"Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so. How often have we not seen the truth condemned! It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history." - Carl Jung
Trump encouraged his supporters to fight and watched in joy as they rioted. Here is the final piece of evidence that shows Trumps plan to be violent on January 6th was intentional and is ongoing so more domestic terrorism by Trump supporters, fueled by the GOP and Fox News, is expected by intelligence.
Roger Stone, an ally to former President Donald Trump, has appeared in several court filings related to the riot that took place at the US Capitol Building on January 6.
Even the phrase, "stop the steal" is a Roger Stone phrase going back to 2016. Its becoming pretty clear that Trump coordinated the January 6th insurrection against a democratic election with Roger Stone. i.e. everything Trump did on January 6th, before and after, surrounding the lies about the election, are intentional.
Hayes: “But, you know, it's not crazy to suppose the President didn't want him on the bench, he wanted him in the game -- to do what he's done his entire career”
CHRIS HAYES (HOST): It wasn't just that the president gave the speech in which he told people to go to the Capitol, or that he spent a month or more creating the conditions for a violent mob to attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power. It's that the people of the core of this conspiracy, as revealed day after day in more and more charging documents, are all like, one note away from the president, or his circle.
I mean, look at this picture to see who the Oath Keepers were with the day before this happened. Look at that, it's Roger Stone.
And Roger Stone, let's be clear here -- Roger Stone is not some ancillary figure in Trump world. Remember, Roger Stone was Donald Trump's first political advisor. He was the guy there at the beginning when Trump launched his campaign in 2015.
According to federal prosecutors and to Stone himself, Stone played an instrumental role backchanneling with Wikileaks in 2016, right? Wikileaks, who of course was publishing the hacked and stolen documents taken by the Russian government.
And Stone played a role in communicating with Wikileaks as part of the first effort to cheat and create an uneven playing field for Trump's victory. It was, you know, successful, at least in the Electoral College.
And then subsequent to that, let's remember that Roger Stone lied about it to Congress in order to apparently cover up whatever he was up to in 2016. And he was convicted for those -- indicted and convicted -- for those lies by a jury of his peers.
And then, what happened? Well, he went away to prison but the president intervened, first by pushing the Department of Justice to reduce the sentence and then by first commuting Stone's sentence and then by directly pardoning him. There was no justification for it.
I mean, Trump was just helping out a buddy, right? And it didn't make much sense to commute that sentence in July -- it was the summer. He had to take a big political hit. But Roger Stone's whole life is quite proudly nothing but dirty tricks -- he is the guy with the Nixon tattoo on his back.
He is also the guy who claims credit for helping to instigate the infamous Brook Brothers riot back in 2000. That of course, would be the last time that an intimidating mob of right-wing activists invaded a government building in order to stop the orderly administration of the democratic process.
It's not crazy to think that is why Roger Stone was sprung by the President, why he was freed before the election. I mean, we don't know. Stone hasn't said, Donald Trump hasn't said. But, you know, it's not crazy to suppose the President didn't want him on the bench, he wanted him in the game -- to do what he's done his entire career.
Remember how the slogan around January 6 was, "Stop the Steal?" That's a Roger Stone phrase. Roger Stone coined that back in 2016.
And so, is it surprising to see Roger Stone -- again, long-time associate of the President, the President's henchman, the guy who lied on behalf of the President, who was then pardoned by the President -- to see him around D.C. around the insurrection, getting security from the people prosecutors say were part of the criminal conspiracy to stop Congress from doing its democratic duty?
Now Trump is trying to rewrite history, in the age of video, with the help of Fox News. Seeking to provide cover;
“I was there on January 6th – the insurrectionists didn’t give a damn if I was a Democrat or a Republican or a staffer or a visitor. They were out for an attack,” says Rep. Dean on the reality of what happened at the Capitol riot, as opposed to the lies coming from the right.
Of course, these lies will lead to more violence and Trump, the GOP and Fox News knows this;
Intel report warns of further violence sparked by Trump election fraud lies - Rachel Maddow shares details from a new report from the U.S. intelligence community that warns that, among other things, "narratives of fraud in the recent general election" and "the emboldening impact of the violent breach of the U.S. Capitol" ... "will almost certainly spur some [domestic violent extremists] to try to engage in violence this year."
Trump's in-plain-sight embrace of Russia gets obscured by the Trump news avalanche. But long before running for president, Trump relied on Russian money. Trump also consistently defends Russia and attacks U.S. officials investigating Russia.
In this tweet you see Trump courting Putin;
Here you see Trump defending Putin and Russia's attack on America to help Trump;
Trumps efforts to follow Russia's lead and cover for them is being adopted by Russia first American party, the GOP;
Rachel Maddow notes an particularly specific warning from the director of the ODNI's National Counterintelligence and Security Center that "pro-Russia Ukrainian parliamentarian Andriy Derkach is spreading claims about corruption" as part of Russia's efforts to manipulate the 2020 U.S. election against Joe Biden and in support of Donald Trump. Derkach has not only been using Rudy Giuliani to spread his claims, but Republican senators Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley have also been receptive to the Russian tactic.
