Dreaming of riches and a better life

Carroll Quigley (1910-1977) was an American historian and theorist of the evolution of civilizations. He was a professor at Georgetown University. Quigley’s views on the middle class are mostly in his massive work Tragedy and Hope : A History of the World in Our Time. He was also different from mainstream academicians in one respect : Quigley repeatedly stressed that secret societies have a major role to play in history. This has made Quigley a favorite amongst conspiracy theorists.


Quigley says that the middle class are a group of people that “intruded” between the “upper class of nobles and upper clergy” and the “great mass of peasants”. This group suffers from “psychic insecurity founded on the lack of secure social status”, an insecurity that can only be relieved by “insatiable material acquisition”. As the medieval feudal fiefs coalesced into principalities, which gradually turned into dynastic monarchies, and finally transformed into modern nation states, the middle class has been particularly keen to base their loyalty to the state on nationalism. The middle class underwent two major changes in America during the last century. First, it learnt that the overriding problems of the economy are not savings and investment, but consumption and distribution. Secondly, the Puritan doctrine of strict discipline of children gave way to the view that children should be left undisciplined to enable their innate goodness to manifest itself.


The institution of marriage also changed in the twentieth century. Spurred on by the media, housewives in middle class homes were led to imagine a world of ‘romantic and carefree housewives with dazzling homes and well-behaved and well-scrubbed children’. Unfortunately, this nirvana was unachievable. Hence, the wife relieves her frustration by goading her husband on to become a better provided of sustenance and domestic bliss. This is usually perceived by the husband, who realizes the impracticability of meeting this sort of demands, as nagging.


Advances in healthcare meant that women were no longer dying in great numbers during childbirth. They began to live as long, or even longer, than men. This has resulted in dramatic acceleration of the transfer of wealth from male to female. The frustrations and tensions of domestic life leads more men to become addicted to work, rather addicted to overwork. And this inevitably leads to overindulgence in tobacco, alcohol, and hyperactive stress. All of which lead to early death. Only, in these cases, it would more appropriately be called suicide.


In the 20th century, boys and girls have increasingly been reared in a similar fashion. In fact, because of the new hairstyles and clothing, it became often increasingly difficult to tell which young person belongs to which gender.


Co-education, which became more and more in vogue in the last century, led to the victimization of boys. Generally more gregarious and confident in themselves, girls adjust to school more easily than boys. The increase in female teachers compounded the problem, because they favored their own sex and also promoted the study habits that come more naturally to girls. All this resulted making the boys more indecisive, hesitant, and dependent.


In effect, the middle class rejects the classical New Testament values of love, charity and unselfishness. It instead glorifies the modern ideals of decisiveness, selfishness, impersonality, ruthless energy, and insatiable ambition. The middle class depends on commerce and has an inbuilt state of psychic insecurity through its lack of status and permanence. It sees the world as a place where the total amount of wealth is fixed, and one man’s gain is another’s loss. Life is a struggle to the death in order to compete for this limited quantity of wealth and social status.


The entry of this middle class into the circles of social status and position earlier occupied by the aristocratic nobility led to a totally new attitude in education. The earlier aim of education, that is, to ‘educate’, has been replaced by the aim to crowd-out the competition. Whereas the aristocrat would compete for the sake of the school or the team, the new middle class competes “for more personal reasons, with much greater intensity, even fanaticism, and play to excel and to distinguish themselves from others”. Quigley takes the example of the physicians, who “became one of the largest groups of hardheaded, petty bourgeois hustlers in the United States, and their professional association became the most ruthless, materialistic lobbying association of any professional group”.
                                               

The second wife of Adam

Lilith is a character in Jewish mythology, first mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud, who is related to a class of female demons in Mesopotamian texts. 

Lilith by John Collier,
at the Southport Atkinson
Art Gallery

The 9th century Alphabet of Ben Sira says that Lilith was Adam’s first wife, who was created at the same time as Adam, and from the same earth. This contrasts with Eve, who was created later from one of Adam’s ribs. 
The legend of Lilith was later greatly developed during the Middle Ages, in the tradition of Aggadic midrashim and the Zohar. According to The Treatise on the Left Emanation, a work by Rabbi Isaac ben Jacob Alfasi ha-Cohen of Spain (13th century), Lilith left Adam after refusing to be subservient to him, mated with the archangel Samael, and then refused to return to the Garden of Eden. The Zohar says that she and Adam were very happy until Adam one day tells her that he has to go off and name the animals. Lilith is furious, and ‘howls like a dog’. She pleads with Adam to take her, too, so that she too can name the animals. Adam refuses and orders her to stay by the Euphrates. Thereupon Lilith invokes Asmodeus, the king of demons. In medieval Jewish folklore, Lilith is the consort of Asmodeus, the king of demons. Lilith and Asmodeus were thought to create demonic offspring endlessly, and Lilith was portrayed as a infant-killing witch.
There may already be a reference to Lilith in the Book of Genesis. While the second chapter describes the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib, the first chapter indicates that a woman has already been made : “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them.” 
According to Kabbalistic mysticism, Lilith was not created by God, but arose out of one of the ten attributes (sefirot) of God that at its lowest manifestation has an affinity with the realm of evil.
In Luciferianism, Lilith is the consort of Lucifer, and when they mate, they form an androgynous being. This being is the famous Baphomet, or the Goat of Mendes, whom the Knights Templar were alleged to have worshipped. Lilith is said to be the actual mother of Cain, as opposed to Eve.
Lilith finds a mention in Goethe’s Faust: the First Part of the Tragedy.

