Sunday 30 August 2015

Gen. Hamid Gul

UPI interview with Hamid Gul

(Editor's note: After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, UPI's Arnaud de Borchgrave had an exclusive interview with former Pakistani Gen. Hamid Gul. In light of the role Gul is given in the recently released secret U.S. military documents, UPI republishes de Borchgrave's interview with Gul. The item was originally published Sept. 26, 2001.)
--
(EXCLUSIVE)
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Sept. 26 (UPI) -- The retired Pakistani general who is closest to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden contends the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington were the work of renegade U.S. Air Force elements working with the Israelis. Gen. Hamid Gul led Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence during the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Gul serves as an adviser to Pakistan's extremist religious political parties, which oppose their government's decision to support the United States in any action against Afghanistan's Taliban regime. Gul contends bin Laden had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, saying instead that they were the work of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service -- a version of events that has been endorsed by Islamic fundamentalist clerics and is widely accepted by Muslims throughout the Arab world.
Here is the transcript of the exclusive interview Gul gave to Arnaud de Borchgrave, United Press International editor at large:
--
De Borchgrave: So who did Black Sept. 11?
Gul: Mossad and its accomplices. The U.S. spends $40 billion a year on its 11 intelligence agencies. That's $400 billion in 10 years. Yet the Bush Administration says it was taken by surprise. I don't believe it. Within 10 minutes of the second twin tower being hit in the World Trade Center ... CNN said Osama bin Laden had done it. That was a planned piece of disinformation by the real perpetrators. It created an instant mindset and put public opinion into a trance, which prevented even intelligent people from thinking for themselves.
--
Q: So you're already convinced bin Laden didn't do it?
A: I know bin Laden and his associates. I've been with them here, in Europe and the Middle East. They are graduates of the best universities and are highly intelligent with impressive degrees and speak impeccable English. These are people who have rediscovered fundamental Islamic values. Many come from the Gulf countries where ruling royal families have generated hatred by the way they flout divine law, wasting billions on gratifying their whims, jetting around in large private jets by themselves, and sailing the Mediterranean in big private boats for weeks on end. Osama's best recruits come from feudal areas that are U.S. protectorates and where millions of poor people are seeking human dignity. I have even visited a Christian convent school in Murree, 60 miles from here, where my 13-year-old daughter is studying. The young girls there have told me Osama is their hero. Osama's followers identify with Mujahideen freedom fighters wherever they are defending Islam and its values.
--
Q: So what makes you think Osama wasn't behind Sept. 11?
A: From a cave inside a mountain or a peasant's hovel? Let's be serious. Osama inspires countless millions by standing up for Islam against American and Israeli imperialism. He doesn't have the means for such a sophisticated operation.
--
Q: Why Mossad?
A: Mossad and its American associates are the obvious culprits. Who benefits from the crime? The attacks against the twin towers started at 8:45 a.m. and four flights are diverted from their assigned air space and no air traffic controller sounds the alarm. And no Air Force jets scramble until 10 a.m. That also smacks of a small scale Air Force rebellion, a coup against the Pentagon perhaps? Radars are jammed, transponders fail. No IFF -- friend or foe identification -- challenge. In Pakistan, if there is no response to IFF, jets are instantly scrambled and the aircraft is shot down with no further questions asked. This was clearly an inside job. Bush was afraid and rushed to the shelter of a nuclear bunker. He clearly feared a nuclear situation. Who could that have been? Will that also be hushed up in the investigation, like the Warren report after the Kennedy assassination?
--
Q: At this point, someone might be asking what you've been smoking. What is Israel's interest in such a monstrous plot, which, of course, no one believes except Islamist extremists who concocted this piece of disinformation in the first place, presumably to detract from the real culprits?
A: Jews never agreed to Bush 41 (George H.W. Bush, the 41st president) or 43 (his son George W. Bush, the 43rd president). They made sure Bush senior didn't get a second term. His land-for-peace pressure in Palestine didn't suit Israel. They were also against the young Bush because he was considered too close to oil interests and the Gulf countries. Bush senior and Jim Baker had raised $150 million for Bush junior, much of it from Mideast sources or their American go-betweens. Bush 41 and Baker, as private citizens, had also facilitated the new strategic relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iran. I have this from sources in both countries. So clearly the prospect of a Bush 43 was a potential danger to Israel.
Jews were stunned by the way Bush stole the election in Florida. They had put big money on Al Gore. Israel has given its imperialist guardian parent opportunities to turn disaster into a pretext for imposing an all-encompassing military, political and economic agenda to further the cause of global capitalism. While Colin Powell is cautious and others are reckless and want to make up for their failure to defeat Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War 10 years ago, the global agenda is the same.
Israel knows it has a short shelf-life before it is overwhelmed by demographics. It is a state that was born in terrorism that terrorized Palestinians into the exile of refugee camps, where they have now subsisted in squalid refugee camps, and is now very much afraid of Pakistan's nuclear capability.
Israel has now handed the Bush family the opportunity it has been waiting for to consolidate America's imperial grip on the Gulf and acquire control of the Caspian basin by extending its military presence in Central Asia. Bush conveniently overlooks -- or is not told -- the fact that Islamic fundamentalists got their big boost in the modern age as CIA assets in the covert campaign I was also involved with to force the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Bush senior was vice president during that entire campaign. And no sooner did he become president on Jan. 20, 1989, than he summoned an inter-agency intelligence meeting and issued an order, among several others, to clip the wings of ISI (Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence) that had been coordinating the entire operation in Afghanistan. I know this firsthand as I was DGISI at the time (director general, ISI).
--
Q: So how do you read U.S. strategy in Pakistan?
A: The destabilization of Pakistan is part of the U.S. plan because it is a Muslim nuclear state. The U.S. wants to isolate Pakistan from China as part of its containment policy. President Nixon's book "The Real War" said China would be the superpower of the 21st Century. The U.S. is also creating hostility between Pakistan and Afghanistan, two Muslim states to reverse the perception that the Islamic world now has its own nuclear weapons. Bush 43 doesn't realize he is being manipulated by people who understand geopolitics. He is not leading but being led. All he can do is think in terms of the wanted-dead-or-alive culture, which is how Hollywood conditions the masses to think and act.
All summer long we heard about America's shrinking surplus and that the Pentagon would not have sufficient funds to modernize for the 21st century. And now, all of a sudden, the Pentagon can get what it wants without any Democratic Party opposition. How very convenient! Even your cherished civil liberties can now be abridged with impunity to protect the expansion of the hegemony of transnational capitalism. There is now a new excuse to crush anti-globalization protests.
Bush 43 follows Bush 41. Iraq was baited into the Kuwaiti trap when the U.S. told Saddam it was not interested in his inter-Arab squabbles. Two days later, he moved into Kuwait, which was an Iraqi province anyway before the British Empire decreed otherwise. Roosevelt baited the Pearl Harbor trap for the Japanese empire, which provided the pretext for entering World War II. And now the Israelis have given the U.S. the pretext for further expansion into an area that will be critical in the next 25 years - the Caspian basin.
--
Q: Were you a fundamentalist in the days of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan when you worked closely with the CIA?
A: Not as much as I am today.
--