Nunes actually went so far as to make friends with a Russia agent...
Rachel Maddow points out that the new intelligence community report on foreign interference in the 2020 election names Andriy Derkach as an agent of Russia, and wonders why Republicans aren't more troubled over keeping Devin Nunes as the ranking member on the Intelligence Committee given his unexplained interactions with Derkach.
... and Nunes even went on Hannity to spread Russian talking points (Russia is covered from 6:50 onwards)
Amid a terrifying rise in anti-Asian violence in this country, and following the grim news that six Asian women were murdered in Atlanta last night, Stephen Colbert pleads with Americans to recognize our common humanity and remember that this nation of immigrants is meant to be a welcoming place for everyone.
Trump and the GOP got their talking points from Russia and covered it up!
Trump has gone out of his way to protect Russia no matter what Russia does. Trump and the GOP even lied about intelligence in their effort to cover for Russia's attacks on American democracy (which now the GOP are implementing as well).
Intel report shows exact opposite of Trump officials' claims on China election intrusion - Rachel Maddow shows how Trump officials repeatedly accused China of running a massive campaign to interfere in the 2020 election even though intelligence gathered during the Trump's time in office (some of which is now declassified) concluded the exact opposite.
This has been a successful operation for Russia by its carefully cultivated assets;
Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset over 40 years and proved so willing to parrot anti-western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow, a former KGB spy has told the Guardian.
Yuri Shvets, posted to Washington by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, compares the former US president to “the Cambridge five”, the British spy ring that passed secrets to Moscow during the second world war and early cold war.
Now 67, Shvets is a key source for American Kompromat, a new book by journalist Craig Unger, whose previous works include House of Trump, House of Putin. The book also explores the former president’s relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
“This is an example where people were recruited when they were just students and then they rose to important positions; something like that was happening with Trump,” Shvets said by phone on Monday from his home in Virginia.
...
The ex-major recalled: “For the KGB, it was a charm offensive. They had collected a lot of information on his personality so they knew who he was personally. The feeling was that he was extremely vulnerable intellectually, and psychologically, and he was prone to flattery.
...
“It was unprecedented. I am pretty well familiar with KGB active measures starting in the early 70s and 80s, and then afterwards with Russia active measures, and I haven’t heard anything like that or anything similar – until Trump became the president of this country – because it was just silly. It was hard to believe that somebody would publish it under his name and that it will impress real serious people in the west but it did and, finally, this guy became the president.”
Trump’s election win in 2016 was again welcomed by Moscow. Special counsel Robert Mueller did not establish a conspiracy between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. But the Moscow Project, an initiative of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, found the Trump campaign and transition team had at least 272 known contacts and at least 38 known meetings with Russia-linked operatives.
Republicans take spanking from Trump, ask for more - Rachel Maddow marvels at the abject kowtowing by Republicans to Donald Trump, even as he insults them and hijacks their fundraising for himself, they still thank and praise him and pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago while Democrats go about the business of governing the country.
"Very deep." Wrote Thomas Mann at the opening of his mythologically conceived tetralogy, Joseph and His Brothers. "is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?" And he then observed: "The deeper we sound, the further down into the lower world of the past we probe and press, the more do we find that the earliest foundations of humanity, its history and culture, reveal themselves unfathomable." Primitive Mythology by Joseph Campbell page 5
The first identifiably human - identified, through the art of the hunt/butchery and killing with weapons - already must have had a markedly human culture he/she was living in with an accepted level of clothing/body-decoration, mythology/symbology and hunting-gathering traditions. Hunting is very old and religions/spirituality associated with it must be very old too. Scavenging and gathering plants and tending to plants as a food source is probably even older.
Researchers working in Ethiopia's remote Afar region have recovered evidence that humans began using stone tools and eating meat far earlier than previously thought. The finds—cut-marked animal bones dating to nearly 3.4 million years ago—push the origin of butchery back a stunning 800,000 years. Furthermore, these ancient butchers were not members of our own genus, Homo, but the more primitive Australopithecus, specifically A. afarensis, the species to which the celebrated Lucy fossil belongs.
Some aspects of culture can be found going back so far back its impossible to tell where it began. This is because, where people go they carry what they value the most with them.
"Through land-nama, "land naming" or "land taking," the features of a newly entered land are assimilated by an immigrant people to its imported heritage of myth." i.e. "The new land, and all the features of the new land, are linked back as securely as possible to the archetypes - the spiritually, psychologically, and sociologically significant archetypes - of whatever mythological system the people carry in their hearts. And through this process the land is spiritually validated, sanctified, and assimilated to the image of destiny that is the fashioning dynamism of the people's lives." - Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology, Page 199
One aspect of that past inheritance appears to be the hearth, where fire has a religious function in the household or community itself. How the fire is used changes but the emphasis on its connection to the divine/spirituality remains the same.
But then why the hearths? It has been suggested that they were used to heat the caves, and this, indeed, would seem to have been the only practical end to which they were turned. However, even if this were the case, one would still have to ask by what accident Sinanthropus could have learned that the blast of a forest, prairie, or volcanic fire could have been turned to such congenial use.
