Toby Rogers recently published a piece regarding the mystery of "they", referring to the key players within the cabal that is currently bulldozing the foundations of prosperity, civility, autonomy, objectivity and more. At times "they" seem to be at war with truth itself, so it seems prudent to learn as much about this project and its authors as humanly possible.
This is no doubt an important mystery to unravel. Dr. Rogers approaches it like a laboratory dissection, slicing up the beast and carefully arranging its parts on labelled trays. I believe he is quite thorough in his deconstruction, and such an approach certainly serves a tactical if not strategic purpose. However, I suspect he may be missing the forest for the burning trees.
The article was actually a follow up piece to one he posted several days prior (also well worth the read) which focused on the potential motivations behind the actions of "they". I like this approach; investigating motive before naming suspects may seem counterintuitive, but the evidence and scope of their crimes has become so overwhelming that the why is possibly the only riddle left to solve.
In short, his proposals were:
1. profit;Maybe it's just the way my mind works, but I found myself immediately searching for (and finding significant) overlap among these candidates. From my perspective, these appear to be compressed, semi-transparent layers of a stack. Looking at it from the top, one might easily see through our preferred explanation to those stacked most closely beneath it, but at some point the preceding layers become too hazy and noisy to read properly.
2. mental capture (because the base determines the superstructure);
3. an immortality project;
4. mass formation;
5. survival;
6. eugenics;
7. evil itself;
8. excitement/entertainment;
9. depopulation; and
10. the possibility that this is all a play by the Chinese Communist Party for world domination
Reshuffling the stack may reveal a wide variety of intelligible correlations and hierarchies. For example, it is easy to see how "profit" can highly correlate with almost every other element, whether as the prime motivator or as an ancillary crime of opportunity. A eugenicist may be motivated by profit, for instance, but he may alternatively be motivated by a disgust/hatred psychopathology, which other players in the cabal could exploit for profit, excitement or depopulation only as a second or third order effect. In other words, these motives appear to be both highly fungible and gracefully interoperable.
But there is one item in the motive stack which does not appear to play well with its neighbors:
7. evil itself.In fact, "evil itself" doesn't even seem to belong in this particular stack — or, if it does, I'd argue it would only make sense in the topmost ordinal position. If we conceive of "evil" as the prime motivating factor (i.e. a supernatural antagonist, whispering commands into one's ear or mind), then the rest are only ad hoc components, subordinate to the actual enterprise.
The various individuals and organizations tethered to this purely evil motive may outwardly appear to us and to themselves as war profiteers, while the true nature and stakes of the conflict remain hidden from all eyes (including their own). In this model, each of Dr. Rogers' players would carry out his task with more or less the blindness of a single ant. I've often heard the entomological claim that there's no such animal as an ant; the colony is the true organism, of which the ants are merely component parts. The anatomies of individual ants are intelligible using scientific deconstruction, just like the various agencies and institutions on Rogers' "they" list. But a higher order of being is located outside of each ant's body, and that being is simultaneously less intelligible via mechanical reduction and more important in understanding the organism's behaviors. No matter how finely we carve its component members on the tray, the gestalt-being of the ant colony can only truly be understood through observation and inference.
Although there are plenty of semantics to untangle here, I think there's a great deal of wisdom embedded in this concept. For one, it has a highly functional and scalable application layer, regardless of whether we are discussing mental capture, mass formations, survival strategies, etc. Even a person who pursues a goal as seemingly individualistic as profit can be reformulated as just one component operating within a meta-organic gestalt.
Consider the unpredictable nature of markets: there is a high degree of reactivity required to participate in any market, even from those persons and organizations who are attempting to game or capture it. This would even be the case for master market manipulators; no single neuron or cluster of neurons can have anything but a temporary and largely illusory control of a market, because the level of resolution required for such predictive power and/or domination is so astronomically high, we might as well ascribe it to the Eye of God, or to Laplace's Demon.
My evidence is this: despite the best efforts of our global financial cyborgs and techno-fascistic syndicates, total market domination has yet to come anywhere close to being accomplished. I say this confidently because we would certainly know if it happened. If Laplace's Demon LLC were to manifest in material reality, life on Earth would become extremely weird, extremely fast, in ways that make the last hundred-odd years of world wars, lunar landings and transsexual dating apps look yawningly pedestrian.
