Glen Ford’s Locating Fascism on the Home Map at Black Agenda Report is well worth a read. Trump pandering to racism and Jim Crow in the under-educated and overly propagandized White blue collar class is as clear as his choice for attorney general, Jeff Sessions, whose long record of White supremacy is undeniable. After the nominally Black Obama had led America’s Black community down a fantasy lane that led to nowhere (except continuing disempowerment), now it is the White pied piper’s turn to enchant. As the ‘white right’ celebrates their hero assuming the presidency, the stark reality is, the White blue collar class is a new class of ‘black’ where under-privilege is being locked in. The stupidity of the propagandized American people, regardless of race, is priceless.
For Uncle Sam White makes the man As easily as trailer trash Crushes a beer can -RTW
Indeed, taking a cue from Ford’s article, the USA’s larger populace is the meat filling for America’s psychopathic leaderships’ home cooked Satan sandwich. I expect Trump’s advisor-cretins are grateful Joe Bageant is dead. Unlike the Black Agenda Report speaking truth to America’s Black community, there is no honest voice (I am aware of) in the White, blue collar class dedicated solely to speaking truth to its’ own. What a pity the the White, blue collar working class prejudices will preclude any real understanding of the honest information presented here:
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
In decadence and decline, the U.S. has produced two strong strains of fascism that now vie for supremacy. The First Black President, now outgoing, represents the “cosmopolitan, global obsessed” variety of fascist. Donald Trump hails from an older fascist strain, “crude and petty, too ugly for global prime time.” At this stage in history, the two corporate parties seem incapable of producing anything other than fascists of one kind or the other.
Locating Fascism on the Home Map
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
“The merciless downsizing of the American worker is a central element of Obama’s legacy.”
Barack Obama was a savior – of a drowning ruling class. Under his administration, Wall Street rose from near-death to new heights of speculative frenzy, awash in capital brutally extracted from the vanishing assets and past and future earnings of the vast majority of the population, or gifted in the form of trillions in free money at corporate-only Federal Reserve windows. The Big Casino, reduced to a rubble of its own contradictions in 2008, ushered in the New Year just shy of the once-fantastical 20,000 mark. Analysts credited Donald Trump’s victory for the bankers’ bacchanal, but it was Obama who made the party possible by overseeing the restructuring of the U.S. economy to accommodate and encourage the hyper-consolidation of capital — another way to describe the deliberate deepening of economic (and political) inequality. Having accomplished the mission assigned him by Wall Street in return for record-breaking contributions to his first campaign, Obama is said to be angling for a hot-money squat in Silicon Valley, the super-rich sector that was most supportive of his presidency.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is melting quicker than the Wicked Witch of the West, principally due to the failure of traditionally Democratic working (and out of work) people of all races to turn out on November 8 — a perfectly understandable response to a party and a system that offers them absolutely nothing but grief, in ever quickening increments. The merciless downsizing of the American worker is a central element of Obama’s legacy. Real wages had been frozen or declining for decades. However, economic restructuring in the Age of Obama demanded that millions of workers be crushed all the way through the floor to a lower level of hell: temporary, contract, not-really-a-job, part-time “gig” employment. If the 1930s squatter shanty-towns called “Hoovervilles” were testaments to President Herbert Hoover’s economic policies, then the maddeningly precarious, no guaranteed hours, no benefits, zero job security, fraction of a shift, arbitrarily scheduled employment of today should be called ObamaJobs. A new study by economists at Princeton and Harvard universities shows that an astounding 94 percent of the 10 million jobs created during the First Black President’s two terms in office were ObamaJobs. This sub-sector of employment increased by almost half under Obama, from 10.7% of the working population to 15.8%.
“The structural lowering of the employment floor to a precariat sub-basement makes all workers more insecure and less able to bargain with the bosses.”
According to the study, one million fewer people are working under any kind of formal employment than before the Great Recession. The researchers also calculate that Obama’s claim of creating 15 million new jobs is off by 5 million.
Low income workers, especially females, were hurt worst under the ObamaJobs regime. But, the structural lowering of the employment floor to a precariat sub-basement makes all workers more insecure and less able to bargain with the bosses — which is precisely what the new employment order is designed to do, and what Barack Obama intended. The President’s apologists claim Republican obstructionists prevented Obama from acting on his alleged progressive instincts. However, as frequent BAR contributor Pascal Robert points out, Obama “expended no political capital to push a jobs agenda at any time in his presidency.”
Republicans did not force Obama off his stride, causing him to stumble and lose his bearings on the way to a progressive agenda. From the very beginning, this consummate corporate politician had a grand social/economic strategy, beyond the overarching mission of resurrecting the Gilded Age of finance capital.
First, he would insulate the pharmaceutical and insurance industries from the threat of single payer, the world standard of health care that has been favored by 60-plus percent of Americans for at least the past three decades. Once those corporate interests were made safe — possibly for a generation — Obama immediately began attempting to forge a Grand Bargain with the Republicans to establish a bipartisan austerity regime. Core labor issues, including the “card check” bill that would have allowed unions to reverse their membership death spiral, were nowhere on his agenda.
“Obama’s assault on FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s War on Poverty seemed to come from out of the blue.”
Obama declared war on social spending before even taking the oath of office. In early January, 2009, he informed the editorial boards of the New York Times and the Washington Post that all “entitlements” would be “on the table” for cutting under his presidency, including Medicare and Social Security. Obama’s assault on FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s War on Poverty seemed to come from out of the blue; the battered Republicans were in no position to pressure anybody, and remembered how badly George Bush had been burned when he attempted to privatize Social Security, in his first term.
Obama seemed positively relieved when the GOP took control of the House, in 2010; he needed a stronger Republican Party on Capitol Hill to make his planned Grand Bargain look like a compromise, so that he would appear like a statesman practicing the politics of bipartisan give and take. But the GOP, the “White Man’s Party” whose organizing principle is race, could not bring itself to seal the deal, even after Obama offered a package of spending cuts approximating the Republicans’ own demands: about $4 trillion. Instead, Democrat-GOP relations calcified into gridlock. Thus, the nation was saved from Obama’s Grand Bargain, which Kansas City Black Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, then chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, called a “Satan Sandwich.”
Obama has not offered a comprehensive economic plan of any kind since the collapse of his courtship with the GOP, which was too mean, narrow and racist to accept his eagerly offered surrender.
“Barack Obama dared to push through Congress a bill authorizing the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens by the military, without trial or charge.”
One does not embark on a campaign to lower wages and savage the social safety net without simultaneously buttressing the national security state. In addition to the exponential expansion of the U.S. domestic and global surveillance regime inherited from George Bush, Barack Obama dared to push through Congress a bill authorizing the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens by the military, without trial or charge. The 2011 New Years Eve insert to the National Defense Authorization Act (NNDA) effectively demolished the principle of due process of law in the United States. Although George Bush claimed the same authority, as inherent in the powers of the commander-in-chief, he never attempted to pass legislation to that effect, knowing that Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill would fight him, tooth and nail. But, Obama’s bill sailed through both chambers of Congress.
When Donald Trump moves into the White House on January 20, he will be empowered to imprison whomever he chooses, without recourse to law as we know it, thanks to Barack Obama. Who, then, is the “fascist”?
President Obama’s greatest foreign policy challenge was to put the United States back on the global military offensive, following George Bush’s humiliation in Iraq. This required a new doctrine, to replace Bush’s discredited crusade to “spread democracy.” On March 17, 2011, Obama loosed his “humanitarian” military intervention doctrine on Libya, effectively negating centuries of international law and custom. As interpreted by Obama, national sovereignty and the inviolability of borders means nothing if the superpower, standing in for the planet, deems a government to be a threat to its own people — even if crimes against humanity have not yet occurred. Absent the principle of sovereignty, international law ceases to exist.
Obama’s methodical nullification of international law is, itself, the gravest aggression and crime against peace. The U.S. and its NATO and Gulf Arab allies deployed massive air power and foreign and Libyan jihadists to destroy the Libyan state and its leader, Muammar Gaddafi, butchered thousands of his supporters, and ethnically cleansed Black Africans from much of the country.
“Obama’s methodical nullification of international law is, itself, the gravest aggression and crime against peace.”
