Kings, fisherkings, and fish rotting from the head

 

by Not Sure

8 September 2025

 

A couple of years ago, I was looking into the Aspen Institute at the suggestion of a listener. During this project, I read a book that Alan Watt of Cutting Through the Matrix often referenced over the years, Foundations: Their Power and Influence by Rene A. Wormser. This book was written in 1958 and covered the work that Wormser did as general counsel for the Special Committee to Investigate Tax Exempt Foundations that became known as the Reece Committee. The book was deserving of such frequent mentions by Alan as it elucidates the work done by the Committee to answer its operative question: Why were the large foundations promoting Marxist ideology and undermining the love that Americans had for their country and its founding principles?

 

I wrote a short piece that touched on Foundations on 16 July 2023:

Dirty Old Town - by Not Sure

 

The following week, I wrote an article about the Aspen Institute and how power is structured in a way (interlock) that makes it impossible to counter, with companies and the trusts of wealthy families interlocked by shared trustees and board members.

The Pritzker Family: Interlock and Gleichschaltung

 

Gleichschaltung is a German word that means ‘coordination’ or ‘synchronization and this is the process by which Adolf Hitler achieved Nazification, the blending of media, business, education, and culture to achieve totalitarian control. Gleich is ‘same’ and schaltung is ‘circuit.’ It is an electrical engineering term that means all switches are put on the same circuit so when the master switch is pulled, they are all activated at once.

Wormser saw this was being applied within the United States and was concerned (quite rightly) that this kind of standardization across disciplines would spell the end of intellectual freedom.  What was eye opening in Foundations was to see how long ideology backed by big money has had a stranglehold on America. The Reece Committee was a follow up on the Cox Committee, and before that in 1912, the Commission on Industrial Relations aka the Walsh Commission convened to study labor relations but asked an important question, What problems result when the concentration of wealth and influence is in the hands of a few shareholders?

 

Those of you interested in a who’s who of history’s recent players and events can look into the Walsh Commission and there you’ll find Old Man Rockefeller and the Ludlow Massacre, Walter Lippman, Clarence Darrow, and Henry Ford to name a few who testified or reported on the proceedings.

 

One of Alan Watt’s most important ‘first principles’ is that this concentration of wealth and influence is many centuries old and in fact he follows it back through time, across Europe, to Greece, down to India and over to Egypt and Sumer. An ancient, deviant priesthood, creating our languages and religions, controlling our perceptions.

 

In Foundations, Wormser supplied much evidence from the twentieth century to support Alan Watt’s basic proposition. Wormser shows us some key thinkers and players and the interlock used to achieve their vision. He highlighted the social ‘scientists’ and ideology behind The Social Science Research Council, founded in 1924 and still very much alive. He quoted from Dr. Herring who was its president:

 

“Here we wish simply to emphasize that in our generation efforts are being made to arrange and control human relationships more consciously, more deliberately, and, it is to be hoped, more responsibly than during the last century. An interdependent world is being forced to an awareness of the limitations of individual freedom and personal choice.”

 

The Aspen Institute is chaired by Margot L. Pritzker. For some staggering interlock between business and large think tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission, see my piece from 2023, The Pritzker Family: Interlock and Gleichschaltung. Look into the work that Jennifer Bilek has done to expose the connections between Pritzker money, Jennifer Pritzker, and what J. Bilek has termed Synthetic Sex Identities (SSI), and see Petra Buesken’s interview with J. Bilek.

Jennifer's Newsletter

The Billionaire Family Pushing Synthetic Sex Identities (SSI)

Episode 1: Jennifer Bilek - Transgenderism: The Reproductive Front of Transhumanism (Petra Buesken interview)

 

When I awoke this morning, I intended to follow up on something I read yesterday about Margot Pritzker’s husband Thomas, which I missed when it was first reported. In December of 2024, Virginia Guiffre’s defamation lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell was unsealed by the court. According to Newsweek, “In a deposition, Giuffre was asked directly about her interactions with Pritzker, to which she responded, "I believe I was with Tom once," suggesting a single encounter.”

 

Thomas Pritzker is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, along with his cousin Penny Pritzker, who was Secretary of Commerce under Barrack Obama. Thomas has a cousin J.B. Pritzker who is the current governor of the state of Illinois, and another cousin, the aforementioned Jennifer Pritzker, a generous donor to many causes promoting the Transgender Agenda, including large grants to universities. ‘Tom’ vehemently denied Guiffre’s allegation, as he did in 2019 when the Miami Herald broke the story.