Nevertheless, many of the events we're witnessing right now — including those perpetrated by the "they" gang as Toby Rogers and countless others contend — still happen to look quite weird. No matter which angle or what level of granularity we study these plays and players from, one gets the sense of a seemingly uncanny coordination between them. One absurd, destructive play seems to dovetail neatly into the next, producing results that are as predictable as they are nightmarish. Not only that, but pieces of the cabal have been fully revealed to us, to the extent that some of their most prominent mouthpieces are now voluntarily (and even proudly) exposing their plans in public. There's a chilling quality to this sudden forthrightness; they seem to believe their shared enterprise is invulnerable to any normal corrective trend. They march forth steadfastly, immune to obvious market signals, public outcries, food shortages, riots, crime waves and more, without conveying the slightest shred of moral (or even immoral) clarity. For all of their energetic flexing of muscle, for all their recent victories in spreading panic and carnage, they seem hidebound to a course that can only end in disaster, including for themselves.
The cliff is dead ahead, in plain sight. And yet, they are putting the pedal to the metal.
So what gives?
The reason I am writing this series is that I'd like to propose a different way of looking at the problems of "they" and "why". It will take some time and patience on my part, and on yours as well. This introductory post will lay out the case in general, with more detailed investigations of the individual elements to follow. Because of this approach, portions of the theory may sound so wildly speculative that a strict materialist-rationalist reader might discard the remainder out of hand. But for those who are willing to play along with thought experiments, I hope you will engage me in the comments. It should go without saying that I don't know everything, and I'm as curious to learn this theory's weaknesses as I am its strengths.
In his brief section describing the potential motivation of "evil itself", Dr. Rogers asked what I thought was a pair of extremely pertinent questions (emphasis mine):
Evangelical Christians (and a wide range of other people in my replies) often argue that what we are dealing with is evil itself, Satan, etc. Gain-of-function research and everything that has followed is certainly evil. But I cannot do much with this theory of the case. Can we see Satan? No? Satan operates through others? Via demonic possession or just ordinary sin? More importantly I don't know how to organize to fight back against this. I imagine prayer helps. But prayer + the Red Army + the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, & Marines + the British Air Force + the Dutch, French, and Jewish Resistance is what it took to defeat the Nazis. And there is a certain sense in which this theory of the case undermines God — can God not already see what's going on? Why does it take extra special pleas to rouse this fella? It's a rather unflattering view of the all-powerful. I believe that spirit will indeed be essential in overthrowing the regime, but at this point I need to focus on understanding the human actors and structures in order to develop a plan for revolution. If "Evil itself" is your theory of the case and I've misrepresented it here (as I'm sure I have), please explain this idea further in the comments.I think Dr. Rogers' questions are sincere. He appears to be a serious man and, after all, these two questions together comprise a timeless metaphysical dilemma.
I think the first question can be reformulated this way:
If I can't kill Satan with a carpet bombing campaign or precision drone strike, then the bastard simply does not exist.
This notion addresses a thorny tactical problem; if our enemy includes no command-and-control assets that can captured, killed or otherwise rendered harmless, then it's possible we won't ever be fighting a winnable war.
The second question addresses a different kind of problem, one that I believe to be the ultimate moral, philosophical and spiritual question:
If God is such a loving dad, why doesn't he come down to the schoolyard and kick my bully in the teeth?
Everyone has his own theory about that, myself included. But I'll set this question aside for now. It's the first question that interests me more at the moment, because it has become brutally obvious that we are in a state of war, aspects of which escape our mechanistic-materialistic-reductionist language model. This is a problem, because it is that precise model which has granted the edge in war, at least since the first industrial age. And in war, it's not enough to merely identify the enemy, but to understand his goals and relay them in some kind of mutually understood tongue. Only then may we begin to predict his movements, and plan our defenses and counterattacks accordingly.
Throughout this series, I will take up Dr. Rogers' challenge, and presume that the key motivation of the enemy is "evil itself" — by which I mean the unadulterated desire to destroy, degrade, immiserate or otherwise cause suffering and harm to as many human beings as possible.
Dr. Rogers eschews this explanation, for what I believe are well-meaning procedural and/or strategic reasons. But I don't necessarily agree with the framing device he uses. The following proposition might sound provocative, but I think it's necessary to contemplate in order for my theory to progress. When Rogers' writes...
