Sunday, August 11, 2013

The Knights of Columbus and child abuse cover-up*

This post contains details that may be upsetting for sensitive readers.

The Knights of Columbus (KOC) are commonly known as the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization, but most people don't know that the Knights also function as a recruiting organization for highly exclusive Catholic equestrian orders such as the Knights of Malta and the Order of the Holy Sepulchre. The history of equestrian orders dates back to Ancient Rome, where the order comprised a large proportion of the patrician classes that monopolized the Roman political process, as well as most major commercial enterprises. Today, this same oligarchical tradition is continued through Catholic equestrian orders that subvert the democratic process by way of quasi-political religious organizations. While the KOC does not represent the upper echelons of the Catholic cryptocracy, that dubious honor instead being designated for the equestrian orders noted above, their political influence as an arm of the Vatican has been significant enough to play a role in silencing countless victims of clerical abuse.

The photo above captures the opening Mass of the 131st annual Knights of Columbus convention on August 6 in San Antonio. Included in the photo is church leader Cardinal Roger Mahoney, who the New York Times states "worked quietly to keep evidence of child molesting away from law enforcement officials and shield abusive priests from criminal prosecution more than a decade before the scandal became public, according to confidential church records." The article continues, "Rather than defrocking priests and contacting the police, the archdiocese sent priests who had molested children to out-of-state treatment facilities...Ray Boucher, a lawyer representing some of the plaintiffs in those cases, said the files released on Monday were “particularly damning,” because they showed the “wanton disregard for the health and safety of children, and a decision by the highest members of the church to put its self-interest and the interest of abusive priests ahead of those of children.”"

Also pictured above is Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who has been accused of sexual assault by former Benectine monk and Catholic priest Richard Sipe. According to Sipe, "On file are the unsealed “MEDIATION DOCUMENTATION FOR FR. G.” that involved McCarrick and the dioceses of Metuchen and Newark, NJ. A financial settlement was reached. The case was sent to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, but it has not yet responded." What follows is an excerpt of the events described in the mediation document:

“He put his arms around me and wrapped his legs around mine. Then He started to tell me what a nice young man I was and what a good priest I would make someday. He also told me about the hard work and stress he was facing in his new role as Archbishop of Newark. He told me how everyone knows him and how powerful he was. The Archbishop kept saying, “Pray for your poor uncle.” All of a sudden, I felt paralyzed. I didn’t have my own car and there was nowhere to go. The Archbishop started to kiss me and move his hands and legs around me. I remained frozen, curled up like a ball. I felt his penis inside his underwear leaning against my buttocks as he was rubbing my legs up and down. His hands were moving up and down my chest and back, while tightening his legs around mine. I tried to scream but could not…I was paralyzed with fear. As he continued touching me, I felt more afraid. He even tried several times to force his hands under my shorts. He tried to roll me over so that he could get on top of me, but I resisted, I felt sick and disgusted and finally was able to jump out of bed. I went into the bathroom where I vomited several times and started to cry. After twenty minutes in the bathroom, the Archbishop told me to come back to bed. Instead I went to the recliner and pretended to fall asleep.”


A news article reports that the Knights of Columbus sponsored a youth group, the Squires, members of which have accused the KOC of collaborating to cover of child sexual abuse. The article states "In one of the lawsuits, an unnamed Kansas resident claims the Squires leader abused him from 1978, when he was 10 years old, until 1986. He claims the leader shared him with other youth counselors in the group and threatened to kill him if he told anyone, the lawsuit said. The second lawsuit came from Texas resident Jim Dennany, who said he alerted Knights of Columbus officials in 1986 to assaults he said he suffered in the 1970s when he was a young teenager. He claimed the group took no action, concealed the allegations and told him to keep quiet, according to the lawsuit."

According to former Domnican priest and canon lawyer Thomas Doyle, "The Knights of Columbus take great pride in their loyalty to the Church and to the bishops. They regularly show their support for priests and announce their love for the Church. They shell out barrels of money to the Vatican, to bishops, to seminaries and to other causes in support of priests. The Knights of Columbus have totally missed the boat. They have supported priests and bishops in their moral bankruptcy and in their destruction of the bodies and souls of the victims of abuse. They have said and done nothing to support the victims."

So it may not be much of a surprise that a Pennsyvania newspaper, the Observer-Reporter, reported that convicted pedophile Jerry Sandusky was awarded Coach of the Year title by the KOC. Sandusky has also been a speaker at KOC events. Former FBI Director Louis Freeh was assigned to investigate the Sandusky scandal. "We will immediately report any evidence of criminality to law enforcement authorities," said Freeh. New York state newspaper The Journal News reports that Louis Freeh, along with suspected Russian spy Robert Hanssen, are both members of the secretive Catholic fraternty Opus Dei. In his book, Their Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei, Robert Hutchinson writes of the canonization of Opus Dei founder Josemaria Escriva, noting that in attendance was "Dr Carl A. Anderson, the Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus and senior American member of Opus Dei." Given the overlapping membership between Opus Dei and the KOC, the likelihood that the Penn State investigation was doomed by favoritism from the very beginning is very high indeed.

According to Vatican Insider, a project run by the daily newspaper La Stampa, Opus Dei is "one of the ecclesiastical bodies closest to the Pope". So the testimony of Jim Jenkins, former chair of the Archdiocese of San Francisco Review Board under Archbishop (now Cardinal) William Levada, should not be ignored. Jenkins states, in reference to the Dallas Charter which provided guidelines for how the Church would respond to the clerical abuse scandal, that "The Charter’s scope needed to be limited to the alleged assaults upon “minors” leaving the inappropriate sexual behavior of clerics with other adults beyond the jurisdiction of the review boards." In other words, the sexual assault of adults was considered to be acceptable behavior. Jenkins also states that "The behavior of bishops and cardinals was off-limits to the scope of any investigation by any archdiocesan review board." Translation: bishops and cardinals are not subject to civil law.

As Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the former Pope Benedict XVI was responsible for investigating clerical abuse scandals. Let's examine some of his accomplishments during that time period.

via CBS News:

The Vatican's lawyer says then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger told a California bishop to make sure a priest with a history of sexually molesting children didn't abuse while the church worked to defrock him...Attorney Jeffrey Lena was responding to a 1985 letter obtained by The Associated Press on Friday in which the future pope said more time was needed to study the case of the Rev. Stephen Kiesle. Lena says Ratzinger urged the bishop to give Kiesle "as much paternal care as possible." Lena says that was a way of saying the bishop was responsible for ensuring Kiesle didn't reoffend....The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock Kiesle, citing concerns including "the good of the universal church," according to the 1985 letter bearing his signature. The correspondence, obtained by The Associated Press, is the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican's insistence that Benedict played no role in blocking the removal of pedophile priests during his years as head of the Catholic Church's doctrinal watchdog office. The letter, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was typed in Latin and is part of years of correspondence between the Diocese of Oakland and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking of the Rev. Stephen Kiesle...

Attorney Irwin Zalkin represents a woman who says Kiesle assaulted her three times by the time she was 7 years old. Court documents accuse Kiesle of providing her with wine, binding her hands and sexually abusing her, Tracy reports....Earlier Friday, the Vatican confirmed that it was Ratzinger's signature on the letter. "The press office doesn't believe it is necessary to respond to every single document taken out of context regarding particular legal situations," the Rev. Federico Lombardi said....The diocese recommended removing Kiesle from the priesthood in 1981, the year Ratzinger was appointed to head the Vatican office that shared responsibility for disciplining abusive priests. The case then languished for four years at the Vatican before Ratzinger finally wrote to Oakland Bishop John Cummins. It was two more years before Kiesle was removed; during that time he continued to do volunteer work with children through the church..... the future pope also noted that any decision to defrock Kiesle must take into account the "good of the universal church" and the "detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke within the community of Christ's faithful, particularly considering the young age." Kiesle was 38 at the time.

Kiesle had been sentenced in 1978 to three years' probation after pleading no contest to misdemeanor charges of lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two young boys in a San Francisco Bay area church rectory. As his probation ended in 1981, Kiesle asked to leave the priesthood and the diocese submitted papers to Rome to defrock him. In his earliest letter to Ratzinger, Cummins warned that returning Kiesle to ministry would cause more of a scandal than stripping him of his priestly powers. "It is my conviction that there would be no scandal if this petition were granted and that as a matter of fact, given the nature of the case, there might be greater scandal to the community if Father Kiesle were allowed to return to the active ministry," Cummins wrote in 1982...California church officials wrote to Ratzinger at least three times to check on the status of Kiesle's case and Cummins discussed the case with officials during a Vatican visit, according to correspondence. At one point, a Vatican official wrote to say the file may have been lost and suggested resubmitting materials....As Kiesle's fate was being weighed in Rome, the priest returned to suburban Pinole to volunteer as a youth minister at St. Joseph Church, where he had served as associate pastor from 1972 to 1975.

Kiesle continued to volunteer with children, according to Maurine Behrend, who worked in the Oakland diocese's youth ministry office in the 1980s. After learning of his history, Behrend complained to church officials. When nothing was done she wrote a letter, which she showed to the AP. "Obviously nothing has been done after EIGHT months of repeated notifications," she wrote. "How are we supposed to have confidence in the system when nothing is done? A simple phone call to the pastor from the bishop is all it would take." She eventually confronted Cummins at a confirmation and Kiesle was gone a short time later, Behrend said. Kiesle, who married after leaving the priesthood, was arrested and charged in 2002 with 13 counts of child molestation from the 1970s. All but two were thrown out after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional a California law extending the statute of limitations. He pleaded no contest in 2004 to a felony for molesting a young girl in his Truckee home in 1995 and was sentenced to six years in state prison.

