Turkish authorities have arrested another journalist amid growing concerns over the Ankara government’s attempts to stifle critical media and crackdown on dissidents.
Ertugrul Ozkok, a columnist and former editor-in-chief of the Turkish-language Hurriyet daily, was arrested on Sunday on charges of slander after publishing an opinion piece indirectly criticizing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan back in early September.
In the op-ed, titled “Listen, grand man,” written after the tragic death of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian child refugee whose body was previously washed up on a beach near the port city of Bodrum, Ozkok denounced the Middle Eastern actors for turning the region into “the most brutal land in the world.”
The article, which did not mention the name of the Turkish leader, further pointed to a “dictator” who thinks the country is the “property of his father.”
Ozkok could face up to five years and four months in prison if found “guilty.”
The arrest came just two days after a prosecutor in Turkey demanded that Can Dundar, the editor-in-chief of center-left Turkish daily Cumhuriyet, along with the paper’s Ankara representative, Erdem Gul, appear in court in Istanbul to face charges of “espionage and treason.” The two journalists had earlier revealed Ankara’s arms delivery to the militants in Syria in their reports. Cumhuriyet says the charges carry up to 45 years in prison altogether.
Outside the courthouse, Dundar told reporters that the government wants to cover up their paper’s revelations, stressing, “There is a crime that has been committed by the state that they are trying to cover up.”
On May 29, Cumhuriyet posted on its website footage showing trucks of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) being inspected by security officers.
The inspectors then spotted cardboard boxes inside a metallic container with the “fragile” marking on them. They opened the boxes, and found a considerable amount of munitions hidden in crates below boxes of medicine.
Cumhuriyet said the trucks were carrying around 1,000 mortar shells, hundreds of grenade launchers and more than 80,000 rounds of ammunition for light and heavy weapons.
On November 7, Arthur Topham was convicted of inciting hatred against a racial group, the Jewish people. Mr. Topham maintains a website, Radical Free Press, in which he publishes and comments upon various documents. These documents include The Elders of the Protocols of Zion, various anti-Zionist texts, and a tract entitled Germany Must Perish, first published in 1941 and then satirized by Mr. Topham as Israel Must Perish.
Mr. Topham’s defense rested primarily on the theory that his writing was not directed at Jews as a race or religion, but rather at the politics espoused by a number of Jewish people. The best discussion of this topic is by Gilad Atzmon, contained in his book, The Wandering Who?. The basic take away for considering the implications of Mr. Topham’s criminal conviction is that some people conflate Judaism as a religion, an ethnic heritage AND with a political view, not always consistent, that generally favors Israel’s perceived benefit.
Canada has a lobby entitled Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) that lobbies the Canadian government on behalf of Israel. Mr. Rudner, who had lodged various complaints about Mr. Topham in the past and was the Crown’s expert in Mr. Topham’s case, has worked for CIJA or its predecessor for 15 years. So the Crown relied upon the testimony of a man who lobbies for Israel (clearly a political entity) for proof of anti Semitic content and potential harm to Jewish people. His appearance in tiny Quesnel is testimony to the political importance that his organization places on silencing Mr. Topham. (The original witness scheduled to testify, Mr. Farber was a former colleague of Rudner’s, and apparently the two are close enough that Mr. Rudner’s written testimony was an exact duplicate of Mr. Farber’s original.)
Since Mr. Topham was accused of anti-Semitism, let’s look at the term. The quote below is from the Holocaust Encyclopedia, published and maintained by the United States Holocaust Museum so it is probably safe to assume that this is a standard definition.
The word antisemitism means prejudice against or hatred of Jews. The Holocaust, the state-sponsored persecution and
murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933and 1945, is history’s most extreme example of antisemitism. In 1879, German journalist Wilhelm Marr originated the term antisemitism, denoting the hatred of Jews, and also hatred of various liberal, cosmopolitan, and international political trends of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries often associated with Jews. The trends under attack included equal civil rights, constitutional democracy, free trade, socialism, finance capitalism, and pacifism.
Interesting that, in the first paragraph of its section on anti-Semitism, the encyclopedia blends together the concepts of ‘hatred of the Jews’ with opposition to various political and social movements generally associated with Jews. This is puzzling. Is it anti-Semitism to oppose socialism or is it anti-Semitic to oppose finance capitalism? While one could oppose both, it would be impossible to espouse either view without rejecting the other. I assume the author did not intend to imply that opposition to socialism, for instance, is anti-Semitic even if such opposition is from a fellow Jew.
I bring this up because this is precisely what I believe happened in Mr. Topham’s case. Mr. Topham was charged with two counts of inciting hatred over different periods of time. The jury found him guilty on the first count and not guilty on the second. Of course there are many possible explanations for a split verdict (none of which the jury is allowed to discuss even after trial without committing what the judge termed a ‘criminal’ offense). The observers, including myself, tended to believe that the discrepancy in the verdicts was a result of the text Germany Must Perish and its satirization by Mr. Topham in Israel Must Perish, a text that appeared on his website during the period for which Mr. Topham was found guilty.
The original text of Germany Must Perish was written in 1941 by Theodore Kaufman, an American Jewish man. The text was originally self-published, but was apparently advertized and reviewed by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Time magazine. In any case, the publication was well known enough to have been read in Germany and was cited by Hitler and Goebbels as evidence of the bad intention of the Jews. The book is horrendous. Its semi-literate ravings are a ridiculous indictment of the German people and their warlike nature. Kaufman advocates sterilization of the Germans as the only possible remedy. At best, the author is confusing all Germans with Nazis, but that is not what the book says. Mr. Topham’s satire in which he substitutes the words ‘Israel’ for Germany and ‘Zionists’ for Germans helps to make the original text comprehensible. The satire hopefully provides some insight into how these words might have been viewed by Germans in 1941. The proof that the works were effective but the satire was not understood, is that Mr. Topham faced criminal charges for aping Kaufman’s words.
In its case, the Crown made the point that Israel Must Perish was a horrible text. The Crown argued that the fact that the words were originally written by a Jewish man to indict the Germans did not kosher the text. “Jews,” the Crown said, “could write anti-Semitic things too.” Presumably her next case will be against a Jew for inciting hatred against the Jewish people. Mr. Topham was making a political point. I believe he was trying to convey the idea that Israel and Zionists could seem very much like Germans and Nazism in 1941. It is not necessary to agree with Mr. Topham’s point to understand it.
If I am right and it was this text that caused Mr. Topham’s conviction, then that is an important indictment against Canada’s admirable attempts to limit ‘hate’ speech while allowing freedom of political speech. Mr. Topham’s criminal conviction may well have been the result of a misunderstanding that Mr. Topham was criticizing Israel and Zionism and not Jews as a race. Germany and Israel are political constructs, Germans may not be, but Zionists, or those who support establishment of the state of Israel are, by definition, espousing a political cause. So, Mr. Topham criticized the political cause of the Zionists. Is there a way in which Canada’s laws would allow Mr. Topham’s political views to find an outlet? Perhaps Canada ought to make criticism of Israel legally off limits so that Canadians may adjust their behavior accordingly.
US and British leaders love to invoke the concept of human rights when promoting their latest neoliberal crusade. UN Ambassador Samantha Power’s career has consisted almost entirely of this strategy: creating human rights propaganda, demonizing countries that assert their independence and justifying the next NATO bombing campaign.
One great example of the human rights hypocrisy of western leaders can be found in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Bahrain is not a democracy, but an autocratic monarchy. The constitution ensures members of the ruling Al-Khalifa family the final say on all matters. The country is rated by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and other humanitarian and international legal organizations as one of the most repressive societies on earth. According to Human Rights Watch, “Torture is a regular part of the legal process in Bahrain.”
Half of Bahrain’s population are not citizens, and have no rights at all. Guest workers from the Philippines and Southeast Asia live as modern-day slaves. Even among the Bahraini citizens, there are conditions described in testimony to the US House of Representatives as similar to apartheid. Shia Muslims, who constitute a 70% majority of the country’s population, are routinely discriminated against.
