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Manipulations & Mind Games: The Secret Battle to Control How We Think

This article was published in New Dawn 144 (May-June 2014)

Throughout history the mechanisms of persuasion and influence have always been manipulated by those in power as a means to maintain authority and legitimacy. In more recent times the overall manipulation of the mass public mind has become less about overt spectacles of fear and obedience, and more about subtle forms of media propaganda. The manufacturing of consent¹ is endemic and has become a pervasive presence within modern societies.

Edward Bernays,² who has been called ‘the father of public relations’, was a nephew of Sigmund Freud and introduced psychological and psychoanalytical methods into modern propaganda. Bernays considered media propaganda essential for manipulating public opinion because society, in his regard, was composed of too many irrational elements (the people) which could be dangerous to the efficient mechanisms of power (‘democracy’). Within the context of our modern mass societies, propaganda has morphed into a mechanism for not only engineering public opinion but also as a means for consolidating social control.

Modern programs of social influence could not exist without recent developments in mass media. Today, it exists as a combination of expertise and knowledge from technology; sociology; social behaviourism; psychology; communications; and other scientific techniques. Almost every nation state has made use of a controlled mainstream media, to various degrees, for the regulation and influence of its citizenry.

By way of mainstream media, a nation’s controlling authority is able to exert psychological influence upon people’s perception of reality. This capacity works hand-in-hand with the more physical components, such as enforcing the legal system and national security laws (surveillance and monitoring). State control, acting as a ‘psychological machine’, instigates specific psychological manipulations in order to achieve desired goals within its national borders (and often beyond).

Examples of these psychological manipulations include the deliberate use of specific cultural symbols and embedded signifiers that catalyse conditioned reflexes in the populace. These triggers have included ‘Red’ and ‘Communist’ during the US’s 1950s McCarthyism; or ‘Muslim Terrorist’ during the recent media-hyped ‘War on Terror’. Targeted reactions can thus be achieved making the populace open to further manipulation in this state. This is a process of psychic re-formation that works repeatedly to soften up the people through continued and extensive exposure to particular stimuli. These are often the subconscious symbols we live by – artificial signifiers in order to create a compliant society.

Today’s media, which includes the dominant presence of advertising, extensively uses the notion of ‘attractors’ and ‘attractor patterns’ to target audience consciousness. This type of symbol-manipulation is often referred to in the business as neuro-marketing. Mainstream media corporations are using the huge growth in global communications to further shape their science of targeting human consciousness.

In the case of neuro-marketing, many advertisers first audience-test their commercials using brain-scanning techniques in order to know which part of a person’s brain is being activated by specific strong attractors. For example, it has been discovered that specific attractors can bypass the logical part of the brain and impact directly the emotional part. In such cases, as in the film industry, the advertisers place an award symbol (such as an Oscar or Golden Globe) which has proven to be an effective ‘strong attractor’ that influences the emotional part of the brain. The philosophy here is to adjust the level of consciousness of an advertisement in relation to the measurable level of consciousness of the consumer.³

Advertisers are aware that a person’s consciousness passes on messages indirectly to the body in the form of galvanic skin response, pupil response, electrical nerve response, etc, and so every element of the screen promotion must elucidate the correct conscious reception. In order to achieve this correct set of attractor patterns, all elements are deliberately worked on: the music, the visuals, the script, the voice. Interesting, symbolic strong attractors that have the most impact to persuade the audience include visuals such as smiley faces and cute animals (dogs wagging their tails and kittens purring). In terms of voice, they include words such as ‘honesty’; ‘integrity’; ‘freedom’; ‘hope and change’; ‘friendship’, etc. For this reason it can be seen how politicians use a great deal of these attractor-patterns in their speeches and promotional material.⁴

Other methods of blatant media coercion include the use of so-called ‘expertism’; that is, using the expert in the white lab-coat tactic for creating simulacra of truth. For such propaganda to be effective it cannot be too far off the truth; in other words, it must have the appearance of reality. Trade, employment, and financial figures are an example of this when the media discusses statistics as if they represented the truth. And which members of the general public have the knowledge or the resources to check and confirm such figures? Those people that do know are usually those that have a vested interest in maintaining the illusion, such as traders and financiers. As a norm, statistics of a negative connotation are usually drawn from the smallest possible pile. And once a false (or ‘doctored’) claim is disseminated and accepted by the public, it becomes established and hard to deconstruct or invalidate (unless persuasive anti-propaganda is just as effective).

Accepted Forms of ‘Individualism’

Modern societies are set-up to accommodate and appeal to not only the mass collective but also to individualism. But the forms that accepted ‘individualism’ takes are often a sheath to hide the workings of a mass psyche. It is the ‘allowed liberty’ that is provided to the modern person in pursuit of material gains as long as they remain within the parameters of their established society. Liberty, then, is an expression of mobility within a pre-described system: it does not denote liberty external to the system. Examples are the rock clichés that the mainstream media love to promote and adorn their front pages. Notables are the raging antics of destroying hotel rooms and throwing televisions out of the window, behaviour that later morphed into copycat corporate rock PR. In essence, such ‘rebels’ are allowed, and even encouraged, because their antics sell records. Rebelliousness in these forms is thus another contribution to a consumerist society, albeit through a different manner. And today there are many forms in which individualism is allowed to manifest as long as it plays within a pre-described system.

Another form of individualism is corporate-media centralisation masquerading as diversity and choice. The display of diversity in the information coming from the mainstream media gives the illusion of independent reportage and news. Yet mainstream media, if it is not government owned, is likely to be owned by a corporate conglomerate, often with high-level state relations. An individual is generally attracted to a particular newspaper that reflects their views, beliefs, lifestyles, etc, without suspecting these are all diversified patterned behaviour within the system. The mainstream media caters for these needs by operating a variety of newspapers that support these mythical standpoints, whether they be politically left, right, left/right of centre, liberal, independent, this, that, or any other of the positions available for the ‘diversity within the unity’ of the mass mind.

Concentration of Media Ownership

It is somewhat worrying to learn that most Western media organisations are owned by only a handful of giant corporations: News Corp; Viacom; Time-Warner; Disney; Vivendi Universal, and Bertelsmann. For example, Disney (The Walt Disney Company) is the largest entertainment and media multinational in the world. Disney owns the TV networks ABC (USA), Disney Channel, ESPN, A&E, and the History Channel, as well as publishing, merchandising, and theatre subsidiaries. They also own Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, Miramax Film Corp., Dimension, and Buena Vista International, as well as 11 theme parks around the world.

