Archive for category: Jeffrey Nyquist Commentary

Afriend in Europe reminded me that on 24 March 2011 a group of “well-known Russian astrologers, shamans and parapsychologists gathered to discuss forecasts for the near and distant future.” Since almost nothing of importance in Russia occurs without the state or the FSB having a “finger in the pie” (so to speak) it is worth taking notice of Russian predictions – whatever the source. Readers are directed to the 2011 Pravda.ru article titled Third World War to Begin during Winter Games in 2014. A wise man once said, “Never make predictions, especially about the future.” Indeed, the article contains predictions that obviously did not come true. Anyone who monitors major predictions about the future will find a very poor track record in 99 out of 100 cases. What is most curious, however, is that “participants” of the aforementioned 2011 meeting offered up a date for the beginning of World War III that already has some of us jittery.

According to the article war supposedly begins in March 2014, during or shortly after the Olympic Games in Sochi. Since there have been bombings in Russia, and since Russia has threatened to take unspecified actions against Saudi Arabia if terrorists bomb the Sochi games, there may be reason to worry. We know that supposed Islamist terror bombings in Russia have, in the past, been carried out by the FSB along with other “false flag” operations. We know that Saudi Arabia is the key to the West’s oil lifeline. Is Russia setting up a pretext for war?

In the case of the assembled astrologers and parapsychologists in Russia, how did they arrive at the March 2014 date for the start of World War III? The best predictions are often made by those who have sources on “the inside.” If an astrologer is trying to boost himself, wouldn’t it be prudent to have friends in the special services or General Staff? After all, such predictions would greatly strengthen the livelihood of any self-respecting astrologer or parapsychologist. Therefore we may ask if the Russian astrologers are merely reflecting an open secret within Russia’s ruling circles. As it happens, an answer to this question is ready at hand. I received a note from a practicing non-Russian astrologer about the March 2014 time frame for World War III. Apparently, in the lore of astrology, 2014 looks rather frightening.In the previous version of this present article I had mistakenly assumed the aforementioned astrologer was concerned about events in March, and I took that to mean there was nothing else behind the Russian astrological predictions except astrology. Silly me. The story is even more interesting insofar as there are no (I am told) astrologically justified reasons for the Russian astrological prediction. I found nothing especially frightening about March 2014. And this leaves me wondering out loud: why were the Russian astrologers, who regularly serve the Russian General Staff and KGB, registering concerns for March 2014? Again, we may be looking at something that has more to do with inside knowledge of intentions which, in trying to look credible, must reflect what superiors already believe is set to happen. This is significant, and perhaps other experts can contact me and weigh in on the matter. It is not a question here of believing in astrology, by the way. It is a question of why Russian astrologers and shamans would underscore the Winter Olympics and March of 2014 as the beginning of World War III.

So when is the next world war going to start?

Let us turn to someone who made 148 falsifiable predictions in his 1984 book and got roughly 94 percent of them right. I am referring to KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn. His predictions were based on strategic insight, years of study, and personal knowledge. In a 1978 memorandum to the CIA Golitsyn warned that America and NATO were in grave danger because the Soviet Union had adopted a long range strategy that the West knew nothing about. According to Golitsyn, “… a trap is being laid by the Communist policymakers which will be exploited when the USSR carries out a deceptive liberalization of its regime….” Written in 1978, more than a decade before the revolutions that swept through Eastern Europe, Golitsyn’s warning was scoffed at. “With few exceptions,” the editors of Golitsyn’s 1984 book affirmed, “those Western officials who were aware of the views expressed in the manuscript [of Golitsyn], especially on the Sino-Soviet split, rejected them. In fact, over the years it became increasingly clear to the author that there was no reasonable hope of his analysis of communist affairs being seriously considered in Western official circles.”

