Reality Change I: 16 ignition points

 By M.K. Styllinski

 “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

– James Baldwin

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Unless you have been living in a small cave in the mountains for the last few decades (and that may still be an option) you have probably noticed that we are moving through extremely tumultuous times. Having successfully traversed the Grand Hype and misinterpretations of the 2012 Mayan Prophecy which did not say the world would end but indicate massive change – humanity is still here. Nonetheless, it seems we are in for some truly momentous events. In fact, there is a host of global indicators which, in isolation, or as a non-linear combination, could signal an epic meltdown in the fortunes of humanity whilst offering the possibility of a completely new world.

Do not take the following synopsis as inevitable and that we should all order a bulk supply of dehydrated chicken noodles and chlorinated water tablets, pack our bug bags and find our respective caves … Only that one, or several of these events have an extremely high probability of occurring over the next 2 -10 years. Our history appears to be one long bid to cover up the reality that this planet goes through cycles of catastrophic upheaval – a “reset” if you will. Those that learned to read the signs and took sensible measures to avoid unnecessary future hardship in the face of these dramatic environmental and infrastructure changes were the ones that survived. That means psychological as well as practical awareness.

In lieu of what has gone before in this series, I hope this list helps to place the events in context, whilst offering an easy summary of what we are all facing. A selection of links is included under each heading which are not definitive, merely relevant sources for further reading.

Official Culture Reprise III: Authoritarianism Revisited (2)

 “… instead of trusting what their own minds tell them, men have as a rule a weakness for trusting others who pretend to supernatural sources of knowledge.”

– Arthur Schopenhauer

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Promotional poster from the film 1984

Authoritarianism only becomes a dominant force when ponerisation is advanced and normal humanity succumbs to the emerging restrictions. Our trust and belief in those who offer the pretence of leadership and a para-moral imperative appears to have a symbiotic relationship to our wilful blindness and apathy which is also part of the rise and fall of numerous Empires. Someone to lead and show us the way, someone with power, personality and charismatic inspiration that is almost spiritual… The same old patterns are in evidence everywhere one looks.

But what if such power lies within a network of human beings who have shed their reliance on an external authority and have discovered the pragmatism of their own centered faith in the Universe and each other? Do we have to have to have ideologues who arrive based on what we lack inside? Is it possible to manifest a leader or leaders who are drawn from something quite different and where the very notion of leadership is redefined?

We have explored the theories of ponerology, authoritarianism and our own stratum of wishful thinking and wilful blindness. We must also factor in an undue emphasis on the material world and the separation from Nature to which we are mysteriously connected, not just through the thousands of years of bio-rhythms and collective archetypes pulsating through the human psyche, but resonant through our very DNA. We might also posit that all the problems of the world lie not in economic, ecological or socio-cultural solutions but ultimately in our relationship to ourselves and the potential to connect with realities that transcend the five senses.

World State Policies III: The Scientific Technique

“Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen…”

– Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society

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Science is in crisis. A product of our official culture, fraud, corruption and a scientific thought police continue to circumscribe academic evaluation, shackling the best scientists and maintaining a materialist gridlock on open-minded and multidisciplinary approaches.  Consequently, in many quarters, the state of science resembles an authoritarian religion where money and inflated academic egos dominate, rather than a quest for truth.

Capitalising on the Age of Reason firmly set in place by the Illuminism and “Enlightenment” of the 18th Century, the “scientific method” or “technique” grew out of Germany and Prussia of the 1800s embracing the theories of the new scientific rationalists such as John Locke and Jean-Jacque Rousseau. This was to inaugurate a new educational system never before seen. Children would become the nuts and bolts of the State, bludgeoning generations of young people into a rigid prison of rationale and reason. Feelings would be irrelevant.

Hegel was one of the most influential philosophers of the modern age and the culmination of the German idealistic philosophy school of Immanuel Kant. Like the Prussian militarists who inspired utilitarian schooling so beloved of the corporatists, there was only one way to live and be – through the world of reason and a rejection of the heart as an organ of perception. To Hegel the state is the ideal of Absolute Reason where citizens gained their freedom from being subservient to the state. Hegel viewed the State through a lens of religious fascism where it: “… has supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the state.” It is therefore unsurprising that both fascism and communism have their philosophical roots in Hegelianism and Illuminism – flag bearers of the present Global Establishment. ^[1]

To bring all this up-to-date we need to introduce another mechanistic thinker who was to provide a massive contribution to our understanding of behaviour which was absorbed into the cult of control in the West of the 20^th Century. His name was Burrhus Frederic (“B.F.”) Skinner who took his cues from Ivan Pavlov’s research into temperament conditioning and involuntary reflex actions. A scientist who sincerely wanted his ideas to benefit humanity he nonetheless, fell into the belief trap that populations could be controlled by a positive reinforcement which was simply a concealed method of coercion. In fact, Skinner was an early technocrat in his thinking and believed in a utopia of science and technology that could control populations rather than encouraging free-will. He stated: “It is a mistake to suppose that the whole issue is how to free man. The issue is to improve the way in which he is controlled.”

A Clockwork Orange (1971) which drew heavily from the ideas behind behaviourism. Theatrical release poster by Bill Gold (wikipedia)

Skinner was Influenced by the Age of Reason and its advocates. His social contract was to be extended to include a scientific elite which would make sure that populations stayed within certain parameters set down by an agreed upon “scientific technique.” It is for that reason that he held with the belief that specialists as “reinforcers” should impose “codified contingencies” to ensure that people – as the instinctive machines he believed them to be – should follow prepared lines of behaviour just as rats in his experiments were encouraged to go down certain paths in a maze.

Skinner introduced us to the ideas of behaviour therapy which included his discoveries of operant conditioning, aversion therapy, and desensitisation. Operant conditioning involves the reinforcement of certain behaviour accompanied by a stimulus such as light or sound. Reinforcement depends on the frequency and occurrence of the response and what type of reinforcement mechanisms are found in the immediate environment. Skinner used rats to illustrate his thinking by using simple experiments with food and water as rewards. When a rat depressed a bar it was rewarded with food. Regardless of how the bar was depressed is irrelevant, operant conditioning shows that it is the frequency or rate at which the operation is carried out (how many times the bar is pressed within a given time and how rapidly) which determines how successful operant conditioning has been.

Aversion therapy is exactly as it sounds: the individual is exposed to a stimulus alongside some form of reinforcement discomfort which is designed to create an aversion to the initial desire. This technique was used in the past to try and cure homosexuality or alcoholism. It was also graphically featured in Stanley Kubrick’s film A Clock-work Orange (1971) as a means of mind control. Skinner’s experiments with rats and pigeons were extraordinarily instructive and offered new insights into how our environment shapes our behaviour. However, he wanted to graduate to humans in a bid to find the perfect automaton, so he took the liberty of using his own daughter. (We don’t know what his mother had to say about this of course). The baby was placed him in a large, sound-proof box with one window where the temperature was carefully controlled. “The Skinner Box” as it would later be known, would go on to be used in many laboratories so that reinforcement and operant conditioning studies could be reliably employed. Skinner was untroubled by the use of his daughter in the experimentation proclaiming that: “crying and fussing could always be stopped by slightly lowering the temperature” and since the box was sound-proofed, everyone was a winner according to Skinner, as “… soundproofing also protects the family from the baby.”

Desensitisation describes a psychological technique whereby the subject is placed in a relaxed and suggestive state and exposed to images and /or accompanying sounds which are designed to evoke mild stress or anxiety. The images gradually become stronger in content until finally the image is so strong that the person shows no anxiety. He has been slowly desensitised to feeling associated with that particular imagery. As the reader can appreciate these methods induce both positive and negative results based entirely on the intent of the experimenter. Furthermore, he discovered that the level and frequency of the rewards determined how the required behaviour could be maintained.

Skinner at the Harvard Psychology Department, c. 1950 (wikipedia)

It was a breath of fresh air for those in Elite circles and enthusiastically incorporated into the psychological warfare of the emerging National Security State. The emphasis on instincts  espoused by Freud, the social engineering modalities of the Frankfurt School and the biological determinism of humans and life itself as nothing more than components of a machine all provided grist to the mill which psychopaths used to keep spinning their reality. Since Skinner’s main focus was developing a society that could be controlled, his contribution in the understanding of how behaviour operated in the modern world was seen by the Pathocrats in this context. The behaviourists were welcomed into the fold and put to work which has led to behaviourism as one of the most accepted and revered forms of psychology in authoritarian perception, not least because ethical science seems to be inimical to its applications. Changing behaviour and belief is vital to changing society with – and preferably without – consent.

Since B.F. Skinner’s experiments, aversive stimulation and knowledge of operant conditioning has been explored through the Cold War to the War on Terror, MKULTRA to the PSYOPS in Media propaganda and the black ops of regime change. Society itself is the new Skinner Box and official culture is both the cause and effect. With the advent of mass surveillance and SMART society, with an ever more integrated functionality from infrastructure to social networks, the behaviourists ethos of managed reflexes has evolved into new technocratic blueprints of managed societies and the ability to carefully control both the inner and outer environments of the human mind.

Perhaps the best representation of elite thinking on the “science technique” to shape society came through the intellectual leviathan that was British philosopher, educational theoretician and mathematician Bertrand Arthur William Russell. The mythology surrounding this man ensured that he was an ardent humanist, socialist and advocate of peace. His controversial views on the future of society have been largely air-brushed from the rose-coloured worship which periodically takes place in the halls of academia and the peace movement. Yet, there is ample evidence that he was one of the most scheming Machiavellian figures of the 20th Century who knew exactly how to play the public and leaders alike with his misanthropic views.  As Lyndon La Rouche summarised in his  1994 Schiller Institute article Russell’s mindset incorporated:  (1) a racism as virulent as Adolf Hitler’s; (2) a feudal-aristocratic socialist’s Ruskin-like hatred for modern European civilization; and (3) a utopian’s obsessive commitment to bringing about civilization’s descent into a parody of pre-Renaissance feudalism, or sometimes even pre-civilized barbarism.”

Russell channelled his beliefs into the Pugwash Movement which he founded in London July 9, 1955 using the Russell-Einstein Manifesto. This led to the first meeting in 1957 attended by many renowned scientists. He received many awards throughout his career and was highly influential in Elite circles. The impetus for creating Pugwash was drawn from his wish to give a scientific justification for world government by using the threat of the Cold War as pretext. Indeed, in his famous treatise: The Impact of Science on Society (1953) he makes his position clear regarding the nature of science and its purpose: “I do not believe that dictatorship is a lasting form of scientific society – unless (but this proviso is important) it can become world-wide.” ^[2]Whether the members of the movement held exactly the same beliefs as Russell remains to be seen. But as we know, there was certainly strong mass appeal for such ideas, Russell being one of a number of great minds to give vent to his authoritarian sentiments.

Russell believed that the empires of the past lost control over their dominions due to an inefficient social programming which should have been in embedded in the development of the centralised structure. He claims that the “Scientific technique” had removed this limitation. The future would be open for the establishment of a successful world government (Empire) if a “unifying principle” could be found that superseded the fear of war: “… unification under a single world government is probably necessary unless we are to acquiesce in either a return to barbarism or the extinction of the human race.” ^[3]

While explicating the evils of the Soviet era he clearly saw this as the forerunner of a more streamlined and cohesive social structure where: “… the very evils of the system help to give it stability. Apart from external pressure, there is no reason why such a regime should not last for a very long time.” ^[4]

As is the case with such a mind-set, it is always the rabble-rousing masses that are the cause of the chaos rather than the institution and creation of strictures that develop from it. Or as Russell mentions, “evil passions in human minds …” that stand in the way of a World State. The philosopher wishes to replace one society and dictatorship driven by the fear of war with another that would make war unnecessary due to the dumbed down compliance of the ordinary man-made stupidity. War would disappear but so would the basic human condition of love, creativity, freedom and spirituality, though this would only be a right and fitting state of affairs according to Russell, since the Elite were eugenically destined to dispense these qualities amongst the plebeians through a strictly behaviourist and Darwinist belief-set:

“War has been, throughout history, the chief source of social cohesion; and since science began, it has been the strongest incentive to technical progress. Large groups have a better chance of victory than small ones, and therefore the usual result of war is to make States larger. […] There is, it must be confessed, a psychological difficulty about a single world government. The chief source of social cohesion in the past, I repeat, has been war: the passions that inspire a feeling of unity are hate and fear. These depend upon the existence of an enemy, actual or potential. It seems to that a world government could only be kept in being by force, not by the spontaneous loyalty that now inspires a nation at war.” ^[5]

Could it be that these same “passions that inspire hate and fear” are primarily due to the very centralised systems Russell intends to enforce on the rest of us? No doubt we have the very manifestations of just such an “enemy, actual or potential” in the form of the War on Terror and false flag operations to keep the public allegiance to the State. The existence of an enemy has always been fabricated by authorities in order to maintain their power base, a state of affairs that became progressively ponerised once that door was opened. Russell’s solution to the creation of that “loyalty” is not by force but through a type of education that would result in a populace made suitably docile and unthinking. He understands very well the importance of mass psychology and believes it to be “immensely important” and “politically useful”. If Russell’s scientific dictatorship is to work, then modern methods of propaganda must target education. Instead of the threat of war we now have the children as the target of indoctrination. Mass psychology is to be used to this end:

This subject will make great strides when it is taken up by scientists under a scientific dictatorship. Anaxagoras maintained that snow is black, but no one believed him. The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakeable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. But I anticipate. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark grey. ^[6]

We see exactly the same vision of children as products envisaged by the American National Education Board and the Rockefeller mind-set where children’s minds are there to be beaten into shape so that they conform to a carefully prepared aversive conditioning. Is it not interesting to see the same perception appearing from a representative of the British intelligentsia bridging the same belief in the minds of industrialists and Fabians more than half a century before? Then of course, we have the same pattern appearing in the forces behind Illuminism and the outgrowth of Empires which underlie the sub-stratum of psychopathy as the unchanging progenitor.

It seems Russell is unable to step outside his own philosophical trap that State and science offers a panacea for human evolution despite the very presence of government always indicating otherwise. The comprehensive overthrow of freedom and the individual mind for peace and the “greater good” is in evidence once again:

It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries. Fichte [German Philosopher] laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished. But in his day this was an unattainable ideal: what he regarded as the best system in existence produced Karl Marx. In future such failures are not likely to occur where there is dictatorship. Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so.”  ^[7]  [Emphasis mine]

Now, if you are blinking your eyes at these statements and thinking perhaps such a noble laureate is not advocating such a position and is merely indicating a future state of affairs, you are mistaken. Remember that the goal of Bertrand Russell and others of his kind has always been the imposition of a scientific World State determined by an Elite. Any intellectual philosophising around that point with the accompanying nuggets of undoubted wisdom mean nothing when set against the framework of what is an authoritarian desire finally let off its leash and buffered by the security of his intellectual status.

Russell’s vision aligns closely with Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World (1932) which describe developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The scientific technique is exacted so precisely that it produces mechanized human beings who are sealed into a tightly controlled artificial environment, separate from nature and the “perils” of intellectual creativity or free thinking. Science is only used as medium for social control just as Skinner and Russell advocate, where dehumanisation will ensure ignorance and weakness, which will thus ensure the end of war.

The framework of science under pathocratic control, sterilizes the natural rhythms of life, replaced with prescriptive values which have little to do with freedom or free-will. It is interesting that science – perceived as an entirely rational subject – can be employed to indoctrinate irrational inclinations. While it is science that the State uses to control its citizens, it is also science that brought about the need for totalitarian control in the first place. The degradation of normal people under the scientific dictatorship will be inevitable so that threats from creative individuals who can offer alternative visions would be inhibited, as is the case in any Pathocracy. And it is here that we see the same process occurring under the “democracies” of many political and academic institutions of the United Kingdom, America and other European countries. This knowledge about the existence of susceptible individuals and how to work on them will continue to be a tool for world conquest as long as it remains the secret of such “professors”.

As Andrew Łobaczewski observed, when ponerology becomes skilfully popularised science, it will help nations to develop immunity. Science can serve as liberator or prisoner of human consciousness, something which seems to have escaped Bertrand’s ambitious scope for world government. As Huxley wrote in BNW: “… we have our stability to think of. We don’t want to change. Every change is a menace to stability. That’s another reason why we’re so chary of applying new inventions. Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy. Yes, even science.” ^[8]

Bertrand Arthur William Russell

This brand of vertical collectivism demands the erosion of national sovereignty necessary to usher in global governance, the start of which begins with the introduction of economic unions (European Union, Africa Union, Asia Union etc.) that will later be interlocked into one Global Union under the hammer of closer world integration. Russell shows an idealistic belief that in order to prevent the “barbarism” of war conducted by nation states: “Means must be found of subjecting the relations of nations to the rule of law, so that a single nation will no longer be, as at present, the judge in its own cause,” and where “… national liberty will have to be effectively restrained.” While preferring not to mention the obvious manipulations by industrialists and Zionist interventions, he goes on to state that once Russia and the United States have come under effective control of collectivism where:

“… either by victory or by an obvious military superiority, the preponderant Power can establish a single Authority over the whole world, and thus make future wars impossible. At first, this Authority will in certain regions, be based on force, but if the Western nations are in control, force will as soon as possible give way to consent. When that has been achieved, the most difficult of world problems will have been solved, and science can become wholly beneficent.” ^[9]

Of course, we must place our trust in Western nations and the rule of law and science as the beneficent arbiters of reality for the masses and bow down to their imposed “welfare.” The best answer for Russell is a Global Authority since he is a man cast from the authoritarian mould. Similarly, ensuring the comprehensive dilution of the genetic stock of normal human beings must be implemented and parallel methods of population control introduced through ostensibly benign reasons. Hence, the emphasis on the population explosion, its causes and effects.

Over 40 years later the same theme is in evidence, this time from one time US foreign policy advisor to President Jimmy Carter Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (1997). Brzezinski, CFR and Trilateral Commission member eloquently offers the same solution for American Hegmony under cover of United Nations protocols.

He states:

“In brief, the U.S. policy goal must be unapologetically twofold: to perpetuate America’s own dominant position for at least a generation and preferably longer still; and to create a geopolitical framework that can absorb the inevitable shocks and strains of social-political change while evolving into the geopolitical core of shared responsibility for peaceful global management. A prolonged phase of gradually expanding cooperation with key Eurasian partners, both stimulated and arbitrated by America, can also help to foster the preconditions for an eventual upgrading of the existing and increasingly antiquated UN structures. A new distribution of responsibilities and privileges can then take into account the changed realities of global power, so drastically different from those of 1945.” ^[10]

The overwhelming imperative is always global governance whether for ideology, power, greed, or psychopathic propagation. If we follow the beliefs of the Russells and Rockefellers of this world the kind of financial-scientific feudalism they so desperately desire will be very soul-less environments indeed and is precisely why they will always break down. As he exclaims: “The completeness of the resulting control over opinion depends in various ways upon scientific technique,” which means an array of suitable scientifically-based techniques must be found to ensure the resulting education will reflect their minority mind-set with all its psychological anomalies. Such people have no problems experimenting in altering the genetic structure of animals, plants and Nature itself in order to dominate and control rather than to work with or co-create. It is inevitable that under a Pathocracy and the knowledge of the Human Genome, the experimental bar on humans will rise, both in secrecy and in public.

