Saturday, October 29, 2011

Untitled II

Callers: Rodney In Illinois, Liz in The Ozarks

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome. Lark In Texas with you… on this Saturday – October 29th, 2011 – for the next hour.
Republic Broadcasting exists to bring forth real news and information… you’d be hard-pressed to find… anywhere else.
As are you, I’m Justa Numerican… concerned about the same things you’re concerned about… the separating of facts… from fiction… and the best investment value… for our time… spent together.
This is why… YOU too… are as reliable… a news medium – in what’s left of America – without a doubt.
And besides all else… you’re tuned to RBN… because you can handle the truth!
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we’d especially like to hear from YOU!
For detailed program notes of this broadcast, currently posted – or any of those previous – refer to the web address http://larkintexas.blogspot.com … and you will find the web log… for Justa Numerican.
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Clouded judgment - its nexus, human failing - begins with the definitions, meanings or nuances of interpretation we are acculturated to, and then assign to the signs and symbols... within the many domains... of language.

The urge to organize, or to systematize, first by way of reason (a branch of logic) and predicated upon supposed knowledge which is too often narrowly considered or construed – whether deliberate or not; and second, the perceived desire for change – customarily something masquerading as need or necessity – causes groups to coalesce around memoranda of understanding [or agreement], which then results in compacts, covenants, or contracts to be entered into. Even though the “consensus of learned opinion” remained divided… and unchanged... from the start...

... And the people find... they have entered themselves... once again...into various forms... of contract bondage.

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He who has endured such vicissitudes with equanimity has deprived misfortune of its power.


http://www.thefreedictionary.com/vicissitude
Vicissitude
1
a: the quality or state of being changeable: mutability b: natural change or mutation visible in nature or in human affairs
2
a: a favorable or unfavorable event or situation that occurs by chance: a fluctuation of state or condition <the vicissitudes of daily life> b: a difficulty or hardship attendant on a way of life, a career, or a course of action and usually beyond one's control c: alternating change: succession
The vicissitude of mutations in the superior globe, are no fit matter for this present argument.
The Essays by Bacon, Sir Francis
Being therefore sold at auction,--alas I what a vicissitude for a chair that had figured in such high company
Grandfather's Chair by Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Up mounted David, and bowled away merrily towards Boston, without so much as a parting glance at that fountain of dreamlike vicissitude.
From Twice Told Tales by Hawthorne, Nathaniel
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Equanimity
The quality of being calm and even-tempered; composure; poise
[Latin aequanimits, from aequanimus, even-tempered, impartial: aequus, even + animus, mind; see an- in Indo-European roots.]
Steadiness of mind under stress; "he accepted their problems with composure and she with equanimity"
Equanimous is the adjective
Equanimously is the adverb
Look now at Stubb; a man who from his humorous, deliberate coolness and equanimity in the direst emergencies, was specially qualified to excel in pitchpoling.
Moby Dick LXVIII-CXXXIV by Melville, Herman
I bore her coarse reproaches with astonishing equanimity, even with cheerfulness; for I was sensible that I had done more good to Nancy Brown than harm to her: and perhaps some other thoughts assisted to keep up my spirits, and impart a relish to the cup of cold, overdrawn tea, and a charm to the otherwise unsightly table; and--I had almost said--to Miss Matilda's unamiable face.
Agnes Grey by Bronte, Anne
He had done the thing before upon more than one occasion, just as in the past he had charged lions himself; but tonight he was far from famished and in the hind quarter he had carried off with him was more raw flesh than he could eat; yet it was with no equanimity that he looked down upon Numa rending the flesh of Tarzan's kill.
Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar by Burroughs, Edgar Rice
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Notes to Self
Adaptation – Reinvention – Renewal
Socialists are always confusing society with government. In their minds, they refuse to believe human beings are capable of self-organization and self-governance… independent of… suffocating… governmental control. More often than not, they seek favor with the powers-that-be in order that they may gain benefit or lucre.
Socialists are fascists and communists driven by monopolistic, authoritarian impulse. Today they have joined forces in order that a trans-generational cabal of international outlaws may continue to thrive as your parasites – in the lap of luxury – as your invisible overlords and, in force and effect, as your slave-masters.
They care not for nations… or states… or you – only the power of THEIR authority to rule over YOU. In their minds, they are the shepherds wielding the staff of iron; and YOU are but one of their flock… of obsequious, obedient… bleating sheep.
They are driven by the will to power; while you struggle… merely… to go along and get along. While they scheme and dream of the riches they will gain by exploiting this propensity… you work, you struggle and you suffer your life away… only to make yourself prepared… for degradation, plunder, slow-poisoning… and then your sacrifice.
Adaptation – Reinvention – Renewal…change… is said to be the one constant of life. We cannot escape from it any more than we can escape our dependency on the air we breathe. However, this truth need not be confused with the LIE that we actually need government-issued edicts – often tantamount to little more than unfathomable tangles of words disseminated from on high – in order to live out perfectly healthy, productive, lives… lived harmoniously… our senses fully engaged, alert to our surroundings… while artfully and peacefully dealing… with all that we encounter.
Note to self: Live by the one rule [or the set of rules] that you choose – not the plethora [or mishmash] of rules through which your enemies wish to rule… over you.
Be not a slave to conformity or convention. Be the oner you were born to be.
Admit your life belongs to you; so reclaim first… your independence of mind… and thought. If you are guided by an even higher authority… become inseparable. Hold your friends close, but your enemies closer.
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The Lincoln Putsch: America's Bolshevik Revolution
By George McDaniel
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Cotton Mather
(born Feb. 12, 1663, Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony — died Feb. 13, 1728, Boston) American Puritan leader. The son of Increase Mather, he earned a master's degree from Harvard College and was ordained a Congregational minister in 1685, after which he assisted his father at Boston's North Church (1685 – 1723). He helped work for the ouster of the unpopular British governor of Massachusetts, Edmund Andros (1689). Though his writings on witchcraft fed the hysteria that resulted in the Salem witch trials, he disapproved of the trials and argued against the use of "spectral evidence." His best-known writings include Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), a church history of New England, and his Diary (1711 – 12). His Curiosa Americana (1712 – 24) won him membership in the Royal Society of London. He was an early supporter of smallpox inoculation. See also Congregationalism; Puritanism.
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Bernard Mandeville
Bernard Mandeville, or Bernard de Mandeville (15 November 1670, Rotterdam – 21 January 1733, Hackney), was a philosopher, political economist and satirist. Born in the Netherlands, he lived most of his life in England and used English for most of his published works. He became famous for The Fable of the Bees.