News Corp comes in next as the world’s second largest media multinational with an incredible range of TV and satellite channels, magazine and newspaper holdings, record companies and publishing companies based worldwide, with a strong presence in Asian markets. Similarly, Time-Warner owns more than 50 magazines; a film studio as well as various film distributers; more than 40 music labels (including Warner Bros, Atlantic, and Elektra); and several TV networks (such as HBO, Cartoon Network, and CNN).

Viacom owns TV networks CBS, MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Paramount Pictures, and nearly 2,000 cinema screens, as part of their media empire. Likewise, Vivendi Universal owns 27% of US music sales via labels such as Interscope, Geffen, A&M, Island, Def Jam, MCA, Mercury, Motown and Universal. They also own Universal Studios, Studio Canal, Polygram Films, Canal+, and numerous Internet and mobile phone companies. Then there is Bertelsmann which, as a global media corporation, runs Europe’s second largest TV, radio and production company (the RTL Group) with 45 TV stations and 32 radio channels; Europe’s largest printing and publishing firm (Gruner & Jahr); the world’s largest English-language general trade book publisher (Random House); the world’s largest book and music club group (Direct Group); and an international media and communications service provider (Arvato AG).

In terms of mainstream news reporting it is always important to check the source when reading a news item, i.e. is it of an independent source or is it ‘according to a government source’, etc. The mainstream media is largely fed via global news wire services, the two largest being Reuters (now Thomson Reuters) and Associated Press. The Rothschild banking family bought Reuters around 1895 and in 1988 Reuters bought 44% of Associated Press. This again constitutes a centralisation of news information, as well as the various well-established political press offices. When such sources (especially PR offices) disseminate information as ‘truthful news’, it is doing nothing more than was parodied in Orwell’s 1984 as Newspeak.

Each day the mainstream media offers a kaleidoscopic view of the world – tragedies, disasters, coups, and politics flash before the eyes like a glitterball. As a result the viewer rarely has the chance to focus on one issue, and generally remembers very little. Nor is there the need to remember a specific event as the next day it is likely to be replaced by the next item of news. In this way the average viewer is granted their ‘nourishment’ and feeling of ‘open news’ whilst at the same time being denied any real depth of knowledge. In such media-saturated environments people are provided with a conversation space or talking point amongst friends and work colleagues; or as a buffer zone to cover up the embarrassment of a non-communicative family. And if all hell breaks loose at work, at least you have Breaking Bad or The Walking Dead waiting for you on the home screen!

The mainstream media and entertainment industry also manipulate viewers’ emotions through the continual images of sexual arousal to the point whereby many of us are desensitised and more accepting of sexual misconduct. The media of escapism allows us to live out our fantasies in what is considered a less harmful way. It provides us with an external platform on which to project our wishful desires. It is supposed to placate us, to make us forget the drudgery of our humdrum lives. There are also those few who are motivated to mimic the acts seen in the media, whether through violence or sexual perversion. No doubt the few who do indulge are considered worth the trade-off against the millions who are mollified and happily passive in front of the screen.

The creative capacity of human imagination is being substituted for a ready-made set of imaginative programming. We don’t need to imagine for ourselves when the whole stage-show is presented to us in magnificent Technicolour and computer-generated imagery (CGI). We have our tickets into the ‘flight into unreality’.

Arrested Development

Another more worrying possibility is that television can act as a factor in causing arrested development within younger children, thus resulting in a later generation of less neurologically developed adults. Child researcher Joseph Chilton Pearce has published findings that indicate how television prevents the higher brain in children from developing as television engages solely with the lower (aka reptilian) brain. If the higher brain is not activated sufficiently through external stimulation – which it rarely is via child institutions – then at age 11 the brain begins to destroy many of its unused neurons. This can lead to a permanent condition of arrested development, according to Chilton Pearce. What this points to is a serious lack of proper stimulants for many children in overly institutionalised and controlled social environments. Also, our brains do not fully mature until we are around age twenty-five, which explains the early targeting of children through advertisers and conditioning institutions.

Recent disclosures have described how large food corporations are targeting children through what has now been dubbed ‘advergames’ – free games to download onto smartphones and tablets that contain subtle advertisements for high-sugar products.⁵ A report commissioned by the Family and Parenting Institute, published in 2012, suggested that children’s brains process advergames in a different way from how they would process traditional adverts; that is, on a more subconscious and emotional level. In this context many children do not understand that such games are actually very sophisticated adverts and so have no conscious ‘cognitive defence’ to the food product marketing.

This is no longer a one-way game, and the media landscape is undergoing a significant transition. What has changed the playing field of the media over recent years has been the rise of distributed and decentralised global communications between individuals. The Internet in particular, as well as other forms of social and community media, has spurred the growth of individuals seeking to verify information for their own selves. Independent media, such as is now coming of age via the Internet, has served to counter-neutralise some of the overwhelming persuasive power of mainstream media. This has helped to shift some people away from the propaganda that was previously virtually unchallenged. This bottom-up media revolution has seriously compromised the conditioning techniques used by governments and corporations alike. A major example of this citizen media revolution was seen during the Arab Spring, circa 2011, where civil resistance was effectively organised through social media networks. There are, as would be expected, now concerted efforts underway to censor the Internet and other social media networks in various nation states, as well as on a global level.

It is therefore imperative that our independent media be protected; our social networks of free speech preserved; and our right to seek and speak the truth defended. Manipulating and messing with our minds has no place in a truly democratic and egalitarian future.

You can explore these subjects further by reading Kingsley Dennis’s book The Struggle for Your Mind: Conscious Evolution and the Battle to Control How We Think (Inner Traditions, 2012), a revolutionary call to overthrow society’s mental controls and expand consciousness for the greater good of humanity. Available from all good bookstores and online retailers.

Check out Kingsley Dennis’s follow up article “Winning the War of Minds & the Battle to Control How We Think” in New Dawn 145.

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Footnotes

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent:_The_Political_Economy_of_the_Mass_Media

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

3. This idea, as well as neuro-marketing, was given to me in personal correspondence by Darryl Howard, who sent me his research ‘Advertising in the New Paradigm’ (Darryl Howard & Associates).

4. Anyone wishing to know more on this subject should investigate Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP).

