Secret History
From the ancient pleasure-seeking Epicureans who argued against the logic-heavy Stoics of ancient Rome to the war of "salvation through faith vs works" that schismed western Christianity, to the chaotic emotional energy driving the Jacobin mobs of France whose passions were only matched by the radical Cartesian logic of their Girondin enemies; humanity has long been manipulated by oligarchs who knew how to set the species to war against itself. Although these operations have taken many forms, the desired effect has always been the same: divide-to-conquer bloodbaths which drowned out the saner voices of Cicero (executed in 44 BCE), Thomas More (executed in 1535 CE), or Jean Sylvain Bailly (executed in 1793 CE).
Today's polarization across the Trans-Atlantic world has reached a fevered pitch with the "right wing conservatives" shouting for liberty and less government while left wing liberals call for more government and top-down reforms of the system (with Great Reset technocrats laughing in the background).
Everyone with half a brain should be able to sense that the danger of civil war and economic meltdown hang over our destinies like a sword of Damocles, but instead of hearing calls for restoring the SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN traditions of American System banking that author Ellen Brown recently documented in her powerful new essay, we find only feuding sects that assert we must EITHER have top-down centralized planning OR bottom-up free markets laissez faire policies devoid of any government intervention.
The goal of Cynical Theories is to add clarity to this admittedly complicated discussion and lay out how postmodernism is of central importance to the development of what we now call "Critical Social Justice" or "Woke" scholarship and ideology. This is actually only one part in a far broader history that certainly draws upon Marx (and thus all the German idealists he drew upon), though in a very peculiar way and through a number of fascinating and, themselves, complex historical and philosophical twists.
One of these is the development of postmodernism, upon which we write, and another is the development of "neo-Marxism," which is sometimes referred to as "Cultural Marxism." This is a development of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, and it too was explicitly highly critical of Marxism in its economic particulars, though it retained the underlying ethos and ambition of overthrowing the ruling classes and establishing some variation on communism. Clearly, a third line of thought that bears some relevance is the long and, again, complex history of "social justice" thought, which can be approached in any number of ways, including religious, liberal, communist, and, as we explain in the book, "Woke," which must be understood to be its own thing in its own context, whatever its intellectual history.

A manufacturing date on a vessel confirmed a Chinese mausoleum's ties to second-century A.D. ruler Liu Zhi The vessel was produced around the time when Liu Zhi's successor, Ling, was building a mausoleum for the deceased emperor.
"Together with the previous documents about the location of the emperor's tomb, the discovery makes us almost certain that it is the tomb of emperor Liu Zhi," Wang Xianqiu, who led the excavation project, tells Lyu Qiuping, Gui Juan and Shi Linjing of state-run news agency Xinhua.
Researchers had previously guessed that the tomb, located in the city of Luoyang, belonged to the Han dynasty emperor. An inscription on the vessel dating its year of manufacture to 180 A.D. appears to confirm this suspicion. Wang, a scholar at the Luoyang City Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute, says the vessel was produced around the time when Liu Zhi's successor, Liu Hong, or Ling, was building a mausoleum for the deceased emperor. The artifact is shaped like a basin and stands about ten inches tall, with a circumference of more than two feet.
This is no small discovery: it was more than a century, in other words since the discovery in 1901 of the first tablets, that this writing system was known. But no one, despite all the attempts in 119 years, has ever found the key. No one, until François Desset, 38, associate researcher at CNRS Archaeorient from Lyon and specialist in the Bronze Age and the Neolithic in Iran.
Comment: See also:
- Archaeologists find 7,000-year-old example of one of the world's earliest writing systems
- Mysterious egalitarian 'megasites' could rewrite history of world's first cities
- 5,000 year old cultic area for warrior-god uncovered in Iraq
- Cuneiform clay tablet translated for the first time, Describes Asteroid Impact
Consider 1177 B.C., when many of the great civilizations of the Mediterranean Sea and Mideast collapsed, and the survivors struggled through a pre-modern Dark Ages. This book assembles what is known about this catastrophic era: 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed.
Then there's 1644 A.D., when the Ming Dynasty was overthrown by the Manchu invasion, a series of self-reinforcing misfortunes stemming from extremes of climate (a.k.a. The Little Ice Age) that left millions hungry and vulnerable to disease and the predation of roving bandit armies.
The Little Ice Age and the famine, conflicts, civil wars, coups, revolts and rebellions it launched killed between a quarter and a third of Eurasia's population. Entire villages melted away as starvation drove the survivors to desperation. The misery stretched from western Europe to China, and lasted for decades.
Comment: The author is being facetious with his last point, but the overall irony of his article is that the stage is, in fact, set to see many of the same developments (listed above) in the not-too-distant future; little ice ages, other earth changes, plagues, civil wars and civilizational collapse - are all in the early to mid-process of actually occurring, and wreaking havoc.
The question then becomes: How determined are each of us to comprehend how all of this is actually occurring - and how focused can we be on seeing it through, and helping others who share this understanding.
The remarkable evidence, published today, suggests that she may well have been a member of the senatorial elite which presided over the final years of Roman Britain.
"It's conceivable that she was the wife of one of Britain's last Roman rulers," said Dr Roger Tomlin, a leading authority on Roman Britain and author of a major study on its people and social history, Britannia Romana.
