Blood Red Movie Massacres

by Loren Coleman ©2012

July 22nd is the anniversary of the 1934 death of John Dillinger, who was killed in front of a movie theater, Chicago's Biograph, after watching the film Manhattan Melodrama. Dillinger was betrayed by the "Woman in Red," a madam (Ana Cumpănaş, also known as Anna Sage) wearing an orange dress, which looked red under the theater's lights.

In Michael Mann's 2009 Public Enemies, Christian Bale (shown) plays FBI man Mervin Purvis, Johnny Depp plays John Dillinger, Branka Katic plays Anna Sage, and Marion Cotillard plays Billie Frechette (shown at top as Dillinger's other woman in red). Bale and Cotillard have significant leading roles in The Dark Knight Rises.

In the film Dillinger saw the night he died, Manhattan Melodrama, Clark Gable (shown) plays the gangster-gambler Blackie Gallagher. The movie's finale has Gallagher being put to death in the electric chair for murder. The back story of Gallagher and his brother by adoption is one of two orphans, and parallels Batman and many other DC and Marvel superheroes. Indeed, they are twice orphaned in one of the strangest twists in movie fiction. The boys are adopted as orphans by Poppa Rosen for a short while. But then Rosen (meaning = roses, red), a Russian Jew, is trampled to death by a policeman's horse after he heckles former Red Army Generalissimo Leon Trotsky at a red Communist rally and a melee breaks out. In the end, Gallagher is the darkness, and his "brother" Jim, who becomes the DA and governor, is the light.

This is also the day of the release of the film Captain America: The First Avenger (a year ago, on July 22, 2011), with the first Nazi machine-gunning scene taking place in Norway, which also mirrors the same day's Breivik's massacre in Norway (July 22, 2011).

Hugo Weaving plays two roles, Johann Schmidt, Adolf Hitler's head of advanced weaponry and the transformed Red Skull commander of the terrorist organization Hydra, in the 2011 film Captain America. Weaving also plays the villain Agent Smith in the three Matrix films and V in V for Vendetta (all films that have resulted in copycat violence).

What we do know is that copycats were certainly a real outcome of the 2008 screening of The Dark Knight. The most infamous was Kim de Gelder, the Dendermonde Joker (shown), who killed two babies and a teacher in a Belgium daycare on January 23, 2009. He dressed like his own personal version of the Joker from The Dark Knight.

We still don't know how the alleged Aurora killer, suspect John Holmes appeared on July 20, 2012, at Theater No. 9. All is pure speculation, and yet the web has gone wild with imagined imagery (see above).

One of the news tidbits that has been revealed about James Eagan Holmes (shown in a photo from his youth) is that besides the reported red hair and goatee, underneath his black body armor, he was wearing red to the midnight showing of The Black Knight Rises. The name Eagan means "fiery."

The Greek Goddess Aurora is sometimes referred to as the "Goddess of the Morning Red." Colorado is Spanish for "red."

Anne Hathaway plays Selina Kyle aka Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises. Seline (Luna/Moon) is the sister of the Roman goddess Aurora (dawn).

One of the first victims of the Aurora, Colorado shootings identified was Jessica Ghawi, an aspiring sportscaster, who happened to almost have been shot during the recent Toronto's Eaton Mall shooting. She also used the name "Jessica Redfield," a name she created because of her red hair, as she said people remembered that name more easily, since "Ghawi" is difficult to pronounce.

Seven employees of the Red Robin restaurant in Aurora were injured in The Dark Knight Rises shooting (thanks 82-28).

President Barack Obama came to Aurora, Colorado, early on July 22, 2012, to visit with shooting victims and family members. The quotation used by the media reflects an underlying theme in the event.

"It reminds you that even in the darkest of days, life continues and people are strong," the president said, after detailing the recovery of two victims. "Out of this darkness, a brighter day is going to come." [Emphasis added.]

The metaphor to dawn is strong in that simple quote.

For more, see my essay posted later on July 22nd, Red Dawn.

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The list

Movies and massacres are nothing new. Here is a compilation (enhanced by me) of theater-related violence, initially published by ABC News and other sources, which I preserve here before it vanishes. It is followed by video clips of Christian Bale talking about The Dark Knight and appearing in American Psycho.

1928 (Burlington, North Carolina): One of the earliest fatal shootings at a theater happened in Burlington, North Carolina and the active shooter is a Holmes. On Tuesday, January 17, 1928, George Washington Holmes, Jr., 30, shot to death Odis Leslie “Ode” Robertson, 34, in the lobby of Burlington's Lyric Theater, before the 7:00 pm showing of The Naked Truth (1924).