Faust: Who’s that there?
Mephistopheles: Take a good look. Lilith
Faust: Lilith? Who is that?
Mephistopheles: Adam’s wife, his first. Beware of her. Her beauty’s one boast is her dangerous hair. When Lilith winds it tight around young men She doesn’t soon let go of them again.

Ultimately, the legend of Lilith is an illustration of the disruptive and destructive effects of unchecked female sexuality.

Bitter aftertaste: the hidden history of Manchuria

To restore our national independence, we must first restore the Chinese nation. To restore the Chinese nation, we must drive the barbarian Manchus back to the Changbai Mountains. To get rid of the barbarians, we must first overthrow the present tyrannical, dictatorial, ugly, and corrupt Qing government. Fellow countrymen, a revolution is the only means to overthrow the Qing government!
- Sun Yat Sen

Manchuria: a wasteland of extremes

The total area of Manchuria is approximately that of France and Germany combined. To the West are the Khingan mountains, a Jurassic range. To the far north is the Amur river.To the east is situated the Changbai mountains, which are surrounded by forested lands.The range represents the mythical birthplace of Bukūri Yongšon, ancestor of Nurhaci and the Aisin Gioro Imperial family, who were the founders of the Manchu state and the Chinese Qing Dynasty. The highest peak is the famed, mythical Baekdu Mountain.

A Russian depiction of three
peoples of Siberia.
The Manchu man is in the middle.

The eponymous ethnic group in Manchuria is the Manchu people, who are a Tungusic people with Altaic origins. The Manchus are so important because they were the people who founded the last imperial dynasty of China, the Qing Dynasty. At first called Jurchens, they were a nomadic Altaic people with shamanistic traditions, and strong links to Mongolia, Korea, and Siberia. Not to the Han Chinese. However, paradoxically, in the ensuing centuries, the Manchus have been culturally and ethnically assimilated into the Han Chinese. 

How the Manchus became the rulers of China

The Great Wall of China could not keep the Manchus out for long.

The Qing dynasty was founded by Nurhaci, a Jurchen chieftain. When Nurhaci died, his son, Hong Taiji, reorganized the Jurchens by incorporating some other ethnicities who had joined them, and renamed his people 'Manchus'. It is not clear how the name Manchu originated, but legends say that Nurhaci believed himself to be a reincarnation of the bodhisattva Manjusri. Hong Taiji also significantly elevated his title from Khan to Emperor.
To help understand how the Manchus, a northern 'barbarian' tribe with almost no continuities with the Chinese cultural tradition, managed to become the rulers of the great Chinese empire and establish their own dynasty, the Qing dynasty, the following sequence of events are presented:
- Hong Taiji was succeeded by his five-year-old son Fulin, in 1643.
- The Manchus were at this time poised to attack Beijing, but were held back by Chinese forces led by Wu Sangui at the Great Wall.
- The ruling dynasty in Beijing at this time was the Ming dynasty, and the ruling emperor was the Chongzhen Emperor.
- What led to the historical turn of events was that a peasant rebellion broke out at this time, led by Li Zicheng.
- In 1644, this rebel force sacked Beijing, and the Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide.
- Li Zicheng then marched against Wu Sangui, who had remained loyal to the Emperor.
- Upon hearing that he was under attack, Wu Sangui threw in his lot with the Manchus.
- A combined army of Manchus and Wu Sangui's soldiers then routed Li Zicheng's army, and then marched upon Beijing.
- The Manchus took Beijing on June 6, 1644.
- On the 30th of October, 1644, Hong Taiji's son Fulin was installed as the Shunzhi Emperor and the "Son of Heaven".
- Thus began the Manchu Qing dynasty, the last imperial dynasty of China.

Kangxi Emperor

The Manchus rule China
It is thus important to note that the Manchus were essentially a non-Chinese people who made themselves the rulers of China.
Their language, script, cuture, customs, dress, everything was initially radically different from the ethnic Chinese whom they ruled. The Qing dynasty always made vigorous efforts to preserve Manchu language and culture, but were not successful as the Manchus started to be gradually assimilated into the majority Han Chinese. However, written Manchu was still used for keeping records in the imperial court until the fall of the Qing.
The Qing rulers also maintained their links with the land of their ancestors, Manchuria, in other ways. While the type of government in China was civil, Manchuria was administered directly by military commanders. Central to the military might of the Qing rulers was the Eight Banner Army, which consisted of Manchurian warriors born and trained in Manchuria. Manchuria was also designated as 'forbidden land', and ethnic Chinese were not allowed to settle there. Due to this ban on settlement by Han Chinese, and further because many ethnic Manchus followed the Qing to Beijing, Manchuria's population gradually dwindled. Many bandits and robbers sneaked into the Manchurian wasteland, attracted by its vast natural resources, especially of gold and ginseng. Thus the desertification of Manchuria continued, a process that extended into the early 20th century. The Han Chinese regarded the region north of the Great Wall as a wasteland populated only by ogres and serpents.

