The Rise of Sauron in the 21st Century

Not content with hijacking "red-pilled" and claiming to be a key player in the Resistance, Musk (and his alt-right ilk) are now perversely using The Lord of the Rings to describe the "invasion" by migrants, equating the latter, and presumably liberals, with the Dark forces and aligning themselves (the Right) with the light, while the simple Shire folk have no idea what's going on in the wider world and the forces supposedly fighting in part to protect them.

A recent, deliberately twisted and perverted Department of Homeland Security social media post for ICE recruitment, reads:

“The board is set, the pieces are moving. We come to it at last, the great battle of our time.”

And it features an image showing a close-up of the hobbit, Merry's face in dark shades of blue that has him saying to his cousin:

“there won't be a shire, pippin.”

Musk maybe hasn't read the two chapters at the end of the book, missing from the films, which show the desecration of the Shire by militancy and dark Satanic mills and the chopping down of trees which, like war – a necessary evil at best, but always a source of profound suffering – J.R.R. Tolkien absolutely abhorred.

This is all very deliberate, and deeply malignant.

Is nothing sacred anymore?

Preter pereo paĝrulado (Beyond doom scrolling)

If you're like me and you're getting worried about skim reading so many articles online that it is having an adverse cognitive effect on things like reading comprehension and retention, maybe consider learning a new language.

I'm just taking baby steps in learning Esperanto (at the equivalent stage of “This is a Janet. Janet is cooking in the kitchen. And this is John. John is in the lounge reading a book.”) and I've noticed that you really have to pore over the text, re-read it, and refer back to it later, numerous times, as the meaning gradually sinks in. It's a totally different, and healthier, experience. Boy, does it slow you down to a sane pace.

The Misguided War on Woke: Part and Parcel of the Culture Wars

With the election of Donald Trump for a second term in 2025, the War on Woke, now officially sanctioned, has greatly intensified. And other figures such as the neurologist and writer Dr. Iain McGilchrist, best known for his work on the hemispheric functioning of the brain, have taken up arms in the fight: not against the war but in support.

And yes, I do appreciate that anything, including wokeness, can be taken by some to unfortunate or grotesque extremes. But for the majority of ordinary, everyday, law-abiding, sentient people, to be woke means to be aware of injustice and to have sympathy, compassion, and empathy for the vulnerable and the downtrodden.

Weaponization

As Neo says to Bugs in the 2021 film, The Matrix Resurrections: “How am I doing? I don’t know. I don’t even know how to know.”

To which Bugs replies: “That’s it, isn’t it? If we don’t know what’s real... we can’t resist. They took your story, something that meant so much to people like me, and turned it into something trivial. That’s what the Matrix does. It weaponizes every idea. Every dream. Everything that’s important to us.”

Hannah Spier, Iain McGilchrist, and the Partisan Attack on the “Cult of Progressivism”

I just read an article titled “The Psychological Mechanisms behind the Cult of Progressivism: Why Charlie Kirk's murder was the execution of a heretic and why it will happen again” by Dr. Hannah Spier, MD, who self-describes as “The Antifeminist Psychiatrist. Exposing bad therapy and the liberal narratives that contribute to our poor mental health” and who also has some pointed things to say about others involved in the culture wars, such as autistic people. You can find that article from her Psychobabble blog at Substack here.

Iain McGilchrist is the author of the much respected The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, and The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. He actually includes Hannah Spier's article, as a guest post, on his own blog, The Matter with Things, also on Substack, using the unequivocally supportive headline “Brilliant piece from Hannah Spier, MD”, which you can find here.

Take the Red Pill, It's Not About Left vs Right

Wherever you find yourself on the political or religious spectrum, please watch this video from a former intelligence agent with much knowledge of psychological operations (psyop) and brainwashing. It may radically change our perspectives, and help save us, those we love, and the world we love.

Charlie Kirk’s Death Exposed the Biggest Scam in History, by Chase Hughes ...

“Charlie Kirk’s assassination will dominate the headlines—but before the truth is even clear, the disinformation machine is already spinning. This video exposes how suppression, radicalization, and division are weaponized—not by ideology, but by systems designed to keep you outraged, divided, and distracted ...”

Seeing with the Right Eyes: Review of Idries Shah Remembered

★★★★★ Tahir Shah (Ed), Idries Shah Remembered.

An Afterword to my own Reading

Like the Sufi mystical tradition that Idries Shah represents, champions, and exemplifies, Shah himself is so multi-faceted that he cannot simply be categorised or pigeon-holed, and perhaps dismissed. There's a tale in the book, containing an idea that crops up again and again, and which applies here: that of the elephant in the dark, an ancient tale that the Sufi Rumi reinterpreted. In this teaching tale, either several blind men are led into the presence of an elephant or sighted people are led to an elephant in the dark, a creature that they know nothing about. One feels its tusk and declares that it is a spear; another touches its ear and declares it a fan; a third is adamant that the tail is a rope; another that its belly is a barrel; and yet another that its sturdy legs are pillars. None of these men “see the whole picture”, the reality. This task of recognition is perhaps made all the more difficult because the externals of the Sufi teachings have throughout history been adapted to suit the current time, place, people, and circumstances, and the tradition's proponents have correspondingly adapted their methods in the face of necessity. Additionally, in Shah's own case, he went to some lengths to strip away cultural accretions around the precious gem or kernel that is Sufism, to the consternation of numerous Orientalists, religionists, and those wedded to exoteric tradition.

