Saturday, June 06, 2009

[thought for the day] saturday evening

Freedom is the freedom to say two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

[George Orwell, 1949]

[yesterday's men] when your race is run






Because when you're told to start
How far can you go
When your race is won
And you already know

Because when you're told to stop
How far will you go
When your race is run
And you already know

Yesterday's men hang on to today,
To sing in any old way,
It must get better in the long run
Has to get better in the long run

Will it get better in the long run
Will we be here in the long run


[d day] the german perspective

It's difficult to get good source material from the German perspective due to the lack of English language German accounts and the Nazi and Allied propaganda of the time.

However:



German students' perspective is one of liberation, not defeat.

The German Army from D-day to Villers-Bocage
:

The Allied landings on the Normandy beaches in June 1944 were brilliantly executed but proved to be just the opening phase of a desperately-fought campaign. The German Army responded to the invasion with as much ferocity and force as it could muster, showed tenacity and determination and turned the struggle for Normandy into a brutal and prolonged campaign.

Here is an account of the U.S. Exercise Tiger which went wrong:

Lured across the English Channel by an unexpected frenzy of radio chatter, the Nazi predators sliced through the waves toward an unknown enemy. It was shortly after midnight on April 28, 1944. Within a matter of 2-1/2 hours, an ambush by a German E-boat flotilla had brought misery to hundreds of American families.

A secret dress rehearsal for D-Day had been interrupted with deadly consequences. As hundreds of American servicemen floundered amid the burning oil and cold water off England's southern coast, futile cries of "help" and "mom" echoed across the darkness. At least 749 U.S. sailors and soldiers would be dead by dawn.

Code-named Exercise Tiger, the ill-fated D-Day dry run was at the time America's costliest incident of the war (only Pearl Harbor was worse). The attack claimed more than three times as many lives as the amphibious landing at Utah Beach in France, the assault they had been practicing for at Slapton Sands in picturesque Devon county.

Steve Sadlon, who was a radio operator aboard the first landing craft struck by the German E-boats that night, recalls being awakened by the "scraping" sound of a torpedo that failed to detonate. Moments later, an explosion ripped through LST 507, which was fully loaded with trucks, military equipment and soldiers. (LST is an acronym for Landing Ship, Tank.)

"It was an inferno," said Sadlon, speaking from his home in Ilion in upstate New York. "The fire was circling the ship. It was terrible.

"Guys were burning to death and screaming. Even to this day I remember it. Every time I go to bed, it pops into my head. I can't forget it."

This disaster may have helped the D Day invasion and the subsequent campaign.

The enemy on D Day:

Opposed to the Allies was the so-called Army Group B of the German Army, consisting of the Seventh Army in Normandy and Brittany, the Fifteenth Army in the Pas de Calais and Flanders, and the LXXXVIII Corps in Holland -- all under command of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.

Commander of all German forces in western Europe was Field Marshal von Rundstedt who, in addition to Group B, also had at his disposal Group G composed of the First and Nineteenth Armies. In all, Von Rundstedt commanded approximately fifty infantry and ten Panzer divisions in France and the Low Countries.

[airbus faulty again] monotonous regularity


Faulty speed meters

Speaking at a press conference in Paris, the director of France's air accident investigation agency, Paul-Louis Arslanian ... confirmed that the missing jet had had a problem calculating its speed, adding that it was a recurring problem on the A330s and that Airbus was undertaking a replacement programme. "We have seen a certain number of these types of faults on the A330," Mr Arslanian said. "There is a programme of replacement, of improvement." But he insisted the planes were safe in the meantime.

AIRBUS: One, two, three, four, five.

[key stages 1-10] in becoming a worker bee



1. In this pluralistic, all inclusive society, anyone will be given a chance to belong:

I believe passionately in the definition of civil society of Mr Mandela, who says that civil society is anyone who stands up.

2. Only the brightest and best will be accepted into this exclusive group:

Common Purpose are looking for candidates who are:

*senior decision-makers within the area covered by the programme
*interested in contributing to the future of their area.

3. Applicants will be considered according to their:

*current responsibility as a leader through work or community activity
*involvement within the area covered by the programme
*likely contribution to the perspectives and dynamics of the group
*ability to participate fully in the Common Purpose programme.

4. You're expected, when you first hear the gobbledegook spoken, not to question or ask for a translation but to adopt the new mode of speech as is; most likely you will already be adept in Bureaubamboozle:

Multi-organisational working, cross-boundary working and the global-national-local interface each raise their own set of organisational dynamics which must be surfaced and worked with if collaboration is to be effective.

5. On the grounds that you are now 'one of us' on probation, when we present you with questionable programmes we're involved in, you are expected to go along with and even embrace these:

InfraGard is an information sharing and analysis association of businesses, academic institutions, state and local law enforcement agencies, and other participants dedicated to sharing information and intelligence …

Robert S. Mueller, III, Director Federal Bureau of Investigation:

I want to turn for a moment to counterintelligence intrusions and economic espionage. There is no shortage of countries that seek our information technology, our innovation, and our intelligence—information we have spent years and billions of dollars developing. The simple truth is we do not protect cyber space to the same degree we protect our physical space. We have in large part left the doors open to our business practices, our sensitive data, and our intellectual property.