Q: What turned you against America?

A: Betrayals and broken promises and what was done to my army career.

--
Q: And what was that?

A: President Ishaq Khan, who succeeded Zia ul-Haq after his plane was blown out of the sky, wanted to appoint me chief of staff, the highest position in the Pakistani army. The U.S., which by then had clipped ISI's wings, also blocked my promotion by informing the president I was unacceptable. So I was moved to a corps commander position. As ISI director, I held the whole Mujahideen movement in the palm of my hands. We were all pro-American. But then America left us in the lurch and everything went to pieces, including Afghanistan.

The U.S. pushed for a broad-based Afghan government of seven factions and then waved goodbye. Even in the best of democracies, a broad-based coalition does not work. So we quickly had seven jokers in Kabul interested in only one thing - jockeying for power. The gunplay quickly followed, which led to the creation of Taliban, the students of the original Mujahideen, who decided to put an end to it.

--

Q: What happened to the 1,000 shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles that were supplied by president Reagan in 1986 and 87 to the Mujahideen, and that literally grounded the Soviet air force?

A: After the Soviets pulled out, the CIA allocated $60 million to try to buy them back. This just drove the black market price up for one Stinger from $100,000 to $300,000. The Taliban still have about 250 of them for the kind of situation they face today against U.S. aircraft.

--

Q: Is the U.S. now your enemy?

A: Is the U.S. national interest in contradiction with the Muslim world? The U.S. needs oil, as do its European allies. You have between 6 and 8 million American Muslims and their ranks are growing. About the same number in Europe. Israel aside, we are America's natural allies. Prof. Sam Huntington in his "Clash of Civilizations" puts Confucius and Judeo-Christians in one corner, and us n the other. His prescription is wrong but is being adopted by Bush 43 who has now put 60 countries on his hit list. This is the diabolical school that wants to launch an anti-Muslim "crusade." Muslims understood what Bush meant when he used that word.
We need a meeting, not a clash, of civilizations. We are on the brink of disaster. It is time to pull back from the brink and reassess before we blow ourselves up. The purpose of Islam is service to humanity. The time for like-minded people to have a meeting of the minds is now.
--

Q: But you are against democracy, so how can there be a meeting of the minds?

