In this symposium, we look into how Brunelleschi, Cusa and Kepler played primary roles in shaping the Italian Renaissance. In the first class, given by Cynthia Chung, we investigate why the dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore is so special. How did a dome spark a Renaissance? Why did the Florentines work on such…
Lessons from a Grecian Urn Part Two: The Paradox of the “One” and the “Many”
By David Gosselin This is Part 2 to the series on Keats’ “Ode to a Grecian Urn”. Part 1 can be found here. Chapter II: What is Poetry? The yearning for harmony and perfection is an innately human desire. What else can satisfy this thirst for perfection, if not art? Even nature, in its infinite…
The Discovery of the School of Athens Part 2: Plato’s Solution-Principle
By Gerald Therrien For Part 1 to the series The Discovery of the School of Athens click here. Now, we must leave this first scene, of the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, and shift our attention to those who are standing on the top of the stairs – the Greek philosophers who were alive at the time…
Two New Canadian Patriot Books! Forlorn Hope and The Coming Storm by Gerald Therrien
Far too many historians have attempted to construct narratives of North American history from artificially narrow filters and assumptions which deny the objective reality of an oligarchy, or the principled conflict emanating from opposing ideas of Man, God and Law which have shaped world history for millennia. From ancient history through the collapse of Rome…
Russia and the United States: The Forgotten History of a Brotherhood
by Cynthia Chung “A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it”. – Frederick Douglass (former slave who would later become a great American statesman and diplomat) It has always been an utmost necessity to exercise…
Ulysses Grant: America’s Greatest General and Most Underrated President
It is often taken for granted that the United States of America has survived the many existential crises thrown onto its path since 1776. On more than several occasions, the world’s first republican nation state came close to the brink of dissolution and besides our current tumultuous age, no period in history saw that threat…
Why Sergey Glazyev’s Memorial to the Legacy of Lyndon LaRouche Matters
On September 11th, 2022, the brilliant Russian economist, grand strategist and leading architect of the emerging new multipolar financial architecture Sergey Glazyev delivered a remarkable memorial address on the life and work of his friend and ally Lyndon LaRouche (1922-2019) who’s 100th birthday was celebrated on September 8th). Within the powerful 13-minute address, Glazyev outlines the root causes of…
Some Additional Words on Today’s Pythagorean Revival- From Bussard’s Polywell to the Safire Project
By Matthew Ehret In my last report, I introduced two opposing schools of scientific thinking that have been at odds with one another since the days of Plato’s Academy at Athens. One system sits dominant upon the throne of today’s western science wearing the garb of “standard model quantum theory” and “standard model cosmology” and…
A Look Into Halton Arp’s “Peculiar Galaxies” and its Implications for the World We Live In
By Matthew Ehret National Geographic Magazine recently covered a widely publicized scientific study which supposedly proved how and when our universe would die. National Geographic stated: “Physicists believe that countless billions of years from now, after all the stars have burned out, the universe will be a cold, dark expanse where nothing of interest happens,…
Is the Age of Big Bang Cosmology and ‘the Science of Scarcity’ Finally Coming to an End?