It is interesting that like Rockefeller, Stalinist Russia is so often the example in Russell’s mind:

“When such methods of modifying the congenital character of animals and plants have been pursued long enough to make their success obvious, it is probable that there will be a powerful movement for applying scientific methods to human propagation. There would at first be strong religious and emotional obstacles to the adoption of such a policy. But suppose (say) Russia were able to overcome these obstacles and to breed a race stronger, more intelligent, and more resistant to disease than any race of men that has hitherto existed, and suppose the other nations perceived that unless they followed suit they would be defeated in war, then either the other nations would voluntarily forgo their prejudices, or, after defeat, they would be compelled to forgo them. Any scientific technique, however beastly, is bound to spread if it is useful in war – until such time as men decide that they have had enough of war and will henceforth live in peace. As that day does seem to be at hand, scientific breeding of human beings must be expected to come about.” ^[11]

And no doubt this “scientific breeding” to produce only the best and strongest will adhere to the same “beastly” precepts that gave rise to the legion of authoritarian principles down through the ages. But Russell doesn’t seem to be worried about that since his white, Oxford-educated Anglo-Saxon genes are beyond reproach and can only lead to a scientific destiny wholly in line with the same kind of British Empire perfection which so captured Cecil Rhodes.

Let’s remember what Russell wrote about education and his regime for the compliant child where: “… Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so.” And finally, the justification for applying the vertical collectivist dream: those totalitarian governments were not so bad … They just needed the right quality of intellectual steerage. Let’s not be too hasty. Russell may not be advocating explicitly such a state of affairs but by inference he means to suggest that such “atrocities” are nevertheless highly practical for an emerging World State and encouraging maximum stability:

“A totalitarian government with a scientific bent might do things that to us would seem horrifying. The Nazis were more scientific than the present rulers of Russia, and were more inclined towards the sort of atrocities that I have in mind. They were said – I do not know with what truth – to use prisoners in concentration camps as material for all kinds of experiments, some involving death after much pain. If they had survived, they would probably have soon taken to scientific breeding. Any nation which adopts this practice will, within a generation, secure great military advantages. The system, one may surmise, will be something like this: except possibly in the governing aristocracy, all but 5 per cent of males and 30 per cent of females will be sterilised. The 30 per cent of females will be expected to spend the years from eighteen to forty in reproduction, in order to secure adequate cannon fodder. As a rule, artificial insemination will be preferred to the natural method. The unsterilised, if they desire the pleasures of love, will usually have to seek them with sterilised partners.

Sires will be chosen for various qualities, some for muscle others for brains. All will have to be healthy, and unless they are to be the fathers of oligarchs they will have to be of a submissive and docile disposition. Children will, as in Plato’s Republic, be taken from their mothers and reared by professional nurses. Gradually, by selective breeding the congenital differences between rulers and ruled will increase until they become almost different species. A revolt of the plebs would become as unthinkable as an organised insurrection of sheep against the practice of eating mutton. (The Aztecs kept a domesticated alien tribe for purposes of cannibalism. Their regime was totalitarian.)

To those accustomed to this system, the family as we know it would seem as queer as the tribal and totem organisation of Australian aborigines seems to us… The labouring class would have such long hours of work and so little to eat that their desires would hardly extend beyond sleep and food. The upper class, being deprived of the softer pleasures both by the abolition of the family and by the supreme duty of devotion to the State, would acquire the mentality of ascetics: they would care only for power, and in pursuit of it would not shrink from cruelty. By the practice of cruelty men would become hardened, so that worse and worse tortures would be required to give the spectators a thrill.” ^[12] [Emphasis mine]

Neither democracy nor “The Rights of Man” are sufficient to avoid such “scientific horrors” only a World State determined by socialist principles. A world government with psychopaths at the helm would revel in just such a future.

Bertrand Russell was briefly a member of the Fabian society and resigned over the issue of “entente” or alliances that could lead to war. However, liberalism, socialism and pacifism were just labels for Russell stating: “I have never been any of these things, in any profound sense.” ^[13]It was his reaction against idealism and his work as a logician which defined his distaste for war and classical totalitarianism. Ironically, he merely advocated another form of dictatorship, its only difference being that it was inverted. He conforms to the Fabian worldview that society must be gradually “shattered to bits” on the anvil of socialism in order to be reformed into a world where a global scientific elite would dominate. Russell is an intellectual genius and knew exactly what he is saying. And though he includes profound insights into the nature of democracy and education his disdain for the common man and his myopic view of science used to dominate and enforce is crystal clear throughout. Though he falls short of recommending certain Dystopian conclusions his vision for enforcing peace through a scientific Elite is the defining reason for his book. And from an undoubted conscientious objector no doubt he really believed his own perceived altruism as so many do. All the same, they lead us down the path of destruction by offering an antidote that is merely more of the same.

One of the first targets of an emerging Pathocracy is within education and in particular the sciences. Łobaczewski had direct experience of this kind of “scientific” induction which was carried out under state Communism in Poland. Based on specific psychological knowledge only the psychopath could harbour and use, he described the process of personality disintegration which occurred as “transpersonification” dispensed from University professor as new tools of the State. According to Łobaczewski, these professors “… knew in advance that he would fish out amenable individuals, and even how to do it, but the limited numbers disappointed him. The transpersonification process generally took hold only when an individual’s instinctive substratum was marked by pallor or certain deficits. To a lesser extent, it also worked among people who manifested other deficiencies in which the state provoked within them was partially impermanent, being largely the result of psychopathological induction.” ^[14] *

It is the intellectual spellbinders from the Neo-Conservative movement to the Fabian and corporate libertarians of the past and present who act through the MSM as conduits for transpersonification and ponerogenesis. We place highly intelligent men like Russell on the pedestal of laudability, whilst disavowing their toxic legacy which can only encourage the receptivity of authoritarian minds. Such complacency in resisting seductive beliefs dressed up in surrounding wisdom sets up a verdant psychic landscape for future pathogens to flourish and should never be underestimated. Learning the language of psychopathic beliefs is vital, as they will inevitably give rise to state-mandated actions which have been given the veneer of time-honoured respectability.

 

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* Drawn from Łobaczewski’s own experiences as a student in Communist Poland, a detailed explanation of the transpersonification process as seen through the scientific academia of the time. The extract is taken from the introduction in Political Ponerology: The Science of the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes.

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 Pathocracy and “Transpersonification”

An extract from Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes By Andrew M. Łobaczewski, edited by Laura Knight-Jadczyk:

May the reader please imagine a very large hall in an old Gothic university building. Many of us gathered there early in our studies in order to listen to the lectures of outstanding philosophers and scientists. We were herded back there – under threat – the year before graduation in order to listen to the indoctrination lectures which recently had been introduced.

Someone nobody knew appeared behind the lectern and informed us that he would now be the professor. His speech was fluent, but there was nothing scientific about it: he failed to distinguish between scientific and ordinary concepts and treated borderline imaginings as though it were wisdom that could not be doubted. For ninety minutes each week, he flooded us with Naïve, presumptuous paralogistics and a pathological view of human reality. We were treated with contempt and poorly controlled hatred. Since fun-poking could entail dreadful consequences, we had to listen attentively and with the utmost gravity.

The grapevine soon discovered this person’s origins. He had come from a Cracow suburb and attended high school, although no one knew if he had graduated. Anyway, this was the first time he had crossed university portals, and as a professor, at that!

“You can’t convince anyone this way!” we whispered to each other. “It’s actually propaganda directed against themselves.” But after such mind-torture, it took a long time for someone to break the silence.

We studied ourselves, since we felt something strange had taken over our minds and something valuable was leaking away irretrievably. The world of psychological reality and moral values seemed suspended as if in a chilly fog. Our human feeling and student solidarity lost their meaning, as did patriotism and our old established criteria. So we asked each other, “are you going through this too”? Each of us experienced this worry about his own personality and future in his own way. Some of us answered the questions with silence. The depth of these experiences turned out to be different for each individual.

We thus wondered how to protect ourselves from the results of this “indoctrination”. Teresa D. made the first suggestion: Let’s spend a weekend in the mountains. It worked. Pleasant company, a bit of joking, then exhaustion followed by deep sleep in a shelter, and our human personalities returned, albeit with a certain remnant. Time also proved to create a kind of psychological immunity, although not with everyone. Analyzing the psychopathic characteristics of the “professor’s” personality proved another excellent way of protecting one’s own psychological hygiene.

You can just imagine our worry, disappointment, and surprise when some colleagues we knew well suddenly began to change their world view; their thought-patterns furthermore reminded us of the “professor’s” chatter. Their feelings, which had just recently been friendly, became noticeably cooler, although not yet hostile. Benevolent or critical student arguments bounced right of them. They gave the impression of possessing some secret knowledge; we were only their former colleagues, still believing what those “professors of old” had taught us. We had to be careful of what we said to them. These former colleagues soon joined the Party.

Who were they, what social groups did they come from, what kind of students and people were they? How and why did they change so much in less than a year? Why did neither I nor a majority of my fellow students succumb to this phenomenon and process? Many such questions fluttered through our heads then. It was in those times, from those questions, observations and attitudes that the idea was born that this phenomenon could be objectively studied and understood; an idea whose greater meaning crystallized with time.

Many of us newly graduated psychologists participated in the initial observations and reflections, but most crumbled away in the face of material or academic problems. Only a few of that group remained; so the author of this book may be the last of the Mohicans.

It was relatively easy to determine the environments and origins of the people who succumbed to this process, which I then called “transpersonification”. They came from all social groups, including aristocratic and fervently religious families, and caused a break in our student solidarity to the order of some 6 %. The remaining majority suffered varying degrees of personality disintegration which gave rise to individual searching for the values necessary to find ourselves again; the results were varied and sometimes creative.

Even then, we had no doubts as to the pathological nature of this “transpersonification” process, which ran similar but not identical in all cases. The duration of the results of this phenomenon also varied. Some of these people later became zealots. Others later took advantage of various circumstances to withdraw and re-establish their lost links to the society of normal people. They were replaced. The only constant value of the new social system was the magic number of 6 %.

We tried to evaluate the talent level of those colleagues who had succumbed to this personality-transformation process, and reached the conclusion that, on average, it was slightly lower than the average of the student population. Their lesser resistance obviously resided in other bio-psychological features which were most probably qualitatively heterogeneous.

I found that I had to study subjects bordering on psychology and psychopathology in order to answer the questions arising from our observations; scientific neglect in these areas proved an obstacle difficult to overcome. At the same time, someone guided by special knowledge apparently vacated the libraries of anything we could have found on the topic; books were indexed, but not physically present.

Analyzing these occurrences now in hindsight, we could say that the “professor” was dangling bait over our heads, based on specific psychological knowledge. He knew in advance that he would fish out amenable individuals, and even how to do it, but the limited numbers disappointed him. The transpersonification process generally took hold only when an individual’s instinctive substratum was marked by pallor or certain deficits. To a lesser extent, it also worked among people who manifested other deficiencies in which the state provoked within them was partially impermanent, being largely the result of psychopathological induction.

This knowledge about the existence of susceptible individuals and how to work on them will continue being a tool for world conquest as long as it remains the secret of such “professors”. When it becomes skillfully popularized science, it will help nations to develop immunity. But none of us knew this at the time.