Ideas

Mandeville's philosophy gave great offence at the time, and has always been stigmatized as false, cynical and degrading. His main thesis is that the actions of men cannot be divided into lower and higher. The higher life of man is a mere fiction introduced by philosophers and rulers to simplify government and the relations of society. In fact, virtue (which he defined as "every performance by which man, contrary to the impulse of nature, should endeavour the benefit of others, or the conquest of his own passions, out of a rational ambition of being good") is actually detrimental to the state in its commercial and intellectual progress. This is because it is the vices (i.e., the self-regarding actions of men) which alone, by means of inventions and the circulation of capital (economics) in connection with luxurious living, stimulate society into action and progress.

Private vice, public benefit

Mandeville concluded that vice, at variance with the "Christian virtues" of his time, was a necessary condition for economic prosperity. His viewpoint is more severe when juxtaposed to Adam Smith's. Both Smith and Mandeville believed that individuals’ collective actions bring about a public benefit. However, what sets his philosophy apart from Smith’s is his catalyst to that public benefit. Smith believed in a virtuous self-interest which results in invisible cooperation. For the most part, Smith saw no need for a guide to garner that public benefit. On the other hand, Mandeville believed it was vicious greed which led to invisible cooperation if properly channelled. Mandeville’s qualification of proper channelling further parts his philosophy from Smith’s laissez-faire attitude. Essentially, Mandeville called for politicians to ensure that the passions of man would result in a public benefit. It was his stated belief in the Fable of the Bees that "Private Vices by the dextrous Management of a skilful Politician may be turned into Publick Benefits”.
In the Fable he shows a society possessed of all the virtues "blest with content and honesty," falling into apathy and utterly paralyzed. The absence of self-love (cf. Hobbes) is the death of progress. The so-called higher virtues are mere hypocrisy, and arise from the selfish desire to be superior to the brutes. "The moral virtues are the political offspring which flattery begot upon pride." Similarly he arrives at the great paradox that "private vices are public benefits".
Among other things, Mandeville argues that the basest and vilest behaviours produce positive economic effects. A libertine, for example, is a vicious character, and yet his spending will employ tailors, servants, perfumers, cooks, prostitutes. These persons, in turn, will employ bakers, carpenters, and the like. Therefore, the rapaciousness and violence of the base passions of the libertine benefit society in general. Similar satirical arguments were made by the Restoration and Augustan satirists.

Division of labor

Mandeville was an early describer of the Division of labour, and Adam Smith makes use of some of his examples.
Mandeville says: But if one will wholly apply himself to the making of Bows and Arrows, whilst another provides Food, a third builds Huts, a fourth makes Garments, and a fifth Utensils, they not only become useful to one another, but the Callings and Employments themselves will in the same Number of Years receive much greater Improvements, than if all had been promiscuously follow’d by every one of the Five... In Watch-making, which is come to a higher degree of Perfection, than it would have been arrived at yet, if the whole had always remain’d the Employment of one Person; and I am persuaded, that even the Plenty we have of Clocks and Watches, as well as the Exactness and Beauty they may be made of, are chiefly owing to the Division that has been made of that Art into many Branches. (The Fable of the Bees, Volume two)
—Adam Smith.

Influence

While the author probably had no intention of subverting morality, his views of human nature were seen by his critics as cynical and degrading. Another of his works, A Search into the Nature of Society (1723), appended to the later versions of the Fable, also startled the public mind, which his last works, Free Thoughts on Religion (1720) and An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour and the Usefulness of Christianity (1732) did little to reassure. The work in which he approximates most nearly to modern views is his account of the origin of society. His a priori theories should be compared with Henry Maine's historical inquiries (Ancient Law). He endeavours to show that all social laws are the crystallized results of selfish aggrandizement and protective alliances among the weak. Denying any form of moral sense or conscience, he regards all the social virtues as evolved from the instinct for self-preservation, the give-and-take arrangements between the partners in a defensive and offensive alliance, and the feelings of pride and vanity artificially fed by politicians, as an antidote to dissension and chaos.
Mandeville's ironic paradoxes are interesting mainly as a criticism of the "amiable" idealism of Shaftesbury, and in comparison with the serious egoistic systems of Hobbes and Helvétius. It is mere prejudice to deny that Mandeville had considerable philosophic insight; at the same time he was mainly negative or critical, and, as he himself said, he was writing for "the entertainment of people of knowledge and education." He can be said to have removed obstacles for the coming utilitarianism.
Mandeville's ideas about society and politics were praised by Friedrich Hayek, a proponent of Austrian economics, in his book Law, Legislation and Liberty.
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The Fable of the Bees
The Fable of The Bees: or, Private Vices, Public Benefits is a book by Bernard Mandeville, consisting of the poem The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves turn’d Honest and prose discussion of it. The poem was published in 1705 and the book first appeared in 1714. The poem elucidates many key principles of economic thought, including division of labor and the invisible hand, seventy years before Adam Smith (indeed, John Maynard Keynes argues Smith was probably referencing Mandeville). It also describes the paradox of thrift centuries before Keynes, and may be seen as part of the school of underconsumption.
At the time, however, it was considered scandalous. Keynes reports in his General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, that it was "convicted as a nuisance by the grand jury of Middlesex in 1723, which stands out in the history of the moral sciences for its scandalous reputation. Only one man is recorded as having spoken a good word for it, namely Dr. Johnson, who declared that it did not puzzle him, but 'opened his eyes into real life very much'."
In the Dictionary of National Biography, Leslie Stephen describes it as follows:
Mandeville gave great offense by this book, in which a cynical system of morality was made attractive by ingenious paradoxes. ... His doctrine that prosperity was increased by expenditure rather than by saving fell in with many current economic fallacies not yet extinct. Assuming with the ascetics that human desires were essentially evil and therefore produced “private vices” and assuming with the common view that wealth was a “public benefit”, he easily showed that all civilization implied the development of vicious propensities....
Keynes observes that this is a precursor to his theory of effective demand. He notes that the book describes the paradox of thrift—showing that a community that forsakes luxury for savings achieves neither.

