Anarchocapitalism: Deep In The Heart Of Texas

ineteconomics |  In 2002, under Governor Rick Perry, Texas deregulated its electricity system. After a few years, the electrical free market, managed by a non-profit called ERCOT, was fully-established. Some seventy or so providers eventually sprung up. While a few cities – including Austin – kept their public power, they were nevertheless tied to the state system.

The market system could, and did, work out most of the time. Prices rose and fell, and customers who didn’t sign long-term contracts faced some risk. One provider, called Griddy, had a special model: for $9.99 a month you could get your power at whatever the wholesale price was on any given day. That was cheap! Most of the time.

The problem with “most of the time” is that people need electric power all of the time. And Texas’s leaders knew as of 2011, at least, when the state went through a short, severe freeze, that the system was radically unstable in extreme weather. But they did nothing. To do something, they would have had to regulate the system. And they didn’t want to regulate the system, because the providers, a rich source of campaign funding, didn’t want to be regulated and to have to spend on weatherization that was not needed – most of the time. In 2020, even voluntary inspections were suspended, due to Covid-19.

Enter the deep freeze of 2021. Demand went up. Supply went down. Natural gas froze up at the wells, in the pipes, and at the generating plants. Unweatherized windmills also went off-line, a small part of the story. Since Texas is disconnected from the rest of the country, no reserves could be imported, and given the cold everywhere, there would have been none available anyway. There came a point, on Sunday, February 14 or the next day, when demand so outstripped supply that the entire Texas grid came within minutes of a collapse that, we are told, would have taken months to repair.

As this happened, the price mechanism failed completely. Wholesale prices rose a hundred-fold – but retail prices, under contract, did not, except for the unlucky customers of Griddy, who got socked with bills for thousands of dollars each day. ERCOT was therefore forced to cut power, which might have been tolerable, had it happened on a rolling basis across neighborhoods throughout the state. But this was impossible: you can’t cut power to hospitals, fire stations, and other critical facilities, or for that matter to high-rise downtown apartments reliant on elevators. So lights stayed on in some areas, and they stayed off – for days on end – in others. Selective socialism, one might call it.

When the lights go off and the heat goes down, water freezes and that was the next phase of the calamity. For when water freezes, pipes burst, and when pipes burst the water supply cannot keep up with the demand. So across Texas, water pressure is falling, as I type these words. Hospitals without water cannot generate steam, and therefore heat; and some of them are being evacuated right now. Meanwhile, ice is bearing down on the power lines.

Past Due Time For Bill Gates To Shut His Great Reset Piehole

finance.yahoo |  Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates on Wednesday rebuked a claim made a day before by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott that put the blame for that state's massive cold-weather power outage on the failure of renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar.

In fact, extreme weather like the winter storm that swept across the country in recent days will become more likely as climate change worsens, Gates told Yahoo Finance, advocating instead for an expansion of renewable energy as part of his call for the U.S. to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

On Tuesday, Abbott blamed the outages on wind turbines and on the Green New Deal, a plan for combating climate change that the Texas governor called "a deadly deal for the United States of America."

Bill Gates, who has been emitting ten thousand times more greenhouse gases than the average person for decades, wants us to believe that he really cares about climate change and the solution is for him to start more companies and make more money off other people's labor.

— Dubula (@killerguerilla) February 16, 2021

“Our wind and our solar got shut down, and they were collectively more than 10 percent of our power grid, and that thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis. ... It just shows that fossil fuel is necessary,” Abbott told Sean Hannity in an interview cited by the Washington Post.

When asked about the blame directed at wind energy by Abbott, Gates said, "He's actually wrong."

"You can make sure wind turbines can deal with the cold," adds Gates, the former Microsoft (MSFT) CEO and author of a new book entitled, "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.” "[The extreme cold] probably wasn't anticipated for the wind turbines that far South. But the ones up in Iowa and North Dakota do have the ability to not freeze up."

The storm struck a large portion of the U.S. on Monday, bringing snowfall and ice that caused power outages for millions of people. Overall, more than 150 million people came under a winter storm warning, the National Weather Service said.

'The extreme events are coming more often'

The cold blast hit especially hard in Texas, where as of Tuesday 4 million households lacked power, the Washington Post reported. Some conservatives blamed frozen wind turbines for the power outage but wind energy contributes a fraction of the state's power in the winter, the Post pointed out.

The loss of power caused by blackouts of thermal power plants — which mostly rely on natural gas — outpaced the loss caused by frozen wind turbines by a factor of five or six, the Post reported.

"Actually, the main capacity that's gone out in Texas is not the wind, it's actually some of the natural gas plants that were also not ready for the super cold temperatures," Gates says.

Incompetent Sock Puppet Politicians + Predatory Corporate Governance = TEXAS

NYTimes  |  The crisis dates back to the 1930s, when the Federal Power Commission gained the authority to regulate interstate transmission of electric power. But politicians in Texas, with their slavish devotion to the fossil fuel industry, didn’t want Washington regulating the electricity business and chipping away at those hefty profits.

So the business went entirely unregulated until the formation of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas in the 1970s. But ERCOT has been anything but reliable. While it is technically overseen by the state, its board is really just an industry club. Several of its members don’t even live in Texas.

On Saturday, Gov. Greg Abbott solemnly declared the state would not see another accident like Thursday’s deadly 100-plus-vehicle pileup on a frozen Fort Worth highway. On Monday, he reassured Texans that power would return. That day, two million people were plunged into darkness, and many into 8 degree weather. Then four million. By Tuesday, 10 people had died in the Houston and San Antonio areas alone. Water pipes burst across the state, forcing people without power to boil water just to drink it safely.

After taking a beating on Twitter, Mr. Abbott spun around on Tuesday and blamed the utilities. He promised an investigation into ERCOT. George P. Bush, the state land commissioner, cravenly blamed the renewable energy industry, a talking point that caught fire among conservatives.

It was all just cow pie, though: Renewables like wind and solar can contribute up to 20 percent of the Texas power grid, but they were forecast to account for just 7 percent of the winter grid, with some 80 percent of electricity in the state’s capacity projected to come from natural gas, coal and a bit of nuclear power. And while some wind turbines in Texas froze, many of them kept turning. By Tuesday, renewables were helping to get the power going again. But it wasn’t enough. Each time the power came back up on Tuesday, demand spiked, and the power supply ran right back down. The rolling blackouts would just keep on rolling.

On Wednesday, Mr. Abbott ordered natural gas producers not to let their supply out of the state until Sunday, and to instead send it to the electrical grid. How soon this could help the millions of Texans who continue to shiver in the darkness is unclear. ERCOT has, once again, ordered utilities to cut power.

“It feels colder than 25 degrees outside. I’m shivering in the house. … My hands are freezing. My feet are freezing, and my nose is freezing,” Laura Bettor, a psychologist in Austin, told me as she watched people ski down her street. “People’s phones are down because they can’t charge. And the government here? Everything about the state government here is stupid.”