But prayer + the Red Army + the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, & Marines + the British Air Force + the Dutch, French, and Jewish Resistance is what it took to defeat the Nazis....the question that immediately sprang to mind was:
Did they really defeat the Nazis, or did they merely replace them?
I'm not questioning the historicity of WWII. My own grandfather was a marine who fought in the eastern theater, where he was twice wounded. Nor am I suggesting some kind of Operation Paperclip-on-steroids, where surviving elements of the actual Nazi regime were installed into positions of global power. Perhaps it would be more helpful to reformulate the question this way:
Did we really defeat evil, or did we come more fully into its service?
But what does that even mean? We can certainly "come into the service" of abstractions. In fact, humans do this all the time, even outside of social, political and religious frameworks. But all abstractions, whether ideological or transactional, require at least some measurable material to be at stake, and at least one avatar with agency to guide or police the interaction with said material. Otherwise, we would not care enough about the abstraction to waste a thought on it, let alone to dedicate ourselves into its service.
If we posit evil as our abstraction, we have an even bigger problem on our hands. By the definition I employed, voluntarily becoming a "servant of evil" would be a stunningly moronic thing to do. After all, your abstract "master" hates you even more than Hitler hated the Jews! On the surface, it seems even the most dedicated sadomasochist would probably avoid this trap with ease, because Evil Itself doesn't employ "safe words". And yet, I suspect this happens to quite a large number of sane and highly intelligent people. It may even be that case that geniuses are more inclined to serve Evil Itself than anyone else.
How does this happen? And why?
To help us find an answer, I'd like to propose a speculative being of pure malevolence. For now, I will call this speculative being the "entity".
This entity has historically been incredibly difficult for us to see, hear or touch. Therefore the prospect of fighting it strikes us as impossible, even though we've developed entire cultural, epistemic and ontological technologies with precisely that goal in mind. However, I contend that these difficulties are diminishing over time, and that they will ultimately vanish completely. In fact, I believe we are poised to see this happen within our lifetimes. To use the illusionist's terminology, we will witness the prestige.
But before we address this elusive creature, we need to lay the groundwork for the existence of supposedly invisible/intangible entities in general. I will try to use as much naturalistic language as possible. Right off the bat, we can dismiss the pseudoscientific and regressive (yet bizarrely fashionable) claim that such entities cannot possibly exist because we "can't see them," and don't need to point to the past century of particle physics to ignore those who make this silly claim.
Let's take a look at some similar kinds of entities, which I believe we can properly say "exist". Jay Rollins of "The Wonderland Rules" has done some truly excellent writing on the concept of egregores, one example of which you can find here.
Though it shares many surface-level characteristics, my proposed entity is not itself an egregore. However, I believe the means by which its ability to manifest itself increases is through its manipulation of such egregores.
If we take for granted that there exists a purely destructive force which — much like the divine, creative spark it conflicts with — is immeasurable by current instrumentation, I think it wouldn't be a stretch to presume that such a force would adapt forms with which to enact said destruction, in a process similar to the evolution of living tissues or technologies. In fact, that would be its only tactic recognizable to the human brain, which busies itself with imagining, then crafting, then wielding material tools to further its owner's goals.
But unlike other agents capable of intentional action, the entity in question can't (or won't) manipulate heavy matter on a regular basis. This limitation may be due to the fact that A) the entity itself lacks mass or B) its composition is so weakly bonded that the energy exchange required for manipulation prevents the most obvious displays of agency and action.
For now, let's assume the answer is B: the entity carries some small measure of mass, but is extraordinarily diffuse compared to other bodies we can perceive instrumentally, which would make the manipulation of dense objects quite the chore. For instance, it might be possible for our entity to hurl an axe the length of a royal dining hall, embedding it in His Goodly Majesty's skull. But to do so would constitute an extreme expenditure of energy, leaving it thoroughly exhausted afterward. This limitation doesn't discount that the entity may be able to manipulate other kinds of particles (neutrinos, for instance, are near massless). But for the sake of this argument, let's just stipulate that it cannot casually interact with anything but the lightest and most stable of particles.
