public transport a PR. And so her loyal and loyalist subjects think twice about incurring her serene displeasure. And it is well to remember that her favor is not to be taken for granted but must be earned anew each day. Actually the Queen is simply a holograph symbol of subservience manipulated by American know-how. Vulgar chaps, by and large, but they do have the technology...

Recent experiments with rhesus monkeys have demonstrated that fear, rage, excretory processes and sexual response can be brought under push-button control. The Chinese delegate screams his rage and shits in his pants on TV...the Soviet delegate masturbates uncontrollably...early answer to use on anyone considering to interfere. We set it all up with top secret documents, statements from a former CIA man who must for his own safety reasons remain anonymous. And we out our rumor boys into the streets with tape recorders.

1)England is taking orders from the CIA and the American narcotics department like a Central American banana republic. Wouldn't surprise me to see the marines land. Look at this drug problem they've dumped into our lap. Go after the pushers - you arrest one pusher and ten more will take his place. The one man the narcotics industry cannot do without is the addict on the street who buys it. Treat the addict in the street and you will put the pusher out of business. The apomorphine treatment started in England - why not give it a chance in England?

And let's give these kids something better to do. Why not reverse the braindrain? It isn't just more money that takes our best research brains to America - its better equipment and opportunities for more advanced research. The new work in autonomic shaping carried out in America by Drs. Bernard Engel, Joe Kamiya, Neal Miller and Peter Lang. They are teaching subjects to control brain waves, rate of heartbeat, blood pressure, digestive processes and sexual response. This could lead to trips without drugs and solve the drug problem. Is England picking up? Is similar research being carried out?...the Bristol Neurological Foundation by Professor Grey Walter? If so we haven't heard about it. Is England afraid of any research that could turn up something basically new? Is England muddling through or simply muddling steadily downhill? Is the mismanagement we see here part of a deliberate plot? It's beginning to look that way.

2) Riots and demonstrations by street gangs are stepped up. Start random assassination. Five citizens every day in London but never a police officer or serviceman. Patrols in the street shooting the wrong people. Curfews. England is rapidly drifting toward anarchy.

3) We send out our best agents to contact army officers and organize a rightist coup. We put rightist gangs into it like the Royal Crowns and the Royal Cavailers in the street. 1. Time for ERP! 2. Come Out in The Open!

The trouble in England is: it is run by old women of both sexes. we have a list of these people. We will not allow them to use the army to overthrow constitutional government and impose a dictatorship under pretense of controlling the disorders which they themselves have caused. It is time for young England to strike, and to strike hard.

We turn our palace guard loose. An armored car draws up in front of Claridge's. Youths with tommy guns jump out and block off the street. A TV crew unloads. The whole scene goes out live on TV.

Steps through the silent dining room...stop by a table. A burst of machine gun fire. A woman screams.

"Shut up you whore! And now, will you all please stand up - that's right. Now all of you sing God Save The Queen. Boys, walk around the dining room. You there - louder...more soul!"

The car stops in front of the best club of them all. It's not White's, I'm told, but we'll be around to White's later. They'll be waiting...the old gentlemen in their armchairs muttering about permissiveness...in the writing room writing letters toward the restoration if hanging and flogging. The boys leap out in their natty blue uniforms with the skull-and-crossbones at the lapel that glows in the dark.

"Are you a member, sir?" The boy shoots him coldly in the stomach with a P-38 (it's nice for city wear, so much more elegant that a revolver). Quick purposeful young steps down drafty halls. Tussle over the wall...the improbable hyphenated names. The members are frozen.

"What is this outrage? When a gentleman is reading his Times?" They expect the club steward to come in and throw the bouncers out perhaps it is even a case for the bobbies. The steps stop in front of an armchair.

"Are you Lord Stansfield?"

"I am."

"He is the most intelligent person in the room. Intelligent enough to know that this is serious." The boy is very elegant and disengaged. Lord Stansfield decides to try a paternal approach.

"Son..." The boy gives him a short burst across the chest. Diving bell from the nineteenth century shattered by a boy's bullets. The members are numb from the shock wave. TV camera, floodlights, the boy paces around the vast lounge looking at the pictures. He points the gun at a steward's stomach.

"You there, bring champagne."

"Champagne, sir?"

"Yes, champagne. And glasses for all the officers and gentlemen, the servants as well, and don't be forgetting the military." The trembling steward passes around the clicking glasses.

"You there! Pick it up!"

Now the boy stands in front of the Queen's picture. He raises his glass. "BUGGER THE QUEEN!" He throws the empty glass at the picture, shards of glass sticking into the Queen's face. The members are frozen. The boy unslings the tommy gun and shoots down five members in a random sequence pivoting from the hip. He picks up another glass. "And now all you officers and gentlemen, gather 'round here. That's right. I want to hear it, I want to hear it good and loud."

"BUGGER THE QUEEN!"

All over England, the elite guard carry the message of death. They have some natty uniforms with trick gadgets: a skull-and-crossbones in the lapel and a helmet that winks on and off, and blue revolving skull lights on the cars. And some frantic faggots get themselves up in skeleton suits of course. Sweeping down country roads thirty boys on motorcycles draw up in front of a stately home.

"Yes sir?"