On a roll, Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton moved thousands of jihadists to Syria, whose largest city, Aleppo, was captured by sectarian terrorists in 2012. From the moment Obama became the protector-in-chief of jihadists in Libya and Syria, virtually all the “news” about the wars in the region has been fake, false, lies. The now indisputable fact that the U.S. has, variously, armed, financed, shielded, transported, trained, directed and otherwise nurtured Islamic jihadists, including al-Qaida, is the truth that cannot be spoken on corporate media. If widely understood and internalized by the public, such a truth would shatter U.S. ruling structures. Therefore, it must be suppressed at all costs.
The sick superpower fends off the smell of death with a daily diet of lies: mainly about Russia and China and other states that refuse to buckle under to U.S. imperialism. The U.S. rulers’ biggest secret — the one that requires many layers of lies to conceal — is that the Lords of Capital see their demise as imminent and inevitable unless they somehow alter the general scope and direction of global economic development. The U.S. share of the world economy is inexorably shrinking — which means, the only way the U.S. can sustain its superpower status is through lawless force of arms abroad, and a crackdown on dissent (truth-telling, or just being Black) at home.
If you are searching for the real meaning of fascism in the superpower under late stage capitalism, you will find it in the nexus between the presidencies of Obama and Trump. Donald Trump’s fascism is the vintage kind that held sway for 70 or 80 years in Dixie under Jim Crow. Still stuck in apartheid, it seems inflexible, crude and petty, too ugly for global prime time. In some ways, this kind of fascist’s ambitions have shrunk to U.S. territorial size, or less.
Obama’s fascism — of the same brand as the Clintons’ — is global-obsessed, because it needs to feed on the whole planet to survive. It’s a cosmopolitan, world-stealing Dracula, that cannot imagine life on Earth without itself in charge. It no longer indulges heavily in ideological justifications for its predations; whatever detracts from its hegemony is the enemy. Increasingly, it is engaged in a War Against All. Most recently, it simultaneously attacked both Russia and Donald Trump’s apartheid branch of fascists.
One fascist is fond of race war. The other isn’t so picky.
This was the headline in my mail from Jonathan Penton at unlikelystories.org. Followed on with:
“Hopefully the subject line is clear enough. Fascism is back, and we’ve chosen to fight it. What have you got to say about it? We’re looking for all sorts of reactions, predictive and current, global and American. We want all the art and literature and crazy passionate rage you’ve got”
Ok, so Trump played on racism and nationalist sentiment in his election campaign. No argument with that. But then…
Who is to say Obama and Hillary are not fascist? Might in fact Hillary be closer to Mussolini than Trump is to Hitler? Have another read:
“Obviously, the sitting parties in Congress want[ed] nothing more than for Trump to be branded a fascist. Which is why Hillary Clinton not long ago compared him to Adolf Hitler. Through a wider philosophical and historical lens, there are two issues with that claim. First, Trump hasn’t killed anyone. Second, the person making the claim has.
“The problem for Hillary is that a lot of Americans understand this. And that because of this such claims have started to backfire in a 180º turnaround. You can witness the same process in Britain’s Brexit debate, and in many other countries.
“I’m not writing this to support Trump or Le Pen, they’re not my kind of people at all. But neither is Hillary. I write it to warn people away from vacuous claims and statements. Which are not only dishonest, they have started to support the very people they’re made against. The political climate is changing, because the economy is tanking.
“And I write this to indicate that fascism may well already be amongst us, and it would be a good idea if we learned to recognize it. To suggest that perhaps, if we’re honest, Hillary is closer to Mussolini than Trump is to Hitler.
“Look, we could talk our faces blue about the differences and analogies between fascism and racism, something the ‘new right wing’ seems to have plenty of, and something Muhammad Ali’s death and yesterday’s Orlando massacre should teach us yet another lesson about. And we could talk about what they might potentially do if/when they acquire political power. But none of that makes these people fascists. Whereas the other side of the equation, the [lame duck] incumbents…”
Moving forward, would liberals care to examine Hillary’s support for a neo-nazi assisted coup in Ukraine? You don’t have to look far for the evidence, here is an authentic political left cover of the subject:
“Hillary Clinton has good reason to avoid these facts. Her popularity has plunged and the truth can only make matters worse. What is striking about her neo-McCarthyist attack, however, is how the same accusations she has made against Putin could be turned right back on her. As Secretary of State, Clinton laid the foundation for the coup in Ukraine in 2014. The coup’s mastermind, Victoria Nuland, was a Clinton surrogate who has been a chief foreign adviser for the Bush Jr. Administration. Ukraine is now controlled by political parties that harbor Nazi ideology such as the Right Sector”
“In late 2011, after months of sustained anti-government protests inspired by the “Arab Spring” movement, Hillary Clinton called for the resignation of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Then, in April 2012, Clinton gave a speech in Turkey more forcefully calling specifically for regime change, saying, “Assad must go.” Those three words created the policies that led to both the rise of ISIS in Syria and the European refugee crisis of 2015.
“One of Clinton’s last actions as Secretary of State was to call for the arming of Syrian rebels fighting Assad. As the London Telegraph reported, Clinton’s plan to give weapons to Assad’s enemies was backed by not only former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, but also by former CIA director David Petraeus and General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. While Obama initially rejected his Secretary of State’s plan, he eventually agreed to arm Syrian rebels in the goal of ousting Assad.
“However, as ISIS began to get a foothold into Syria and Iraq, the “moderates” that received weapons from the US were eventually overtaken by ISIS fighters, who suddenly found themselves in the possession of military-grade weapons paid for with US tax dollars. In a study conducted by Conflict Armament Research, which tracks the movement of arms in war-torn regions, researchers found that ISIS has weapons and ammunition not just from the US, but also from coalition forces that are funded by the US government. The access to advanced weaponry was likely the reason for ISIS’ rapid expansion into Libya, Egypt, and elsewhere.”
So, who is the proven murderer? ‘Never Clinton’ would perhaps be the best news the contemporary world could know, while on the other hand, the petty mobster Trump hasn’t had his chance … yet.
“Our vision of “transgressive” is proprietary, idiosyncratic, and possibly delusional, but we believe that when literature legitimately challenges the assumptions of the reader, it has the power to create pragmatic change” [partial] mission statement at unlikelystories.org
If well intended, self-delusional certainly… But then we found this story at Politico:
“Soros bands with donors to resist Trump, ‘take back power’
“George Soros and other rich liberals who spent tens of millions of dollars trying to elect Hillary Clinton are gathering in Washington for a three-day, closed door meeting to retool the big-money left to fight back against Donald Trump”
Politico is hardly some fringe news outlet. So, who are the fascists? A most unlikely story, “Never Trump”, would have you believe a proven mass killer, Hillary, is preferable to a petty mobster yet to put his hands on a trigger-misnomer called ‘The Oval Office.’ Huh. Inciting extra-constitutional street violence on behalf of a loser is apparently the new liberal value…
And who is a poet celebrated at unlikelystories.org? How about a “Soros Life Achievement Award” inkster:
“JANOS MARNO (born 1949, Budapest): Janos has published eight volumes of poetry and a book of essays, and translated works by Paul Celan. From 1967-1980, he silenced himself due to political discrimination. He has won the Jozsef Attila prize, the Dery prize, and the Soros Life Achievement award“
3 days ago – Anti–Trump US Color Revolution Includes Soros and Clinton … light of the protests and rioting that have transpired since the election of Trump, …
thefreethoughtproject.com › Be The Change › New Study
5 days ago – There is Nothing Organic About It — Anti–Trump Protesters Are Being … Hand Behind Trump Protests — Provoking US ‘Color Revolution‘ … In light of the protests and rioting that have transpired since the election of Trump, …
4 days ago – Some of the anti–Trump protests in the US have been organized by groups that were … George Soros predicts riots, police state and class war for America — RT … “We now have Soros behind many ‘color‘ revolutions in other …
4 days ago – The Purple Revolution will resist all efforts by the Trump … in two Orange Revolutions sponsored by Soros, one in 2004 and the other, ten years … «Pussy Riot» released on YouTube an anti–Trump music video titled «Make …
6 days ago – George Soros begins his color revolution in America, as MoveOn … Anti–Trump protesters march through the streets of New York shouting ‘Not my president’. ….. George Soros is FUNDING the riots and looting from #BLM and …
3 days ago – Following Trump’s election, MoveOn.org called for demonstrations across the country … as Hidden Hand Behind Trump Protests to Provoke US ‘Color Revolution‘ … George Soros Front Groups Connected To Anti–Trump Riots.