A possible answer is provided by the Ainu ritual of the mountain bear ceremonially entertained during his night-long conversation with the goddess of the hearth; for the fire in that context was not a mere device for the provision of heat but the actual presence of a divinity. The earliest hearths, too, could have been shrines, where fire was cherished in and for itself in the way of a holy image or primitive fetish. The practical value of such a living presence, then, would have been discovered in due time.
The suggestion is rendered the more likely, furthermore, when it is considered that throughout the world the hearth fire remains to this day a sacred as well as secular institution. In many lands, at the time of marriage, the kindling of the hearth in the new home is a crucial rite, and the domestic cult comes into focus in the preservation of its flame. Perpetual flames and votive lights are known practically everywhere in the developed religious cults. The vestal fire of Rome, with its attendant priestesses, was neither for cooking nor for the provision of heat. And we have already learned of the holy fire made and extinguished at the times of the installation and murder of the god-king.
The hearth, then; the mountain sanctuary of the bear; and the ceremonial burial with grave gear, animal sacrifice, and perhaps occasional ritual cannibalism - these, in the period of Neanderthal Man, supply our chief clues to the religious life of a broad middle paleolithic province, documented from the Alps to the Arctic Ocean, eastward to Japan and south to Indonesia. But where the mythogenetic zone and where the diffusion zones within this vast area may have been we do not know, though, surely, the earliest points of reference thus far discovered are the bear-skull sanctuaries of the Central European peaks.
The reason I have this above extract here is to show the religious significance fire took on AND that it was associated with the goddess of the hearth and is another tradition that has carried on for a serious number of years into the unfathomable past. This means a hearth goddess may be one of humanities oldest religious cults, along with the hunting ones and the head hunting ones, that probably all existed simultaneously at some time in the past with different groups of people.
Since the discovery of the Homo Erectus female statue we can take Joseph Campbells outdated view and stretch it back further indicating that Goddess cultures/religions might be one of humanities first religions along with the religions of the hunt:
The richest finds of the first of these two complexes have turned up in the Ukraine, though the range extends westward to the Pyrenees and eastward to Lake Baikal. Provisionally, therefore Ukraine may be designated as the mythogenetic zone; and this liklihood is rendered the more evident when it is considered that many of the basic elements of the complex were to reappear in the neolithic goddess-cults of the fifth millennium B.C., directly to the south, on the opposite flank of the Black Sea."
Another cult/religion that must have existed for a long time is the cult of the headhunt whose practitioners, even today, open up skulls as Neanderthals did tens of thousands of years ago.
Sinanthropus, it will be recalled, who had already captured fire as early as c. 400,000 B.C., was a cannibal; so also Neanderthal Man: we have mentioned the opened skulls at Krapina and Ehringsdorf. But in Java too a number of such opened skulls have been found among the remains of Solo (Ngandong) Man, neanderthal's Oriental contemporary; and these were opened precisely in the way of the skulls of the present day headhunters of Borneo. Neanderthal and Solo Man, therefore, may have practiced some form of ritual cannibalism in connection with an early version of the headhunt; and if so, the formula should perhaps be carried back even to the period of Plesianthropus, who killed and beheaded men as well as beasts - in which case, this grim cult might be proposed as the earliest religious rite of the human species.
Neanderthals started burying their dead possibly as 300,000 years ago in southern Europe, and indisputably since 130,000 years ago.
As Joseph Campbell writes on page 66;"the idea of the earth as mother and of burial as a re-entry into the womb for rebirth appears to have recommended itself to at least some of the communities of mankind at an extremely early date. The earliest unmistakable evidences of ritual and therewith of mythological thought yet found have been the grave burials of Homo neanderthalensis, a remote predecessor of our species, whose period is perhaps to be dated as early as 200,000 – 75000 B.C. Neanderthal skeletons have been found interred with supplies (suggesting the idea of another life), accompanied by animal sacrifice (wild ox, bison, and wild goat), with attention to an east-west axis (the path of the sun, which is reborn from the same earth in which the dead are placed), in flexed position (as though within the womb), or in a sleeping posture – in one case with pillow of chips of flint. Sleep and death, awakening and resurrection, the grave as a return to the mother for rebirth; but whether Homo neanderthalensis thought the next awakening would be here again or in some world to come (or even both together) we do not know."
Of course, simply because the first burials we find are Neanderthal doesn't mean that other species of humans going back to Homo Erectus didn't believe in an after life. In India, for millennia, burning bodies has been seen as the right way and cremation is gaining popularity today. In other cultures, such as the Tibetans, you find a burial by feeding the body to vultures. Both traditions, burning and feeding a dead body to scavengers, could be alot older than the burial tradition.