1934 (Chicago): Gangster John Dillinger dies in front of the Biograph Theater on July 22nd (see above for more details).

1955 (Chicago): Ex-con shoots rookie cop in a movie theater four miles from the Loop.

1985 (Chicago): Movie-line quarrel ends with one man dead of a gunshot wound to the back of the head.

1988 (Southfield, Michigan): In October, two men are shot during an argument near the box office of the Americana.

1989 (New York City): Ricardo Jimenez, 21, kills Sean Worrell, 20, for buying the last bag of popcorn at Tim Burton's 1989 Batman premiere on July 3rd, at the Whitestone Multiplex Cinema. Michael Keaton plays Batman and Jack Nicholson plays The Joker.

1989 (Southfield, Michigan): A man opens fire in the main auditorium of the November 17th opening night of Eddie Murphy's Harlem Nights at the Americana. (Metal detectors were installed and it was reopened in 1990 as the Southfield City 12, and closed forever in 2001.)

1990 (Valley Stream, New York): A 15-year-old was killed and three other bystanders wounded when a shootout (between a group in the front row and one in the back) erupts on Tuesday, December 25th, Christmas Day, during the premiere running of The Godfather Part III at the Sunrise Cinema Multiplex. (2012 media reports this then becomes the first cinema in the country with metal detectors.)

1991 (Chicago): A 23-year-old man is shot at a July premiere showing of Boyz n the Hood.

1991 (Los Angeles and nationwide): Boyz n the Hood sparks shootings that leave 33 injured, in LA, Minneapolis, Universal City, and other locations.

1991 (Seattle): A 15-year-old is stabbed during the premiere weekend at the Lewis & Clark Theater of Boyz n the Hood.

1993 (Brooklyn, New York): 19-year-old man is shot to death during a late screening of Judgment Night.

1998 (Bakersfield, California): Eight people are injured after shooting during I Got the Hookup.

1999 (Seattle): One man shoots another in the stomach during Analyze This.

2002 (Philadelphia): Janitor shot twice in the head in movie theater bathroom.

2006 (Baltimore): A 24-year old man Mujtaba Rabbani Jabbar, a resident of the exclusive Anton North neighborhood, sits behind Paul Schrum, 62, from Pikesville, at the Loews Valley Center 9, shoots Schrum in the head, hollers for everyone to stay down, and then fires three more shots during the showing of X-Men: Last Stand at the Owings Mills multiplex.

2006 (Pittsburgh): A screening of Get Rich or Die Tryin ends when one man fatally shoots another in the lobby after a trip to the restroom.

2008 (Philadelphia): James Joseph Cialella, 29, is charged with shooting the father of a family who he complained was talking during a Christmas Day showing of the Brad Pitt film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Cialella allegedly throws popcorn at the man’s son and then shoots the man in the arm at the Riverview Regal Theater.

2008 (Raleigh, North Carolina): An unidentified masked man tries to rob the Marquee Cinemas Theater, and then fatally shoots the manager Mark Douglas Buhaug, 48.

2010 (Daly City, California): A man shoots three people outside a Bay Area movie theater, including a pregnant woman.

2011 (Tuscaloosa, Alabama): Teen shoots another teen in movie theater parking lot.

2012 (Aurora, Colorado): Alleged suspect James Holmes opens fire at the July 20th midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises, killing 12 people and injuring 59 others, in Theater 9 and through collateral damage, at the Century 16 Theaters.

Credit: ABC News, Hollywood Reporter, and via other research and sources.

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Christopher Loring Knowles had this to say in his "Dark Knight of Our Soul, or The New Ambulance Chasers":

I do know that is just more bad news attached to a Christopher Nolan film. This is a guy who puts forward psychopaths as his protagonists (Following, Memento, The Prestige) and cast a guy previously best known as Bateman, the American Psycho as Batman....I do know this is a guy who revels in fascist, brutalizing imagery and themes in his work.
I do know that he deliberately created a brand new archetype with his Joker, the real protagonist of The Dark Knight. A figure of pure, wanton destruction- the killer that every Jugalo would love to be when they grow up. This was pure psychological manipulation of the worst kind, and has had terrible real world results.

 Bale on Batman

   

Bale as Bateman

 

Joker Copycats: 2008-2112

"If coincidences are just coincidences, why do they feel so contrived?" ~ Special Agent Fox Mulder, X-Files, "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," 1996.