A: Democracy does not work. Politicians are constantly thinking of their next election, not the public good, which means, at best, constantly shading the truth to hide it from their constituents. Their pronouncements are laced with lies and the voters are lulled or gulled into believing utter nonsense. The Koran says call a spade a spade. It is the supreme law and tells right from wrong. There is no notion of "my country right or wrong" under divine law. The creator's will predominates. All if subservient to Allah's will and adherence to a set of basic, fundamental values.
--

Q: So what kind of a system are you advocating?

A: The world needs a post-modern state system. Right now, the nation-state and round the clock satellite TV lead people to imitate America's way of life. Which is mathematically impossible. You have 4 percent of the world's population consuming 32 percent of the world's resources. The creator through Prophet Mohammed said equal distribution. Capitalism is the negation of the creator's will. It leads to imperialism and unilateralism.
--

Q: So what does this post-modern state system look like?

A: A global village under divine order, or we will have global bloodshed until good triumphs over evil. Islam encapsulates all the principal religions and what was handed down 1,400 years ago was the normal evolutionary sequel to Judaism and Christianity. The prophet's last sermon was a universal document of human rights for everyone that surpasses everything that came since, including America's declaration of independence and the U.N. Charter of universal rights. If you superimpose true secular values on true Islamic values, there is no difference. So surely divine law should supersede man-made law. Islam is egalitarian, tolerant and progressive. It is the wave of the future.

--

Q: Marxism also believed that the nation-state would eventually wither away.

A: Socialism jumped the rails when it was co-opted by the imperialist Soviet state. Islam believes in dynamism, Christianity stands for static statism. The pope in all his pronouncements has expressed a dogmatic attachment to the status quo. Why are so many black Americans converting to Islam? Because they are looking for true equality which they cannot find under capitalism. Allah has no gender, neither male nor female. Islam has no indirect taxation in an interest-free economy. Usury was a Jewish concept.

--

Q: Is Iran your model?

A: There isn't a single true Islamic state in the world today. Iran has moved forward from its 1979 revolution, but I am not sure whether it's the right direction.

--

Q: And Taliban?

A: They represent Islam in its purest form so far. It's a clean sheet. And they were also moving in the right direction when this crisis was cooked up by the U.S. Until Sept. 11, they had perfect law and order with no formal police force, only traffic cops without sidearms. Now, in less than two weeks, they have mobilized some 300,000 volunteers to fight American and British invaders if they come.

--

Q: And you reaction to U.S. demands on Pakistan?

A: If Pakistan gives the U.S. base rights we will have a national upheaval. And if the U.S. attacks Afghanistan, there will be a call -- a fatwa -- for a general jihad. All borders will then disappear and it will be a no-holds-barred Islamic uprising against Israel and American imperialism. Pakistan will be engulfed in the firestorm. So I can only hope that cooler heads will prevail in Washington.
--
Q: What about the other U.S. demands?

A: Overflight rights are meaningless since the U.S. violates air space daily all over the world. As for intelligence sharing with ISI, you can't even catch your own terrorists. And what ISI gives you will be of marginal value anyway.
--
Q: President (Pervez) Musharraf has made strong statements supporting the U.S.

A: He was my student in the army. He is a good man, but he doesn't understand Islam. The army will never fight the masses. If push comes to shove, Musharraf will say no to the Americans rather than turn against the people. He is not just facing a handful of angry people. By his own admission, it's 10 percent to 15 percent of the population, or at least 10 million people willing to fight. For openers, they would close the port of Karachi. A country cannot breathe without lungs.
--
Q: Back to Osama's terrorist network. Who was behind the bombing of the U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya?

A: Mossad is strong in both countries. Remember the Israeli operation to free hostages in Entebbe (Uganda)? Both Kenya and Tanzania were part of the logistical tail. A so-called associate of Osama was framed at Karachi airport. The incidents took place on Aug. 8, 1999, and on the 10th a short, clean-shaven man disembarks at Karachi airport and presents the passport of a bearded man. Not your passport, he was told. He then tries to bribe the clerk with 200 rupees. A ludicrously small sum given the circumstances. The clerk says no and turns him in and he starts singing right away. Not plausible. Osama has sworn to me on the Koran it was not him and he is truthful to a fault. Pious Muslims do not kill innocent civilians who included many Muslim victims. The passport must have been switched while the man was asleep on the plane in what has all the earmarks of a Mossad operation. For 10 years, the Mujahideen fought the Soviets in Afghanistan and not a single Soviet embassy was touched anywhere in the world. So this could not have been Osama's followers.
--
Q: What if bin Laden has been lying to you and is guilty. Is that inconceivable?