"The second mythology of this important era, that of the great temple-caves, is definitely centered in northern Spain and southern France - the so-called Franco-Cantabrian zone - and though the cult may have commenced as a provincial form of some earlier mask ritual of the men's dancing grounds developed in areas to the south, it achieved here a character and ritual investment of such force that the area must be regarded as our first precisely pin-pointed mythogenetic zone; one, furthermore, from whose truly marvelous amplifications of the symbology of the labyrinthine chambers of the soul every one of the high religions and most of the primitive, also, have received instruction. Page 397
Spears over 380,000 years have been found in a German coal mine. Wood dissolves over time yet , by luck, we have found 400,000 year old spears so its only logical that wooden spears must be humanities oldest weapons. Add to that stone tipped spears over 500,0000 years old that have also been found should seal that fact (we are clearly looking at 2 very different ancient cultures here). So, an important note I want to make here is that cultures probably developed in wood and left no traces behind till they started working with stone. So a culture once formed in stone - something that will last and will be easy to find - may have incredibly older roots in wood;
And finally, as to the question of other possible mythogenetic zones and ritual syndromes developed during the course of this long period, whether in Africa, western Europe, or Southwest Asia, nothing has yet been found that could be read as evidence. However, it is entirely possible that the cults of the female statuettes and temple caves, which appear abruptly in the following period, were in the process of formation in this earlier, darker day, but have left no evidence; for where wood is abundant as a material for sculpture, and leaves, bark, feathers etc., for ritual masks, no remains survive. Some part of the great primary field of the tropics, therefore, may have been the mythogenetic zone for the earlier stages of the cults that abruptly appear, already fully formed, in the documented late paleolithic areas of the golden age of the Great Hunt. Pages 394-395
Another thing that doesn't survive time very well is fire use but we have found evidence of fire going back to Homo Erectus, so fire may be a very old religious symbol indeed.
Science Daily: Evidence that human ancestors used fire one million years ago:Scientists have identified the earliest known evidence of the use of fire by human ancestors. Microscopic traces of wood ash, alongside animal bones and stone tools, were found in a layer dated to one million years ago at the Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa.
Also, the female statutes (also called Venus figurines) and temple caves Campbell is referring to is from around 30,000 BC. which in his time was the oldest date these finds could be attributed to:
Stage IV, then (c. 30,000 - 10,000 B.C.) reveals the mythology of the naked goddess and the mythology of the temple caves. Page 397
For primitive man, as Campbell put it, to change a form (a ritual or even a tool such as an axe) is to destroy its magical or spiritual power so the forms continue for an incredibly long time.
Indeed, some excavations (for example, those of L. S. B. Leakey at Olduvai Gorge in the north of Tanganyika) have revealed in perfect sequence every stage of the evolution of the hand ax from the pebble tools of man’s first beginnings to the finely finished, really elegant axes of the period of the Neanderthal. And if the view into the depth of the well of time that we obtained in the South of France was great, this of Olduvai is simply beyond speech. But what is even more amazing than the profundity of the prehistoric past here illustrated is the broad diffusion over the face of the earth of exactly the same ax forms as those of Paleolithic East Africa. As Dr. Carleton S. Coon has remarked: “During the quarter of a million years when man made these tools, the styles changed very little, but what changes were made are to be seen everywhere… This means that human beings who lived half a million years ago were able to teach their young skills that they had learned from their fathers in most minute detail, as living Australians and Bushmen do. Such teaching requires both speech and a firm discipline, and the uniformity of hand-ax styles over wide areas means that members of neighboring groups must have met together at stated intervals to perform together acts that require the use of these objects. In short, human society was already a reality when the hand-ax choppers of the world had begun to turn out a uniform product.
All of which speaks volumes for the force and reach of diffusion in the primitive world.
Moreover, what is perhaps more remarkable still is that some of the most beautiful of the symmetrically chipped hand axes of this period are as much as two feet long, a size too cumbersome for practical use; the only possible conclusion being that they must have served some ceremonial function . Professor Coon has suggested that such axes were not practical tools but sacred objects, comparable to the ceremonial tools and weapons of later days, “used only seasonally, when wild food was abundant enough to support hundreds of persons at one place and one time. Then the old men,” he supposes, “would cut the meat for the assembled multitude with some of these heavy and magnificent tools,” after which, like the magically powerful tjurungas of the Australians, the sacred implements would be stored in some holy place. Primitive Mythology by Joseph Campbell, Page 364
So, a culture adds to itself and reinterprets symbols and meanings but cultural artifacts once added to a culture will often continue as long as that culture exists. Especially in the primitive world.
Which brings me to the oldest religion that exists today, that we have video of. The tradition may have picked up some more recent influences but the basic form will still be the same, so watching this ritual is watching something that is immensely old. Maybe something that has existed in some form or another since Homo Erectus, if not earlier.
"The Cult of the Cave Bear" is a specific hunting religious cult/tradition so long that it stretches from the age of the Neanderthals (and probably earlier to Africa), to its last remnants in Japan today. The cult of the cave bear. The minimum age of this cult of 40,000 years given how old the archaeological find is:
Joseph Campbell writes in Primitive Mythology: In Dreachenloch and Wildermannlisloch little walls of stone, up to 32 inches high, formed a kind of bin, within which a number of cave-bear skulls had been carefully arranged. Some of these skulls had little stones arranged around them; others were set on slabs; one, very carefully placed, had the long bones of a cave bear (no doubt its own) placed beneath its snout, another had the long bones pushed through the orbits of its eyes.