In 2011, when people in Bahrain revolted as part of the Arab Spring, they were rounded up and tortured. After Saudi Arabia sent in its troops to defend the monarchy and put down the mass uprising demanding democracy, a number of Bahraini dissidents were “disappeared” and later killed without even a trial.
A Hotbed of Terrorism and Hate
The crimes of the Al-Khalifa family that rules Bahrain are not only domestic. Bahrain has a made a point of sending weapons and funding to anti-government fighters in Syria. As Syria grows more unstable, and ISIS has emerged, horrifying the world with its criminal acts of terrorism, the Bahraini autocracy continues to send weapons and money to jihadist groups.
Abdul Rahman al-Hamd, a leading influential Bahraini Salafist religious leader, relocated to Syria in 2013 in order to join anti-government terrorism. Members of the Bahraini parliament have very publicly delivered funds and money to armed Salafi terrorists in Syria on multiple occasions. It has been established that training camps for Salafi terrorist groups exist within Bahrain itself.
A significant number of Bahrainis are known to be members of ISIS. Abu Hamza al-Bahraini, a 23-year-old Bahraini also known as Ali Yusuf, very publicly participates in ISIS terrorism on social media. Social media has also widely circulated a photo of an ISIS flag being displayed at the largest mosque in Bahrain on the Islamic Holiday of Eid.
The repression of the majority Shia population in Bahrain, universally condemned by the world, is consistent with the Bahraini foreign policy of supporting Salafi terrorists. In Saudi Arabia and the aligned surrounding countries including Bahrain, children are taught to view Shia Islam as a “Jewish Conspiracy Against The King.” The jihadists in Syria, including the Al-Nusra Front and ISIS, call for slaughter of the “Shia apostates.”
Takfiri fighters, armed with weapons manufactured in the United States and supplied by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Turkey, and Jordan, openly intend to slaughter Shia Muslims. Many takfiri, Salafi, and Wahhabi fighters believe that if they kill seven Shias they will be guaranteed admission to paradise.
The primary ideological motivation for the amassing of takfiri terrorists in Syria is contempt for the country’s Alawite religious minority. Bashar Assad and many leading members of the ruling Baath Arab Socialist Party in Syria are Alawites. Takfiris, Wahhabis, and Salafis consider Alawites to be “Shia apostates” worthy of execution.
A Terror-Linked Apartheid Regime
The Kingdom of Bahrain hosts of the Fifth Fleet of the US Navy. When Baghdad was ripped to shreds with “shock and awe,” the cruise missiles were fired from aircraft carriers that had docked in Bahrain. The Pentagon’s forces of destruction, no longer officially operating within the borders of Saudi Arabia, are stationed in the tiny Kingdom of Bahrain.
The British Navy has announced that it is also setting up shop in the terrorism-linked autocracy. Soon, the US Fifth Fleet will be joined by a division of Her Majesty’s Navy.
Extremely anti-democratic practices, hatred and repression of Shia Muslims, and violent terrorism are not things that western leaders proclaim to believe in. As they seek to isolate and attack countries like Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, People’s Korea, China, Russia, and Iran, they pretend to be believers in “freedom,” “human rights,” and “equality.” Furthermore, they claim to be fighting a “war against terrorism,” and seek to protect their citizens and the world from the menace of takfiri terrorists like ISIS.
However, western leaders have done everything they can to prop up the terrorism supporting the repressive, autocratic, apartheid regime in Bahrain.
Consider these facts the next time you see western leaders on TV, lecturing the world about human rights and terrorism.
Caleb Maupin is a political analyst and activist based in New York. He studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College.
Turkey under Erdogan is a fascist police state. Anyone criticizing regime policy risks harassment, arrest, indictment on phony charges, imprisonment or death. Fundamental freedoms don’t exist.
Prominent Turkish attorney/Kurdish rights supporter Tahir Elci headed southeastern Diyarbakir province’s bar association.
On Saturday, local hospital sources confirmed he died from gunshot wounds to his head, a clear indication he was assassinated. In October, he was detained for publicly saying the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) isn’t a terrorist organization – then released awaiting trial.
He faced imprisonment for speaking freely – the most fundamental right in all free and open societies without which all others are endangered.
Regime-controlled prosecutors accused him of spreading terrorist propaganda. He was killed while making a statement to the press.
Was it state-sponsored to silence him? Turkey is unsafe to live in for anyone criticizing regime policies. Opposing Erdogan’s agenda publicly is considered treason. Following Elci’s murder, protests erupted, attacked violently by police, continuing into the night as this is written.
Separately, Turkish police in Ankara pepper-sprayed supporters of wrongfully arrested journalists Can Dunbar and Erdem Gul for doing their jobs. Criticizing rogue regime policy subjects anyone to arrest, prosecution and imprisonment.
About 1,000 protesters chanted: “Shoulder-to-shoulder against fascism.” Large crowds gathered near Dunbar’s Cumhuriyet Istanbul office in solidarity with both journalists. “Free press cannot be silenced,” they chanted.
Some accused Erdogan and complicit AKP officials of supporting ISIS terrorists. Clear evidence proves it.
Dunbar is Cumhuriyet editor-and-chief, Gul its Ankara bureau chief – both men arrested and imprisoned awaiting trial for publishing photographic evidence of Turkish intelligence smuggling heavy weapons to ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria.
They’re charged with treason and espionage for reporting important truths the whole world has a right to know. Not in police state Turkey, tolerating no opposition or exposure of state crimes.
Opposition People’s Republican Party (CHP) deputy Utki Calorpzer said “(j)ournalism is being put on trial with these arrests and the Turkish press is being intimidated.”
Pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party co-chairwoman Figen Yuksekdag said “(a)ll opposition press organizations that are abiding by the ethics of journalism and trying to do their journalism are under threat and under attack.”
“This dark operation aimed at covering the crimes that those trucks carried and the crimes which are continuing to be committed will not be successful.”
Opposition lawmaker Baris Yarkadas said Erdogan “does not want any journalist to see what kind of a calamity (he created) for Turkey…” Cumhuriyet’s Friday headline read: “Black day for the press.”
Erdogan said both men would “pay a heavy price.” Arriving for his court appearance, Dundar spoke candidly, saying “(t)here is a crime that has been committed by the state that they are trying to cover up.”
“We are being charged with being spies. The president is saying that we are traitors to the state. We are not spies. We are not traitors. We are not heroes. We are journalists.”
Interviewed by RT International, Haberdar newspaper editor-in-chief Said Sefa said “(w)e as journalists can no longer investigate.”
According to opposition lawmaker Mehmet Ali Edeboglu, “(e)vents covered in the international media can be completely underreported in Turkey. The reason for that is a crackdown on journalism. If a media company criticizes the government it is seen as treason.”
A Final Comment
CNN interviewed Erdogan instead of refusing to give him airtime, letting him rant freely, including lying about the downed Russian aircraft entering Turkish airspace.
“(I)f there is a party that needs to apologize, it is not us,” he blustered.” He vowed to down any Russian aircraft allegedly entering Turkish airspace – lunacy if he pulls this stunt again, unlikely with S-400 defense systems deployed, able to target and destroy any threat to Russian air or ground forces.
Erdogan vowed an automatic military response if Russia downs a Turkish aircraft in Syrian airspace. He recklessly ordered one once. Putin won’t tolerate a repeat incident.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
Are the powers-that-be using crises such as recent events in Paris to drive through a tyrannical agenda?
Rahm Emanuel – Obama’s former Chief of Staff – once famously said “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste – it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before”.
He was not saying anything new. He was simply rehashing something self-evident to those who deal in strategy rather than hysteria, and passing off as his own something said years before by Churchill.
Today, the world is hysterical about the recent serious crisis in Paris.
Naturally, these terrorist actions are tragedies for those individually impacted by them. But strategically, they are opportunities for “things you think you could not do before.”