 

Virginia Guiffre died from suicide in April of this year. Her father insisted that she didn’t take her own life, but someone ‘got to her.’


 

My friend Judy is amused by the detail I get into with the people I write about and their relationships. I find I cannot help myself, I’m a frustrated Sherlock. In this Redux from Alan Watt, “The Banks of Think-Tanks: Adventure of Our Future now Caged, Forlorn, The Future was Planned Before We Were Born” from September 1, 2019, Alan read a story about how Prince Harry and Meghan hired a social media expert as their popularity was trailing that of William and Kate. Alan said, “They actually make them like dramas. Because people get sucked into them. And they’ve said that the woman who likes soap operas gets sucked into these things and it personalizes these people that they’ll never meet. It makes them seem real to them and like members of the family, you see. It’s all science and it’s all fake.” I never got into watching soap operas and thought the idea of them was silly, but still, when I write, I have to examine every boot print, ash dropping, and sideways glance.

 

As today wore on and other tasks took my attention, I found myself wandering away from Thomas Pritzker and asked myself two questions. 1) Did the ancestors of this generation of the Pritzkers of Chicago know Walter Paepcke of Chicago who started the Aspen Institute in 1949, developed the town of Aspen, and died in 1960? 2) Had Peter Thiel and Alex Karp of Palantir been trotted out on the stage of Aspen, their technological genius and business acumen celebrated?

 

I cannot find a strong connection between Paepcke and the Pritzker family. Walter Paepcke seemed to have two goals with Aspen: restore the dilapidated Victorian era buildings and homes, develop the area into a winter sporting destination, and bring culture to ‘the people.’ His attention was shifted away from ‘the people’ when he received a visit from Henry Luce and his wife Clare Booth Luce. Bingo! Just the sort of pivotal and important connection I was looking for. Henry Luce of Time magazine and the CIA, and Clare Booth Luce who seemingly had an affair with everyone, including John Foster Dulles, whose brother Alan headed up the CIA. Small world.

 

Henry Luce told Walter Paepcke that the great unwashed mass of business men needed culture, needed to have their minds guided in the right direction. During Walter Paepcke’s lifetime, Aspen Institute did just that, but over the years with the Aspen Security Forum and the Aspen Strategy Group, with its headquarters in Washington D.C., and its Aspen satellite a friendly, ‘front facing’ enterprise, it has become an octopus that would make Henry Luce quite chuffed. Take a look at the CFR/Trilateral interlock in that 2023 Not Sure piece. This is a policy-shaping force to be reckoned with.

 

And yes, Peter Thiel and Alex Karp of Palantir have been trotted out on the Aspen stage, at front facing events and in Washington D.C. Alex Karp has been part of an Aspen Ideas Festival, and Peter Thiel has participated in numerous events, most recently at a 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival session entitled “The Iconoclast.” In 2015, at a festival event he had a conversation with David Bradley of the Atlantic Media Company (owner of The Atlantic and other influential news outlets), sort of the Henry Luce of our time, except without the CIA connections, of course. In 2014, he did an interview with David Frum at the Washington Ideas Forum.

 

Some of you careful listeners may remember that Alan Watt mentioned David Frum and his mother Barbara Frum several times. Barbara Frum was a well known Canadian radio and television journalist for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). David Frum has followed in her footsteps except he moved to the U.S. He works as a political commentator and is senior editor of The Atlantic (run by David Bradley, a member of the CFR, but not the CIA, of course). Frum was George W. Bush’s speechwriter and is credited with the famous “axis of evil” phrase that Bush used in his 2002 State of the Union Address.

 

Remember that Alan Watt would say things like “Forget about the politicians, we should be able to vote for which speechwriter we like best.” A documentary that Alan told us about is Spin from 1995. This is raw satellite feed from politicians’ pre-appearance (on television shows) planning for their upcoming interviews. Alan told me to pay close attention to Larry King as he interacted with George Bush Sr. (and others). He said, “Larry is the king. Look at the deference Bush gives him.”

Spin - 1995 film

 

One thing I took note of when examining the interlock between the Aspen Institute, the Trilateral Commission, and the Council on Foreign Relations is that there is a liberal inclusion of journalists and media titans. It is no surprise that for fifteen years, the Aspen Institute had Walter Isaacson at the helm. A Rhodes scholar, Isaacson has written biographies on Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Jennifer Doudna (CRSPR), and most recently Elon Musk.