The South Manchuria Railway

However, as this transformation of Manchuria into a wasteland continued, the Qing emperors started encouraging Manchu bannermen stationed in Beijing to settle in Manchuria. Unfortunately, this was not practical at this time, as the Manchus had become accustomed to urban life and could no longer endure the harsh life in their own ancestral homeland. Finally, in 1908, the traditional policies aimed to isolate Manchuria were abandoned, and people of all ethnicities were allowed to settle in Manchuria. By this time, Manchurians had become a minority in Manchuria, and their land had come under the sway of warlords and bandits.

Manchuria in the 20th century
In 1924 Lieutenant Colonel Takahashi Sutejiro wrote a research report titled “Mounted Bandits in Manchuria,” in which he lists the following factors responsible for the emergence of mounted bandits:
1) Chinese attributes: rugged individualism, duplicity, cunning, practicality, absence of morality except where personal gain or loss is involved; lack of national allegiance, lack of empathy, follower mentality
2) Inadequate education
3) Overpopulation and natural disasters
4) Lack of transportation
5) Private armies
6) Corrupt civil servants and military officials
7) Illegal mining of gold and cultivation of ginseng and poppies
8) Illicit logging
9) Easy accessibility of weapons
For ordinary people in Manchuria, simply surviving each day was an ordeal. Looting, arson, rape, and abduction were unexceptional events. During these times of lawlessness, there was even no clear distinction between soldiers and bandits. Every once in a while bandits were invited by the government to serve in the army. Once they were defeated in a battle and had to surrender, they reverted back to banditry.
In the 15th century, Russia had acquired new momentum in its eastward expansion. Thus began a prolonged simmering conflict with the Chinese, which was partly resolved with the Treaty of Nerchinsk between the Kangxi Emperor and Peter the Great.
After the Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901, there was a rapid influx of Han Chinese and Russians into Manchuria. But there was a difference in the nature of the Chinese and Russian incursions. While the Chinese immigrants were mostly refugees who sneaked in with the main intention to exploit the land's natural resources, the Russians had a definite national strategy in mind, building cities and railroads. They spent millions of roubles in building the city of Harbin and the Chinese Eastern Railway. Chinese accounts of the history of this period are replete with references to 'heroes defending their nation', 'merciless exploitation', 'plunder of resources' and other stock phrases. The situation was much more complex in reality, and the significant part was that the so-called 'patriots defending the motherland' were in most cases none but armed bandits engaged in loot and arson. 

Establishment of the state of  Manchukuo

Postcard of the state of Manchukuo

In the evening of September 18, 1931, an explosion occurred on the tracks of the South Manchuria Railway near the city of Mukden. Following this, Japanese soldiers moved swiftly and in a few months the whole of Manchuria was under Japanese control.An important factor which indicates that the people of Manchuria welcomed the Japanese army as liberators is that there was hardly any resistance to them. On 18 February 1932 the new nation-state of Manchukuo was proclaimed. The city of Changchun became the capital. The last Qing(Manchu) Emperor of China, Pu-Yi, was invited to come to Manchukuo and become its first head of state, which he did. Two years later, Pu-Yi was declared Emperor of Manchukuo, with the era name of Kangde. Manchukuo thus became the Great Manchurian Empire.

Poster promoting racial harmony. The
caption says: With the
cooperation of Japan, China, and Manchukuo,
the world can be at peace.

In 1933, the League of Nations declared that Manchuria remained rightfully part of China, prompting Japan to leave the League. The events surrounding the formation and sustenance of Manchukuo, and the role the last Qing Emperor played, are the subject of Bernardo Bertolucci's 1987 film The Last Emperor. During this period, public order was maintained perfectly; not a single soldier-bandit could carry out his depredations.  

Emperor Hirohito of Japan and Emperor Kangde
of Manchukuo
The latter was also the last Qing Emperor.

 The vast wastelands of Manchuria bloomed with agriculture and industry. Living standards improved and people from all over East Asia came to settle in Manchuria. In 1945, after 'years of Japanese occupation', Manchuria was the richest single region of eastern Asia in terms of natural resources, power, industry, transport, and agriculture.The Japanese, called oppressors and occupiers, had wrought this miracle with the active cooperation of the people of Manchuria. 

Flag of Manchukuo

Why Manchukuo had every right to exist as a sovereign nation

What has largely been ignored is the question of self-determination of the Manchu people. That was the primary reason why Manchukuo was formed. Many Manchu visionaries, nevertheless, thought of this as the first step in the restoration of the 'Great Qing Empire'. Manchukuo was not just a puppet state but was recognized as a legitimate nation by 23 countries of the world including the Empire of Japan, Nazi Germany, Italy, Vichy France, Spain, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Finland, Romania, Thailand, Croatia and the Vatican. Interestingly, the Japanese brought in many displaced Jews from Europe and settled them in Manchuria. However, instead of discussing the question of self-determination of the Manchu people, the Western powers were mainly occupied with debating the extent of Japanese influence over Manchukuo, which really should not have concerned them. Ever since the Xinhai Revolution of 1911-1912, the Manchus had repeatedly been vilified as foreign usurpers. In that case, Manchuria should have been considered a foreign land by nationalist Chinese, and thus it is mighty peculiar why they should have been so concerned about Manchuria's fate, either in Japanese hands or otherwise.