"Where's the old bitch?"

The butler's face does not change. "Mrs. Charington is in the garden sir." And there she is, in her trowels and slacks, digging away at her roses.

"What do you want, young man?" She thinks he will quail before a good woman's gaze. He doesn't.

"Lebenstraum, you old hag. You poison the air we breath."

Mrs. Charington bleeds into her roses. The butler is busy with the wall safe...

They sweep up to a baronial estate.

"You'll have to wait, constable, the family is at dinner."

"Good, we'll join them." He jabs the butler in the stomach with his tommy gun. The lord and lady die in the seats, faces in the grouse. the children, a boy of eighteen and a girl of sixteen, sit there, faces blank with shock. Slowly the boy's face glows and sharpens with calculation. his lips part and his eyes shine. "Due truths are told as happy preludes to the swelling act. And now for my unfortunate brother."

Lead boy calls in two footmen. "Bring mattresses. You, and you, go along and see that they don't get lost.

Television cameras set up. the mattresses brought in and dropped on the floor in front of the fireplace.

Next scene shows the other boys gang-fucking the girl while the new boy tries on his uniform.

All over England under the searching guns pubs echo with "BUGGER THE QUEEN!" Taken up by junkies, meth heads, hippies...played back on recorders...live on TV.

"BUGGER THE QUEEN!" rises to the pale English sky. Whole regiments scream it out.

"BUGGER THE QUEEN!" and murder their officers straightway.

Boy packs with tommy guns march down the street and blast every shop window that bears the hated placard, "By Appointment to Her majesty the Queen." And everyone they meet had better scream it out loud...

"BUGGER THE QUEEN!"

They march into offices, schools, factories, department stores.

"All right, all of you, stick your head out of the window and show some respect."

"BUGGER THE QUEEN!"

All over England heads pop out of windows screaming,

"BUGGER THE QUEEN!"

Languid young officers on flower floats through the streets as the delirious populace chants,

"BUGGER THE QUEEN!"

"Bugger the Queen!" is now the national greeting..

ERP occupies Buckingham Palace to protect and advise the Royal family. Decimated by assassination and deprived of psychic support, the army falters. The Queen abdicates, while the elite guard languidly polish their nails on skull lapels. And who is that...a very natty tailor-made uniform?

...I think there is a residue of fair-minded people in England who will read it as it is intended: as an empirical sociological observation. If an image or symbol is widely venerated in a population segment, the desecration and shattering of that image or symbol will shatter the social structure insofar as that structure is based on the image or symbol. It's a very old rule: shatter the idols and you shatter the social structure. The idols are not often as easy to find. "Bugger Nixon" just doesn't do it at all. No shock value there.

The cut-ups date from the Dadaist movement and Tristan Tzara pulling a poem out of a hat. So you will see, this is actually a repetition of "Burn the Louvre!" And everybody says, "So who cares?" You don't have a basically important symbol. The tactic must shock and enrage, preferably to the point of madness. that is what this tactic is all about: desecration, madness.

"No it was not a difficult decision to issue these licenses for rape and murder. Nothing more ominous than a difficult decision in the Pentagon. And nobody does more harm than he who feels bad about doing it. Sad poison, nice guy more poison than nice wept when he saw the Hiroshima pictures. What a drag. When we murder somebody we want to have fun doing it.."

This license was dictated by a consideration taken into account by prudent commanders throughout history. You have to pay the boys off. Even the noble Brutus did it: "The town is yours boys." Tacitus describes a typical scene: "If a young girl or good-looking boy fell into their hands they were torn to pieces in the struggle for possession. And the survivors were left to cut each other's throats." Well there is no need for it to be that messy - why waste a good-looking boy? Mother-loving American army run by old women, many of them religious my god hanging American soldiers for raping and murdering civilians.

"WHAT THE FUCKING BLOODY HELL ARE CIVILIANS FOR?"

Old Sarge bellows from here to eternity: "Soldiers pay!"

The CO stands there and smiles. Just ahead is a Middle Western American town about 200,000. Pretty town on a river, plenty of trees. The CO points, "He's all yours boys! Every man, woman and child of it. Anything in it, living or dead."

"Now just a minute boys. Listen to Old Sarge. Why make the usual stupid scene kicking in liquor stores grabbing anything in sight. You wake up with a hangover in an alley, your prick tore from fucking dry cunts and assholes, your eye gouged out by a broken beer bottle when you and your buddy wanted the same one - no fun in that. Why not leave it like it is? They go about their daily tasks and we just take what we want when we want it, cool and easy, and make them like it. You see what I mean? Five thousand of us, two hundred thousand of them."

The young lieutenant in camouflage sees what he means. Boys - school showers and swimming pools full of them...

So we lay it on the line. "There's no cause for alarm, folks, proceed about your daily tasks. But one thing is clearly understood - your lives, your bodies, your properties belong to us whenever and wherever we choose to take them." So, we weed out the undesirables and turn the place into a paradise...getting' it steady year after year...

(End of tape one, side B)

A transcript from The Revised Boy Scout Manual, a novel in the form of three one-hour cassettes.

William S. Burroughs (1970)
RE/SEARCH #4/5 
1982

http://www.artdamage.com/wsb/boyscout.htm

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The Secret Order of al-Hashishin (Part Three)

Where would you put a library of 200, 000 books?

