by Terry Melanson - April 27, 2012

Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith, by James H. Billington, is arguably the most valuable reference on revolutionaries ever written. (The softcover that I purchased in 2004 is in tatters from overuse and nearly impossible to handle; the situation is the same, I suspect, for many students and historians of the subject.) The body of the text is remarkable enough, however his extensive notes also feature a narrative full of minutia, and multiple citations ranging from a paragraph to a full page. I continually mine it for new leads, and constantly discover that many of the obscure older sources – once only housed in prestigious University and libraries – are now accessible on the internet.

An example that I’ve found lately is a 1910 article by Otto Karmin. Here’s the passage from Billington followed by citations (pp. 93, 537-8):

In the early days of the revolution, Masonry provided much of the key symbolism and ritual—beginning with the Masonic welcome under a “vault of swords” of the king at the Hotel de Ville three days after the fall of the Bastille.^[36] To be sure, most French Masons prior to the revolution had been “not revolutionaries, not even reformers, nor even discontent”;^[37] and, even during the revolution, Masonry as such remained politically polymorphous: “Each social element and each political tendency could ‘go masonic’ as it wished.”^[38] But Masonry provided a rich and relatively nontraditional foraging ground for new national symbols (coins, songs, banners, seals), new forms of address (tu, frère, vivat!), and new models for civic organizations, particularly outside Paris.^[39]

[…]

36. On the use of the voûte d’acier on Jul 17, see J. Palou, La Franc-maçonnerie, 1972, 187.

37. D. Mornet, Les Origines intellectuelles de la révolution française (1715–1787), 1954, 375; discussion 357–87; bibliography, 523–5; and outside of France, Billington, Icon, 712–4. A. Mellor, Les Mythes maçonniques, (1974) also minimizes Masonic influence, though vaguely acknowledging the influence of the occultist revival on the revolutionary movement.

38. Ligou, “Source,” 46, also 49.

39. This subject has never been comprehensively studied. For the best discussions in general terms, see O. Karmin, “L’Influence du symbolisme maçonnique sur le symbolisme révolutionnaire,” Revue Historique de la Révolution Française, 1910, I, 183–8 (particularly on numismatics); J. Brengues, “La Franc-maçonnerie et la fête révolutionnaire,” Humanisme, 1974, Jul–Aug, 31– 7; Palou, 181–215; R. Cotte, “De la Musique des loges maçonniques à celles des fêtes révolutionnaires,” Les Fêtes de la révolution, 1977, 565–74; and the more qualified assessment of Ligou, “Structures et symbolisme maçonniques sous la révolution,” Annales Historiques, 1969, Jul Sep, 511–23.

For the heavy reliance on Masonic structures in provincial civic rituals, see, for instance, F. Vermale, “La Franc maçonnerie savoisienne au début de la révolution et les dames de Bellegarde,” Annales Révolutionnaires, III, 1910, 375–94; and especially the monumental work for la Sarthe which lifts the level of research far above anything done for Paris: A. Bouton, Les Franc-maçons manceaux et la révolution française, 1741–1815, Le Mans, 1958. See also his successor volume Les Luttes ordentes des francs-maçons manceaux pour l’établissement de la république 1815–1914, Le Mans, 1966.

In the New World, where the links between Masonic and revolutionary organizations were particularly strong, rival revolutionary parties sometimes assumed the names of rival rites. In Mexico, for instance, escoceses (pro-English “centralists” from Scottish rite lodges) battled yorquinos (federalists from the rite of York introduced by the first U.S. ambassador, Joel Poinsett). See A. Bonner, “Mexican Pamphlets in the Bodleian Library,” The Bodleian Library Record, 1970, Apr, 207–8.

Leads a plenty.

It was the Karmin article, after finding it online, which compelled me to compile “Masonic Emblems on Coins and Medallions during the French Revolution.”

Basically, what he did was mine the data in a standard numismatic reference work and highlight the examples of Masonic influence – minus illustrations, hence the need for my own treatment. The evidence is clear and seems deliberate, although one isn’t quite sure whether the artists involved were actually Masons themselves.

(more…)

• Robespierre and the Mother of God (part 1 - 2 - 3)
• Duchanteau and Claviere, alchemists (1 - 2 - 3)

JACK CORAGGIO - March 24, 2012

WASHINGTON — At every corner, beneath you and above you and to all sides, the inscrutably familiar symbolism of the Freemason organization is hidden in plain sight. This historic home is like a dollar bill—if a dollar bill was priceless.

Think of that pyramid and unblinking illuminated eye on the back of a dollar; these kinds of symbols are methodically carved or built into the walls of a house that has been revitalized in Washington, and so are the squares and the suns that denote the historic and quietly influential fraternity.

