Турниры теней

Большая игра - соперничество между Великобританией и Россией за господство в Центральной Азии - продолжалась в течение всего двадцатого века. Несмотря на изменившееся название и характер государственного устройства, Россия по-прежнему играла роль главного соперника Великобритании на Ближнем Востоке и в Центральной Азии. Для таких крупных геополитических субъектов международных отношений, как Соединенное Королевство и Россия, расширение своих интересов на территории Центральной Азии и Ближнего Востока является естественным процессом.

Любое государство с имперскими тенденциями развития, в том числе, например, такие страны, как в свое время Германия, Франция и Соединенные Штаты Америки, рано или поздно приходит к необходимости освоения этого региона. Именно поэтому несколько столетий назад Британская империя начала колонизацию этих территорий и до сих пор продолжает делать все возможное, чтобы устранить конкурентов в этом отношении, рассматривая свою политику на Ближнем Востоке и в Центральной Азии с точки зрения своего естественного права борьбы за жизненное пространство наравне с остальными игроками, которые проявляют такие же имперские тенденции.

Независимость, процветание и развитие государства зависит от наличия и постоянного расширения доступа к природным ресурсам, в том числе энергоносителям (уголь, нефть, газ, уран). Территории Ближнего Востока и Центральной Азии – это жемчужина мировых залежей полезных ископаемых. Но Иран, наравне с Египтом, в этом отношении занимает особое положение.

В отличие от остальных стран этого обширного региона (Ирак, Сирия, Иордан, Саудовская Аравия, Леван, Палестина, Йемен), за исключением Афганистана, Пакистана и Индии, Иран до разделения (с 30 октября 1918 г. по 1 ноября 1922 г.) бывшей Оттоманской империи на отдельные страны, представлял собой независимое государство, которое на протяжении длительного времени довольно успешно отстаивало свою независимость как от турецких, так и английских и российских имперских происков в регионе.

Наиболее успешным игроком в борьбе за контроль над этими территориями оказалась Британская империя, которой удалось, развязав Первую мировую войну, в которую затем были вовлечены империи-соперники Великобритании, положить конец самому существованию таких крупных игроков с имперскими замашками как Германия (Deutsches Reich), Российская империя и Оттоманская империя. В той или иной степени, в результате этой гениальной авантюры, с 1916 по 1922 годы удалось фактически изнутри разрушить государственную инфраструктуру одновременно трех главнейших геополитических противников Британской империи, расчленив территорию этих империй на отдельные независимые маленькие страны, подконтрольные британскому военно-политическому руководству.

Конечно, жизнь вносила свои коррективы и не всё у англичан получилась так, как было задумано с самого начала, но главный приз, в виде россыпи маленьких независимых арабских государств, сформированных британским внешнеполитическим ведомством на месте бывшей Оттоманской империи, они получили. Саудовская Аравия, Сирия, Иордан, Ирак, Леван, Палестина, Йемен были созданы англичанами фактически на пустом месте, если под пустым местом понимать конструктивные усилия и последовательные согласованные устремления арабских племён, направленные на совместное государственное строительство.

Хитростью, подкупом и обманом британским политикам и военным удалось заполучить эти территории под свой контроль, разделив их на маленькие арабские королевства, поставив в каждом короля, наиболее лояльного по отношению к англичанам и наименее конфликтного по отношению к местному населению. Как писала Гертруда Белл (Gertrude Bell), «Никто не знает точно, чего они действительно хотят и что им нужно, меньше всего – они сами, кроме того, что им не нужны мы.» ("No one knows exactly what they do want, least of all themselves, except that they don’t want us.").

Иран, в отличие от этих арабских стран - полностью подконтрольных Великобритании детищ британских разведслужб, оставался относительно самостоятельной фигурой в «Большой игре» и поэтому превратился в поле последующих столкновений британских и советских попыток за контроль над этой богатой нефтью территорией. Наиболее явно это проявилось в период англо-советской оккупации Ирана с 25 августа по 17 сентября 1941 года (Operation Countenance). Тем не менее, Иран сохранял не только независимость, но внутриполитические тенденции свидетельствовали о том, что руководство страны проводит политику явно имперского характера. Заявка Ирана на роль единственной, оставшейся в регионе, империи стала очевидной, в частности, когда Мохаммад Реза Пахлави, 16 сентября 1941 года сменивший на троне своего отца, присвоил себе титул «Шахиншаха» («Король королей»), который является древним полным императорским титулом правителей династии Ахаменидов времён Первой персидской империи.

Сирия, Ирак, Иордан, Палестина и Леван, сгрудившиеся на территории некогда великой Новоассирийской империи середины первого тысячелетия до нашей эры, для обманутых англичанами арабов, выступивших в 1916 году на стороне Великобритании против Оттоманской империи, стали горьким напоминанием о былом величии арабского «плодородного полумесяца» и символом рухнувших надежд на создание истинного единого арабского государства. Для Ирана это стало сигналом для наращивания своих имперских амбиций в отношении этого соседнего с ним региона.
Не удивительно, что англичане, а вместе с ними и американцы, вложившие столько сил и средств в разрушение и дезинтеграцию былых имперских образований, в том числе в этом регионе, испытывают, почти, генетическую неприязнь к любым намёкам на возрождение имперских амбиций со стороны кого бы то ни было. Англосаксонская цивилизация претендует на место единственной в мире мегаимперии и рассматривает борьбу с любым другим государством, выбравшем путь имперского развития, первостепенной по своему значению. Это – борьба за выживание!

Одним из необходимых факторов имперского развития того или иного государства является территориальная особенность его географического положения и численность населения. Обширные территории и большое количество населения, в сочетании с положительной демографической динамикой, делают имперскую политику неизбежной.

Империя превращается в самобытную цивилизацию, созидательные и творческие особенности которой начинают, как магнит, притягивать к себе меньшие по численности и территории народы, которые постепенно органично вписываются в систему государственных отношений. Таким образом империя продолжает расти и расширятся, включая в свою систему коммуникаций (обмена информацией, товарами и услугами) всё большее пространство.

