Crispin Glover, Hollywood Materialism, and 9/11 Predictive Programming

What is It Cover Art

“The United States has it’s own propaganda, but it’s very effective because people don’t realize that it’s propaganda. And it’s subtle, but it’s actually a much stronger propaganda machine than the Nazis had but it’s funded in a different way. With the Nazis it was funded by the government, but in the United States, it’s funded by corporations and corporations they only want things to happen that will make people want to buy stuff. So whatever that is, then that is considered okay and good, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it really serves people’s thinking – it can stupefy and make not very good things happen.” – Crispin Hellion Glover

Recently, I had the distinct opportunity to see “Crispin Glover Live”, where he gave a series of slide show presentations that left me in a state of what I would describe as bemused confusion at what exactly I was witnessing. After all, how does one begin to fully explain what a reading and rendering of a book about the intricacies of rat catching and cadavers from a professional in the field of dissection and listing of anatomical features interspersed with what appear to be a series of drawings, book passages, and black-and-white photographs from the 1950s really mean? Next, he showed his surreal movie “What is It?”, a Jungian-like exploration of the unconscious adventures of a motley cast of characters, mostly with Down Syndrome, that involved a white guy in black face, a running motif of a dissolving snail being salted, and Crispin Glover himself playing some kind of cruel king of the underworld surrounded by a bevy of topless women with animal heads and one grown man in a diaper lying a crib. Honestly, you can’t make this crazy shit up! But, Crispin Glover can and did make this up…creating what I’m sure was one of the greatest WTF moments in many warped peoples’ minds that were lucky enough to be there that night with me at the Alamo Drafthouse.

Most of you, however, probably remember Crispin Glover not from his personal surreal film oddities like the aforementioned “What is It?” but rather his acting in idiosyncratic roles like Dale in David Lynch’s Wild at Heart. It was his breakthrough role as the nerdy and socially-awkward George McFly, who is able to rise to the occasion against his arch nemesis Biff with the help of his future son played by Michael J. Fox, where Crispin Glover became a recognizable actor in Hollywood. Unfortunately, one gets the impression that Hollywood never really fully appreciated his decidedly bizarre choice of characters that were to follow and nor especially the anti-corporate ethos regarding his own creative work. Even on the celebrity talk show circuit, Glover was quickly typecast as a dangerous weirdo, as his appearance on Letterman would clearly show when he was kicked off the show for well…”kicking on the show”.

Crispin Glover in Shades

However, behind the largely unpretentious, darkly humorous, and quirky character turns of Glover lay a much overlooked critical and very perceptive mind that saw the Hollywood system for what it really represented to those unfamiliar with its inner workings. This came out during an enlightening session of Q&A at the end of the movie where Glover talked about the creative straight jacket of Hollywood and how experimental movies such as his own are essentially locked out of any commercial distribution through the main theater chain outlets. This obviously isn’t that surprising given that the commercial theater chains only real objective is to maximize profit on a per screen basis and will quickly cut anything that isn’t pulling in the numbers they want, which is why you rarely see any documentaries playing on the silver screen except in a handful of small theaters that also play indie and foreign films. It was during this Q&A that Crispin Glover spoke about what became something of a defining moment for him. He was working on the set of Back to the Future that would soon make him into a household name with director Robert Zemeckis. Originally, after Marty McFly returned to his new and improved family that now lived in a wealthy neighborhood where the kids all had great professions as opposed to low-paying jobs, the McFly family had a black servant. Glover politely mentioned to the director how this might appear racist to black audiences, and Zemeckis wisely changed the servant to a newly humbled Biff putting a second coat of wax on George McFly’s fancy car. However, the underlying assumption of the movie remained unchanged in Glover’s mind as he relates in this interview on the Opie and Anthony Show where he speaks about the controversy surrounding his feud with Robert Zemeckis.

Back to the Future

So, just what is the subtext of Back to the Future’s ending? “A self-realized and happy existence equals a rich and materialistic life.” Is this the message? Or, am I oversimplifying the underlying message of Back to the Future? Could the onetime yuppie star of the greed obsessed 1980s, Michael J. Fox, who started out as a teenage Reagan wet dream in the sitcom “Family Ties” and graduated to movies that celebrated the ego-centric corporate ladder climbing purpose of life in movies such as The Secret of My Success really be about nothing more profound than the joys of materialism? When Crispin Glover probed the question further, Robert Zemeckis told him point blank- “Listen, I don’t care about artistry. I want to be rich!!” There you have it. And, no doubt with such blockbusters as Forest Gump under his belt, Robert Zemeckis would indeed become rich beyond his wildest dreams as he knew all too well how to cater to audiences’ expectations in terms of what makes for mass entertaining movie. This blockbuster formula would be followed to a “T” even better by Hollywood’s Golden Boy director of the last 40 years, Steven Spielberg, beginning with Jaws released back in 1975.

It is a formula that has been followed perhaps a bit too well over the years, and Glover reserves some particularly pointed barbs for Spielberg that you can see in a classic chapter that he wrote in the brilliantly subversive book, Apocalypse Culture II. Interestingly, the book was edited and published by Adam Parfrey of Feral House, who also just so happens to play the Minstrel character in Glover’s “What is It?” movie mentioned previously. I specifically asked Crispin Glover about the comments he made in Apocalypse Culture II and Spielberg (in particular) for those in attendance that were unfamiliar with the book, and he reiterated again how he didn’t like Steven Spielberg movies at all and thought that they were totally subservient to the corporate ethos. In fact, he said that the only movie he somewhat liked of Spielberg’s entire oeuvre was A.I. that was released as something of a homage to Stanley Kubrick after he died and never got the chance to do the film. Kubrick told Spielberg that he thought he should do the movie instead given his worries that he might make the movie too cerebral, whereas we all know we needn’t worry about Spielberg making something too intellectually probing. However, while I would agree with Glover that A.I. had some rather interesting philosophical themes, I too wish that Kubrick had been the one to make the movie, since I’m sure he would have made a much more profound and interesting film.

At one point in Apocalypse Culture II, Glover chastises Spielberg for completely missing the point of Kubrick’s philosophy as when Spielberg calls Kubrick’s movies “hopeful”. He then rhetorically asks, “Was A Clockwork Orange hopeful? Was Full Metal Jacket hopeful?” Clearly, one begins to wonder just how Spielberg was seeing these movies if indeed he was seeing them at all. Kubrick was often criticized for portraying humanity as too dark, too unethical, and too morally ambiguous…but hopeful? Hardly a word I would use to describe his work. This isn’t to say that there weren’t little moments in his pictures like his future wife, Christiane, singing a German folk song to a group of hardened WWI French soldiers in Paths of Glory that didn’t tap into a kind of universal sentimental zeitgeist, but (unlike Spielberg) he was not a “sentimental” director in the sense of mawkishly milking emotionalism within his movies to garner greater appreciation and recognition. In other words, he saw deeply into much of the dark abyss that lies within men’s souls and wasn’t afraid to portray it on screen without apology and without the usual formulaic redemption scene that accompanies most Hollywood movies that touch on the darker aspects of humanity these days. That shows real courage, in my opinion, instead of merely skillfully manipulating an audience’s emotions to love the hero, hate the villain, and be roused from their seats with a John Williams score and “happily ever after ending”. Even the late, great director Sidney Lumet once quipped that he couldn’t stand American audiences because- “They are totally sentimental.” I would wholeheartedly agree with at least this sentiment and add (due to this) also highly predictable in their tastes.

Apocalypse Culture II

What is even more interesting, however, about a movie like Back to the Future is that it has scenes of predictive programming woven into the plot that (if you watch carefully) actually predict what will occur on September 11th, 2001. How does a movie that came out in 1985 predict perhaps the single most important geopolitical event of the last 40 years some 31 years in the future? It would certainly seem highly unlikely that scenes in the Back to the Future franchise foreshadowing 9/11 were mere coincidence. So, for instance, the mall where Marty and Doc meet to test the Delorean time machine took place at Twin Pines mall, a reference to the Twin Towers. Also, if you turn the clock upside down, it reads 9:11. Later in the movie, the Twin Pines are replaced with a Lone Pine. Why? Also, when Doc sets up a rig to wire the electricity from a lightning strike into the time machine so that Marty can leap back into the future from 1955 to 1985, the hands on the clock tower are set at 9 and 11. Marty then tries to warn Doc about the future where he will be shot by Muslim terrorists at the mall for stealing plutonium. Get that last part? Something sounds awfully familiar and fishy about this plot. In Back to the Future I and II, there are also similar signs and symbols throughout that act as a form of “psychic programming” about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. As an example, there is the town square that is an exact replica of the layout of Dealy Plaza in Dallas where in a storefront window has a severed head of JFK. This is also the same block where the Delorean time machine is struck by lightning, which is symbolic of the assassination itself in the motorcade. Finally, just to drive the point home, the movie Back to the Future II was released on November 22nd. Ring a bell, anyone?

Hollywood movies are notorious for “predictive programming” that I believe act like subconscious triggering mechanisms that both condition the public for what is to come and signal to those “in the know” what could be described as a kind of sick inside joke for the cabal orchestrating these false-flags and psy-ops. It’s their way of absolving themselves through a kind of occult admission and public submission through hiding their handiwork in plain sight, as it were. Or, as Stanley Kubrick would have it, you watch these films with Eyes Wide Shut whereas they can read the subtext, programming, symbolism, numerology, and sorcery behind the overt plot of the movie. Granted, not all movies are embedded with such layers of meaning and predictive programming, but those that are would certainly be popular enough to do their job on the public psyche at large, which by now is global. Unfortunately, for the vast majority of Americans, this would be considered virtual lunacy to bring up in mixed conversation and naturally most all movie critics are completely oblivious to this topic. That is because we are “symbolic illiterate”, whereas secret societies like the Scottish Rite of Freemasons (especially in the higher degrees) are symbol literate.

Albert Pike

All symbols be they corporate logos, political emblems, or religious iconography has layers of meaning that can be traced through time immemorial and throughout various historical cultures, each one of which may have imbued it with their own particular nexus of meaning and purpose. And, as Carl G. Jung spoke about, there are those ancient and archaic symbols that stir in us what some have referred to as genetic memory to the point where they might as well be etched onto our very DNA. This is what he called “archetypes of the collective unconscious”. Naturally, it would behoove us greatly to know from whence these symbols first arose and what their deeper occult meaning is as understood by the mystery schools throughout the ages, but we are woefully uneducated about these matters and can therefore be triggered (and consequently manipulated) with certain symbols that are used by adepts within the media. This need not be the case, however, and I would urge you to take a crash course in “Symbolic Literacy” by either picking up a few books on the subject, checking out the work of modern symbolist and mythologist Michael Tsarion, and/or reading some of the excellent articles on the subject at http://www.vigilantcitizen.com/


The Secret History of the Anglo-British-American Domination of Global Politics, Finance, and Wars for Profit, Elite Ideology, and Imperialism

*Note: The following article was written by the excellent alternative historians, Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor. In my opinion, it is such an erudite and beautiful piece of para-political secret history that I thought I would reproduce it in its totality for this blog’s readership, particularly since it is certainly in the same vein as to what this blog is all about. This is particularly essential if you are to come to understand how power really operates and is exercised in the world then and now. Naturally, it becomes all the more relevant when discussing (as this article does) the secret founding of the Federal Reserve Bank, the esoteric origins of WWI, and certain Anglophile elite cabals such as the Cecil Rhodes founded “Group” and the Pilgrims Society. -Parapoliticaljournal.com

New World Order: The Founding Fathers
By Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor
First published in July 2013

Rothschild Family Coat of Arms

Rich and powerful elites have long dreamed of world control. The ambitious Romans, Attila the Hun, great Muslim leaders of Medieval Spain, the Mughals of India all exercised immense influence over different parts of the globe in set periods of recognized ascendancy.

Sometimes tribal, sometimes national, sometimes religious, often dynastic, their success defined epochs, but was never effectively global until the twentieth century. At that point, with the future of the British Empire under threat from other aspiring nations, in particular Germany, a momentous decision was taken by a group of powerful and determined men. Their decision was that direct action had to be taken to assert their control, and that of the British race, over the entire civilized world. It has grown from that tiny select cabal into a monster that may already be beyond control.

“One wintry afternoon in February 1891, three men were engaged in earnest conversation in London. From that conversation were to flow consequences of the greatest importance for the British Empire and to the world as a whole.”

So begins Professor Carroll Quigley’s book The Anglo American Establishment. It may read like a John Le Carre thriller, but this was no spy fiction. The three staunch British Imperialists who met in London that day, Cecil Rhodes, William Stead and Lord Esher, were soon joined by Lords Rothschild, Salisbury, Rosebery and Milner, men whose financial, political, and administrative powers set them apart.

Some of these names may not be familiar to you, but that is a mark of the absolute success of this group. From the outset they insisted on secrecy, operated in secret and ensured that their influence was airbrushed from history. They believed that white men of Anglo-Saxon descent rightly sat at the top of the racial hierarchy and they fully understood the impending threat from a burgeoning Germany whose modern, expanding economy had begun to challenge British hegemony on the world stage.

The above named elites drew up a plan for a secret society that aimed to renew the bond between Great Britain and the United States [1] and bring all habitable portions of the world under their influence and control. The U.S. had grown rapidly in self-esteem, wealth and opportunity since the declaration of independence in 1776, but Anglo-American connections remained strong and would embroil her in the long-term plan for one world government. The meeting in 1891 was, in effect, the birth of the New World Order cabal.

Great financiers frequently used their fortunes to influence questions of peace and war and control politics for profit. Cecil Rhodes was different. He was determined to use his vast fortune not simply to generate ever-increasing profit, but to realize his dream, a dream he shared with his co-conspirators. Rhodes turned the profit objective on its head and sought to amass great wealth into his secret society in order to achieve political ends, to buy governments and politicians, buy public opinion and the means to influence it. [2]

Cecil Rhodes

He intended that his wealth should be used to grasp control of the world, secretly. Secrecy was the cornerstone. No one outside the favored few knew of the group’s existence. They have since been referred to obliquely in speeches and books as “The Money Power”, “The Hidden Power” or “the men behind the curtain”. All of these labels are pertinent, but we have called them, collectively, the secret elite.

Carroll Quigley revealed that secret elite influence on education was chiefly visible at the exclusive English private schools, Eton and Harrow, and at Oxford University, especially All Souls and Balliol Colleges. [3] This immensely rich and powerful group was given intellectual approval and inspiration by the philosophy of John Ruskin, professor of fine arts at Oxford. He spoke to the Oxford undergraduates as members of the privileged ruling class, telling them that they possessed a magnificent tradition of education, rule of law and freedom. He championed all that was finest in the public service ethic, duty and self-discipline, and believed that English ruling class tradition should be spread to the masses across the empire. [4]

But behind such well-serving words lay a philosophy strongly opposed to the emancipation of woman, had no time for democracy and supported the “just” war. [5] Ruskin advocated that control of the state should be placed in the hands of a small ruling class. Social order was to be built upon the authority of superiors, imposing upon their inferiors an absolute, unquestioning obedience. He was repelled by the notion of leveling between the classes and by the disintegration of the “rightful” authority of the ruling class. [6]

Ruskin’s philosophy was music to the ears of the elitists. It gave their lust for global power the blessing of academic approval. What they did, they would claim, was not for them, but for mankind. They would rise to power on the spurious justification that the world would consequently be a better place for humanity.