A: If Taliban are given irrefutable evidence of his guilt, I am in favor of a fair trial. In America, one is entitled to a jury of peers. But he has no American peers. The Taliban would not object, in the event of a prima face case, to an international Islamic court meeting in The Hague. They would turn extradite Osama to the Netherlands.
Related UPI Stories

Khordokovsky


The Oligarchs and the West

In the late 1980s, under Gorbachev, Generals Bobkov and Kondaurov sponsored several bright young “Russian’ entrepreneurs, and arranged for them to work with a group of consultants out of Switzerland know as Riggs-Valmet. 

This was the very same Riggs operation set up by George Bush in 1988 under the watchful eye of his brother and former National Security Council director. The names of these first generation oligarchs were :

Mikhail Khordokovsky
Alexander Konanykhine
Boris Berezovsky (Berezovskii)
Roman Abramovich

Alexander Konanykhine would be responsible for up to half of the campaign financing for an unknown Russian Congressman from the remote regions of Russia known as Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin would win the election and become President of Russia. Under KGB protection, Konanykhine opened a series of banks used for moving Russian money out of Russia, most notably the Russian Exchange Bank, the European Union Bank and his partnership with Mikhail Khordokovsky in the Bank Menatep. The European Union Bank was actually a money laundering operation in Antigua run as an internet bank. The computers used to operate the bank were traced to Val Kulkov, an associate of Konanykhine, at Suite 347, 1429 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC. The internet address for the bank belonged to a block of Internet addresses owned by a company called Aegis. Thayer Equity Investors, of 1445 Pennsylvania Avenue, which controlled Aegis at the time, is located on the third floor of the same building. Thayer Equity’s address was also used at one time by the Hohlt Group, which now resides at 1433 Pennsylvania Avenue, virtually right down the hallway. Interest is taken in these groups, because the men who control them are major financial power brokers of the U.S. Republican Party: Frederick Malek (Thayer Equity ) and Richard Hohlt (the Hohlt Group). Hohlt is a reported associate of Richard Armitage. Oligarch Mikhail Khordokovsky would be responsible for setting up the primary financial organization for taking over Russian oil and gas industries, as well as moving money out of the country: Bank Menatep. Over time, Riggs would reduce its control of Bank Menatep from 51% to a public 4%, although total ownership of the institution remains cloaked by offshore privacy allowances. 

Khordokovsky’s dealings would also involve a takeover of the gas industry: Gazprom, and with it AEB, which had been originally controlled by Palmer and Lauder.


Mikhail Khodorkovsky on life after prison and Russia after Putin

Former imprisoned Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

He was Russia’s richest man, and then its most high-profile prisoner. Now, a year after Vladimir Putin pardoned him and released him from jail, Mikhail Khodorkovsky is living in Zurich and plotting the downfall of the man who put him behind bars for a decade.

“I will work to make sure the regime in Russia changes,” he says. “The question is: am I prepared to go all the way? And yes, I am prepared to go all the way.”

The Guardian’s meeting with Khodorkovsky takes place in a handsome but functional five-story building in central Zurich which serves as his office. He appears with a big pair of headphones round his neck and a black rucksack over his shoulders. The top-floor views of the River Limmat and the spires of central Zurich are a far cry from what he had to get used to for a decade.

“When I look back now, I can’t believe that a year ago I was in [prison] and didn’t think I’d ever be set free,” he says, pausing to eat slices of dried banana from a bowl on the table. “I thought there would be a third case.”

Putin announced that he planned to free Khodorkovsky on the sidelines of his marathon pre-Christmas press conference last December. It came as a surprise: there had been murmurings that a third criminal case was being prepared in order to keep the former oligarch locked up. But, beneath a cloak of secrecy, Khodorkovsky was whisked from his prison cell that night and put on a plane to St Petersburg, where he switched planes on the tarmac to a waiting aircraft that flew him to Berlin.

Khodorkovksy says he promised Putin three things in a handwritten letter asking to be freed so he could see his mother, who was terminally ill: that he would leave Russia to spend time with his family, would stay away from politics, and would not attempt to win back his shares in Yukos – his dismantled oil company – or get involved in any court cases.

Until late in the summer, when his mother died, he was indeed silent, but now he has set up a foundation called Open Russia and has been making political statements.