Сегодня Иран остаётся единственным в данном регионе государством с имперским потенциалом, направленным на район Ближнего Востока. Ему противостоит англосаксонская империя в лице Великобритании, США и Франции, а также Россия и Китай, обладающие имперским потенциалом мирового масштаба. В настоящее время естественное объединение мусульман возможно только при наличии имперообразующей силы в лице отдельного мусульманского государства с мощным имперским потенциалом в регионе. Египет, с учётом его геополитического положения, не может быть естественным лидером в этом отношении. Другие страны-осколки Оттоманской империи, обременённые своим англофильским прошлым, также не в состоянии проводить самостоятельную политику. Иран на данный момент остаётся единственным государством способным проводить свою имперскую политику, в том числе при поддержке России и Китая.

Этим объясняется традиционная нелюбовь англичан и американцев к Ирану. Этим объясняется традиционная нелюбовь англосаксов к России и Китаю, когда во главе этих государств стоят дальновидные, разумные политики.

Текст песни "Hotel California" (перевод)

Окончательный вариант! Текст песни Hotel California (перевод)

Над шоссе ночным пустынным ветер свеж и хлад,

Вверх струится лучшей травки теплый аромат.

Впереди я видел свет, вдалеке светится.

Голова отяжелела, начал взор мутиться.

Нужно было на ночлег мне остановиться.





Вот она стоит в дверях. В бой труба зовет...

То ли Бог меня так любит, то ли манит чёрт.

А она зажгла свечу, повела меня...

Слышал я, что где-то пели голоса, звеня,

И слова той песни странной будто понял я....





Вас приветствует отель “Калифорния”!

Что за чудный миг! Что за чудный миг!

Что за чудный лик!

Места хватит всем в отеле “Калифорния”!

В день и час любой, в день и час любой

Мы всегда с тобой!





У нее богемный склад юного ума.

Голливудской красотой снабжена она.

У нее полно парней. Каждый – друг её!

Ночь - для танцев во дворе, страсть ручьями льет.

Кто запомнится надолго, кто-то так пройдет.





Я позвал официанта: “Где мое вино?”

Принесли мне дорогое… Прямо, как в кино!

“Вот уж десять лет такого здесь не подают”.

Голоса зовут, как прежде, спать мне не дают.

Все поют издалека, эту песнь свою...





Вас приветствует отель “Калифорния”!

Что за чудный миг! Что за чудный миг!

Что за чудный лик!

Прожигают жизнь в отеле “Калифорния”!

Вот такой сюрприз! Вот такой сюрприз!

Докажи, что чист!





Потолок - одни зеркала!

Пьем шампанское со льдом.

И она тогда сказала:

“Мы здесь - узники, а это - наш невольный дом.”

Все - в чертогах господина, чтобы есть и пить,

Чтобы каждый мог стальной свой клинок вонзить,

Но они не могут просто зверя победить.





Помню только, как бежал я к выходу скорей,

Чтоб найти дорогу к месту моих прежних дней.

Сторож вдруг сказал: “Расслабься! Принять на постой

Мы запрограммированы. Будь самим собой.

Ты формально только вышел: мы - всегда с тобой!"

The Bitter Pill for the U.S. Politics

The U.S. healthcare system facilities (hospitals, medical centers, etc.) are currently owned by anonymous private-equity groups and various entities from corporate financial industry.

The U.S. healthcare-industrial complex's operations and transactions (between medical centers, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, medical devices and durable equipment manufacturers, insurance companies, and doctors) tend to be severely underregulated. That lack of the government regulation and control in in the U.S. health care industry is being maintained in the same way now as the lack of the government regulation and control has been in the financial and banking sector.

The culture of that lack of regulation and oversight, especially with regard to disproportionate pricing, outsize profits, and excessive compensation, is getting increasingly characteristic of the U.S. hospitals and medical centers just as in the financial sector.

Drugs and medical equipment producing companies, along with the major medical facilities (medical centers, hospitals, etc.), have been freely pursuing their policies of unrestrained prices and profits under the pretext that it is necessary to fund the risk taking of research and development. Because of heavy lobbying, Congress prohibits the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) of the Department of Health and Human Services from negotiating prices with drug makers, medical devices and durable medical equipment manufacturers. It also prevents any legislative measures, which could be construed as mandates for practice guidelines, coverage recommendations, payment, or policy recommendations.

The unrestricted freedom of the financial capital in the U.S. has been turning the nation's healthcare system into another economic estate of transnational financial corporate oligarchy with serious political consequences for the United States of America.

The financial sector, which is intrinsically international in nature, has been tightening its grip on the U.S. healthcare-industrial complex, using it as another avenue of political influence on the U.S. domestic policies and more. Hospitals are increasingly consolidating by buying doctors' practices and competing hospitals. Their position is usually solidified as that of community's most important charitable institution, and their influential stakeholders determine economic policies of medical equipment manufacturers, drug companies, doctors, and rank-and-file employees. As a result, hospitals have already become the most politically powerful institution in any congressional district...

The culture of that lack of regulation and oversight, especially with regard to disproportionate pricing, outsize profits, and excessive compensation, is getting increasingly characteristic of the U.S. hospitals and medical centers just as in the financial sector.

Drugs and medical equipment producing companies, along with the major medical facilities (medical centers, hospitals, etc.), have been freely pursuing their policies of unrestrained prices and profits under the pretext that it is necessary to fund the risk taking of research and development. Because of heavy lobbying, Congress prohibits the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) of the Department of Health and Human Services from negotiating prices with drug makers, medical devices and durable medical equipment manufacturers. It also prevents any legislative measures, which could be construed as mandates for practice guidelines, coverage recommendations, payment, or policy recommendations.

The unrestricted freedom of the financial capital in the U.S. has been turning the nation's healthcare system into another economic estate of transnational financial corporate oligarchy with serious political consequences for the United States of America.