Texas Not Only Frozen But Also Wrecked And Parched...,

nbcnews |  As large parts of Texas woke up Thursday to another day of a power crisis amid extreme winter weather, issues with water systems added to the misery for much of the state's population.

Texans were under notice to boil tap water before drinking it after days of record low temperatures damaged infrastructure, caused blackouts and froze water pipes.

Millions across the U.S. were left without electricity or heat in the aftermath of the deadly winter storm as utility crews rushed to restore power before another blast of snow and ice this week.

• Out of more than a million people in the U.S. who did not have electricity, Texas accounted for nearly half with 511,421, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us. The state dropped below 1 million power outages for the first time Thursday.
• In Texas, the extreme weather disrupted water service for more than 12 million residents, forcing many of the more than 680 water systems in the state to issue boil water notices.
• Other parts of the country are bracing for snow. Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York City and the tristate area are expected to see 6 inches of snow, while Washington, D.C., is expected to get 2 to 4 inches.
• At least 37 people have died because of weather-related fatalities since Thursday, the majority in Texas.

---

Another major winter storm is expected to track from the Lower Mississippi Valley into the mid-Atlantic and Northeast through Friday, the National Weather Service said, bringing more heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain to further complicate recovery efforts.

Travel remains paralyzed across much of the United States, with roadways treacherous and thousands of flights canceled. Many school systems also delayed or canceled face-to-face classes.

However, staying home also carried risks in places without power.

The winter weather has caused blackouts in Texas that affected 1.8 million customers Wednesday night, according to the tracking website poweroutage.us. That number was down to just over 511,000 as of 11:28 a.m. local time, the site said.

Without power or heat, some Texans posted videos on social media of them burning old furniture to stay warm. Others shared images of flooding caused by burst pipes and collapsed ceilings.

The extreme winter weather this week and accompanying problems — water facilities without power and lines that broke after freezing — disrupted service for more than 12 million Texans, forcing nearly 680 water systems to issue boil water notices, according to a spokesperson for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Nearly 264,000 Texans live in areas where water systems are completely nonoperational.

Texas Is Experiencing A Self-Inflicted $Trillion Dollar FAIL

slate |   Of all the continental states, Texas alone has its own power grid. (The rest of the continental U.S. is covered by two other grids.) The reason for this is very Texan: The utilities wanted to avoid the oversight from the federal government that comes with interstate business. So Texas developed a massive market governed by the rules of supply and demand that led to low prices for consumers.

But according to Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston, there’s no incentive for Texas power generators to jump in at a moment’s notice, thanks to the way the market is structured. The average wholesale price of electricity for the past decade or so has been lower than what it costs to provide that electricity. He notes that the high-cost generators know they have to be ready to go in the summer, but after that, they “button up and go fishing,” and it can be difficult to bring them back online quickly. For some companies, providing that reserve power in offseason times, such as February, could prove very rewarding if an unusual spike happens. But it’s a high-risk venture, and larger companies are motivated to avoid sinking so much into the cost of producing supply without a reliable demand. So Texas doesn’t have a lot of reserve power.

Julie Cohn, a historian with affiliations at the Baker Institute at Rice University and at the Center for Public History at the University of Houston, added that in Texas there is no law or regulatory entity requiring a power system to have a certain amount of backup in case of a sudden spike in demand, as is the case elsewhere. It’s possible that, because of its isolation, the Texas grid was unable to pull power from the surrounding regions. But as Gürcan Gülen, an independent energy consultant and a former researcher at UT Austin, noted, the surrounding regions were dealing with their own blackouts, so it’s unlikely that would have helped much.

At least one expert has argued that Texas had little reserve power on hand simply because it had little need to worry, given its abundant natural gas resources. But natural gas, which powers a large percentage of Texas electricity plants, was a major culprit in this week’s blackouts. Multiple technological elements in the extraction and distribution of natural gas failed in the extreme temperatures, knocking out about half of its normal output. This would have been a huge problem even if natural gas’s role in the state’s power generation wasn’t taken into account: Texans rely heavily on natural gas for heat and fuel during the winter, and when demand skyrocketed as temperatures plunged, the utilities were forced to prioritize individual houses and hospitals over the power plants. And even then, some of those power plants that received the natural gas were forced to halt operations due to the cold.

The cold was punishing for other power sources as well: At least one nuclear power plant partially shut down in the cold, and some coal generators failed in the frigid temperatures.

 

This Explains Why PennyAnte Local Politicians Have Felt So Lockdown Emboldened

gpenewsdocs  |  Corporations have stepped beyond lobbying governments. They are integrating in policy making at the national and international levels. From agriculture to technology, decisions historically made by governments are increasingly made by secretive unaccountable bodies run by corporations says Nick Buxton.

LYNN FRIES: Hello and welcome. I’m Lynn Fries, producer of Global Political Economy or GPEnewsdocs. Today I’m joined by Nick Buxton. He’s going to be giving us some big picture of context on The Great Reset, a World Economic Forum initiative to reset the world system of global governance.

A worldwide movement crossing not only borders but all walks of life from peasant farmers to techies is fighting against this initiative on the grounds that it represents a major threat to democracy. Key voices from the health, food, education, indigenous peoples and high tech movements explained why in The Great Take Over: How we fight the Davos capture of global governance, a recent webinar hosted by the Transnational Institute.

Today’s guest, Nick Buxton is a publications editor and future labs coordinator at the Transnational Institute. He is the founder and chief editor of TNI’s flagship State of Power report. Welcome. Nick.

NICK BUXTON: Thank you very much, Lynn.

FRIES: The Transnational Institute was co-organizer of The Great Takeover webinar. So what is it that you’re mobilizing against by opposing this Great Reset Initiative.

BUXTON: What we’re really concerned about is really that this initiative by the World Economic Forum actually looks to entrench the power of those most responsible for the crises we’re facing. In many ways, it’s a trick. It’s a sleight of hand to make sure that things continue as they are; to continue the same.

 That will create more of these crises, more of these pandemics, will deepen the climate crisis, which will deepen inequality. It’s not a Great Reset at all. It’s a Great Corporate Takeover. And that’s what we were trying to draw attention to.

What we’ve been finding in recent years is that really there is something I would call it a kind of a global, silent coup d’état going on in terms of global governance. Most people don’t see it.

And people have become familiar with the way that corporations have far more influence and are being integrated into policymaking at a national level. They see that more in front of them. People see their services being privatized. They see the influence of the oil companies or the banking sector that has stopped actions such as regulation of banks or of dealing with a climate crisis.

What people don’t realize is a global level there has been something much more silent going on. Which is that their governance, which used to be by nations, is now increasingly being done by unaccountable bodies dominated by corporations. And part of the problem is that that has been happening in lots of different sectors but people haven’t been connecting the dots.