Now would probably be a good time to include this painting by the highly talented tattoo artist Paul Booth:

*Research credit for many links in this post is due http://popecrimes.blogspot.com/2011/11/will-opus-dei-knights-shield-sandusky.html













Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Second Update to Occult Origins of the Counterculture

Here is another update to my Occult Origins of the Counterculture article. I still need to make a few minor revisions to the original article so hopefully that will be done within a few days.

In addition to the the shamanic ceremonies of First Nation peoples, another indigenous spiritual tradition that influenced Western occultism was the African religion of Vodun. Along with European folk magic, Vodun was merged into the syncretic religion of Lousiania voodoo, which by turn influenced the development of American spiritualism. In Haiti, a similar syncretic religion was created in the form of voodou, with many rituals and mythological figures overlapping with the American voodoo tradition. Both Louisiana voodoo and Haitian vodou were created when African slaves passed on to their descendants the traditional ceremonial dances of Africa under the guise of Catholic litanies following the suppression and criminalization of these ceremonies by slave owners. The religious suppression of the voodoo religion was a direct extension of the social policies enacted by Christian and Muslim colonization of Africa, which resulted in the murder of many Vodun priests as well as destruction of Vodun temples. One aspect of Vodun religion that was incorporated into its syncretic North American incarnations was the idea of continuity between the world of the dead and the living, in that ancestors were deified and considered an ever present part of the family through spiritual communion.

Although voodoo has been sensationalized as being oriented towards accumulation of material wealth and predatory magical powers, its origins are far more nuanced, centered around a belief in a nebulous force which pervades all aspects of existence. Because the Voodoo creation myth emphasizes metaphysical interconnectedness, extending emotional, material and spiritual support to family and community is considered an intrinsic expression of religious worship. Vodun cosmology also emphasizes the divinity of the natural world, formulated in a hierarchy of spirits from those that govern weather to smaller spirits who inhabit rivers, streams and even individual rocks and trees. Animism offers a continuity in belief between African tradition and that of European occultism. The overlapping belief in nature devas and elemental spirits formed the basis of many divination rituals and conjuration methods, especially regarding the use of botanical magic.

Occurring simultaneously with the rise of voodoo was the folk magic system of hoodoo which made use of European magical grimoires that typically contained translations of ancient Kabbalistic documents as well as unorthodox interpretations of biblical texts. The Old Testament is inundated with passages that justify slavery as a necessary, even righteous social institution, however vodoo and hoodoo practitioners emphasized the story of Exodus as a representation of the freedom-seeking impulse. When Moses lead the Israelites out of bondage in the Book of Exodus, the obvious parallel was the transatlantic slave trade, with the abolition movement seen by hoodoo conjurers as divine imperative. Largely for this reason, the primary magical texts utilized by hoodoo practitioners were the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, a compendium of magical seals, astrological treatises, and incantations taken from European occult literature, Talmudic magic names and Christian Biblical passages. The texts, although primarily printed in the 18th and 19th centuries, were purportedly lost writings of Moses and they circulated throughout The United States, the Caribbean, West Africa, Scandinavia and Central Europe, widely known as "the Black Bible". Moses, who was traditionally depicted carrying a serpent on his staff, became a figure who easily combined elements of the Vodun serpent god Damballa, primordial creator of life and archetypal father figure, with orthodox religious doctrines and European concepts of Luciferian Enlightenment.

Although recent years have, to a certain extent, seen the recognition of the voodoo religion as a richly varied cultural tradition, the central role of voodou and hoodoo conjurers in galvanizing slave revolts has not been fully documented, since most historians of the colonial time period held perspectives that would have been favorable to the economic interests of plantation owners. What has been conclusively documented is that, in 1791, under the cover of vodou ceremonies, Haitian slaves organized an uprising that went on to shut down the majority of sugar plantations on the island. Haiti, one of two sovereign states located on the island of Hispaniola, was a particularly appropriate locale for an uprising since its inhabitants had been subjected to some of the most horrific brutalities of the transatlantic slave trade. When Christopher Columbus and his men had first arrived on the shores of Hispaniola, they quickly established an enforced labor system in which the native Arawak people collected gold, with enforcement occurring via the method of slower laborers having their hands cut off. The original Arawak population has been roughly estimated to be at least 250,000, yet within less than 25 years, through murder, mutilation, malnutrition and mass suicide, that number was reduced to 50,000.

By 1650 almost none of the original Arawaks or their descendants remained on the island. The importation of African slaves soon replaced their rapidly dwindling numbers, however the population of foreign slaves was also continually replenished because their death rate was vastly higher than their birth rate due to similar brutalities. The unintended consequence for European colonists was that Haitian slaves were able to more effectively preserve African cultural traditions through vodou ceremonies, eventually leading to a resistance movement which was uniquely unified in comparison to other areas of colonial America. One of the most influential leaders of the rebellion was a vodou priest named Francois Mackandal, who created a secret organization connecting escaped slaves (Maroons) with those who still lived on plantations. The Maroons, a mixture of Native Americans and Africans, combined African agricultural practices with Native American wilderness skills as the number of former slaves surviving outside of the settlements of the colonists expanded. After the Maroons torched plantations and chased out the owners, Mackandal was burned alive in the public square of Cap-Francais on account of his role in organizing the insurrection. His actions set a strategic model for the Haitian Revolution of 1791, which is generally considered to be the most successful slave rebellion in the Western hemisphere.

Compared to the American Revolution, which exclusively granted rights to the minority of the white male population that owned property, Haiti's revolution sought and achieved political rights for the entire population. Although the insurrection was accompanied by horrific and dehumanizing massacres on both sides of the conflict, by 1803 slavery had been abolished and decolonization was attained. The secret society organized by Mackandal played no small part in Haitian resistance movements, and there is evidence to suggest that much of the symbolism and themes adopted by vodou-practicing Maroons were a product of Freemasonic influence. Anthropologist Richard Stanley gave the following statement in the special feature section of his documentary on Haitian vodou, The White Darkness: “Most books consider voodoo to be a combination of Roman Catholicism and African mythology. There are elements of voodoo that have nothing to do with either. There is a huge amount of Old World Masonic imagery—for example, pentagrams, which suggests that perhaps three or four hundred years ago slaves were initiated by previous imperialists. That's something that hasn't been talked about. I was told about the various handshakes and rituals that I would need to know. Altes Paul (voodou sorcerer) warmed to me after I gave him a third degree masonic handshake, convinced that I was a fellow Mason.”

In his book on Haitian vodou culture, The Serpent and the Rainbow, ethnobotanist Wade Davis describes a network of secret societies covering the country, each maintaining control of its own territorial jurisdiction. Haitian vodou cults inevitably contained elements of Freemasonic tradition, including ritual handshakes, initiation rites, banners and even a hierarchical degree system. This network is described in the book as a “quasi-political” force that effectively managed to organize a parallel government and expel the regime at Port-au-Prince. Unlike Freemasonry, vodou secret societies granted membership to women, many of whom became political leaders in their own right. This history of cultural influence reveals the ideological complexity of Freemasonry, which at times has participated in, and even instigated, the furthest abuses of colonial social institutions, and at others has worked towards political sovereignty of oppressed peoples.

The cultural influence of European colonists on Haitian secret societies was most likely a factor in the vodou cults' adoption of Masonic rites and regalia. This same influence may have also played a role in shaping the iconography of West African secret societies, which were located in the same approximate geographical vicinity from which Vodou cults descended. This West African cult network had risen to prominence precisely at the time when European slave traders invaded African villages and negotiated the right to abduct community members with the elders of their group, many of whom formed a fraternal order called The Ekpe. Similar to the vodou societies, the Ekpe organizational structure mirrored Freemasonry in all of its essential aspects, indicating the strong possibility that much of the imagery and mythology of these West African cults were synthesized as a consequence of collaboration with Freemasonic slave traders. The Ekpe hierarchy consisted of nine initiatory grades, with each successively higher rank ensuring greater prestige within the community. The cult society maintained the loyalty of their community by sponsoring elaborate masquerades, while also acting as a court system for the enforcement of debt collection, the nonpayment of which could result in the debtor being sold to foreign slave traders. Ekpe cults enacted a wide variety of punishments for nonpayment, ranging from fines to property seizure to execution. Those community members who were executed were left tied to trees with their lower jaws removed as a warning that others should obey the dictates of the cult.

Given the Ekpe's participation in enabling the transatlantic slave trade, it may seem counterintuitive that the group provided cultural and spiritual inspiration for another secret society, the Abakua, who would later act as a liberatory force against colonial occupation in Cuba. The latter organization was started by a group of former Ekpe members who had been imported as slaves into Havana, after which they reorganized to form a lodge, Efik Buton, named after a settlement in the Nigerian city of Calabar. Like the Vodou and Ekpe cults, the Abakua Society is structured around a graded degree system and oaths of secrecy are required during initiatory ceremonies. During the Christian festival, Day of the Three Kings, members danced through the streets wearing the Abakua ceremonial outfit, a checkerboard dress and a headpiece topped with tassles. The dress is reminiscent of the checkerboard floors of Freemasonic Lodges, whereas the headpiece is remarkably similar to the fez worn by the Shriners (Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine), who were established as an appendant body to Freemasonry.

Abakua was originally formed as a mutual aid society committed to resisting Spanish authorities by purchasing slaves in order to release them. In recent years the Abakua Society has been reframed as a national symbol of anticolonial liberation struggle by historians such as Dr. Ivor Miller, who has documented the group's cultural narrative through interviews with Abakua elders as well as more conventional academic sources. Miller states that, during the Cuban wars of independence, members of the Abakua formed associations with famous Freemasons like Antonio Maceo, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and other leaders of the Mambi Independence army which fought to end slavery.This documentation should demonstrate that attempts to classify Freemasonry as necessarily always working towards oppressive ends are short-sighted simplifications of a multi-faceted legacy. However, the fraternity's reputation for conspiracy and intrigue is well deserved, and its history includes many reprehensible acts such as playing a central organizing role in colonial racism. Where the furthest extremes of this more problematic representation of societal conditioning play out tends to be in the advanced Freemasonic degrees which are heavily influenced by royalism and an agenda for concentration of wealth and resources.