Nevertheless, we must admit that in demonstrating the properties of this process to us in such a way as to force us into in-depth experience, the professor helped us understand the nature of the phenomenon in a larger scope than many a true scientific researcher participating in this work in other less direct ways.

~~~

As a youth, I read a book about a naturalist wandering through the Amazon-basin wilderness. At some moment a small animal fell from a tree onto the nape of his neck, clawing his skin painfully and sucking his blood. The biologist cautiously removed it — without anger, since that was its form of feeding — and proceeded to study it carefully. This story stubbornly stuck in my mind during those very difficult times when a vampire fell onto our necks, sucking the blood of an unhappy nation.

Maintaining the attitude of a naturalist, while attempting to track the nature of macro-social phenomenon in spite of all adversity, insures a certain intellectual distance and better psychological hygiene in the face of horrors that might otherwise be difficult to contemplate. Such an attitude also slightly increases the feeling of safety and furnishes an insight that this very method may help find a certain creative solution. This requires strict control of the natural, moralizing reflexes of revulsion, and other painful emotions that the phenomenon provokes in any normal person when it deprives him of his joy of life and personal safety, ruining his own future and that of his nation. Scientific curiosity therefore becomes a loyal ally during such times.

 

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Notes

[1] p. 133; Philosophy of Right, “The State”, By Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1821 Trad. S. W. Dyde, 2008. Cosimo, Google Print, p. 133.
[2] p.57; The Impact of Science on Society by Bertrand Russell, Published by Routledge; New edition edition, 1985 | ISBN-10: 041510906X
[3] Ibid. (p.27)
[4] Ibid. (p.51)
[5] Ibid. (p.27)
[6] Ibid. (p.31)
[7] Ibid. (p.52)
[8] Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932).
[9] op. cit. Russell (p.97)
[10] op. cit. Brzezinski (1997)
[11] op. cit. Russell, (p.29)
[12] Ibid. (p.53)
[13] p. 260; The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, By Bertrand Russell. Published by Routledge January 1950
[14] op. cit. Lobacwezki (p..27)

Puppets & Players VIII: Bilderberg Group

Bilderberg group connections (click on image to enlarge)
‘Imporre un governo pro Bilderberg destabilizzando le banche italiane’ (‘Imposition of pro Bilderberg government destabilizing Italian banks’) By Sandro Bulgarella

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Arguably the most influential of the bunch, the Bilderberg group was founded in 1954 by handful of the usual suspects with directives from the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) (formerly Chatham House ) and the Round Table. These founding members included philosopher, economist, communist Poland’s Charge d’Affaires and European union architect Dr. Joseph H. Retinger, international banker Baron Victor Rothschild, industrialist Laurence Rockefeller, U.S. Ambassador to Moscow and CIA Director General Walter Bedell Smith, and the Netherland’s charismatic Prince Bernhard, husband of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, the richest women in the world at the time. (This was primarily due to her business partnership with Victor Rothschild’s Royal Dutch Shell Oil Co. and substantial stock held in Exxon). ^[1]

(left) A Young Dr. Joseph H. Retinger; (right) Prince Bernhard

As you can see already, the Rothschilds were in on the act right from the start, once again since it is they who have the overall control over the direction and flow of money.

Though the name “Bilderberg” comes from the Dutch hotel that hosted the first meeting in Oosterbeek, Holland, the German-born Prince had far less innocent beginnings as a card-carrying Nazi and member of the SS. Though he redeemed himself in the minds of many by being a stalwart fighter in the Dutch resistance, it seems he was chosen for his mind-set. Bernhard and his Bilderberg baby is credited with being the cradle of the European Community the ultimate goal of which was – surprise, surprise – a one world government and an Anglo-American empire dominating the globe. ^[2]

Prince Bernhard was keen to work for British Intelligence during the Second World War and although initially refused he was offered work at the Allied war planning councils. This may have been a cover story. There is little doubt that America’s CIA had a large part to play in the formation of the Bilderberg meetings. In 1952, the agency allegedly financed a trip for Joseph Retinger to persuade Prince Bernhard to form regular, unofficial meetings which would provide a place to solve the problems of the Atlantic community. Dr. Retinger thrashed out the details with his old buddies David Rockefeller, (CFR)  Averill Harriman (Skull & Bones) and then director of the CIA Bedel Smith:

“… Retinger explained his proposal, Smith said, ‘Why the hell didn’t you come to me in the first place?’ He quickly referred Retinger to C. D. Jackson, who was about to become Eisenhower’s special assistant for psychological warfare. It took a while for Jackson to organize the American wing of the group, but finally, in May 1954, the first conference was held in the Hotel de Bilderberg, a secluded hotel in Holland, near the German border. Prince Bernhard, and Retinger drew up the list of invitees from the European countries, while Jackson controlled the American list.” ^[3]

As with most of the above groupings so far, a cross-fertilization of discussion takes place at regular meetings where geo-political policy is planned for the coming years. All the representatives from the usual spheres are present; the only difference being it has a distinctly European flavour, with an emphasis on Euro-banking. NATO representatives, “The Structural Adjustment Team,” of the IMF, World Bank and WTO, the Rothschilds and the Dutch Royal family’s Queen Beatrix are very regular members. Other attendees have included Bill Clinton, former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel and the Goldman Sachs and Federal Reserve cartel as represented by Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers and Tim Geithner. European Central Bank’s Jean-Claude Trichet, and Bank of England’s Mervyn King swap vol-au-vents with Lloyd Blankfein, George Soros, Donald Rumsfeld and Rupert Murdoch as just some of the luminaries who grace the Bilderberg meetings with their divine presence.

According Investigative journalist Daniel Estulin’s research, Steering Committee rules ensure that:

“… the invited guests must come alone; no wives, girlfriends, husbands or boyfriends. Personal assistants (meaning security, bodyguards, CIA or other secret service protectors) cannot attend the conference and must eat in a separate hall. The guests are explicitly forbidden from giving interviews to journalists or divulge anything that goes on in meetings.”

Estulin also states:

“Host governments provide overall security to keep away outsiders. One-third of attendees are political figures. The others are from industry, finance, academia, labor and communications. Meeting procedure is by Chatham House Rules letting attendees freely express their views in a relaxed atmosphere knowing nothing said will be quoted or revealed to the public. Meetings “are always frank, but do not always conclude with consensus.” ^[4]

There are numerous examples of Bilderberg influence greasing the wheels of progress for those they consider to be potentially useful in the achievement of their aims. Tony Blair was a Bilderberg attendee before becoming UK Prime Minister. Bill Clinton attended a meeting 1991 and made sure the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect when he became President shortly after. NAFTA was a Bilderberg priority and Clinton, Establishment groomed, was considered a good choice to further their agenda. There are many others. Funding for the events is never a problem since several member organisations and companies willingly donate each year. Two of these regular contributors are Goldman Sacs and BP who financially assist the “charity” although since 2008 it has omitted the donator’s names from its accounts. ^[5]

Estulin is arguably the world’s expert on what is discussed at each year’s Bilderberg meetings. After 14 years of research based on what he calls “… the ‘conscientious objectors’ from inside, as well as outside the Group’s membership,” he has managed to garner a comprehensive picture of the perceptions and plans behind the Bilderberg Group and their aspirations for the world. The True Story of the Bilderberg Group shows convincingly that the suspicions of so-called “conspiracy theorists” are generally correct. Though some will find his breathless: “I’m-about-to bust-their-show-wide open-and-they’re-after-me” pitch a little too much to stomach the author has worked hard to prise open the inner workings of the group and should be commended for that, if not for the English text translations.

Estulin is convinced that the Bilderberg Group and its affiliated nodes are “a shadow world government” who are threatening to take away our right to direct our own destinies by creating “a disturbing reality” which is very far from the public interest. He writes: “Imagine a private club where presidents, prime ministers, international bankers and generals rub shoulders, where gracious royal chaperones ensure everyone gets along, and where the people running the wars, markets, and Europe (and America) say what they never dare say in public.” ^[6]

It seems at the very start of the Bilderberger project the idea was to build an “Aristocracy of purpose” between Europe and the United States in policy, economics, and strategy.” NATO was to ensure “perpetual war” and “nuclear blackmail” to keep the required fear quota at a premium and for geo-strategic bargaining chips. In David Rockefeller’s Memoirs (2002) he refers to both of these themes, stating: “Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.” ^[7] You can’t fault Mr. Rockefeller for candour when it suits him. Yet, clearly, it much more than merely “a more integrated global political and economic structure” and “one world” as if you imply this is a fuss about nothing and quite natural and benign.

This rare glimpse of “honesty” doesn’t begin to address the institutional secrecy of which he is so “proud”. While these imperatives are set to continue to interfere in global decision-making it is because the Bilderbergers are very aware of both human psychology and the repercussions of the information Age that they will continue to work in secret. They know when information begins to leak progressively into the mass mind dots can be connected and a thinking population is the last thing they want.

In Estulin’s 2007 report – perhaps one of the most pertinent – he offers some possible trends on the energy scene and in particular oil, a resource that is deep interest to the Bilderbergers. He states: “From now on, the only sure thing is that supply will continue to diminish and prices will continue to increase. In these conditions world conflict is a physical certainty. End of oil means end of world’s financial system, something which has already been acknowledged by Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, two full time members of the Bilderberger inner circle.”

Bilderberg Group leaked attendee list, Ottawa 2009. (click on the image to enlarge)

Whether the “end of oil” is a realistic prediction any time soon, the accessibility of oil reserves is certainly a question which is being asked in the meetings with increasing frequency. Estulin continues: “Goldman Sachs oil report, (another full time member of the Bilderberger elite) published on March 30, 2005 increased the oil price range for the year 2005-6 from $55-$80 per barrel to $55-$105. During the 2006 meeting, Bilderbergers have confirmed that their short range price estimate for oil for the 2007-08 continues to hover around US $105-150/barrel. … No wonder Jose Barroso, President of the European Commission, announced several months ago during the unveiling of the new European energy policy that the time has come for a ‘post-industrial age.’”

Which brings us to the main thrust of Bilderberger designs:

“ To bring the world into the post-industrial age, you first need to destroy the world’s economic base and create another Great Depression. When people are poor, they don’t spend money, they don’t travel, and they don’t consume.” ^[8]

While the “end of oil” and by implication the concept of “Peak oil” may be another instrument from the propaganda tool-kit, the war for resources from water to mineral deposits, oil to foodstuffs will play a large role in the coming conflicts. The “Order out of Chaos” theme can be seen over and over where society is broken and rebuilt, only to be broken and rebuilt again according to how much and how many can be exploited. Whether it is the First or Second World Wars, the balkanization of Iraq, the creation of Kosovo as a narco-state – all have this strategy in common.

Supreme confidence in the Olympian ideals is drawn from the probable high incidence of psychopathy within their ranks. If we strip away the rationalisations and ideological nonsense all that remains is a framework by which they can exert unlimited power and control.

Estulin’s discoveries regarding their objectives are paraphrased thusly:

• ““one international identity with one set of universal values;”
• centralized management and direction of world populations by controlling world public opinion;
• a New World Order with no middle class, only “rulers and servants (serfs),” and no democracy;
• “a zero-growth society” without prosperity or progress, only greater wealth and power for the rulers;
• The creation of “Union blocks” which will eventually be interlocked into one entity.
• using the UN as a de facto world government imposing a UN tax on “world citizens;”
• expanding NAFTA and WTO globally;
• the world militarization of NATO;
• imposing a universal legal system; and manufactured crises and perpetual wars;
• absolute control of education to program the public mind and train those chosen for various roles;
• “centralized control of all foreign and domestic policies;” one size fits all globally;
• A global “welfare state where obedient slaves will be rewarded and non-conformists targeted for extermination.”

What is more, the vast influence that is brought to bear on global power-brokers and their goals is entirely illegal. Under United States law, the Logan Act states that it is against the law for federal officials to attend secret meetings with private citizens in order to develop public policies. (The same principle applies in the UK). Therefore, when US officials have attended Bilderberg meetings, they were breaking federal laws of the United States. As online journalist Jerry mazza reminds us at the 2005 Bilderberg meeting : “… the American government was well represented in Rottach-Egern by Alan Hubbard, assistant to the president for economic policy and director of the National Economic Council; William Luti, Deputy Under Secretary of Defence; James Wolfensohn, outgoing president of the World Bank and Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of state, an ideologue of the Iraq War and incoming president of the World Bank.” ^[9]

Bilderberg 2013 Conference took place at the Grove Hotel, Watford, UK

The corporate media still refuses to cover the Bilderberg meetings except for the occasional piece by more independent journalists such as the Guardian’s Charlie Skelton. Generally, the meetings remain unknown by the majority. Like the CFR’s total control over the American media CNN, CBS, ABC and other media giants continue to control and filter everything that passes as news to the general public. Many Bilderberg attendees are journalists and newspaper editors who push the required propaganda while agreeing to keep silent about the groups meetings.

The closely aligned Rockefeller family has managed to rapidly exert incredible power over socio-cultural, economic and political discourse in both the US and the UK. It is worthwhile reminding ourselves once again of another example of David Rockefeller’s soul-bearing in this context where he expresses his gratitude to: “… the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years.” And here we have the truth laid bare, when he states: …It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated now and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto determination practiced in past centuries.” ^[10]  It is the self-proclaimed status as demi-God that characterizes the present breed of psychopaths convinced of their own special “auto-determination” outside the destiny of normal peoples. Bilderbergers, Trilateralists and CFR members want an all-encompassing and preferably eternal monopoly over every aspect of our lives – that is the endgame.

The UN is busy doing its level best to provide them with that mechanism under a document called “Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF)” policy paper No. 24. This may as well have been written by the hand of Rockefeller himself for in this little-known paper we can read how “Governance solutions for reasserting the state monopoly on the use of force” and a helpful, altruistic listing of the options available to governments to re-establish “monopolies of force” against their own people:

• (Re-) establish state monopoly – Ownership of WMDs – Safety Inspectorates
• Prohibit business activity – Justice and Execution – Deadly Force?
• Regulate/limit activities – Private defence/security services, Control of financial transfers – Export controls – Transport and infrastructure safety – Environmental impact

What is more: “The legitimate monopoly of force should not be limited to the nation-state but should be based on the local, national, regional and the global levels.” And further: “At the global level no monopoly of violence exists. The UN Security Council already has a monopoly power to authorize the use of force at the global level, although the UN was never given the necessary means to exercise this authority, such as the capacity to implement sanctions, a police force and armed forces… This deficiency in global governance acts as a bottleneck and a barrier to the creation of the democratically legitimized monopoly of violence that is globally required.” ^[11]

See also: The Dark Green series exploring “Eco-Fascism” and “Eco-Intelpro”.

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Notes

[1] Queen Juliana: The Story Of The Richest Woman In The World, by William Hoffman, Published by Angus and Robertson, 1980 | ASIN: B000UI94JK.
[2] See: H. R. H. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands: an authorized biography by Alden Hatch. Published by Harrap, 1962.
[3] The Chairman: John J. McCloy – The Making of the American Establishment, by Kai Bird, Published by Simon & Schuster, 1992.
[4] op. cit. Estulin (p.25)
[5] Applications listed in the Charity Commission annual records: http://www.apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Accounts/Ends06/0000272706_AC_20080331_E_C.PDF
[6] Ibid.
[7] Memoirs By David Rockefeller, Published by Random House, 1st Trade Ed edition, 2002. ISBN-10: 0679405887 (p. 490).
[8] ‘Bilderberg 2007: Welcome to the Lunatic Fringe’, by Daniel Estulin DanielEstulin.com, May 21, 2007.
[9] ‘I’ll have the Bilderberger, well done!’, by Jerry Mazza Online Journal, Nov 9, 2007.
[10] Quoted from Bilderberg/Trilateral meeting in 1991 in Baden Baden, Germany. (See Daniel Estulin.)
[11] Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) Occasional Paper – № 24 ‘The Privatisation of Security in Failing States – A Quantitative Assessment’ By Željko Branović, Geneva, April 2011.

 

The Z Factor XV: Inglorious Human Rights

“Ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized,…”

– UNICEF, Children in Israeli Military Detention: Observations and Recommendations (2013).

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Israeli West Bank Barrier otherwise known as “The Wall”| Photo from the cover of UNICEF’s 2013 report Children in Israeli Military Detention: Observations and Recommendations (2013).

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Jewish cultivation of victimhood and the mythologising of certain events in history have been used to affect a form of thought control that confers a mighty buffer to criticism. This serves to prop up a lasting deference and preferential treatment at both the socio-cultural and political level. But what of vengeance? Does the atrocious human rights record by Israelis have anything to do with Amalekian revenge and their association with Arabs as the New Nazis in waiting, should they be given power and equal rights?

Inglorius Barsterds, a 2009 film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino goes some way in explaining the perceptions of some of in the global Jewish community regarding the ideas of revenge and victimisation. Producer Lawrence Bender, after reading the first draft of the film script exclaimed: “… as a member of the Jewish tribe, I thank you, … because this movie is a fucking Jewish wet dream.” The film’s executive producers Harvey and Bob Weinstein, also reportedly “… enjoyed the film’s theme of Jewish revenge.” ^[1]

I  bet they did.

The film is set in Nazi-occupied France during World War II and follows the exploits of a group of Jewish-American soldiers known as ‘The Basterds’ as they go about inflicting various forms of Tarantino-esque revenge upon the Third Reich while going under cover to assassinate high-ranking Nazi officials. It is a nicely crafted film, musically rich, inventive, and visually powerful; chock full of comic-book humour and film culture references. As we’ve come to expect from Tarantino, it is also gratuitously violent and patently immoral.

Represented as cathartic “kosher porn” according to one of the Jewish actors who had a leading role, the film quite literally exorcised the Jewish archetypes of passivity and victimhood into an unbridled blood lust of revenge. While Tarantino revels in his own pornographic love of violence in a war-time setting, it perversely delves into some very dark arenas of Jewish lore with somewhat disturbing results. In attempting to come up triumphant by dramatically reversing Jewish guilt, passivity and victimhood, it merely creates their nemeses.  Nevertheless, Jewish influence in the entertainment industry and our Official Culture being as it is, we can’t be too surprise that it was deemed a resounding success by most critics and audiences.

However, a few were not convinced including author and critic Daniel Mendelsohn who found the portrayal of Jewish-American soldiers mimicking German atrocities done to European Jews disturbing and went to the heart of the matter  He when he stated: “ … Tarantino indulges this taste for vengeful violence by—well, by turning Jews into Nazis.” ^[2] The Jewish press, summed up Tarantino’s style of film making as lacking any kind of depth or subtle understanding and when faced with Nazis and Jewish retribution it was inevitable that audiences would be served with an: “… alternative to reality, a magical and Manichean world where we needn’t worry about the complexities of morality, where violence solves everything, and where the Third Reich is always just a film reel and a lit match away from cartoonish defeat.” ^[3] To which Tarantino would probably say, is exactly the point.

It’s only “entertainment” right?

Promotional Posters for Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds (2009)

The fact that the film not only went down a storm in Israel only serves to reinforce the idea that most Israelis and Jewish-Americans seem to be happy with the fact that Jews exacting revenge by using the same methods of destruction is without any moral ambiguity: “The ‘chapters’ of the movie showing Nazi-scalping, baseball bat-wielding Jews instilling fear into the hearts of the German army (and Hitler), as well as the bloodbath finale where Nazi elite are all burned alive, elicited cheers and hearty rounds of applause, while the man himself won a standing ovation as the end credits rolled.” ^[4]Such gleeful bloodletting and burning alive of Nazis is comfortably explained away by the right of victimhood while simultaneously fuelling Nazi-like behaviour that is not only deemed just and appropriate, but natural.  It was indeed a “wet dream” for Jewish movie moguls trumped only by Tarantino’s blatant and cynical pandering to the same, making sure he’ll always be welcome in Hollywood for a long time to come.

***

What makes this such an interesting mirror for the Israeli-Arab conflict is the current and appalling human rights abuse we see inflicted on Palestinians. It makes this “Jewish Fantasy” a far more disturbing and topical piece of propaganda than it first appears.

So, let’s have a look at some cold hard reality:

• From September 29, 2000 to the present (March 2012) 125 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians and 1,471 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis ^[5]
• 1,092 Israelis and at least 6,537 Palestinians have been killed; ^[6]