The Greater Asia Co-prosperity Sphere 

This was a concept propagated by Japan during the first half of the 20th century, which represented the desire to create a community of Asian nations led by Japan and free of European colonialism. The Greater East Asia Conference was held in Tokyo in November 1943, and was intended to emphasize the Emperor of Japan's commitment to liberate Asia from European colonialism. The conference was attended by Hideki Tojo, Prime Minister of Japan, Zhang Jinghui of Manchukuo, Wang Jingwei of China, Ba Maw of Burma, Subhash Chandra Bose of India, José Paciano Laurel y García of the Philippines, and Wan Waithayakon of Thailand. The conference issued a joint declaration urging economic and political cooperation in order to fight the Allies.

The end of Manchukuo

Manchukuo was a great experiment carried out successfully to build a modern multi-ethnic state.With the fall of Japan and consequently Manchukuo at the end of World War II, the great Manchu people and their ancient land were lost, dissolved in the huge morass called China. The Manchus had been swallowed up by the very land they had conquered and ruled for centuries.
     

Anti-Art
 
The rabbis may not have forbidden
The making of images
For religious reasons.
Perhaps they foresaw
The leprous eyesores
Their unghettoed artists
Would flush
From chisel
And brush.

- Anonymous

The Combat League for German Culture (Kampfbund für Deutsche Kultur) was established by Alfred Rosenberg in 1929. The concept of Cultural Bolshevism (Kulturbolschewismus) was applied to modern art, which was in those days, as now, in many ways, degenerate.This was linked to a Jewish-Communist conspiracy to undermine the beauty-ideal of the Aryan race.

Blind Musician, by Finnish Expressionist painter Alvar Cawén

 
In the early 20th century, modern art movements like cubism and surrealism were becoming popular. The Nazis viewed these art forms with suspicion, characterizing them as “degenerate”. According to Nazi theorists, such works were created by those who were so corrupted and morally enfeebled by modern life that they had lost the capability of producing coherent art. Impressionist and Expresssionist art is marked by ‘painterliness’, in which brushstrokes are applied in a less than controlled manner, thus being impulsive in nature.

The Birth of Venus (La Nascita di Venere) by Sandro Botticelli

Directly opposite to this painterly style are the works of artists like Botticelli and Michelangelo, who paid exquisite attention to controlled drawing and shading in order to duplicate reality as closely as possible.
When these modern art forms first began their rise to popularity, many thought of these as elitist, incomprehensible and morally suspect.

The Nazis stressed that artists must work for the broad masses of people, and not for other artists. In other words, works of art should be comprehensible to ordinary people and not ‘esoteric’.
Amongst the most vocal proponents of the Nazi idea of art was the architect Paul Schultze-Naumburg. According to him, artists paint according to what they see and perceive, which in turn is conditioned by who they are, especially their race. The art of ancient Greece and Rome were the ideals to be emulated, and their depiction of timeless concepts of classical beauty was a sign of racial purity and superiority. Depiction of the idealized human form was good art, whereas the tendency of modernist art to depict deformed and abstract human forms was condemned as indicators of racial and moral degeneracy. He condemned the propensity of many modernist artists to imitate ‘Negro art’, while at the same time praising genuine African art of being great.
The Nazi regime was unmatched in its devotion to totally interfere in art, architecture, films, theater, music and literature. In 1933 the Reichskulturkammer (Reich Culture Chamber) was established, with Joseph Goebbels as its chief. He, however, did not believe that Expressionism should be considered an example of degenerate art. This viewpoint was vehemently opposed by Alfred Rosenberg, who despised Expressionism. The controversy was finally settled when Hitler himself ruled finally that there was no place for any kind of modernist experimentation in the Reich, including Expressionism.
In music, again classical music was admired, jazz was frowned upon, cabarets were stopped, and atonal music (music that lacks a tonal center, or key) was banned.
The Nazi approach to art can properly be called romantic realism, which in essence means taking an idealized and romantic view of reality. 

Farm Family from Kahlenburg by Adolf Wissel, a typical example of Nazi-favored art

Interestingly, the writer and philosopher Ayn Rand has also described herself as a romantic realist, and she described romantic realism as ‘a portrayal of life as it could be and should be’. A related concept is heroic realism, which is when art is used for propaganda purposes, as it has been in Communist countries, especially the former Soviet Union. Heroic realism, a term which is self-explanatory, also characterized much of the public artwork of Nazi Germany. In Nazi Germany, politics and art were inextricably linked. Goebbels said : “Politics is the highest and most comprehensive art there is, and we who shape modern German policy feel ourselves to be artists, the task of art and the artist being to form, to give shape, to remove the diseased and create freedom for the healthy.”

A typical work by Arno Breker

 
Typical of the Nazi approach to art is the work of the sculptor Arno Breker. Hitler loved Breker’s work. These sculptures, which depicted flawless and idealized bodies, represented to Alfred Rosenberg the “mighty momentum and willpower (Wucht und Willenhaftigkeit) “, that was to propel National Socialist Germany to last a thousand years. Most of Breker’s work survived the war, but a majority of his sculptures were destroyed by the Allies after the war. 

Adolf Hitler in Paris. To his right is Albert Speer.
To his left is Arno Breker.