We understand that we must continue to work closely with all of you—members of the private sector and the academic community. Think of the fusion center as a hub, with spokes that range from federal agencies, software companies, and ISPs, to merchants and members of the financial sector.

Industry experts from companies such as Cisco, Bank of America, and Target sit side-by-side with the FBI, postal inspectors, the Federal Trade Commission, and many others, sharing information and ideas. Together, we have created a neutral space where cyber experts and competitors, who might not otherwise collaborate, can talk about cyber threats and security breaches.

Members from a host of industries, from computer security to the chemical sector, share information about threats to their own companies, in their own communities, through a secure computer server. We are also reaching out to academia. In 2005, we created the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board. We asked your president, Graham Spanier, to lead the group. We knew it wouldn't be an easy sell, because of the perceived tension between law enforcement and academia.

Therefore, as we've dropped big names and painted a picture of an ongoing grand work in progress which ants like yourself are now privileged to contribute towards, it is expected you'll be in awe and won't draw attention to anomalies such as why exactly ' we must continue to work closely with all of you', wshen there is no necessity whatsoever. This is above you, so stop analysing and get on-board.

6. There are assumed collective mental positions which, if you're to work under this roof, you will subscribe to.

‘A “slide” is a prefabricated, politically correct, blanket pop opinion, “view” or “take” upon a particular issue of general interest which is designed to preclude further consideration, analysis or investigation of the issue in question.

This paper seeks to fill this gap, by drawing both upon theoretical literature and experience with successful change facilitation practices from Europe and the US. Its focus is on the cognitive aspects of strategic orientation and provides a practical guide to those who use this process.

7. You are expected to contribute to discussions by parroting the gobbledegook of the adepts and following the 'paint by numbers' easy guide on how to think, in order to arrive at your position, which will inevitably lead to group acceptance and a sense of well-being.

Beyond Bullets, addressing Groupthink, wrote:

It's fine to assume these things, as long as we're aware that our default mode of presenting and informing also means that there is little room for thinking, challenging, dialogue and debate -- a fertile breeding ground for groupthink. The way we use PowerPoint only adds fertilizer to this stagnant pool, because a slide filled with bulleted text only increases the illusion of certainty for presenters and the feeling of passivity for audiences.

8. You must develop a vocabulary of ad hominem, e.g. 'pseudo', 'shill', in order to tear down any diverse opinion and to ridicule the one[s] from whom it emanated.

Lest anyone be confused, this is quite the opposite situation from when former NYT pseudo-reporter/White House shill, Judy Miller, was subpoenaed and went to jail for failing to reveal her sources in the CIA leak case. In her case she was refusing to name White House officials who were involved in government wrongdoing in which she had a role.

9. On a mock-scientific basis, your 'irrational' beliefs will be challenged and reframed.

The NLP Milton model uses non-specific and metaphoric language allowing the listener to fill in the gaps, making their own meaning from what is being said, finding their own solutions and inner resources, challenging and reframing irrational beliefs.

Grinder and Bandler stated that there were a few common traits expert communicators – whether top therapists, top executives or top salespeople – all seemed to share:

Everything they did in their work, was pro-active (rather than reactive), directed moment to moment by well-formed outcomes rather than formalized fixed beliefs.

A Well-formed outcome is a term originating in neuro-linguistic programming for an outcome one wishes to achieve, that meets certain conditions designed to avoid (1) unintended costs or consequences and (2) resistance to achieving the goal resulting from internal conflicting feelings or thoughts about the outcome.

If the Little Red Book says your view is irrational, please believe that your view is irrational and will need to be corrected.

10. You are now ready to take your place as a worker bee in the hive, contributing your small part to the Great Work of Ages. By the way, you are forbidden to view such degenerate films as 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' or to suggest that we'll all soon be subject to Nurse Ratched.

Friday, June 05, 2009

[death of a government] a musical tribute










So, on with the Doc Martens, boys and girls and let's help this government out of its misery ...

[By the way, top backing band, the Blockheads, didn't you think?]

[thought for the day] friday evening

Oh liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!

[Mme Roland, de Lamartine, 1847]

[caroline flint] is it true?

My favourite pollie - no, no! Is it true she's gone? All right, her mind might be stuffed with socialist maggots and she might say some amazingly stupid things but she can be looked at, let's be honest, in a George Harrison/Spice Girls sort of way.

Dear oh dear. Caroline? !

Sob.

Blognor Regis on the situation.

Si salvi chi puo'!

This is the best take on it I've seen.  It shows Flint to have been at once naive and opportunistic, as well as self-centred enough to think Labour owed her a place in the inner circle.  There is also the fact that she has been one of the co-conspirators holding meetings about that very topic.

[boris] has he thinned down a bit?