“It’s true I don’t want to get involved in politics,” he claims. “I want to support people who share my values, and that’s what I’m doing. In Russia, they call that politics, OK, well fine,” he says. He claims that by “changing the regime” he does not necessarily mean Putin – in the unlikely event that Putin decided tomorrow he wanted to completely change his style of rule, Khodorkovsky says he would be happy to work with him. He also insists he personally has no burning desire to be president: “I can’t really say that I am really interested in doing that, but if people ask me, then yeah, OK, I’m ready.”

22 Dec 2013, Berlin, Germany. Khodorkovsky holds a press conference at the Berlin Wall Museum, two days after he received a pardon from prison.
22 Dec 2013, Berlin, Germany. Khodorkovsky holds a press conference at the Berlin Wall Museum, two days after he received a pardon from prison. Photograph: Kay Nietfeld/DPA/Corbis

But he surely knows that suggesting, however obliquely, that he might like to be president is not going to go down well with Putin. The last time Khodorkovsky dabbled in politics, he was arrested and spent the next 10 years in prison. While there is no doubt that most of the people who got rich in 1990s Russia committed a multitude of sins, there was also little doubt that the proceedings against Khodorkovsky were political. Is he really ready to take on the Kremlin again?

His office in Zurich is just a few blocks from the house where Vladimir Lenin lived for a year until April 1917. The Bolsheviks at the time were a marginal group with little support in Russia, and Lenin’s pontificating from Switzerland seemed something of an irrelevance. Within a few months of being dispatched to Russia by train, however, Lenin had deposed the provisional government and become the new leader of Russia.

In modern times, however, the character with most parallels to Khodorkovsky is Boris Berezovsky. Both men grew fabulously wealthy through the dubious and unjust privatisation process in the 1990s, and both were close to the Kremlin. Berezovsky, who was Putin’s political mentor, fell out with his protégé and fled to London, where he died in an apparent suicide in 2013.

“To turn into someone like Berezovsky, as well as the physical circumstances you also need to have the internal predisposition to this kind of situation. He was a real opportunist, whereas I am more of a pragmatist. I am used to running businesses. I am used to setting realistic goals and achieving them. Sometimes they are major goals, sometimes minor ones, and sometimes achieving them takes longer than I thought. But they are always pragmatic goals, pragmatic steps and carefully planned movement towards the goal.”

To this end, Khodorkovsky says he spent most of his time in prison thinking about what Russia should look like after Putin.

“It was very difficult over 10 years to take part in all these processes with predetermined results, in all these little insults, which happened later on in the camps. So I gave myself intellectual exercises, and set to work thinking about what mechanism there should be for the transition period. Where we need to get to is clear enough: a state governed by the rule of law. Full stop.”

A rally of Khodorkovsky's supporters in St Petersburg, Russia, on 12 December 2010.
A rally of his Khodorkovsky’s supporters in St Petersburg, Russia, on 12 December 2010. Photograph: Anatoly Maltsev/EPA

On the specifics, however, he is vague. How a new government would come into place – through revolution or negotiation – he declines to say. Whether there should be criminal prosecution for current regime figures, he also says should be decided later.

“We will discuss this a lot, we have time. I think there will be a lot of discussion.”

He talks about a transition period of two or three years in which he would be prepared to be president, but again, the mechanics of this are vague.

Even in sleepy Zurich, the Kremlin is never far away. The Russian special services make it clear they are monitoring Khodorkovsky’s communications, he says: if he asks someone to take a document to Moscow, that person will stopped at customs and subjected to a search. At his public events, there are often uninvited guests.

“You can tell them by the questions. Sometimes they introduce themselves, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes the local guys tell me: ‘Ah, your lot have come again’. They know everyone here, it’s a small country.”

He is not visibly followed, he says, but is aware of the risks of vocal opposition: “I understand perfectly well that if Putin gives the order to have me removed, I will be removed. What else is there to say? But given I’m his personal opponent, it would be a very public gesture. I don’t know how much that would stop him, when you think about what has happened in Ukraine. But let’s hope that some kind of rules of the game remain in force.”

Khodorkovsky speaks with quiet determination, but also a studied indifference. He says he has neither the time, nor the desire to continue his prison diaries, and insists he has no dreams, no flashbacks to his time in jail. “I’m completely calm. It happened, so, whatever. Time to move on.”

It is nice to eat good food, he says, but insists he was not that bothered by prison fare. “I’m a pretty easy-going person. Whatever you feed me, I’m fine. So I didn’t really suffer from prison food, although really you could only call it ‘food’ in the sense that it had calories in it.”

As for things which surprised him when he emerged from the electronics-free vacuum that is Russian prison, Khodorkovsky says most things he understood, but after a decade locked up, the power of social media had been the biggest shock.

“I read 200 pages a day, so I had a theoretical understanding of everything that was happening, even of iPhones. The phenomenon of social media came as a surprise to me, though. I knew that these things exists, but to understand the influence it has had on humankind, you have to really feel that.”

He claims that one advantage he has gained from his time in prison is patience.

“Prison taught me that time does not have as much significance as we think. Just because something didn’t happen today doesn’t mean it won’t happen tomorrow,” he says. “There is no rush. Ten years is not a long time. For me, 2024 is not a long time away. There is a plan for these years. And if everything will happen the right way, I will implement it.”


Spanish Imperialism


Saturday 29 August 2015

The Manic Depression of Buzz Aldrin


Freemasonry and Pirates


THE MYSTERY OF MITHRA
by Harry Kenison M.M.
The Scottish Rite's New Age Magazine
April 1961 

piratesdance
"MITHRAISM is of significant importance to Masons, for this early mystery religion contains much that is symbolic of Masonry, and it is quite possible that Mithraism has been a contributing factor to several facets of Masonic wisdom
Mithra, the angel of god or heavenly light, as he was known in both the Vedas of India and old Persian documents, was also a war-like and conquering deity. He was special guardian of the "Great Kings," whom they involved prior to battle and to whom they bound themselves by strong oaths.

Mithraism expanded with the conquests of the Persian armies, and as the mighty Persian war machine spread victoriously through Syria, Chaldea, Galatia, and Asia Minor, the fame and influence of Mithra grew proportionately, Even after the defeat of Darius, the famed Persian ruler and general, Mithraism gained in popular acceptance in opposition to the Hellenizing culture of the Greeks.

Mithra was not too highly regarded or accepted in Greece. This lack of popularity was primarily based on the antipathy of the Greeks for the Persians as the result of early and well-remembered wars. This antipathy, however, was restricted almost exclusively to Greece, for the domain of Mithra by the beginning of the Christian era extended from the Indus River in the east to the Black Sea on the west and north. It was widely accepted in the plateau countries of Asia Minor, and came to be recognized by the Romans in the land of Paul's birth as the religion of the Cilician pirates.

The Roman, not being of the temperament to countenance for long the bold effrontery of the Cilician pirates, made short work of them, but the cult of Mithra was infectious, and the prisoners and slaves taken by the Romans quickly introduced the cult to the capital city. Thus, Mithraism, which was not widely acknowledged outside the Orient during the Hellenic period, had by about the beginning of the second century become known throughout all Italy. The gospel of Mithra was well-established in the city of Rome by the time Paul of Tarsus arrived there.

At approximately this same time there was a general acceptance of Mithra by the army, and homage was paid him by the soldiers of the Third Legion. Contact with those in the Roman provinces throughout Asia Minor had further introduced Mithraism to both Roman citizens and soldiers alike.

It was the mysteries of Dionysos that held an attraction for women at this time, largely because the ceremonies of Mithra were restricted to men. The cult of Mithra contained a special interest for Roman soldiers, for Mithra himself had been for centuries a god of battle, and his was a strong masculine cult appealing to reverential and superstitious soldiers. The soldiers required an assurance of divine protection and courage in their constant contact with the foe. As the legions advanced, so did Mithraism. It soon became the recognized religion of the Roman army and spread in two centuries to the farthest limits of the Roman Empire.

As the Roman legions forced their way into Germany, France and Britain, they were accompanied by groups of builders or masons who erected bridges, aqueducts, and fortifications as demanded by the soldiers or by the provinces they occupied. It is, then, possible that the similarity between some aspects of Masonry and Mithra could stem from this source.

Little is known of the secret ceremonies of Mithra, and much that we have on the mystery has been deduced from the little factual evidence and is not entirely reliable. We are aware, however, that the worship of Mithra was no simple ceremony or initiation. Knowledge of this has been taken from prejudiced Christian sources opposed to the competitive cult of Mithra. They have indicated Mithraism consisted of seven stages or degrees, ranging from the lowest, the Raven, to the highest, the Father or Pater. Between these two grades were the degrees known as Occult, Soldier, Lion, Persian, and Courier of the Sun.