So what we’ve been trying to do in the last year is to talk with people in the health movement, for example; people involved in public education; people involved in the food sector; to say what is happening in your sector?

And what we found is that in each of these sectors, global decisions that used to be discussed by bodies such as the WHO or such as the Food and Agriculture Organization were increasingly done by these unaccountable bodies.

Just to give an example, we have now the global pandemic and one of the key bodies that is now making the decisions is a facility called COVAX [COVID-19 Vaccines Global Alliance]. You’d have thought global health should be run by the World Health Organization. It is accountable to the United Nations. It has a system of accountability.

Well, what’s actually happening is that the World Health Organization is just one of a few partners but really [COVAX] it’s being controlled by corporations and corporate interests. In this case it is GAVI [The Vaccine Alliance formerly known as the Global Alliance for Vaccines & Immunization] and CEPI [The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations].

And they are both bodies, which don’t have a system of accountability. Where it’s not clear who chose them; who they’re accountable to; or how they can be held to account. And what we do see is that there’s a lot of corporate influence in each of these bodies.

The Conspiracy to Subvert Conspiracy Theorizing

strategic-culture |  The first conclusion you would likely arrive at is that the United States government was just put through the first coup in over 58 years (yes, what happened in 1963 was a coup). Although it is becoming a bit prohibitive to speak such words aloud in polite society, Nancy Pelosi’s official biographer Molly Ball, recently penned a scandalous Time Magazine article entitled ‘The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign that Saved the 2020 Elections’ which admitted to this conspiracy saying:

“Even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream- a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.” (Lest you think that this was a subversion of democracy, Ball informs us that “they were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.”)

Another conclusion you might come to is that many of the political figures whom you believed were serving those who elected them into office, actually serve the interests of a clique of technocrats and billionaires lusting over the deconstruction of western civilization under something called “a Great Reset”. Where this was brushed off as an unfounded conspiracy theory not long ago, even Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister (and neo-Nazi supporting Rhodes Scholar) Chrystia Freeland decided to become a Trustee of the World Economic Forum just weeks ago. In this role, Freeland joins fellow Oxford technocrat Mark Carney in their mutual endeavor to be a part of the new movement to decarbonize civilization and make feudalism cool again.

Lastly, you might notice that your having arrived at these conclusions is itself increasingly becoming a form of thought-crime punishable in a variety of distasteful ways elaborated by a series of unprecedented new emergency regulations that propose extending the definition of “terrorism”. Those implicated under the new definition will be those broad swaths of citizens of western nations who don’t agree with the operating beliefs of the ruling oligarchy.

Already a 60 day review of the U.S. military is underway to purge the armed forces of all such “thought criminals” while McCarthyite legislation has been drafted to cleanse all government jobs of “conspiracy theorists”.

Another startling announcement from the National Terrorism Advisory Bulletin that domestic terrorists include: “ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority [and] perceived grievances fueled by false narratives.”

While not yet fully codified into law (though it will be if not nipped in the bud soon), you can be sure that things are certainly moving fast as, before our very eyes, the right to free speech is being torn to shreds by means of censorship across social media and the internet, cancelling all opinions deemed unacceptable to the ruling class.

Tryna Set Up Political Party BLM Global Gets Rejected By Elections Commission And Grassroots BLM UK

dailymail  |  The Electoral Commission has rejected a controversial application to set up a Black Lives Matter (BLM) political party in Britain because its name would be 'likely to mislead voters'.

The independent election watchdog argued that a 'reasonable voter could assume that the party represents, or is in some way associated with' the grassroots BLM movement and its official UK affiliate.

A spokesperson told MailOnline that the party's proposed constitution and financial scheme were 'incomplete' and also rejected, as the manifesto did not determine the structure and organisation of the party. 

The application was submitted to the election watchdog by applicants whose identities remain unknown just five months after the killing of black man George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis.

His death triggered a cultural revolution in Britain that began with a wave of statue toppling by protesters and culminated in the founding of a Commission of Diversity in the Public Realm by London Mayor Sadiq Khan. 

Tory backbenchers claimed the application to set up the party proved that BLM was a partisan political project with Left-wing objectives, including 'deconstructing the concept of "family" and defunding the police'.  

However, at the time the bid was lodged the main Black Lives Matter UK (BLM UK) group insisted it had no affiliation with the applicants. 

Pray To Gawd You Know This Post Ain't About These Woes....,

opendemocracy |  When asked to address philanthrocapitalism over the last 20 years, one of the first thoughts I had was how late-stage capitalism impacts sex workers. I entered sex work as a stripper in the United States at the age of 19 in 2007, and even then dancers at my club bemoaned how much earnings had dropped since the 1990s. In the 14 years since, even those of us who are relatively privileged have seen tuition and predatory student loan practices soar, employment rates/wages drop, and a continuing erosion of social safety nets. This has meant that many of us in a previous decade potentially could have quietly done sex work in our early 20s and moved on to other careers as we got older, but under current economic conditions we have simply never been able to afford to entirely leave the industry.

As the sex industry has grown oversaturated, managers of legal workspaces have become bolder in pursuing exploitive and discriminatory labour practices. This, in conjunction with Trump’s presidency and the passage of anti-sex work policies like SESTA/FOSTA, has pushed many of us into higher contact, more criminalised work that is still preferable to the majority of available waged jobs. Anti-trafficking crusaders often blame us for glamourising the industry, but the reality is that people of all genders and ages are entering into sex work because they are under increasing financial duress and experience a lack of other viable options under our current power structures.

As an administrator of the Lysistrata Mutual Care Collective & Fund, a mostly volunteer-run resource specifically by and for sex workers, our collective grounds its resistance to predominant modes of philanthrocapitalism by drawing on what grassroots organisers call the non-profit-industrial complex. Non-profits, especially in the anti-trafficking realm, often give lifetime positions of power to people outside of marginalised communities. They are accountable primarily to well-off board members and funders. Funding typically goes to their salaries rather than directly to individuals in the populations they claim to serve.

This dynamic is also found within the sex worker movement. Formally educated, white sex workers from middle class backgrounds are disproportionately able to transition to paid advocacy work and secure grant funding, while our peers who face greater risk of arrest and violence in every part of their existence are often additionally barred from transitioning to non-profit and academic employment.

Above All Else Patrice Cullors Comically "Secured The Bag!"

deadline |  CAA has signed artist, organizer, educator, and public speaker Patrisse Cullors for representation in all areas.

Cullors is known as the co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network. In addition to her work with BLM, her advocacy shines through as a Chairperson of Reform LA Jails, and Founder and Board Chair of grassroots Los Angeles-based organization Dignity and Power Now.

On the TV side, Cullors is part of the writers’ room for the Freeform series Good Trouble. She initially served as a consultant for the first season of The Fosters spinoff to help with Malika (Zuri Adele) activism and social justice storyline. She joined the writers’ room for the second season.

