The Tearing Of The Fig Leaf Dress

I still have a lot of reading to do in order to prepare my next post in the series on Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy.  Today's post will therefore not be part of that series.  And it will be a short post.

But I do want to comment on the significance of some of the geopolitical events which have taken place during the last month or so.  In particular, I want to comment on a particular effect of the massive protests which have taken place in Russia against the regime of Vladimir Putin.  Those who have been paying attention to events during the last decade will appreciate the significance of this effect.  Note this: one thing that narcissists always target in their victims is the victims' memory - for it is the ability to remember that enables the victim to recognize patterns of abusive behavior, and to make connections between those patterns and the narcissists' current behavior.  (See this also.)  If pattern recognition can be sabotaged, the narcissist can prevent the victim from taking the steps needed to permanently remove himself or herself from the narcissist.  This is why remembering history - both personal and communal (including national and international) is such an important faculty.

Those therefore who remember much of the commentary in the blogosphere and on a lot of "alternative media" from 2007 to early 2017 will remember how much of that commentary attempted to paint Russia under Vladimir Putin as a Paradise in the making, a model to which other nations should aspire.  Putin was fond of comparing himself to Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's founding prime minister.  (See "Lee Kuan Yew and Russia: Role Model For Hire?", "Lee Kuan Yew Conferred Order Of Honour By Russia's Putin" and "How Lee Kuan Yew and Putin Exposed The Democracy Bogey" for instance.)  The comparison was a conveniently self-serving move for Putin, as Lee Kuan Yew had presided over the re-making of Singapore from a dirt-poor Third World ex-colony of Britain into an economic, scientific and technical powerhouse.  Putin sought similarly to paint himself as the re-making savior of Russia.

Putin's portrayal of himself as a savior was also central to his strategy of expanding Russian geopolitical influence during that time.  Other elements of that strategy included positioning Russia as a leader (perhaps the leader) of the white supremacist Global Far Right, and as a defender of traditional moral and religious values which were supposedly under severe threat due to the decadence of the West and the inevitable "excesses" that are supposedly associated with liberal democracy.  Saving the world from such "strong" threats required, of course, a "strong" leader.  And Putin was supposedly the man!  The project of expanding Russian geopolitical influence was also part of a larger narcissistic strategy of global empire which had first been developed by a rather slimy character named Aleksandr Dugin, and which I began to describe in a series of blog posts titled, "The Revanchism of the Third Rome."

For a while the strategy seemed to work.  This was especially true during the oil shock of the first decade of the 21st century, when oil prices briefly climbed above $140 a barrel on the world market and Russia made money hand over fist as a result.  But that oil shock produced economic effects which undermined the ability of the global economy to support such prices, and the cash boom which Russia enjoyed during that period began to dry up.  That boom is not returning.  Putin has been revealed to be a parasite, and his regime has been revealed to be parasitical.  And the nativist, populist leaders whom the Russian government helped to install in Britain, the U.S., Brazil, and other places have been revealed by the crises of the last two years to be parasites as well, parasites who are willfully, malignantly incompetent.  (To the Brexiteers: how does Brexit feel now?  Y'all happy?)

Now just as a smart wolf relies on sheep's clothing in order to optimize his catching of prey, so too do narcissistic beings (whether persons, families, or national governments) rely on the projection of an image of perfection.  But the underlying reality belies the image.  A wolf is not a sheep, no matter what kind of costume he puts on.  Putin is therefore no defender of traditional moral values if it is revealed that he is a divorced serial fornicator - even though his palace contains a church in addition to a pole dancing theater.  Nor has he turned Russia into a Paradise in the making.  Although he was able to recruit a rather large army of spin-doctors to project an image of perfection to the West, that image was like a dress made of fig leaves.  Perhaps the autumn of his regime has come, for it seems that the fig leaves have turned brown and brittle.  The protests during the first two months of this year have ripped that costume to shreds, revealing the raw flesh of life under Putin.  Eight months ago I suspected that something like this might happen - yet I am no prophet.  Rather, I say again now what I said back then: watch the weak signals.

P.S. Note that the most recent protests in Russia have been decentralized and performed in such a way that Putin's ПОЛИЦИЯ can't do a thing to stop them.  Nor can anyone inject violence into them.  The latest protests are an example of what the literature on strategic nonviolent resistance calls "tactics of dispersion."  These protests show strategic sophistication.  You BLM leaders: are you reading this?  Pay attention!  I'm telling you this as a brother.  How I wish we had done something like this after Stephon Clark was murdered by the Sacramento Police!

When Counting to 100 is Not Enough

The Kremlin is finding itself in a bit of a sticky situation this week.  You know how some people advise that if something makes you mad, or you smash your thumb while doing work, you should count to 100 before you say anything?  Waiting before talking is supposed to increase the chances that whatever does eventually come out of your mouth won't reflect badly on you.  But such advice doesn't always work.

After the "illegal" anti-corruption protests in Russia this weekend conducted by predominantly youthful demonstrators, Putin waited...and waited...and then said some things that added a great deal to the evidence that he is, in fact, a dictator and not a democrat.  According to one source, he accused "political forces" of using the issue of Russian government corruption for their own benefit.  He also compared the weekend protests to the Arab Spring protests that began in 2010, and hinted that if such protests were allowed to continue in Moscow, the result would be "chaos."

After these remarks, there were attempts both in Russian media and in sympathetic Western media (such as this) to deflect some heat away from Putin by suggesting that the real target of protesters' anger was Dmitry Medvedev.  One polling agency suggested that most Russians are not actually angry with Putin - believing instead that Putin is trying to fight corruption, but that he may not be successful.  And Putin also professed his dedication to fighting corruption, saying that "Personally, I am in favor of having questions about the fight against corruption always at the center of public attention."

So - if it's so that Mr. Putin is in favor of placing the fight against corruption at the center of public attention - why the crackdown on last weekend's protests?  Why have Russian prosecutors moved to block Internet calls for more protests?  Why were many protesters beaten while being arrested?  Why were even bystanders arrested?  Why did Putin show solidarity with Medvedev afterward?  Why is participation in "unsanctioned gatherings" punishable by up to five years in prison under Russian law?  (For that matter, if a man won a U.S. presidential election fair and square, and was himself the living embodiment of American democratic ideals, why would he be afraid of a vote recount?  But I digress.)

Honest people have a very powerful way of showing their honesty: namely, by allowing free and open examination of their deeds, including constructive criticism by others as necessary.  If Mr. Putin is really a champion of honesty and the elimination of corruption, how could he possibly be hurt by a free and open discussion of corruption in Russia - a discussion that included free, unconstrained, nonviolent protest?  Instead, what Russia is doing is seeking to "cure" the wave of protest by state-sponsored education about the Russian government's anticorruption efforts.  At least one Russian teacher is taking this "education" to a whole new level.  You can watch a video of this teacher here.

Problems that are constantly swept under a rug eventually become a tripping hazard.  One of the ways that tripping hazard may grow in Russia could be that the civil resistance that manifested itself last weekend begins to move beyond the methods of protest and persuasion to the methods of non-cooperation (especially economic non-cooperation), and to the methods of nonviolent intervention - including beginning to construct parallel institutions.

The Arrival of Name and Blackeneth

You should never argue with a crazy ma-ma-ma-ma-man,

You oughtta know by now…

– Billy Joel, Movin’ Out

“ ‘And so it was in those days,’ said Brother Reader:

“that the princes of Earth had hardened their hearts against the Law of the Lord, and of their pride there was no end. And each of them thought within himself that it was better for all to be destroyed than for the will of other princes to prevail over his. For the mighty of the Earth did contend among themselves for supreme power over all; by stealth, treachery and deceit they did seek to rule...”

– Walter M. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz, “Fiat Lux”

Donald Trump created a bit of a stir over the last few days with some tweets expressing his desire to expand and modernize the U.S. nuclear weapon arsenal. As his aides tried to downplay his words, he countered by offering additional words of “explanation” which increased the alarm of his hearers. Among the things he said are the following:

• He intends to “greatly” expand the number of warheads and delivery systems.
• He does not care whether this action provokes a renewed arms race between the United States and other nations. In his words, “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.” And as his soon-to-be White House spokesman said, “I think it’s putting every nation on notice that the United States is going to reassert its position in the globe.”
• Some have recalled his earlier assertions that the United States should not necessarily prevent other nations from acquiring nuclear weapons, and that they should no longer expect to rely on the United States for protection from nuclear threats. (See this and this.)

While the Donald’s words contain plenty of cause for alarm, I have to say that I don’t necessarily view his words in the same way as some of the alarmed voices see them. For many of these voices are the voices of regretful players on the losing end of empire who have pointed to the stabilizing role the United States has played for several decades as the center of empire. Their lament that this stabilizing role is about to come to an end seem to me to be a veiled plea for that empire to continue, a veiled justification of that empire. But while it is quite true that the United States has played a pivotal role in nuclear non-proliferation, and while the work that has been done in that role has been unquestionably good, it is also true that the United States has made a lot of people suffer by reason of its imperialism. Most of those sufferers have been citizens of the “developing world,” a world kept in a continual state of brokenness in order that five percent of the world’s population might consume over 40 percent of the world’s resources. It won’t hurt my ego at all if someone else assumes the role of global leadership for a while – provided, of course, that the next leader is sane, rational and moral.

Trump is not sane, rational or moral. I agree with the alarmists that the Donald’s words are cause for great alarm – for the following reasons.

First, his intention to “greatly strengthen and expand [the U.S.] nuclear capability” would almost certainly be a direct repudiation of the second pillar of the international Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (or NPT) which was ratified in 1970, and to which the United States was one of the signatories. (It seems that Russia may already have repudiated the second pillar.) There is no doubt that the NPT has made the world safer by greatly reducing the risk of nuclear war. Yet even now, there are non-nuclear nations which have long-standing frustrations with the five major nuclear powers (the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France) because of the refusal of the major powers to adhere to the same standard of behavior to which they hold the non-nuclear nations. A decision by the United States to abandon disarmament in favor of increasing the total count of weapons would provide these other nations with ample justification for turning their own backs on the NPT.

Second, the tone of Mr. Trump’s nuke language, combined with many of his previous statements, shows his need to approach his interactions with other nations as the dominator with the biggest stick, rather than as a humble, genuine peacemaker seeking the greatest good for all. This is not likely to go over very well in the world at large, many of whose nations may soon come to feel themselves to be under existential threat because of the actions and attitudes of our incoming Narcissist-In-Chief. And when people feel that their very lives are threatened, they will be prepared to fight back. Maybe that’s why the Donald, who campaigned on an ostensibly isolationist platform, is nonetheless seeking to drastically expand U.S. military spending, and to eliminate budget caps on future military spending. The U.S. military budget is already bigger than the next fifteen largest national military budgets combined. If Trump really is a peacenik, why do we need more troops and hardware?

Third, the creation of a global political climate in which nations felt that they were not significant or were vulnerable to domination unless they each had nuclear weapons would produce the same results on an international level that the massive promotion of gun ownership has had in the United States. (See this also.) The U.S. is not safer as a result of massively increased gun ownership and concealed or open carry laws. Instead, we have found that certain kinds of hotheads gravitate toward gun ownership, and that the fact that these people have guns has greatly increased the chances that the guns will be used – and not for good purpose! How do you feel about having a world of nuclear-armed nations whose leaders say things like, “Why do we make [nukes] if we’re not going to use them?”, or, “You want to be unpredictable [in your potential use of nuclear weapons]”? (Quotes paraphrased from source cited in paragraph.)

Fourth, Mr. Trump has promised to build a “serious missile defense system” to protect the United States from nuclear threats. Perhaps he is hoping that the U.S. could hide itself behind such a system.  However, intercepting nuclear missiles is much harder than it has been made to seem by proponents of missile defense systems.  There are three stages in the flight of a ballistic nuclear missile where the missile could be intercepted by a defense system: boost, ballistic and reentry. But trying to intercept a missile during the reentry phase is, in many respects, waiting until it’s too late. And U.S. attempts to build systems that could intercept a missile during the boost and ballistic phases have uniformly failed. (See this, this, and this.) Is Trump promising to build a system that would actually and reliably work against a modern ICBM? Fuhgeddaboudit.

To me, Trump’s recent military statements can be taken in two ways. First, I think he will treat the United States – with all of its various peoples – as nothing more than a narcissistic extension of himself. Now that he has, by means of a rigged election, graduated to the biggest of the big leagues, he will try to display the biggest persona of them all. At present he receives a great deal of narcissistic supply from his association with Vladimir Putin, who has distinguished himself as another Big Man on a Big Stage. But I suspect that there is also in Trump a feeling of rivalry and envy in his association with Putin and with Russia – an envy with Freudian overtones. A buildup of the U.S. military may be one way by which Trump seeks to resolve that envy and prove to himself that he is the bigger man. Indeed, there are already signs of instability in the relationship between these two narcissists, as indicated in Trump’s response to the thoughts expressed toward him in a recent letter from Putin: “In response to Mr. Putin’s letter, Mr. Trump said that a failure by either side to ‘live up to these thoughts’ would require the United States to ‘travel an alternative path.’” I remember reading how last year, Mr. Putin publicly lectured the West concerning American intervention in the Mideast, pointedly asking, “Do you realize what you’ve done?” However, Mr. Putin’s solution to American imperialism has been to support the political ambitions of a man who is morally unfit to be the President of the United States. Therefore Putin’s “cure” will almost certainly be worse than the disease for which it was intended. A day may soon arrive in which other heads of state pointedly ask Putin, “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

(I used to have a great deal of respect for Putin and his version of Russia, but unfortunately, his mask has slipped. Even though many of his criticisms of the West have validity, I no longer view him as the doctor to be writing prescriptions for anything.)

The second way to look at Trump is to see that deliberately sowing consternation (and confusion) is part of his overall style. He seems to take great pride in being unpredictable. Indeed, he seems to see this unpredictability as a strength. Others don’t necessarily agree. (See this, this and this.) I also have a few thoughts on Mr. Trump and unpredictability, which I will disclose in a future post. In that post, we’ll be climbing back out onto the skinny branches again.

Aggressiveness, insecurity, unpredictability, and nukes – oh, my!

When The First Amendment Is Revoked

A troubling development has surfaced in the preparations being made by the Trump team to seize the White House which they "won" in a rigged election this past November.  It appears that the Trump team issued a list of 74 questions to Department of Energy personnel, asking them to identify which employees and contractors worked on climate change initiatives under President Obama.  Among the items in the questionnaire are the following:

• "Can you provide a list of all Department of Energy employees or contractors who have attended any Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon meetings?  Can you provide a list of when those meetings were and any materials distributed at those meetings, emails associated with those meetings, or materials created by Department employees or contractors in anticipation or as a result of those meetings?"
• "Can you provide a list of Department employees or contractors who attended any of the Conference of the Parties (under the UNFCC (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change)) in the last five years?"
• "Which programs within DOE are essential to meeting the goals of President Obama's Climate Action Plan?"
• "Can you provide a list of the top twenty salaried employees of the lab, with total remuneration and the portion funded by DOE?"
• "Can you provide a list of current professional society memberships of lab staff?"
• "Can you provide a list of all other positions currently held by lab staff, paid and unpaid, including faculties, boards, and consultancies?"

These questions are being asked by the transition team of a President-elect who has vowed to dismantle Obama's climate action policies and who has publicly said that "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."  It is therefore understandable that the scientists in the Department of Energy are looking at the questionnaire from the incoming Administration in the same way that a flock of chickens might look at a fox who is asking for each chicken's name and address.

However, the point of my post today is not to argue whether climate change is real, or whether, if real, it is being caused by human activity.  (On these two points, the science is indisputable.  As to the consequences we are now reaping, see this, this, and this for instance.)  My point is, rather, whether the scientists who are seeking to do objective, fact-based work at the DOE have good reason to be worried about what a hostile incoming Administration might try to do to them.  For it is well known that Donald Trump is a classic narcissist, and we can also be reasonably certain that most of his inner circle shares his disease.  One of the rules for survival in proximity to a narcissist is this: Don't ever disagree with him.  If you break that rule, be prepared for retaliation.  And if the narcissist not only controls your employment, but also knows all your professional associations and positions held outside of your regular employment, he can majorly ruin your chances of finding any kind of employment in your particular field.  There are many stories around just now of people whose careers were ruined by narcissists or bullies. 

So it will be interesting to see how dissenting scientists fare in the DOE under a Trump administration.  That will tell us how the Trump administration will respond to dissent in general.  Early reports are not encouraging, as seen here, here and here, for example.  I think that it is very likely that we will have to endure an extremely thin-skinned President who is determined to live in the narcissistic bubble of his own fantasy, a President who will explode in narcissistic rage at any fact, reality or person who dares to burst that bubble.  He will be Nixon on steroids.

And for that reason, I think it is prudent for those of us who will have to live under such a President to consider two of Gene Sharp's Methods of Nonviolent Action (from his book How Nonviolent Struggle Works), under the heading of Social Intervention: creating alternative social institutions, and creating alternative communication systems.  What is more, these alternative social institutions and alternative communication networks must be tough, survivable, and able to function even when they are denied access to the resources available to official institutions and communication networks.  It might be a very good idea to ask how you would form a network of people you can rely on when your power to form networks is being interdicted by the State.  It might be a good idea to ask how you can communicate with a wider audience or an audience spread over a wide geographic area when you can't use Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, Blogger, or any other electronic Web-based social media - either because access to these media is denied, or because dissenters who try to use them might wind up getting arrested.  Message in a bottle, anyone?

The Black Hole At The Imperial Center

Warning: This will be a blatantly spiritual post, so you can decide whether you are interested enough in that subject to keep reading.  I will begin with an analogy from astronomy.  Observations of stellar motion near galactic cores explain much about what holds galaxies together.  Scientists who have observed such cores have gleaned a great deal of information about a thing that can be observed only indirectly, namely, the super-massive black hole that lies at the heart of a typical galaxy.  Those observations have enabled them to estimate the probable mass of many black holes at galactic centers and the radius of their event horizons.

Here's a question: can observations of empire tell what lies at the center of earthly empires?

A clue came to me recently.  For the last several months I've been listening to audio recordings of the Bible that I downloaded from the LibriVox website.  For some reason, I found myself obsessively listening to various readings of the Book of Daniel for several days last month, and that led me to an effort to try to figure the book out.  I am not going to give you some grand exposition today, but I will comment on a couple of things that I noticed.

First, the main theme of Daniel seems to be summarized in Daniel 4:17 - that God Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever He will, and sets up over it the lowest of men - and that one day, all earthly kingdoms and their kings will be superseded by a King from Heaven whose reign will be over all, and will never end.

But before that everlasting Kingdom comes, there will be one last earthly empire.  That empire will rule the earth for a time, and will be evil.  One interesting observation is the power and motivation behind that last empire, whose ruler will "do that which his fathers have not done, nor his fathers' fathers."  (Daniel 11:24)  In other words, he will be an exceptional conqueror having an extraordinary degree of cunning.  What will be the secret of his success?  This: "He will not regard the gods of his fathers, or the desire of women, or regard any god, for he will magnify himself above all.  But in his place he will honor a god of fortresses, a god whom his fathers did not know; with gold, silver and with precious stones and pleasant things.  He will deal with the strongest fortresses by the help of a a foreign god; he will give great honor to those who acknowledge him and will cause them to rule over the many, and will parcel out land for a price."  (Daniel 11:37-39, various translations)

To put it plainly, behind the empire of the final earthly king will be the worship of a "god of fortresses..."  In other words, the power and foundation of this empire will be from an occult source.  This is also indicated in Daniel 8:23-24, "And in the latter period of their kingdom, when the transgressors have finished, a king will arise strong of face and skilled in ambiguous speech (or intrigue, or enigmas).  And his power will be mighty, but not by his power (emphasis added), and he will destroy (or corrupt) to an extraordinary degree and prosper and perform his will; he will destroy (or corrupt) mighty men and the people of the saints.  And through his shrewdness he will cause deceit to succeed by his influence..."

Thinking of these passages led me to formulate a hypothetical question: what if the power and foundation of every earthly empire throughout history has come from an occult source?  This seems especially likely if the empire was an extraordinarily violent and successful conqueror, and/or a severe and cruel oppressor.  What if, moreover, every conspiracy to create an earthly empire has an occult inspiration?  Where would one look for evidence to confirm or contradict such a hypothesis?  Over the last few weeks, I have been looking at the last five hundred years of the history of the Global North (Europe, the Five Eyes, and Russia), and I came up with some very interesting findings.  I will divide those findings into "historical imperial examples" and "present-day conspiratorial examples."

Under the heading of "historical imperial examples" were some obvious cases, such as Nazi Germany under the reign of Hitler.  (See this, this, this, and this for instance.  However, the author of the last source cited seems to hint that occult fascinations merely colored, and did not cause, certain aspects of National Socialism.)  There is also the case of Italy under Benito Mussolini, whose reign was influenced to some degree by occultist Julius Evola, who was also virulently racist,  According to one source, his writings have had a major impact on the development of the global far right.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

There is also at least one questionable example, namely that of Napoleon Bonaparte of France.  The limited investigation I have done has turned up no hard link to the occult in Napoleon's empire.  However, he is an ambiguous character who proclaimed his allegiance to several religions in order to facilitate his rule over the diverse peoples he conquered.

But there is also an unexpected example, namely that of Elizabethan England, where the Queen had a court astrologer and advisor named John Dee who was also the inspiration and architect of the formation of the British Empire.  Throughout his adult life he had a strong and increasing fascination with the occult (which is one thing actually that led to his eventual ruin).  There is also the example of Cecil Rhodes, who, according to Carroll Quigley, was the mastermind behind attempts by certain wealthy British interests to reconquer some of the possessions lost by the British Empire.  According to Quigley, one of the institutions arising from the activities of Mr. Rhodes is the Society for Psychical Research (The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 32).

There is also the example of the United States, if one cares to take the time to find reputable and scholarly articles concerning the faith of the Founding Fathers.  (Hint: most of them were not fundamentalist Christians.  See this also.)  Note also the significant role played by secret societies in American history. (See this and this for instance.)  Lastly, consider the hidden agenda and esotericism of certain examples of American-made religion, such as Mormonism and Dominionism.  And there is the example of Federal funding for research into the use of psychic phenomena for military purposes!

Under the heading of "present-day conspiratorial examples", the biggest and most obvious case I found was Russia and its involvement with the burgeoning far-right, white supremacist movements now at work in the Global North.  Those who are intimately familiar with Russian culture know of the prominent role of the occult in pre-revolutionary Russia, as well as the Soviet research in attempts to use psychic phenomena for Soviet governmental objectives.  (See this, for instance.)  But what is even more interesting is the place of the occult in the resurgence of post-collapse Russian society and of post-collapse Russian geopolitical strategy.  Consider, for instance, Aleksandr Dugin, the chief architect of modern Russian geopolitical strategy.  Consider the occult roots of his political philosophy, and of Dugin's fascism.  (See this and this also.)  Dugin, it seems, wants to build a global empire centered on and run by Russia.  Indeed, he believes that Russia without empire would cease to exist.

And part of his strategy (a strategy we have seen implemented quite effectively over the last two years) involves the financing and political support of far-right groups in Europe and the United States.  (For an example of involvement in Europe, see this.)

I would also say that the widespread evidence of occult involvement in the global far-right groups today transcends any individual country.  It is truly an international phenomenon.  (See this, this and this for instance.)  There is evidence, moreover, that these far-right groups are actively creating a white supremacist youth culture.  (See this, this and this also.)

So then, based on my initial findings, I think I can state that the answer to my initial hypothetical question is most likely "Yes, the foundation of earthly empires and imperialist conspiracies is occult."  Therefore I submit that thus we who are members of those people groups who have been oppressed and exploited by the Global North for the last five centuries or so can begin to understand the power and motives behind the cruelty dealt to us by our oppressors.  And we can begin to estimate the future trajectory of our oppressors, as well as understanding how we should respond to the oppression dealt to us.

As a Christian, I boldly state that our response must not be to attempt to wield the same power now wielded against us by our oppressors!  For those who wield that kind of power run the risk of losing their souls "on singularly unfavorable terms" (to quote C.S. Lewis), regardless of the earthly results they achieve.  Rather, for the Christian, it is much more relevant that, "...for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we for Him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we through Him."  (1 Corinthians 8:6)  And, "A glorious throne on high from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary.  O LORD, the hope of Israel, all who forsake Thee will be put to shame..." (Jeremiah 17:12-13). 

My assessment also agrees with the words of Soong-Chan Rah in his book Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice In Troubled Times, where he says, "American Christians operate under the delusion that success and power provide the answer to the world's problems.  In Scripture, we see that powers and principalities are not necessarily a positive expression.  Moses stands against the powers and principalities of his time.  The prophets boldly speak against the powers, including their own king.  Jesus rejects the temptation of secular power.  Ephesians 6 portrays powers and principalities as demonic forces.  Should we seek the same type of power that the world seeks?"

Some readers may be curious as to the results which can be expected from the seeking of occult power by the far-right supremacist groups I have cited.  Some may also be curious as to the timing of the final end of the trajectory of these supremacists.  I will not comment on such matters today.  (I think I have spent quite enough time behind a keyboard this weekend!  And some of you who read today may be thinking, "He's really climbed far out onto the skinny branches with this post!")  However, I will end with a sociological question.

The quest for empire is essentially a quest for power, and the bigger the imperial dream, the greater is the underlying thirst for power.  The empires of the 19th and 20th centuries enjoyed exponentially greater power than any empires that preceded them, thanks to the Industrial Revolution and the resources - particularly, energy resources - that supplied that revolution.  Now those resources are coming to an end, and their end signals a mortal threat to the narcissistic quest for imperial power by those who have long enjoyed the fruits of that power.  Could it be that the surging interest in the occult in the Global North - especially among the supremacist elements - signifies a desperate search for another kind of (blatantly evil) power?  And will the quest for that power intensify in the months ahead?

A Bag of Smashed Chips

News is like cheaply made clothes, sometimes - it's flashy and new for a week, then starts to fade alarmingly, and before you know it, there's a hole in your trousers at the knees.  So it is with the Orlando shooting and the uses certain people tried to make of it.  I was fully intending to write a long expose of the uses which the campaign of Donald Trump was trying to make of the shooting (although I wasn't really looking forward to the task; there are a lot of weeds yet to chop down in the backyard and I'm tired).  But events have taken a turn which seems to have resolved a great deal of what I was going to say.

It is well known that the campaign of Donald Trump has made the scapegoating of minorities and immigrants of color a central feature of its strategy for winning the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.  In this, Trump has mirrored many European leaders, who, faced with the inevitable loss of the wealth and power of their respective nations, have sought to blame that loss on a supposed overwhelming influx of supposedly savage, half-human invaders commonly known as "immigrants" and "refugees."  It is well-known that Europe and the United States created that flood of immigrants and refugees by smashing the home countries of those refugees into bits and digesting those bits for food. 

(To channel an old, rather dumb sci-fi TV series, "They say there's no devil, Jim, but there is...right out of hell!  I saw it!...It destroys planets, chops them into rubble...")

A central feature of that smashing has been the use of scapegoating to justify the smashing and the resultant inhumane treatment of the smashed populations.  A central feature of that scapegoating has been the portrayal of the target populations as fanatically, destructively insane people controlled by some ideologically insane organization which wants to attack the West solely because it "hates our freedoms!!!", and which we must therefore smash and attack first.  Thus we have forced the populations we want to smash and loot to serve as mirrors reflecting back to our eyes a Doomsday Machine which the West is actually guilty of being.  But to perpetuate the lie we have told ourselves about ourselves and about the populations we have decided to target, we have invented bogeymen which are supposed to represent the populations we have targeted.  Thus ISIS has come into being, just as Al-Qaeda came into being, and has served the same purpose for us that we caused Al-Qaeda to serve until Al-Qaeda outlived its usefulness.

ISIS was used as a justification for attempting to smash Syria - but a funny thing happened along the way.  A large number of Syrians, Libyans and North Africans became refugees and fled to the countries of Europe to escape the smashing, and to be fed some of the crumbs of the loot which Europe and the United States had stolen from them at gunpoint.  Europe - pure as the wind-driven snow and special, oh, so special - could not tolerate having dark-skinned, unchurched refugees in their midst, so a number of rather inexplicable incidents started to occur in Europe over the last year and a half - none of which made any strategic or tactical sense, and all of which were blamed on "ISIS agents masquerading as refugees."  (See this and this for a catalogue of some of these incidents.)

As I said, these incidents made no tactical or strategic sense if they were actually perpetrated by Muslims trying to destroy the West, for the same reason that if you are actually trying to kill a bear, it makes no sense to do nothing more than hit him across the snout with a hickory switch.  All that does is make the bear mad at you.  But these incidents made perfect sense if their purpose was to rouse Europe and the United States into taking drastic steps toward fascism - steps like trying ever harder to find some justification for invading Syria and any other Muslim or African country they could get their hands on, and closing their borders to refugees in order to "protect themselves" from further attack.

So in the wake of supposed Muslim attacks by "ISIS", a bunch of European nations closed their borders to immigrants (especially dark-skinned immigrants) and refugees, and the United States followed suit - especially in Southern states.  And a few incidents occurred right here in the USA in order to add momentum to the push by certain elements in this country to preserve a pure "American paradise" that did not have to share its ill-gotten gains with the people it had robbed at gunpoint and smashed.

But another funny thing started to happen.  An increasing number of people began to view all the supposed attacks by ISIS as false-flag operations, self-wounding operations carried out by well-placed Americans in order to gain sympathy for their narcissistic agenda.  (I have spent several months looking at Uncle Sam as a narcissistic personality, but really, the more I think about it, there is also more than a hint of borderline personality disorder at work in the mainstream American psyche.)  Now things are at the point where whenever a supposed "ISIS attack" is publicized by the American mainstream media, it is met by a growing and deafening chorus of skeptics like me who are shouting "False Flag!"  And mainstream media outlets - which at first ignored us, then made light of us - are now having to take time to answer us seriously.  (See this for instance.)  But that is not helping them, because the fact that they must now take serious time for serious answers means that people are now having to seriously consider our arguments.  The fact that we must now be taken seriously means that we have won a victory.

The result of that is that many of the associations between Omar Mateen and ISIS which were made by the mainstream media in the first few days after the Orlando nightclub shooting have been carefully and quietly scrubbed from the ongoing narrative of that shooting.  To associate that incident with ISIS is to give one's credibility the kiss of death. 

And Donald Trump - who has become the American embodiment of all the right-wing, racist intolerance which has revived in Europe - has found that the Orlando shooting has not helped him.  Rather, his insane remarks in the wake of the shooting have actually hurt him.  (See this, this and this.)

Meanwhile, this weekend we are seeing in Britain the sort of consequences which begin to unfold when a bunch of people who think they are All That And A Bag Of Chips cut themselves off from the rest of the world.  What if that sort of people wins control of the United States this November?

The Mirror Image Of A Certain Hairstyle

My intuition was piqued after a Turkish Air Force F-16 shot down a Russian fighter-bomber within Syrian airspace.  As I read about the Turkish response to the downing of the Russian jet, and to Moscow's protest of the incident, a pattern began to emerge.  For Turkey refused to apologize for the incident, insisting instead that the Russian jet had violated Turkish airspace for 17 seconds without identifying itself.  But along with that excuse came a few Freudian slips as Turkish President Recep Erdogan revealed some of the true reasons for his anti-Russian animosity (and his probable true motives for downing the jet), namely, that he is upset that Russia is helping Syria oust foreign fighters who are being financed by the West to overthrow the government of Syrian President Assad.  It appears that when Washington enlisted Turkish help to cannibalize Syria, Erdogan was promised a rib or a thigh from the cannibal feast, and now he is seeing his chances of chowing down evaporating before his eyes.

Erdogan's response - his dishonesty and the impunity of his actions - reminded me of none other than Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination to represent the Republicans in the next presidential election.  Both men are narcissistic, reckless and impulsive, men of very strong ambition who boldly assert their right to do whatever they please and who show utter disregard for any possible consequences of their actions.  In this they are like the heads of many nations which have been Murdochified, NATO-ized, or neoliberalized by the West.  Men like Stephen Harper and Tony Abbott also come to mind.  But when I heard of what Erdogan had done, I immediately thought of Trump.  It seems that I am not the only one who sees similarities between the two.  Certainly, I am not the first.

So if anyone is wondering what life in the U.S. might be like under a Trump presidency, he or she would do well to study what's been happening in Turkey over the last several years.  Note especially the ways in which President Erdogan has tried to amass unilaterally overwhelming state power to himself, as well as his extreme intolerance to criticism.  Note also how in letting his grandiose self run amok, he has brought on himself consequences which he refused to foresee.  One of those consequences may be that Turkey faces a very cold winter without access to Russian gas.  Another consequence may be that the southern part of Turkey becomes a no-fly zone - as in, any unidentified Turkish aircraft that gets too close to the Syrian border may be standing into danger, even if it's still inside of Turkey.  Alternatively, consider that, with people inside of Turkey comparing Erdogan to Gollum, a wise and skillful agent outside of Turkey (such as another nation) could easily win the hearts and minds of Turks who are finding Erdogan to be rather burdensome just now.

Trying To Win A Fight By Punching Yourself In The Face

A co-worker ran into me yesterday afternoon in the office kitchen. “Did you hear what happened in Paris?,” he gravely asked. “I can't hear a word you're saying,” I replied, and groped to turn down my headphones. (Headphones are a sanity saver in an open office environment.) Once my co-worker saw that I could hear him, he proceeded to tell me about a supposed terror attack in France that had killed 27 people. That was the only information I received at the time about the attack; yet it got me thinking about a few things. (Today I see that the death toll has gone up.)

One of the first things I thought of was intuition and the role it plays in helping people formulate an accurate mental picture of the world. I will define two types of intuition. Taking things backward, I call the first “Type B intuition”, and the second I call “Type A intuition.” By Type B intuition I mean the very natural ability to make a complete mental picture out of incomplete parts. A simple example of this is answering the question “2 + x = 4. What is x?” Type A intuition is what we arrive at when we ask a person to make a complete mental picture of a situation out of fewer and fewer parts. Those who are able to form accurate mental pictures as the number of parts approaches zero are either prophets or magicians. Prophets are Divinely appointed, and magicians are playing with fire and in danger of getting burned. My interest in this post is with neither, so I will not write further of Type A intuition here.

Type B intuition, on the other hand, arises out of the interplay of left-brained and right-brained thinking. It can be honed and sharpened by experience and practice (although it can be dulled and short-circuited by prejudice). It often plays a key role in the practice of medicine, engineering and the sciences. The reason it can be honed with practice is because a major part of this kind of intuition consists of the art of pattern recognition. A very important application of pattern recognition, and hence of intuition, lies in learning to recognize human predators. Unfortunately, the development of this kind of intuition usually involves repeated exposure to painful experiences.

As I trace the development of this aspect of my own intuition, I think of how I was exposed to an abusive church many years ago when I was young and inexperienced, and how reluctant I was to see the pattern of abuse and hypocrisy in that church. But once my eyes came fully open, it became easy to see the same pattern repeated in other settings, both sacred and secular. One element of the pattern I saw was a leader who was roundly praised by his lieutenants and sycophants as a man of unquestionable virtue who just happened by accident to be the head of an organization that somehow wound up hurting people for reasons that no one in charge seemed to be able to figure out. The shattering of our leader's virtuous picture came when the evidence of the dirty dealings of the leader and his family was unearthed. Then I began to see that church for what it was: a whitewashed tomb full of folks who put on a beautiful public face, yet whose leader and lieutenants had a hidden and hurtful agenda.

That knowledge stayed with me during the middle years of the last decade, and began to have an unsettling effect on some of my political convictions. I had become a Christian many years ago, and while I am still most definitely a Christian, I have to say that my initial faith was tainted by teaching, books and “Christian” media which reflected a white American cultural captivity. So I was groomed to equate patriotism with godliness, and to be a good little Republican. Therefore, I was overjoyed by George W. Bush's capture of the White House. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, I was glad that we had such a strong leader to guide this nation through “dangerous times.”

But then the Iraq war happened, and a funny thing happened along with it, namely, that no evidence of weapons of mass destruction was ever found in Iraq. And the threat of WMD's had been a main reason for Bush's decision to invade Iraq. And after that came the resignation of Colin Powell, the uncovering of abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison, and the shooting deaths of unarmed Iraqi civilians by Blackwater. As these things came to light, the nation was treated to a recurring spectacle of a President who seemed to be all heart and all sincerity, yet who just happened by accident to be the head of an administration that somehow wound up hurting people for reasons that no one in charge seemed to be able to figure out. Repeatedly, we all kept hearing that he “just wanted to get to the bottom of things, to just get the facts,” and that he would most certainly fix things so that people didn't keep getting hurt by Americans working to make the world “safe from terrorism.”

And it kept getting better, as 2005 rolled around, and Hurricane Katrina rolled around with it, and the world saw what a train wreck the Bush administration made of the disaster response effort. We also got to see how severely people of color suffered as a direct result of the guidance and direction of National Guard troops and FEMA officials whose guidance and direction seemed deliberately designed to hurt these people. Once again, we all saw Bush's mug on TV screens and newspaper front pages as he praised his FEMA director for doing a “heckuva job” while promising to get to the bottom of some unfortunate lapses in FEMA's performance. But I began to get the uncomfortable feeling that I was seeing a repeat of a whitewashed tomb full of folks who put on a beautiful public face, yet whose leaders had a hidden and hurtful agenda.

So it was that in the fall of 2006, as I was traveling on business, I finally began to question allegiances that had heretofore been unquestioned, and to entertain the voices of critics whom I had heretofore dismissed as being part of “the liberal media.” And so I spent a couple of very late nights in a hotel room reading Wikipedia accounts of the run-up to the Iraq war (including the yellowcake uranium story (see this also) which was debunked by the husband of Valerie Plame, and the Bush administration's retaliation against her), and I read about how Lewis Paul Bremer, appointed by George Bush as the provisional governor of Iraq after the U.S. invasion, helped the United States to steal everything that wasn't nailed down (and a great deal that was nailed down) from the Iraqi people during his “reign.”  (There's this also, but unfortunately, it's behind a paywall.)  The Wikipedia articles I read all contained publicly available knowledge, including documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

That information helped to complete a mental picture for me – a picture of the true motives and the actual agenda of the United States concerning Iraq and the Mideast from the beginning of the Bush presidency onward. For I saw that the rape and plunder of Iraq were the result of deeply laid plans, and not some spur-of-the-moment reaction to external events. I saw how 9/11 had been used as a tool for implementing those plans, and thus 9/11 fell into perspective as well. As a result, I became deeply suspicious of the official narrative concerning the 9/11 attacks – and this happened without any input from the “truthers”.

That same mental picture has guided my view of the destruction of Libya (whose leader was murdered by NATO) and the attempted destruction of Syria. For in the case of Libya and Syria, I saw a repeat of the same pattern that led up to the destruction of Iraq by the U.S. Key elements of that pattern were the branding by the U.S. of the leaders of Libya and Syria as “supporters of terrorism” who “opposed democracy” and thus “had to go”. This branding was used as the justification for U.S. and NATO intervention which destroyed the infrastructure of those countries and made much of their oil available for seizure by the U.S. and Europe. In the case of Syria, incidents were conveniently manufactured by certain “actors” in order to demonize Bashar Assad and to mobilize popular support for U.S. efforts to overthrow him. Those efforts began as long ago as 2006 – four years before the onset of the Syrian civil war, by the way.

So then, with this mental picture in place, how should I interpret this most recent terror attack? What kind of mental picture should my intuition create? I think the answer to that question is that there are now so many verified pieces to this picture that intuition is no longer necessary; instead, we have moved to the realm of analysis which engineers call “trending.” Intuition is as superfluous here as driving in broad daylight with your headlights on. (Consider for instance the evidence that ISIS and the “moderate Syrian opposition” are one and the same entity, funded willingly and knowingly by U.S. dollars.) So I think the picture that is emerging is influenced by certain factors, listed below:

What's at stake now in the Mideast and Europe
The situation: We now have three and a half smashed countries (not to mention the sub-Saharan African countries which have been perennial targets of exploitation), hundreds of thousands of victims now turned into refugees, and a number of vampire nations on a couple of vampire continents which have benefited from the smashing. As the victims of the smashing seek refuge in the countries that did the smashing, many of the vampire citizens of these vampire nations are loudly declaring that they want no part in helping the refugees and victims they have created. But there is one Mideastern country now being rescued by Russia from further smashing and exploitation, and this rescue is a situation which threatens to upset the balance of power in the Mideast and possibly lead to the rescue of other smashed nations from the vampires now feeding on them.

Patterns: Note the similarities with 9/11, the Charlie Hebdo attack, and the Boston bombing. One such similarity is that either the accused are never brought to trial because no bad guys are taken alive, or that if suspects actually are arrested, they are subjected to secret, non-televised trials, the results of which are reported to us by word of mouth from monopolistic mainstream media outlets. There is no publicly available evidence for examination by members of the public who might want to decide on their own the guilt or innocence of accused parties. The mainstream media outlets always cast the supposed perpetrators as a monolithic Hollywood stereotype bad guy entity whose soul and inner workings we never get to see, except that it ontologically “hates our freedoms!!!” and speaks with a foreign accent. Once that Hollywood bad guy has done his work for the day, he is pulled back behind the stage curtain until his next required appearance.

Motive: So whose interests benefit from a supposed Islamist terror attack in Europe now? To answer that question, you have to ask whether the perpetrators of the attack are really as stupid as they're being made out to be. If, as many right-wing racist neo-Nazi types would have us believe, the attacks were perpetrated by Arab Muslim terrorists who sneaked into Europe with the wave of Syrian, North African and Afghan refugees, what would they stand to gain from such an attack? The answer is obviously nothing. Such an attack would only hurt their interests by making it easier for right-wing elements in Europe to justify inhumane treatment and expulsion of refugees, and by making it easier for Western war-hawks to justify the ongoing destruction of the home countries of these refugees. I don't think that the Arab refugees, Muslim or otherwise, are stupid enough to start a fight that they cannot win. On the other hand, consider how much the racist elements in Europe and the warmongers leading the West have to gain from such an attack. Especially given that some of them were predicting that just such an attack would arise from allowing Arab refugees into Europe.  Ever heard of a guy named Nero?

Objective: So what use will be made of this terror attack? Here, I will let informed intuition guide me. I think we will see (and are already beginning to see) loud calls for retaliation against ISIS by the leaders of France, NATO and the United States. Iraq will be identified as the place where the targets of retaliation should be located. This will be for two reasons: first, that expanded Western intervention in Syria cannot be justified due to the denial of Syria as a target by Russian and Syrian forces; and secondly, in order to try to seize enough of the assets of Iraq to prevent Russia, Syria and Iran from removing Western agents from Iraq. I think this attack will also be used by wealthy Westerners such as Rupert Murdoch and his European counterparts to mobilize an intense racist backlash against the refugees now seeking to enter Europe. This makes the deaths of people in yesterday's attack all the more tragic, yet not nearly as tragic as the suffering which the West is about to unleash against people who are not guilty of any crime against the West, yet who have already suffered horribly at the hands of the West.

The picture that emerges, then, is not some sinister attack by a radicalized, non-European savage race of impure souls, but rather, a narcissistic empire so overcome by fear at its impending demise that rather than accepting that demise gracefully, it seeks to rally its citizens to a last unjust fight by creating a last outburst of self-inflicted drama. And that's what that picture looks like.