S01E90: Access Evil
Tarot: https://tarotx.net/tarot-card-meanings/linestrider-tarot/nine-of-wands.html
Freaks of Hazard:
SirBemrose booked us for the SWEET spot for this special edition post No Agenda episode! Check out his show here at https://angrytechnews.com/, and if you want more podcasts than you could shake an RSS feed at head over to http://listen.noagendastream.com/noagenda!
Tjunta’s monthly donation of $3.33 lands and it’s a SWEET suace with dem nuggies! We got a brand deal! Get some gummies for your tummies at https://www.mouseybear.com/! Tjunta also busted out these HOTTIES this morning!
A new Freak of Hazard stumbled into the green room, and on the way in swapped our RSS feeds to allow us SWEET streaming action with scissors on Curiocaster. Fuck Yes. Check out the Podcast Index for a good time!
SirSpencer faxed over some info packets on one of our stories tonight. Very legal.
MKateUltra sent a series of clips along with one song from makeheroism that we will be featuring during Intermission over the next couple weeks. George is such a SWEET SWEET boy.
NetNed found some SWEET Adam Curry Isos!
Kitty Tarleton has sent in by far the SWEETest Joe Biden iso perhaps of all time!
SirVo, cottingin, and SeeDubs for the amazing work done with Gal!
Dame Boolysteed sent in $13.92 and said:
‘Shine on you crazy diamonds’ BehindtheSch3m3s. Excellent episode 89, music and the show notes.
“Kowloon Walled City” was a very small Chinese slum complex which existed within, but was independent from, British-controlled Hong Kong.
Quick cap on Chinese history and culture…
The word for “City” in Chinese means “Wall”. Walls are sacred and very important in Chinese culture, and are the very embodiment of civilization and architecture.
Hong Kong territory can be described as a tropical archipelago, a series of hilly islands and mainland jutting out into the Sea, at the very southern tip of the great nation. Hong Kong proper is nestled between the largest of these islands, named Hong Kong Island, and the mainland that lies less than a mile away over a small, deep channel called Victoria Harbour. This harbor is protected from the brutality of the South Chinese Sea and provides strategic bottlenecking in the event of attack or invasion.
I use the term “mainland” loosely, as the northern chunk of Hong Kong I’m referring to is separated yet again from mainland China by another formidable river stretching East from the Shenzhen Bay.
Before the English came, Hong Kong was a remote location mainly used by rural farmers and pirates. However, the government of the Sung Dynasty built a salt mine and fort on what is now the Kowloon Peninsula, which will be the location of our tale that unfolds a thousand years later.
The English arrive, and desire Hong Kong for its location among other things. The first of England’s imposed Opium Wars begin in 1841. In response, the Chinese under the Qing dynasty began fortifying their settlement in Kowloon with a stone wall, and by 1847 it became known at Kowloon Walled City, recognized as a distinct and independent city from Hong Kong, although the entirety of the city was estimated to be merely 6.5 acres, or roughly 1/100th of a square mile.
By 1868, and after a few Opium Wars, Hong Kong had been ceded to Britain in an arrangement that would leave the city and territory in British dominion for over a century. It is at this time that the history of the city as we know it begins in earnest. The Chinese have their view of their role in the city’s development as much as the British.
The city grows into one of the great commercial hubs of the world. Kowloon, which was once a rural peninsula inhabited with farmers and pirates, is now filled and modernized into one of the most populous and in-demand neighborhoods in the world.
However, despite all these maneuverings by the British, due to a series of errors and confusions during negotiations, the small Fort known as the Walled City of Kowloon never officially became part of the British territory. It remained in the purview of the Chinese government and remained so until the British escalated things by attacking the fort in 1899, only to find it abandoned.
After over a year of arguing, both sides somehow lost interest in the City, and with unclear jurisdiction, the place began to deteriorate and became a tourist attraction – „a little bit of Old China. Schools and churches were built inside the City, and the number of squatters were growing greatly to the annoyance of the British. However, they left it alone for the most part.
The city did not see any major conflict, even through the Chinese Civil War of the early 20th Century, until 1940 when the Japanese occupied Hong Kong during WW2. During this time, the cheng, or wall, of Kowloon Walled City itself, was dismantled and used for the construction of an airport runway at the nearby Kai Tak Airport, Hong Kong’s international airport. Kowloon had a relatively new wall compared to others in the area, and so it was not spared.
After the end of WW2, the Chinese Civil War continued where it left off, and Nationalist China made efforts to reclaim the Walled City. With the Government once again claiming the City as its legitimate enclave, the place began to fill up with an unprecedented amount of refugees escaping the Fallout of the Chinese Civil War and the Communist takeover (1945-1949). The empty territory was quickly inhabited with new dwellers/squatters, who did not need the physical protection of the city walls (as had been the case in centuries past) but the legal right for dwelling in the territory outside Mainland China. The Chinese Nationalist Government, who ultimately had to abandon mainland China and exile itself to the island of Taiwan (where it remains today), then made an agreement with the British that the fort de jure remain in their jurisdiction while held only nominally by the British.
Following this, Crime - such as prostitution, gambling, and dealing of opium, heroin and other drugs - flourished with the development of an unsupervised and hazardous construction of buildings. It was also a booming time for unlicensed shops and businesses such as food producers or doctors – especially dentists.
This place became known by many names, such as “The Dark Spot of Hong Kong” and “the City of Darkness.”