The financial sector, which is intrinsically international in nature, has been tightening its grip on the U.S. healthcare-industrial complex, using it as another avenue of political influence on the U.S. domestic policies and more. Hospitals are increasingly consolidating by buying doctors' practices and competing hospitals. Their position is usually solidified as that of community's most important charitable institution, and their influential stakeholders determine economic policies of medical equipment manufacturers, drug companies, doctors, and rank-and-file employees. As a result, hospitals have already become the most politically powerful institution in any congressional district...

John Oliver, who is a British national, has finally admitted that, despite the fact that he likes living and working in NYC, if he got ill, he would rather fly back to the U.K. for treatment than seek medical aid in the U.S.

That was an unexpected remark but not entirely unusual for the British comedian, resident in New York, NY. American financial oligarchy, which undoubtedly is tied to the British corporate finances, currently have stakes in the U.S. healthcare system. British financiers certainly have an increasingly greater say in the U.S. healthcare system development. That is not a purely business domain for the British financiers. The U.S. healthcare system is being used as another way to influence American domestic politics through exercising complete command and control of the most powerful political institution in congressional districts today, i.e. hospitals!

Politicians like Rand Paul work hard to make sure that the culture of lack of regulation and oversight, prevalent in the banking industry and financial sector now, would be firmly established in the U.S. healthcare system as well. In the long run, that would enable the foreign corporate stakeholders, including those in the U.K., control the political processes inside the U.S. That is more in the interest of the U.K. than it is in the interest of the U.S. corporate entities, let alone the ordinary Americans.

That is why any British national, who can think, would rather support politicians like Rand Paul, who ultimately play into the hands of foreign (i.e. British) corporate interest groups, than advocate any more public-oriented healthcare system reform in the U.S. The situation is similar to that in the financial and banking sector, which the U.S. healthcare system has already become another political and economic fiefdom of.

Almighty Jesuits

The Society of Jesus (Societas Jesu) was founded by Íñigo Lopez de Recalde (1491–1556). He is known by his Romanised name Ignatius Loyola. Íñigo Lopez de Recalde was a dignitary from Spain. He was born to a wealthy noble family at Loyola Castle in the Kingdom of Navarre, in today's Basque province of Guipúzcoa, Spain.

The proper title of the organization is "Clerks Regulars of the Society of Jesus”. That term does not fully expresses the original idea of its founder that his creation was a band of spiritual soldiers living under martial law and discipline.

The ordinary term "Jesuit"was given to the Society by its avowed opponents later. It is found for the first time in the writings of the Swiss theologian John Calvin (1509 - 1564) the leader of the Reformation in Geneva who set up a strict religious community there.

Pope Julius II  (Giuliano della Rovere), aka "The Fearsome Pope" (Il Papa Terribile), declared a reformed Holy League against the Republic of Venice in 1511 and ordered all Papal fiefs to supply troops. King John III of Navarre (1484 - 1516) refused to join and declared his kingdom neutral, though. Several noble families, including Íñigo Lopez de Recalde,  sided with the Spanish.

In 1512, the forces of Ferdinand II of Aragon along with the Castilian militia and rebel Navarre nobles joined forces under the command of General Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo of Castile against King John III of Navarre, defeating him and annexing the southern regions of Navarre into the kingdom of Castile.

Íñigo de Loyola excelled himself in battle and was appointed a senior commander to Antonio Manrique de Lara, Duke of Nájera and also Castilian (Spanish) Viceroy of occupied Navarre, based at Pamplona. His main task was to enforce Spanish rule, especially the Inquisition upon the local population in Navarre.

There was a general rebellion across occupied Navarre including Pamplona in which the previous Castilian (Spanish) Viceroy, Manrique de Lara, was killed in 1516. Íñigo de Loyola and the Castilian troops under his command regrouped and routed the rebels, burning their towns and destroying their castles.

At the age of 25, Íñigo de Loyola was appointed the new Viceroy of occupied Navarre commanding several thousand troops in 1516. At the commencement of his newly appointed career, he was especially ruthless towards hundreds of the rebels, who were rounded up by his troops and secret inquisitors and executed.

But it was Viceroy Íñigo de Loyola's invention of the concept of a "professional police force", both in terms of hierarchy, strict code of conduct, law and order and counter espionage that would be one of his most historic and relatively unknown contributions to civilization.

In order to control a largely hostile population with limited resources, Íñigo commissioned his most trusted head of the secret police Francisco Xavier - also originally of Navarre - to follow a strict instruction or "rule" by which secret police would pledge their total unquestionable devotion and even to sacrifice their "self" in order to assume the role of both secret soldier, protector and assassin of "enemies of the state" by living amongst the people, rather than in barracks.

The concept of small bands of well trained men living amongst the people and often dressing like them to control law and order, rather than living in barracks in larger groups was a radical idea for the times as it went against most "traditional" military theory of overwhelming force.

The secret police force of Íñigo de Loyola was very successful and held Navarre with an iron fist for four years.  Íñigo de Loyola worked along with his loyal deputies Francisco Xavier, Alfonso Salmeron, Diego Laynez from the court at Castille.

Several cities, including the cities of Valladolid, Tordesillas and Toledo in the Kingdom of Castile, rose in revolt against Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1520. While the principle duty of the Viceroy Íñigo de Loyola was to use his thousands of troops to defend Spanish Navarre against French attack, Charles ordered the Viceroy to move the bulk of his troops south to help crush the internal Castilian rebellion known as the "Revolt of the Comuneros".

Henry II of Navarre sensing a unique opportunity managed to quickly raise a French army under the command of General Asparroz of over 14,000 which invaded in 1521. Occupied Navarra suddenly erupted in revolt leaving Viceroy Íñigo de Loyola exposed with only a few thousand of his troops besieged in his citadel at Pamplona and his secret police force.