The initiation ceremonies have been described as beginning somewhat as follows: In the first degree the initiate wears the mask of the raven, and, enveloped in total darkness, he enters a cavern which is intermittently illuminated by flashes of light representing lightning. In the occult ceremony he wears a veil and enters a door into a den of tigers, hyenas, and other simulated wild beasts. The initiate was presented a mask for each degree and conducted through several caverns in which methods were employed to instill fear and horror. In the seventh cavern, the darkness was changed to light, and the initiate was brought before the chief priest, who was seated on a splendid throne and surrounded by assistant dispensers of the mysteries. He was also subjected to a grim fast, required to swan a raging torrent, and exposed to the solitary terror of the desert wilderness. It is said that be was finally beaten with rods and then buried up to the neck in snow.

It is known that the Christian Fathers especially delighted in elaborating and condemning these rites and to expose them as "tortures" and the "eighty punishments" by water, fire, frost, hunger, thirst, and prolonged journeyings of increasing hardships and severity.

The candidates took oaths of binding secrecy and were given an obligation which included sacred words known only to the members of the cult. The initiate was presented with a conical cap, loose tunics on which were depicted the celestial constellations, a belt containing the representations of the Zodiac, a pastoral staff, and a golden serpent was placed on his bosom as a symbolic sign that he had been regenerated and initiated as a disciple of Mithra.

Outstanding among the ceremonies of Mithra was a simulated murder, apparently performed on the candidate. It is supposed that death was the logical preliminary to a renewal of life and the possible representation of a transvaluation of all values. The priests of the early regeneration ceremonies acknowledged that only the select few among the initiates could master the ultimate secrets embodied in them. Murder was an obvious start toward a regeneration, in fact so apparent that it is said the emperor Commodus polluted the rites by a real murder when a certain thing was to be done for the sake of inspiring terror, probably in the third, or soldier, grade of the initiation.

Also distinctive in the Mithraic ceremonies were baptism and ablutions of various sorts. Two types were the marking of the forehead and complete immersion, and it is believed that they promised purification from guilt. The Christian Fathers, quick to notice the similarity, charged the devil with plagiarism.

Provision was also made in the Mithraic ritual for the nourishing of a new spiritual life. At initiation, honey was placed in the mouth of the candidate, in both the Lion and the Persian grades of initiation. It was also customary to put honey in the mouths of new-born children; so in Mithraism the spiritually new-born were fed honey, it is said. Honey was of both mystical and practical value for the priests of Mithra.

There is archaeological evidence indicating a communion including bread and wine, of which the Mithraic initiates partook. The bread consisted of tiny leaves, each distinctively marked with a cross. The participants ate the bread and then drank the wine from a cup. The Christians of the day, noting the likeness, accused the demons of thievery. Both ceremonies, Christian and Mithraic, were believed to have been memorial services celebrating the divine, and it is known that Mithra, at the close of his redemptive career and just before his ascension to heaven, partook of a last supper with his companions.

The conception of Mithra himself was an ethical one, his name in Sanskrit meant "Friendship," and in the Avesta "Compact." As a result of Mithra's alliance with Zarathustra, his ethical character was accentuated and he was a special guardian of truth and light as opposed to evil or darkness. There were also certain commandments which the candidates were careful to observe to assure salvation with Mithra or the sun, with which he was identified.

Mithraism has shown that the cult offered its devotees the hope of immortality and an assurance of victory in the struggle for life. Feeding the initiate honey and his participation in a sacramental communion both stressed outwardly the idea that initiation was a rebirth to a new life."




1938 - The Gathering Storm

In the course of the night we stood on the terrace of the Berghof with Hitler and marveled at a rare natural spectacle. Northern lights of unusual intensity threw red light on the legend-haunted Untersberg across the valley, while the sky above shimmered in all the colors of the rainbow. The last act of the Gotterdammerung could not have been more effectively staged. The same red light bathed our faces and our hands. The display produced a curiously pensive mood among us. Abruptly turning to one of his military adjutants, Hitler said: “Looks like a great deal of blood. This time we won’t bring it off without violence.”
Inside the Third Reich,
Albert Speer


Friday 28 August 2015

The House of Schumer, and FBI are (still) Stupid


"Three thousand years of beautiful tradition, from Moses to Sandy Koufax..."

"I'm sort of a Jew."
- Amy Schumer

[A blonde-haired, blue-eyed sort of a non-religious Jew]

As Gilad Atzmon would say, "She is politically Jewish".

She is ethnically Teutonic and religiously atheistic.

Carlin: 
"I’d like to mention something about language, there are a couple of terms being used a lot these days by Guilty White Liberals. 

The first is “Happens to be” : ‘He Happens to be black’ 

“I have a friend, who happens to be black”,
like it’s a fuckin' accident, ya know?