Breker himself was fined but not otherwise harassed. He continued to work after that, and was commissioned by King Hassan II of Morocco for an important building in Casablanca. But controversy rose, and the work was demolished.
Postering was an important element in art during the Nazi regime, in which lighting was skilfully used to create the impression of dedication, bravery and power.

Poster for the exhibition

The Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibit premiered in Munich in 1937 and travelled to eleven other cities in Germany. It consisted of more than six hundred works of art seized from museums and other sources, works which were shown to the public to give them an idea of what degeneracy was. Next to many of the paintings were labels indicating how much money was spent to acquire them. This was apparently done to blame the Weimar Republic of having squandered public money to acquire tasteless pieces of artwork at a time when the country was facing unprecedented economic hardship. At the end of the period of exhibition, many of the works which had value in the international art market were auctioned, whereas the others were publicly burned by the Berlin Fire Brigade.
Interesting in this context is the case of Emil Nolde. Nolde is considered one of the great waercolor painters of the 20th century. His style is distinctly expressionistic. From the early years of the National Socialist movement, Nolde was its supporter. He considered Expressionism to be a distinctly Germanic style. 

Blumengarten, by Emil Nolde

However, as mentioned above, there were serious differences of opinion amongst top Nazis with respect to Expressionism; Rosenberg and his group opposing it, Goebbels and his group supporting it. With Hitler finally ruling against Expressionism, Nolde, despite being an ardent Nazi, was prohibited from painting, even in private. Most of his work was seized. Many were included in the Degenerate Art exhibition, despite Nolde’s personal appeal to Baldur von Schirach, the governor of Vienna and head of the Hitler Youth. During the period of the ban, he secretly painted many watercolors, which he called the ‘unpainted paintings’. Nolde was again honored after the war, receiving West Germany’s highest civilian decoration.
The ideas of art so forcefully propagandized in Nazi Germany have today largely been abandoned, except for the so-called Art Deco, which has much of the same features. Art Deco has undergone a recent resurgence and is much used in graphic design and in advertisements for jewelry, fashion and toiletries.

Bombay has one of the largest number of buildings in the world built in the Art Deco style of architecture, including many old movie theaters like
Eros, New Excelsior, New Empire and Liberty.

Hidden masters

One of the things about Zecharia Sitchin's books that has puzzled me is the lack of explanation about why the Annunaki are no longer visibly active. Is it somehow related to the fact that we are today more capable of recognizing them instantly for who they really are? Or is it because they have simply lost interest and gone away?
Perhaps the first in the series of books to draw interest toward this overarching subject is the classic work by William Bramley : The Gods of Eden. Bramley has been focused more on who incites and sustains wars on this planet. But the theme is distinctly different from that of Sitchin; the latter seems to focus on Sumer. Another work which is in the same scheme but offers a different perspective is Graham Hancock's book Supernatural.
Edward Bernays said in his 1928 book Propaganda that, "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."
It is still not clear whether the behind-the-scenes manipulation that is obviously going on in all sectors of society is a totally malevolent job done for the enslavement of humanity or whether it is good or bad depending on just how you view things or whose side you are on.

Mathematitis

Mathematics was originally the servant of physics. It has gradually come to be the master. Every natural phenomenon is now measured in terms of mathematical equations. This approach has created numerous paradoxes which are, curiously, left unexplained, with the assertion that phenomena appear paradoxical only from the viewpoint of a particular observer, and that human reason holds no right to question what can be definitively proven by means of mathematical equations.

Statue of Kant at Kaliningrad, Russia

 
Immanuel Kant was an 18th-century German philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad, Russia). He never travelled more than ten miles from his hometown in all his life. His father was from Memel (present-day Klaipėda, Lithuania). Kant founded the doctrine of transcendental idealism according to which space and time are the media by which we perceive things. Before Kant, Leibniz had said that space and time were not real things but only relations between things, whereas Newton maintained that they were real things. 

Klaipėda, Kant's hometown

Kant said that the ultimate nature of a thing was essentially unknowable; we only perceived certain properties of things through our senses.
Today an extreme Positivism (the view that holds that the scientific method is the best approach to understanding reality) holds sway and this says that to understand the universe we have to rely on our senses through a physical measuring apparatus. This extreme Positivism faces no problems as far as classical physics is concerned, but with quantum physics the general tendency has been to go to a viewpoint of extreme Relativism (the view that holds that what we observe has no absolute truth but depends only on differences in perception and consideration).
The Theory of Relativity presents us with frustrating paradoxes. For example, if one of a pair of twins goes on a spaceship and travels at speeds approaching that of light, and the other twin remains behind on Earth, time is supposed to pass at a slower rate for the first twin. So if he returns to Earth he will then find that his twin has aged more than he. But the paradox here is that from the viewpoint of the twin in the spaceship he is himself stationary whereas his twin on Earth is moving. So which twin has aged more than the other? How can this be a matter of relative perception? Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle says that since we cannot measure accurately, reality itself is inaccurate. Modern physics trashes the idea of a real external world independent of our perceptions and places instead a world of illusions and appearances.
Modern scientists seem to believe that we can explain the universe through 'beautiful equations' and mathematics. The solid philosophical basis of science is lost in our modern world.