T What about Hassan i Sabbah, the Assassins ? ... These were sexual techniques ?

. . . Yesterday a thousand years ago, Hassan i Sabbah, a Persian by birth and school-chum of Omar Khayyam, walked by accident (as if there were any accidents) into the studios of Radio Cairo to find all the cats bombed. He realized like a flash that he could SEND, TOO. He took the mike to an unheated penthouse called Alamut near the Caspian . . . his original station nearly a thousand years ago could broadcast from Alamut to Paris with Charlemagne on the house phone and as far as Xanadu East. Today the same lines have been proliferating machine-wise and a stray wire into the room I am in . . . Well, you figure it out . . . (BG, Minutes to Go)

B Uh ... presumably .. . ummmm I've written a piece which has gotten lost; I've sold it to a collector instead of getting it published . . . it wasn't a very good piece, it was funny . . . essentially not a very funny subject . . . but, uh, I made a pilgrimage to Alamout, the castle of the Assassins . . . uh, in the summer of 1973-and I know less than when I started . . . that's it . . . I know less than when I started . . . I know a lot more than any book that I've read about it . . . there are maybe better books, and I understand that Professor Corbin is bringing out new material which he got through the Aga Khan, who is said to be a descendant-in fact the Aga Khan's vast wealth and spiritual authority depends on being a descendant of a captive and then eventually reigning Old Man of the Mountain, and a Fatimid, descended from the Prophet's own daughter Fatima, who was chosen by the British to be a great leader who was not a territorial prince-the British in 1885 realized that they were having such terrible trouble with the Indian princes who were territorially based, that they had a sort of competition which was judged in British fashion by a British court in Bombay, in which they put to trial the Sufis as represented by the great-grandfather, or certainly the forebears of Idries Shah, and his rather kind of sloppy commercialized Sufism that he's trying to push in England right now . . .

And, uh, they lost and the Aga Khan won, and the Aga Khan, curiously enough, was a descendant of the last Old Man of the Mountain . . . and the Ismaelis had papers and documents which have recently been handed to, or been given for study by French authorities such as Corbin . . . and I'm sure he knows a great deal more about the Old Man of the Mountain than I do . . . although I think he's not been to the Castle, which is a very extraordinary experience, it's only one of a great series of castles in the mountains to the south of the Caspian Sea . . . and, uh, one learns a great deal from actually visiting such a place, as I suggested you might visit Genet's castle of Fontevrault that he wrote The Miracle of the Rose about, and would learn a great deal from just being at base itself . . .

Uh, some of the conclusions were practical-like, uh, it must be fucking cold up there in the wintertime, and this area is so small where would you put a library of 200,000 books; there isn't enough room to put away 200 packages of vitamin B-1 .. . uh, very tiny, very small, very dangerous, cold and uncomfortable sort o5-spot . . . which I guess Hassan i Sabbah dug a lot, and he must've been very hard to live with is all I can think of . . . (laughing) end of that-push the button . . .

(tape stops)

The salacious stories, what did they involve?

T "Nothing is true . . . "

B (laughing) "Nothing is true, everything is permitted" . . . not everything is permitted in the village, it's not true . . . alas .. . it's not really Hassan i Sabbah's village, but another .

I went to Hassan i Sabbah's Alamout, as you know, I wrote a rather poor piece about it that nobody even bothered to turn down, it just sort of came back to me some way without any proper refusal from whoever I sent it-oh, Rolling Stone, I think .. . must've been quite shocked by it . . . The story of going to Alamout with a very charming and witty, rather campy American friend, and, uh, that may've been too much for them, I don't know . . .

T It was just that that was too much for them?

B Well, maybe they just didn't . . . no, it wasn't their sort of thing at all, in fact they, they're not publishing things like that, they're into politics . . . Watergate-type, CIA . . .

T Fear and loathing at Alamout . . .

B (laughing) Yes, fear and loathing . . . hmmm . . .

T It must've been quite an experience to be there?

B Overwhelming. Very difficult physically and psychically. I had asthma, mountain sickness, and sheer funk . . . uh, wearing town shoes, climbing up to those really extremely inaccessible spots . . . where there are traces of the fortifications and, uh, whether they date from the time of the Old Man himself one doesn't know, but the castle was utterly destroyed by the Mongols . . . one can judge that it must've been an absolutely impregnable place, but really very small, too small to hold a library such as he was said to have possessed ... the Mongol conqueror was accompanied by a historian who claims that he actually saw such a library, that it was destroyed or utterly dispersed at that time . . . uh, recently French scholars have claimed to have come up with original manuscripts which are in the hands of Ismaeli followers of the Aga Khan, who had settled in Bombay several centuries ago, and Corbin has recently published some material here in France; but I haven't had the official version of that, because he was scooped by a journalist who runs a pseudo-psychic magazine and managed to get hold of Corbin's papers and produced a rather ludicrous account of what was supposed to be in them . . . I think we're going to have to wait for the documents to be properly published, but there may still be written information that we don't know about with regard to the organization of the Assassins . . .