5. ‘Food giants target children with addictive “advergames”,’ www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/food-giants-target-children-with-addictive-advergames-9222302.html

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November 15, 2014
Russian President Steers a Straight Course
From New Dawn Special Issue Vol 7 No 6 (Dec 2013)

Today we need new strategies to preserve our identity in a rapidly changing world, a world that has become more open, transparent and interdependent. This fact confronts virtually all countries and all peoples in one form or another: Russian, European, Chinese and American – the societies of virtually all countries.
– V. V. Putin, Valdai Club, 19 September 2013

Vladimir V. Putin has maintained his ideological position, and reiterated Russia’s determination to maintain her sovereignty and identity in the face of globalisation. Putin’s course for Russia was unequivocally stated in a September 2013 speech at a plenary session of the Valdai Club, which included foreign dignitaries and Russian luminaries from politics, academia and media. (https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/vladimir_putin_meets_with_members_the_valdai_international_discussion_club_transcript_of_the_speech_/)

Putin stated that while every nation needs its technical strength, at the basis of all is “spiritual, cultural and national self-determination” without which “it is impossible to move forward.” “[T]he main thing that will determine success is the quality of citizens, the quality of society: their intellectual, spiritual and moral strength.” Putin rejects the economic determinism of the modern era, stating:

After all, in the end economic growth, prosperity and geopolitical influence are all derived from societal conditions. They depend on whether the citizens of a given country consider themselves a nation, to what extent they identify with their own history, values and traditions, and whether they are united by common goals and responsibilities. In this sense, the question of finding and strengthening national identity really is fundamental for Russia.

Putin pointed to the threat posed to Russian identity by “objective pressures stemming from globalisation,” as well as the blows to Russia inflicted by the attempts to erect a market economy, which it might be added, was sought by internal oligarchs and outside plutocrats; attempts that are ongoing. Putin moreover points to the lack of national identity serving these interests:

In addition, the lack of a national idea stemming from a national identity profited the quasi-colonial element of the elite – those determined to steal and remove capital, and who did not link their future to that of the country, the place where they earned their money.

President Putin meets Russia’s religious leaders

What the globalists and oligarchs wish to impose on Russia from the outside cannot form an identity, which must arise from Russian roots, and not as a foreign import in the interests of commerce:

Practice has shown that a new national idea does not simply appear, nor does it develop according to market rules. A spontaneously constructed state and society does not work, and neither does mechanically copying other countries’ experiences. Such primitive borrowing and attempts to civilise Russia from abroad were not accepted by an absolute majority of our people. This is because the desire for independence and sovereignty in spiritual, ideological and foreign policy spheres is an integral part of our national character. Incidentally, such approaches have often failed in other nations too. The time when ready-made lifestyle models could be installed in foreign states like computer programmes has passed.

“Russia’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity are unconditional,” states Putin. He has called for unity among all factions, above ethnic separatism and urges an ideological dialogue among political factions.

Putin also recognises that what is today called the “West,” with the USA as the “leader of the Western world,” as the media and US State Department constantly remind us, shows little evidence of any vestige of its traditional foundations:

Another serious challenge to Russia’s identity is linked to events taking place in the world. Here there are both foreign policy and moral aspects. We can see how many of the Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting their roots, including the Christian values that constitute the basis of Western civilisation. They are denying moral principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious and even sexual.

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In this demise of Western values, Putin attacks “political correctness,” where religion has become an embarrassment, and Christian holidays are, for example, changed or eliminated. This nihilism is being exported over the world and will result in a “profound demographic and moral crisis,” resulting in the “degradation” of humanity. While multiculturalism is problematic for many states in Europe, Russia has always been multiethnic and this diversity should be encouraged in forging local identities, but within the context of a Russian state-civilisation.

Simultaneous with the moral and religious decline is the attempt to impose a “standardised, unipolar world” where nations become defunct, rejecting the “God-given diversity” of the world in favour of “vassals.” Above this, Putin is promoting a “Eurasian Union,” a geopolitical bloc that will enable the states of the region to withstand globalisation.

Putin’s Valdai speech shows that he has a fully developed world-view on which to base Russia’s future course. It also indicates that while Putin might have his faults (and I can’t think of what they might be offhand) he is the only actual statesman in the world today, and has established Russia as the most likely axis of a new civilisation and a new era.
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Gain a deeper understanding of the conflict between Putin's Russia and the West. Check out New Dawn Special Issue Vol 8 No 5, with an article by KR Bolton entitled "The Great Conspiracy Against Russia: What is Really Behind the Campaign Against Putin". 
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November 15, 2014
The Great Conspiracy Against Russia: What is Really Behind the Campaign Against Putin?

From New Dawn Special Issue Vol 8 No 5 (Oct 2014)

When the war-drums start beating in Washington against a state or statesman, one is entitled to wonder what transgression might have been made against the ‘New World Order’. Over the past few decades we have seen one nation after another succumb to either financial blandishments, or when those fail, long-planned, well-funded ‘spontaneous’ colour revolutions, and as a last resort bombs. The states of the ex-Soviet bloc largely succumbed to ‘colour revolutions’ orchestrated by the Soros network, aligned with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), USAID and a host of other funds and NGOs.

Milosevic’s Serbia, Qadhafi’s Libya and Saddam’s Iraq were bombed into submission, with ground support for jihadists. The globalists have no objection to jihadists when they serve to keep the world in a state of ‘constant conflict’, in accordance with globalist aims. The USA will use ‘Islamists’ where they can, both as dupes and bogeymen.

There is one major spanner in the world: Russia – again. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been vilified relentlessly from the start of his leadership of Russia. A second ‘Cold War’ followed so soon in the aftermath of the first that the two can be regarded as one.

Russia Stymied World State

There was a fleeting interregnum when it looked as though Russia would finally succumb to globalisation. This encompassed the Yeltsin years, however it was prepared while the Communist Party still held power, during the Gorbachev era. The sudden implosion of the mighty Soviet edifice, seemingly overnight, was long prepared by a combination of US-based subversion, backing ‘dissidents’ such as Solidarity in Poland, coupled with a planned scuttle by Gorbachev, who envisioned himself as an internationally-feted globalist celebrity.

Russia had succumbed to the nexus of money and revolution in 1917. The revolutionary movement had been well funded since 1905 when the anti-Tsarist journalist George Kennan was sent over to Japan to propagandise Russian POWs, with funds from Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., Wall Street. Kennan remarked that 50,000 revolutionary cadres were sent back to Tsarist Russia. Schiff’s contribution to the overthrow of the Tsar was lauded in New York in March 1917.¹ There quickly followed the Bolshevik coup led by Lenin and Trotsky. Lenin was backed by the Germans to get Russia out of the war, and Trotsky was backed by the Americans and British to keep Russia in the war. Trotsky was in close association with R. H. Bruce Lockhart, British War Cabinet special agent in Russia, to such an extent that Lockhart’s wife commented that many of his colleagues quipped he was turning Bolshevik. The lines were drawn when Trotsky resigned as minister of foreign affairs because of Lenin’s insistence that Russia sign an armistice with Germany.²

After the war, there was a scramble by international finance to get concessions from the Soviets, at a time when their existence was very precarious at best, and the American ‘intervention’ under General Graves was doing its best to backstab the White Armies in favour of the Reds.³ H. Wickham Steed, editor of The London Times, observed at the Paris Peace Conference that it was the international financiers such as Schiff who were pushing for worldwide recognition of the Bolsheviks.⁴ Matters proceeded well for international capitalism under the regime of Lenin and Trotsky. Russia opened up to foreign capital and technology. With Lenin’s death and the resulting power struggle, Stalin eliminated the influence of Trotsky and his coterie in 1928.