The cave in Germany, Petershohle, near Velden, which was explored by Konrad Hormann from 1916 to 1922, had closet like niches in the walls, which contained five cave-bear skulls – and once again the leg bones.
Now the cave bear, it must be told, for all its size, was not an extremely dangerous beast. In the first place, it was not carnivorous but herbivorous, and in the second place, like all bears it had to go to sleep in the winter. But during the ice age the winters were long. The bears would go into the caves to sleep and, while there, could be readily killed. In fact, a tribe of men living in the front part of a cave with a couple of sleeping bears in the rear would have had there a kind of living deep freeze.
...
Vestiges of a circumpolar Paleolithic cult of the bear have been identified throughout the arctic, from Finland and Northern Russia, across Siberia and Alaska, to Labrador and Hudson Bay: among the Finns and Lapps, Ostyaks and Vogul, Orotchi of the Amur river region, Gilyaks, Goldi, and peoples of Kamchatka; the Nootka, Tlingit, Kwakiutl, and others of the Northwest American Coast; and the Algonquins of the Northeast. And so here is a northern circumpolar hunting continuum in counterpoise to tha broad equatorial planting belt which we traced from Sudan to the Amazon in Part Two. And just as there a certain depth of time was indicated, going back to perhaps c. 7500 B.C., the dawn of the proto-neolithic, so here too there is a depth in time – but how very much greater! For in the high Alps, in the neighborhood of St. Gallen, and again in Germany, some thirty miles northwest of Nurnberg, near Velden, a series of caves containing the ceremonial arranged skulls of a number of cave bears have been discovered, dating from the period (it is almost incredible!) of Neanderthal Man.(Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology page 339)
Page 349: Several other themes also emerges from the evidence reviewed. The orientation east-and-west of the skeleton at La Chepelle-aux-Saints points to a solar reference; as does likewise the position of the handsomely buried rickety 4 year old in the much later grave at Malta. The crouch position of the two adult skeletons at La Ferrassie, as well as of the child at Malta, suggests the fetal position for rebirth; though, on the other hand, they may represent an attempt so to bind the ghost that it should not return to terrify those left behind. For the burial rites of the Ainus, as well as those of the more primitive Aranda of Central Australia, illustrate vividly a primitive fear of the dead, which, as we have already said, is in radical contrast to the attitude expressed in the rites of the primitive planters of the Sudan. The North African hunter's ritual of defense against the killed panther's evil eye, and the curious thrusting of the bones through the eyes of the paleolithic bear, suggest, by analogy, that in that remote period, too, fear was felt of the revengeful magic of the slain beast. And finally, we note that as the animals of the hunt changed, so too did the focal figure of the rites. The earliest animal master, apparently was the cave bear, whose counterpart in Africa was the lion, leopard or panther; whereas in what was perhaps a later context we find the mammoth; and then bison.
The mythology of the hunt probably kept a similar form throughout the ages with only the primary animal changing. In other words, the basic religious/ritual form being followed for the cave bears probably is much older and goes back to Africa where it was probably used for lions or panthers:
In short, then, a prodigious continuum has been identified, deriving in time at least from the period of the Riss-Wurm inter-glacial, about 200,000 B.C. It is represented in its earliest known forms in the high-mountain Neanderthal caves of Germany and Switzerland, but then also, millenniums later, in the caves of Homo sapiens of southern France. Its range in space extends, on the one hand, northeastward throughout the circumpolar sphere of the primitive arctic hunters and collectors, where its ritual of the Master Bear is continued to the present day, and, on the other hand southward into Africa, where the great felines - lion, leopard, panther, etc. - are in the role that is played by the bear in the north. In the survey of the main outlines of the archaeology of our subject, in Part Four, we must ask whether, actually, the African forms of the cult may not go back even further in time than the bear cult of the Neanderthal, so that the shift of role would have been rather from lion to bear then from bear to lion - according to the principle of land-nama, described earlier. For the present, however, our concern can be only: (1) to identify in the broadest terms the cultural zone of the cult of the animal master; (2) to see it in contrast to the younger mythological zone of the maiden sacrifice; and (3) to distinguish both primitive (or relatively primitive) contexts, as far as possible, from the much more securely documented prehistoric assemblages of the basal and high neolithic. from which emerged the great civilizations of the hieratic city state. page 348
i.e. The Bear hunting cult/religion probably originates from the South and a much older culture (Africa). The only differences is that the primary animal changes depending on what is available and the accompanying body of myth and ritual simply becomes attached to this new animal through a process coined as "land naming". This is how a myth can carry forward for so many millenniums.