While Nancy Reagan consulted astrologers, the White House and intelligence community weren’t touching Golitsyn with a ten foot pole. In fact, the poor man was defamed in publication after publication. The accuracy of his predictions was vociferously denied. And here we are, twenty years after the liberalization of the Soviet Bloc, with a KGB officer nominally in charge of Russia. If anyone cares to notice, the liberalization was false indeed if only because Russia has not been liberalized. Even the former satellite countries exist in a curious state between liberalization and ongoing control by hidden communist “structures.” What did this liberalization accomplish in the end? If anyone cares to notice, NATO has been gradually disarming while President Barack Obama is working to shrink the U.S. nuclear arsenal to a fraction of its current size. And why is this important? In a 1973 memorandum to the CIA Golitsyn wrote: “One can also expect a concealed Communist offensive through their agents of influence … in order further to undermine the establishment, especially the Pentagon, the so-called ‘military-industrial complex’ and the American Special Services; and further to reduce the authority of the President in the military field and to reduce expenditure on defense….” The further weakening of the United States, wrote Golitsyn, will lead to Communist Bloc military “superiority over the West through secret Sino-Soviet cooperation….”

The result of such superiority is not hard to guess. According to Golitsyn’s 1973 memorandum, “The Soviet and Chinese rocket strike units and strategic bombers will make a surprise raid on Pearl Harbor lines on the main government and military headquarters of the leading Western countries and on their missile sites. The main idea will be to knock out the primary Western sources of retaliation and to paralyze, at least for a short period, their physical ability to take a decision on retaliation.” Golitsyn further wrote: “Although, of course, this vision of a surprise attack on the West is … speculation, it is [my] belief that it is definitely in the realm of possibility, given that it has been the subject of study by the KGB, and should in any case be prepared for….”

There are a number of factors that must be clarified before we continue our analysis of when World War III is likely to begin. First, we must reckon with the diversionary role played by Arab terrorism in advance of a nuclear attack on the United States. A pre-war diversionary phase, known within Soviet military circles as “Grey Terror,” was outlined by GRU defector Viktor Suvorov in Spetsnaz: The Inside Story of the Soviet Special Forces. On page 196 of the book, Suvorov defined Grey Terror as “a series of large and small [terrorist] operations the purpose of which is, before actual military operations begin, to weaken the enemy’s morale, create an atmosphere of suspicion, fear and uncertainty, and divert attention of the enemy’s armies and police forces to a huge number of different targets.” Suvorov further stated that Grey Terror is a kind of terror that is carried out “in the name of already existing extremist groups not connected in any way with the Soviet Union, or in the name of fictitious organizations.”

If alarm bells are not ringing in your head at this point in our discourse, then you haven’t been reading with sufficient attention. For here we have a GRU defector describing a diversionary strategy that precedes World War III. The book in which this description takes place was written 13 years before the spectacular terrorist attack of 9/11, which KGB defector Alexander Litvinenko hinted was a KGB operation. (Before his poisoning with polonium-210, Litvinenko also said that leading figures in al Qaeda were KGB agents – including Ayman al-Zawahri, the current chief of al Qaeda.) It is almost certainly not a coincidence that al Qaeda’s operations against the United States closely resemble Grey Terror. If we consider the Soviet role in creating and supporting international terrorism during the past half century, and the testimony of communist bloc defectors like Ion Pacepa, the purpose of the terror edifice comes sharply into focus.

In essence, if we are reading the situation correctly, the first act of war has already happened. It was accomplished through a covert mechanism so that the victim of the attack could not properly identify the true source of the attack. The question of when all-out war begins, however, is still not answered. In November 1999, while conversing with GRU defector Stanislav Lunev, I admitted to being puzzled by the exact mechanism of a Soviet surprise nuclear strike. How would they pull it off? Lunev said, “If you ever hear that Arab terrorists have attacked an American city with nuclear weapons, don’t believe it.” I asked Lunev why I should disbelieve such a thing. He replied: “Because it will be my people. It will be Spetsnaz.” I asked him what would happen after such a nuclear attack. He said that a period of weeks or months would elapse. “Then the rockets from Russia will arrive.” This last statement puzzled me a great deal at the time, but does not puzzle me today.