[weekend poll] sexiest brit public figure

1 Anne "Hope You Die Happy" Robinson


2 Kate Middleton with best pal


3 Julia "Beyond Authority" Middleton


4 Cherie Blair [thanks Bloggerheads]


5 Harriet Harman with best pal


6 Ann Widdecombe


7 Jacqui Smith [being investigated for porn connections]


8 The Chipmunk


9 Polly Toynbee - Blogger advises that posting photos of this lady breaches its terms and conditions


10 Gordo 'I love England' Brown


[oh my goodness] the price of delusion

BBC:

Defence Secretary John Hutton, another leading Blairite, said Mr Purnell had made "the wrong decision" and Mr Brown was "the right man to lead our party and our country".

[sotomayor] and subjective views of reality


Under the heading ‘Sotomayor Racist Comments Controversy Spreads Through Battle Lines’ one article says:

Sotomayor's extreme likelihood of confirmation almost makes these alleged racist comments unlikely to make a big difference. Yet it will take up a few news cycles as Sotomayor faces racist comment charges while preparing for her hearings.

Sotomayor has been vetted and considered as a Supreme Court justice before, and was the favorite to be nominated this time for weeks, so foes have had a lot of time to find something.

That's as maybe but it doesn't seem to me that the issue is really her racist comments but her record of judgements and just why she is the darling of Obama. This is a pure power game going on here with the stacking of the Supreme Court and that's why the right is up in arms.

Having said that, I thought Gingrich and Co. and the Starr Scandal brought the level of political debate to an all time low [before Obama], much as this blog holds no brief whatsoever for Clinton. There was just too much of the Andy Johnson stitch-up in that and Gingrich's credentials rightly became zero.

With that also having been said, Cassandra makes some good points about subjectivism and objectivism:

The blatant class justice and 'reverse' racism on display all over the Western hemisphere and how this is apparently the natural standard for entire cohorts of postmodernists, is reaching fever pitch! Case in point: Sonio Sotomayor, Obama's pick for the US Supreme Court.

In modern times the notion was introduced by Immanuel Kant. He stopped just short of proposing the possibility of personal 'realities'. Instead he posited social subjectivism, the collectivist idea that social groups create their own realities.

Followers carried the idea to further extremes: there is no reason why mankind should not consist of competing groups, each with their own type of consciousness, vying with others for the control of reality.

Postmodernism (now mainstream) furnished ethnic groups with their own mental constitution, a racial or cultural version of subjective 'truth,' that may be invalid for others. This is what present day multiculturalists term 'the narrative'.

A multicultural society is a socially subjective political system: an archipelago of distinct autononous cultural and racial islets (others would say, ghettos). Although politicians like to present the doctrine as synonymous with 'a society consisting of multiple cultures' this is emphatically not the case. On the contrary, it is legalized segregation and the diametrical opposite of 'melting pot.'

Now this last paragraph is the issue here and it is explained further:

As long as all groups abide by the principle that each and every culture is equally valid and autonomous in its own right, it is just the dissenters, apostates and outcasts who are thrown under the bus. But as soon as one tribe starts developing theories about its own supremacy, or becomes envious of more successful ones, or becomes predatory - to mention but a few wildly speculative possibilities - it's back to the drawing board of human civilization for the survivors (if any).

In a social or political setting the objective approach seeks to apply equal rules and treatment for all concerned, without regard of the individual involved - baron or beggar - or his particular circumstances or background: murder is murder, no matter who committed it.

Objectivity has been the highest standard of moral judgment for a very long time.

I'm sure you've latched on to the bottom line – that Obama and similar thinking people have created urban myths of their own, each group wrapped in their own subjective idea of reality when in fact, the thing is bollocks. There are certain facts and figures – population, GDP etc., which just ARE.

We could go into the rewriting of history but it would make the post too long [and I am going to post on the revisionist redating of the gospels if I can condense all the material] but suffice it to say that:

Sotomayor was racist in her remark, however innocuous.

Whether that should exclude her or not is not really the point here. The point is – the rule should equally apply to all and, as Cassandra wrote: 'This is emphatically not the case.' There is also the question of her character and personal fitness or not to hold that office.

[truth] obama style

Obama:

He cited the Koran as saying: "Be conscious of God and speak always the truth."

That's interesting. There's an element to the Christian faith [and no doubt in the Muslim too] that if you know something to be true but you deliberately lie, especially when backsliding from your faith, you're headed for the hot place:

“I’ve always been a Christian,” the Illinois Democrat responded. “I have never practiced [Islam].”Note: The newspaper editors had to add the word, “Islam.”

In his autobiography, “Dreams From My Father,” Obama mentions studying the Quran. He was enrolled in two Jakarta schools as a Muslim. His teacher Tine Hahiyary said that she remembered that he had studied “mengaji” (recitation of the Quran).” Classmate Rony Amiris described Obama as being a very devout Muslim, saying, “Barry was previously quite religious in Islam.”