The poem

The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Public Benefits consisted of a poem, The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves Turn'd Honest, along with an extensive prose commentary. The poem had appeared in 1705 and was intended as a commentary on England as Mandeville saw it.
“A Spacious Hive well stock'd with Bees, That lived in Luxury and Ease; And yet as fam'd for Laws and Arms, As yielding large and early Swarms; Was counted the great Nursery Of Sciences and Industry. No Bees had better Government, More Fickleness, or less Content. They were not Slaves to Tyranny, Nor ruled by wild Democracy; But Kings, that could not wrong, because Their Power was circumscrib'd by Laws.
The 'hive' is corrupt but prosperous, yet it grumbles about lack of virtue. A higher power decides to give them what they ask for:
But Jove, with Indignation moved, At last in Anger swore, he'd rid The bawling Hive of Fraud, and did. The very Moment it departs, And Honesty fills all their Hearts;
This results in a rapid loss of prosperity, though the newly-virtuous hive does not mind:
For many Thousand Bees were lost. Hard'ned with Toils, and Exercise They counted Ease it self a Vice; Which so improved their Temperance; That, to avoid Extravagance, They flew into a hollow Tree, Blest with Content and Honesty.”

Prose expansions

The poem attracted little attention. The 1714 work soon became famous/notorious, being understood as an attack on Christian virtues. What it actually means remains controversial down to the present day. Mandeville did say:
“What Country soever in the Universe is to be understood by the Bee-Hive represented here, it is evident from what is said of the Laws and Constitution of it, the Glory, Wealth, Power and Industry of its Inhabitants, that it must be a large, rich and warlike Nation, that is happily govern’d by a limited Monarchy. The Satyr therefore to be met with in the following Lines upon the several Professions and Callings, and almost every Degree and Station of People, was not made to injure and point to a particular Persons, but only to shew the Vileness of the Ingredients that all together compose the wholesome Mixture of a well-order’d Society; in order to extol the wonderful Power of Political Wisdom, by the help of which so beautiful a Machine is rais’d from the most contemptible Branches. For the main Design of the Fable, (as it is briefly explain’d in the Moral) is to shew the Impossibility of enjoying all the most elegant Comforts of Life that are to be met with in an industrious, wealthy and powerful Nation, and at the same time be bless’d with all the Virtue and Innocence that can be wish’d for in a Golden Age; from thence to expose the Unreasonableness and Folly of those, that desirous of being an opulent and flourishing People, and wonderfully greedy after all the Benefits they can receive as such, are yet always murmuring at and exclaiming against those Vices and Inconveniences, that from the Beginning of the World to this present Day, have been inseparable from all Kingdoms and States that ever were fam’d for Strength, Riches, and Politeness, at the same time.”

Economic views

Mandeville is widely regarded as a serious economist and philosopher. He produced a second volume of The Fable of the Bees in 1732, with an extensive set of dialogues that set out his economic views. His ideas about the Division of labor draw on those of William Petty, and are similar to those of Adam Smith. Mandeville says:
When once Men come to be govern’d by written Laws, all the rest comes on a-pace. Now Property, and Safety of Life and Limb, may be secured: This naturally will forward the Love of Peace, and make it spread. No number of Men, when once they enjoy Quiet, and no Man needs to fear his Neighbour, will be long without learning to divide and subdivide their Labour... Man, as I have hinted before, naturally loves to imitate what he sees others do, which is the reason that savage People all do the same thing: This hinders them from meliorating their Condition, though they are always wishing for it: But if one will wholly apply himself to the making of Bows and Arrows, whilst another provides Food, a third builds Huts, a fourth makes Garments, and a fifth Utensils, they not only become useful to one another, but the Callings and Employments themselves will in the same Number of Years receive much greater Improvements, than if all had been promiscuously follow’d by every one of the Five... The truth of what you say is in nothing so conspicuous, as it is in Watch-making, which is come to a higher degree of Perfection, than it would have been arrived at yet, if the whole had always remain’d the Employment of one Person; and I am persuaded, that even the Plenty we have of Clocks and Watches, as well as the Exactness and Beauty they may be made of, are chiefly owing to the Division that has been made of that Art into many Branches.”
(The Fable of the Bees, Volume two)
References
The Wealth Of Nations, Glasgow Edition, footnote to page 27, section I.ii.3
External links
Text of the original poem
Downloads of several editions of The Fable of the Bees
Hutcheson, Smith and the Division of Labor
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The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order
By Bernard E. Harcourt
(2011)
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Why American History Is Not What They Say It Is: An Introduction to Revisionism
By Jeff Riggenbach
(2009)
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Colonial Script
Contributed by David Hayes
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Lyndon LaRouche
THE ROOTS OF THE AMERICAN SYSTEM:
From Cameralism, to the American System of Economics
By Nancy Spannaus
Printed in the American Almanac, 1996
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How the Nation was Won: America's Untold Story, 1630-1754

(1987)
By H Graham Lowry
Patriots Who Fought For the American Republic
Part I:
James Fenimore Cooper and the Society of the Cincinnati
By Patrick Ruckert
Part II:
THE AMERICAN PATRIOT: The Patriot File, Unearthed
By Anton Chaitkin
&
The Erie Canal: How American Patriots Fought for Infrastructure
By Judy Hodgkiss
Part III:
Rediscovering Mathew Carey;
`The Olive Branch': How a Book Saved the Nation
By Roger Maduro
with
Excerpts from `The Olive Branch'
Part IV:
John Quincy Adams Battles for the American System
By Denise M. Henderson
Rekindling the Spark of Liberty: Lafayette's Visit to the United States, 1824-1825
By William Jones
Andrew Jackson as A Treason Project
By Anton Chaitkin
The Legacy of Friedrich List: The American System's Battle Against British Free Trade
By Lawrence Freeman and Marsha L. Bowen
The British East India Company's War Against the United States
By Jeffrey Steinberg
`A Time of Unexampled Prosperity': The Great Mississippi Bubble
By Washington Irving
Who Was Benjamin Franklin?
By H. Graham Lowry
Lincoln's American System vs. British-Backed Slavery
By Anton Chaitkin
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SCHILLER INSTITUTE
Schiller Institute/ICLC Conference
"The Palmerston Zoo"
How the Venetian Virus Infected and Took Over England
By H. Graham Lowry
Presidents Day, 1994
This report is adapted from presentations delivered to the Conference of the Schiller Institute/ICLC Conference in suburban Washington, D.C. on President's Day weekend, 1994. See “Solving the Paradox of Current World History" for the setting of the following articles. It was published as a special report by EIR, and is available in photocopy. Contact Schiller Institute at email or phone numbers listed below.
Links to the all the articles and panel presentations are included.
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RE-CREATING THE REPUBLIC
How Abraham Lincoln Organized Victory For the Union
By H. Graham Lowry
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Mont Pelerin Society: Satanism and Genocide
By Allen Douglas
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Executive Intelligence Review (LaRouche Publications – Article Archive)
ECONOMICS OF MEGACHURCHIANITY
PART 1
Church Tradition, Transformation, and Transition
ECONOMICS OF MEGACHURCHIANITY
PART 2
Communitarian Church Growth Movement
ECONOMICS OF MEGACHURCHIANITY
PART 3
Language of the Communitarian Church

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Everett M. Dirksen
Calvinist upbringing | daughter married Senator Howard Baker
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Isaiah Berlin, part 1: what is liberalism?
Ann Coulter's sustained attack on liberalism as a leftwing philosophy demonstrates a confusion about its political origins
Isaiah Berlin, part 2: what is 'good' freedom?
Isaiah Berlin's ideas of positive and negative liberty reveal that the search for freedom is more complex than we suppose
Isaiah Berlin, part 3: The anti-liberalism of the 'big society'
Both Red Tory and Blue Labour favour 'thick' societies, risking a loss of diversity for the social solidarity of close-knit community
Isaiah Berlin, part 4: Liberalism's flawed freedom
Liberalism is good at saying what it is against, but not what it is for – other than a vague expression of freedom
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Silent No More Publications
Money – Defending Your Prosperity II
By Kirk McKenzie
YouTube: silentnomorepubs
How To Take Our Country Back I – Strategy
How To Take Our Country Back II - Tactics (1/7)
Why We Are In So Much Debt I: Concepts (full video)
Why We Are In So Much Debt II: The History (full video)
Why We Are In So Much Debt III: Solutions
Aaron Russo's Thoughts On Banking & Bankers
1913
This short video shows how the U.S. Government was effectively overthrown in 1913 via 3 changes, all sponsored by the Money Power:
16th Amendment
17th Amendment
Federal Reserve Act
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Ethics
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Theonomy
Theonomy is a theory in Christian theology that God is the sole source of human ethics. The word theonomy derives from the Greek words “theos” God, and “nomos” law. Cornelius Van Til argued that there "is no alternative but that of theonomy or autonomy" (Christian Theistic Ethics p. 134). Among Reformed Christians, John Calvin, the Continental Reformers, the Westminster Divines and other Puritans, and Christian Reconstructionists have developed similar ethical perspectives, but the term is not limited to the Reformed.
The non-Reformed theologian Paul Tillich used the term "theonomy" to describe his ethical perspectives, albeit in a manner diametrically opposed to its use by Reformed writers in the Christian Reconstructionist movement. Between the views of the Reformed and Tillich are found various Evangelical, Dispensationalist (usually not mentioned outside systematic theology texts) and Roman Catholic theonomies.
The Bible Opposes Socialism Part 1
(A Theonomy Resources learning presentation)
By Steve C. Halbrook
Amitai Etzioni
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Influence Peddling
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Human Trafficking
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Parasitism
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Biomimicry
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Bioethics
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Mailstar.net – The Jewish Utopia
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Libya: Soros behind "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) as a form of Global Governance, from Peter Myers
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Convergence
Sakharov, Golitsyn and East-West Convergence towards World Government
(World Federalism)
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ASI presents: Hillary, Walter Cronkite and World Government
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Unveiled
It is our illusions that create the world.
~Didier Cauwelaert

In the movie the Matrix, after Neo takes the red pill,
he reaches out and touches the mirror...
And discovers that the mirror is not a mirror at all...
At that moment, Neo takes the first step out of the
Matrix... And into the truth behind it...
Ancient yogis and spiritual teachers have always said
that Life is an Illusion... A hologram... A virtual reality
And for you to awaken, you must see and experience
true reality... the truth behind the illusion.
In this mind-bending course, Eric Pepin brings ancient teachings
into modern times and brings you the raw truth behind the Matrix.
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Simulacrum
SIMULACRUM (simulacra): Something that replaces reality with its representation. Jean Baudrillard in "The Precession of Simulacra" defines this term as follows: "Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.... It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody. It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real" (1-2). His primary examples are psychosomatic illness, Disneyland, and Watergate. Fredric Jameson provides a similar definition: the simulacrum's "peculiar function lies in what Sartre would have called the derealization of the whole surrounding world of everyday reality"
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Simulacra and Simulation
Simulacra and Simulation (Simulacres et Simulation in French) is a philosophical treatise by Jean Baudrillard seeking to interrogate the relationship among reality, symbols, and society.