Inspired by Ruskin, Cecil Rhodes and his accomplices created the secret society with an inner core of trusted associates called “The Society of the Elect”, who unquestionably knew that they were members of an exclusive cabal devoted to taking and holding power on a world-wide basis. [7]

A second outer ring, larger and quite fluid in its membership, was named “The Association of Helpers”. At this level members might not have known that they were an integral part of, or inadvertently being used by, a secret society. Many on the outer edges of the group, idealists and honest individuals, may never have been aware that the real decisions were made by a ruthless clique about whom they had no knowledge. [8]

The man who exposed the secret society, Carroll Quigley (1910 – 1977), was the highly esteemed professor of history at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and a lecturer at Princeton and Harvard. He revealed that the organization was able to “conceal its existence quite successfully, and many of its most influential members… are unknown even to close students of British History”. [9]

Quigley’s greatest contribution to our understanding of modern history came with his books, The Anglo-American Establishment and Tragedy and Hope, A History of the World in Our Time. The former was written in 1949 but only released after his death. His disclosures placed him in such potential danger from an Establishment backlash that it was never published in his lifetime. In a 1974 radio broadcast, Quigley warned the interviewer, Rudy Maxa of the Washington Post, “You better be discreet. You have to protect my future as well as your own.” [10]

Quigley had received assistance of a “personal nature” from individuals close to what he called the “Group”, but “for obvious reasons” he could not reveal their names. [11] He made it clear that evidence about them was not hard to find “if you know where to look,” [12] and it has to be asked why generations of historians have failed to pursue his trail.

Though sworn to secrecy, Professor Quigley revealed in the radio interview that Sir Alfred Zimmern, the British historian and political scientist, had confirmed the names of the main protagonists within the secret society. Without a shadow of doubt, Zimmern himself was a close associate of those at the center of real power in Britain. He knew most of the key figures personally and was himself a member of the inner core of the secret society for twelve years between 1910 and 1922. [13]

The enigma of Professor Quigley’s work lies in his statement that while the secret cabal had brought many of the things he held dear close to disaster, he generally agreed with its goals and aims. [14] Were these merely words of self-preservation? Be mindful of his warning to Rudy Maxa as late as 1974. Quigley clearly felt that these revelations placed him in danger.

Unknown persons removed his major work, Tragedy and Hope, from the bookstore shelves in America, and it was withdrawn from sale without any justification soon after its release. The book’s original plates were unaccountably destroyed by Quigley’s publisher, the Macmillan Company, who, for the next six years “lied, lied, lied” to him and deliberately misled him into believing that it would be reprinted. [15] Why? What pressures obliged a major publishing house to take such extreme action? Quigley stated categorically that powerful people had suppressed the book because it exposed matters that they did not want known. The reader has to understand that we are discussing individuals whose power, influence and control were unrivaled.

From the very start, each of the initial conspirators brought valuable qualities and connections to the society. Cecil Rhodes was Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and master and commander of a vast area of Southern Africa which some were already beginning to call Rhodesia. His wealth had been underwritten by brutal native suppression [16] and the global mining interests of the House of Rothschild, [17] to whom he was answerable. William Stead was the most prominent journalist of his day and a voice to which ordinary people listened.

Lord Esher represented the interests of the monarchy from Queen Victoria’s final years, through the exuberant excesses of King Edward VII, to the more sedate but pliable King George V. His influence was immense because he operated between monarchs, the aristocracy and leading political figures. He chaired important secret committees, was responsible for appointments to the Cabinet, the senior ranks of the diplomatic corps and voiced strong personal opinion on top army posts. [18] Esher exerted a power behind the throne far in excess of his constitutional position. His role of power-broker on behalf of the secret elite was without equal. Indeed Professor Quigley dubbed him, “the greatest wire puller of the period.” [19]

Another name that pervaded all that was powerful and influential during this period was that of the Rothschild dynasty, and Quigley placed Lord Nathaniel (Natty) Rothschild within the very core of the secret organization. [20] Rothschild was all-powerful in British and world banking and virtually untouchable.

“The House of Rothschild was immensely more powerful than any financial empire that had ever preceded it. It commanded vast wealth. It was international. It was independent. Royal governments were nervous of it because they could not control it. Popular movements hated it because it was not answerable to the people. Constitutionalists resented it because its influence was exercised behind the scenes – secretly.” [21]

Mayer Amschel Rothschild

Taken together, the principal players, Rhodes, Stead, Esher, Rothschild and Milner represented a new force that was emerging inside British politics, but powerful old traditional aristocratic families that had long dominated Westminster, often in cahoots with the reigning monarch, were also deeply involved, and none more so than the Cecil family. Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, the patriarchal 3rd Marquis of Salisbury, ruled the Conservative Party at the latter end of the nineteenth century. He served as prime minister three times for a total of fourteen years, between 1885 and 1902 (longer than anyone else in recent history). When he retired as prime minister in July 1902, he handed over the reins of government to his sister’s son, Arthur Balfour.

Lord Salisbury had four siblings, five sons and three daughters who were all linked and interlinked by marriage to individuals in the upper echelons of the English ruling class. Important government positions were given to relations, friends and wealthy supporters who proved their gratitude by ensuring that his views became policy in government, civil service and diplomatic circles. This extended ‘Cecil-Bloc’ was intricately linked to “The Society of the Elect” and secret elite ambitions throughout the first half of the twentieth century. [22]

Another member of the inner core, Lord Alfred Milner, offers cause for greater scrutiny because he has been virtually airbrushed from the history of the period. Alfred Milner was a self-made man and remarkably successful civil servant who became a key figure within the secret elite and absolutely powerful within the ranks of these privileged individuals. He and Rhodes had been contemporaries at Oxford University, and were inextricably connected through events in South Africa. Rhodes recognized in him the kind of steel that was required to pursue the dream of world domination, “I support Milner absolutely without reserve. If he says peace, I say peace; if he says war, I say war. Whatever happens, I say ditto to Milner.” [23] Milner grew in time to be the most able of them all, to enjoy the privilege of patronage and power, a man to whom others turned for leadership and direction.

When governor general and high commissioner of South Africa, Milner deliberately caused the Boer War in order to grab the Transvaal’s gold and use the economic resources of South Africa to extend and perpetuate secret elite control. He had the grace to confess in a letter to Lord Roberts, Commander in Chief in South Africa, that

“I precipitated the crisis, which was inevitable, before it was too late. It is not very agreeable, and in many eyes, not very creditable piece of business to have been largely instrumental in bringing about a big war.” [24]

This was no immodest boast. Alfred Milner’s matter-of-fact explanation displayed the cold objectivity that drove the secret elite cause. War was unfortunate, but necessary. It had to be. They were not afraid of war.

The secret elite’s war against the Dutch settlers began in October 1899 and ended with the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging on 31 May 1902. The Boer Republics were annexed to the British Empire. The Transvaal’s gold was finally in the hands of the secret elite at a cost of some 70,000 dead on the battlefields, plus 32,000 dead in British concentration camps, including more than 20,000 children of Dutch descent.

Some thirty thousand Boer farms were burned to the ground, livestock slaughtered, and the women and children put in British concentration camps. In the camps, the families of men fighting for the Boer army were punished by being put on half the already meagre rations with no meat whatsoever. [25] W. T. Stead, former member of the inner core of the secret elite who had resigned in disgust over the Boer War, was overcome by the evidence presented to him. He wrote,

“Every one of these children who died as a result of the halving of their rations, thereby exerting pressure onto their family still on the battle-field, was purposefully murdered. The system of half rations stands exposed, stark and unashamedly as a cold-blooded deed of state policy employed with the purpose of ensuring the surrender of men whom we were not able to defeat on the field.” [26]

20,000 children dying in British concentration camps were of little consequence to Milner. He was so driven that he ignored the weight of opposition ranged against him. He warned his friend, Richard Haldane: “If we are to build up anything in South Africa, we must disregard, and absolutely disregard, the screamers.” [27] It takes a very strong man to disregard the screamers, to ignore moral indignation, to put the cause before humanitarian concerns. Some front line politicians find it all but impossible to stand against a torrent of public outrage, but those behind the curtain in the secret corridors of power can easily ignore ‘sentimentality’.

Milner’s period of stewardship in South Africa had a very important consequence. He administered the defeated Transvaal and Orange Free State as occupied territories, and recruited into the upper layers of his civil service a band of young men from well-to-do, upper-class, frequently titled families who became known as “Milner’s Kindergarten.” [28] They replaced the government and administration of the Boer republics, and worked prodigiously to rebuild the broken country. [29] The Kindergarten comprised new blood; young educated men – mostly Oxford graduates, with a deep sense of duty, loyalty to the Empire and capable of populating the next generation of the secret society. [30] In the period 1909-1913 the Kindergarten set up semi-secret groups, known as Round Table Groups, in the United States and the chief British dependencies.

The Round Table Groups in Canada, as elsewhere, were merely different names for “The Association of Helpers” and only part of the secret society, since the real power still lay with “The Society of the Elect”. This all-powerful inner-core would bring in new members from the outer ring as was deemed necessary. [35] The alliance of powerful investment bankers, politicians, diplomats and press barons shared the same unwritten purpose, the destruction of German imperial power and the confirmation of Anglo-Saxon domination of the world.

Money was never a problem for the secret elite. As we have seen, Natty Rothschild, the richest man in the world, was directly involved from the beginning, but the ‘Money-Power’ extended well beyond that single source. The Rand multimillionaires, Sir Abe Bailey and Alfred Beit were members of the inner core [36] and always willing to finance secret elite proposals, fund their propaganda groups, and back Milner. Sir Ernest Cassel, an investment banker and one of the wealthiest men in pre-war Europe, was likewise involved. Cassel, a close friend of King Edward VII, acted as go-between for the British government and provided personal funds for Lord Esher. [37]

Other great financiers and bankers, centered in the City, the financial and banking district of London, shared the vision of a single world power based on English ruling class values. The world had entered an era of financial capitalism where these wealthy international investment bankers were able to dominate both industry and government if they had the concerted will to do so. [38] This “Money Power” seeped into the British Establishment and joined the aristocratic landowning families who had ruled Britain for centuries. Together, they lay at the heart of the secret elite.

In his “Confession of Faith”, Cecil Rhodes had written of bringing the whole uncivilized world under British rule, and the “recovery” of the United States to make the “Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire,” [39] by which he meant a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant America working in tandem with like minds in England. Clearly the United States could not be “recovered” by force of arms, so Rhodes dream was expanded to include the wealthy elites in the U.S. who shared a similar mind-set.

Rhodes suffered from heart and lung problems and was aware that his projected life span was limited. He wrote several wills to ensure that his fortune would be used to pursue his dream. Part of his strategy was to gift scholarship places at his alma mater, Oxford University, in the belief that exposure to British culture, philosophy and education would strengthen the best young minds from the colonies and, most importantly, the United States.

Rhodes scholarships favored American students, with two allocated for each of the fifty states and territories, but only sixty places for the entire British Empire. The “best talents” from the “best families” in the US were to be nurtured at Oxford, spiritual home of the secret elite, and imbued with an appreciation of “Englishness” and “retention of the unity of the Empire.” [40] Professor Quigley revealed that “the scholarships were merely a facade to conceal the secret society, or, more accurately, they were to be one of the instruments by which the members of the secret society could carry out his [Rhodes] purpose.” [41]

Rhodes_Trust_Scholarships

The secret elite appreciated America’s vast potential, and adjusted the concept of British Race supremacy to Anglo-Saxon supremacy. Rhodes ‘s dream had only to be slightly modified. The world was to be united through the English-speaking nations in a federal structure based around Britain. [42] Alfred Milner became the undisputed leader of the secret society when Cecil Rhodes died in 1902. Like Rhodes, he believed that the goal should be pursued by a secret political and economic elite influencing “journalistic, educational and propaganda agencies” behind the scenes. [43]

The flow of money into the United States during the nineteenth century advanced industrial development to the immense benefit of the millionaires it created, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan, Vanderbilt and their associates. The Rothschilds represented British interests, either directly through front companies or indirectly, through agencies they controlled. Railroads, steel, shipbuilding, construction, oil and finance blossomed in an oft-cut throat environment, though that was more apparent than real. These small groups of massively rich individuals on both sides of the Atlantic knew each other well, and the secret elite in London initiated a very select and secretive dining club, The Pilgrims, that brought them together on a regular basis.

On 11 July 1902, an inaugural meeting was held at the Carlton Hotel [44] of what became known as the London Chapter of The Pilgrims Society, with a select membership limited by individual scrutiny to 500. Ostensibly, the society was created to “promote goodwill, good friendship and everlasting peace” [45] between Britain and the United States, but its highly secretive and exclusive membership leaves little doubt as to its real purpose. This was the pool of wealth and talent that the secret elite drew together to promote its agenda in the years preceding the First World War.

Pilgrim Society Logo

Behind an image of the Pilgrim Fathers, the persecuted pioneers of Christian values, this elite cabal advocated the idea that “Englishmen and Americans would promote international friendship through their pilgrimages to and fro across the Atlantic “. [46] It presented itself as a spontaneous movement to promote democracy across the world [47] and doubtless many of the members believed that, but The Pilgrims included a select collective of the wealthiest figures in both Britain and the United States who were deeply involved with the secret elite. They shared Rhodes’ dream and wanted to be party to it.

The New York branch of The Pilgrims was launched at the Waldorf-Astoria on 13 January 1903, [48] and comprised the most important bankers, politicians and lawyers on the Eastern Seaboard. They established a tradition of close interaction with British and American ambassadors. [49] The ambassadorial connections with The Pilgrims would prove absolutely crucial in linking the Foreign Secretary in London and the Secretary of State in Washington to the secret elite and its agenda for war. A number of the American Pilgrims also had close links with the New York branch of the secret elite’s Round Table.

Round Table Groups

In Britain, at least eighteen members of the secret elite, including Lords Rothschild, Curzon, Northcliffe, Esher and Balfour attended Pilgrims dinners, though the regularity of their attendance is difficult to establish. Such is the perennial problem with secretive groups. We know something about the guests invited to dinner, but not what was discussed between courses. [50] In New York, members included both the Rockefeller and Morgan dynasties and many men in senior government posts. Initially, membership was likewise limited to 500. [51]

The power-elite in America was New York centered, carried great influence in domestic and international politics, and was heavily indulgent of Yale, Harvard and Princeton Universities. They conducted an American version of what Carroll Quigley termed the secret elite’s triple-front-penetration of politics, the press and education. [52] The Pilgrims Society brought together American money and British aristocracy, royalty, government ministers and top diplomats. It was indeed a special relationship.