Going Underground: Building a Caring Alternative Parallel Society

As the poet, dissident, and member of the Czech underground resistance movement during the communist regime, Ivan Martin Jirous wrote, perhaps in “Parallel Polis: An Inquiry”:

“If it proves impossible legally to compel the ruling power to change the ways it governs us, and if for various reasons those who reject this power cannot or do not wish to overthrow it by force, then the creation of an independent or alternative or parallel [society] is the only dignified solution ...”

With the shadow of totalitarian or techno-feudalist regime change looming over us and already detrimentally impacting our lives, and the dismal prospect of a further descent into superficiality, falsehood, blatant corruption, vulgarity, and barbarism, not only in the Disunited States but also elsewhere in Europe, the UK, and around the globe, we need to be making preparations right now, and developing alternative infrastructure – and keeping a faithful record of our history – while we are still at liberty to do so.

A Little Something for Your Ark, Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt

In these increasingly dire times we have plenty of warners, but what we desperately need right now are more arks.

As Michael Ventura wrote: “[A]ll of this passing things on, in all its forms, may not cure the world now—curing the world now may not be a human possibility—but it keeps the great things alive. And we have to do this because, as Laing said, who are we to decide that it is hopeless? And I said to my son, if you wanted to volunteer for fascinating, dangerous, necessary work, this would be a great job to volunteer for—trying to be a wide-awake human during a Dark Age and keeping alive what you think is beautiful and important.”

~ James Hillman and Michael Ventura, We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World's Getting Worse.

So, with that in mind, here's a little something to stow away safely in your ark, as we make preparations for the dark times ahead of us.

“Some want to turn the clock back, harkening back to some golden age of nostalgia, when women, children, the lower class, parishioners, and people of other races and creeds knew their place; not back to the 1950s, but further back: to Dickensian times and to (corporate) feudal fiefdom. They want to wind the clock back to a time before the hard-won battles for civil rights, social reforms, and worker representation. A time long, long before the ‘woke virus’, ‘illegal immigrants’, and gender identity, when life was more conservative and white lives mattered; though with a new, fundamentalist, Christian nationalist (or Islamist, or ultra-Zionist, or even atheist) and isolationist twist. And some will go to any lengths – and I do mean any desperate, violent, draconian lengths – to bring this vile and unholy vision about.”

~ Preface to Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt, a story of resistance.

The Root Causes of Why We're FUBAR

Or “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”

I'm tempted to simply post:

“The U/S is FUBAR and the UK is heading the same way.

“That's it. That's the post.”

I was going to say that coming in the wake of Trump's abominable Big Ugly Bill, the message will be clear to all but the hardcore sycophants in Cult 45/47. However, large swathes of the population, especially in rural areas – ordinary, everyday, decent, law-abiding folk – are probably misinformed or oblivious to the facts.

But, of course, the spread of right-wing authoritarian regimes, faux-populism, faux-Christian nationalism, straight white male supremacy, oligarchy, and veiled eugenics sweeping through the US and reverberating throughout the West – toxic as these may be – have their root causes elsewhere. 

Though the allure of quick and simple solutions to horrendously complex problems is undeniable, and tempting, especially to those of us who have done our own research – that is, shunned the experts, the libtard fact-checkers and the Marxist wokerati, and watched a few videos on YouTube – we have to look deeper and further afield.

AEON, Step 1: Hello World!

Welcome to AEON!

Home of the Ad-hoc Emergency Online Network.

Inspired by Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt, a story of resistance by H.M. Forester.

The AEON Network

AEON is a decentralised, trust-based, non-hierarchical, democratic, browser-based, online network (with no vulnerable central server or database). It uses gossip to propagate individual users' digitally-signed registry entries (using a private key) containing details such as hostname, IP address, nickname, X509 security certificate, and personal biography or blurb on any site and community resources they choose to host in the network.

A would-be member can contact any other registered member, via the latter's built-in server (a http web server running on port 8008), and become a registered member of the AEON network.

Any registered member can moderate users' behaviour, and it is up to individual members which (if any) moderators they trust, and hence whether or not to act on their trusted moderators' actions. Though we can't block individuals from a decentralised network like AEON, we can limit their audience reach by applying trusted moderator overrides. This will limit the propagation of the individual's registry entry and updates, and hence reduce their social reputation and reach in the network.

Our Books and Documents

Since the future of the Internet Archive's library can no longer be guaranteed, due to massive lawsuits by book publishers and music companies, I've backed-up some files at Facebook.

Etienne de L'Amour's mystical adventure, H.M. Forester's soft sci-fi, and other short documents are now available in the Mystical Faction group's Files section.

The Arms Race to End Democracy

Right now, though most of us have not yet been informed or cottoned-on, we are in an arms race: a battle to save or destroy democracy itself (depending on which side you are on). The opposition (currently fronted by Musk and his minions) see democracy as no longer fit for purpose, and obsolete, and see techno-feudalism as the way forward. Think about that.

We who are pro-democracy are at a distinct disadvantage: we're playing by the rules, while the opposition (Trump, MAGA, Musk, Christian Nationalists, alt-right, techno-feudalist elite) have torn up the rule book. And while it takes an age to formulate a case to take to court against executive orders that ride roughshod over the Constitution and the rule of law, they have their plan worked out using AI in a jiffy, and they're already two or three plans ahead.

And no matter how many thousand followers you have in the social media, you can't post your way out of fascism.

Image from Mike Brock's article, “The Plot Against America”.