"Through land-nama, "land naming" or "land taking," the features of a newly entered land are assimilated by an immigrant people to its imported heritage of myth." i.e. "The new land, and all the features of the new land, are linked back as securely as possible to the archetypes - the spiritually, psychologically, and sociologically significant archetypes - of whatever mythological system the people carry in their hearts. And through this process the land is spiritually validated, sanctified, and assimilated to the image of destiny that is the fashioning dynamism of the people's lives." - Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology, Page 199
Put that all together and we suddenly have video evidence of a ritual and body of myth so old its like looking at one of the earliest religions of humans. Given that its basic form may go back even earlier to Africa and the lion (which the Sphinx may have originally been) we may be looking at one of humanities oldest rituals in the hunting religions;
Iyomande: The Ainu Bear Festival A documentary film which records the religious bear festival ceremony of the animistic Ainu people in Japan. Includes songs
Campbell: The main idea would seem to be that there is no such thing as death, but simply, as we have said, a passing back and forth of the immortal individual through a veil. The idea was well expressed in the words of the Caribou Eskimo shaman Igjugarjuk: "Life is endless. Only we do not know in what form we shall reappear after death." This idea is apparent also in the Ainu prayers both at the bear sacrific and at teh funeral rite. To the bear: "Precious little divinity... please come again and we shall again do you honor of a sacrifice"; and to the man: "Take hold of [your staff] firmly at the top, and walk securly, minding your feet." The grave gear and sacrificed animals found in the graves in the Dorgone, at La Ferrassie, Le Moustier, and La Chapelleaux-Saints, surely indicate something of the kind for the period of Neanderthal. And though we do not know whether burials of such a type were unusual or unusual at that time, the fact remains that in these cases, at least, a life beyond death was envisioned. Was the handsome hand ax in the grave at Le Moustier a souvenir to be presented to the god or ancestors in the other world? We do not know. And would the dead return at will, or remain with the ancestors. This we do not know either. But there was another world, there can be no doubt. [Primitive Mythology -Pages 348]
Campbell: 1a. With an identified center in central Europe dating from the third inter-glacial period and a range extending, on the one hand, eastward to Labrador, and, on the other. southward to Rhodesia, an abundantly documented mythology of the hunt has flourished, of such a consistent character that we may well speak - indeed have to speak - of an area of diffusion. It is impossible to name with certainty the basic traits of this mythology in its earliest phase. In such contemporary manifestations as the Ainu bear sacrifice and burial rite, one has to recognize, besides the earliest paleo-Siberian strain of tradition, the probability of a very much later neolithic, Sino-Mongolian, Japanese, and even recent Russian influences. Nevertheless, certain patterns of thought and ritual appear in these traditions that can be readily matched in other parts of the great continuum, and these - if we do not press them too far - can be taken to represent in the main general stance of the mind in this domain, which has fundamentally colored the web of whatever culture has come into form within its sphere of force. [Primitive Mythology -Page 349]
What I want to leave you with is this thought. Given the genetic link of the west to Neanderthals and the East to Denisovans (even in Tibet)... are we living, in some way, the spiritual/mythological heritage of ancient humans? The genetic distribution divide almost exactly matches the mythological divide that Joseph Campbell describes, in his Masks Of God, as Occidental and Oriental mythology. Its just a little to the east as far as genetics goes;
Svante Pääbo: DNA clues to our inner neanderthal - Sharing the results of a massive, worldwide study, geneticist Svante Pääbo shows the DNA proof that early humans mated with Neanderthals after we moved out of Africa. (Yes, many of us have Neanderthal DNA.) He also shows how a tiny bone from a baby finger was enough to identify a whole new humanoid species.
The ranges of Neanderthals and Denisovans, with genetic sharing going on between Denisovans and us as early as 14000 years ago;
The amount of DNA we share with the two ancient human domains, depending on which way we were migrating;
Media Matters’ 2018 Misinformer of the Year is 21st Century Fox Executive Chairman Lachlan Murdoch. Our annual designation is given to the media figure, news outlet, or organization that stands out for promoting conservative lies and smears in the U.S. media. Murdoch was selected for his role in overseeing Fox News, the right-wing network founded by his father Rupert, who previously received the title. Several of the network’scurrent and formercommentators have previously been named Misinformer of the Year.
Lachlan Murdoch has consistently lied about what his network does and what it is, even as the people who work for him have breached the norms of their profession in increasingly flagrant ways and become ever more entangled with the Trump administration.
Rupert Murdoch bears responsibility for the Trump COVID-19 response that reportedly “disgust[s]” him
Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch made their decision. They chose money and ideology over responsibility. And a lot of Americans are dead because of it.
Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch is reportedly “disgusted” by President Donald Trump’s failed handling of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. He and his son Lachlan Murdoch, who currently oversees the network, are also partly responsible for it.
Murdoch has complained to confidants that Trump “is not listening to advice about how best to handle the pandemic” which is “creating a never-ending crisis for his administration,” according to a Thursday account from The Daily Beast.
It’s true that Trump has ignored the counsel of experts throughout his failed handling of the pandemic, and the result has been a calamitous death toll from an unsuppressed pandemic with no end in sight. But the advice Trump took instead came from Murdoch employees at Fox.
Trump is obsessed with Fox and treats its right-wing personalities as his closest advisers. The hours of Fox programming he watches each day shape his worldview. His administration’s policies are informed by what the network’s hosts tell him, both through his television and in private conversations.
The coronavirus has proved no different. Virtually every presidential action on the pandemic has reflected Fox’s malign influence.
Fox told Trump that the virus was nothing to worry about -- just another “hoax” by journalists and Democrats who wanted to destroy him -- so he downplayed and ignored it for crucial weeks as it spread through the country.
Fox told Trump that unproven antimalarial drugs were a miracle cure for COVID-19, and he put them at the center of his administration’s therapeutic push. The federal government has stockpiled tens of millions of doses of a drug that is apparently ineffective in stopping the virus.
Fox told Trump that face masks were both ineffective at preventing the spread of the coronavirus and a sign of Democratic authoritarianism, and he scorned them. Masks became a culture war issue that divided the parties, rather than a vital tool.
Fox told Trump to prioritize “reopening” the economy over stopping the spread of the virus and he obliged them. Seven months later, the virus is still not contained, and the economy is still faltering.
Fox told Trump that Scott Atlas, a radiologist and conservative think-tanker who regularly appeared on the network to downplay the virus, was a credible expert, so he hired him as a White House coronavirus adviser. The administration’s policy “is increasingly being shaped” by Atlas, who has championed a “herd immunity” approach that experts say could lead to a catastrophic death toll.
The Murdochs elected a president who would dance to their network’s tune, and now Rupert is “disgusted” that it hasn’t worked out.
All of this was predictable, and I know that because I predicted it.
“A significant number of Americans are likely to die -- prematurely and unnecessarily -- because Trump is taking advice from Fox News,” I warned on March 9, when the recorded count of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. was only 500 and the network was telling the president it was nothing to worry about.
Two weeks later, with the death toll still numbered in the hundreds and the president following Fox personalities by praising the coronavirus-fighting properties of antimalarial drugs and pushing to swiftly end business closures, I wrote that the network “needs to get its hosts under control -- or take them off the air.”
“If Fox does neither, the network’s leaders will bear partial responsibility for the calamitous death toll that is likely to ensue,” I warned. “Fox's executives need to act -- if they don’t, the results could be catastrophic.”
Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch made their decision. They chose money and ideology over responsibility. And a lot of Americans are dead because of it.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has released more emails from 2015 and 2016 between White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller — at the time, an aide to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) — and then-Breitbart editor Katie McHugh. In addition to showing Miller’s support for a number of far-right conspiracy theories, such as the “great replacement,” the emails reveal that Miller also took aim at a notable conservative target: Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch.
Miller’s criticism of Murdoch shows just how much the tycoon has lost control of right-wing media narratives. Instead, it’s now his son Lachlan Murdoch heading up the Fox Corp. and supporting the network’s descent into outright white nationalism.
In July 2015, Rupert Murdoch posted a tweet that was critical of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s statements on immigration:
“Actually, no,” Miller commented in an email to McHugh with the subject line “don’t believe your lying eyes,” which linked to the tweet. The email also linked to an article by Jason Richwine, who had previously resigned from the Heritage Foundation over his racist writings against Hispanics.
Lachlan Murdoch, by contrast, sent personal text messages of support to Fox’s Tucker Carlson, whose show has been a center of anti-immigrant commentary, after the prime-time host declared in December of 2018 that immigration “makes our own country poorer, and dirtier, and more divided.”
More recently, Carlson said that “illegal immigrants are tethering themselves here with millions of anchor babies.” Likewise, in Miller’s own emails to Breitbart, the future White House adviser decried: “Not only will the U.S.-born children of future illegal immigrants and guest workers be made automatic U.S. citizens, but their foreign-born children will too because, as [former Republican House Majority Leader Eric] Cantor said, ‘Our country was founded on the principle.’”
There were brief periods in the past in which Fox News would clean up its anti-immigration rhetoric to be more in line with Rupert Murdoch’s own positions. But those days are so long gone, they seem quaint in comparison to the conservative media of today.
Fox News has traditionally treated bigotry as a core part of its business model. But since the political rise of President Donald Trump, the network’s commentators have adopted talking points that had previously been the province of hardcore white supremacists. The reported manifesto of the gunman who murdered 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, TX, on Saturday is all but indistinguishable from transcripts ripped from its prime-time shows. This shift is not an accident but a programming decision, one the network has pursued even as its hosts’ racist rhetoric has triggered costly ad boycotts.
Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch are ultimately responsible for this toxic programming. Rupert, chairman of parent company Fox Corp., laid the foundation for the shift. He then ceded much of the day-to-day authority to Lachlan, who maintained that heading as the Fox Corp.’s executive chairman and CEO.
Fox is feeding its audience a poisonous stew of bigoted, xenophobic conspiracy theories because that is what the Murdochs want the network to do.
A New York Times Magazine investigation found that in recent years, the Murdochs’ media empire has been “instrumental in amplifying the nativist revolt that was reshaping governments not just in the United States but also across the planet,” with their outlets fueling xenophobia and ethnonationalism to achieve political aims in the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Australia.
In the United States, that meant taking advantage of a rare opportunity to reshape Fox News following the removal of network co-founder Roger Ailes and the swift departures of longtime network hosts Bill O’Reilly, Greta Van Susteren, and Megyn Kelly.