Of all the American banking establishments, none was more Anglo-centric than the J. P. Morgan bank, itself deeply involved with The Pilgrims. An American, George Peabody, established the bank in London in 1835. In 1854 he took on a partner, Junius Morgan, (father of J. P. Morgan) and the bank was renamed Peabody, Morgan & Co. When Peabody’s retired in 1864 it became the J. S. Morgan bank.

J. Pierpont Morgan

The Rothschilds had developed a close relationship with Peabody and Morgan, and following a crash in 1857 saved the bank by organizing a huge bailout by the Bank of England. Although American by birth, the Morgan family wore their affinity to England like a badge of honor. Despite stinging criticism from Thomas Jefferson that Junius’s father-in-law, the Rev John Pierpont, was “under the influence of the whore of England,” [53] Junius sent his son to the English High School in Boston. J. P. Morgan spent much of his younger years absorbing English traditions, and was an ardent anglophile and admirer of the British Empire.

In 1899 J. P. Morgan traveled to England to attend an international Bankers Convention and returned to America as the representative of Rothschild interests in the United States. [54] It was the perfect front. Morgan, who posed as an upright Protestant guardian of capitalism, who could trace his family roots to pre-Revolutionary times, acted for the Rothschilds and shielded their American profits from the poison of antisemitism.

JP Morgan Building

In 1895 the Rothschilds had secretly replenished the US gold reserves through J.P. Morgan, and raised him to the premier league of international banking. [55] In turn, his gratitude was extended to another Rothschild favorite and leading figure in the secret elite, Alfred Milner. In 1901, Morgan offered Milner a then massive income of $100,000 per annum to become a partner in the London branch [56] but Milner was not to be distracted from the vital business of the Boer War. J. P. Morgan was an Empire loyalist at the heart of the American Establishment.

A second powerful bank on Wall Street, Kuhn, Loeb & Co., also served as a Rothschild front. Jacob Schiff, a German who ran the bank, came from a family close to the Rothschilds. [57] He had been born in the house his parents shared with the Rothschilds in the Jewish quarter of Frankfurt. [58] Schiff was an experienced European banker whose career straddled both continents, with contacts in New York, London, Hamburg and Frankfurt. His long-standing friend, Edward Cassel of the secret elite, was appointed Kuhn, Loeb’s agent in London. Schiff even dined with King Edward on the strength of Cassel’s close friendship with the King. [59]

Jacob Schiff had married Solomon Loeb’s daughter and, backed by Rothschild gold, quickly gained overall control of the Kuhn, Loeb Bank. [60] Schiff in turn brought a young German banker, Paul Warburg, over to New York to help him run the bank. Paul and his brother Max had served part of their banking apprenticeships with Natty Rothschild in London. Like the Peabody-Morgan bank in London, the Warburg family bank in Hamburg had been saved by a very large injection of Rothschild money, and undoubtedly acted as a Rothschild front thereafter.

On the surface there were periods of blistering competition between the investment banking houses and international oil goliaths J. D. Rockefeller and the Rothschilds, but by the turn of the century they adopted a more subtle relationship that avoided real competition. A decade earlier, Baron Alphonse de Rothschild had accepted Rockefeller’s invitation to meet in New York behind the closed doors of Standard Oil’s headquarters on Broadway.

Standard’s chief spokesman, John D Archbold [61] reported that they had quickly reached a tentative agreement, and thought it desirable on both sides that the matter was kept confidential. Clearly both understood the advantage of monopolistic collusion. It was a trend they eventually developed to their own advantage. By the early years of the twentieth century much of the assumed rivalry between major stakeholders in banking, industry and commerce was a convenient facade, though they would have the world believe otherwise.

Consider please this convenient facade. Official Rothschild biographers maintain that the dynasty’s interests in America were limited, and that the American Civil War led to “a permanent decline in the Rothschild’s transatlantic influence”. [62] All our evidence points in the opposite direction. Their associates, agents and front companies permeated American finance and industry. Their influence was literally everywhere. J. P. Morgan, the acknowledged chieftain of the Anglo-American financial establishment was the main conduit for British capital [63] and a personal friend of the Rothschilds.

Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb, another close friend of the Rothschild family, worked hand-in-glove with Rockefeller in oil, railroad and banking enterprises. Jacob Schiff the Pilgrim was both a Rothschild agent and a trusted associate of J. D. Rockefeller the Pilgrim. Morgan, Schiff and Rockefeller, the three leading players on Wall Street, had settled into a cosy cartel behind which the House of Rothschild remained hidden, but retained immense influence and power. Control of capital and credit was increasingly concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer men until the rival banking groups ceased to operate in genuine competition. [64]

This trans-Atlantic financial collusion underpinned the Anglo-American bond on which the secret elite built their dream of world domination. Political control moved hand in glove with the Money-Power.

One of the problems the secret elite had to contend with was democracy, even the very limited choice that British and American democracy had to offer. Professor Quigley observed that Alfred Milner, and apparently most members of the secret elite, believed that “democracy was not an unmixed good, or even a good, and far inferior to the rule of the best…” [65] They, of course, believed themselves “the best” and their morality did not exclude the use of warfare to carry out what they deemed to be their civilizing mission; a new world order based on ruling class values in which they would be first amongst men.

In Britain, faced with an electorate that frequently changed allegiance from the Conservative party to the Liberal party and back again, the secret elite selected reliable and trusted men to hold high office in both parties. Conservative Prime Minister Arthur Balfour, a member of the inner circle of the secret elite, [66] and Foreign Secretary Lord Lansdowne began the transformation of British Foreign policy towards war with Germany in the sure knowledge that senior Liberals would continue that policy if and when the people voted for change.

Herbert Henry Asquith, Richard Haldane and Sir Edward Grey were Milner’s chosen senior men in the Liberal Party and “objects of his special attention”. [67] Their remit was to ensure that an incoming Liberal government maintained a seamless foreign policy that served the grand plan. Their secret elite connections were impeccable. Together, with their good friend Arthur Balfour, they were intimately involved with the inner circles of the cabal. Their duty was to the King, the Empire, to Milner’s dream, to Rhode’s legacy. They confronted the same problems, analyzed the same alternatives and agreed the same solution. Germany had to go.

The senior Liberals, Asquith, Grey and Haldane, conspired to undermine the anti-war Liberal Party leader Campbell-Bannerman from within and were supported by both the Conservative party leaders and King Edward VII, himself a key figure inside the secret elite. Every major step taken by the British Foreign Office from 1902 onwards was dictated by the overall objective to destroy Germany. Treaties with Japan, the Entente Cordiale with France and all of its secret clauses, the secret conventions agreed between King Edward and the Russian Czar had that single purpose. Simply put, the large field armies of France and Russia were needed to crush Germany.

In the United States, and indeed in France, political power was guaranteed by financial incentives and the appointment of suitable candidates, in other words through bribery and corruption. Senator Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island was chosen by the secret elite to be the voice of “sound economics” in the Senate. A wealthy businessman and father-in-law of J.D. Rockefeller Jr., Aldrich was known as “Morgan’s floor broker in the Senate.” [68] Shameless in his excesses, he used public office to feather his own very large nest. Public service was to him little more than a cash cow through which he built a ninety-nine roomed chateau and sailed a two hundred foot yacht. [69]

Over a two-year period the Money-Power worked steadily on their chosen Senator to turn him into an “expert” on banking systems. Congress appointed a National Monetary Commission in 1908 with Aldrich as Chairman to review U.S. banking. Its members toured Europe, supposedly collecting data on various banking systems. Aldrich’s final report, however, was not the product of any European study tour, but of a collective conspiracy.

In November 1910, five bankers representing Morgan, Rockefeller and Kuhn Loeb interests, met in total secrecy with Senator Aldrich and the Assistant Secretary to the U.S. Treasury on Jekyll Island, an exclusive playground of the mega-rich off the coast of Georgia. Of the seven conspirators, five, Senator Aldrich, Henry Davison, Benjamin Strong, Frank Vanderlip and Paul Warburg, were members of The Pilgrims. [70] Their objective was to formulate a Central Banking Bill that would be presented to Congress as if it was the brainchild of Aldrich’s Monetary Commission.

Jekyll_Island_Clubhouse

The proposed “Federal Reserve System” was to be owned entirely by private banks, though its name implied that it was a government institution. Individuals from the American banking dynasties, including Morgan, Warburg, Schiff and Rockefeller, would hold the shares. It was to be a central bank of issue that would have a monopoly of all the money and credit of the people of the United States. It would control the interest rate and the volume of money in circulation.

The Federal Reserve System constructed on Jekyll Island had powers that King Midas could never have contemplated. The objective was to establish a franchise to create money out of nothing for the purpose of lending, get the taxpayer to pick up any losses, and convince Congress that the aim was to protect the public. [71]

The Aldrich proposals never went to a vote. President Taft refused to support the Bill on the grounds that it would not impose sufficient government control over the banks. The Money Power decided that Taft had to go. Their support in the 1912 Presidential election swung behind the little known Woodrow Wilson. The speed with which Wilson was bounced from his post at Princeton University in 1910, to Governor of New Jersey in 1911, then Democratic Party nominee for the Presidency in 1912 made him the Solomon Grundy of U S politics.

Not only did the secret elite put their man in the White House, they also gave him a minder, Edward Mandell House. Woodrow Wilson was President of the United States but this shadowy figure stood by his side, controlling his every move. House, an Anglophile who had been part educated in England, was credited with swinging the 1912 Democratic Convention in Baltimore behind Wilson. [72] He became Woodrow Wilson’s constant companion from that point onwards, with his own suite of rooms in the White House. He was also in direct, sometimes daily contact with J. P. Morgan Jr, Jacob Schiff, Paul Warburg, and Democrat Senators who sponsored the Federal Reserve Bill. [73]

Colonel Edward Mandell House

Mandell House guided the President in every aspect of foreign and domestic policy, chose his Cabinet and formulated the first policies of his new Administration. [74] He was the prime intermediary between the President and his Wall Street backers. [75] The Anglo-centric Money Power had complete control of the White House and finally established its central bank in time for the secret elite’s war.

Ponder the significance of this coincidence. Provided with huge sums of secret elite money rerouted via St Petersburg, French politicians, newspapers and journalists were effectively corrupted to elect the Revanchist warmonger candidate Raymond Poincare to the Presidency of France. By February 1913, two major powers, the United States and France, had new Presidents who were elected to office through the machinations of the secret elite. They had positioned key players in the governments of Britain, France, and the United States and exerted immense influence over the foreign ministry in Russia.

Politics, money and power were the pillars on which the Anglo-Saxon elite would destroy Germany and take control of the world. All that was left to concoct was a reason for war.

The Kaiser’s refusal to be drawn into direct confrontation with France and Britain over crises in Morocco in 1905 and 1911 demanded a rethink. Public hysteria in Britain about spies was developed into a cottage industry, with barely literate novels and wild articles in Northcliffe’s papers portraying Germany as a dangerous warmongering nation of Huns preparing to pounce on an unsuspecting and ill-prepared Britain. Similarly in France, through blatant bribery and corruption, both the press and the Revanchistes in French politics fomented anti-German sentiment. But Germany remained stubbornly unwilling to become involved a European war.

From 1912 onwards the secret elite looked to the Balkans to provide the excuse for war. Alexander Isvolsky, their top Russian agent, had been strategically moved to Paris, from which vantage point he directed the Balkan agitation. The mix of ethnic diversity, religious animosities, political intrigue and raw nationalism was deliberately provoked into two brutal Balkan wars which in themselves could have brought about a pan-European war, but the Kaiser refused to take the bait.

Something more dramatic, more sensational, was needed. The notion propagated by many historians that world war was ‘inevitable’ or that the world ‘slid’ into war is crass. Chance was not involved. It required a complex set of manipulated events engineered by determined men to set the fuse. What remained was a spark to ignite that fuse. It came with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir-apparent to the Austrian Empire, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. Millions of words have been written to describe the events in Sarajevo that day, but none have ever revealed the trail of complicity that led from the gunmen back to the secret elite in London. Be certain of one thing. It was not the man who fired the bullet that caused a world war.

How to purchase Hidden History: The secret origins of the First World War by Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor

Thus war engulfed the known world to a degree that had no precedent. Histories have been written to explain away the reasons why, histories that favored the victors and twisted the truth to blame Germany. How history has been manipulated, how evidence has been removed, burned, shredded or otherwise denied to genuine researchers remains a crime against truth, against humanity. The received history of the First World War is a deliberately concocted lie. Not the sacrifice, the heroism, the horrendous waste of life or the misery that followed. No, these were very real, but the truth of how it all began and how it was unnecessarily and deliberately prolonged beyond 1915 has been successfully covered up for a century.

Professor Quigley stated,

“No country that values its safety should allow what the Milner group accomplished – that is, that a small number of men would be able to wield such power in administration and politics, should be given almost complete control over the publication of documents relating to their actions, should be able to exercise such influence over the avenues of information that create public opinion, and should be able to monopolize so completely the writing and the teaching of the history of their own period.” [76]

Never were truer words uttered in dire warning. These Founding Fathers, the secret elite, began with Rhodes’ secret society and expanded across the Atlantic, always away from the public eye. They were deniers of democracy, men who always pursued their own malevolent agenda, who used this very process to advance their power. What they achieved in causing the First World War was but the first step in their long term drive to a new world order.
Note: This article was originally published in 2013 on the globalresearch.ca website. Read an excellent 10-page summary of Caroll Quigley’s masterpiece Tragedy and Hope. Then read other incisive summaries which dive deep beneath the surface to give a much broader view of our world.


Gerry Docherty
is a former head teacher. Jim Macgregor was a family doctor. They took early retirement and worked full time together for the past five years researching and writing Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War – described at the Edinburgh International Book Festival as a “fascinating and incendiary book”. It reveals how historical accounts of the war’s origins have been falsified to conceal the guilt of the secret cabal of rich and powerful men (described in this article) and explains their manipulations and deceptions.

For details visit the authors’ blogsite at firstworldwarhiddenhistory.wordpress.com.

Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War by Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor is available at leading bookshops and can also be purchased on the internet at Amazon, Alibris, etc.


Notes:

[1] W.T. Stead, The Last Will and Testament of Cecil John Rhodes, p. 62.

[2] Stead, The Last Will and Testament, p. 55.

[3] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 6.

[4] Carroll Quigley, Tragedy &Hope, pp.130-31.

[5] Joan Veon, The United Nations Global Straightjacket, p. 68.

[6] J. A. Hobson, John Ruskin, Social Reformer, p. 187.

[7] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p. 3.

[8] Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island, p. 272.

[9] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, pp. 4-5.

[10] Interview can be heard at www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeuF8rYgJPk

[11] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p. x

[12] Ibid.

[13] www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeuF8rYgJPk – Caroll Quigley Interview 1974

[14] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p. xi

[15] www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeuF8rYgJPk – Caroll Quigley Interview 1974

[16] Neil Parsons, A New History of Southern Africa, pp. 179–181.