The Citadel held at the Battle of Pamplona - in which Viceroy Íñigo de Loyola was badly injured - ended around May 1521 thanks in some part to the counterinsurgency coordinated by head of the secret police force Francisco Xavier and the loyal members of his company "invisible" amongst the people. Badly injured, Íñigo de Loyola was then unable to continue his duties as Viceroy and he returned to his family fief to recover.

Íñigo de Loyola suddenly became especially religiously fervent sometime after 1522, during his recovery. During that period of recovery he refined his theories on the use of secret forces, agents and assassins to maintain order, apart from brute military force.

By 1523, Íñigo de Loyola was recovered enough from his injuries to return to service and in May/June of that same year he was appointed Emissary of Charles V to Venice to conclude a treaty with the Venetians.

Upon concluding the treaty and before heading to the Holy Land, Íñigo de Loyola is believed to have found the climate and hospitality of the Venetians agreeable to his continued recovery and remained as an honored guest of Doge Andrea Gritti until early 1524.

Loyola was recalled to Spain by Charles V in 1524. He experienced a growing frustration and hatred towards Charles V after being appointed to rule Salamanca in Spain and because of the lack of interest on the part of the Emperor in the refined techniques of Íñigo de Loyola to establish and run a complete secret police force capable of subjugating any enemy.

Contrary to the complete lack of interest of Charles V concerning the "company rule" of Loyola in conducting secret police forces and armies of assassins hidden within the population, King Francis I like the Venetians almost certainly considered such knowledge to be extremely powerful in the art of "statecraft". Loyola no longer considered himself a loyal soldier to the Emperor, instead he was now an agent and teacher to his former enemies, the French, Venetians and English.

Íñigo de Loyola was directly responsible for the formation of the first official Secret Police Force in history when King Francis I in 1527 merged the ancient offices of Constable and Marshal Provost into a new force known as Maréchaussée or, formally, the Constabulary and Marshalcy of France (Connétablie et Maréchaussée de France) - commonly known as the Police.

To ensure the effectiveness and self-regulation of this new concept of a professional "police force", Íñigo de Loyola commissioned them their own "Constitution" which members of the Maréchaussée were sworn to uphold under the concept of "Esprit De Corpus" ("For the spirit of the company"), commonly known as Esprit De Corps.

Despite his frustration at the limits placed upon his vision, Íñigo de Loyola remained in the employ of Francis I at least up to 1534.

After that Loyola was brought into contact with Francis Borja, the paternal great-grandson of Pope Alexander VI. Using the experience under King Francis I, Loyola modified the Constitutions for a new Order - an Order of "Soldiers for Christ" under the “Esprit De Corp” of absolute obedience and loyalty to their Superior, willing to die without hesitation for the "greater glory of God" ("Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam").

By the summer of 1534, Loyola had summoned his old allies to Paris to help establish the new "Soldiers of Christ" including Francis Xavier, Alfonso Salmeron, Diego Laynez, and Nicholas Bobadilla, all Spanish; Peter Faber, a Frenchman; and Simão Rodrigues of Portugal.

On "Assumption Day" of August 15, 1534, Íñigo Loyola and the other six met in the crypt of the Chapel of St. Denis, at Montmartre in Paris and founded the Company of Jesus - "to attack the enemies of the church by any and all means, or to go without questioning wherever the General of the Order might direct".

In this first most secret ceremony of the founding the Order of the “Soldiers of Christ” is the origin of the same secret ceremony of other secret organizations with strict military-like discipline including the notorious Freemasons. During the rite of initiation, each initiate "died" to their old selves, pledging absolute and unquestioning loyalty to the Esprit De Corps, their absolute undying loyalty to Ignatius Loyola as the "illuminated one".

After the ceremony, one group including Loyola headed north to the Netherlands to plan their attempted assassination of the Emperor Charles V, while another group with poison provided from the infamous book of Borja headed to Rome in order to prepare for the assassination  of Giulio de' Medici (Pope Clement VII).

Loyola and the Netherland group failed in their attempt to kill the Emperor, but forty days later September 25, 1534 Pope Clement VII was found dead and Alessandro Farnese was elected the new Pope (Pope Paul III).

Evading capture, Íñigo de Loyola did not return to Paris, but instead travelled straight to Venice where he was warmly received by his old friend Doge Andrea Gritti. But before Venice could help sponsor with the new Pope Paul III the creation of Loyola's international "Police Force", Loyola would need to demonstrate his talents once again and help Venice create a new professional "sea bound" military force.

The Venetians had generally used the military skills of others. The Venetians mostly usually applied their brilliance at banking and finance to broker some deal, as well as payment for the necessary militia skills, known historically as the "lagunari". But the Ottoman Empire and the professional standing armies of Europe meant such kind of "rent-a-war" was no longer viable - especially as Venice continued to face increasing attack.

The solution by Íñigo de Loyola for the Venetians was the formation of the first permanent professional military units of Venice known officially as the Marine Corps - a smaller army of a few thousand highly trained, highly motivated soldiers, sworn by sacred oath to unquestionable and absolute allegiance and honor.

The word marine meaning "sea" and the word corps meaning in this context "bank of knights" therefore the first Marine Corps in history meaning literally "band of sea knights" - the name Fanti da Mar (infantry of the sea) a deliberate distraction to hide their official name.

Íñigo de Loyola and his most loyal companions took their vows and were ordained as Franciscan Priests at the Frari Basilica in 1537. Loyola was at the age of 46 at the time. They swore their allegiance to the "Gray Pope" the Minister General and therefore to Venice and to its partnership with Rome as the Holy See.

The new members of the Orders Friar Minor then traveled to Rome to see Pope Paul III, with Loyola fully expecting to honor his promise and grant the new Police force the "Company of Gesu" for the Venetians and Roman Cult controlling the Catholic Church. However, he was to be immediately frustrated. Such a military entity as presented by Loyola and his friends represented far too much power and the Cardinals were wear of an all out revolt.

Loyola was forced to remain in Rome and play diplomat and politician, offering concessions and conditions such as the new order being based in Rome and not Venice. Also, a strict rule was to be instituted by Loyola to ensure compliance and clear limits on the power of this soon-to-be-unleashed "power". After three long and difficult years, the concessions were sufficient for Pope Paul to feel safe in issuing his Papal Bull.