Cullors also appeared in the Kenneth Paul Rosenberg’s documentary Bedlam, which sheds light on the state of mental health in the U.S. It premiered at Sundance earlier this year and Cullors’ family is one of four that share their personal stories about mental health. For her part, she shares the heartbreaking story of her brother Monte and his struggle with mental health. This opens the floodgates that unveil the country’s severely broken healthcare and prison system.

In 2016,  Cullors published her memoir When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir which wnet on to become a New York Times bestseller. She has directed and produced numerous theater and performance pieces as well as docu-series.

Cullors will continue to be repped by Keppler Speakers and Victoria Sanders & Associates.

What Would The Black Panthers Think Of Black Lives Matter?

truthdig  |  The black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws—racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced.—Martin Luther King Jr., 1968

You don’t have to be one of those conspiratorial curmudgeons who reduces every sign of popular protest to “George Soros money” to acknowledge that much of what passes for popular and progressive, grass-roots activism has been co-opted, taken over and/or created by corporate America, the corporate-funded “nonprofit industrial complex,” and Wall Street’s good friend, the Democratic Party, long known to leftists as “the graveyard of social movements.” This “corporatization of activism” (University of British Columbia professor Peter Dauvergne’s term) is ubiquitous across much of what passes for the left in the U.S. today.

What about the racialist group Black Lives Matter, recipient of a mammoth $100 million grant from the Ford Foundation last year? Sparked by the racist security guard and police killings of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown and Eric Garner, BLM has achieved uncritical support across the progressive spectrum, where it is almost reflexively cited as an example of noble and radical grass-roots activism in the streets. That is a mistake.

I first started wondering where BLM stood on the AstroTurf versus grass roots scale when I read an essay published three years ago in The Feminist Wire by Alicia Garza, one of BLM’s three black, lesbian and veteran public-interest careerist founders. In her “Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement,” Garza wrote: “Black lives. Not just all lives. Black lives. Please do not change the conversation by talking about how your life matters, too. It does, but we need less watered down unity and a more active solidarities with us, Black people, unwaveringly, in defense of our humanity. Our collective futures depend on it.”

Denouncing “hetero-patriarchy,” Garza described the adaptation of her clever online catchphrase (“black lives matter”) by others—“brown lives matter, migrant lives matter, women’s lives matter, and on and on” (Garza’s dismissive words)—as “the Theft of Black Queer Women’s Work.”

“Perhaps,” she added, “if we were the charismatic Black men many are rallying around these days, it would have been a different story.”

From a leftist perspective, this struck me as alarming. Why the prickly, hyperidentity-politicized and proprietary attachment to the “lives matter” phrase? Garza seemed more interested in brand value and narrow identity than social justice. Did she want a licensing fee? Wouldn’t any serious, leftist, people’s activist eagerly give the catchy “lives matter” phrase away to all oppressed people and hope for their wide and inclusive use in a viciously capitalist society that has subjected everything and everyone to the soulless logic of commodity rule, profit and exchange value? Who were these “charismatic Black men many are rallying around” in the fall of 2014?

And how representative were Garza’s slaps at “hetero-patriarchy” and “charismatic Black men” of the black community in whose name she spoke? Would it be too hetero-patriarchal of me, I wondered, to suggest that maybe a black male or two with experience of oppression in the nation’s racist criminal justice system ought to share some space front and center in a movement focused especially on a police and prison state that targets black boys and men above all?

I defended the phrase “black lives matter” against the absurd charge that it is racist, but I couldn’t help but wonder about the left-progressive credentials of anyone who gets upset that others would want to have a “conversation” (as Garza put it) about how their lives matter too. Is there really something wrong with a marginalized Native American laborer or a white and not-so “skin-privileged” former factory worker struggling with sickness and poverty wanting to hear that his or her life matters? For any remotely serious progressive, was there anything mysterious about the fact that many white folks facing foreclosure, job loss, poverty wages and the like might not be doing cartwheels over the phrase “black lives matter” when they experience the harsh daily reality that their lives don’t matter under the profits system?

My concerns about BLM’s potential service to the capitalist elite were reactivated when I heard a talk by Garza’s fellow BLM founder, Patrisse Cullors (another veteran nonprofit careerist). Cullors spoke before hundreds of cheering white liberals and progressives in downtown Iowa City in February. “We are witnessing the erosion of U.S. democracy,” she said, adding that Donald Trump “is building a police state.” Relating that she had gone into a “two-week depression” after Hillary Clinton was defeated by Trump, Cullors said she wondered if BLM had “done enough to educate people about the differences between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.” She described Trump as a fascist.

Remember When Hillary Clinton Clowned A Group Of Black Lives Matter Activists?

BAR  |  It is painfully evident from the video of last week’s meeting between a #BlackLivesMatter delegation and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton that the organization is philosophically incapable of making demands on the political representatives of the rulers of the United States. #BLM’s leadership is either confused as to the nature of political demands, or has decided to reject the most fundamental lessons of mass movement politics – indeed, of human social dynamics. Political movements are defined by their core demands. The video of #BLM’s closed-door encounter with Clinton in New Hampshire, August 11 – after the five activists had been prevented from attending and, presumably, disrupting her campaign event – should become a staple for future political education classes on what happens when would-be movement operatives enter the lion’s den unarmed with political demands: they are humiliated and eaten alive.

#Black Lives Matter does post a list of “National Demands ” on its website, including “that the federal government discontinue its supply of military weaponry and equipment to local law enforcement,” and that the U.S. Justice Department “release the names of all officers involved in killing black people within the last five years.” Mixed in with these demands are pledges to “seek justice for Michael Brown’s family,” to develop a network “aimed at redressing the systemic pattern of anti-black law enforcement violence in the US,” and to “advocate” for a decrease in federal spending on law enforcement, accompanied by an increase in social funding.

The commingling of demands and lists of future projects is, itself, indicative of lack of clarity on what constitutes a demand. However, it is clear that the organization’s campaign to disrupt presidential candidates involves only one demand: that representatives of the corporate electoral duopoly “acknowledge whether they believe that Black lives matter,” in the words of #BLM co-founder Alicia Garza, who interviewed on MSNBC on the same day as the New Hampshire debacle.

The main aim of #BLM, besides the huge airplay generated by the confrontations, is to elicit the candidates’ own proposals for changes in the criminal justice system. Julius Jones, founder of the Worcester, Massachusetts, chapter of #BLM and Clinton’s main interlocutor at the New Hampshire encounter, told The Daily Beast :

“Each one [of the candidates] is being made to offer their racial analysis in the United States. We require that they have an understanding so to that list we need to strongly add analysis because we live in a pluralistic society."

“The main aim of #BLM is to elicit the candidates’ own proposals for changes in the criminal justice system.”