The common fight against the Axis in the Second World War opened up a further opportunity for the USSR to be brought into a world order. The USA proposed such a world state via the United Nations General Assembly as a world parliament. The USSR recognised that the USA would control any such parliamentary vote, and insisted that authority be vested in the Security Council with the right of veto for permanent members. The second premise for a post-war new world order rested with the US proposal to ‘internationalise’ atomic energy under United Nations aegis, outlined in the ‘Baruch Plan’, named after Bernard M. Baruch, so-called ‘elder statesman’ of the USA. Again, the USSR said no.⁵

The USSR alone prevented the creation of a world state. The conservative Right remains confused about Russia till today, and much of it continues the old Cold War anti-Russia line against Putin who, to them, is the new Stalin.

How the Soviet Bloc Imploded

While the globalists opportunity to erect a world state in the name of ‘world peace’ after the defeat of the Axis was scuttled by the USSR, the implosion of the Soviet bloc provided another opportunity. The oligarchs in the West are so conceited that they assume the whole world yearns for the ‘freedom’ of their ‘Brave New World’, in a narcosis of production and consumption. They assumed that with the demise of the Soviet Union they would be linking with their counterparts in Russia to form an international exploitative regime. Mikhail Gorbachev was their man, as Lenin and Trotsky had been.

Gorbachev has indeed become part of the globalist elite, as indicated by the 2011 celebration of his 80th birthday at the Royal Albert Hall, London, where “movie stars, singers and politicians showed up, underlining the celebrity status Mr Gorbachev enjoys in the West where he is widely perceived as the man who freed Eastern European from Soviet rule and ended the Cold War.”⁶ Guests included Lech Walesa, father of post-Soviet Poland, whose Solidarity movement received largesse from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), CNN founders Ted Turner, Israeli President Shimon Peres, and unnamed “oligarchs.”

On his birthday, Gorbachev warned Putin not to seek a third presidential term and menacingly referred to the revolts in the Arab world.

Back in 1988 Gorbachev openly invited revolt in the Soviet states by declaring before the United Nations that the USSR would not defend their Eastern bloc colleagues. This was the year that the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan, ‘Russia’s Vietnam’. He also announced there would be a massive reduction of Soviet armed forces from the Eastern bloc states.⁷ Gorbachev stated to his advisors his commitment to a “new world” under the auspices of the United Nations Organisation.⁸ The groundwork had been laid previously, with the sponsoring of Solidarity in Poland, which Carl Gershman, head of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), stated set in motion the “velvet revolutions” that toppled the Warsaw Pact bloc.⁹ The NED contrived Polish-Czech-Slovak Solidarity Foundation supported dissident publishing in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Moldova, the Caucasus and Central Asia. The Foundation for Education for Democracy, an outgrowth of the Solidarity Teachers Union, trained teachers and NGO leaders throughout the former Soviet Union, and the East European Democratic Center created dissident media in the Ukraine and Central Asia.¹⁰ The destruction of the Soviet bloc was orchestrated by a combination of Gorbachev’s treachery, globalist funded subversion, and the US sponsored Afghanistan imbroglio.

In 1991 Gorbachev established the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Studies to add his input to the dazzling array of interconnected globalist NGOs, foundations and think tanks. The North American branch founded in 1997 states the purpose is to spread “economic liberalisation.”¹¹

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“Wrong Direction”

Throughout the 1990s things seemed to be going well for the globalists. Russia had at last been deconstructed, and was ready for bringing into the ‘New World Order’. Gorbachev gave the green light for the dismantling of the Eastern bloc, and paved the way for idiot democracies of the Westminster style. Appropriately a drunken buffoon, Boris Yeltsin, who started his climb to power under Gorbachev in 1985 as a member of the Politburo, Mayor of Moscow and other senior posts, was offered up to usher in the new democratic Russia that could take her place in the world as another colony of finance-capitalism. He had earned his credentials as a liberal when criticising the lack of haste in reform in 1987. The first democratically elected president of Russia, he lasted from 1991-1999. Under Yeltsin Russian assets were sold off at knock down prices to oligarchs in the name of economic liberalisation. From the start of his presidency Yeltsin brought in advisors from the IMF, World Bank and US Treasury. His 1996 presidential campaign was funded by the oligarchy and promoted by their controlled media. Boris Berezovsky was described by a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) analyst, Daniel Treisman (who served in a 1997 US team in Russia on tax reform), as the “godfather of godfathers,” the oligarch who sat at the top of the dung-heap.¹²

Having devastated Russia, Yeltsin resigned, begging Russians for forgiveness for the ruin he had brought. The presidency was assumed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in December 1999. It was anticipated that Putin would continue to allow Russia to be vampirised, but he took what the globalists have ever since been calling a “wrong direction,” the title of a Council on Foreign Relations position paper “Russia’s wrong direction.” Written in 2006, the CFR paper recommended increased funding for the Freedom Support Act, in this instance referring specifically to the 2007-2008 presidential elections. Authors of the CFR report included Jack Kemp, Republican Party politico; Mark F. Brzezinski, who served on the National Security Council as an advisor on Russian and Eurasian affairs under President Clinton, as his father Zbigniew had served in the Carter Administration; Antonia W. Bouis, founding executive director of the Soros Foundations; James A. Harmon, senior advisor to the Rothschild Group, et al.¹³

President Putin relaxing

While Putin has been criticised for associating with a coterie of oligarchs of his own, these businessmen have been incorporated into the strengthening of the Russian state, not its undermining for globalist interests. Those who acted otherwise have been purged, and are celebrated as ‘dissidents’ and champions of ‘human rights’ by anti-Russia interests. These include the ‘godfather of oligarchy’ Berezovsky, who was living in exile in England where he was found hung,¹⁴ and Mikhail Khodorkovsky (hailed as a hero in the West), onetime owner of Yukos, jailed for ten years, while his oil empire was taken back for Russia. His son Pavel heads the Institute of Modern Russia to continue the work of his father’s Open Russia Foundation to promote “Russia’s integration into the community of democracies,”¹⁵ which is to say, Russia’s subordination to international finance.

