The Public School Nightmare: Why fix a system designed to destroy individual thought?

we've been hood winked, we've been bamboozled , we've been sold a bad bill of goods ,we didn't land on Plymouth rock , fucking Plymouth rock landed on U.S.  ...we R being fucking raped,pillaged ,ass fucked & IT HAS ALL BEEN BY DESIGN !!!        ...now lets ALL put r hands down , we've em~bare~assed   ourselves long enough :o  &   fucking clean the "elites" fucking parasites ass pipes up & out !    .... lets try that fucking 1   ,  fucking once

by John Taylor Gatto
(all rights reserved)

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I want you to consider the frightening possibility that we are spending far too much money on schooling, not too little. I want you to consider that we have too many people employed in interfering with the way children grow up — and that all this money and all these people, all the time we take out of children's lives and away from their homes and families and neighborhoods and private explorations — gets in the way of education.
That seems radical, I know. Surely in modern technological society it is the quantity of schooling and the amount of money you spend on it that buys value. And yet last year in St. Louis, I heard a vice-president of IBM tell an audience of people assembled to redesign the process of teacher certification that in his opinion this country became computer-literate by self-teaching, not through any action of schools. He said 45 million people were comfortable with computers who had learned through dozens of non-systematic strategies, none of them very formal; if schools had pre-empted the right to teach computer use we would be in a horrible mess right now instead of leading the world in this literacy. Now think about Sweden, a beautiful, healthy, prosperous and up-to-date country with a spectacular reputation for quality in everything it produces. It makes sense to think their schools must have something to do with that.
Then what do you make of the fact that you can't go to school in Sweden until you are 7 years old? The reason the unsentimental Swedes have wiped out what would be first and seconds grades here is that they don't want to pay the large social bill that quickly comes due when boys and girls are ripped away from their best teachers at home too early.
It just isn't worth the price, say the Swedes, to provide jobs for teachers and therapists if the result is sick, incomplete kids who can't be put back together again very easily. The entire Swedish school sequence isn't 12 years, either — it's nine. Less schooling, not more. The direct savings of such a step in the US would be $75-100 billion, a lot of unforeclosed home mortgages, a lot of time freed up with which to seek an education.
Who was it that decided to force your attention onto Japan instead of Sweden? Japan with its long school year and state compulsion, instead of Sweden with its short school year, short school sequence, and free choice where your kid is schooled? Who decided you should know about Japan and not Hong Kong, an Asian neighbor with a short school year that outperforms Japan across the board in math and science? Whose interests are served by hiding that from you?
One of the principal reasons we got into the mess we're in is that we allowed schooling to become a very profitable monopoly, guaranteed its customers by the police power of the state. Systematic schooling attracts increased investment only when it does poorly, and since there are no penalties at all for such performance, the temptation not to do well is overwhelming. That's because school staffs, both line and management, are involved in a guild system; in that ancient form of association no single member is allowed to outperform any other member, is allowed to advertise or is allowed to introduce new technology or improvise without the advance consent of the guild. Violation of these precepts is severely sanctioned — as Marva Collins, Jaime Escalante and a large number of once-brilliant teachers found out.
The guild reality cannot be broken without returning primary decision-making to parents, letting them buy what they want to buy in schooling, and encouraging the entrepreneurial reality that existed until 1852. That is why I urge any business to think twice before entering a cooperative relationship with the schools we currently have. Cooperating with these places will only make them worse.
The structure of American schooling, 20th century style, began in 1806 when Napoleon's amateur soldiers beat the professional soldiers of Prussia at the battle of Jena. When your business is selling soldiers, losing a battle like that is serious. Almost immediately afterwards a German philosopher named Fichte delivered his famous "Address to the German Nation" which became one of the most influential documents in modern history. In effect he told the Prussian people that the party was over, that the nation would have to shape up through a new Utopian institution of forced schooling in which everyone would learn to take orders.
So the world got compulsion schooling at the end of a state bayonet for the first time in human history; modern forced schooling started in Prussia in 1819 with a clear vision of what centralized schools could deliver:
Obedient soldiers to the army; Obedient workers to the mines; Well subordinated civil servants to government; Well subordinated clerks to industry Citizens who thought alike about major issues.
Schools should create an artificial national consensus on matters that had been worked out in advance by leading German families and the head of institutions. Schools should create unity among all the German states, eventually unifying them into Greater Prussia.
Prussian industry boomed from the beginning. She was successful in warfare and her reputation in international affairs was very high. Twenty-six years after this form of schooling began, the King of Prussia was invited to North America to determine the boundary between the United States and Canada. Thirty-three years after that fateful invention of the central school institution, as the behest of Horace Mann and many other leading citizens, we borrowed the style of Prussian schooling as our own.
You need to know this because over the first 50 years of our school institution Prussian purpose — which was to create a form of state socialism — gradually forced out traditional American purpose, which in most minds was to prepare the individual to be self-reliant.
In Prussia the purpose of the Volksshule, which educated 92 percent of the children, was not intellectual development at all, but socialization in obedience and subordination. Thinking was left to the Real Schulen, in which 8 percent of the kids participated. But for the great mass, intellectual development was regarded with managerial horror, as something that caused armies to lose battles.
Prussia concocted a method based on complex fragmentations to ensure that its school products would fit the grand social design. Some of this method involved dividing whole ideas into school subjects, each further divisible, some of it involved short periods punctuated by a horn so that self-motivation in study would be muted by ceaseless interruptions.
There were many more techniques of training, but all were built around the premise that isolation from first-hand information, and fragmentation of the abstract information presented by teachers, would result in obedient and subordinate graduates, properly respectful of arbitrary orders. "Lesser" men would be unable to interfere with policy makers because, while they could still complain, they could not manage sustained or comprehensive thought. Well-schooled children cannot think critically, cannot argue effectively.
One of the most interesting by-products of Prussian schooling turned out to be the two most devastating wars of modern history. Erich Maria Ramarque, in his classic "All Quiet on the Western Front" tells us that the First World War was caused by the tricks of schoolmasters, and the famous Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that the Second World War was the inevitable product of good schooling.
It's important to underline that Bonhoeffer meant that literally, not metaphorically — schooling after the Prussian fashion removes the ability of the mind to think for itself. It teaches people to wait for a teacher to tell them what to do and if what they have done is good or bad. Prussian teaching paralyses the moral will as well as the intellect. It's true that sometimes well-schooled students sound smart, because they memorize many opinions of great thinkers, but they actually are badly damaged because their own ability to think is left rudimentary and undeveloped. We got from the United States to Prussia and back because a small number of very passionate ideological leaders visited Prussia in the first half of the 19th century, and fell in love with the order, obedience and efficiency of its system and relentlessly proselytized for a translation of Prussian vision onto these shores.
If Prussia's ultimate goal was the unification of Germany, our major goal, so these men thought, was the unification of hordes of immigrant Catholics into a national consensus based on a northern European cultural model. To do that children would have to be removed from their parents and from inappropriate cultural influence. In this fashion, compulsion schooling, a bad idea that had been around at least since Plato's "Republic", a bad idea that New England had tried to enforce in 1650 without any success, was finally rammed through the Massachusetts legislature in 1852. It was, of course, the famous "Know-Nothing" legislature that passed this law, a legislature that was the leading edge of a famous secret society which flourished at that time known as "The Order of the Star Spangled Banner," whose password was the simple sentence, "I know nothing" — hence the popular label attached to the secret society's political arm, "The American Party." Over the next 50 years state after state followed suit, ending schools of choice and ceding the field to a new government monopoly.
There was one powerful exception to this — the children who could afford to be privately educated. It's important to note that the underlying premise of Prussian schooling is that the government is the true parent of children — the State is sovereign over the family. At the most extreme pole of this notion is the idea that biological parents are really the enemies of their own children, not to be trusted. How did a Prussian system of dumbing children down take hold in American schools?
Thousands and thousands of young men from prominent American families journeyed to Prussia and other parts of Germany during the 19th century and brought home the Ph. D. degree to a nation in which such a credential was unknown. These men pre-empted the top positions in the academic world, in corporate research, and in government, to the point where opportunity was almost closed to those who had not studied in Germany, or who were not the direct disciples of a German PhD, as John Dewey was the disciple of G. Stanley Hall at Johns Hopkins. Virtually every single one of the founders of American schooling had made the pilgrimage to Germany, and many of these men wrote widely circulated reports praising the Teutonic methods. Horace Mann's famous "7th Report" of 1844, still available in large libraries, was perhaps the most important of these.
By 1889, a little more than 100 years ago, the crop was ready for harvest. It that year the US Commissioner of Education, William Torrey Harris, assured a railroad magnate, Collis Huntington, that American schools were "scientifically designed" to prevent "over-education" from happening. The average American would be content with his humble role in life, said the commissioner, because he would not be tempted to think about any other role. My guess is that Harris meant he would not be able to think about any other role. In 1896 the famous John Dewey, then at the University of Chicago, said that independent, self-reliant people were a counter-productive anachronism in the collective society of the future. In modern society, said Dewey, people would be defined by their associations — not by their own individual accomplishments.
It such a world people who read too well or too early are dangerous because they become privately empowered, they know too much, and know how to find out what they don't know by themselves, without consulting experts. Dewey said the great mistake of traditional pedagogy was to make reading and writing constitute the bulk of early schoolwork. He advocated that the phonics method of teaching reading be abandoned and replaced by the whole word method, not because the latter was more efficient (he admitted that it was less efficient) but because independent thinkers were produced by hard books, thinkers who cannot be socialized very easily. By socialization Dewey meant a program of social objectives administered by the best social thinkers in government.
This was a giant step on the road to state socialism, the form pioneered in Prussia, and it is a vision radically disconnected with the American past, its historic hopes and dreams. Dewey's former professor and close friend, G. Stanley Hall, said this at about the same time, "Reading should no longer be a fetish. Little attention should be paid to reading." Hall was one of the three men most responsible for building a gigantic administrative infrastructure over the classroom. How enormous that structure really became can only be understood by comparisons: New York State, for instance, employs more school administrators than all of the European Economic Community nations combined.
Once you think that the control of conduct is what schools are about, the word "reform" takes on a very particular meaning. It means making adjustments to the machine so that young subjects will not twist and turn so, while their minds and bodies are being scientifically controlled. Helping kids to use their minds better is beside the point. Bertrand Russell once observed that American schooling was among the most radical experiments in human history, that America was deliberately denying its children the tools of critical thinking. When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That's if you want to teach them to think.
There is no evidence that this has been a State purpose since the start of compulsion schooling. When Frederich Froebel, the inventor of kindergarten in 19th century Germany, fashioned his idea he did not have a "garden for children" in mind, but a metaphor of teachers as gardeners and children as the vegetables. Kindergarten was created to be a way to break the influence of mothers on their children. I note with interest the growth of daycare in the US and the repeated urgings to extend school downward to include 4-year-olds.
The movement toward state socialism is not some historical curiosity but a powerful dynamic force in the world around us. It is fighting for its life against those forces which would, through vouchers or tax credits, deprive it of financial lifeblood, and it has countered this thrust with a demand for even more control over children's lives, and even more money to pay for the extended school day and year that this control requires.
A movement as visibly destructive to individuality, family and community as government-system schooling has been might be expected to collapse in the face of its dismal record, coupled with an increasingly aggressive shake down of the taxpayer, but this has not happened. The explanation is largely found in the transformation of schooling from a simple service to families and towns to an enormous, centralized corporate enterprise.
While this development has had a markedly adverse effect on people and on our democratic traditions, it has made schooling the single largest employer in the United States, and the largest grantor of contracts next to the Defense Department. Both of these low-visibility phenomena provide monopoly schooling with powerful political friends, publicists, advocates and other useful allies. This is a large part of the explanation why no amount of failure ever changes things in schools, or changes them for very long. School people are in a position to outlast any storm and to keep short-attention-span public scrutiny thoroughly confused.
An overview of the short history of this institution reveals a pattern marked by intervals of public outrage, followed by enlargement of the monopoly in every case.
After nearly 30 years spent inside a number of public schools, some considered good, some bad, I feel certain that management cannot clean its own house. It relentlessly marginalizes all significant change. There are no incentives for the "owners" of the structure to reform it, nor can there be without outside competition.
What is needed for several decades is the kind of wildly-swinging free market we had at the beginning of our national history. It cannot be overemphasized that no body of theory exists to accurately define the way children learn, or which learning is of most worth. By pretending the existence of such we have cut ourselves off from the information and innovation that only a real market can provide. Fortunately our national situation has been so favorable, so dominant through most of our history, that the margin of error afforded has been vast.
But the future is not so clear. Violence, narcotic addictions, divorce, alcoholism, loneliness...all these are but tangible measures of a poverty in education. Surely schools, as the institutions monopolizing the daytimes of childhood, can be called to account for this. In a democracy the final judges cannot be experts, but only the people.
Trust the people, give them choices, and the school nightmare will vanish in a generation.