Pope Paul III confirmed the order through the bull Regimini militantis on September 27, 1540 but limited the number of its members to sixty. This limit severely hampered the role of the Soldiers of Christ and made their purpose of becoming the most powerful Police Force ever conceived unattainable. However, thanks to patience and further negotiation, this limitation on numbers was removed through the Bull Injunctum Nobis on March 14, 1543. Thus was born the Societas Jesu , Society of Jesus, or, as it is commonly known today, "the Jesuits".

Then another significant victory for the early formation of the Jesuits was obtained as Pope Paul III issued a bull in 1545 permitting them to preach, hear confession, dispense the sacraments and say mass without having to refer to a bishop. That had effectively placed the Jesuit members outside the control of the regional clergy.

While technically monks, according to the Constitution of Loyola, the Jesuit priests were exempted from the cloistered rule (i.e. living in monasteries). Instead, Jesuit monks were to live "in the world".

In 1546, Pope Paul III appointed the Jesuits to their first political mission, appointing Lainez and Salmeron as his official representatives at the Council of Trent as Pontifical Theologians. Lainez with the assistance of Cardinal Monroe successfully defeated all but one minor agenda item for reform of the Catholic Church.

It seemed that this and many other subsequent services delivered by the newly created most powerful and versatile special military order in the world made it sure that the power of the Pope remained unchallenged.

The Order

The Roman Catholic Church is still actively involved in international politics which does not come as a surprise. There is an aspect of that involvement that makes it surprising, though. Even if it does not seem to be all too obvious. Vatican is no longer an independent subject of contemporary financial, economic, and political affairs. Something as significant as financial, economic, and political independence has become a matter of the past for the institution of the Roman Catholic Church, which has become a very different kind of institution, actually. The Roman Catholic Church essentially is on the brink of extinction and as an institution it can no longer represent Christianity as an organized religion.

The decline of papal power has been long in process and became especially dramatic since the first half of the 20th century. We have already witnessed the result of the final attempts on the part of the papacy to regain at least some control and power, and authority, in the modern world, when Pope Benedict XVI resigned earlier this year becoming the first pope to resign since Gregory XII in 1415.

Benedict announced his resignation shortly after an event that was held at the Vatican to mark the 900th anniversary of the official recognition of the Order of Malta by Pope Paschal II (who was the head of the Catholic Church from August 13, 1099 to his death in 1118). The Knights attended Mass in St. Peter's Basilica and received an audience with Pope Benedict XVI. Benedict had spent several hours with the Order of the Knights of Malta before he appeared in public again looking more tired than ever that day, February 9, 2013.

The Knights of Malta are one of the most feared and whispered-about secret societies in the world. Many of the world’s elite were and are members of the “Knights of Malta” and “Opus Dei”. Unlike many others, the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta is a Roman Catholic religious order of a military nature by tradition. And unlike the Roman Catholic Church, which is mired in all kinds of scandals and is in dire straits now, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, headquartered in Rome, is widely considered a particularly respectable political player these days and a sovereign subject of international law.

Benedict had yielded his seat to Archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who, on March 13th 2013, became Pope Francis, the first pope from South America, making him the first non-European since the 8th century.

But the most notable fact about Pope Francis is not that he is the only pope to take the name Francis  - evoking the humility of St Francis of Assisi, a 12th century Italian monk. Most surprising of all, he is the only member of the Society of Jesus to become a pope.

But just who are the Jesuits, exactly? There are many various orders in the Catholic Church - such as the Dominicans, Benedictines, Cistercians (including Trappists), and Franciscans. Such orders have more autonomy from the central church. Unlike the secular clergy, the members of those religious orders are not under the jurisdiction of a bishop and can live completely excluded from secular society, depending on the order they belong to.

The Society of Jesus is another such religious order. But not quite. Set up by Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish former soldier, in 1540, the Order has over 12,000 Jesuit priests now, and the society is one of the largest groups in the Roman Catholic Church. Known as the "soldiers of Christ" after the military bearing of their founder (who discovered his vocation, it is claimed, after reading a book on the lives of the saints in a hospital when recovering from war wounds) the Order emphasizes education, particularly their belief in the importance of learning languages, and the need for missionary evangelism in the life of a priest.

The Jesuits are a military order, just like the Knights of Malta. But their activities revolve generally around intelligence gathering, propaganda, and covert operations, bordering on information warfare and psychological operations. Working in tandem and under the guidance of the global elite’s secret military leadership, of which the Knights of Malta are certainly among the most notable members, the Jesuits are usually tasked to convey selected information and indicators to specific audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of certain governments, organizations, groups, and individuals. In other words, they are taught to spy, to lie and manipulate others.

The history of the Society of Jesus is ripe with very many controversial facts. Jesuit Order became like a weathervane atop a roof, which has been turned by a different wind. For Jesuits, the papacy has no longer held any primacy of position. The corporate aim of the Society has long been to place itself and the Roman Catholic Church at the disposal of a radical and purely social and political change in the world, pretty often without reference to - indeed, in defiance of - papal strategy, policies, and aims.

There are many interesting facts about the Jesuits that make them a particularly conspicuous group of people, whose true interests and loyalties are very circumspect. Unlike diocesan priests, who can complete their studies in four or five years, Jesuits train for 12 years and only become ordained when they are in their thirties. Associated with the more liberal aspects of Catholicism, they are less likely than other groups, such as the Oratorians, to conduct mass in the old rite Latin form. On becoming a Jesuit, they also vow never to take ecclesiastical office, such as a bishopric, unless ordered to by the pope.

This last vow is one of the reasons why Pope Francis's election was particularly surprising. According to Brendan Callaghan, the master of Campion Hall, a Jesuit college in Oxford, many Jesuits thought they would never see one of their own in papal office, even if some, such as Pope Francis, had become archbishops.