Overview

The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.
[This quotation is credited to Ecclesiastes, but there is no such quote in the Old Testament.]
Simulacra and Simulation is most known for its discussion of images, signs, and how they relate to contemporaneity. Baudrillard claims that our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience is of a simulation of reality. Moreover, these simulacra are not merely mediations of reality, nor even deceptive mediations of reality; they are not based in a reality nor do they hide a reality, they simply hide that anything like reality is irrelevant to our current understanding of our lives. The simulacra that Baudrillard refers to are the significations and symbolism of culture and media that construct perceived reality, the acquired understanding by which our lives and shared existence is rendered legible; Baudrillard believed that society has become so saturated with these simulacra and our lives so saturated with the constructs of society that all meaning was being rendered meaningless by being infinitely mutable. Baudrillard called this phenomenon the "precession of simulacra".

"Simulacra and Simulation" breaks the sign-order into 4 stages:

1. The first stage is a faithful image/copy, where we believe, and it may even be correct that, a sign is a "reflection of a profound reality". This is a good appearance, in what Baudrillard called "the sacramental order".
2.The second stage is perversion of reality, this is where we believe the sign to be an unfaithful copy, which "masks and denatures" reality as an "evil appearance - it is of the order of maleficence". Here, signs and images do not faithfully show us reality, but can hint at the existence of something real which the sign itself is incapable of encapsulating.
3.The third stage masks the absence of a profound reality, where the simulacrum pretends to be a faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original. Signs and images claim to represent something real, but no representation is taking place and arbitrary images are merely suggested as things which they have no relationship to. Baudrillard calls this the "order of sorcery".
4.The fourth stage is pure simulation, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part of images or signs is only of the order of other such claims.

Simulacra and Simulation identifies three types of simulacra and identifies each with a historical period:

1. First order, associated with the premodern period, where the image is clearly an artificial placemarker for the real item. The uniqueness of objects and situations marks them as irreproducibly real and signification obviously gropes towards this reality.
2. Second order, associated with the modernity of the Industrial Revolution, where distinctions between image and reality break down due to the proliferation of mass-reproducible copies of items, turning them into commodities. The commodity's ability to imitate reality threatens to replace the original version, especially when the individual person is only concerned with consuming for some utility a functional facsimile.
3. Third order, associated with the postmodernity, where the simulacrum precedes the original and the distinction between reality and representation vanishes. There is only the simulacrum, and originality becomes a totally meaningless concept.
Baudrillard theorizes that the lack of distinctions between reality and simulacra originates in several phenomena:
1. Contemporary media including television, film, print and the Internet, which are responsible for blurring the line between goods that are needed and goods for which a need is created by commercial images.
2. Exchange value, in which the value of goods is based on money rather than usefulness.
3. Multinational capitalism, which separates produced goods from the plants, minerals and other original materials and the processes used to create them.
4. Urbanization, which separates humans from the natural world.
5. Language and ideology, in which language is used to obscure rather than reveal reality when used by dominant, politically powerful groups.
A specific analogy that Baudrillard uses is a fable derived from On Exactitude in Science by Jorge Luis Borges. In it, a great Empire created a map that was so detailed it was as large as the Empire itself. The actual map grew and decayed as the Empire itself conquered or lost territory. When the Empire crumbled, all that was left was the map. In Baudrillard's rendition, it is the map that people live in, the simulation of reality, and it is reality that is crumbling away from disuse.
The transition from signs which dissimulate something to signs which dissimulate that there is nothing, marks the decisive turning point. The first implies a theology of truth and secrecy (to which the notion of ideology still belongs). The second inaugurates an age of simulacra and simulation, in which there is no longer any God to recognize his own, nor any last judgment to separate truth from false, the real from its artificial resurrection, since everything is already dead and risen in advance.
It is important to note that when Baudrillard refers to the "precession of simulacra" in Simulacra and Simulation, he is referring to the way simulacra have come to precede the real in the sense mentioned above, rather than to any succession of historical phases of the image. Referring to "On Exactitude in Science", he argued that just as for contemporary society the simulated copy had superseded the original object, so, too, the map had come to precede the geographic territory (c.f. Map–territory relation), e.g. the first Gulf War (see below): the image of war preceded real war.
Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map.
See also
Simulated reality
Public Opinion
The Matrix
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Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard (27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and post-structuralism.
Life
Baudrillard was born in Reims, northeastern France, on July 27, 1929. He told interviewers that his grandparents were peasants and his parents were civil servants. During his high school studies at the Reims Lycée, he came into contact with pataphysics (via the philosophy professor Emmanuel Peillet), which is said to be crucial for understanding Baudrillard's later thought. He became the first of his family to attend university when he moved to Paris to attend Sorbonne University. There he studied German language and literature, which led to him to begin teaching the subject at several different lycées, both Parisian and provincial, from 1960 until 1966. While teaching, Baudrillard began to publish reviews of literature and translated the works of such authors as Peter Weiss, Bertolt Brecht, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann.

During his time as a teacher of German language and literature, Baudrillard began to transfer to sociology, eventually completing his doctoral thesis Le Système des objets (The System of Objects) under the dissertation committee of Henri Lefebvre, Roland Barthes, and Pierre Bourdieu. Subsequently, he began teaching sociology at the Université de Paris-X Nanterre, a university campus just outside of Paris which would become heavily involved in the events of May 1968. During this time, Baudrillard worked closely with Philosopher Humphrey De Battenburge, who described Baudrillard as a "visionary". At Nanterre he took up a position as Maître Assistant (Assistant Professor), then Maître de Conférences (Associate Professor), eventually becoming a professor after completing his accreditation, L'Autre par lui-même (The Other by Himself).

