December 4, 2010
Apocalypse 1957, and other frightening thoughts
Your curators have been nudged to provide a bit of an update on the eclectic variety of subjects we cover.
Armageddon: we recently came across some interesting reportage on Mao’s address to the 1957 world confab of Communist leaders in Moscow. It seems that the Great Helmsman boldly advocated global nuclear war, unnerving and shaking a audience not normally thought of as squeamish. Well, one does have to break a few eggs to make an omelette, as they used to say? Deo gratias, the assembled thugs didn’t think that was such a good idea.
Square and Compasses: the newswires have been alight with things Masonic, from the EU’s forthcoming “Atheists and Freemasons” Summit (no joke) to the recent death of Admiral Emilio Massera, a member of Italy’s clandestine P2 lodge who went on to serve as a key figure in Argentina’s military government of the 1970s. The notoriously political Grand Orient of France has decided to go co-ed, and it recently renovated its museum with French government support. And have you heard about the proposal for a “Universal Temple of Freemasonry” to be built in Jerusalem? (The architect has posted a YouTube video here.)
In other news… Secret Places, Hidden Sanctuaries has been reviewed recently in New Dawn and The Square, and features are upcoming in Inside the Vatican and the New Oxford Review.
Your Italian friends might want to know that our Italian edition will be out in January, under the evocative title Guida ai luoghi più segreti del mondo.
So what can you tell us about the new Italian masonic lodge, P3, of which Berlusconi is said to be a member?
That’s interesting that Mao was gungho for nuclear war. According to Nixon’s memoirs, the Russians once approached Nixon and asked if he would mind if they nuked China (over some small border disagreement). The Chinese are once again behaving like they wouldn’t mind a nuclear war on their doorstep. Their unwavering support for the criminals in N. Korea will lead to exactly that.