The United States government has sometimes (if not often) been manipulated by Russian agents of influence. Diana West has written a bestselling book to remind us of this fact. Time is always required for such agents to guide a nation’s policies toward national disadvantage. This would also be true for a country suffering a diversionary nuclear terror attack. Considering how easily we have been manipulated in the past, consider what a diversionary nuclear strike could accomplish if the right people were in the White House?

This leads me to consider another communist bloc defector. His name was Jan Sejna, and in 1982 he wrote the following words about Russia’s long-range strategy:

Soviet ambitions towards the United States were aimed at the extinction of Capitalism and the ‘socialization’ of America…. The main strategic goals on the road to their fulfillment were: the withdrawal of the U.S.A. from Europe and Asia; the removal of Latin America from the United States’ sphere of influence and its incorporation into the Socialist bloc; the destruction of United States influence in the developing world; the reduction of American military power to a state of inferiority; the advent to power in Washington of a transitional liberal and progressive government; and the collapse of the American economy.

Before a missile can be launched the U.S. political system will be infiltrated (see the work of Trevor Loudon) and the U.S. economy will be sabotaged (see the work of Kevin Freeman). We can also see there is no reason to attack the United States with nuclear weapons until most or all of these goals have been reached. For once these goals are accomplished the United States will be “ready for the oven.” In essence, the country will be disarmed and isolated. It will only be a matter of time before the country wakes up and attempts to change course. This is when Russia’s nuclear weapons prove useful. That is when you should expect a war to start.

All of this does not render an exact date. Instead, it gives us markers on the road ahead. Through these markers we can track our progress. We can see where we are, and where we can expect to be as events unfold. The strange thing, of course, is that Socialist bloc defectors have been describing our future for decades. The reason they were able to do this is simple. Strategy works when there is no counter-strategy. The Great Game follows a pattern set by the side that holds the initiative. In the West our leaders have denied there is an enemy or an opposing strategy. They are readily diverted into the dead end policies of the present day.  The question that now cries out the for clarification has to do with domestic U.S. politics.

An interesting news item appeared on Newsmax yesterday with the headline, Billionaires Dumping Stocks, Economist Knows Why. In brief the article states that Warren Buffett and other billionaires have no faith in the future of “dyed-in-the-wool” American companies because of recent “disappointing performance.” The rest of the article is an advertisement for an economist who is predicting a large market correction. Such predictions, of course, are the flies of a summer. How can anyone pretend to predict the future?

The political economist Max Weber was, perhaps, best known for writing The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in which he argued that Puritan ethics influenced the development of market society. Weber wanted to be scientific about economics and the way people deal with uncertainty. To this end Weber wrote Economy and Society, in which he divided social action into four types: (1) instrumentally rational; (2) value-rational; (3) affectual; and (4) traditional or “ingrained habituation.” Of these four kinds of action, we might presume that market prediction falls under “instrumentally-rational action” or “value-rational action.”

Science, for Weber and many other scientists, is about prediction. If you want to understand human economic action you need some kind of comprehensive typology for grasping the factors at work. In economics you cannot explain everything that happens in terms of the individual rationally seeking pecuniary advantage. A great deal depends on irrational factors that are rarely discussed. Such factors are hopelessly intertwined with each other – as in the case of the action produced by Puritanism on the market economy of previous centuries.