Narco-Villain “El Chapo’s” Arrest Packaged for Media Consumption

Posted by Bill Conroy - March 1, 2014 
Former DEA Supervisor Contends Guzman’s Capture Was An “Arranged” Event
The recent capture of the notorious Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, longtime leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa narco-trafficking organization, was not what it appeared to be, according to a former DEA supervisory agent who still has a deep network of contacts in Mexico.
Guzman’s takedown, despite the media script portraying it as a daring predawn raid, was, in fact, an “arranged thing,” claims the retired DEA agent, Hector Berrellez, who led the investigation into the 1985 torture and murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena. That cross-border investigation ran for several years and eventually led to the capture and conviction in Mexico of Rafael Caro Quintero, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo — considered the leaders of Mexico’s then-dominate drug organization, The Guadalajara Cartel.
“Chapo [Guzman] was protected by Mexican federal agents and military, by the Mexican government,” Berrellez told Narco News. “He was making [Mexican President Enrique] Peña Nieto look bad, and so the government decided to withdraw his security detail. Chapo was told he could either surrender, or he would be killed.”
Berrellez, who retired from the DEA in 1996, stresses that he is not speaking on behalf of the US government, but rather as an individual who has decades of law enforcement experience, including serving as DEA’s lead investigator in Mexico.
“This information comes from my sources, that I am still in contact with,” Berrellez adds. “I developed a large informant network in Mexico, including sources in the Mexican Attorney General’s office, Mexican generals and others. These people are still in contact with me.”
Berrellez says his version of what happened is further evidenced by the fact that Guzman was apprehended early Saturday morning, Feb. 22, in an unremarkable condominium tower in the Pacific resort town of Mazatlan, Mexico, without a shot being fired and no security detail present to offer a fight.
“This guy [Guzman] was bigger than Pablo Escobar [the infamous Colombian narco-trafficker whom law enforcers killed in 1993 in a rooftop shootout in Medellin],” Berrellez says. “He [Guzman] ran around with a several-hundred man security detail that included Mexican military and federal agents, yet, in the end, he is arrested like a rat in a hole. My sources are telling me it was an arranged thing.”

