Oz's Lindt Chocolate Cafe Hostage Situation

A Lindt Chocolate Cafe is the focus of a terrorist hostage situation in Oz. The exact filming location of some of the scenes in Matrix are where this event is occurring.

A major police operation was under way on what is Monday morning, December 15, 2014, at the Lindt Chocolate Cafe, on the corner of Elizabeth Street and Martin Place, Sydney, Australia.

An armed man was filmed with black headband with Arabic writing (see below). A black Arab flag was seen flying inside the cafe. Witnesses described seeing cafe staff and shoppers pinned up against the building’s front window, with their arms raised and a black and white Islamic flag in the window (as shown at top).

As many as 13 hostages were being held in the Lindt Cafe. At least two gunmen took over cafe just before 10 a.m. Customers and staff locked in David Jones in Elizabeth Street. Davy Jones' Locker, also Davy Jones's Locker, is an idiom for the bottom of the sea: the state of death among drowned sailors and shipwrecks.

It is believed six Black Hawk helicopters with troops on board are headed to the city. Castlereagh Street is swarming with hundreds of shocked onlookers and media personnel.

Lindt & Sprüngli AG, more commonly known as Lindt, is a Swiss chocolate and confectionery company, dating back to 1845. Rudolf Lindt, (July 16, 1855 – February 20, 1909) was a Swiss chocolate manufacturer and inventor.

Lindt has opened eight chocolate cafes in Australia, four in Sydney and four in Melbourne. The first one opened in 2004 at Martin Place in Sydney.

The name Lindt is derived from the Upper German word lind, which means "tender," "gentle hearted." The similar phonetic name Linde comes from "Linden," which is a type of tree. It is generally known as a sacred, hallowed tree in Slavic and Germanic cultures, and in England is called a "lime tree."

The symbol found on the logo is of a dragon.

Imprinted on individual chocolates is the logo's dragon. But, intriguing, turned...

...upside down, the head of the dragon looks like a machine gun. This was discovered and noted here, and mentioned in a blog in 2012.

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A rundown of the current breaking news follows. First, a bit of history:

In September 2014, the Australian Federal Police made "a host of arrests after allegedly uncovering a plot to abduct a random Australian and execute them by beheading in a public place, possibly Martin Place and post the act on social media."

Source.

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Are We In Oz? Another Beheading and A King Air Crash

In "The Perfect Synch Storm," I shared a comment maker's notion that what we are seeing is, in some way, linked to the twilight language of James Shelby Downard’s "Killing of the King" ritual. The many royal monikers showing up in the recent news items seem to be beyond coincidence.

That was followed last night, by Patricia Ward, a professor of English, being beheaded by her son Derek. An eyewitness is quoted.

Witness Jack Imperial, 41, of Queens, was taking a taxi to a meeting when he came across the grisly scene, he told the New York Daily News.
“The body’s feet were at the curb, the shoulders were at the middle of the street. The head was across the street,” Imperial told the newspaper. “I’ve seen some gruesome stuff in my years of living ... but nothing like this. I didn’t expect to see something like this, especially not out here.” Source

Then this morning a King Air crashes in Kansas. 

A small airplane struck a FlightSafety International building near Wichita's Mid-Continent Airport on the morning of October 30, 2014, FlightSafety spokesman Steve Phillips said.

People were found dead inside the building, four are reported dead. At one point, over 10 people were said to be trapped in the building, with a few seriously injured, after the plane, a Hawker Beechcraft King Air, crashed into that building near the airport located in southern Kansas.

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The logo of the Hawker Beechcraft King Air appears to repeat the imagery in the Cross of the Hospitallers.

An interesting and romantic survivor of Outremer (a general name given to the Crusader states established after the First Crusade) "was, and is, the Sovereign Order of the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, and of Malta, the Hospitallers, who held Rhodes from 1309 to 1523 and Malta from 1530 to 1798. Starting with a hospital in Jerusalem, before the Crusades even started, the Order was recognized by the Pope in 1113 and soon acquired a military branch, staffing some of the most famous castles of Outremer, like the Krak des Chevaliers in Syria." Source.

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The FAA said the twin-engine plane lost an engine on takeoff and crashed into the two-story building. The roof on the building's eastern side has collapsed.

Video from KSNW-TV showed thick smoke rising from the building at 10:20 a.m. (11:20 a.m. ET).

Wichita, Kansas, with a 2010 population of 382,368, is the largest city in Kansas. Because of it's unique position on the plains and in the center of the country, the city has been the location of the beginnings of many businesses. Coleman, Mentholatum, Pizza Hut, Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers, White Castle, Taco Tico, and Koch Industries were all been founded in Wichita.

The city is known as "The Air Capital of the World" because of the establishment of the following aircraft corporations in Wichita in the late 1920s and early 1930s: Stearman, Cessna, Mooney, and Beechcraft. Learjet, and Spirit AeroSystems continue to operate design and manufacturing facilities in Wichita today, and the city remains a major center of the U.S. aircraft industry.

The city has interesting links to a broader history, such as the fact that one of the signatories on the town charter was a lone woman, the town laundry operator, Catherine "The Widow" McCarty, whose elder teenage son, after leaving Wichita, would become the infamous gunman, Billy the Kid.

Billy the Kid is a 1930 American film produced and directed in widescreen by King Vidor.

Kansas? But are we, instead, in Oz? 

In L. Frank Baum's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the author describes Kansas as being "in shades of gray." 

But what is Oz, red, right now?

Let's we forget, in the book, the Tinman beheads wild cats.

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Scarecrow: “I cannot understand why you should wish to leave this beautiful country and go back to the dry, gray place you call Kansas.”
Dorothy: “That is because you have no brains … No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home.” ~ from L. Frank Baum's book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)

Dorothy: Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more. ~ from the film, The Wizard of Oz (1939).

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Van Winkle Dies In Oz: Death in the Kansas City Chiefs Parking Lot

A man is sleeping, wakes up, gets in a fight, and dies. It does not seem remarkable, at first, until you begin to look at the name of the individual, the date of the incident, and the location.

The story:

A man who owned a Jeep and his son returned to their vehicle in a football stadium's parking lot after Sunday's game. They find a sleeping man "who did not belong" inside the Jeep. This discovery resulted in a fight between the specific owner of the vehicle - the father - and the man inside. The person in the car, described as a white male in his mid-20s, collapsed during the struggle. When paramedics arrived, the man was found lying unconscious on the pavement. The person was then taken from the Arrowhead Stadium parking lot in Kansas City, following the Chiefs' loss to the Denver Broncos (35-28), on December 1, 2013, and declared dead at a local hospital.

The name:

The sleeping man was identified as Kyle A. Van Winkle (also spelled VanWinkle and Vanwinkle in media reports), 30, of Smithville, Missouri, located just on the border with Kansas. Van Winkle was a loan operations specialist for the $1.8 billion CommunityAmerica Credit Union in Lenexa, Kansas, revealed the Credit Union Times. Van Winkle was the son of Dean Van Winkle, a detective sergeant in the investigations unit of the Grandview Police Department, according to the Kansas City Star.

New information indicates that Van Winkle appears to have fallen asleep in an unlocked Jeep that looked like his.

An examination of Van Winkle's body did not show obvious signs of trauma, Kansas City police spokesman Darin Snapp said. Police Chief Darryl Forte said the death is being investigated as a homicide and that two suspects have not been identified yet.

The name Van Winkle is from the Dutch (also given as Vanwinkle, Van Winckle, Van Winkel). It is a moniker originating from the topographic name for someone who lived on a corner (either a street corner or a corner of land), from Dutch winkel, "corner," "nook," or a habitational name from a place named with this word, for example in North Holland. (Source.)

The traditional story of Rip Van Winkle is well-known in America. It tells of a man named Rip Van Winkle who lived in a village in New York State during the American Revolutionary War, when it was still ruled by the British. Rip Van Winkle fell asleep for 20 years and woke up to find he wasn't in the world he remembered.

"Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by American author Washington Irving published in 1819, as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. Written while Irving was living in Birmingham, England, it was part of a collection entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.. Although the story is set in New York's Catskill Mountains, Irving later admitted, "When I wrote the story, I had never been on the Catskills."

(See the end of this posting for the plot to the short story.)

The date:

Kyle Van Winkle's death came one year to the day after Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher shot and killed his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, on December 1, 2012, at a home not far from the stadium. Belcher then drove to the team's practice facility and fatally shot himself in front of then-coach Romeo Crennel and general manager Scott Pioli.

As I mentioned a year ago, Kansas City, Missouri, police spokesman Darin Snapp was the person who identified the player as linebacker Jovan Belcher, 25. Belcher, from West Babylon, New York, played football at the University of Maine from 2005-08. He graduated from Maine in December 2008 with a bachelor's degree in child development and family relations.

Jovan as a boy's name is of Latin origin. Variant of Jove, from Jupiter (Latin) "the supreme God." Jupiter was the supreme deity of Roman mythology, corresponding to the Greek Zeus.

The surname Belcher has its roots in medieval England, and, before that, in France. The name Belcher is composed of two syllables: Bel and cher. In Old French, Bel meant "beautiful or fine." The Middle English word cher (also derived from the Old French) meant an "an expression on the face." the Belcher name refers to a beautiful or fine expression on the face, hospitality, or, in summary, Bel = "good" + cher = "cheer."

See this blog's detailed discussion of the December 1, 2012 event, "KC Chiefs Player Suicide at Arrowhead."

The location:

Arrowhead Stadium parking lot, December 1, 2013.

Besides the suicide death of Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher on December 1, 2012, in this parking lot, a previous incident occurred there.

In September 2012, a gunman attacked a Kansas City Royals employee in the same parking lot, which also services Kauffman Stadium. The shooting took place several hours before the scheduled start of the Royals' game, which went on as scheduled.


The summary of the plot of Rip Van Winkle:

Statue of Rip Van Winkle in Irvington, New York, 

not far from "Sunnyside," the home of Washington Irving.

The story of Rip Van Winkle is set in the years before and after the American Revolutionary War. In a pleasant village, at the foot of New York's Catskill Mountains, lives the kindly Rip Van Winkle, a colonial British-American villager of Dutch descent. Rip is an amiable man who enjoys solitary activities in the wilderness, but is also loved by all in town—especially the children to whom he tells stories and gives toys. However, a tendency to avoid all gainful labor, for which his nagging wife (Dame Van Winkle) chastises him, allows his home and farm to fall into disarray due to his lazy neglect.
One winter day, Rip is escaping his wife's nagging, wandering up the mountains with his dog, Wolf. Hearing his name being shouted, Rip discovers that the speaker is a man dressed in antiquated Dutch clothing, carrying a keg up the mountain, who requires Rip's help. Without exchanging words, the two hike up to an amphitheatre-like hollow in which Rip discovers the source of previously-heard thunderous noises: there is a group of other ornately-dressed, silent, bearded men who are playing nine-pins [kegelen]. Although there is no conversation and Rip does not ask the men who they are or how they know his name, he discreetly begins to drink some of their liquor, and soon falls asleep.

He awakes in unusual circumstances: It seems to be morning, his gun is rotted and rusty, his beard has grown a foot long, and Wolf is nowhere to be found. Rip returns to his village where he finds that he recognizes no one. Asking around, he discovers that his wife has died and that his close friends have died in a war or gone somewhere else. He immediately gets into trouble when he proclaims himself a loyal subject of King George III, not knowing that the American Revolution has taken place; George III's portrait on the town inn has been replaced by that of George Washington. Rip is also disturbed to find another man is being called Rip Van Winkle (though this is in fact his son, who has now grown up).
The men he met in the mountains, Rip learns, are rumored to be the ghosts of Hendrick (Henry) Hudson's crew. Rip is told that he has apparently been away from the village for twenty years. An old local recognizes Rip and Rip's now-adult daughter takes him in. Rip resumes his habitual idleness, and his tale is solemnly taken to heart by the Dutch settlers, with other hen-pecked husbands, after hearing his story, wishing they could share in Rip's good luck, and have the luxury of sleeping through the hardships of war. Source: Wikipedia.

 

The story contains other names to be aware of in the telling: Wolf, Kegelen, George, Washington, Hendrick, Henry, and Hudson. Other names are involved, too.

In the 1914 movie Rip Van Winkle, "The main setting is outside the tavern of Nicklaus Vedder in the village of Falling Waters."

In reality, there is a Falling Water, and the small rural village lies along State Route 23A at the base of Kaaterskill Clove, New York.

The bizarre keglers in Washington Irving's story, playing at ninepins (a/k/a kegelen), are often described as dwarfs or goblins.

Washington Irving's companion short story is "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820) - the tale infamous for Ichabod Crane and its headless horseman, of course.

(H/T to Robert Sullivan for KC news hints.)

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Kansas Deaths Are Dark Mirrors

Still missing, Lana, 18 months old, in the "shades of gray" state of Kansas.

News is coming out of Olathe and Ottawa, Kansas, of the grisly discovery of the bodies of three adults and a missing, presumed dead child of one of the deceased. It appears to be a ghastly reflection - a dark one - of the rescue in Cleveland.

The names in Cleveland - Knight, Berry, and DeJesus - are well-known now.

From Kansas, we may be hearing more about Bailey, Stout, and White soon.

Steven E. White, one of the deceased.

The bodies of Kaylie Kathleen Bailey, 21, Andrew Adam Stout, 30, and Steven Eugene White, 31, were discovered at a farmhouse in Ottawa earlier this week.

(L-R) Andrew Stout, Kaylie Bailey, Steven White

Friends of a man who lives at the home in the 3100 block of Georgia Road called deputies Sunday after smelling a foul odor. They also had been unable to contact their friend recently. But deputies did not find any bodies.

The friends returned Monday and found what they believed to be a woman’s body in a garage. Deputies then returned to the home, got a search warrant and found the men’s bodies. All of the victims were adults.

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/05/07/2792530/2-bodies-found-on-farm-in-east.html#storylink=cpy

The first body was found in the farm's garage Monday, May 6, 2013, by friends of Stout's, who investigated the property after not hearing from Stout for several days. They called police after finding Bailey's body in the garage under a tarp. Authorities then launched a full search and found the other two bodies. Bailey's daughter, Lana, was nowhere to be found.

Franklin County Sheriff Jeffrey Richards said at a news conference that the 18-month-old daughter of one of the victims is "presumed dead" although her body has not been found. A 27-year-old man has been arrested in the deaths of these three people, law enforcement officials said Thursday.

Lana Leigh Bailey and Kaylie Bailey.

Earlier in the week, the Wichita Eagle shared the concerns of relatives:

Rachel Helms-Bailey, grandmother of the missing child, said her son, Shawn Bailey, and Kaylie married in 2009 and lived with her for years in Basehor and later Melvern. She said Kaylie never missed a day of work [at an American Eagle Outfitters warehouse], so it’s extremely unusual that Kaylie would miss a week of work without calling.
Kaylie and her baby moved back with Kaylie’s mother in Olathe about six months ago, Helms-Bailey said. Shawn Bailey was sent to prison for theft and forgery convictions in early March, and the couple divorced at the end of March, she said.
Kaylie last was seen about noon Wednesday leaving her mother’s home to visit Andrew Stout, who lives at the Georgia Road home. They worked together as security officers. Stout had at least one roommate who recently had been released from prison, Helms-Bailey said.
Kaylie said she would be back in two hours but never returned, Helms-Bailey said. She missed her overnight shift that night and every shift since. Stout has also not returned to work, Helms-Bailey said.

Police had earlier been looking for two men in connection with the murders: Kyle Flack, 27, and Cyle Mathew Bailey, 22. They are believed to be driving a Toyota Corolla.

The suspect was located in Emporia, about 50 miles southwest of Ottawa, Sheriff Richards said. That suspect is being held at the Franklin County jail on a first-degree murder charge but has yet to be formally charged, according to Richards and Franklin County Attorney Stephen Hunting.

Shawn was arrested with relative Cyle Bailey, 23, who had been imprisoned with Shawn for their role in a 2008 burglary in Franklin County. Cyle Bailey had also initially been sought by police as a “person of interest" in the Ottawa homicide. However, police canceled that request Tuesday after speaking with Cyle. Source.

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/05/07/2792530/2-bodies-found-on-farm-in-east.html#storylink=c

Update: Prosecutors are expected to charge Kyle T. Flack, 27, of Ottawa with multiple counts of first-degree murder in the case, Richards said. (Flack is pictured below in recent booking photographs.)

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/05/09/4226917/missing-18-month-old-ottawa-girl.html#storylink=cpy

Update: Prosecutors are expected to charge Kyle Flack, 27, of Ottawa with multiple counts of first-degree murder in the case, Richards said.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/05/09/4226917/missing-18-month-old-ottawa-girl.html#storylink=cpy

The father of the child, Shawn Bailey, is apparently not a suspect. He has been in jail in Missouri since January on burglary charges. It is not known if Cyle Bailey is a relative.

 OzOzOz

Olathe, Ottawa, Emporia. We are in Kansas. Oz incarnate. The state has a Wizard of Oz Museum, a Yellow Brick Road, a Munchkin Mall, and other Oz-linked roadside attractions. Olathe, where Kaylie Bailey lived, is literally "beautiful."

Olathe was founded by Dr. John T. Barton in the spring of 1857. He rode to the center of Johnson County, Kansas, and staked two quarter sections of land as the town site. He later described his ride to friends: "...the prairie was covered with verbena and other wild flowers. I kept thinking the land was beautiful and that I should name the town Beautiful." Purportedly, Barton asked a Shawnee interpreter how to say "Beautiful" in his native language. The interpreter responded, "Olathe." Source.

Other highlights summarized from Wikipedia:

This area of Kansas was involved in the pre-Civil War bloody battles between pro- and anti-slavery factions. Confederate guerrillas from Missouri led by William Quantrill surprised the residents and raided the city on September 7, 1862, killing a half dozen men, robbing numerous businesses and private homes, and destroying most of the city. Quantrill launched the raid because the people of Olathe were known for their abolitionism.

Ottawa is a city situated along the Marais des Cygnes River (which use to flood often) in the central part of Franklin County, Kansas. Beginning in 1943, Ottawa served as a branch camp for Nazi prisoners of war.

Emporia, Kansas, located on upland prairie, was founded on February 20, 1857, drawing its name from ancient Carthaginian Africa. The 1987 CBS miniseries Murder Ordained was filmed in Emporia. The program was the dramatization of an actual event in Emporia involving the 1983 death of Sandra Bird. Her husband, Reverend Tom Bird, was convicted of first-degree murder in her death and served 20 years in prison. On Sunday, March 6, 1988, a heavily armed gunman walked into the Calvary Baptist Church during services and opened fire. The 29-year-old gunman, Cheunphon Ji, shot randomly, killing 1 person and injuring 4 others.

"No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home." ~ Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.

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Down The Road of Yellow Bricks: Oz and FLW

Yes, there are porcelain people in our future, folks.

Oz: The Great and Powerful is due in theaters on March 8, 2013.

By pure coincidence, I obtained a book a few days ago, opened it, and saw these remarkable endpapers above. The book's name is Frank Lloyd Wright Field Guide by Thomas A. Heinz. It was published in 2005 by Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois.

The homes and buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (FLW) appear to create a synchromystic goldmine of material to examine. Some of it has been explored here at Twilight Language (see below).

In my posting on the Fortean Society and Forteans, I mention that Frank Lloyd Wright was an early member of the Fortean Society. As demonstrated by where these endpapers lead us, as well as his associates in the Fortean Society, the people linked to Frank Lloyd Wright certainly points right down the "road of yellow bricks."

At the top of the first inside page of Frank Lloyd Wright Field Guide, I found the explanation behind what greeted me when I first viewed the book. Heinz has written: 

The endpapers in this book have been recreated from those used by L. Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz, in an earlier book he wrote, typeset, printed, and bound for publishers Way & (Chauncey) Williams of Chicago, called By the Candelabra's Glare. Baum's endpaper are reported to have been taken from wallpaper used in the Wright-designed Chauncey Williams house....(p. 2)

The Chauncey L. Williams House is located at 530 Edgewood Place, River Forest, Illinois.

The house was scaled to accommodate Williams's height: he was six feet four inches tall. With money inherited from his father, he started a publishing firm Way and Williams. He knew attorney Clarence Darrow and Kansas Governor Henry J. Allen along with bookseller George Millard who were all Wright clients. (p. 282)

Other significant Frank Lloyd Wright essays, with linkages, on Twilight Language are:

The Strange Syncs of the Church Bomb Suspect

Phoenix and Frank Lloyd Wright Lexilinks Crash

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

Frank Lloyd Wright and Synchromysticism

Blade Runner: 30 Years of Synchromysticism

Dakota

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I'm still waiting for someone to give Baum's axis mundi symbolism its due: The tornado, Dorothy starting in Kansas, which was then the geographical center of the United States and ultimately arriving at the geographical center of Oz. The four kingdoms of Oz with their color-coding and the Emerald City in the center -- emerald is traditionally associated with the axis mundi (which may also be why Aragorn insisted that Bilbo include an emerald in his poem about Earendel, another otherworld journey.)
I have no great confidence that the Disney people will have aimed any higher than "adventure story with steampunk touches" -- but if they've mined Baum deeply enough to include the porcelain people, one never knows. ~ Cory Panshin.

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The new film does have a porcelain person.

Oz: The Great and Powerful appears to be a film that will contain some powerful synchrocinematic imagery.

 

 Find your way to the Land of Oz, here.

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