The history of the Jesuits’ notorious opposition to papal power is well documented. The Jesuit Order, which was created to help the Roman Catholic Church to lead others in following the teachings of Jesus Christ, later became the Church's most insidious enemy, especially so after Vatican II.

The Roman Catholic Church has been in decline for the past four hundred years. After a thousand-year-long experiment the Roman institution had finally failed and had attempted a total invasion of political and social as well as economic and cultural fields of human activities. The 20th century has marked the end of that political and social activism of the Roman Catholics on their own. From now on, the remainder of the Catholic sojourn in this world, it seems, will be a service, but not to God or other people, under the guise of humanitarian goals. It will be a service to some darker powers.

The scandalous enthronement of a Jesuit on the Throne of Peter has become a logical conclusion of the earlier processes, triggered by the Vatican II, and itself marked the end of the Roman Catholic Church as an organization that represents purely religious values. Until recently, modernist (humanist) tendencies, which had been surreptitiously spreading through the Jesuit Order since the early 20th century, as well as any manifestation of heresy or disobedience among the Jesuits were brutally crushed by the hierarchy of the Order itself, because papal authority was still exercised in the Church.  With the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI that authority was removed completely.

The Jesuits had always operated like some sort of rebels under the papal radar, until the revolutionary situation that presented itself in the aftermath of the Vatican II. According to some critics, the Jesuits of the 1960s were a notable historical example of the Trojan Horse. They did everything they could to undermine the Papacy and the Catholic Church. Their policies of Modernism and Liberation Theology in Latin America had always been a priority before they resulted in blatant and scandalous disloyalty to the Pope.

But, until recently, there has been at least some kind of resistance on the part of the Pope against those diabolical forces. The beginning of the radical takeover of the Roman Catholic Church by the Jesuits and the forces behind them began with the death of Pope John Paul I. The confrontation between the Pope and the “Soldiers of Christ” had gone so far that judging from John Paul's memoranda and notes, unless there was a speedy reform of the Order, he had in mind the effective liquidation of the Society of Jesus.

Pope John Paul I planned to deliver a hard-hitting speech of warning to the Jesuits. He planned to deliver it to the international assembly of Jesuit leaders and Father General Arrupe at another of their General Congregations which was to be held in Rome on September 30, 1978.

The Pope never delivered that speech of warning. On the morning of September 29, after thirty-three days on the Throne of Peter, and one day before he was to address the Society's General Congregation, John Paul I was found dead in bed.

According to some experts, The Jesuit Order badly needed to be suppressed in the 1960s, but nothing happened then. After the death of Pope John Paul I the opposition to the Jesuits on the part of the papal authority has waned. 

Now that the Jesuit Archbishop of Buenos Aires Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis, there is no papal authority left in the Vatican to oppose those tendencies, which are not only heretical but non-Christian, too. Because, technically speaking, there is no Pope in Rome, right now!

Christianity is not about the mythology of modern rationalism. It is about the conflict of Good and Evil. Now that the Vatican has been turned into a bureaucracy by the same diabolical forces that propose to reform the Roman Catholic Church through that one person who represents them, the two words - “Pope’s Revolution” - depict the current situation very accurately in that both of them are fake and each one of them is a lie!

As Jesus once pointed out: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” (John 8:44)

The Club

Mark Leibovich has written a book titled “This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral (Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!) in America's Gilded Capital”. The book was intended to raise anti-Congressional sentiments.

According to the New York Times, the book is “not to ruin it for you, but: if you already hate Washington, you’re going to hate it a whole lot more after reading Mark Leibovich’s takedown of the creatures who infest our nation’s capital and rule our destinies. And in case you are deluded enough as to think they care, you’ll learn that they already hate you”.

Mark Leibovich quoted his former Washington Post colleague Henry ­Allen: ­“Washington feels like a conspiracy we’re all in together, and nobody else in America quite understands, even though they pay for it.”

Mark Leibovich intended his book to be read not only by those who already hated the United States Congress but also by those who already have a fair knowledge of that scandalous bicameral legislature of the federal government. In order to be able to fully appreciate the delicacies of Leibovich’s book, the reader has to be one of those political junkies who regularly watch the Sunday talk shows and other pundit platforms. Then the reader would be able to know most of the characters who swim through the narrative. Most probably, no one else would.

Delicious portrayal of vanity and runaway opportunism, the book could be categorized halfway between satire and a polemic. Although not an in-depth investigation into Washington’s abuse of power and excesses, it is said to be giving a panoramic view of the culture of Washington portraying it as a fertile soil for wide-spread corruption.

Mark Leibovich is a New York Times reporter and perhaps no other source does a better job attenuating the desired effect of the afore mentioned book than the New York Times itself in a piece published on July 25, 2013. Dubbed “Leibovich’s Congressional hall of shame”, the book was portrayed as a bold but honest account of people - Washington insiders, that is - who cynically enrich themselves with taxpayers’ money and “gleefully inhabit ethical no-worry zones and execute brisk 180-­degree switcheroos on any issue... as long as it pays”. According to some critical comments, those people always have a cynical smirk on their faces, laughing at the stupid people - everyone outside of the Beltway - who support their little aristocracy upon the Potomac ('The Club', as it is referred to).

It has been noted that the author does not take sides, politically. He shies away from exposing true corruption. Generally, the author is portrayed as a guy who is simply giving an honest account of what he had seen behind the curtains. As a political reporter, Mark Leibovich is disinclined to expose the true breadth and depth of the decadence of 'The Club' of which he is definitely a member.

Giving the readers only a few quick glances behind the curtain before closing it again, the author has nonetheless exposed the relationship between politicians and the media people who cover them. But the greatest attention is paid to the lobbying!

While writing mostly about the last several years, with much of the book centered upon the 2012 elections, Leibovich dedicated a lot of his attention to lobbying and lobbyists in the United States Congress. The New York Times points out that President Obama’s first year in office was the best year ever for the special interests industry, which earned $3.47 billion lobbying the federal government. Calling it the “arresting figure”, the New York Times cites Leibovich as well as The Atlantic emphasizing the fact that lobbying has now become one of the primary activities for “50 percent of senators and 42 percent of congressmen”.