What about photons? Although they carry no mass whatsoever, they can carry information. Physicists at the University of Twente recently managed to squeeze 10 bits onto a single photon (and — theoretically, at least — there is no upper limit on potential storage). While this has obvious implications for quantum cryptography and related fields, it also has implications for our entity. Let's postulate for the moment that it has within its power a means to intentionally manipulate light (quite a suitable talent, if our entity was named "Lucifer"). If that's the case, then the potential for it to weave a variety of sensory illusions exists (equally suitable, if it were named the "Father of Lies"). I have some ideas about how the mechanics of this capability might work (e.g. strange attractors that, presuming agency, don't look quite so strange). But for now, let's just say that it can accomplish this feat with some degree of regularity. How would it wield such a power to pursue its goal?
Given its strengths and weaknesses, I suspect its base tactic would be to influence other intelligent beings, primarily by presenting them with illusions which suggest alternative theories of reality — lies, essentially, though of a kind that is likely quite simple in form. The elaboration of these simple lies into coherent, actionable narratives is outsourced to the physical brain itself, which has evolved over millions of years to perform just such a trick.
The originating lie might be as subtle as rearranging a few nodes within a pattern, such that it appears quite similar to the pattern's naturally occurring form (i.e. the truth) but becomes progressively more distorted with each fractal iteration across spacetime. The old cartoon anthology series "Fractured Fairy Tales" springs to mind; the best strategic use of illusion would be to leave enough familiar elements in place for the human victim/accomplice to reframe himself as the hero of the tale, and thereby to rationalize any evil action as having been performed in the pursuit of greater goods (Come to think of it, this might serve as a pretty good summation of our postmodern philosophies, and I tend to think the connection is not accidental).
But this tactic alone wouldn't be enough. Perhaps it would drive large numbers of traumatized or otherwise psychologically weakened people to madness (and I strongly believe it does that as well). But such a result would taste like thin gruel to our entity's palate. Remember, our critter's sole goal is harm: maximum destruction, chaos, misery and torment. To this end, the entity would need to expend its energy efficiently, relying mostly upon existing structures that wield great influence over the dense, manmade tools of coercion and harm. The primary forms it would seek to hijack (i.e. "possess") would therefore be the human brain networks in command of vast resources, and employing armies of morally or intellectually compromised institutions and agents (i.e "principalities").
But there's a problem here: the process of corrupting individual minds within these principalities one-by-one would be both inefficient and exhausting, even for a powerful illusionist like our entity. It's worth mentioning that I think it's possible this wasn't always the case; if we were to travel back to a time when the human population was comparably scarce, and the tribal affinity to individual leaders far stronger, it stands to reason that conquering a few minds here and there would yield much greater reward output. It's even possible that there might have been enough energy left over to perform a certain number of "supernatural" feats (e.g. flying axes, guided arrows, curses and hexes, monstrous beasts, etc.) in order to lure, frighten or otherwise coerce humans into the entity's service. But, given how fruitful and multiplicative we've been throughout the Holoscene, even the base tactic of photon manipulation would prove maddeningly inefficient. That might be true even for an entity that had evolved to ten times its capacity over the same period. For that reason, I contend its primary means of manipulation is conducted via the medium of egregores, and the constituent minds and forces that comprise them.
By now, I would assume religious readers will recognize in my proposed entity the outlines of a certain infamous biblical villain who warred with his creator, lost, and was hurled into the material of the universe, where he plots his ultimate vengeance to this day.
From now on, I will call my theoretical antagonist by that very name. Not merely because I'm tired of typing "the entity" over and over, but because I believe a thing must be well-named to be well understood. And who am I to argue with such a long established nomenclature, or to refuse the gifts of the past in general? The model seems to have held up quite well over time, and you don't fix what ain't broke. I'm told that's particularly true in times of war.
By the same logic, a religious reader might presume that egregores are likewise analogous to biblical demons, bound to Satan's service via some mechanism of infernal law. My short answer to that is, "Sort of?"
In the Book of Enoch, the term egregore may be referring to the principalities themselves, or the unseen social mechanisms and feedback loops that maintain them. On the other hand, it also describes them in a way that suggests awesomely powerful beings with agency, who indifferently crush us like insects because of their vast size and alien intellects. One imagines something along the lines of a tornado descending upon a sleepy village, the sky transforming into a monster that blindly and randomly devours us.