"Happens To Be Black?"
Yes, he Happens To Be Black. 

"He has two black parents?"
Oh yes, yes he did. 

"And they fucked?"
Oh indeed they did, yes!

"So where does the surprise part come in?"

I’d think it’d be more unusual if he just Happened To Be Scandinavian.

The other term is openly : “He’s Openly Gay”. 

That’s the only minority they use that for. 

You know, you wouldn't say someone was "Openly Black." 

Well, maybe James Brown. 

Or Louis Farrakhan. 

Louis Farrakhan is Openly Black. 

Colin Powell is NOT Openly Black. 

Colin Powell is Openly White - he just Happens to Be Black."


"Schumer's father is Jewish and her mother is from a Protestant background. 
Schumer was raised Jewish."

[That's what I just said - she is Politically Jewish.]
[She just happens to be blonde-haired, blue-eyed and not go by the Torah.]


"On July 27, The Hollywood Reporter reported that investigators believed Houser chose to commit his attack in a theater playing Trainwreck due to its feminist themes and characters, as well as its lead actor's Jewish background. 

Houser was said to have been a misogynist and praised the actions of Adolf Hitler on online message board."

[ NOTE : So did Bill Hicks - "Hitler had the right idea - he was just an underachiever." ]



Amy Schumer fights for tougher gun laws after ‘Trainwreck’ shooting

Amy Schumer fights for tougher gun laws after ‘Trainwreck’ shooting
Comedian Amy Schumer got teary-eyed Monday as she joined her cousin [SENATOR] Chuck and vowed to fight for tougher gun-control laws following the deadly shootings in a Louisiana movie theater that was playing her movie, “Trainwreck.”

She broke down at a packed press conference in Midtown with the senator, her second cousin once removed, as she described the two young women — 21-year-old Mayci Breaux and Jillian Johnson, 33 — killed during the movie on July 23.

“I’m not sure why this man chose my movie to end those two beautiful lives and injure nine others, but it was very personal for me,” the actress said, her voice wavering.

“Enough is enough. These shootings have got to stop. I don’t know how else to say it.”
After talking with her cousin, who hasn’t seen the romantic comedy, Amy Schumer turned that anger into action.

The duo announced a three-pronged plan that includes incentives for states to provide more information for the nationwide background check for gun applicants.

The Schumers also called on Congress to fully fund the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which is facing up to $150 million in federal cuts.

“Unless something is done, and done soon, dangerous people will continue to get their hands on guns,” Amy said.

“No one wants to live in a country where a felon, the mentally ill or other dangerous people can get their hands on guns with relative ease.”




The 59-year-old shooter, John Russell Houser, who had a history of mental illness, was known for his anti-Semitic beliefs and apparently targeted the film for its feminist themes. He killed himself amid his rampage.

Sen. Schumer said his cousin’s star power will get attention for the issue well beyond the political sphere.

“Having people like Amy speaking out reaches people who I could never reach,” he said at the press conference, which was attended by more than two dozen reporters.




Carlin

"Here's another example of overprotection. 

You ever notice on the TV-news every time some guy with an AK47 strolls on to a school yard and kills three or four kids and a couple of teachers, the next day... the next day the school in overrun with counsellors, and psychiatrics, and grief counsellors, and trauma therapists trying to help the child cope

Shit, when I was in school, someone came to our school and killed three or four of us; we went right on with our arithmetic: "35 classmates minus 4... equals 31."

We were tough."

****

"They'll take away a gun, but let you keep a knife. 

Well, what the fuck is that

In fact, there is a whole list of lethal objects they will allow you to take on board. 

Theoretically, you could take a knife, an ice pick, a hatchet, a straight razor, a pair of scissors, a chainsaw, six knitting needles, and a broken whiskey bottle, and the only thing they're going to say to you is, "That bag has to fit all the way under the seat in front of you."

And if you didn't take a weapon on board, *relax*. 

After you've been flying for about an hour, they're going to *bring* you a knife and fork! 

They actually *give* you a fucking knife! 

It's only a table knife, but you could kill a pilot with a table knife. It might take you a couple minutes, you know, specially if he's hefty, huh? 

Yeah, but you can get the job done if you really wanted to kill the prick.

There's a lot of things you use to kill a guy with. 

You could probably beat a guy to death with a Sunday New York Times!"


"This is a pretty fancy ... pretty distinguished group," [The President of the United States] said of the invited guests, which included members of the House and Senate, two justices of the Supreme Court, Olympic athletes, entrepreneurs, Rabbinical scholars, "and Sandy Koufax." 

The mention of his name brought the biggest cheer at the event.