In 1970, Baudrillard made the first of his many trips to the USA (Aspen), and in 1973, the first of several trips to Japan (Kyoto). He was given his first camera in 1981 in Japan, which led to his becoming a photographer.

In 1986 he moved to IRIS (Institut de Recherche et d'Information Socio-Économique) at the Université de Paris-IX Dauphine, where he spent the latter part of his teaching career. During this time he had begun to move away from sociology as a discipline (particularly in its "classical" form), and, after ceasing to teach full time, he rarely identified himself with any particular discipline, although he remained linked to the academic world. During the 1980s and 1990s his books had gained a wide audience, and in his last years he became, to an extent, an intellectual celebrity, being published often in the French- and English-speaking popular press. He nonetheless continued supporting the Institut de Recherche sur l'Innovation Sociale at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and was Satrap at the Collège de Pataphysique. Baudrillard taught at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee and collaborated at the Canadian theory, culture and technology review Ctheory, where he was abundantly cited. In 1999-2000, his photographs were exhibited at the Maison européenne de la photographie in Paris. In 2004, Baudrillard attended the major conference on his work, "Baudrillard and the Arts," at the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe in Karlsruhe, Germany.



Core Ideas



Baudrillard was a social theorist and critic best known for his analyses of the modes of mediation and technological communication. His writing, though mostly concerned with the way technological progress affects social change, covers diverse subjects — including consumerism, gender relations, the social understanding of history, journalistic commentaries about AIDS, cloning, the Rushdie affair, the first Gulf War and the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City.

His published work emerged as part of a generation of French thinkers including Gilles Deleuze, Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan who all shared an interest in semiotics, and he is often seen as a part of the poststructuralist philosophical school. In common with many poststructuralists, his arguments consistently draw upon the notion that signification and meaning are both only understandable in terms of how particular words or "signs" interrelate. Baudrillard thought, as many post-structuralists, that meaning is brought about through systems of signs working together. Following on from the structuralist linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, Baudrillard argued that meaning (value) is created through difference - through what something is not (so "dog" means "dog" because it is not-"cat", not-"goat", not-"tree", etc.). In fact, he viewed meaning as near enough self-referential: objects, images of objects, words and signs are situated in a web of meaning; one object's meaning is only understandable through its relation to the meaning of other objects; in other words, one thing's prestige relates to another's mundanity.

From this starting point Baudrillard constructed broad theories of human society based upon this kind of self-referentiality. His pictures of society portray societies always searching for a sense of meaning — or a "total" understanding of the world — that remains consistently elusive. In contrast to poststructuralists such as Foucault, for whom the formations of knowledge emerge only as the result of relations of power, Baudrillard developed theories in which the excessive, fruitless search for total knowledge lead almost inevitably to a kind of delusion. In Baudrillard's view, the (human) subject may try to understand the (non-human) object, but because the object can only be understood according to what it signifies (and because the process of signification immediately involves a web of other signs from which it is distinguished) this never produces the desired results. The subject, rather, becomes seduced (in the original Latin sense, seducere, to lead away) by the object. He therefore argued that, in the last analysis, a complete understanding of the minutiae of human life is impossible, and when people are seduced into thinking otherwise they become drawn toward a "simulated" version of reality, or, to use one of his neologisms, a state of "hyperreality." This is not to say that the world becomes unreal, but rather that the faster and more comprehensively societies begin to bring reality together into one supposedly coherent picture, the more insecure and unstable it looks and the more fearful societies become. Reality, in this sense, "dies out."

Accordingly, Baudrillard argued that the excess of signs and of meaning in late 20th century "global" society had caused (quite paradoxically) an effacement of reality. In this world neither liberal nor Marxist utopias are any longer believed in. We live, he argued, not in a "global village," to use Marshall McLuhan's phrase, but rather in a world that is ever more easily petrified by even the smallest event. Because the "global" world operates at the level of the exchange of signs and commodities, it becomes ever more blind to symbolic acts such as, for example, terrorism. In Baudrillard's work the symbolic realm (which he develops a perspective on through the anthropological work of Marcel Mauss and Georges Bataille) is seen as quite distinct from that of signs and signification. Signs can be exchanged like commodities; symbols, on the other hand, operate quite differently: they are exchanged, like gifts, sometimes violently as a form of potlatch. Baudrillard, particularly in his later work, saw the "global" society as without this "symbolic" element, and therefore symbolically (if not militarily) defenseless against acts such as the Rushdie Fatwa or, indeed, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the United States and its military establishment (see below).

In 2004, the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies was launched.



The object value system


In his early books, such as The System of Objects, For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, and The Consumer Society, Baudrillard's main focus is upon consumerism, and how different objects are consumed in different ways. At this time Baudrillard's political outlook was loosely associated with Marxism (and situationism), but in these books he differed from Marx in one significant way. For Baudrillard, it was consumption, rather than production, which was the main drive in capitalist society.

Baudrillard came to this conclusion by criticising Marx's concept of "use-value." Baudrillard thought that both Marx's and Adam Smith's economic thought accepted the idea of genuine needs relating to genuine uses too easily and too simply—despite the fact that Marx did not use the term 'genuine' in relation to needs or use-values. Baudrillard argued, drawing from Georges Bataille, that needs are constructed, rather than innate. He stressed that all purchases, because they always signify something socially, have their fetishistic side. Objects always, drawing from Roland Barthes, "say something" about their users. And this was, for him, why consumption was and remains more important than production: because the "ideological genesis of needs" precedes the production of goods to meet those needs.
He wrote that there are four ways of an object obtaining value. The four value-making processes are as follows:
The first is the functional value of an object; its instrumental purpose. A pen, for instance, writes; and a refrigerator cools.
 
