R
RAYTHEON23
Гостин
david icke
by Alex Burns (alex@disinfo.com) - December 16, 2000
Princess Diana and JFK were both ritually assassinated. The Earth is hollow, and secretly ruled by the Secret Reptilian Brotherhood from Alpha Draconis (or was it the Fourth Dimension?), who regularly practice ritual Satanic murder and child molestation. Francis Bacon was Shakespeare; Jesus Christ never existed; Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles are shapeshifters who assert world control through a vast international banking network. The Disinformation editor's cute little brown chicken is now alien property. Welcome to the strange twilight world of David Icke, best-selling conspiriology author and one of the most controversial public speakers on Earth today. Through a series of books, most notably 'The Biggest Secret: The Book That Will Change The World' (Bridge Of Love Publications, 1999), '. . .And The Truth Shall Set You Free' (Truth Seeker, 1998), and 'The Robot's Rebellion: The Story Of The Spiritual Renaissance' (Gill & Macmillan Publishers, 1994), Icke lays out a conspiriology 'grand narrative' that involves every major conspiracy theory and occult society that ever existed, an alternative view of history which Icke contends has been kept from the majority of the human race. This worldview was parodied by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson in their famous 'Illuminatus! Trilogy' (Dell Publishing Company, 1975), but Icke is deadly serious about his model, and continues to attract a devoted following.
Read as fictional metaphor, Icke's books are a paranoid roller-coaster ride through Humanity's eternal struggle to consciously evolve from primitive and violent deep-brain subsystems to whole-Earth macro-views. But unfortunately many readers are confusing the map with the territory, resulting in the 'information overload' that semiotician Umberto Eco wryly warned about in his masterful postmodern novel 'Foucault's Pendulum' (Picador, 1990).
Icke's biographical story offers ample examples of this common mistake of 'Seekers After Truth'. Professional soccer player, sports correspondent, and later national spokesperson for Britain's Green Party, Icke underwent a highly publicized spiritual awakening after a visit to a medium and healer. The brutal reality according to some conflicting accounts however, is that Icke got a personal assistant pregnant whilst on holiday, and split with his family. The public outcry drove Icke into the very fringes of conspiriology subcultures.
According to a scathing review of 'The Biggest Secret' by the late Jim Keith, Icke lacks the finely honed analytical skills required to discriminate between credible and delusional sources. Whilst Icke does highlight in his own way the turbulence of the multi-polar Digital Age and the exploitative excesses of laissez-faire capitalism run amok, he also prints (plagiarizes?) the most bizarre anecdotes, without any sustained critique. His books are required reading to grasp the irrationalism and virtually nonexistant research methodologies that plagues the conspiriology underground, but for all the wrong reasons: Icke may awaken the desire for conscious evolution, but then provides an error-filled map. Only psychotics and shamans create their own realities.
Here's a revolutionary test designed to reshape your reality tunnel: get a private journal, and then read a David Icke book. Note your reactive feelings and thoughts. Then read Michael Shermer's 'Why People Believe Weird Things' (WH Freemason & Co, 1998) and Carl Sagan's 'Demon Haunted World (Ballantine Books, 1997). Note your reactive feelings and thoughts. The read an Icke book again. Note any perceptual changes and review your notes. Has your world subsequently become an awe-inspiring, more beautiful place?
Shortcut
www.armavirumque.org
To contact The New Criterion by email, write to:
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Blondgroll li synahaka[
Jan 31, 2008 07:04 AM
The fairy tale of fragility
by Stefan Beck
Eons ago, in a sepia-toned past that few can now recall, President George W. Bush (remember that guy?) spoke of the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” Well, it seems to have reared its soft, bigoted head once more, this time in the form of the media’s horrified responses to the Clinton Machine’s attacks on Barack Obama. John McWhorter, one of my favorite authors and commentators on race in America, has no patience for this sort of delicate treatment, as he makes clear in today’s New York Sun: There is a tacit sense that decent people would make an exception for him. Otherwise, why would so many think of it as news that the Clintons or anyone else would get nasty in trying to push past him? Let’s face facts: People see this commonplace phenomenon as news because of a tacit idea that as a black man, Mr. Obama should be treated with kid gloves.б Lawrence Bobo, professor of sociology at Harvard, gives it away comparing the Clintons’ attacks on Mr. Obama to, specifically, the Willie Horton ad and the 2000 vote count. That is, events traditionally classified as “racist”—as if Republicans have not sought to best Democrats in ways disconnected to race. Upon which the Swift-boat thing is germane. Mr. Bobo appends that to his list, too—but misses that the guiding theme is not racism but hardball. Welcome to reality: being judged by the content of our character means that we black people will not be exempt from hardball. We should not be seduced by the fantasy that we must pretend to be fragile. That’s McWhorter’s argument in a nutshell, but it’s worth reading the whole thing for an entertaining (though not, as they say, in a good way) digression about the credulity-straining inclusion of Duke Ellington in The Rest Is Noise, Alex Ross’s new “survey of twentieth-century classical music.” McWhorter’s column is required reading as we approach Super Tuesday, which is also Fat Tuesday, which means that, whatever the outcome, you can assuage your suffering or compound your relief with the help of the almighty Sazerac. Plan ahead, though: They don’t sell Peychaud’s Bitters at your corner store.
by Alex Burns (alex@disinfo.com) - December 16, 2000
Princess Diana and JFK were both ritually assassinated. The Earth is hollow, and secretly ruled by the Secret Reptilian Brotherhood from Alpha Draconis (or was it the Fourth Dimension?), who regularly practice ritual Satanic murder and child molestation. Francis Bacon was Shakespeare; Jesus Christ never existed; Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles are shapeshifters who assert world control through a vast international banking network. The Disinformation editor's cute little brown chicken is now alien property. Welcome to the strange twilight world of David Icke, best-selling conspiriology author and one of the most controversial public speakers on Earth today. Through a series of books, most notably 'The Biggest Secret: The Book That Will Change The World' (Bridge Of Love Publications, 1999), '. . .And The Truth Shall Set You Free' (Truth Seeker, 1998), and 'The Robot's Rebellion: The Story Of The Spiritual Renaissance' (Gill & Macmillan Publishers, 1994), Icke lays out a conspiriology 'grand narrative' that involves every major conspiracy theory and occult society that ever existed, an alternative view of history which Icke contends has been kept from the majority of the human race. This worldview was parodied by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson in their famous 'Illuminatus! Trilogy' (Dell Publishing Company, 1975), but Icke is deadly serious about his model, and continues to attract a devoted following.
Read as fictional metaphor, Icke's books are a paranoid roller-coaster ride through Humanity's eternal struggle to consciously evolve from primitive and violent deep-brain subsystems to whole-Earth macro-views. But unfortunately many readers are confusing the map with the territory, resulting in the 'information overload' that semiotician Umberto Eco wryly warned about in his masterful postmodern novel 'Foucault's Pendulum' (Picador, 1990).
Icke's biographical story offers ample examples of this common mistake of 'Seekers After Truth'. Professional soccer player, sports correspondent, and later national spokesperson for Britain's Green Party, Icke underwent a highly publicized spiritual awakening after a visit to a medium and healer. The brutal reality according to some conflicting accounts however, is that Icke got a personal assistant pregnant whilst on holiday, and split with his family. The public outcry drove Icke into the very fringes of conspiriology subcultures.
According to a scathing review of 'The Biggest Secret' by the late Jim Keith, Icke lacks the finely honed analytical skills required to discriminate between credible and delusional sources. Whilst Icke does highlight in his own way the turbulence of the multi-polar Digital Age and the exploitative excesses of laissez-faire capitalism run amok, he also prints (plagiarizes?) the most bizarre anecdotes, without any sustained critique. His books are required reading to grasp the irrationalism and virtually nonexistant research methodologies that plagues the conspiriology underground, but for all the wrong reasons: Icke may awaken the desire for conscious evolution, but then provides an error-filled map. Only psychotics and shamans create their own realities.
Here's a revolutionary test designed to reshape your reality tunnel: get a private journal, and then read a David Icke book. Note your reactive feelings and thoughts. Then read Michael Shermer's 'Why People Believe Weird Things' (WH Freemason & Co, 1998) and Carl Sagan's 'Demon Haunted World (Ballantine Books, 1997). Note your reactive feelings and thoughts. The read an Icke book again. Note any perceptual changes and review your notes. Has your world subsequently become an awe-inspiring, more beautiful place?
Shortcut
www.armavirumque.org
To contact The New Criterion by email, write to:
letters@newcriterion.com.
To contact The New Criterion by mail, write to:
The New Criterion
900 Broadway
Suite 602
New York, New York 10003
USA
Blondgroll li synahaka[
Jan 31, 2008 07:04 AM
The fairy tale of fragility
by Stefan Beck
Eons ago, in a sepia-toned past that few can now recall, President George W. Bush (remember that guy?) spoke of the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” Well, it seems to have reared its soft, bigoted head once more, this time in the form of the media’s horrified responses to the Clinton Machine’s attacks on Barack Obama. John McWhorter, one of my favorite authors and commentators on race in America, has no patience for this sort of delicate treatment, as he makes clear in today’s New York Sun: There is a tacit sense that decent people would make an exception for him. Otherwise, why would so many think of it as news that the Clintons or anyone else would get nasty in trying to push past him? Let’s face facts: People see this commonplace phenomenon as news because of a tacit idea that as a black man, Mr. Obama should be treated with kid gloves.б Lawrence Bobo, professor of sociology at Harvard, gives it away comparing the Clintons’ attacks on Mr. Obama to, specifically, the Willie Horton ad and the 2000 vote count. That is, events traditionally classified as “racist”—as if Republicans have not sought to best Democrats in ways disconnected to race. Upon which the Swift-boat thing is germane. Mr. Bobo appends that to his list, too—but misses that the guiding theme is not racism but hardball. Welcome to reality: being judged by the content of our character means that we black people will not be exempt from hardball. We should not be seduced by the fantasy that we must pretend to be fragile. That’s McWhorter’s argument in a nutshell, but it’s worth reading the whole thing for an entertaining (though not, as they say, in a good way) digression about the credulity-straining inclusion of Duke Ellington in The Rest Is Noise, Alex Ross’s new “survey of twentieth-century classical music.” McWhorter’s column is required reading as we approach Super Tuesday, which is also Fat Tuesday, which means that, whatever the outcome, you can assuage your suffering or compound your relief with the help of the almighty Sazerac. Plan ahead, though: They don’t sell Peychaud’s Bitters at your corner store.