These icons are found in the most cleverly apt places. A ceiling lamp hangs from a depiction of a glowing sun, suns are found in fireplace mantles, and, in fact, in any place the image could illuminate. Consider the circular window on the due solar west end of the home.

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Through A Glass Darkly with Paul and Phillip Collins- Episode 2

Paul and Phillip Collins are the authors of The Ascendancy of the Scientific Dictatorship and contribute to the outstanding website www.conspiracyarchive.com. This episode is part 2 of Imperial Providence: Examining the Religion of Empire.

Through A Glass Darkly with Paul and Phillip Collins- Episode 3

This is Part Two of ”Imperial Providence- Examining the Religion of Empire”. This week, Paul and Phillip examine the Russian variant of mystical imperialism.

Through A Glass Darkly with Paul and Phillip Collins- Episode 4

The Collins Brothers continue with their discussion of mystical imperialism- this week, they take a closer look at the satanic foundation to empire building.

Christopher Slobogin - Apr. 11, 2012

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) recently issued “Guidelines for Access, Retention, Use, and Dissemination by the National Counterterrorism Center and Agencies of Information in Datasets Containing Non-Terrorism Information” [PDF]. As this prolix title implies, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), the key agency for organizing and analyzing national security intelligence, routinely acquires and accesses datasets about US citizens that contain personal details having nothing to do with terrorism. These datasets could contain information about credit card transactions, airline reservations, phone and ISP communications, bank, tax and social security records and perhaps even medical consultations. Nowhere do the guidelines mention these datasets by name, but previous intelligence practices make clear they are among the sources the NCTC wants to consult. While the government was probably collecting much of this information before the events of September 11, 2001, since that time it has clearly been aggressively engaged in doing so, through a series of programs known successively as Total Information Awareness, Terrorism Information Awareness, ADVISE (Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement) and, most recently, “fusion centers,” where information from various sources is “fused” together.

Before promulgation of the guidelines, the government could legally retain information that is not presently linked to national security concerns for no longer than six months. The guidelines extend that period to at least five years. The impetus for this change was undoubtedly the belief that effective counter-terrorism is possible only if intelligence agencies have access to every conceivably relevant piece of information, which is less likely to occur if datasets are frequently purged.

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April 15, 2011 issue of Catholic San Francisco

This is an excerpt from a talk by French philosopher Fabrice Hadjadj March 24 in Paris at an event that was part of a Vatican-sponsored initiative to create dialogue among Catholics and atheists and agnostics in Europe, called the Courtyard of the Gentiles after a section of the ancient Jewish Temple that was accessible to non-Jews. He contrasts the “trasumanar,” or openness of heaven, of Dante’s Paradiso and the “transhumanism” of the first director general of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Julian Huxley. Rome journalist Sandro Magister published an English translation of highlights of the talk on his website, chiesa.espressonline.it.

“Transhumanism” was coined in 1957 by the biologist Julian Huxley, the first director general of UNESCO. What is interesting is that this first director general of UNESCO did not at all mean what Dante did by “transhumanism.” His thought, in fact, goes radically against that of the “Divina Commedia.” But it has the advantage of making manifest the only alternative that is posed today in the modern world.

Brother of Aldous Huxley, the author of “Brave New World,” Julian Huxley might have been expected to be inoculated against any temptation to eugenics. Instead the opposite is true. Not that Julian Huxley was inconsistent; no, he was consistent in the extreme. In 1941, at the very time when the Nazis were gassing the mentally ill, Julian Huxley wrote with a certain audacity: “Once the full implications of evolutionary biology are grasped, eugenics will inevitably become part of the religion of the future, or of whatever complex of sentiments may in the future take the place of organized religion.” These statements were written in 1941. But it was in 1947 that they were published in French, when he was already director general of UNESCO. Not one line was changed on that occasion. Of course, Huxley was anti-Nazi, social democratic, and above all anti-racist. But he presumed to replace the traditional religions with biotechnology.

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Cannonfire - April 09, 2012

Since when has it become acceptable for television commercials to tell outright lies? I was under the impression that deceptive advertising was illegal.

You know about Progressive Insurance. That’s the company whose TV ads feature a lovely lady wearing a white uniform and blindingly red lipstick. The folks at Progressive are pushing a device called Snapshot which plugs into your car’s steering column and sends the company information about your driving habits. If you practice good habits, you get a substantial discount.

The question is: How much info are you sending to them? Are they tracking your location via GPS? Are they keeping track of how fast you go?