The second is the exchange value of an object; its economic value. One pen may be worth three pencils; and one refrigerator may be worth the salary earned by three months of work.
 
The third is the symbolic value of an object; a value that a subject assigns to an object in relation to another subject. A pen might symbolize a student's school graduation gift or a commencement speaker's gift; or a diamond may be a symbol of publicly declared marital love.
 
The last is the sign value of an object; its value within a system of objects. A particular pen may, while having no added functional benefit, signify prestige relative to another pen; a diamond ring may have no function at all, but may suggest particular social values, such as taste or class.

Baudrillard's earlier books were attempts to argue that the first two of these values are not simply associated, but are disrupted by the third and, particularly, the fourth. Later, Baudrillard rejected Marxism totally (The Mirror of Production and Symbolic Exchange and Death). But the focus on the difference between sign value (which relates to commodity exchange) and symbolic value (which relates to Maussian gift exchange) remained in his work up until his death. Indeed it came to play a more and more important role, particularly in his writings on world events.
    Simulacra and Simulation

As he developed his work throughout the 1980s, he moved from economically based theory to the consideration of mediation and mass communications. Although retaining his interest in Saussurean semiotics and the logic of symbolic exchange (as influenced by anthropologist Marcel Mauss), Baudrillard turned his attention to Marshall McLuhan, developing ideas about how the nature of social relations is determined by the forms of communication that a society employs. In so doing, Baudrillard progressed beyond both Saussure's and Roland Barthes' formal semiology to consider the implications of a historically understood (and thus formless) version of structural semiology. The concept of Simulacra also involves a negation of the concept of reality as we usually understand it. Baudrillard argues that today there is no such thing as reality.
Simulation, Baudrillard claims, is the current stage of the simulacrum: All is composed of references with no referents, a hyperreality. Progressing historically from the Renaissance, in which the dominant simulacrum was in the form of the counterfeit—mostly people or objects appearing to stand for a real referent (for instance, royalty, nobility, holiness, etc.) that does not exist, in other words, in the spirit of pretense, in dissimulating others that a person or a thing does not really "have it" -- to the industrial revolution, in which the dominant simulacrum is the product, the series, which can be propagated on an endless production line; and finally to current times, in which the dominant simulacrum is the model, which by its nature already stands for endless reproducibility, and is itself already reproduced.


Some examples Baudrillard brings up of the simulacrum of the model are: 1) the development of nuclear weapons as deterrents—useful only in the hyperreal sense, a reference with no real referent, since they are always meant to be reproducible but are never intended to be used—2) the (former) Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, which replaced a New York of constantly competing, distinct heights with a singular model of the ultimate New York building: already doubled, already reproduced, itself a reproduction, a singular model for all conceivable development, and 3) a menage-a-trois with identical twins where the fantasy comprises having perfection reproduced in front of your eyes, though the reality behind this reproduction is nil and impossible to comprehend otherwise, since the twins are still just people. The very act of perceiving these, Baudrillard insists, is in the tactile sense, since we already assume the reproducibility of everything, since it is not the reality of these simulations that we imagine (in fact, we no longer "imagine" in the same sense as before; both the imagined and the real are equally hyperreal, equally both reproducible and already reproductions themselves), but the reproducibility thereof. We do not imagine them reproduced for us, since the original image is itself a reproduction—rather, we perceive the model, the simulation.


The end of history and meaning
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, one of Baudrillard's most common themes was historicity, or, more specifically, how present day societies utilise the notions of progress and modernity in their political choices. He argued, much like the political theorist Francis Fukuyama, that history had ended or "vanished" with the spread of globalization; but, unlike Fukuyama, Baudrillard averred that this end should not be understood as the culmination of history's progress, but as the collapse of the very idea of historical progress. For Baudrillard, the end of the Cold War was not caused by one ideology's victory over the other, but the disappearance of the utopian visions that both the political Right and Left shared. Giving further evidence of his opposition toward Marxist visions of global communism and liberal visions of global civil society, Baudrillard contended that the ends they hoped for had always been illusions; indeed, as his book The Illusion of the End argued, he thought the idea of an end itself was nothing more than a misguided dream:
The end of history is, alas, also the end of the dustbins of history. There are no longer any dustbins for disposing of old ideologies, old regimes, old values. Where are we going to throw Marxism, which actually invented the dustbins of history? (Yet there is some justice here since the very people who invented them have fallen in.) Conclusion: if there are no more dustbins of history, this is because History itself has become a dustbin. It has become its own dustbin, just as the planet itself is becoming its own dustbin.
Within a society subject to and ruled by fast-paced electronic communication and global information networks the collapse of this façade was always going to be, he thought, inevitable. Employing a quasi-scientific vocabulary that attracted the ire of the physicist Alan Sokal, Baudrillard wrote that the speed society moved at had destabilized the linearity of history: "we have the particle accelerator that has smashed the referential orbit of things once and for all."

In making this argument Baudrillard found some affinity with the postmodern philosophy of Jean-François Lyotard, who famously argued that in the late Twentieth Century there was no longer any room for "metanarratives." (The triumph of a coming communism being one such metanarrative.) But, in addition to simply lamenting this collapse of history, Baudrillard also went beyond Lyotard and attempted to analyse how the idea of forward progress was being employed in spite of the notion's declining validity. Baudrillard argued that although genuine belief in a universal endpoint of history, wherein all conflicts would find their resolution, had been deemed redundant, universality was still a notion utilised in world politics as an excuse for actions. Universal values which, according to him, no one any longer believed universal were and are still rhetorically employed to justify otherwise unjustifiable choices. The means, he wrote, are there even though the ends are no longer believed in, and are employed in order to hide the present's harsh realities (or, as he would have put it, unrealities). "In the Enlightenment, universalization was viewed as unlimited growth and forward progress.