Weber was particularly interested in the role that religion played in economic activity. And if Weber were alive today, he would be fascinated to see that irrational beliefs of a non-religious kind are having a profound effect on the economy today. In fact, so strongly held are these irrational beliefs, that we cannot even discuss them without entering into controversy. One must either believe, or be an enemy of belief. No rational discussion can be allowed in such cases. For the true believers are, after all, true believers; and everywhere these believers exist and assert their influence. They tyrannize our thinking and bring about profound economic and social changes in society.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Weber’s Economy and Society is Chapter XIV, “Charisma and Its Transformation.” We must not underestimate this most irrational and mysterious factor in economic and political history. For it is during a great crisis that charismatic leadership typically comes into play. Weber explains it like this: “All extraordinary needs … which transcend the sphere of everyday economic routines, have always been satisfied … on a charismatic basis. The further we go back into history, the more strongly does this statement hold.” In other words, the true charismatic leader appears in times of distress, not in times of peace and prosperity. He appears at the beginning and end of things. He may be described as Christ describes himself in the Book of Revelation, “I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending … which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.”

The “natural” leader, the charismatic leader, appears as if Providence had summoned him. He speaks as if he has authority from a higher source. Such leaders, wrote Weber, “[are] neither appointed officeholders nor ‘professionals’ in the present-day sense, but rather the bearers of specific gifts of body and mind that were considered ‘supernatural.’” The charismatic leader seems to be channeling something that comes from a “higher” source. When the charismatic leader speaks, people are mesmerized or fascinated by his inspired fervor. They might even feel they are hearing the Word of God.

We must not be constricted, says Weber, with a strictly religious notion of charisma. In an increasingly secular world, where politics has replaced religion, the “charismatic” leader might be a magnetic speaker who hypnotizes the masses while seeming to drift in and out of a religious kind of ecstasy. Setting aside frauds and circus acts, Weber suggests that such leadership is real and has a profound impact wherever it appears. In the complex society of today there might be charismatic leaders in many walks of life, even in corporations. Consider the almost divinely inspired genius of Thomas Edison or Nikola Tesla. Both these figures engaged in work that transformed the world economy. We might ask ourselves: Where did they receive their extraordinary inspiration from?

It is interesting to note that the word “genius” comes from the Latin word genii, which refers to the tutelary deities of a person, family or place. Does anyone seriously think that creative inspiration is rational? Or is it mystical? And is not the economy, in large part, driven by creative inspiration? In fact we do not know what invention, what scientific discovery, may next overturn all our economic expectations (whether optimistic or pessimistic). Consider the economic consequences of the computer or smartphone on which you are reading this article. Thirty years ago these products (in current form) didn’t exist. What will exist thirty years from now? Perhaps there will be massive undreamt of prosperity. On the other hand, there may be nothing but rubble and destitution. At this juncture, we simply cannot picture the future with any certainty; for many possibilities lie open to us. Given the creative and charismatic forces unleashed by the global economy, there is no set future, no longer a discernible pattern, and no past with which to compare the present day.

Charisma, says Weber, is a revolutionary force in both society and economy. This is because the charismatic leader creates a new dispensation by laying down a new law, or by instigating a new mode of life “for the sake of glorifying a genuine prophetic and heroic ethos.” People are therefore inspired by the story of Nikola Tesla or Edison, or even by billionaires who have made their money through a process of thought that simply eludes routine number-crunching and common sense. And yes, even billionaires can be charismatic leaders.

Perhaps the uninspired majority need to follow someone. The problem for investors, as with most followers, is a problem of discernment. Which financial prophet has the gift of grace? Which has genuine charisma, genuine inspiration? And are we correct to think that extraordinary people possess an extraordinary understanding which explains their achievements? And if charisma is real, as Weber asserts, is it a permanent possession or something temporary? Certainly we cannot deny that Joan of Arc was an example of charismatic leadership, although her “voices” abandoned her prior to being burned as a witch. So even if we could recognize a genuinely inspired financial leader, how can we be sure he hasn’t suddenly lost his grace in the manner of Joan of Arc?

The wellspring of human creativity is from the soul, and the soul must remain a mystery. It is perhaps true that science is no better at predicting human action than shamanism. And so we are left to follow our own analysis of the economy or someone else’s. But who, in truth, follows their own analysis? Even our inspirations may ultimately come from outside ourselves (that is, if our inspirations are “genuine”).