If I had to convert this concept into religious language, I might simply name these beings "angels" (fallen and otherwise), or the (lower-g) "gods" and chthonic monsters of antiquity. From that perspective, what we see of them could be thought of as trace evidence left behind when they act, like the fingerprints at a crime scene. I won't quibble over which description is the better one; it may be that both can serve different but equally important purposes, depending on the situation.
Like earthly flora and fauna, egregores have evolved into a wide variety of forms, displaying varying degrees of complexity. For example, I think the stock market could potentially be described as a species of egregore; a decentralized meta-organism that continually devours information and vomits out signals. This process of endless ingestion/regurgitation is near-simultaneous (just ask HFT firms), and is well beyond the capabilities of any individual human who interfaces with it in Meat World.
If artists were to visualize this egregore (and indeed, we already have), the result might look like a large, two-headed beast which vacillates between high energy (aggressive; charging) and low energy (lethargic; retreating) states.
The BullBear egragore
A secondary takeaway might be that the Bullbear is not malevolent per se. No matter which head is driving the body, or which rider is attempting to steer its course, the Bullbear is indifferent to questions of morality. It is a machine-god that has adapted solely for survival and growth (and in that order, by necessity). The fact that persons or corporations within the egregore's distributed form will pursue individual goals is perfectly acceptable within this structure of being, so long as the primary goals are simultaneously being advanced. The individual trader may take the day off to play a few rounds of golf. The ant is not programmed where to go, only where to return.
This doesn't mean catastrophe can't befall an egregore. It may even be that inevitable, catastrophic failure is built into its meta-anatomy, as it is built into the anatomies of all living species. The difference is that — being an immortal egregore — the Bullbear will always recover from its periodic "deaths", so long as there exists information to feed it, and an observer to witness the output. There has never been a time when some human, somewhere, wasn't looking to trade one source of value for another, generating price signals as a consequence. Not only does the Bullbear never die. It never sleeps. If all of the stock exchanges were to halt trading tomorrow, Bullbear would still exist, lethargically prowling or charging boldly forth as always. It would just be harder for us to see.
An egregore can also be an archetype, which is gradually brought to life by a multiplicity of narrative structures and artistic forms. This is usually a long and messy process — Does Cerberus have three heads or fifty? — but eventually we establish the existence of a relatively consistent being that can be mentally conjured at a moment's notice, with the strong theory that everyone's image of this being is practically the same. To falsify it, all you'd have to do is point at a picture of a multi-headed dog, and ask ten strangers to tell you its name. If they all shrug their shoulders, or say something like "Fido", it's possible Cerberus is in serious trouble. And perhaps we all are, because it would mean the gates to the Underworld now stand unguarded.
Now you might say, "Not everyone will recognize Cerberus, in name or form." And that's exactly correct. Some egregores are more mortal than others. Who among us could recount the names or visages of more than a few gods of ancient Babylon? Or even one, for that matter? Unless you are personally interested in the subject, the chances are slim. And an unworshipped god is not a god at all. It's at best a cliquey curiosity, or an academic footnote, or an obscure slice of kitsch.
In the language model I'm proposing, those gods of Babel are long dead. Perhaps they might be reanimated some day, much the way Bullbear re-instantiates itself from time to time. But to resurrect an egregore of this narrative species would take a lengthy and concerted effort, by a large number of people who not only are interested, but psychologically and spiritually invested in that result. When this happens, I think the distributed hive-mind of riders that sits atop the egregore disappears. It becomes more than just a Jungian construct of the collective unconscious, but rather a real manifestation, with a will and agency of its own. Like the market, it becomes unpredictable, and potentially very dangerous
I suspect the most significant instance of this strategy in the recent past was pursued by Aleister Crowley and his Thelemic cult. A full dissection of that dark enterprise could send us down a very deep rabbit hole. Suffice it to say I believe certain projects of this cult were "successful". If you're curious to examine one of these projects, you could perhaps start with "1003 Orange Grove Avenue, Pasadena, CA" and roll from there. But I would advise you to be very careful when conducting such investigations. Not all egregores are malevolent; but some are, and are terrifyingly dangerous to boot. I'd tell you to ask Jack Parsons, but the sonofabitch is dead as Hell (and could likely give you a tour of it).