Today, by contrast, universalization is expressed as a forward escape."

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"Magick" is Illuminati's Most Potent Weapon

By Henry Makow

I was taught Communism was "public ownership" and the overthrow of capitalist tyranny, not how certain capitalists stole the wealth of other capitalists while pretending to champion the working class. This indeed is "Magick" a.k.a. deception, propaganda, education, the "news."

(This is an update of an important article, "The Illuminati World of Make-Believe" first posted four years ago.)

If you asked Genghis Khan for his formula for world conquest, you'd expect to hear "overwhelming force" or "terror."

You would NOT expect to hear, "'Make-believe.'"


"Make-believe?" Who is this tyrant? Walt Disney?


Yet in the First Protocol of the "
Protocols of the Elders of Zion," the author says three times, Our Countersign is "Force and Make-believe."

"Make-believe" is the Illuminati's "Magick." Magick is simply deceit or lying which is pretty easy to do when you own the mass media and educators.
The evil magician Aleister Crowley defined Magick as "the science and act of causing change to occur in conformity with will... any willed change in ourselves or in our environment is Magick."
In other words, Magick is reshaping the world according to their interests. The Illuminati are masters at using false pretexts to do this. Our reality is largely their magick spell.

I finally noticed this when I read
"The Truth About the Slump" (1931) by A.N. Field. The Bolshevik Revolution was portrayed as an egalitarian revolt. In fact, the Illuminati Jewish bankers financed it to confiscate Russian industry. (pp.62-72)

German Secret Service documents instructed the Bolsheviks to "destroy the Russian capitalists as far as you please, but it would by no means be possible to permit the destruction of Russian enterprises."
The German Imperial Bank sent the Bolsheviks in excess of 60 million rubles. Documents 10 and 11 between the bankers and the Bolsheviks "give a complete synopsis of the terms on which the German banks after the war were to control Russian industry." (p. 69)
Of course German Secret Service Chief Max Warburg, the brother of US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Warburg, was behind this. We're talking about international bankers and their confederates here.

DIS-ILLUSION

I was taught Communism was "public ownership" and the overthrow capitalist tyranny. I was not taught that Communism was how certain capitalists stole the wealth of other capitalists while pretending to champion the working class.
The international bankers used US Treasury money to finance both the Bolshevik Revolution and the USSR. (Collective Speeches of Congressman Louis T. McFadden, Chairman, House Banking Committee, p 397.)
The Third Baron Rothschild was a Soviet agent and half the British establishment were Soviet assets.
What a triumph of "make-believe" Communism was! Think of the millions of idealists who devoted their lives to this farce? Think of the millions who died in World War Two when the same bankers financed Hitler to keep Stalin in line? Think of the trillions of dollars spent in the Cold War? "Make-believe!" Think of how little we in the West hear of Stalin's or Mao's atrocities compared to Hitler's. (See my "The Other Side of Holocaust Denial")
If Communism was a ruse, we can assume that every major historical event and cultural trend in modern Western History, including the religion of "secular humanism and modernism", are also the products of "make-believe."
If they could pull off the Communist fraud, the 9-11 attacks and the "War on Terror" are small potatoes.
ZIONISM


Some people think the central bankers are instituting their world dictatorship on behalf of the Jewish people. This is understandable since the same bankers (Rothschild, Schiff, Warburgs etc.) were the official leaders of the Jewish community.
They financed most Jewish organizations and political movements where Jews are prominent. Conversely, they denied funding and publicity to competing Jewish groups.
Louis B. Marshall, (1856-1929) the Counsel to bankers Kuhn Loeb said in a letter dated Sept. 26 1918, "Zionism is but an incident of a far-reaching plan: it is merely a convenient peg on which to hang a powerful weapon."
Gee, how would Jews who dedicated their lives to a "national homeland" react to this news? Or to the information that the new Israeli Supreme Court is filled with Masonic symbolism designed to serve the New World Order?
Recalling that "force" is the other half of the formula, Marshall's letter ended with a threat to non-Zionist Jews: "All the protests they may make would be futile. It would subject them individually to hateful and concrete examples of a most impressive nature. Even if I were disposed to combat Zionism, I would shrink from the possibilities that might result."
This letter was addressed to Max Senior, a businessman and philanthropist, who had asked Marshall to speak out against Zionism (Marshall posed as an anti-Zionist.)
The threat is indicative of the gangster tactics Zionists used against the Jewish community. Senior was quick to react. He replied to Marshall Sept. 30 1918:
"I repudiate any connection on national, religious, racial or cultural grounds, with 'national home-land for the Jews in Palestine.' We have seen how demoralizing a divided allegiance was to the Germans in this country. I do not pretend to know the inside political history and intricacies of policy at which you hint...I am not to be intimated into silence by either of the threats you mention...I regard the real danger to the Jew to lie in the silent acquiescence to the Zionist claims." (L. Fry, Waters Flowing Eastward, p.55)

CONCLUSION

Communism and Zionism are just "incidents in a far reaching plan" to create a "world government" dictatorship dedicated to Lucifer run by the central bankers.
The "powerful weapon" is the energy of organized Jewry in helping to overthrow the Christian basis of Western Civilization and ushering in the "New Age."
Communism is satanic. Its emblem, the five-pointed star, is Satanic. The Communist Manifesto calls for the destruction of the family, culture, science and religion (atheism), the confiscation of property and inheritance, control of communication and dictatorship. It also called for private central banks and income tax. Yet it has been tolerated and even glorified.
Thanks to "Magick," the masses have been tricked into advancing the Illuminati's satanic agenda. The Cold War, 9-11, the War on Terror, the Credit Crunch and the current Sovereign Debt Crisis -- are all "Magick" - false pretexts to achieve their diabolical evil.

In order to build the "New" world order, they need to destroy the old. "Magick" refers to the specious excuses they use.