Gemstones Are Forever: Bond, Elrod House, Onassis, Hughes & JFK

What is the most synchromystic, conspiracy-laden James Bond film?

The answer is an obvious one. It happens to be the cinematic expression that revealed Ian Fleming's leaking of the Gemstone Files, in one of the 23 Bond films that have been made through 2012: Diamonds Are Forever (1971).

The visual and design legacy of Frank Lloyd Wright is to be found prominently in this movie. FLW-trained architect John Lautner's Elron House is one of the important filming locations, serving as the Howard Hughes-clone character Willard Whyte's "winter home."

Before learning from FLW in the 1930s, John Lautner's background was in Michigan, and he got his start in building at 12 years old. His family built a rural residence together, a cabin they named Midgaard, "a word from Norse mythology that described the home of mankind, situated between the land of ice and the land of fire."

Considering Lautner's Elrod (Old English for "noble counsel") House was built on client interior designer Arthur Elrod's 23 acre property in Palm Springs, California, in 1968, and the film was released in 1971, the shooting occurred soon after the house was constructed. 

The following three images are from the Elrod House in Diamonds Are Forever. The House is the focus of Bond's meeting with the two female guards – Thumper and Bambi – who are the precursor characters for future acrobatic sci-fi fight sequences (including those seen in Blade Runner and Kill Bill). It is also the location of Bond's release of the "real" Willard Whyte character.

The Internet has many recent photos, including the following, of Lautner's masterpiece, as well as the floor plans, because the Elrod House has been up for sale for a bit under 14 million dollars for a few years.

The Elrod House is a "gem" and thus a metaphor for the entire underlying, less than subtle theme, so apparent in the title of this film, Diamonds Are Forever. But do not fool yourself, these are hardly ordinary gemstones.

A detailed analysis of Diamonds Are Forever is included in David Hatcher Childress' chapter, "James Bond & The Gemstone File" (pages 69-90), contained in Inside the Gemstone File: Howard Hughes, Onassis & JFK by Kenn Thomas and David Hatcher Childress (Kempton, Illinois: Adventures Unlimited Press, 1999). Here is one short selection from the greater chapter [with a few comments added by me]:

In the filmed story of Diamonds Are Forever, the plot remarkably parallels The Gemstone File years before the Skeleton Key to the Gemstone File was ever circulated. The plot begins in the diamond fields of South Africa, as in Fleming's original book [1956], but soon diverges from the book to bring in elements of The Gemstone File and the Mafia/Las Vegas/Area 51 entanglement.

Bond is assigned to follow a trail of diamonds from South Africa to Amsterdam and then to Las Vegas where he is confronted by the Mafia. In one scene, James Bond sneaks into a secret facility in the Nevada desert outside of Las Vegas. This facility is the location of Mercury, the exit off that interstate highway leading to Area 51, the top secret space facility in south central Nevada rumored to house flying saucers and alien technology. 

 

Once inside the facility, Bond pretends to be a worker in a lab coat and walks into a room where a German engineer is in charge. The man is clearly meant to be Werner von Braun. After witnessing the faking of the Apollo Moon missions, Bond steals the lunar rover and escapes into the desert. Does Diamonds Are Forever mirror the truth about NASA being part of a secret conspiracy? In the movie, the space facility and the Mafia are working together.