By Matthew Ehret It appears increasingly like our world is being shaped by ideas and intentions that have a pseudo-religious like commitment to limits and reducing human activity upon the earth. The concepts of “entropy”, “homeostasis”, “natural equilibrium” and “limits to growth” shape many of the contours of all permitted discussion of ecological, economic and…
Study of the Heavens: a History of Chinese Astronomy
Transcript of a lecture given by Cynthia Chung at ‘The Universe, Creativity and You‘ Symposium. We live in a strange time. Many have forgotten the power of imagination and are instead bogged down with the reality of ‘practicality’. The reality of ‘the budget’, and the reality of ‘what is deemed useful and what is deemed…
Kennedy’s U.S.-Russia Joint Space Vision Must Be Revived
By Matthew Ehret September 20th marks the anniversary of the last speech John F Kennedy delivered to the United Nations’ General Assembly. This event bears more relevance upon our present crisis than most people could possibly imagine. This is true not only because it is wise to pay homage to great ideas of the past which lesser souls…
The Eastern Economic Forum Accelerates a Grand Strategy of Win-Win Cooperation
By Matthew Ehret The battle lines for the future of humanity were made explicitly clear during this week’s Eastern Economic Forum held in Vladivostok under the theme of “Opportunities for the Far East in a World Under Transformation”. President Putin set the tone of the event by noting: “The strategic vector for the development of the Far East is towards a new economy,…
The Historic Clash of Two Opposing Paradigms: Gilpin’s Landbridge vs. Mahan’s World Maritime Empire
By Matthew Ehret Compared the great initiatives taken on behalf of freedom and anti colonialism throughout the past 260 years, today’s America appears to be a strange and foolish creature running roughshod over the dignity of people and nations in a race for mass nuclear extermination. Such is the image projected by Mike Pompeo’s anti-China…
The End of Closed System Geopolitics and the Rise of Open System Development- Vernadsky’s Law for the 21st Century
By Matthew Ehret It has become popular today among the scientific community, to proclaim as a matter of fact, that the universe is ultimately governed by death and decay on the large scale and randomness on the microscale. While it is rare that this chilling popular theory is explicitly stated in such direct terms as…
How Huxley’s X Club Derailed a 19th Century System of Win-Win Cooperation (and 150 Years of Science)
By Matthew Ehret In 1865, a group of 12 scientists under the leadership of Thomas Huxley, Matthew Arnold, Joseph Hooker, and Herbert Spencer (founder of social Darwinism) was created under the name “X Club” with the mandate to reform global British Imperial strategy. At the time of this group’s formation, Lincoln’s north was on the…
Schiller, Shelley and Poe: The Manifestation of the Spiritual in the Material World
It is too often the case that the line separating the domain of the thing we call “matter” and “spirit” is far too firmly drawn in the sand, resulting in a schismed sense of reality- or “two opposing realities” having no commensurability to one another. But are these two worlds truly as disconnected as some…
Clash of the Two Americas Mini Doc Part 5: Why Canada Failed the Ben Franklin Challenge
In this 5th of a series of historical videos inspired by the audiobook of Clash of the Two Americas vol 1 (the Unfinished Symphony) narrated by Hugh Patrick Trudeau and produced by Jason Dahl, you will be introduced to the real reasons that Canada failed to become the 14th colony to break free of the British Empire…
Kennedy and the New Frontier
In this Rising Tide Foundation lecture delivered as a sequel to last week’s Franklin Roosevelt’s Republican Grand Design, historian Pascal Chevrier introduces the figure of John F. Kennedy from several valuable frames of reference: His family traditions, his experience in the military during WW2, the geopolitical world in which he lived, his anti-imperial vision and…
China’s BRI Shapes a Multipolar Future for Saudi Arabia
By Matthew Ehret Xi Jinping’s visit to Saudi Arabia is heralding more tectonic changes in the rules of the Great Game in ways that few have begun to realize. While many people are quick to criticize China for having looked the other way while the atrocious Saudi-led offensive in Yemen has continued to kill hundreds…
Beyond Oil: How the UAE’s HOPE Mars Mission Is Breaking the Arab World Out of the Crisis of Scarcity
By Cynthia Chung Something truly remarkable happened on Feb. 9th, 2021, which I fear has not been fully comprehended by most of the Western hemisphere in terms of its massive implications as a game-changer in geopolitics for the Middle East. Here in the West, we have become accustomed to our jaded denigration of space exploration. It…
The Chinese-Russian-Iranian Alliance Ushers in a New Hope for the Middle East
By Matthew Ehret Russia and China have accelerated the next phase of Middle East reconstruction and stabilization this week with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s March 24-30th Middle East tour resulting in the finalization of the long-awaited Five Point Initiative for Security in Southwest Asia on March 30th and $400 billion Iran deal on March 27th. These milestones were accompanied by…
Two New Documentaries: The Unfinished Symphony and International Dimensions of 1776
What were the core principles of the republic and how were those moral principles of natural law subverted over the course of a 250 year struggle to establish on this earth a system of representative government founded upon the consent of the governed, unalienable rights of all mankind, and the General Welfare? What grand design…
Understanding Today’s War Danger and its Remedies [An Afternoon with Ray McGovern]