T In terms of the cut-up technique, being in direct line from-

B Ah well, Hassan's private story . . . was that he went to school in, uh-y'got any more squeaky tape here, or you running out?-he went to school near Meshad, in eastern Iran, at the University of Nishapur a century or so after the Turk invasion of that part of the world, and he found that he had to share a room with two other boys; one of them was Omar Khayyam, who became the great mathematician, astronomer and poet, whose Rubaiyat everybody knows in the Fitzgerald translation, and the other boy ...

He was the victim of a cut-up . . .

... became the prime minister of that whole vast empire . . . and they took a schoolboy oath that they would always help each other in later life . . .

And after they left school Hassan i Sabbah went back to his native town, which doesn't exist anymore; it was south of where Tehran is today, and, uh, the oldest of the three became prime minister and gave the job of court astronomer, which was a lifetime sinecure, to Omar Khayyam . . . and Hassan i Sabbah then presented himself at court and asked for an equivalent position and was given the direction of the finances . . . And he found when he came to deliver his speech on the exchequer that his manuscripts had been cut in such a way that he didn't at first realize that they had been sliced right down the middle and repasted-books were individual folios that were pasted into bindings at that time, or else one great big roll out of which one read . . . All of his material had been cut up by some unknown enemy and his speech from the Woolsack was greeted with howls of laughter and utter disgrace and he was thrown out of the administration . . . So he was the victim of a cut-up, and that was the reference that you remembered, in fact . . .

T And you suddenly found yourself in line from that . . . you produced cut-ups and it tied you in even more so than you had been-

B Huh. I don't know that I really wanna be tied into anything . . .

T Whether you wanted to or not . . .

B I found it very disturbing when I was at Alamout, to imagine .. . uh, find myself under strong psychic attack - whereas the friend with whom I was traveling went scampering around the precipices like a goat, I suddenly was attacked with vertigo, which I hadn't ever experienced before in my life, and altitude fever - it's very high, it's about 10,000 feet, perhaps more . . . so that there was some physical reason for that . . . But I also felt psychically attached to the place as I have never felt before in any other spot in my travels . . .

T These effects perhaps could give some indication as to what actually was the state of mind of those adepts there, rather than hashish-

B I felt that I was somebody that'd been pushed over the precipice, and I wasn't certain that I wanted to be a victim to such an old scene . . .

T (pointing finger at him)

B Yeah, long pointed (laughing) William on top of the tower pointing a long bony finger-and there was I tumbling into the precipice - no, that's not the way I wrote this at all . . . I refuse this version . . .

T Brion, what I was thinking of before, orgasm to produce events - could that be a finger or a penis-

B Oh, I haven't followed you on that one at all! Whaddyamean?

T The techniques taught or used there . . . it was an all-male community. . . ?

B Yes, yeah . . . although other people have now said that it wasn't, but it must have been; physicad possibilities are such that it must have been a monastery-fortress-as there were many others in Islam, it was not a new invention. A Ribat, or Rabat, such is the name of the capital of Morocco, originally means a monastery where warrior-monks were gathered, who were pushing Islam . . .

T I was just trying to tie in the-

B The exact methods-we don't know enough, there aren't enough documents.

T But we can assume that-

Ordinary Male-Female sexuality reinforces human time...

B Oh, a writer can assume, a fictioneer can assume . . . but as I said, there probably are going to be more and more documents available within the very short future . . .

T We've said that ordinary Male-Female sexuality reinforces human time . . .

B Mmmm. . .

T The question is what alternatives actually do.

B One would have to go and ask the Assassins . . . I can't answer that . . . It was a subject that I offered to William: I met a woman who'd written an extremely interesting book about it, in 1958, some time like that, and then I started talking about it to William, who took it up with enormous enthusiasm and who came, over the years, to dcvclop a point of view on the subject, but that's not based on any new research . . .

. . . each one of us, naturally, has his or her own move to make in the game. I abhor the word and hate having to use it to refer in any way to our activities, but Mya, being a woman has to be "played with," of course . . . Mya's ambitions are, like Mya herself, potentially limitless. It would not be good for her or for anybody else if she became what she wants to be: the Ace of Space!

. . . my own next move can be accomplished only in silence-utter and absolute silence. I mean this quite literally . . . I have little more to say beyond what I feel I owe to you as a fellow-male who has been drawn abruptly into this tale of ours. Mektoub: it is written! The rest is up to you. Be as cautious as you can, of course, for you know that as soon as you have anything like a kingdom, enchanters and conjurers will always drop in from all over Creation to take it away from you, naturally enough ... (Thay Himmer, in The Process)

(excerpts)

Brion Gysin and Terry Wilson. Here to Go - Planet R 101, p. 64-65; 96 - 97; 98 - 99; 100.

www.inter-zone.org/hassan3.html

The Secret Order of al-Hashishin (Part Two)

“Get some bulldozers in here. Clear out all this crap…”

[…]

The definite article THE. THE contains the implication of one and only: THE God, THE universe, THE way, THE right, THE wrong. If there is another, then THAT universe, THAT way is no longer THE universe, THE way. The definite article THE will be deleted and the indefinite article A will take it’s place.

The whole concept of EITHER/OR. Right or wrong, physical or mental, true or false, the whole concept of OR will be deleted from the language and replaced by juxtaposition, by AND.