The enemy is nearer than you think

"The happiest day that might be foreseen for the American taxpayer is that on which his miserable representatives in Government begin to live in physical fear for their lives and persons and give some consideration to the constituency for whom their contempt is commensurate with their availability to looting. An American Congressman fleeing from a mob of taxpayers while his house burned would be the heartening sight of a lifetime. An election every four years isn’t as effectual as would be the assassination of a legislator every four minutes, because the enemy isn’t only in Moscow. He’s much nearer at home."


Lucius Beebe


San Francisco Chronicle
July 10, 1961

Senator Robert A. Taft: a man of true courage

Senator Robert A. Taft (1889-1953) was a US Senator from Ohio. 

He was one of the few courageous men who condemned the Nuremberg trials as a violation of the most basic principles of international norms of justice as well as American standards of justice. According to him, these trials were victor’s justice in which the winners of the war were the prosecutors, the judges, and the alleged victims, all at the same time. 
He said:
‘I question whether the hanging of those, who, however despicable, were the leaders of the German people, will ever discourage the making of aggressive war, for no one makes aggressive war unless he expects to win. About this whole judgment there is the spirit of vengeance, and vengeance is seldom justice. The hanging of the eleven men convicted will be a blot on the American record which we shall long regret.’

He has been described in Chapter 9 of the book Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy.

An infinite series of mulattoes

"The bitterest steady prejudice I’ve ever met was in Haiti, the black republic, where black hated mulatto, mulatto hated white, and black, straight hair, resented kinky hair, broad nose resented narrow nose, and there were dozens of words to name the differences of blood between pure African and pure Caucasian. I used to be taken by mulatto friends to the Bourdon Country Club, which admitted neither blacks nor whites as full members;only the lovely browns were allowed to pay dues. And I knew a beautiful girl, niece of a former president, who claimed that there were no blacks in her family.
“You’re descended from an infinite series of mulattos?”
“Oui."

Herbert Gold

in his foreword to Kike! A Documented History of Anti-Semitism in America

Gloomy times

"It’s a gloomy moment in history. Not for many years — not in the life of most men who read this — has there been so much grave and deep apprehension, never has the future seemed as incalculable as at this time. In France the political caldron seethes and bubbles with uncertainty. Russia hangs as usual like a cloud, dark and silent upon the horizon of Europe; while all the energies, resources and influences of the British Empire are sorely tried. It is a solemn moment, and no man can feel indifferent — which happily no man pretends to feel— in the issue of events. Of our own troubles in America, no man can see the end."

Editorial from Harper’s Weekly
Oct. 10, 1857

The end of evolution

"Will humankind continue to evolve? The present answer must be “no.” Cultural evolution has buffered us against biological pressures that weeded out the feeble,slow,or stupid. Now, power tools, computers, clothes, spectacles, and modern medicine devalue the old inherited advantages of powerful physique, intelligence, pigmentation, visual acuity and resistance to diseases like malaria. Societies hold high percentages of physically weak or ill-proportioned people, and people with poor eyesight, or skin color and disease resistance unrelated to the climates where they live.
Some individuals who would have died in infancy a century ago survive to breed, handing on genetic faults to future generations.
Migration, too, has helped halt human evolution. No group lives isolated long enough to evolve into a new species as happened in the Pleistocene. And racial differences will decline with increased interbreeding of peoples from Europe, Africa, the Americas, India and China."


David Lambert

The Cambridge Guide to Prehistoric Man

A note about the Leuchter report

Was Auschwitz a death camp specifically used for the extermination of Jews? Or is there a whole cooked-up story hiding behind a mask?
Did Auschwitz inmates enjoy music shows? And did they have swimming pools? As the pictures below show? Makes us think, at the least.

Posters for music shows at Auschwitz

Swimming pool at Auschwitz

The basic questions that need to be addressed are:
1. How many died in the Holocaust? Six million? One million? 5.09 million? A few thousand? None?
2. Was any ‘gassing’ involved in the killings?
3. Did or did not Nazi Germany have a systematic plan in place to ‘kill all the Jews’?

Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., as the chief engineer of Fred Leuchter Associates of Malden, Massachusetts, had accumulated a vast amount of experience in the design of gas chambers for the execution of criminals. Ernst Zundel paid Leuchter and his team $35,000 for what has since become famous as the “Leuchter Report”. This team scraped the walls, ceilings and floors of the alleged ‘gas chambers’ of Auschwitz-Birkenau and had the samples analyzed for cyanide content by Alpha Labs of Ashland, Massachusetts. The control sample was taken from the delousing or fumigation chamber in Birkenau, where all scholars admit that Zyklon B was used for delousing. The report stated that significant amounts of cyanide were present in the sample taken from the delousing chamber, but only trace amounts were present in the samples taken from the so-called ‘gas chambers’. This shows that the alleged gas chambers could not have been used to kill people, as the amount of cyanide should then have been higher than in the chamber used just for fumigation and delousing.

Leuchter concluded his detailed report with this unambiguous statement:
“After reviewing all of the material and inspecting all of the sites at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek, your author finds the evidence as overwhelming. There were no execution gas chambers at any of these locations. It is the best engineering opinion of this author that the alleged gas chambers at the inspected sites could not have then been, or now be, utilized or seriously considered to function as execution gas chambers.”
 