"I don't believe in coincidence." ~ Batman, Justice League, "Starcrossed," 2004.

(If you are looking for updates on post-July 20th copycats, please see: Aurora Copycat Effect: The Complete List.)

James Eagan Holmes, 2012.

"You're a detective now. You can't believe in coincidences any longer." ~ Commissioner James "Jim" Worthington Gordon to new Detective John Blake, The Dark Knight Rises, 2012.

One of the first victims of the Aurora shootings identified was Jessica Ghawi, an aspiring sportscaster, who happened to almost have been shot during Toronto's Eaton Mall shooting. She also used the name "Jessica Redfield," a name she created because of her red hair, as she said people remembered that name more easily, since "Ghawi" is difficult to pronounce.

The following essays were first posted in January and March, 2009. They have been moved to the top, in the wake of the Aurora events of July 20, 2012. This is due to the "media reportage" that the shooting suspect James Holmes said "I am the Joker" when he was arrested. Whether that is a fact remains to be proven. The notion it is now a cultural "factoid" cannot be avoided.


There is little denying now that the 2009 Dendermonde Joker is a Heath Ledger/Joker copycat from the 2008 film The Dark Knight. (The "Dendermonde case" is code for the 2009 event involving the daycare nursery killer, Kim de Gelder, the Dendermonde Joker. I've web logged several recent entries about the subject, for example, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

The first drawing and a later colored one, via eyewitness descriptions, of 2009's Dendermonde Joker.

The 20-year-old accused daycare baby killer Kim de Gelder is a big fan of movies, but sat on suicide watch after his capture. The Dark Knight re-opened around the world on Friday, January 23, 2009, on giant IMAX screens everywhere.

De Gelder has been variously described by former workmates as a "film freak" and "movie addict."

Joker copycats did show up before de Gelder, but the couple of incidents picked up by the media in 2008 were actually minor in nature.

Talk of a Dark Knight curse has certainly been in the air from the beginning. The Dark Knight is dedicated to both the 28-year-old Heath Ledger, who died of an accidental overdose on January 22, 2008, and Conway Wickliffe, 41, a stunt supervisor who died in a freak accident in London while setting up a car crash. Other weird deaths have been associated with the film.

On September 1, 2008, in Johannesburg, Morné Harmse, an 18-year-old pupil in his high school in South Africa allegedly killed a fellow student with a sword and then hacked up three others. Harmse wore a clown mask and carried other masks supposedly inspired by the group Slipknot. The key to our examination here is that the killer also spoke in a voice to mimic the Joker in The Dark Knight.

Thus, the level of violence of the Dendermonde Joker is acknowledged as way above all previous examples for individuals more closely mirroring The Dark Knight's Joker.

The two specific costumed Joker arrests before the Belgium stabbing attacks mostly went unnoticed because they were so mild by comparison.

In July 2008, Boing Boing told of a Joker copycat who had been arrested.

Detective Mike Mohney stated at the time that 20-year-old Spencer Taylor (above) of Three Rivers, Michigan, had been booked for investigation of larceny and malicious destruction of property. Mohney says officers who were dispatched on that early Sunday morning of July 27, 2008, to the theater to find employees restraining a man wearing a purple suit, a green wig and face paint in the style of Batman's nemesis in The Dark Knight.

On August 14, 2008, the local media in Michigan followed up by declaring that Taylor had been sentenced.

Taylor pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of malicious destruction of property. Police from Three Rivers, Centreville, Michigan, said that Taylor wore a purple suit, green wig and face paint like the Joker when he was arrested for attempting to steal the big Batman movie poster.

Spencer Taylor was sentenced to one day in jail, 16 hours of community service and fined $685. Other charges were dropped when Spencer Taylor agreed to do a plea deal.

The Joker copycat incident in Arizona around Halloween was a bit more dangerous.

A 16-year-old Palo Verde High School student was rushed to the hospital Friday, October 31, 2008 (Halloween) for serious but not life-threatening injuries after what authorities described as an accidental stabbing by a classmate.

The injuries occurred during lunch while the student, a junior, horsed around with a freshman friend, said Ross Sheard, high school chief academic officer for the Tucson Unified School District. The 15-year-old jumped on the older student's back, causing two puncture-type wounds to the older boy, Sheard said.

Classmates said that the student who accidentally stabbed his friend was dressed up like the Joker from the Batman movie The Dark Knight, and that dressing that way was not uncommon for him. He often goes by the nickname "Joker."