A substantial minority of people have now got the point that since “a serious crisis” is so useful to those who rule us, our rulers will not only sit around waiting for things to happen which they can use, they will also initiate such things.
It was the events in New York on 9/11 – in which the laws of physics were apparently suspended – which allowed the Patriot Act to be pushed through and the Plan for a New American Century to be enacted.
But it took several years before opinions unencumbered by official propaganda percolated through society.
Due to the proliferation of social media, that same process of dissemination and cross-pollination of cynicism towards the official version of events was in full sway only a matter of minutes after the Paris bombings were announced.
And while the larger portion of the herd is running about crying out for someone to save it and the architects of policy are calmly ramming through their agenda, the new challenge is how to clamp down on dissent from media orthodoxy.
So what’s coming down the pike?
First off: boarder crackdowns. The Guardian recently noted that: “EU interior and justice ministers are to meet in Brussels where they will discuss tightening checks on all travelers at the external borders of the 26-nation Schengen zone as an emergency measure.
“Cazeneuve called on his fellow ministers to agree on a Europe-wide passenger information register, improved controls along Europe’s external borders, and better coordination against arms trafficking.”
“France has been calling for these measures for more than 18 months, and some progress has been made,” he said. “But it is not fast enough, and it does not go far enough … Everyone must understand Europe has to organize, recover, defend itself against the terrorist threat.”
The Independent informs us that EU ministers (i.e. those bureaucrats none of us voted for and whose power structure mirrors that of the Soviet Union’s Politbureau) are considering setting up their own “CIA-style intelligence agency”.
The current stampede will also help push through other items already openly on the agenda.
In the UK, for example, the government is busy enacting a bill to give police access to everyone’s entire internet history.
Richard Berry, the National Police Chiefs’ Council spokesman for data communications, told the newspaper: “We essentially need the ‘who, where, when and what’ of any communication – who initiated it, where were they and when it happened.”
In short: the police want access to your entire life.
Where this is going is total surveillance, general suspicion, and the removal of the velvet glove from the hand of power to reveal the iron fist which was there all along – all served up in the form of a palliative citing the need to protect us from an outside threat.
From Nero to Bush, nothing changes – except who benefits.
So who does benefit?
Western media are intractably incurious on such questions, barely daring to stray beyond the prescribed narrative and sternly serving up Pentagon press releases as news.
A notable exception is political journalist and author Gearóid Ó Colmáin.
Interviewed by RT, Ó Colmáin stated boldly what many have already surmised but had been denied a platform beyond social media to express.
The points Mr. Ó Colmáin makes include the fact that the war against Syria is orchestrated by NATO; that it has been conducting attacks against the civilian population of that country for four years now, and that this itself is a “terrorist campaign”.
He states that there is a worldwide war the object of which is to make the world’s population submit to a “global order” – a war which serves the interests of what he rightly calls a “tiny and particularly tyrannical ruling elite.”
He says: “There is no War on Terror. There is a war which is being waged using terrorist proxy groups and they are being used against nation states who are resisting U.S. and Israeli hegemony. And they are also being used as a means of disciplining the work forces in Europe. In a period of mass unemployment and austerity, you now have terrorist attacks being committed by terrorists funded, armed and trained by Western intelligence agencies. There is no such thing as ISIS. ISIS is a creation of the United States.”
Finally, someone tells it like it is.
The powers-that-be are going to try to shut people like Gearóid Ó Colmáin up. And they are going to use the very “terrorism” that Mr. Ó Colmáin accuses them of creating to do it.
By means of apparently supernatural prescience the UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron anticipated just such a problem.
In July, 2015, Cameron set out plans to deal with people who question the official line. He is particularly concerned to contain – and we assume later to criminalize – “ideas” which are “based on conspiracy”.
Cameron asserts: “In this warped worldview, such conclusions are reached – that 9/11 was actually inspired by Mossad to provoke the invasion of Afghanistan; that British security services knew about 7/7, but didn’t do anything about it because they wanted to provoke an anti-Muslim backlash.”
In the meantime – as the Independent informs us – France has declared a “state of emergency for three months, allowing authorities to shut down websites and giving police sweeping new powers.”
Those powers “include the ability to put people under house arrest without trial and to block websites.”
As Orwell tells us in 1984: “In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
And the “ruling elite” Ó Colmáin refers to is in the process of conflating such revolutionary acts with “terrorism”.
While people at Mr. Cameron’s level and above understand perfectly well how power works, if those whose interests Cameron represents get their way, we the people are to be forced by law to believe the type of foolishness which benefits precisely those interests Ó Colmáin had the forthrightness to identify.
If facts are thought so fragile they need laws to enforce their acceptance, once they are enacted it is time to stop pretending we are free and face reality: We are living under tyranny.
Given the right “serious crisis” of the kind Mr. Emanuel so enthusiastically embraces, the herd can doubtless be stampeded over the cliff of any form of resistance to the political will to drive such new laws through. And once such a principle is accepted, there is no philosophical barrier to expanding it.
The loss of what we thought of as our rights will be achieved under the cloak of what works best: appeals to decency and reasonableness and the need to protect the innocent.
While men such as Ó Colmáin are working to awaken the people to the specter of open tyranny, history and experience are against him.
Gustave Le Bon in his seminal work on realpolitik, The Crowd (1895) wrote: “Whoever can supply them [the masses] with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.”
By that measure, Ó Colmáin will be thought a terrorist, and those who condemn him hailed as defenders of freedom.
Le Bon believed that the majority respects only tyranny and force and spurns freedom.
We are in the process of learning if he was right.
Sam Gerrans is an English writer, translator, support counselor and activist. He also has professional backgrounds in media, strategic communications and technology. He is driven by commitment to ultimate meaning, and focused on authentic approaches to revelation and realpolitik. He is the founder of Quranite.com – where the Qur’an is explored on the basis of reason rather than tradition – and offers both individual language training and personal support and counseling online at SkypeTalking.com.
A Turkish prosecutor asked a court to imprison the editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet newspaper pending trial for espionage and treason. In May, the outlet published photos of weapons it said were then transferred to Syria by Turkey’s intelligence agency.
Besides the editor, Can Dündar, the prosecution said it is seeking the same pre-trial restrictions for Cumhuriyet’s representative in Ankara, Erdem Gül.
Dündar arrived at an Istanbul court on Thursday, saying that he and his colleague “came here to defend journalism.”
“We came here to defend the right of the public to obtain the news and their right to know if their government is feeding them lies. We came here to show and to prove that governments cannot engage in illegal activity and defend this,” Dündar was cited by Today’s Zaman.
The articles, published on Cumhuriyet’s front page in May, claimed that Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) is smuggling weapons in trucks into Syria and was caught doing so twice in 2014. The trucks were allegedly stopped and searched by police, with photos and videos of their contents obtained by Cumhuriyet.
The arms were reportedly delivered to extremist groups fighting against the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, whom Ankara wants ousted from power.
The Turkish authorities denied the allegations, saying that the trucks were carrying aid to Syrian ethnic Turkmen tribespeople and labeled their interception an act of “treason” and “espionage.”
Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely has met with representatives of YouTube and Google to discuss ways to cooperate in what she calls the fight against “inciting violence and terrorism.”
Israel’s Maariv newspaper reported yesterday that Hotovely agreed to work with Google and YouTube in order to establish a joint working mechanism to monitor and prevent the publication of “inflammatory material” originating in the Palestinian territories.
Since the latest escalation of violence between Palestinians and Israeli security services that erupted at the beginning of October, many people have been sharing videos depicting Israeli aggression towards Palestinians to highlight the Palestinian perspective of the conflict. London-based Arab newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed has expressed concerns that the meetings suggest moves towards censoring Palestinian material on the part of the Israeli state.
Walmart hired global security giant Lockheed Martin a few years ago to monitor activism in its massive workforce, according to new documents. The defense contractor tracked employees’ social media and reported protest participation to the retail giant.
Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense contractor, provided Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, with intelligence-gathering and surveillance services in 2012, according to a lengthy report by Bloomberg Businessweek. The news has emerged just before Black Friday protests by a union-funded group called OUR Walmart, the report claims. Participants demand higher wages and reliable scheduling for Walmart employees.
While Walmart publicly dismissed the demonstrations as “just another union publicity stunt,” their subsequent actions indicate that they took it seriously. In addition to hiring Lockheed Martin to keep tabs on employees’ social media feeds, the companies ranked stores by labor activity and monitored employees who were known to be involved in labor activism, according to Bloomberg.
The defense contractor offers a product called LM Wisdom, which is marketed as a tool for fighting drug and human trafficking, but which Walmart used to track employees in 2012 and 2013. Lockheed Martin analysts would follow the Twitter and Facebook feeds of workers and then report information about labor activism back to the company’s corporate headquarters. The defense contractor also put together a map of likely routes for five “Ride for Respect” bus caravans that were sent to HQ to demonstrate.
In one of the documents obtained, when asked about the company’s relationship with Lockheed Martin, Walmart Senior Vice President of Labor Relations Karen Ann Cassey said that the company was even “partnering with the FBI/the Joint Terrorism Task Force” to monitor protesters that planned to go to the company’s headquarters, saying that similar protests have become violent.
Walmart didn’t comment on the specific allegations in the Bloomberg story, but sent a statement via email arguing that the measures had been taken to protect their shoppers, employees and business.
“Unfortunately, there are occasions when outside groups attempt to deliberately disrupt our business and on behalf of our customers and associates we take action accordingly,” the statement reads.
Bloomberg retrieved the information on Lockheed Martin’s labor-monitoring services by acquiring documents ahead of a National Labor Relations Board hearing. The case concerns Walmart’s alleged history retaliation against employees who protested against the retailer.
Earlier this year, Walmart announced that its company-wide minimum wage would go from $9 in 2015 and [to] $10. While OUR Walmart touts this wage increase as a victory, they remain steadfast in their demand for a minimum of $15 an hour. The group will be protesting this Black Friday for the fourth year in a row.
With dismaying predictability, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu lost no time in exploiting the massacre in Paris. As he has done many times before, he claimed Europe’s trauma was just a taste of the suffering Israelis have long known.
Discounting decades of a brutal Israeli occupation as the cause of the recent wave of Palestinian attacks, he said: “It is the terrorists who are to blame for terrorism, not the territories, not the settlements and not any other thing.”
Rather than criticising the occupation, he added, the world should learn from Israel’s “aggressive policy” how to defeat its enemies. Last week, he unveiled the latest measure, outlawing the northern wing of the Islamic Movement, a popular party among Israel’s Palestinian citizens, one in five of the population.
Netanyahu and his ministers justified the decision by conflating the Islamic Movement with Hamas and ISIL. But while its leader, Sheikh Raed Salah, rejects the idea of a Jewish state, the movement operates entirely within Israeli law. Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency opposed Netanyahu’s move, admitting that it had failed to find any evidence linking the movement to violence.
Salah’s organisation refuses to participate in the Israeli parliament, and instead directs much of its efforts at religious instruction and good works, including health clinics, nurseries and sports clubs, to the poorest communities in Israel.
That has made it hugely popular. A recent survey found 57 per cent of Israel’s 1.6 million Palestinian citizens believe the movement represents them. A third of Israel’s Palestinian Christians support it too. And it has 10,000 paid-up members, who now risk imprisonment.
So why do it? There are several benefits for Netanyahu and the Israeli right in equating all Islamic activism with terrorism.
Not least, international pressure to negotiate an end to the occupation is likely to lift. He can now recast Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians from a national conflict into a religious – and existential – one. If France is getting tough against ISIL, why should Netanyahu be expected to sit down with his own extremists?
It also helps him domestically. He needs an implacable foe to justify to Israelis why they need an authoritarian government like his.
The US nuclear deal with Iran removed his chief bogeyman. Meanwhile, Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority is helping maintain order in the West Bank. And Hamas is licking its wounds in Gaza. Now he has an internal enemy, the Islamic Movement, that the argument goes must be fought ruthlessly from within.
Salah’s group fits the bill well. It has been an obstacle to two key planks of the Israeli right’s agenda.
First, it has frustrated the government’s efforts to drive tens of thousands of Bedouin from their ancestral villages into hugely deprived townships. The Islamic Movement has helped to organise and strengthen these communities.
And second, Salah has taken on the fight at Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, as Jewish settler groups have used their government connections to gain ever greater purchase on the holy esplanade.
Salah’s cry of “Al Aqsa is in danger” has rallied huge numbers of supporters – Palestinians with the advantage of Israeli citizenship – to get involved at the mosque, at a time when all other Palestinian players, including the PA, have been excluded from Jerusalem.
Netanyahu characterises that opposition to his Jerusalem policies as a terror-like “incitement”, saying it has triggered the current Palestinian unrest.
Outlawing the Islamic Movement looks set to be the first step down a path to greater political repression.
Last year the Netanyahu government passed a law raising the electoral threshold too high for any of Israel’s Palestinian political parties to pass it and so win seats in the parliament.
Against the odds, the disparate factions created a Joint List, which is now the third largest party in the chamber. In response, Netanyahu used the election campaign to fearmonger, warning that Palestinian citizens were coming out to vote “in droves”.
The crackdown on the Islamic Movement paves the way to justifying a ban on members of the Joint List. The Balad faction, in particular, has skated close to illegality by arguing that Israel cannot be both Jewish and democratic.
Its demand that Israel choose democracy – becoming a “state of all its citizens” – has outraged the right and led to repeated efforts to ban it. That now seems likelier than ever.
If Balad is outlawed too, the Joint List will collapse and the Palestinian parties will be forced out of the Israeli political arena.
The Shin Bet opposed outlawing Salah’s movement because it feared the move would radicalise the Palestinian minority. Denied either a parliamentary or extra-parliamentary platform, some would drift towards violence.
That is already a danger. Last week six Palestinian citizens were charged with trying to join ISIL in Syria, so far a tiny but discernible trend.
Netanyahu’s world view has always depended on a bloody, winner-takes-all clash of civilisations between West and East. He will continue offering vociferous advice on tackling terrorism to European leaders. They would do well to ignore him.
A week now after the attacks in Paris that news broadcasters keep telling us has “changed the world forever”, it looks less and less likely that this was a straightforward ISIL terrorist attack and more likely that something much more sinister may have gone on.
And not just a staged, false-flag operation, but a pre-fabricated, mass Psy-Op designed to bring about radical changes and to shape or re-configure public perception and psychology.
It has become evident to me *why* it was Paris and why it was Friday 13th; the answers are unsettling. I will get to the significant occult symbolism shortly.
But any time we’re told over and over again that something “has changed the world forever”, we’re best served to be suspicious. In regard to terror attacks, the only other time this mass psychological conditioning has occurred was with 9/11, which probably did change the world forever and which we were repeatedly *told* would change the world forever. Other terror attacks have simply been treated as precisely that: as terror attacks – 7/7, Boston, and others weren’t sold to us as ‘world changing’ or historic, but just as terrorism.
The 13/11 Paris attack seemed pre-packaged from the start as something much more important. This is mass psychological programming we’re witnessing right now; and everyone should pay attention so they can observe how it works.
The mainstream media all over the Western world was on virtual 24-hour Paris coverage for days. In the UK, BBC News 24 reported on virtually nothing else. On Sunday, I watched even the UK’s Channel 4 news do a one-hour news special from Paris, forsaking all other world news. It didn’t show or report on anything new that hadn’t already been reported on the Saturday, but seemed to exist purely to amplify the mass hysteria and sense of historic, world-changing drama.
This weekend, the English Premier League was to play the French anthem before all football matches.
Facebook asking all its billions of users whether they wanted to change their icon to incorporate the French flag?