Finding Chapo

As remarkable as Berrellez claims may sound to some, there is evidence indicating that law enforcement authorities have known for years where to find Guzman, who has led the Sinaloa organization since at least 2001, when he "escaped" from prison. Still, law enforcers mysteriously failed to capture him — until last week.
Among the reasons for Guzman’s long run from the law, several law enforcers and intelligence sources told Narco News, was not due to the fact that he could not be found, but rather because Guzman’s security team was formidable and any move against him would have led to a bloodbath — not an attractive political or law-enforcement option.
An email penned by the head of the Texas-based private intelligence firm Strafor, obtained and made public in 2012 by WikiLeaks, echoes that analysis:

Chapo commands the support of a large network of informers and has security circles of up to 300 men that make launching capture operations difficult.

Once the security-detail obstacle was removed, Guzman became a sitting duck. One law enforcer with experience working in Latin America put it this way:

It seems Chapo put his life in the hands of the people he paid off [the Mexican government, if Berrellez is right, and the military and federal cops attached to his security detail]. But whenever the government wants to get you, they can get you. Look at Escobar, Fonseca, Gallardo, Quintero. They were all considered untouchable. Then, one day, it was in the interest of the government to get them.

Retired DEA agent Phil Jordan, who once led DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center, told Narco News that he was surprised that Guzman was captured under a PRI government. (President Peña Nieto is part of Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI in its Spanish initials.)
“Chapo contributed a lot of money to the PRI,” Jordan says. “The PRI historically has been an ally of the cartels, and Chapo Guzman has contributed millions to their campaigns. All of that is documented [in intelligence reports] I have seen.”
After Jordan made similar comments to the Spanish-language TV station Univision recently, the DEA issued the following statement to the media.

Remarks made by retired Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Phil Jordan and those of other retired DEA agents do not reflect the views of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The arrest of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera was a significant achievement for Mexico and a major step forward in our shared fight against transnational organized crime, violence, and drug trafficking. …

The fact that DEA felt compelled to issue such a statement indicates that Jordan’s comments about the PRI’s complicity with narco-trafficking organizations must have hit a nerve in Washington, one DEA source told Narco News. Jordan’s allegations, if on the mark, also support Berrellez’ contention — and those of his sources — that Guzman was receiving protection from the Mexican government — including under the administration of President Peña Nieto. If we accept that, the question then becomes: Why was that support withdrawn?
Berrellez says his sources indicated to him that Guzman had become more of a liability than an asset for the Mexican government. The reform agenda being pursued by the Peña Nieto regime hinges, in part, on creating a perception that Mexico is winning the drug war and reducing the violence, so that it appears a safer bet for the billions of dollars in foreign investment (particularly in the oil-and-gas and tourism sectors) that Mexico is seeking to attract.
A free Guzman was deemed a bigger threat to that agenda than a defanged Guzman, and his capture, conversely, would provide the Peña Nieto administration with a big image boost, and so Guzman had to go.
“It was political,” Berrellez says.
And it’s clear the arrest of Guzman did give Peña Nieto’s administration a major image bounce on the global stage — given the avalanche of positive press that followed "El Chapo's" capture. And it comes at a time when Peña Nieto is seeking to promote reforms that position Mexico as a land of enchantment for speculators, investors and tourists.
A 14-page advertorial section that ran in TIME magazine in late December of last year, about two months prior to Guzman’s capture — which was paid for, in part, by the Mexican government — spells out the Peña Nieto plan for “progress.”

Osorio Chong says the series of market reforms means 2014 is the ideal time to invest in Mexico and that foreign investors are welcome to bring their money, knowledge and skills to any of the nation’s industrial, commercial and manufacturing sectors. [Miguel Angel Osorio Chong is Peña Nieto’s Interior Minister, the top post in his administration.]
… A former energy minister, Luis Téllez-Kuenzler, who is now president of one of the country’s most important financial institutions, the Mexican Stock Exchange, adds:
“Mexico is very investor-friendly. Anyone wishing to invest from any other country just needs to go to their bank or stock brokerage house and invest. It’s transparent, efficient and very easy to do.”

Berrellez is not the lone veteran law enforcer who does not buy into the conventional-media script manufactured for Guzman’s capture. Another former DEA agent, Mike Levine, a veteran of deep undercover missions, such as Operation Trifecta — which played out in Mexico in the late 1980s when the PRI Party also was in power in Mexico — describes the arrest of Sinaloa organization top-capo Guzman as “yet another drug war rip-off.”
Levine relayed to Narco News the following via email:

Here’s why it [Guzman’s arrest] perpetuates the drug-war shill game run by media: Two decades ago, I was part of an international undercover operation [called] “Operation Trifecta.”
On hidden video, our undercover “Mafia” [a ruse organization set up to sting Mexican narco-traffickers and corrupt government officials] was able to arrange a 15-ton cocaine deal directly with the Mexican military and representatives of the Mexican government, at least one of whom was tied directly to the incoming president of Mexico. As I detailed in NY Times Best Seller “Deep Cover,” CIA, State and the Department of Justice immediately moved to destroy “Operation Trifecta.” As is revealed in the book, the then-Attorney General of the United States actually blew the cover of our undercover team.
Due to a couple of hard-headed DEA and Customs agents, they were not entirely successful. Point is, what gave Chapo Guzman and ALL like him the power to become billionaire drug kingpins was the covert involvement of his own government in maintaining the flow of money and drugs through Mexico into the US.
… Understand that NOTHING has changed since this was shown and that while the covert involvement and support of the drug economy by the Mexican government — and those elements of the US government lending covert support to same — continues, there will be a continued flow of CHAPO GUZMANS ….
This link to a Youtube [video] actually captures the undercover deal [that was carried out as part of Operation Trifecta]. The video was sent by overnight courier to the Attorney General of the US, who then blew our cover by warning the AG of Mexico of the impending arrests.…

Stay tuned….