I mentioned Hong Kong’s airport earlier. Kai Tak was an insane airport, which required specially-trained pilots to land in a mountainous and skyrise packed environment. Kowloon City was directly in the path of the runway, and so was limited to 14 stories. All 14 levels were packed with shoddy, ply-wood built houses and garbage-strewn halls of abandoned and leaking piping. A small courtyard offset the center of the block, which provided a relatively desirable district of the city, while the rest consisted of rooms and passageways of a supreme disorganization and squalor. The unfamiliar visitor could easily get lost stumbling up lightless stairways and through meandering passages. The dimensions of this monstrous super-building are documented with maps constructed by urban explorers and locals of the time. Though the wall disappeared, a new unofficial wall was made out of a combination of judicial circumstance and high-rise buildings enclosing the City. There were no border patrols well up until the 80’s, and it was easy to enter this strange place.
The 'City of Darkness' was recorded as the most densely populated place on the planet, far denser than any of its competitors. Compare for example the data provided by Liauw: „
KWC average 13,000 persons per hectare
New York City 91 persons per hectare
Challenging living conditions of the City were no surprise. Narrow alleys filled with garbage (and even dead bodies: „Some days there would be so many bodies you could hardly walk through.“ [Wilkinson: 68]), the smell, the constant dripping of water, and the often absolute lack of sunlight, together with criminal activities, gave the city its reputation.
The city remained in this condition all the way into the 80’s and 90’s, as the end of the British lease for the Hong Kong Territories was approaching. The Sino-British Joined Declaration signed in the mid 80’s resulted in the return of the whole of Hong Kong to the Chinese government by 1997. In relation to this shift in power, a decision was also being made about the 'dark spot' of Hong Kong – Kowloon Walled City. Both the British and the Chinese governments simultaneously announced in January 1987 the decision to demolish the whole area. Former residents of the building were evicted and provided with new subsidized dwellings. By 1992, the place had been fully emptied and prepared for demolition. Jackie Chan filmed the 1993 movie Crime Story in the abandoned city, and the film is today considered a classic. The City was completely destroyed by the end of ‘93, and a park and nicer buildings were constructed in its wake.
Since then, the city has become an iconic ideal for gutterpunk, dystopian, urban environments, and remains a source of fascination and inspiration in popular culture, much to the chagrin of the poor souls who actually had to live there. It has inspired such works as Ghost in a Shell which itself inspired The Matrix which itself has inspired a generation of dystopian fiction in virtually all mediums worldwide since its inception. Whether we know it or not, this crazy joint is a major player in all of our current ideals of a seductive dystopian environment. It made shitholes cool.
Pictures from the Elton John concert
Tate Death Gun Called ‘Favorite’ Manson Weapon
The gun used at the Tate Murders was said to be the favorite gun of Manson. Danny DeCarlo stated on the stand that the .22-caliber revolver was one of many at Spahn ranch. DeCarlo was a former weapons instructor for the Coast Guard, a member of the family, and was the so-called armorer.
Out of the .303 British Enfield rifle, a .22 rifle, a 20-gauge shotgun, a 30-caliber carbine, a 12-gauge riot gun, an M-l carbine, a submachine gun, the .22 was the firearm Manson carried with him daily and fired the most. “Manson got the gun, DeCarlo said, by “trading my truck for it.” He said the gun disappeared in early August and he didn’t know what happened to it”.
Boy, 11, Found Tate Murder Gun, Had Hard Time Convincing Police
Steven Weiss found the .22 revolver on a hill behind his house in Sherman Oaks. “I brought it to my dad by picking it up by the tip of the barrel because I wanted to preserve the fingerprints,” the sandy haired sixth grader testified. “I was careful not to touch the rest of the gun”.
“The police officer called to the home by the boy’s father wasn’t as careful, the youth said and “touched it with both hands all over the gun.” The officer, the boy said, then emptied the gun of two live cartridges and seven shell casings, fingering them all.”
Three and a half months later thee boy called the police to remind them the revolver was possibly in their evidence room in Van Nuys. It was the highest profile murder weapon and there was a huge search out for it.
“The first gun in the series -- a .22 caliber nine-shot Hi Standard Ned Buntline revolver -- was the most important, because it was also the most widely used and deadly. In early July of 1969 Charles Manson shot the drug dealer Bernard Crowe with it in an act if self-defense while attempting to mollify Crowe after he was angered by being ripped off by Charles "Tex" Watson. That presumed fatal shooting set off the violent chain of events which eventually led to the murders on Cielo and Waverly Drives. The same revolver was used to lethal effect at the former address, where Watson used it to shoot and bludgeon three people to death. “
“The origins of this particular firearm are murky. According to Vincent Bugliosi in Helter Skelter, "The gun, serial number 1902708, had been among a number of weapons taken from the Archery Headquarters in El Monte, California, during a burglary on the night of March 12, 1969. According to [Randy] Starr, he obtained it in trade with a man known only as "Ron." Manson was always borrowing the gun for target practice, and Randy finally gave it to him in trade for a truck that had belonged to Danny DeCarlo." (Manson implied in his 1986 interview with Charlie Rose that the "Ron" who was the source of this gun was then President Ronald Reagan.)”
Manson’s Got A Gun 1 I Do No Wrong - This part of the interview touches briefly on Manson’s childhood. Life is not in a schoolbook.
Manson's Got A Gun 2 DimA/DimB - Manson dresses down Rose about parallel worlds before saying he doesn’t know how to survive.
Manson’s Got A Gun 3 I Am Love - And Love is intelligence.
Manson’s Got A Gun 4 You Dig What I'm Saying - Manson gets animated about that the people he’s carrying, and return all he got was the removal of his rights.
Danzig talks on his new band, Rick Rubin, and more.
Danzig and Adam Curry 1 Man’s Struggle - The whole topic and nothing but the full topic when it comes to good and bad in people. It’s history.
Danzig and Adam Curry 2 In The Bible - A wild ride into the Pre-Bible Satan scandal.
OPENER
INTERMISSION
In The Hall Of The Ye-Ye King (Agatlebauer)