Another classmate,
Emirsyah Satar, now the CEO of Garuda Indonesia, was quoted as saying, “He (Obama) was often in the prayer room wearing a ’sarong.’” (See Obama’s Education.) Yet, on his official campaign website, Obama has posted this statement, “Barack has never been a Muslim or practiced any other faith besides Christianity.”

Is this the sort of 'speak always the truth' he's referring to?

[wind turbine] at home in your front yard


Thursday, June 04, 2009

[quick quiz] for the hell of it


1. Who quipped about recognizing old age when the policemen on the street look so young?

2. What was Richard Nixon's daughter's dog named?

3. What's the curved surface of water in a container referred to as?

4. What did Bernard Bosanquet invent - in India it's called a doosra?

5. What's a name for intricately carved wood panelling, especially a room made from this?

Answers

Seymour Hicks, Checkers, meniscus, googly or bosie, boiserie

[thought for the day] thursday evening

The condition upon which G-d hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.

[John Philpot Curran, 1790]

[cascade of failure] not a comedy of errors


So sad:

The plane's last automated messages detail a series of failures that end with its systems shutting down, suggesting the plane broke apart in the sky, according to the aviation industry official.

The pilot sent a manual signal at 11 p.m. local time Sunday saying he was flying through an area of black, electrically charged cumulonimbus clouds that come with violent winds and lightning.

Ten minutes later, a cascade of problems began: Automatic messages indicate the autopilot had disengaged, a key computer system switched to alternative power, and controls needed to keep the plane stable had been damaged. An alarm sounded indicating the deterioration of flight systems.

Three minutes after that, more automatic messages reported the failure of systems to monitor air speed, altitude and direction. Control of the main flight computer and wing spoilers failed as well.


The Tenerife disaster was not so much a cascading failure but a conjunction of independent circumstances or comedy of errors, equally as bad.

The former can be designed for to an extent; the latter is near-impossible to contend with.

[eu elections] conflict in terms

As this blog does not recognize the institution of the EU [as distinct from the EEC] and as Lisbon has not been ratified, then these elections are a sham and this humble blogger doesn’t intend to comment any further on them.

Thank you.

[odd one out] who doesn’t belong and why










[philosophy] sophistry and pseudo-intellectualism

Wittgenstein, in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1922] opined:

What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

It would surprise some for an anti-philosopher to quote Wittgenstein but there we are. In that matter, he was quite right.

One of the major tasks of my students at university was to take tomes by seemingly eminent writers and to spend 70% of the available time translating them into a form of English that an educated English speaker could comprehend, thence to break down the key concepts into clear writing and the remaining 10% of the time both internalizing the points made and deciding if they were worth the effort of undertaking the exercise in the first place.

I reject utterly the thesis that in order to be labelled intellectual, one must speak or write in an unintelligible manner, coining obscure personal definitions and bamboozling the hoi-polloi with one’s erudition. There is, unfortunately, in academia, this attitude that to retain one’s chair, one must speak and write in a learned [read opaque] form and there are various assumed unassailable truisms, e.g. Voltaire had something edifying to say.

The thing one must never do is to mock the holy cows, something I very much did in my piece on philosophy being sophistry. You’d need to be a roamer of the hallowed halls to appreciate how badly that post would have gone down in certain circles and how ‘lager loutish’ the writer of it would be viewed by his erstwhile colleagues. ‘Philistine’, ‘pseudo-intellectual’ and ‘amateur’ are just three ad hominems to be flung at such a one who would thus betray his peer group.

It’s not the philosophy itself which I take issue with but the way certain assumptions about the deist position are taken as read before the discussion even gets underway. The false syllogisms and the false first premises in philosophical discussions, as taught in university courses, can be both breathtakingly specious and horrifying at the same time, especially when ad hominem is projected back onto the detractor, never an acceptable position in a philosophical discussion in the first place.

Hence my charge of sophistry in the manner in which philosophical discussion takes place in so many instances.

Cassandra may be right to say that philosophy does not equal sophistry but the two certainly have a nodding acquaintance with one another in the halls of academia.

On Saturday there’ll be a short post showing how the use of gobbledegook to reinforce, in the initiate, the all-knowingness of the adept is a key strategy in the broader community, particularly with groups like Common Purpose.

Wednesday, June 03, 2009

[thought for the day] wednesday evening

The people never give up their liberties, except under some delusion.

[Edmund Burke, 1784, attributed]

[ladies and gays] your word is my command

This blog, having come under fire lately for the vastly out of proportion representation of scantily clad females of a youngish aspect [all over 23], hereby presents twelve specimens of male hunkdom for your delectation.

May I also humbly submit that, on Friday, there’s a little post coming up to further redress the balance. After that, we’ll see what we can do for the trannies and metros.













There you go.

[bonking] an honest answer to blogger queries


Certain of you august readers did raise the question about poor Julia, so this is an attempt to fill you in with part of an article about her:
Die NPD gibt den Volkstribun als Antiglobalisierungspartei und Hüterin der völkischen Identität. Offen bekennt sie sich dabei nur zu ihrer Ablehnung der Europäischen Integration und aller Weltoffenheit. Vor dem Hintergrund vermeintlicher Standort- und Demographieargumente leben die NPD-Politiker ihre Xenophobie aus. Dabei nutzen sie die Verunsicherung der Bevölkerung in Zeiten von Sozialabbau und Arbeitsplatzunsicherheit.
Hope that makes it clear.