The movie, however, turns out to be the story of a kidnapped billionaire named Williard Whyte (played by Jimmy Dean of pork sausage fame), who is held in seclusion by [Ernst Stavro] Blofeld, exactly as [Bruce] Roberts claimed [American billionaire Howard] Hughes [sharing the double initials HH, just like Williard Whyte, WW ~ LC] was held captive by [Greek-born billionaire Aristotle Sokratis] Onassis.
Bond frees the kidnapped Willard Whyte and proceeds, with the help of Tiffany Case (played by Jill St. John), to attack Blofeld at his secret base: an oil platform either off the coast of Texas or California, the movie does not indicate which. [Yes, it does. The secret oil platform is shown off Baja California on a global map of Blofeld's empire, which matches the Onassis reach, btw ~ LC.] Bond destroys the oil platform but Blofeld escapes to reappear briefly in the 1981 film For Your Eyes Only when he is finally dispatched permanently. By this time, Onassis was dead as well.
Indeed, the parallels between Diamonds Are Forever and The Gemstone File are many:
*Willard Whyte is held captive in Las Vegas by Blofeld and the Mafia.
*Howard Hughes is held captive in Las Vegas and elsewhere by Onassis and the Mafia.
*Blofeld owns a casino named Casino Royale in Monte Carlo and has various "doubles."
*Onassis owns a casino named Casino Royale in Monte Carlo and Onassis has various "doubles" concocted by Onassis and Maheu.
*Blofeld owns oil fields and oil platforms. He is protected by foreign countries.
*Onassis owns oil tankers and has an exclusive deal with Saudi Arabia. He is protected by foreign countries such as Greece and Monaco.
*Blofeld owns his own island, high-tech yacht fleet, and private army.
*Onassis owns his own island (Skorpios), has a high-tech yacht fleet (Onassis owned many, many ships), and controlled a private army that allegedly went beyond the Mafia to the Marseille underground and the CIA and FBI.
*Diamonds Are Forever was about the secret NASA base outside of Las Vegas, and the use of diamonds to make a space-based laser system, one that could project holographic images into the sky.
*The Gemstone File is about synthetic rubies and their use by Hughes in laser research and Roberts' later use of these synthetic rubies as "gifts" with an attached "Gemstone Letter" that revealed certain behind-the-scenes activities of Onassis, the Mafia and the CIA to important and wealthy individuals. Las Vegas was the scene of Hughes' kidnapping and imprisonment, a city well known to be owned and run by the Mafia and their overt partners.

As Kenn Thomas and David Hatcher Childress theorize in their book, Inside the Gemstone File, Ian Fleming, a former British intelligence agent, used his books to unfold the secrets that he had discovered about Onassis and others through material that would someday be called the Gemstone File. Considering that several of the Bond books were published long before many of the events were exposed in the dots that have since been connected and then shown in the films, Fleming walked a narrow, dangerous path.

The Gemstone File is a conspiracy theory document attributed to Bruce Porter Roberts. In 1975, "A Skeleton Key to the Gemstone File" appeared and is generally attributed to Stephanie Caruana. The "Key" is purportedly a synopsis of Roberts' documents that presents a chronicle of interlocking conspiracies, including claims that world events since the 1950s were shaped by suppressed information, the names of supposed shooters of President John F. Kennedy, and suggested connections between a number of political assassinations which occurred within a relatively short time frame. Many of these show up in Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, and thus in the movies that followed.

The Gemstone File proposes that Aristotle Onassis, JFK's father Joseph P. Kennedy, and other prominent figures were involved in various schemes to forward a vast global conspiracy, involving the Mafia and corrupt politicians, brutal oil and drug cartels, rogue military operations, and more. It also posits that early in 1957, Aristotle Onassis had Howard Hughes kidnapped from his Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow; that Hughes suffered a massive brain injury during the forcible kidnapping, and that Hughes was subsequently a virtual prisoner of Onassis on his private island Skorpios and injected regularly with morphine, while Onassis took over the operation of Hughes's considerable financial affairs, including airlines and U.S. defense contracting. Post-Fleming author John Gardner would overtly title one of his James Bond books, Scorpius (1988).

Aristotle Onassis and Jacqueline "Jackie" Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis

The Gemstone File portrays Onassis as the main force behind the election of John F. Kennedy as President, and subsequently, Kennedy's assassination in 1963. According to the documents, Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy in the JFK assassination plan and was linked to the Central Intelligence Agency, and to Mafia connections in Lafayette Square, New Orleans, with Jimmy Fratianno, Johnny Roselli, and Eugene Brading as the real shooters. The Gemstone papers claim that John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Joseph P. Kennedy were involved with the Mafia and Onassis, and when the Kennedy brothers attempted to break away, they were murdered. We know too what happened between Onassis and Jackie O, after the death of JFK. Wild theories and thoughts, perhaps, indeed, but then when connecting dots in conspiracy speculations, when are such not radical, raging, and rough?