As the nations of the world are pulled into a storm unlike anything ever experienced by humanity, various futures are opening up over the horizon. Some of those futures are beautiful and others darker than you can possibly imagine. However without understanding the nature of the battle fronts in either the Pacific, Ukraine or elsewhere…
America’s Forgotten Fight for Universal Progress (Anton Chaitkin RTF Lecture)
Does the United States hold within it the moral fitness to survive? If this question is to be answered in the affirmative, then it will be due to the rediscovery and application of the founding political economic traditions that gave rise to the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and economic identity as a nation premised on…
Teddy Roosevelt’s Last Mad Crusade (Martin Sieff RTF Lecture)
In this Rising Tide Foundation lecture, renowned journalist and historian Martin Sieff zeroes in on a pregnant moment in world history which saw the 1901 murder of a great president (William McKinley) and the rise of Teddy Roosevelt into high office. This was a moment of change that saw a young republic pulled in two…
Getting to Know the REAL Ben Franklin [Episode 4 of the Unfinished Symphony series]
In this 4th of a series of historical videos inspired by the audiobook of Clash of the Two Americas vol 1 (the Unfinished Symphony) you will be introduced to a side of Benjamin Franklin which has been suppressed by 250 years of revisionist history. This involves seeing him as a scientist, statesmen, poet and cultural…
Symposium: Renaissance Across the Ages
While all living beings are mortal, only human kind has access to the self-awareness of its own mortality. With this knowledge of our own finiteness, we may become cynical and fearful pessimists wallowing in despair and nihilism or we may choose to embrace a higher set of goals and principles for the identity we shape…
The Light of Life: An RTF Discussion with Dr Michael Clarage
Whether we are thinking about the radical materialism prevalent in our model of the atom, space time or life itself, a more holistic, rigorous and truthful restoration of scientific practice will have to occur if the discoveries future generations require of us will not be un-necessarily sabotaged. This Rising Tide Foundation seminar deals with the…
The Magic of the Atom
If human activity moves into planetary bodies, the distances are daunting and challenges manifold. What type of energy sources will be needed to support a species capable of making journies to Mars or beyond? What sort of energy sources would open up new avenues of creativity on earth at the same time? Chemical fuel and…
Leibniz Discourse on Metaphysics- Study Group
In this series of readings of the Discourses on Metaphysics (1686), we are introduced to the deeper philosophical and scientific ideas of the polymath genius Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). This reading will cover the essential concepts of the nature of the Creator and creation of which we as self-conscious reasoners are integral components possessing both…
“To Hate All Things Russian”: Russia’s Contributions to the Treasure-trove of World Civilization
By Prof. Alexandra Kostina and Prof. Valeria Z. Nollan In his article for The Atlantic of July 24, 2022 “Don’t Blame Dostoevsky,” Mikhail Shishkin makes a false start right away.[i] He rationalizes hate for a nation and its culture in the first sentence: “I understand why people hate all things Russian right now.” From the outset he tells…
The International Dimensions of 1776 and How an Age of Reason Was Subverted
By Matthew Ehret Today, a larger-than-usual shadow is cast upon America which has come face-to-face with some serious historic reckonings. While the existence of an oligarchy and international “deep state” should not be ignored as a political force of history- arranging wars, assassinations and promoting economic enslavement of people and nations throughout the centuries, the…
Now Available! Volume 3 of Clash of the Two Americas: The Birth of a Eurasian Manifest Destiny
The Rising Tide Foundation is proud to announce that the third volume of the Clash of the Two Americas trilogy is now available for purchase in paperback and digital editions. Titled “The Birth of a Eurasian Manifest Destiny”, volume three ends in some ways how the trilogy began in 1776 as told in Volume 1……
The U.S. Pivot to Asia: Cold War Lessons From Vietnam for Today
By Cynthia Chung In part one of this series, I discussed how a massive U.S. arms stockpile in Okinawa, Japan that was originally intended to be used for the planned American invasion of Japan was cancelled once the two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. L. Fletcher Prouty, who served as Chief of Special…
From Balkh to Konya: Discovering Rumi’s spiritual geopolitics
By Pepe Escobar Originally published on The Cradle KONYA – Mystic poet, Sufi, theosophist, and thinker, Jalal al-Din Rumi remains one of the most beloved historical personalities in history, east and west. A wanderer in search of the light, he famously characterized himself thus: “I am nothing more than a humble lover of God.” The era…
An African Renaissance Emerges with Multipolar Alliance
By Matthew Ehret [This is an expanded version of an article which was first published on The Cradle on August 1st] The oft-repeated neoliberal messaging proclaiming Russia’s isolation as a pariah state is wearing thin. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s recent tour of Africa has demonstrated a desperation never before seen felt by the…
Clash of the Two Americas Mini Doc Part 3: How a World of Sovereign Republics was Subverted
Many paradoxes are littered about the contours of history, and many false narratives have been placed between the mind of truth seekers and the basic elementary facts of historical causality which would provide the greatest insight not only into the reasons for our current crises, but also creative insights into solutions for the future. Several…
WHY Russia Saved the United States: The Forgotten History of a Brotherhood
Why did Russia’s Czar Alexander II deploy the Russian navy to the coasts of the USA during the height of the Civil War in 1863? What dynamic shaped the rise of the great rail building traditions across Russia, the USA, Germany, Japan and France in the 19th century and how did this process shape the…
‘The Special Relationship’: How the British Reconquered the United States and Established an Anglo-American Empire
By Cynthia Chung “Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organisation will be gained without … a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States…not only the growing friendship and mutual understanding between our two vast but kindred systems of society, but the continuance of the intimate…
Symposium: Rediscovering the Lost Art of Statecraft
To view all past symposiums click here. To register for future class series email info@risingtidefoundation.net 1st Movement: The Ancients Date: Sunday May 9 at 4pm ESTTitle: Plato and Confucius, Spiritual Brothers and Philosopher Kings Living at the Two Ends of the World Island Lecturer: Dr. Quan LeBio: Dr. Le is a practicing psychiatrist and geopolitical…
The Untold History of Ibero America: Empire vs Christian Humanism
During the mid-19th century a revolutionary struggle swept across ibero American nations and in the course of several decades monarchical systems of empire that had established themselves across the Americas began to lose their hold on power and a new system of republics were instituted. Certainly this movement cannot be said to be bad as…
Learning to Think Like Mencius in a Time of Crisis
Full Reading Now Available. Since ancient times, philosophers have sought the remedy to humanity’s recurrent plunges into war, division, chaos, ignorance and all the moral, temporal and spiritual ills that accompany those disharmonies. In ancient Greece, this effort was spearheaded by Plato (427-347 BCE) and his school of disciples that applied the methods of their…
The Silk Road Roots of America and the American Roots of the New Silk Road
Upon reading this title, I can only imagine a reader asking: How could a young nation that only existed since 1776 be responsible for an idea which has its roots in a program that dates back over two millenia? Of course I am not implying that that America created the ancient Silk Road, but what…
Canada’s Potential Eurasian Future: A Vision for the 21st Century and Beyond
In the following report, a strategic overview is laid out with the explicit purpose to inform and activate leading citizens and policy makers towards the strategy needed to re-align our nation from the shackles of the rules-based order’s collapsing monetarist system, towards the new paradigm exemplified by the BRICS/New Silk Road orientation of win-win cooperation…
The Russia-China Polar Silk Road Speeds Ahead
By Matthew Ehret Since China’s Arctic extension of the New Silk Road was first unveiled in a January 2018 white paper, a process of Arctic development has been unleashed which represents one of the most important and under-appreciated developments on Earth. Not only will 10 days be saved by goods moving between China and Europe via…
Statecraft in Modern China: From Sun Yat-sen to the New Silk Road
Many citizens in both the west and east still find themselves trapped under a set of assumptions that presumes Chinese and American cultures arise from two opposing and incompatible worlds of politics, economics and culture. In this Rising Tide Foundation lecture, Dr. Quan Le shatters that belief by introducing the history, philosophy and political economic…
The Dream of an African Renaissance: Cheikh Anta Diop’s Vision
In this class exploring the life, and research of the great Senegalese scientist, philosopher and statesman Cheikh Anta Diop and his life, Nicholas Jones (President of Artists’ Alliance for Africa) introduces a picture of Africa and her deep history that is quite different from what we might expect. A precolonial glory connected with Egypt’s ancient…
Iran’s Century and a Half Fight for Sovereignty
By Cynthia Chung It all started in 1872, with Nasir al-Din Shah having granted to the British Baron Julius de Reuter, rights to Iran’s entire economic estate. Reuter not only controlled Iran’s industry, farming, and rail transportation, but also held the right to issue currency and to set up a national bank, called the Imperial…
The Harmony Between Tianxia and Westphalia
By Matthew Ehret I have noticed that many pro-Chinese thinkers and writers have lately made the mistake of presuming that Chinese culture and civilization stands in total opposition to the divisive/imperially minded western culture which has laid waste to much of the world over the past centuries. This perception has expressed itself in the various…
India-Russia-Iran: Eurasia’s New Transportation Powerhouses
By Matthew Ehret (Originally published on The Cradle) Tectonic shifts continue to rage through the world system with nation-states quickly recognizing that the “great game” as it has been played since the establishment of the Bretton Woods monetary system in the wake of the second World War, is over. But empires never disappear without a…
Cultural Warfare and the American Revolution (Franklin, West and Morse Revisited)
In this lecture delivered as part of the Rising Tide Foundation series “Towards an Age of Creative Reason”, Matthew Ehret introduces the fight to establish a cultural revolution in the arts and sciences initiated by Benjamin Franklin, and a small international network of co-conspirators of the 18th century which was then understood to be the vital…
A Harmony of Interests: Inquiries into the True Nature of the American System
What ideas will shape the next centuries of human civilization as our species begins to confront the reality of our collective self-interest living on the earth? The use of the atomic for either peaceful or warlike purposes has given our species for the first time in history the dual potential to destroy all life as…
The ABCs in Energy: Do We Actually Understand How Energy Works?
By Cynthia Chung Europeans are presently being told that the energy crisis they are entering, with natural gas prices now four times higher than last year, stems from a longer winter, competition with East Asian countries for gas, and problems on the supply end with delayed maintenance and less investment. These gas prices are in…
What Determines A Limit to Growth?
By Cynthia Chung This is an article version of a class Cynthia Chung gave for the symposium “The Earth Next 100 Years” which can be viewed here. What Determines a “Limit to Growth”? This might seem like a rather ignorant or simplistic question to some. Many will think the answer rather obvious, that the Limit…
The Dynamics of Nuclear Power Diplomacy: Russia and China vs the Neo-Malthusians
In 1975, an influential Stanford biologist named Paul Ehrlich (author of the misanthropic 1968 Population Bomb) stated that in his view, humanity’s acquisition of fusion energy was “like giving an idiot child a machine gun”. Ehrlich’s views were shared widely among the peculiar sect of scientists that have come to be known as neo-Malthusians. Ehrlich’s colleague John…
Sugar and Spice and Everything Vice: the Empire’s Sin City of London
By Cynthia Chung “Hell is a city much like London” – Percy Bysshe Shelley The City of London is over 800 years old, it is arguably older than England herself, and for over 400 years it has been the financial center of the world. During the medieval period the City of London, otherwise known as…
Gottfried Leibniz and the Cameralist Tradition (RTF Lecture with Nancy Spannaus)
While many victims of today’s education system are mis-educated into believing that the experiment known as the republic of the United States sprang ex nihilo into reality in 1776- driven by rebellious desires to avoid paying taxes, the truth is goes much deeper. As American System Now President Nancy Spannaus lays out in this lecture…
What it Means to be an American Citizen this Fourth of July
By Cynthia Chung In celebration of the upcoming Independence Day, I thought I would share with you the transcript of a lecture I delivered 2 years ago on the subject of “Frederick Douglass and the Fight to Save the Soul of America.” It is a pretty heated situation in the United States right now, pretty much likened…
The Imperial Myth of Canada’s National Policy. Its Contemporary Implications
By Matthew Ehret The mythology of Canada’s National Policy is a multi-layered fallacy of composition which must be addressed from the standpoint of locating Canada’s struggle for nationhood as locked in the midst of a battle between two conceptions of man and law expressed in the British vs. American systems of political economy. Before entering…
Favorable Winds from China: How the BRI is Transforming West Asia
By Cynthia Chung [Orginally published on The Cradle.] ‘A crisis is an opportunity riding the dangerous wind.’ So says a Chinese proverb, and nowhere is this truer than in crisis-ridden West Asia, now a major focus of Beijing’s BRI vision to bring infrastructure, connectivity and economic growth to this struggling region. West Asia’s winds have…
Sparks of a New Renaissance in Painting Emerge from China
By Matthew Ehret It is rare to see new artistic movements arise. It is even rarer that such artistic revolutions manage to respect the best traditions of the past while at the same time infuse something new and improved into society. The fatal error made by many innovators attempting to break with the often stultifying…