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Sam Biddle - Apr 5, 2012

Russia and America have been uneasy pals for a while now, but that could all go down the drain in a microwaved hurry: the Rooskies are testing an energy weapon capable of causing extreme pain and mind-control. Russian zombies burning an American flag.

Australia’s Herald Sun reports the beam weapon, trotted out by Russian defense minister Anatoly Serdyukov, is capable of some serious frying:

Precise details have not been revealed but previous research has shown that low-frequency waves or beams can affect brain cells, alter psychological states and make it possible to transmit suggestions and commands directly into someone’s thoughts.

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• The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)
• NSA Chief Denies Domestic Spying But Whistleblowers Say Otherwise
• Scott Horton Interviews James Bamford
• Shady Companies With Ties to Israel Wiretap the U.S. for the NSA
• Surveillance State evils

National Security Agency Whistleblower William Binney On Growing Orwellian State Surveillance (via infiniteunknown)

Tom Blackwell - Mar 14, 2012

Canadians suffer from a “collective national amnesia” regarding Tommy Douglas’s support for eugenics, likely because they are reluctant to taint the medicare pioneer’s glowing image with unsavoury ideas, suggests a prominent McGill University physician in a new analysis.

Biographies and other accounts of Mr. Douglas’s life have either ignored or down-played his striking embrace in the mid-1930s of forced sterilization and segregation for people of “sub-normal” intelligence and morality, says Dr. Michael Shevell in a newly published academic paper.

He argues that people should instead make a point of remembering the CCF/NDP leader’s early advocacy of eugenics as a cautionary tale about simplistic medical solutions to social problems — even as they admire his many other, positive accomplishments.

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Excerpt:

“Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters — all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing,” Petraeus said, “the latter now going to cloud computing, in many areas greater and greater supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum computing.”

Petraeus allowed that these household spy devices “change our notions of secrecy” and prompt a rethink of “our notions of identity and secrecy.” All of which is true — if convenient for a CIA director.

Jay’s Analysis - March 16, 2012

At the end of H.G. Wells’ Outlines of History, he speaks about the “rise of the machines” and their ability to allay the toils of men, granting them more leisure for scientific products, art, and other harmonious progressive pursuits. Education will become universal, and a better world will ensue. Wells was, to be fair, spot on with many of his sci-fi predictions. One can’t but notice that this article confirms his claims from The Time Machine concerning the devolution into “stunted pig-goblin creatures” to quote Alex Jones, likened to the Morlocks, while the elites will become like the Eloi.

However, the rise of the machines has been wilder than even Wells could have imagined, and will probably not be the universal utopia Outlines imagines, but something closer to the dystopia of The Time Machine. In fact, we have reached the point where A.I. is nearing the ability of what we see in many science fiction films and novels, yet I agree with the affirmation of Douglas Hofstadter in Godel, Escher, Bach that we will not achieve self-awareness. Even if this did occur, there is no certain test to determine the existence of “self-awareness,” and the modern scientists who argue to no end against the soul or mind must also take their dogma of the inability to “prove consciousness” and apply it to the golem. On their basis, you could no more prove one than the other. So the reductionists who think consciousness is merely matter have no problem identifying humans as “more complex” computers (like Daniel Dennett). Nevermind that they are all guilty of the naturalistic fallacy.

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Socialism’s one-time interest in eugenics is dismissed as an accident of history. But the truth is far more unpalatable

Jonathan Freedland - Feb 20 2012

Does the past matter? When confronted by facts that are uncomfortable, but which relate to people long dead, should we put them aside and, to use a phrase very much of our time, move on? And there’s a separate, but related, question: how should we treat the otherwise admirable thought or writings of people when we discover that those same people also held views we find repugnant?

Those questions are triggered in part by the early responses to Pantheon, my new novel published this week under the pseudonym Sam Bourne. The book is a thriller, set in the Oxford and Yale of 1940, but it rests on several true stories. Among those is one of the grisliest skeletons in the cupboard of the British intellectual elite, a skeleton that rattles especially loudly inside the closet of the left.

It is eugenics, the belief that society’s fate rested on its ability to breed more of the strong and fewer of the weak. So-called positive eugenics meant encouraging those of greater intellectual ability and “moral worth” to have more children, while negative eugenics sought to urge, or even force, those deemed inferior to reproduce less often or not at all. The aim was to increase the overall quality of the national herd, multiplying the thoroughbreds and weeding out the runts.

Such talk repels us now, but in the prewar era it was the common sense of the age. Most alarming, many of its leading advocates were found among the luminaries of the Fabian and socialist left, men and women revered to this day. Thus George Bernard Shaw could insist that “the only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man”, even suggesting, in a phrase that chills the blood, that defectives be dealt with by means of a “lethal chamber”.

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