[17] Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild, The World’s Banker, p. 363.

[18] James Lees-Milne, The Enigmatic Edwardian, pp. 162-8.

[19] Quigley, Tragedy & Hope, p. 216.

[20] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p. 311.

[21] Derek Wilson, Rothschild: The Wealth and Power of a Dynasty, pp. 98-99.

[22] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, pp. 16-17.

[23] Stead, Last Will and Testament, p.108.

[24] Thomas Pakenham, The Boer War, p.115.

[25] Emily Hobhouse, The Brunt of War and Where it Fell, p. 174.

[26] W.T. Stead, cited in Hennie Barnard, The Concentration Camps 1899–1902 at www.boer.co.za/boerwar/hellkamp.htm

[27] Pakenham, The Boer War, p. 483

[28] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p. 7.

[29] Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, p. 138.

[30] William Nimocks, Milner’s Young Men p. 21

[31] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p.312.

[32] Ibid., p. 7

[33] Ibid., pp. 86-7.

[34] Ibid., p.314.

[35] Ibid., p. 4.

[36] Ibid., p. 312.

[37] Quigley, Tragedy & Hope, p. 216.

[38] Ibid., pp. 60-61.

[39] Stead, Last Will and Testament, p. 59.
www.publicintelligence.net/the-last-will-and-testament-of-cecil-john-rhodes-1902/

[40] Ibid. p. 34.

[41] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p. 33.

[42] Ibid., p.49

[43] Ibid.

[44] Anne Pimlot Baker, The Pilgrims of Great Britain, p. 12.

[45] New York Times, 3 March 1903.

[46] Baker, Pilgrims of Great Britain, p.13.

[47] E.C. Knuth, The Empire of The City, p.64

[48] Baker, The Pilgrims of the United States, p.3.

[49] Baker, Pilgrims of Great Britain, p.16.

[50] While it is possible to list all of those in whose honour these dinners were organised, the individual members who attended remains a secret.

[51] Baker, Pilgrims of the United States, p .9.

[52] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p. 15.

[53] Webster G Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, George Bush; the Unauthorized Biography, p.136.

[54] W.G.Carr, Pawns in the Game, p. 60.

[55] G. Edward Griffin, interview:
www.educate-yourself.org/cn/gedwardgriffininterview02apr04.shtml

[56] Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, p. 951.

[57] Ron Chernow, The Warburgs, pp. 46-8.

[58] Stephen Birmingham, Our Crowd, p. 175.

[59] Chernow, The Warburgs, p. 51.

[60] Carr, Pawns in the Game, p. 61.

[61] Initially an outspoken critic of Standard Oil, Archbold was recruited by Rockefeller to a directorship of the company, where he later served as vice president and then president until its ‘demise ‘ in 1911.

[62] Ferguson, House of Rothschild, p. 117.

[63] Chernow, Titan, The Life of John D Rockefeller Sr., p. 390.

[64] Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island, p. 436.

[65] Quigley, Anglo American Establishment, p. 134.

[66] Ibid., p. 312.

[67] Terence H. O’Brien, Milner, p. 187.

[68] Gary Allen, None Dare Call it Conspiracy, Chapter 3, p8.

[69] Chernow, Titan, p. 352.

[70] Organisation for the Study of Globalisation and Covert Politics,
https://wikispooks.com/ISGP/organisations/Pilgrims_Society02.htm

[71] Griffin, Creature from Jekyll Island, p. 23.

[72] Ibid., p. 240.

[73] Ibid., p. 458.

[74] George Sylvester Viereck, The Strangest Friendship in History: Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, p. 4.

[75] Ibid., pp. 35-7.

[76] Quigley, Anglo-American Establishment, p. 197.


Scientology, Cult Sociopathology, and the Many Masks of the Hollywood Elite

“We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them.” -Oliver Wendel Holmes

Going Clear Scientology Book Cover

Recently, I’ve been reading a book that I’d been waiting to pop up on a Half Price book shelf, ever since I saw the author speak at a book signing event a couple years ago. The title of the book is Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by local Austin writer, Lawrence Wright. At one point, the book shot to #4 on the New York Times Best Sellers List for Non-Fiction, which is an astounding achievement for a book that digs deeply into a notoriously litigious and quite often dangerously vindictive cult. Now, award-winning director, Alex Gibney, has turned it into a documentary to air on HBO. Scientology has targeted just about any investigative reporter, whether they hailed from the National Inquirer, Newsweek, or Time Magazine with libel suits, harassment, intimidation, surveillance, and any number of other tactics from their bag of dirty tricks. So, it is with admiration and amazement that such a high-profile author as Lawrence Wright, who had previously won a Pulitzer for his book The Looming Tower about the 9/11 hijackers wrote this detailed account of Scientology. As he said during the talk I saw, he has been primarily interested in the nature of belief systems (particularly fanatical and fundamental styles of belief) that cause them to go to extreme lengths, including willing to die, in order to promulgate them the world over.

As you’re probably aware, it all began with an eccentric, insatiably driven, prolific author, and charismatic megalomaniac/conman by the name of L. Ron Hubbard, who was the infamous founder of Scientology just as he’s spoken of as a god by Scientologists, ever since he died back in 1986. This sea-faring adventurer was a voracious writer of stories of all kinds, an experimental technological tinkerer, con artist, a womanizer, and could be a tyrannical perfectionist willing to smash to bits all who dared get in his way or unwilling to do things his way. With any controversial figure, it’s extremely difficult to separate the man from the myth, the fact from the legend, especially when much of the myth and legend was printed by L.R. Hubbard himself. The truth, however, often lies somewhere in the middle between the demi-god that Hubbard was fashioned into by the church and the complete degenerate asshole that his staunch enemies would paint him as. However, by most accounts, L. Ron Hubbard was his own worst enemy in the end, when you fully consider the sordid saga of his rise to notoriety through a kind of ruthless paranoia and perfectionism that was able to create a fanatical following among his people. This handful of followers were no doubt taken by his cocksure bravado, imagined self-importance, and desire to clear themselves of their own characteristic shortcomings through the so-called E-Meter auditing sessions that they felt would eventually “clear them of suppressive behavior” (SP) as Hubbard called it. Plus, the radical experimentation with novel and bizarre religious beliefs were at their peak in the late 1960s and early 70s when the church of Scientology really took off in terms of numbers.

L.Ron Hubbard

However, according to L. Ron Hubbard’s own son, Scientology was merely another scheme and ruse of Hubbard’s to make money by starting his own religion…or at least what passed for one using its own unique abbreviations and linguistic mysticisms in their lavishly furnished offices around the world. Hubbard’s particular pseudo-psychological psychobabble was tailor made for those wannabe actors, screenwriters, directors, singers, and entertainers of all stripes trying desperately to gain an edge over their formidable competition to become “known” in showbiz. Scientology was new, high tech, glamorous, hip, and above all knew how to cater to the shallow insecurities of Hollywood celebrities, who would eventually become its biggest spokesmen over the years. Naturally, if you actually rise through the OT ranks in order to gain their so-called secret wisdom to learn what Scientology claims is the origin of humanity to OTIII, it’s absolutely hysterical as the awesome show South Park depicted it. However, even the fearless satirical show of South Park would pay the price of losing Issac Hayes (who played Chef) given that he was a Scientologist along with Comedy Central and the creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, being spied upon for a potential smear campaign that is like trying to smear shit on snot.

Now, we know that the church of Scientology uses coercion, threats, intimidation, beatings, blackmail, and even imprisonment in what’s known as the Rehabilitation Project Force (RPF). In what was a watershed moment for the church, a major raid was conducted by the FBI in 1977, when they learned about what is known as Operation Snow White. Just what, exactly, was Operation Snow White? Apparently, on April 20th, 1973, L. Ron Hubbard wrote a secret order codenamed “Snow White”. Its goal, in part, was to find as many damning files in government intelligence offices that it felt was being used in order to suppress the church from further expansion. Hubbard tasked the Guardian’s Office with this special mandate that included intelligence gathering, filing lawsuits to intimidate opponents, and attacking mental health professionals. According to the book Going Clear, in just “a few years, as many as five thousand Scientologists were covertly placed in 136 government agencies worldwide. Project Grumpy, for instance, covered Germany, where the Guardian’s Office was set up to infiltrate Interpol as well as German police and immigration authorities. In addition, there was a scheme to accuse German critics of the church of committing genocide. Project Sleepy was to clear files in Austria; Happy was for Denmark, Bashful for Belgium, and Dopey for Italy.” Given how extensive were the operations against Germany, it’s little wonder that the government moved to ban them at one point from the country for being a subversive cult rather than a religion.

Seven Dwarfs Target Game

Wright continues with, “Projects Witch and Stepmother both targeted the UK, the source of Scientology’s immigration problems. Project Hunter was the United States, where Scientologists penetrated the IRS, the Justice, Treasury, and Labor Departments, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Drug Enforcement Administration, as well as foreign embassies and consulates…” They also infiltrated several newspapers that were critical of Scientology in the past including the Washington Post. It didn’t end there, however, as Wright describes how- “In an evident attempt at blackmail, they stole the LA IRS intelligence files of celebrities and political figures, including California governor Jerry Brown, LA mayor Tom Bradley, and Frank Sinatra. Nothing in American history can compare with the scale of domestic espionage of Operation Snow White.” [Italics my emphasis]

When the FBI raided what was called the Scientology’s Advanced Org building in Los Angeles, they were shocked at what they found down in the darkened corridors of the basement. As Wright describes it, “They found a warren of cubicles, each occupied by half a dozen people dressed in black boiler suits and wearing filthy rags around their arms to indicate their degraded status. Altogether, about 120 people were huddled in the pitch-black basement, serving time in the Rehabilitation Project Force. The ranks of the RPF had expanded along with the church’s need for cheap labor to renovate its recently purchased buildings in Hollywood. The federal agents had no idea what they were seeing. Within moments, a representative of the church’s Guardian’s Office arrived and began shouting at the agents that they were exceeding the limits of their search warrants. Seeing that the Sea Org members posed no threat to them, the agents shrugged and moved on. It is instructive to realize that none of the Sea Org members consigned to the RPF dungeon took the opportunity to escape. If the FBI had bothered to interrogate them, it’s unlikely that any of them would have said that they were there against their will.”

They were what you could truly call “dyed in the wool” believers and would therefore never leave. However, even if they wanted to leave, fear of reprisal and severe punishment by the church hierarchy was often enough to prevent them attempting escape. Once L. Ron Hubbard died in 1986, the current head of the church took over and is certainly the most feared of all in the church hierarchy…David Miscavige. According to whistle-blower accounts of Scientology by defectors, Miscavige makes up for any lack of charm and charisma that L. Ron Hubbard had through his penchant for sadistic terror and unpredictable rage at his underlings. Although he showed sociopathological behavior early on (at one point even beating up his Pre-Clear auditor when he was only 13-years-old), David advanced quickly through the ranks of the Sea Org due to his energy and commitment to Scientology. He credited the church with curing his asthma, even though it really never did. Regardless, he joined the Sea Org at 16 and was thought to have filled the spot that might have typically been reserved for Hubbard’s son Quentin. Wright aptly describes Miscavige (who you can see in a very rare interview back in 1992 on Ted Koppel’s Nightline) as, “tough, tireless, and doctrinaire.”

David Miscavige Photo

However, most of the public knows Scientology not by its head figure, David Miscavige, or even by its patron saint and founder L. Ron Hubbard but rather by some of their more glassy-eyed followers that have achieved a degree of fame. The most conspicuous and fanatical follower is, of course, Tom Cruise. Probably next on that list would be John Travolta, who began going to Scientology before he became a household name with TV sitcoms like “Welcome Back Kotter” and movies like “Saturday Night Fever”. Besides these two, however, are many other celebrities of varying degrees of fame, who have walked through the doors of Scientology at one point or another. Some of those that kept coming back and no doubt spending a small fortune in the process were such notables as Priscilla Presley, Kirstie Alley, and director Paul Haggis. Scientology, like Hollywood, breeds the in the murky waters of the desire for omnipotence and its attendant self-importance and vanity. Both are, likewise, a carefully crafted illusion that reflect nothing nothing except perhaps the hollow desperation of their respective beliefs.

Scientology Time Magazine Cover

The Academy Awards are emblematic of the vacuousness of fame where actors’ innate need for admiration and attention, given to a politically select few decided upon by other actors and directors, make up the Academy. The pomp and sanctimonious gala is mediated through the exchange of little golden idols called Oscars that represent in miniature what the actors hoped to be all along, the object of worship for millions in this country and the rest of the world. For Scientology, the illusion of its promise takes on a far more dangerous imprimatur beginning with its students signing a contract for “a billion years of service” to the church of Scientology. At what point, one may ask, does the illusionary masks worn by both thespian and Scientology alike become the master of the persona and not merely another face fitting the function of the occasion?

One of the stranger phenomenons that I’ve noticed is actors affiliated with Scientology being in a disproportionate number of movies where the mask has been a major motif. Think about it. John Travolta in the movie “Face Off”. Tom Cruise in “Vanilla Sky”, “Mission Impossible”, and the incredibly beguiling “Eyes Wide Shut”. All had depictions of masks as literal and symbolic manifestations within the movie that were key elements in the plot. What might be the significance of the mask symbolism to those within Scientology, given what we know about its inherent duplicity and ability to hide from public scrutiny behind the celebrity faces that make up its roster of adherents? Hollywood, as we’ve come to learn from former child actors like Corey Feldman and his late best friend Corey Haim, hides a dark secret behind the glitz and glamor in front of the camera. As a previous post that I wrote alluded to an interview Feldman gave and perhaps elaborates in his autobiography “Coreyography”, there are a few major Hollywood moguls, directors, and actors that are known to be pedophiles. He wouldn’t comment in terms of names, but there are some clues as to who they might be that were we to follow up on them might lead us to their door. At that point, as the FBI clearly isn’t going to do anything about it, we might as well give “To Catch A Predator” a call.

Putting the Mask On


The Need for a New Black Consciousness in an Era Plagued by Thugs on Both Sides of the Racial Divide

Frederic Douglas

In light of the events of Ferguson, MO, I would like to take this time to write about some of my views regarding black radicalism, police brutality, and the necessity for a revival of a strong “black consciousness” in America…an aspect of which is a new found black militancy. Given how thoroughly dumbed-down, manipulated, and reactionary the current dialogue on race politics is in the media, it is high time that we look back on the African American experience with a sharp eye focused on what could be described as radical voices by today’s PC standards but are very worthy and necessary in understanding just what is going on today in the major cities of this country, where black people are actually worse off than they were some 50 years ago. Therefore, let us begin with a quote by the influential black intellectual and writer, James Baldwin, who wrote these words to his 14-year-old nephew:

“You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason. The limits to your ambition were thus expected to be settled. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity and in as many ways as possible that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence. You were expected to make peace with mediocrity.”