In the logic of #BLM leaders, solicitation of reformist proposals from candidates of the two oligarchic parties constitutes a kind of demand. The group doesn’t even require that candidates endorse #BLM’s own posted, reformist demands, such as decreasing spending on police or releasing the names of killer cops. Instead, the candidates are “made to offer their racial analysis” and to produce proposals tailored by the candidate’s own staffs.

The strategy – if one could dignify it as such – is inherently impotent, which is why corporate lawyer and war criminal Hillary Clinton found it so easy to reduce Jones and his colleagues to school children at an elementary civics class.

Although millions of people have already seen the video, it is important to carefully examine the exchange between Clinton and Julius Jones, since the meeting marks a crucial point in the trajectory of both #BLM and of the larger movement to which Alicia Garza and her colleagues contributed a name. The contradictions of #BLM’s strategy will have profound impact – at least in the near term – on the future of the struggle against state oppression of Black people in the U.S. We need to learn from this disaster.

The CIA Created Or Infiltrated Dozens Of Leftist Organizations...,

 off-guardian |  Just the other day The New York Times had this headline: 

Robert Kennedy Jr. Barred From Instagram Over False Virus Claims.

Notice the lack of the word alleged before “false virus claims.”  This is guilt by headline.  It is a perfect piece of propaganda posing as reporting, since it accuses Kennedy, a brilliant and honorable man, of falsity and stupidity, thus justifying Instagram’s ban, and it is an inducement to further censorship of Mr. Kennedy by Facebook, Instagram’s parent company.

That ban should follow soon, as the Times’ reporter Jennifer Jett hopes, since she accusingly writes that RFK, Jr. “makes many of the same baseless claims to more than 300,000 followers” at Facebook. Jett made sure her report also went to msn.com and The Boston Globe.

This is one example of the censorship underway with much, much more to follow.  What was once done under the cover of omission is now done openly and brazenly, cheered on by those who, in an act of bad faith, claim to be upholders of the First Amendment and the importance of free debate in a democracy. We are quickly slipping into an unreal totalitarian social order.

I think this is a half-truth that conceals a larger issue. The censorship is not being driven by power-hungry reporters at the Times or CNN or any media outlet. All these media and their employees are but the outer layer of the onion, the means by which messages are sent and people controlled. 

These companies and their employees do what they are told, whether explicitly or implicitly, for they know it is in their financial interest to do so.  If they do not play their part in this twisted and intricate propaganda game, they will suffer. They will be eliminated, as are pesky individuals who dare peel the onion to its core.

For each media company is one part of a large interconnected intelligence apparatus – a system, a complex – whose purpose is power, wealth, and domination for the very few at the expense of the many.  The CIA and media as parts of the same criminal conspiracy.

To argue that the Silicon valley companies do not want to censor but are being pressured by the legacy corporate media does not make sense.  These companies are deeply connected to U.S. intelligence agencies, as are the NY Times, CNN, NBC, etc.  They too are part of what was once called Operation Mockingbird, the CIA’s program to control, use, and infiltrate the media.  Only the most naïve would think that such a program does not exist today.

In Surveillance Valley, investigative reporter Yasha Levine documents how Silicon Valley tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google are tied to the military-industrial-intelligence-media complex in surveillance and censorship; how the Internet was created by the Pentagon; and even how these shadowy players are deeply involved in the so-called privacy movement that developed after Edward Snowden’s revelations. 

Like Valentine, and in very detailed ways, Levine shows how the military-industrial-intelligence-digital-media complex is part of the same criminal conspiracy as is the traditional media with their CIA overlords. It is one club.

Many people, however, might find this hard to believe because it bursts so many bubbles, including the one that claims that these tech companies are pressured into censorship by the likes of The New York Times, etc.  The truth is the Internet was a military and intelligence tool from the very beginning and it is not the traditional corporate media that gives it its marching orders.

That being so, it is not the owners of the corporate media or their employees who are the ultimate controllers behind the current vast crackdown on dissent, but the intelligence agencies who control the mainstream media and the Silicon Valley monopolies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.  All these media companies are but the outer layer of the onion, the means by which messages are sent and people controlled.

But for whom do these intelligence agencies work? Not for themselves.

They work for their overlords, the super wealthy people, the banks, financial institutions, and corporations that own the United States and always have. In a simple twist of fate, such super wealthy naturally own the media corporations that are essential to their control of the majority of the world’s wealth through the stories they tell.

It is a symbiotic relationship.

Warren Buffet's BLM Global Network Losing Its Grassroots Due To Lack Of Transparency And DNC Control

BAR  |  Black Lives Matter Inland Empire, in an open letter, last week announced its departure from the cash-heavy Black Lives Global Network.

“The issue of greatest concern for us is the relationship between the Global Network and the Democratic Party.”

To our community,

Recently, a group of BLM chapters known as the BLM 10 has come forward to voice their concerns and opposition to the Global Network. Those concerns, along with the egregious conduct the Global network demonstrated on Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday, have brought us to the conclusion that continuing to remain silent would be an act of betrayal. While the issues and problems that have been raised have been well known within our circle for years, it prompted many questions & concerns for us locally. We’d like to let the community know everything outlined in the statement put out by the BLM 10 is valid. We’ve also reached out to the BLM 10 and offered to sign on in support. Hopefully, we can provide insight and clarification into our chapter’s history, our relationship with the global network, and our commitments going forward. 

When BLM IE first started, we were originally known as the Black and Brown Underground (BBU). In 2015 we were approached by an individual named Patrisse Cullors, who offered us an opportunity to join the Global Network and organize as a Black Lives Matter chapter.  After hearing her proposal, we believed that our work, direction, and principles aligned and agreed to join the network; renaming ourselves Black Lives Matter Inland Empire in the process. We were told that the organization we were joining was decentralized and leaderless, but we quickly discovered that was not the case. The Global Network is a top-down dogmatic organization that promotes certain chapters that choose to align with their direction and sequester the ones that don’t. For us locally, that chapter has been Los Angeles.

“Continuing to remain silent would be an act of betrayal.”

For years, the leadership of the Los Angeles chapter has aligned with the Global network and One United Bank to impose on various chapters, particularly ours. We believe that while doing this they received substantial donations and funding, despite them continually soliciting the community for donations. Together, the Los Angeles Chapter along with the Global Network have consistently tried to strong-arm other groups and have worked to undermine a grassroots movement by capitalizing on unpaid labor, suppressing any internal attempt at democracy, commodifying Black death, and profiting from the same pain and suffering inflicted on Black communities that we’re fighting to end. In spite of being ostracised, receiving no financial support, and the maltreatment from both the Global Network and Los Angeles Chapter we’ve maintained our composure while working to the benefit of our community and victims of state sanctioned violence. 