3 days ago – “If Trump wins, expect the likes of Soros and MoveOn.org to unleash wave after wave of flash mobs, who will protest, riot, smash and burn their …
3 days ago – It Looks Like George Soros is Funding the Trump Protests Just Like He … to as “the architect and sponsor of almost every revolution and coup …
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Cartoon credit to Bill Purkayastha, author of ‘Raghead‘
An example of the Catholic right-wing’s anonymous propaganda lies, followed by a set of links (beneath this piece) to open source intelligence analysis by this author and a few outside articles detailing some of Catholic fascism’s criminal structures and associated behaviors –
This article ‘honors’ Tantumblogo, a Dallas, Texas right-wing Catholic without the personal courage to blog under his real name; as he spews lies and hate at those who threaten his reality, notably Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation @
My attention had been drawn to Tantumblogo on account of a misleading (lying, actually) article on Mikey Weinstein, “Crude anti-Christian thug continues persecuting Christians in the military”, here is the linked screenshot:
Over 95 percent of MRFF’s clients are practicing Christians, who nonetheless reject being forced to participate in a superior officer’s Bible study or prayers, or who believe their vow to defend the Constitution bans state-sanctioned, state-funded religion, period
Is this preceding a case of right-wing Catholics do not recognize non-Catholics as Christian? What then, of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation’s clients who’re moderate Catholics? I emailed Mikey Weinstein and asked. The answer?
as of an hour ago, 10,406 [moderate catholic clients]
It would seem, according to Tantumblogo, nearly ten and one half thousand moderate Catholic soldiers who happen to be Military Religious Freedom Foundation clients bear no resemblance to “any semblance of Christianity”, as well these moderate 10,000 + Catholic clients are in league with a man, Mikey Weinstein, who is “full of hateful invective”
I left a bit of an intemperate comment at Tantumblogo’s article:
Nobody has crude behaviors exceeding that of *some* Catholic thugs. I recommend a bit of research into “GLADIO” and former CIA director Bill Colby’s admission Opus Dei was employed to set up the cells of ‘Christians’ in Europe that murdered innocents in cold blood so it could be blamed on ‘left wing terror’ and influence elections favoring the right wing, a series of crimes acknowledged by the government of Italy. Didn’t Jesus say ‘do not judge, lest you be judged?’ Or was it don’t throw stones? Either way, it’s sound advice –
I received a very disingenuous answer from a John Nolan, who at least had the courage to post under what is probably his actual name:
How endearing to see that Soviet era KGB disinformation lives on in the minds of the gullible.
Take a pinch of truth, (NATO did have a “stay behind army” strategy with arms caches in case of Soviet invasion) and add a dash of lies – Opus Dei involvement in assassinations (the KGB was Dan Brownish before Dan Brown) – and stir in a forged US army field manual to give it credibility – thereby smearing both NATO and the Catholic Church in one clever disinformation campaign.
Ah, how such repeated historical nonsense makes one nostalgic for the old days. Did you hear the KGB tale about Pope Pius and the Jews …..?
Ok, so I knew I wouldn’t likely get away with posting links relating to GLADIO and information like this:
Banco Ambrosiano, Calvi’s massive, privately-owned bank, collapsed on the news of his death, revealing a huge “black hole” in the balance sheet amounting to $1.3 billion. A large proportion of the missing money was later located in accounts owned by the Vatican bank
But nevertheless I attempted some reference with a comment I have to (imperfectly) reconstruct here…
Good the information got under your skin; Dan Brown did the church a massive favor with writing his fantasies, you think? Now, Vatican finance irregularities can be equated with conspiracy theories. And what about the pedophilia running rampant through right-wing Catholicism?
…because Tantumblogo intervened with:
First comment, [then] gratuitous descent into insults regarding priests raping boys – where do you stand on sodomites pretending to marry? – gets an instant ban. It indicates a fundamental lack of good will
The he deleted his (above) comment and my reply to ‘John Nolan’ but not before I had opportunity to preserve his ‘instant ban’ and he left my initial comment together with John Nolan’s propaganda reply I will not be allowed to rebut (as of this writing)
I thought ‘well, ok, I can maybe do something with this’ and proceded to look around. TantumBlogo’s ‘about me’ is interesting:
When you look at his ‘about me’, the ‘likes’ instantly jump out where is what appears to be a neo-Nazi symbol at 3rd from left and sure enough, when clicking on that symbol it brings up a neo-Nazi Waffen SS motto:
What could say more ‘about’ Tantumblogo than people who appreciate his ‘good works’? (speaking of “fundamental lack of good will”)
Links to further information on Catholic fascists:
“In any democracy, ethics, self restraint, tolerance & honesty will always take a second seat to narcissism, avarice, bigotry & persecution, if only because people who play by the rules in any democracy are at a disadvantage to those who easily subvert the rules to their own advantage” -Ronald Thomas West (Ronald’s Maxim)
A religious-military totalitarian state is born:
“Mr. Snowden has brought home to us that, while we Americans do not yet live in a police state or tyranny, we are well along in building the infrastructure on which either could be instantly erected if our leaders decided to do so. No longer protected by the law, our freedoms now depend on the self-restraint of men and women in authority, many of them in uniform. History protests that if one builds a turnkey totalitarian state, those who hold the keys will eventually turn them” -former U.S. Ambassador Chas Freeman
Deep State series article four, NATO & Gladio:
Sociopaths & Democracy
sociopath |ˈsōsēōˌpaTH|
noun
a personality disorder manifesting in antisocial attitudes & behavior and lack of conscience
DERIVATIVES
sociopathic |ˌsōsēōˈpaTHik| adjective.
sociopathy |ˌsōsēˈäpəTHē| noun
In March 2009, Seymour Hersh, naming Admiral William McRaven, mentioned an ‘executive assassinating ring’ that reported directly to Dick Cheney until its military commander (McRaven) had ordered it stopped (we are supposed to believe.) In August 2009, the story broke Central Intelligence Agency had hired Blackwater for a covert assassination program and then new CIA director Panetta ordered it cancelled (we also are supposed to believe.) It was in August 2009 Kieth Olbermann broke the story on Blackwater crusaders:
“The affidavit also says that Prince, quote, “views himself as a Christian crusader eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe. To that end, Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the crusades”
It was May of 2009 Harpers Magazine broke the story of a 2004 incident, a Special Forces officer, following viewing ‘The Passion of the Christ’, took his team into the suburbs of the Iraqi city of Samarra while using a bullhorn during evening prayer hour to broadcast “Jesus killed Mohammed“
““Each time I go into combat I get closer to God,” [Special Forces officer] DeGiulio would later say. He thought The Passion had been a sign that he would survive”
It was in 2008, the Pentagon promoted (now three star) General Robert Caslen despite the fact he’d been recommended for disciplinary action by the Department of Defense Inspector General for participating in a promotional Christian evangelical video where he states (in uniform, at the Pentagon) “We are the aroma of Jesus Christ”
“We substantiated the allegation in regards to military officers. The seven officers participated in interviews with Christian Embassy, excerpts of which were also included in the [Christian Embassy] promotional video. The officers were filmed during the duty day, in uniform with rank clearly displayed, in official and often identifiable Pentagon locations. Their remarks conferred approval of, and support to Christian Embassy, and the remarks of some officers implied they spoke for a group of senior military leaders, rather than just for themselves”
It is worth noting here, General Caslen is identified as president of the “Officers Christian Fellowship” whose mission statement is:
“a spiritually transformed military, with ambassadors for Christ in uniform, empowered by the Holy Spirit”
And now, following too many similar stories to list, we skip forward to April 2014, where the United States Army (officers at the Pentagon) is sending a military chaplain, band, color guard and entertainers to an event sponsored by the uber-right-wing ‘National Day of Prayer Task Force’, an organization which requires all its members and volunteers working with them to:
“to provide on their applications their ‘testimony’ of their ‘personal relationship’ with Jesus Christ”
Following on this spate of news on the motive and drive behind the people in custody of our world’s most lethal arsenal, we return to Seumour Hersh. In January, 2011, Hersh mentions Admiral William McRaven again, in context of Catholic religious-right extremism, Hersh states as a matter of fact the Joint Special Operations Command’s top leadership is populated with members of Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta and has this to say about the USA’s special operations commanders in regards to their membership in these right-wing Catholic organizations:
“They do see what they’re doing — and this is not an atypical attitude among some military — it’s a crusade, literally,” Hersh reportedly continued. “They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They’re protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function”
I admire Seymour Hersh, he has done some very important reporting on the USA’s dirty work in geopolitics, however I do not believe journalists, even the good ones, are gods. But, he nearly nails it here and it took a lot of guts to name the Knights of Malta and Opus Dei in relation to the American Joint Special Operations Command, because these are the sort of stories which are deliberately buried in the public psyche by associating the facts with nut jobs like Alex Jones and David Icke. Nothing works quite like humans with lizard DNA on the same page, alongside some of the most important stories of our time (mixed with disinformation), to get ordinary people to dismiss the most critical information out of hand. But that’s the purpose Jones and Icke serve. We won’t go to Alex Jones and his ilk, rather to Mother Jones instead.