Certainly, this 2nd class citizenship continues today in a climate more rife with racial antagonisms than ever before. Besides racial hatreds that have persisted, albeit in perhaps more covert and hidden forms, what has changed since the Civil Rights era in black peoples’ relationship with the police? Well, for one thing, the police have become much more of a para-military force now and (thanks in large part to the Obama administration) have military-grade equipment and a wide assortment of so-called non-lethal weapons that they can use on violent or peaceful protestors, as you can see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut3xsdkIWhg

As you’re no doubt aware, immediately following the Darren Wilson (no indictment verdict)…the mostly black suburb of Ferguson, Missouri outside of St. Louis went up in flames with mass looting, shooting, and destruction of businesses and government buildings. However, the black teenager, Michael Brown, wasn’t exactly a poster child for good black citizenry. In fact, all indications showed him to be an amoral thug, who was even caught on video camera shortly before he was shot robbing a convenience store and pushing the clerk out of the way when he attempted to stop him. Later, he was reportedly walking down the middle of the street preventing traffic from moving when Wilson told him to get out of the street. Brown shouted an obscenity at the officer, and that’s when Wilson attempted to apprehend Brown. This is where accounts get fuzzy as to what occurred next. Some eye witnesses say that Michael Brown had his hands up in the air and was trying to get away when Wilson shot him. However, according to Darren Wilson’s account that apparently the grand jury agreed with, the much heavier Michael Brown attacked Wilson and tried to reach for his gun at which point Darren Wilson defended himself in the only way he believed he could and escape with his life…namely by taking Brown’s life.

Of course, arguments will naturally arise as to whether or not lethal force was even necessary at all. In other words, why couldn’t Wilson have shot him in the leg or something? Or, why didn’t he use his taser or pepper spray? Since I wasn’t there, and there isn’t any video of the encounter…we’ll likely never know for sure the details as to what really took place. However, the truth (more often than not) probably falls somewhere in the middle. What is pretty certain at this stage is that Michael Brown was a typical “thug” teenager, who like most have a sense of entitlement and like many of those in Ferguson will use any excuse to loot out of opportunism without really posing any threat to the establishment itself.

This is in sharp contrast to the Afro-Centric radicalism and departure from the white establishment that groups like the Black Panther Party represented. I was fortunate enough to meet one of the co-founders of the original Black Panther Party that started in Oakland, CA as a way to combat rampant police abuse, repression, and occupation of black neighborhoods…Mr. Bobby Seale. Along with Huey Newton, Bobby and Eldridge Cleaver’s genesis for the Black Panther Party grew out of a growing frustration among the black community to be unable to use the legal system in obtaining justice from wanton police harassment, arrest, and brutality largely just being black. Bobby Seale gave the keynote address at the “2nd Annual Police Accountability Summit” here in Austin, TX that I attended, which you can see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRPi0UBNV-M

Black Panther Party

The Black Panther Party wasn’t just for self-defense, however, but taught black empowerment, opened up their own school to teach young black children, and even had a couple of businesses that they ran to profit the community. Again, their focus wasn’t simply on hating all white people as the New Black Panthers seem to only care about but rather to elevate the black people of their community beyond their ghetto circumstances and give them a sense of pride based on imparted self-worth and actual accomplishment. Before he was assassinated, Malcolm X also tried to point out the ways in which white society had corrupted the minds of black people into believing themselves to be inferior as you can see in this clip entitled “Who Taught You to Hate Yourself?”. Unfortunately, J. Edgar Hoover launched a fierce campaign of violence and subversion against the Black Panther Party as part of the Cointel Program to neutralize what the Feds saw as threats to the American (that is to say rich white people) way of life.

COINTEL PRO Beware My Friends

Once the Black Panther Party and other Afro-Centric and militant black groups like MOVE were systematically destroyed, a new image began to emerge that is now so perverted, so vile, so thuggish, and so just plain stupid as to be diametrically opposed to everything Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X fought and were assassinated for, namely to free black people not merely from the shackles of segregation (King) and mental slavery (Malcolm) but to empower them to stand as equals among the fellowship of men and women. This is why the welfare state is so insidious to a poor black family given that it represents a new kind of slavery and servitude born out of an inability and unwillingness to raise family through gainful employment while at the same time keeping themselves tied like a baby’s umbilical cord to their new master, Uncle Sam. Much of this infantalism is now displayed with no sense of shame for all the world to see in way that previous generations would have openly mocked.

Chris Rock’s signature comedic bit seen in his HBO Special “Bring the Pain” was called “Black People vs. Niggas”. He explicates the problem quite well and humorously in this fantastic bit, since as a black man himself and a comic he’s poised to be able to speak frankly about race in a way that hardly anyone else in the limelight can. Prior to him, Richard Pryor used classic comedic bits to elucidate race in way that opened up a greater dialogue and showed how comedy alone can break down racial barriers once thought rigid. For Pryor, the word “nigger” was simply apart of the language of the black vernacular in the places he grew up in along with being an easy comedic device to generating laughs in his act. It wasn’t until he had the chance to visit Africa for the first time that his eyes and mind were opened up to seeing the use of the word “nigger” as not merely an affectionate term when used by your black friends and racist when used by white people but rather as something that black people themselves denigrate themselves with absent any white people, since it really signifies someone who is ignorant. It was a turning point in Pryor’s life for him to come to this insight, which he shared with an audience during his “Live on the Sunset Strip” performance. One of the most insightful and brilliant creations that I’ve ever seen that commented on this crisis within the American black populace to celebrate “niggerdom” (i.e. idiocy and infantile lunacy) was shown on an animated TV show called “Boondocks” in an episode that depicted what might happen were Dr. Martin Luther King to return from the dead to the modern world. Needless to say, he is thoroughly disgusted by what black people have become in the ensuing years since the Civil Rights era of the late 60s and in a moment of outrage at what he sees he speaks his mind at a party held on his behalf. The name of the episode is entitled “Return of the King”.

American History X Smoking

So, the question is, how did black people go from Richard Pryor to Tyler Perry? Or, from Marvin Gaye to Kanye West? Or, worse still Lil’ John? Black people have always been musical innovators from the early pioneers of Rock N’ Roll with Chuck Berry and Little Richard to the Soul Music of James Brown and Aretha Franklin to the great Blues musicians of Muddy Waters, B.B. King, and Robert Johnson…American music has always been filled with great black musicians. Now, it’s so-called hip-hop and rap that dominate the airwaves and what most black people listen to. However, the rap of today is a far cry from the early pioneers of rap that came to the fore in the late 70s and early 80s. Rappers like Grand Master Flash, RUN-DMC, and the Sugar Hill Gang were mixing funk and rock riffs and beats to lyrics that spoke to traditional themes of ghetto hardships, black empowerment, or simply having a good time spitting rhymes. Now, it’s dominated by thug posers like 50 Cent, big ass whores like Nikki Minaj, moronic hood rats like Lil’ John, and greed-obsessed exhibitionists like Jay-Z. This can’t be the best that black musicians have to offer, can’t it?

Professor Griff of Public Enemy would say that it is nothing short of conspiracy in order to lead the black man astray down the path of self-imposed ignorance, degradation, exploitation, and ultimately ruin in attempting to live out the opulent and extravagant fantasies show in rap videos these days. And, I’m inclined to believe that there’s probably some truth to that along with most of the stupid music industry following whatever moronic trend that’s going on at the time. One could certainly make the case for gangsta rap having started the trend back in the 80s, especially once the crack cocaine epidemic hit Los Angeles. Anyone wanting to know how crack was introduced into neighborhoods like Compton should read former San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb’s work, who shows how it was a CIA operation was part of the war with the Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua to funnel cocaine into this country and guns into Central America. So, we can trace at least the crack explosion to the CIA. But, what about the music industry? One way to follow the narrative would be to look at what happens when rappers like Tupac, who’s mother was a member of the Black Panther Party, attempts to shed light on the suppression and oppression of black people. He’s killed on the Las Vegas strip, and nobody is indicted for his murder? Or, how about the career of the sublimely beautiful Lauren Hill? Granted, she was chastised for taking the time to raise her son, but then she came to realize that she didn’t want any part of what she had correctly deemed as a wicked and corrupt industry along with much of the rest of the world as you can see her discuss in this revelatory Def Poetry recital.

So, we’ve come full circle now. From the LA riots after the Rodney King verdict in 1992 to the riots in Ferguson after the “no indictment” of Darren Wilson, expressions of rage against the police (whether justified or not) certainly shouldn’t be directed against businesses in your own community, where even black owned businesses were trashed. They should be directed against the police, their headquarters, and other government officials like the mayor, chief of police, and state representatives that you believe are oppressing your people. After all, it’s people like the governor that are bringing in the national guard against you not the corner liquor store owner. Besides, do you really want to be shot for stealing a pair of Nike sneakers or a bottle of Johnny Walker Black? Killed for mindless consumerism? To be a revolutionary means not accepting how the established order defines you, and what could be more status quo than keeping people identifying themselves as “consumers” of products made by Third World wage slaves many of whom are black? Liberation politics means a revolution of ideas, and the idea that I am proposing (which as a white guy I realize isn’t PC to propose but I’m doing it anyway) is that black people adopt some revolutionary ideas for someone in your impoverished condition.

That is- “Empower yourself by educating yourself (read to your kids), black men start actually raising your children as fathers and supporting the family you helped create, get off welfare completely, stop blaming white people for all of your problems as most of them are your own creation, learn to start your own businesses and manage your own money (there’s more to finance than shiny rims after all), understand how to be civil and honorable, take pride in your accomplishments instead of having an attitude of entitlement (you don’t deserve reparations because you were never a slave), and stop glorifying and celebrating the most depraved, ego-centric, and criminal aspects of a corrupted corporate culture.” Once you do that, you can now begin the long struggle back up to the top of that fabled mountaintop that Dr. King talked about and certainly didn’t end with an Uncle Tom getting into the White House. I’ll end with the man Ossie Davis rightly described as “our shining black prince”, Mr. Malcolm X speaking about why black people shouldn’t trust the house negro, many of whom you’ll see in the US government. I can certainly think of a few…can you?

Malcolm X Be Peaceful Unless Someone Puts His Hands on You


Lessons from the Dead on the Art of Living and the Emptiness of Celebrity

Robin Williams Alone and Gone

 

In my last post, I wrote about my dearly departed dad and his quest (some would say undying faith) in the “spiritual” realm and its universal truths that was, perhaps, largely elusive during his incarnate life but now largely answerable in death. Unfortunately, once you cross death’s door and enter the great beyond, you’re access to the physically living is barred save a haunting here and there. And yet, strange at it may seem, the dead continue to whisper to us from beyond the grave through fleeting glimpses of their lasting memory, their remaining possessions, their photographs, their writings, and their surviving friends and family, who recount stories about their life. Certainly, this has been my experience with my own father, whose incessant hoarding provided an endless stream of artifacts, paperwork, and reminders of his passions, his business failures, his spiritual leanings, and odd possessions themselves (alternative medical devices from the 60s and 70s being one such example) that stood out as a stark reminder of the enigmatic and paradoxical nature of the man himself along with volumes of trash and debris itself that overwhelms the senses with a kind of psychic burden and looming baggage for which only death could absolve.

And so, the question remains like a dagger sticking in my head- “What, if anything, can we learn from the dead?” For one thing, we can learn how to appreciate life more. While it sounds cliche and trite, any soldier that has seen combat will tell you just how much greater appreciation they have for life after they’ve stared into the cold, expressionless faces of the newly killed. It reminds me of the scene from the movie Fight Club when the character played by Brad Pitt puts a gun to the back of a store clerk’s head and demands that he become what he originally wanted to be in life lest he shoot him. When Edward Norton asks- “What the fuck was the point of that?!” He replies, “Tomorrow that man will have the most beautiful day of his life. His breakfast will taste better than any breakfast we have ever known.” And, it’s precisely because the previous night, he thought he was going to be shot in the back of the skull by some deranged maniac in the parking lot of the convenience store he worked at just to “get by and pay the bills” and forgo his dreams of becoming a veterinarian. But now, he was given a new lease on life and a stern commandment- “Follow your dreams and true desires or die!” Just picture Tyler Derden as the Grim Reaper, and you’ll get the general idea.

How many of us have to face our own death before we can begin to live life? Perhaps, we all have to experience a little hell before we can appreciate a little heaven. Or perhaps, we’re all just a bit insane and stupid in that we’ve constructed a civilization that is so divorced from a humane world that we’ve forgotten how to be truly human anymore, at least insofar as the original meaning of the word “Hu” (God) “man”. Would a God-realized man put himself through the torture of a drudgery-filled job, surrounded by the empty spectacle of vacuous consumptions of corporate-driven commodities, and pursuing the greedy and materialistic false desires of a banal culture or to fulfill the whims of loveless relationships? Of course NOT! We’re so far removed from the natural world of real survival-based needs that we can’t distinguish between needs and desires, between biologically-ingrained instincts and conditioned reflexes, between our own idiosyncratic selves and the manufactured subterfuge media-enforced imagery that we adopt as our own. We’re psychically crippled and fragmented creatures as a result of the constant bombardment media and the demands of corporate America that assault our senses with the constant refrain- “Work, work, work…so you can earn, earn, earn more money, more money, more money…so you can buy, buy, buy, buy more stuff, more stuff, more stuff that you will have to work, work, work for.” It’s a never ending cycle of monotonous labor that turns Hu(God)mans into Slaves on the Job and Zombies off the Job.

None of the bullshit sold to us through Madison Avenue’s slick campaigns, particularly through their exemplars of the “Good Life” being celebrities, ever leads to lasting happiness. Ask Philip Seymour Hoffman about the “Good Life”. Or, better yet, ask Robin Williams about it. Was there anyone in the Hollywood limelight more seemingly full of childlike joy, exuberance, and humor than Robin Williams? And yet, for all the beauty, light, and spontaneity of this wonderful and gracious man…he succumbed to the inner demons of addiction, isolation, and despair. I can hear people thinking aloud, “Yeah, but he was wealthy, famous, and adored by millions of people around the world. Isn’t this the epitome of success? How could he ever reach the point of utter despair that he would commit suicide? It doesn’t make any sense.” It doesn’t make any sense only if you measure success, let alone happiness by the rubric of the mainstream media. However, make no mistake, Hollywood is known as the land of Illusion for a reason, just as peoples’ lives are shredded like tinsel on the Sunset Strip.