"He dresses up like him a lot. He does his makeup like him a lot, and that's what he goes by," said sophomore Sara Everett, 15.

"It was not a fight," he said. "It wasn't kids being knock-down, going after each other. It was horseplay that got out of control."

Afterward, the students apparently made their way to the office and asked for help, he said. About an hour and a half later, officials tracked down the knife that was used in the incident, Sheard said.

The 15-year-old had a total of three knives in his pocket — two kitchen knives and a hobby knife — and is facing charges of carrying the concealed knives, but not aggravated assault, said Sgt. Mark Robinson, a Tucson Police Department spokesman.

Sheard said it was too early to say what might happen to the 15-year-old student, but the district has a zero-tolerance policy against weapons on campus.

Police questioned the uninjured student at Palo Verde, 1302 S. Avenida Vega, near East 22nd Street and South Kolb Road.

"We're not sure how serious the injury is," Sheard said. "There was bleeding. That was the part that had everybody very concerned."

Robinson said later that the student was undergoing surgery at a local hospital.

Many students were in costume on Halloween, he said, which caused some added confusion on campus.

A soldier dressed and wearing face-paint like Batman villain The Joker was shot and killed by police on March 8, 2009, in the Shenandoah National Park after he pointed a loaded shotgun at them after a chase, an FBI affidavit says. The incident occurred near Front Royal, Virginia, according to the Associated Press.

Army Spc. Christopher Lanum's girlfriend, Patsy Ann Marie Montowski, who was with him when he was shot, told FBI investigators that the soldier idolized the Joker, played in the most recent Batman film, The Dark Knight, by the late Heath Ledger.

Lanum, a suspect in the stabbing of a fellow soldier at Fort Eustis, was killed hours after the attack when officers attempted to stop the minivan he was driving, according to court documents filed Wednesday, March 11th that first disclosed the weekend shooting.

Montowski, a passenger in the van, was hit by gunfire and treated at a hospital. She was arrested Wednesday evening and charged with being accessory after the fact to assault, authorities said.

A lawyer for Montowski was not listed in court documents.

According to the FBI affidavit filed in federal court in Montowski's case, Lanum was dressed in The Joker outfit at the time of an argument early Sunday with his Fort Eustis suite mate, Spc. Mitchell Stone.

Back in 2009, I asked: "Have there been other copycat incidents since The Dark Knight appeared?"


The correct question should have been about "when"?


"I, like God, do not play with dice and do not believe in coincidence."
and
"There are no coincidences...only the illusion of coincidence." ~ V, V for Vendetta, 2005.

Copycat Jokers

"I don't believe in coincidence." ~ Batman, Justice League, "Starcrossed," 2004.

James Eagan Holmes, 2012.

I have an old posting worthy of revisiting, updated. So do please now find it here: Joker Copycats: 2008-2012. Those essays were first posted in January and March, 2009. They have been moved to a more recent location and revised, in the wake of the Aurora events of July 20, 2012.

"If coincidences are just coincidences, why do they feel so contrived?" ~ Special Agent Fox Mulder, X-Files, "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," 1996.

At top, a drawing, from eyewitness descriptions, of 2009's Dendermonde Joker.

Dark Knight Shooting: 12 Dead, 58 Injured

"The fire rises!" ~ Bane, The Dark Knight Rises, 2012.

A mass shooting occurred on July 20, 2012, at a midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises, leaving 12 dead and 58 injured (some gravely), 15 minutes after the film began. The active shooting took place in Theater No. 9 at the Century 16 Movie Theaters, located at 14300 East Alameda Avenue in Aurora, Colorado. (News reports have said as high as 15 are dead, but as of 8:00 AM Eastern, CNN is reporting 12 have been killed. Double-counting caused the 15 count.)

The suspect (shown at top; TMZ discovered the colored-hair image) has been identified as recent Aurora resident James Eagan Holmes (born December 13, 1987), according to federal authorities. His parents live in San Diego. Spokeswoman Jacque Montgomery says 24-year-old James Holmes was a doctoral student at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver until last month. She did not know when he started school or why he withdrew. He apparently was a former biology (neuroscience) student in southern California.

Early on the morning of Friday, July 20, 2012, mountain time, at least 50 people were injured, twelve were killed, in a shooting at an Aurora, Colorado movie theater, as the new Batman movie screened. The number was confirmed by Police Chief Dan Oates.
A 24-year-old suspect is in custody, Oates told reporters. "We don't have any evidence of a second gunman," he said.