Lobbying and the arrival of big money in Washington has become the major focus both of the Leibovich’s book and the New York Times’ critical acclaim of his book. The two has portrayed Washington as a culture that breeds irrevocably corrupt politicians and the constellation of enablers. A lot has been said about the proliferation of “formers” and pundits, who had turned Washington into a “Parliament of Whores, Continued.”

As it has been mentioned, Leibovich does not takes sides in his strangely provocative and intentionally depressing book. Leibovich does not make any recommendations for change, either. The book has been generally referred to as a well-written anthropological study of a specific tribe of politicians, with its own culture, language and social mores. The author plays the part of the anthropologist, who is simply observing but unwilling to judge.

In a very complimentary way, the New York Times does just that in its critical essay on the book. Christopher Buckley, in the final chapter of his recent article ‘A Confederacy of Lunches’ writes: “By the end, one is left thinking that our country would be so much better off if, after putting in their years of “public service,” all these people would just go home. Or just away.”

It seems, for some, the “Parliament of Whores” has become more than just a nuisance of America’s everyday politics. And the notorious lobbying of transnational corporate interests in the United States Congress has ceased to be just another feature of the local political landscape. The tragic proliferation of foreign-backed corruption and political intrigue, which has dramatically increased over the past twenty years, has turned out to be playing against the national interests of the United States of America.

It is well known that traitors and sellouts have no true political or national identity and are loyal only to the source of their biggest financial support. Perhaps, a sweeping political reform in Washington is a long shot, so far. But this book by Mark Leibovich and a characteristic response from the leading critics in the U.S. bespeak a growing tension in the relationship between ‘The Club’ and the American nationalists. If such a book were to become the first stone, the years, if not centuries, of infiltrating of foreign interests inside the American politics would be over within a decade or two. But, perhaps, it will take more than just another book before American citizens manage to make the “Citizens of the Greenroom” go home. Wherever it is.

An Asymmetrical Answer to the British Empire

May 17, 2013 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

ANDREY FURSOV: An Asymmetrical Answer to the British Empire


April 13-14, Schiller Institute, Frankfurt, Germany.

The conference was devoted to the question of reviving Classical culture.



Transcript



Dear Colleagues:

First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to the organizers of the conference, who invited me to speak here.

I would like to start my talk with a quotation from the quintessential British imperialist, Winston Churchill, who, in 1940, wrote in a letter, that

    "Great Britain was fighting not against Hitler, and not even against National Socialism, but against the spirit of the German people, against the spirit of Schiller, so that this spirit would never be reborn."

But now we are here, at a conference which was organized by the Schiller Institute, and it is our kind of asymmetrical answer to the British Empire....

Crisis has become a code word of our time. But the question is—a crisis of what? We are told that it is a crisis of finance, it is a crisis of state, it is a crisis of education—so, it is a crisis of everything. But what does this mean, to be a crisis of everything? A crisis of everything means a systemic crisis. It is a crisis of the social system, and this social system is capitalism.

So, first, a crisis of capitalism, and only secondly, a crisis of civilization, mankind. But what is capitalism? Descartes used to say "define the sense of the words." My working definition is that capitalism is a complicated institutional system which limits capital in its own long-term and holistic interests, and ensures expansion in space, externalizing the crisis, and exploitation.

The last element is vital, because capitalism, like antiquity, like the slave system, is an expansively oriented system. When in the course of the evolution of capitalism, the global rate of profit was diminishing, capital used to carve out parts of known capital zones, and transform them into the capitalist periphery, the zone of raw materials extraction, and that of cheap labor. But in 1991, with the fall of the socialist camp, including the U.S.S.R., and with the start of semi-gangster type of capitalism in Russia, non-capitalist zones evaporated. Now capitalism is everywhere. It encompasses all the globe. Complete victory.

But every acquisition is a loss. Now there is no place to expand. Intensification of capitalism is the whole agenda. The problem is that capitalism is an extensively constructed system in principle. Several institutions—the nation state, civil society, politics, and mass education—limit capital's possibility to exploit the core of the system, in the way, or on the scale it does at the periphery. The institutions I have mentioned externalize exploitation, somewhat compared to the way Solon's reforms did in ancient Athens.
Lords of the Crisis Rings

I do not want to minimize the level of exploitation in the so-called highly developed countries, but there is a certain limit to it, or, to be more precise, there was in the period of 1945-1975. It is no coincidence that the French called this period "the glorious 30 years." I say "was," because since the 1980s, the dominant groups of the capitalist class have been dismantling these protected institutions, the sum, or rather the system of which, constitutes normal and sound capitalism, or its pillars.

During the last 30 years, we have been witnessing the fading away of nation-states, the squeezing of civil society, depoliticization of the political sphere, and deliberate primitivization and weakening of mass education, including higher education. In America, this process took place in the 1970s and '80s; in Russia, we are witnessing it now. But thanks to the socialist foundations, those who are trying to demolish our education are succeeding, but only partly. This liquidation is the essence of the so-called neo-liberal revolution, or rather, counter-revolution: counter not only to the main tendencies of the postwar 30 years, but also to the whole period of European history since the Renaissance.

It is not just a regression; it is counter-progress. It is deliberate counter-progress.

During the last 30 years, we have been living in crisis. And this crisis, the neo-liberal counter-revolution, is man-made; it is artificial, or it has been artificial, because it seems that at the beginning of the 21st Century, the crisis began to go out of control of its masters, of the "Lords of the Crisis Rings." We can identify this, indirectly, in the conflicts of different segments of the global elite, in the activities of their closed organizations, and in the statements of high functionaries.

Suffice it to recall what [IMF Managing Director] Christine Lagarde was saying in October in Tokyo, at the meeting of the IMF and World Bank, and what the essence of the report of the Morgan Stanley management in June of last year was.