On the one hand, it’s a nice sentiment to show solidarity with the Paris victims. On the other hand, where was this sentiment in previous tragedies or losses of life? The Houla massacre in Syria? The relentless Saudi-led decimation of Yemen? The downing of a Russian passenger plane in the Sina? Five years of civilian casualties in Syria? ISIL massacres in Iraq last year? Or even natural disasters like earthquakes or tsunamis? Why is it only for Paris that Facebook tries to guilt-trip its scores of users into showing solidarity? To be fair, I was surprised by how many people seemed to react badly to this and ask the same question; but maybe that’s just the circles I tend to roll in, because I did see lots of users changing their icons like they were told to. You Tube, Amazon and others got in on the symbolism too.
This psychological operation was best exemplified by the lighting-up of various landmarks across the world in French colors, again to show solidarity. This actually seemed to happen suspiciously quickly in some cases, particularly the World Trade Center site.
Again, this was never done for the quarter-of-a-million dead in Syria or for the children of Yemen, or for the thousands of Palestinians killed by Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip last year, etc. And I don’t believe it’s just because ‘white lives matter’ or anything like that, but more specifically because we are all *meant* to have focused deeply on Paris and what we’re told was happening.
These aren’t just friendly gestures. These images and gestures are designed to imprint themselves onto our minds, to shape our psychology.
We’re supposed to believe and always remember that Friday 13th 2015 ‘changed the world forever’, just as 9/11 changed the world forever. And we’re supposed to understand that the whole civilised world (including Qatar, which hilariously also lit up a landmark in French colors, despite being a primary funder of ISIL and terrorism) has united against this terrible, demonic ‘threat’ to civilisation and that we’re all together in both accepting the official narrative of what happened and in regarding ourselves and our societies as somehow the great ‘victim’ of the entire narrative.
It’s this mass identification with victimhood that is the main part of the Psy-Op. Never mind the hundreds of thousands dead in Syria on account of Western-funded terrorism. Never mind the million-plus Iraqis dead from Western, US-led aggression or the permanent erasing of the nation of Libya from existence by a French-led, illegal military operation. And most of all, never mind the fact that ‘ISIS’ is largely our creation.
No, the West is the victim; wealthy and eternal Paris, just like wealthy, eternal New York, is the victim.
Everyone is told, both overtly and subliminally, ‘focus all of your grief and sympathy here’ in Paris or New York and not in Aleppo or Mosul, Tripoli or Gaza.
That’s the Psy-Op. People are so mass-media reliant that they’ll only mourn who they’re told to mourn, while they’ll vilify who they’re told to vilify, and they’ll come together in their masses to mark one tragedy, while entirely ignoring another tragedy going on elsewhere. Now this mass-media manipulation goes on all the time, of course, and not just in terms of the CIA’s famous ‘Operation Mockinbird’ program; but every now and then major events like Paris or 9/11 are created to more aggressively, more overtly, focus everyone’s attention and emotion, so that the great masses of people can all be hypnotically, subliminally and overtly conditioned by the same event and the same symbols and at the same moment in time.
That shared, collective trauma is a shared, collective psychological conditioning that can inform our world-view on an emotional and subliminal level, even if our *intellect* thinks there’s something not right about the narrative.
Wikepdia defines Psy-Ops as ‘planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals’. That’s as good a description as you could get of what appears to have happened in Paris.
This has looked more and more like a planned psy-op, a scripted drama, a trauma-based collective hypnosis, as the days have passed; all perfectly designed to draw everyone in and create a permanently resonating ‘moment in time’ that everyone will look back to as a justification for whatever is going to happen now or later. 9/11 served the same purpose, so that no matter what happened in Iraq or in the War on Terror, people – especially Americans – could look back to 9/11 and their collective emotional trauma, with all its accompanying images, as justification for anything the American military-industrial complex and Neo-Con regime subsequently did. That’s partly why George W. Bush was able to win a second term (even though he hadn’t actually won his first term), and why the American State Department is able to continue peddling nonsensical, insane ideas and statements with a straight face and why mainstream media is able to play out ludicrously fake narratives. Because ‘Never Forget 9/11’.
It’s a way of shutting down debate by forcing everyone to focus on symbols, catchphrases and emotions (and permanent association of specific emotions with those symbols). ‘Pray For Paris’, ‘Je Suis Charlie’, ‘Never Forget’, etc, are all designed to be emotional triggers or ‘trigger-words’.
Hypnosis often works a similar way; by what are known as ‘key words’ or ‘triggers’. A simple trigger word or trigger phrase can be employed by a hypnotist to evoke specific associated feelings or perceptions in their subject.
All that’s necessary is for the trigger word, phrase or symbol to be firmly planted in the subject’s emotional memory and psychology first. Events like 9/11 and 13/11 can be therefore be seen in many ways as a mass hypnosis almost on a par with the Nuremberg Rallies.
Don’t misunderstand; I’m not comparing the modern French or American states with Nazism in any moral or ideological terms; I’m simply talking about the power of imagery and dramatic moments as psychological conditioning. The power of mass hypnosis centering around ideas or symbols was something masterfully used by the Nazis. At Hitler’s personal request, a 31-year-old actress and movie director named Leni Riefenstahl filmed an entire week-long rally, producing an extraordinary film record, utilising many unique camera angles and dramatic lighting effects. Riefenstahl’s finished masterpiece was called Triumph of the Will.
It was a similar business after the Charlie Hebdo attack, which involved mass gatherings, a popular catchphrase, and mass solidarity events in different parts of the world. I wrote back then that the ’emotionally-charged issue is serving to engulf the masses in the fog of a trauma-based emotional reaction (further amplified by the experience and imagery of the marches in Paris and elsewhere) and is preventing people from looking beyond that fog’.
That is even more the case now in the wake of this latest attack, where it isn’t only the large gatherings and vigils or the minute’s silence, but the evocative visual stimuli of world landmarks and the social conditioning of Facebook icons. The message all of this instills isn’t just about fearing terrorists, but it is designed to also instill the idea that Western societies – in this instance the great symbolic city of Paris – are the innocent victims in everything that’s happening in the world and that anything Western states do in response is merely justified retaliation. ‘Pray For Paris’, because Paris is the victim; don’t pray for Syrians, because that’s where the Bad Guys came from.
Even children who’ve been seeing all this coverage are going to be conditioned by it to view the world a certain way, just as lots of children on 9/11 were conditioned for life.
Another interesting thing about hypnosis is that it can be induced via crippling fear. In human terms, it’s a much more psychologically complex version of the trance-like state you can induce in certain animals, like a mouse, by startling it with sudden movement or noise. Fear and anxiety can also make people more docile, more susceptible to things they might otherwise not be. This is particularly relevant in France, a society that, in normal circumstances, cherishes liberty above all else.
Fear and trauma also don’t allow you to think straight or reason properly. Many of the people who were attacked in Paris on Friday 13th probably have even had their suspicions about the emerging narrative. But when you’re abruptly caught up in terrifying or horrific events like that and you’re shaken and traumatised, all you want is to be safe and to be assured of your safety. In all the confusion and panic of Friday 13th, it is impossible to tell how many people caught up in the events of that night were crisis actors and how many were complete innocents with no idea what was going on; certainly some of them, especially some of those we’ve seen on film, were actors (in the same vein as in the Boston Marathon bombing), but the majority probably had no idea what was happening and might not have thought they were under attack by ‘ISIS’ until they got home and turned on the TV and were told.
Had they not been told they’d been attacked by ISIL, they might’ve been telling a very different story about what happened. This is already evident in some of the eyewitness testimony we’ve had that contradicts the official narrative.
The celebrity involvement is also tediously employed to further glamorise the drama and make it all the more relatable for a dumbed-down, celebrity-obsessed TV audience, particularly in America. This is seen in scripted dramas like an American TV personality claiming his daughter was at the Stade de France and then later saying she was at the Bataclan. It all seems to be part of a real-world ‘movie’ production being played out. What I have observed, disturbingly (and reluctantly), in the past week is that masses of people, not just in France but everywhere, are being psychologically programmed.