To cite one example, Confederate war General Albert Pike was the Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite's Southern Jurisdiction, who also wrote the primary reference book for Freemasonic ritual, Morals and Dogma. In Klu Klux Klan: Its Origin, Growth and Disbandment, Vanderbilt University history department chair Walter L. Fleming wrote “General Albert Pike, who stood high in the Masonic order, was the chief judicial officer of the Klan.” Pike was the owner-publisher of the Memphis Daily Appeal, and on April 16, 1868, he authored an editorial stating the following: “With negroes for witnesses and jurors, the administration of justice becomes a blasphemous mockery. A Loyal League of negroes can cause any white man to be arrested, and can prove any charges it chooses to have made against him...The disenfranchised people of the South...can find no protection for property, liberty or life, except in secret association...We would unite every white man in the South, who is opposed to negro suffrage, into one great Order of Southern Brotherhood, with an organization complete, active and vigorous, in which a few should execute the concentrated will of all, and whose very existence should be concealed by all but its members.”

As Confederate commissioner of Indian affairs, General Pike negotiated a treaty of alliance between the Confederate government and Native American tribes. One of the signatories of this document was Freemason and Cherokee Chief John Ross. On May 5, 1855, Ross wrote a letter to Reverend Evan Jones, in which he described a “secret society” that had attempted to invade the Cherokee Nation: “It seems that there has been a secret society organized in Delaware and Saline Districts, auxiliary to a Mother Lodge in some of the States or Territories of the United States, and the enclosed copy is a form of the oath it is said to be administered to the members of the Society. But I do not apprehend that the authors of this sinister plot can possibly dupe the Cherokee people into their own ruin and downfall, as the schemes when found out will only render themselves more odious to all who feel an interest in the prosperity and welfare of the Nation.” The oath attempted to bind the Cherokee nation in support for slavery, and to “...support any person that you may be instructed to, by the Mother Lodge, for any office in the Cherokee Nation or anywhere else, and to assist any member that may get into difficulty on account of being a brother of the Secret Society and to keep secret the names of the Brothers of the Society and other secrets of the Society.”
The secret society to which Chief Ross was referring was the Cherokee branch of the Knights of the Golden Circle (K.G.T), a fraternal organization that included in its membership many prominent Cherokees including Chief Stand Watie, who was also a Freemason affiliated with Federal Lodge Number One in Washington D.C. The Constitution to this adjunct organization states “No person shall become a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle in the Cherokee Nation who is not a pro-slavery man.” The Kansas Encyclopedia of 1912 states that the organization was formed as part of the Freemasonic Blue Lodges. Despite this uncharacteristic and obviously strategic inclusion of Native Americans by a Freemasonic sect, the Grand Lodge of Arkansas failed to recognize the charters of lodges registered in Native American territory following the end of the Civil War.

The overarching goal of the Knights of the Golden Circle was to create a circular-shaped Southern empire founded on slavery and centered in Havana, Cuba with jurisdictions extending throughout the Caribbean, to the Southern portion of the United States, the Gulf of Mexico, and Central America. The intended addition of fifteen new slave-holding states was to persuade Congress to abandon the goal of abolition. The economic security of the empire was hoped to be provided by slave labor capable of supporting industries including sugar, cotton, tobacco, rice, coffee, indigo and mining.

The political influence of the Knights is thoroughly detailed in The Private Journal and Diary of John H. Surratt, the Conspirator, which describes the author's induction into the fraternity through an elaborate ceremonial rite. Surratt discovered that prominent members of the K.G.C. included congressmen, cabinet members, judges, politicians and actors.. He also reveals the organization's intent to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, a plan whose formation began before the President's inauguration and was finalized with the actions of K.G.C. member John Wilkes Booth. Surratt had been accused of plotting the assassination and narrowly escaped arrest by fleeing the country. His mother, who owned the boarding house where the plot was conceived, was convicted of conspiracy and hanged by the United States Federal Government.

In addition to Freemasonry's role in pursuing colonial policy and intrigue in the Americas, the fraternity has also been unequivocally active in suppressing indigenous populations on the African continent. Renowned statesman, founder of Debeers diamond monopoly and 33rd degree Freemason Cecil Rhodes was one of the primary architects of the laws that would later enable apartheid in South Africa. For over forty years the Cape Colony had been based on laws that allowed the entire population to vote for representatives of the Assembly, irrespective of the race of the voter. Rhodes utilized his role as Prime Minister of the Cape to pass two laws that removed large numbers of native Africans from the electoral role. The Glen Grey Act strictly limited the amount of land Africans could possess, while the other law tripled the property requirements for the vote. The system Rhodes helped to set in place would develop into a framework for racial segregation that enabled white supremacy while reducing black Africans to second class status. The ultimate goal was to unite the entire world under an Anglo-Saxon empire intended to include Africa, South America, much of the Middle East, the East Asian coast and South Pacific Islands.

Once again, a prominent Freemason would call for the formation of a secret society to curtail the political rights of people of color. In his first will, Cecil Rhodes acknowledged plans for a “secret society” aiming towards “the extension of British rule throughout the world”, a goal that would be accomplished by the “ultimate recovery of the United States as an integral part of the British Empire.” The plan would be finalized in “consolidation of the whole Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial Representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire, and finally the foundation of so great a power as to hereafter render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity.” This organization, The Society of the Elect, was the inner committee for a larger group, the Round Table Movement, which would establish the elite Rhodes scholarship program before finally attempting to implement neocolonial imperialism by way of global think tanks and non-governmental organizations.

In his exhaustive history of Western civilization, Tragedy and Hope, Harvard history professor and U.S. military political consultant Carrol Quigley inserts the following infamous quote: “There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960’s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and many of its instruments.” He further elaborates on the machinations of the Round Table group in another book, The Anglo-American Establishment: “This organization has been able to conceal its existence quite successfully, and many of its most influential members, satisfied to possess the reality rather than the appearance of power, are unknown even to close students of British history.”

The Society of the Elect was composed of a small handful of political leaders, including Freemason Lord Alfred Milner, who once stated “My patriotism knows no geographical but only racial limits. I am a British Race patriot.” Due to his success as a colonial administrator in South Africa, Milner was made a baron in 1901 and a viscount in 1902. After his retirement in 1921 Milner was appointed a Knight of the Garter, designating affiliation with the Order of the Garter, an organization which contains no more than 24 members including the British Royal Family. Society of the Elect member Reginald Baliol Brett, later known as Lord Esher, was also a friend of royalty, in addition to being a member of Lord Elgin's South African War Commission. Esher was known to be a confidant of Queen Victoria, as well as the most significant advisor to King Edward VII and King George V.

The political authority of the Round Table group in South Africa continued an extensive tradition combining Freemasonry and royalism on the continent. The Royal African Company was a slaving company founded by the House of Stuart, previously mentioned for their role in establishing the Blue degrees of Freemasonry. The company was led by James, Duke of York, the younger brother of James II, and was responsible for the transport of approximately 5,000 slaves per year. The total number of slaves transported between 1672 and 1689 is estimated to be between 90,000 and 100,000. Many of these slaves were branded with the letters DY, in reference to the Duke of York, while others were branded with the company's initials, RAC. The company was granted a monopoly in the region and given the authority to maintain troops, exercise martial law and capture any ships that defied the terms of their monopoly in the area. Revenues derived from slave-trading were divided equally between the King and company shareholders. Its profits were so significant that the Royal African Company played a critical role in the economy of London.

The stage of colonization defined by military conquest can be represented by the company founded by the House of Stuart, whereas the political imposition enacted by the Round Table groups, while no less destructive in its aims, is contingent upon neocolonial policies which seek to hide cultural subjugation under a guise of ostensibly democratic representation. At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, a senior Society of the Elect member named Lionel Curtis proposed the idea of establishing what Quigley describes as an “Anglo-American Institute of foreign affairs”, organized for the purpose of preventing future wars. This organization became known as the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA), also referred to as Chatham House, and its U.S. counterpart became the Council on Foreign Relations. RIIA is now known as the second most influential think tank in the world, behind the Brookings Institute. The Queen of England is designated as the official patron of Chatham House, and through it, as well as other non-state actors, the influence of royalism maintains a covert presence in the international political process.

That Lord Milner, a key member of the Round Table groups, would also claim Knighthood in the Order of the Garter is likely no coincidence, considering that the Order is itself founded on the myth of King Arthur's Round Table. The Order of the Garter is the highest order of chivalry in England, considered to be the pinnacle of the British honors system after hereditary peerages, which are now normally only given to members of the Royal Family. Membership in the Order is always bestowed as the sole prerogative of the Monarch. In the historical treatise, Order of the Garter, politician, Freemason, royalist sympathizer and court astrologer Elias Ashmole contends that “The Order of the Garter was formed by Edward III, perhaps in imitation of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table.” Froissart's Chronicles, recognized as the primary expression of the 14th century chivalric revival, states “The King of England took pleasure to re-edify the Castle of Windsor, which was begun by King Arthur, and there first began the Table Round, whereby sprang the fame of so many noble knights throughout all the World. Then King Edward determined to make an Order and a Brotherhood...to be called Knights of the Blue Garter, and a feast to be kept yearly on St. George's Day.”
Arthurian legend tells the story of how the Round Table was designed to seat 24 knights, in parallel with the strict membership limitation of 24 within the Order of the Garter. There are other indications of the Order's origins in esoteric symbolism as well, such as its insignia which depicts a red cross on a white background, the same image that was carried on the banners of the Knights Templar. The red cross in the Order's insignia is depicted in the center of an 8-pointed star, traditionally known as the star of Venus or Ishtar. Within Babylonian and Assyrian cultures, the 8-pointed star of Ishtar was an astrological representation of the four cardinal directions divided by the two solstices and equinoxes.