Leuchter also makes the observation that these ‘gas chambers’ were not properly sealed to prevent the gas from leaking out, that there was no way for the gas to be dispersed safely without endangering those nearby, and also that the chambers were too cold for the pellets of Zyklon B to vaporize.
Zundel has made an important point : history is not effectively written in scholarly journals aimed at the hundreds, but in forums and movements accessible to the millions.

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"History would be a wonderful thing, if it were only true."
- Leo Tolstoy

The key to the past lies in the North: the Arctic origins of civilization

The matter of determining the origins of the ancient Aryans is of prime importance if we are to understand the true nature of our past. It also helps to explain many of the events taking place currently in our world. 
The ancient Aryans were a race of people who lived in the Arctic and polar regions upto the second millenium BC. They lived there for the centuries spanning the post-glacial climatic optimum, during the third millenium BC, when the climate in those regions was more warm and hospitable. When the Sub-Boreal climatic plunge started in the early second millenium BC, something happened which changed the history of the Aryans forever. The decreasing temperatures, icy weather, and resulting upheaval spurred these people to move southward to seek more hospitable regions for living and developing new civilizations. Groups of warlike Aryans migrated south, where they reached warmer climes and founded the civilizations of Vedic India, ancient Greece and ancient Rome. It is also very likely that they played an important role in the founding of civilizations in Sumer, Egypt, China, and the Americas. It is a sad matter that the Aryan foundations of these civilizations have become mired in the fog and mist of history and later depredations.Only careful research and observation throws light on Aryan influence.

Arctic landscape

Bal Gangadhar Tilak

An important work which deals with the polar-Arctic origins of the Aryans is the book The Arctic Home in the Vedas by the great Indian nationalist and Vedic scholar Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Using astronomical evidence from Vedic hymns, he very convincingly demonstrates how the Vedas retain memory of a distant time when the Aryans inhabited the Arctic regions, where they witnessed long days and long nights, where the sun went round the sky overhead, and the dawns lasted many months. The beauty and temporal length of Arctic dawns is the most probable reason why poetic descriptions of the dawn (Ushas, the goddess of dawn) is so prominent in the Rig Veda.
More esoteric and mythological topics, like the relation of the Arctic Aryan homeland with the hollow-earth hypothesis, Shambhala, and Agartha, are too controversial to deal with here. I hope to describe them in another article.

The physical appearance of the prototypical Aryan consists of :
a.) white skin with very little reddish tinge
b.) blond hair (of the golden type seen in Scandinavians and other Northern Europeans, rather than the flaxen type seen in Finns and Balts
c.) Facial physiognomy corresponding to the Hallstatt Nordic type.

Another significant work which throws light on the northern origins of the Aryans is Felipe Vinci’s Homer in the Baltic. Written in Italian and widely translated and read, this book postulates that the events and characters in Homer’s epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey took place not in Greece, the Aegean sea and Asia Minor, but in Scandinavia and the shores of the Baltic. According to Vinci, ancient Troy is not the Anatolian site discovered by Heinrich Schliemann but the town of Toija in Finland. What Vinci sets out to prove, with convincing arguments, is that the events of the Iliad and the Odyssey took place when the Aryans were still living in icy northern climes, in Scandinavia, the Baltic region, and surrounding seas and isles. Some of the other points made by him are:(1.) Homer repeatedly mentions inclement weather conditions - snow and mist, icy winds, and gray skies; these are more appropriate in a Northern setting rather than in the sunny Mediterranean. (2.) Homeric place names and topographical features have been shown by Vinci to show a striking correspondence with places in the Baltic region, Finland, the fjords of Norway and the Faroe Islands. The legend of Helen of Troy seems to come from the same mythic race-memory as the legend of Sita in the Hindu epic The Ramayana. This legend is similar in that it also revolves around the kidnapping of a princess and the resulting calamitous war. The events obviously have a common source and happened in the distant past, when the Aryans were still living in the far North, and the great southward migrations were yet to start. When the Aryans were able to create fresh magnificent civilizations in southern climes they transformed their icy myths into the temperate and tropical settings of the new lands where they now lived. Gradually the memories of their Arctic, Scandinavian and Baltic homelands were either forgotten or retained in a radically changed form. The events described in the Ramayana thus are descriptions of events that once took place, in some form, in some northern icy land, remote from warm, sunny India.

Kalsoyarfjordur, in the Faroe Islands 

It is worth noting here that only in Scandinavia and northern Germany was there no existing substratum of earlier humans, at least there is no archaeological evidence to suggest that. So it is in these areas that the original Aryan physical forms of blond, blue-eyed white-skinned tall people was preserved to the maximum extent. In the other places where the Aryans migrated, there was already an existing substratum of humans, and there was the inevitable race-mixing, with the resultant dilution of the prototypical Aryan physical characteristics. One of the more intriguing parts of this migration epic is the oft-drawn parallel between the Saxons (a Germanic tribe), and the Scythians (an Irano-Aryan people). Certain authorities have even gone on to suggest that the whole of the Germanic peoples have an Eastern origin. This is in conformity with the mistaken notion of many that the origin of the Aryans was from the steppes of eastern Ukraine and the Caspian sea region. This is actually a time-reversal of the actual events. In fact the Germanic tribes, as much pure-Aryan as could be, moved from their homeland in Scandinavia and other northern regions at a later stage, after many hundreds of years had passed after the earlier Aryan migrations to Greece, Rome, India and other places. In the course of their wanderings in eastern Europe, it is likely that they came into contact with Irano-Aryan tribes, these being the progeny of the earlier wave of Aryan invaders who had moved to Iran and India. But it is obvious, if only we pay attention to multiple sources and factors, that the general direction of the Aryans’ movement has been from north to south and from west to east. But it is also true that in the Middle Ages a significant amount of Ural-Altaic admixture seems to have taken place amongst the eastern Germanic tribes, as a result of the Hun and Mongol incursions. Some have noted a degree of Altaic physical characters in the Swedes , and of course in the Finns, which is absent in more western Germanic-origin peoples such as the Dutch, the Norwegians, and the English.