Malaysian Airlines MH370: aircraft may have been on ground when last signals sent

Investigation focuses on pilot of missing aircraft as radar and transponders were switched off before he said goodnight to air traffic control

Police search Malaysia Airlines pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah (top) and co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid's houses in Kuala Lumpur Photo: AP/A Current Affair/nineMSN

By Andrew Marszal

2:20PM GMT 16 Mar 2014

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/malaysia/10700892/Malaysia-Airlines-MH370-plane-crash-live.html

This page will automatically update every 90 secondsOn Off

• Search widened to include 25 countries
• Plane may have landed before satellite signals sent
• Tracking signals cut before pilot's last radio message
• Pilots & engineers in contact with MH370 investigated
• 9/11-style terror allegations resurface
• Profile of missing plane's pilots emerges
• MH370: How much do we really know?
• In pictures: The hunt for MH370

^Latest

14.47 One of today's more substantial developments has been confirmation at the Kuala Lumpur press conference that the plane's tracking systems - known as ACARS [Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System] and the transponder - were switched off before the pilot send his final radio communication to air traffic control, in which he said "Alright, good night" without hinting at any trouble.

The ACARS system is supplied to Malaysia Airlines by a Geneva-based air transport communications firm SITA, using a satellite system operated by British firm Inmarsat (see 12.04). SITA issued the following statement:

SITA can confirm that it supplies its Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) to Malaysia Airlines. We are fully supporting the airline and all of the relevant authorities in their on-going investigation of flight MH370.

While ACARS can be manually switched off, it contains a failsafe function which, in the absence of any communications activity for more than an hour, sends a simple "ping" signal.

This function cannot be switched off without depowering the plane itself. An industry source who asked not to be named told the Telegraph:
Somebody on the plane turned off ACARS [Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System] and the transponder, but the system has a failsafe function which, in the absence of any activity, sends a simple ping saying “are you there… yes I am.” They probably didn’t know about it. You can’t switch it off without depowering the plane. It functions if we haven’t heard anything for an hour. [The ‘ping’ system] is built in as an additional failsafe. I don’t think it has ever been used in this way before. This is a very unique situation – somebody has manually turned off ACARS and the plane appears to have gone out to deep sea so there is no radar verification.
There is no regulatory requirement to have this technology. It would have been the simplest thing in the world to make all planes report their speed and position.
14.20 As this Reuters article points out, the assumption that China and India are too extensively covered by radar for the plane to have flown through their airspace undetected doesn't quite stack up either.
We have many radar systems operating in this area, but nothing was picked up," Rear Admiral Sudhir Pillai, chief of staff of India's Andamans and Nicobar Command, told Reuters. "It's possible that the military radars were switched off as we operate on an 'as required' basis."
Separately, a defense source said that India did not keep its radar facilities operational at all times because of cost. Asked what the reason was, the source said: "Too expensive."
14.12 Jeff Wise, a pilot and author who writes on aviation, has blogged for Slate on why he thinks it is most likely that the missing airliner is somewhere in Central Asia.
He points out that the sourthern arc, or "corridor", (see 09.22) contains "only two kinds of place" - small islands and ocean:
As for the first, I find it impossible to imagine that MH370 landed on a small island without being noticed.
As for the second, I find it impossible to reconcile with my understanding of human nature that someone would commandeer a plane, maneuver it skillfully and with great imagination through a well-monitored zone of radar coverage, fly for eight hours, and then just go pffft in the middle of an ocean. To believe this scenario, I think you would have to overlook for me what has become a bedrock assumption about this case: that whoever carried it out is extremely intelligent, daring, dedicated, and brave. (Not words you’re supposed to apply to a bad guy, but neither his motives or the nature of his deeds has yet been established, so I’ll let them stand for now.)
^Slate.com
13.59 One of the many mysteries of the missing MH370 is why, if the plane was indeed hijacked, nobody on board has managed to get a signal to the outside world. There were reports yesterday of calls to some of the mobile phones on board connecting, but not being picked up.
According to an industry source, the missing plane did have onboard telephones in the business class section, but these can be disabled in the same way as the plane's ACARS and transponder tracking systems - meaning it is likely that whoever manually switched these off would have done the same with the phones.
Wi-fi of the sort found in US planes, using a ground-to-orbit system called "Go-go", is not yet available in Asia.
13.48 As reported at 08.10, India has put its navy and air search operations for the missing jet on hold at the request of the Malaysian authorities. Coast guard ships have reverted to routine surveillance in the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal.
There has still been no indication of when the search will resume, but more details have filtered through on the reason for the pause.
Indian and Malaysian officials are understood to have met in Kuala Lumpur today to refine search coordinates, based on recent developments in the ongoing investigation. A statement from India's Defence Ministry said:
So far no sighting or detection has been reported by the units deployed for searches in various designated areas.
The Malaysian authorities have now indicated that based on investigation, the search operations have entered a new phase and a strategy for further searches is being formulated. Accordingly, search operations have been suspended and all Indian assets earmarked for search operations have been placed on standby
It is thought to be unlikely that the plane could have entered Indian airspace undetected, as the region has substantial radar coverage owing to the large number of flights between Europe and Southeast Asia which travel through and high security standards.
However, Vinod Patney, a retired air force officer, told AP that though this was unlikely, it was "not impossible".
13.24 Sarah Weeks, the sister of one of the missing plane's passengers, has described the agonising wait for news.
[The possibility the plane has been hijacked rather than crashed] does raise your hopes because you think the potential is there that my brother is still alive.
But then I also find that very scary as well because if someone has deliberately taken this plane then they've taken it for a reason, and I think we know that oftentimes that's not good:

13.05 The mystery and potential tragedy of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight has gathered intense interest all across the globe.

