Programmed to Chill

note from the archivist:

Jimmy did not write episode notes for the remaining episodes

artwork by Dakota (@DEEP_RED_BELLS) and Mr. Laaksonen

Episode 89 Songs:

Race For the Prize by the Flaming Lips

Waiting for Superman by the Flaming Lips

Dream On by Aerosmith

note from the archivist:

Jimmy did not write episode notes for the remaining episodes

Songs:

Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! by Tex Williams

Chan Chan by Buena Vista Social Club

Cryin’ by Aerosmith

note from the archivist:

artwork by Robert Voyvodic (@rvoy__) based on Cuny's NGO maps for Thai concentration camps

Songs:

I’m Gonna Live Some Before I Die by Faron Young

Putin by Raus

Monsters You Made by Burna Boy feat. Chris Martin

note from the archivist:

Jimmy did not write episode notes for the remaining episodes

artwork by Robert Voyvodic (@rvoy__) based on Cuny's NGO maps for Thai concentration camps

Songs:

Go Back, You Fool by Faron Young

Forget the Past by Faron Young

False Flag by Massive Attack

note from the archivist:

Jimmy did not write episode notes for the approximately 46 remaining episodes

artwork by Robert Voyvodic (@rvoy__) based on Cuny's NGO maps for Thai concentration camps

Songs:

I Hear You Talkin’ by Faron Young

Live Fast, Love hard, Die Young by Faron Young

Face to the Wall by Faron Young

[originally published on Patreon March 22, 2024]

This is the fifteenth and last installment in the UFC/Banana/Guatemala series.

Rodolfo and I finish discussing the film La Llorona. We get into some of the more spiritual themes of the film. We sincerepost and share our thoughts on spirituality more generally. This leads to a discussion of family ghost stories, and we each share one. 

Songs:

La Llorona by Gaby Moreno

Ghost Party by Messer Chups

[originally published on Patreon March 21, 2024]

Diving deeply into the claims made in the film La Llorona, I examine the question of Guatemala's oil industry in the wake of the 1954 coup and onwards, especially during La Violencia. As it turns out, most of the story deals with a company named Basic Resources International SA, or BRISA. 

BRISA was owned by Sir James Goldsmith, a very curious man from a curious family. A corporate raider, far-right donor, and backer of private military contractor companies. I discuss the relationship between conservation movements and PMCs, and how the Goldsmith family backed both. 

This leads me to discuss the privatization of intelligence, such as Six Eye / 6I, and Goldsmith's ties to Le Cercle. That, in turn, leads to a discussion of the P2 Lodge which itself loops right back to Banco Ambrosiano and would you look at that - BRISA again.

Then, I lay out BRISA's money moves and acquisitions next to the events of La Violencia and it starts to look more and more like the genocide was to move the Mayans off oil-rich lands. Finally, I find the piece of the puzzle to connect BRISA to the genocide directly via the case of General Vernon Walters. 

Then, I cite several key examples which strengthen the hypothesis. After that, I explain what happened to the Guatemalan oil industry afterwards, where Guatemalan gangs came from, and why Guatemala continues to be unstable.

[originally published on Patreon March 20, 2024]

I am joined by Rodolfo (from the Bolaño series) to discuss the 2019 Guatemalan film La Llorona, which features a lightly fictionalized account of a Montt stand-in and deals with the psychic and spiritual fallout from La Violencia. We discuss about half of the film's plot which led us to one of the throwaway lines in the film - the question of Guatemalan mineral rights. 

Songs:

Lonely Surf Guitar by the Safaris

Surfin’ Todd by the Burzums

[originally published on Patreon March 19, 2024]

I pick back up with Efraín Ríos Montt's pacification plan known as Victoria 82, informally known as Fusiles y Frijoles, or Rifles and Beans. Montt established secret courts, a scorched-earth military campaign and utilized counterinsurgency troops.

I share my personal experience with survivors of these incidents. I also read from a work of fiction, Senselessness by Horacio Castellanos Moya which more eloquently captures what it is like to be confronted by these stories. Then, I read an extended passage from a truth and reconciliation report from just one of the many massacres of Finca San Francisco Nenton in Huehuetenango. 

I discuss political opposition to the genocide. I also discuss the concentration camp program created with help from Israeli military advisors - they spoke frankly about the Palestinianisation of Guatemala. Further, the Israeli military provided arms and even a computer system which was used to compile death lists comparable to those of IBM and the Holocaust. 

In August 1983, Montt was deposed in a bloodless military coup. I discuss Guatemala in the broader Cold War and World Anti-Communist League context. Then, I examine Montt's mental state during La Violencia and raise the serious possibility that he was a controlled asset. I trace the history of La Iglesia El Verbo, Gospel Outreach, this broader Dominionist theology, and Pat Robertson's investment portfolio.

[originally published on Patreon March 18, 2024]

A brief parenthetical before continuing with the story of the Guatemalan genocide, I decided to do an episode just for me (and the like three other Mormon listeners) about the Mormon church in Guatemala, though I think this will still be instructive. 

The history begins with a Mormon named John Forres O’Donnal who was hired to the US Department of Agriculture’s new agency, the Office of Rubber Plant Investigations and sent to Guatemala and more or less developed Guatemala's rubber industry for US strategic purposes. More or less downstream from that, Mormonism began to flow as a consequence of his presence in the country. Church leaders visited and US missionaries began to arrive in the 1950s after the 1954 coup.

A former Mormon missionary who learned Mayan languages went back to BYU and worked on creating the Cakchiquel Basic Course through funding via a grant from the U.S. Department of Health, Education & Welfare; this was published in 1969, and then expanded and republished in 1977. It is very likely that this program also received NSA funding as discussed in the Puzzle Palace by James Bamford. In turn, this facility with Mayan languages would have been used during the Guatemalan Civil War for counterinsurgency purposes.

Then, I tell the story of Cordell Andersen, a biological warfare doctor from a family with a