Do you think just because you have a star on the boardwalk…you aren’t going to get stepped on? Perhaps, more to the point, celebrity is strange kind of hell wherein suddenly what you do, who you’re with, what you say, where you go, and even how you dress becomes fodder for the gossiping, judgmental, and obsessive public. Fame seen in this unforgiving light can be quite oppressive indeed and might begin to explain why a genius like Stanley Kubrick avoided it like the plague or why Dave Chappelle walked away from $50 million and the 3rd season of “Chappelle Show”. He also understood how the image of who he was far superseded the flesh and blood man that he was and how Hollywood had a particularly sinister agenda for leading black actors as he related on the Oprah Winfrey Show at one point. It’s still hard to fathom how a man as seemingly loved as Robin Williams was could sink so low as he did. But, it only goes to show just how little the average person knows as to what really goes on behind the scenes in their favorite celebrities’ lives…try as they might to discover them in the tabloids. We see what we want to see or rather the smiling faces staring back at us from the front covers of People, Parade, Vanity Fair, GQ and Cosmopolitan. They all speak to the same over-riding and ubiquitous lie of modern life, namely that SUCCESS=WEALTH, FAME, BEAUTY, POPULAR TALENT. However, where is the soul in all of this? Or, for those of you who are atheists and secular humanists, where is the depth of character? By character, I don’t mean what new Marvel character they’re playing in the movies but rather strength and integrity of their inner self (psyche, mental clarity, emotional maturity, physical health, moral compass, etc.). At no point in the obsessions of Maxim Magazine, TMZ, or the National Inquirer is there any discussion of these aspects of a celebrity except in the most passing superficial way and hence both the public and celebrity are treated to another nauseating dose of ego-tripping clap trap that further erodes our sense of self as well as that of our heroes, who are eventually seen as the mere puppets of giant media corporations consciously or not.

The dead see past all pretensions of ego inflation and vanity, however. Your ultimate worth as a human being is seen, at least in this context, as a question of good selfless deeds in the service of others rather than the selfish deeds done in the furtherance of one’s career or status. Robin Williams was one of those uniquely gifted entertainers whose generosity of spirit was a great as his comedic talent and one of the main reasons why he will be missed by so many people, who knew him personally as well as on the screen. After all, even an actor can’t hide everything he/she is behind a role they’re playing. Part of their personality is bound to come out no matter how much of a chameleon they might be, particularly in roles that they’re often best known for. In Robin Williams’ case, this was even more true given that he showed both his comedic genius in movies like Good Morning Vietnam, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Aladdin. And, he showed a great deal of empathic pathos in movies like Dead Poets Society, What Dreams May Come, and Good Will Hunting.

The great irony, however, about comedy is that some of the best comedians and comedy comes from the grist of tragedy. Certainly, this was the case with Richard Pryor, who was a longtime cocaine addict along with Robin Williams. Don’t forget that Robin even worked with Richard on his very short-lived “The Richard Pryor Show”, which I highly recommend checking out as you can on DVD. Richard Pryor was described by his writing partner, Paul Mooney, as being a lot like a child, which you can clearly see in some of his standup. This was also certainly true of Robin Williams, particularly in movies like Jack and Hook. The imagination of the child, innocent, free, and vivid is contrasted against the rigid rules of civilization as an undercurrent or subtext in many of Robin Williams’ movies, and you get the impression that this was not by accident. He identified with the blissful and carefree child in many regards and was one of the very few public figures, who could tap into that stream of childlike consciousness instantly. For adults, this can be quite dangerous given how stodgy and pretentious most people tend to be in these PC days, but they should all learn to love, laugh, and live more like the children they once were before they end up the bitter, miserable, and dying old farts they will eventually become.

 

 

 


On My Recently Departed Dad, Truth, Struggle, and the Search for the Sublime…

Ghandi No God Higher Than Truth

“May you get to heaven before a word is said, and make your peace with God before the Devil knows you’re dead.” -Old Irish Prayer

 

It’s been over 3 months since I’ve written anything on this blog and while you could attribute some of this to sheer laziness…the truth is, “I simply haven’t found much time lately.” The reason for this very long delay is because shortly after my last post my father died unexpectedly just shy of turning 80. His death came as a shock because I wasn’t even informed of his hospitalization, which I later learned was for at least 3 weeks. Apparently, he didn’t want to tell either my brother nor I about it, and so I didn’t learn about it until he had already passed on. I believe that he was embarrassed to have either of us see him in such a crippled and invalid state as the last image we would have of him, especially since so much of his early life had been preoccupied with displays of youthful vigor.

After all, he would brag about being in the Golden Gloves and had some memorable amateur fights. He taught dance at Arthur Murray dance studio and was obsessive about his health even becoming a vegetarian back in the 50s, long before it was fashionable. So much of his identity was wrapped up in his Adonis-like appearance that creeping finger of old age robbed him of more than his strength and vitality…it cannibalized his spirit until there was nothing left but a shell of his former self left. However, it wasn’t just old age that did this (which one could argue in our youth-obsessed culture robs most people of their spirit if not their identity). He was always just barely hanging on to financial long-shots, embittered by business deals gone awry, partnerships gone sour, and opportunities lost as if in some cruel twist of fate that was his burden to bear like the trials of Job. It was if his life were the living embodiment of Murphy’s Law (i.e. Whatever Can Go Wrong, Will Go Wrong). He never seemed to have a firm grasp on reality, which is why he so loved to escape into his “far out” books.

If he couldn’t master the tangible universe, then he was hellbent on mastering the intangible, the invisible, the spiritual one. How does one achieve mastery over something so ethereal and elusive? For my dad, this involved a lifetime’s worth of searching for what were deemed “spiritual” or “transcendent” truths, which found their apogee in the Indian mysticism of Sant Mat. This particular path has a lineage of gurus, who by all accounts are quite spiritually evolved and teach union with the divine through meditation on what is called “the sound current” or “Nam”. It believes in living an ethically pure life, of course, abstaining from alcohol, meat, drugs, and pre-marital sex.

Oddly enough, this last abstention is congruent with (in theory) much of Christian thought. In fact, what’s particularly interesting about this predominantly Indian-oriented form of mysticism is that it accommodates what you might describe as Gnostic forms of Christianity into its philosophy, which can cause a radical psychic schism to develop in the psyche if not navigated successfully. Given the rather obvious ways that contradictions, hypocrisies, and inner conflicts appeared throughout my father’s life- I would have to say that he was largely unsuccessful in navigating those perilous psychic waters with the most evident being that he was, for the most part, not a well contented man let alone spiritually enlightened enough to be in a blissful state of consciousness. As Nietzsche would say, “He was human, all too human.”

And by human…I mean flawed, emotional, habitual, accident prone, short-sighted, reflexive, and given to repeat the same stories and mistakes throughout his entire life. And, boy did he love to tell a lot stories, long-winded, fantastical, seemingly meaningless, but always with a sense that he was conveying something profound. Listening to stories about UFOs, his American Graffiti-like adolescence, his rocky marriage to my mom, transcendental readings through psychic mediums, meeting remarkable or otherwise famous individuals, and endless stories about his master, Charan Singh, along with the basic philosophy and mythology of Sant Mat was (given the numerous times my pop would repeat the same story over and over again though at seemingly widely varying intervals) both fascinating and exhausting at the same time. The weirder, the better, the more outlandish and fantastical, the more he loved it. Proof be damned! Truth is stranger than fiction, and my dad had no time for fiction…or so he would tell you.

However, his truth was so “out of this world”, for most people grounded in the banalities of everyday life, I’m sure he appeared as just another nutty snake oil salesman of para-normal and mystical stories the veracity of which were always in question. So, I was both bemused and befuddled by them, since I’m known to have an attraction to the mysterious but more prone to use Occam’s Razor. My pop, on the other hand, never let investigatory facts or common sense answers get in the way of his metaphysical yarns, though. It was almost comical how emphatic he would be on subjects that he had absolutely no professional training or background in nor even take the time to thoroughly research adequately. Still, for all his flaws, he was at bottom a kind man, a generous man, and (in his own way) a reflective man, who was driven by his insatiable curiosity to know and dwell in universal truth but failed to recognize the truth in imperfection and how truth is lived subjectively in those that remain true to their individuated uniqueness rather than always stifling it among the homogenous masses.

Truth is the force that gives life meaning, and it can and does take a multitude of forms, expressions, rhythms, and embodiments within the strata of life. For me, it means thinking, feeling, speaking, and acting out of the greatest aspect of my humanity and higher self. It means living in the fullest expression of my own unique contribution to this mad play called life without lying to myself or others. It means giving respect but taking no shit. Sometimes I fall short, but the moments when I rise to the occasion are without a doubt the greatest moments. These moments need not be filled with action, since there times when non-action is just as truthful as action. It takes discernment to know what is called for, though.

Back to my pop, I always felt that he was conflicted within himself, and it was difficult to discern why. Like many of his generation, the idea of speaking about your feelings was considered too feminine. So, much of his heartbreaks, disappointments, turmoils, fears, vulnerabilities, and inadequacies remained hidden (or at least not typically discussed with me). Women are much more open about these things, obviously, to their trusted confidants and this is probably why they live on average a couple of years longer than men. It isn’t that you should whine or complain about petty bullshit, quite the contrary. However, neither should you think that keeping all your emotions bundled up inside until one day they explode in a violent rage or self-destructive act is good for your disposition.

There’s a reason why women talk things out. They’re not necessarily expecting to get a solution to the problem that may or may not be solved. But, they’ll talk things out nonetheless because it helps to get things off your chest whether or not people want to take action or not. The best I can determine, in my dad’s case, is that there was an inner schism within the deeper recesses of his unconscious mind, which I believe was at root based on the dichotomy he placed between his animal instincts and his spiritual aspirations. This is especially pronounced within monotheistic religions such as Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.

It goes all the way back to the real fall from grace, the alienation of man from the natural environment through agriculture and domestication of animals. Prior to this happening some 12,000 years ago, man lived in a harmonious symbiotic accord with nature as a hunter-gatherer. His spirituality was intimately tied up and dependent on his organismic and psychic connection with Mother Earth. However, the domestication of plants, animals, and eventually people themselves caused this cosmic unity to become fragmented and replaced by the beginnings of monotheistic religion through the ancient solar cults. Nature was no longer the repository of our spirits, our ancestors, our nourishment of both body and mind. It was, thanks to this alien philosophy, now considered corrupt, lower, and in need of control and domination through what eventually became the age of machines and technology. Civilization wrecked havoc on the indigenous world where tribal peoples still adhered to the old ways of natural communion and living in harmony with the Earth rather than viewing the planet as something to be conquered and exploited for material gain.

Needless to say, the Western spiritual tradition shifted away from nature-centric paganism and took on the predatory militarism of monotheism, which created a dualistic split between the carnal earth thought to be corrupt and the lofty airy pure spirit thought to reside in the afterlife. And, it was this schism between his carnal instincts such as to fight or fuck and his spiritual aspirations of meditation in seeking union with the divine that drove my dad to the point of despair and ruin, since he ultimately knew that he couldn’t escape these inborn and ingrained attitudes and behaviors attributed to his lower/animal self. How might he atone, therefore? Punishment or karma was due, in his mind to atone for these transgressions. And, as a result, he bore his pain both with a heavy but also somewhat masochistic heart in that (in his mind) he was working off the karma of falling short of his higher spiritual self…of not being free of his creature-liness as it were.

What if there isn’t such a hard and fast dividing line between matter and spirit, Earth and Heaven, tangible and intangible, Animal and Man, or even Man and God? What if we exist on a continuum of the gradual increasing of qualitative spiritual awareness relative to our animal friends and need not give up earthly pleasure to attain eternal life, since we are eternal? Is God’s love so possessive that he would have us give up the simple pleasures of life in order to seek the kingdom exclusively? Or, is the kingdom within as Christ said, and we can be still be stewards of the Earth at the same time as being rays of the divine invisible sun?

I began this blog by paraphrasing what I think is an old Irish prayer, which I got from the last Sydney Lumet movie “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead“. Go watch this movie, if you haven’t already. It’s a brilliantly constructed movie about a jewelry store robbery gone horribly awry and the toll that it takes on two brothers, who learn that the love of money tears families apart. The older brother is played magnificently by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, who also carried a larger inner burden than he usually let on about. Most people in our celebrity and fame-obsessed society can’t fathom someone as famous and successful as Hoffman being depressed and dying from a heroin overdose. Huge success, fame, and certainly wealth come with the very heavy expectations of the world of maintaining it, and the stresses that this false idolatry and adulation brings are often greater than one man, one man with inner demons and doubts can withstand.  Interestingly enough, he’s a heroin addict in the movie as well. Not to spoil it for you, but there’s a great scene where the father of the two boys discovers a dark secret about his own son with an old Jewish jewelry dealer, who tells him- “The world is an evil place. Some people make money from it, and others are destroyed by it.” The world, the fabricated artificial world of our greedy and corrupt civilization, is indeed an evil place. And, my father didn’t make money from this fact but was in the end destroyed by it. However, it doesn’t have to be like this. After all, the Earth (for all its dangers and perils) is basically a hospitable and good place for this life, in this incarnation, and in this body. And, the world need not be evil, since the world is going to be whatever we make of it.

 

RIP

Bob Matthews

Bob Matthews (November 10th, 1934 – June 29th, 2014)

 


The Secret Life of Barack Obama: The Making of a Manchurian Candidate for President

Obama Kissing Man*

Given what I can only assume many people will perceive as an overtly partisan attack, let me assure you (dear readers) that I am an equal opportunity offender and do attack the GOP as much as I do the DNC. However, if you are at all familiar with the philosophy of this blog, you’ll know that I consider the so-called “Left” and “Right” paradigm to be merely two sides of the same totalitarian coin. The only difference between the two major US political parties is whether you want a more Fabian-socialist style of government with the Democrats or would prefer the more corporatist-fascism style with the Republicans. However, as you’ll soon see, even those narrow ideological lines are blurring to the point of total irrelevance these days. So, with that in mind, let’s examine what Chris Hedges calls the “cult of personality” of Barack Obama. [*Note: The picture above is photo shopped, but the sentiment is not far from the mark as you’ll come to see in the course of this article.]

The first thing that comes to mind with regards to Barack Hussein Obama is how seemingly “out of nowhere” and quickly his star rose, from being a three-term Illinois State Senator to then becoming a one term US Senator of Illinois to running a hugely successful presidential campaign just a short 4 years later. Having slogged through 8 long and tortuous years of Bush W’s idiotic butchering of Iraqi citizens, constitutional liberties in the post 9/11 hysteria, and the English language (to name just a few of the many travesties that befell this nation during the dark and fearful days of the Bush Administration)- it’s perhaps wholly understandable why so many people got “Obama fever” in the waning days of 2008. However, this fanaticism and overwrought emotionalism (seen most prominently in the young and minority groups of America that could most readily identify with Obama’s inspiring optimistic oratory) should have been recognized as the bullshit political rhetoric that it most certainly was. At the very least, it should have been met with the kind of realistic suspicion and scrutiny that all campaign talk must be met with, since we ought to know all too well how much politicians lie to garner votes.

In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find a politician that doesn’t lie to the point where it has become difficult to catch one of them actually tell any kind of truth. And yet, most Americans fell head over heels in love with their own smug sense of progress-ism in thinking that surely hokey slogans like “Hope” and “Yes, We Can” actually meant something beyond the empty, hollow sloganeering that they always were. As comic Doug Stanhope has pointed out in regards to the fact of Barack Obama being the first black president, it’s just “trivia” and nothing more. “It’s like the first midget bull rider.” However, trivia and certainly novelty are really all it takes to capture peoples’ imaginations to the point of cult-like obsession, and nobody in recent political memory has been able to mesmerize the public quite like Obama has been able to.