[…]

Much of the force of the reactive mind also depends on the falsification inherent in the categorical definite article THE. THE now, THE past, THE time, THE space, THE energy, THE matter, THE universe. Definite article THE contains the implication of no other. THE universe locks you in THE, and denies the possibility of any other. If other universes are possible, then the universe is no longer THE it becomes A. The definite article THE in the proposed language is deleted and replaced by A.

[…]

I have frequently spoken of word and image as viruses or as acting as viruses, and this is not an allegorical comparison. It will be seen that the falsifications in syllabic western languages are in point of fact actual virus mechanisms. The IS of identity the purpose of a virus is to SURVIVE. To survive at any expense to the host invaded.

[…]

The categorical THE is also a virus mechanism, locking you in THE virus universe. EITHER/OR is another virus formula. It is always you OR the virus. EITHER/OR. This is in point of fact the conflict formula which is seen to be archetypical virus mechanisms. The proposed language will delete these virus mechanisms and make their formulation impossible in the language.

William Burroughs. Electronic Revolution. Expanded Media Edition. 1986.

Brion Gysin's dazzling anecdotes and inspired digressions form the matrix for a very precise cosmology. Brion does not identify himself with any codified, preconceived religion, philosophy, or system of thought. His thinking does not derive from Islam, Buddhism, Chinese or Zen formulations, and is categorically divorced from any Western religion. Churches, he says, should be taxed out of existence. He speaks of Hassan i Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountain, as one of his sources, but Hassan i Sabbah left no written teachings or doctrines. The library that was supposed to have been stored at Alamout has never come to light. Brion, who has visited the fortress of Alamout, observed that there would not have been room to store such a library - reputedly consisting of 200,000 books. He surmises that the books, like the Garden the Old Man showed to his followers, were not of this world.

Since so little is known about Hassan i Sabbah and the training his followers received at Alamout, any thought system that derives from the Old Man must be made up of suppositions. When we consider the inferential sources of Hassan i Sabbah’s thinking, we see that he has much in common with the Manichaean or Zoroastrian concept of Good and Evil, in a conflict the outcome of which is uncertain. The Old Man taught that assassination was an act of spiritual liberation, removing obstacles between the initiate and the Garden.

Brion Gysin / Terry Wilson. Here to Go: Planet R-101, Preface by WS Burroughs.

http://www.creationbooks.com/text-gysin.html

Secrets of the Assassins

Fascinating material on the Ismaili sect and on Hassan i Sabbah... the only spiritual leader who has anything significant to say in the Space Age.

- William S. Burroughs, in a review of Peter Lamborn-Wilson's Scandal: Essays in Islamic Heresy.

After the death of the Prophet Mohammad, the new Islamic community was ruled in succession by four of his close Companions, chosen by the people and called the Rightfully-guided Caliphs. The last of these was Ali ibn Abu Talib; the Prophet's son-in-law.

Ali had his own ardent followers among the faithful, who came to be called Shi'a or "adherents". They believed that Ali should have succeeded Mohammad by right, and that after him his sons (the Prophet's grandsons) Hasan and Husayn should have ruled; and after them, their sons, and so on in quasi-monarchial succession.

In fact except for Ali none of them ever ruled all Islamdom. Instead they became a line of pretenders, and in effect heads of a branch of Islam called Shiism. In opposition to the orthodox (Sunni) Caliphs in Baghdad these descendants of the Prophet came to be known as the Imams.

To the Shiites an Imam is far more, far higher in rank than a Caliph. Ali ruled by right because of his spiritual greatness, which the Prophet recognized by appointing him his successor (in fact Ali is also revered by the sufis as "founder" and prototype of the Moslem saint). Shiites differ from orthodox or Sunni Moslems in believing that this spiritual pre-eminence was transferred to Ali's descendants through Fatima, the Prophet's daughter.

The sixth Shiite Imam, Jafar al-Sadiq, had two sons. The elder, Ismail, was chosen as successor. But he died before his father. Jafar then declared his own younger son Musa the new successor instead.

But Ismail had already given birth to a son - Mohammad ibn Ismail - and proclaimed him the next Imam. Ismail's followers split with Jafar over this question and followed Ismail's son instead of Musa. Thus they came to be known as Ismailis.

Musa's descendants ruled "orthodox" Shiism. A few generations later, the Twelfth Imam of this line vanished without trace from the material world. He still lives on the spiritual plane, whence he will return at the end of this cycle of time. He is the "Hidden Imam", the Mahdi foretold by the Prophet. "Twelver" Shiism is the religion of Iran today.

The Ismaili Imams languished in concealment, heads of an underground movement which attracted the extreme mystics and revolutionaries of Shiism. Eventually they emerged as a powerful force at the head of an army, conquered Egypt and established the Fatimid dynasty, the so-called anti-Caliphate of Cairo.

The early Fatimids ruled in an enlightened manner, and Cairo became the most cultured and open city of Islam. They never succeeded in converting the rest of the Islamic world however; in fact, even most Egyptians failed to embrace Ismailism. The highly evolved mysticism of the sect was at once its special attraction and its major limitation.