If this sounds a little too much like obscurantist woo woo to you, well... good. It should. There exists a mountainous language barrier when it comes to describing the transition from a meta-entity / groupmind established by feedback loops to an actual being that operates via independent agency. I intend to outline my theory of how and why this occurs in a future part of this series. For now, I will only stipulate that the manifested egregore is not a being created by its human components, but rather one that is summoned by them. In my interpretation, demons aren't immune to the forces of the Attention Economy. Quite the contrary; attention is their stock and trade. So when an egregore is "brought to life", the agency does not actually belong to it (and by extension, to the distributed will of its human components). It belongs to an entity that's been lured to the lavish attention it is being paid by the cult, whose members implore it to immanentize. It's the attraction of moths to flames, essentially. But in this case instead of perishing, the moth is now armed with a flamethrower.
Can an egregore of this species be inherently "good"? If so, what would that look like? In my estimation, such a being would function to produce more ordered liberty, gratitude, mercy, love and joy. But if and when such a being is ever summoned, I don't think it would manifest in the same way malevolent ones do. Its summoners would just appear to be living their best possible lives. Once such an egregore has established a high enough degree of reliable order and growth, the stable structures and institutions that form and nest around it can afford each individual human escape routes into art, philosophy and both physical and spiritual exploration. And many would indeed follow these routes, because it is in these directions that we will find truth, transcendence and, ultimately, a glimpse of God's kingdom. This is the inverse of Kafka's Metamorphosis; the ant becoming fully human (and practically overnight, from the perspective of God Himself).
Has this ever happened before? I don't know. I suspect it hasn't, for the same reason I suspect Laplace's Demon LLC hasn't conquered the world, and converted us all into robotic eunuchs and concubines: We would see its fingerprints everywhere. I believe there have at least been a few somewhat successful attempts to summon good egregores in the past, and that certain projects are ongoing. But this is outside the scope of my theory; Satan interacts with egregores differently than we do, and I think humans have a vested interest in learning to recognize those techniques.
If you've followed along to this point, you have my gratitude. I'm quite certain I've lost every mechanistic-rationalist-materialist by now, which was the inevitable outcome. My language (like all languages) is imperfect, which is why I will need your help. Language modelling is inherently a collaboration. after all.
Even if you accept my core premise — that Satan is a real agent, equipped with powers that manifest in material reality — you might have a few questions (and understandably so). Some of you may interpret my speculative Satan (as well as my demons and egregores) as a kind of elaborately festooned metaphor, describing the patterns generated by groupthink and distributed will. I assure you it is not.
In the next part, I will try to explain what I have observed of the satanic entity and its methods thus far. I'll also take a deeper dive into what I think the mind and body of an incarnated devil might look like to humans, and what its motive of pure evil suggests about the hidden structure of reality. Plus we might be doing a bit of time travel as well. Could be fun, right?
In the meantime, if you have any thoughts on this or related subjects, I would love to read them in the comments.
I'd like to thank the many substack authors whose insight, wit, grace and intellectual courage have inspired me to write this series, and encourage you to subscribe to their work. This is by no means an exhaustive list — the depth of talent on this platform never ceases to amaze me — but here are just a few names, in no particular order:
John Carter (Postcards From Barsoom)
Jay Rollins (The Wonderland Rules)
Chris Bray (Tell Me How This Ends)
Katherine Watt (Bailiwick News)
Toby Rogers (uTobian)
Doctor Hammer (Doc Hammer's Anvil)
Karen Hunt (Break Free with Karen Hunt)
Handwaving Freakoutery
Mike Hind (Rarely Certain)
el gato malo (bad cattitude)
eugyppious (eugyppius: a plague chronicle)
Robert Malone (Who is Robert Malone)
Winston Smith (Escaping Mass Psychosis)
Good Citizen (The Good Citizen)
May God bless all of them, and all of you as well.
#2- strangely worded "mental capture" is most interesting to me.
As I have interest in eastern philosophy - and I see how it rings true from my own experiences - I try to learn from my own and others' mistakes - I can tell you one thing - mastering the mind (it is a drunken monkey) is the whole game of life.
Whether "they" know it or not - some do no doubt - they're messing with your mind in a huge obnoxious play for distraction and annoyance.
That's pretty satanic - but at the same time like all our femmy incompetent perverted leaders - they have no real power. And abrahamic religions are not a way out - but part of the game.
2. There is no "china" or any other country that is autonomous - sorry - they were made commies by those above - kissinger-types , many yrs ago.