In particular, Putin has challenged the notion of “the New American Century” as one prominent think tank optimistically termed the 21^st century. Putin has moved to limit the influence of the same subversive networks that undermined the Eastern bloc via ‘velvet revolutions’ by obliging employees of NGOs to register as ‘foreign agents’, and the state started an investigation of these subversives in March 2013. In that year NED provided $8,226,487 to NGOs, programmes and seminars in Russia for the undermining of the state in the name of “human rights.”¹⁶ NED receives funding from US Congress. Imagine the outrage of ‘world opinion’ if Russia funded groups to undermine the US government. Added to this are the millions that have poured in to undermine Russia by the George Soros network, USAID, and a host of others. In 2012 Putin expelled USAID, a governmental agency, stating that it was undermining Russia’s sovereignty.

Geopolitically, the globalists aim to encircle Russia. The alliances created by Putin in central Asia and further afield have meant this has not entirely succeeded, with the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation including China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan; and with India, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan having observer status. Belarus and Sri Lanka are dialogue partners, and Turkmenistan has guest attendance.

However, states such as Georgia and the Ukraine are targeted for takeover as important elements in this strategy. NED avidly sponsored young cadres in various sectors of Ukrainian society, including ‘educating’ electorates on how to vote in the October 2012 elections. The 2012 NED financial report lists the NGOs in the Ukraine that received $3,380,834 during that year.¹⁷ The amount represents the upper end of funds sent by NED throughout the world.

Pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine who would in other circumstances be lauded by the world media and politicians as ‘freedom fighters’, have been characterised as ‘terrorists’. The enemies of Russia have through the most illogical of rhetoric charged the Russian president with being personally responsible for the downing of a Malaysian airliner. The only thing known for sure as this is written is that Russian interests were in no way served by the targeting of the airliner, but it serves as grist for the anti-Russian agenda. Russia in turn is being pushed further from Europe, and into the embrace of China.

The Russians remain one of the few residues of a tough people still relatively uncorrupted by the moral, cultural and spiritual rot of a West in its epoch of death. With Russia there are still at least possibilities. “The Russian people are the people of the future,” wrote the philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev. “They will decide questions which the people of the West has not yet the strength to decide, which it does not even pose in their full depth.”¹⁸

Gain a deeper understanding of the conflict between Putin’s Russia and the West. Check out all the articles in New Dawn Special Issue Vol 8 No 5.

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FOOTNOTES

1. K. R. Bolton, Revolution from Above, Arktos Media Ltd., 2011, 57-58

2, K. R. Bolton, Stalin: The Enduring Legacy, Black House Publishing, 2012, 104-106

3. K. R. Bolton, Revolution from Above, op. cit., 66-97

4. Ibid., 61-62

5. K. R. Bolton, Stalin, op. cit., 125-134

6. Reuters, ABC News, ‘Stars honour Gorbachev at gala birthday bash’, 31 March 2011, www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/03/31/3178823.htm

7. Dr. Svetlana Savranskaya and Thomas Blanton (ed.), ‘Previously Secret Documents from Soviet and U.S. Files n the 1988 Summit in New York, 20 Years Later’, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 261, 8 December 2008

8. M. Gorbachev, ‘What are we going to take to the United Nations?’, Conference with advisors, 31 October 1988, Attended: Shevardnadze, Yakovlev, Dobrynin, Falin, Chernyaev, Archive of the Gorbachev Foundation. Fond 2. Notes of A.S. Chernyaev. On file at the National Security Archive. Translated by Svetlana Savranskaya. www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB261/sov03.pdf

9. C. Gershman, ‘Giving Solidarity to the world’, Georgetown University, 19 May 2009, www.ned.org/about/board/meet-our-president/archived-remarks-and-presentations/051909

10. C. Gershman, ‘Giving Solidarity to the world’, Ibid

11. The Gorbachev Foundation of North America, ‘Mission’, www.gfna.net/staff.php

12. Daniel Treisman, ‘Blaming Russia First’, Foreign Affairs, Council on Foreign Relations, November/December 2000, www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/56649/daniel-treisman/blaming-russia-first

13. Jack Kemp, et al, ‘Russia’s Wrong Direction: What the United States Can and Should Do’, Independent Task Force Report no. 57, Council on Foreign Relations, 2006, xi. The entire publication can be downloaded at: www.cfr.org/publication/9997/

14. Ian Cobain, ‘Boris Berezovsky inquest returns open verdict on death’, The Guardian, 27 March 2014, www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/27/boris-berezovsky-inquest-open-verdict-death

15. ‘Russia : A Postmodern Dictatorship?’, NED forum, 2013, www.ned.org/events/russia-a-postmodern-dictatorship

16. ‘Russia’, 2013 NED Annual Report, www.ned.org/where-we-work/eurasia/russia

17. National Endowment for Democracy, NED 2012 Annual report, www.ned.org/where-we-work/eurasia/ukraine

18. Nikolai Berdyaev, The Russian Idea, Macmillan, 1948, 70

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November 15, 2014
TransEvolution: The Age of Human Deconstruction

From New Dawn Special Issue Vol 8 No 5 (Oct 2014)

Mr Daniel Estulin is an award winning investigative journalist and best selling author of The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, published in 64 countries and translated into 41 languages. In August 2010 he was invited by Fidel Castro for a personal meeting in Havana after Castro read his book. In October 2010 Mr Estulin became the first journalist to give a speech to the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Venezuelan armed forces on global financial structures and the Bilderberg Group – an annual invitation-only conference of the elites in the fields of business, finance, media, military and politics.

Mr Estulin has authored 12 books, five of them international bestsellers, including The Invisible Empire, Conspiracy Octopus, Deconstructing Wikileaks, and The Lords of Shadows.

Daniel Estulin

His latest book, TransEvolution: The Age of Human Deconstruction, suggests that the depth of progress and technological development is such that people in the very near future may no longer be fully human. He asks: Is humanity in danger because of this domination of science and technology?

In the following interview with New Dawn magazine, Mr Estulin discusses the rise of transhumanism, the ‘Age of Transition’, post-humanity, synthetic biology, cybernetic immortality, new technologies of control, and the reasons why the global elite are interested in population control.

NEW DAWN (ND): Most New Dawn readers are acquainted with your best selling book The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, in which you expose the secretive global elite planning group that meets annually. You reported that at this year’s Bilderberg meeting they expressed grave concern about the rise of Iran, Russia and China. And of course the volatile situation in Ukraine. Before we discuss your latest book TransEvolution: The Coming Age of Human Deconstruction, could you elaborate on your approach to understanding world events?