In 1074 a brilliant young Persian convert arrived in Cairo to be inducted into the higher initiatic (and political) ranks of Ismailism. But Hasan-i Sabbah soon found himself embroiled in a struggle for power. The Caliph Mustansir had appointed his eldest son Nizar as successor. But a younger son, al-Mustali, was intriguing to supplant him. When Mustansir died, Nizar - the rightful heir - was imprisoned and murdered.

Hasan-i Sabbah had intrigued for Nizar, and now was forced to flee Egypt. He eventually turned up in Persia again, head of a revolutionary Nizari movement. By some clever ruse he acquired command of the impregnable mountain fortress of Alamut ("Eagle's Nest") near Qazvin in Northwest Iran.

Hasan-i Sabbah's daring vision, ruthless and romantic, has become a legend in the Islamic world. With his followers he set out to recreate in miniature the glories of Cairo in this barren multichrome forsaken rock landscape.

In order to protect Alamut and its tiny but intense civilization Hasan-i Sabbah relied on assassination. Any ruler or politician or religious leader who threatened the Nizaris went in danger of a fanatic's dagger. In fact Hasan's first major publicity coup was the murder of the Prime Minister of Persia, perhaps the most powerful man of the era (and according to legend, a childhood friend of Sabbah's).

Once their fearful reputation was secure, the mere threat of being on the eso-terrorist hit-list was enough to deter most people from acting against the hated heretics. One theologian was first threatened with a knife (left by his pillow as he slept), then bribed with gold. When his disciples asked him why he had ceased to fulminate against Alamut from his pulpit he answered that Ismaili arguments were "both pointed and weighty".

Since the great library of Alamut was eventually burned, little is known of Hasan-i Sabbah's actual teachings. Apparently he formed an initiatic hierarchy of seven circles based on that in Cairo, with assassins at the bottom and learned mystics at the top.

Ismaili mysticism is based on the concept of ta'wil, or "spiritual hermeneutics". Ta'wil actually means "to take something back to its source or deepest significance". The Shiites had always practised this exegesis on the Koran itself, reading certain verses as veiled or symbolic allusions to Ali and the Imams. The Ismailis extended ta'wil much more radically. The whole structure of Islam appeared to them as a shell; to get at its kernel of meaning the shell must be penetrated by ta'wil, and in fact broken open completely.

The structure of Islam, even more than most religions, is based on a dichotomy between exoteric and esoteric. On the one hand there is Divine Law (shariah), on the other hand the Spiritual Path (tariqah). Usually the Path is seen as the esoteric kernel and the Law as the exoteric shell. But to Ismailism the two together present a totality which in its turn becomes a symbol to be penetrated by ta'wil. Behind Law and Path is ultimate Reality (haqiqah), God Himself in theological terms - Absolute Being in metaphysical terms.

This Reality is not something outside human scope; in fact if it exists at all then it must manifest itself completely on the level of consciousness. Thus it must appear as a man, the Perfect Man - the Imam. Knowledge of the Imam is direct perception of Reality itself. For Shiites the Family of Ali is the same as perfected consciousness.

Once the Imam is realized, the levels of Law and Path fall away naturally like split husks. Knowledge of inner meaning frees one from adherence to outer form: the ultimate victory of the esoteric over the exoteric.

The "abrogation of the Law" however was considered open heresy in Islam. For their own protection Shiites had always been allowed to practise taqqiya, "permissable dissimulation" or Concealment, and pretend to be orthodox to escape death or punishment. Ismailis could pretend to be Shiite or Sunni, whichever was most advantageous.

For the Nizaris, to practise Concealment was to practise the Law; in other words, pretending to be orthodox meant obeying the Islamic Law. Hasan-i Sabbah imposed Concealment on all but the highest ranks at Alamut, because in the absence of the Imam the veil of illusion must naturally conceal the esoteric truth of perfect freedom.

In fact, who was the Imam? As far as history was concerned, Nizar and his son died imprisoned and intestate. Hasan-i Sabbah was therefore a legitimist supp-orting a non-existent pret-ender! He never claimed to be the Imam himself, nor did his successor as "old Man of the Mountain," nor did his successor. And yet they all preached "in the name of Nizar". Presumably the answer to this mystery was revealed in the seventh circle of initiation.

Now the third Old Man of the Mountain had a son named Hasan, a youth who was learned, generous, eloquent and loveable. Moreover he was a mystic, an enthusiast for the deepest teachings of Ismailism and sufism. Even during his father's lifetime some Alamutis began to whisper that young Hasan was the true Imam; the father heard of these rumors and denied them. I am not the Imam, he said, so how could my son be the Imam?

In 1162 the father died and Hasan (call him Hasan II to distinguish him from Hasan-i Sabbah) became ruler of Alamut. Two years later, on the seventeenth of Ramazan (August  in 1164, he proclaimed the Qiyamat, or Great Resurrection. In the middle of the month of Fasting, Alamut broke its fast forever and proclaimed perpetual holiday.

The resurrection of the dead in their bodies at the "end of time" is one of the most difficult doctrines of Islam (and Christianity as well). Taken literally it is absurd. Taken symbolically however it encapsulates the experience of the mystic. He "dies before death" when he comes to realize the separative and alienated aspects of the self, the ego-as-programmed-illusion. He is "reborn" in consciousness but he is reborn in the body, as an individual, the "soul-at-peace".