In The Four Reformers, by Robert Louis Stevenson, a meeting takes place under a bramble bush where four conspirators talk about remaking the world. The first says, “We must abolish property.” The second says, “We must abolish marriage.” The third says, “We must abolish God.” The fourth wants to abolish work, and falls silent. The first then admonishes his comrades to a practical expedient; namely, reduce all men to “a common level.” The second says, “Let us give freedom to the sexes.” The third says, “Let us find out how to do it.” The first says, “Let us abolish the Bible.” The second says, “Let us abolish the laws.” The third says, “Let us abolish mankind.”

And how is mankind abolished? As the science of extermination entered its first experimental phase, there came into existence the extermination camps of the Nazis, the Gulag Archipelago of the Soviets, and the Laodong Gaizao (reform through labor) of the Chinese Communists. But now, with the advent of nuclear, biological and seismic weapons (not to mention weaponized nanotechnology), the abolition of what Nietzsche called “the many-too-many” becomes a distinct possibility.  And so the four reformers of Stevenson’s story pave the way with feminism, atheism, legal nihilism, and Darwinism (setting the stage for the abolition of property – as a necessary precondition).

It was F.A. Hayek who pointed out, in The Road to Serfdom (1944), that with the rise of destructive totalitarianism mankind had fallen into decline. Hayek explained: “We have progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past. Although we had been warned by some of the greatest political thinkers of the nineteenth century, by Tocqueville and Lord Acton, that socialism means slavery, we have steadily moved in the direction of socialism.”

Hayek pointed out that the ideas behind National Socialism (Germany) and Soviet Socialism (Russia) represented a total break “not only with the recent past but with the whole evolution of Western civilization….” It is not merely a break with Adam Smith, Hume, Lock and Milton; but a break with “the foundations laid by Christianity and the Greeks and Romans. Not merely nineteenth and eighteenth century liberalism, but the basic individualism inherited by us from Erasmus and Montaigne, from Cicero and Tacitus, Pericles and Thucydides….”

Merely raise a generation that has little or no contact with classic antiquity – with those great men who taught us how to think, how to value the life of the mind, how to nurture the spirit of free inquiry and thought – and you have cut the tree of civilization from its roots. To accomplish this, you launch an attack against the past. The way to do this was described in Richard M. Weaver ‘s essay, “On Setting the Clock Right.” According to Weaver: “If one remarks that … collectivism is fatal to individual liberty, one is blamed for being out of step with the times. If one hazards an opinion that the amount of noise and confusion prevailing today is perhaps not the best thing for the human psyche, one is branded an enemy of progress.” Those who conspire to cut us out of the fabric into which we were woven by historical circumstance, tell us that we cannot turn the clock back. Richard Weaver sweeps this aside by explaining that the past is real and substantial, while the future is unreal. “The past exists in the form of history,” declared Weaver; “it is something we in a sense possess, something we can examine and appraise.” The future does not exist in the same way. We cannot appraise it, though we may realize through study of the past that there is “nothing new under the sun,” and finding ourselves in context, understand our place in history.

But once you take history away, no understanding is possible. Once history has been severed, and we no longer look back, we become vulnerable to the most elementary errors. Stevenson’s four reformers are empowered whenever history is forgotten or set aside. This is because historical knowledge inoculates society against the four reformers. But ignorance of history allows them to advance from one destructive absurdity to another. For example, consider the recent heroic status assigned by the four reformers to homosexuality (along with the irresistible campaign for the legal recognition of homosexual marriage). Today the four reformers have succeeded so well, that few would dare to defend the old view, which can only be dug out of the ashcan of history from a burnt fragment. One such fragment would be Johann David Michaelis’s Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, where it says: “If we reflect on the dreadful consequences of sodomy … we cannot … consider the punishment as too severe. For if it once begins to prevail, not only will boys be easily corrupted by adults, but also by other boys; nor will it ever cease; more especially as it must thus soon lose all its shamefulness and infamy and become fashionable and the national taste; and then … national weakness, for which all remedies are ineffectual … not perhaps in the first generation, but certainly in the course of the third or fourth…. To these evils may be added yet another, viz. that the constitutions of those men who submit to this degradation are, if not always, yet very often, totally destroyed, though in a different way from what is the result of whoredom.”

It is, of course, swimming against the tide to read aloud from books that will soon be outlawed as “hate speech.” Historical memory being corrupted, our discourse disconnected from our forefathers, we are as ready to burn old books of wisdom as were the Nazis. And then, under a totalitarian parade of tolerance, so artfully conceived by the four reformers, one discovers a new intolerance. Animated by intensive hatred for tradition, law and civilization, the new intolerance is aimed at those who nurtured us through the centuries, who prepared the way for our existence. Here is the project of the four reformers: to destroy the foundation of civilized life, despite the fact that the reformers exist upon that same foundation. In their suicidal campaign, it is imperative to punish or intimidate all those who reflect upon the requirements of human procreation, of the breeding of healthy human beings in a way that preserves a path forward (i.e., through successful generations of children brought up to perform their duty in that great chain of being without which human life would disappear altogether). According to Johann David Michaelis, “Whoever, therefore, wishes to ruin a nation, has only to get this vice [sodomy] introduced; for it is extremely difficult to extirpate it where it has once taken root because it can be propagated with much secrecy … and when we perceive that it has once got a footing in any country, however powerful and flourishing, we may venture as politicians to predict that the foundation of its future decline is laid and that after some hundred years it will no longer be the same … powerful country it is at the present.”

If Sodomy was once shameful, and now becomes the “national taste,” what has become of shame? In his book, Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History, Lee Harris asked: “What makes the difference between Happy Lands and Not So Happy Lands?” According to Harris, you cannot build a free society without shame. “Shame is a force superior to reason,” wrote Harris, “because it is rooted in the deepest of our fears – the fear of being abandoned.” Therefore, if you want to abolish freedom then you must abolish shame. “It is through shame,” noted Harris, “that we develop the tendency to treat other people decently, and with fairness….”  Every religion, every successful society, has recognized this fact. The four reformers must add shame to their list of things to be abolished. And while they’re at it, Hell must be abolished since Hell is the place of exile from God. According to Peter Hitchens, in The Abolition of Britain, “Hell was abolished around the same time that abortion was legalized and the death penalty was done away with.” If you are going to eliminate shame you might as well eliminate Hell. After all, you are on the road to making the entire world into Hell. So actual Hell becomes redundant. In this way, as a bonus, you simultaneously abolish the Church. As Hitchens observed, “Like many of the other great British or English institutions, the Church had good reason to feel it was no longer as ‘relevant’ as it had been. It depended upon stable  families and lasting marriages to pass on its faith and traditions, which few would learn outside the home, or without parental pressure and guidance.”

So many things to abolish, so little time. As a matter of course, the four reformers must attempt to abolish war. But this is pure mockery. Such things as stupidity, poverty and war cannot be abolished. So what is the reason for putting forward so many arms control agreements and UN resolutions? It is not to abolish violence, but to break down those national structures which prevent violence, and thereby preserve law and order and property (which the reformers hate).

If I were to update Robert Louis Stevenson’s story of The Four Reformers, looking back at their accomplishments to date, I would record their most recent meeting as follows:

“We have not abolished property, but we have inspired envious hatred against those who hold property,” said one.

“We have not abolished marriage, but we have made divorce so easy that marriage can no longer bind man and woman together,” said the second.

“We have not abolished God, but we have corrupted the Church with a false idea of God,” said the third.

“I wished we could abolish work, and now the welfare state makes work superfluous,” said the fourth.

“We have been practical in our politics,” noted the first, “since we have reduced all men to a common level.”

The second bragged, “We have degraded them sexually.”

The third smiled, “We know how to spread all forms of degradation.”

The first added, “We have replaced the Bible with television.”

The third said, “We may yet abolish man.”