One needs to be careful with certain foreign names in the English sphere and certain English language names in the foreign sphere. For example, a Russian friend of mine once advised me to be careful when mentioning the British writer Minette Marrin. I was asked if it woud not be perhaps better to refer to her as Ms Marrin?


[robot logic] k.i.s.s.


Dylan Evans wrote, in Robot logic, on August 23, 2004:

Isaac Asimov’s solution to the problem of robots harming humans was to program all robots to follow these three laws:

1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence but not in conflict with the First or Second Law.

Programming dilemmas

These laws might seem like a good way to keep robots in their place but they pose more problems than they solve. Asimov was well aware of this, and many of his short stories revolve around their implicit contradictions and dilemmas.

# For a start, programming a real robot to follow the three laws would in itself, be very difficult.

# The robot would need to be able to recognise humans and not confuse them with chimpanzees, statues and other humanoid robots.

# To follow rule two, the robot would have to be capable of recognising an order and to distinguish this from a casual request — something well beyond the capability of contemporary artificial intelligence, as those working in the field of natural language processing would attest.

# To follow any of the three laws, the robot would have to determine how they applied to the current situation, involving complex reasoning about the future consequences of its own actions and of the actions of other robots, humans and other animals in the vicinity.

# A robot needs to know its geographical restrictions. Standing in the Arctic, it might reason that it could take food to Africa and thereby save a child from starvation. If it remains in the Arctic, the robot would, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm, thus contravening the first law.

# What about conflict between one law and another? The hierarchical nature of the laws solves that.

# What about conflict between multiple applications of the same law?

For example, what if a robot was guarding a terrorist who had planted a time bomb? If the robot tortured the terrorist in an attempt to find out where the bomb had been planted, it would break the first law; but if the robot didn't torture the terrorist, it would also break the first law by allowing other humans to come to harm.

Lateral solution

Lord T's solution to the dilemmas is:

# Build robots, not in the image of humans but considerably smaller and single purpose;

# Give them simplistic command and respond codes, with no capacity for independent thought.

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

[thought for the day] tuesday evening

When the people contend for their liberty, they seldom get anything by their victory but new masters.

[George Saville, Marquess of Halifax, 1750]

[caption time] stranger things have happened

[sexiest pollie] results

Click here for the results to this poll.

[explain please] what's with this d day fiasco?

Help me out here please. Who is actually responsible for the D Day/Queen fiasco?

The Queen was embarrassed by remarks made by Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, at the weekend that he had "done his public duty" by accepting an invitation from French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

In an interview on the BBC, Mr Brown said: "If the Queen wanted to attend these events, or if any member of the Royal family wanted to attend these events, I would make that possible."


Did Sarkozy snub her or was it that Brown b--g-red up the protocols? Will someone tell me?

[andrew] marring the noble science of interviewing

Hands up all those who think Andrew Marr is a total sycophant? Who'd like to see Brown face Paxman?

[gnosis] gnosticism, gnostics

It will take a man or woman of great perspicacity to see through Gnosis because it is a subtle, spiritual appeal to the intellectual mind, it encourages an attitude of outward gentility and tolerance in its devotees and casts any form of dogma or referral to a set of universal truths as blunt, brutal things, spouted by minions of a less transcended, more primitive being.

A young man [or woman] of intellect, thirsting for knowledge and answers to the whys and wherefores of life is going to be attracted to the mystic elements of gnosis and overly impressed by its long history, where he would be repelled by the take-it-or-leave-it dogma and narrowmindedness of the only manifestation of Christianity allowed to be made visible to a sceptical world, especially that vision projected by the fundamentalist American Right and exacerbated by fanatical, seemingly intolerant and inflexible disciples of weirdo sects.

Gnosis helps this perception along, ignoring the quite gentle nature of grass roots Christianity and instead emphasizing the hellfire and brimstone aspect, which is so far from an accurate reading of the synoptic gospels as to induce tears from that vast misrepresented and slandered group of ordinary men and women you never get to hear from.

Taking Gnosis to task casts the detractor as an unreasoning, narrow-minded brute, steeped in dogma and conversely, casts the Gnostic as an unharmful, gentle soul who believes in the fusion of all religion and would simply like to be allowed to get on with his own pursuit of spiritual ascendancy without coming under fire, a view quite appealing to a libertarian, for example. That the hellfire and brimstone detractors are their own worst enemies only lends validity to the image which the Gnostic seeks to project.



Christianity, in its visible form, visible to a non-believing wider world, I mean, has always meant the bloody Crusades, the Inquisition’s torture chambers, the moral crusaders, the intolerant bible bashers, the corrupt Church with its selling of pardons, child molesting and so on and so on. Literature, popular tradition and the fifth column within the Church-State nexus, have always perverted the true nature of the message and reinforced this image in people’s minds for two millennia now.