• 9,226 Israelis and 45,041 Palestinians have been injured; ^[7]
• 0 Israelis are being held prisoner by Palestinians, while 5,300 Palestinians are currently imprisoned by Israel; ^[8]
• no Israeli homes have been demolished by Palestinians and 24,813 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel since 1967. ^[9]
• The Israeli unemployment rate is 6.4 per cent, while the Palestinian unemployment in the West Bank is 16.5 per cent and 40 per cent in Gaza; ^[10]
• Israel currently has 236 Jewish-only settlements and ‘outposts’ built on confiscated Palestinian land. ^[11]

Persistent violations of the Geneva Convention underlie these statistics with the Israeli military as the primary source for these atrocities. moreover, the brunt of these  attacks have been borne by Palestinian children. It is not hard to see that much of these human rights violations and deaths are sourced from beliefs that see Palestinians as not only unwelcome but less than human, a belief that has been instilled into socio-political consciousness of Israel for a very long time.

In 1973 Rabbi A. Avidan gave some religious “inspiration” for Israeli soldiers and subsequently published by the Central Regional Command of the Israeli Army. Although no other Rabbi or military personnel criticised the memo it was eventually taken out of circulation presumably due to conflict in the chains of command. It stated: “When our forces come across civilians during a war or in hot pursuit or in a raid, so long as there is no certainty that these civilians are incapable of harming our forces, then according to the Halakhah [Jewish religious law] they may and even should be killed … In a war, when our forces storm the enemy, they are allowed and even enjoined by the Halakhah to kill even good civilians, that is, civilians who are ostensibly good.” ^[12]

This “guidance” for the military feeds the parallels with Nazism and ethnic cleansing in general and brings the history of Biblical Jewish conquest into focus but also explains some of the brutality currently experienced by Palestinians, most notably children. A standard mantra for abrogating responsibility and to cover a probable shoot-to-kill policy is the following statement when the Israeli military killed yet another 3 year-old girl in her home: “A spokesman for the Israeli military justified the girl’s killing, saying that soldiers thought that Palestinian resistance fighters were somewhere in the neighborhood.” ^[13] This has remarkable mileage when you’d like to see the demise of a population. So, let’s review just a few of the many indiscriminate attacks against Palestinians under occupation.

In 2002, Palestinian Mohammad Abu Kweik, 8, his two sisters, Bara, 14, Aziza, 16, and their mother Bushra Kweik, 38, were killed when their Mitsubishi pick-up truck they were travelling in was bombed by Israeli forces in the West Bank Palestinian ghetto of Ramallah, she had picked them up from school. A car following the family was also hit killing two Palestinian children aged 4 and 16. Apparently, they were attempting to assassinate a man who was not in either vehicle. ^[14]

In July of the same year 11-year-old Khalil Ibrahim, was shot in the head in Rafah a part of the Gaza ghetto as he in a playground with his friends, two of whom were wounded. “The children were gunned down by Israeli soldiers from a Jewish guard tower as they were playing.” ^[15] In May 7, 2001 Israelis shelled homes in the Khan Yunis Refugee Camp and fired large-calibre machine guns which killed 4-month-old Iman Hijo, “shrapnel tearing a hole into the infant’s back.” The attack also wounded 24 civilians, he girl’s 19-year-old mother, as well as three brothers and sisters, were among the wounded, “including 18-month-old Mahmoud Hijo, [who] was in intensive care at Nasser Hospital with shrapnel wounds, doctors said.” … “Israeli troops also fired on the refugee camp’s Khaldieh School in the West Bank, killing a Palestinian school-teacher.” ^[16]

Indiscriminate airstrikes (not Hezbollah’s or Hama’s shielding as claimed by Israeli officials) and violations of human rights were most evident in Gaza offensives by Israeli army between 2006 – 2009 causing a large spike in civilian casualties, the most brutal of which was the massacre of Palestinian women and children in Israel’s “Cloud of Autumn.” ^[17]  When you grow up with state-mandated violence, hatred and poverty it is little wonder so-called resistance groups like Hamas and Hezbollah have formed. What needs to be borne in mind is that these are people who simply want to lead normal, ordinary lives with some dignity and respect for even the most basic human rights. According to American Educational Trust: “The majority of these [Palestinian] children were killed and injured while going about normal daily activities, such as going to school, playing, shopping, or simply being in their homes. Sixty-four per cent of children killed during the first six months of 2003 died as a result of Israeli air and ground attacks, or from indiscriminate fire from Israeli soldiers.” ^[18]

One report from Hebron describes the case of two year-old Burhan Sidir who was blown apart by Israeli mortar fire. His legs and head were found in the street and had to be retrieved by relatives. Can we even imagine the shock, grief and horror at having to pick up your son’s head from the street and carry on with your life?

Just think about that for moment when we become irritated that we’ve missed the last episode of Game of Thrones. Palestinians live with this kind oppression every day of their lives. everyone knows someone who has lost a son, daughter, mother, father, sister or brother.

Total disregard for Palestinian lives has given Israel numerous warnings for war crimes. ^[19]Palestinian inter-factional fighting between particularly between Hamas and Fatah on top of a fluctuating humanitarian crisis creates intolerable conditions for the young and old alike in the occupied territories. Worse still, is the spectre of targeted killings of children and teenagers by the Israeli military. Though it may not be official policy it appears to be a reality nonetheless, with higher level officers sometimes giving the order to shoot commensurate with reflexive actions of Israeli soldiers as whole which belie “a culture of impunity.” Many recent reports confirm what Palestinians have been living with for decades, namely that a Palestinian life – even a child – means nothing for many in the Israeli military and that an apparent unlawful death is like a fine for a parking ticket at around 100 or 200 shekel [$US22 or $US44]. Mandating a collective punishment on the Palestinian people is drawn from an ever-present emotion of revenge as Israeli soldiers explain:

In May 2004, Israeli forces launched an operation in southern Gaza that resulted in the expulsion of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, and the deaths of 50 Palestinians, up to half of whom were civilians Rafi, an officer in an elite unit connected to the air force, told how the entire mission was about revenge. “The commanders said kill as many people as possible,’ he said. Orders were also given to kill anyone seen on the rooftops of homes, irrespective of what they were doing or whether they were armed. Among the casualties were Asma Moghayyer, aged 16, and her brother Ahmed, 13, who were shot as they were collecting clothes from their rooftop washing line. Rafi described how his impression of the operation was ‘chaos’ and the ‘indiscriminate use of force’. ‘Gaza was considered a playground for sharpshooters,’ he said. ^[20]

The explanations that issue forth to justify attacks by Israeli Defence Forces hold less and less validity when such an unspoken policy exists as well as the numerous occasions of attacks in the refugee camps. When teenagers and children have been killed the Israeli military issues standard denials that anything untoward has taken place. How tragically ironic it surely is to see another kind holocaust going on in the occupied territories.

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“(The Palestinians) would be crushed like grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls.”

— Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988

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The baby in the photo (right) was killed by a bullet to the head during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. He is of one of thousands over the years, yet Israel is still considered a democracy.

What if it were your little niece or nephew?

Your baby son or daughter?
Asma, 16, and her younger brother Ahmed, are typical examples of more “collateral.” They were both shot through the head by an Israeli soldier: “as they fed their pigeons and collected the laundry from the roof of their home in Rafah refugee camp.” Yet, just hours after the deaths Israeli officials were busy blaming Palestinians suggesting that the children had been planting bombs or killed accidentally by other external factors despite clear evidence to the contrary:

Dr Ahmed Abu Nkaria, who pronounced the Mughayar children dead, insists on proving the manner of their killing. He pulls Asma’s body from the mortuary’s refrigeration unit and fumbles through the teenager’s hair to reveal the hole where the bullet entered above one ear and ripped a much larger wound as it emerged above the other.

“The Israeli propaganda is that they were killed in a work accident. These are the kinds of lies they tell all the time,” he says. “They say all the dead are fighters. They say they do not deliberately kill children, but about a quarter of the dead from the first day of shooting are children. The evidence is here in the morgue. Does this girl look as if she was blown up by a bomb?” […]

Ahmed lies with 14 other bodies … He was a small boy who could not easily be mistaken for a man.

Dr Nkaria rolls the child over to show a tiny round hole in his forehead, just above his fringe. There is a much larger hole at the back of the head where the bullet came out. Neither Asma nor Ahmed show signs of any other injuries, particularly of the kind that might be expected from a blast, such as shrapnel spread across the body, burns, or mutilation.

“This is what the Israelis claim is a ‘work accident’,” Dr Nkaria says ….”This is Ibrahim Alqun. He is 14 years old. He was shot in the back of the head. The bullet came out of his right eye,” he says. The child’s face is badly mutilated by the wound. The bodies of the children continued to pile up in the mortuary yesterday.

Saber Abu Libda, 13, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers after he left his home in Tel al-Sultan in the morning to find water for his family. Dr Nkaria’s finger probes a tiny hole in the small child’s back which masks the devastation done to his heart as the bullet shot through it. “No one can say this child was a fighter. Look at the size of him and look where they shoot him – in the back, not coming to attack someone,” the doctor says. ^[21]

A Palestinian rescue worker carries the body of a child from the al-Dallu family into the hospital in Gaza City on November 18, 2012, after seven members of theal-Dallu family, including four children, were among nine people killed when an Israeli missile struck a family home in Gaza City, the health ministry said. AFP PHOTO/MOHAMMED ABED

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The cases of children and teenagers being shot in cold-blood are numerous and amount to daily executions. A climate of fear is a constant part of Palestinian lives in the occupied territories and refugee camps.

Take the 2004 case of 13 year-old Iman walking to school and who accidentally found herself in Israeli army’s “forbidden zone” at the bottom of her street. It was broad daylight; she was carrying her satchel and wearing her school uniform. Only a few minutes later “the short, slight child was pumped with bullets. Doctors counted at least 17 wounds and said much of her head was destroyed.”

Standard denials followed from the military unit responsible for killing the school-girl. This was followed by an initial army investigation that cleared the commander of the unit of any wrong doing, despite his own soldiers accusing him of “… giving the order to shoot knowing the target was a young girl, and of then emptying the clip of his automatic rifle into her.”

Some Palestinian witnesses gave detailed descriptions as to what happened to Iman. Basim Breaka saw the killing from his living room: “Some soldiers were lying on the ground and shooting very heavily toward her,” …Then one of the soldiers walked to her and emptied his clip into her. For sure, she died on the second or third bullet. I could see her lying on the ground, not moving. I can’t imagine why that soldier wanted to shoot her after she was dead.” ^[22]

A prosecution case was brought by the family of Iman Darweesh al-Hams due to the lightness of the charges brought against the commander who was “reprimanded in custody.” Not one month later a tape surfaced showing exactly what happened to Iman and who was responsible. The whole Israeli unit continued firing at Iman well after she had been identified as a “frightened child,” and illustrated that both the unit and the commander were culpable. In the recorded exchanges someone in the operations room asks:

Iman Al Hams was a 13-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israel Defense Forces fire near a military observation post in a “no-man’s” zone near the Philadelphi Route on 5 October 2004, in Rafah in the Gaza Strip. (wikipedia)

“Are we talking about a girl under the age of 10?” The observation post, housed in a watchtower, replies: “It’s a little girl. She’s running defensively eastwards, a girl of about 10. She’s behind the embankment, scared to death.”

Not until four minutes later was it reported that the girl had been hit and had fallen. The observation post reports: “Receive, I think that one of the positions took her out.” … Operations room: “What, she fell?” Observation post: “She’s not moving right now.”

The tape records the commander as telling his men, after firing at the girl with an automatic weapon and declaring he has “confirmed” the killing: “Anyone who’s mobile, moving in the zone, even if it’s a three-year-old, needs to be killed.”

The soldiers said that the commander had fired two shots at the girl from close range as she lay on the ground before withdrawing, turning and “emptying his magazine” by firing some 10 bullets at her body. This account is broadly confirmed by the terms of the indictment issued this week. ^[23]

The Commander, “Captain R.” was subsequently acquitted and within a few months promoted to the rank of major. To further compound the misery of the al-Hams family the former Captain received “82,000 New Israel Shekels (roughly $17,000) to compensate him for his defense expenditures and time spent in jail.” ^{[24] [25]}

The family’s lawyer summed their feelings in a statement to the press believing that “… the commanders and the soldiers who fired should all have been charged with murder.”

A homeless Palestinian girl stands in a burnt classroom at a United Nations school after it was hit by Israeli shelling on January 17, 2009 in Beit Lahia. | Photo: UNRWA photographer Iyad El-Baba/Electronic Intifada

In the summer of the same year Israeli soldiers killed a 13-year-old Palestinian girl as she was playing football near her home in southern Gaza. “Medics said teenager Sara Mahmud Zurub was shot in the chest in an outlying neighbourhood of the city of Khan Yunis on Monday and died on the way to the hospital.” The report also lists a separate incident where soldiers “soldiers shot dead a 50-year-old Palestinian woman in the south of the territory. The army claimed it had fired towards a site where mortars were allegedly fired from.” ^[26]

4 year-old Raghda al-Assar died in September 2004 of wounds she sustained two weeks before. She had been shot in the head by Israeli soldiers while sitting at her desk at elementary UNRWA school, in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis: “The shooting began when Palestinian militants who oppose the Israeli occupation of Gaza launched a series of missiles at a nearby Jewish settlement. The UN says that the soldiers shot indiscriminately into the crowded refugee camp for more than half an hour.” “Headmistress Um Khalid says the incident has caused a lot of fear among her pupils, with some crying uncontrollably and others too afraid to come to school.” ^[27]

On the same day in Rafah, a 16-year-old Palestinian Mahmud Said Qishta, was playing outside his home in Rafah “when he inadvertently stepped on an explosive device left behind by the Israeli army.” He later died of his wounds. ^[28] Nor is this “careless” use of explosives exceptional. On Nov. 22, 2001, five Palestinian school boys ages 7 to 14 were on their way to classes in the Gaza strip when they were killed by a bomb planted by Israeli forces Palestinian children bid farewell to their deceased playmates, killed by a booby-trapped bomb planted on the path to their school by the child-killing Israeli army. ^[29]

While in March of 2008 in the Jabalya refugee camp 12 year-old Sami Abu Salem was killed by an Israeli sniper bullet. “An ambulance tried to reach her but Israeli soldiers opened fire at it, wounding a paramedic and causing the tires to lose air, and so she bled to death three hours after she was wounded.” ^[30]

Palestinian doctors and paramedics have been considered as targets by the Israeli military when attempting to rescue victims. In March 4, 2001 57-year-old Dr. Khalil Suleiman was killed while Israeli military opened fire on the ambulance attending to victims in the Jenin refugee camp. Three paramedics including a 9-year-old girl were wounded. ^[31] Tragedies and atrocities frequently occur at check-point crossing reminiscent of Nazi Germany: “An ill, one-year-old Palestinian baby died in his father’s arms on Sunday after the pair passed several hours under baking sun waiting to cross from the Gaza Strip into Israel, medics said. Ibrahim Abu Nahel and his father arrived at the Erez border crossing between Gaza and Israel at 8 a.m. on Sunday.” ^[32]

In 2008 Ramallah, an Israeli soldier received only 28 days confinement for causing the death of a Palestinian pre-term baby at a Hawara checkpoint near Nablus city. Israeli troops at the checkpoint “… prevented him and his pregnant wife from crossing the point in order to go to hospital despite the fact that his wife was bleeding. “… as they were waiting, his wife gave birth to their son Zaid who lived just for a few moments and after one hour and a half Palestinian paramedics arrived at the checkpoint and completed the birth process to save the life of his wife.” ^[33]

Palestinian girls traumatised at funerals of relatives and siblings | AFP

Harassment by Israeli border guards and airport security officials also takes place in the jolly land of Palestinian occupied rule. Israeli officials have been strip-searching girls as young as seven inflicting humiliation and indignity upon Muslims and Christians under the amused gaze of Israeli armed guards. Like so much Israeli unofficial policy it serves as another tool of psychological torture that pressures Palestinians not to return to Palestine.

One example comes from Oregon attorney Hala Gores from a Palestinian Christian family in Nazareth who had to leave due to Israeli discrimination and was strip-searched at just 10 years-old: “Gores has never returned to her family’s ancestral home in Nazareth, she says, in part because she does not want to repeat the experience of having no control over what is done to her. The Israeli policy appears to target only Christian and Muslim children, and is equally applied to those with Israeli citizenship and citizenship in other countries, including native-born Americans. There are no reports of Jewish children being strip-searched.” ^[34]

Perhaps one of the worst years for children murdered in the operations mounted by the Israeli military in Gaza was from June – September, 2006. Figures from the Palestinian Centre of Human Rights (PCHR) ^[35] put’s the whole tragic mess into perspective:

• Bara Nasser Habib, 3 (hit by shrapnel to the head and body, Gaza City, 26 July)
• Shahed Saleh Al-Sheikh Eid, 3 days old (bled to death after airstrike, Al-Shouka, 4 August)
• Rajaa Salam Abu Shaban, 3 (died of fractured skull in air raid, Gaza City, 9 August) 
• Jihad Selmi Abu Snaima, 14 (killed by a shell, Al-Shoukha, 10 september)
• Khaled Nidal Wahba, 15 months (died of wounds from an airstrike, 10 July)
• Rawan Farid Hajjaj, 6 (killed with his mother and sister in an airstrike, Gaza City, 8 July)
• Anwar Ismail Abdul Ghani Atallah, 12 (shot in the head, Erez, 5 July) 
• Shadi Yousef Omar 16 (shot in the chest by IDF, Beit Lahya, 7 July)
• Mahfouth Farid Nuseir, 16 (killed by missile while playing football, Beit Hanoun, 11 July)
• Ahmad Ghalib Abu Amsha, 16, (killed by missile while playing football, Beit Hanoun, 11 July)
• Ahmad Fathi Shabat, 16 (killed by missile while playing football, Beit Hanoun, 11 July)
• Walid Mahmoud El-Zeinati, 12 (died of shrapnel wounds, Gaza City, 11 July)
• Basma Salmeya, 16 (killed in Israeli airstrike, 12 July, Jabalia)
• Somaya Salmeya, 17 (killed in Israeli airstrike, 12 July, Jabalia)
• Aya Salmeya, 9 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)
• Yehya Salmeya, 10 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)
• Nasr Salmeya, 7 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)
• Huda Salmeya, 13 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)
• Eman Salmeya, 12 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)
• Raji Omar Jaber Daifallah, 16 (died of shrapnel wounds from missile, Gaza City, 13 July)
• Ali Kamel Al-Najjar, 16 (killed by Israeli tank shell, Al-Maghazi refugee camp, 19 July)
• Ahmed Ali Al-Na’ami, 16 (killed by Israeli tank shell, Al-Maghazi refugee camp, 19 July)
• Ahmed Rawhi Abu Abdu, 14 (killed by drone missile, Al Nusairat refugee camp, 19 July)
• Mohammed ‘awad Muhra, 14 (killed by Israeli bullet to the chest, Al-Maghazi refugee camp, 20 July)
• Fadwa Faisal Al-‘arrouqi, 13 (died from shrapnel wounds, Gaza City, 20 July)
• Saleh Ibrahim Nasser, 14 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 24 July)
• Khitam Mohammed Rebhi Tayeh, 11 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 24 July)
• Ashraf ‘abdullah ‘awad Abu Zaher, 14 (shot in the back, Khan Younis, 25 July)
• Nahid Mohammed Fawzi Al-Shanbari, 16 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 31 July)
• ‘aaref Ahmed Abu Qaida, 14 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 1 August)
• Anis Salem Abu Awad, 12 (killed by airstike, Al-Shouka, 2 August)
• Ammar Rajaa Al-Natour, 17 (killed by drone missile, Al Shouka, 5 August)
• Kifah Rajaa Al-Natour, 15 (killed by drone missile, Al Shouka, 5 August)
• Ibrahim Suleiman Al-Rumailat, 13 (killed by drone missile, Al Shouka, 5 August)
• Ahmed Yousef ‘abed ‘Aashour, 13 (killed by missile fire, Beit Hanoun, 14 August)
• Mohammed ‘Abdullah Al-Ziq, 14 (killed by drone missile, Gaza City, 29 August)
• Nidal ‘abdul ‘aziz Al-Dahdouh, 14 (killed by rifle fire, Gaza City, 30 August)
• Jihad Selmi Abu Snaima, 14 (killed by artillery fire, Rafah, 10 September

Not content in assassinating Palestinian youth the Zionist state imprisons children they do not kill. Human rights violations and forced labour form the basis of life inside prisons. From the authors of Stolen Youth: The Politics of Israel’s Detention of Palestinian Children prison is not only a central feature of Palestinian life, but part of Israel’s system of control “permeating every aspect of Palestinian life. It is a system backed by legal, political, economic, cultural and psychological structures, and designed to keep more than 3 million people under submission,” 600,000 Palestinians of whom have spent time in prison since 1967. ^[36]

The expertly researched book records the daily horrors of Palestinian children who are arrested: “… at checkpoints, on the street, or at their homes by heavily armed Israeli soldiers in the middle of the night. The soldiers take them to detention centres in Israeli settlements or military camps… the children are interrogated. This almost always involves some form of torture or abuse, including sleep and food deprivation, threatening language, beatings with heavy batons, being punched and kicked, as well as being tied in painful and contorted positions for long periods of time …” ^[37]

Astonishingly, a police state applies to Palestinians who are under military law whilst Israelis enjoy the privileges of their own civil law. Interrogation is then followed by a military court or virtual Star Chamber that decides the fate of children designed to try adults. This is due to “The [Israeli military] court’s definition of a child [being] a person who hasn’t yet reached the age of 14. A child between 14 and 16 ‘is a big child’ and if more than 16, an adult.” ^[38] Despite the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, defining a “child” as any individual under the age of eighteen years, for the Israeli military court system, this can be discarded according to their own whims and preferences. This means that a child of fourteen who has thrown stones at armoured tanks or soldiers equipped with riot gear and weapons with live rounds can be plucked from his bed at night, face a pseudo-military court, be tortured and abused and while absent for his or her trial, face many months in jail.