Clearly, we do not have the same beliefs or sense of ethics. We no longer feel, as we initially did, that our politics align. As a result, we are announcing that we are no longer associated or connected to the BLM Global Network. As an attempt to distance ourselves, we have decided to rename part of our organization The Black Power Collective while we restructure. 

The use of the BLM name, which we believed was intended to unify our struggle, has been commodified and debased. It is now being used to sell products, acquire book deals, T.V. deals, and speaking engagements. We have no interest in these pursuits, and we are opposed to the movement to substitute Black capitalism for white capitalism. It has become clear that the Global network and certain figures have platformed our struggles with the sole purpose of exploiting our labor.

“The BLM name is now being used to sell products, acquire book deals, T.V. deals, and speaking engagements.”

 Furthermore, the issue of greatest concern for us is the relationship between the Global Network and the Democratic Party. This is hypocritical at best, as the Democratic Party has historically rejected and ignored BLM’s demands and has made it clear that they are pro-police, pro-prison, and committed to capitalism. From Obama’s support of police and his double-cross of Erica Garner, to “Top Cop” Kamala Harris’ denial of justice for Matrice Richardson, even going back to the 1994 Crime Bill authored by Joe Biden along with the Prisoner Litigation Reform Act that stripped basic human rights from countless Black people—the Democratic Party has literally created the conditions that led to the formation of this movement. Even now, the Democractic party continues to support imperialism, killing African heads of state, bombing Somalia, abusing immigrants (including those of the Black diaspora), and spreading the U.S. military throughout Black and Brown countries around the world. This is a party that is a threat both here and internationally. To ally with them is to ally against ourselves.

Awwwww SNAP!!! Gov. Andrew Cuomo Done Fscked Up Now!!!

WSJ  |  Three months ago New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was awarded an Emmy for “his leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic and his masterful use of TV to inform and calm people around the world.” Turns out the Emmys had the right actor—but the wrong performance. Increasingly it looks like Mr. Cuomo’s real act was to keep people from finding out how many people in his state’s nursing homes died from Covid-19.

On Thursday the New York Post reported that Melissa DeRosa, the Governor’s top aide, admitted to Democratic leaders that the state had deliberately kept the true numbers from them. In a Wednesday conference call, Ms. DeRosa told Democrats the Cuomo administration rejected a legislative request for the figures last August because Donald Trump was tweeting that “we killed everyone in nursing homes” and was directing “the Department of Justice to do an investigation into us.”

As Ms. DeRosa put it, “Basically, we froze.” The administration wasn’t sure, she said, if any information it released to state lawmakers or the Department of Justice “was going to be used against us” or “if there was going to be an investigation.”

Nursing home deaths are a sensitive issue for Mr. Cuomo because of a March 25 health department directive that barred these homes from rejecting people because they had Covid-19. The Associated Press reports that 9,056 recovering patients were sent into nursing homes after the directive, more than 40% higher than what the state had previously reported. 

In January state Attorney General Letitia James released a report on an investigation into complaints about how the nursing homes handled Covid-19. Two findings stand out. First, that “a larger number of nursing home residents died from COVID-19 than” the official data reflected. Second, that the March 25 directive “requiring the admission of COVID-19 patients into nursing homes may have put residents at increased risk of harm in some facilities and may have obscured the data available to assess that risk.”

Liberty! Fraternity! Hierarchy! Qualitative Spiritual Praxis Or Biologically Conceived Hierarchy?

gatestoneinstitute  |  China is in the process of creating the "perfect Communist," Weichert, also the author of Winning Space, told Gatestone. "China is run by a regime that believes in the perfectibility of mankind, and with the advent of modern genetic and biotechnology research, China's central planners now have the human genome itself to perfect according to their political agenda."

Chinese scientists already are on the road of "gene-doping" to make future generations smarter and more innovative than those in countries refusing to embrace these controversial methods. "What you are witnessing in China," Weichert has written, "is the convergence of advanced technology with cutting-edge bio-sciences, capable of fundamentally altering all life on this planet according to the capricious whims of a nominally Communist regime."

Shenzhen's He, after an international uproar caused by news of his dangerous and unethical work, was fined and jailed for "illegally carrying out human embryo gene-editing," but in the Communist Party's near-total surveillance state, he obviously had state backing for his experiments.

He's efforts are not isolated. Nature magazine's news team reported in April 2015 that Chinese researchers at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, in another world-first experiment, edited "non-viable" human embryos with CRISPR-Cas9. "A Chinese source familiar with developments in the field said that at least four groups in China are pursuing gene editing in human embryos," the magazine's website stated.

Beijing's prosecution of He, therefore, looks like an attempt to cool down the furor and prevent the international scientific community from further inquiry into China's activities.

Unfortunately, China's advances in gene editing human embryos for super soldiers is persuading others they must do the same. Soon, for instance, there will be "Le Terminator." The French government has just given approval for augmented soldiers. "We have to be clear, not everyone has the same scruples as us and we have to prepare ourselves for such a future," declared French Minister for the Armed Forces Florence Parly.

Michael Clarke of Kings College London told the Sun, the British tabloid, there is now a biological competition fueled by China. Will we soon have, as the International Society for Military Ethics has dubbed it, a race of "homo robocopus"?

Ahnenerbe The Ancestral Heritage Research and Teaching Organization

salon  |  There were three main categories of unethical medical experiments carried out by Nazi scientists, most of which were done under the supervision of Sievers and the Ahnenerbe (as well as, famously, by Josef Mengele at Auschwitz). Prisoners were used as some laboratories might experiment on animals.

The first category was survival testing. The idea was to determine the human survival thresholds for Nazi soldiers. One example was an experiment to determine the altitude at which air force crews could safely parachute. Prisoners were placed in low-pressure chambers to replicate the thin atmosphere of flight, and observed to see when organs began to fail. Sievers’ most infamous experiments at Dachau were to determine the temperature at which the human body would fail, in the case of hypothermia, and also how best to resuscitate a nearly-frozen human. A body temperature probe was inserted into the rectum of prisoners, who were then frozen in a variety of manners (for example, immersion in ice water or standing naked in the snow). It was established that consciousness was lost, followed quickly by death, when body temperature reached 25 C. Bodies of the nearly-frozen were then brought back up in temperature through a variety of similarly unpleasant manners, such as immersion in near-boiling water. Himmler himself suggested the most bizarre, but least cruel, method of reviving a hypothermic — by obliging him to have sex in a warm bed with multiple ladies. This was actually practiced (and seemed to work, at least better than the other methods). But the very idea that experiments were undertaken to kill or almost kill, humans through freezing, and then determine how best to resuscitate them, bring them back to life, is not a long leap to the reanimation of the clinically dead.