DANIEL ESTULIN (DE): We are witnessing first hand the destruction of the world’s economy and the work of supranational forces. When one speaks of policy we often mean foreign or national executed by national governments. But we have to understand that Presidents and Prime Ministers are messengers of those who rule the world from behind the scenes. Which is why to understand what is happening in the world we have to frame issues in terms of global policy decisions. These decisions are not made at the White House or Downing Street but rather in the back rooms of the supranational elite. What is taking place in the Ukraine, the revolts in Venezuela, the utter destruction of the American economy (read Detroit), drug wars in Colombia and beyond, Kosovo, Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Syria, Colour Revolutions, etc, etc. – these are not isolated events but rather part of the continuum to change the very paradigm of modern society and take us to hell through deindustrialisation, zero growth, demand destruction, perpetual wars, etc.

ND: Your book warns about the imminent “transhumanist” revolution which seeks to integrate human with machine. What exactly is transhumanism and how is it connected directly to the global elites you’ve written extensively on in the past?

DE: Transhumanism is an ultra high tech dream of computer scientists, philosophers, neural scientists and many others. It seeks to use radical advances in technology to augment the human body, mind and ultimately the entire human experience. To most people this sounds like something from a science fiction film. Few are aware of constant breakthroughs in technology, which makes the transhumanist vision a very real possibility for the near future.

For example, neurochip interfaces, computer chips that connect directly to the brain, are being developed right now. The ultimate goal of a brain chip would be to increase intelligence thousands of time over – basically turning the human brain into a super computer. Lifelong emotional well-being is also a key concept within transhumanism. This can be achieved through a recalibration of the pleasure centres in the brain. Pharmaceutical mood renderers have been suggested, which will be cleaner and safer than mind-altering drugs. This is Aldous Huxley’s 21st century scientific dictatorship without tears.

Transhumanism was born out of humanism, which is yet another clever disguise of “scientism,” created specifically so that global eugenics operations could be carried out without being noticed.

ND: At the start of TransEvolution you make a link between the 2005 Bilderberg Group meeting and the 2006 British government document ‘Strategic Trends Report 2007-2036’. Was the discovery of this link one of the reasons you wrote the book?

DE: Exactly. At the end of the 2005 Bilderberg Conference in Germany, I was given a first draft of what later turned into a UK government report, ‘Strategic Trends Report 2007-2036’, a secret source document on the future of humanity. This 91-page report is a blueprint for the UK’s future strategic national requirements through the analysis of key risks and future shocks to the world’s financial, economic, political, demographic and technological areas and markets.

But it wasn’t the only report. In my investigation I came across two additional very important reports published over a decade ago by the British government and the US government. One is called ‘The Age of Transition’ which dealt with nanotechnologies, biology, information technology and cognitive technology. The other is ‘Russia 2045 Global Future’.

It was the hope of three conferences, ‘The Age of Transitions’, the ‘Global Future 2045 International Congress’ and the ‘NBIC’ conference, to integrate humanity with nature to save Planet Earth from mankind. Visions laid out included robotics, cybernetics, artificial intelligence, life extension, brain enhancement, brain-to-brain interaction, virtual reality, genetic engineering, teleportation, human-machine interfaces, neuromorphic engineering and enhanced human capabilities for defence purposes.

Once you break down the Orwellian speak, you realise that we, the people, are the enemy of the elite and through technological advancement and enhancement they will be able to control the future of humanity.

ND: The controversial Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, who has been dubbed “Putin’s brain” by the globalist CFR journal Foreign Affairs, warns in regard to the transhumanist agenda: “There will be some black magic yet, and certain things that will outright petrify. I think genetic engineering – we’re only now seeing the last people; we haven’t yet seen the first post-people, which are very soon to come. These should be mutants, clones, and they aren’t just fantasies or science fiction.” What do you think will happen?

DE: Our children are the last truly human generation of human beings on the planet. We will have transhuman children – post human, man-machine, cyborgs who are not totally human as a result of synthetic biology.

Now, in one of the biggest breakthroughs in recent history, scientists have created a synthetic genome that can self-replicate. They have taken a cell and modified the genes of a cell by inserting DNA from another organism. And the bacteria replicated itself thus creating a second generation of the synthetic DNA. The organism will do exactly what the scientist intended: a living thing, but under the control of Man.

If the 19th century was all about the revolution of harnessing energy from fossil fuels, and the 20th century was about exploiting the power of data, this century will be about controlling biology.

What’s amazing is that the cell was assembled and sparked into life in a laboratory. This technology takes mankind across a threshold. A turning point that marked a coming of age of a new science called synthetic biology, founded on the ambition that one day it will be possible to design and manufacture a human being.

In other words, you can get DNA of anything here on Earth and create organisms that never before existed entirely from non-living materials. Scientists are creating new life forms that the human immune system and the world have never so far experienced. As such, it will revitalise perennial questions about the significance of life – what it is, why it is important and what role humans should have in its future.

ND: Most people seem oblivious to what is just around the corner in terms of technology and its impact on human life. You say in your book that transhumanism is “steered by the elite” and that “we, the people, have not been invited.” What are some of the visible strategies being employed by the elites to dumb down the population so they sleepwalk into this so-called transhumanist “utopia”?

DE: Media, social media in all of its manifestations, and especially Hollywood – GIJoe 2, Prototype, Transcendence, Gatacca, I am Legend, Moon, Minority Report, AVATAR. Video games like ‘Deus Ex’. These are films, but the reality is far more dangerous.

Once they see some of these same gadgets employed in real life, people think they are still watching a ‘cool’ Hollywood ‘flick’. For example, in Minority Report Tom Cruise’s character John Anderton has a radical surgery to replace his eyes so that he can get past security systems that scan his retina to identify him. As he’s lying in a tub recovering from his black-market procedure, tiny robots sneak into the room and scan his eyes in an attempt to track down the fugitive Future Crime officer. The ability to scan retinas to identify people is straight out of a sci-fi film but, outside of the use of spider-like drone bots, this is very much present and near future. In fact, soon your eyes may not even need to be in close proximity to the scanner to be identified.

Engineers at Southern Methodist University are working closely with the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop a new type of eye scanner that could identify a room full of people without their knowledge. The new image sensors, called Panoptes, could locate and scan a person’s iris regardless of distance, and even if they’re not looking directly at the camera. The system, dubbed Smart-Iris, is impervious to problems like poor lighting, glare, eye-lashes, or movement. And, with the help of a new algorithm, it can function with only a partial scan.

One of the most talked about areas of research is something called the “Active Denial System,” ADS. ADS is a by-product of a larger ongoing research effort looking for technology that could delete and then replace a person’s memories via the use of electromagnetic radiation.

If you are thinking Men in Black Hollywood science fiction, you are absolutely right. Except the technology, called “Amnesia Beam,” is here, ready to be used at a moment’s notice. What’s more, a team of neuroscientists has actually developed a brain scan based on finding hints about what a subject is intending to do. This is a nightmare version of Minority Report made reality.

Scientists claim that the seeds of criminal and anti-social behaviour can be found in children as young as three. More researchers believe that violent tendencies have a biological basis, and that tests and brain imaging can pick them up in children. By predicting which children have the potential to be trouble, treatments could be introduced to keep them on the straight and narrow. If the tests are accurate enough, then a form of screening could be introduced in the same way we test for some diseases. The theories were put forward by two leading criminologists at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington.

Please understand, these are not publicly funded projects for the betterment of humanity, but they are mostly secret experiments sanctioned in the name of defence, which when put on its head is crime prevention. Extrapolated into the future it’s tailor-made to put down any rebellion by the 99% of the world’s population destined to live in abject poverty in crime infested Mega-Cities of the future.

Let me give you another example. Last year FOX showed a TV series called Almost Human where one of the main characters is a cyborg cop interacting with humans in society. Almost Human is about neuroscience, a key element of the elite’s control. Neuroscience is the study of the nervous system. With advances in chemistry, computer science, engineering, medicine and other disciplines, neuroscience now also includes the study of the molecular, cellular, developmental, structural, functional, evolutionary, computational, and medical aspects of the nervous system. From molecular and cellular studies of individual nerve cells to imaging of sensory and motor tasks in the brain, neuroscience has crossed the threshold of science and has become a key element of national security apparatus the world over.

The development of sophisticated neuro-weapons will create a perpetual state of uncertainty with the promise and peril of the development of neuro-warfare and its effects. Emotional detection systems will pervade public areas as global surveillance networks seek out terrorists and criminals.

These technologies are not being developed to stop the terrorists but rather to stop you! The laws to justify these technologies are not written on a whim. They are specifically designed to give the government carte blanche authority over the people during the chaos and confusion of the ‘Age of Transitions’. Transition to a planetary civilisation.

You see, the future Bin Ladens and Qadhafis are not the enemy. In fact, they never were. You are the enemy. Whether at airports, border crossings or on the street corner, from now on we will be mind-probed by amazing new technology developed by the Human Factors Division of the Department of Homeland Security’s Science & Technology directorate [this is an actual division of US Homeland Security].

ND: You write that: “Transhumanism fills people’s hopes and minds with dreams of becoming superhuman, but the fact of the matter is that the true goal is the removal of that pesky, human free will itself.” Do you believe the elites are planning this coming age of machine and robots (which are very sophisticated and will replace many human jobs) as a way to eventually eliminate the excess of humanity, the “useless eaters” as they’ve been termed?

DE: There is an effort by the mainstream press to focus on the work issue and completely miss the bigger picture. First, let’s look at the technology. Brain machine interfaces would allow the control of machinery with the brain itself. Implantable brain chips would also be able to store information and enhance cognitive function. The ultimate human machine symbiosis would be to download the actual copy of a person’s brain into a super computer.

I repeat, this would allow someone to effectively live forever in a computer-generated virtual simulation. And, of course, the military implications of convergence are quite obvious. A cybernetic enhancement of human performance is inevitable. Achieving these visions requires the decoding and understanding of complex systems. The most important complex system being the human brain. After all, it is the driving force behind human performance.

Augmentation can be a huge business for these corporations. We have been integrating ourselves with technology for decades now, replacing damaged limbs with mechanical limbs, implanting data chips into our bodies which give away huge amounts of information to governments and corporations all across the world. Has it come to the point when we will be actively encouraged to exchange our perfectly functional body parts for upgraded applications?

But it comes at a price. You will have to take the drugs for the rest of your lives to make sure the augmentation works. These drugs are both dangerous and addictive and expensive. If you don’t, your body will reject your augmentation. The elite will have their technology in you. They have the power to turn off your limbs, the potential to turn off your eyes, send messages to your brain and control your thoughts as if they have the power of God.

The technology doesn’t end there: Intel is working on implantable sensors in the brain that will be able to directly control computers and cell phones. By the year 2020 you won’t need a keyboard and mouse to control your computer. Instead, users will open documents and surf the web using nothing more than their brain waves.

The potential ‘benefits’ of such technology are almost beyond imagination. An article on the website of the Science Channel put it this way: “If you could pump data directly into your gray matter at, say, 50 mb per sec – you’d be able to read a 500-page book in just under two-tenths of a second. How would the world change if you could download a lifetime of learning directly into your brain in a matter of weeks?”

The possibilities are endless. But so is the potential for abuse. Through interaction, implantable microchips can ‘talk’ directly to the brain, bypassing sensory receptors. This would give a tyrannical government an ultimate form of control. If you could download thoughts and feelings directly into the brains of your citizens, you could achieve total control and never have to worry about them turning on you.

We haven’t even scratched the surface. Called Remote Neural Monitoring (RNM), this technology is already in use in the USA, UK, Spain, Sweden, Germany and France. It allows them to see through your eyes, hear your thoughts, and upload photos and scents into your brain as real as if you saw or smelled it in the natural environment.

Needless to say, the perpetrators can hear what you hear because you become a unit of the mainframe. They can change your behaviour, affect memory functions and emotions. This is not a plotline of a dystopian novel. This is real and it is being implemented today, every day by the governments who profess to protect us from evil.

In fact, you could potentially program these chips to make your citizens feel good all the time: The ultimate goal of Huxley’s scientific dictatorship without tears – soma personified. The future is now.

Instead of drugs like cocaine and marijuana giving you a natural high, you could have these chips produce a ‘natural high’ that never ends. Drug dependency replaced by a fully government sanctioned chip dependency. The way of the future.

Post-humanity will be a new human, genetically engineered and brain-chipped for total control. Part man and part machine, the new man will no longer have a need of the sexual reproductive function. If the elite’s plan is to reduce the world’s population, can you think of a better way to do that?

ND: What’s the connection between elite control of the world’s food supply and the depopulation agenda?

DE: There is no better or cheaper way to reduce population than through starvation. And in order to starve a people to death you must take control of their food production away from independent farmers and put it into the hands of giant corporations subservient to the interests of World Company Inc.

Ten to twelve pivotal companies, assisted by another three dozen, run the world’s food supply. This cartel has complete domination over world cereals and grains supplies, from wheat to corn and oats, from barley to sorghum and rye. But it also controls meat, dairy, edible oils and fats, fruits and vegetables, sugar, and all forms of spices.

While these firms maintain the legal fiction of being different corporate organisations, in reality this is one interlocking syndicate with a common purpose and multiple overlapping boards of directors.

Please understand, this interlocked self-perpetuating syndicate decides who eats and who doesn’t, who lives and who dies. It is a virtual spider web of financial, political, economic and industry interests with the Venetian ultramontane fondi model at the centre. These people own and manage the affairs of an interlocking corporate apparatus that dominates choke points within the global economy, especially finance, insurance, raw materials, transportation, and consumer goods.