But first, the problem with Hersh is, he is too conservative in his interpretations and by narrowly focusing his stories, will almost certainly miss the larger picture in relation to the Christian extremism at the Pentagon (and has done things like this before with his journalism.) But that’s what journalists do, keep a narrow focus. Intelligence analysts, on the other hand, must paint the larger picture and run the risk of blowing an analysis, but the good ones generally won’t. Using open source analysis, I’ll take you to the big picture of religion in relation to our Pentagon, special operations forces, Knights of Malta and Opus Dei, but to arrive in focus, we have to go back to the collapse of the 3rd Reich and begin with a look at the Vatican ‘Ratline‘ allowing literally tens of thousands of Nazis to escape Europe in the aftermath of World War Two. History shapes societies and our society is no exception. The primary ‘Ratline’ example for purpose of this essay is Horst Wagner, responsible for the murders of 350,000 people:
“After escaping from a Nuremberg jail in 1948, [Wagner] later explained .. how he was aided on his way to South America on the so-called Kloster Line, being given sanctuary in a number of convents and holy orders in Austria before heading to Rome. He sailed out of Genoa to Argentina to join such killers as Adolf Eichmann, the supreme mastermind behind the Holocaust, and Josef Mengele, the perverted ‘Angel of Death’ of Auschwitz, notorious for his grotesque medical experiments.
“[German Bishop at Rome assigned to smuggle Nazis] Hudal also arranged the paperwork for Franz Stangl, the commandant of the extermination camps of Sobibor and Treblinka, to flee to Brazil on a Red Cross passport using Vatican funds. Stangl, who was eventually extradited back to Germany in the 1960s and died in jail while serving a life sentence of his crimes, oversaw the murder of an estimated 1.4 million people at the two camps”
This preceding is example of a joint venture between the Vatican, MI6 and the CIA’s ‘Operation Paperclip’, a Nazi rescuing endeavor born out of an intensely close relationship between the man who shaped what later became the CIA and the Vatican, detailed in a one year investigation reported by Mother Jones in 1983:
“One day in July 1944, as the Second World War raged throughout Europe, General William “Wild Bill” Donovan was ushered into an ornate chamber in Vatican City for an audience with Pope Pius XII. Donovan bowed his head reverently as the pontiff intoned a ceremonial prayer in Latin and decorated him with the Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Sylvester, the oldest and most prestigious of papal knighthoods
“Pope Pius’ decoration of Wild Bill Donovan marked the beginning of a long-standing, intimate relationship between the Vatican and U.S. intelligence that continues to the present day”
The Mother Jones investigative report goes on:
“But the needy aided by certain SMOM [Sovereign Military Order of Malta, a.k.a. The Knights of Malta] members in the late 40s were some of the 50,000 Nazi war criminals who, with the assistance of the International Red Cross, were furnished fake Vatican passports and, in some cases, clerical robes, and were smuggled on Bishop Alois Hudal’s “underground railroad” to South America. Among those was Klaus Barbie, the “butcher of Lyon.”
In 1948, the SMOM gave one of its highest awards of honor, the Gran Croci al Merito con Placca, to General Reinhard Gehlen, Adolf Hitler’s chief anti-Soviet spy. (Only three other people received this award.) Gehlen, who was not a Catholic, was touted as a formidable ally in the holy crusade against godless Marxism. After the war he and his well-developed spy apparatus—staffed largely by ex-Nazis—joined the fledgling CIA. Eventually, hundreds more Nazis ended up on the U.S. government’s payroll. Among them was Klaus Barbie.
A note on the immediate preceding, Gehlen was ‘rehabilitated’ by the CIA and subsequently became the head of post-war West Germany’s CIA, known as BND. We’ll come back to this. Mother Jones goes on:
“The CIA very early on made a decision that Nazis were more valuable as allies and agents than as war criminals” says Victor Marchetti, an ex-CIA officer who was raised a Catholic. Marchetti is disturbed by the role of the CIA and his church in perpetuating the Nazi outrage. “It gets a little crazy,” he said, “when you let one thing [anticommunism] take over to the extent that you forgive everything else”
Ok, so now we can take the Mother Jones report, setting up the CIA relationship to the Vatican, and run with it. It was ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan established the close relationship with the Vatican to what became the CIA. Walter Beedle Smith, the first CIA director, brought on-board Allan Dulles. It was these three men who were the primary co-collaborators with the Vatican, over a period exceeding ten years from the late 1940s through the 1950s, in the rescue and delivery to safety of between forty and fifty thousand 3rd Reich criminals. The USA wanted the Nazi scientists (Operation Paperclip) and this paid off dramatically, not only Nazi Party member and rocket technologist (V2 bombing of London) Werner von Braun developing the future American ICBM missiles & USA space program launch successes, but also employing Nazi medical science, this is where the CIA went off the rails with Project MKUltra. But by far, the OSS that became the CIA, mostly wanted Nazi intelligence and its agents particularly, especially those familiar with the Soviet Union. And this is where the western democracies generally, not only the USA, went off the rails.
There is an interesting short memo, dated 1946 and declassified by the CIA, on Walter Beedle Smith, including this interesting language:
“Beedle Smith, on several occasions, called in the Chief Chaplain and gave him very firm orders to straighten with the Vatican Mission .. with a new appointment of chief of the Vatican position, one may expect the relationship will be bettered”
The specific intent of the memo is somewhat masked because it appears to be a code named subject (orchestra/oak) but the message is clear relating to Beedle Smith; as (at that time) Eisenhower’s military chief of staff, he is putting up with no nonsense from any Chaplain assigned to the ‘Vatican Mission.’ If (conjecture) this has to do with Protestant/Roman Catholic relations getting in the way of business, it is a lesson Beedle Smith’s protege, Allan Dulles, took to heart.
Allan Dulles is NOT the man a CIA edited Wikipedia represents:
“In 1935 Dulles returned from a business trip to Germany appalled by the Nazi treatment of German Jews and, despite his brother’s objections, led a movement within the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell to close their Berlin office.As a result of Dulles’ efforts, the Berlin office was closed and the firm ceased to conduct business in Nazi Germany”
“”The Consolidated Silesian Steel Company situation has become increasingly complicated, and I have accordingly brought in Sullivan and Cromwell, in order to be sure that our interests are protected,” wrote Knight. “After studying the situation Foster Dulles is insisting that their man in Berlin get into the picture and obtain the information which the directors here should have. You will recall that Foster is a director and he is particularly anxious to be certain that there is no liability attaching to the American directors””
Allan Dulles is “Foster Dulles” brother and all Allan Dulles’ law firm is concerned with is protecting business interests and escaping liability, nothing more. Certainly the man who spent years following the war protecting and helping thousands of Nazis evade justice cannot be the man concerned for Jews represented at Wikipedia.
Allan Dulles (and subsequent CIA personalities) did not limit the CIA relationship with the Catholic Church at Rome to shipping Nazis to safety (and in many instance providing them paid careers) but considerably widened the CIA/Church cooperation with the implementing of Operation Gladio. This is where things become even more sticky, if that were to seem possible. Related to this, when anonymous editors of Wikipedia had been tracked to Langley, Virginia and the CIA, they had seemed keen on deleting career CIA (operations division) man William Colby’s admission the CIA had set up (Operation Gladio) secret militia throughout Western Europe in concert with Opus Dei. The deleted entries include:
“According to a November 25, 1990 article by the Danish daily newspaper ”Berlingske Tidende”, quoted by Daniele Ganser in his 2005 book on Gladio, a source named “Q” confirmed William Colby’s revelations in his memoirs about the setting-up of stay-behind armies in Scandinavia .. Opus Dei played a central role in the setting up of Gladio in the whole of Europe”
But first, there is a powerful right-wing of the Catholic Church, firmly rooted in the Vatican, represented in Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta, had supported the rise of Latin America’s fascist juntas in concert with the CIA, following on the Nazi exodus to that global region. But this right-wing branch of the church did not by any means remain idle in Europe and North America.
