Before The Legend of Rasputin.....there was the Legend of Mackandal

Rasputin

Chicks dug this dude?

In reality, Rasputin was a cooky flake with a long beard who the Russian monarchy kept around to "heal" them with his quackery and nonsense. They gave this charlatan high office in the political ranks of their regime. They gave him a lot of money and respected him until he got a little too much political sway in the royal family and then they killed him.

Legend has it, that in 1916 Rasputin was poisoned with cakes and wine but consumed them unharmed. He was then shot 4 consecutive times but didn't even give a care, then he was stabbed, beaten up, rolled in a carpet and thrown into the river. He broke free from the carpet but finally drowned in the cold Neva River.

Here's the tl;dr form of the story told in Disco form:

Mackandal

Many years prior, 158 years prior to be exact, another "hard to kill" myth was born around a Haitian slave named Franswa Makandal. Factual history shows Mackandal was an escaped slave who resisted capture and organized resistance to French slave owners in Haiti. I'm going to relay the myth of Mackandal compiled from many sources but since its a myth and only loosely based on fact, I'm just going to paraphrase what I've read on him and maybe even take some creative liberties (as such).

Mackandal was born in the Congo in the early 18th century. The king of Congo treated his people as commodities and sold Mackandal and others to French slavers who brought them to St. Domingue (present day Haiti). He was purchased from the slave traders by the Lenormand family and put to work on their plantation.

During his daily menial hard labor, Mackandal pocketed any piece of reading material he came across and self-taught himself to read french. He started with basic material and soon was fluent in french. He got his hands on books on french law, history, and newspaper articles. He knew what the situation was, and how unjust the world was. In the news he would read articles about Padre Jean and other slaves who were fighting french authority.

While working on the sugar press machine which turned sugar cane into white granular sugar, Mackandal had his right arm cut off. For failing to complete his chores that day, he was given 50 lashes with a leather whip. Bloody, broken, and close to death...Mackandal risked his life to escape and succeeded.

Mackandal took refuge in the hills. The difficult terrain and extreme tropical heat gave his pursuers great difficulty in re-capturing him. He made a natural fortress out of the hills and gave refuge to other escaped slaves seeking shelter. By 1748 he had formed a band of marooned ex-slaves who acquired food and supplies by raiding plantations. They made use of Mackandal's knowledge of poisons to kill slave owners discreetly.

In 1758 The Mack assessed that he had enough freedom fighters and enough poison for a wide-scale attack on the french. Sadly, before the attack was to take place one of Mackandal's allies was captured, tortured, and gave away the location of the rebels. Mackandal was then caught and escorted by the french military to Le Cap where he would be executed.

fuck this shit!

The french liked to take the re-captured escaped slaves into the town square and burn them at the stake, while other slaves watched, to show them what happened to rebels. Mackandal broke free from his bonds and began to flee the square but was apprehended and brought back. The french tied him to the stake and lit it on fire again but this time the wood burned before Mackandal, his bonds were broken and he again fleed. They caught him and tried again, this time when the fire was about to consume him he chewed up a single hair he was keeping between his teeth, he chewed it into 100 pieces and spit out 100 poisonous frogs. Mackandal's body burned to ash...the soldiers began stepping on the poisonous frogs and crushing them before they could poison anyone. The frogs stuck out their long tongues before dying and spat out 100 yellow flies each who flew away into the night. Mackandal was dead.

Mackandal's final form...?

The voudou houngan Zamba Boukman sparked the Bois Caiman rebellion 33 years later (1791), involving heroes such as Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines. The French foreign legion sent by Napoleon Bonaparte to quell the uprising were devasted by the tropical heat and the yellow flies that swarmed the region. The yellow flies carried yellow fever and the disease killed an estimated 27,000 french troops including Napoleon's brother in law.

Were those yellow flies the same that sprang from the mouths of those frogs the day Mackandal was executed?

Opinions on the Occupy Movement (part 1)

on War of Imagery

The McMedia always seems to refer to the occupiers as not knowing what they are doing or what they want. To me, this movement in a nutshell is an awareness campaign to highlight global economic corruption, and I think it's at least getting a dialogue going on the matter.