But it does not end there. The control of food supplies is a matter of national security. The US Department of Agriculture is one of the key elements in a national security edifice attempting to control the world food market.

Food is power. When it is used to cull the population, it becomes a weapon of mass destruction. You may not realise it, but the elite certainly do.

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ND: In light of these alarming behind-the-scenes developments, can you elaborate on the global elite’s long-term plan?

DE: There are currently seven billion people on Planet Earth, a small blue orb meandering through space with limited natural resources and an ever-expanding population. Food and water are becoming scarcer. The elite understand this: a larger population equals fewer natural resources and more food and water supply shortages. Therefore, from the point of view of an oligarchical elite, if they want to completely control a planet, they must reduce the population to a more ‘manageable’ number. Remember, seven billion people and growing is a lot of mouths to feed. For the elite to eat, you and I have to die. How is that for a solution?

ND: How can aware people resist this diabolical ‘TransEvolution’?

DE: We have to understand that all of us have a place in the universe. Immortality, the way I understand it, is assuring the survival of the human species. Human beings are the most divine element of the known Universe. Nothing compares to our divine spark of reason. Technology and progress must be used to increase Man’s power in the Universe, not to destroy humanity.

Readers are encouraged to obtain a copy of Daniel Estulin’s book TransEvolution: The Age of Human Deconstruction, in which he lays out the full evidence for the points covered in this interview (and much more). The book can be purchased from all good bookstores or www.amazon.com. Check out Mr Estulin’s latest work at https://www.youtube.com/user/DanielEstulinVideos & https://vipwebinars.org/

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October 18, 2014
V. V. Putin & Eastern Wisdom

From New Dawn Special Issue Vol 7 No 6 (Dec 2013)

Back in October 2000, the newly elected President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir V. Putin, granted a revealing interview to the editors of India Today and The Russian Journal. President Putin paid special tribute to Nicholas Roerich, the Russian artist, explorer and mystic, stating:

“Roerich’s life was an amazing life, a marvel of creativity and astonishing example of spiritual closeness that, perhaps doesn’t lie on the surface, but is nevertheless the spiritual closeness that binds all peoples.”

In December 2002, President Putin’s wife Lyudmila opened an exhibition of Nicholas Roerich’s work at the National Museum of India in Delhi.

Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947) is remembered today as a celebrated Russian painter and occultist, whose intrepid journeys through Central Asia captured the attention of the Western public in the 1920s and 1930s. But Nicholas Roerich was also a master of ‘spiritual geopolitics’ who sought to establish a pan-Buddhist, transnational ‘New Country’ stretching from Tibet to southern Siberia, including territory that was governed by China, Mongolia, Tibet, and the Soviet Union. This ‘New Country’ was conceived by Roerich as the manifest, earthly expression of the invisible Kingdom of Shambhala, “the Holy Place, where the earthly world links with the highest states of consciousness.”1 This Shambhala Project was to establish the Sacred Union of the East.

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The American scholar John McCannon, who is writing a biography of Roerich, points out that in today’s Russia Roerich’s ideas are discussed at the highest echelons:

Roerich’s name has appeared with surprising frequency in civic and academic discussion of international relations and new directions in foreign policy. Mainly, he has been cited by political scientists and strategic thinkers in Russia looking for models of ‘multipolarity’ and ‘global pluralism’ to counter U.S. hegemony and seemingly triumphalist or confrontational political theories from the West…2

Since the earliest days of his first presidency, Vladimir Putin has worked tirelessly to lay the foundations of a Eurasian alliance. Just weeks after paying tribute to Nicholas Roerich, Putin told an international forum that “Russia has always perceived of itself as a Eurasian country.” Then in 2001, Russia and China, along with the states of Central Asia, founded the Eurasian political, economic and military organisation known today as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Mongolia, Pakistan, Iran and India, have all expressed interest in joining the group.

In the lead up to his election for a third term as Russian president, Putin set out his grand Eurasian vision in a series of widely published articles.

Nicholas Roerich was introduced to the Buddhist legend of Shambhala while working on the first Buddhist temple ever constructed in Europe, in St. Petersburg the imperial capital of the vast Russian Empire. The Russian Tsar Nicholas II, although a devout Orthodox Christian and head of the Russian Church, had a deep interest in mysticism and Eastern wisdom. On several occasions the Tsar received the Buddhist monk Dorzhiev, assuring him that, “Buddhists in Russia may feel as if under the wing of a mighty eagle.” Construction of the St Petersburg Buddhist temple commenced in 1913 to coincide with the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. That same year Lama Dorzhiev, a friend of Nicholas Roerich and George Gurdjieff, wrote that Russia was about to fulfil the old Buddhist messianic myth of Shambhala by founding a great Buddhist empire in the East.

One hundred years later in 2013, President Putin, himself a native of St. Petersburg, promised “100-percent support” for Russia’s Buddhists. Speaking during a visit to Russia’s Buryatia republic, Putin said he was proud that Russia is the only country in Europe where Buddhism is officially recognised as a traditional religion. The Russian President emphasised that “Buddhism plays a significant role in Russia… It has always been that way. It is well known that the Buddhists helped during both world wars.” Putin described Buddhism as a “kind, humanist learning based on love for others and love for one’s country,” and said he, the federal government and regional authorities were “always at [the Buddhists’] disposal and ready to support them.”3

Like Tsar Nicholas II, President Vladimir Putin is known to be a devout Russian Orthodox believer with a strong interest in Eastern wisdom. A master of both sambo and judo, Putin has often spoken of how the martial arts – imbued with Asian philosophy – are intended to train the body and the mind. Though an Orthodox Christian, he is conscious of the spiritual authenticity of other traditional religions. And like Nicholas Roerich, who was born Orthodox Christian but later became steeped in Buddhism, Vladimir Putin may well sympathise with the view that the highest forms of all the world’s religions point to the same ultimate reality.

For more about Russian President Putin, check out New Dawn Special Issue Vol 8 No 5.

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Footnotes

1. See ‘From Synarchy to Shambhala, The Role of Political Occultism and Social Messianism in the Activities of Nicholas Roerich’ by Markus Osterrieder, www.scribd.com/doc/119329670/From-Synarchy-to-Shambhala

2. ‘By the shores of white waters: the Altai and its place in the spiritual geopolitics of Nicholas Roerich’ by John McCannon, www.roerichmongolia.org/files/sibirica%20full%20text%20article.pdf

3. ‘Putin Promises 100% Support for Buddhists’, RIA Novosti, 11 April 2013, http://en.ria.ru/russia/20130411/180578136.html

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October 18, 2014