Taken together, this symbolic imagery likely indicates the Order's association with ancient mystery schools that trace a direct line of descent from the cults of antiquity through mystical Catholic orders to the occult fraternities that form the basis of today's shadow government system.
The Order of the Garter's close relationship with Freemasonry is suggested by observing the extensive number of high-ranking Freemasons who have also been members of the Royal Family. The United Grand Lodge of England is the main governing body of Freemasonry within England and other Commonwealth countries. As the oldest Grand Lodge in the world, according to its records, the lodge is often recognized as the “home Grand Lodge” by international Freemasons. The current Grand Master of the lodge is Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, who continues an uninterrupted tradition of heading the lodge as royalty since it began keeping records in 1813. The book 10,000 Famous Freemasons, published by Macoy Publishing and Masonic Supply Company, claims that Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth, was initiated into Freemasonry in 1952, stating: “Present at the initiation were the Earl of Scarbrough, Grand Master...and Geoffrey Fisher, archbishop of Canterbury. The lodge has many ties with the royal family as King Edward VII served as its first master in 1896 when he was Prince of Wales. King George VI...served as master when he was Duke of York.”

There is a certain amount of historical evidence intimating that the Royal Family's preoccupation with Arthurian legend, and concurring membership in secret societies, may not be a simple matter of antiquated pomp and circumstance, but instead a deliberate attempt to conceal a historical pedigree that could damage the family's claim to support democratic political structures. In the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, authors Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln unearth documents that they claim provide evidence of a secret society existing for the purpose of housing genealogical records that trace the origins of present reigning Monarchs to the Merovignian dynasty, which was ostensibly deposed in 751. The authors believe that these records were maintained by secret societies, including the Rosicrucians, Templars, and Freemasons, which sought to conceal evidence of the royal bloodline whose descendants would go on to take leadership roles in these same secret societies. In the course of pursuing research for the book, the authors discovered a series of pamphlets that contained royal pedigrees stretching from the early Middle Ages to the present day.

Three of the authors linked to the dissemination of the pamphlets were later found to have died under mysterious circumstances that point strongly towards murder. Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln managed to locate the daughter of another of the authors, who was unaware of her father's apparent interest in genealogy, yet also informed her interviewers that he had been denied a visa for entry into the United States on account of suspected espionage or other clandestine activity. Although the book has been dismissed by professional scholars as pseudo-history, probably in large part because of the authors' belief that the royal bloodlines they studied may have descended from Jesus, the dizzying volume of data contained within the book is unparalleled in scope, and far too exhaustively researched to be based purely in speculation. While many fans of the book argue that Holy Blood... exposes an unorthodox religious history with liberatory implications, few of these readers have speculated as to why it may be that a genuinely altruistic organization would resort to murder to maintain the cover of secrecy.

One possible explanation for this seeming paradox is that high-ranking initiates did, in fact, work to subvert dominant social institutions, not as a secret ploy to liberate the masses, but instead as a route to consolidate political and economic power for themselves and their descendants. In this scenario, a democratic political framework would be the ideal camouflage for exercising such a strategy, and the numerous proto-globalist projects of the Round Table movement may serve as prime example of this pattern. What this supposition amounts to is a literal re-establishment of the divine right of kings under cover of representative government. Of particular interest in pursuing this line of reasoning is historical data linking the legend of King Arthur's Round Table, and perhaps, Cecil Rhodes' Round Table groups as well, to the royal bloodlines from which present day Monarchs descended.

Wolfram von Eschenbach is the author of Parzival, which is considered to be one of the most important works of Arthurian literature, particularly for its focus on the Holy Grail which shifted focus away from King Arthur himself to other Knights of the Round Table. The story recounts the tale of Lohengrin, son of the Grail King Parzival and member of a secret order whose mission is to provide lords to kingdoms that have lost their protectors. Lohengrin was said to have rescued and then married the duchess of Brabant, after which he informed her that she was forbidden from asking him about his origins or ancestry. When the duchess finally succumbed to curiosity, Lohengrin abruptly departed, leaving behind a child of uncertain lineage. According to Eschenbach, this child was either the father or grandfather of Godfroi de Boullion, founder of the Knights Templar who captured Jerusalem from the Saracens. Bouillon himself was the subject of numerous legends attributing him with supernatural lineage, such as the story of his half-serpent daughter Melusine. Bouillon is also the subject of legend amongst Freemasons, who erected a statue of him alongside Lichfield Chapel which is considered to be a Christian holy site. In his book on Cecil Rhodes' wills, Society of the Elect member William T. Stead makes the following comment. In light of the historical and mythological data expressed above, this otherwise inexplicable quote becomes far more intriguing: “He aspired to be the creator of one of those vast semi-religious, quasi-political associations which, like the Society of Jesus, have played so large a part in the history of the world. To be more strictly accurate, he wished to found an Order as the instrument of the will of the Dynasty, and while he lived he dreamed of being both its Caesar and its Loyola.”

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Update to Occult Origins of the Counterculture

The following section has been added to the Occult Origins of the Counterculture article, and the introduction to the article has been revised as well.

The social stratification represented by the degree system of Freemasonry is a logical extension of natural law, the Catholic ideology by which rigidly maintained social hierarchy was deemed a necessary component of any holy society. The Eye of Providence, colloquially known as the all-seeing eye, was first a Catholic symbol intended to symbolize the divine providence of God watching over humanity and superseding in human affairs through ecclesiastical authorities. The earliest depiction of the Eye of Providence in Europe was within the Palatine Chapel, whose construction was begun by Charlemagne in 786. Charlemagne was the first Holy Roman Emperor, and his accession inaugurated a return to the divine right of kings in Christian Europe. In the New Testament, the concept of the divine right of kings had been justified by the statement of St. Peter that all Christians should honor the pagan Roman Emperor. Throughout Medieval Europe, the same idea applied to feudal properties, which were believed to be owned by God and managed by Kings, who were in turn answerable only to the authority of Popes. This arrangement of power formed the basis of the figurative pyramid whose base was composed of serfs living in conditions akin to slavery in all of its most essential aspects. Feudal plantation owners were legally allowed to beat, murder and rape their serfs, while the serfs were forbidden from owning or selling property. The etymology of the term “serf” can be traced to the Latin word “servus”, which literally translates to slave.

In 1865 slavery was permanently abolished within the United States by way of the Thirteenth Amendment. Less than a year later, the Holy Office responded via an instruction signed by Pope Pius IX, which states: “Slavery itself, considered as such in its essential nature, is not at all contrary to the natural and divine law, and there can be several just titles of slavery, and these are referred to by approved theologians and commentators of the sacred canons … It is not contrary to the natural and divine law for a slave to be sold, bought, exchanged or given”. This policy was not officially changed within Canon law until 1918. Medieval texts used the words “peasant”, “serf” and “slave” as synonymous representations of the overwhelming majority of the population who did not own property. The Domesday Book of 1086 recorded a census of Britain's million and a half inhabitants, noting that less than three percent were free landholders. The feudal pyramid explicated a regimented division of value whereby corporeal hierarchies of serfs, lords, abbots, knights and bishops were arranged below heavenly hierarchies of saints, angels and, ultimately, God. As a material extension of these values, religious institutions such as abbeys and monasteries maintained a significant portion of European feudal properties while simultaneously amassing vast fortunes as a result.

The social stratification of greater Medieval society was also applied to individual families, which were typically formed according to strict laws and customs as opposed to individual choice. For example, the lord of an estate could prevent serfs from marrying women from another estate, while also exercising the power to choose husbands for their tenants' daughters. Medieval laws also required parental consent for marriage up to the age of 30 for men and the age of 25 for women. The doctrine of mutual consent also allowed for spouses to abandon their families based on “confession” of prior marriage to a different spouse. As merchant classes arose in later centuries, the doctrine of mutual consent ostensibly allowed for freedom of choice in marriage, however, in practice, parents controlled the choices of their children by denying inheritance rights to those who married against their wishes. The free bench was an English manorial custom that defined a widow's inheritance rights as dependent on her chastity, and remarriage, as well as any ostensible evidence of sexual activity, required the widow to forfeit her lands. Similarly, the Legrewite was a fine designed to punish single sexually active women, a fee often compounded by the childwite, yet another fine for the birth of illegitimate children. As stated previously, the doctrine of mutual consent allowed for previously married women to have their children classified as illegitimate regardless of the wife's commitment to her marriage. In France, unmarried pregnant women were systematically interrogated at local government offices.

The “virtue” of blind obedience to religious and political authorities was promoted by the Jesuits, a Catholic fraternity that predated both the Freemasons and the Bavarian Illuminati. In his Letter on Obedience, Jesuit (Society of Jesus) founder Ignatius of Loyola wrote “And so, I should wish that all of you would train yourselves to recognize Christ our Lord in any Superior whomsoever, and with all devotion, reverence and obey in him His Divine Majesty. And this will appear less strange to you, if you keep in mind that St. Paul, writing to the Ephesians, bids us obey even temporal and pagan Superiors as Christ from Whom all well ordered authority descends: Slaves, obey your masters according to the flesh with fear and trembling in the sincerity of your hearts as you would Christ: not serving to the eye as pleasers of men, but as slaves of Christ.”

Loyola's apparently tolerant attitude toward polytheistic cultures did not, however, prevent the Jesuits from playing a central role in the Goa Inquisition, a horrific period of history enabled by the Society's reverence for social inequality. The office of the Inquisition on the Portugese state of Goa was responsible for sanctioning the death by torture of dozens of Hindus and Muslims for the crime of practicing their native religion. The Goa Inquisition was originally installed after Francis Xavier, a student of Loyola's, one of seven original Jesuits and co-founder of the same group, wrote a letter to King John III of Portugal, requesting Catholic expedition to India as a route to ensuring Christian purity. As Xavier departed to lead the mission, the pope appointed him apostolic nuncio to the East, an ecclesiastical diplomatic title equivalent to that of ambassador. The Inquisition's first act was to establish the death penalty for open practice of the Hindu faith. Hundreds of prison cells were set up to accommodate the accused. Hindu temples were destroyed and ransacked, their contents confiscated by army action. The local Konkani language was suppressed, Hindu holy books were destroyed and Portugese became the compulsory national language.

