How the World Really Works, Pt. 1: The MI6 Model

The present book under anaklysis.

The present book under analysis.

By: Jay

For those who enjoy the subject matter in my analysis, Stephen Dorril’s MI6 is often referenced, recommended and cited as a prime example of real-world intrigue.  It’s functions as a window into how the West has operated geo-politically the last one hundred years, during the two great wars, the Cold War, and into the modern era of the “war on terrorism” so-called.  The book was published in 2002, so it’s also not that out of date, and since its publication, Mark Curtis’ 2010 Secret Affairs has also been published vindicating much of Dorril’s analysis.  Dorril’s book can be seen as a lengthier, massive version of the material in Curtis’ book, with Secret Affairs focusing on the West’s utilization of radical Islam.  Curtis is also a former LSE graduate and Royal Institute research fellow.  Dorril is also a professor and intelligence researcher, as well as a BBC consultant.  The point being, neither of these authors are “conspiratorial” in their approach.  While both might be said to be probably somewhat “left” in their analysis, the presentation in both are attempts at factual analysis.

The purpose of this article?  To shut the mouths of the countless idiots and lazy intellectuals that sit back offering endless criticism and don’t read or know about any of this.  Do I really care? No, but it’s fun to make mincemeat of the pseudo-intellectuals that sit back as armchair philosophers and critics that don’t read jack shit about jack shit, but feel the need to correct me in every possible way.  You see, it’s “bad” to read books on a multitude of subjects – it’s bad to be interested in geo-politics.  What you’re supposed to do is get married, get screwed over by your fat wife, then get screwed by some vulturous corporation after 40 years of servile servitude, and then proceed to your early grave through orderly euthanasia by the stategod, should you be allowed to live that long, after all your cancer-causing vaccines, Soviet-fluoridated water and GMO foods.  I’ll gladly take the gadfly mantle of “failure” by this ridiculous “society.”  When this all converts to the automatic technocratic technocracy, what some boomer thinks in 2012 will be on no one’s mind, other than for a good laugh.  To other detractors and critics who complain that this blog is not written for a mass audience, no it isn’t.  This is supposed to be the “real world” isn’t it?  Grow up and read a book. Read more of this post

Casino Royale (Novel) – Analysis

1960 copy of Casino Royale I Came Across.

By: Jay

Casino Royale (1953) is the first of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels, and since I’ve decided to write my master’s thesis on this classic series of espionage novels, blogging about the series would be a help to my own writing process.  I’ll be dealing with the semiotic and propaganda effects of real events being fictionalized, and then the resulting impact and purpose of the fiction as it passes into mass media consumption.  As Fleming himself noted, “everything I write has precedent in truth.”

This is crucial to keep in mind as one works through the novels and films, as it becomes clearer and clearer that Fleming, himself a top British intelligence agent, gradually reveals the means and methods of control and manipulation by the top of the pyramid.  Bond himself is a cog in this machine, situated as the symbol of the loyal, western, capitalist hemisphere, battling what he discovers to be the evil Soviet anti-spy agency, SMERSH.  SMERSH is a kind of Soviet “Secret Team” that proclaims “death to all spies.”

In the beginning, however, Bond is not after SMERSH, but a wealthy, disfigured rogue who stuck out on his own and created a “fifth column” from SMERSH, named LeChiffre.  LeChiffre translates as “the cypher,” letting us know more is at work here.  LeChiffre, according to Bond writer Ian MacIntyre, was based on British Satanist/occultist Aleister Crowley.

In fact, Ian Fleming, it has recently been claimed by researcher Anthony Masters, was responsible for crafting the plot to lure Rudolph Hess to Scotland based on a bogus astrological chart that tickled Hess’ fancy, created by Crowley. The plot worked, apparently, and Hess parachuted into Scotland and was captured.  LeChiffre, “the cypher,” has curious features, and like many Bond villains a strange sexual appetite and fixation, in the same vein as Crowley.

Soon into the novel, Bond meets his first “Bond girl,” Vesper Lynd, who will double-cross him and be exposed as a SMERSH agent working under duress.  What’s interesting is that a team of Bulgarian communists attempts to assassinate Bond with an explosive device soon after Bond arrives in the fictional Royale-Les-Eaux in Northern France.  The explosion fails in its design, however, and a cover story is created, blaming in on leftist, communistic terror.  Read more of this post

Josephus on the Temple Symbolism

By: Jay

I had always thought, following James B. Jordan’s analysis as well (in Through New Eyes), that the three levels of the Temple signified a three-tiered, symbolical view of the world. In this view, the holy of holies corresponds to heaven, or God’s throne, and the holy place and courtyard to earth or the stellar sky and earth.  A friend of mine into biblical theology had always taken a different approach to the referents of the levels, and we had an interesting discussion as a result. However, I noticed that Josephus more or less backs up my view in Antiquities of the Jews, though elsewhere in Wars of the Jews in his younger days, he apparently gave a different interpretation.

Also interesting is that Josephus affirms the zodiacal symbolism of the breastplate (from Philo), and this is picked up in writers like Clement of Alexandria in The Stromata. Another argument I’d made several times that garnered quite a bit of opposition and criticism. I came across this in Mircea Eliade’s classic The Sacred & the Profane, and I think the symbolism is probably polyvalent. Gordon Wenham hints at this connection in his commentary on Numbers and here is Josephus affirming it: Read more of this post

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