The guiding document of the neo-liberal counter-revolution was the report "Crisis of Democracy," written at the request of the Trilateral Commission by Samuel P. Huntington, Brian J. Crozier, and Joji Watanuki, in 1975. The document is very interesting. The authors wrote that the only cure for the evils of democracy was not more democracy, but the moderation of democracy. The report argued that, for a democratic political system to function effectively, it usually required some measure of apathy and non-involvement on the part of some individuals and groups. They meant the middle class and upper groups of the working class.

The democratic surge, the report said, was a general challenge to existing systems of authority, public and private; and the main conclusion was that a diminution of public influence was needed. So, in fact, this document was a reaction to the rise of the middle class and working class, due to industrialization in the 30 postwar years. The solution was very simple: deindustrialization. The deindustrialization of the North Atlantic core, and an offensive against the middle class and working class. And we saw it in Thatcherism and Reaganomics.

Deindustrialization of the West, which began in the 1980s, ideologically has been under preparation for a long time, since the 1860s-1880s in Great Britain. In the 1950s and 1960s, the environmentalist movement was added to it. The environmentalist movement of the '60s was organized by the Rockefeller Foundation, and it was paving the way for future deindustrialization.

The same role was played by the youth culture and different minority movements, and, of course, by de-rationalization of thinking and behavior. The '80s saw the rise of irrational cults, the deterioration of mass education, and, of course, the supplanting of science fiction by fantasy. The Harry Potter series is a very indicative example, where we see the future, or a picture of reality, where there's no democracy, where there's a hierarchy, and where power is based on magic, not on rational choice.
The Project To Stop History

In fact, the neo-liberal counter-revolution, which organized the redistribution of incomes in favor of dominant groups, and at the expense of the middle class and working class, was part of a much greater geo-historic project, or plot, as you wish: the project to stop history. Because the redistribution of income, and de-democratization of society, demanded a civilizational U-turn, which I call the three Ds: de-industrialization, de-rationalization, and de-population.

This last plays an important role, not only from the economic point of view, or from the resource point of view. It is much easier to control 2 billion people than 7 or 8 billion. The de-population project is financed by the same structures which financed the ecology movement, etc.

The neoliberal counter-revolution was a crisis in itself, but it was intended to be a managed crisis. Yet, in the beginning of the 21st Century, the process seems to be going out of control, as I said; Hegel used to call such situations the perfidy of history.

So, we have a double crisis: one man-made and planned, and then, a new crisis, a chaotic one.

To deal with the crisis, one has to have will and reason, or rather, first, reason, to understand, and secondly, the will to put reason into action. In our case, reason is social science, but the problem is that social science, in its present condition, is not adequate to the challenges of our epoch. The main agent of social science is the expert, who knows more and more about less and less. And there is a de-theoretization of knowledge. Knowledge is becoming more and more empirical, statistical case studies without theory, without scientific imagination and so on.

First, the disciplinary net of the late 19th Century, which is our inheritance from the 19th Century—economy, sociology, and political science—in fact, doesn't capture social reality as a whole—only parts of it. The basic unit of analysis of sociology is civil society, but if that is shrinking, it means that sociology can tell us less and less about the world we are leaving and the world we are entering.

[The French historian] Fernand Braudel used to say: "Capitalism is the enemy of the market." Rather, capitalism is balanced between monopoly and market, but now we can see that transnational corporate monopolization is pushing the market away.

I would like to remind you about the research by Andy Coghlan and Debora MacKenzie, published in October 2011 on the site of the New Scientist. This group of scholars showed that 147 companies, 1% of all companies, controlled 40% of the world economy. This is very indicative. This means that the modern economy, whose basic unit of analysis is the market, conceals more than it shows. Politics and the nation-state are fading away, and this means that political science, with its basic units of analysis—politics and the state—not only cannot adequately conceptualize, but cannot even merely depict real power relations, especially on the global level.

Secondly, there is another serious problem with political science. Real power is usually secret or semi-secret, shadow power. Conventional political science has neither concepts nor methods, to analyze this type of power. The more democratic the facade of the western society was becoming in the 19th and 20th centuries, the less real power it had. This power was channeled into closed clubs, super-national structures, etc.

What I am saying is banal and trivial, but political science in its present condition cannot analyze real power relations. The integration of these structures as units of analysis in conventional political science will in fact blow it up.
Cognitive Intelligence Organizations

So, a new social science is needed, studying the real world, and not that which professed scholarship defines as real. A new social science with new disciplines, new concepts, a social force which will be able to create such a new type of scholarship, has the best chance to win in the 21st Century, or at least to undermine attempts to cut us off from our European legacy.

It is evident that a new scholarship can be created only by structures of a new type. Which organizations are analyzing reality today? Above all, these are scientific organizations and the analytical branches of secret services, but both are in deep crisis. Today, we are witnessing a crisis of both scientific organizations and secret services—their analytical branches. Scholarship appears not to be able to work with enormous volumes of information and feels awkward in analyzing informational streams. The gap between informational streams, including professional ones, and the standard level of a standard scholar is growing. Instead of scholars, as I said, we have experts who know more and more about less and less.

The whole picture reminds us of the situation of scholasticism at the end of the 15th Century: the miniaturization of research, case studies, and no universal lexicon among different spheres of knowledge. As for the analytical branches of the secret services, they seem to be unable to work in a world where almost all significant information can be found in open sources. And this transforms the whole business.

So, there is a need to create fundamentally new structures. I prefer to call them cognitive intelligence organizations. They must combine the best features of scholarship structures and those of the secret societies. Like the latter, they must analyze the real world, not the imaginary one, paying attention to certain indirect evidence. Social science usually neglects indirect evidence, which is, however, very important.

At the same time, like scholarship, they must concentrate on the laws and regularities of mass processes. Such structures must be not just analytical units, but also organizational weapons in the struggle for the future. I understand very well that it is much easier to pronounce such things, than really to create these organizations, but one must try.

Thank you.