MH370 passenger's sister describes agonising wait for news of missing plane

Earlier today Pope Francis urged people to pray for the victims and families of MH370 after his Angelus address in St Peter's Square in Rome, reports Josephine McKenna. He said:
I ask you to remember the passengers and the crew from the Malaysian plane and their relatives in your prayers.
We are with them at this very difficult time
^{Pope Francis speaks to faithful during Angelus, the traditional Sunday's prayer, in Saint Peter's Square, Vatican City, Vatican; EPA/MAURIZIO BRAMBATTI}
12.55 US public radio station WNYC has put together an interesting infographic showing where the aircraft could be if it has successfully landed at a secret location.
Boeing 777s need a runway to be at least 5,000 feet long, limiting the number of possible sites within the 2,200 nautical mile-radius it is believed the plane could have flown from its last known position within the five hours it is thought to have remained airborne:
^{http://project.wnyc.org/runways/}
12.49 Our US correspondent - and former Transport Editor - David Millward has noted an interesting historical precedent if, as seems increasingly plausible, we are looking at a hijacking of some description.
If the flight has been hijacked and taken to a secret airfield, the attack will reprise the Dawson’s Field hijackings in 1970 when three aircraft - two bound for New York and one en route to London - were diverted to Dawson’s Field in Jordan by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
The story was memorably covered by Telegraph reporter, John Mossman, who even managed to bribe his way onto one of the hijacked aircraft.
12.39 Malaysia's transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein has rejected criticism of Malaysia's Air Force and said the situation the country is in is being monitored throughout the world and could make aviation history.
The latest phase of the search being coordinated by Malaysia involves 25 countries - up from 14 yesterday.
12.22 Reuters has more information on Zaharie Ahmad Shah, the missing plane's captain, whose homemade flight simulator has been seized by police and is currently being scrutinised:
A senior police official said the flight simulator programmes were looked at closely, adding they appeared to be normal ones that allowed players to practice flying and landing in different conditions.
A second senior police official told Reuters investigators had found no links between Captain Zaharie, a father of three grown-up children and a grandfather, and any militant group.
Postings on his Facebook page suggest the pilot was a politically active opponent of the coalition that has ruled Malaysia for the 57 years since independence.
A day before the plane vanished, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was convicted of sodomy and sentenced to five years in prison, in a ruling his supporters and international human rights groups say was politically influenced.
12.04 A team from British satellite firm Inmarsat, which provided the satellite information that persuaded the Prime Minister that the plane had been deliberately seized and turned back across Malaysia, is now assisting the Malaysian authorities with the search.
Two of the firm's scientists have been dispatched to Kuala Lumpur where they are supporting the search's technical team in understanding their satellite data calculations and the type and limitations of the data that is available on MH370, The Telegraph has learnt.
11.40 The Malaysian foreign ministry earlier today briefed representatives from 22 countries, including the central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan, and requested support in the form of satellite and radar data.
This is part of a broader attempt to rule out the "northern" search corridor, which is thought to be an increasingly unlikely route for the plane to have taken given the higher density of radar systems over land compared with the southern corridor, which is mainly ocean (see 09.22)
11.10 Malaysian authorities confirm they have seized the self-assembled flight simulator belonging to flight captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, and have experts currently inspecting it for information including flight paths.
10.55 Najib Razak, Malaysia's Prime Minister, has been busily retweeting the following information from transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein's communication team during the press conference:
<noframe>Twitter: H2O Comms - Up until time <a href="https://twitter.com/search?src=hash&q=%23MH370" target="_blank">#MH370</a> left primary radar coverage, movements consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane -<a href="http://www.twitter.com/HishammuddinH2O" target="_blank">@HishammuddinH2O</a></noframe>
<noframe>Twitter: H2O Comms - Information released y'day has provided new leads, and given new direction to the search process <a href="https://twitter.com/search?src=hash&q=%23MH370" target="_blank">#MH370</a> -<a href="http://www.twitter.com/HishammuddinH2O" target="_blank">@HishammuddinH2O</a></noframe>
<noframe>Twitter: H2O Comms - With the new wave of information, we hope more parties with expertise will come fwd & help us narrow the search for <a href="https://twitter.com/search?src=hash&q=%23MH370" target="_blank">#MH370</a> -<a href="http://www.twitter.com/HishammuddinH2O" target="_blank">@HishammuddinH2O</a></noframe>
10.40 Our South Asia Editor Dean Nelson was at the press conference in Kuala Lumpur, and has sent through the following notes:
The pilot of MH370 had either switched off the plane's radar and transponders when he said goodnight to Malaysian air traffic controllers or had done so under duress by hijackers, Malaysia's transport minister said.
The police investigation is focussing on crew, passengers and ground staff. The perpetrator/s had one of four motives/causes: hijacking, sabotage, personal problem or psychological problem.
Passengers from four different countries have been investigated by their own intelligence agencies and cleared of any suspicion.
We will have more on these points shortly.
10.18 The search for missing the Malaysia Airlines jet continues along the two "corridors" outlined earlier (see 09.22), now with the possiblity confirmed by authorities that the plane has safely landed somewhere within this area and continued to emit the signals picked up by satellites.
10.13 Some interesting answers from the Malaysian authorities, in particular the information that the plane's communication system had been disabled before the final radio contact from the plane's pilot to air traffic control "Alright, good night".
That would seem to increase the focus on the pilots rather than another passenger on board, although all passengers on the plane are still under investigation.
The information that the two pilots had not requested to fly together would seem to rule out any possible collusion between them.
10.07 The press conference is now over. The authorities claim to have new leads and directions but remain tight-lipped on what exactly these are.
The investigation continues to broaden by the day, with 25 countries now involved and the land area of 11 countries now within the search area.
You can watch highlights of the press conference here:

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370: all passengers and crew being investigated

10.02 There have been no negative reports on the backgrounds of any passengers from foreign intelligence agencies, but all are still being investigated.
09.57 Possible that the plane was grounded when some satellite signals were sent, says Malaysia's civil aviation chief.
09.52 The plane took off with the planned [amount of] fuel - there was no additional fuel. No hazardous cargo was on board.
09.49 Khalid Abu Bakar, Malaysia police chief, says the investigation has been reclassified to cover offences including hijacking, sabotage and terrorism.
He says the investigation has not yet received background information on all passengers as not all countries' intelligence agencies have responded to Malaysia's requests.
Hussein denies rumours that some countries have been uncooperative, describing an "unprecedented" number of people assisting in the investigation internationally.
"The number of countries involved in the search and rescue operation has increased from 14 to 25, which brings new challenges of coordination and diplomacy to the search effort," he says.
09.37 Hussein confirms police have visited the homes of both pilots and inspected the captain's home flight simulator.
He confirms that a rumour that the pilot and copilot had specifically asked to fly together on MH370 is not correct.
The investigation has been refocused on the pilots, passengers and ground staff.
Countries including the US, China and France have been asked to provide further satellite data. Eleven countries' land area are now being searched.
09.30 Today's press conference in Kuala Lumpur is now getting underway with Malaysia's Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein addressing a crowded room full of journalists.
He describes a "significant recalibration of search", meaning that the search area has been significantly expanded and nature changed, now looking at large tracts of land as well as sea.
The number of countries involved in the search has been increased from 14 to 25. Leaders of several countries including Bangladesh, India and Kazakhstan have been briefed in last 24 hours.
^{Kuala Lumpur news conference}
09.22 In his press conference yesterday, Mr Najib said that authorities were trying to trace the plane across two possible “corridors” — a northern one from the top of Thailand through to the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and a southern route from Indonesia through to the southern Indian Ocean.
A source familiar with US assessments of satellite signals said it appeared most likely the plane turned south over the Indian Ocean, where it would presumably have run out of fuel and crashed.
The other interpretation was that MH370 flew to the north-west and headed over India.
But it is unlikely the plane flew here for any length of time. India has strong radar coverage that should have allowed authorities there to intercept the plane.
Here's a handy graphic which shows the vast area being searched:

09.00 The major development this morning has been confirmation of the renewed investigation into the two pilots' backgrounds, including searches of their homes.
The flight simulator constructed by the plane's captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah has drawn particular interest, and is being inspected by Malaysian police.
We are half an hour from today's scheduled Malaysia press conference, in which we hope to learn more details of any progress.
AFP has run the following profile of Zaharie:
The captain of a missing Malaysian jet is an engineering buff who assembled his own home flight simulator...
Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981 and is praised as a passionate pilot who has logged 18,365 hours of flying time at work and still more at home on his sophisticated simulator.
A tribute page that has garnered more than 400 comments largely from well-wishers, shows pictures of the complex set-up including Zaharie posing in front of it.

aircon service, indoor aircon service http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atQZtEEcE4c&list=UUm6f3-wcpgLhxUR_ONPfoJA