Children a Rahfar border refugee camp – “the largest concentration camp”

Children often find themselves signing confession forms which are either entirely fictitious or distorted. In effect, these children are duped into signing false confessions along with a hefty fine rather than a release form. As all legal documents are in Hebrew as well as being terrified out of their wits it is little wonder that they end up part of the prison population rather than back with their families. Once the children are under prison control the absence of freedom exercised by Israeli military police even extends to bodily functions since “detainees are not allowed to use the toilet and are forced to relieve themselves while fully clothed in the presence of others.” ^[39]

Pretty much standard protocol in the use of torture.

Describing the pattern of invasive tactics that lead to detention, Murad Abu Judeh, a seventeen-year-old male resident of al-Arroub refugee camp in Hebron district, recalls:

We heard a very loud knock on the door … fifteen soldiers entered the house, three of them were masked and wearing civilian clothes. One of the masked soldiers asked me my name and for my ID card. I went to my room in order to bring the ID and one of the soldiers followed me. When I bent over to get the key for my drawer he kicked me on my back six times, pushing me to the ground. He searched my drawer, then grabbed me by my neck and took me back to the main room where I found the soldiers had upturned our furniture. The masked soldier whispered in my ear, “We’ll rape you one by one.” ^[40]

It is not just Palestinian children who have died in the continuing conflict that defines Arab-Israeli relations. Israeli children too have to shelter from the constant threat of Hamas fired missiles. Ambushes by Palestinian militants also occur though attacks on Israeli civilians are relatively uncommon by comparison. However, in one particularly brutal incident condemned by Amnesty international as a crime against humanity a pregnant mother of eight months and her four children were executed by a militant Palestinian group. ^[41]  Atrocities will happen when people have known nothing but violence and oppression since birth and when the total disregard for life is simply mirrored back to the perpetrators of the daily crimes from the Zionist state.

So, you see, maybe some Israelis and some Jews can celebrate in the confines of the cinema and enjoy the shedding of Nazi blood in cathartic kosher-porn of gore.  But when victims rule by perpetrating genocide upon their Arab neighbours who are in reality their brothers and sisters … Then it makes a mockery of remembrance; with Yahweh laughing down through the ages at the success of his child sacrifice. For some a promised land is worth thousands of children’s lives as long as they’re mostly Palestinian.

This post is dedicated to all those Israelis, Jews and Palestinians who join together to resist evil and work for peace.

“Little Handala”

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 See also: Rogue state: Declassified Israeli docs spell out 60-year-long strategy to ethnically cleanse Arabs

Occupation 101 – Official Movie (1 of 7) in High-Definition – New Digitally Remastered Version. Award-winning documentary film on the roots of the Palestine-Israel conflict and U.S. Government involvement.

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The following graphs and many other details on the Israeli occupation can be found at www.ifamericansknew.org

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s major sources of instability. Americans are directly connected to this conflict, and increasingly imperiled by its devastation. It is the goal of If Americans Knew to provide full and accurate information on this critical issue, and on our power – and duty – to bring a resolution. Please click on any statistic for the source and more information. Statistics Last Updated: March 5, 2014 Israeli and Palestinian Children Killed September 29, 2000 – Present

129 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians and 1,523 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000. (View Sources & More Information)

Israelis and Palestinians Killed September 29, 2000 – Present
	1,109 Israelis and at least 6,862 Palestinians have been killed since September 29, 2000. (View Sources & More Information)

Israelis and Palestinians Injured September 29, 2000 – Present
8,550 Israelis and 54,761 Palestinians have been injured since September 29, 2000. (View Sources & More Information.)

Daily U.S. Military Aid to Israel and the Palestinians Fiscal Year 2013
	During Fiscal Year 2013, the U.S. is providing Israel with at least $8.5 million per day in military aid and $0 in military aid to the Palestinians. (View Sources & More Information)

UN Resolutions Targeting Israel and the Palestinians 1955 – 1992
Israel has been targeted by at least 77 UN resolutions and the Palestinians have been targeted by 1. (View Sources & More Information)

Current Number of Political Prisoners and Detainees
	0 Israelis are being held prisoner by Palestinians, while 5,023 Palestinians are currently imprisoned by Israel. (View Sources & More Information)

Demolitions of Israeli and Palestinian Homes 1967 – Present
0 Israeli homes have been demolished by Palestinians and at least 27,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel since 1967. (View Sources & More Information)

Israeli and Palestinian Unemployment Rates
	The Israeli unemployment rate is 6.8%, while the Palestinian unemployment in the West Bank is 22.5% and 22.5% in Gaza. (View Sources & More Information)

Current Illegal Settlements on the Other’s Land
Israel currently has 262 Jewish-only settlements and ‘outposts’ built on confiscated Palestinian land. Palestinians do not have any settlements on Israeli land. (View Sources & More Information)

Note:  All photos from the occupied territories courtesy of “Children of Palestine”  at Occupied Palestine. The photos are graphic and extremely disturbing. If you want to see the reality of Israeli occupation visited upon families in Palestine then look at these photos and channel this anger and outrage constructively – Seek to understand and raise awareness of these issues with others. Let’s end the dominance of psychopaths infiltrating our social systems and subverting them toward greed, poverty, war and ecological disaster.

 

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Notes

[1] ‘Hollywood’s Jewish Avenger’ By Jeffery Steinberg, The Atlantic Magazine, September 2009. “Roth told me recently that Inglourious Basterds falls into a subgenre he calls “kosher porn.” “It’s almost a deep sexual satisfaction of wanting to beat Nazis to death, an orgasmic feeling,” Roth said. “My character gets to beat Nazis to death. That’s something I could watch all day. My parents are very strong about Holocaust education. My grandparents got out of Poland and Russia and Austria, but their relatives did not.”
[2] ‘Inglourious Basterds: When Jews Attack’ Daniel Mendelsohn, Newsweek. August 14, 2009.
[3] ‘Inglorious Indeed’. Tablet Magazine, by Liel Liebovitz, September 9, 2009.
[4] ‘Israelis go wild for Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds’ By Sara Miller, Haaretz, September 16 2009.
[5] ‘Remember these Children 2000’: a coalition of groups calling for an end to the killing of children and a fair resolution of the conflict. http://www.rememberthesechildren.org/
[6] B’Tselem, The Israeli Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. (Visit their statistics page, last updated September 30, 2011.)
[7] The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has collected data on both Israeli and Palestinian injuries since 2005. Their Protection of Civilians: Casualties Database provides careful and detailed documentation for each recorded injury, including location, gender, age, type of weapon used, context and incident type, and nationality of both the offender and the injured.
[8] International Middle East Media Center, “Gaza’s Ministry Of Detainees: ‘There Are 5,300 Detainees Still Imprisoned By Israel’” (October 21, 2011)
[9] The Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions estimates that 24,813 houses have been demolished in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza since 1967 (as of July 28, 2010).
[10] CIA World Factbook on Israel, the CIA World Factbook on the West Bank, and the CIA World Factbook on Gaza. All 3 are the estimates for 2010.
[11] Americans for Peace Now’s “Facts on the Ground” Map Project, (www.peacenow.org) there are 171 official Israeli settlements and 101 informal outposts on Palestinian land. APN’s interactive settlement map shows the name, location, and population for each settlement and outpost on Palestinian territory, all of which are considered illegal under international law.
[12] op. cit. Shahak (p.76)
[13] ‘Israeli army murders 3-year-old girl inside her house’ Al-Jazeera, January 26, 2005.
[14] ‘Israelis Murder Palestinian Family: Mother and three children’ Los Angeles Times, March 4, 2002.
[15] Ibid.
[16] ‘Israelis Kill Baby Girl and School-Teacher, Wound Ten other Children in Refugee Camp’ New York Times, March 16, 2001, (p. A-10)
[17] ‘Israel: Investigate ‘White Flag’ Shootings of Gaza Civilians’ Internal Israeli Military Investigations Inadequate Human Rights Watch, August 13, 2009. / ‘Israel: Gaza Ground Offensive Raises Laws of War Concerns’ Both Sides Must Take ‘All Feasible Precautions’ to Protect Civilians, Human Rights Watch, January 5, 2009 | Massacre of Palestinian Women and Children – Israel’s “Cloud of Autumn” Massacre in Gaza, Global Research, November 10, 2006.
[18] American Educational Trust, 2005. http://www.remberthesechildren.org,
[19] ‘Israel raid ‘could be war crime’’ BBC News, 15 September 2008. / ‘Criticism of Israeli War Crimes Mounts’ by Jonathan Cook, January 10, 2009.
[20] “Israeli soldiers reveal official ‘hoot to kill’policy towards Palestinian civilians” By Rick Kelly, World Socialist Website, wsws.org, 15 September 2005. “The soldier explained how there was a general culture of impunity within his unit, including with regard to the killing of Palestinian children. The attitude was, ‘so kids get killed,’ he said. “For a soldier it means nothing.”
[21] ‘Palestinian doctors despair at rising toll of children shot dead by army snipers’ by Chris McGreal in Rafah, The Guardian, May 20, 2004.
[22] ‘Israelis fired on girl ‘having identified her as a 10-year-old’, military tape shows’ By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem, The Independent, 24 November 2004.
[23] Ibid.
[24] ‘Inquiry faults probe of Gaza girl’s killing’ By Amos Harel, Haaretz February 18, 2006.
[25] ‘Court: Iman al-Hams death may have been prevented’ Ynet News, January 7, 2007.
[26] ‘Israeli soldiers kill teenage girl’ 26 Jul 2004, Al-Jazeera.
[27] ‘Gaza’s tragic classroom casualties’ BBC News, 27 Sep 2004.
[28] Ibid.
[29] ‘On The Way To School,’ Gideon Levy, Haaretz, Nov. 26, 2001: “…places explosive charges where children are likely to pass and then claims that only the other side practices terrorism?”
[30] ‘Israeli sniper bullet takes 12-year-old girl’s life’ Diaries: Live from Palestine, Electronic Intifada, 9 March 2008,
[31] op. cit. Los Angeles Times, March 5, 2002.
[32] ‘Gazan baby dies after 4-hour wait to cross border’ Agence France Presse, August 27, 2007.
[33] ‘Israeli officer who caused death of Palestinian baby sentenced to 28 days’ September 13, 2008.

[34] ‘Humiliation and Child Abuse at Israeli Checkpoints Strip-Searching Children’ by Alison Weir, CounterPunch, March 15, 2007.
[35] ‘Gaza: The children killed in a war the world doesn’t want to know about’ By Donald Macintyre, The Independent, 19 September 2006.
[36] p.7; Stolen Youth: The Politics of Israel’s Detention of Palestinian Children by Catherine Cook, Adam Hanieh, Adah Kay, London and Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, in association with Defence for Children International: Palestine Section, 2004. | ISBN-10: 0745321615 | The authors of Stolen Youth worked for Defense for Children International/Palestine Section (DCI/PS) between 1999-2003. Their work is based on the human rights reports of B’Tselem, The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, Physicians for Human Rights, the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, on the DCI/PS case files, the Israeli press, and their own research, the interviews and testimonies of children, lawyers, advocates, and families.
[37] op. cit. Cook, Hanieh and Kay (p.5)
[38] Ibid.
[39] op. cit. Cook, Hanieh, and Kay (p. 81)
[40] op. cit. Cook,Hanieh, and Kay (p. 53) [DCI/PS case file, 17A/2001].
[41] ‘Pregnant mum and four children gunned down’ The Sydney Morning Herald. May 3, 2004.

Religious Authoritarians VI: Temple Mount …Temple Might VI

“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”

– Corinthians 3:16

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Apparently the message from Corinthians above, might as well have been scrawled on a latrine for all the lack of attention it received. Temple Mount and the Dome of Rock remain the primary portal of enormous conflict where the indwelling spirit of God seems to be the last thing on the minds of the warring tribes of cultish monotheism.

One of the two most important lynch-pins of End Times prophecy in Judaism and Christian belief is firstly, the rebirth of Israel, support for which has become the central nexus of foreign policy and the jewel in the crown of religious fundamentalist prophecy. Secondly, the idea of the Anti-Christ in Dominionism and Rapture theory who signs a seven year peace treaty with Israel – before its annihilation. The rebuilding of Temple Mount in Jerusalem with support from both Muslims and Jews is part of this deal. This is necessary because the Anti-Christ’s double-cross involves its desecration with all manner of apocalyptic calamities drawn from the traditions of Moses so that Christ will be suitably impressed and venture forth to provide the Second Coming carnival. The eschatological rules must be obeyed and it seems for the Christian Fundies, Jews must convert at the last minute to save more Gentiles, while Israel is busy being purged and sacrificed for God’s Kingdom to reign once more.

The Jewish Messianics and Lubavitchers  however, see it in reverse.  Christians and Gentiles will be sacrificed with Israel reigning supreme over a Greater Israel. Armageddon does not feature. At least, certainly not in the sense that they are the main course.

The Temple Mount has been a sacred religious site for Judaism, Christianity, Islam and pagan cults for thousands of years. Despite the accuracy of the geographical location being called into question it remains the inspiration for the final curtain of the End Times. For Judaism it is the birthplace of the world, a place which brought forth the sacred book of the Talmud; Abraham’s sacrificial and ritualistic binding of Isaac. ^[1] Orthodox Jewish beliefs assign meaning to the Temple in the shape of a “… figurative ‘footstool’ of God’s presence.” ^[2]

Most importantly, it is considered to be the location for Solomon’s Temple a site which has significance for religion, freemasonry and other occult groups. ^[3] British freemasonry in particular and the most “lunatic elements” within the fraternity have been involved in ensuring that the destinies of the “Lost Tribes of Israel” and the Royal bloodlines conform to the prophecies stretching back to Babylon and ancient Egypt.

In Judeo-Christian theology The Temple of Solomon is thought to have been built by King Solomon, son of Davidin 957 BCE and represented the First Temple in eschatological thought. After being destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, the Second Temple was apparently constructed on the same site first by the Persian King Cyrus the Great, (515 BC) completed under the reign of King Darius I (522 BC) and rebuilt and reconstructed by King Herod by 37 BC. The First Jewish-Roman war and The Siege of Jerusalem in the year 70 saw the destruction of the Second Temple. In Jewish traditions it is said that the Third and final Temple will be built on the same sacred site.

Islam’s contribution to the Temple mythology came from the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem in 637 BC and the subsequent construction of the Dome of the Rock on the site completed by 692 BC. This is where the Bible states that the Holy third Temple be built, which is why Sunni Muslims see this as the holiest site in Islam.

So, we have Christians, Muslims, Palestinians and Jews all claiming religious sovereignty over the site. We also have an alliance between ultra-right Christian Fundamentalists and Militant Zionists. The Christian Zionist and messianic sects in the US government – with particular attention to Chabad Lubavitch – require a precise biblical working out of a very, VERY old agenda with a spy vs. spy manipulation on a grand scale, with a global holocaust as their shared objective. For the Christian fundies, if Jews do not convert then they will be destroyed and the inherent anti-Semitism present in the religious right will be seen in all its Christian glory. Since these cycles of millennialism come and go and the world obviously doesn’t end, there is nonetheless, widespread carnage when shock, abandonment and disillusion sets in from what doesn’t happen, as much as what does.

If you find the notion that individuals and groups are actively seeking to stimulate World War III in the 21^st Century a little hard to swallow, one of the best investigations of the subject is by Israeli author Gershom Gorenberg who confirms that this is indeed the dominant reality, where Christian Zionists, Jewish messianists and Muslim apocalyptic preachers are converging to do battle on the sacred site of Temple Mount with the rest of us as global collateral.

In this extract from Gorenberg’s book The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount he describes the reworking of eschatological scripts and the strange apocalyptic dances of the protagonists in question:

At the ‘End of the World,’ the believers of three faiths will watch the same drama, but with different programs in their hands. In one, Jesus is Son of God; in another he is Muslim prophet. The Jews messiah is cast in the Muslim script as the dajjal – another name for the Antichrist, the deceiver predicted by Christian tradition. The infidels in one script are the true believers of another. If your neighbor announces that the End has come, you can believe him, even if he utterly misunderstands what is happening.

It makes sense: Christianity’s scriptwriters reworked Judaism and Islam rewrote both. David Cook notes that from the start, apocalyptic ideas moved back and forth between the faiths; the global village is older than we realize. Some of the early spokesmen of Islamic apocalyptic thinking were converted Jews and Christians; they arrived with histories of the future in their saddlebags.

What’s more, a story’s end is when the truth comes out, the deceived realize their mistake. The deep grievance at the start of both Christianity and Islam is that the Jews refused the new faith – so the Jews must appear in both religion’s drama of the End, to be punished or recognize their error.

And the setting of the End is also shared. The crucial events take place in or near Jerusalem. After all, the script began with the Hebrew prophets, for whom Jerusalem was the center not only of their world but of God’s, and everyone else worked from their material. Isaiah’s announcement of the End of Days comes directly after he laments that the ‘faithful city [has] become a harlot.’ That sets up the contrast: In the perfected age,’ the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the top of the mountains’ and ‘out of Zion shall go forth the law.’ The Messiah’s task is to end the Jews’ exile and reestablish David’s kingdom – in his capital.

Christianity reworked that vision. Jesus, says the New Testament, was not only crucified and resurrected in the city, he ascended to heaven from the Mount of Olives – and promised to return there. Without the Jews’ national tie to the actual Jerusalem, Christians could allegorized such verses. The Jerusalem of the end could be built on other shores, and countless millennial movements have arisen elsewhere. But the literal meaning is there to be reclaimed, particularly in a time of literalism, such as our own.

Most striking of all is Islam’s adoption of the same setting. For Muslim apocalyptic believers, Jerusalem is the capital in the messianic age. At the end of time, say Muslim traditions, the Ka’ba – Islam’s central shrine in Mecca – will come to Jerusalem. The implication is that in Islam, speaking of the apocalypse at least hints at Jerusalem – and a struggle over Jerusalem alludes to the last battle.

Curiously, academic experts often say that Islam assigns scant space to apocalypse. In the religion’s early centuries, believers attributed a vast body of contradictory traditions to the Prophet. Early Islamic scholars winnowed the sayings, establishing which were most reliable. Meanwhile, Islam became the faith of an empire, and it was time to talk softly of overthrowing the given order. So the authors of books containing the ‘most accurate’ traditions, the pinnacle of the canon, said little of the End. ‘High’ Islam appears un-apocalyptic. ^[4] [Emphasis mine]

So, we see the reason for Christians becoming Christian Zionists and the Dominionists jumping in bed with the Jewish Messianists – they seek to ditch the Jews at the last moment unless they fully repent and convert, which obviously isn’t going to happen. Meantime, they are useful players in this Biblical saga, as they are integral to the narrative of final redemption. Christian Zionists believe that the Second Coming will only take place if an “ingathering” of Jews is initiated in accordance with what they see as Biblical prophecy. They are the “chosen people of God” all right, but not quite in the way that Jews see themselves

© infrakshun

Described as the Father of Christian Zionism, Texan Evangelist Hal Lindsey gleefully exclaimed: “Only 144,000 Jews will remain alive after the battle of Armageddon. These remaining Jews – every man, woman and child among them – will bow down to Jesus. As converted Christians, all the adults will at once begin preaching the gospel of Christ. Imagine! They will be like 144,000 Billy Grahams turned loose at once!” ^[5]

The Late Great Planet Earth (1970) has been described by the New York Times as the “#1 Non-fiction Bestseller of the Decade.” and with approximately 35 million books sold worldwide ^[6] Lindsey taps into the sub-strata of collective fears and reaping not only huge profits but fanning the flames of dangerous sectarianism. Like so many End Times writers constant revisions of prophecies that never come to be make it an exercise in hyperbole, self-justification and prevarication further underscores his opinions, the sources and footnotes of which are absent.

Lindsey’s business acumen and clever marketing strategy is in keeping with End Times non-fiction. His extraordinary reach and popularity however is in part, a result of his ascent to power care of the Reagan Administration of the early 1980s and he was not alone in that revival. According to Presbyterian Minister and writer Don Wagner:

“The election of Ronald Reagan ushered in not only the most pro-Israel administration in history but gave several Christian Zionists prominent political posts … Once the Reagan Administration opened the door, leading Evangelical Christian Zionist televangelists and writers were given direct access to the President and cabinet members. Rev. Jerry Falwell, Christian Zionist televangelist Mike Evans and author Hal Lindsey among them” ^[7]

Despite the professed love for Jews by fundamentalist and Catholic Christianity the history of the Church paints a different picture. As anti-Semitism has been used by Jewish power brokers and Israel to do as exactly as they please to whomever they please, so too, the Christian groups have adopted the politically useful tool of philo-Semitism so that they can smile sweetly while guiding them into a second holocaust that will be potentially far worse than World War II. Once the Jews have performed their task, only a select few (144, 000) maybe proffered salvation through conversion. If not, then they will burn in a multi-denominational hell along with the rest of us.

God Works in Mysterious ways indeed…

For Christian Zionists and many Dominionists, Jews are the vital key to Rapture and salvation. But once the door is open the key can be thrown away. And since the Jews, in their eyes are the source of all the problems of the world then it is only Biblical logic that they should be “dispensed” with, which is why many Christians support Israel, above and beyond all reason. While Israel and Jewish people move in line with Biblical prophecy then support will be forthcoming.

Come “Judgment Day” – the gloves are off.