People like Jimmy Swaggart, Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise do nothing to dispel this.

Any PR agency, if it wanted, could do the same with Gnosis. Gathering some charismatic but slightly dodgy figures together to argue for Gnosis, this agency could then progressively reveal its flaws, ‘accidentally’ revealing child sacrifices, social destabilization, it’s connection with the kabbalistic and satanic and the corruption of its disciples. There’d be fisking on the net and exposes on TV. It could bring the most esoteric and opaque apologist for Gnosis onto a chat show with a less than intellectual audience and turn everybody off. It’s the oldest trick in the book - discrediting a movement and its devotees by means of tearing down strawmen.

Yet the Gnostics are left largely untouched.

What we have here is the most ancient of ongoing battles from far earlier than the relative newcomer, Christianity, back even before the ziggurats on the Babylonian plains, back to the dawn of time. Gnosis is correct in saying it has always existed and the Keepers of the Transcended Wisdom, they who come from the stars, from another dimension, have been at it since the earliest times.

Gary H. Kah, in "En Route to Global Occupation", Huntington House, 1991, wrote:

Gnosticism, the most effective and widely accepted form of pantheism, was more deceptive and clever than the others, developing the occult's only major counter explanation to the Message and Person of Christ. The Gnostics were the chief adversaries of the Apostle Paul and the early Church, relentlessly pursuing Christians wherever they went, long before the mystery religions even began to crumble.

The world has remained largely ignorant of this eternal war and the problem is that even scholastic Christians must admit that what the other side says does refer to historical events and what could well be truths, albeit selectively chosen, incorrectly interpreted, twisted and arranged to open a portal for one you really don’t want to have as your god. It’s a finely woven pantheistic synthesis of all religions and philosophical thought, the ‘big tent’ concept, thereby appealing to a far broader base than mere Christianity, Islam, Judaeism or any other single school of thought.

The concept of striving to reach the Light, of the perfectability of man to a state of Illumination, even draws people like technophiles under its canopy, using other-worldly but beautiful phraseology which creates a feeling, in earnest scholars, that there has to be something in this, doesn’t there?

As with the Masons, the down side is never mentioned to the Blue Orders, only the mystical aspects of transcendence.

Leaving Gnosis aside for one moment, it’s as well to know what satanism preaches, in all its manifestations, through Baal, Moloch, Kali, Ea, Ishtar, Matreya, Set, the Sumerian, the Assyrian – take your pick.



The Cult of Lucifer

Let’s dispel the illusion straight away peddled by those projecting themselves, by means of esoteric rhetoric, as historical scholars, that Satan and Lucifer are two separate entities. Satan is simply a derogatory term used by the detractors of the fallen Lucifer, especially by Christians. It does not refer to a separate entity in any way, except in non-biblical literature.

Luciferianism preaches:

1. Dualism or the dual nature of man which manifests itself in acts of philanthropy, balanced by atrocity.

2. That power passes to humans at the points of birth and death. That’s why an animal is bled over a human and the blood is drunk at the point of death. That animal can be human, the younger and ‘purer’ the better, hence the traffic in human female children.

3. That sexuality is far more than reproduction, it being tied in with the Sacred Feminin and so involves participation in ancient mystery rituals of sexual ‘celebration’, accompanied, at Grand Climax, by death of the victim.

4. That Man has been misled into thinking that the creator is ‘good’ whereas he is flawed and has brought into existence a flawed world with wars, suffering and horror. He allows these things to continue because the creator is bad, flawed – quite persuasive, yes?

5. That Man should not artificially place limits on his instincts and feelings - that if he is angry, it’s OK to kill, that if he feels lust, it’s OK to rape, that if he feels happy, it’s OK to sing, that if it’s necessary to climb higher, it’s OK to betray. It’s never mentioned that the longer one places no self-limits on oneself, the more bestial and the more easily enslaved one becomes by one’s own emotions, which are progressively more easily manipulated.

According to the satanists/luciferinans, the True God, Lucifer, draws man into a realization of the piece of divinity within him, the soul, the ‘divine spark’ and so, from the Tower of Babel through to modern technology, man must ignore the namby-pamby, flawed weakness of the false creator and his pathetic ‘faith, hope and charity’ and instead strive towards a new form of Man – a Nietzschean superman, with a divine king to inspire him, ultimately revealed as Lucifer, of course, the lightbearer, the bringer of true synthetic, relativistic wisdom.

Through the ensuing carnage, suffering, betrayal, desolation, personal despair and misery, all laid at the door of the false creator, Man throws off the shackles placed on him by a cynical god, becomes strong and perfects himself.

Also sprach Zarathustra was yet another example of this motif of false dualism which, if a significant number of people are fooled by it, can cause mayhem.

People do actually believe this stuff.