When Hasan II proclaimed the Great Resurrection which marks the end of Time, he lifted the veil of concealment and abrogated the religious Law. He offered communal as well as individual participation in the mystic's great adventure, perfect freedom.

He acted on behalf of the Imam, and did not claim to be the Imam himself. (In fact he took the title of Caliph or "representative".) But if the family of Ali is the same as perfect consciousness, then perfect consciousness is the same as the family of Ali. The realized mystic "becomes" a descendant of Ali (like the Persian Salman whom Ali adopted by covering him with his cloak, and who is much revered by sufis, Shiites and Ismailis alike).

In Reality, in haqiqah, Hasan II was the Imam because in the Ismaili phrase, he had realised the "Imam-of-his-own-being." The Qiyamat was thus an invitation to each of his followers to do the same, or at least to participate in the pleasures of paradise on earth.

The legend of the paradisal garden at Alamut where the houris, cupbearers, wine and hashish of paradise were enjoyed by the Assassins in the flesh, may stem from a folk memory of the Qiyamat. Or it may even be literally true. For the realized consciousness this world is no other than paradise, and its bliss and pleasures are all permitted. The Koran describes paradise as a garden. How logical then for wealthy Alamut to become outwardly the reflection of the spiritual state of the Qiyamat.

In 1166 Hasan II was murdered after only four years of rule. His enemies were perhaps in league with conservative elements at Alamut who resented the Qiyamat, the dissolving of the old secret hierarchy (and thus their own power as hierarchs) and who feared to live thus openly as heretics. Hasan II's son however succeeded him and established the Qiyamat firmly as Nizari doctrine.

If the Qiyamat were accepted in its full implications however it would probably have brought about the dissolution and end of Nizari Ismailism as a separate sect. Hasan II as Qa'im or "Lord of the Resurrection" had released the Alamutis from all struggle and all sense of legitimist urgency. Pure esotericism, after all, cannot be bound by any form.

Hasan II's son, therefore, compromised. Apparently he decided to "reveal" that his father was in fact and in blood a direct descendant of Nizar. The story runs that after Hasan-i Sabbah had established Alamut, a mysterious emissary delivered to him the infant grandson of Imam Nizar. The child was raised secretly at Alamut. He grew up, had a son, died. The son had a son. This baby was born on the same day as the son of the Old Man of the Mountain, the outward ruler. The infants were surreptitiously exchanged in their cradles. Not even the Old Man knew of the ruse. Another version has the hidden Imam committing adultery with the Old Man's wife, and producing as love-child the infant Hasan II.

The Ismailis accepted these claims. Even after the fall of Alamut to the Mongol hordes the line survived and the present leader of the sect, the Aga Khan, is known as the forty-ninth in descent from Ali (and pretender to the throne of Egypt!). The emphasis on Alid legitimacy has preserved the sect as a sect. Whether it is literally true or not, however, matters little to an understanding of the Qiyamat.

With the proclamation of the Resurrection, the teachings of Ismailism were forever expanded beyond the borders imposed on them by any historical event. The Qiyamat remains as a state of consciousness which anyone can adhere to or enter, a garden without walls, a sect without a church, a lost moment of Islamic history that refuses to be forgotten, standing outside time, a reproach or challenge to all legalism and moralism, to all the cruelty of the exoteric. An invitation to paradise.

From Peter Lamborn Wilson's Scandal: Essays in Islamic Heresy, published by Autonomedia, PO Box 568, Williamsburg Station, Brooklyn, NY, USA

http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/Articles/SecretsoftheAssassins.html

The Secret Order of al-Hashishin (Part One)

Top Secret - Classified - For The Board - The Elite - The Initiates          

Are these the words of the all-powerful boards and syndicates of the earth? These are the words of liars cowards collaborators traitors. Liars who want time for more lies, Cowards who can not face your "dogs" your "gooks" your "errand boys" your "human animals" with the truth, Collaborators with Insect People with Vegetable People. With any people anywhere who offer you a body forever. To shit forever. For this you have sold out your sons. Sold the ground from unborn feet forever. Traitors to all souls everywhere.You want the name of Hassan i Sabbah on your filth deeds to sell out the unborn?

What scared you all into time? Into body? Into shit? I will tell  you; "the word." Alien Word "the."  "The" word of Alien Enemy imprisons "thee"  in Time, In Body. In Shit. Prisoner, come out. The great skies  are open, I Hassan i Sabbah rub out the word forever. If you I  cancel all your words forever.

William S. Burroughs, Nova Express (1964)

The Hashshashin (also Hashishin, [haššāšīn]), or Assassins were a religious sect (often refered to as a cult) of Ismaili Muslims from the Nizari sub-sect with a militant basis, thought to be active in the 8th to 14th centuries as a mystic secret society specializing in terrorising the Abbasid elite with fearlessly executed, politically motivated assassinations (the word "assassin" is generally thought to derive from their name). Their own name for the sect was al-da'wa al-jadīda (الدعوة الجديدة) which means the new doctrine and they called themselves fedayeen from the Arabic fidā'ī which means one who is ready to sacrifice their life for a cause — that term has the modern connotation of "freedom fighter". The name Hashshashin was given to them by their Muslim enemies.