In Europe, after the USA abandoned denazification during the Dulles tenure at the CIA, a most interesting CIA file on Reinhard Gehlen turns up, definitively establishing by the late 1950s at the Federal Parliament in West Germany, 26% of Bundestag [parliament] members were former Nazi Party members and 28% of Bundestag staff were the same. Of further interest is Gehlen himself, recalling the Mother Jones reporting in 1948 he’d been awarded high honors by the Vatican’s Knights of Malta:
“In March 1950, John McCloy was given the task of appointing a new head of the West German Secret Service. After discussing the matter with Frank Wisner of the CIA, McCloy decided on Reinhard Gehlen, the Nazi war criminal. This resulted in protests from the Soviet Union government who wanted to try Gehlen for war crimes.
“During the Second World War Gehlen served Adolf Hitler as head of military intelligence for the Eastern Front. It was in this post he had created a right-wing group made up of anti-Soviet Ukrainians and other Slavic nationalists into small armies and guerrilla units to fight the Soviets. The group carried out some of the most extreme atrocities that took place during the war. Gehlen was also responsible for a brutal interrogation program of Soviet prisoners of war
“Gehlen recruited large numbers of former members of the SS and the Gestapo. This included Franz Six, who had led Einsatzguppen mobile killing squads on the Eastern Front. The Gehlen Organization was also used to help Nazi war criminals escape to South America. This included Klaus Barbie who was smuggled out of Germany in March, 1951 and given a new life in Bolivia”
How have the CIA effort initiated with Gehlen turned out?
Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) or Federal Intelligence Service (Germany) reports directly to Angela Merkel. Recapping the preceding, this German counterpart to the CIA had been born out of the USA’s rescue of Nazi intelligence at the end of World War Two. Initially organized by the OSS and subsequently CIA as the ‘Gehlen Organization’ under Hitler’s veteran Soviet spymaster (Nazi war criminal) Reinhard Gehlen, the BND came into existence when the Gehlen Organization, staffed with Nazi Party & SS veterans, as well as more than 100 former Gestapo officers, was transferred by the USA to the Federal Republic of Germany (then so-called ‘West Germany’) to be under the authority of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. And so it was Hitler’s top intelligence people became Germany’s post-war counterpart to the CIA. One can only imagine Reinhard Gehlen’s smirk when he’d stated his organization employed a lower percentage of former SS & Gestapo than most ministries in Adenauer’s Federal Republic of Germany government.
Nazi’s don’t shed their spots, folks. Simple social psychology determines an agency staffed with Gestapo that is historically, closely wedded to Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (and especially the CDU’s ‘sister’ party, the Christian Social Union) will have kept a certain proclivity or sympathies intact. It’s like any exclusive club at the top, you are hired based on the people controlling the interview process (Gestapo) and promoted to the top because of your willingness to ‘play the game’, insuring a particular mindset will perpetrate itself (similar to inter-generational violence.) This will certainly be the case of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) in relation to Angela Merkel’s political support structures in the Bundestag (German Parliament) and its numerous Nazi founders. To see Merkel’s minions (and by implication BND) fingerprints supporting a CIA initiated putsch installing a neo-nazi regime in Ukraine, one need look no farther than Merkel’s CDU aligned Adenauer Foundation:
“According to press reports, the German government would like to have boxing champion Vitali Klitschko run for president and bring him to power in the Ukraine. It would like to enhance the popularity of the opposition’s politician by staging, for example, joint public appearances with the German foreign minister. For this purpose, a meeting is also planned for Klitschko with Chancellor Merkel at the next EU summit in mid-December. The Konrad Adenauer Foundation is, in fact, not only massively supporting Klitschko and his UDAR party. According to a CDU politician, the UDAR Party was founded in 2010 on the direct orders of the CDU foundation. Reports on the foundation’s activities for the development of Klitschko’s party give an indication of how Germans are influencing the Ukraine’s domestic affairs via UDAR. Berlin’s use of Poland in its policy toward the Ukraine is also increasing. Berlin and Warsaw are cooperating with the Ukrainian ultra right-wing Svoboda (“Liberty”) party, which stands in the tradition of Nazi collaborators, who massacred 100,000 Christian and Jewish Poles during WW II”
Meanwhile, it should come as no surprise the present day German government has laws on its books subsidizing the church. What is Opus Dei up to in today’s Germany? According to a former senior church theologian:
“I supported anti-democratic and anti-liberal groups .. in which some people dream of a fundamentalist Catholic religious state or seriously call for a Catholic jihad”
And very interesting:
“the Vatican is .. relying increasingly on reactionary troops. It is closing ranks with evangelists, bible fundamentals and extremely reactionary forces”
Meanwhile in North America, one cannot expect Opus Dei and Knights of Malta has been idle, but we will cover this in relation to establishing Gladio, the CIA and particularly the CIA’s relationship to the USA’s special operations commanders. It was former Pentagon liaison to the CIA, L Fletcher Prouty, had in his book ‘The Secret Team‘, presciently warned of the dangers of Special Operations commanders advancing to the levels of command and control represented in the Pentagon. This is on account of the special operations forces having a longstanding historical relationship to the CIA Operations Division or, in Prouty’s words the “Dirty Tricks” division, particularly in face of the fact our U.S. military is used by the CIA as cover for numerous career operatives. Add in the thought; in common with CIA, the special operations commanders are expert in psychological warfare, destabilizing false flag operations, undermining governments and asymetrical & unconventional warfare. These are not the people you want at the apex of military power in any secular democracy, it’s simply too dangerous. But in fact that is what we have arrived at, a marriage made in hell, recently represented in the person of special operations expert David Petraeus who has literally gotten away with murder according to the investigative journalism of the Guardian. Tapping the expertise of his former mentor and CIA ‘Dirty Wars’ veteran Colonel James Steele, the Iraq war commanding officer Petraeus had the American commander of secret torture centers and who was overseeing arming and training death squads, reporting directly to him:
Based on this development, I will take Prouty’s hypothesis a bit further; throw in the right-wing fascism represented in Opus Dei & Knights of Malta, taken together with the fundamentalist criminal religious enterprise known as “The Family” all married into the American Special Operations forces commanders at the Pentagon, throw in the CIA partnership, and you have what we arrived at through the USA’s intelligence partnership with the Vatican, beginning with rescuing the Nazis and progressing to Opus Dei involvement with setting up Gladio. In other words, a driving force behind policy that doesn’t answer to democratic institutions and the rule of law, but rather to the minions of theocratic ideals on the far right of the political spectrum. Insofar as a Catholic fascist alliance with with the Protestant ‘Family’, this next is quite informative; relating to Hillary Clinton’s role as NATO’s ‘mother of nations’ bringing ‘democracy’ empowering jihadists and generating mass killings sprees (e.g. regime change in Libya), here’s information with impeccable journalistic credentials. According to the investigative reporting of Mother Jones Magazine, in Hillary Clinton’s own words, she is under the spiritual tutelage of ‘Family’ leader Doug Coe:
“Coe, she writes, “is a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God”
And according to the excellent investigative reporting of Jeff Sharlet, Coe, in his own words, is no stranger to violence in politics:
“Doug Coe offered Pol Pot and Osama bin Laden as men whose commitment to their causes is to be emulated. Preaching on the meaning of Christ’s words, he says, “You know Jesus said ‘You got to put Him before mother-father-brother sister? Hitler, Lenin, Mao, that’s what they taught the kids. Mao even had the kids killing their own mother and father. But it wasn’t murder. It was for building the new nation. The new kingdom”
And this:
“I’ve seen pictures of the young men in the Red Guard… They would bring in this young man’s mother. He would take an axe and cut her head off. They have to put the purposes of the Red Guard ahead of their father, mother, brother, sister, and their own life. That was a covenant. A pledge. That’s what Jesus said” -Doug Coe (verbatim quote from video)
And this:
“On June 5 [2014], Pope Francis met in private with Doug Coe, one of the most influential evangelicals in the US and head of the Family, tea-party ally Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and former U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne who served under Bush 43 amid unprecedented scandal”
What the Doug Coe cult and its’ Vatican allies has worked decades putting into practice is Dominion Theology and ‘terror’ is the necessary tool to consolidate a ‘Dominion Theology‘ police state (subject of the next section on ‘Gladio’)
“Dominion theology refers to a line of theological interpretation and thought with regard to the role of the church in contemporary society. Dominion theology is also known as Christian reconstructionism and theonomy. Dominion theology states that biblical Christianity will rule all areas of society, personal and corporate. Christian reconstructionism reasons that society will be reconstructed by the Law of God as preached in the gospel and the Great Commission. Theonomy is a post-millennial view believing that all of the moral laws contained in the Old Testament are yet binding today”
Other than a ‘Jesus Love Nukes‘ history of the U.S. Air Force training nuclear launch officers in Saint Augustine’s ‘Christian Just War Theory’, the ample evidence for Dominion Theology overtaking command structures in the armed forces of the United States (and by extension, NATO) is finally best illustrated using this example:
“In October of 2013, the Air Force quietly modified Air Force Instruction 36-2606, which [now] states that all enlistees must sign the oath to God and swear it aloud. Prior to the change in the regulation, secular and atheist service members were allowed to omit the phrase”
This amended regulation had been brought into force for the specific purpose of weeding out the ‘unfaithful.’ If you do not subscribe to the Pentagon’s radical religious views, you’re not really welcome in the United States military, any and all public posturing to the contrary notwithstanding. Implementing the regulation speaks louder than words.