Commensurate with daggers and smiles is the economic elevation of Israel with sufficient amounts of weapons and military might to ensure its perceived survival. Unfortunately, this amounts to fattening up the Golden Calf for a nuclear slaughter. Moreover, on the road to sacrificing humans, there are customs and rituals of animal sacrifice with a long and bloody history. Sacrificial cults have played a large role in Jewish history all the way back to the Talmudic Babylonian sects and the Israelities’ clash with Mosaic Law. Even the Torah has pages about animal sacrifice. As the practice died out Judaism seemed to do quite well without it, just like everyone else who decided to grow and progress.

Panorama of the Temple Mount, seen from the Mount of Olives | Photo: Berthold Werner (wikipedia)

Jewish journalist and author Grace Hasell illustrates this point when she recounts a meeting she had with a retired Army Major named Owen who in early 1999, as part of a dispensationalist group called Concerned Christians, was arrested by Israeli police. He and other members were jailed and deported back to the US after being accused of: “… planning a ‘bloody apocalypse’ to hasten the Second Coming of Christ,” and further, “…plot[ting] the destruction of Jerusalem’s most holy Islamic shrine.” She accompanies Owen as they visit the Dome of Rock, the shrine located at Temple Mount and the City of Jerusalem which has been “… throughout its long history … predominantly and overwhelmingly Arab.”

Hasell describes the scene as their Jewish guide who is leading the group launches into his practiced spiel:

“There—” our guide said, pointing upward toward the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosque — “we will build our Third Temple. We have all the plans drawn for the temple. Even the building materials are ready. They are hidden in a secret place. There are several shops where Israelis work, making the artifacts we will use in the new temple. One Israeli is weaving the pure linen that will be used for garments of the priests of the temple.”

He pauses, then adds:

In a religious school called Yeshiva Ateret Cohanim the Crown of the Priests — located near where we are standing, rabbis are teaching young men how to make animal sacrifice.”

A woman in our group, Mary Lou, a computer specialist, seems startled to hear the Israelis want to return to the rites of the old Solomonic sacrificial altar of the temple.

“You are going back to animal sacrifice?” she asks. “Why?”

^” It was done in the First and Second Temples,^“ our Israeli guide says. “And we do not wish to change the practices. Our sages teach that neglecting to study the details of temple service is a sin.”

Leaving the site, I remark to Owen that our Israeli guide had said a temple must be rebuilt on the Dome of the Rock site. But he said nothing about the Muslim shrines.

“They will be destroyed,” Owen tells me. “You know it’s in the Bible that the temple must be rebuilt. And there’s no other place for it except on that one area. You find that in the law of Moses.”

Did it seem possible, I ask Owen, that the Scripture about building a temple would relate to the time in which it was written — rather than to events in the current era?

“No, it is related to our era,” Owen says. “The Bible tells us that in the End Times the Jews will have renewed their animal sacrifice.”

In other words, I repeat, a temple must be built so that the Jews can resume their animal sacrifice?

“Yes,” said Owen, quoting Ezekiel 44:29 to prove his point.

Is Owen convinced that Jews, aided by Christians, should destroy the mosque, build a temple and reinstate the killing of animals in the temple — all in order to please God?

“Yes,” he replies. “That’s the way it has to be. It’s in the Bible.”

And does the building of the temple, I ask, fit into any time sequence?

^” Yes. We think it will be the next step in the events leading to the return of our Lord. As far as its being a large temple, the Bible doesn’t tell us that. All it tells us is that there will be a renewal of sacrifices. And Jews can do that in a relatively small building.”

Isn’t it atavistic, I ask, to go back to animal sacrifice? And what about a multitude concerned with animal rights in our modern age?

“But we don’t care what they say. It’s what the Bible says that’s important,” Owen stresses. “The Bible predicts a rebuilding of a temple. Now the people who are going to do it are not Christians but Orthodox Jews. Of course the Old Testament made out a very specific formula for what the Jews must follow regarding animal sacrifice. They can’t carry it out without a temple. They were observing animal sacrifice until 70 A.D. And when they have a temple they will have some Orthodox Jews who will kill the sheep or oxen in the temple, as a sacrifice to God.”

As Owen talks of reinstating animal sacrifice — a step he feels necessary for his own spiritual maturity — he seems to block from his awareness the fact that Muslim shrines stand on the site where he says God demands a temple be built.

That evening, after dinner, Owen and I take a long walk. Again, I voice my concerns about the dangers inherent in a plot to destroy Islam’s holy shrines.

^”Christians need not do it , ^“ Owen says, repeating what he told me earlier. “But I am sure the shrines will be destroyed.”

But, I insist, this can well trigger World War III.

^” Yes, that^‘ s right. We are near the End Times, as I have said. Orthodox Jews will blow up the mosque and this will provoke the Muslim world. It will be a cataclysmic holy war with Israel. This will force the Messiah to intervene.” Owen speaks as calmly, as softly as if telling me there’d be rain tomorrow.

“Yes,” he adds, as we return to our hotel. “There definitely must be a third temple” ^[8] 

Dome of the rock, Al-Aqsa mosque, Temple Mount, Jerusalem | Photo: Andrew Shiva.

The “Gush Emunim” or “Temple Mount Faithful” are as equally blasé as the Christians in the inevitability of death and bloodshed for everyone but their own tribe, utterly convinced as they are in their own special status certain that they have connected all the doctrinal dots in order to reserve their 1^st class seat to heavenly bliss and World conquest. It is an apocalyptic picture that is painted with the same belief in blood and slaughter which saw the rise of the crusades. As one Temple Mount Rabbi enthused: “war is accompanied by destruction and death, on the other hand, it increases the power of the Messiah … Unfortunately, it is still impossible to achieve the completion of Redemption by any means other than war.” ^[9]

Whether it is the Christian belief in the Second Coming of Christ or the Jewish Messianists’ arrival of their Messiah it is unlikely either religious avatar would recognise him even if it were a reality. But you can be sure, should their geo-strategies be successful, that smoke, blood, bombs and horror will be very much at the heart of Israel during that process and possibly a large proportion of the world.

Do the Jewish Messianists have an ace up their sleeve perhaps? Nope. Just as the sacrifice of ordinary Jews during World War II was part of the plan for Statehood, so too the necessary and “inevitable” result of war may mean the levelling and destruction of many Jews for Lubavitchers , Christian Zionists and Dominionists as a necessary revenge. Gorenberg, views it like this: “The Jews die or convert. … If you listen to the drama they’re describing, essentially it’s a five-act play in which the Jews disappear in the fourth act.” ^[10] 

And the possibility of the fourth act being rushed through anytime in the next decade requires a speedy evaluation of living arrangements sooner rather than later if you happen to live in Israel. Such thinking hasn’t escaped the plotters and architects of terror. Pragmatism and survival is only logical. If you light the fire then you plan your escape route well in advance if you wish to rise phoenix-like from the ashes. Evidence of these preparations has been seen for decades in Establishment circles.

Journalist Wolfgang Eggert has been researching the subject for years and reports on lands in countries of Latin America currently being scouted as suitable refuges for the wealthy:

There is a storm brewing and thus it is not surprising that members of the controlling “caste” are looking around for safe harbours. Kawther Salam reports that the Israeli government is carrying out huge purchases of land at the other end of the world, in the remote Southern tip of South America. Her report coincides with revelations on the Internet, allegedly originating from German Intelligence Sources (Bundesnachrichtendienst), stating that this is an Israeli-American joint venture safety manoeuvre. Financial head of this venture: Paul Wolfowitz.

The truth is that almost a sixth part of Patagonia – which means a territory as big as Austria and Switzerland together – is now owned by 350 foreign “investors”. Media baron Ted Turner (CNN) only recently purchased a huge property including a safe water supply provided by a private river. George Soros, the Hungary-born Billionaire residing in New York, is one of the biggest private land owners in this area. The same is true for his associate Eduardo Elzstain, the Argentine business magnate and great Chabad donor. In the North of the American continent investments in building projects of the better-informed-circles are meanwhile being moved into the bowels of the earth. The Neo-Conservative US Vice-President Dick Cheney only recently had a sophisticated private bunker system installed under his home. ^[11]

Holy War is a means to an end. Just like the Neo-Conservatives, the Christian Zionists, occult groupings and Satanic practice itself, war is not a necessary evil but the means and the end rolled into one. This is where the depopulationists, eugenicists and eco-fascists align with the religious fanatics in the total disregard for human life, where culling of humans is for a global salvation serving a select few, the divine rights of which must be enforced. At this stage, the net results are the same, with religio-occult beliefs aligned in a common union of death for the “greater good” and on a grand scale.

The Pathocratic Elite and their military have been planning and spending considerable sums on private bunkers with the use of allocated funds far removed from Congress for decades. There are also those underground labyrinths left over from the Cold War presently undergoing refurbishments in order to serve the needs of the “continuity of government” in the face of nuclear attack or environmental catastrophe – or both. The overwhelming priority is the cull, survival and total control.

The influences of Chabad Lubavitch, Zionism and their connections to the Establishment in the US, UK and Israel cannot be viewed in isolation from religious fanaticism currently pervading Western politics. Moreover, these expressions of psychopathy and their probable trajectories cannot be understood further without taking a closer look at the dynamics of all three.

 

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Notes

[1] “The most recent Palestinian uprising, this past September, began in the wake of the opening of Jerusalem’s “Hasmonean Tunnel,” which runs adjacent to the Haram al-Sharif, Islam’s Third Holiest Shrine, is the former site of the Temple of Herod, destroyed in A.D. 70 by Roman legions commanded by Titus.
Though the media repeatedly discounted it at the time, the Palestinians were enraged due to their fear that the opening of the Tunnel was the beginning of the end for the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the start of the rebuilding of the Third Temple, which is the fabled goal to which most of the esoteric secret societies of the West and most especially the orders of Freemasonry, are oriented (indeed, masonic iconography is obsessed with a rebuilt Temple).
The establishment media, in a remarkable demonstration of the uniformity and power of their monopoly control of large scale communications, were able to stifle any substantial reporting in September, providing evidence that Palestinian fears on this subject had some justification.
In what James Shelby Downard terms a “cryonic process” (after the method by which Walt Disney’s mortal remains are supposedly preserved)–the freeze-wait-thaw operation–the truth about the intense concentration of the resources of both esoteric Zionism and esoteric Freemasonry on this “Temple Mount” complex, was frozen while the riots raged. When they subsided, a waiting period ensued as the crisis left the front pages and moved slightly to the rear of the consciousness of the group mind of the masses. After the waiting period, came the thaw, when the truth was taken out of the deep freeze and presented to the public. […]
The opening of the tunnel in September, 1996, with its ritual bloodshed, a precursor of the sacrificial blood ordained to flow if the Temple is rebuilt, was orchestrated in 1867. It was then that the future General Sir Charles Warren, England’s Commissioner of Police and co-conspirator in the occult ritual murder known to history as “Jack the Ripper,” had been dispatched on yet another masonic mission, to lay the groundwork for the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem. And so it was that in 1867, one of England’s most important Freemasons, a member of its “research lodge” (Ars Quator Coronatorum), “rediscovered” the claustrophobic, 500-yard tunnel.
The “implements” of the old Temple, according to the Talmud, were hidden on the Temple Mount before the destruction of the Second Temple. With Warren’s Tunnel now open, the “treasure hunt” begins, as the establishment media admitted, between the lines, during its mid-October “thaw.”
In the second week in October, Zionist zealots involved in crimes of terrorism linked to the hoped-for destruction of Al-Aqsa mosque, suddenly entered stage center from their establishment-imposed positions of obscurity. In the processing of the group mind, chronology is everything. Hence, mid October was the time designated for slowly pulling the curtain back and revealing the actual game afoot . At this juncture the establishment media unveiled Mr. Yehuda Etzion, head of Hai Vekayam, spearhead of the drive to rebuild Herod’s Temple upon the ruins of Islam’s revered Al-Aqsa mosque. As if on cue, seven Hai Vekayam “activists” were arrested by Israeli police when they tried to force their way onto the Dome of the Rock in October.
Also on cue, a petition was presented to the Israelis in October, dotting every “i” and crossing every “t” of every Palestinian fear about what the Zionists intend with their “tunnel.” The petition, put forth by the Temple Mount Faithful organization, a group financed by deep-pockets Judeo-Churchian fundamentalists in the U.S. and shadowy, international Zionist and masonic moneybags, calls for the removal of the mosque from the Temple Mount. James Shelby Downard and I have a term for that call: Truth or Consequences via Revelation of the Method. – From ‘Warren’s Tunnel, The Palestinian Riots and The Apocalypse’ by Michael A. Hoffman II. 1996. | http://www.revisionisthistory.org
[2] There is no evidence at all for the Temple of Solomon story both in terms of location and narrative. For more information on the nature of the Bible as very far from a historical document please read: Who Wrote the Bible? By Laura-Knight-Jadczyk at http://www.cassiopaea.org/category/volumes/who-wrote-the-bible/ | Shekhinah: “Shekinah, Shekinah, Shechinah, Shechina, or Schechinah, (Hebrew: שכינה‎) is the English spelling of a grammatically feminine Hebrew ancient blessing of the feminine aspect of God. The original word means the dwelling or settling, and denotes the dwelling or settling of the divine presence of God, especially in the Temple in Jerusalem.” (Wikipedia)
[3] “The most recent Palestinian uprising, this past September, began in the wake of the opening of Jerusalem’s “Hasmonean Tunnel,” which runs adjacent to the Haram al-Sharif, Islam’s Third Holiest Shrine, is the former site of the Temple of Herod, destroyed in A.D. 70 by Roman legions commanded by Titus.
Though the media repeatedly discounted it at the time, the Palestinians were enraged due to their fear that the opening of the Tunnel was the beginning of the end for the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the start of the rebuilding of the Third Temple, which is the fabled goal to which most of the esoteric secret societies of the West and most especially the orders of Freemasonry, are oriented (indeed, masonic iconography is obsessed with a rebuilt Temple).
The establishment media, in a remarkable demonstration of the uniformity and power of their monopoly control of large scale communications, were able to stifle any substantial reporting in September, providing evidence that Palestinian fears on this subject had some justification.
In what James Shelby Downard terms a ‘cryonic process’ (after the method by which Walt Disney’s mortal remains are supposedly preserved)–the freeze-wait-thaw operation–the truth about the intense concentration of the resources of both esoteric Zionism and esoteric Freemasonry on this ‘Temple Mount’ complex, was frozen while the riots raged. When they subsided, a waiting period ensued as the crisis left the front pages and moved slightly to the rear of the consciousness of the group mind of the masses. After the waiting period, came the thaw, when the truth was taken out of the deep freeze and presented to the public. […]
The opening of the tunnel in September, 1996, with its ritual bloodshed, a precursor of the sacrificial blood ordained to flow if the Temple is rebuilt, was orchestrated in 1867. It was then that the future General Sir Charles Warren, England’s Commissioner of Police and co-conspirator in the occult ritual murder known to history as ‘Jack the Ripper,’ had been dispatched on yet another masonic mission, to lay the groundwork for the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem. And so it was that in 1867, one of England’s most important Freemasons, a member of its ‘research lodge’ (Ars Quator Coronatorum), ‘rediscovered’ the claustrophobic, 500-yard tunnel.
The ‘implements’ of the old Temple, according to the Talmud, were hidden on the Temple Mount before the destruction of the Second Temple. With Warren’s Tunnel now open, the ‘treasure hunt’ begins, as the establishment media admitted, between the lines, during its mid-October “thaw.”
In the second week in October, Zionist zealots involved in crimes of terrorism linked to the hoped-for destruction of Al-Aqsa mosque, suddenly entered stage center from their establishment-imposed positions of obscurity. In the processing of the group mind, chronology is everything. Hence, mid October was the time designated for slowly pulling the curtain back and revealing the actual game afoot. At this juncture the establishment media unveiled Mr. Yehuda Etzion, head of Hai Vekayam, spearhead of the drive to rebuild Herod’s Temple upon the ruins of Islam’s revered Al-Aqsa mosque. As if on cue, seven Hai Vekayam ‘activists’ were arrested by Israeli police when they tried to force their way onto the Dome of the Rock in October.
Also on cue, a petition was presented to the Israelis in October, dotting every ‘I’ and crossing every ‘t’ of every Palestinian fear about what the Zionists intend with their ‘tunnel.’ The petition, put forth by the Temple Mount Faithful organization, a group financed by deep-pockets Judeo-Churchian fundamentalists in the U.S. and shadowy, international Zionist and masonic moneybags, calls for the removal of the mosque from the Temple Mount. James Shelby Downard and I have a term for that call: Truth or Consequences via Revelation of the Method. – From Warren’s Tunnel, The Palestinian Riots and The Apocalypse by Michael A. Hoffman II. 1996. | http://www.revisionisthistory.org
[4] p.45; The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount By Gershom Geronberg. Published by Oxford university Press 2002. | ISBN-10: 0195152050.
[5] p.111; The Late Great Planet Earth By Hal Lindsey and Carol C. Colsen, Published by Zondervan 1970. | ISBN-10: 031027771X.
[6] Hal Lindsey, The 1980’s: Countdown to Armageddon By Hal Lindsey, Published by Bantam, 1981 ( p.179). | ‘Hal Lindsey’s The Late, Great Planet Earth and the Rise of Popular Premillennialism in the 1970s’ By Cortney S. Basham, Western Kentucky University January 8 2012.
[7] ‘Beyond Armageddon’ By Donald Wagner, 2007. www. christianzionism.org/article/wagner04.asp
[8] Forcing God’s Hand: Why Millions Pray for a Quick Rapture and Destruction of Planet Earth By Grace Halsell. Published by Amana Publications 2002. | ISBN-10: 1590080157.
[9] ‘Temple Mount Fanatics Forment A New Thirty Years’ War,’ by Jeffrey Steinberg, Executive Intelligence Review, November 3, 2000.
[10] Gorenberg on CBS, 60 Minutes, October 6th, 2002, ‘Zion’s Christian Soldiers.’
[11] ‘Kein Zweiter Holocaust! By Wolfgang Eggert et al 2007 | http://www.apocalypse-no.net/en/

Religious Authoritarians V: Rapture and Killing for God

“Never so sure our rapture to create,

As when it touch’d the brink of all we hate.”

― William Hazlitt, author and philosopher

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Alongside the burgeoning rise of all things eschatological we also have the religious marketing phenomena of the “Rapture,” a term that refers to being “caught up” in anticipation of the Second Coming and finally resurrected. The word was chosen due to the mix of meanings from ecstatic joy, spiritual rebirth and the act of transporting the supplicant from one plane of existence to another.

Those responsible for introducing the concept of the Rapture came from a scattering of individuals. Firstly from puritanical American preachers Mather and Increase Cotton, a father and son duo from 17^th Century; the theologians Philip Doddridge and John Gill who helpfully introduced the actual word in popular religious discourse. Various sparks of religious fervour supporting this idea appeared throughout the 17^th Century until the mid-18^th Century Scottish minister and theologian Edward Irving passed the baton to John Nelson Darby who took hold of the idea with particular fervour and made it truly popular for royal and rabble alike. Though rejected by the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox churches and the Anglican Communion, the eschatology went into overdrive for the Protestants. It caused a stir in Baptist, Pentecostal and other fundamentalist denominations in both Britain and America; now they had something to really set their sights on, acting as a laser beam of focus within traditional eschatological movements as a whole. ^[1]

The Rapture: One in the Field Jan Luyken – Bowyer’s Bible, Bolton, England 1795 (wikipedia)

There are differing theories within the movement on timing: pre-tribulation, mid-tribulation, pre Wrath, Partial and Post-tribulation (see chart below) but the general consensus is that Jesus Christ appears in the air and has a con-flab with the righteous immediately preceding his return to Earth. They believe that their salvation is assured provided they sign on the dotted line to manifest Armageddon so that He can return at the appointed time. Thus they can be plucked from seven years’ worth of apocalyptic “tribulation,” which they enthusiastically helped to create. (How is that for a twist on “create your own reality”?) Meanwhile, the rest of us will be gnashing our teeth and weeping and wailing in a pit of fire.  It’s appears to be a little more complicated then that however, as you can see from the chart below:

 

Diagram of the major tribulation views in Christian theology | Lamorak – Own work uploaded by User B (wikipedia)

The faithful Dominionists are busy making sure that this is exactly the scenario that will play out. This is the bread-and-butter of fanaticism and should come as no surprise for anyone who has studied religious authoritarians. However, what makes this phenomenon chilling is the heavy, modern-day marketing of “Christian duty” which must have a guiding hand in its manifestation and furthermore, to rejoice in destruction. The absence of love and compassion in favour of vicious selfishness and spiritual greed is astonishing to behold.

Rapture prediction has been big business. Books, audio tapes and seminars offering sage advice in preparing for the Big Day have saturated the Christian market. Gracing our bookshops and internet outlets are The End-Times Survival Handbook: What to Expect before the Rapture and How to Survive It (2003) by Joan Hake Robie and Daymond R. Duck which seems to be somewhat oxymoronic. If all genuine Christians are going to be raptured then what is there to survive?

Then we have Jerry B Jenkins, ghost-writer for Tim LaHaye who seems to have cornered the market on apocalyptic writings using fiction to promote their message. With subtle titles such as: The Rapture: In the Twinkling of an Eye–Countdown to the Earth’s Last Days (2007); The Mark: The Beast Rules the World (2011) and The Remnant: On the Brink of Armageddon (2011) and the popular Box-set of ten volumes entitled: The Left Behind Collection (2003) the formula is most reminiscent of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s Mission Earth series and equally lucrative.