Observers of the movement, for the most part, don't involve themselves in that dialogue, they choose to let their conclusions fall into two simple categories. They conclude either that:

A: "look at all these bums camping in the street, don't they know the economy made them those cool Ipads? They should get off the street and go pay homage at Steve Jobs tomb and beg forgiveness"















B: "Why are the police arresting them and beating them up? Are we actually living in a police state? This sucks."
















These are the two most popular opinions and with good reason. These are the two groupings of images you see most concerning the Occupy Movement...and it has literally become a war of images.

Concerning conclusion "A", I do feel despite Apple's horrid sweat shop labor practices that they are indeed a ligitamate business that researches technology and creates employment. Personally, I have never owned an Apple product (except for a free download of Quicktime to watch .mov files) but I don't think it makes the Occupiers hypocrites for having these products.

I think conclusion "B" is a little more damning than "A", holding down men and women and beating them is a much more shocking image than some pictures of I-shit. The police make themselves look like the worst possible sort of thug when they act like that. They look like government ordained street gangs out there. (Edit: These images were mostly spread by foreign news networks to make America look bad it seems).

on Ronnie-boy Paul

Ronnie-boy

The most odd development in the Occupy Movement (in the US anyway) has been the cult following which has sprung around Bible Belt politician Ron Paul.

Ron Paul is very fringy, and a beloved member of the John Birch Society. On abortion for example, he believes the moment the sperm hits the egg it is considered a human (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctity_of_Life_Act).

In 1964 he wrote congress to convince them not to pass the Civil Rights Act which gave equal rights and opurtunities to black Americans. Both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X died trying to make these human right gains and help blacks to not be treated like second class citizens. It's very odd to be against equal rights. In fact, in 2004 on the anniversary of the Civil Right Act...Ron Paul addressed congress with this:

"...contrary to the claims of the supporters of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the sponsors of H.Res. 676, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not improve race relations or enhance freedom. Instead, the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty."

(Source: http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul188.html)

Passing a bill which prohibited businesses from refusing to serve black customers apparently was bad according to Ron Paul because it limited those businesses' freedom. Give me a break.

Take another example of the John Birch Society's interpretation of "freedom." In the 1970's women caught the equal rights fever that was going around and various women's groups wanted a 1923 law proposed by Alice Paul (one of the chicks who spear headed the women suffrage movement in 1920 which won female Americans the right to vote) to be ratified. This law was the Equal Rights Amendment which simply stated that, "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex." (http://www.house.gov/house/Amendnotrat.shtml). The main opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment was the John Birch Society who felt that this amendment would "limit freedom."

pronounced: Shlaff-Lee

The John Birch Society assigned the loveable Phyllis Schlafly to be the leader of the anti-ERA squad, and the main rhetorical claim used was the same old "it will limit your freedom" which is basically the JBS mantra. Elizebeth Kolbert gives a good summary of Schlafly's opposition to the ERA in a 2005 New Yorker article,

"American women, she wrote in the Phyllis Schlafly Report, were blessed to live in a country where Christian traditions of chivalry still held—'a man’s first significant purchase (after a car) is a diamond for his bride'—and where free enterprise was continually improving life for the weaker sex. 'The great heroes of women’s liberation are not the straggly haired women on television talk shows and picket lines,' she asserted, but 'geniuses' like 'Clarence Birdseye, who invented the process for freezing foods.' Why, Schlafly demanded, should women 'lower' themselves to equal rights 'when we already have the status of special privilege?' Leaders of the pro-E.R.A. campaign found it hard to take such arguments seriously: according to one contemporary account, copies of the Report became collectors’ items among feminists, acquired for their comic value."

(Source: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/11/07/051107crbo_books) 

The John Birch Society sees change of any sort as the collapse of its image of America. The U.S.A. of yore is a story book in their minds, a picturesque beautiful place with eagles and all kinds of nice shit. Their vision of U.S. history in their cute little brains doesn't include images of the slavery, or civil war, or public hangings, or the KKK....just eagles and frozen food. They have nostalgia for an age which never existed.

Ron Paul wants the gold standard back for that reason alone, because that's the way it used to be when America was "normal." He wants everything back to the old ways when negroes and women couldn't vote and everyone prayed to Jesus...to Ron that's "normal." Returning to the "old ways" isn't going to stop corruption, I'm sorry but returning to gold is not the answer.

Having Ron Paul as president of a country would be really fucked up.

Zomb-A-Show

It's a Zomb-A-Show Strava-Ganza!!!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxKOo98O8_k