GLADIO
Gladio ostensibly was conceived as setting up a partisan resistance to a possible Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Anticommunist hardliners at the CIA and Vatican previously had seen eye to eye on rescuing the Nazis in the spirit of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ The right-wing at the Vatican (recalling Pope Benedict’s screening of ‘The Passion of the Christ’ produced by uber-right Catholic Mel Gibson) are famous anti-Semites, no matter numerous disingenuous disclaimers, in fact ‘the Jews murdered Jesus’ theology is the underpinning of the Vatican sympathy underwriting the so-called ‘Ratlines’ which had expedited the Nazi exodus from Europe. In the case of communists, they are no better than Jews in conservative Catholic vision, both Jews and Communists disavow “The Savior.” In this case, the right-wing of the church, represented in Opus Dei & Knigths of Malta was more than willing to provide secret militia members on the extreme right of the church political spectrum, when coordinating setting up Gladio for the CIA. A fascist/anticommunist militia membership would be ‘safe’ or ‘secure’ in event of Soviet occupation of Western Europe. These would be ideologically dedicated people unlikely to cooperate and give up the Gladio partisan armies. In fact Gladio was a disaster for the democracies the operation was purported to protect.
In short, when the communists (different altogether to the Soviet style) in NATO nations were on the political ascent, it was decided to mobilize Gladio elements and suppress them, applying psychological operation melded with what amounted to Catholic neo-fascist cells. The Gladio operation had stashed arms and explosives with these neo-fascist cells across Western Europe. With some of the cells activated, in Belgium, people were indiscriminately machine-gunned in super-markets. Subsequently weapons were planted on prominent political figures on the left and ‘tips’ led to their discovery. Police investigations were stymied by the intelligence agencies. In Italy, bombings were pinned on the left and newspapers printed the carnage. Same result, the investigations were sabotaged. After several years, news of Gladio broke into the open over a massacre in Germany and suddenly it all stopped. But the perpetrators were never brought to justice:
But what was learned was quite incredible in the meanwhile; entire societies could be manipulated with terror, it had worked quite efficiently to destroy the left in public perception and there was no recovery. Even greater peril to the democracies was the result of the Opus Dei-CIA joint venture; a club within the clubs had evolved, intelligence and special operations forces controlling Gladio support and resources had been operationally integrated to Opus Dei, and Opus Dei embedded in the intelligence agencies as a matter of consequence.
When the Soviet Union collapsed and there was no longer the threat of a communist boogeyman, this NATO embedded ‘deep state’ apparatus, by this time pervasive throughout the western democracies institutions, had no problem finding a new enemy: Islam. Just as serious, when compared to Hitler’s military having/had about 8% devoted Nazi membership, with the ideological core centered at the top, in the present structure of NATO, the USA military alone has over 30% ‘Christian Dominion’ personalities, with the ideological core centered in the Pentagon and Joint Special Special Operations Command. These people command the world’s most lethal arsenal and have less than little regard for secular democracy, they are dedicated to its demise. Our CIA & Pentagon have become the home of the most powerful Opus Dei and Knights of Malta personalities in the world. Combine this with the military industrial complex boards and alliance with “The Family” and you get what the FBI has named “Gladio B”
This necrotic series of events (above video) is the Gladio social engineering virus escaped the lab, and is responsible for western corporate revenue generating false flag terror around the world. Don’t like Putin standing in the way of exploiting Central Asia? Neither does the Vatican like the Russian Orthodox Church standing in the way of Catholic encroachment in the former Soviet republics. The solution? Make Russia into ‘The Boogeyman’ justifying an ever more aggressive NATO by installing a ‘Greek Catholic’ prime minister in Kiev with a CIA-Vatican coordinated coup in Ukraine, complete with snipers killing both police and protestors, all blamed on Russia sympathetic elements but spilled open in a leaked conversation:
There is an obscure 1973 essay by former Pentagon liaison to the CIA, L Fletcher Prouty, pointing out by the time of the Johnson administration, there was a more than fair chance any President of the United States, going forward, would have found himself trapped in the circumstance of helpless in the face of executive branch institutions, the CIA Operations people particularly, behaving as they pleased, without accountability. Prouty was a smart man, and since his time, the CIA and Pentagon appear quite clearly to have become integrated into a tool that is not controlled by the President but is an agency which controls on behalf of right-wing ‘Christian Millennial‘ personalities who just happen to believe in literal Armageddon. In the final estimation, Obama (and successors), if he’d any inclination to do the right thing when coming into the presidency, he’s since found out he’d been ‘chosen’ and when you’ve been ‘chosen’, you cannot say ‘no’
What likely are current Gladio related operations in the USA HERE
I should mention I’d thought about the difference in terms between ‘psychopath’ & ‘sociopath.’ I settled on sociopath for the reasons psychopath is often seen in stereotype sense in the common usage (along the lines of Hollywood psycho-thrillers), as well sociopath casts a bit wider net. In a sense, psychopath could be seen as a subset of sociopath although I’m aware there is a changing sense of the term or some controversy as to its definition.
In the Summer of 1976, I was walking alone in the forest outside of my hometown (West Glacier, Montana USA) returning to my house from a visit to some Blackfeet Indians staying in a tipi a mile or so away. Not paying attention to the fact I was not on a trail but walking through the forest simply by familiarity with the terrain, my foot rolled into a small depression concealed by leaves and I heard a bone in my ankle break (the talus) with the sound equivalent to the crack of a 22 caliber pistol. I was about 1/2 way home, out of earshot of anyone and thought .. ‘well, this is pretty stupid circumstance’
Sitting on the ground, I felt over my foot and determined what to do. I tore my shirt into a makeshift wrap for my ankle, to give it some support, stood up and leaning against a tree, looked around for a suitably strong walking stick. I spotted one and hopped on one leg to retrieve it, and completed my journey home.
My ‘home’ at that time was a metal shed with a dirt floor, I was unemployed and pretty much broke and seeing a doctor or using an emergency room and being billed, was not an appealing thought. So I packed up minimal camping and survival gear and a few paperback books, and hitch-hiked to the north entrance of Yellowstone National Park.
Just inside the park, you won’t see this in any of the official literature, is the natural drain of the ‘Mammoth Hot Spring’, where a large stream of very hot water erupts from the ground and flows a short distance into the Gardiner River. It is in the river canyon below Mammoth, about 2-3 miles south of Gardner, Montana, where the road from Gardner to Mammoth crosses the Gardner River (there is a sign marking the 45th Parallel) is a parking area my last ride had dropped me at. With a makeshift crutch, I hobbled the 1/2 mile or so upstream along the riverside trail and arrived at Boiling River for my convalesce.
For the next ten days or so I spent my days soaking my foot (at times my entire body) in the natural beauty of my surroundings, taking breaks to sun myself while reading paperbacks on the ledge above the river. Elk and Bison had wandered by, the sky was big and beautiful. The river has cut away much of the bank since those days, as it slowly moves in a seasonal migration towards the opening in the ground whence the hot water flows, one day the flow of the hot water will likely emerge directly into the cold flow of the Gardiner River. But still today as in times past, one should be able to find the place in the mixed hot and cold water flows to suit your desire, it is quite a marvelous experience to shift ones body from hot to cold and back to hot with minimal effort.
America was less fascist and our National parks less policed in those days, there was no one giving me any problem for having a small tent pitched 50 or so yards from the Boiling River hot spring. Nor was it any big deal, in those days, to ‘skinny dip’ (bathe in the nude) at Boiling River, people worked these things out with common sense, or as in the case of what I had witnessed one day while sunning like an Iguana (in my cut-off blue jeans), sometimes fate works these things out for us, and that is ok. Or mostly that would be the case and people who could not handle the nude bathers would find somewhere else or another time to enjoy. Life was more relaxed.
It was late mid-morning, I was reading ‘The Greening of America’ (it never happened, obviously) and a group of about a dozen hippies or so had arrived and all had jumped into the river naked, no big deal. They were enjoying the varying pools where the hot mixed with the cold, after each season’s high water people would gather the smooth river stones and build submerged dikes to shape the current into bathing pools of varying temperatures. Not everyone was naked but those who were not, did not seem to mind those who were.
But then .. it happened a Girl Scouts troop was coming up the trail, from my perch above things, I could see what the others could not, an old and a young scout master and about 15 teenage girl scouts with towels about to discover at near point blank range that their planned soak was populated with naked people.
The older woman was up at the point of the troop and coming upon the place where the trail first opened to a view of a dozen naked hippies in the water a mere 15 or 20 meters distant, she turned like a drill sergeant and ordered her girls to stop in their tracks. The girls obediently did so, but also you could see there was a certain spirit of rebellion stirring, obviously the nude hippies were no threat, there were women and kids among them, it was not like some motley lot of dirty old men. These were more lenient times and the girls were not horrified, they only wanted into the water, real hippies being a common social phenomena of that era, they’d yet to become extinct and this was no big deal to the girls, it was plain to see.
Now, the scoutmaster ladies had separated themselves to one side to have a ‘Plan B’ conversation out of the girls hearing and I swear it must have been the serpent from the garden that freaks out the misogynist Christians, had something to say about what happened next.
It just so happened a very large Bull Snake, six foot (two meter) length, frequented that area and liked a pile of old lava slabs to sunbathe himself and the two scout masters had picked those very lava slabs to stand on and have their conversation. The Bull Snake choose that very time to come up for his morning sun and emerged precisely between the women at their very feet .. sending the two scout masters into what appeared to be opposite direction levitations with accompanying screams. By the time they had recovered their composure, too late, all discipline had been lost, and their girls were in the water with the naked hippies.
Recipe for recreating an outdoor hot spring in your bathtub:
Hot water on demand, a large window open to a beautiful day and one packet of ‘natron’ (baking soda or Epsom salts will substitute for Americans) and a deep tub. Close your eyes while soaking and engage memories of more innocent times, all the while imagining any sound of traffic is French and Japanese tourists soon to be gored while posing for photos with Bison…
This is about the book, not the film. The film sells the book out and is essentially worthless melodrama
Jeremy Scahill’s “Dirty Wars” is investigative journalism better described as a counter-intelligence opus; revealing the nature of a fascist state that is growing like a mushroom in the dark. I have only one criticism of the book, that is the apparent acceptance of the official 9/11 narrative overlooking un-refutable evidence we have not been provided anything close to an accurate picture of 11 September 2001. Setting aside this single aspect, ‘Dirty Wars’ is a treasure trove of information the Obama administration never wanted you to know.
The most compelling aspect of Scahill’s work is what too many (to count) intelligence professionals (includes your’s truly) have been saying for years. The war on terror generates the very terror it purports to fight. One of Scahill’s intelligence informants compares the war on terror to “a self-licking ice cream cone” in a circumstance where those who lead the so-called ‘war on terror’ are those who most profit from it, whether corporate mercenaries harvesting the money involved, or criminals reaping fear-mongering political capital to be promoted within the military power structures or the halls of Washington DC.
If the so-called ‘war on terror’ as a self generating phenomena is the most compelling aspect, perhaps the most disturbing aspect is the strong indicators of a ‘war on Islam’ in the integrated story of how Anwar al-Awlaki was driven by the USA’s security services, via years of apparent baseless and extreme harassment, from a moderate Muslim preacher who’d condemned the 9/11 attacks, into a radicalized Imam preaching against the USA. The only evidence we have of why his 16 years old son, a natural born American citizen, was killed in a separate drone strike appears to be because of who his father was. This aspect of ‘Dirty Wars’ raises the specter of literally ‘crusading’ ideologue elements integrated to the American apparatus of state security at the highest levels. Scahill does not name the ‘war on terror’ as a ‘war on Islam’ but the story has all of the elements. In this aspect, information developed separately by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, when juxtaposed to the information developed in ‘Dirty Wars’ supports the idea of a ‘war on Islam’ as a de facto reality, despite any assurances by Obama he has set out to repair relations with the Islamic world. This BS needs met head on by any and all of those who would see the value in preventing the USA’s aggressions devolving into a war of civilizations.
A followup point developed is, how easily and completely Obama lies to the American people (and the world) about his out of control murder (color of law targeted killings) program engineered by what one must conclude can only be psychopath killers (Obama favorite Admiral William McRaven, example given.) The result? Our constitution and rule of law trashed and immense damage to the American reputation both generally and particularly in relation to international law.
Dov Weisglass: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger”
The Weisglass quote is in reference to the Gaza ‘blockade’ where only the minimal survival sustenance has been allowed into Gaza as a matter of official policy for years. When you read in the news that Israel has opened a crossing into Gaza to allow food and medicines across, it is subject to the statement of Dov Weisglass. The reported openings are, in actuality, a means of generating a positive propaganda spin from what is in actuality enforcing the Palestinians living in what amounts to a “Ghetto.”
The word “Ghetto” in relation to Jewish history is not a kind reference. It recalls the Ashkenazi experience at the hands of the NAZIs. It also recalls the known malignant social phenomena “Inter-generational Violence”, where one generation passes on behaviors to the next generation.
I had once been censored at “The Guardian” public forum (discussion of articles) for daring to point out the “Price Tag” vandalism by the (Christian Zionist funded) fundamentalist Israeli settlers in the West Bank resembled “Krystallnacht” insofar (I was clear in this) as the social phenomena of “Inter-generational Violence” passes a malignant behavior on to a new generation. This is not only a family phenomena but a community phenomena. No different to the behaviors of the NAZIs impacted the behaviors of some Ashkenazi, I propose those Ashkenai are impacting the behaviors of many Palestinians in a spiral of inter-generational violence.
It is in this same context of “Inter-generational Violence”, I will point out Gaza resembles a “Ghetto.” The Palestinian young people presently growing up in Gaza will see themselves as “Freedom Fighters” little differently to those Jews who lived in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1944. So a new cycle of violence begins with a new generation.
Insofar as money attending the power-corrupt insures this cycle only continues, the brilliant people at “J Street” (a Jewish organization) recently polled the American Jewish community and came up with a startling finding: 72% of American Jews support a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 borders of Israel .. including East Jerusalem, but this fact is drowned out by the money of AIPAC. Who supports AIPAC? American neo-liberals and the right-wing minority Jews, politically wedded to a by far, far larger base of American neo-conservative right-wing Christians.
In essence, it is right-wing Christians producing the money and political drive supporting the Israeli policies in both the West Bank and Gaza. How it is politicians on the center-left (a few sane conservatives are at least trying) fail to shake off the boogey-man of AIPAC in the name of sanity and stand up to infantile, fascist killers like Bibi Netanyahu, is beyond the pale of reason. It is cowardice.
Netanyahu belongs to the LIKUD party which has been in governance (often in coalition with even more extreme right parties) since 2009. An IDF Special Forces veteran, Netanyahu has been known to have ordered illegal international political assassinations (murders), most famously the failed 1997 attempt on HAMAS leader Khalid Mashal. Under Netanyahu, the West Bank settlers ‘price tag’ criminality not only goes on largely ‘undetected’ (and unpunished) by one of the best governments in the world at intelligence, his political philosophy underwrites annexation of all Palestinian lands to the bank of the Jordan River. You see this play out (with lip service to peace) via the ongoing annexation by process of West Bank ‘settlement creep.’ In effect, Netanyahu and LIKUD are every bit as dedicated to the destruction of a Palestinian state as media promotes the idea HAMAS is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. This reality pointing to certain wider regional war and eventual world war, underlies the present circumstance. Meanwhile, honest narrative of the historic reality are buried in the rhetoric:
“For refugees, camps were shelters for the reconstruction of personal and social life, but were also seen as sites of great political significance, the material testimony of what was destroyed and ‘all that remains’ of more than four hundred cities, towns and villages forcefully cleansed throughout Palestine in the Nakba of 1947-9. This is the reason refugees sometimes refer to the destruction of camps as ‘the destruction of destruction.’ The camp is not a home, it is a temporary arrangement, and its destruction is but the last iteration in an ongoing process of destruction.