"On December 20, 1947, Jacob Rubenstein changed his name to Jack L. Ruby by decree of the 68th Judicial Court of Dallas, Texas. The etymology of the term 'Ruby': (French) rubis; (Spanish) rubi; (Latin) rubinus, carbuncle….The term 'Jack Ruby' was once used by pawnbrokers to indicated a fake ruby. In iconography a ruby or carbuncle symbolizes blood, suffering and death." ~ from King-Kill 33 by James Shelby Downard.

Childress writes further in his Bond analysis: "Ian Fleming [at the age of 56] died of mysterious circumstances in Jamaica on August 12, 1964, of a 'heart attack.' According to Bruce Roberts, the 'sodium morphate' used by Onassis and the Mafia made the victim appear to have died from a massive heart attack….In August of 1964…Fleming was planning to fly from Jamaica to New Jersey to meet with Ivan T. Sanderson, a biologist and former British Intelligence agent. As a zoologist, Sanderson had written a number of books, including one on Bigfoot and Yeti, and appeared frequently on radio shows and even Johnny Carson's Tonight Show."

The late Ivan T. Sanderson (a friend of mine) was a Fortean researcher and author on topics including the Philadelphia Experiment, as well, a subject about which Sanderson appears to have been corresponding with Fleming.

Childress continues, "Fleming never made it to his rendezvous with Sanderson. He died of a sudden heart attack on August 12th, 1964 at his home in Jamaica…[on] the 21st anniversary of The Philadelphia Experiment (August 12, 1943)….Was Ian Fleming killed because he knew too much about such things as the Kennedy assassination, The Philadelphia Experiment and the genesis of UFO technology?"

We perhaps shall never know, but awareness of the world may be revealed, frighteningly, more through watching Diamonds Are Forever than turning in to the nightly news, where the selling of automobiles and drive-through-hamburgers is the goal.

There has been fifty years of James Bond movies. Much is unfolded in fiction worth our attention. The 23rd Bond film, Skyfall, will be released in November 2012.

 

How Did They Kill Bill?

Did someone Kill Bill, after all? The symbolic imagery was all around him, as seen in the background.

An elementary decoding of the Carradine family's history and ties to certain groups makes David Carradine's death more mysterious than most.

93, 93/93. 09/3/6. Carradine died in 2009, on 3 June, in Thailand. According to his family, he might have been killed because he was investigating "secret societies."

Dr. Michael Baden, the former New York City chief medical examiner and lead investigator of the House Select Committee's review of the JFK assassination, has determined that Carradine's did not die by suicide.

So, what happened?

Is it time to synchromystically observe the man in the movies?

Now comes the tributes in which his films are being screened anew. No marathons of Carradine's series "Kung Fu" yet, but Spike TV is paying tribute to David Carradine with a movie marathon Saturday, June 13, 2009, from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m Eastern. Such a movie marathon allows for a thoughtful viewing of the deeper themes of two of his more recent marital arts-related projects.

First up, at 2:00 p.m. is Kill Bill: Volume 1, in which Carradine played the leader Bill of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. Bill's codename is "Snake Charmer." The Bride/Beatrix "Black Mamba" Kiddo (Uma Thurman) is a female assassin, a trained killer who has been betrayed by the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad led by her former boss Bill (David Carradine) who gunned her down at her wedding, leaving her for dead. The Bride wakes up four years later and sets out to begin her quest for vengeance. With the help of one of Bill's former tutors, retired sword-maker Hattori Hanzo (Sonny Chiba), The Bride sets out to eliminate the first two targets on her list: Vernita Green/"Copperhead" (Vivica Fox), who has retired from the Deadly Viper Assassin Squad and has a daughter and O-Ren Ishii/"Cottonmouth" (Lucy Liu), who is now the kingpin of the Tokyo criminal underworld and leader of the "Crazy 88" crime gang. The major bloodbath of Volume 1 occurs at the House of Blue Leaves.