Nope Bumber Sticker

It’s only been within the last couple of years that some of the more starry and teary-eyed deluded “Obamanites” have begun to wake up to the fact that Obama might have promised “Change”, but his administration has only given us more of the same…and, in some cases, even worse than his predecessor. After all, despite his campaign promises to close down Guantanamo, it is still an open wound from the black bag operations of the Bush regime, where the US has embarked on the longest multiple theater war in its history. Secret courts without the need for evidence, water-boarding and other forms of torture, indefinite detentions, and covert assassinations are still being carried out with impunity and in numbers that actually far exceed those of the Bush years.

Add to this already sordid indictment a trenchant war being waged against whistle-blowers, journalists, and dissidents that (as I’ve discussed in previous articles) can even get you killed, and it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that there is no hope with this blowhard of business-as-usual. After all, even after some of the worst trampling of constitutional rights from the Patriot Act and the Military Commission’s Act during the Bush years, the Obama regime has gone one step further in draconian fascism by making it legal for the president to assassinate an American citizen merely for being suspected of being a terrorist with the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Furthermore, there were also a lot more killings of innocent civilians in far-flung places like Yemen and Pakistan from the use of military drones, which aren’t nearly as surgical in their devastation as the Pentagon would have us believe. I could go on and on, but I can only assume that most of you don’t need anymore of a history lesson to convince you on the duplicitous record of Barack Hussein Obama. So, let’s turn our attention to some of the more hidden aspects of his presidency.

Obama with Cabinet

Jerome Corsi of World Net Daily and others have made much noise concerning the “birth certificate” controversy. Personally, I find it hard to comprehend how Obama’s reputed birth certificate can be looked at as anything but an obvious forgery. However, assuming for a moment that it is legit, one wonders just why Obama’s team of lawyers would feel the need to spend literally millions of dollars fighting in court from ever having to release his long-form birth certificate, if (in fact) they have nothing to hide and then finally releasing something that so many experts agree is a forgery. So, we’ll simply have to wait until the final verdict is in on that one, but (were I to guess) I’d say that he was probably born in Kenya. Be that as it may, let’s move on to what I believe is a more controversial and damning evidence of his pedigree. Barack Obama might have inherited his biological father’s name (Barack Obama Sr.), but early on after his mother Stanley Ann Dunham married Lolo Soetoro…Barack was known as Barry Soetoro growing up in Indonesia and later Hawaii. It is interesting to note that both his mother and stepfather, Lolo, were in the employ of the CIA through their work with the USAID, which is an intelligence gathering front for the agency and (in the case of Lolo) as a covert operative in Indonesia.

So, Barack’s (a.k.a. Barry’s) childhood years were spent moving through the serpentine and clandestine diplomatic channels of an intelligence front, and he would later be groomed like a Manchurian Candidate by these same CIA men and other powerful players like the Chicago business elite to become president, since these men don’t just appear out of nowhere but are chosen through a prolonged vetting process that takes many years. Here is where it takes a decidedly twisted turn in my view. According to a former classmate of Barry’s when he was attending an elite private school in Honolulu, Hawaii- Obama was known throughout the school among his circle of friends and others associated with the school as being a complete fag. He could even be heard bragging about scoring bags of coke from having had sex with older white men, and this didn’t even faze this former classmate as much as the fact that he was also known as a pathological liar. So, here we have a report (that while doesn’t constitute proof is certainly telling hearsay evidence) of Obama being 1) A Homosexual and 2) A Pathological Liar. The natural question is- “Is there any corroboration to this story?” Based on my research, I would give a categorical “yes”. However, former classmates and close confidants of Barack Obama are hard to come by, as are a lot of mysteries surrounding his past, and I would argue that this opaqueness alone should be cause for concern coming from an individual that proclaims to want greater transparency in government.

One of the researchers that has looked deeply into this murky past is Webster Tarpley, who published an unauthorized biography of Barack Obama. Listen to a little of what he has to say about this man’s history and true character, and you get a much more damning indictment than anything the mainstream media is ever going to give you from their largely lapdog press. According to Tarpley, one of Obama’s mentors at Columbia University was Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was the chairman of the infamous Trilateral Commission under the financial backing of international plutocrat and psychopathic global manipulator…David Rockefeller. It was Brzezinski and the Trilateral Group that put Jimmy Carter into the White House, where he was made the National Security Adviser. And, he was a primary driver of the Afghan war against the Soviets during the 80’s using radical Islamic fundamentalists called the muhajadeen that we now claim are Al-Qaeda terrorists even though they’re a total CIA creation at best. Understand, I don’t care if he’s a mixed race black guy. And, I don’t even care that he’s a homosexual. On this latter point, however, it makes for a sensational choking point for blackmailing this black male…wouldn’t you say? The most publicized outing of Barack Obama came from Larry Sinclair, who convened a National Press Club conference back in 2008 to discuss how he performed fellatio on the then Sen. Obama back in 1999 after he snorted cocaine while Obama smoked crack!

Larry Sinclair

Since Obama was seen smoking crack, he thought it rather disingenuous for Obama to claim that he never did hardcore illicit drugs like cocaine. Of course, the MSM completely trashed Larry Sinclair through a typical character assassination effort, since he had an unrelated warrant. There have always been rumors and stories of congressmen and other high-level officials being kept in check and manipulated from dissenting against powerful interests through so-called “honey traps” that can include pictures showing an official engaged in sex outside his marriage with a prostitute, with someone of the same sex, and even with underage children as documented by the excellent suppressed documentary Conspiracy of Silence that was yanked from being aired because its investigations into pedophilia rings reached all the way to the White House and Capitol Hill. In fact, recently an investigation proved that there are many government employees and high-level bureaucrats working in the halls of the Pentagon, who were trafficking in child pornography to the point that it was thought to be imperiling our national security.

Needless to say, all of this should be “front page” news in a so-called democratic society, but it’s not. Instead, the media are largely enamored of Obama and his phony liberalism. However, ever since the corrupt failures of his banker bailouts during the crash of 2008, the fake bin Laden raid, the intrusive debacle of Obamacare, his continued coverup of the Benghazi raid, and his assault on various constitutional liberties (especially the 2nd Amendment)…we have gotten our “wake up call” as to what Obama’s real domestic agenda really is all about.

Lastly, if Obama is really a closet homosexual, he’d probably hate having to feign interest in his wife, Michelle…right? Obviously! However, this could all be averted if Michelle was really a man! Regardless of what you think of this very telling and quite thoughtful Youtube video that I think makes a cogent case, you have to at least admit that Michelle has very man-ish features. The broad manly shoulders, the bulging biceps, the longer ring finger, the clearly protruding Adam’s apple, what appears to be the outline of her dick in a dress (see picture below), etc. all point to this “she” being a “he”. If this is really a woman, she has to be one of the most masculine First Ladies ever to stroll through the Oval Office. However, on the other hand, if I’m right and Michelle should more properly be called “Michael”, then it explains quite a bit and seems to confirm what Barack’s former classmates and contemporaries have already said about him being a flaming homosexual, habitual drug user, and a pathological liar. However, don’t take my word on it. Judge for yourself by looking closely at the evidence that I’ve presented in the links provided for this article, and you can come to your own informed decision. Suffice to say, there’s a hell of a lot more than meets the eye with the president these days, and, in the case of Barack Obama, I’m sure there’s plenty of people, who would just assume to not even know the truth about his secret life.

Further Reading: The Manufacturing of a President by Wayne Madsen

http://www.lulu.com/shop/wayne-madsen/the-manufacturing-of-a-president/paperback/product-21612385.html;jsessionid=820486A2FE1EED0B9948D8500C7C780D?showPreview=true

Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized Biography by Webster Griffin Tarpley

http://www.amazon.com/Barack-H-Obama-Unauthorized-Biography/dp/0930852915/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403773764&sr=8-1&keywords=Unauthorized+Biography+of+Barack+Obama

 

Michelle Obama has a Dick

 

 

 

 

 


Railroaded: The Trials, Populism, Brutal Honesty, Imprisonment and Redemption of Rep. James Traficant

Traficant on the Congressional Floor

In my previous article, I wrote about reporters, insiders, researchers, and various whistle-blowers of one stripe or another, who paid the ultimate price for attempting to tell us (the American public) the truth about corruption, malfeasance, and coverups in high places. Rest assured, the powers that be (sociopaths and psychopaths that they are) have no qualms about killing someone or even large numbers of people in order to squash a bombshell truth from being released and then predictably calling it an accident or a suicide. However, there are occasions when the figure in question is simply what you could call a nuisance and outspoken “troublemaker” or radical critic of government overreach even within the corridors of power itself. And, when this occurs, there are often less deadly ways of getting rid of them.

So, for instance, if they can’t be bribed, cajoled, or blackmailed by people above them…they might simply be fired and their homes ransacked the way former NSA whistle-blower Thomas Drake was after he protested their unconstitutional domestic spying operations before the Ed Snowden leaks became common knowledge. Or, perhaps they’ll be drug through a long, arduous, and costly legal battle the way former Assistant Secretary of HUD (Housing and Urban Development), Catherine Austin Fitts, was for attempting to audit her department’s fraudulent financial statements. Fortunately, she was able to finally win her case and eventually learn about how departmental agencies such as hers were being used as slush funds for CIA black budget operations…legally!

If you’re in the US Congress, you’re expected to play the game of mindless ineptitude, corporate graft, and other partisan “business as usual” bullshit so indicative of life on Capitol Hill. You’re obviously not supposed to cause too much consternation and problems for the Pentagon, the FBI, the CIA, the IRS, or any other ingrained and entrenched bureaucracy of US imperial empire. However, a few intrepid souls do just that, and that’s when the heat comes down on their heads whether they expect it or not. For Rep. James Traficant, it was perhaps only a matter of time and opportunity as to when the Department of Justice (a misnomer if there ever was one) went after him on bogus, trumped-up charges of bribery, racketeering, and tax evasion until they had him in front of a congressional ethics committee fighting not only for his seat in the House but to remain a free man.

It was a fight that he unfortunately lost, and he was forced to serve 7 years in a federal penitentiary beginning in 2002. However, it’s what led up to his railroading out of the US Congress and imprisonment that interest me and hopefully you, since his case is very instructive in many ways. Interestingly enough, Jim Traficant gained significant notoriety for successfully representing himself in a RICO case where he was accused of taking bribes from the mob that he maintained was part of an investigatory sting operation. As the city’s tough no nonsense Sheriff of Mahoning County, Traficant was popular with his solid working-class constituents, especially when he refused to evict people from their homes after severe economic conditions created a lot home foreclosures. Jim Traficant decided to run for a US congressional seat in the Youngstown district and won. He quickly became a pariah on the Hill for his brash comments often hilariously aimed at his congressional colleagues.

Once, after being trounced on the floor of the House by fellow Congressmen for his style and manner, he walked to the podium and proclaimed- “As far as I’m concerned, you’re all a bunch of political prostitutes!” This caused a scandal that echoed through the halls of the capitol like a donkey having sex with an elephant (which has fascinating political implications all it’s own). The normally sedate House was suddenly aroused sufficiently from its intellectual slumber to stir itself into a combination of confusion as to what exactly he had said and anger over what some had actually heard. When he was corned outside by reporters, one news stringer asked him pointedly, “Tell us how you really feel, Sheriff.” He very sardonically replied, “I’d like to apologize to all the hookers of America for associating them with the US House…” So, you’ve got to the love the guy just for his sharp humorous wit, and it would be often in his career when humor alone would seem to alleviate the seriousness of the charges leveled against him.

Over the years, he would tackle some very thorny and controversial issues with his characteristic bravado, swagger, and brutal honesty. During the Clinton years, he would make a lifelong enemy of Attorney General Janet Reno and the FBI by vehemently criticizing their catastrophic debacle at Waco and Ruby Ridge (as I profiled in an earlier post). Both Ruby Ridge, where the FBI killed Randy Weaver’s wife as she held her infant in the doorway, and Waco, where the Branch Davidian compound was burned to the ground after Bradley tanks shot CS gas into the building that easily ignited, were public relations disasters for the FBI. However, for all their bluster, coverups, corruption, and now mass homicide, very little was done to actually punish the guilty parties responsible and rein in the abuse of the FBI, along with what some saw as heavy handed assaults on the US citizens’ liberty. By being one of the FBI’s staunchest critic to anyone that would listen, Traficant was no doubt “Public Enemy #1” within the US Congress and very likely targeted in a covert effort to entrap him in some kind of scandal.

Targeted- James Traficant

He also went after the hated IRS and their fraudulent wage garnishments, property leins, and home seizures, particularly since their jackboot tactics and audits were ruining peoples’ lives. According to Jim Traficant, the thing that he is most proud of is passing a bill with then Texas Congressman Bill Archer, which puts the burden of proof of tax liability on the IRS rather than on the citizen. This single piece of legislation was able to reduce the number of houses seized by the IRS from 10,073 down to 57 in one year!! Given that the IRS is really the enforcement arm of the Federal Reserve that supplies the Treasury with “notes” that it expects to receive interest on, the US government uses the IRS to collect on the debt that it creates every time it borrows money and then fleeces the public to pay back. As the late, great Aaron Russo once said about IRS (an acronym), “It Really Sucks!” So, anytime anyone in government does something to rein in the IRS besides merely protecting Wall Street crooks in hiding their money in off-shore accounts…I applaud them.

The next potentially grave enemy that Jim Traficant made was with the state of Israel and the very powerful lobby AIPAC (American Israeli Political Affairs Committee). While you might not have ever heard of AIPAC, the truth is that America’s unwavering allegiance, support, and loyalty to Israel in the face of global criticism for their treatment of the Palestinians is no accident. It is the result of powerful lobbies such as AIPAC, Mossad spy infiltration of the US, and other Zionist front groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and B’nai B’rith. One point of major controversy in the already contentious career of Rep. Jim Traficant came when a family approached him and asked that he look into a case that they were fighting on behalf of a man that had been charged with being a prisoner guard at one of the Nazi concentration camps during WWII.

The Israelis claimed that he worked at Treblinka and was known as “Ivan the Terrible”, based on his sadistic enjoyment of torturing the prisoners there. However, the family told Trafficant that this man, who went by the name of John Demjanjuk, was not “Ivan the Terrible” as the Israelis had claimed. According to photos that the family showed Traficant of both Demjanjuk and “Ivan the Terrible”, there was a prominent scar on the neck of the Ukrainian guard but not on Demjanjuk’s. The family of Demjanjuk had told Jim that they approached him last about it because they knew how much the Congress hated him, but they didn’t know where else to turn as everybody else in the House and Senate had turned down their request to look into the case. Traficant was sufficiently convinced of their case that he took the evidence to Tel Aviv and presented it to the Israeli Supreme Court, who finally agreed that Demjanjuk was not the right guy and (to their credit) released him from prison into Traficant’s custody on a plane back to the US. For this act of courage and justice, he was smeared by the press as someone who, to even care about the case, was thought to have “anti-Semitic blood”.