The Jesuits organized an annual mass baptism on January 25, the Feast of Saint Paul, whereby their African slaves were ordered to grab Hindus and smear their lips with beef, an act that resulted in many Hindus being labeled as untouchable by their own people. In his book, the Goa Inquisition, Indo-Portugese historian T.R. De Souza writes “...the government transferred to the Church and religious orders the properties and other sources of revenue that had belonged to the Hindu temples that had been demolished or to the temple servants who had been converted or banished. Entire villages were taken over at times for being considered rebellious and handed over with all their revenues to the Jesuits.” The Goa Inquisition also exhaustively details the methods of torture through which Catholic missionaries enforced religious conversions, including flogging, dismemberment and amputations carried out so slowly that the victims remained alive throughout the process. The auto-de-fa was the Catholic ritual of public penance whereby condemned heretics and apostates were burned at the stake. According to De Souza, Francis Xavier was present at the first Inquisition, where two of the accused, including a French cleric, were burned alive. For his efforts, Xavier was canonized as a saint by Pope Gregory XV, at the same time as Ignatius Loyola, and proclaimed the “Patron of Catholic Missions” by Pope Pius XI.

Aside from their work in suppressing cultural and religious expression abroad, the Jesuits also endeavored to suppress European institutions that threatened the power of the Catholic church, particularly in the areas of politics and scientific discourse. In 1616 the Inquisition declared the scientific proposition that the Earth rotates around the Sun to be heresy, shortly after the Index of Prohibited Books banned any writings that advanced Copernican heliocentric astronomy. Jesuit astronomers argued that geocentrism, the theory that the earth is the center of the universe around which all heavenly bodies revolve, was in accordance with a literal interpretation of Scripture, particularly Psalms 96:10, Chronicles 16:30, Psalms 93:1, Ecclesiastes 1:5 and Psalms 104:5. The chief theologian of the Inquisition, Robert Bellarmine, was a Jesuit who read the astronomer Galileo Galilei the decree of the Index and ordered him to abandon his research into the Copernican system. When this decree was ignored, Galilei was confined to house arrest for the rest of his life. Galilei's discoveries were so ground-breaking that he has since been dubbed the “father of observational astronomy”.

The Society of Jesus was also able to gain political influence by hearing the confessions of kings, princes and other political authorities. According to the New Catholic Encyclopedia, “they acted as royal confessors to all French kings for 2 centuries, from Henry III to Louis XV; to all German emperors after the early 17th century; to all Dukes of Bavaria after 1579; to most rulers of Poland and Portugal; to the Spanish kings in the 18th century; to James II of England; and to many ruling or princely families throughout Europe.” Confessions in this context functioned much as the Bacchanalia had in previous centuries: organizations in a position to elicit incriminating secrets were much more likely to gain the advantage of political blackmail. Royal confessors were thus able to promote the interests of the Papacy, such as when LeTellier, Jesuit confessor to King Louis XIV, convinced the monarch to revoke the Edict of Nantes which granted substantial rights to Calvinist Protestants. Because of this history of political maneuvering, the Society was expelled from most states across Europe, as well as a number of European colonies. In Portugal the Jesuit royal confessor Gabriel Malagrida was declared guilty of high treason on account of his role in plotting the attempted assassination of King Jose I. Malagrida was not executed because the Papacy expressed opposition to the execution of a Jesuit by secular authorities. Instead, he was confined to a dungeon beneath the tower of Belem along with other Jesuits, who were also arrested for their role in the plan.

Aside from political intrigue, another charge commonly leveled at the Society was economic exploitation, especially regarding trade revenues derived from colonial mission plantations. As a religious order the Jesuits were technically forbidden from buying and selling for profit, however, as had been the case with the Knights Templar before them, this rule was largely disregarded. Referring to the Society's financial management of mission plantations, the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1908 states “...this was allowed, partly to provide for the current expenses of the mission, partly in order to protect the simple, childlike natives from the common plague of dishonest intermediaries.” In the Americas, Jesuit acquisitions were so extensive that suppression of the order resulted in widespread economic changes. The Society had owned the largest number of black slaves in Chile, so when Jesuits were expelled from the country there was a sharp decrease in the number of imported slaves. After Jesuit vineyards in Peru were auctioned, wine production also declined because the new owners did not have the expertise necessary to manage the fields.

The combined political, economic and academic influence of the Society contributed to numerous anti-Jesuit conspiracy theories alleging the order to be involved in plotting to overthrow nation-states on behalf of the Papacy. Many of these theories were a product of French anti-clericalism and claimed a rivalry between Freemasons and the Society of Jesus. Ironically, historians documenting the origins of speculative Freemasonry have unearthed evidence indicating that Freemasonry is in large part derived from Catholicism, with the Jesuits, in particular, playing an important role in their expansion throughout France and Germany. According to Chevalier Ramsay, a Fellow of the Royal Society as well as a tutor to King James' two sons, Freemasonry was founded in antiquity and renewed at the time of the Crusades. Crusaders utilized a symbolic language derived from the ancient Mystery cults, which was intended to differentiate Crusader from Saracen. The close relationship between these early Masons and the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem eventually resulted in the Blue Degrees which are named St. John's Masonry. Masonic participation in the Crusades may also be the reason why, according to Freemasonic legend, the original Lodge is “symbolically” located in Jerusalem. It may also be worth noting that Ramsay was a Baronet in the Jacobite Peerage (a hereditary honor granted by the deposed Stuart dynasty), so he may have been in a strategic position for absorbing the guarded secrets of high-ranking initiates.

One of the oldest surviving Masonic documents, from December 1658, suggests that the commonly held belief of the ideals of Freemasonry being opposed to royalism may, in truth, be erroneous. The document states, “That as formerly we and predecessors have and had from the temple of temples building on this earth one uniform community and union throughout the whole world from which temple proceeded one in Kilwinning in this our nation of Scotland and from that of Kilwinning many more within this kingdom of which there proceeded the Abbey and Lodge of Scone, built by men of art and architecture where they placed that lodge as the second lodge within this nation, which is now past memory of many generations, and was upheld by the Kings of Scotland...this Lodge is the most famous Lodge (if well ordered) within this kingdom-of which name of Mylne there had continued several generations of Master Masons to his Majesties the Kings of Scotland ." Art and Magic in the Court of the Stuarts is a book by architectural historian Vaughan Hart which further verifies this assertion, primarily through documenting the Hermetic-Cabalistic themes inherent in the masques of the Stuart court, which were typically planned and conceived by Masons.

The acolytes of King James Stuart II, the Jacobites, followed him into exile and renewed the ancient Rite of Heredom, also known as the Scottish Rite of Perfection, along with the Rite of Kilwining, which had commingled with the Templar tradition. Although this moment in history is a point of contention amongst many modern historians, in his work Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and its Kindred Sciences, the Freemasonic historian Albert Mackey states that King James II took refuge in the Jesuit College of Clermont in Paris, where a network of aristocrats and members of the royal court had founded a Masonic Lodge. The purpose of this Lodge was the restoration on the House of Stuart to the throne of England, and its rites consisted of six degrees including those of St. John's Masonry. The Baron von Hund then synthesized the ideas of these degrees and produced from them the Rite of Strict Observance which gained popularity in Germany. Mackey also contends that the Masonic lodge at the Jesuit College of Clermont has had a particularly notable influence on the advanced degrees of Freemasonry.

These higher degrees can be easily traced to their origin in Jesuit initiation ceremonies by scrutinizing the commonalities found in both fraternal orders, as well as the Templars and Knights of Malta who share a common line of descent with the Society of Jesus. Although detailed accounts of Jesuit initiations are scarce, the Schaff Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge contains revealing quotes from a 16th century Jesuit document which describes ceremonies culminating in acts analogous to modern day accounts of Satanic ritual abuse. The second degree into the Jesuits began when the candidate fasted and was then blindfolded and led through a cavern while reciting incantations. After crawling through a narrow opening, the initiate's blindfold was removed and he found himself in a dungeon with three lamps on the ground, surrounded by skeletal remains. This room was called the Cave of Evocation. A similarly darkened room, containing a skull, scythe and candle, is used within the initiation rites of advanced Freemasonic degrees, and referred to as the Chamber of Reflection. The second degree initiation of the Knights of Malta also contains the Chamber of Reflection, which the order says is a symbolic representation of the tomb of the Pharaoh.
The Jesuit document quoted in the Schaff Herzog Encyclopedia describes the conclusion of the rite: “...they took off all his clothing, which they cast upon a pyre in one corner of the cave, and marked his body with numerous crosses, drawn with blood. At this point, the hierophant with his assistants entered, and having bound a red cloth round the middle of the candidate's body, the brethren, clothed in bloodstained garments, placed themselves beside him, and drawing their daggers, formed the steel arch over his head.”

Further corroboration of the details of Jesuit initiation rites can be found in the Journals of the 62nd Congress, 3rd session, which records the personal testimony of former Jesuit priest Alberto Rivera: “When a Jesuit of the minor rank is to be elevated to command, he is conducted into the Chapel of the Covenant of the Order, where there are only three others present, the principal or Superior standing in front of an altar. On either side stands a monk, one of whom holds a banner of yellow and white, which are the Papal colours, and the other a black banner with a dagger and red cross above a skull and crossbone, with the words INRI and below them the words IUSTUM NECAR REGES IMPIUS, the meaning of which is: it is just to exterminate or annihilate impious or heretical Kings, governments or rulers. Upon the floor is a red cross at which the postulant or candidate kneels. The superior hands him a small black crucifix, which he takes in his left hand and presses to his heart, and the Superior at the same time presents to him a dagger, which he grasps by the blade and holds the point against his heart.” The Jesuit candidate is then instructed to receive “the wafer from the Superior and writes his name with the point of his dagger dipped in his own blood taken from over his heart.”

