Morning Comrades! Before I get into the MK Ultra Culture War x Charles Manson topic the title alludes to- here is this week’s drop. The above hoodie will be the last iteration of the FTS graphic so that’s your chance. As always, all hoodies are made from organic cotton, heavy in weight, come with a front pocket, solid hood and are true to size.
Secondly, this shirt is finally making it’s appearance after farting around with the graphic for a year or so. I am donating all profits from this one to Doctors Without Borders. Click on the picture below to go directly to the online store.
This popped up on my screen the day before yesterday in a conversation with a dear comrade and it’s increasingly blowing my mind - so let’s start from the beginning. The pop cultural narrative of the west post WW2 as we know has been heavily influenced by the CCF, the Congress for Cultural Freedom aka the CIA, I’ve written about this a few times on here. The depth of this program is still being analyzed but to be sure, the entirety of the our cultural narrative is and has to be re-evaluated because of this. Add our knowledge of what the MK Ultra program was and did and our narrative, our history really begins to spiral out of control. For those unaware of what the MK Ultra program was, click this link, but to cut a long story short, it was a hugely illegal global CIA operation that involved human experiments with psychoactive drugs ( LSD ), psychological torture, illegal prison sites and so on. Considering the sheer scope and inclusion of cultural figureheads such as Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg and Robert Hunter one can only assume at this point what impact the state sanctioned drug induced mind alteration from the CIA had on these important figureheads, for what purpose I am unsure of at this point, but it does beg the question how much of our cultural revolution was planned and orchestrated for the sake of, officially anti-communist work.
In a new book that I have just bought and NOT read yet - consider this your weekly book recommendation - by Tom O’Neill’s entitled Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties, the author clearly connects Manson to the CIA and the MK Ultra program. In itself and on the surface, no big deal but here is my thinking. Considering the fact that within the popular cultural narrative it is widely considered to have been Manson and his family that killed off the hippie cultural revolution this connection, at the very least, sheds new information on this juncture. It is no secret that the initial hippie movement presented a giant threat to the pre-planned trajectory of US society, going as far as threatening the military hegemony of the US pre-Vietnam and threatening the ultra conservative pro-capitalistic reality so forcibly put into effect by the powers that be. I know, it sounds like a crack pot conspiracy theory but I cannot shake the feeling that that if you combine the CCF, MK Ultra and add these facts together, we might have to genuinely re-evaluate our story. Sounds like a good PhD project for when I am done with this one. I’ll report back after my vacation when I have read the book but for now, get into it comrades.
Speaking of vacations, I am taking a much needed break come Saturday and will return mid October. There will not be a disruption to this newsletter or Black Lodges but if you need me, I would kindly ask for patience in communication.
Right, of course there is another reading recommendation, of course! In this case I wanted to point you to an archive of zines and journals that are all free for you to download and print for yourself. Rolling Thunder was a bi-annual journal covering passionate living and creative resistance in all the forms they take: from consensus process to street fighting, from workplace struggles to graffiti art, from gender mutiny to subversive humor. Each issue runs the gamut from on-the-spot reporting, strategic analysis, and instructional guides to poetry, comics, and games. Rolling Thunder was published from 2005 to 2015.
No weekend without a few documentaries and such! There is a special little program for anyone interested in what’s happening at my doorstep this weekend, with the German Federal Election taking place on Sunday, to usher in the post-Merkel era.
Ana and Tatjana are back to wrap up this week with their two columns and with that, make these, enjoy it all, buy a shirt or a hoodie if you feel like it, maybe share this newsletter with someone or get subscribing. Either way, enjoy and see you next week.
Quick and easy jams for starters or snacks or whatever whenever really.
Ingredients:
For the Crostini: a good baguette cut into slices, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, 1-2 cloves of garlic
For the creme: 200g of ricotta, 1 table spoon of olive oil, lime juice from half a lime, grated lemon peel, a dash of fresh cream, salt, pepper.
For the toppings: whatever you like really, here I used fresh basil, tomatoes, figs, peaches - essentially your call.
Step 1
Cover the sliced baguette in olive and roast in the over for 5-10 minutes until golden brown. Let it cool off and then rub the peeled garlic clove over the bread.
Step 2
Get the ricotta to room temperature and mix with the other ingredients for the creme and then mix until the creme becomes, well, creamy. Get that on the bread!
Step 3
Add toppings. Seriously, thank me later. Maybe add a dash of lemon juice over it all when your are done for that extra kick.
As warned, we are now moving into the stirred cocktails and we're kicking it off with a REVOLVER.
THE REVOLVER is basically a coffee twist on a Manhattan – one of the most well known classics. The Manhattan has birthed several off springs through it's lifetime, and is still a favourite order among many. Just like the number of its twists, the origin of the Manhattan is everyone's guess. It is however generally agreed upon that it came about in the late 1800's. Recipes and stories differ even more so than normally, when dealing with other old, classics still lying shrouded between the lines of a drunk dude's notes from the debauchery he was involved in earlier that evening. The Revolver is a newer cocktail, and was invented by American bartender Jon Santa in the early 2000's. This is not gonna be his original recipe. It's definitely not gonna be the last Manhattan twist we're gonna do either. There's a fuck ton of them, so I'll most likely pick some of my favourites from the (almost) endless catalogue.
I love whiskey based drinks and I love coffee. Easy choice. Originally it is done on Bulleit's rye whiskey, but any good bourbon or rye will do. Be aware that rye generally is a a bit sharper compared to bourbon, which is often more round and can have a sweetness to it. Something that is very important is a good coffee liqueur. The selection will differ from country to country, and whether you live somewhere with easier access to a well stocked liquor shop. A liqueur will by it's very nature always have sweetness and sugar in it, so make sure to pick a coffee liqueur that doesn't just taste like straight up sugar with a hint of burnt beans in the back. Dry orange Curaçao should be on the shelf in most liquor shops.
WHAT YOU NEED:
- Whiskey (whatever you prefer on rye or bourbon)
- Coffee liqueur
- Dry orange Curaçao
- Orange bitters
- Orange and peeler
- Ice
- Glass/tin for stirring (either the Boston glass from your shaker or a mixing glass) - Bar spoon
- Julep strainer
- Something like a cocktail glass (look at my personal notes here)
HOW YOU DO IT:
- Pour 4 cl whiskey, 1,5 cl of coffee liqueur, 1 cl of dry orange Curaçao and 2 dashes of orange bitters in to your Boston glass/mixing glass.
- Prep your orange peel for garnish.
- Get your bar spoon and give it a good stir for about 7-10 seconds. Be super careful here since it's a fine balance between chilled and over diluted. The glass you're stirring in should feel cold to the touch, when you're done.
- Put your Julep strainer in the glass (the strainer gonna be 'lying' diagonally once put in correctly), put your finger between the top of the circle/strainer and the handle, press down to hold it place, and pour your cocktail into your chilled glass.
- Hold your orange peel 6-8 cm from the glass, bend between your fingers to spray the oils onto the glass. Rub the peel on the rim, little on the side and stem as well, and then put it neatly into the drink. The original version you use a flamed orange peel, which means you set fire to the oil as they spray onto the glass.
- Drink!
ON A PERSONAL SIDE NOTE:
A few things to address again this time. Lets start with the specs: the original has a higher total volume of liquid in, so I've scaled it down to how I do it and like it. Generally American recipes makes 'bigger drinks' compared to the 'European style'. Sounds somewhat pretentious, but it's true. Always keep that in mind, if you look up specs online – and the source. There's a lot of 'bad', altered and straight up wrong recipes on the internet, kids. Also I've added dry orange Curaçao to this one, because orange goes so well with whiskey and coffee.
Secondly, we need to talk about the stirring technique. Just like shaking, it's a must to know – especially if you want to do the classics. Now the action of stirring is hard to put a time on. It really depends on which drink you're doing and which products you're working with. Bartenders develop this very specific spidey sense for when a drink is done being shaken/stirred/thrown/whatever you're doing to it. We can 'feel' it, and that 'feeling' only comes with practice. Stirring is in it's essentials super fucking easy, but a little harder in practice. Same as with shaking; look it up in a video or tutorial of some sort. It's easier to understand the motion when you have visual input. Same as last time, I'll give a short, more technical explanation of it here: you wanna place the bar spoon between your 3rd and 4th finger, and above hold it with between your index finger and thumb in a 'natural position'. Sounds weird, I know. The thumb and index keeps it in place, while the 3rd and 4th fingers does the work. Now the motion itself is to move it back and forth with the 3rd and 4th finger, while keeping the rest of your arm still. Wrist too. The only things, that should be moving are your finger muscles. A good way to practice this and annoy your neighbours at the same time is to take a chopstick, hold it like a bar spoon and put it in a metal tin. Move the end of the chopstick back and forth (fast and with some power) between 12 o'clock and 6 o'clock inside the tin. Top to bottom, again and again. I did that for 10 minutes straight in the bar much to the annoyance and entertainment of our guests, when I was first learning to stir. Once you have the motion down, put ice in the tin/glass, grab your bar spoon and do the same back-and-forth motion. If you're doing it right the bar spoon should now spin the ice around and stay along that tiny space between the ice and the tin/glass. Once you get a hang of that, add speed. When you've stirred the drink, you still need to move fast. As long as the ice is in, it's diluting and we do not want an overdiluted drink. Thirdly, the glass. Now I've seen Manhattens come in many different glasses. Most will tell you to do it in a cocktail glass – think the classic 'martini' glass from the old Bond movies or something similar. I've seen a Manhatten in heavily decorated early 1900s style cocktail glasses, but I have also seen it served in more of a goblet style glass. If you go with those big Bond-style cocktail glasses, this recipe might end up being a touch short. What you want no matter the direction you go with the glass presentation is well balanced drink, a stem to hold on and an 'open top' of the glass, so you get the full smell of both the drink and the orange's oils.
Now fourth and last: my amazing friend, co-worker and R&D partner has the same love for these boozy fuckers as I do. We both love mezcal too. We also like to fuck around, so Frida came up with a mezcal version of the Revolver. Only difference in the recipe is that instead of 4 cl pure whiskey, you do 3 cl mezcal and 1 cl orange curaçao. We usually go with bourbon for this. It is so fucking delicious.
All my instincts are telling me to do a bad joke on something with “shooting the drink”, because it's called a Revolver. Figure a better one out yourself, while drinking it. Enjoy!