Brenda Stuart, of 850 KOA radio, said that "a lot of people thought the gunshots were part of the movie. They heard what they thought were firecrackers. Then they saw the bullets flying."

Eyewitnesses reported the assailant appeared to be wearing a gas mask, body armor, similar to how the film's villain Bane did too. Witnesses say the suspect was dressed all in black, with a riot helmet, goggles, and a gas mask. Tear gas went off in the Century 16 Movie Theaters at the Aurora Town Center following the gunfire. Reports indicated bullets had passed from one theater into an adjoining one.

Police reported during the afternoon that Holmes did not look like Bane, after all. He first identified himself as "I am the Joker," and had his head and goatee hair painted red and did, somewhat, resemble (perhaps? under his body armor?) the Joker during attack.

The shooting scene was hectic. Three area hospitals were receiving victims, and police at the scene were taking victims to hospitals in their cars, not just waiting for ambulances. Nicole Williams, with the Swedish Medical Center of Englewood, Colorado, told KUSA-Denver the hospital was alerted to a mass-casualty incident at 1:15 a.m. local time Friday (3:15 a.m. ET).

The suspect James Holmes was arrested at the back of the theater, near a car (with Tennessee plates), with a gas mark, two handguns, an "AK-type" firearm and a shotgun.

The suspect James Holmes made statements that he had explosives at his apartment, which is located at Paris Street and 17th Avenue in North Aurora. A bomb squad was on site. There are reports this location is booby-trapped.

At the Twilight Language blog, yesterday, I indicated we should be alert to a possible violent incident occurring on July 20, 2012.

Andrew Griffin's excellent overview, "Midnight Massacre in Theatre No. 9," at the Red Dirt Report is also worthy of reading.

Please now find more, historically, here: Joker Copycats: 2008-2012.

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Victims

Jessica Ghawi/Jessica Redfield, killed in Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting (NY Daily News)

The shooting at the food court at the Eaton Centre mall, in Toronto, Canada, took place on Saturday evening, June 02, 2012. Several people were wounded. Media accounts told of one dead, and seven wounded. One high profile witness was Blue Jays 3B Brett Lawrie. One of the dead victims of the Aurora shooting has turned out to be Jessica Ghawi, an aspiring sportscaster, who happened to almost have been shot during the Eaton shooting. Her immediate pre-The Dark Knight Rises tweets have been published.

A six-year-old is said to be among the fatalities.

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Synchromystic Threads


"It is always darkest just before the day dawneth." - English theologian and historian Thomas Fuller (1608 – 1661)

(Video referral: RPJ/Miguel)

Harvey Dent:

"The night is darkest just before the dawn. 

And I promise you, the dawn is coming." 

~ The Dark Knight (2008)

The name Aurora means "dawn." The Roman goddess of the dawn was named Aurora, and her siblings are Sol (Sun) and Luna (Moon). These names in Latin and Greek are Aurora/Eos, Sol/Helios, Luna/Selene.

Anne Hathaway/Catwoman's public persona character in The Dark Knight Rises is named Selene Kyle (Selene = Moon, Kyle = Strait of Water/River).


Aurora is an extremely popular name in Norway, being the 16th most used in 2006.

Aurora is a suburb less than 10 miles east of downtown Denver. Aurora originated in the 1880s as the town of Fletcher, taking its name from Denver businessman Donald Fletcher, who saw it as a real estate opportunity. He and his partners staked out four square miles east of Denver, but the town - and Colorado - struggled mightily after the Silver Crash of 1893. At that point Fletcher skipped town, leaving the community with a huge water debt. Inhabitants decided to rename the town Aurora in 1907, after one of the subdivisions composing the town.

Colorado is of Spanish origin, meaning "colored red" and "ruddy."

The memories of Columbine (20 miles away from Aurora) are being recalled by the Colorado and other media.

The Aurora name is familiar to investigators of the unexplained due to the the Aurora, Texas, Airship incident that reportedly occurred on April 17, 1897, in Aurora, Texas, a small town in the northwest corner of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The incident (similar to the more famous Roswell UFO incident 50 years later) allegedly resulted in a fatality from the crash. The alleged alien body is reportedly buried in an unmarked grave at the local Aurora cemetery.

The suspect's name translates as James = "he who supplants," Eagan = "fiery," and Holmes = "holly" and/or "island in the river."

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Personal Note

Why am I up this early, as Willie Geist often asks, specifically reporting on this event? Well, I was startled from my sleep, at 4:27 am Eastern, on this morning of July 20th, by what sounded like someone calling my name; I literally thought there was a person in my bedroom. Then I checked the news and heard about the Aurora shooting. I have never had such a startling awakening. Yes, I am open to Forteana, but I do not consider myself involved in psychic phenomena, per se, so this was an unusual personal incident for me.

Bane/Bain Bursts Bare (Part 3)

By Loren Coleman ©2012

Do synchronistic events reveal underlying patterns? Are there meaningful coincidences? Does acausal parallelism exist? There are no coincidences. Everything is a coincidence. What does the data show? What do you think?

"If there is an underlying oneness of all things, it does not matter where we begin, whether with stars, or laws of supply and demand, or frogs, or Napoleon Bonaparte. One measures a circle, beginning anywhere." 

~ Charles Fort

At this Twilight Language blog on Sunday July 15, the topic was first broached, concerning Bane/Bain (Part 1), then followed again with more here (Part 2). 

Soon, we all were awash in a sea of conjectures, speculations and spoofs as the news and near-news organizations burst bare with their fascination with Bane/Bain, from the likes of Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart, Drudge, and Rush Limbaugh. It has been quite a week of many discussions about Bane/Bain.

Now that the date of the release of The Dark Knight Rises and this visual Bane is upon us, let's look at the fact the film is opening on July 20, 2012.  7.20.2012.  20.7.2012.

What are the significant memorable themes associated with past July 20ths? There are two major motifs that leap forth from history: space and assassinations.

The Masonic flag that went to the Moon.

Is there any more important incident, historically, for Earthlings than the simple fact this is the anniversary of humans landing on the Moon? In 1969, on July 20th, Apollo 11 made the first successful manned landing in the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon. Freemasons Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, complete with a Masonic flag, became the first humans to walk on the Moon. This is also the anniversary date in 1976 of Viking 1, an American craft, landing on Mars. To continue the space theme, Star Trek's Scottie, James Doohan (born 1920), died on July 20, 2005.

Assassinations have been associated with July 20th, as well. In 1944, Adolf Hitler survived an assassination attempt led by German Army Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, known as Operation Valkyrie, at Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair or Wolf's Fort) in the Masurian woods, near Rastenburg, East Prussia, now Ketrzyn, Poland. In 1951, King Abdullah I of Jordan, a Freemason, who had worked directly with British hero and Freemason T. E. Lawrence of Arabia, was assassinated by a 21-year-old Palestinian, Mustafa Ashu, while attending Friday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Jerusalem. The mysterious death, some say assassination, of the American actor and martial artist Bruce Lee occurred on July 20, 1973. This is the date in 1977, on which the CIA released documents under the Freedom of Information Act revealing it had engaged in mind control experiments, under Project MK-Ultra (1953-1973).

Will any events take place on July 20, 2012, of any import?

Dates of movie releases have had strange links.

The day of neo-Nazi Breivik's massacre in Norway (July 22, 2011) was the day of the release of the film Captain America (July 22, 2011), with the first scene taking place in Norway, to the sound of Nazis' rapid fire machine gunning. A bizarre coincidence, to say the least.

Batman Begins was released on June 15, 2005 in the United States. 

Spanish police, in a series of concurrent raids throughout Spain on June 15, 2005, arrested 17 alleged Islamic extremists; 11 were associated with Abu Musab al-Zarquawi, and 5 were connected to the Madrid train bombing of March 11, 2004.

The Dark Knight was released on July 18, 2008, in North America.

The largest mobile crane in the nation collapsed at a Houston, Texas, oil refinery on July 18, 2008, killing four workers and injuring six others in the latest of several fatal accidents that have raised concerns about the safety of construction cranes. Meanwhile, on this same date, another crane was in the news at the site of the former Twin Towers in New York City. The so-called "Survivors' Stairway" at the World Trade Center site was moved on July 18, 2008 down to bedrock within the foundations of the Memorial at Ground Zero.

What will happen on July 20, 2012?

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Now we know...

UPDATE: BREAKING NEWS ~ 

DARK KNIGHT SHOOTING IN AURORA!!

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"I shall be accused of having assembled lies, yarns, hoaxes and superstitions. To some degree I think so, myself. To some degree I do not. I offer the data."

~ Charles Fort.

See also:
 Bane/Bain ~ Part 1
 Bane/Bain ~ Part 2
 Bane/Bain ~ Part 3