The presence of a dagger, as well as that of the skull and cross bones, can also be found within Freemasonic ceremonial rites. In a documentary entitled “Secrets of Secret Societies”, the Discovery Channel interviewed Catholic author and former high-ranking Freemason John Salza, who reported his participation in an initiation rite that involved him stripping off his clothes and being pierced with a knife. He described the rite as conveying a “warning” to the initiate. The skull and crossbones were also adopted by the Knights of Malta, whose second degree initiation involves the candidate being presented with bones which are described as the remains of the biblical patriarch Joseph, whose body had been carried to Egypt by his people.

Rivera expresses further similarities to Freemasonry with his delineation of how fellow Jesuit members identify one another, stating that the initiate, “with his right hand makes a circle around his head, touching it; the other then with the forefinger of his left hand touches the left side of his body just below the heart; the first then with his right hand draws it across the throat of the other, and the latter then with a dagger down the stomach and the abdomen of the first.” As reported by Richardson's Monitor of Freemasonry, a candidate is awarded the Grand Master Elect degree when he is either being pricked under the chin with a knife, or clenches the fingers of his right hand, extends the thumb and slides the tip of it up his abdomen to the underside of his chin. Within both the Society of Jesus and the Freemasons, the gesture is meant to convey the image of the initiate being ripped open with a knife, typically in response to his having violated the vow of secrecy protecting fellow members. This ceremony is based on the penal code of Freemasonry, which, Duncan's Masonic Ritual and Monitor states, “intimates that the stiff neck of the disobedient shall be cut off from head of the living...”.

Musician who painted Queen's portrait arrested for child sexual abuse

Entertainer Rolf Harris arrested in fallout from Jimmy Savile sex-abuse case London – The Associated Press Friday, Apr. 19 2013 Rolf Harris, a veteran entertainer who has released hit singles and painted the Queen’s portrait, has been arrested as part of a police investigation into sexual abuse allegations stemming from the Jimmy Savile scandal, British media reported Friday.
Major media outlets followed The Sun newspaper in identifying Harris, an Australian-born artist, musician and television host who is a household name in Britain….
Harris, who lives in Berkshire and turned 83 on March 30, has been a British entertainment stalwart for decades. He has had musical hits with “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” – which he once performed with The Beatles – and “Two Little Boys.” He also has hosted television shows, painted an official portrait of the queen for her 80th birthday in 2006, and performed at the monarch’s Diamond Jubilee concert last year. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/entertainer-rolf-harris-arrested-in-fallout-from-jimmy-savile-sex-abuse-case/article11400305/

Monday, May 20, 2013

Fury of Opus Dei in Latin America

Some of the word choices in this article seem a bit odd to me, but that might be due to problems of translation. I don't necessarily agree with all the opinions expressed here, aside from criticism of Opus Dei. FYI, some details that follow may be upsetting for sensitive readers.

via Pravda:

Lawyer Ives Gandra Martins da Silva, the principal exponent of the fascist sect Opus Dei in Brazil, is concerned about the advancement of the left in Latin America. In an angry article in the column Trends / Debates of Folha de Sao Paulo, he distilled hatred and prejudice against Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Fidel Castro and Lula... Besides lying about the reality of human rights in Cuba, he cannot hide his sympathy for the dictatorial regime of Chile, which has always had the active support of Opus Dei....The right-wing ideas and prejudices of Opus Dei are already known, but it is good not to underestimate the influence of this world sect - which enjoys space in the middle class media and has a strong presence in the state apparatus. Its interest in Latin America is not new and always hovers threateningly. Since its arrival to the continent, 50 years ago, Opus Dei cunningly plans its rise to power. The project only gained momentum with a wave of military coups in the region in the 60s. Its followers presided in several nations or advised numerous dictators. In the 90s, with the neo liberal avalanche, the faithful technocrats of this sect once again enjoy a certain prestige.

"Catechism" in Latin America

In the 50s, the sect seduced its first believers among the old oligarchies that sought to differentiate from indigenous peoples and preached religious fundamentalism. But Opus Dei only acquired greater strength with the wave of attacks from the 60s. Until then, its action was still dispersed. According to an excellent article by Marina Amaral in the magazine Dear Friends, "in 1970, Josemaría Escriva [founder of the sect in Spain] traveled to Mexico to start giving 'travel catechisms' of the Americas that lasted until the eve of his death in Rome in 1975."

In 1974, he visited South America, then dominated by dictatorships. "The progressive clergy tried to use the weight of the church to denounce torture and killings and to fight for the restoration of democracy. In his speeches, he once replied to a soldier that asked to follow the path of 'spiritual sanctification' of the Opus Dei: 'The soldier already has done half of the spiritual path." In this dark period, the sect supported the attacks and has participated in various dictatorial governments, according Emílio Corbière, author of the book "Opus Dei: Catholic totalitarianism.”

In Chile, the fascist sect of dictator Augusto Pinochet was what Augusto Franco was in Spain. The main ideologist of this bloodthirsty regime, Jaime Guzmá, was an active member of the sect, as well as hundreds of civilian and military boards. It also supported the strikes and participated in the authoritarian regimes in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. According Corbière, it funded the regime of Nicaraguan dictator Anastácio Somoza until his defeat by the Sandinistas. In the decade of the 90s, it still gave "active assistance" to the terrorist and corrupt dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori, Peru.

Another "prosperous" phase occurs with the neo liberal offensive in the 90s. Boasting the sympathy of the pope and of autonomy facing the local churches, it benefited from the invasion of Spanish multinationals, the result of state-owned privatization. Many of them are influenced by cash from Opus Dei. According Henrique Magalhães, in article in the magazine The New Democracy, "Argentina handed their state telephone, oil, aviation and energy to Telefonica, Repsol, Endesa and Iberia. Iberia had already swallowed the LAN [aviation], of Chile, where the generation of energy was already controlled by Endesa. The Spanish banks also came to the continent in this process.”

"The Opus Dei is for the neo liberal model what the Dominicans and the Franciscans were to the cross and the Jesuits for the Lutheran Reform," compares José Steinsleger, columnist for the Mexican newspaper La Jornada. In the 90s, the sect also enlisted several bishops and cardinals in the region. The most famous was Juan Cipriani, of Peru, intimate friend of the dictator Alberto Fujimori. In 1997, during the invasion of the Japanese embassy by militants of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, the bishop earned the position of mediator and used a listening device in a crucifix, which enabled the police to invade the house and kill all its occupants.

In Brazil, the Opus Dei entrenched its root in 1957, in the city of Marília, inside Paulista, with the establishment of two centers. In 1961, given the importance of the branch, the sect visited the Spanish sect Xavier Ayala, the second in the hierarchy. "Doctor Xavier, as he liked to be called, although a priest, stepped foot on Brazilian soil with the mission of strengthening the conservative wing of the church. On the eve of the Second Vatican Council, the progressive clergy in Latin America argued for the revolutionary return to the origins of Christianity and the 'option for the poor', fundamentals of Liberation Theology," explains Marina Amaral.

The tentacles in Brazil

Still, according to the report, "the few, Opus Dei have been finding their allies on the university’s right. Among the first were two young promising youths: Ives Gandra and Carlos Alberto Di Franco, the first one sympathetic to monarchism and a defeated candidate for representative; the second, a secondary school student of the College Rio Branco, the Rotarians of Brazil. Ives began to attend the meetings of Opus Dei in 1963, Di Franco 'whistled' (asked to enter) in 1965. Today, the organization says it has in the country a little over three thousand members and about forty centers, where approximately six hundred sects live."

Growth in dictatorship

During the dictatorship, the sect also focused its action in the legal environment, which yields fruit until today. The retired promoter and ex-deputy Mr. Hélio Bicudo reveals two times being harassed by judges loyal to the organization. The exponent at this stage was José Rodrigues Geraldo Alckmin, appointed minister of the STF by dictator Garrastazu Medici in 1972, and uncle of the Tucanos (PSDB) candidate to the presidency in 2006. Until the 70's, however, the power of Opus Dei was embryonic. It had boards in important positions, but without coordinated action. Moreover, it was divided with the Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) the sympathies of Catholics of the extreme right-wing.

Its growth depended on the blessing of generals and links with powerful companies. Ives Gandra and Di Franco turned their "ambassadors", linking themselves with the owners of the media, right-wing politicians, bishops and entrepreneurs. College Catamarã (SP), Casa do Moinho (Cotia) and Publisher Quadrant - is from this phase of the construction of the structure of facade. It also created an NGO to raise funds: OSUC (Works Social, and Cultural University). It receives donations until today from Itaú, Bradesco, GM and Citigroup. Faced with this denunciation, Lizandro Carmona, OSUC, begged the journalist Marina Amaral: "For the love of God, do not go write that companies such as Itaú donate money to Opus Dei."

Recent Offensives in the region

In the recent phase, the Opus Dei set bold plans to win more political power in the region. In April 2002, it participated actively in the failed coup against President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. One of its faithful, José Rodrigues Iturbe, became Minister of Foreign Affairs in the government of the elusive con man. The embassy of Spain, at the time governed by the Franco Popular Party (PP) of Jose Maria Aznar - whose wife is the Opus Dei - gave Guarita (Watchtower) to their faithful. Another con man linked to the sect, Gustavo Cisneiros, is the largest communications businessman in the country.

In December 2006, the sect witnessed the defeat of its candidate, Joaquim Laví, former adviser to the dictator Augusto Pinochet, for the presidency of Chile. Back in May 2006, it collected a new defeat with the candidacy of Lourdes Flores, nominee of the National Unity Party. In compensation, it celebrated the victory of narco terrorist Álvaro Uribe in Colombia, who dispersed millions of dollars from the government of George Bush. In Mexico, another known faithful of Opus Dei, Felipe Calderon, a former executive of Coca-Cola, won one of the most fraudulent elections in history of this country.

Its most daring move, though, was the attempt to elect a follower in Brazil. According to Henrique Magellan, "the hope of Opus Dei turned to Geraldo Alckmin, that today is one of its most prominent political structures. The Organization tried to make him president to form an axis with thegeopolitical leaders of Colombia and Mexico. " The media and the Tucanos (PSDB) members have even tried to cover up that shadowy connection. In a piece in the Folha de Sao Paulo, Alckmin pledged: "I am not one of the Opus Dei, who is in respect, but I do not know." He lied to hide his close relations with the fascist sect - from the time of childhood, in the meeting with his father and uncle-Minister of the dictatorship of the STF, to the illegal "talks of Morumbi." But the nation is not deceived. This explains the recent elitist moanings of Ives Gandra, high head of Opus Dei.

The above article does a great job of summarizing Opus Dei's connections to Latin American military dictatorships, but it doesn't get into some of the social policies the sect is actively promoting. For example, Opus Dei is known to have ties to Priests for Life, an anti-abortion organization which denies the medical reality that continuing a pregnancy can sometimes endanger the life of the mother. To get an idea of what a society governed by these principles would look like, consider the recent case in Brazil, where the mother of a 9-year-old, pregnant rape and incest victim was excommunicated by the Catholic church after arranging for her daughter to get an abortion. The doctors involved in the decision, who were also excommunicated, had warned her that her daughter was risking her life by continuing the pregnancy. Most reasonable people would let it go at that. The Vatican, however, insisted that, even though the child did not have the skeletal structure necessary for childbirth, she could still receive a Caesarian section.

This perspective demonstrates blatant and willful ignorance of the medical risks of pregnancy faced by young mothers. One of these risks includes preeclampsia, a condition of high blood pressure that can result in swelling of the face and hands, as well as permanent organ damage. Preeclampsia can also be a life-threatening condition. "Pro-life" organizers will argue that a few nine-year-old incest victims being forced to carry a rape baby to term despite their potential loss of life is a small price to pay for all the lives saved due to stringent anti-choice legislation. Let's examine that line of thinking more closely.


via The New York Times:

For proof that criminalizing abortion doesn't reduce abortion rates and only endangers the lives of women, consider Latin America. In most of the region, abortions are a crime, but the abortion rate is far higher than in Western Europe or the United States. Colombia - where abortion is illegal even if a woman's life is in danger - averages more than one abortion per woman over all of her fertile years. In Peru, the average is nearly two abortions per woman over the course of her reproductive years. In a region where there is little sex education and social taboos keep unmarried women from seeking contraception, criminalizing abortion has not made it rare, only dangerous. Rich women can go to private doctors. The rest rely on quacks or amateurs or do it themselves. Up to 5,000 women die each year from abortions in Latin America, and hundreds of thousands more are hospitalized.

Abortion is legal on demand in the region only in Cuba, and a few other countries permit it for extreme circumstances, mostly when the mother's life is at risk, the fetus will not live or the pregnancy is the result of rape. Even when pregnancies do qualify for legal abortions, women are often denied them because anti-abortion local medical officials and priests intervene, the requirements are unnecessarily stringent, or women do not want to incur the public shame of reporting rape.

But Latin Americans are beginning to look at abortion as an issue of maternal mortality, not just maternal morality. Where they have been conducted, polls show that Latin Americans support the right to abortion under some circumstances. Decriminalization, at least in part, is being seriously discussed in Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, Uruguay and Argentina, and perhaps will be on the agenda after the presidential election in July in Mexico....Latin American women, who are increasing their participation in the work force and in politics, have also become more vocal. Their voice would be much louder were it not for the Bush administration's global gag rule, which bans any family planning group that gets American money from speaking about abortions, or even criticizing unsafe illegal abortions. This has silenced some respected and influential groups, such as Profamilia in Colombia. Anti-abortion lawmakers in Washington can look at Latin America as a place where the global gag rule has worked exactly as they had hoped. All Americans can look at Latin America to see unnecessary deaths and injuries from unsafe abortions.











Opus Dei lobbies to prevent maternal death exception for Irish abortion ban

via The Guardian:

The secret ultra-conservative Catholic sect Opus Dei is mobilising within the Irish professions to stop the republic reforming its abortion laws, one of the country's most prominent doctors has warned. John Crown, a leading cancer specialist and member of parliament, accused the powerful organisation of trying to exercise influence on the medical profession and politicians to prevent limited abortion being made legal for the first time in Ireland. The only physician on the parliamentary subcommittee exploring the abortion question at present, Crown said he believed Opus Dei was "a major player" in the campaign to thwart legislation that would allow for abortion when a mother's life was at risk.

The member of Ireland's second chamber, the Seanad, said he had received abuse over his role on the subcommittee, particularly when he revealed that 30 terminations had been carried out in Irish hospitals last year. The Fine Gael-Labour coalition is under intense pressure to introduce legislation that would allow for abortions when a woman's life is at risk, including from suicide. The momentum for change on abortion laws has intensified since the Indian dentist Savita Halappanavar died from blood poisoning after a Galway hospital refused to terminate her pregnancy last autumn.

Enda Kenny's government has promised reform but the taoiseach's Fine Gael party is coming under attack from anti-abortion activists, particularly in rural, conservative parts of the republic, who have threatened to picket the constituency offices of teachta dálas (members of the lower house of parliament, the Dáil Éirann) who previously promised to oppose any change in the law. Crown said: "I believe that many of the organisations that are most prominent in this campaign in trying to thwart reform will have substantial membership from Opus Dei." He said it was time for members of the Oireachtas (parliament) – both the Dáil and Seanad – to be required to declare if they belonged to any secret organisations, such as Opus Dei. "That is something that should be declared because there are potential conflicts of interest if one believes that one is answering to a higher authority than the parliament of the republic.

"We have several examples in history where leaders of this country asked if people should state their allegiance. Garret Fitzgerald [a former taoiseach] once famously asked his cabinet to inform him if they were members of secret organisations, which I think is not a bad idea at all for the whole of the Oireachtas."

Despite a highly organised, well-funded anti-abortion lobby, Crown told the Guardian he was confident both houses of parliament would pass legislation allowing abortion in limited circumstances. Such a move would finally enshrine in law the recommendations made by supreme court judges in the X case in 1992, when it was ruled that a 14-year-old rape victim had the right to a termination because of the risk to her life from suicide. Since then successive governments have failed to legislate in relation to the ruling. more...



Sunday, May 19, 2013

Elite Australian SRA pedo ring memoirs

Hopefully the author is ok with this story being re-posted. Some details may be unsettling for ritual abuse survivors.

via the David Icke forum:


In case anyone is interested, I would like to summarise my memories of being ritually abused by an elite Sydney pedo/SRA ring. I never underwent hypnosis; instead, my memories emerged spontaneously after my pedophile step-grandfather, Peter Holowczak (deceased), was found hanged to death. My grandmother, Helen Holowczak (deceased), said some men arrived on a weekday morning, sent her shopping, and when she returned she found Peter hanging dead in their chook pen at 14 McAlister Ave, Engadine, Sydney.

I was born Holowczak in Sydney in the late 60s. Helena and Peter introduced me to the pedophile ring. They were Polish immigrants who had worked at joined the great wave of Nazi war criminals who were granted asylum in Australia. I was raised in their Nazi flavoured religion of Mithra worship. I attended gatherings with many Slavic immigrants who settled in the Southern Sydney area.

A large purple banner was erected at these ritualistic gatherings. This featured a large eagle over an encircled hexagram. A symbol sat in each corner of the banner: a serpent entwined around a pole (medicine), a triangle divided into 3 triangles (trinity), the trident (psychology), and a line penetrating a circle, like a lolipop (Cleopatra's needle, cloning). Seal of Solomon ritual banner:

pedophilesdownunder.wordpress.com

Rituals mainly took place in numerous locations including: the chapel at Australia's first Boystown in Engadine, St John Bosco Catholic church Engadine, Regina Coeli Catholic church Beverly Hills, Bathurst City Hall, Sydney University chapel, Waterfall consumptive cemetery, Caltex oil refinery at Kurnell.

The crimes took place in the 1970-80s. Perpetrators included a local GP, a local policeman, numerous police and a police commissioner, an Australian sporting legend, a famous stage actor, a most famous movie actress, a B-Grade movie actor, a Sydney Uni lecturer, a biochemist/psychologist/uni lecturer, Kim Beazley Snr (deceased) Labour politician in Prime Minister Whitlam’s cabinet, a Serbian Sydney Uni psychology student who later anglicised her name.

I witnessed these people commit crimes of murder, rape, abduction, unethical hypnosis, unethical medical experiments, torture. I saw two child kidnappings. At age 15 I saw them lure a 15 yo boy with sandy hair dressed in a blue billabong t-short into a car at Cronulla Beach. When I was 6 yo, I saw them kidnap a 12 yo girl with dark hair in a side ponytail, dressed in a red t-shirt and white shorts from a main road in Engadine. Both victims were murdered. The Engadine policeman and the GP covered for both deaths.