Part of the success of the books is drawn from its sensationalist promotion of genuine fears which are already rising from the uncertainty of economic disruption and social dislocation. LaHaye is also the founder and president of the Council for National Policy, a secretive outfit known to very few but which exerts considerable influence. Formed in 1981 the CNP brings together a collection of disparate ultra-conservative groupings to focus and strengthen the right wing Christian agenda on Middle East foreign policy.

A New York Times report described CNP members as comprising of “a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country” who meet “behind closed doors at undisclosed locations … to strategize about how to turn the country to the right.” ^[2]  The group is chock full of Neo-Conservatives and Christian Zionists who share the same burning desire to see the Middle East reduced to an apocalyptic pile of rubble as a prelude to the Second Coming. George W. Bush, former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, devotee of Jewish messianic cult Chabad Lubavitch, were all members.

As author and journalist George Monbiot observed at the time:

“So here we have a major political constituency – representing much of the current president’s core vote – in the most powerful nation on Earth, which is actively seeking to provoke a new world war. Its members see the invasion of Iraq as a warm-up act, as Revelation (9:14-15) maintains that four angels ‘which are bound in the great river Euphrates’ will be released to slay the third part of men.” ^[3]

Though the Bush Administration has gone, the legacy remains within the Obama government.

US TV Evangelist Rev. Jack von Impe allegedly sent his pearls of wisdom directly into Bush’s ear and advised him on the religious stakes concerning the war in Iraq. Von Impe believes (and probably hopes) that Russia and the Arab nations will attack and destroy Israel as part of a nuclear Armageddon no later than the end of 2012. ^[4]  Thankfully, along with brains, prediction is not an Evangelist’s strongest suit.

Conversely, another Armageddon cheer-leader and Christian Zionist TV preacher John Hagee believes that the United States must stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel for the return of Christ at the appointed hour. Essential to this countdown to destruction is the Neo-Con doctrine of a pre-emptive strike against Iran which will initiate the countdown to a global holocaust. The fact that part of this mythology includes the required obliteration of Israel is conveniently left out of his proselytizing.

JCH_at_Podium Christian Zionist Pastor John C. Hagee of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio Texas at the U.S. Capitol on July 18, 2007 during CUFI’s annual conference | 18 July 2007. Source: Christians United for Israel | photo: Paul Wharton (wikipedia) (Star of David added)

Another Club which has grown into a comprehensive cabal is “The Fellowship” which had its beginnings in the 1930s care of spellbinding Norwegian immigrant and Methodist minister, Abraham Verified. Having changed its name on various occasions since 1935 and cultivated a constant but modest presence throughout politics, its strength and influence is now considerable. Journalist and author Wayne Madsen asserts: “Its stealth existence has been perpetuated by its organization into small cells, a pyramid organization of ‘correspondents,’ ‘associates,’ ‘friends,’ ‘members,’ and ‘core members,’ tax-exempt status for its foundations, and its protection by the highest echelons of our own government and those abroad.” ^[5]

It seeks to present itself as a religious fraternity when it is nothing more than cult of political control working in tandem with other factions for totalitarian government. Like other nested military-intelligence cults, Fellowship members believe that the New World Government should consist of the Christian elect that will rise from the ashes and establish God’s dominion on Earth. Madsen connects the heritage from which The Fellowship draws its succour is none other than our favourite iconic despot Hitler, who:

“… planned for a ‘Thousand Year Reich’ over the planet. It is not a coincidence that Hitler desired and the so-called Christian Dominionists/reconstructionists now contemplate a thousand year reign. The Christian Dominionists are the political heirs of Hitler, the Norwegians Vereide and Quisling, Buchman, Opus Dei founder and fascist patron saint Josemaria Escriva and their political and religious cohorts.” ^[6]

This is essentially what we are talking about here: a virulent, religious fascism that has merged with all the many elements of the Conservative Establishment and melded with American-German Nazism to produce a potent political force. It is the new militant army that exerts near total control over the United States executive, its legislature and several state governments. The federal judiciary and the U.S. Supreme Court are sure to follow, as its influence in high-level international affairs continues to expand.

This sect may well be the source of the revival in Dominionism within the Bush and Obama administrations. Many top level members of the military are in its thrall appealing to the spellbinders and psychopaths that fancy cutting a retributive slice of messianic deliverance upon their enemy. Some of these members include those for whom sexual abuse and torture are part of God’s will for the New American-Israel, such as former Joint Chiefs Chairman General David Jones, former Marine Corps Commandant and current NATO commander General James L. Jones, Lt. Gen. Bruce Fister, the former head of the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command, Iran-contra figure Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, current Joint Chiefs chairman General Richard Myers, and yes, the familiar presence of Army Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, the military head of Defence Secretary Rumsfeld’s intelligence branch who went on to create the torture and sexual molestation of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The United States has become the battleground for millennial fanaticism of the kind that was last seen at the time of the crusades. Instead of swords, arrows and armies we have drones, smart bombs and technocratic psychological warfare.

The Crusades: Updated and re-packaged under Dominionists

Notice how religious, scientific and civic activism is engineered to conflict and fight out each other’s opposing force so that the population is kept busy and attention deflected away from those pushing the buttons of these movements? On the one hand you have atheists and humanists all waxing lyrical about the evils of the religious right while the latter hurls fire and brimstone accusations at the communist Anti-Christ minions of the left. All the while “Satan” puffs a cigar and warms his hands on the conflict from each.

There is no shortage of groups and individuals proclaiming a Rapture date from the 17^th Century right up to the present. The well-publicized announcements of radio evangelist Harold Camping predicted the fateful / joyful day as September 6, 1994. Surprisingly enough, nothing happened that could be described as Rapturous. Camping revised his predictions and confidently told us that May 21, 2011 was in fact, the true date for a trans-spiritual pick-up. Again, nothing happened. Camping put this down to God’s Judgement. Even God can get his Rapture day wrong it seems.  So, October 21, 2011 was to be the new Departure point, which nonetheless, proved surprisingly – for Camping at least – a non-Rapture event. ^[7] (More ruptured than raptured?)

However, there may be some truth to the predictions of a specific time of “Tribulation,” the Rapture being the least important of the beliefs currently swirling in the vortex of Dominionist anticipation. This is where sects like The Fellowship, Christian Fundamentalism and Zionism link hands forming a circle around the Biblical icon of End Times prophecy:

Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.

 

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Notes

[1] “What is ‘The Rapture?’” by Fr. Dimitri Cozby. Orthodox Research Institute.
[2] ‘Club of the Most Powerful Gathers in Strictest Privacy’ By David D. Kirkpatrick, New York Times, August 28, 2004.
[3] Their Beliefs are Bonkers…, George Monbiot, The Guardian, 2004.
[4] ‘Is Bush Getting Apocalyptic Advice?’, MSNBC, August 13th, 2003.
[5] ‘Expose: The “Christian” Mafia – Where Those Who Now Run the U.S. Government Came From and Where They Are Taking Us’ By Wayne Madsen, May 2005, waynemadsenreport.com/
[6] Ibid.
[7] ‘Apocalypse (Not Quite) Now: Camping Picks New End-of-World Date’ May 24 2011. Laist.com

Outsourcing Abuse I

By M.K. Styllinski

[NATO soldiers, UN police, and Western aid workers] “operated with near impunity in exploiting the victims of the sex traffickers.”

– Amnesty International

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In 2003, Kenneth Cain joined forces with former UN officials Heidi Postlewaite and Andrew Thomson, to write a book called Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Matters ^[1] which hit the shops in June of 2004. The book detailed widespread sexual abuse within the UN and its peace missions. It received significant exposure on many a Neo-Conservative website and newspaper and was gleefully pounced on by ardent anti-UN detractors. Mr. Cain, a Harvard law-school graduate and full time writer paints an unrelenting picture of decadence and corruption where drugs, alcohol and sex are the mainstay of some nations’ peace keeping forces. Dr. Thomson, a U.N. physician was equally unflattering about the world organization describing his missions in Haiti and the Dominican Republic as a “frustrating exercise in futility.”

An uncharacteristically vehement Kofi Annan tried to have the publication banned and then heavily censored, threatening the employees with redundancy if they did not reconsider. According to the UN they “violated staff rules” though in truth, the book is merely a distillation of widespread reports which began to gather pace long before the controversial book went to print. In 2001, about a half-dozen investigators from the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services in New York and investigators from the Office of the Inspector-General of the U.N. High Commissioner of Refugees finally examined the allegations. Despite the deluge of referrals and submitted cases surrounding the inquiry the book gave substantial weight to the criticism levelled at the organisation for being far too slow in its general investigations. Dileep Nair, U.N. Undersecretary General and Chief of OIOS said: “We can barely cope with the cases that are being referred to us” with over 400 cases were demanding attention. ^[2]

Bearing in mind that these are only the recorded cases, the findings that the UN consistently ignored claims of abuse and refused to take action, dating back as far as the late eighties parallels the same methods of denial of the Catholic Church and other institutions. Aid workers for Non-Governmental Organisations such as Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) and Save the Children UK were also implicated. A full copy of the joint study sponsored by the UNHCR and SC-UK noted the following: “Agency workers from the international and local NGOs as well as U.N. agencies were ranked as among the worst sex exploiters of children, often using the very humanitarian aid and services intended to benefit the refugee population as a tool of exploitation.” The findings further revealed: “In order for a refugee to make a report, they would have to go through the same persons who themselves are perpetrators of sexual exploitation. Most staff appear to connive to hide the actions of other staff.” ^[3]

Note the ponerisation of not only UN staff but affiliated NGO agencies. This made it easy for UN officials to keep it  quiet, narrow down the scope of investigations and cover-up the abuse. Interestingly enough, the investigator himself, Dileep Nair was investigated after the UN Staff Council, the equivalent of a union, alerted Secretary-General Kofi Annan about alleged “violations of appointments and promotions rules in OIOS, as well as allegations of corrupt practices in the Office and “other misconduct” by Mr. Nair.”^[4] However, no “credible” evidence of wrongdoing was found. Whether a smear campaign was enacted against Nair in order to deflect further investigations by discrediting his probe or that the allegations had some grain of truth was never established.

No Place to Hide (2013)

“They took us to a small house. Then they tore the clothes from our bodies and raped us. I was just 17 and still a virgin!” Joari and her friend were raped by men thought to be their saviours: UN peacekeepers. Since 1999, the United Nations has maintained a peace keeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It aims to bring stability to the region and protect the civilian population from attacks and sexual violence of the warring parties. But many of the 20,000 peacekeepers become perpetrators, exploiting the extreme distress and poverty of women and girls.In addition to showing victims of UN soldiers’ sexual attacks for the first time, the film also proves that the issue of sexual violence by peacekeepers has long been known at UN headquarters in New York. For years, the UN has been trying to combat the abuse by increasing staff training and introducing a zero-tolerance policy. Officials claim that the number of incidents has been drastically reduced. At local level however, UN insiders tell us, these measures have no effect at all.”

– No Place to Hide, German documentary by Pagonis Pagonakis und Marcel Kolvenbach

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Over four million people have been killed by war and preventable diseases in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the past eight years, or as one UN humanitarian chief mentioned: “…the equivalent of six Rwandan genocides”, where the ‘Military and civilian authorities are still virtually unaccountable for crimes against civilians…’” ^[5] The institutionalised abuse by UN personnel is a large part of that desperate picture. Didier Bourguet, a U.N. senior logistics officer was charged with running an internet paedophile ring in the region, where he established a sophisticated porn studio for the procurement of young boys and girls in a multi-media operation. Videos were freely available to buy. According to Human Rights Watch, some of the female victims were as young as eleven years old.

While Bourguet had engaged in similar activity in a previous UN posting in the Central African Republic, he was not alone in his endeavours. Claude Deboosere-Lepidi, Bourguet’s lawyer, said his client admitted he assaulted minors and that his sex crime spree included other U.N. officials. He was insistent in his belief that the UN as a whole was partly to blame for tolerating the continued attacks on Congolese women and young girls. The UN has since confirmed this belief admitting that its peacekeepers regularly raped, abused and prostituted children in their care. A range of sexual abuses from UN troops and aid workers were catalogued including: “Reported rapes of young Congolese girls by blue-helmeted U.N. troops as well as aid workers; a colonel from South Africa accused of molesting his teenage male translators; hundreds of under-age girls having babies fathered by U.N. soldiers who have been able to simply leave their children and their crimes behind. Despite the UN’s official policy of “zero-tolerance” there were 68 allegations of misconduct in the town of Bunia alone. Another case included a 14-year-old girl who had told UN investigators that “she had sex with a UN peacekeeper in exchange for two eggs. Her family was starving.” ^[6]

A sex trade flourished in Monuc where scores of local women and girls had been made pregnant by Moroccan and Uruguayan peace keeping soldiers as well as two UN officials. One Ukrainian and a Canadian were obliged to leave the country after getting local women pregnant and two Russian pilots based in Mbandaka paid young girls with jars of mayonnaise and jam in order to have sex with them. ^[7] It appears that a virtual industry has grown up, including the production and selling of pornography and bartering goods for sex.

The lack of screening of UN peace keeping soldiers provided a new opportunity for rebuilding more than just infrastructure and aid. It can hardly be surprising if sexual exploitation infiltrates institutions on the ground, regardless of their humanitarian intentions. It is the proverbial honey-pot for those who have no conscience, or as a Times report so aptly quoted: ‘Never forget this is Heart of Darkness country. People do things here just because they can,” one female UN employee said, in a reference to Joseph Conrad’s novel about the abuses of the former Belgian Congo.” ^[8]

With UN officials accused and suspended after scores of abuses, one would have thought that it may have dawned on Kofi Annan that these crimes had been occurring for a number of years. Annan was previously head of the UN’s peacekeeping force and acknowledged that “acts of gross misconduct have taken place”. Asked whether he could have, given his experience, done more to prevent abuse in Congo, he said: “You never know when you send that many people out. There may be one or two bad apples.” ^[9]

Annan is being a little disingenuous to say the least. There is no question that this was a systematic manifestation of variable abuse which the UN consistently hushed up for many years. As such, he is ultimately responsible and should have resigned. Instead, after 150 reported claims of abuse, many of them involving minors, he continued the tradition of secrecy and suppression further damaging what remains of the UN’s standing. A hotline set up to receive complaints about past and future abuse was a case of too little too late.

Kofi Annan

In March of 2006 another report, this time on the military arm of the UN, concluded: “deeply flawed and recommends withholding salaries of the guilty and requiring nations to pursue legal action against perpetrators.” It also included a host of other recommendations to be fully implemented by 2007. However, as a recent report in May from the Associated Press shows, far from coming down hard on such crimes, the activities actually doubled in 2004. Though this may in part, be due to the heightened awareness of such activities, the vast majority of allegations were still levelled at UN peace keepers. In 2002, the UN was beginning to form its defence against shocking abuse allegations in the Congo. It would finally send an investigation team in 2004 after a seemingly “outraged” Annan decided enough was enough. Whether this was due to media pressure or concerns about his own image, is far from clear.

In any event, within the same year, an exact same pattern of abuse surfaced in Sierra Leone where the UN and NGOs were running programmes to reintegrate former child soldiers from the bloody civil war between the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels and the Civil Defence Force (CDF) a pro-government militia known as the Kamajors. Both committed atrocities that are astonishing for their ferocity. Child protection agencies estimated that the warlords abducted as many as 6,000 children, out of which about 3,500 actually fought in the war. The rest were used for sex and for carrying weapons. Sierra Leone was plagued by the slow deployment of UN troops and the apathetic defence of civilians habitually caught in the cross-fire between the warring sides. One NGO chief executive described the reality: “These atrocities are taking place practically under the noses of government and international troops …Innocent civilians are suffering, and it’s the responsibility of these troops to protect them. They should do their job.”^[10]

These atrocities included systematic rape of women and girls, some as young as ten, and the murder of whole families. Infants and children were thrown into burning houses, the hands of toddlers as young as two were severed with machetes and girls as young as eight were sexually assaulted. A newspaper reporter in Sierra Leone told Human Rights Watch: “There was rampant raping. I saw a fifteen-year-old girl raped right before me. They left her, but they captured others, and among them was a seven-year-old girl.” ^[11]

Amputation of limbs came to be the most prominent horror of the ten year old war but sexual abuse was actually more common. As discussed in Rape: Corporate Camouflage and Across the Gender Divide  the practice of rape as a strategic weapon is no longer rare. By forcing members of families to rape each other and to watch the atrocity, the belief was that this would reduce the likelihood of support for military operations. Even worse was the evidence of sexual atrocities being committed by troops from the regional intervention force, Ecomog, and the UN peacekeeping mission: “Women were used by all sides as chattels, kidnapped from their homes often in rural areas and forced to act as sex slaves for the troops as well as domestic maids responsible for cooking and household chores.” ^[12]

In 2004 The UN’s UNICEF reported that Sierra Leone, led the world in child mortality with one in four children dying before the age 5, while in Iraq, one in 10 do not make it to their fifth birthday. The UN has within its ranks those that were willing and able to mop up what was left of the shells that were once children. Yet despite the UN “Personnel Conduct Officers” representing system-wide focal points designed to deal with charges of gender-based violence and abuse, the United Nations is facing new allegations of sexual misconduct by U.N. personnel in Burundi, Haiti, and Liberia. This is probably due to the familiar buffering of the fact that such measures alert patterns of abuse but do not address the key issues as to why they arise. Even if this is known, it represents a flow that is hard to stem.

This is exacerbated by the rhetoric of Annan’s earnest bulletin setting out directives for UN personnel yet excluding military troops who are only answerable to their own national military authorities. This amounts to more tinkering at the edges of the cause. With sex workers appearing en masse at the borders needing to feed their families and with thousands of peace keeping soldiers present, the market and so will extensive forms of abuse. Reports of these abuses continued to surface though this was not limited to UN military deployments and operations.

One case in many includes the presence of a weapons inspector who led several sado-masochistic sex rings. “Harvey ‘Jack’ McGeorge, a former US Marine and Secret Service agent, [was] a founding officer of ‘Leather Leadership Conference Inc.’” and recommended by the US State Department.^[13] Another report showed UN personnel who were involved in bringing girls from Thailand to East Timor as prostitutes. As abuse allegations have increased, so too the variable unsuitability of those employed by the UN. ^[14]

NATO forces, UN peace-keepers and the local mafia have all been implicated in sex slavery in Kosovo. UN personnel exploited the victims of sex traffickers for their own ends, adding to the already dire situation in the Balkans since NATO troops and UN administrators took over the province in 1999. The question of why patients at United Nations mental institutions in Kosovo were raped and physically attacked under the eyes of UN staff, also suggests that this was more than an isolated incident but part of a well formed network. ^[15]

And what of the progress being made to stem this tide? Well, UN soldiers forcing young women and minors to have sex in exchange for material aid still appears to be occurring more than ten years after these initial reports. A UN report interviewed over 200 Haitian women—a third of whom were minors and collated enough data to suggest this was systematic and organised. ^[16]

While the spectre of sexual abuse is being tackled by UN officials, disturbing questions still remain about the overall functioning of an institution that is seen by many to be dangerously flawed, contributing to chaos rather than the betterment of nations and their peoples. What are we to make of the United Nations that cries out to be a beacon for the world’s poor and oppressed when the reality sees it failing those who are most need of its protection and support? Is this rot from within a mere blip or a peek behind the curtain?

 

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Notes

[1] Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Matters – A true Story from Hell on Earth’ By Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait, Andrew Thomson 2004 published by Miramax books/Hyperion ISBN 140135201-4
[2] ‘U.N. Finally Forced to Probe Its Paedophilia Scandal’ NewsMax.com Wires and NewsMax.com, Tuesday, May 7, 2002.
[3] Ibid.
[4] ‘Thorough probe finds no evidence of wrongdoing by UN official’ 16 UN News Centre, November 2004, http://www.un.org/
[5] UN calls rape ‘a cancer’ in DRC, BBC News, 15 September 2006.
[6] Ibid.
[7] ‘UN moves to answer child sex allegations’ Sydney Morning Herald, February 18 2005.
[8] ‘Sex scandal in Congo threatens to engulf UN’s peacekeepers’ The Times, December 23, 2004