Zaharie has his own YouTube channel, features videos such as this one showing him cheerfully explaining how to fix an air-conditioner, patch damaged windows, and other DIY projects.
08.43 The Sunday papers have covered the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane from a number of different angles, with much speculation about the possible means and motives of any potential hijacking.
The Sunday Express leads with an interview with an anti-terror expert who believes we may be witnessing the world's first "cyber hijack", speculating that hackers could have taken control of the plane remotely via mobile phone.
According to Dr Sally Leivesley, a former Home Office scientific adviser, a framework of malicious codes, triggered by a mobile phone, would have been able to override the aircraft’s security software.
Meanwhile, the Mail on Sunday has splashed on claims that Zaharie Ahmad Shah, the plane's captain, was a "political fanatic", based on the fact that he had reportedly attended the controversial trial of Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia’s opposition leader, just hours before the flight.
08.30 It is not just China who is critical of Malaysia's investigation. The New York Times has compiled a summary of what it calls the "series of errors" made by Malaysia, which it says has complicated the task of finding MH370.
Most troubling, it says, is the fact that the plane flew over Malaysia itself without the country's military noticing it on military radar or taking steps to identify it.
"The fact that it flew straight over Malaysia, without the Malaysian military identifying it, is just plain weird — not just weird, but also very damning and tragic,” David Learmount, the operations and safety editor for Flightglobal, a news and data service for the aviation sector, told the newspaper.
The article notes that Malaysia has a control room and American-made F-18s and F-5 fighters on standby for emergenies exactly like this, but did nothing about the unauthorised flight.
08.23 China has ramped up its criticism of Malaysia's handling of the missing plane investigation today, saying it "squandered" precious time and resources by releasing dramatic information on the plane's fate a full week after it vanished.
Prime Minister Najib Razak's revelation yesterday that Malaysia Airlines flight 370 was deliberately diverted and flew for several hours after leaving its intended flight path has prompted questions over how long Malaysian authorities had been privy to the new data, and whether they had missed an opportunity to intercept the diverted plane. <script height="315px" width="460px" src="http://player.ooyala.com/iframe.js#pbid=7dfd98005dba40baacc82277f292e522&ec=tvNjQ3bDqNqS6IGzNLGY_qPjlpbgV9j_"></script>
China's state-run Xinhua news agency has run a scathing editorial:
It is undeniable that the disclosure of such vital information is painfully belated...
And due to the absence - or at least lack - of timely authoritative information, massive efforts have been squandered, and numerous rumours have been spawned
Two-thirds of the passengers on board the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing were Chinese.
^{Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak (2nd R) addresses the media on Saturday}
08.10 Also overnight, India has put its search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 on hold, at the request of the Malaysian authorities.
India had been combing two areas, one around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and a second, further west, in the Bay of Bengal. Both operations have been suspended, but may yet resume, defence officials said.
08.00 Malaysian authorities are expected to issue an update on their investigation at 9.30am UK time this morning. We will bring you the latest from that as it breaks.
07.55 The renewed interest in the plane's pilots stems from the confirmation yesterday by Najib Razak, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, that airliner MH370’s communications systems had been deliberately disabled.
He said this was the “deliberate action of someone on the plane”, adding to growing speculation that the flight had been hijacked by terrorists or one of its crew had “gone rogue”.
Mr Najib’s announcement suggests the Malaysian authorities are convinced that someone in the cockpit switched off the communications systems.
Patrick Sawer and Tom Phillips in Kuala Lumpur round up what we really know about the missing plane so far.
07.48 Intriguingly, the Malaysian government statement also said that engineers who may have had contact with Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 before it took off on March 8 were also part of the investigation into the missing jet.
Once again, the statement emphasises that this is "normal procedure" for such an event.
07.40 As the plane's pilots come under renewed scrutiny, you can read our profiles of the pair, who according to their friends and families cut extremely unlikely terrorist figures:
The suspicion of Captain Shah, a 53-year-old grandfather and father of three grown up children, was bolstered in profiles of him that highlighted his obsessive passion for aircraft – he even had his own airline flight simulator at home and flew model remote controlled planes as a hobby.
His co-pilot, 27 year old bachelor Fariq Abdul Hamid was portrayed as a playboy who entertained female passengers in his cockpit, where they flirted and smoked cigarettes.
But according to their devoted and distraught friends and families they cut extremely unlikely terrorist figures – if they had in fact pulled their Boeing 777 airliner off its course, they would have done it on the basis of extraordinary covers.
^{Journalists wait outside the house of Fariq Abdul Hamid, co-pilot of the Malaysian airlines missing flight MH370, in Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia}
07.30 Overnight it has emerged that Malaysian police have searched the homes of the missing airliner's two pilots, and are examining the captain's home flight simulator.
Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, was captain of the missing plane, and is said to have assembled his own complex flight simulator at home. Malaysia's transport ministry issued a statement:
Police searched the home of the pilot [Zaharie Ahmad Shah] on Saturday, 15 March.
Officers spoke to family members of the pilot and experts are examining the pilot's flight simulator.
On 15 March, the police also searched the home of the co-pilot [Fariq Abdul Hamid].
However, Malaysian authorities has been keen to emphasise that nothing specific has emerged to cast suspicion on him, and have warned against "jumping to conclusions"
^{Captain of the Malaysia flight MH370 Zaharie Ahmad Shah}
07.15 Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the search for MH370, the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane which has now been missing for eight days.
As reported in today's Telegraph, evidence has emerged of a possible 9/11 style plot, after an al-Qaeda supergrass told a court last week that four to five Malaysian men had been planning to take control of a plane, using a bomb hidden in a shoe to blow open the cockpit door.
Security experts said the evidence from a convicted British terrorist was “credible”. The supergrass said that he had met the Malaysian jihadists – one of whom was a pilot – in Afghanistan and given them a shoe bomb to use to take control of an aircraft.
A British security source said: “These spectaculars take a long time in the planning.”
The possibility of such a plot, hatched by the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, was bolstered by an admission by Najib Razak, Malaysia’s prime minister, that the Boeing 777’s communications systems had been deliberately switched off “by someone on the plane”.
Read a full round-up of yesterday's dramatic developments.

Fight Club, Evola and Secret Societies Part I

Fight Club, Evola and Secret Societies Part I

The film Fight Club, which is just about to turn fifteen, has had a lasting influence on pop culture. Brad Pitt as the hipster revolutionary Tyler Durden is arguably the actor's most iconic role, and his-mug-as-Durden has found its way on to any number of internet images over the years. But beyond it's influence on mainstream culture, Fight Club has had an especially lasting impact on the patriot movement, the conspiratorial right and libertarian circles in general. For instance, the popular Austrian School-centric economic news website Zero Hedge is written by a group of editors who collectively use the pseudonym Tyler Durden when posting. What's more, Zero Hedge's name derives from the line "On a long enough timeline the survival rate of everyone drops to zero" uttered by Pitt's Durden inn the film.

This is only scratching the surface of Fight Club's influence on such "grassroots" circles. Fight Club was one of several films released in 1999 (The Matrix, American Beauty, eXistenZ, Eyes Wide Shut, and so forth) that would go on to have an enormous influence on post-9/11 conspiracy culture. In hindsight this is hardly surprising. Fight Club, as well as The Matrix and American Beauty, feature burned out white yuppie protagonists who ultimately engage in one type of rebellion or another against their soulless consumerist existence. No doubt this has became the fantasy of any number of burned out white yuppies who are now convinced the presidency of Barack Obama is the most heinous personification of evil the nation (and possibly human kind) has ever confronted.