I recall a ritual that took place under the guise of the Bathurst 2000 car race. i reported this incident to the NSW Police in 2008. Unbeknownst to me, fellow victim Tor Neilsen reported similar Bathurst crimes to the NSW Police. As a result of his reporting these crimes, Tor was harassed by the NSW police, Sydney health workers, Sydney psychologists and psychiatrists. WA test results reveal these people poisoned Tor with a drug that induced psychosis. NSW police dropped Tor's case against Bathurst Catholic priests who abused him at St Stanislaus College. Consequently Tor did a letter box drop that resulted in these same priests being charged with hundreds of counts. Some were jailed, some committed suicide, some were let off because they were old. Sydney newspapers told numerous victims' stories of chanting, late night orgies, and hypnosis. Tor himself was raped in Bathurst City Hall, where I also was raped. Tor's lawyer pretended to run a civil case for him, but mysteriously fell out of a high rise building after Tor blew the whistle on St Stanislaus.

Coincidentally, a former St Stanislaus boy, whose son attended the school, was to be a witness at the St Stanislaus hearings; he was found kneeling, hanging by his necktie from a bookcase in the basement library of Frederick Jordan Chambers Sydney. My highschool friend found him dead. His death was initially treated as suspicious. The man had half an hr earlier been seen happily working on a case.

Like Tor Nielsen, I too have been harassed by police, health workers, psychologists, university lecturers, and other government officials. I have had numerous pets killed, received death threats, police held three loaded weapons to my accountant husband's head for no reason, dead chopped up animals have been left on my doorstep. On one occasion my family and I witnessed three men dressed in dark robes, standing outside my mother's house at 2am.

I have lost everything for refusing to be silent. The psychology board falsely accused me and used illegal means to try and force me to attend the type of health assessment that landed Tor Nielsen drugged with psychotic inducing drugs. A top psychiatrist warned me that the Board were stitching me up and to not attend. Consequently, despite references from high profile psychologist supervisors and psychiatrists, I lost my job and career.

Similar to Tor Nielsen's experience, a Melbourne QC ripped me off $50k while pretending to defend me against a private university whose staff have been accused of cult-like practises and sexual harassment of students, His sidekick mocked me and verbally abused me for talking about my childhood abuse.

At the private university, one psychology lecturer grabbed my breast at her birthday party and tricked me into sleeping in her bed at another party; a female law lecturer offered my piano tuner's 18yo daughter sex for good grades; a 50 yo law lecturer offered a 17 yo scholarship student sex for good grades; the pro-vice chancellor sexually harassed a male student and offered him a tutor position in exchange for sex. This student distributed pamphlet in campus accusing the private uni hierarchy of engaging in bizarre cult-like practises.

The private university lecturers pooled their knowledge of my childhood abuse experiences, removed the young age (at least 5) I was at the time of my abuse, presented me as an adult perpetrator of the same crimes, and reported me as a criminal to the police. I have no criminal history and previously worked as a parole officer.

I came under fire from the private uni after I ignored lecturers instruction not to report fresh allegations of child abuse involving previously convicted pedo child protection DOCS foster carers to the police. In accordance with mandatory reporting laws, I submitted a complaint to the Children's Commissioner. Consequently, I was hammered by the university whose most celebrated lecturer and former dean was recently charged for sexually abusing two 12 yo girls.

The university then breached disability officer requirements for my visual cortex stroke and made me drive 1.5 hrs to placement instead of 15 minutes at a similar local rehab work place. Within 2 wks my eyesight broke and I lost near vision. The Australian Human rights Commission upheld my claim of sexual harassment and disability discrimination against the private university.

In writing, the Psychology Board refused to reference the APS Ethical Code Guidelines when examining my well-evidenced joint complaint with an experienced psychologist against the university staff; however, they said they would be implementing the very same code and guidelines in the complaint against me that I was a criminal who perpetrated the crimes I was a child victim of.

The contents of Fritz Springmeier's writings regarding the post-Nazi projects is consistent with my memories of similar practises in Sydney. I recall being assessed at age 5 by the notorious John Gottinger. I recall being assessed on the SB-LM. I recall being sleep deprived. I recall being drugged. i recall being subjected to unethical hypnosis. I recall being subjected to brainwashing involving a synthesiser that continuously played the words "Know this spirit" up and down the keyboard. I recall people chanting nursery rhymes. I recall a man chanting a Batman, Catwoman, and Joker themed chant; one section involved 9 levels represented by '9 cat lives'; he stopped at the 6th level and sang: "Number six, number six, what do we have at number six? Number six has lots of tricks...there are SIX spirits at number six!"

Tor Neilsen and I have given our information to the Royal Commission into Child Abuse. I recently sent it to the Police Integrity Commission who dismissed it to the state Ombudsman. I gave it to the Police Minister who told me to show him evidence. The local Police basically criticised me in their latest letter, calling my claims vexatious and having no evidence. Apparently the two independent witness testimonies of similar crimes in the same place at a similar time does not constitute evidence.

I have had enough! I would appreciate some support from people who believe this happens, who give a stuff, and who would like it to cease.




Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Mind control data media packet

The following document was originally published at endritualabuse, the website of psychologist Ellen Lachter. She will be speaking at this weekend's Survivorship conference.

Torture-based, Government-sponsored Mind Control Experimentation on Children

...From Senator Edward Kennedy’s opening remarks to a Senate investigative committee August 3, 1977:

"Some two years ago, the Senate Health Subcommittee heard chilling testimony about the human experimentation activities of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over 30 universities and institutions were involved in an “extensive testing and experimentation” program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens “at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign.”
. . .
Perhaps most disturbing of all was the fact that the extent of experimentation on human subjects was unknown. The records of all these activities were destroyed in January 1973 at the instruction of then CIA Director Richard Helms. In spite of persistent inquiries by both the Health Subcommittee and the Intelligence Committee, no additional records or information were forthcoming. And no one- no single individual— could be found who remembered the details, not the Director of the CIA, who ordered the documents destroyed, not the official responsible for the program, nor any of his associates.

Adult Survivors and Their Helpers Report Child Torture Committed During the Cold War in the Name of National Security

257 survivors from at least 15 countries reported that secret GMC (government-sponsored mind control) experiments were performed on them as children. National Security Archive “Declassified records" reveal that at least 23 war criminals or Nazis were approached
by the CIA for recruitment after World War II.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20050121/FINAL_Comments_Op_Files.pdf
Carol Rutz

“Many survivors have alleged some of these same war criminals, using aliases, were complicit in their extreme abuse. Some of the names the torturers went by were Dr. Black, Dr. Swartz(Black in German), Father Joseph, and Vaterchen (Father in German). These four aliases are names many survivors have independently reported to me as names that were used in their presence by Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death,” the infamous Nazi
doctor who performed horrific experiments on the prisoners at Auschwitz.

(Rutz, C. [2007, August]. The world will know. Paper presented at the 10th Annual Ritual Abuse Conference, Windsor Locks, CT. Neil Brick, Moderator)
http://members.aol.com/smartnews/cr07.htm
60 survivors reported that one of their perpetrators went by the name “Dr. Black;” 33 reported a Dr. Swartz;
34 reported a Father Joseph; 30 reported a Vaterchan. 34 helpers had heard adult survivors report that Mengele was involved in their abuse. 166 survivors reported hearing mind control programmers who spoke German or with heavy German accents.

CIA Director Allen Dulles (1953)

. . . we have no human guinea pigs, ourselves, on which to try out these extraordinary techniques [referring to Communist brainwashing techniques].” Sometime after this speech, in an effort to win the “battle for men’s minds” between the United States and the Soviet Union, Dulles set up MKULTRA. He authorized mind control experiments testing such techniques as brain implants, sensory deprivation, ultrasonics, torture, amnesia-inducing drugs, biologicals, psychological stress, electroshock, and hypnosis.” (Dulles, A. W. [1953, May 8]. Brain Warfare—Russia’s Secret Weapon. U. S. News & World Report, p. 58).

Declassified CIA Document (MKULTRA) One of the documents specifically stated that experimental studies of the postulated abilities of a few specially gifted subjects would be studied [see Gordon Cooper’s comments below] and “that in working with individual subjects, special attention will be given to disassociative states which tend to accompany spontaneous ESP experiences. Such states can be induced and controlled to some extent with
hypnosis and drugs...”


". . .The data used in the study will be obtained from special groups such as psychotics, children [on the EAS, 257 adults reported that they had been used as children to obtain data in these studies] and mediums...Learning studies will be instituted in which the subject will be rewarded or punished for his overall performance and reinforced in various ways–by being told whether he was right, by being told what the target was, with electric shock, etc.” (Subproject 136 of MKULTRA CIA Mori ID#17395 ESP Research, 1961 and 1962)

Number of survivors who have remembered:

forced drug usage 236
sensory deprivation. 222
having beliefs indoctrinated by perpetrators 221
electroshock 217
near-drowning experiences 186
aversive hypnosis 171
brain implants 71

228 survivors answered “yes” to the question: “My perpetrator(s) deliberately created/programmed dissociative states of mind (such as alters, personalities, ego-states) in me.”
228 said that they had been diagnosed with dissociative identify disorder (DID).
171 said they had experienced basic mind control programming in the control personality.
219 remembered seeing perpetrators wearing white doctors’ coats
159 stated that one or more of their alters had access codes.
.
Herbert Hoover (Report by Secret Group for White House, 1954) “It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination...There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto
accepted norms of human conduct do not apply.” (1954 Hoover Report. As quoted in Moyers, B. [1988]
. The Secret Government
. Cabin John, MD: Seven Locks Press

159 survivors had heard Greek letters used in connection with their abuse.
207 had experienced self-destruct programming installed in the event that they began to remember the programming.
156 reported that perpetrators had made them believe that external entities/spirits/demons
had taken over their bodies.
228 had been threatened with death if they ever talked about their abuse.
128 had been taken out of their schools to other locations for mind control programming, then returned to their classrooms.
160 had experienced sexual mind control programming used by handlers
for blackmail or personal use.
128 had experienced mind control programming through which they were trained to become assassins.
85 had fantasized as children that they were being tortured by doctors.
110 are able to speak and/or write in unknown languages and/or codes.
165 said that their mind control had originated from their families of origin.

more...


.