Gnosticism – views from within

In this I quote heavily from Stephan A. Hoeller (Tau Stephanus, Gnostic Bishop):

The Gnostic concept of the world sounds a little different, ‘the knowledge of transcendence arrived at by way of interior, intuitive means, most Gnostic scriptures taking the form of myths, as distinct from the dogmas of theology or the statements of philosophy.’

So, in one fell swoop, the positivist philosophy I attacked the other day, all other forms of philosophy, Christianity plus any other form of understanding of the world not Gnostic in nature, is consigned to the scrapheap.

‘Gnostics hold that the world is flawed because it was created in a flawed manner. In order to nourish themselves, all forms of life consume each other, thereby visiting pain, fear, and death upon one another.

Genesis, according to the Gnostic, was a myth in declaring that transgressions committed by the first human pair brought about a ‘fall’ of creation, resulting in the present corrupt state of the world’, a selective distortion of what Christianity actually says, a strawman in fact. Gnostics respond to their own strawman by saying that ‘this interpretation of the myth is false’.

‘The blame for the world’s failings lies not with humans, but with the creator. In the Gnostic world, there are many beings and one is called Sophia [or wisdom].

In the course of her journeys, Sophia came to emanate, from her own being, a flawed consciousness, a being who became the creator of the material and psychic cosmos, all of which he created in the image of his own flaw.

This being, unaware of his origins, imagined himself to be the ultimate and absolute God, the Demiurge, but was not and brought chaos. Humankind contains a perishable physical and psychic component, as well as a spiritual component which is a fragment of the divine essence.

Human nature mirrors the duality found in the world: in part it was made by the false creator God and in part it consists of the light of the True God.
The recognition of this dual nature of the world and of the human being has earned the Gnostic tradition the epithet of “dualist”.

Humans are generally ignorant of the divine spark resident within them. This ignorance is fostered in human nature by the influence of the false creator and his Archons, who together are intent upon keeping men and women ignorant of their true nature and destiny.

Humans are caught in a predicament consisting of physical existence combined with ignorance of their true origins, their essential nature and their ultimate destiny. To be liberated from this predicament, human beings require help, although they must also contribute their own efforts.

Ignorance - whereby is meant ignorance of spiritual realities - is dispelled only by Gnosis, and the decisive revelation of Gnosis is brought by the Messengers of Light, especially by Christ, the Logos of the True God.’

This Christ is not Jesus of Nazareth, by the way but an entirely different being. Guess who? Remember, as a human, you are ignorant and only these Messengers of Light can lead you to perfection by going through the Inferno [fire] of matter and the Purgatory of morals to arrive at the spiritual Paradise. That ‘passing through the fire’ motif yet again.

Gnosis dispels other modes of thought as well:

‘Karma, at best, can only explain how the chain of suffering and imperfection works and to worship the cosmos or nature or embodied creatures is thus tantamount to worshipping alienated and corrupt portions of the emanated divine essence.

Thus, Gnosis, with one stroke of the pen, eliminates eastern religions and Paganism and instead, institutes a mish-mash of religions and world movements into an all-in-one explanation, ultimately controlled by the ‘True God’.’

The Gnostic apologists state: ‘The God concept is more subtle than that of most religions. In its way, it unites and reconciles the recognitions of Monotheism and Polytheism, as well as of Theism, Deism and Pantheism. One may begin to recognize that it is in fact the most sensible of all explanations.’

All eminently reasonable, yes? Appeals very much to the young philosopher who yearns to know about the cosmos and the meaning of life.



What is the gnostic view of ethics and morals?

‘If the words ‘ethics’ or ‘morality’ are taken to mean a system of rules, then Gnosticism is opposed to them both’, an attractive view for those of a libertarian bent.

‘Rules of conduct may serve numerous ends, including the structuring of an ordered and peaceful society, and the maintenance of harmonious relations within social groups. Rules, however, are not relevant to salvation; that is brought about only by Gnosis. Morality therefore needs to be viewed primarily in temporal and secular terms.’

Do as thou wilt shall be the whole law, with no constraint whatsoever, except that which you impose on yourself.

‘Gnosticism embraces numerous general attitudes toward life: it encourages non-attachment and non-conformity to the world, a ‘being in the world, but not of the world’; a lack of egotism; and a respect for the freedom and dignity of other beings. Nonetheless, it appertains to the intuition and wisdom of every individual ‘Gnostic’ to distil from these principles individual guidelines for their personal application.’

A practical application of this is that if you are angry with someone, you may strike him down and kill him; if you desire some girl, you may rape her, as there is no danger of non-salvation attached to your act; what you did is largely irrelevant in terms of you spiritually ‘finding yourself’.

The only constraint on such acts is if it impairs your spiritual journey upwards.

Like the myth of the Muslim 72 virgins, it’s a seductive, persuasive and pervasive world view, appealing to people on many levels, from the scholastic halls of learning to the gullible seeking for an answer, especially an easy, neat answer which ties up the loose ends and explains all, which is philosophy’s remit as well.

To embrace Gnosticism labels you as an august scholar, not least because it attracts those who would be august scholars.

Contrast that with Christianity and its seeming anomalies, heavily dependent on acceptance of a metaphysical plane and on belief as its driving force.

Christianity has its second side though – the caring ministry of practical help, support, charity and compassion, never mentioned by its detractors except for the ungracious rejoinder, ‘Well they don’t have a monopoly on compassion, do they?’

Question - if you were starving in an economic depression, would you rather go for relief to a Salvation Army soup kitchen, to a Gnostic discussion group or to a Luciferian ‘raped baby on the bonfire’ sacrificial ritual?

Which do you feel you’d get the most compassionate treatment from?


Gnosticism – views from without

From "En Route to Global Occupation" by Gary H. Kah

If Kabalism could be viewed as the occult counter-explanation of the Old Testament, Gnosticism, existing as a further development of Kabalism and taking into account Satan's "new problem" posed by the risen Christ, would serve as the main occult counterattack against the New Testament. Thus, Kabalism and Gnosticism combined, composed a type of occult parallel to the Old and New Testaments.

Gnosticism, although originally composed of Jewish occultists, rapidly gained Gentile followers until it soon became predominantly Gentile. As the priesthoods were forced to take on new forms, Gnosticism became a magnet for these occult adepts. Branches of Gnosticism represented the first significant secret societies of the post-resurrection era with various degrees or levels of initiation and the inner circle of initiates worshiping Lucifer.

From Albert Pike, ‘Morals and Dogma’:

"The Gnostics derived their leading doctrines and ideas from Plato and Philo, the Zend-avesta and the Kabalah,and the Sacred books of India and Egypt; and thus introduced into the bosom of Christianity the cosmological and theosophical speculations, which had formed the larger portion of the ancient religions of the Orient, joined to those of the Egyptian, Greek, and Jewish doctrines, which the New-Platonists had equally adopted in the Occident" (Morals and Dogma, 248).

Pike shows the connection: Kabbalah-Gnosticism-Templars-Masons-Satan. Madonna’s mocking of the cross in Moscow was but one manifestation of the interconnection.

"The Templars, like all other Secret Orders and Associations, had two doctrines, one concealed and reserved for the Masters . . . the other public . . . Thus they deceived the adversaries whom they sought to supplant." (Morals and Dogma, 817-818).



From "En Route to Global Occupation" by Gary H. Kah:

Gnosticism flourished through various offshoots such as the Manicheans of the third century, the Euchites of the fourth century, the Paulicans of the seventh century, and the Bogomils of the ninth century (Nesta H. Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, Hawthorne, CA, 1924, p.32-34, 63).

It is not possible within the scope of this book to identify and define each branch of Gnosticism that has existed over the centuries, but the following teaching of the Bogomils will give us an idea of what beliefs the Knights Templars embraced before passing them on to Freemasonry.

‘God, the Supreme Father, has two sons, the elder Satanael, the younger Jesus. To Satanael, who sat on the right hand of God, belonged the right of governing the celestial world, but filled with pride, he rebelled against his Father and fell from Heaven. Then, aided by the companions of his fall, he created the visible world, image of the celestial, having like the other its sun, moon, and stars, and last he created man and the serpent which became his minister.

Later Christ came to earth in order to show men the way to Heaven, but His death was ineffectual, for even by descending into Hell He could not wrest the power from Satanael, i.e., Satan. This belief in the impotence of Christ and the necessity therefore for placating Satan, not only "the Prince of this world," but its creator, led to the further doctrine that Satan, being all-powerful, should be adored.’ (Ibid., 63).


Albert G. Mackey: Encyclopedia of Freemasonry


From Edith Starr Miller, Occult Theocracy, Hawthorne, CA, 1933:

"Pike named the Order the New and Reformed Palladian Rite. Historian Edith Starr Miller describes it as neo-Gnosticism, "teaching that the divinity is dual and that Lucifer is the equal of Adonay (Ibid., 216-217). It is in fact Lucifer who is worshipped within this Rite of Freemasonry."

This comes from an article on the Priory of Sion and also seems relevant:

The Priory of Sion is a secret society whose roots are believed by some to go back to the 12th century but some believe the Priory can trace its heritage back to the 1st century AD. It was at this time that Ormus was converted to the Gnostic view of Christianity by Mark, a disciple of Jesus.

It was Ormus who founded a secret society, which united esoteric Christianity with the teachings of the pagan mystery schools. He adopted the symbol of a cross, surmounted by a rose, to symbolize the specifically pagan brand of Christianity he embraced. The symbol of a red or 'rosy' cross was later adopted by the Templars, while the cross with surmounting rose was embraced by the medieval Rosicrucians.

The Priory of Sion consisted of an inner circle of initiates, which controlled the Knights Templar from above. Whatever aim the Priory or Freemasons may have had formerly, their long-term goal today is referred to as "The Great Work of Ages" and consists of a plan to centralize power and impose a global dictatorship.

Conclusion

Call Gnostics what you like but do not call them innocent philosophers with the good of the world at heart. They have a specific agenda, just as do all other arcane and nefarious organizations.