Demjanjuk in Israeli Court

I heard about all this one night while watching C-SPAN back in early 2001 before 9/11 would irrevocably change the world and political landscape. Jim Traficant recounted many stories he had had throughout his colorful career at Cleveland’s City Club, and I’ve still got most of his talk on VHS tape somewhere (see the whole hour long speech archived by C-SPAN in the hyperlink to follow). It’s still a great talk, full of interesting anecdotes, humorous asides, and emotional statements like “What happened to America? What is America? Do people still govern here? I think not. The government is coming after people, and this needs to stop.” Shortly after 9/11, he would be charged in the House with breaking the rules of the Ethics Committee by accepting money through his staffers that the House claimed he was unable to account for. These hearings were also largely televised on C-SPAN, and I recorded all the ones that I could as I knew at the time that they were really the result of what he had been talking about before.

When his case went before a judge in an Ohio criminal court, he wasn’t even allowed to cross examine the so-called witnesses against him that he later found out were pressured by the FBI to give false testimony. He also wasn’t allowed to bring in his own witnesses and evidence that would clearly have exonerated him in the eyes of the jury and was essentially convicted in a kangaroo court, where a grave miscarriage of justice served him into an 7-year prison sentence. However, now that he’s out, he continues to fight the good fight against what he sees is criminal corruption within the White House, court system, FBI, and US Congress among other usual suspects on shows like Greta van Sustern and Alex Jones. And, to top it all off, he even ran for his old congressional seat, which would have been another first. I can see the headlines now- “Ex-Felon James Traficant Wins Old Seat in the House next to Soon to Be Felons”. Now, you know just about the only guy that I would consider voting for. Traficant for President in 2016!

Traficant before Reporters

 

 

 


Martyred in the Name of Truth (A Short List of Para-Political Murders) Part 1

John Lennon We Live in a World

In annals of para-politics, there have been many researchers, journalists, politicians, hackers, and various whistle-blowers of governmental/corporate malfeasance and corruption that have been “suicided” (to use a CIA term). This means that, in the process of uncovering massive corruption, cover ups, or otherwise earth-shaking information, they were murdered by the powers that be (often in a black-ops style hit), and the death was summarily ruled a suicide by the subsequent investigation, which is usually the final cover up of whatever explosive information the victim was planning on revealing.

One could make a very convincing argument that for agencies like the CIA assassination has been perfected through decades of practice so extensively…that making a murder look like a suicide or at the least controlling the investigation into it has become standard operating procedure. After all, there are quite a lot of ways to kill somebody these days and make it look like an accident or suicide. You can be thrown from a high rise building the way biological scientist Frank Olsen or Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal were. You can be given cancer or a heart attack via an injection or poisonous dart the way that Oswald’s killer, Jack Ruby, or even probably musical revolutionary, Bob Marley, were quite likely killed.

Of course, the easiest way to kill someone and make it look like a suicide is simply with a gunshot to the head. The problem is when there’s more than one fatal shot or when the gun that’s claimed to be the one used during the suicide doesn’t even have any fingerprints from the victim on it and/or the ballistics don’t match as in the notoriously suspicious Vince Foster case. And, therein lies the rub (if you’ll pardon the rather mafia-like pun). For the people below, these mysterious coincidences pile up one on top of another, quite often to the point that it becomes damn near impossible to deny that they weren’t murdered for what they were about to reveal. After all, what they had already revealed was pretty juicy to the erstwhile conspiracy researcher and intolerable to the power elite.

Taken individually, they mean next to nothing…just another person dead in the obituary column of life’s long procession line to the grave. However, looked at not only in context but also the frequency at which these strange deaths invariably occur, these murders that are ruled a suicide or an accident become something that suggests something far more sinister than one lone death ever could. They serve to remind us that the corrupt architects of power are afraid of being challenged, pursued, and exposed for what they are. Their real power is in manipulating and hypnotizing the public into believing that they are powerless to challenge their authority, which resides solely in the illusionary perception of the masses. And, when their power is unmasked, challenged, or otherwise usurped by an intrepid individual that attempts to wrest power away from the evil and greedy few in order to distribute it more equitably among the masses, this brotherhood of darkness, in all its many guises, isn’t against using bribery, treachery, threats of violence, and even murder itself to achieve their ends as you’ll soon see.

But, when enough people stand up to this monster (especially the monster of fear that resides in all of us) and confronts these people head on, they will inevitably be vanquished, since we far outnumber them and most of their power exists in the fear-based victim mentality our own minds besides. We still must not forget that these people have no moral inhibitions against killing as many people as it takes to preserve their rank and power. So, while compassion and conscience are what distinguish “us” from “them” quite often, we naturally shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking these people are wholly like ourselves, insofar as they often lack those attributes that make them feel empathy for their fellow human beings.

Nothing should be construed here as prima facie evidence, as even here there are probable murders that don’t warrant a conspiracy to explain them (as in the case of Eugene Mallove). And, neither can it always be said that every victim is a hero, insofar as they aren’t always savory characters themselves (as the case of Roberto Calvi clearly shows). However, by and large, the following list of people are worthy of our admiration, respect, and love as those, who paid the ultimate sacrifice with their lives so that “we the people” might live more conscious, rewarding, and healthy lives as a result of their courageous endeavors. What follows represents a tiny list of some of the more well-known mysterious deaths of truth-seekers, who met with an untimely end at the hands of various agencies usually in order silence their potent message of truth. May their memory serve to remind us of this as we ponder their legacy. And, in no particular order, they are:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Under Siege with the Bundy’s and the BLM: Shades of Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the Fight Against Federal Fascism of the 1990s

That Which is Tyranny by Jefferson

The latest standoff between federal agents of the Bureau of Land and Management (BLM) and Nevada cattle rancher, Cliven Bundy, is coming to a head around the same time that another standoff ended in catastrophe and bloodshed some 21 years ago on April 19th. I’m speaking of course of the splinter group of Seventh Day Adventists, known as the Branch Davidians, whose compound was raided by the ATF and FBI back in 1993 in what would end in fiery tragedy for some 76 members of the church including 23 children. Thanks to the tireless work of many investigators into the Waco tragedy…we now know that the CS gas that was shot into the compound by the Bradley tanks was highly flammable, and this (of and to itself) could have started the massive fire once it was exposed to any kerosine lamps, pilot lights, or candles inside the building.

However, there is also evidence that the FBI actually started the fire by using flash grenades in multiple parts of the compound. While this may appear to be somewhat controversial, based on what we know about the provable corruption, coverups, and criminal acts of the FBI…this should come as no surprise as I’ll clearly show. So, for instance, as the Waco compound was burning to the ground, Branch Davidians were being shot at from the back of the building by what were later determined to be Special Forces snipers, including members of the elite Delta Force. How do we know this? We know that there were shots being fired at the back of the compound as it was going up in flames because of the analysis of the FLEER video, which shows heat signatures of what can only be rifle muzzle flashes.

Waco Compound Burns

Also, it is worth noting that a subsequent investigation by the Texas Rangers on the scene showed bullet holes entering a double door in the back, but this door was seized and promptly “lost” by the FBI. Again, this is not a “conspiracy theory” but is historical fact. One of the lead investigators of the Texas Rangers at Waco was Joaquin Jackson, who later retired in disgust over the whole sordid affair. However, don’t expect the media to tell you what really transpired at Waco. There are tantalizing clues, however, if you know how and where to look.

One such clue that I came across recently was Dick Morris, who told Sean Hannity of FOX that Janet Reno blackmailed Bill Clinton to giving her a 2nd term as Attorney General or else she would “tell the truth  about Waco”. What did she know about Waco besides the fact that she and the FBI had a lot of innocent blood on their hands? The only thing that makes any sense is that Bill (and possibly Hillary) Clinton also knew and probably even ordered the compound be torched on the 51st day of the siege. Unfortunately, Morris doesn’t clarify just what Reno knew, and we’re left with a juicy clue and nothing more.

ATF Goon Squad

It’s instructive that we begin with the Clinton presidency, though, since that’s when we saw a great rise in governmental over-reach of federal power against individual citizens, who were targeted merely for being 2nd Amendment advocates, outspoken about federal centralization of power, or just plain “different” enough to draw the attention and ire of the Feds. This took on an almost maniacal and feverish pitch when the Oklahoma City bombing occurred in 1995 and was quickly blamed on so-called disenfranchised anti-governmental militia types as Timothy McVeigh was claimed to have been.

However, anyone that has studied the Oklahoma City bombing with any real depth can see that the building’s debris was blown out from the inside rather than from the outside inward with a Rider truck filled with a 1,200 lb. fertilizer bomb. There are several affidavits that attest to there being at least two other bombs “inside” the the building that day, including one by Tiffany Bible who swore that she spoke with an ATF agent that told her the Murrah building was destroyed because of retaliation for the Waco debacle. Many of the records of the Waco investigation were being housed in the Murrah building when the lead investigator moved them to Oklahoma City. However, none of the ATF personnel were in the building at the time, which strikes me as very oddly convenient. Meanwhile, the initial reports coming out of the local media describe two unexploded bombs being taken out from inside the building. So, there’s a lot more to the story than what we’ve been told, and I encourage you all to go watch the excellent documentary film “A Noble Lie” should you want to learn just what that other stuff is.

Suffice to say, McVeigh (who asked directions on how to get to the building beforehand) was clearly nothing more than a FBI/ATF stooge patsy that took the fall in order to demonize the “patriot movement” and other champions of the constitution as well as states’ rights over federal power. So, he was blamed for the thing, and Bill Clinton was able to pass the “Anti-Terrorist Act” in 1996.

Another gut-wrenching story of one man’s courageous fight against encroachments from the federal goon squad agents of the ATF and FBI occurred in the Ruby Ridge case of the Randy Weaver family of Idaho. Here again, federal agents were using an informant to entrap Randy in an “illegal weapons” charge and attempting to drag him into court over a sawed-off shotgun. They staked out his property, harassed his children (just as the BLM has with the Bundy’s), and even shot the family dog. Unfortunately, after they shot the dog, Randy’s 14-year-old son Sammy was killed, when he exchanged fire with the federal agent that killed his beloved pet.

Randy Weaver

Idaho ( much like Montana) was known to have stalwart ranchers and farmers, who distrusted their corrupt government and clearly had a “Don’t Tread on Me” attitude. That’s why the Weaver family had their community’s support from the beginning of their ordeal to the horribly tragic conclusion, when Randy Weaver’s wife was shot between the eyes by an FBI sniper as she held her infant in the doorway of their house. Even the corrupt FBI agent had to admit his heinous crime in this case and settle with Randy for $3.1 million in a subsequent lawsuit that he filed against them for the wrongful death of his wife.

However, I don’t care how much you’re able to get in a lawsuit after the fact…nothing, absolutely nothing can ever make up for losing your wife and one of your children! These are the kinds of crimes of the state that were infuriating a small but growing handful of mostly rural people in the US during the 1990s, who were dismissed by the mainstream media as crazy “conspiracy theorist”  domestic terrorists.

At one point, the infamous inventor of the “magic bullet theory” Warren Commission member, Arlen Specter, chaired a congressional hearing about the rise of militia groups in America that had grown in response to tragedies like Waco and Ruby Ridge. You can tell that he’s clearly incredulous to the outcry and claims being made by the various militia men, concerned patriots, and constitutional attorneys on the video. However, since he was a part of the coverup of the JFK assassination, this should come as no surprise. One surmises that he (along with the US congress, White House, and various alphabet soup agencies) were looking at these courageous men as “threats” to the attempt being made to slowly turn this country into a slavish, technocratic, corporate-socialist police state, which is exactly what happened and accelerated into hyper-drive post 9/11.

Under Siege

One must realize that with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall…the Military-Industrial-Complex had to find a “new enemy” to keep the money flowing into their coffers, and this meant that, even if a huge existential threat and enemy was imaginary, the important thing for the US hegemonic war machine was to have something to be able to justify their enormous Pentagon and National Security State budgets. That’s why “terrorism” was chosen as the new “existential” enemy that can and would not ever be eliminated. After all, terrorism is a strategy of fighting (largely poorly armed people against standing armies) and therefore it’s not even a legitimate external enemy as such. Also, when big powerful countries like the US invade a smaller country like Iraq (as it did in 2003) under false pretenses, there is quite naturally going to be a violent backlash from the occupied people of that country attempting to throw off the yoke of foreign domination and control. So, all the US does is create legions of terrorists around the world every time it or its Israeli client state drops a bomb or fires a missile into the dwellings of “suspected” terrorists, who just as often as not end up being innocent men, women, and children that we derisively label “collateral damage”.

Now, let’s get back to Cliven Bundy and his fight against the BLM. While it’s fairly obvious that he was pushing his luck in not paying the grazing fees for his cattle since 1993, he contends that it is “public land”, and he has more of a right to it than any federal agency. Of course, the idea of public land belonging to the public is just that…an idea and largely a false one at that. The state of Nevada, in particular, is almost all government-owned land. And, even if you think you own a piece of property, tell me this- “Why (assuming that you own it) would you need to pay property taxes on it year in and year out?” What happens when you refuse to support the psychiatric public school system and decide that you’re not going to pay? Obviously, you’re going to lose what was never really yours to begin with.

However, let’s concede that Mr. Bundy does in fact have the right to the land, since he’s the one that lives there and raises his cattle on that land. This hearkens back to the days of the great migration westward when pioneers were allowed to lay claim to a piece of real estate so long as they built a home there, tilled the soil, or raised animals on the land. And, in that respect, yes Cliven Bundy certainly does have (under those settler’s conditions) more of a right to the land than a third party governmental agency, whose dubious role in the desert Southwest has been far less than stellar. The BLM, to my mind, are nothing more than a bureaucratically meddlesome bunch of control freaks, who showed their true colors in the wild horses scandal that has been ongoing now.

One certainly has to wonder whether or not the reasons for the harassment under the approval of Clark County’s sheriff and Sen. Harry Reid is really nothing more than a land grab situation, where the Bundy ranch just so happens to sit on what some oil and gas company want to frack or a mining company wants to dig. After all, one of the largest gold mining companies in the world, Barrick, have several major operations in Nevada. And, according to investigative journalist, Greg Palast, they were able to practically steal the rights to the largest known deposits of gold in this country for a mere $10,000 and turn it into $10,000,000,000 in pure profit. That’s $10 billion dollars that went to a Canadian company and was given a big assist by George H.W. Bush Sr., who just so happened to be given a multi-million dollar consulting job after he left the White House. That’s big money, people, and I can guarantee that if the Bundy’s are sitting on what some might think is even a fraction of this kind of wealth…I wouldn’t doubt it when Harry Reid says- “It’s not over.” Interestingly enough, one of Senator Reid’s largest campaign contributors over the years has been a mining company called Newmont that are involved in a joint venture with Barrick in Nevada.

 

Nevada Rancher And Federal Gov't Face Off Over Land Use Battle