“This rhetoric of double negation – the negation of negation – tallies well with what Saree Makdisi, talking about the Israeli refusal to acknowledge the Nakba, has termed ‘the denial of denial’, which is, he says, ‘a form of foreclosure that produces the inability – the absolutely honest, sincere incapacity – to acknowledge that denial and erasure have themselves been erased in turn and purged from consciousness.’ What has been denied is continuously repeated: Israel keeps on inflicting destruction on refugees and keeps on denying that a wrong has been done” –Eyal Weizman: ‘The Least Of All Possible Evils’ (Humanitarian Violence From Arendt To Gaza)
It should be recalled in context of the Eyal Wiezamn quote, it was LIKUD’s first Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, built and detonated the first car bomb ever used in an indiscriminate act of terror in what is now Israel. Prior to the events acts of this nature had set in motion, 80,000 of the Arab world’s nearly one million Sephardic Jews lived in Cairo alone, largely in peace with their culturally near identical Muslim neighbors, a legacy of over 1,000 years tolerance. That tolerance had been destroyed and the blame can be fairly apportioned in a major share to the policies of the Ashkenazi victims of inter-generational violence, now in turn perpetrated against any perceived existential threat; Arab nationalism and Iran, even Americans and/or American Jews who stand up to AIPAC, but most particularly focused on the Palestinian people.
So long as there is a Palestinian identity tied to the West Bank, it stands in the way of a vision both Christian and Jewish right-wing ideologues hold for a ‘Greater’ Israel. Here it does well to mention Israel is not a party to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and endures no inspection regime relevant to its estimated arsenal of up to 400 nuclear weapons, even as Iran is pressured under the treaty Israel rejects. The entire world outside of those western democracies pushing policy in the face of middle east nations, see this hypocrisy and this strengthens the hand of radical ayatollahs.
The equation is World Peace versus LIKUD and the American religious right, in a spiral of escalating inter-generational violence the western democracies’ political leadership is too cowardly to honestly address. In fact so long as AIPAC enables LIKUD to move for a ‘Greater’ Israel to the bank of the Jordan River, any lip service to peace based on a Palestinian state is a calculated lie.
What is clear is, the West Bank settlement policy is a determined effort to destroy any Palestinian identity with ties to the land. In regards to Gaza, the only possible purpose (outside irrational cruelty) of ongoing blockade’s denial of sufficient non-military necessities has been to deprive that population of any opportunity at a reasonable international commerce and attending standard of living, is to drive it out in despair. But it’s not working. And even if it did, Israelis will have (with the backing of the western democracies who support the Israeli policies with arms and money, lip service to peace notwithstanding) created a negative mirror image of their own history.
Meanwhile, moderate Ashkenazi, secular Jews, humanist Jews, Sephardic Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Iranian Jews, sane Jews, all pay for the policies, with the anti-Semitism generated by the behaviors of personalities like Netanyahu and AIPAC ‘friends’, not only the Arabs suffer.
The insanity of it all is expressed in AIPAC which only exists in the state of power it does today because of extreme Christian support, Christian support that is firmly grounded in a belief they are the “New Jews” who will inherit Jerusalem when Israel has finally self-destructed.
In this case, the Israeli religious right should pay closer attention to their ally the American religious right and their ‘the Jews murdered Jesus’ conviction. Convinced they are “Covered in the blood” of Jesus [the idea Jesus had been murdered by the Jews] as they make money hand over fist covering the planet in blood with war profiteering, all the while in swoon over misogynist-anti-Semitic hate monger Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of the Christ”, these allies of Netanyahu are certainly no friends of the Jewish people. This is the pogrom inspiration of a church made myth concerning a man they love to pretend is a murdered ‘God’ incarnate they engage in cannibalizing every ‘Sabbath’ with a ‘Communion’ of eating Jesus flesh and drinking Jesus blood. Y’know, if people really knew how to think for themselves, there would be no such necrotic fantasies and resultant criminal civilization .. just a thought, but meanwhile:
The paranoid Jewish Zionists embrace these rabid anti-Semitic Christian Zionists who fully intend the Jewish Zionists will become extinct once they’ve finished the dirty work of retaking the West Bank for the Christian Zionists necrotic vision on a road to Armageddon, meanwhile the Jewish Zionists label any non-Jewish anti-Zionist as anti-Semitic, when in fact most of the non-Jewish anti-Zionists are the bitter foes of the rabid anti-Semitic Christian Zionists momentarily embraced by the Jewish Zionists.
Now, in the mix of all of this, the anti-Zionist Jewish personalities are in an impossible state of being forced to play a game of ‘shut the fuck up’ or get blasted by all Zionists, Jewish and Christian, while the non-Jewish anti-Zionist is attacked by the paranoid Ashkenazi, who became paranoid and Zionist, on account of the pogroms of anti-Semitic Christian Zionists. These people bite the hand of people who’re actually doing them a favor by taking on the rabidly anti-Semitic Christian Zionists, personalities who intend as soon as the partnership of convenience is over, all those clinging to Judaism will be tossed into a lake of what will almost certainly amount to man-made nuclear fire.
Meanwhile, the Sephardic Jews who’d lived for nearly one and a half thousand years in peace and tranquility in the world of Islam (excepting that period when they’d fought on the side of the Muslims during the Crusades) have become an extinct species in the Arab countries, not in the least because of both Jewish and Christian Zionism via policy and settlement in the West Bank and the ‘ghetto’ called Gaza, and the incredibly nasty treatment of the Arabs there. Israeli Zionists have enacted this social injustice, enabled by American Zionists, including countless conservative Christians who label all Jews (except ‘Jews for Jesus’) “Christ Killers”, while bankrolling these policies abusing the Palestinians. All this came about because of Jewish Zionist paranoia of living in countries with a majority Christian Zionists and history of pogroms, yet are (for reasons of the social psychology phenomena of inter-generational violence) behaving towards the Arabs like the Christian Zionists had treated them. This in turn set up the present cycle of anti-Palestinian pogroms, based on behaviors Jews learned from Christians, now on a scale of nukes & nations.
It only gets more ridiculous:
The Sephardic Jews who’d relocated to Israel as a result of fallout in the Arab world from Zionist policies are absolutely 2nd class citizens- pointing to the anti-Semitic tendencies of the conservative Ashkenazi Jews, a race based oxymoron of Jewish anti-Semitism. This is obviously as clear as it is ludicrous and self destructive, when a Jewish person in Israel cannot be equal, because this Jew has the appearance, language and customs of an Arab.
I think a moral to this story could be: Any Zionism that is literal Zionism (unlike the benign Zionism of Bob Marley) is a loser. Perhaps this could be the idea behind the UN Resolution equating Zionism with Racism?
Inter-generational hate and violence is a known and understood phenomena of social psychology. Many people have not risen above this malevolent infection of the psyche that is imbued in a very literal sense of the Torah or Pentateuch: ‘the child inherits the sin of the father’ (or in the case of certain Ashkenazi, the sins of a xenophobic & nationalist stepfather)
In the larger picture of nations, relating to this inter-generational violence, should it not be the responsibility of several national leaders to stand up and state to the Israelis, whether the leaders of Russia, Germany or Spain, examples given, ‘do not treat the Palestinian as our Christian has treated the Jew.’
If only because it is the responsibility of leadership to demonstrate responsible attitudes in relation to the acts of nations. And crucial, is that nation which had transgressed most egregiously in historic times should demonstrate this courage to confront the worst of these infantile and irrational behaviors, if only to remind the USA, not only Israel, do not dare to go down this road, do not dare to become the NAZIs.
In the end, whether Jewish or Christian ‘New Jew’, “God’s Chosen” is worse than a dumb idea, the idea that will get everyone killed if this insanity goes on much longer-
Ronald Thomas West 