The number of overtly hidden connections to other films in the Kill Bill movies is phenomenal. From the links to The Manchurian Candidate (1962), where the introduction of the fight between Thurman and Fox parallels the fight between Sinatra and Silva, to the Al Hirt theme music from "The Green Hornet," which is heard when The Bride rides her motorcycle through Tokyo, there are many. The Kato masks worn by The Crazy 88s are also taken from the one worn by Bruce Lee on that 1966 television show, which references Lee's precursor role to Carradine in "Kung Fu." Was it about Lee's death too?



The overall storyline of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill - a woman seeks revenge on a group of people, crossing them off a list one by one as she kills them - is adapted from Lady Snowblood, a 1973 Japanese film in which a woman kills off the gang who murdered her family. The film also references Samurai Reincarnation (1981) by quoting its iconic line "If you encounter God, God will be cut."


Kill Bill: Volume 2 follows at 4:30 p.m. When this chapter in the saga begins, The Bride has already encountered some of her targets, as she continues battling her way up the chain of command, knowing it will ultimately lead her to her main goal: her chance to kill Bill. Elle Driver/"California Mountain Snake" (Daryl Hannah) and Bill's brother, Budd/"Sidewinder"(Michael Madsen) are important characters in Volume 2. (In real life, Carradine and Madsen were good friends.)

Both Kill Bill films are rebroadcast at 7:30 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.

At 1:00 a.m. is Kung Fu Killer.


David Carradine and Daryl Hannah reunited in a film for the first time since their roles on the big screen in Kill Bill to star in the two-part original movie miniseries, Kung Fu Killer, which was first broadcast on Spike TV in August 2008.

Set in late 1920s in China, before Communist rule, Kung Fu Killer tells the story of White Crane (Carradine), an orphaned son of Western missionaries who was raised as a Wudang monk to become a spiritual leader and master in martial arts, and his ultimate journey for revenge and justice.

In the first installment, Crane’s peaceful world is shattered when Kahn Xin (Lim Kay Tong) and his mercenaries raid his temple and slay his mentor. In search of his master’s murderers, Crane infiltrates the Shanghai underworld where he encounters Jane Marshall (Hannah), a lounge singer from Brooklyn, who is on a mission of her own – to find her lost brother, who is being held captive by Kahn. Realizing that Kahn’s evil plans are more intricate and widespread than originally thought, Crane teams up with Jane in order to enter Kahn’s inner circle. From there, they tread carefully in order to dismantle Kahn’s destructive plans before assassinating him. Soon, Crane’s battle becomes a moral one, as he finds himself torn between his peaceful Wudang upbringing and the cold-blooded life of an assassin.

The second installment, Kung Fu Killer II shifts gears to a more personal drama as Crane returns to help rebuild his shattered temple. However, the peace is short-lived as, back in Shanghai, nightclub singer Jane is kidnapped by Bai Yang, an old classmate and rival of Crane’s who plans to employ her in the sex trade. It is up to Crane and his young protégé Lang (Osric Chau) to save not only Jane, but Lang’s true love Wei.

Kung Fu Killer was shot entirely on location in China at the Zhejiang Heng Dian World Studios and the towns of Fong Yang and Heng Dian. The miniseries marked the first time a production of this scale was produced by a Western production company utilizing an almost exclusively Chinese crew.



Complete schedule for the Marathon, Spike TV, June 13th:

2:00pm

Kill Bill: Volume 1

4:30pm

Kill Bill: Volume 2

7:30pm

Kill Bill: Volume 1

10:00pm

Kill Bill: Volume 2

1:00am

Kung Fu Killer