 

As vice-chair of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, Isaacson oversaw the rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina, and he chaired the board that ran Voice of America, the U.S. (CIA) government-funded international broadcaster, where Tucker Carlson’s father Dick was the director for a few years.

 

Back to Peter Thiel. Peter is ‘rock’ or ‘stone.’ “On this rock I will build my church.” Thiel is a diminutive of Thietilo or Tielo which is medieval German, and from the same root as Diedrich or Diederich, ‘ruler,’ ‘king,’ ‘king of the people.’ Thiel has Palantir, his own ‘seeing stones.’ He owns a vice-president, J.D. ‘aw shucks’ Vance, who he picked up at Yale. J.D wrote for David Frum’s FrumForum website under the name J.D. Hamel.

 

Thiel has left the day to day running of Palantir to his fishy (carp/Karp) bottom-feeder. Alex Karp has lobbied for the Pentagon to be renamed to the Department of Offense. This past Friday, President Trump signed an executive order to rebrand the Pentagon The Department of War. Time to call the fish rotting from the head…a fish rotting from the head.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp Once Pushed For 'Department Of Offense' — Now Trump Rebrands Pentagon To 'War' Office As PLTR Touts America's AI Edge

 

Karp is a creature who oozes arrogance from each of his deliberate tai chi breaths. He has said that the thought of having children gives him hives. Every time I look at him, or read about him, I break out in something like hives and can’t wait for my next shower. Thank goodness, I didn’t have to look too closely at him today. Patrick Wood of Technocracy News has done a fine job of distilling the arrogance down to a manageable snifter full.

Palantir Is The Biggest Existential Threat To America - Patrick Wood/Technocracy News

 

For a guided journey through the interlock to be found in the Trilateral Commission and its bleed over into other institutions, see Patrick Wood’s book co-written with Antony C. Sutton, Trilaterals Over America.

 

In Wood’s piece, he points out that Condaleeza Rice was an early Palantir advisor, and reminds us that she was a member of the Trilateral Commission. I will add that she is also a member of the CFR and is co-chair of the Aspen Strategy Group and played a leadership role in the Aspen Security Group. Small world, and all.

 

The first appearance I find of Thiel at Aspen was in 2011 when he discussed the Thiel Fellowship he started in 2010. Get it? Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Rings, Palantir? A good fisher of men (see J.D. Vance), this Devi-Ant kingfisher throws a bit of his pocket money at university drop outs, and claims to have produced between eleven and twenty-six unicorn companies. (That’s a privately held company with a valuation over $1 billion USD). What I see on the Fellowship ‘job board’ are a bunch of trendy sounding one word names such as Alloy, Curative, Lumanai, Genetesis, Keep, and Mobot, a few names from a very long list. I looked at a handful of the companies and saw genetics, a stablecoin payment system, a company focused on cryogenically freezing your pet. How much, I wondered? “We’re not there yet, pricing this service presents challenges.” I bet it does.

 

I finally saw a name I understood. “Super Coffee.” We believe positivity is the human spirit’s most powerful source of energy.” “We mass produce positive energy.” Some six-pack ab guy named Devon Lévesque drinks it and so does J.Lo.

 

Rainmaker. The cloud seeding company given seed money by Thiel’s Fellowship. Here’s their motto: Rainmaker is going to end global water scarcity and terraform Earth. We’re going to do so by making it rain, literally. Rainmaker’s seeding operation near the Guadalupe River in Kerr County Texas on 2 July 2025 had nothing to do with the catastrophic flooding that occurred on 4 July. Experts have debunked any connection between the cloud seeding and the floods as conspiracy theories, stating that “cloud seeding can only enhance existing rainfall, not create storms of this magnitude.” (AInvest.com)

 

Unicorn companies aside, The Fellowship looks more like a Cosa Nostra money laundering scam than a place where serious scientific and tech research, or socially significant startups gestate. I’m sure there are some noteworthy exceptions, but the money flows, and the occasional “bright fish” gets pulled from the “pool of life,” as Alan Watt explained in Cutting Through volume 1, when he wrote about the kingfisher and the fisher-king.

 

I always hope that you, the reader, will find something useful or interesting in these pieces I share with you, but the process of thinking and typing is an end in itself. When I sit down to write, the ‘game’s afoot’ and solving the mystery is all I care about. Maybe I’m just adding one or two more pieces to a puzzle I’ve been working at for a few years. It gets my adrenaline flowing. Keep your Super Coffee, Peter. I produce my own energy, positive and otherwise.

© Not Sure