Thus, to summarize, there were 3 major waves of migration of the Aryan peoples:
1. The original moving-out from the Arctic homeland following the Sub-Boreal climatic shift. When the Aryans moved a bit south, they settled in Scandinavia and northern Germany
2. Here there were no ‘native’ people and the racial purity of the Aryans was maintained. From here many groups of Aryans moved out south, sometime in the second or third millenium BC, to far countries like India, Greece, Rome, and perhaps other countries.
3. The third wave of migrations was what has become famous as the great Germanic migrations throughout Europe. The Viking and Norman contributions may also be considered part of this wave.

How the Jews of Prague were saved: the legend of the golem

Tucked away in the Jewish quarter of Prague is a synagogue that is as beautiful as it is old and significant.

This is the famous Old New Synagogue, Europe’s oldest active synagogue. Completed in 1270, it was one of Prague’s first Gothic buildings. It is said that the body of Golem lies in the attic of this synagogue. Strangely, this building was spared by the Nazis during their destruction of Jewish buildings during the occupation of the city.
The word ‘golem’ means ‘unformed, amorphous’. According to the Talmud (Tractate Sanhedrin 38b), it is the matter which God shaped into the form of Adam, before breathing the breath of life into his nostrils. However, just as God cannot create another God, no man can create another man. Thus a golem made by a man lacks some characteristic or the other which prevents him from being called a man; this is usually the power of speech. The Sefer Yetzirah, the Book of Creation (2nd century BC), says that the letters of the Hebrew alphabet hold the key to creation, and thus it is the interplay of letters which creates and destroys a golem. The word emet (אמת, “truth” in the Hebrew language), inscribed on the head of the golem, keeps it alive. When the golem needs to be deactivated, the letter aleph in emet is erased, changing emet אמת (truth) to met אמ (death). Other legends state that a golem can be controlled by writing a specific series of letters on parchment and placing the paper in the golem’s mouth.

The most famous Golem narrative in history is the one involving Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the 16th century chief rabbi of the city of Prague in Bohemia, widely known as the Maharal of Prague. The Maharal was a well-known Talmudic scholar, mystic and philosopher.

Tombstone of the Maharal, at the

Old Jewish Cemetery, Prague

Under the rule of Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor, a decision was taken to kill or expel the Jews of Prague. The Maharal then created the Golem from clay taken from the banks of the Vltava river. Initially successful in its mission, the Golem grew and bacame increasingly violent, killing gentiles and, according to some accounts, Jews too. The Emperor then pleaded to the Maharal to deactivate the Golem, which the latter did. The body of the golem was then stored in the attic of the Old New Synagogue of Prague, where legend says it lies to this day. One tale tells of a Nazi agent who ascended the attic and tried to stab the Golem, but died instead.

Illustration of a golem, by Philippe Semeria

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (the last Rebbe of Lubavitch) wrote that his father-in-law told him that he saw the remains of the Golem in the attic of Alt-Neu Shul.

Isaac Bashevis Singer said that the golem is the “very essence of Jewish folklore”. Yet this enthralling legend has strayed far beyond the realm of Jewish myth and strayed into the silver screen, Marvel comics, the opera, ballets, and plays.
Gustav Meyrink’s 1914 novel Der Golem is loosely inspired by the tales of the golem created by Judah Loew ben Bezalel.

The golem and the rabbi

In 1974, Marvel Comics introduced “The Golem” as a recurring character in its Strange Tales comic book series.
David Brin’s science-fiction novel, Kiln People, describes a future where humans make lower quality copies of themselves (dittos or golems) out of clay. After reaching their expiration date, the golem’s memories can be reintegrated to the original person.
Two episodes of the science fiction TV series The X-Files, season 4’s Kaddish and season 6’s Arcadia, feature golems.
In I, Robot, Isaac Asimov shows us robots growing in sophistication and approaching ever nearer to humans in their consciousness. But the robot never attains humanity, just as man never attains godhead. Like a robot, the golem can always be destroyed by its maker, since it has no soul.
The golem is a popular figure in the Czech Republic. There are several restaurants and other businesses whose names reference the creature.

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Golem of Prague: Fact or Fiction?
This lecture was given at The Intercontinental Hotel in Vienna by Dr Shnayer Leiman on July 7, 2009.
Download the lecture here

Love intrigues

"The final aim of all love intrigues, be they comic or tragic, is really of more import than all other ends in human life. What it all turns upon is nothing less than the composition of the next generation. It is not the weal or woe of any one individual, but that of the human race to come which is here at stake."
Arthur Schopenhauer