And while superficially Tyler Durden's anti-corporate/consumer monologues have a certain appeal in the New Normal, a closer examination of Fight Club reveals a picture deeply steeped in a certain type of revolution and one that would hardly lead to "freedom" as defined by most Americans. As best as Recluse can remember, the Chuck Palahniuk novel upon which the film is based took a dimer view towards the Durden figure and the revolution he attempts to incite. Conversely, director David Fincher depicts Durden as an MTV ready anti-hero bent upon wrecking the yuppie complacency with consumerism all the while maintaining an impeccable tan. Fincher and scribe Jim Uhls even go so far as including more expletive political overtones to Durden's musings so as to add meaning to what is ultimately rebellion seemingly inspired more by boredom than anything else.

Fight Club is effectively the tale of a nameless corporate drone sometimes referred to as "Jack" (played by Edward Norton) who, in order to cope with the meaningless of his existence, develops an alternative personality: Tyler Durden (Pitt). Tyler is everything Jack wishes that he was, and "together" they begin founding a gentleman's clubs in which other emasculated men beat one another to pulp on certain nights of the week. Eventually Jack/Durden becomes enamored with the potential of these fight clubs and effectively turns the organization into a nation wide secret society. Thus Jack/Durden, the prototypical yuppie, possess himself as the leader of the "middle children of history" (who largely consist of waiters, bus boys, clerks, and other minor professions) in a revolt against their corporate overlords. And in the midst of all of this is Helene Bonham Carter as Marla Singer, a kind of stand-in for woman kind who becomes in a bizarre love "triangle" with Jack/Tyler.

Norton as the Narrator

But despite this populist slant, Durden is seemingly little concerned with the woes of the ever growing ranks of American's working poor. Of this state of affairs Henry Giroux, professor, author and culture critic, notes:

"While Fight Club registers a form of resistance to the rampant commodification and alienation of contemporary neoliberal society, it ultimately has little to say about those diverse and related aspects of consumer culture and contemporary capitalism structured in iniquitous power relations, material wealth, or hierarchical social formations. Fight Club largely ignores issues surrounding the break up of labor unions, the slashing of the U.S. workforce, extensive plant closings, downsizing, outsourcing, the elimination of the welfare state, the attack on people of color, and the growing disparities between the rich and the poor. All of these issues get factored out of Fight Club’s analysis of consumerism and capitalist exploitation. Hence, it comes as no surprise that class as a critical category is non-existent in this film. When working class people do appear, they are represented primarily as brown shirts, part of the non-thinking herd looking for an opportunity to release their tensions and repressed masculine rage through forms of terrorist violence and self-abuse. Or they appear as people who willingly take up jobs that are dehumanizing, unskilled, and alienating. There is one particularly revealing scene in Fight Club that brings this message home while simultaneously signaling a crucial element of the film’s politics. At one point in the story, Tyler takes Jack into a convenience store. He pulls out a gun and forces the young Indian clerk to get on his knees. Putting the gun to the clerk’s head, Tyler tells him he is going to die. As a kind of parting gesture, he then asks Raymond, the clerk, what he really wanted to be in life. A vetinarian, Raymond replies, but he had to drop out of school for lack of money. Tyler tells him that if he isn’t on his way to becoming a vetinarian in six weeks he is going to come back and kill him. He then lets Raymond go and tells Jack that tomorrow morning will be the most important day in Raymond’s life because he will have to address what it means to do something about his future. Choice for Tyler appears to be an exclusively individual act, a simple matter of personal will that functions outside of existing relations of power, resources, and social formations. As Homi Bhabha points out, this notion of agency 'suggests that "free choice" is inherent in the individual [and]...is based on an unquestioned "egalitarianism" and a utopian notion of individualism that bears no relation to the history of the marginalized, the minoritized, the oppressed.'

"This privatized version of agency and politics is central to understanding Tyler’s character as emblematic of the very market forces he denounces. For Tyler, success is simply a matter of getting off one’s back and forging ahead; individual initiative and the sheer force of will magically cancels out institutional constraints, and critiques of the gravity of dominant relations of oppression are dismissed as either an act of bad faith or the unacceptable whine of victimization. Tyler hates consumerism but he values a 'Just Do It' ideology appropriated from the marketing strategists of the Nike corporation. It is not surprising that in linking freedom to the dynamics of individual choice, Fight Club offers up a notion of politics in which oppression breeds contempt rather than compassion, and social change is fueled by totalitarian visions rather than democratic struggles. By defining agency through such a limited (and, curiously republican party )notion of choice, Fight Club reinscribes freedom as an individual desire rather than the 'testing of boundaries and limits as part of a communal, collective process.' In the end, Fight Club removes choice as a 'public demand and duty'20 and in doing so restricts the public spaces people are allowed to inhabit as well as the range of subject positions they are allowed to take up. Hence, it is no wonder that in Fight Club it is not about working men and women who embody a sense of agency and empowerment but largely middle-class heterosexual, white men who are suffering from a blocked hyper-masculinity." 

Raymond the would-be veterinarian 

Thus, Tyler's rejection of consumerism, and to some extent capitalism itself, can not be understood in anything resembling Marxist terms. Indeed, it is likely Tyler would have vehemently denounced Marxism had such concerns been relevant during the feel-good Clinton era. In point of fact, Durden's world view in this sense bears a striking similarity to the Evolan school of post-World War II fascism. The Baron Julius Evola (much more on Evola can be found here and here), the notorious occultist and philosopher, was of what this researcher likes to think of as the "revolutionary" wing of fascism, as opposed to the "traditionalist" wing (the historically dominate variety) that has sought close ties with the heads of industry and religion of a respective nation. Evola and his ilk saw capitalism, communism and monotheism alike as equally evil.

"Evola argued that it was absurd to identify the right with capitalism. Fascism, properly understood, was the antithesis of bourgeois society, not its avatar. Since fascist values like blood, sacrifice, and heroism were far more pagan than Christian, fascism was also in opposition to the Catholic Church. He was equally relentless in his condemnation of the Salo left. To Evola, Marxism, with the its stress on material issues, was merely a further extension of bourgeois ideology, not its negation. Any movement primarily inspired by economic concerns was intrinsically anti-heroic."

(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan, pg. 211) 

Black, sacrifice, and heroism certainly play a crucial role in Durden's ideology. Nor is the only time Fight Club's philosophy crosses paths with Evola. Much of the ideology underpinning Tyler's revolt is centered around an obsession with the warrior ethos of old and a complete rejection of all things feminine. Indeed, Fight Club effectively blames the spiritual malaise of modern man at the end of the millennium on the stifling emasculation of the hyper-feminized society in which they inhabit. Continuing with Giroux:

"The pathology at issue, and one which is central to Fight Club, is its intensely misogynist representation of women, and its intimation that violence is the only means through which men can be cleansed of the dire affect women have on the shaping of their identities. From the first scene of Fight Club to the last, women are cast as the binary opposite of masculinity. Women are both the other and a form of pathology. Jack begins his narrative by claiming that Marla is the cause of all of his problems. Tyler consistently tells Jack that men have lost their manhood because they have been feminized, they are a generation raised by women. And the critical commentary on consumerism presented throughout the film is really not a serious critique of capitalism as much as it is a criticism of the feminization and domestication of men in a society driven by relations of buying and selling. Consumerism is criticized because it is womanish stuff. Moreover, the only primary female character, Marla, appears to exist to simultaneously make men unhappy and to service their sexual needs. Marla has no identity outside of the needs of the warrior mentality, the chest-beating impulses of men who revel in patriarchy and enact all of the violence associated with such traditional, hyper-masculine stereotypes... But representations of masculinity in Fight Club do more than reinscribe forms of male identity within a warrior mentality and space of patriarchical relations. They also work to legitimate unequal relations of power and oppression while condoning 'a view of masculinity predicated on the need to wage violence against all that is feminine both within and outside of their lives...'"