Carlson, a Rupert favorite, had already amassed a staunch following among white nationalists for his denunciations of diversity and fervent airing of white grievances.
If you want to stop the Fox host, focus on the money behind him
Tucker Carlson is responsible for the vile rhetoric he spews to the Fox News audience every night. But it is Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan, the billionaires who pay his salary, who decided to make him the unaccountable face of their right-wing propaganda network.
So when he denigrates pregnant active duty U.S. service members, then lies about the massive backlash he received from rank-and-file members of the military, veterans, the brass, and the Pentagon in order to paint himself as a victim, he does so knowing the Murdochs will have his back.
Carlson is now Fox’s lodestar. He has its highest-rated show, his commentary is regularly injected into the rest of the network’s coverage, and his work is the lynchpin of Fox’s new push to generate sign-ups for its Fox Nation streaming platform. Like his colleague Sean Hannity during the Trump administration, Fox treats Carlson as too big to fail, too important to restrain.
The Murdochs made Carlson the face of Fox even as advertisers have abandoned his program. Its commercial blocks now effectively consist of spots for a right-wing pillow company; ads the network is purchasing from itself; and tumbleweeds. Thursday night’s show featured a single ad break with a total of six commercials, one of which was a Fox promo.
Changing the calculus for the Murdochs means ensuring that Carlson’s brand is no longer an asset to their other revenue stream.
That means encouraging corporations that don’t want their own brands tarnished with his bile to remove their advertising from the entire Fox network. And it means that people who don’t want to be inadvertently supporting Carlson should push their cable carriers to stop financing his bigotry.
The Murdochs care about money. The best way to reduce Carlson’s malignant influence is to make him less profitable for them.
Amid growing pressure on advertisers to distance themselves from Fox News, Lachlan Murdoch, executive chairman of 21st Century Fox, told CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin that critics should be more tolerant of what airs on the network. Talking to Sorkin at The New York Times’ DealBook conference, Murdoch also claimed that the “biggest critics of Fox News are not watching Fox News,” and that President Donald Trump does not like Fox News, but rather “dislikes us less than everyone else.”
Murdoch refused to take any responsibility for the company that he runs, instead offering a load of horseshit for an elite audience. While Murdoch claimed that Fox News just runs banal conservative programming in prime time, the network is actually broadcasting white nationalistpropaganda indistinguishable from the likes of David Duke. And while Murdoch refused to acknowledge a revolving door between Fox News and the Trump White House, Trump is dialing upFox hosts from the White House, and Fox is hiring people who leave the administration. Murdoch can pretend that Fox News is a normal news organization -- and he wasn’t really pressed on the matter because Sorkin isn’t terribly familiar with what happens on the network -- but the reality is that Fox News is a right-wing propaganda machine.
Murdoch repeatedly pointed to Fox anchor Shep Smith to deny that the network is a pro-Trump operation. The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple discussed yesterday why this is laughable. In fact, the network repeatedly airs claims that Smith already debunked. Contrary to Lachlan’s assertions, Smith does not redeem Fox News. Instead, he reveals Fox News for the cesspool it is.
Murdoch also highlighted Martha Maccallum as an example of straight news coverage, which is evenmorebaffling if one is familiar with her Fox shows.
An April 3 story in TheNew York Times Magazine reported that Fox Corp. Chairman Lachlan Murdoch reassured Fox News host Tucker Carlson of his support after Carlson was criticized for espousing white supremacist talking points on immigration.
In December, Carlson said that immigration “makes our own country poorer, and dirtier, and more divided.” Carlson received widespread condemnation and advertisers fled his show.
Lachlan Murdoch is full of shit - After Lachlan Murdoch writes that “Black lives matter” and that FOX is committed to diversity, Fox News pushes the same old bigotry. Read more.
The Murdochs Attack Facts And Spread Lies All Around Their World Including The Land They Are From, Australia. Its What They Do! They Are Like Real Life Super Villains!
Rupert Murdoch's wife, Wendi Deng, captivates the U.K. with her Ultimate Fighting skills and her clear displeasure with those who question her husband.
Hayes: “You are not in Rupert’s club. You’re not in Rupert’s social circle. You viewers out there in TV land are where they throw out the chum for the common people”
CHRIS HAYES (HOST): Rupert Murdoch does not want to die a premature death. But that is not the message the rest of us are getting from the multi-billion dollar enterprise Rupert Murdoch owns, and has made him so wealthy.
Because you see, you are not in Rupert's club. You're not in Rupert's social circle.
You viewers out there in TV land are where they throw out the chum for the common people. Where they disingenuously stoke skepticism and fear in the most cowardly way possible, by posing as brave truth-tellers in the guise of just flinging nonsense at people and leading to more people getting sick. This has been true throughout the pandemic.
There is a nightly drumbeat on Fox News, specifically from Tucker Carlson, that is undermining our best chance to get out from under this disease.
...
Obviously, Tucker knows there are easily accessible answers to these questions about the vaccines. He's not stupid. He just thinks his audience is, and so he feeds into fears by lying that shadowy people are refusing to answer these legitimate questions that are out there.