Comment: See also:
- 536 AD: Plague, famine, drought, cold, and a mysterious fog that lasted 18 months
- Saxons did not invade Britain after Romans left
- Pompeii was a full-fledged city before it was taken over by the Romans
- Prittlewell: Stunning artefacts discovered in Anglo-Saxon nobleman's burial chamber in Southend-on-Sea, England
- Ruins suggest Britons had bathhouses before Roman occupation
The Morlocks periodically rise above ground in hunting parties to kidnap and eat unsuspecting Eloi in this symbiotically vicious circle of life.
This famous story was written by a young British writer in 1893 whose ideas and pioneering work in shaping new techniques of cultural warfare which profoundly affected the next 130 years of human history. These ideas led to the innovation of novel techniques of "predictive programming", and to mass psychological warfare. In contrast to the optimistic views of mankind and the future potential envisioned by the great science fiction writer Jules Verne earlier, Wells' misanthropic tales had the intended effect of reducing the creative potential and love of humanity that Verne's work awoke.
To restate the technique more clearly: By shaping society's imagination of the future, and embedding existential/nihilistic outcomes within his plotlines, Wells realized that the entire zeitgeist of humanity could be affected on a profound level than simple conscious reason would permit. Since he robed his poison in the cloth of "fiction" the minds of those receiving his stories would find their critical thinking faculties disengaged and would simply take in all trojan horses embedded in the stories into their unconsciousness. This has been an insight used for over a century by social engineers and intelligence agencies whose aim has always been the willing enslavement of all people of the earth.
"Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction having been given to public opinion. This is the weak point of our defences, and the part to which the enemies of the system will direct all their attacks. Opinion can be so perverted as to cause the false to seem true; the enemy, a friend, and the friend, an enemy; the best interests of the nation to appear insignificant, and trifles of moment; in a word, the right the wrong, and the wrong, the right. In a country where opinion has sway, to seize upon it, is to seize upon power. As it is a rule of humanity that the upright and well-intentioned are comparatively passive, while the designing, dishonest and selfish are the most untiring in their efforts, the danger of public opinion's getting a false direction is four-fold, since few men think for themselves." - James Fenimore Cooper (The American Democrat 1838)I think it is evident to most by now that the United States is presently undergoing a crisis that could become a full-blown second civil war.
Some might be wondering, is it really so bad that the U.S. could possibly collapse in the not-so-distant future? After all, isn't it acting like the worst of empires? Isn't it wreaking havoc on the world today? Is it not a good thing that it collapse internally and spare the world from further wars?
It is true that the U.S. is presently acting more like a terrible empire than a republic based on liberty and freedom. It may even be the case that the world is spared for a time from further war and tyranny, if the U.S. were to collapse. However, this is unlikely and it most certainly would be only temporary, since the U.S. is not the source of such monstrosities but rather is merely its instrument.
This paper will go not only go through why this is the case and but will also analyze Russia's historical relationship to the U.S. in context to its recognition of this very fact.
"Based on the archaeological evidence that is currently being studied, it can be hypothesized that Jelogir Mound was once home to an Achaemenid castle, which was probably existed in the [subsequent] Sassanid era," CHTN quoted senior archaeologist Vahid Younesi as saying on Sunday.
Younesi, who leads an archaeological survey on the mount, believes pottery fragments scattered at the site are a rich source of information that could shed a new light on ancient life on Jelogir Mound and its surroundings.
"Recognition of relative chronology and introduction of pottery features of various historical periods (Achaemenid, Parthian, Sassanid) of this area in Fars region will pave the way for us to access valuable information and findings of cultural heritage," he explained.
Situated northwest of Marvdasht plain, Dorudzan district, Jelogir mound is registered first by Andrea Williamson, then by William Samner through archaeological surveys at the southern Iranian pain, but regarding to its strategic location and it demands comprehensive investigation around the site to recognize peripheral settlements to understand the site position in Marvdasht Plain.
In the present paper, it is attempted to estimate the mound chronology, and the site role within the plain according to a comprehensive survey and analyzing the collected data.
But the emperor Augustus didn't exactly get paid in kind when he died in 14CE.
His tomb -- a huge, circular mausoleum, which was the largest in the city when it was built -- was abandoned for centuries. With its roof fallen in and the cypresses planted around it left to grow wild, it has long been a far cry from the carefully preserved Colosseum and Roman Forum.
In fact, for much of the past 80 years, it has been closed to the public, with brief openings in the year 2000 to celebrate the city's Jubilee year, and then again, before being closed in 2007 for archaeological investigations.
Comment: See also:
- Ultra-rare coin celebrating Julius Caesar's assassination sells for a record $3.5 million
- Legendary ancient Torlonia Marbles to go on display after decades in the dark
- Pompeii was a full-fledged city before it was taken over by the Romans
- Behind the Headlines: Who was Jesus? Examining the evidence that Christ may in fact have been Caesar!
- Behind the Headlines: Julius Caesar - Evil Dictator or Messiah for Humanity?
- The Truth Perspective: Julius Caesar and the Transformation of Rome - Interview with Dr. Tom Stevenson
Comment: See also: