Here’s the latest Acorn bulletin, which I edit over on the Winter Oak site…
Number 102
In this issue:
1. Zones of corporate tyranny
Campaigner David Powell has issued a new warning about the spectre of corporate tyranny facing the UK.
We reported in The Acorn 100 that he has been drawing attention to the dangers involved with the UK’s deregulated Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and Freeports first introduced by the global mafia’s “Conservative Party” puppets and now being pushed through by their “Labour Party” marionettes.
In a new article, published in The Canary on April 8 2025, Powell writes: “Freeports and Special Economic Zones are variations on the same thing: deregulation, privatisation, tax evasion, and corporate governance.
“Complexity is their camouflage, and we must understand what they are, because they are carving up the UK into regions where corporations are protected from parliamentary and public scrutiny under secondary legislation”.
With Keir Starmer’s regime notoriously close to the Rothschilds, it is little surprise to know that one of their better-known fronts is involved in the dodgy scheme.
Writes Powell: “Blackrock has bought three British Freeports. In partnership with Terminal Investment Limited (TiL), a subsidiary of the shipping line MSC, it has acquired an 80% stake in Felixstowe, Harwich, and Thamesport, as part of a larger $22.8 billion deal with CK Hutchison.
“Freeports are bad news for the UK. They are playgrounds for predatory corporations, which are free to indulge in all manner of illegal and illicit activity, such as modern-day slavery, private banking, fraud, the suspension of corporate taxes and custom duties, discarding environmental protections, erosion of workers’ rights, the smuggling of weapons, drugs, and people, hoarding of stolen art, installation of private security forces, extreme worker surveillance, acceleration of land-grabbing, and the trashing of regulations in favour of all-out deregulatory frameworks.
“It should be noted that the UK’s 86 free zones, unlike Thatcher’s SEZs, are now embarking on something they couldn’t do when the UK was an EU member: dishing out public money to their corporate friends to facilitate economic growth for the 1%”.
Elsewhere, Powell refers to Starmer’s use of the label “blockers” to designate the new bogeymen, in the proud totalitarian tradition of “extremists”, “counter-revolutionaries”, “conspiracy theorists” and “enemies of progress”.
He writes: “Who do you think the blockers are? They are ordinary people who have business, agricultural, and residential properties that the UK Govt can seize under Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs).
“Where do you think CPOs are most likely taking place? Inside any one of the 86 deregulated free zones across England, Scotland, and Wales that were resurrected by Sunak and Truss immediately after Brexit, and signed off by Labour MPs, Mayors, councillors, Lords, and Baronesses who were part of a cross-party consortium with major stakeholders like Blackrock, Palantir, Amazon, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Fujitsu, Deloitte, PwC, EY, Google, The City of London Corporation, BP, Goldman Sachs, Thames Water, BlackStone, Telstra Health, Macquarie, Meta, SGN, EDF, Leonardo, BAE Systems, Cadent Gas, National Gas, Natwest, Virgin Atlantic, Abrdn, Barclays, Coinbase, The British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association, Bluebird Care, and Edelman.
“These are just some of the firms that have met with senior Labour figures over the last 12 months; Labour recently announced they were handing over governance powers to 700 corporate lobbyists while the Government takes a ‘secondary position’.
“6,000 people could have their homes torn down as part of a £2.2bn project in which 1,266 council houses and 567 properties belonging to private homeowners could be repossessed in a mass compulsory purchase order for the area”.
This all amounts, warns Powell, to “government-by-BlackRock”.
2. A message to the nature-hating bastards
by The Stirrer
In a recent post – Something feels…off… 5.4.25 – I wrote that I was going to take my foot off the gas for a bit, rest up and take some time to reflect ahead of what I feel is going to be a heavy summer. I’d like to reassure my readers that I’m not throwing the towel in – all I want to do is look after myself to be as ready as possible for what’s coming.
A fair-sized part of that process is taking long walks in the surrounding countryside. Walking across the fields, through the woods, taking in the views and enjoying the way spring is transforming the landscape is doing wonders for my state of mind. Getting closer to nature is a boost to mental health. As is getting away from the screens, the ‘news’ agenda, the rage baiting, the divide and rule merchants and all of the other crap that comes with life in the 21st century.
The best part about all of this is that it’s free. The only thing that isn’t free is the end-of-the-walk drink at our adopted riverside local pub:)
The thing is, the bastards who presume to rule over us, and the banksters and corporations they serve, hate the idea of anyone getting closer to nature in their local countryside, and taking time out to think and reflect on what’s really important in this life. We have the misfortune to have rulers that can only measure our worth by how much we contribute to their cherished bottom line. This is something I’ve reflected upon in a couple of recent(ish) posts:
Nature hating government gives green light to the Lower Thames Crossing 26.03.25
The Labour government exists to serve their corporate masters while we, the populace, have to suck up the consequences. Even if those consequences destroy the environment, take out productive farmland and damage human health, physical and mental. We’re forced to live in an increasingly stress-inducing society, where wanting to take time out to reconnect with nature and heal, is viewed as an abhorrent aberration by a government whose only concern is boosting the bottom line for their corporate masters.
Is mental health now an acceptable target for demonisation? 15.01.25
We also live in a world that has increasingly lost touch with nature. This is a process that started with the Industrial Revolution and has been accelerating since then. When we lose touch with nature, we start to lose touch with who we really are. Disassociation with the natural world that supports us and worryingly, disassociation from our bodies, can only lead to a dystopian future where you have to fit in with the high-tech matrix just to survive. Which raises the question – just what are we surviving for?
My response to these nature-hating psychopaths is a poetic one, as follows:
This wood is my sanctuary
When the world grinds me down, I come to this wood for solace
I come to hear the rustle of the breeze in the trees
I come to feel the calming, protective presence of the trees
I come to restore my balance so I can face the world again
The bastards hate the idea of sanctuary, calm and reflection
They hate it when it comes for gratis, no money required
They want us working, stressing, spending, spending...spending...
They hate us retreating from their sordid world into the woods
I come to this wood, to escape, think, reflect and wonder
The bastards don’t want us escaping, thinking or reflecting
As for wonder, the nature hating, soulless bastards despise it
All because it adds nothing to the bottom line they worship
You could almost pity them for their shallowness...almost...
But, I can’t pity the bastards who would destroy what I love
They can’t comprehend anything with a deeper meaning
They fear and loathe the secrets of life the wood could tell them
This wood is a web of life, more rich than they can ever understand
This wood has a spirit and a presence they can never understand
When the stress of modern life crushes my spirit and soul
This wood is my sanctuary, my salvation, my muse and inspiration
There’s this as well regarding a physical reconnection with nature, something those who presume to rule over us not only have no understanding of – it’s also something they would absolutely abhor:
The old oak in the woods
On a bright Spring day, the two of us came to these woods
We came seeking escape from the madness of the world
We came seeking connection with nature that would heal us
And...we came seeking re-connection with each other
We stopped at the old oak to rest awhile under her boughs
We looked at her twisted, gnarled branches and trunk in wonder
We wondered about the history she has seen over the years
And all of the wisdom she has gathered in that time
We touched her bark and branches, seeking connection
We felt a calming energy that brought us together
We felt the cares of the world lift from our shoulders
Restored, we slowly walked away, thankful for her presence
We’re in an existential battle as to what it means to be truly human in a world run by soulless techno-fascists. A big part of what that means is reconnecting with, and being a part of, nature. It also means a sense of belonging to community, place and the environment that sustains us. Thankfully, this is something that is taking place… Leaving on an optimistic note, this is happening in the region we live in: Taking action for the Avon 9.4.25. I’ll leave you with these words from We Are Avon in The Thriving Avon Charter:
We are each invited to become a guardian of the Avon — whether you’re a swimmer, farmer, artist, dog walker, or dreamer. This is a movement of many hands, hearts, and voices, working together to restore the soul of this land through care for its waters.
3. London conference for freedom and Palestine
by Real Left
We are pleased to announce the final speakers line-up for our ‘Uniting the pro freedom and pro Palestine liberation left’ conference taking place in just under a month in central London.
To grab your tickets book on eventbrite here or email: realleftevents@yahoo.com to pay cash on the day.
Registration will open at 9.45am and the event will end by approximately 5.30pm with a 1 hour lunch break from 12.30-1.30, plus 1/2 hr coffee/tea break in the afternoon.
On the Palestine Liberation panel we present:
Yahya Abu Seido. As founder of the student Society for Palestine at UCU and lately the Association for Student Activism for Palestine, Yahya has been deeply involved in the student movement for disinvestment. He has a number of extended family members currently fighting for their lives Gaza, but beyond this personal connection, Yahya believes the Palestinian struggle for justice is one of universal relevance and concern to us all.
Dr Ang Swee Chai. Co-founder of Medical Aid for Palestinians, orthopaedic surgeon Dr Swee has undertaken multiple visits to Palestine to treat the wounded. She has authored a number of books including: ‘From Beirut to Jerusalem’ which documents her experience in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. She was awarded the ‘Star of Palestine’ by Yasser Arafat in recognition of her humanitarian work.
Yael Kahn. Israeli born anti-Zionist campaigner for 50 years, Yael grew up witnessing, and from the age of 19 working to end, the injustices and oppressions faced by Palestinians over many decades. She has recently attracted viral attention due to a sustained campaign of police harassment in response to her peaceful demonstrations with unapologetically anti-apartheid and genocide signs.
Our research focussed talks of the day, with two of the three speakers coming specially from Europe to present, are as follows.
Anarchist, researcher, author and founder of Winter Oak publishing Paul Cudenec on: ‘Mapping out the Ideological Terrain of the Struggle Ahead Against the Criminocracy aka the Zio-Imperialist Mafia’.
Journalist, researcher and founder of the Organisation for Propaganda Studies Piers Robinson on: ‘Understanding Power Dynamics and Moving Beyond Divisions: Covid–19 through to Ukraine and Israel/Palestine’.
And via video presentation, ex-academic and author of ‘Covid-19: Psychological Operations and the War for Technocracy’ amongst other works David A Hughes: ‘On Avoiding the Biodigital Concentration Camp’
Plus further contributions/special messages from Piers Corbyn, Chris Williamson, and Heather Brunskell-Evans.
An opportunity to participate in an event with this depth and breadth of speakers, sharing such a wealth of experience and ground-breaking information and analysis does not come along often, so don’t miss out and reserve your ticket now! Prices start at £15 (concession), £25 full price or £35 solidarity. There are a limited number of free places for those who otherwise would be excluded from participating (realleftevents@yahoo.com).
We look forward to seeing you on the day and please consider sharing this post to help spread the word.
4. We Were the Shepherds
We were the shepherds and sheepdogs
who tried to keep the wolves from the sheep
but the sheep we'd tried to awaken
took far too much pride in being wide asleep.
We were the thoughtful ever-watchful shepherds
who were cruelly abused for our selfless efforts
to warn the unwary smugly-unaware sorts
of the terrible perils of yielding to evil
by blindly complying with a diabolic force
that had recently increasingly poured forth
from the smothering swarm of incurably corrupt
orgs and organs that formed the vicious system
the flocks were taught to incuriously trust
from their first day in class to their last day alive;
that formed the despicable system
that had finally hit its highly-malignant stride
in the booming all-consuming business
of assiduously spreading the latest big lies.
We were the widely wildly-despised
shepherds who were openly spat and shat on
for trying to lead the sheep towards the light;
for trying to sever the threads of a web
of darkest deceit in this darkest of nights
as half-caged we raged
raged against the dying of what's right
fully engaged in a life-and-death fight
with a supremely malevolent spell.
We were the shepherds who caught a clear sight
of the devil's grand plans for a well-managed hell;
shepherds whose warnings were firmly ignored
as sure as flooding rivers ignore their own banks.
We were the shepherds whose only thanks
was “Thanks but no bloody thanks!”
“Shut your damn trap!” and “Keep your facts
to your damned daft self and your fellow cranks!”.
We were the sheepdogs and shepherds
who were decried for our tireless efforts
to reach those we'd so desperately hoped
would heed our pressing message.5. Walter Benjamin: an organic radical inspiration
The latest in our series of profiles from the orgrad website.
“That which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art”
Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a philosopher and social critic who was forced to flee his native Germany when the Nazis came to power and died on the Franco-Spanish border at the start of the Second World War.
Benjamin’s position is difficult to tie down, as he was influenced by the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, by Marxism, by German idealism and by Jewish mysticism.
Michael Löwy places him broadly within the tradition of “anti-capitalist Romanticism” which he identifies as being particularly influential among German-speaking Jewish intellectuals at the time.
One of Benjamin’s early sources of inspiration was Friedrich Hölderlin (1) (pictured) and he also studied the work of organic radical thinkers such as Friedrich Schelling, (2) Georg Hegel, (3) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, (4) Gustav Landauer, (5) Martin Buber, (6) and Ernst Bloch, (7) who became a friend.
Gershom Scholem says Benjamin was “a great metaphysician” (8) who was guided by a “deeply-rooted messianic faith” (9) and a concept of myth and tradition “which over the years was going to take on an increasingly mystic hue”. (10)
“He declared that he still didn’t know himself what the aim of philosophy was, given that there was no need to discover the ‘meaning of the world’, since this had been defined by myth, which, for Benjamin, was everything”. (11)
Benjamin was a strong critic of industrialism. He denied, for instance, the authenticity of mass-produced art.
He wrote: “That which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. This is a symptomatic process whose significance points beyond the realm of art. One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition”. (12)
He challenged the official story of ‘progress’ with his imagining of the angel of history, as inspired by Paul Klee’s painting Angelus Novus.
Wrote Benjamin: “His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet.
“The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them.
“This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress”. (13)
For Benjamin, opposition to industrialism was part and parcel of his opposition to capitalism. His deconstruction of the ideology of progress was not carried out in the name of conservation or of restoration, but in the name of revolution. (14)
He pointed out that, in stark contrast, fascism involved the typically modern combination of technological progress and social regression. (15)
From this radical organic perspective, fascism is clearly revealed to be a counter-revolutionary force protecting the industrial capitalist system.
Benjamin stressed that being inspired by pre-industrial societies, and comparing those societies favourably with our own, does not amount to a simple yearning for yesterday.
We would never be looking at an impossible retour (return) to the past, but to a détour via the past to a future of our choice.
Löwy says that Benjamin believed that “revolutionary utopia is reached through the discovery of an ancient, archaic, prehistoric experience”. (16)
In Benjamin’s outlook, says Löwy, “the archaic societies of Urgeschichte [the distant past] feature a harmony between man and nature which has been destroyed by ‘progress’ and is in need of reinstatement in the emancipated society of the future”. (17)
As a young man Benjamin was a leading light in the pre-WWI Jugendbewegung, (18) the Wandervögel often wrongly maligned as “the beginnings of the Hitler Youth”. (19)
Scholem says that he and Benjamin later shared a kind of “theocratic anarchism” (20) which led them, on August 23, 1927, to attend a huge and angry protest in Paris against the impending execution, in Massachusetts, USA, of the anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.
Recalls Scholem: “The police, partly on horseback, charged the protesters. We were caught up in a human maelstrom and, near the Boulevard de Sebastopol, we managed to narrowly avoid the police batons by diving into a side street. Benjamin was very fired up”. (21)
Benjamin was drawn to surrealism and then Marxism, under the influence of the dramatist Bertolt Brecht and the Frankfurt School.
But he found himself caught between two ways of thinking: metaphysics on the one hand and socialist materialism on the other.
Scholem writes: “The liquidation of magic in language for which he was calling, in conformity with the materialist theory of language, was blatantly at odds with all his earlier ideas on the subject, which were founded on theological and mystical inspiration”. (22)
These poles were never fully resolved and remained a source of philosophical tension in Benjamin’s work, lending his writing a unique flavour. Brecht remarked, somewhat disparagingly, that Benjamin was “mystic even in his denunciation of mysticism”. (23)
Video link: Who killed Walter Benjamin?
1. Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin: Histoire d’une amitié, trans. by Paul Kessler (Paris: Presses Pocket, 1989), p. 28.
2. Scholem, p. 24.
3. Scholem, p. 53.
4. Scholem, p. 117.
5. Scholem, p. 24.
6. Scholem, p. 52.
7. Scholem, p. 123.
8. Scholem, p. 111.
9. Scholem, p. 86.
10. Scholem, pp. 88-89.
11. Scholem, p.53.
12. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn, (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970) p. 223.
13. Benjamin, Illuminations, pp. 259-260.
14. Michael Löwy, Juifs hétérdoxes: Romantisme, messianisme, utopie (Paris: Éditions de l’ éclat; 2010), p. 36.
15. Löwy, Juifs hétérodoxes, p. 121.
16. Michael Löwy, ‘Walter Benjamin et le surréalisme in Europe’, Revue littéraire mensuelle, April 1996, p. 83.
17. Michael Löwy, Rédemption et utopie: le judaïsme libertaire en Europe centrale (Paris: Éditions du Sandre, 2009), p. 148.
18. Scholem, p. 11
19. https://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/hitleryouth/hj-beginnings.htm
20. Scholem, p. 130.
21. Scholem, p. 208.
22. Scholem, p. 301.
23. Bertolt Brecht, Arbeitsjournal, 1938-1955, cit. Scholem, p. 256.
6. Acorninfo
“The UK government wants to build Europe’s first Universal theme park in Bedford,” writes journalist Lewis Brackpool. “And guess who stands to benefit? BlackRock, Vanguard, JP Morgan, some of the world’s most powerful asset managers who are major shareholders in Comcast (Universal’s parent company). A complete waste of time, land, and public interest — all to serve the same global investment giants”. Yes, it’s the Rothschilds and their zio-imperialist mafia (ZIM), yet again. Trampling over everything we hold sacred in their demented pursuit of still more profit and power.
* * *
The UN’s Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, while superficially benevolent, mask a deeper agenda of centralised control, author and scientist Gregg Braden has warned. “You read the fine print of how they plan to achieve those goals, and it is horrendous. It is a remaking of social structure of family and society—social engineering—to a degree we’ve never seen in our world before… leading to a world of centralised power and control”.
* * *
“As protests against Israel continue to grow across America, U.S. police are being funded AND trained — by Israel — to shut them down. There’s no other way to put it — we are an occupied nation”. James Li explains how ZIM crushes dissent in the USA, identifying “a clear overlap between pro-corporate and pro-Israel causes, both of which benefit from the expansion of militarized policing practices”.
* * *
“The moment you challenge the empire, the moment you challenge the war machine, the moment you call out the hypocrisy… they come for you”. This is the reality of zio-totalitarian occupation, as described by Natalie Strecker, a Jersey human rights campaigner who is currently facing prosecution under the island’s “terrorism” laws for expressing her pro-Palestinian and anti-genocide views.
* * *
“It’s a compliment to be called a conspiracy theorist because it means your brain is still working”. Candace Owens on Israel and Zionism, the military-industrial complex, the CIA, Mossad, blackmail, censorship, the Rockefellers…
* * *
“There has been infiltration, there has been compromise”. Sabrina Salvati looks at the way in which certain so-called “independent” journalists are collaborating with war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu and ZIM.
* * *
Rothschilds, on whose board sits former UK national security adviser Lord Mark Sedwill, has no less than $53bn invested in Ukraine, points out Mark Curtis on the Declassified UK website. He adds: “The corporation was invited to the 2023 Ukraine Recovery Conference held in London and is a member of the UK-Ukraine Finance Partnership. It has also been the main adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance since 2017″.
* * *
Anti-totalitarian rebels in London, UK, continue to cut down ULEZ cameras, a traffic surveillance system that seeks to control people’s movements and penalise those who cannot afford authorised “green” cars. Meanwhile, in France, the threatened imposition of a similar system is being held up by massive public opposition. People power will defeat the global smart-tyrants!
* * *
A very useful resource providing links to lots of information about the “Manchester bombing” has been published by the Pighooey blog. It says: “The architects of this particular production are doing their best to ‘disappear’ the evidence which has been unearthed by a series of researchers since Day One, 22nd May 2017”. Meanwhile, David A. Hughes has given a half-hour summary of his findings on the event in an interview by Sonia Poulton.
* * *
An excellent mini-documentary on like-minded spirit Hrvoje Morić of Geopolitics & Empire has been aired by the Grand Theft World podcast.
* * *
An interesting in-depth video conversation was recently held between the Freedom Conversation Podcast and regular Winter Oak contributor W.D. James.
* * *
Courier 3, the latest in our friend Ken Avidor’s series of dystopian animated films, is now out and can be seen on YouTube.
* * *
“The book portrays development narratives as carefully constructed propaganda designed to legitimize global economic interventions that fundamentally serve transnational corporate interests rather than local populations”. A very thorough analysis of Paul Cudenec’s latest collection of essays, The Global Gang, has been published on the Lies Are Unbekoming website.
* * *
“Do not fool yourself by saying you would like to help usher in a free society, but you cannot sacrifice an armchair for it”. Voltairine de Cleyre
(For many more like this, see the Winter Oak quotes for the day blog)
It's Acorn time, baby!
Key phrase: “government-by-BlackRock” — David Powell
From The Stirrer, this … “We have the misfortune to have rulers that can only measure our worth by how much we contribute to their cherished bottom line.”; and this … “We’re in an existential battle as to what it means to be truly human in a world run by soulless techno-fascists.”
Choice: “Yes, it’s the Rothschilds and their zio-imperialist mafia (ZIM), yet again. Trampling over everything we hold sacred in their demented pursuit of still more profit and power.” — Paul Cudenec
James Li: “There’s no other way to put it — we are an occupied nation”. Actually, there is another way to put it: U.S.A. = United States of AIPAC.
Tim Pool 2.0 = Tim Tool
powerful stuff..