Marla

Evola's world view was shaped by what he perceived as a Manichean struggle between the forces of "absolute manhood" and the feminine, a war that has unfolded since the dawn of time and is one of both a spiritual and genetic nature.

"Evola's own mythmaking centered around Hyperborea, the original article homeland, also known as Thule, the sacred island. Evola's Hyperborea was as much a vision of being (or what he calls a 'framework of an ontology') as a historic fact. The sacred figure in Hyperborea was the king, conceived not simply as the ruler of a warrior aristocracy, but as a 'God/man' – a living link to the divine, much like the Japanese emperor or Egyptian pharaoh. King, not high priest, was the true pontifex, who united the natural and supernatural dimensions.

"From Hyperborea (or Ultima Thule), the sun-worshiping Boreal Race migrated in two directions. One group went to northern Europe, where it preserved its solar symbolism in the swastika. A second migration went first to Atlantis and then into the Americas and Western Europe. Remnants of the Hyperborean culture had also been preserved by the Aryans, who originally entered India from the far north.

"During their vast migrations, the Hyperboreans encountered many indigenous cultures. Although the northern European branch kept itself relatively pure, the 'Atlanteans' allowed intermarriage with the aboriginal races of the south. These encounters with 'inferior races, which were enslaved to the chthonic cult of demons and mixed with animal nature,' gave rise to 'memories of struggles that were eventually expressed in mythological form.' In these myths geography took on symbolic meaning. The chaotic, fertile sea was female. Mountains, as fixed 'elevated places' (and the traditional seat of the Gods), were the masculine opposite of the 'contingency of the "waters."' Another symbolic north/south dividing line involved burial ritual: In solar cults the dead are incinerated, while in the south the dead are placed in graves and returned to Mother Earth.

"The south's religions, the cults of Earth and Sea, were matriarchal. Out of them came pantheistic naturalism, sensuality, promiscuity, and a passive mystical and contemplative nature. The south also gave rise to egalitarianism by dethroning the original ruling warrior caste and replacing it with the sacerdotal or priests caste. Any society governed by such a priest caste was inherently 'feminine in its attitude to the spirit' because kingship had been reduced to a purely material function. Before the decay, the dominate warrior caste had followed the northern solar-worshiping religion without need of priestly mediation. The elevation of the Brahmans above the Kshatriyas therefore marked beginning of the Silver Age. Now the priests determined the divinity of the king.

"The north/south struggle was mythologically symbolized by the clash between the sun-god principle of the north that stood for 'the superior invisible realm of being' and the moon goddess of the south whose dominion was the 'inferior realm of becoming.' Evola believed that the Italian personality was split along a north/south archetypeal axis, where 'Nordic elements coexisting in perpetual anarchy with Africo-Mediterranean elements,' causing an absence of 'psychic equilibrium' critical to an understanding of Italy's complex, infuriating history. He rethought world history as well, declaring that the Mayans were a telluric race, while the Aztecs and Incas followed of the solar north. Japan was a model solar civilization whose aristocratic bushido warrior code best preserved Tradition. In Greece, the Eumenides symbolized the victory of the masculine north over matriarchy.

"With Heracles the West had its first great epic hero. In his book Metaphysics of Sex, Evola called Heracles the embodiment of solar masculinity who became legendary both as a conqueror of the Amazons, and as 'a foe of the Mother (of Hera, just as Roman Hercules was the foe of Bona Dea), from whose bonds he freed himself.' Heracles dominated the Tree/Female life force principle by obtaining 'Hebe, everlasting youth, as his wife in Olympus after attaining the way to the garden of Hesperides,' where he plucked the golden apple, 'itself a symbol link to the Mother (the apples have been given by Gea to Hera) and to the life force.' 

"Dionysus, however, stood for a 'Chthonic-Poseidon form of manhood,' as he was linked to Poseidon, god of the waters, and also to Osiris, 'conceived as the stream of the Nile, which waters and fertilizes Isis, the black earth of Egypt.' Dionysus symbolizes 'the wet principle of generation related to the merely phallic concept of manhood; the god is the male considered only according to the aspect of the being who fecundates the female substance and, as such, is subordinate to her.' This was why Dionysus 'is always joined with female figures related to the archetype of the Great Goddess.' Even as a sun god, Dionysus was still viewed 'not in the aspect of pure, unchangeable light but as the star that dies and rises again.' Dionysus symbolized the sun only in an inferior way, the way 'the sun sets and rises again,' when its light 'is still not the steady, abstract light of being or of the pure Olympian principle.' As for Christianity, it was less a Jewish sect that another variant of Dionysianism from Asia Minor.

"Only in its 'Apollonian manifestation' does 'pure manhood' fully manifest itself. Here the god Apollo becomes:

"The embodiment of Olympian nous (perception) and of unchangeable uranic light, freed from the earthly element and also from his connection with goddesses in some spurious historical varieties of his warship. At this level Apollo, as the god of 'pure form,' was conceived without a mother and was born by himself, ametor (without a mother) and autophues (self-growing), being the Doric god who 'produced from geometrically.' (This determination of plastic matter is proper to the male and to form, whereas the indeterminate nature of plastic matter and the limitless apeiron, belongs to the female.)"

(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan, pgs. 304-306) 

the Baron Evola

Pitt's Tyler Durden, with his movie star looks, blond highlights and bronzed tan, is very much an Apollonian figure. He is also one of contradictions, being both rebel and authoritarian in equal measures. This is also true of Apollo.

"He first manifests himself as the image of violence and unbridled arrogance but, as he gathers to himself a range of Nordic, Asiatic and Aegean attributes, his divine personality becomes more and more complex. It synthesizes within itself so many warring elements which it finally reconciles into the ideal of wisdom which is regarded as the Greek miracle. Apollo embodies the balance and harmony of the passions, achieved not by suppressing instinctive impulses, but by directing them through the development of awareness towards an ever-increasing spiritualization..."

(Dictionary of Symbols, Jean Chevalier & Alain Gheerbrant, pg. 34)

In a sense this is also the path Tyler and Jack take as well, though their "spiritualization" of their instinctive impulses is to form a cult geared toward carrying out a rather juvenile terror campaign. It is dubbed Project Mayhem. In the second installment I shall consider Project Mayhem and the curious overlap it and the fight club secret societies have with one of them ore compelling claims floating around conspiracy culture. Stay tuned.

Posted by Recluse at http://visupview.blogspot.com/