The second category of tests included those with pharmaceuticals and experimental surgeries, with inmates used like lab rats. Doctors tested immunizations against contagious diseases like malaria, typhus, hepatitis and tuberculosis, injecting prisoners and exposing them to diseases, then observing what happened. Procedural experiments, like those involving bone-grafting without anesthetic, which took place at the Ravensbrueck concentration camp, could also fall into this category. Antidotes were sought to chemical weapons like mustard gas and phosgene, with no regard for the well-being of those experimented upon. Keeping in mind the Nazi policy of using prisoners of “lesser” races for economic benefit (this is why concentration camp victims were often kept just alive enough to provide free labor, rather than universally being killed upon capture), this prisoner-as-guinea-pig approach fits into this perverse logic.

November 1944 saw an experiment with a cocktail drug called D-IX, at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. D-IX included cocaine and a stimulant called pervitine. The Luftwaffe (Nazi air force) had been supplied with 29 million pervitine pills from April-December 1939 alone, with the pill codenamed “obm.” Its use left the soldiers addicted, but did succeed in extending attention spans, reducing the need for sleep and food and giving a dramatic increase in stamina. 18 prisoners were given D-IX pills and forced to march while wearing backpacks loaded with 20 kilos of material — after taking the pills, they were able to march, without rest, up to 90 kilometers a day. The goal was to determine the outer limit of stamina induced by the pills. The D-IX pill proper, launched March 16th, 1944, included in each pill 5 mg of cocaine, 3 mg of pervitine, 5 mg of eucodal (a morphine-based painkiller) and synthetic cocaine. It was tested in the field with the Forelle diversionary unit of submariners. The experimentation and use of the pills, both on prisoners and soldiers, was considered very successful, and a plan was put in place to supply pills to the whole Nazi army, but the Allied victory months later stopped this. These pills sought to create super soldiers, in a contorted interpretation of the Nietzschean übermensch.

The third category was racial, or ideological testing, famously overseen by Josef Mengele, who experimented on twins and gypsies, to see how different races responded to contagious diseases. Mass-sterilization experiments on Jews and gypsies provided a sort of photo-negative to one of Himmler’s pet projects, called Lebensborn. It was a breeding program in which racially-ideal Aryan men and women (tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed, strong Nordic bone structure) were obliged to breed, in order to produce more, and purer, Aryan children. This was part and parcel with the belief that the Aryans of the 20^th century were descended from an ancient race with superhuman powers — and that these powers had been gradually lost through interbreeding with “lower” races. If the “pollution” of these other races could be bred out, through generations of Aryans mixing only with other Aryans, then perhaps these powers could be regained? This, too, has an echo of resurrection to it. Resurrecting the lost purity of the original Aryans from Thule, and bringing back their superhuman powers, through breeding programs with pure-blooded Aryans.

Comprehending Transcendent Levels Of Reality Through Concrete Phenomena

aaroncheak  |  The Lubiczs returned to France in the early 1950s, retiring to Mas du Coucagno at Plan-de-Grasse. In 1952, on the day of St. John the Baptist, Schwaller penned an intriguing text entitled Verbe Nature (Nature Word), perhaps one of his most deeply revealing works.[61] The subtitle of the work is: Quelques réponses de la Nature et de ses Sages aux questions de l’auteur, porte-parole des inconnus (Some responses from Nature and her Sages to the questions of the author, spokesperson of the unknown). Bearing the distinct stamp of Schwaller’s mysterious daimon, the premise of the text is the transcription of a series of answers given by ‘Nature and her sages’ to questions posed, but not recorded, by Schwaller. It is thus composed solely of responses. One of the more important features of the text is the insight it gives into Schwaller’s broader theories of biological and spiritual transmutation. Nature Word makes the startling claim that there is a fixed alchemical salt—an immortal mineral ‘nucleus’ that neither fire nor putrefaction can destroy—residing in the human femur.

 With unusual specificity, Schwaller held that the incorruptible salt in the human femur is the mineral ‘register’ upon which the most vital moments of human consciousness could be permanently ‘inscribed’. This salt or nucleus was, in comparison the chromosome,  ‘extremely fixed or even indestructible’.[62] Schwaller regarded it as more permanent than DNA and accorded it a key role in his esoteric theory of evolution (genesis). Contrary to the Darwinian theory (where only the characteristics of the species are able to be preserved through genetic transmission), Schwaller maintained that the fixed salt located in the femur is the precise mechanism by which individual characteristics—the vital modes of consciousness—are able to be preserved and transmitted beyond the death of the individual. This salt was therefore central to the alchemical process of rebirth (palingenesis). Within the wider framework of Schwaller’s cosmology—in which material genesis is conceived as the visible index of the evolution of consciousness—the alchemical salt forms the ‘magnet’ that draws primordial matter through the existential vehicles of the mineral, vegetable, animal and human kingdoms towards the ultima materia (or telos) of ‘spiritual concretion’. As such it formed the hidden link—the invisible bond in the chain of continuity—in the otherwise apparently discontinuous process in which the generation and corruption of evolving forms is situated.

In 1956, Schwaller published Le Roi de la théocratie pharaonique (The King of Pharaonic Theocracy), a work which, among other things, traces the deviation and distortion of Egyptian consciousness through Greek rationality, highlighting the Egyptian rather than Greek basis of the intellectual ‘miracle’ than transformed antique civilisation. In this work, Schwaller reveals important insights into the alchemical process of ‘qualitative exaltation’, a term he compares to the occurence of ‘teratological proliferation’ (mutational phenomena) in plants. Pointing to the images of the proliferous lotuses depicted on the ‘Botanical Gardens’ of Thutmose III at Karnak, he reveals how authentic alchemical mutation emerges not from the purification of the material body of an entity, but from the intensification of its spirit or consciousness.[63] In short, consciousness shapes form, and it was precisely the qualitative exaltations of consciousness that were registered in the immortal mineral remains (the fixed salt) and carried over between kingdoms and species, thus forming the Ariadne’s thread in de Lubicz’s esoteric theory of evolution.

 It was in Plan-de-Grasse, however, that Schwaller finally completed and published his three-volume magnum opus, Le Temple de l’homme (1957-8), the magisterial synthesis of his many years of on-site study in the temples of ancient Egypt. On the eve of Le Temple, Schwaller presented some papers at the Congrès des Symbolists in Paris.[64] Just after his chef d’œuvre appeared, a Belgian-American by the name of André VandenBroeck encountered Schwaller’s work and, over a period of eighteen months, became his last, and perhaps most important, ‘disciple’. The account that VandenBroeck left of this period (1959-60), published some twenty-seven years later on the centenary of Schwaller’s birth (Al-Kemi: Hermetic, Occult, Political, and Private Aspects of R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, 1987), remains the single most important memoir of Schwaller de Lubicz to date.

 The final book published by de Lubicz was Propos sur ésotérisme et symbole (On Esotericism and Symbol, 1960), a short text actually written during the Christmas of 1947, and dedicated to his ‘friends from the Luxor group’. Propos sur ésotérisme et symbole distils many of the themes explored in the wealth of notes and unpublished papers that Schwaller wrote throughout the 1940s, and remains one of his most concise meditations on metaphysics, containing specific insights into the Hermetic mystery of salt.[65]

Human Beings DO Live In A Simplified Narrative-Dream World...,

NYTimes |  Relations between master and disciple were always difficult. Mr. VandenBroeck already had some background in the occultist philosophy of Ouspenkyism and in the hardly less bizarre Chicago-based general semantics movement, which opposed traditional Aristotelian logic. De Lubicz for his part was suspicious and cryptic. Knowledge had to be worked for.

R. A. Schwaller was born in 1887. In his youth he worked as a chemist and studied art and theosophy. The aristocratic Lithuanian poet and occultist Oscar Milosz conferred the title of de Lubicz on Schwaller. At around the same time, Schwaller de Lubicz claims to have met the enigmatic alchemist Fulcanelli. Fulcanelli later became famous for his book ''Le Mystere des Cathedrales'' (1925), an alchemical reading of the symbolism of Gothic cathedrals.

Soon afterward, Fulcanelli (certainly a pseudonym) vanished mysteriously. De Lubicz claimed that Fulcanelli had not only pirated his (de Lubicz's) ideas on the symbolism of cathedrals, but had also attempted to make gold without fully understanding the procedure. This last had fatal consequences, and Mr. VandenBroeck tells us that, when de Lubicz visited Fulcanelli on his deathbed, the alchemist had turned black.

After World War I, de Lubicz was largely responsible for the formation of the Veilleurs (the Watchmen), a group dedicated to preserving higher values in a demoralized postwar world. The higher values were those of hierarchy and discipline. The elite of the Veilleurs sought to evolve to a higher state of being. The group's ambitions were esoteric and protofascist. Subsequently R. A. de Lubicz went to Egypt, where he spent years studying the temple at Luxor. ''Le Temple de l'Homme,'' published in 1958, was his exposition of the inner meaning of Pharaonic architecture, which boring mainstream Egyptologists with their profane readings had failed to penetrate. Finally, de Lubicz moved to Grasse, where Mr. VandenBroeck found him a couple of years before his death.

This is all quite interesting, but the reader has to work hard to extract the interest. The book is clogged with abstruse lectures on secret harmonies, mystical chemistry and whatnot. The style is rigorous, but the content is ultimately meaningless.

Eventually, Mr. VandenBroeck left the temple of mysteries at Grasse. It is to his credit that an important motive for his doing so was that he found de Lubicz's political ideas objectionable. It would have been even more to his credit if he had gone further and had recognized that most of de Lubicz's theories were junk. His ''archeology'' at Luxor failed to take account of the ascertainable circumstances of the temple's building. His ''history'' was a farrago of nonsense about racial destiny and the secret histories of Templars, tarot cards and so on. His ''geography'' had space for a manmade Nile and a Sphinx up to its neck in seawater. His ''science'' was an ill-tempered polemic against Darwin and Einstein. It is odd, then, to find Saul Bellow's foreword giving endorsement to de Lubicz as ''a source of revolutionary insights.''

 

 

Social Media Is A Scam

idler |  From The Century of the Self to HyperNormalisation, the journalist Adam Curtis has consistently exposed stories and truths that lay hidden to others. His BBC blogs feature brilliantly researched articles on, for example, the history of think tanks and their relationship with battery farming and Google. Always entertaining and always a provocative, original voice, he refuses to spout liberal platitudes and makes up his own mind. This bold voice has found him millions of fans across the world, and he is gaining a new audience among the teens and 20-somethings.

I recorded two interviews with Curtis and what follows is edited highlights from our exchanges. We start by discussing the so-called power of the tech titans. Adam argues that a simple way to remove their grip on us would be to stop believing in their magic.

Adam Curtis: When we say: “Facebook is a dark, manipulative force”, it makes the people in charge seem extremely powerful. The truth is that people within the advertising and marketing industry are extremely suspicious about whether online advertising has any effect at all. The internet has been captured by four giant corporations who don’t produce anything, contribute nothing to the wealth of the country, and hoard their billions of dollars in order to pounce on anything that appears to be a competitor and buy it out immediately. They will get you and me to do the work for them – which is putting the data in – then they send out what they con other people into believing are targeted ads. But actually, the problem with their advertising is that it is – like all geek stuff – literal. It has no imagination to it whatsoever. It sees that you bought a ticket to Budapest, so you’re going to get more tickets to Budapest. It’s a scam. In a way, the whole Facebook/Cambridge Analytica thing played into their hands because it made it even more mystifying. I’ve always thought John Le Carré did spies a great service because he made it seem as if there were endless depths of mystery and darkness when in fact, if you’ve ever researched the spies, they are (a) boring and (b) useless. I mean really, really useless. I researched MI5 once and they hardly ever manage to capture any traitors… it’s usually someone else who points them in the right direction. And in a way I think that’s true of this. The tech companies are powerful in the sense that they’ve got hold of the internet, which people like me think could be a really powerful thing for changing the world and disseminating new ideas, and they’ve got it in this rigid headlock. To do that, they’ve conned everyone into thinking that their advertising is worth it. And in the process, they’re destroying journalism.

Tom Hodgkinson: Cambridge Analytica and Facebook are surely clever and manipulative though?

AC: I’m sure some really bad stuff went on. There’s no question about that. But where’s the evidence that it actually swayed elections? What we lost in the hysteria about it all, is the sense of: why did people really vote for Brexit and Trump? I maintain that all the evidence points to the fact that there is real anger and a sense of isolation in Britain and America. The results reflected that. For 20 years, they’ve been offered no choice between the political parties. They’ve been given this enormous button that says “Fuck off” and they’ve pressed it. That’s a rational thing to do. The problem with the professional classes is that they don’t know how to deal with that. Instead they turn to these other reasons, which of course are there. But it’s like they’re looking at a little part of something much, much bigger, which involves having to make political choices about what might have gone wrong in your society. Everyone goes: “Oh that’s magical!” about the internet, but so what? That’s actually just so banal. People go: “Oh it’s terrible, they’re manipulating us!” or: “They know so much about me!” Well, what do they know about you? Your shopping? That’s it? What they don’t know, actually, are all the things that you’ve forgotten which are your real intelligence, and that world that you live in your head, day by day – which is rich and extraordinary.

TH: That’s a lovely thought. So we should really be saying they’re stupid and they’re boring?

AC: Yes, and all they really know about you is your shopping.

TH: There are good things about the internet.

AC: The internet is all sorts of things. The real problem is that we’ve grown up in a period of high individualism and, in a period of high individualism, the one thing you don’t notice is power. You’re supposed to be an empowered individual yourself. What’s disappeared out of the language is power. We just don’t see it. We just blindly go through the world, not seeing that there are powerful forces.