To: "S.T.R.I.C.K" <strick@....net>
From: jyhadx@...........com (Sam Smeed)
Subject: Re: S.T.R.I.C.K

What does S.T.R.I.C.K stand for?

>Sam Smeed wrote:
>
>> silent tristero rules in covert kindgdoms!
>>
>> Why? Please explain.
>
>hey jyhad,
>dault (feyerabend) will have to explain.
>


Glad to:

First of all, go to your local library (while it's still free) and get your
hands on a copy of _The Plays Ford, Webster, Tourneur and Wharfinger_,
published by the Lectern Press, Berkeley, CA.  Try to find the 1957 edition
(it's a reprint.  I think the first ed. was a textbook).  This book is
important because it provides the only published version of Wharfinger's
play "The Courier's Tragedy" taken from the 1687 folio edition (most other
published versions come from the Quarto, several years later) which
replaces the closing lines of the fourth act, "Who once has crossed the
lusts of Angelo," with "Who's once been set his tryst with Trystero."
        As far as Jacobean revenge plays go, Courier's Tragedy is no
masterpiece.  But it is remarkable in that this (called by some corrupt)
interchange of refrains is the first known mention of the Tristero.  The
full Stanza:

He that we last as Thurn and Taxis knew
Now wrecks no lord but the stiletto's Thorn
And Tacit lies the gold once knotted horn.
No hallowed skein of stars can ward, I trow,
who's once been set his tryst with Trystero.

Dr Emory Bortz, in his 1967 _Plotting the Stealth and Intrigue of the
Jacobean Revenge Plays_ lays out a convincing argument for the Folio over
the Quarto refrains by comparing and contrasting what the audience's
understanding of each would have been in Wharfinger's day:  "The 'hallowed
skein of stars' is God's will.  But even that can't ward, or guard,
somebody who has an appointment with Trystero.  To merely cross the lusts
of Angelo would provide any number of avenues for escape:  leave the
country, for example.  Angelo is only a man.  But the brute Other, that was
something else again.  Evidently Wharfinger was convinced that, to his
audience, Trystero would symbolize the Other very well."

Now, it can be argued (as some have done) that all such references are
aberrations with little or no historical founding, and scant literary
reference.  True.  But this fails to take into acoount the truly repressive
clampdown on the flow of information during the political height of the
Thurn and Taxis postal monopoly (the repurcussions of which, it can be
argued, are still in evidence today.  "Going Postal" being merely the most
egregious example).  The scant but constant fringe references to the
Trystero (later Tristero) throughout the recorded history of the Thurn and
Taxis (and even, it has been argued, such pre-modern postal organizations
e.g. the Pony Express) is made al the more interesting by the almost
complete hole of silence surrounding the name in the more commonly known
histories of the politics of central and western europe through the
eighteenth century.  The silence begs the question:  has there been, for
five centuries, a viscious and arcane plot to undermine the established
postal service (in europe and possibly even in this counrty)?  And if so,
is this "silence" a direct result of fierce and constant repression on the
part of those who controlled the ebb and flow of facts through most of that
period (Thurn and Taxis itself, and later systems based on the Taxis model)
or, more insidiously, has the silence been generated by the Trystero
itself?

Information historian Gossett Englebart may have unknowingly prefaced just
these questions when he wrote of the advent of email and it's possible
effects on the global information economy (an article in _The Economist_
reviewing John Naisbett's _Future Shock_). Could it be that what has seemed
all along like a safe, decentralized process of spontaneous generation and
imrovements (starting  with the Arpanet and extending now through the World
Wide Web, and particularly the ready availability of Eudora Light) has
really been a well coordinated, all out and perhaps final assault upon an
information management monopoly whose influences have been felt since the
early days of western civilization?  One could put these questions to
Gosset's cousin, Douglas Englebart (co-developer of the Arpanet and, not
coincidentally, credited creator of the "mouse", the hardware architecture
that made "surfing the web" a conceptual possibility literally within the
grasp of millions) but he isn't talking.  Perhaps he, too, knows the value
of silence.

It is entirely possible (the evidence is there to support the proposition)
that there is a long standing and not-coincidental connection between
several key events in our recent history:  specifically (and already
mentioned) the rise of a viable, "decentralized" long distance information
courier system based on the Arpanet model (email); the dramatic rise in
deaths related to postal workers going over the edge ( there is evidence of
connection between between the government backers of arpanet in the sixties
and the MKULTRA counterintelligence program which suporvised mind control
and destabilization experiments around the same time (see particularly the
July 1989 issue of the "Covert Action Information Bulletin", pp 15-21); the
"revamping " of the Coca Cola formula in the mid 80's, and its near
immediate withdrawl and reintroduction as "Coke Classic" with a slightly
altered formula (there was a particularly interesting study recently on the
effect of high doses of corn syrup sweetening agents on the prevalence of
psychotic breaks in occupations of high stress and repetitious activities.
One interesting conclusion was the finding that service workers _such as
postal clerks_ were particularly susceptable); and the collapse of the
Soviet Union (with one result being that suddenly the much coveted Georgian
and Ukranian corn harvests were allowed to flood the global market in the
interests of "stimulating the economy").  One could definitely make a case
for it.  The evidence is there, if you dig.

Hope that clears things up.

Yours ever,
David