Their Muslim contemporaries were extremely suspicious of them; in fact they were described in terms (Batini) which suggested they were only nominally Islamic. This constant religious estrangement would eventually see them go so far as allying with the Occidental Christians against Muslims on a number of occasions. It is even suggested that they attempted to negotiate their own conversion to Christianity with Amalric I of Jerusalem, but were foiled by Templar machinations, perhaps on the basis that this would exempt them from onerous taxes on non-Christians in the Holy Lands, which were profitable for the knightly orders. Plainly, their connection to mainstream Islam was tangential at best.

The group transformed the act of murder into a system directed largely against Seljuk Muslim rulers that had been persecuting their sect. They were meticulous in killing the targeted individual, seeking to do so without any additional casualties and innocent loss of life, although they were careful to cultivate their terrifying reputation by slaying their victims in public, often in mosques. Typically they approached using a disguise; their weapon of choice a dagger, rejecting poison, bows and other weapons that allowed the attacker to escape. However, under no circumstances did they commit suicide, preferring to be killed by their captors.

...

Although apparently known as early as the 8th century, the foundation of the Assassins is usually marked as 1090 when Hasan-i Sabbah established his stronghold in the mountains south of the Caspian Sea at Alamut. A Yemeni emigrant and an Ismaili Shiite, Hasan set the aim of the Assassins to destroy the power of the Abbasid Caliphate by murdering its most powerful members. Hasan ibn Sabbah was also known as "The Old Man of the Mountain", however, this is likely to have been a mistake in translation, since "Old Man" is the literal translation of "Sheikh". Much of the current western lore surrounding the Assassins stems from Marco Polo's supposed visit to Alamut in 1273, which is widely considered mythical (especially as the stronghold had reportedly been destroyed by the Mongols in 1256).

Benjamin of Tudela who traveled one hundred years before Marco Polo mentions the Al-Hashshashin and their leader as "the Old Man." He notes their principal city to be Kadmus.

The group inspired terror out of all proportion to their scant numbers and territory. The members were organized into rigid classes, based upon their initiation into the secrets of the order. The devotees constituted a class that sought martyrdom and followed orders with unquestioned devotion, orders which included assassination. Because of the secretive nature of the order, it has often been invoked in conspiracy theories.

Most of the victims of the Assassins were Sunni Muslims. There were some extremely highly placed victims including Nizam-ul-Mulk. It is known that Saladin, incensed by several almost successful attempts on his life, besieged their chief Syrian stronghold of Masyaf during his reconquest of Outremer in 1176 but quickly lifted the siege after parley, and thereafter attempted to maintain good relations with the sect. The sect's own extant (and doubtless embellished) accounts tell of the Old Man himself stealing into Saladin's tent in the heart of his camp, and leaving a poisoned cake and a note saying "You are in our power" on Saladin's chest as he slept. Another account tells of a letter sent to Saladin's maternal uncle, vowing death to the entire royal line, perhaps no idle threat; whatever the truth of these accounts (and likely it will remain a mystery) he clearly heeded their warning, and desisted. Alone amongst the Islamic heretics Saladin so despised, the batinis would be granted leeway.

Christians were largely untouched by the depredations of the Assassins; it was not until the middle of the 12th century that they had even really heard of them, although Raymond II of Tripoli and Conrad of Montferrat, King of Jerusalem, were victims. The Assassins of Conrad may have even been hired by Richard the Lionheart.

The power of the Hashshashin was destroyed by the Mongol warlord Hulagu Khan, but several Ismaili sects share something of a common lineage, such as the sect led by the Aga Khan. During the Mongol assault of Alamut, the library of the sect was destroyed, along with much of their powerbase, and thus much of the sect's own records were lost; most accounts of them stem from the highly reputable Arab historians of the period.

The word "assassin" in the English language has come to denote a murderer, usually with a political motive.

Although Legends states that Hasan-i Sabbah, original leader of the Nizari Isamailies, used Hashish to grant "visions" of paradise to his followers, it is highly unlikely, given the fact that the use and effects of Hashish were well known during that time period, and frequent subjects of Imams in the Mosques. Marco Polo, who traveled through the area, gave an account similar to this:

Recruits were promised Paradise in return for dying in action. They were drugged, often with materials such as hashish (some suggest opium and wine as well) then spirited away to a garden stocked with attractive and compliant women (houris) and fountains of wine. At this time, they were awakened and it was explained to them that such was their reward for the deed, convincing them that their leader, Hassan-i-Sabah, could open the gates to Paradise.

In the very beginning Hasan was not likely to use doped and kidnapped individuals, as their fundamentalism prevented them from using any kind of drug, or making misbelievers become martyrs, as his operatives. But as Ismaili power grew and several Fortresses and their accompanying villages came under Ismaili rule, Hasan and his followers are believed to have begun recruiting and training assassins from birth.

Some commentators make comparisons between the historical Assassin movement and Al Qaeda, noting the similar tactics of terror, political assassination, the promise of reaching paradise, as well as the cult-like mysticism around Osama Bin Laden [ also a Yemeni ]. Al Qaeda is also a secret society, with its leaders purportedly hiding in mountain hideouts. Martyrdom is also a key aspect of Al Qaeda's tactics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashshashin