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batmandarknightrisise-blog · 4 years

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The Dark Knight Rises: Film Review

The real world threats of terrorism, political anarchy and economic instability make deep incursions into the cinematic comic book domain in The Dark Knight Rises. Big-time Hollywood filmmaking at its most massively accomplished, this last installment of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy makes everything in the rival Marvel universe look thoroughly silly and childish. Entirely enveloping and at times unnerving in a relevant way one would never have imagined, as a cohesive whole this ranks as the best of Nolan's trio, even if it lacks -- how could it not? -- an element as unique as Heath Ledger's immortal turn in The Dark Knight. It's a blockbuster by any standard.

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The director daringly pushes the credibility of a Gotham City besieged by nuclear-armed revolutionaries to such an extent that it momentarily seems absurd that a guy in a costume who refuses to kill people could conceivably show up to save the day. This is especially true since Nolan, probably more than any other filmmaker who's ever gotten seriously involved with a superhero character, has gone so far to unmask and debilitate such a figure. But he gets away with it and, unlike some interludes in the previous films, everything here is lucid, to the point and on the mark, richly filling out (especially when seen in the Imax format) every moment of the 164-minute running time.

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In a curtain raiser James Bond would kill for, a CIA aircraft transporting terrorists is sensationally hijacked in midair by Bane (Tom Hardy), an intimidating hulk whose nose and mouth are encumbered by a tubular, grill-like metal mask which gives his voice an artificial quality not unlike that of Darth Vader. What Bane is up to is not entirely clear, but it can't be good.

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Although it's only been four years since the last Batman film, eight years of dramatic time have elapsed since the climactic events depicted in The Dark Knight. Batman and Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) have been in suspiciously simultaneous total seclusion, much to the consternation of loyal valet Alfred (Michael Caine), who, upbraiding his boss for inaction, accuses him of “just waiting for things to get bad again.” They do, in a hurry. But in the interim, Gotham has scarcely missed him, as he's publicly blamed for the death of D.A. Harvey Dent and hasn't needed him anyway since organized crime has virtually disappeared.

Bruce begins being dragged back into the limelight by slinky Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), a spirited cat burglar who lifts his fingerprints and a necklace from his safe while pulling a job at his mansion. It was always a question how this ambiguous feline character (never called Catwoman herein) would be worked into the fabric of this Batman series, but co-screenwriters Jonathan and Christopher Nolan, working from a story by the director and David S. Goyer, have cannily threaded her through the tale as an alluring gadfly and tease who engages in an ongoing game of one-upmanship with Batman and whose selfishness prevents her from making anything beyond opportunistic alliances.

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Commandeering the city's sewers with his fellow mercenaries, Bane begins his onslaught, first with an attempted kidnapping of Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman), then with a brazen attack on the Stock Exchange, which, at the film's 45-minute mark, has the double effect of luring Batman out of hiding and bankrupting Bruce Wayne. The latter catastrophe forces the fallen tycoon to ask wealthy, amorously inclined board member Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard) to assume control of his company to squeeze out Daggett (Ben Mendelsohn), who's in cahoots with Bane.

Nolan has thus boldly rooted his film in what are arguably the two big worries of the age, terrorism and economic collapse, the result of which can only be chaos. So when virtually the entire Gotham police force is lured underground to try to flush out Bane, the latter has the lawmen just where he wants them, trapped like animals in a pen waiting for slaughter. And the fact that Gotham City has, for the first time, realistically used New York City for most of its urban locations merely adds to the topical resonance of Bane's brilliantly engineered plot, in which he eventually takes the entire population of Manhattan hostage. Nolan has always been a very serious, even remorseless filmmaker, and never more so than he is here.

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Inducing Selina to take him to Bane, Batman gets more than he bargained for; physically, he's no match for the mountainously muscled warrior, who sends the legendary crime fighter off to a literal hellhole of a prison, with the parting promise of reducing Gotham to ashes. Seemingly located in the Middle East, the dungeon resembles a huge well and has been escaped from only once, by none other than Bane, who is said to have been born there and got out as a child.

Here, as elsewhere, there are complex ties leading back to the comic books that link characters and motivations together; with Bruce and Bane, it is with the League of Shadows, which occasions the brief return of Liam Neeson's Ra's Al Ghul, last seen in Batman Begins (in 2005). A solid new character, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's resourceful street cop John Blake, is a grateful product of one of the Wayne Foundation's orphanages. Many of the characters wear masks, either literal or figurative; provocatively, Batman's mask hides his entire face except for his mouth, the very part of Bane which is covered. This is just one of the motifs the Nolans have used to ingeniously plot out the resolution to their three-part saga, which involves at least one major, superbly hidden surprise.

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While Bruce Wayne languishes in the pit rebuilding his strength for an escape attempt, Bane spectacularly and mercilessly reverses the entire social order of Gotham City: 1,000 dangerous criminals are released from prison, the rich are tossed out of their uptown homes, the remaining police hide out like rats underground, and a “people's court” (presided over by Cillian Murphy's Scarecrow) dispenses death sentences willy-nilly. With virtually all bridges and tunnels destroyed, no one can leave the island, which is threatened by a fusion device, initially developed by Bruce and his longtime tech genius Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) as a clean energy source but now transformed at Bane's behest into a nuke, which he promises to use.

Some of the action scenes, such as multiple chases involving the armed motorcycle Bat-Pod (mostly ridden by Selina) and the cool new one-man jet chopper-like aircraft called The Bat that zooms through the city's caverns like something out of the early Star Wars, have something of a familiar feel. But the opening skyjacking, the Stock Exchange melee and especially the multiple explosions that bring the city to its knees -- underground, on bridges and, most strikingly, in a football stadium -- are fresh and brilliantly rendered, as are all the other effects. The film reportedly cost $250 million, but it would be easy to believe that the figure was quite a bit more, so elaborate is everything about the production.

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But the fact that all the money has been put to the use of making the severe dramatic events feel so realistic -- there's not a hint of cheesiness or the cartoonlike -- ratchets up the suspense and pervasive feeling of unease. One knows going in that this film will mark the end of Batman, at least for now and as rendered by Bale and Nolan, but for the first time there is the sense that it could also really be the end for Batman, that he might be sacrificed, or sacrifice himself, for the greater good.

Needing to portray both his characters as vulnerable, even perishable, Bale is at his series best in this film. At times in the past his voice seemed too artificially deepened and transformed; there's a bit of that here, but far less, and, as Bruce becomes impoverished and Batman incapacitated, the actor's nuances increase. Caine has a couple of surprisingly emotional scenes to play and handles them with lovely restraint, while other returnees Oldman and Freeman deliver as expected.

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Bane is a fearsome figure, fascinating in his physicality and blithely confident approach to amoral anarchy. With the mask strapped to his head at all times and his voice altered, Hardy is obliged to express himself mostly through body language, which he does powerfully, and at a couple of key moments his eyes speak volumes. All the same, the facial and verbal restrictions provide emotive limitations, and his final moments onscreen feel almost thrown away; one feels a bit cheated of a proper sendoff.

Hathaway invests her catlike woman with verve and impudence, while Cotillard is a warm and welcome addition to this often forbidding world. Even though Nolan and Bale have made it clear that The Dark Knight Rises marks their farewell to Bruce Wayne and Batman, the final shot clearly indicates the direction a follow-up offshoot series by Warner Bros. likely will take.

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As before, the production values are opulent and sensational; nothing short of the highest praise can be lavished on the work of production designers Nathan Crowley and Kevin Kavanaugh, cinematogtapher Wally Pfister, costume designer Lindy Hemming, visual effects supervisor Paul Franklin, special effects supervisor Chris Corbould, editor Lee Smith, composer Hans Zimmer and sound designer Richard King, just for starters.

The only conspicuous faux pas is a big continuity gaffe that has the raid on the Stock Exchange take place during the day but the subsequent getaway chase unfold at night.

Nearly half the film, including all the big action scenes, was shot with large-format Imax cameras and, with both versions having been previewed, the 70mm Imax presentation that will be shown in 102 locations worldwide is markedly more vivid visually and powerful as a dramatic experience; the normal 35mm prints, while beautiful, are somewhat less sharp.

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Despite all the advanced technology deployed to make The Dark Knight Rises everything it is, Nolan remains proudly and defiantly old school (as only the most successful directors can get away with being these days) when it comes to his filmmaking aesthetic, an approach indicated in a note at the end of the long final credits: “This motion picture was shot and finished on film.”

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epixolon · 6 years

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Hey so I started ORV about 2 weeks ago and I need to place down my feelings and I hope y’all appreciate it. Most of my predictions about immediate events turned out to be wrong, like they were through most of the novel, but some of the longer ranged ones might still be possible, and as you will read i haven’t edited these, so most of my stuff will be wrong, but I don’t much care, it’s stream of thought. Enjoy

Chapter 0-206

* Dokja will bookmark and use either Jonghyuk’s regression, or Nirvana’s reincarnation.

* Dokja will devour a constellation’s story in order to get their stigma, rather than go through the process of bookmarking it, with my personal guess being zeus and the lightning carnival since that’s been mentioned a bunch and he already has electrification.

* when the fourth wall has devoured things so far, dokja gets a better understanding of the being, so maybe if he devours a constellation like, say, zeus, he will gain a better understanding of the constellation to allow for bookmark

* Soon enough he’ll use unidentified wall to communicate with his allies, probably the underworld, maybe Uriel, definitely Jonghyuk and co. outside Seoul in an attempt to consolidate his power before the coming storm of the nebulae opposing him.

* Yoosung will find a way to be a sacrificial bastard like Dokja so she can upgrade her stigma from him by following his story.

* The fourth wall makes a lot of sense both as a representation of Dokja’s inner thoughts and subconscious, mostly seen as the ways that he’s been traumatized, such as with his mother, are when he becomes most like the fourth wall and the benefits are lost.

* The being inside the wall that his mother saw is unclear to me, i could maybe see the subconscious pride and confidence that he has with himself and the knowledge he possesses, but it could also be the author in some fashion, especially with that bit of advice he got in the outer god’s stomach

* The fourth wall is a great piece of writing for every reason possible, but also makes sense within the universe as to how it can do this stuff: we see everywhere that when a constellation wants to do something direct, it has to use up probability, and anyone that wishes to oppose its actions can use some of that probability as well such as with Kyorgius (I don’t remember how to spell his name, the tiny man), or even the outer god, and probability storms are when nobody will use this probability to oppose them, the universe sets the balance right. And so the fourth wall uses probability

* The fourth wall represents two things: 1. how probable is it that a book character can affect a reader? that’s unlikely right? even more so to be able to know the reader in some intimate fashion? and 2. we see sparks every time someone tries to read his mind/abilities. the fourth wall essentially absorbs that probability and stops the skill, and i think a similar thing happened with the unidentified wall as it seemed to be using a lot of probability to do anything and the fourth wall just took it all in “with a bigger spark”

* the unidentified wall i think will possibly become “identified” as something, either a definite thing straight from ways of survival, or it will be open to possibility like Heewon’s crouching figure, in which case i see like a 30% chance it is influenced by the fourth wall and becomes something similar to it

* I definitely think there’s a possibility the secret plotter is related to the author, and you see it much more when in a reread the constellation seems to occasionally hear his thoughts or potentially understand more about the situation than it should be able to, without being overboard obvious about knowing dokja’s attributes.

* ok and with it laughing when he forces down the fourth wall, like he could tell what happened, and when he was “snapping at the great old ones looking at you,” I’d say he’s pretty damn powerful, maybe even more than narrative grade, and maybe it’ll just be the christian god or the devil or whatever something, but it could also be the author i think

* As we’ve seen most clearly from Dokja’s use of the sword song of the maritime war god, but not Jihye’s ghost fleet, constellations can have multiple stigmas, so i at least am predicting Dokja will give the fourth wall or possibly character list, or maybe even a copy of the ways of survival text (i definitely don’t think she’ll get ORV or bookmark though, those are protagonist powers), as a stigma later on for Yoosung, but i def could be wrong about that.

* I think there’s a possibility Sooyoung will tell everyone that Dokja is a reader before he gets back, but i could see it not happening.

* when 41st Yoosung is born as a dokkaebi, i wonder if using her channel will break the contract he and Bihyoung have. i think he might switch over to the channel for his covert revolution actions at the very least, and just block channel access to the vedas and the other nebulae, and might switch over his scenarioing to the new channel entirely

* actually, when he was in Seoul, he said his contract was cancelled, so maybe he can stream with the both of them now, or even just 41st Yoosung

* i think there’s a possibility that Sooyoung actually did plagiarize the text, but just doesn’t remember, either because she’s becoming more like a character like the two prophets, because when the author deleted the text from the internet her mind got frazzled, or when she made her first clones, the memory of reading it went with it and got destroyed when the clone died

* the author in the first chapter said that their story won a contest, and while in retrospect it seems like a lie, i wonder if there’s the possibility that like with peace land, who’s author sold the setting, if the author wrote the story either without meaning to

* like if Sooyoung actually did just write her own story from a dream, maybe the author did the same and just got more of the dream enough to realize the coming reality of the story, and maybe the dream was them acting like actual prophets to the world before the constellations were going to show up anyway

* the debt/free service time mentioned by the dokkaebi in the beginning is interesting, and i wonder if the end of the scenarios is having enough coins to buy either the planetary system or even just more time of free service away from the constellations.

* Dokja might eventually get more attributes, maybe something like writer or fanfiction writer or revisionist to get new powers given the ways he’s changing the story, either something like avatar (or maybe he’ll just use bookmark for that) as a way to either die more or make a nebulae out of one constellation, or some bullshit reality bending power like writing is, or just like a more reliable use of the other constellations’ Deus Ex Machina to do anything he wants, with enough probability of course

* compounded because in his attributes window we see more skills ■’d out

* given Myungoh’s daughter, will Dokja be adopting a 4th child in the near future?

* maybe asmodeus wants to feed the 73rd demon king to his child

* do you think anyone we’ve met, maybe someone from the constellation banquet, has the ancient dragon’s heart we see Dokja looking at in the Ichthyosaurs’ stomach?

* does/will Dokja look very different from how he did previously because of the golden dragon heart (which based on the heart we’ve seen previously should give him a lot of regen and storage of his magic) and the arm? along with the rest of the broken pieces that became his ruined body that probably only vaguely resemble his face? and the demonic energy he had before and might have again, and maybe ending up as the 73rd demon king

* his face is apparently blurry to people, even with a new story on it, i wonder if he’ll lower the fourth wall to let people see him at some point

* Jihye mentioned that his face is blurry, but Gilyoung has mentioned that he looks fine, so to me that indicates it’s maybe the fourth wall

* do you think there will be any romance by the end? i get the Jonghyuk and Dokja romance implications, but at least as far as the Fate goes, it looked a lot more to me that Dokja’s true love was the love of a good story, and that he died from the story he told with his friends, that proof alone isn’t enough for romance to me, so i could see it ending with none, no romance at all and the story just ends with Dokja and his 7 adopted children.

* why are there 72 demon kings, but they’re in the 73rd demon realm and asmodeus has 32 realms under his control? is there a mistranslation or a misunderstanding going on or what?

* maybe asmodeus absorbs/devours/suborns any demon king that he can and just takes his land, and so he wants the 73rd realm

* could be related to the question of asmodeus’s child above

* i think destroy evil from samyeondang might come up in the demon realm

Chapter 207-214

* I love Uriel now I think, and Biyoo

* i wonder if Dokja can bookmark unidentified wall, or if Hayoung can learn bookmark

* I’m unsure if the revolutionary will end up being a bad person or not, because i think I might have a problem if Dokja just kills the revolutionary, but maybe they’ll sacrifice themselves, or die elsewhere, or maybe they can give it up willingly, idk

* i could see the end of the novel being all the star stream being destroyed, which means no dokkaebis and no stories, so the constellations start to die, and we either get a sad ending of Dokja dying as a constellation, or we get a nice one of him (and maybe some other nice constellations) surviving on Biyoo’s Bootleg, or maybe the same barstardry he pulls, with him doing another “I don’t die when I am killed” and coming back from death again

* I wonder if Hayoung and maybe Dokja will find/convince the 15 year old to allow/make a way for Sooyoung to keep her sanity while following the story, like maybe a new story for the constellation, idk

* ooh shit, Dokja having read the story is spreading, yoo sangah at least suspects, i wonder if everyone will know by the time he gets back

* it’d be a funny scene if Uriel notices Biyoo’s Bootleg and tells Jonghyuk about it to avoid the dokkaebi, and so they miss each other for a bit until Dokja does something stupid/self-sacrificing enough (maybe by a plan from the Duke) that Jonghyuk realizes it’s him and comes and saves him

* i had a dream the dokkaebi had british accents whenever they spoke, and the idea of a foul mouthed floating cat going around saying “oi cunts moider each other or ah’ll shank ya nan” is just hilarious to me

Chapter 215-224

* <3 <3 Fuck Kim Dokja <3 <3

* I figured the hair was going to be involved, but not explicitly that

* If Dokja can find a way to with relative consistency summon the soldier, that’s great

* ok asmodeus is the king of the 32nd. ok, not 32 of them

* Dokja normally says no to potentially unfair support like this from constellation level beings, but i’d actually like to see him deal with asmodeus and just manage to manipulate it so that he is the king of all demons or something

* If Dokja gets support from Asmodeus, than the demon will probably leave his incarnation body there and use it as a puppet to pop in when needed even as he attends to matters in his own kingdom most of the time. This’d open the possibility of Dokja getting to adopt another child, which is always good to see

* I’m also real curious how the possibility of the people who were once characters finding out they were, and what differences there will be to the “real” people, although the fact that the two prophets are characters now is intriguing

* So far it’s just Sangah who knows, but I wonder if Heewon and the others will even be allowed to understand the concept, given the ways the filtering has prevented it in the past

#long post #omniscient reader's viewpoint #orv #orv spoilers

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thevividgreenmoss · 6 years

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...Anyone who knew Eqbal in conditions of struggle knew subliminally that his loyalty and solidarity were unquestionable. He was a genius at sympathy. When he used the pronoun "we," you knew that he spoke and acted as one of us, but never at the expense either of his honesty or of his critical faculties, which reigned supreme. This is why Eqbal came as close to being a really free man as anyone can be.

This isn't to say that he was indifferent to the problems of others, or blessed in that he didn't have problems of his own. This was very far from true. But he did give one the impression that he was always his own man, always able to think and act clearly for himself and, if asked, for others. His subcontinental origins in Bihar and Lahore steeped him both in the travails of empire and in the many wasteful tragedies of decolonization, of which sectarian hatred and violence, plus separatism and partition, are among the worst.

Yet retrospective bitterness at what the white man wrought and at what his fellow Indians and Pakistanis did were never part of Eqbal's response. He was always more interested in creativity than in vindictiveness, in originality of spirit and method than in mere radicalism, in generosity and complexity of analysis over the tight neatness of his fellow political scientists. The title of one of his most spirited essays, on Regis Debray, was entitled "Radical but Wrong."

When I dedicated my book Culture and Imperialism to him, it was because in his activity, life, and thinking Eqbal embodied not just the politics of empire but that whole fabric of experience expressed in human life itself, rather than in economic rules and reductive formulas. What Eqbal understood about the experience of empire was the domination of empire in all its forms, but also the creativity, originality, and vision created in resistance to it. Those words-" creativity, " "originality," "vision"-were central to his attitudes on politics and history.

Among Eqbal's earliest writings on Vietnam was a series of papers on revolutionary warfare which was intended as a refutation of standard American doctrine on the subject. U.S. counterinsurgency experts see in Vietnamese resistance a sort of conspiratorial, technically adept, communist and terrorist uprising, which can be defeated with superior weapons, clear-cut pragmatic doctrines, and the relentless deployment of overwhelming military force. What Eqbal suggested was a different paradigm: the revolutionary guerrilla as someone with a real commitment to justice who has the support of her or his people, and who is willing to sacrifice for the sake of a cause or ideology that has mobilized people. What counterinsurgency doctrine cannot admit is that the native elites whose interests are congruent not with their country's but with those of the United States are not the people to win a revolutionary war. In confronting the arch-theorist of this benighted view-none other than Samuel Huntington-Eqbal. Put it this way:

In underdeveloped countries the quiescence which followed independence is giving way to new disappointments and new demands which are unlikely to be satisfied by a politics of boundary management and selective cooptation-a fact which the United States, much like our ruling elites, is yet unable or unwilling to perceive. There is an increasingly perceptible gap between our need for social transformation and America's insistence on stability, between our impatience for change and America's obsession with order, our move toward revolution and America's belief in the plausibility of achieving reforms under the robber barons of the "third world," our longing for absolute national sovereignty and America's preference for pliable allies, our desire to see our national soil freed of foreign occupation and America's alleged need for military bases.... As the gap widens between our sorrow and America's contentment, so will, perhaps, these dichotomies of our perspectives and our priorities. Unless there is a fundamental redefinition of American interests and goals, our confrontations with the United States will be increasingly antagonistic. In the client states of Asia and Latin America it may even be tragic. In this sense Vietnam may not be so unique. It may be a warning of things to come.

What emerges in these writings is the opposition between conventional and unconventional thought and of course the even deeper opposition between justice and injustice. In his preference for what the unconventional and the just can bring peoples by way of liberation, invigorated culture, and well-being, Eqbal was firm and uncompromising. His distrust for standing armies, frozen bureaucracies, persistent oligarchies allowed no exceptions. Yet at the same time, as he showed in his great essay on Debray, it is not enough to be unconventional if that means having no regard for tradition, for the goods that women and men enjoy, for the great stabilities of human life. Eqbal was shrewd and illusionless enough to realize that overturning societies for the sake of revolution only, without sufficient attention to the fact that human beings also love and create and celebrate and commemorate, is a callous, merely destructive practice that may be radical but is profoundly wrong.

...No one has more trenchantly summarized the various pathologies of power in the third world than Eqbal in the three summary essays he wrote for Arab Studies Quarterly in 1980 and 1981.9 Once again, unlike many of the second-thoughters and post-Marxists who populate the academic and liberal journals today, Eqbal remained true to the ideals of revolution and truer yet to its unfulfilled promise. To have heard him lecture over the years, passionately and sternly, about militarism in the Arab world, in Pakistan, in Algeria and elsewhere, was to have known the high moral position he took on matters having to do with the sanctity and potential dignity of human life either squandered or abused by strutting dictators or co-opted intellectuals. Creativity, vision, and originality of the kind appreciated by Eqbal in his great friend the Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz are the measure for political life, not the trappings of honor guards, fancy limousines, and enormously bloated and all-powerful bureaucracies.

The measure is the human being, not the abstract law or the amoral power.

I think it must have been difficult to hold on to such ideals and principles. Most of Eqbal's written work, and indeed his activism, took place in dark times. Not only did he take full stock of the devastations of imperialism and injustice all over the globe, but in particular he more eloquently than anyone else inventoried the particular sadness and low points reached by Islamic cultures and states. Yet even then he managed to remind us that what he mourned is no mere religious or cultural fanaticism, as it is usually misrepresented in the West, but a widespread ecumenical movement. Moreover, though not an Arab himself, Eqbal reminded Arabs that Arabism, far from being a narrow-based nationalism, is quite unique in the history of nationalisms because it tried to connect itself beyond boundaries. It came close to imagining a universal community linked by word and sentiment alone. Anyone who is an Arab in his feelings, in his language and his culture, is an Arab. So a Jew is an Arab. A Christian is an Arab. A Muslim is an Arab. A Kurd is an Arab. I know of no national movement which defined itself so broadly.

In such a situation and with such a heritage, Eqbal saw the degradation of ideas and values that grip Arabs and Muslims alike. Let me quote him again. This is in the aftermath of the Gulf Way in 1993:

We live in scoundrel times. This is the dark age of Muslim history, the age of surrender and collaboration, punctuated by madness. The decline of our civilization began in the eighteenth century when, in the intellectual embrace of orthodoxy, we skipped the age of enlightenment and the scientific revolution. In the second half of the twentieth century, it has fallen. I have been a lifelong witness to surrender, and imagined so many times-as a boy in 1948, a young man in 1967 ... and approaching middle age in 1982-that finally we have hit rock bottom, that the next time even if we go down we would manage to do so with a modicum of dignity. Fortunately, I did not entertain even so modest an illusion from Saddam Hussein's loudly proclaimed 'mother of battles."

This on the one hand and on the other the multiple degradations of what he once called the fascism and separatis clearly identifiable, seemingly hostile but symbiotically linked trends, in his Pakistan. Former Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and his family, former president General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, and their coteries plundered the land, demoralized the population. They tried to subdue the country I s insurrectionary constituent cultures and failed, but at the price of more blood and treasure. And everywhere, as throughout the Muslim world, they provoked, if they did not actually cause, the rise of Islamism, which as a secularist Eqbal always deplored.

But ever the fighter and activist, he did not submit in resignation. He wrote more and more in earnest and in 1994 undertook his grand project of founding a new university in Pakistan-Khaldunia, aptly named after the great Arab historian and founder of sociology, Ibn Khaldun. In this project and his enthusiasm for it, Eqbal was no Don Quixote, tilting at windmills, but like Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci, he took as his motto "Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will. This was part of the man's rareness, knowing how to rescue the' best available in a tradition without illusion or melodramatic self-dramatization. For him, Islam, Arabism, and American idealism were treasures to be tapped, despite tyrants like Zia ul-Haq and Henry Kissinger, whose manipulations and cold-blooded policies debase and bring down everything they touch.

Edward Said, Introduction to Eqbal Ahmad’s Confronting Empire

#*#eqbal ahmad #edward said #confronting empire

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rgr-pop · 6 years

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When Cathedrals Were White is really strange and strangely underconsidered. It’s Le Corbusier’s Democracy in America, kind of: went on a speaking tour and wrote a book about looking at New York. It’s part travelogue and part proposition for a new New York. But it’s not just about New York (everyone says it is about New York!), it is also about Detroit, it contains scenes from his visit to both Ford and Cranbrook. It is a surprising book mostly, but the visit to Detroit is like a thousand others I’ve read before. It’s not surprising. This passage is funny!

This book is about the color white, and whiteness, both, interchangeably.

Yes, the cathedrals were white, completely white, dazzling and young-and not black, dirty, old. The whole period was fresh and young.

I guess this book was written in the thirties but translated into English in 1946. In 1946 Corbu was working not only for the UN, coming back to the US to find a site for the headquarters, he was also working for de Gaulle’s Ministry of Reconstruction. Vers une Architecture is about revolution, Cathedrals in translation feels sometimes like it is about reconstruction.

Middle Ages? That is where we are today: the world to be put in order, to be put in order on piles of debris, as was done once before on the debris of antiquity, when the cathedrals were white.

This isn’t Corbu’s only book about color, but I think it’s his only book about the color white. I wondered why none of the books I have on him talked much at all about his theories of white, why white. I had to memorize his dumb points in architecture history class, but never why white.

In Cathedrals, white is a material and it is also, explicitly, often, race:

When the cathedrals were white, Europe had organized the crafts under the imperative impulse of a quite new, marvelous, and exceedingly daring technique the use of which led to unexpected systems of forms-in fact to forms whose spirit disdained the legacy of a thousand years of tradition, not hesitating to thrust civilization toward an unknown adventure. An international language reigned wherever the white race was, favoring the exchange of ideas and the transfer of culture. An international style had spread from the West to the East and from the North to the South-a style which carried with it the passionate stream of spiritual delights: love of art, disinterestedness, joy of living in creating.

The cathedrals were white because they were new. The cities were new; they were constructed all at once, in an orderly way, regular, geometric, in accordance with plans. The freshly cut stone of France was dazzling in its whiteness, as the Acropolis in Athens had been white and dazzling, as the Pyramids of Egypt had gleamed with polished granite. Above all the cities and towns encircled by new walls, the skyscrapers of God dominated the countryside. They had made them as high as possible, extraordinarily high. It may seem a disproportion in the ensemble. Not at all, it was an act of optimism, a gesture of courage, a sign of pride, a proof of mastery! In addressing themselves to God, men did not sign their own abdication.

The new world was beginning. White, limpid, joyous, clean, clear, and without hesitations, the new world was opening up like a flower among the ruins. They left behind them all recognized ways of doing things; they turned their backs on all that. In a hundred years the marvel was accomplished and Europe was changed.

The cathedrals were white.

Get this!:

To speak of American trains is to speak of something quite different from the dull gloom of our conveyances. Grand Central Terminal is a marvel, and I am not referring to the technical accomplishment of the engineers. I am speaking simply as an ordinary traveler and I say that taking a train here is a pleasure excursion.

First, it is clean. It is kept clean constantly by an army of excellent Negroes who are polite, attentive, and never obnoxiously grasping.

He has solutions both strange and unsurprising. There is a chapter called “The Spirit of the Machine, and Negroes in the USA” in which jazz functions as space does elsewhere in his writings. But then, also:

The jazz is more advanced than the architecture. If architecture were at the point reached by jazz, it would be an incredible spectacle.

Here is a bit on Corbu in Harlem. I do not know that it answers my question, jazz-as-space. This chapter is about jazz as “machine,” as technology to some degree, but it activates his concern with the dual problems of history/prehistory and humanism/essentialism.

Psycho-physiologically it is so powerful, so irresistible that it has tom us from the passivity of listening and has made us dance or gesticulate, participate. It has opened the cycle of sound of modem times, turned the page on the conservatories. New cadences, new cries, unknown groups of sounds, an exuberance, a flood, a vertiginous intensity .... Launched by the Negroes, it is American music, containing the past and the present, Africa and pre-machine age Europe and contemporary America.

It looks in many ways the same as his approach to classicism--almost.

Peter Eisenman said, in some interview somewhere, he didn’t know who started calling the New York Five--the five subjects of Five Architects--“the Whites.” I gestured about this the other day. Maybe it’s worth explaining: the name comes from the color of their work. The color of their work is conceptual in a sense, but it is also functionally a reference to Le Corbusier. Because they were doing, rehabilitating, a kind of international style in a moment when legacy of the international style was in dispute. “The Whites” was probably to some degree a joke from the beginning, because “white box”--a term in critical revolt against the international style--or variations thereof, anyway, had been floating around by 1973. I don’t know how old it is. Frank Lloyd Wright talked about “the white-paint-men” in 1952. “White” had content, it was referring to more than the work itself. To Wright, “white” meant an absence of content. In Five Architects white was about formalism without utopia--contentless content. But to Le Corbusier, white was dialectical; in Cathedrals its content is not just revolution, but maybe reconstruction; it’s newness that demands perpetual renewal (and a labor force to do so). It also contains the classical.

So (and this is maybe less interesting and important than what I just said) it is hard to say “the Whites were called the Whites in reference to their reverence for Corbu in a moment where we are supposed to understand that the forces of history were moving against Corbu” even if that is true. Because in Five Architects Colin Rowe said that Five Architects was about looking at the formal solutions proposed by the avant-garde but leaving both the social content and the revolutionary position to which “avant-garde” referred: to do modernist boxes in 1971 was both pure formalism and, a little bit, historicist (historicist about the thirties). Neither revolutionary nor reconstructionist--well, there was arguably a kind of reversion to wholeness (Modernism) at play in their work, but I kind of think that’s been overstated.

But in Cathedrals, white was not just formal (as in Richard Meier’s work, an extension of space) nor conceptual (as in Eisenman’s work, white in service of space as pure abstraction, plus deep structure that looks a little like Corbu’s humanism), it was both symbolic (newness) and his way of articulating a material of revolution (also newness).

In sum: How express this program?? By techniques.

#architecture #color stories

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betterthedevilyouknowuk · 6 years

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Never Let Your Activism Be Artless: An Interview With Lucien Greaves of The Satanic Temple

Haute Macabre interview June 28, 2017

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing The Satanic Temple‘s Lucien Greaves about art, activism, and what religion means as a framework rather than a faith. “Recently” isn’t quite right — these questions were written back in February, as you might notice by the news reference in one of them, but we hope you’ll forgive us the wait. I’ve been following TST’s work for a while and am wholeheartedly a supporter of their mission, but whether you know their tenets by heart or are just tuning in, you’re sure to find something of interest below.

So, just to get it out of the way, could you describe the difference between The Satanic Temple and The Church of Satan for any readers who may not know?

Well, first off, organizationally, there isn’t any similarity. That is to say, we have an organization, we have active chapters internationally, we have a physical headquarters, and we have active campaigns to advance our goals in the real world. The Church of Satan has none of these things.

One thing that I don’t think is clear to a lot of people is that all of the organized Satanic activity you’ve seen in the national and international press in the past years — from the Satanic monument, to the religious reproductive rights lawsuits, to the After School Satan Clubs — it’s all come from The Satanic Temple. The Church of Satan writes these humorous tirades in opposition to each of our activities, but they always get their facts wrong. For instance, they’ll claim that they would never seek to erect a monument on public grounds because, according to them, they support secularism.

In fact, we very often work with the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, American Atheists, the American Humanist Association, and other established defenders of secularism nationwide. Our monuments are made in defence of secularism, and we are very clear about that. We only seek to place our Baphomet monument on public grounds where there is a pre-existing 10 Commandments monument to ensure that the government remains neutral regarding religious expression in public forums. Government has no place in Religion, Religion has no place in Government. If a public forum allows privately donated religious monuments, the Government can’t pick and choose between religious viewpoints. That’s secularism. You can’t let the theocrats take over the Public Square and claim it as their own exclusively.

Of course there are those who complain that a true expression of secularism would be the absence of any religious monuments on public grounds. Well, yes, but when there’s already a 10 Commandments monument on public grounds, it doesn’t do much good to simply say you wish it weren’t there. There isn’t much point to organizing a membership structure and hierarchy when there are no activities associated with those roles. When we’re proposing our monument, the government then has to make a choice — will they accept a Satanic monument, or will they engage in religious discrimination and all but ensure that the 10 Commandments monument will come down as well?

Similarly, The Church of Satan objects to our After School Satan Clubs on the grounds that they feel proselytizing to children is abhorrent. If they learned about our after school program before commenting, they’d find that we, too, find proselytizing to children abhorrent. In fact, the very reason we started the After School Satan Clubs was to offer an alternative to coercive religious proselytizing inflicted on children through evangelical after-school clubs, and we only offer our club in schools where the evangelical presence already exists. Our curriculums don’t contain any items of religious opinion and focus entirely on critical thinking and reasoning skills. To say, then, that we shouldn’t call it the After School Satan Club misses the point. We’re The Satanic Temple, and we’re Satanists, and we’re not going to hide that fact. The schools have to understand, if they allow evangelical clubs, they can’t turn away the Satanists. For children to be aware that there are self-identified Satanists, and that they are friendly, approachable people — it has a counter-indoctrination effect.

So, the incessant criticisms we receive from the Church of Satan are either wildly misinformed, or completely dishonest.

Philosophically speaking, The Church of Satan is a fundamentalist LaVeyan organization, which makes a certain sense from a business perspective because they base their authenticity on the fact that they inherited Anton LaVey’s organization and claim his achievements as their own. They hold to a remarkably similar philosophy as you find espoused by radical Tea Party Christians on the theocratic Right: Ayn Rand-inspired Social Darwinist authoritarian-fetishizing libertarianism, but with a bit of occultic ritual magic thrown in. The Satanic Temple espouses a non-supernatural anti-authoritarian philosophy that views the metaphorical literary construct of Satan as a liberator from oppression of the mind and body. Our canon embodies the Romantic Satanism of Milton, Blake, Shelley, to, particularly, Anatole France, whose Revolt of the Angels is a primary text in TST. From its inception, modern Satanism, as it came to be defined in the Revolutionary era of Romantics, was very much a non-theistic movement aligned with Liberty, Equality and Rationalism. With that in mind, I think we’re rather closely aligned with early Modern Satanism, rather than some type of wildly aberrant, unique and unrecognizable contemporary off-shoot.

Since the religious construct of Satanism doesn’t believe in the supernatural, you say you “turn to literature and art as icons for deeply held beliefs.” Can you talk more about the importance of art and literature, especially during times of conflict?

This, I think, cuts to the very heart of what it means to be a non-theistic, non-supernaturalist religion. As I’ve described elsewhere, non-theistic Satanic religious affiliation has a cultural framework that is deeply significant and far from arbitrary— that is to say, we couldn’t simply re-label it for the sake of diplomacy, nor would doing so be true to our principles.

The narrative of the ultimate rebel against tyranny, the use of blasphemy as a tool for liberation against imposed, frivolous, sanctified superstitions; the cultivation of the individual will and rationalism unencumbered by “faith” or blind subjugation; the willingness to stand as an outsider with a sense of justice that is independent of laws and institutions; all are embodied by the literary Satan.

Those of us who were burdened from childhood by archaic tradition-based dogmas, especially in the era of the Satanic Panic, were instilled with an irrational aversion and fear toward the “other”, the Satanic. Breaking that barrier, defying such deeply-entrenched cultural programming, embracing the symbols, narrative, and outside status of the Adversary, can be a supremely liberating personal experience, not merely incidentally divorced from superstition, but emblematic of, and vital to, the break with superstition. Whether we interpret them literally or not, the mythological backdrop by which we each contextualize our existential grounding is profoundly important in our lives. I feel that theists are subjugated by their myths, while we are empowered by ours. The literary Satanists of the Revolutionary Era understood this, and their power to change the world by way of altering the cultural mythological structure was certainly not lost on them. One can read some artful exposition on this point in Shelley’s A Defense of Poetry. In explaining this, I can only hope to make some people understand that, despite common perceptions, Satanism is (or can be) deeply personally enriching, and isn’t merely an attention-seeking shock tactic directed at observers. When the cameras aren’t rolling, when the journalists have all left the spectacle, we are, in fact, Satanists still. I know this doesn’t quite exactly directly answer the question of how literature and art serve as icons for deeply held beliefs; But the power of metaphor, the vital necessity of narrative to cultivate and define one’s sense of self and purpose, the atavistic desire for art are all self-evident to me. I have a difficult time understanding the bizarre, yet apparently prevalent notion, that religious identity, practice, and ethics should be dependent upon intellectually crippling superstitions. I can’t grasp why it became the norm to believe that mentally-stunted fundamentalists have a more authentic claim to deeply-held beliefs.

Any advice you would give those who are operating at the intersection of art and activism?

Never separate art and activism. Never let your activism be artless, and never allow your art to be orthodox.

In a VICE interview a few years ago, you said, “LaVey is an excellent jumping-off point, but his work was a product of its time, and it’s appropriate to recontexualize it to today’s reality. LaVey was active during a time in which, for decades, the United States was on a dysfunctional spiral of increasing violence.” 2017 also seems to be a spiral of increasing violence; do you see TST adapting to that in any particular way?

I don’t agree that there is a spiral of increasing violence. In fact, violence is at historic lows. Since 2008, in the United States, violent crime has been lower than at any point in over 40 years. There was a rise in crime in 2015, but there’s no reason to believe it’s a trend, and there’s no reason to believe it harkens the end of an overall decline in violence. Broader historical overviews indicate an overall decrease in violence from the beginning of recorded history till now. So why are we being sold this bullshit apocalyptic narrative of increasing criminality and violence? I think the reasons should be clear to anybody paying attention to American politics. There needs to be an emergency in order to declare Emergency Powers. Fear-mongering inures the public to unilateral executive actions that defy the checks and balances of open deliberation. “Othering” strengthens tribal bonds as they unify themselves against a common enemy, and the creation of unease and general panic can be used by leaders to manipulate their followers who offer them the latitude to protect them by whatever means.

In the case of LaVey, he actually was living in a time in which violence in the United States was trending upward and was a cause for alarm. During the 1960s, crime steadily and dramatically rose till about 1995 when it began to plummet, eventually, to where we happily are now. LaVey seems to have looked at what was unique in the culture around him at the time to determine what may have precipitated the rise in crime, and to determine what might need to change to make things better. He looked critically at the Rights Revolution and he despised the Hippy culture. He imagined a stratified and tribally divided, non-democratic world. He advocated police state politics.

Turns out, he was wrong.

Secular democratic states are less likely to engage in war against each other and less likely to engage in terrorism or political violence than autocratic states. The rise in democratic states and the concurrent diminution in autocracies correlates to the global trend in reduced violence. Intermingling cultures — free to “appropriate” from each other — fare better than insular ethnic/religious/nationalist cults. And crime has, as stated, drastically plummeted in the United States without any massive reductions in Civil Liberties. In fact, the Rights Revolution has continued to move forward, slowly — but with great resistance, particularly from the Christian Right — and inexorably. I highly recommend a book by Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, which explores this topic in great detail.

Troublingly, I feel that the greatest threat to our social stability now comes from those who claim we must do something to stop the imagined increase in violence. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We already see an increased tribalistic zeal, and we see pre-emptive violence in the name of anti-fascism, which will then be used as justification for increased police action. That’s the real downward spiral.

However, an increase in crime now can’t change what we know. It won’t make a stratified, autocratic Social Darwinist system any more correct. That said, one might wonder why I feel LaVey could be described as an “excellent jumping-off point” at all, if he is so entirely incorrect on this important point? LaVey was a bold voice in opposition to faith-driven mindlessness. He was instrumental in establishing recognition of Modern Satanism, even if he did hang on to other forms of magical thinking. If he were alive today, I like to think that he would be able to see the evidence and adjust his thinking accordingly. Being able to live without delusion and adjust one’s thinking to incorporate the best empirical evidence is, I think, a great overriding principle of Satanism.

In certain areas, LaVey was quite progressive, and I’ve gotten to know some of his old friends (who don’t associate with the Church of Satan), and they’ve all said that they suspect he himself would very much appreciate what The Satanic Temple is now doing.

Is there a reason TST’s Baphomet doesn’t have breasts?

The short answer as to why our Baphomet monument has no breasts is because we fight to win in all of our battles. The Baphomet was originally offered as a private donation to Oklahoma’s State Capitol grounds where, in 2012, their government allowed for the placement of a 10 Commandments monument. The Oklahoma Legislature — led on this issue by a Southern Baptist Deacon State House representative — claimed that the 10 Commandments monument wasn’t, in fact, a religious monument, but a secular, historical monument paying tribute to the early foundations of Constitutional Law. In further attempting to build an argument that the 10 Commandments on Capitol Grounds didn’t constitute a government endorsement of religion, Oklahoma made clear that no public funds went into the construction of the monument, thus opening the Capitol Grounds as a First Amendment protected public forum for private donations. Clearly, they didn’t expect anybody to call their bluff. It was the end of 2013 when we sent off a letter to the State of Oklahoma expressing to them that we should like to offer a monument to be displayed on the Capitol Grounds and requesting the documentation required to move our monument request forward. Having obtained that, we then began to design a monument within the parameters of their “limited open forum” requirements. After sketching out various proposals, it became clear that Baphomet was the best, artistically and symbolically. Symbolically, the binary elements of Baphomet aligned perfectly with our effort to counterbalance the 10 Commandments. We meticulously contrived a legal argument for the inclusion of the Baphomet on the Oklahoma Capitol grounds that artfully paralleled the 10 Commandments’ Bill in every way. The Baphomet was to stand as an homage to the unjustly accused, the heretics and the scapegoats: those burned, hung, stoned, and tortured during witch-hunts and crowd panics. An homage to them, we explained, is an homage to the moral underpinnings of our secular Judiciary which works from a presumption of innocence, places the burden of proof upon the accuser, and refuses to recognize claims of divine authority or anti-blasphemy legislation. We constructed an ironclad argument. We knew, however, that exposed breasts would lead to an opportunity for Oklahoma to claim that our monument defied so-called decency standards, and they would be entirely relieved to evade the Establishment Clause issue in favor of a puritanical claim related to community standards. Initially, I worked with the artist to devise some type of covering for the breasts, but they all looked out-of-place and distracting. Artistically, the breastless bare chest looked best. We still occasionally hear from people who insist that they, as purists, would have included the breasts, decency complaints be damned. I just have to shrug and let them know that this is exactly why they’ll most likely never get anything done.

As a hybrid religion/activism group that embraces humor, TST bears some similarity to 60s activist group W.I.T.C.H., which has recently announced a modern reincarnation. I’m also reminded of Discordianism, which was my first introduction to the use of religion as a satirical framework as a teenager. Do you think humor is an integral part of activism?

I think humor is integral to being a well-adjusted human. There is a difference, however, between creating a satirical religion and using satire, as a religious organization, to advance a point.

Our identification as Satanists isn’t “satirical,” however, we’re not adverse to using humor and satire to highlight various hypocrisies and absurdities we run up against. This point is entirely lost on some people who seem to believe that everything is mutually exclusive, and one organization can’t be more than one thing at a time.

We’re often asked if we’re political, religious, an art movement, etc. Why would we have to choose between any one of those things? Why can we not be entirely sincere while also having a sense of humor? For that matter, why is it we seldom see the skepticism that is directed toward us directed toward the Evangelical Right? Is the Evangelical Right a sincere religious movement, or is it merely political? Is there anything in scripture that even distantly implies that a corporation like Hobby Lobby shalt not pay for insurance benefits that include contraceptive coverage? Is their belief that they should not pay those benefits more deeply-held than our belief in bodily autonomy merely because they claim to lack the intellectual nuance to not read their Bible as a literal historical text?

I would like to see that The Satanic Temple never loses its sense of humor, even as there persists this bizarre notion that humor and authenticity are irreconcilable.

According to Breitbart, you reached out to clarify that TST had nothing to do with the counter-Milo protests in California, citing your support of free speech. How do you reconcile having “freedom to offend” with the danger Milo causes to individuals by targeting specific trans or undocumented students at his speeches?

I’m not sure what danger he’s caused to anybody. I’ve never read his material. I’ve never listened to him speak. Even still, after having defended his right to speak, I still don’t give a shit about what he’s saying. I defend the principle of Free Speech, and when you defend a principle, you don’t only defend it selectively. If you can’t support it when it incidentally doesn’t benefit you, you’re not supporting it at all. You can’t claim that you believe in Free Speech, only insofar as you agree with what’s being said. If Milo has posed a legitimate danger to individuals through inciting violence in a very direct and tangible way, if he’s defamed people, or invaded their privacy — this seems like a matter for the civil courts, and the aggrieved parties should consult legal representation. If the “danger” is that he has hurt people’s feelings, then I should be quite clear that I am not sympathetic. For my part, I can’t wrap my head around the cognitive dissonance that has self-proclaimed defenders of Liberal Democracy calling for limitations on Free Speech in the name of “anti-fascism.” The irony is overwhelming. Of course, it seems, nobody quite wants to admit that they renounce Free Speech, so it’s quite popular to try and categorize anything one disagrees with as Hate Speech worthy of censorship. But offensive and even hateful speech is, and should remain, protected under the First Amendment. Threats and incitement are treated differently, and there could be legal claims related to those, if in fact that’s what Milo’s done.

Many are the times in which The Satanic Temple has been wrongly denigrated as engaging in “hate speech” by offended Christian groups who imagine that any and all of our activities are acts of persecution against them. They would argue that while we’re not make direct threats or inciting specific actions against them, our very identification as Satanists nonetheless threatens Christians and incites acrimony against them. Their feelings are hurt. They’re offended. We would support a broadened definition of Hate Speech or accept a less discriminating interpretation of what constitutes a threat or incitement at our own peril.

My impression of Milo is that he rode a wave of celebrity that was largely created by the ignorant little assholes who ran amok lighting fires, smashing property, and macing bystanders in the face wherever he was scheduled to speak. When you take a third-rate comedian who’s saying offensive things and demand his censorship, you suddenly give him the First Amendment high ground. You turn him into a defender of Civil Liberties. You make him a Free Speech martyr, and in the internet age his message is certainly no less accessible, you’ve only given him free publicity.

Incidentally, it appears that Milo’s career as a sweetheart of the alt-right is all but entirely finished, and it wasn’t destroyed because some screaming mob of mindless fascistic “anti-fascists” managed to impose a general censorship of his words, but because he was allowed to speak freely and express things that even his followers couldn’t support or defend.

Related, does TST have an official stance on punching Nazis?

Personally, I think it’s a bad idea to go out looking to punch anybody. I especially think it’s a bad idea to go out looking to punch thick-skulled miscreants who themselves are looking for a pretext for a fight. I also think Nazis are a bit too easy a target to place all of our post-election angst upon. I’m not particularly concerned that the Nazi Party is going to gain prominence in the United States any time in the near or projected future. Even our most oppressive elements on the right probably honestly believe themselves to be entirely unrelated to Nazis. The self-identified Nazis I know of are angry, uneducated, aggressive yokels who run no risk of organizing a national coup. I just don’t run into Nazis in my daily life or when I’m out socializing. I’m not sure where people are living that they can decide to whimsically travel out and go punch a Nazi at will. Rather, I think the anti-Nazi rhetoric is simply a safe and inoffensive exhibition of discontent. It’s something people can rant about and issue threats of violence toward without any real fear of actual confrontation. I think it would be far more poignant and meaningful if people were to confront Evangelical Nationalism and rail against the Theocratic Right. I get sick of hearing people say, “let’s call them what they really are: Nazis.” No. Why don’t you call them what they really are? They are the Theocratic Right. They are Evangelical Nationalists. They are taking over the public offices and overturning Liberal Democracy. When you call people who have no attachment to Nazi-ism Nazis, they don’t know you’re talking about them, and it’s not clear that you know who you’re talking about either.

You recently opened an international headquarters in Salem. Can you tell us about this?

Our organization has grown so rapidly in the past few years. It made sense to have a dedicated headquarters where we can keep our offices and centralize our operations. The lower floor is open to the public as an art gallery where we regularly have exhibitions. The current exhibition features the work of Vincent Castiglia, a remarkable artist who paints enormous and meticulously detailed works of art in his own blood. We have some amazing sculpture-work by Chris Andres, who also designed our veterans’ memorial in Minnesota. We also have a segment of the gallery dedicated to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 90s, and which still persists to a greater or lesser degree today. We also have a lecture room where we show films and host guest speakers.

The gallery is always going to be a work in progress and we’re adding to it all the time. By now, given my explanation of non-theistic religion and the importance and power of art, it shouldn’t seem strange in the least that our headquarters should double as an art gallery. In fact, nothing could be more natural to us. Art is integral to our religion.

People often ask how we’re received by the local community. There haven’t been any problems at all. We get along with the neighbors, the local officials haven’t given us any problems, and we really couldn’t have picked a better place to put our headquarters. When people recognize me on the street, it’s always been a positive and polite interaction. We’ve had many people visit from out-of-state just to visit our headquarters, and it hasn’t been uncommon for them to considering moving to Salem afterward. I have a feeling that Salem will become home to the largest population of self-identified Satanists in the world in the foreseeable future.

You support non-believers having access to religion as a framework. Can you elaborate on what that means? What is the difference between religion and faith?

“Faith” is belief without evidence. Theists ennoble faith as integral to religion: blind belief in intellectually insulting superstitions that offer the benefit of solace in “knowing” that we’ll go to a paradisiacal after-world, so long as we live a life of servitude toward an unseen master. Faced with disconfirming evidence, the theist often withdraws into arguments that attack a lack of moral clarity in science. The superstitious religionist feels that their ethics, community, and sense of cultural identity are founded upon old superstitions that they must strive to believe and struggle to uphold, despite the persistent injuries constantly dealt to those beliefs by critical scrutiny and empirical knowledge.

In the United States we afford certain protections to deeply-held beliefs to respect freedom of conscience. Thomas Jefferson, in his Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom stated, “all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities.” Elaborating on this bill (which was important enough to him that it was named among three lifetime achievements upon his grave), Jefferson wrote in his memoirs that in this statute “protection of opinion was meant to be universal”, and the document included “within the mantle of its protection the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.”

Religious opinion was meant to be equally protected alongside faith. The non-believer’s right to express non-belief and not be besieged by a state-sanctioned religious viewpoint is equally protected alongside the right of the superstitious to assemble in houses of worship and implore the good will of a petty and jealous deity to take pity on their pathetic and groveling souls. This is the only tenable interpretation of what “religious liberty” can mean in a democratic pluralistic society. Religious Liberty doesn’t support a “right” to impose a religious viewpoint upon anybody else, or a “right” to limit another’s civic capacities. Religious Liberty gives every one of the us the opportunity to object to impositions of the state that run contrary to our deeply-held beliefs and challenge our freedom of conscience. Superstition does not produce superior ethics or identities, nor does faith provide beliefs that are more deeply-held than the personal moral foundations of any well-adjusted atheist. It would be deplorable to give superstition preferential treatment to rational thinking.

Of course, any time that equal protection for the religious opinion of non-believers is contextualized as part of a fight for Religious Liberty, there’s always some smug asshole, self-identifying as an atheist, who witlessly parrots the witticism, “atheism is a religion in the same way that bald is a haircut,” or, “…in the same way that off is a television station,” or any number of less-than-clever unoriginal variations. Nothing could be more helpful to the Fundamentalists than non-believers who insist that religion is dependent upon superstition, thus defining themselves outside of a protected class. I feel that atheist organizations, as organizations based upon a well-defined religious opinion, or opinion regarding religion, should have no hesitation in arguing for religious privilege and exemption including religious tax-exemption.

I think that the more people come to recognize the legitimacy of non-theistic religions — and there are already a significant population of atheist Jews, Buddhists, and others — the more we will see atheistic Christians making themselves known; individuals who still venerate the Christian myth and its customs, who identify with the Christian community, but simply can’t claim to believe ludicrous Biblical stories — at least not literally.

When superstitious delusion becomes isolated from the real-world benefits of religious affiliation, superstition becomes all the more impossible to maintain and defend. The sooner the atheist movement recognizes that their fight is with superstition, not religion, the sooner we’ll get there.

What are you working on right now? How can people get involved?

Recently, we were approved to place a veterans’ memorial monument in a park in Belle Plaine, Minnesota where a Christian veterans’ monument provoked controversy leading the local officials to open the public grounds as a limited open forum. We’re crowd-funding to offset the cost of that effort.

We have two lawsuits, State and Federal, currently active in Missouri, where we’re fighting against prohibitive abortion restrictions on the grounds that these restrictions violate our religious liberty.

We’re putting a volunteer manual together for our After School Satan Club, so that people who aren’t a part of a local TST chapter can nonetheless apply to present our After School Satan Club (ASSC) curriculum in schools where Evangelical indoctrination clubs are present. We’re going to release our volunteer manual at around the same time we file our first ASSC-related lawsuit.

We’re currently researching the prospect of opening our own religiously-protected abortion clinic.

I’m putting together a syllabus now for ordination coursework through The Satanic Temple, and it’s going to be rigorous and intensive, but it will ensure that our ministry are entirely capable of speaking on behalf of our beliefs.

We’re putting together an online platform so that we can video stream our activities at the headquarters to our membership and better connect with our international community.

In fact, we have a massive number of projects currently in the works that keeping track of it all has become the largest difficulty we face. Expect big things in the near future.

People who want to get involved can check to see if they have a local chapter near them, or reach out to us if there is sufficient local interest in starting one. Keep up with our current campaigns on our website and check up on our daily news on Facebook. Check out our merchandise on ShopSatan.com and keep in mind that your purchases help fund our campaigns.

Anything you want to add?

Please check out GreyFaction.org. Grey Faction is a sub-organization of The Satanic Temple dedicated to combating irrational conspiracy theory-based moral panics, modern witch-hunts, and the discredited therapeutic practices that still haunt us from beyond the formally recognized Satanic Panic era. We are keeping track of professionals in the mental health field that continue to use Recovered Memory Therapies to reveal and propagate delusional narratives of Satanic Ritual Abuse. We have issued petitions against therapists who openly endorse bizarre conspiracy theories related to imaginary Satanic cults to the mentally vulnerable. Our research revealed the connection between one such therapist and the murder of an 8-year old boy not many years ago. Our work with Grey Faction is supremely important, but has received relatively little press coverage.

#tst #the satanic temple #friends of the satanic temple uk #Lucien Greaves #satanism #satan #satanic #athiesm #activism #activist #secular #secularism #religion #interview #art

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dippedanddripped · 4 years

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The world of tailoring has taken an unforeseen turn over the past year. Following the outbreak of a global pandemic, business hours have been forced into unpredictable territory, social schedules among the population have been stripped and, from a sartorial point of view, wardrobes have been overhauled. Given that there’s not much to do in our day-to-day lives right now (and no clear end of this in sight), the need for comfort in clothing is key, which, in turn, leaves formalwear feeling just a tad unnecessary. So what does this mean for Savile Row, London’s famed street of bespoke tailoring which relies on exactly this kind of clothing in order to thrive? A general consensus of fear, no doubt, but there’s one Savile Row tailor who shows signs of no such thing: Edward Sexton.

Sexton is one of the most important figures in the history of Savile Row. Put simply, he paved the way for its modernity. After working for an array of tailors across the early ‘60s, he met a talented salesman called Tommy Nutter who shared his avant-garde sensibilities. Together, in 1969, they opened Nutters of Savile Row and, with it, transcended all notions of the traditionally closed-off street. Characterized by architectural silhouettes, roped shoulder sleeve heads, suppressed waists and generous lapels, Sexton’s approach to cutting was revolutionary, proclaiming a masterful blend of glamour, elegance and sex-appeal by way of a bespoke suit. Five decades on, with menswear taking a flamboyant turn, Sexton’s mutual influence on the worlds of both fashion and bespoke tailoring feels beyond compare.

Having lived through all kinds of societal shifts — from the flamboyance of the swinging ’60s to the digitalized mindset of millennial generations — Sexton is a pro at responding to change. We were extremely curious to hear his thoughts on the evolution of tailoring (both before and after coronavirus), so we sat down with the living legend for a very enlightening conversation …

InsideHook: Can you tell us a bit about how you got into tailoring?

Edward Sexton: I like to think that I’ve always been a very proactive person. I started out as a young apprentice and, soon after, assistant cutter at Harry Hall on Regent Street. This was an equestrian tailoring house which specialised in long-waisted, slightly flared jackets — very comfortable pieces to wear. I loved the long, lean silhouette of this house style and I loved assisting with its creation, but during these early days, I worked with a certain amount of reluctance, because, inside me, I wanted to do other things. I was certainly influenced and informed by the creations of my peers, but I wanted to develop a brand new vision based on my own style, and the only way I could really start to do this was by taking on private clients. So eventually, I did, and it was around the time I met Tommy Nutter.

So what made you open Nutters of Savile Row in 1969?

I met Tommy in 1967 when I started working as a cutter for Donaldson, Williams and G. Ward. One day, over a beer after work, I explained to him that I was moonlighting alongside my job with private clients. Cut a long story short, Tommy suggested we collaborate on a brand new look to test out in his social circle — one which was growing in influence. It also helped that he was being financed by big figures like Cilla Black and Peter Brown (the new manager of The Beatles).

In the ’60s, Savile Row was such a boring street — it still is, to some extent. All the tailoring companies had big heavy curtains across the windows, so it was by no means a place for window shopping. You’d go there, see your tailor, and move on. But elsewhere in London, Chelsea’s King’s Road was booming and the nearby Carnaby Street was kicking off. These were the streets with proper style, and the attitude of their people certainly influenced the vision between Tommy and I, but the problem was that none of their shops sold clothing of real quality. So that was the gap we decided to fill: luxury tailoring informed by an avant-garde attitude.

And what did that look like, in sartorial terms?

Well, our first prototype was a long-waisted, fitted jacket with a narrow shoulder. It was very restricted but very flattering and, after some tweaks, it went on to become our house look. The gay world was just coming into force at this time, and the men in it wanted to look immaculately dressed, so they loved a really long and lean approach to tailoring. With Tommy as the salesman and myself as the cutter, we opened our Savile Row shop on Valentine’s Day in 1969, and in a break from everyone else, we had dramatic open window displays to show off our totally different and, in my opinion, really sensational suits. Since then, I’ve always remained very true to the distinctive features which represent my design identity — like strong architectural lines and generous curved lapels — because they set me apart from other people. Through more of a social lens, I think we drove an idea of what the suit should really be: sharp, sexy and full of glamor.

Ok, so five decades on from this, what’s changed for you?

To meet the needs of new generations, my approach to designs are a little bit more relaxed now. That’s not to say they’ve lost their original identity; they’re still comfortably close, so I can maintain my beliefs in the lines I want to create. A lot of guys today are very athletic and they have these big shoulders, but I don’t find that problematic. Actually, it has encouraged me to be braver and a touch more aggressive with the lines around the upper half of their silhouette. Texturally speaking, I think that people are very much aware of touch today. They crave comfort, so there’s a certain level of softness desired from fabrics, but they still need to have a genuine luxury to them in order to reach their highest potential for comfortability. Still, I can’t pretend to just be selling suits all the time, because suits are not being worn like they once were. Especially in light of the past year.

So what was your initial response to the pandemic?

As I said before, I’m a proactive person, and this mentality has enabled me to survive some very serious situations in the past. At one point, Tommy and I were given limited electricity and we could feel the threat of our business dying. So in response to this, I got all the names of our overseas clients and booked a flight to New York. I wrote each of them a letter, telling them I’d be staying in a hotel for five days with my workbook and swatches if they wanted to pay a visit. I returned to London with a full book of orders. From something that was an initial problem, being proactive brought us more global attention. The same kind of thing happened when we experienced recessions in the ’70s and the ’80s. So my point being, although this COVID situation is disastrous and, from a business point of view, very inconvenient, I’m not worried about the status of my business because we’re being proactive, so I’m confident we’ll survive.

Proactive in what way?

So at the end of last year, still in the middle of this pandemic, we re-opened a ready-to-wear showroom and exhibition space on Savile Row. We were already offering this on our online e-commerce site, but we wanted to bring a bit of pizazz and attention back to the Row during these hard times. Ready-to-wear seemed like the perfect approach to doing this, because even though bespoke suits aren’t desired so much as we speak, people do still have an appetite for tailored clothing. Not necessarily as a full ensemble, but more so as single pieces — like a blazer or a relaxed shirt — to bring them a subtle amount of luxury in a pared-down outfit. These designs still capture all the expressions of my garments, so it seemed like the right time to amplify this sector of our business and show it in a physical place. Savile Row needs people back on it. In fact, it needed people even before this pandemic. So this is my show of strength to the world that it’s still alive and kicking. There are more eyes on businesses now than ever, so I want people to see what we’re doing and understand it. Everyone will want to feel sexy again once this is all over.

Definitely. Did you run into some physical protocols during this process?

Business is different, I can’t pretend it isn’t. We’re following all the essential protocols like masks, sanitizing and social distancing, but of course, customers are a little more cautious at showroom appointments or personal fittings these days. That being said, I strongly believe that if you’re offering a good garment, it should speak for itself. The term I use for this is “hanger appeal” and it’s the idea that a customer can assess the shape and silhouette of an item purely from it sitting on a hanger. Over the past year, this is something I’ve turned to in the process of sales — whether they be shown online or in our showroom.

Do you think that this pandemic has changed people’s approach to buying suits on Savile Row?

In the most traditional idea of buying a Savile Row suit, yes. But from my point of view, it hasn’t had a detrimental impact on my business because I have adapted myself to the desires of a customer. Leisurewear may have exploded over the past year, but that’s not to say that the interest for tailoring is gone. It’s the highest form of luxury, and people will always want it, even if, right now, it’s just in small doses. I’ve found that a special jacket, for example — be it in velvet or luxury wool — is still desired in a wardrobe because it can be dressed down with a pair of jeans and still look just as stylish. I myself haven’t worn a shirt and tie in over a year, but that’s not to say that my wardrobe has lost its luxury feel. It’s just reframed; particularly through roll-neck sweaters in either cashmere or wool, which I think look fabulous with tailoring. Sure, it’s not the classic way of styling it, but I still feel equally as dressed. And I love a good pair of trainers with certain pieces of tailoring. People may not be wearing fully tailored ensembles right now, but they’re still wearing single pieces — so the ingredients of a suit have just been reframed to work with the times. It’s only natural, and it’s still completely elegant to me. But I don’t think it will stay like this forever.

So what do you think will happen after this pandemic?

The old Savile Row mentality said that fashion and tailoring were two separate worlds. I’ve always disagreed with this. There’s a co-dependency between the two and I draw upon both within my work: the quality from tailoring and the flamboyance from fashion. Whether everyone on Savile Row admits it or not, we’re all influenced by the things we see on social media today, and the strongest appetite — in my opinion — is the collision of these two worlds. Glamor in menswear has really been on the rise over the past few years, and tailors can’t close their eyes to it.

So because we’ve been stripped of nightlife, fun and sartorial glamor over the past year, my prediction is that the public will want to dress more extravagantly than ever once this pandemic is over. They will want to do something revolutionary — and the most obvious way to express that kind of action is through clothing. Psychologically, I think people benefit from wearing good clothes because it makes them look and feel sexy, so as long as tailors can meet a modern demand when it comes, I think the Savile Row suit will be revitalized. And it’s incredibly exciting. Suits are modes of armor which help people face the world, so when it’s time to do that again, I’ll be there with some serious sartorial sculpturing to carry them through it.

#style #savile row #bespoke suits #london england #fashion blog #menswear blog #menswear mecca

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coolthingsisee · 4 years

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Labour unveil taxes on homeowners who have a garden and forces of sale of land on the cheap | Daily Mail Online

Labour was accused of pursuing the policies of Venezuela last night as it unveiled plans for a tax raid on middle-class homeowners and powers to force landlords to sell on the cheap.

A report, called Land for the Many, said council tax should be replaced with a new 'progressive' levy targeting larger homes with gardens.

And it suggested scrapping the single person discount – which gives widows and others 25 per cent off their bill. The blueprint, commissioned by Labour, also put forward radical reforms such as taxing land owned by foreigners and building thousands of council houses on public land.

Labour was accused of pursuing the policies of Venezuela last night as it unveiled plans for a tax raid on middle-class homeowners and powers to force landlords to sell on the cheap. Pictured: Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn

And it called for Britons to be forced to attend town hall planning meetings in the same way they have to go on jury service.

Labour frontbencher Jon Trickett said he would consider the proposals, which he said would tackle the 'concentration of land in the hands of the few'.

However, Tory MP Priti Patel accused the party of 'state-sponsored theft'. The former Cabinet minister said: 'This is confirmation that Labour would bring the policies of Venezuela to Britain.

'These are the policies of a banana republic with a disregard for property rights.'

David Prescott, 49, (right, left, his father John) a close aide to Mr Corbyn, was allegedly accused by a young female Labour MP of making 'unwanted sexual advances' in November 2017.

Labour staff in revolt after Jeremy Corbyn blocked the suspension of John Prescott's son over sexual harassment claim

More than 100 Labour staffers wrote to Jeremy Corbyn last night to demand he get the party’s ‘house in order’ over sexual harassment.

They demanded action over claims that the Labour leader’s office blocked the suspension of John Prescott’s son following a complaint of alleged sexual harassment.

David Prescott, 49, was allegedly accused by a young female Labour MP of making ‘unwanted sexual advances’ in November 2017.

According to reports, Mr Corbyn’s chief of staff Karie Murphy intervened to overturn a recommendation that he be suspended from Labour membership.

He has strenuously denied the allegations. No formal complaint was pursued and he returned to his role in the Labour leader’s office.

Yesterday, Labour staffers wrote an open letter to Corbyn asking him to overhaul the party’s system for handling complaints.

They wrote: ‘Working in politics isn’t easy, and many of us choose to give up our personal lives for Labour because we believe it is the best force for good in our country.

‘What makes the job even more challenging than it should be is having to work in an environment where sexual harassment and bullying are not taken seriously.’

Labour has said it takes all complaints extremely seriously.

‘In this case, no formal complaint was received to investigate,’ a party spokesman said.

MPs have urged the party to make its complaints procedure entirely independent to avoid accusations of factionalism in dealing with complaints of harassment or racism and anti-Semitism.

The MPs Jess Philips and Stella Creasy have said the party must carve off its complaints arm, rather than use the current system where the bodies making final decisions about the complaints can be elected on factional slates.

A newspaper and television journalist - who helped write his father’s now-defunct column for the Sunday Mirror - Mr Prescott is a seasoned political operator who has worked with, among others, Tony Blair’s spin doctor Alastair Campbell.

When talking up his private media training business, which he ran before taking up his role with Labour in late 2016, he took credit for the campaign that resulted in disgraced Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Fred Goodwin handing back £4.7million of his pension.

Venezuela's economy has been driven into political and economic crisis by hard-Left policies admired by Jeremy Corbyn.

The report, written by academics and economists, was commissioned by Labour to address 'the problems and injustices of British society'.

It said the 'regressive and unpopular' council tax should be replaced by a new progressive property tax based on regularly updated property values that would hit the top 40 per cent of property by value.

Rates would be set nationally rather than by local councils, meaning regular inspections by state officials.

The report accused the single person discount of encouraging the 'over-consumption of housing'.

It also called for town halls to make more use of compulsory purchase orders on land needed for building – and said they should be allowed to buy the land at a much cheaper price than at present.

Councils would be given the power to require land that has been left vacant or derelict for a defined period to be sold at public auction.

Changes to existing laws would enable them to buy at prices closer to its current use value, rather than potential future residential value.

In order to ensure poorer families have a voice in the process, it said everyone should be eligible for jury service-style attendance at planning meetings.

Among the other policies, a 'community right to buy' would make it easier for residents to band together to purchase land. Firms based abroad who own land in the UK would face a new offshore company property tax.

Mr Trickett, Labour's spokesman for the Cabinet Office, said: 'For too long, people across the country have had little or no say over the decisions that affect their communities and the places in which they live.

'So much of this can be traced back to the broken system of land ownership. Concentration of land in the hands of a few has led to unwanted developments, unaffordable house prices, financial crises and environmental degradation.

'Labour is committed to tackling these head on and delivering a fundamental shift in wealth and power from the few to the many.'

Housing Secretary James Brokenshire said: 'These proposals are extraordinary and deeply damaging in equal measure. Labour will stop at nothing to hammer families with more tax and make home ownership a pipedream for future generations.

'Plans to seize land into public ownership also show Labour's true colours of more and more state control. This tax bombshell for families would mean family homes with gardens paying far more and higher taxes on pensioners by abolishing the single person discount.'

ALEX BRUMMER: A frightening move straight from the autocrat playbook

Among all of Labour's crackpot schemes to destroy free market capitalism in Britain, none is more frightening than the proposed 'grab' of private land that the party has just unveiled.

It is a move straight out of the Marxist playbook, a tactic regularly deployed by autocrats the world over with the aim of burnishing their revolutionary credentials – with dramatic consequences. What Labour is determined on is a new age of collectivism. Well, we know how disastrously that worked out in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere – famine and starvation.

For modern day examples, look no farther than Zimbabwe and Venezuela, where the confiscation of large swathes of property from the landowners to be gifted directly to workers led to collapsing food production, economic slump, and was a factor in the hyper-inflation and widespread poverty that followed.

The proposed 'grab' of private land that Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party wants has chilling echoes of the policies of former Zimbabwe leader Robert Mugabe (right)

In a sophisticated nation such as Britain, where international investors have bought property as a safe investment haven, the impact could be even more devastating.

Even the threat of Jeremy Corbyn's apparatchiks interfering in the free market by stopping the sale of land to the highest bidder is enough to scare off buyers and cause values to collapse.

Of course, Labour would argue that is the aim – 'land for the many, not the few'. In reality it shows the party's utter economic ignorance.

For example, under current arrangements, local authorities or infrastructure companies such as HS2, which is building the high speed rail link between London and Birmingham and on to Manchester, are required to compensate land and home owners affected by the development at market values.

Corbyn and his team, headed by shadow chancellor John McDonnell (pictured) would buy land at its current (and always lower) 'land use value' rather than at a market price which recognises the uplift that development can bring

Corbyn and his team, headed by shadow chancellor John McDonnell, want to change that. They would buy land at its current (and always lower) 'land use value' rather than at a market price which recognises the uplift that development can bring.

This could trigger a financial crisis. Much of the nation's potential land for development is owned by housebuilders, property companies and institutions such as insurers and pension funds.

Some of these development holdings will have been bought or financed on credit from the banks. If land values plummet, banks will be left with a black hole on their books.

A lending freeze might follow, bringing commerce to a shuddering halt, since credit is what keeps corporate Britain moving. That could lead to cascading business closures and a return of large scale unemployment. Even worse, those financial institutions most exposed to property could collapse, destroying the savings of millions. Almost as alarming is Labour's proposal for an offshore property company tax, a huge deterrent to overseas investors from Asia, the Middle East and closer to home in Norway and Germany.

No one could blame them for pausing their investment in Britain.

What Labour seems oblivious to is that property development is a fundamental building block of our services- led economy.

Of course, it is not the first time that Labour has threatened such action. In the run-up to the 2015 election, the then Labour leader Ed Miliband provoked a firestorm when he told property developers to 'either use the land or lose the land'. Business leaders described it as 'Stalinist threat to property rights.

The land grab agenda of today's party leadership goes much further.

Labour is cloaking its proposals in the disguise of being 'good for communities', arguing that challenging land ownership will deliver a fundamental shift in wealth and power.

This ignores the fact that one of the fundamental principles on which social solidarity in Britain rests is that of a property-owning democracy.

Indeed, this was one of the underpinnings of the Thatcherite revolution which allowed council home residents, many of them Labour loyalists, to buy a property and take control of their own bit of Britain.

It is no exaggeration to say that the UK's green and pleasant land – by the way, Labour plans on appropriating agricultural land for 'small farmers' too – is under threat as never before.

And our hard-earned status as the fifth most prosperous country in the world could be imperilled.

It is with good cause that a Corbyn government is already regarded as more frightening than a No Deal Brexit by entrepreneurs, business and overseas investors

This content was originally published here.

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http-twinkularis · 7 years

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Sweet Creature (M)

Justin Trudeau/Emmanuel Macron, First Meeting, Implied Sexual Content, Barack Obama/Emmanuel Macron, Non Canon Compliant, Love at First Sight, French Language, Top!Trudeau, Villain!Marine Le Pen, SongFic

TW: Trump Victory

Language: English Words: 1k Chapters: 1/1

Chapter 1 Emmanuel was new to the political scene. Only 39, he set out to change the world with his one dapper suit and an unwavering faith in humanity, a faith that he could leave the world better than he found it. In the political scene, he was isolated. There seemed to be no one who shared his beliefs and he felt out of place amongst the big name lobbyists and campaigners for Miss. Marine Le Pen. Marine was his main competitor, the antithesis of what he stood for, and it felt as if though it was her and the world against him and his ideas. Brexit proved that anything could happen and Trump’s election in America only sparked a wave of hatred that fueled Marine. They were calling her the Trump of France. Who was he amidst all this then? Obama, that wonderful man with which he had been infatuated through his entire run, had fled America. He had shaped his political views and inspired him to pursue what he loved. He remembered that night he spent in America, the weight of the world dissipating as Barack taught him things he had never known before… “Forget everything you ever thought you knew. It’s just us tonight” he had whispered in that dark oval room. He was the founding father of his heart. After Obama, it seemed that no one would come close to winning him the way he did; he would never love again. And so he drowned himself in his work. Emmanuel walked into the conference room. His meeting with the Canadian prime minister was set to start soon. It was an understatement to say he didn’t want to be there. He despised these big suit, big money meetings full of irrelevant niceties. They distracted from the real issues. He’d much rather had been writing about those issues in his flat than standing demurely in wait for yet another lying politician. And then, preceded by hordes of security, the prime minister walked in. Emmanuel hadn’t known much about Trudeau before today. He hadn’t known he would be so… immediately charming. The minute he walked in he took command of the room, his white smile flashing. He was tall and tan and his hair fell in unkempt waves. Emmanuel immediately knew that this was not an ordinary man. Amongst the old white politicians standing around him, Justin was a paragon of hope, bringing in a new generation of goodness. His suit seemed to constrain him. He looked as if he was meant to live perpetually free of formalities. Emmanuel related. And Justin’s sparkling blue eyes set on him. They reminded him of the French Riviera. “Bonjour Macron! Comment allez-vous mon ami? Un Plaisir…” he said as he reached out his hand for a firm handshake. He maintained eye contact during the sustained touch, his palm calloused and rough. Emmanuel almost forgot to respond. He had also forgotten that Justin was a francophone. His voice sounded beautiful in his native French. Finally, he replied faintly “Bonjour monsieur.” With that, Trudeau pulled him in from the handshake to quickly whisper in his ear, “Enchante. Maybe once I get you alone, away from this Anglophonic press I can hear more of your French. It’s so refreshing to meet another politician who speaks the language of love, no? I would like to see you in my office later. I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you.” Emmanuel quickly let go of his hand for fear of doing something indiscreet. What was Justin suggesting? Trudeau had seen his picture in the news and read articles about his platform. He had obviously been anticipating the meeting. But what was the true nature of it? He was being delusional. It was common for politicians to have private meetings. And yet, he trembled in anticipation as he thought of a similar scenario, one that had led him to a locked oval office in the dark of the night. As the meeting went on and formalities were exchanged Macron couldn’t help but noticing the way Justin looked at him. His head resting languidly on his fist, he eyed the candidate as if he were a feast. And then it was the prime minister’s turn to speak. Macron usually tuned out the ramblings of leaders pandering to an audience but Justin’s smooth voice captured him immediately. He spoke animatedly, passionately. He could ask the nations to follow him to the end of the world and Emmanuel would be the first to take up arms in his name. His eyes had a fire in them bright enough to ignite a flame that had the potential to change entire policies. Watching him talk, he felt as if he had finally found his political niche in a person with whom he shared ideals. Amongst the hatred prevalent in this election, he found an overwhelming love in this man that transcended politics and was, at its core, real. He was entranced. He ended, speaking directly to Macron “Who cares about winning? We should focus on serving.” He had been wrong about Trudeau. He wasn’t just another lying politician. Everything after his speech was arbitrary. Emmanuel spoke, going through his usual points but with a certain inflection aimed to impress the Canadian whose eyes never left his face. The cameras flashed within the conference room and reporters scribbled notes furiously but Emmanuel was not flustered. He had a clear message and Justin’s expression made him feel confident and safe. Later, once the press had settled down after his brief but fiery speech, the concluding remarks were exchanged. And that was it. Emmanuel shook the hands of what seemed like a million men and women in suits all the while keeping a relaxed smile on his face. And yet his mind was elsewhere. As he was walking out of the room, on to the rest of the campaign trail, a hand caught the sleeve of his suit jacket. It was none other than the Canadian prime minister. “Macron. It would be a crime to let you leave without speaking to you privately, away from all these cameras. Join me for the evening?” “Prime Minister, I’m afraid I must go. There is much still to do in France.” “And yet what is more important than the here and now. We’ve all the time in the world, Emmanuel. Join me. We’ve lots to talk about” “I don’t know what to say. It has all been said” he replied nervously, employing any excuse to avoid facing the man of his dreams alone. “Good. Then make no sound.” Justin hadn’t let go of his sleeve. He pulled him closer. “J’aime te faire rougir.” Truly, Emmanuel realized he had blushed at Justin’s words. He seemed adamant. What was he planning? Their eyes met as Macron contemplated. Why had the prime minister taken such an interest in him? And then, all at once, he allowed himself to be pulled through a mass of press, security, and politicians by Justin. They slipped away behind a column and ran into a dimly lit corridor, their footsteps echoing against the marble floor. Justin led him up a flight of stairs and the sounds of the commotion below them faded gradually. Eventually they found themselves in front of a beautifully constructed set of doors and Justin, ever the gentleman, opened one for him. Macron entered. There, he found a gorgeously adorned room, lined with books whose titles were illuminated by a flood of golden light coming in from a desk side window, a window which overlooked the gardens of the Saskatchewan legislative building. The sun was setting. “My personal library here.” Trudeau broke the silence. “I quite enjoy reading.” Emmanuel walked towards one of the shelves. He saw authors of all sorts from Maya Angelou to Karl Marx himself. “How do you make time for so much reading?” He himself had been too busy to indulge in a good book or any literature besides legislation. “I suppose I take pleasure in books. These are all revolutionary writers. I never stop learning from them.” Macron was overwhelmed suddenly. “These authors… they have changed the world. They seem like political giants. How am I to match their prevalence?” He knew he was oversharing but somehow he seemed comfortable with Justin, like he had known him before. “Emmanuel…” he started “You are doing something unprecedented. I have to admit I’ve read much about you, and truly, you caught my eye from the beginning of the race.” Justin slowly approached him, hands behind his back, and a look of disbelief that Macron couldn’t see his worth. “You are exactly what the world needs right now. To so many people, you represent a new age of hope. To me, you represent a saving grace in Europe. Don’t you see Emmanuel?” He said with a light smirk and playfulness in his eyes, lit up with the orange light pouring in the windows. Justin was in his personal space now. He placed his hand against Emmanuel’s chest, feeling his picked up heart rate. “You are the flesh and blood of the new political age. Don’t you see? Les courbes de vos lèvres réécrivent l'histoire.“ The curves of your lips rewrite history. Justin moved his hand up from his sternum to his jaw and traced the outline of his lips with his thumb slowly, gently, never taking his eyes away from them, his other hand still in his trouser pocket. Emmanuel could not believe what was happening. The hand he had shook earlier was now all but in his mouth. Macron closed his eyes and grabbed his wrist lightly. He couldn’t resist opening his mouth slightly, reveling in the intimate moment. Justin tilted his head slightly and narrowed his eyes, urging Emmanuel on. He took him into his mouth, swirling his tongue around and sucking lightly. “I must say, I’ve imagined this. That beautiful mouth of yours… so many beautiful words come out of it, so many beautiful words… I wondered what else it was good for.” Suddenly, Justin was the name of God on Macron’s lips. He sighed lightly opening his eyes to meet the older man’s gaze. He quickly bit the pad of his thumb. At this, Tudeau gasped and moved his hand to the back of his neck, pulling him in roughly. “Délectable, douce creature.”

FIN

#justin trudeau #Emmanuel macron

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familyhistorybuff · 6 years

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Intro to History of the Wright family

The following is the Introduction as authored by William Henry Wright and Gertrude Wright Ketchum in their 1913 book "History of the Wright family..." I found it quite informative and gives an insight into just how lucky we are today that many of our descendants took the same interest in family history. It also sheds light as to how they linked the gap now connecting my generation to mid-16th century England.

When we began the search for our ancestry in the year 1902, we had little knowledge of anyone back of our great-grandfather, Andrew Wright, of Shoreham, Vermont (born 1763, died 1833), and had no idea of the interesting search that was to follow our first efforts in this line, or of the length of time that might elapse before the results now attained should be written out for the benefit of generations to follow:

We wish to acknowledge the valuable assistance received from various sources, and the kindly encouragement of interested kinsmen. We will mention:

First, Rodney P. Wright of Cambridge, Mass., who is descended from Sir John Wright of Kelvedon Hall, Essex, England, and is the author of a history of his branch of the Wright family. His help has been invaluable to us in many ways.

Second, W. Farrand Felch, Editor of the Genealogical column of the The Hartford Times. He has given much space to our queries and their answers, and many personal suggestions.

Third, James G. Taylor of So. Glastonbury, Conn., who is a descendant of the emigrant, Thomas Wright (1639-40), has furnished many bits of interesting history.

Fourth, and there are many others, too numerous to mention here, who have given their time to research that we might have statistics and items of historical value from various branches of the family.

Our great-grandfather, Andrew Wright, was a soldier of the Revolutionary War, and came from Lenox, Mass., to Shoreham, Vt., in 1785. There was a tradition that his father or grandfather was a sea-captain, named Samuel Wright, and that he died at sea. This tradition was handed down in several branches of the family.

Learning that the Addison County, Vermont, records showed that Andrew Wright had applied for a pension in 1832, we wrote to the Bureau of Pensions, Washington, D.C., asking if the birth-place and parentage of Andrew was given in his application, and received answer, dated July 25th, 1903, giving his military record, and these remarks: "Solder's birth-place is not given, but he states that before coming to Vermont, he had always lived in Lenox, Mass.

We then wrote to the Town Clerk of Lenox, asking for a record of birth, together with names of his brothers and sisters, also of his father and mother. We received answer, Aug. 15th, 1903, which gave the names of Andrew's father and mother as Samuel and Mary Wright, and the names and dates of birth of their children from 1757 to 1765, and of the children born to Samuel and Mehitabel (second wife) from 1769 to 1780. A search for the record of Samuel's death at this time was unsuccessful, but later we found from other sources that he died Oct., 1789, ages 67 years.

Mary, his first wife, died Aug. 18th, 1767, no age given. There is no record, as far as we can find, of the death of Mehitabel.

We learned that Samuel Wright of Lenox formerly lived in Goshen, Conn., and the births of several of his children are recorded there, some of whom are also recorded in Lenox. We account for this double record by the fact that Samuel assisted in the organization of the town of Lenox and was appointed its first Town Clerk, and naturally made a record of his children's births there.

Now began a search for the parentage of Samuel of Lenox. One Samuel Wright, eldest son of Capt. Samuel Wright, was born in Wethersfield, Conn., in 1722, but there was no further record of him in that town and he was believed to have settled elsewhere.

The town of Lebanon, Conn., gave us the records of three Samuel Wrights, none of whom seemed to fit our case; and for a number of years the search yielded small returns. Then, remembering a visit to our family, about the year 1863, by some of the relatives from Ohio - and having lost all trace of them - we determined to get into communication with them if possible. Finally, in the fall of 1908, after making inquiries among the nearest relatives, we found there was an old photograph of one of these cousins in the possession of our uncle Freeman Wright's widow, with the address, Sidney, Ohio, on it. We then wrote the City Clerk in that place, inquiring about the family. Through him we were soon in communication with them. They gave us much valuable information about their branch of the family, but were unable to give Samuel Wright's parentage as their old records and valuable papers had some of them been lost in moving and some destroyed by fire, but a "Short Memorial of My Life," written from memory by Gideon Wright (son of Samuel Wright of Lenox and the ancestor of the Ohio branch), gave us some interesting history, and a letter written by his brother Josiah in 1865 gives a good account of the children in their father's family.

Our uncle, Freeman G. Wright, visited the cousins in Ohio in 1849 and brought home with him a record - copied apparently from the one which was lost or burned - of the earlier generations of our family. He died in 1900, before we began our search, and his family thought the record had been loaned and lost. However, in the summer of 1909 they found it in an old pocketbook which had been stowed away in an old trunk containing letters and papers of bygone years. Fortunately, this furnished the "missing link" in our history, and reads literally as follows":

"The family of Jno. Wright taken for one, or the first generation. "The sixth or seventh generation back was three brothers that came from England in the time of persecution. (Proof) A bed-staff retained by the oldest son. "The fifth generation was a sea captain, the oldest of the family. (Proof) The retaining of the bed-staff. He died at sea, was brought to New London, Conn., and buried. He had five children, two sons and three daughters. His name was Samuel. "The fourth of the generation by the name of Samuel, the oldest son of the sea captain, lived first in Wethersfield, Conn., then moved to Lenox, in Mass. Had twelve children; eight boys. Died and was buried in the latter place sixty years ago next month, aged sixty-seven. Was ten years old at the death of his father. His oldest son was called Samuel. He was a farmer. "The third in line by the name of Andrew, was the fifth son. Was born in Lenox, Mass., March 11th, 1763, and went to Shoreham, Vt., in the 23rd year of his age, in May, and came back in the fall, and moved with his next younger brother, Ebenezer, the next spring, to Shoreham, Vermont."

The second "link" is from the town records of Wethersfield, Connecticut: "Capt. Samuel Wright, Jr., son of Serg't Samuel Wright, was born 1692/1693. Married Abigail, dau of Jonathan Goodrich, 2d Jan'y 1718. Their children were: Samuel, born May 28th, 1722. Abigail, born March 11th, 1724. Rebecca, born Sept. 7th, 1726. Lucy, born Jan. 26th, 1729. Moses, born July 3rd, 1732."

The third "link" comes from the "Diary of Joshua Hempsted of New London, Connecticut," in which we have this items: "Capt. Samuel Wright, from Barbadoes, brought in dead, June 7th, 1732."

A comparison of these records establishes the fact that our Samuel of Lenox was the son of Samuel the sea captain, and that he was born in Wethersfield, Conn., in 1722. Referring to the memorandum made by F. G. Wright during his visit to Ohio in 1849, we find: "The fourth of the generation by the name of Samuel _____ died and was buried in the latter place sixty years ago next month, aged sixty-seven." Sixty years prior to 1849 would give us the year of his death as 1789, and as he was sixty-seven years old when he died, the date of his birth must have been 1722, which agrees with the Wethersfield record given above. There is also the statement in the Ohio record that he was ten years old at the death of his father, which agrees with the New London account of the captian's death in 1732.

We found that his mother, Abigail Dickinson, and sister, Miss Rebecca Wright, were buried in Lenox, Mass. Their grave-stones are still standing. The will of Miss Rebecca, recently found, shows that she made her home with her nephew Samuel. In Gideon Wright's "Memorial," he gives his birth as April, 1775, and states: "My father died in October and the spring I was fifteen (i.e., 1790) I went to Shoreham, Vermont, to live with my brother Andrew." The probate records give the date of settlement of Samuel's estate as January 5th, 1790. Samuel Wright, Jr., Administrator.

Thus one account verifies the other, and from this point we can trace our line back to Thomas Wright, the emigrant, 1639-40, by the Wethersfield Town Records, Stiles "Ancient Wethersfield," and from other sources.

Records from England give a direct lineage from John Wright (died 1551) to the birth of Thomas, 1610, and this, in connection with the records in America to the present time, completes our family history for a period covering about four hundred years.

The following is a tradition that has been handed down in the Wright family (Thomas Wright was doubtless one of the sons referred to):

"Once upon a time, away years in the past, three strong young men were about to emigrate to America. Their old father in bidding them 'good-by' said: 'I am too old to go with you, but I am glad my sons can go.' Then he took a shillalah and cut it into three equal parts, or lengths, and gave one to each of his sons. 'Keep these,' he said, 'in remembrance of the old home. When you grow old let each give to his oldest son, and let him give to his oldest son, and so on. If there be no son, give to oldest daughter.'"

Mrs. Stewart of Ohio, a descendant of Thomas Wright and grand-daughter of Gideon Wright, to whom we are indebted for this tradition, has one of these pieces of wood in her possession, of which she writes as follows: "When my father (son of Gideon Wright) was on a visit to his kin in Vermont, in the year 1852, or about that time, he received from his aunt, Mary Hawley, one of these pieces of wood. He brought it home to my grandfather, who would have nothing to do with it, so it was given to the oldest daughter, Albina; now she is gone I have it in my possession. I do not know the wood, it is dark red in color, about one foot long and two inches in diameter. It has been used as a rolling pin." We do not understand how it happened to be handed down among the younger children of Samuel of Lenox, instead of the family of Samuel, Jr., the oldest son, but give the story as it came to us.

We beg the kind indulgence of our readers, knowing there are many imperfections in our work, and possibly inaccuracies have crept in, but the records have been verified and as far as we know are correct. We have done all in our power to make it interesting as well as instructive, and hope future generations will be benefited by our labors.

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howieabel · 7 years

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"It is true that anarchists and socialists have always profoundly disagreed in their concepts of historic evolution and the revolutionary crises that this evolution creates, and consequently they have hardly ever been in agreement on the means to adopt, or the opportunities that have existed from time to time to open up the way towards human emancipation. But this is only an incidental and minor disagreement. There have always been socialists who have been in a hurry just as there are also anarchists who want to advance with leaden feet, and even some who do not believe at all in revolution. The important, fundamental dissension is quite another: socialists are authoritarians, anarchists are libertarians. Socialists want power, whether by peaceful means or by force is of no consequence to them, and once in office, wish to impose their programme on the people by dictatorial or democratic means. Anarchists instead maintain, that government cannot be other than harmful, and by its nature it defends either an existing privileged class or creates a new one; and instead of aspiring to take the place of the existing government anarchists seek to destroy every organism which empowers some to impose their own ideas and interests on others, for they want to free the way for development towards better forms of human fellowship which will emerge from experience, by everybody being free and having, of course, the economic means to make freedom possible as well as a reality. It seems unbelievable that even today, after what has happened and is happening in Russia (1921), there are still people who imagine that the differences between socialists and anarchists is only that of wanting revolution slowly or in a hurry. Social democrats start off from the principle that the State, government, is none other than the political organ of the dominant class. In a capitalistic society, they say, the State necessarily serves the interests of the capitalists and ensures for them the right to exploit the workers; but that in a socialist society, when private property were to be abolished, and with the destruction of economic privilege class distinctions would disappear, then the State would represent everybody and become the impartial organ representing the social interests of all members of society. Here a difficulty immediately arises. If it be true that Government is necessarily, and always, the instrument of those who possess the means of production, how can this miracle of a socialist government arising in the middle of a capitalist regime with the aim of abolishing capitalism, come about? Will it be as Marx and Blanqui wished by means of a dictatorship imposed by revolutionary means, by a coup de force, which by revolution decrees and imposes the confiscation of private property in favour of the state, as representative of the interests of the collectivity? Or will it be, as apparently all Marxists, and most modern Blanquists believe, by means of a socialist majority elected to Parliament by universal suffrage? Will one proceed in one step to the expropriation of the ruling class by the economically subjected class, or will one proceed gradually in obliging property owners and capitalists to allow themselves to be deprived of all their privileges a bit at a time? All this seems strangely in contradiction with the theory of “historic materialism” which is a fundamental dogma for Marxists. “Communism is the road that leads in the direction of anarchism.” This is the theory of the bolsheviks; the theory of marxists and authoritarian socialists of all schools. All recognise that anarchy is a sublime ideal, that it is the goal towards which mankind is, or should be, moving, but they all want to become the government, to oblige the people to take the right road. Anarchists say instead, that anarchy is the way that leads to communism or elsewhere. To achieve communism before anarchy, that is before having conquered complete political and economic liberty, would mean (as it has meant in Russia) stablising the most hateful tyranny, to the point where people long for the bourgeois regime, and to return later (as will happen in Russia) to a capitalistic system as a result of the impossibility of organising social life which is bearable and as a reaction of the spirit of liberty which is not a privilege of the “latin spirit” as the Communist foolishly accuses me of saying, but a necessity of the human spirit for action in Russia no less than in Italy. However much we detest the democratic lie, which in the name of the “people” oppresses the people in the interests of a class, we detest even more, if that is possible, the dictatorship which, in the name of the “proletariat” places all the strength and the very lives of the workers in the hands of the creatures of a so-called communist party, who will perpetuate their power and in the end reconstruct the capitalist system for their own advantage. When F. Engels, perhaps to counter anarchist criticisms, said that once classes disappear the State as such has no raison d’etre and transforms itself from a government over men into an administration of things, he was merely playing with words. Whoever has power over things has power over men; whoever governs production also governs the producers; who determines consumption is master over the consumer. This is the question; either things are administered on the basis of free agreement among the interested parties, and this is anarchy; or they are administered according to laws made by administrators and this is government, it is the State, and inevitably it turns out to be tyrannical. It is not a question of the good intentions or the good will of this or that man, but of the inevitability of the situation, and of the tendencies which man generally develops in given circumstances. What is the true basis of the differences between anarchists and State communists? We are for freedom, for the widest and the most complete freedom of thought, organisation and action. We are for the freedom of all, and it is therefore obvious, and not necessary to continually say so, that everyone in exercising his right to freedom must respect the equal freedom of everybody else; otherwise there is oppression on one side and the right to resist and to rebel on the other. But State communists, to an even greater extent than all other authoritarians, are incapable of conceiving freedom and of respecting for all human beings the dignity that they expect, or should expect, from others. If one speaks to them of freedom they immediately accuse one of wanting to respect, or at least tolerate, the freedom to oppress and exploit one’s fellow beings. And if you say that you reject violence when it exceeds the limits imposed by the needs of defence, they accuse you of pacifism, without understanding that violence is the whole essence of authoritarianism, just as the repudiation of violence is the whole essence of anarchism." - Errico Malatesta, Anarchism, Authoritarian Socialism and Communism

#Errico Malatesta #Anarchism Authoritarian Socialism and Communism #Anarchism #Anarchy #Socialism #Marxism #State Socialism #Communism #Castro #Lenin #Freedom #Stalin #Marx #Blanqui #State #Government

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pebblesandjamjam · 8 years

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Critical Jam #9: Psalm for the Newly Anointed

Welcome to Critical Jam, J.A. Micheline’s monthly column on criticism.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but: nobody’s in charge.

For newer media especially--games and comics and whatever comes next--there is no established authority, no canon of critical texts that guides the consumer, the critic, the creator. There’s nothing enshrining us, nothing empowering us. No true criticism; a legitimation crisis.

This is freeing in some aspects, but frustrating in others. In her January Crown on the Ground column, critic Emma Houxbois touches upon the transience in comics criticism in particular, though her points are applicable to the present states of criticism elsewhere:

“One of the truest and most fundamental realities of comics criticism is that it’s a transient field with a very short life cycle. People come into it with little to no formal training because there’s little to none available and they have a crack at it until they move onto something more fruitful or diminishing returns catch up with them. As a result there’s no established and easily accessible canon, there’s little in the way of bodies of work to build from and refine the field, especially since the waves of consolidation and site shutdowns have wiped out massive amounts of it.”

In other words--with nothing shoring us up, we are vulnerable, scattered, and easily erased. Though some handful of us are protected by the pillars of major publications, the vast majority exist on social media, in the comments sections, and websites that fall just as soon as they rise. With a few exceptions, none are household names and none (individually) wield the power to make or break their subjects. This instability, the absence of permanence reflected both in where criticism can be found as well as its shifting flagbearers, has a great deal to do with why people like to say that modern criticism is dead, bad, or somewhere in between.

You can pin it to the rise of the digital age, certainly. The transition from analog to digital has meant that years of work can vanish with the closing of a site, with the click of a button. And in turn, anyone with access to the Internet can become a critic--present company included. Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr--all of them allow for greater access than ever before. Criticism has ceased to become (at least, entirely) the province of the elite and has expanded to a much more grassroots endeavor.

“Because The Internet” is an all right answer, but I think postmodernism--a concept that precedes the Internet by a longshot--is a slightly better fit. It’s a movement, literary, artistic, and otherwise, specifically concerned with the destruction of gods and masters in favor for contingent truths and individual narratives. (I’ve written a light discussion of postmodernism through comics here.) I favor it for many reasons, up to and including its revolutionary potential, but I hold it in tension with its force for destruction. The expansion and impermanence of criticism, while opening the doors to many, also makes it difficult for the lot of us to eat. Because anyone could potentially do the work we do, the labor becomes cheap and many of us go unpaid, regardless of the quality of our material.

Quality is hard to pin down too, under a postmodernist regime. Everything is subjective--no gods and no masters, remember?--so who is to say really, who is a good critic or a bad one. Greater access should lead to a more meritocratic system of rewards, but because there is no uniform set of criteria, the infrastructure inevitably collapses upon itself. The arbitrary rubric assigns value, but can only do so if its arbitrariness is allowed unjust sovereignty. We random users of the Internet are finally permitted the title of critic, but now the title means nothing at all, and so, we frequently work for free. Tricky. Frustrating. A double edged sword. In eroding the canonic power of the elite critic, we erode ourselves. Our crowded presence and eagerness to welcome everyone devalues the field.

So the death of criticism is frequently touted because we are no longer kingmakers or heartbreakers. There was a time--or so they say--that a restaurant, a play, a ballet, a film, would live or die by the word of an individual critic. Back then, criticism was Good--which is as much a designation of quality as it was a designation of power. After all, critics of the modernist tradition and style of these kingmakers still exist and still win Pulitzers for their efforts, but the impact of a single critic’s word, even of the Pulitzer-winning variety, has diminished over time. These days, a critic can write beautiful, carefully considered prose in discussion of their subject and be met with some variety of “Yeah? Well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man” in the comments section.

Which, when all is said and done, is irritatingly just.

It is just my opinion and that it exists in such a way that it can be dismissed soundly in favor of someone else’s is an annoyingly just consequence of destroying everyone’s sense of authority. This monstrosity of collapsed power which leaves many of us working for free is the consequence of inviting everyone to the party, and for newer media, doing so before a canon could establish itself in the background.

Part of the problem is that the old ways are not entirely dead. Modern structures, specifically, power structures still exist and therefore still benefit from and exploit the hierarchy. As strong as grassroots efforts have become, criticism backed by established outlets holds more weight than criticism elsewhere. The would-be meritocratic rise of quality criticism is hampered not just by an inability to judge quality objectively, but also the same old devaluing problems we had during modernist times--that one’s criticism is only as good as where it appears and is only financially compensated when it appears in those forums. In other words--you’re not Good until you’ve been externally validated as Good, usually in the form of someone thinking you’re Good enough to compensate with capital.

It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg game: is the criticism presumed Good because the critic was paid well for it, or was the critic paid well because the criticism was Good? Or is it Good because it is exclusive, because not everyone is chosen to write for particular publications, so surely the choice was based on merit. “She must know what she’s doing if she writes for The Guardian,” and so on.

I’m not sure what comes next, what comes after this. We’re trapped in a righteous hell of our own making, because we don’t have the political strength to see ourselves paid fairly and because acquiring the political strength would turn us into the systemic monsters we seek to topple.

I don’t know what comes next, but, in the end, I think everyone starts to look for God.

For me, part of Seeing with eyes unclouded is continually reckoning with my own irrelevance, but at the same time--it’s tiring to have no one in charge, tiring to make every evaluative decision for oneself, tiring to wade through a sea of information without a single, certain guide for what is Absolutely Good or Absolutely Bad. It’s exhausting to permit such uncertainty. And so, we take shortcuts, we look for some form of God to pass us The Word so we don’t have to burden ourselves. It’s the sensible thing to do if we are tired, if our attempts to strike out on our own have burned us, if the world has been proven to be cold without Him, without some kind of authority on whose criticism is Good.

Maybe what’s next is a return to modernism, a retreat to structural certainty. Maybe the kingmakers will rise again. Maybe criticism will be Good once more.

But probably not. Postmodernism is here to stay and its embracing of fractionation is such that it cannot be defeated. The Internet doesn’t seem to be going anywhere either. So, as I find myself asking so often in this column: what’s to do?

We cannot and should not return to the old ways of denying access to the many, but we can all collectively take this access and make it something great. My solution, generally, has been to behave as though I possess the authority of a kingmaking critic, while still holding firmly to the reality of my complete and utter unimportance. I’ve decided to be my own god.

That most of us remain uncompensated is something that remains, largely, out of our control, but the way we conduct ourselves always is. The endpoint of this hierarchical deconstruction is the formation of us as new, smaller gods rather than erasing godhood entirely. If we, individually, are the newly anointed, then we must act with the same discretion, honor, and reverence as we would have expected from the old ones. We must treat our work and the work of others with the same respect as we would any old classics, while still realizing that it’s just our opinion.

It’s artifice, certainly, but it’s an artifice that improves us--which is rather the function of god to begin with. If there’s nobody in charge, nobody on the throne, nobody to worship--it may very well be that you’re the only one left.

Act accordingly.

Previous: On Conflicts of Interest

Next: We Must Be Better

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this piece, feel free to click here and buy me a coffee or follow me on Twitter at @elevenafter.

#criticaljam #criticism #postmodernism #emma houxbois

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pensarelvirus · 5 years

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On the Epidemic Situation / Alain Badiou

From the start, I thought that the current situation, characterised by a viral pandemic, was not particularly exceptional. From the (viral) pandemic of AIDS, and passing through the avian flu, the Ebola virus, and the SARS 1 virus – not to mention several flus, the appearance of strains of tuberculosis that antibiotics can no longer cure, or even the return of measles – we know that the world market, combined with the existence of vast under-medicalised zones and the lack of global discipline when it comes to the necessary vaccinations, inevitably produces serious and devastating epidemics (in the case of AIDS, several million deaths). Besides the fact that the current pandemic situation is having a huge impact on the rather comfortable so-called Western world – a fact in itself devoid of any novel significance, eliciting instead dubious laments and revolting idiocies on social media – I didn’t see why, beyond the obvious protective measures and the time that the virus would take to disappear in the absence of new targets, it was necessary to climb on one’s high horse.

What’s more, the true name of the ongoing epidemic should suggest that in a sense we are dealing with ‘nothing new under the contemporary sun’. This true name is SARS 2, that is ‘Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome 2’, a name that signals the ‘second time’ of this identification, after the SARS 1 epidemic, which spread around the world in Spring 2003. At the time, it was called ‘the first unknown illness of the 21st century’. It is clear then that the current epidemic is by no means the emergence of something radically new or unprecedented. It is the second of its kind this century and can be situated as the first’s descendant. So much so that the only serious criticism that can today be addressed to the authorities in matters of prediction is not to have funded, after SARS 1, the research that would have made available to the medical world genuine instruments of action against SARS 2.

So, I didn’t think there was anything to be done other than try, like everyone else, to isolate myself at home, and nothing to be said other than to encourage everyone else to do the same. Adhering to a strict discipline on this point is all the more necessary in that it provides support and fundamental protection for all those who are most exposed: all medical staff, of course, who are directly at the front, and who must be able to rely on a firm discipline, including on the part of the infected; but also all the most frail, like the elderly, especially those in care homes; as well as all those who have to go to work and run the risk of contagion. The discipline of those who can obey the imperative ‘stay home’ must also find and propose means for those who have barely any ‘home’ or none at all so that they may nevertheless find a secure shelter. One could envisage in this case a general commandeering of hotels.

It is true that these duties are increasingly urgent but, at least on initial examination, they do not require any great analytical efforts or the constitution of a new way of thinking.

But I am reading and hearing too many things, including in my immediate circles, that disconcert me both by the confusion they manifest and by their utter inadequacy to the – ultimately simple – situation in which we find ourselves.

These peremptory declarations, pathetic appeals and emphatic accusations take different forms, but they all share a curious contempt for the formidable simplicity, and the absence of novelty, of the current epidemic situation. Some are unnecessarily servile in the face of the powers that be, who are in fact simply doing what they are compelled to by the nature of the phenomenon. Others invoke the Planet and its mystique, which doesn’t do any good. Some blame everything on the unfortunate Macron, who is simply doing, and no worse than another, his job as head of state in times of war or epidemic. Others make a hue and cry about the founding event of an unprecedented revolution, whose relation to the extermination of a virus remains opaque – something for which our ‘revolutionaries’ are not proposing any new means whatsoever. Some sink into apocalyptic pessimism. Others are frustrated that ‘me first’, the golden rule of contemporary ideology, is in this case devoid of interest, provides no succour, and can even appear as the accomplice of an indefinite prolongation of the evil.

It seems that the challenge of the epidemic is everywhere dissipating the intrinsic activity of Reason, obliging subjects to return to those sad effects – mysticism, fabulation, prayer, prophecy and malediction – that were customary in the Middle Ages when plague swept the land.

As a result, I feel somewhat compelled to bring together some simple ideas. I would happily call them Cartesian.

Let us begin then by defining the problem, which has elsewhere been so poorly defined and thus so poorly treated.

An epidemic is rendered complex by the fact that it is always a point of articulation between natural and social determinations. Its complete analysis is transversal: one must grasp the points at which the two determinations intersect and draw the consequences.

For example, the initial fulcrum of the current epidemic is very probably to be found in the markets of Wuhan province. Chinese markets are known for their dangerous dirtiness, and for their irrepressible taste for the open-air sale of all kinds of living animals, stacked on top of one another. Whence the fact that at a certain moment the virus found itself present, in an animal form itself inherited from bats, in a very dense popular milieu, and in conditions of rudimentary hygiene.

The natural trajectory of the virus from one species to another thereby transits towards the human species. How exactly? We don’t know yet, and only scientific studies will tell us. Let us, in passing, revile all those who circulate typically racist fables online, backed up by counterfeit images, according to which everything stems from the fact that the Chinese eat bats when they’re still almost alive…

This local transit between animal species that eventually reaches human beings is the origin point of the whole affair. After which there simply operates a fundamental datum of the contemporary world: the rise of Chinese state capitalism to imperial rank, in other words an intense and universal presence on the world market. Whence innumerable networks of diffusion, evidently before the Chinese government was able to completely isolate the point of origin, namely an entire province with 40 million inhabitants – something it ultimately succeeded in doing, but too late to stop the epidemic from departing on the paths – and the planes, and the ships – of global existence.

Consider a revealing detail of what I call the double articulation of an epidemic: today, SARS 2 has been stifled in Wuhan but there are very many cases in Shanghai, in the main due to people, generally Chinese nationals, coming from abroad. China is thus a site in which one can observe the link – first for an archaic reason, then a modern one – between a nature-society intersection in ill-kept markets that followed older customs, on the one hand, and a planetary diffusion of this point of origin borne by the capitalist world market and its reliance on rapid and incessant mobility, on the other.

After which we enter the stage in which states try locally to stifle this diffusion. Let us remark in passing that this determination remains fundamentally local, while the epidemic is instead transversal. Despite the existence of some trans-national authorities, it is clear that it is local bourgeois states that are on the frontline.

We touch here on a major contradiction of the contemporary world. The economy, including the process of mass production of manufactured objects, comes under the aegis of the world market – we know that the simple assembly of a mobile phone mobilises work and resources, including mineral ones, in at least seven different states. And yet political powers remain essentially national in kind. And the rivalry between imperialisms, old (Europe and US) and new (China, Japan…) excludes any process leading to a capitalist world state. The epidemic is also a moment when the contradiction between economics and politics becomes flagrant. Even European countries are not managing promptly to adjust their policies in the face of the virus.

Prey to this contradiction, national states attempt to confront the epidemic situation by respecting as much as possible the mechanisms of Capital, even though the nature of the risk compels them to modify the style and the actions of power.

We’ve known for a long time that in the event of a war between countries, the state must impose, not only on the popular masses, as is to be expected, but on the bourgeoisie itself, considerable constraints, all in order to save local capitalism. Some industries are almost nationalised for the sake of an unbridled production of armaments that does not immediately generate any monetizable surplus value. Many bourgeois are mobilised as officers and exposed to death. Scientists work night and day to invent new weapons. Numerous intellectuals and artists are compelled to supply national propaganda, etc.

Faced with an epidemic this kind of statist reflex is inevitable. That is why, contrary to what some say, the declarations by Macron or Prime Minister Edouard Philippe regarding the return of the ‘welfare’ state, spending to support people out of work, or to aid the self-employed whose shops have been shut, demanding 100 or 200 billion from the state coffers, and even the announcement of ‘nationalisations’ – none of this is surprising or paradoxical. It follows that Macron’s metaphor, ‘we are at war’, is correct: in war or epidemic, the state is compelled, sometimes trespassing the normal run of its class nature, to undertake practices that are both more authoritarian and more generally targeted, in order to avoid a strategic catastrophe.

This is an entirely logical consequence of the situation, the aim of which is to stifle the epidemic – to win the war, to borrow once again Macron’s metaphor – with the greatest certainty possible, while remaining within the established social order. This is no laughing matter, it is a necessity imposed by the diffusion of a lethal process that intersects nature (whence the preeminent role of scientists in the matter) and the social order (whence the authoritarian intervention, and it couldn’t be otherwise, of the state).

That some massive lacunae appear in the midst of this effort is inevitable. Consider the lack of protective masks or the unpreparedness in terms of the duration of hospital isolation. But who can really boast of having ‘predicted’ this kind of thing? In certain regards, the state did not prevent the current situation, it’s true. We can even say that by weakening, decade after decade, the national health system, along with all the sectors of the state serving the general interest, it acted instead as though nothing akin to a devastating pandemic could affect our country. To this extent the state is very culpable, not only in its Macron guise, but in that of all who have come before him for at least the past thirty years.

But it is nonetheless correct to note here that no one had predicted, or even imagined, the emergence in France of a pandemic of this type, except perhaps for a few isolated scientists. Many probably thought that this kind of thing was good for dark Africa or totalitarian China, but not for democratic Europe. And it is surely not leftists – or gilets jaunes or even trade-unionists – who enjoy a particular right to hold forth on this point, and to continue to make a fuss about Macron, their derisory target for the last while. They too had absolutely not envisaged this. On the contrary, as the epidemic was already on its way from China, they multiplied, until very recently, uncontrolled assemblies and noisy demonstrations, which should disqualify them today, whoever they may be, from loudly condemning the delays taken by the powers that be in taking the full measure of what was happening. Truth be told, no political force in France really took this measure before the Macronian state.

On the side of this state, the situation is of the kind in which the bourgeois state must explicitly, publicly, make prevail interests that are in some sense more general than those of the bourgeoisie alone, while strategically preserving, in the future, the primacy of the class interests of which this state represents the general form. In other words, the conjuncture compels the state to manage the situation by integrating the interest of the class whose authorised representative it is with more general interests, on account of the internal existence of an ‘enemy’ that is itself general – in times of war this may be a foreign invader, while in the present situation it is the virus SARS 2.

This kind of situation (world war or world epidemic) is especially ‘neutral’ at the political level. The wars of the past have only triggered revolutions in two cases, which may be termed outliers with regard to the imperial powers of the time: Russia and China. In the Russian case, this was because Tsarist power was in every sense, and had been for a long time, retrograde, including as a power potentially adapted to the birth of a genuine capitalism in that immense country. And against it there existed, in the shape of the Bolsheviks, a modern political vanguard, strongly structured by remarkable leaders. In the Chinese case, internal revolutionary war preceded the world war, and the Chinese Communist Party was already, in 1940, at the head of a popular army that had been tried and tested. By contrast, in no Western power did the war trigger a victorious revolution. Even in the country that had been defeated in 1918, Germany, the Spartacist insurrection was quickly crushed.

The lesson to be drawn from this is clear: the ongoing epidemic will not have, qua epidemic, any noteworthy political consequences in a country like France. Even supposing that our bourgeoisie – in light of the inchoate grumbling and flimsy if widespread slogans – believes that the moment has come to get rid of Macron, that will in no way represent any change worthy of note. The ‘politically correct’ candidates are already waiting in the wings, as are the advocates of the most mildewed form of a ‘nationalism’ as obsolete as it is repugnant.

As for those of us who desire a real change in the political conditions of this country, we must take advantage of this epidemic interlude, and even of the – entirely necessary – isolation, to work on new figures of politics, on the project of new political sites, and on the trans-national progress of a third stage of communism after the brilliant one of its invention and the – interesting but ultimately defeated – stage of its statist experimentation.

We will also need to pass through a stringent critique of every perspective according to which phenomena like epidemics can work by themselves in the direction of something that is politically innovative. Over and above the general transmission of scientific data about the epidemic, a political charge will only be carried by new affirmations and convictions concerning hospitals and public health, schools and egalitarian education, the care of the elderly, and other questions of this kind. Only these might possibly be articulated with a balance-sheet of the dangerous weaknesses on which the current situation has shed light.

In passing, one will need to show publicly and dauntlessly that so-called ‘social media’ have once again demonstrated that they are above all – besides their role in fattening the pockets of billionaires – a place for the propagation of the mental paralysis of braggarts, uncontrolled rumours, the discovery of antediluvian ‘novelties’, or even fascistic obscurantism.

Let us not give credence, even and especially in our isolation, except to truths that are controllable by science and to the grounded perspectives of a new politics, of its localised experiences as well as its strategic aims.

Translated by Alberto Toscano

Fuente: https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4608-on-the-epidemic-situation

Publicado 23/marzo/2020

#Alain Badiou #coronavirus #covid-19 #virus #crisis #filosofía #pensamiento #sociedad #Francia #france

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cabiba · 6 years

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Students of the Communist movement are bound to run across the story of how M. Oudendyke, Netherlands Minister in Russia at the time of the Russian Revolution, had warned the British and French governments that Communism is Jewish; but that this warning had been carefully deleted from the official British papers on the subject. Oudendyke had taken over British affairs in Russia at the time.

It may be asserted that such a report never existed. Yet here it is, printed in 1931 as part of the USA State Department papers, and reproduced as Exhibits 256 through 259. The Oudendyke report is long. I have reproduced not all of it but enough so that the context of his warning is clear.

Oudendyke’s communique went to various governments including our own, and included:

“The danger is now so great that I feel it my duty to call the attention of the British and all other Governments to the fact that if an end is not put to Bolshevism in Russia at once the civilization of the whole world will be threatened. This is not an exaggeration … I consider that the immediate suppression of Bolshevism is the greatest issue now before the world, not even excluding the war which is still raging and unless as above stated Bolshevism is nipped in the bud immediately it is bound to spread in one form or another over Europe and the whole world as it is organized and worked by Jews who have no nationality and whose one object is to destroy for their own ends the existing order of things (Exhibits 258, 259)

Oudendyke’s prophetic warnings went unheeded. How Jewish pressure was brought to bear to remove Allied forces fighting with the anti-Communist Whites in Russia is still another story. Bloody Trotsky and Lenin were armed and financed to clean up the job initiated by Jewish Kerensky, and Russia went under sadistic totalitarian anti-Christian, Jewish controlled enslavement, with more countries to follow, until now the entire World is threatened.

The Jews Gloat

At the celebration of the 1917 triumph of Jewry, at Carnegie Hall in New York (N.Y. Times, 3/24/17), it was proudly told how Jacob Schiff had financed Communist propaganda spread among 50,000 Russian war prisoners in Jew-financed Japan, which sent them back to attempt putting over the 1905 Red Revolution in their Russian homeland.

Not only are the agent connections of Schiff with the Japanese war against Russia hailed in his Kehillah sketch (Exhibit 214) and his agent ties chronicled elsewhere in aid of every phase of the Talmudic plan, his own words bear witness to his deeds.

As the State Department communications herein show, Schiff and his Jewish cohorts were, at the time of the Carnegie Hall meeting, financing the bloody terrorists Trotsky and Lenin to finish off the job instituted and furthered under Kerensky.

To further quote the 1917 N.Y. Times report:

“An authority on Russian affairs, George Kennan, told of a movement by the Society of the Friends of Russian Freedom financed by Jacob H. Schiff, which had at the time of the Russo-Japanese war spread among 50,000 Russian officers and men in Japanese prison camps the gospel of the Russian revolutionists … ‘The movement was financed by a New York banker you all know and love,’ he said, referring to Mr. Schiff, ‘and soon we received a ton and a half of Russian revolutionary propaganda. At the end of the war 50,000 Russian officers and men went back to their country ardent revolutionists!’

“Mr. Parsons then arose and said: ‘I will now read a message from White Sulphur Springs sent by the gentleman to whom Mr. Kennan referred.’ This was the message:

“ ‘Will you say for me to those present at tonight’s meeting how deeply I regret my inability to celebrate with the Friends of Russian Freedom the actual reward of what we had hoped and striven for these long years …’”

This was followed by pious hopes that a “proper government and constitution which shall permanently assure to the Russian people … happiness and peace,” and the signature: “Jacob H. Schiff.”

By what followed we know what Schiff meant as a “proper government.”

The New York Times report of the great Carnegie Hall celebration of the Russian Revolution was subtitled:

“Rabbi Wise Ready for War — Relates How Jacob H. Schiff Financed Revolution Propaganda in Czar’s Army.”

To quote:

“Then the rabbi praised the Russian revolution … ‘I cannot forget,’ continued the rabbi, ‘that I am a member and a [page 88] teacher of a race of which half has lived in the domain of the Czar, and as a Jew, I believe that of all the achievements none has been nobler than the part the sons and daughters of Israel have taken in the great movement which had culminated in the free Russia.”’ (Note: for “free,” read “Red Dictatorship.”)

To his dying day, Rabbi Stephen Wise, a tireless Red, never waned in his enthusiasm for the Soviet slave state, the murderer of so many millions of Christians.

“At the close of the meeting pictures of the revolutionary leaders were shown upon the screen,” reported the N.Y. Times.

Next: Chapter XIII.

Modern Jewish “Anti-Communism”

Table of Contents

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Introduction to Elizabeth Dilling

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Very few people are aware of the extent to which Jews were responsible for the Communization of Russia, first through organizing of the unsuccessful revolution of 1905, and then the later and successful Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Both were heavily financed by outside Jewish financial and banking houses, and ultimately resulted in Jews assuming control of what had become the Russian Soviet Government. Concurrently, Jewish machinations in the United States, Germany and elsewhere helped set the stage for the take-over.

This Jewish control still exists, despite propaganda to the contrary, designed to delude and deceive non-Jews.

Long prior to the Revolution of 1905, Jews had conceived a hatred of Christian and Czarist Russia, because of opposition of the Russian people and Government to Jewish Talmudism.

In his introduction to the 1903 translation of the Talmud, for example, Rodkinson details the repeated denunciations of the Talmud over many centuries by nearly every country, the Popes, and others, and also states (see Exhibit 11): ‘Still what has been the result? The Talmud exists today, and not one letter in it is missing. It is true, the persecutions against it are not yet at an end; accusations and calumnies by its enemies, under the new name of anti-Semites, are still directed against it, while the government of Russia legislates against and restricts the rights of the nation which adheres to the Talmud.”

One of the prime Jewish conspirators plotting to Communize Russia was Jacob Schiff, who became head of the enormously powerful New York Jewish banking house of Kuhn, Loeb and Co.

Turn to the laudatory sketch of Jacob Schiff, in the Jewish Communal (Kehillah) Register of New York City, 1917-18, of which Kehillah he was an Executive Committeeman (see Exhibits 210, 212, 214, 215). It is stated there how German-born Schiff came to America and made connections with a banking house. “In 1873, he returned to Europe where he made connections with some of the chief German banking houses” and “The firm of Kuhn-Loeb & Co. floated the large Japanese war loans of 1904-5, thus making possible the Japanese victory over Russia …”

The last paragraph (Exhibit 215) boasts “Mr. Schiff has always used his wealth and his influence in the best interests of his people. He financed the enemies of autocratic Russia. [This was written in 1918, after the Bolshevik revolution had been made secure] … and used his financial influence to keep Russia from the money market of the United States.” It is stated that “all factions of Jewry” hailed him for this.

“Today it is estimated by Jacob’s grandson, John Schiff, a prominent member of New York society, that the old man sank about $20,000,000 for the final triumph of Bolshevism in Russia.” (Cholly Knickerbocker in his society news column in the Hearst Press, Feb. 3, 1949, appearing in the N.Y. Journal-American and other papers.)

The Jewish Bankers

The great Jewish banking monopolies have been interwoven by marriage like a rug. Note three things about the Rothschilds in Exhibit 298, which is from the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1905:

That of the 58 Rothschild marriages to that date, exactly half, or 29, had been to first cousins. This appears in the right hand column.

That the Rothschilds “were the first to make use of journalistic methods to arouse the interest of the public in their loans. They have, however, consistently kept the secret of their own operations!”

A major reason why Russia collapsed and went under the Red heel during World War I also appears in this exhibit, namely, “Of recent years the Rothschilds have consistently refused to have anything to do with loans to Russia owing to the anti-Jewish legislation of that empire.” (This was 1905.)

The Warburg International Jewish banking family has also been closely connected with the Schiffs and Rothschilds. James Paul Warburg, in his sketch in Who’s Who in American Jewry — 1938-9 states:

“Born Hamburg, Germany, August 18. 1896 … paternal ancestors through six generations have been bankers as members of the banking house of MM. Warburg & Co., founded in Hamburg, 1798 … maternal grandfather, Solomon, founder of international banking house of Kuhn, Loeb &Co … Came to U.S., 1902 …”

Paul M. Warburg had married Jenny Nina Loeb, mother of James Paul. Jacob Schiff, after coming to the U.S., had married Theresa Loeb, sister of Nina, and daughter of the Kuhn, Loeb founder. Schiff’s daughter, Frieda, married Felix M. Warburg, Hamburg-born banker who headed the agro joint work for Jewry in Russia to help keep them in power after the Red Revolution. Their daughter, Carola, married Walter M. Rothschild. Felix M. Warburg and Paul M. Warburg of Kuhn, Loch & Co., partners of Jacob Schiff, were brothers of Max Warburg of Hamburg, Germany, the pay-off man, in power with the Kaiser, who funneled funds to Lenin and Trotsky during World War I to undermine and destroy the Russian Government.

[page 80] Jacob Schiff received his banking training in his father’s business, he being a Rothshild agent and associate. The basement of the two-in-a-row houses of Schiff and Rothschild, which I visited in Frankfort-on-Main, Germany, was one room-in-common, with a joint “get-away” which formerly had led beyond a ghetto wall. The little shack at the back was where Kings, hat-in-hand, would come to get Jewish loans. The original name of Bauer had been abandoned for “Red Shield” (Rothschild) and a Red Shield hung out as an address sign at the front of the house.

A ship sign for “Schiff” hung outside the Schiff house, built along the same common wall. Each house was about the width of an entrance hall. The room back of the Rothschild kitchen was a tiny synagogue when I was there in 1934. A skull-capped Jew was the guide, who collected entrance fees for showing the houses, the Rothschild house being the chief attraction. A gambling table was the main piece of furniture in the front room in the upstairs of the Rothschild house. Two rooms on each floor comprised the house.

“When the Kehilla [i.e. the Jewish community] of New York was organized in 1909, the control rested with a group of German Jews including Jacob Schiff, president of Kuhn, Loch and Co., a branch of the Bleichroeder Mendelssohn Bank, affiliated with the big “D” banks in Germany: Deutsche Bank, Disconto Gesellschaft, Dresdener Bank, Darmstadter Bank.” (From Waters Flowing Eastward, by L. Fry, published by the R.I.S.S. of Paris, founded by Monsignor Jouin.)

“In Germany the leading private bankers included the Mendelssohns … and the Bleichroeders … who were bankers to Emperor William I., Bismarck, and the early industrialists … Frankfort, the ‘mother city’ of Jewish bankers … produced its Lazards, Speyers, Sterns, Dreyfuses, and Sulzbachs as well as sending abroad one Jacob H. Schiff.” (The Jews of Germany, Marvin Lowenthal, Longmans Greenand Co., N.Y., 1936).

And, says the same source:

“Toward the end of that period the house of Warburg in Hamburg played an important part not only in the finances but destinies of Germany. Max Warburg was adviser to the government at the Versailles Peace Conference. Carl 1. Mel-choir, another member of the firm … headed the financial section of the Armistice Commission in 1918-1919 and was one of the six German delegates to Versailles.”

Elsewhere herein, through State Department documents, you will note the role played by the M.M. Warburg banking firm in financing the Red Russian Revolution. And, when Max Warburg came here from Hamburg in 1939, the American Jewish Committee placed him on its “Post-War” committee for the reorganization of the World which, in turn, set up the propaganda claque for the ensuing United Nations.

And so, down through the decades, Kuhn, Loch, and international bankers, “Princes of Jewry” remold the World toward the ultimate aim — World Jewish dictatorship, now so rapidly coming about.

The Kaiser

Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany and his Government were used during World War I by Jews such as Max Warburg to channel funds into Russia to breed disaffection in the Russian Army and Navy, and to set the stage for the ultimately successful Bolshevik Revolution.

When Kaiser Wilhelm realized that he had been made a tool of Jewry, it was after the War was over, and he was sawing or chopping wood at Doom, Holland. It was too late.

Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent carried this article, July 9, 1921:

“It is a most significant fact that, as in Washington, the most constant and privileged visitors to the White House were Jews, so in Berlin the only private telephone wire to the Kaiser was owned by Walter Rathenau [who later wrote the constitution of the post-war Jew-controlled Weimar “Republic”]. Not even the Crown Prince could reach the Kaiser except through the ordinary telephone connections.

“It was a family enterprise, this international campaign. Jacob Schiff swore to destroy Russia. Paul M. Warburg was his brother-in-law; Felix Warburg was his son-in-law. Max Warburg, of Hamburg, banker of the Bolsheviks, was thus brother-in-law to Jacob Schiff’s wife and daughter.

“Max Warburg represents the family in its native land. Max Warburg has as much to do with the German war government as his family and financial colleagues had to do with the United States war government.

“As has been recounted in the press the world over, the brother from America and the brother from Germany both met at Paris as government representatives in determining the peace. There were so many Jews in the German delegation that it was known by the term ‘kosher,’ also as ‘the Warburg delegation,’ and there were so many Jews in the American delegation that the delegates from the minor countries of Europe looked upon the United States as a Jewish country which through unheard-of-generosity had elected a non-Jew as its president … The Jews had several objectives in the war, and one of them was to ‘Get Russia’ … In this work Max Warburg was a factor. His bank is noted in a dispatch published by the United States government as being one whence funds were forwarded to Trotsky for use in destroying Russia. Always against Russia, not for German reasons, but for Jewish reasons, which in this particular instance coincided. Warburg and Trotsky — against Russia! While Otto Kahn, another partner in Kuhn, Loch & Co. denounced ‘pro-German propaganda,’ his partner Paul was playing the German symphony string! It is a great international orchestra, this Jewish financial firm; it can play the Star Spangled Banner, Die Wacht am Rhein, the Marseillaise, and God Save the King in one harmonious rendering, paying obsequious attention to the prejudices of each.”

Thus spoke the Ford paper in 1921. [page 81]

Jews in Russian Revolution

of 1905

The New York Communal Register of 19 17-18 (Exhibit 228) related the actions of the American Jewish Committee in the U.S. to protect Russian Jewish revolutionaries. In 1909, so many Red revolutionary criminals had fled to this country from the Jewish war against Christian Russia that the Committee fought to keep two of them, Pourea and Rudovitz, here.

“The Committee appreciated the bearing of their cases upon a large number of Jews who had taken part in the Russian Revolution [i.e. of 1905] and who had sought or might seek, an asylum in this country, and in cooperation with others succeeded in defeating the attempt of Russia.”

The “others” referred to included Secretary of State Elihu Root, who despite the fact that “no substantial evidence was produced before the committing magistrate that the offenses charged against Pourea were political [therefore under the law he could be extradited] delayed in deciding the case until it could be changed in Pourea’s favor.” (Letter of Root to Jacob Schiff — see Exhibit 245). Socialist Jew Samuel Gompers was also among those who intervened for Pourea (Same Exhibit).

Rutenberg and the Russian Revolution

We see in Exhibit 224 how the 19 17-18 Jewish Kehillah report boasted of Pinchas Rutenberg as a founding force in the American Jewish Congress as well as his being the right hand man to Jewish Premier Kerensky in the 1917 Russian Revolution.

Mourning the death of its founder, Pinchas Rutenberg, the American Jewish Congress publication, The Congress Weekly (1/16/42) stated in an article, “Rutenberg’s Mission to America:”

“His role in the birth of the American Jewish Congress was immense … the young Russian intellectual, in other words, revolutionist, soon made his influence felt in the underground council of the Social Revolutionary Party. Rutenberg was the man who, in 1905, piloted the revolutionary activities of the notorious Father Gapon and then sat in judgment and brought about his execution.

“In Italy, during the first World War, he got in touch with Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of the Jewish Legion. In New York in 1915 he got in touch with the representatives of the Social Revolutionary Party there, Dr. Chaim Zitlowsky and Dr. Samuel Ellsberg, who were now interested in the Poale Zion party, Palestine, and Jewish rights.”

Father Gapon

The above Father Gapon incident is typical of applied Judaism. The dramatic prayer addressed by Gapon to the Czarist government with the threat that if it were not granted, we shall die here on the Square before thy Palace,” combined with mutinies, strikes involving more than 2,000,000 people, are related in William Henry Chamberlin’s The Russian Revolution 1917-1921(1935).

We read: “Gapon himself was doubtful about the wisdom of bringing large masses … to present this petition” (Vol. I, p. 48). Yet Gapon was pushed ahead as the leader. Then, “when the demonstrators refused to obey orders to disperse and go home volleys of rifle fire poured on them … The casualties of Bloody Sunday [Jan. 22, 1905] are estimated at from two hundred to fifteen hundred.”

That the Jew Rutenberg “piloted the revolutionary activities of the notorious Father Gapon, then sat in judgment and brought about his execution,” is not mentioned by historian Chamberlin, who was correspondent for 12 years in Russia for the leftist-oriented Christian Science Monitor, and now writes for the new Jewish-line “Anti-communist” Human Events. He also serves as Contributing Editor of the Socialist Social Democratic Federation party’s magazine, New Leader.

Rutenberg was chosen in 1937 as one of the 120 leading Jews of the world, along with Litvinov (Finkelstein), the Soviet Commissar, and Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, head of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He died in Palestine in 1942, much mourned, having set up the Palestine Electric Corporation, using huge water rights, issued under British protection, for the use of Jewry.

More Jewish Manipulations in the U.S.

No corner of the earth has been too remote to manipulate for Jewry. We note activities of the American Jewish Committee (Exhibit 228) concerning: “The Jews in the Balkans,” after 1913. And our government was used again to pressure for Jewish power.

Exhibit 229 shows how restriction of immigration from Russia was fought by the American Jewish Committee after 1906, so that the flow of revolutionaries might not be curbed. The literacy test was fought so that illiterate Jews might swarm here — as they did. Of three literacy test bills, we are told, President Taft vetoed one and President Wilson two, under pressure of the American Jewish Committee. And then when one of them was passed, despite the veto, the Committee “succeeded in procuring adoption of a clause which excluded … those who came to this country to avoid religious persecution, whether induced by overt acts, oppressive laws, or by governmental relations.”

The cry of “persecution,” has always been used to cover the crimes of the only people on earth whose very religion teaches them that murder and enslavement and cheating of all other peoples is a sacred right.

We are told in the New York Jewish Communal Register, that the American Jewish Committee considered it “one of its most important functions to bend every effort toward the solution of the passport question.” (Exhibit 230) This “solution” was to circumvent Russia, which sought to bar Russian-born Red Jews, who came to the U.S.A. to get citizenship so as to return to Russia as American citizens, from [page 82] using their immunity to steer the Red Revolutionary overthrow of the Russian Christian government.

Russia had instructed its consuls to inquire of any applicants for passports to enter Russia from the U.S.A., and if they were Russian-born Jews, not to give them an entrance visa. The U.S.A. was at that time full of jailbird revolutionaries wanted in Russia, who thus sought to escape Russian law as American citizens. The aim of the American Jewish Committee was first to overthrow the Russian government, and later to sustain the Red butchers as they enslaved the Christian populace.

Note the sanctimonious “Hearts and Flowers” pose of the Committee (Exhibit 231) about Russia “refusing to recognize the American passport in the hands of American citizens of the Jewish faith.” And what is that holy “faith?” A criminal conspiracy against all humanity, against all civilized laws, all reciprocity, a code which makes that of gangsters seem benign.

Treaty with Russia Broken

Too often unmentioned today is the fact that under Article 6 of the United States Constitution, a treaty becomes the “supreme law of the land; and judges in every state shall be bound thereby; anything in the Constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.”

At one stroke, thereby, all State laws as well as the Constitution itself may be legally nullified by a treaty.

In our time, this has been done. The United Nations Charter, ratified by almost 100% of the Senate, became as a treaty the Supreme Law of the Land, anything in the Constitution or the laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding. The machinery to nullify our freedoms therefore is in place.

That the top American Jewish Committee was well aware of this provision of the Constitution back in 1917-18 when the New York Kehillah report was issued, is evident from the text. The reciprocal trade treaty of 1832 with Russia had to be broken. It had permitted Russia to have some say as to those from the U.S.A. it must admit through its borders. Russia retained some sovereignty which Red Revolutionary Jewry from Russia, armed with American citizenship, could not hurdle. The Jewish mob must be free to return to Russia and put over the Jewish revolution.

The New York Kehillah text states (Exhibits 231, 232):

“The Committee, after serious consideration, determined to recommend to the President the abrogation of the treaty with Russia, and on May 18, 1908, dispatched a letter to President Roosevelt. This began the attempt on the part of the organization to induce our Government to take some effective action to terminate the controversy. Correspondence with the same end in view was also had with President Taft and was supplemented by personal interviews with the President and with Secretaries of State, Root and Knox. [Schiff headed this delegation.]

“The effect of the termination of the treaty, was the declaration of the national policy of the United States that it would not tolerate further discrimination against American citizens of the Jewish faith. Since treaties are, under the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, with the termination of the treaty there no longer exists a law which according to the Russian Government’s contention was susceptible of the unconstitutional construction that our Government permitted discrimination against American citizens on account of race or religion.

“The action of President Taft and of the Congress of the United States was subsequently approved by all the great political parties of the country, in platform adopted by them in 1912, and again in 1916.”

More of the background of these pre-revolutionary activities of the American Jewish Committee, which was headed by Jacob Schiff, was covered in the Henry Ford Dearborn Independent, in an article in January, 1921 entitled: “Taft Once Tried to Resist Jews and Failed.” To quote:

“Mr. Taft once stood out against the Jews, was strongly denounced as unfavorable to the Jews, was soundly beaten by the Jews on a matter on which he had taken a firm stand, and has ever since shown that he has learned his lesson by accommodating the Jews in their desires …

“For centuries Russia has had her own troubles with the Jews and, as the world knows, has at last fallen prostrate before Jewish power which for centuries, has been working to undermine her … The biggest hoax in modern times was the propaganda against Russia as the persecutor of the Jews. Russia devoted to the Jews a large part of the most favored section of the land, and was always lax in those laws which prohibited Jews from settling in other parts of the country that the Jew was able to create an underground system throughout the whole of Russia which controlled the grain trade, controlled public opinion, and utterly baffled the Czar’s government. The cry of ‘persecution’ arose because the Jews were not permitted to exploit the peasants as much as they desired. They have, however, gained that privilege since.”

Reports of U.S.A. Ministers are quoted showing that while 1500 Jews were registered in St. Petersburg with the police, 30,000 were operating there illegally. Jewish editors and writers wielded power on “the leading newspapers of St. Petersburg and Moscow,” and the liquor trade was entirely in Jewish hands. “At every turn the United States Government discovered that Jews were exaggerating their difficulties for the purpose of forcing governmental action … The Jews represented that their life in Russia was a hell … Presently, after years of underground work and open propaganda against Russia in the daily press, until the American conception against Russia was fixed almost beyond correction, the agitation took the form of the ‘Russian passport question’ … Jews demanded nothing less than that the United States should break all treaty relations with Russia. They demanded it.”

How Jacob Schiff, Louis Marshall, Adolph Krauss and [page 83] Judge Henry M. Fogle (Executive Committee members of the American Jewish Committee) walked in on President Taft at the White House, February 15, 1911, is described. They had demanded the conference, were dined at the White House luncheon table, but Taft insisted upon reading them his conclusions that the trade treaty of 1832 with Russia should not be broken as an exceptional favor to Jews, despite his sentiments in favor of Jewry.

Jacob Schiff was enraged. “This means war!,” he exclaimed.

“On leaving the White House, Jacob Schiff refused to shake the President’s hand, but brushed by it with an air of offended power … Neither did the President know what was behind it all … It meant that German Jews would be the intermediaries of trade between Russia and the United States [if the treaty were broken] … The Frankfort bankers and their relatives in the United States knew what that meant … the relation meant power over Russia — and Jacob Schiff lived to overthrow Russia.

“The neutrality of the United States was torn to shreds by a movement organized and financed on American soil for the overthrow of a friendly nation, and the organizers and financiers were Jews! … The United States was to be used as a crowbar to batter down the walls.

“When the Jewish Ambassadors left the White House, orders flew from Washington and New York to every part of the United States, and the Jewish ‘nagging’ drive began. It had a center in every city. It focused on every Representative and Senator — no official, however, was too mean or unimportant to be drafted. American editors can remember the drive: it was operated on precisely the same lines as the one which is proceeding against the press today. The Jews have given absolute proof in the last two months that they control the majority of the American press.

“Jacob Schiff had said on Feb. 15, ‘This means war!’ He had ordered a large sum of money used for that purpose … On December 13 of that same year — almost ten months to a day after Jewry had declared war on President Taft’s conclusions — both houses of Congress ordered President Taft to notify Russia that the treaty with Russia would be terminated. Frankfort-on-Main Had Won!

“Nine years later, at the writing of this article, it is noted that Taft is making speeches for the Jews after the ‘Jewish’ press of the United States berated President Taft with Jewish unreserve. It would be an eye-opener if, at every speech which William Howard Taft makes for his Jewish clients there could be distributed copies of the remarks printed about President Taft by those same Jewish clients nine years ago … Two governments had been beaten … and the glee with which Jewry hailed the event is also known.”

The fact that Taft was that strange phenomenon — a one-term President, is noted and the question raised that this might have been in consequence of his disobedience.

“The President had really done what he could to prevent the Jewish plan from going through. On Feb. 11, 1911, he withstood them face to face. On December 13, 1911, they whipped him. And yet, in the next year, 1912, a peculiar thing occurred; the high officials of the B’nai B’rith went to the White House and there pinned on the breast of President Taft a medal which marked him ‘as the man who had contributed most during the year to the welfare of the Jewish cause.’ There is a photograph extant of President Taft standing on the south portico of the White House, in the midst of a group of prominent Jews, and the President is wearing his medal. He is not smiling …

“That is the story of William Howard Taft’s efforts to withstand the Jews, and how they broke him. It is probably worth knowing in view of the fact that he has become one of those “Gentile fronts’ which Jews use for their own defense.”

At every stage of the game of take-over for Talmudism, the United States was used a base of operations for “the synagogue of Satan” to put Christian Russia under heel. Propaganda flooded this country which inculcated those of my vintage with the conviction that the weak Czar with his outnumbered, outfinanced foes, wielded a blacksnake whip over little “angel” Jews, made to suffer just because they were “People of the Book.” We were taught that to the tune of millions of dollars spent by the American Jewish Committee and others.

You have only to read such Jewish books as Dubnow’s History of the Jews of Russia and Poland, put out by the American Jewish Committee’s Jewish Publication Society of America for its own people to see how every law was flouted as the Talmudists rose to assassinate and crowd their way into complete mastery and butchery in Russia.

Ford “Apologizes” to Jewry

Even one of the most wealthy and powerful men in the World was not immune to Jewish power and intimidation. The unqualified crawl, even the misstatement that he had been unaware of the contents of his Dearborn Independent, appeared over Henry Ford’s signature, June 30, 1927, just about six-and-a-half years after the above article appeared. The apology was addressed to Louis Marshall as head of the American Jewish Committee.

The renowned theologian, Dr. James M. Gray, head of the Moody Bible Institute, wrote, concerning this apology by Ford (Moody Monthly, September, 1927):

“This confession in our opinion is another link in the chain of prophecy. As we read it we were impressed that the great millionaire went further than the circumstances of the case required him to do. To put it another way, we do not believe the editor of the Independent, Mr. Ford’s paper, was either as foolish or as wicked as the confession of its proprietor would make him appear. We believe he had good grounds for publishing some of the things about the Jews which he did publish … Indeed, the pressure brought to bear upon Mr. Ford to make his confession was in itself such corroborative evidence. This pressure came from Jews all over the world, and in the face of it Mr. Ford was panic-stricken. He is one of [page 84] the richest men in the world, and of course, conscious of the power that money brings with it; but he was made to feel that the Jews have more money and hence more power than he, and that in such a cause their money and their power can be quickly mobilized against an opponent and with crushing consequence …”

Dr. Gray knew what he was talking about, having been subjected to Jewish threats himself. But he refused to recant his assertions that the Protocols of Zion represent the program of Talmudic World Jewry.

I knew Dr. Gray. Large numbers of my book The Red Network were sold in the Moody Bookstore. I spoke in the Moody Church and over the Moody radio. Unfortunately Dr. Gray’s successor has quieted down many matters in favor of Jewry.

The Russian Revolution —

Suppressed State Department Documents

Much authentication of the Jewish hand in the successful Communization of Russia through the revolution of 1917 is contained in official United States Government documents — namely Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1918, Russia, consisting of three volumes and published in 1931. (See Exhibit 243) Included are many communications between then Secretary of State Lansing, U.S. Ambassador to Russia Francis, and various consular officials, detailing events as a “moderate” regime took over Russia under Jewish Premier Kerensky, who was then superseded in a few months by the bloody Bolsheviks, led by Jews such as Trotsky (real name Bronstein), Zinoviev (real name Hirsch Apfelbaum), Kamenev, and Sverdlov. Exhibits 244 through 260 (244, 245, 246, 247,248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260) are excerpts from these Government documents.

All through the State Department papers, most of which are not reproduced, is the picture of Russia in a state of economic collapse as soldiers and sailors are being paid to demonstrate against the Christian government, by Jewry, events which are followed by the final Red take-over.

These documents are today suppressed for public view, and if you don’t believe this to be so, try to obtain copies, or even to find them in any public library. The current Jewish line is that Soviet Russia is “anti-Semitic,” and organized Jewry has no desire to have our people learn of the true origins and beginnings of anti-Christian Communist Russia.

The Revolution Begins

On March 15, 1917, Russian Czar Nicholas II abdicated under revolutionary pressures, naming as regent Grand Duke Michael, until his son came of age.

Not reproduced here is the communication, the very next day from Secretary of State Lansing telling Ambassador Francis to call on Milyukov, Foreign Affairs Minister of the new government, and to “state that the Government of the United States recognizes the new Government of Russia,” to which Ambassador to Russia Francis replied that he had arranged to turn out his entire staff “in full uniform” to recognize the revolutionary regime.

Also omitted here are reports showing the Premiership of Prince Lvov, a sop to the royalty-adoring Russians.

All party functions of the Left had unitedly put over the revolution and this interim regime was to be short-lived, indeed.

Four days after the Czar’s abdication, Ambassador Francis stated: “Financial aid now from America would be a master stroke, immeasurably important to the Jews that revolution succeed.” (State Dept. - Exhibit 244)

Enter Kerensky

The premiership of Prince Lvov lasted only two months. To quote from the 1920 four-volume report of the New York State Committee Investigating Subversive Activities (headed by Senator Clayton R. Lusk): “Alongside of the provisional government headed first by Prince Lvov, the socialist and anarchist elements of Petrograd’s population established a Soviet of Soldiers’, Workmen’s, and Sailor’s Deputies…

Its president was at first Tcheidze [Menshevik leader] and its vice-president Kerensky [leader of the socialist Social Revolution Party]. In May, 1917, the Soviet [Kerensky’s] forced the resignation of the first cabinet … Kerensky then succeeded Prince Lvov, the first premier of the provisional government, who proved to be a weak and vacillating character.” (Vol. 1, Page 218)

Kerensky was “weak and vacillating,” not because he did not know about the Lenin-Trotsky revolution being financed by the Kuhn, Loeb cabal, and which was to follow him. The State Department papers herein show he knew every move in advance and did nothing about it. About five months after Kerensky became Russian Premier, the Bolsheviks took over. The wrecking Red work of Jewish Kerensky during his time in office is described in part as follows in the above N.Y. State Lusk Report: “The liberal decrees of the Provisional Government had destroyed the discipline of the army and the disintegration of the once powerful Russian military machine became complete.” (Page 219) “Kerensky’s Social Democrats distributed hundreds of thousands of leaflets among Russian soldiers” urging “that the soldiers should disobey their officers and lay down their arms.” (Page 215) The “swift success” of the final Revolution was “attributed in large measure by Lenin to a fortuitous cooperation between contending groups and factions.” (Page 217) [Note: Lenin’s real name was Ulyanov. His father was of Mongol origin, his mother a German Jewess.]

Kronstadt

The great mutiny of the Kronstadt sailors of July 16-17, 1917, is chronicled in modern encyclopedias as a Red Revolutionary event. Kronstadt is an island 21 miles from Petrograd (now Leningrad), in the Gulf of Finland.

On July 16, 1917, Kerensky has come home from the front when Milyukov’s Cadet Party ministers resign. And the next [page 85] day, July 17, 1917, we see that the Bolshevik turmoil is used as “the ostensible grievance” for Kerensky to demobilize “two regiments at the front.” Enter Trotsky (Bronstein).

With Kerensky having conveniently “departed for the front,” Trotsky harangues the crowds. The Cossacks, who are anti-Jew, are unable to prevail. (Exhibits 247, 248)

Chamberlin, in his The Russian Revolution 1917-21 describes the march of 20,000 sailors who disembarked from Kronstadt and marched through Petrograd, shooting into homes and killing people on the pretext that they had been attacked. The roaring bloody days of July 16th and 17th left the people helpless at the hands of the bloodthirsty demonstrators: “So the city was really at the mercy of the demonstrators,” says Chamberlin (Vol. 1, page 173). He also says:

“The Kronstadt sailors marched through the main streets of Petrograd … They promptly broke into houses from which shots were supposed to have come and killed with scant ceremony anyone whom they suspected of shooting … ‘five people were killed and twenty-seven wounded before his eyes on Sadovaya Street,’” read one report by one Kantorovitch.

Terrorist Trotsky (real name Bronstein), who was later to gouge out eyes and dismember his victims in sadistic Talmudic fashion, during the Red Terror, was reported by Ambassador Francis to have “aroused great enthusiasm by advocating violent measures.” (State Department — Exhibit 248).

Kronstadt was a rehearsal leading up to the ripe time for take-over, in November, 1917, several months later.

Trotsky had been living in New York, editing the Russian Communist paper Novy Mir (New World), financed by the communist Garland Fund, directed by Jacob Schiff’s rabbinical protege, Rabbi Judah Magnes, and such leading Communists as William Z. Foster and Roger W. Dunn, Sidney Hillman, Norman Thomas and others, serving on the Red Revolutionary battlefield in this country.

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson heard about the abdication of the Czar’s government March 15, 1917, and hailed it. The pretense then, on the part of stooges like Alexander Kerensky and other Jews, was that a “democratic” revolution had been successful, and that “humanity” was to profit from it; the weak Czar, under the thumb of his Jewish bankers and occult Rasputin, having been a pushover achieved by Jewish finance for Jewish power objectives.

The scholar, Jennings Wise, has written (Woodrow Wilson, Apostle of Revolution):

“Woodrow Wilson, despite the efforts of the British police, made it possible for Leon Trotsky to enter Russia on an American passport.” (page 647)

In Document 5 (State Department — Exhibit 254) we see that Lenin got 315,000 marks in June, 1917, just before the Kronstadt revolutionary rehearsal. As the note of our Ambassador states: “Kronstadt, the navy base, was the nerve center from which L’s [Lenin’s] activities radiated during the Summer …”

The funds originated from the “Diskonto Gesellschaft” Bank (Same Exhibit), one of the Jewish controlled German “D Banks” which helped finance the Bolshevik takeover. You may see by referring to the 1943 Universal Jewish Encyclopedia (“Finance, Jews in”) that the so-called “D” banks of Germany were all run by Jews, including the Diskonto Gesellschaft and Deutsch Bank, all being part of the conspiracy.

In September, 1917, Kronstadt is notified that the order to give passports and 207,000 marks “as per order of your Mr. Lenin have been handed to persons mentioned in your letter. The selection met with approval of his excellency the ambassador.” Ira Nelson Morris was Jewish U.S. Ambassador to Sweden at that time.

Jewish Financing Long Planned

As Documents 1 and 2 (Exhibit 251) show, the revolutionary set-up and the banking credits were all ready to function in 1914, and Document 3 (Exhibit 252) specifically names the Diskonto Gesellschaft and Deutsch Banks in this 1914 conspiracy. Exhibit 253, of February 23, 1915, reports the work of revolution, with “W [Warburg] chiefly works from Stockholm” where Jewish Ira Nelson Morris was U.S. Ambassador from July, 1914, until 1922. The “Rhenish Industrial Syndicate” (Document 5, Exhibit 253) advises the Nya Banken in Stockholm and the Stockholm representatives of two of the Jewish-run “D” Banks of Germany that they are to give money for revolutionary propaganda against Russia.

Ambassador Francis detailed (Exhibit 251) documents showing: That, in the name of the German government, agencies had been set up in such Finnish border towns as Lulea, Haparanda and Varda, also in Bergen and Amsterdam. That: “very close and absolutely secret relations [are] being established with Finnish and American banks. In this connection the Ministry begs to recommend the Swedish Nya Banken in Stockholm, the banking office of Furtsenburg; the commercial company Waldmar Hansen in Copenhagen, which are maintaining close relations with Russia.”

Francis adds: “Note: this is an outline of basic financial structure begun in February, 1914, five months before war was launched and still in operation; notice reappearance in subsequent Lenin messages, towns Lulea and Varda, likewise reference to American Banks. Olof Aschberg; one of the heads of the Nya Banken, came to Petrograd a month ago and boasted that N.B. [Nya Banken] was the Bolshevik bank.”

The Guarantee Trust Co., of N.Y. is mentioned, and “Furstenberg,” under the name of Ganetski, and Aschberg are cited as inner group members apt to run the Bolshevik state bank.

Looking at the map of Sweden, you may see that in the North where Sweden joins Finland, and the Gulf of Bothnia ends, washing both shores, there is a little border town of Haparanda and south of it is Lulea, also on the Gulf, with Russia, of today, a short trek to the east across Finland. Those were chosen for the arms-running to the Bolsheviks. The Imperial and “D” Banks of Germany, in the political [page 86] saddle, in cahoots with the Jewish U.S. Ambassador to Sweden, Ira Morris, and the Red Revolutionary Jews, armed with endless funds, put over the job. The Jewish network touched everywhere.

Furstenberg at Stockholm

Stockholm was a cozy place those days for the Reds with the USA Jewish Ambassador friendly to Jewry’s aims. There the “banking office of Furstenberg,” and the “Swedish Nya Banken in Stockholm” are mentioned in Document 1, Exhibit 251, and that was February 14, 1914. Document 8, Exhibit 254, is written to “Mr. Furstenberg” and is from the representative of the Deutsche, one of the German “D” Banks, in Switzerland. He is writing Furstenberg, June 16, 1917, to tell him that Bolshevik pamphlets costing 32,000 francs (Swiss francs were the highest of all in exchange value) have been sent and he would like to know when they arrive. “Maximalist” is used throughout the reports, meaning Bolshevik.

Furstenberg, in good approved Communist style, addresses his letter in Document 9, Exhibit 254, to Raphael Scholnickar as: “Dear Comrade:”, stating: “The office of the banking house M. Warburg has opened … an account for the undertaking of Comrade Trotsky.” The arms have been purchased and sent and a “person authorized to receive the money demanded by Comrade Trotsky.”

Ambassador Francis noted that this communication connected Trotsky “with banker Warburg and with Furstenberg.”

Furstenberg was a busy Jew those days, sending messages of cheer. Document 10, Exhibit 255, is to Bolshevik military leader Antonov at Haparanda telling him that: “Comrade Trotsky’s request has been carried out,” and that a trusty Bolshevik “Sonia,” will be coming to hand him “400,000 kroner.”

We also see that note of Ambassador Francis (Document 10, Exhibit 255):

“This letter from Scheidemann, the German Socialist leader, links him with Furstenberg-Ganetski, with the Nya Banken and with subsidizing the Russian revolution. Trotsky published a paper during the Summer. Another paper spoke for Lenin. Vorwarts would seem to refer to the Socialist organ at Berlin …”

Elsewhere (Exhibit 253) we see the name of Max Warburg, of M.M. Warburg bankers of Hamburg, and related to the Kuhn, Loeb Warburgs of the U.S.A.

As previously mentioned, Max Warburg, later, in 1939, came from Germany and served on the American Jewish Committee “Peace Committee” which drew up and organized the United Nations, its Charter and its propaganda network, consummated at San Francisco in 1945 (See American Jewish Year Book, “Report of American Jewish Committee,” on “Institute on Peace and Post-War Problems,” p. 751, Vol. 43, 1941-2).

Note that Warburg is cited in this Exhibit 253 as one of the three Jewish bankers Rubenstein, Max Warburg, and Parvus, who maneuvered with the Russian revolutionaries, Zenzinov and Lunacharski. Ambassador Francis noted that “Parvus and Warburg both figure in the Lenin and Trotsky documents.”

The Bolsheviks Take Over

While the Army was disintegrating, Premier Kerensky knowing all the time what was to follow, was fluttering with small talk when the take-over by the Red murderers came in November, 1917.

The day of the “Coup D’Etat,” November 7, 1917, Ambassador Francis communicated with Lansing, telling him that the Secretary of the Embassy, Sheldon Whitehouse, had met Kerensky hurrying out of Petrograd, and acknowledging that the Bolsheviks held the city and the Ministers of his government would be arrested (page 224). From then on, the reports go like this: “All Ministers arrested except Kerensky.” “Bolsheviki took possession of Winter Palace where all Ministers except Kerensky were located, all Ministers except Kerensky in Peter and Paul Fortress.” Conflicting reports screen Kerensky’s safe exit, not a hair of his head being harmed. Kerensky later retired to New York, to live graciously after performing his part in the Russian Red Revolution.

It is plain to see from State Department papers that at first Ambassador Francis saw the “German money” financing the Bolsheviks as just that and nothing more. He sensed, however, that a general European revolution was being fomented. And his information came from the files of “Kontrerazvedka, Government secret service organized under Kerensky.”

Concerning this, Ambassador Francis stated in February, 1918:

“If so, unavoidable questions arise why K [Kerensky] did not use evidence against Bolsheviki last July.” “Many clues lead to Stockholm and Copenhagen.”

The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia boasts of the Jews who led the Bolshevik revolution in Russia:

“The political revolution of March, 1917, brought about the complete emancipation of the Russian Jews.” (Page 670, “Soviet Russia”)

“Individual revolutionary leaders of Jewish origin — such as Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Sverdlov — played a conspicuous part in the revolution of November, 1917 which enabled the Bolsheviks to take possession of the state apparatus.”

The great majority of Jews were Socialists, socialist Bundists, socialist Mensheviks, we are further informed, all of whom had worked for the overthrow of the Christian government of Russia.

Consequent “Anti-Semitism”

It followed, in the fight between the Christian elements and the Bolshevik Jews and their dupes, as the same source states that:

“Wherever the civil war was fought, the Whites identified [page 87] the Jews with the Bolsheviks and singled them out for attack … from the first, Anti-Semitism was severely condemned by the Bolsheviks … The recuperative process which set in with the end of the civil war was furthered by the New Economic Policy (NEP) adopted in the Spring of 1921 … By 1924 nearly one-third of all the stores in Moscow were owned by Jews.” (page 674, Encyclopedia)

From our Embassy in Russia came the report of: “conditions appalling; a veritable slaughter … Men are shot without trial.” (Sept. 21, 1918) And “bloody delirium now reigning at Moscow and Petrograd.” (Sept. 25, 1918, page 694; State Department)

In Exhibit 260, we have a typical report from those on the ground, a communication from the U.S. Consul General at Moscow (Summers) to the Secretary of State, May 2, 1918: “Jews predominant in local Soviet government; anti-Jewish feeling grows among population which tends to regard oncoming Germans as deliverers.”

Another State Department report during this period (Exhibit 261) notes: “Fifty per cent of Soviet Government in each town consists of Jews of the worst type, many of whom are anarchists.”

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