[9] ‘Secretary-General ‘absolutely outraged’ by gross misconduct by peacekeeping personnel in Democratic Republic of Congo UN Press Release, 19/11/2004. http://www.un.org/
[10] Peter Takirambudde, Executive Director of the Africa division of Human Rights Watch, quoted from Focus on Human Rights: ‘Civil War in Sierra Leone Rebel Abuses Near Sierra Leone Capital’ United Nations Should Act, Says Rights Group, (New York, March 3, 2000.www.hrw.org/
[11] Human Rights Watch, ‘Getting Away with Murder, Mutilation, and Rape: New Testimony from Sierra Leone’ (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999), p. 50.
[12] ‘UN troops accused of ‘systematic’ rape in Sierra Leone’ by Tim Butcher, The Daily Telegraph, January 17, 2003.
[13] ‘UN weapons inspector is leader of S&M sex ring’, The Washington Post, November 30, 2002.
[14] ‘UN ship ‘carried child prostitutes’ August 21, 2003 http://www.news.com.au.
[15] ‘UN ‘ignored’ abuse at Kosovo mental homes,’ The Guardian, August 8, 2002.
[16] ‘UN peacekeepers sexually abused hundreds of Haitian women & girls – report’. RT, June 10, 2015.

Rape: Corporate Camouflage and Across the Gender Divide

By M.K. Styllinski

“When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town.  But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder.  You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you.”

– Deuteronomy 20:10-14

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As the above Bible quotation illustrates, whether a psychopathic God, tribal leader or armchair geo-politician such as Henry Kissinger, rape and plunder can be used as powerful political tool.

To step down the implications of ponerology we can use the standard definition of rape where a male forces a female or another male to submit to sexual intercourse against his or her will. We can see that the act of rape is both a literal and metaphorical expression of the ponerisation of social systems. Definitions of rape, rates of reporting, collection of data, prosecution and conviction has led to rape being the most contested of all crime-related statistics. It is also considered the most under-reported crime due to socio-cultural stigmas; the individual’s distrust of the authorities (as well as their culture of denial) the prospect of facing the attacker in court and his or her own sense of shame.

According to a 2001-2002 United Nations report where government statistical data was compiled from over 65 countries 250,000 cases of male-female rape or attempted rape were recorded by police annually. ^[1]  The rate of rape may still be conservative when we consider that in cases where women whose husbands or boyfriends force them to have sex they are unlikely to say “yes” when asked whether or not rape has occurred. To make things worse, male-female rape is the only kind reported in some countries.

Award-winning journalist and human rights activist Jan Goodwin described the horrors in the Democratic Republic of Congo over ten years ago. Her article illustrates how so called “globalisation” is largely nothing more than an excuse to export more systems of neo-imperialistic exploitation. The myth of neo-liberal democracy continues to feed on the rest of the world, most notably in the war-weary continent of Africa where rape plays a strategic role in the fortunes of tribal warfare, governments and corporations.

Goodwin writes:

Last May, 6-year-old Shashir was playing outside her home near Goma, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), when armed militia appeared. The terrified child was carried kicking and screaming into the bush. There, she was pinned down and gang-raped. Sexually savaged and bleeding from multiple wounds, she lay there after the attack, how long no one knows, but she was close to starving when finally found. Her attackers, who’d disappeared back into the bush, wiped out her village as effectively as a biblical plague of locusts.

‘This little girl couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk when she arrived here. Shashir had to be surgically repaired. I don’t know if she can be mentally repaired,’ says Faida Veronique, a 47-year-old cook at Doctors on Call for Service (DOCS), a tented hospital in the eastern city of Goma, who took in the brutalized child.

‘Why do they rape a child?’ asks Marie-Madeleine Kisoni, a Congolese counselor who works with raped women and children. “We don’t understand. There’s a spirit of bestiality here now. I’ve seen 2- and 3-year-olds raped. The rebels want to kill us, but it’s more painful to kill the spirit instead.’ ^[2]

And “killing the spirit” is the part of the armoury of corporate psychopathy, fostered and encouraged.

In the Eastern regions of the Congo gang rape still continues with the relatively new phenomena of “fistulas” caused by the introduction of objects such as sticks, pipes or gun barrels into the vagina, usually after repeated raping. These acts cause serious internal damage leading to the rupturing of the walls that separate the vagina and bladder or rectum. Instances of carefully shooting the victim in the vagina so that the woman or girl remains alive are increasing. Dr. Denis Mukwege, medical director of Panzi Hospital:  “The perpetrators are trying to make the damage as bad as they can, to use it as a kind of weapon of war, a kind of terrorism. Instead of just killing the woman, she goes back to her village permanently and obviously marked. ‘I think it’s a strategy put in place by these groups to disrupt society, to make husbands flee, to terrorize.” ^[3]

The age old, colonial formula came under some rare scrutiny by a UN Security Council panel which cited: “… eighty-five multinational corporations, including some of the largest US companies in their fields, for their involvement in the illegal exploitation of natural resources from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The commerce in these ‘blood’ minerals…drives the conflict. The brutality of the militias – the sexual slavery, transmission of HIV/AIDS through rape, cannibalism, slaughter and starvation, forced recruitment of child soldiers – has routinely been employed to secure access to mining sites or insure a supply of captive labor.” ^[4]

warchild.org

(click on the image above to watch the documentary)

“A mother carries her children in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Forcibly displaced women face grave threats and abuse in the volatile region.” – ‘ Source: The Congolese rape victims a UNHCR officer will never forget’ By Francesca Fontanini in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo | Telling the Human Story, 3 September 2009.

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UNICEF works with the same multinationals, which patronize and donate to many other leading NGOs and charities. Rape has always been a weapon of war, but now it has been recognised as an intentional tool rather than a by-product of conflict. As the author states, this is an international problem where the yolk of conscience that has long since seeped away.

As of 2013, this ponerological disease has begun to spread into the social infrastructure where reports of some teachers and senior officials raping school children in their care. According to a July 6th 2013 report by the Association Africaine de Défense des Droits de l’Homme (ASADHO)  “Young girls are regularly raped in schools” in Kinshasa with local police providing statistics for the town of Matadi. As the report outlined, the abuse is met: “… with authorities and the justice system remaining silent.”

Despite these horrors, there are dedicated people on the ground achieving minor and sometimes major successes. What acts as a constant brick-wall to progress is the governmental bureaucracy and corporate complicity which handicaps the long-term effectiveness of these breakthroughs. Successful prosecutions for these crimes are pitifully small and will remain so when human rights violations serve the corporate and banking interests. Ancient tribal divisions are purposely exacerbated and brought into sharp relief in order to monopolise the rich resources available in the African continent. This is now common knowledge and easily verified. Yet, at the time of the Rwanda genocide for instance, the media sought fit to paint such a human disaster as simple blood-lust fuelled by tribal racism that simply surfaced “out of the blue”. These deep insecurities and fears were brought to boiling point and unleashed on a nation precisely because vested interests knew where to apply the pressure so that corporate plunder could continue while Africa’s citizens were fully embroiled in killing each other. The divide and rule formula is nothing new, though the effects of lighting the tinder-box and the required atrocities can burn way out of control.

In 2012 the number of rapes rose dramatically due to various rebel militia groups upping the ante. The presence of Western corporations in DRC and their indirect funding of groups and militias to intentionally keep this resource-rich country destabilized is now a matter of record and has continued despite many commentators drawing our attention to the blatant hypocrisy on show. Unfortunately, until our socio-political system changes and changes radically, we can only expect the results of this neo-colonialism and its horrific effects to continue.

Across the Gender Divide

Though as much a reality as female rape, male rape is barely acknowledged as a problem, let alone an endemic one. In East Africa, where male rape is high, bringing the issue to light is hindered by the fact that homosexuality is still seen as a crime in 38 of the 53 African nations.

In a recent Observer article journalist Will Storr reported on male rape in Africa notably from victims in and around the Congo. Storr interviewed Eunice Owiny who is employed by Makerere University’s Refugee Law Project (RLP) in Kampala, Kenya “… to help displaced people from all over Africa work through their traumas.”  The situation, while horrific for women and children is all the more harrowing for men because no one wants to know. “They will probably be ostracised by friends, rejected by family and turned away by the UN and the myriad international NGOs that are equipped, trained and ready to help women. They are wounded, isolated and in danger. In the words of Owiny: ‘They are despised.’” ^[5]

Slowly victims are hearing of the services offered by RLP and attendance is rising rapidly. Storr met several young men out of more than 150 who had been raped and assaulted during conflict. He recounted the tale of one Jean-Paul, a student at university in Congo, who had been studying electronic engineering when his father – a wealthy businessman – was accused by the army of aiding the enemy and shot dead. Jean Paul fled in January 2009, only to be abducted by rebels. Along with six other men and six women he was marched to a forest in the Virunga National Park. Once captured Jean-Paul was taken deep into the jungle with the other women. While they were told to make coffee and fetch water, the rebels set up camp and then turned their attention to their new captives:

 ‘You are all spies,’ the commander said. ‘I will show you how we punish spies.’ He pointed to Jean Paul. “Remove your clothes and take a position like a Muslim man.”

Jean Paul thought he was joking. He shook his head and said: ‘I cannot do these things.’

The commander called a rebel over. Jean Paul could see that he was only about nine years old. He was told, “Beat this man and remove this clothes.’ The boy attacked him with his gun butt. Eventually, Jean Paul begged: ‘Okay, okay. I will take off my clothes.’ Once naked, two rebels held him in a kneeling position with his head pushed towards the earth.

At this point, Jean Paul breaks off. The shaking in his lip more pronounced than ever, he lowers his head a little further and says: “I am sorry for the things I am going to say now.” The commander put his left hand on the back of his skull and used his right to beat him on the backside “like a horse”. Singing a witch doctor song, and with everybody watching, the commander then began. The moment he started, Jean Paul vomited.

Eleven rebels waited in a queue and raped Jean Paul in turn. When he was too exhausted to hold himself up, the next attacker would wrap his arm under Jean Paul’s hips and lift him by the stomach. He bled freely: ‘Many, many, many bleeding,” he says, ‘I could feel it like water.’ Each of the male prisoners was raped 11 times that night and every night that followed. […]

It is for this reason that both perpetrator and victim enter a conspiracy of silence and why male survivors often find, once their story is discovered, that they lose the support and comfort of those around them. In the patriarchal societies found in many developing countries, gender roles are strictly defined. ^[6]

The most shocking aspect was revealed to Storr when he discovered that not only is “male sexual violence a component of wars all over the world” but that international aid organisations are failing victims. He quotes Lara Stemple’s study from the University of California which cites a review of 4,076 NGOs that have addressed wartime sexual violence. “Only 3 percent of them mentioned the experience of men in their literature. “Typically … ‘as a passing reference.’” ^[7]

RLP director Chris Dolan was not surprised: “The organisations working on sexual and gender-based violence don’t talk about it,” he says. “It’s systematically silenced. If you’re very, very lucky they’ll give it a tangential mention at the end of a report. You might get five seconds of: ‘Oh and men can also be the victims of sexual violence.’ But there’s no data, no discussion.” ^[8]

The reason that there is no discussion supports the data in this blog/book that there is gender bias that is now equal if not greater towards men than women in a variety of social and cultural domains, especially within charity and non-governmental organisations or as Dolan wryly points out: “There’s a fear among them that this is a zero-sum game; that there’s a pre-defined cake and if you start talking about men, you’re going to somehow eat a chunk of this cake that’s taken them a long time to bake.”

© unknown

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“There are no detailed statistics, but sexual violence against men and boys is increasingly being recognized as a protection concern in conflict and forced displacement situations.”

– UNHCR issues guidelines on protection of male rape victims

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Dolan also mentions a November 2006 UN report that followed an international conference on sexual violence in this area of East Africa where the authors insisted that the definition of rape was restricted to women, where even:  “… one of the RLP’s donors, Dutch Oxfam, refused to provide any more funding unless he’d promise that 70 percent of his client base was female. Another serious case of male rape was referred to the UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR who told him: “We have a programme for vulnerable women, but not men.” (Happily, things are slowly beginning to improve.  For the first time, guidelines for UNHCR staff and other aid workers were issued in 2012 on: “… how to identify and support male victims of rape and other sexual violence in conflict and displacement situations.”)

Storr is reminded of a scene described by Eunice Owiny: “‘There is a married couple,’ she said. “The man has been raped, the woman has been raped. Disclosure is easy for the woman. She gets the medical treatment, she gets the attention, she’s supported by so many organisations. But the man is inside, dying.” Dolan agrees: “Part of the activism around women’s rights is: ‘Let’s prove that women are as good as men.’ But the other side is you should look at the fact that men can be weak and vulnerable.’ ” ^[9]

This gender bias and overt discrimination against men is a concurrent theme and represents a serious problem in organisations tasked to help all those suffering from human rights abuses.  It will need not just a radical change in the law to change such aberrations, but equally dramatic change in the very notion of economics and the unfettered powers of international banking. This is the form of globalisation which underpins almost all of our social ills and the eventual atrocities which inevitably occur. Unless the core issues are addressed humanitarian professionals who struggle daily to cope with these iniquities will be forever submerged in the tide of trans-national profits divorced from values and any accountability for their crimes.

It would also be a mistake to see the exploitation of ancient tribal feuds as an exclusively African problem. The same atrocities were witnessed in the former Yugoslavia where the primary drive for was the control of oil, weapons sales and the creation of a geo-strategic arena called Kosovo. This was also under the guise of an humanitarian effort.

Among countries which report these statistics, the United States has the highest rape rate, 4 times higher than that of Germany, and 20 times higher than that of Japan and 13 times higher than that of England, though the latter country’s rates are increasing with 5,000 children under sixteen raped every year. ^[10]  In 1991 alone there were estimated to be 700,000 rapes of adult women,^[11] while 1 in 3 sexual assault victims are under the age of 12. ^[12] The figure for reported child rapes for the same year is 1.4 million. The first comprehensive report on the financial cost of rape has the highest annual victim costs at $127 billion per year with child abuse at $56 billion. ^[13] Unsurprisingly perhaps: “compared to their non-crime victim counterparts, three times more likely to develop major depression; 4.1 times more likely to have seriously contemplated suicide and 13 times more likely to have actually made a suicide attempt.” ^[14]

By 2008, the statistical counts and rates ^* of rape in each country has continued to rise with the US, taking the lead, followed by United Kingdom, France, Korea, Germany, the Russian Federation and Sweden representing some of the highest counts of rape. While Belgium, New Zealand, United States, Lesotho, Trinidad and Tobago and Sweden are reaching the highest rates of rape per year. However, even the United Nations report is far from definitive when we realise that there are differences between recording and reporting as well as difficulties in bringing to trial or being convicted as well. We must also include the disparity of definitions for rape around the world and the significant amounts of data still missing. Finally, even when reports of cases making it to court can be counted, less than half of those arrested for rape are convicted.^[15]

High profile cases of false rape accusations by women and the oft quoted spectre of “date rape” in Western Europe have tarnished and distorted the acute problem of rape in society fuelling the idea that all rape is merely in the imagination of the female concerned. Such fraudulent claims only do harm to objective investigation to sexual assault overall and most certainly to those accused, often ruining lives in the process. Even if those accused are subsequently cleared, the damage is done, leading to stigmatization from colleagues and friends and in some cases resulting in suicide. According to UK Home Office research, between “…3 percent and 9 percent of all reports of rape are found to be false … with 16 and 25 making up both the largest group of victims and the accused.” ^[16]

Given the rise in narcissism within our societies – and women in particular – this may be, in some way connected. The law is also very different in the United Kingdom and the United States. In one case the British Court of Appeal dismissed a claim by a former nurse who was jailed for two years after falsely accusing a man she had met online. The presiding judge said that false allegations damage conviction rates of genuine rapes and are “terrifying” for innocent victims where: “False complaints of rape necessarily impact upon the minds of jurors trying rape cases.” ^[17]

In the US no appeals can take place because no such law exists for false rape claims. Of the 90,427 forcible rapes reported in 2007, 40 percent were cleared by arrest or “exceptional means.”  This translates as those suspects whom have died before an arrest can be made (not very common) the accusation of rape has been retracted (common) the suspect is held in another state with jurisdiction and extradition has been denied or evidence for a rape is non-existent. A percentage of rape complaints have been classified as “unfounded” by the police for decades and excluded from the FBI’s statistics. ^[18] Not exactly a scientific way of producing definitive data on such an important issue.

An article by Bruce Gross in the Forensic examiner described this anomaly in the following terms: “…there are no formal negative consequences for the person who files a false report of rape. Not only did the false allegation serve a purpose for the accusers, they actually never have to fully admit to themselves, their family, or their friends that the report was a lie. Although there are grounds for bringing legal action against the accuser, it is virtually never done. Even should a charge be filed, in most jurisdictions filing a false report is only a misdemeanor.” ^[19]

Present day figures on rape have increased. According to the UK Government’s Action Plan on Violence Against Women and Girls, 80,000 women are raped a year, and 400,000 women are sexually assaulted in the UK alone. ^[20] In 2012, thousands of women in India took to the streets to protest “endemic and unchecked violence against women” sparked by the death of a woman named Damini who had been gang-raped, dying of her injuries a few weeks later. An article in the UK Independent highlighted the fact that it is comforting to think that this is a strictly Indian or African problem when in fact, it is a convenient myth designed to brush what is a global problem, under the cultural carpet. One example from the developed nations of Europe came from France in 1999, where: “… two then-teenagers – named only as Nina and Stephanie – were raped almost every day for six months. Young men would queue up to rape them, patiently waiting for their friends to finish in secluded basements. After a three-week trial this year, 10 of the 14 accused left the courtroom as free men; the other four were granted lenient sentences of one year at most.” ^[21]

As we can see, the fluctuations of gender bias manifests in many different ways.

 

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* “Counts” are raw numbers; the “rate” is the statistical average from that data.

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Notes

[1] ‘The Eighth United Nations Survey on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems’ (2001–2002) – Table 02.08 Total recorded rapes.
[2] ‘Silence = Rape’ By Jan Goodwin, The Nation, 2004.
[3] “More Vicious Than Rape” by Rod Nordland, Newsweek, November 13 2006.
[4] Ibid.

[5] ‘The rape of men ’By Will Storr, The Observer, July 2011.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] ‘Revealed: the horror of the 5,000 children under 16 raped every year’ by Denis Campbell, The Observer, May 14, 2006.

[11] ‘Minnesota Sex Offense Screening Tool – Revised’ by D. Epperson (2000) presented at Sinclair Seminars Sex Offenders Re-Offense Risk Prediction, Madison Sq. Wisconsin.

[12] The impact of violence on children. The Future of Children: 33-49.Snyder, H., Sickmund, M. Juvenile offenders and victims: 1999 national report. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

[13] In February 1996, the National Institute of Justice released the first comprehensive report on the cost of victimization. Data was gathered from criminal justice agencies, medical professionals, hospitals, insurance companies, mental health professionals, crime victim compensation programs, and crime victims, significant information is available about the immediate, short-term and long-term financial impact of victimization.

[14] US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Victims Assistance Academy 1996. Chapter 1. The Scope of Violent Crime and Victimization, Statistical overview.

[15] The Response to Rape : detours on the road to equal justice : by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Congressional Sales Office, 1993. ISBN: 0160417872.

[16] ‘Forever Accused’ BBC News, February 12, 2008.

[17] ‘Prison ‘inevitable’ for false rape claims’ by Tom Whitehead, The Telegraph, October 30, 2009.

[18] Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). (2008d). Percent of crimes cleared by arrest or exceptional means, 2007. (Clearance Figure). Uniform Crime Report: Crime in the United States, 2007. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Retrieved from http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/offense/ clearances/index.html#figure.

[19] ‘False Rape Allegations: An Assault on Justice’ By Bruce Gross, PhD, JD, MBA, The Forensic Examiner, September 15, 2009.

[20] ‘Sexual violence is not a cultural phenomenon in India – it is endemic everywhere’ The Independent December 30, 2012. |/www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/sexual-violence-is-not-a-cultural-phenomenon-in-india.

[21] Ibid.