You, your children, your grandmother, even your little kitty-kat, are all being majorly mind-fucked. I was too; but only for about an hour. As soon as it became obvious they had no footage whatsoever of any explosions at the Stade de France, I was thankfully snapped out of any mass-induced trance immediately.
Furthermore, ‘ISIS’ itself is a massive Psy-Op designed to create fear and anxiety in the West and exacerbate racial and cultural tension and mistrust, all the while being used to achieve Geo-political objectives in Libya (already accomplished), Syria (pending), and the rest of the Middle East (as per the Zionist/Yinon Plan and US/Neo-Con agenda). Lebanon will be next, but no one cares because we’re all too busy watching Paris.
‘ISIS’ is in fact the ultimate Psy-Op. Even the name ‘ISIS‘ was invented by Western media, probably following directions from intelligence agencies. The jihadists in Iraq and Syria call themselves ‘ISIL’, and the Arabs call them by the derogatory name ‘Daesh’; ‘ISIS’ is a Psy-Op name the media continues to use because it has occult connotations and ancient connotations of the Egyptian Goddess, and – I suspect – because it phonetically sounds very similar to ‘SS’ when you say it, bringing to mind associations with the Nazi Stormtroopers. Things like this work on a subliminal level, but help to convince the broader population that ‘ISIS’ is the new ‘SS’ and that a Third World War may be necessary, just as the Second World War was.
And the idea is frequently put across now that this is a grave threat to Western society on a par with the Nazis and that this attack in Paris was the worst since World War II.
‘ISIS’ also has its menacing black-flag symbol that terrifies peace-loving people in the West, just as the Nazi swatsika became a symbol of evil decades ago; even though the swastika itself, prior to the Nazis, wasn’t a negative symbol at all – just as the Koranic script on the ‘ISIS’ flag doesn’t represent anything remotely ‘evil’, but is made to seem so. It is intended to terrify and program people on multiple levels, some of it overt, some of it subliminal. Daily ‘ISIS’ stories in mainstream newspapers are part of the long-playing Psy-Op, designed to condition people to be afraid of this terrible, inhuman threat from the East.
And in actual fact, the emergence of ISIL in the Middle East in many ways was also a Psy-Op conducted against populations in parts of Iraq and Syria (and Libya subsequently), with populations being – certainly in the early stages – terrified by what they were seeing and the stories they were hearing. This was something I touched upon when writing about Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Last summer, when I first heard that a mysterious figure named ‘Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’ was being declared “the leader of all Muslims everywhere” by ‘Islamic State’ propagandists, it was one of the most disturbing things I had heard in a while; but I also clearly recognised it as a major, major piece of psychological warfare being conducted against Muslims in part of Iraq, Syria and beyond, and that it was cleverly rooted in Islamic prophecy concerning the End of the World. It was all designed to confuse, terrify and even bewitch some people, particularly young men, in those places; because here comes an ultra-violent group, spouting prophecy, massively funded, armed with Western weapons and vehicles, clearly supported from the outside by powerful backers, and declaring a holy, puritan Caliphate – that in itself is a big-time Psy-Op. According to a Brigadier General Kevin Bergner, a chief American military spokesman of the Iraq campaign, Baghdadi never even existed and was actually a fictional character whose audio-taped declarations were provided by an elderly actor.
Even the name Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is designed to be divisive and inflammatory; as the original ‘Abu Bakr’ was the first Caliph of the first Caliphate and is also seen as a symbol of the schism between Sunni and Shia Islam.
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So it can be seen that a major psychological conditioning has been going on right across the board, engulfing minds and collective mind-sets in different parts of the world, most of it regarded as ‘post-9/11’. But the Friday 13th attacks in Paris and the subsequent outpouring of emotion, fear and anxiety, coupled with the heavy symbolism and focus is all designed to be a massive hypnotic/brainwashing amplifier that works at different levels of consciousness, some subtle, some overt.
And some of it occult in nature; which is the level at which the symbolism speaks to those ‘in the know’, but is missed by the majority of us plebeians.
Some non-linear thinking exposes possibilities that might explain why Paris was the site of the attacks, why Friday 13th was the chosen date, what is invoked or signified in the locations chosen, and what it may all be about.
It may be worth noting, as some others have, that Friday 13th is a date of occult significance, partly because it was the date the Knights Templar were betrayed and massacred in Paris in 1307, from which point – according to the legends – the Order’s occult or secret knowledge went underground to be preserved only by secret societies. It is believed by some – and possibly incorrectly – that the Templars were Satanists. That may be more a case of politically-motivated demonisation from the era (the authorities wanted a reason to steal the Templars’ immense wealth), but what certainly is accepted is that they were an Order of great occult significance.
These curiosities are in addition to the broader fact that Paris itself is historically a city of great occult or esoteric significance, a capital city for secret societies, and, like Washington DC and the City of London, believed by many to be laid out according to esoteric symbolism. In fact, Washington DC’s unique design was the work of Frenchman Pierre Charles L’Enfant. The esoteric city-plan of Paris and its national monuments was the subject of a book by Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock called Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith.
Even aside from that, however, the Knights Templar are particularly significant because they were the first international banking elite/cartel and were a model not only for subsequent and current secret societies but also for subsequent banking elites. The Templars also financed European Crusades and wars of aggression in the Middle East and oversaw the theft of wealth from the Muslim world, so they have great significance right across the board. It is also thought by many that these Crusades, conducted by barbaric religious fanatics from Europe (the ‘Daesh’ of their day, if you like), were what provoked Islamic societies into becoming more aggressive. This was at a time when the Islamic world was still quite close in time to its ‘Golden Age’, in which science, philosophy, medicine and astronomy had flourished and cities like Damascus, Cairo and Baghdad were great seats of learning while most of Europe was still mired in religious intolerance and persecution, with brutal inquisitions going on and people being burnt or tortured left, right and centre.
The date Friday 13th – especially in regard to the city of Paris – is highly symbolically significant. But the Templars aren’t the only factor. The Church of Saint Peter of Montmartre (pictured above) is the oldest surviving church in Paris and was held to be the location at which the vows were taken that led to the founding of the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuit Order. Jesuit conspiracy theories, particularly the earliest ones, often focused on the personality of Adam Weishaupt, a Professor of Canon Law at a Jesuit school who went on to found the Bavarian Order of the Illuminati.
I’ve usually kept a distance from modern fascination with ‘the Illuminati’ or the occult in general; I don’t particularly regard ‘the occult’ with any kind of disapproval or see it through any religious lens, so conspiracy-lore ‘Illuminati’ obsession isn’t something that has particularly interested me. However, there are times – and this Paris business is one of those times – where the symbolism and connection is so obvious that it becomes difficult to ignore it, even for someone who prefers to steer clear of it.
Wikipedia further highlights that Weishaupt was accused of being ‘the secret leader of the New World Order, and even of being the Devil himself’.
Now, let me just state this: the issue is not whether people like you or I believe in these religious or even occult concepts or realities, but it’s about understanding that *other people* and organisations *do* believe in these things. And in their world, all these things are symbolically significant and have symbolic/esoteric power. It’s the same reason that it is significant that Princess Diana was killed close to the site of the ancient Temple of Diana in Paris. I don’t demonise the ‘occult’ any more than I would demonise Christianity or Islam; in all three cases, my problem is with what specific organisations, networks and people are doing, and not about what belief system or mythology they happen to be co-opting or abusing in order to do it.
What’s fascinating is that both the Knights Templar and the Jesuit Order are claimed by contrary theorists to be both the source of Freemasonry and of the modern banking elite; and in regard to the city of Paris, both the Templars and Jesuits are historically significant.
But get this: getting back to the Jesuit Order and the Church of Saint Peter of Montmartre; according to its traditional history, the church was founded by Saint Denis in the third century, and moreover, Théodore Vacquier, the first municipal archaeologist of Paris, identified remains on the site belonging to the ancient Temple of Mars, from which Montmartre took its name. Mars was of course the God of War; and if there was one immediate thing these Paris attacks brought about it was Francois Hollande’s declaration that this was “an act of war” and France now would wage war in Syria. Hollande is known to be a high-ranking Masonic figure, and indeed French politics and high office are known to be riddled with masons; and to such men, symbols, invocations and reenactments are hugely important.
In that context, we can also note that the band playing at the Bataclan theatre on Friday 13th – the Eagles of Death Metal – are led by a musician who calls himself ‘the Devil’ (and who, like a lot of famous musicians, has been seen in recent years making occult signals and symbols – it’s only certain musicians and celebrities who seem to do this, probably because they’re very low-level initiates or fodder in secret fraternities), and more remarkably that the song they were reported to have been playing at the moment the unknown gunmen came in and began the massacre was titled ‘Kiss the Devil’, which begins with the lyrics ‘Who’ll love the Devil/Who’ll sing his song?’
Both the date of the attack and the nature of the performers at the Bataclan have led some to suggest the massacre was an occult or Satanic ‘blood sacrifice’ carried out as a symbolic sacrifice by those ‘in the know’; this could’ve therefore been, in part, a sacrifice to Mars, the God of War – and moreover as the event with which to literally *declare war*, as Hollande of course immediately did.
If you think I’m going off on one here, please note that the illegal operation to invade Iraq (2003) and the illegal operation to destroy Gaddafi and Libya (2011) both occurred on March 19th, and March 19th is the traditional date that celebrates the Roman goddess of war, Minerva; and Minerva is thought by some to be a particularly revered mythical figure in Masonic societies. According to John Robison’s Proofs of a Conspiracy (published in 1798), the third degree of the Bavarian Illuminati was called ‘Minerval’ or ‘Brother of Minerva’, in honour of the goddess. Later, this title was also adopted as the first level of initiation for the world-famous, notorious occultist/Satanist Aleister Crowley’s OTO rituals.
Robison was a renowned and accomplished Scottish physicist and mathematician and professor of philosophy. Following the French Revolution, Robison was suspicious about what had really been behind it and he had become disenchanted with elements of the Enlightenment; his 1798 book accused Freemasonry of having been infiltrated by Weishaupt’s ‘Order of the Illuminati’.
The full, original title of his work was Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe.
And further, ‘Saint Denis’ (which, as explained above, is symbolic of the Jesuit church in Paris) is where the Stade de France is located and was also the location the alleged ISIL terrorists were holed up in and the site of the subsequent deadly raid that saw the remaining ‘perpetrators’ killed a few days ago.
So, as I said, even when – like me – you’re someone who usually resists this kind of area of discussion, there comes a point where the symbolism is so pronounced that you can’t really ignore it anymore.
What’s even more fascinating than all of that, however, is the pre-existing connection between the city of Paris and the goddess Isis. Paris was thought to be a center for the worship of Isis and the location of a major Temple of Isis.
As early as the 15th century AD, Parisian historians believed that the city of Paris owed its very name to Isis.
In 1512, the French historian Lemaire de Belge reported that an idol of the goddess Isis had been worshipped in the Abbey of St. Germain-des-Pres in Paris. The same belief was reported by Gilles Corrozet, the first historian to produce a comprehensive guide of the city. In 1550 Corrozet wrote, ‘… coming to the imposition of the name (of Paris), it is said that there, where stands St. Germain-des-Pres was a temple of Isis of whom it is said was the wife of the great Osiris or Jupiter the Just. The statue (of Isis) having come in our times, of which we recall… This place is called the Temple of Isis and, for the nearby city, this was called Parisis… meaning near the Temple of Isis‘.
New York’s iconic Statue of Liberty, for that matter, is regarded a statue of Isis that was gifted by French Freemasons to the American Freemasons who were the Founding Fathers.
So the manufactured ‘ISIS‘ coming to literally the city of Isis (Paris) to allegedly carry out attacks is just ridiculously rich in occult symbolism. The goddess Isis is, by all accounts, a favorite of occult or Masonic societies (and remember the jihadists don’t call themselves ‘ISIS’, but ISIL, and before that they were called simply ‘Al-Qaeda in Iraq’). For the record, I’m not saying there’s anything inherently wrong with the worshipping of the Egyptian goddess; it would seem as valid a religious belief as any.
But with all of that as context, the Paris attacks of Friday 13th look very different to what they’re portrayed as.
Whether or not there were any actual ‘jihadists’ on the ground (and there may well have been), when one examines the symbolism and its historic context, what we are looking at might well have been a symbolic false-flag massacre designed not only to pave the way for war, but to signal and announce an occult-inspired push towards what John Robison cited centuries ago as Weishaupt’s and the Bavarian Illuminati’s ‘New World Order’ model. The attack invoked all the necessary symbolic markers – the Templars, the Jesuits, the Bavarian Illuminati and the ‘New World Order’ concept, the God of War, the literal ‘sacrifice’ to the symbolic ‘Devil’ at the Bataclan, and so on.
And that would be why all the deliberate symbolism was invoked – to deliberately signal that fact to all ‘those in the know’, while letting the rest of us think this was simply the work of those terrible, disaffected and stupid, radicalised teenagers.
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Before I sound like a clichéd conspiracy theorist, however, I’d like to clarify that I don’t necessarily view ‘Masons’ as inherently a negative force, nor do I think a demonisation of the original, eighteenth century Bavarian Illuminati is necessarily historically accurate. The original movement, which was quickly suppressed, seemed to be an intellectual movement to oppose state abuses of power and the excessive influence of religion on public life; and excessive demonisation of Adam Weishaupt may have simply been a case of religious extremists objecting to the Enlightenment and the growth of reason and intellect.
A society or fellowship being secretive isn’t a reason to demonise it; sometimes the secrecy and secret handshakes and signals are necessary for safety purposes; in pre-Enlightenment Europe the church and the enforcers of religious orthodoxy were entirely intolerant of intellectuals and free-thinkers and intelligent people were therefore forced to conduct their gatherings and pursuits in secrecy. It would be comparable to if a ‘guild of liberals’ or a ‘fellowship of reformists’ were to form in modern-day Saudi Arabia – they’d have to meet in secret and develop secret language and vetting procedures to avoid being arrested and even executed.
The question, however, in my view is whether later offshoots or societies simply adopted or co-opted the ‘Illuminati’ ideology (just like co-opting ancient esoteric imagery like Isis, Egyptian mysteries, Roman gods, etc) and developed it in a different, sinister direction. In essence, all ideals or movements, no matter how noble in the first instance, are eventually hijacked or subverted – that is simply the way of the world. This can be seen in all religions, in most political movements, and classically in numerous states or governments that have been based on a high ideal or system only to later become corrupt, oppressive institutions that no longer resemble their original purpose or character.
With that in mind, it seems reasonable to consider that although the original thinkers and individuals behind the early ‘Illuminati’ or secret societies may have been entirely of noble intent and looking to the good of all society, subsequent perversions or subversions of those societies may well be a more sinister force, with collegiate fraternities (Skull and Bones), gentlemen’s clubs (Bohemian Club), and think tanks (Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission), all being movements of darker intent in the typical conspiracy-lore sense and trying to bring about a ‘New World Order’ based not on the original ideas or ideals but on something altogether more corrupt and sinister; as I said, all movements are eventually corrupted or degraded from within and all high-minded principles co-opted by ambitious men.
I also, for the record, don’t wish to sound like an anti-occult, right-wing religious fundamentalist, as nothing could be further from the truth; I actually have great interest in the ‘occult’, as well as in old mythologies and mystery traditions, including the Isis mythology. And I have no religious or other type of bias and consider myself always a neutral, objective observer.
But in the context of all the symbolism highlighted above, it is more than interesting to note what has happened since last week’s attacks. Rarely has a move towards the classic ‘New World Order’ model seemed so blatant as it seems right now in France.
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Vanessa Beeley, on the Wall Will Fall, has just also put up a very good analysis, which also focuses on controversies over Facebook employing its ‘Safety Check App’ during the Paris operation and an explanation of why this probably wasn’t the friendly or sympathetic act that Facebook wants Parisians to think it was. She also makes the crucial point that ‘The 13/11 Paris attacks with all the accompanying media frenzy will surely lead us further down the path to the implementation of Patriot Act equivalents in Europe’.
In the United States, September 11th 2001 – the Neo-Cons’ predicted and desired “Pearl Harbour” – established a “permanent state of emergency” (the Patriot Act), allowing it to make radical changes domestically and also to launch several imperialist wars of aggression. France’s state of emergency could be paving the way for France and Europe to follow/adopt, or perhaps more accurately to come into line with, the American model.
Francois Hollande gave an historic speech at Versailles on Monday before the upper and lower houses of parliament – only the third time this has happened since 1848 – to declare “France is at war”. The bombing of Syria, on the surface of it, may be an assault on the ‘ISIL’ strongholds, but ultimately this renewed French military operation, in concert with American operations, is aimed at the removal of the Syrian state and the reconfiguration of the country.
France has not only sent out hundreds of its own troops again into the streets, but EU troops, we’re now told, could be sent to France. The EU has opened the door to even Britain sending troops or other specialists to France as part of this ‘state of emergency’. The French state has cited ‘Article 42’, which compels other EU states to send support, including military support.
All of this being to combat a rag-tag group of teenage terrorists that France, NATO, the United States and its allies created in the first place.
Meanwhile the deployment of army soldiers and possible Special Forces could also pave the way for more militarization to come, not limited to France. Earlier this year when the Charlie Hebdo attacks occurred, it wasn’t just France that deployed armed soldiers into the streets, but Belgium followed suit. If further terrorist attacks are to occur in Europe, this all may multiply and spread, drawing us towards the deployment of an ‘EU Army’. The elite Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR) are reported to be backing up undercover armed police officers to protect the UK in the wake of the Paris attacks. More than 60 soldiers, including SAS and SRR personnel were deployed after a high-level security meeting was held at MI5.
Moreover, Francois Holland has said the French constitution may need to be altered in order to deal with this terrorist threat, as the country is being prepared for potentially draconian policies, including the possibility of expelling foreigners considered a threat. With the state of emergency stated to extend over three months, the president seeks to expand his own powers and the powers of the state. This is comparable to what is happening in once-secular Turkey, where the ruling AKP government has stated intentions to alter Turkey’s secular constitution, partly in order to combat the very terrorist threat that the Turkish state itself has been enabling against Syria.
Some, even in France, see the dangers of this. “If you give the president powers that have been reserved practically for civil war, that is extremely serious,” said Adrienne Charmet, campaign director for a French digital-rights group, la Quadrature du Net.
These attacks have also occurred only a few months after legislators passed sweeping new surveillance laws affording the government expanded powers to closely monitor the mobile phone and Internet communications of its citizens, including monitoring phone calls and emails without the authorization of a judge. The same law requires Internet service providers to retain and provide mass data on the Web-browsing and general Internet habits of millions of people to intelligence agencies. All of this might be a very effective way of fighting terrorism and thwarting future attacks; but that’s assuming of course that there have been any genuine terrorist attacks.
France has essentially been maneuvering to go the US/NSA route and establish a surveillance super-state based on the American model; a route it can now follow with virtually unanimous public support thanks to the Friday 13th attacks. And where France leads, the EU might follow; and in that scenario, we’ll end up with a NSA-style surveillance super-state that spans the entire Western world, backed up on the ground by armed troops with expanded powers to arrest, confine or eliminate people.
In France, the talk is already of people being legally arrested without trial or charges and about law-enforcement agencies being allowed to break into people’s houses at any time of night and without any search or arrest warrants. This essentially turns parts of France into a situation comparable to occupation-era Iraq.
These are Orwellian ideas, to say the least – and in a society that is traditionally seen as the bastion of libertarian principles.
This isn’t a joke; these powers and the intention behind them allows the state to legally act as ‘thought police’ and to go after anyone it wants at any time it wants, without needing a justification. And the main vehicle for this expansion of control is the Internet. In his 1928 book, The Open Conspiracy, H. G. Wells offered blueprints for a world revolution and ‘world brain’ to establish a technocratic world state and planned economy.
Further to this, as France moves further towards inevitable thought-policing and curtailing of freedom of speech, Hollande has equated “conspiracy theories” to Nazism and is calling for government regulations to prevent the sharing or publishing of any views deemed as ‘dangerous thought’ by the state. Hollande isn’t alone in this implicated maneuver; British Prime Minster David Cameron has already publicly stated that so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ (for ‘conspiracy theories’, read anything that challenged the official narratives) should be deemed as “extremist” and equivalent to “terrorist” and should be stopped/policed on the basis of ‘national security’.
Thierry Meyssan covers that subject more fully on the Voltaire Network. But this is serious, serious territory we’re now in. The alternative media and independent journalism has been a major problem for geo-political and psy-op conspirators for some time, having played a substantial role in exposing the corporate-media misinformation and the various agendas, from the fraud of 9/11 to the false narratives of the War in Syria. Eliminating as much of this alternative media as possible is a major part of the agenda.
It seems therefore that every element of progression needed to move us into the ‘new world order’ paradigm has been serviced by the Friday 13th attacks in Paris.
And the idea that France, and Paris particularly, would be at the centre of this push is in keeping with all the symbolic significance I highlighted earlier, and also in keeping with the historical precedents in regard to the Templars, the Jesuits, the Masonic traditions, and the banking system. Again, for the record, I’m not saying the original Templars, Jesuits or Masons were dark conspirators, but that they are evoked by modern conspirators as powerful symbols and markers.
Also, further ‘terror attacks’, as we’re being constantly told, are imminent. There is almost certainly going to be a major attack in either the UK or the United States very soon, which will serve to reinforce everything evoked or accomplished in the Paris attacks and will therefore hasten any such agenda further.
Moreover, if we are now being pushed towards a changing world order, people in general are now so scared and unsettled that they’re more likely to embrace it than to resist it. As previously suggested, people are currently in the grip of a trauma-based collective conditioning that Friday 13th was probably designed to create and which the mass media has been excessively working to cement.
This entire paradigm was in fact very lucidly laid out by George Lucas in his Star Wars saga, which is easily viewed as a story about false-flag wars in which one source is controlling both sides of the conflict, the ultimate purpose being to end a democratic Republic and turn it into an imperial dictatorship. In the Star Wars saga, it is via a carefully arranged false-flag war that the republic is placed into a ‘state of emergency’ and the political conspirator is granted ’emergency powers’, setting him up as a dictator and paving the way for a totalitarian regime that lasts decades.
This is a particularly good video on Star Wars as a parable for false-flag terrorism and the New World Order, which is really worth a watch. And for anyone who’s never seen the Star Wars prequels, I’d highly recommend you look past the Jar Jar Binks problem and do so. George Lucas in fact clearly had a vision of Star Wars as not just a fantasy or even just a morality play, but as a warning. In fact even in his early notes for early drafts for the first movie in 1977, he wrote that the Empire was “America ten years from now”.
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The actual reality is that ‘ISIS’ *isn’t* any kind of existential threat to ‘the West’, to Europe, to France or to civilisation, certainly nothing like on the level of 1930s fascism or the dangers of the Cold War.
‘ISIS’ is in fact simply a manufactured bogeyman, its rank-and-file consisting mostly of teenagers or disenfranchised young men who’ve been overly influenced by a mixture of Salafist indoctrination, violent, war-based computer gaming and intelligence-agency manipulation.
‘ISIS’ could be completely eliminated with little more than a sustained police-style investigation to identify and arrest recruiters, identify and cut off the sources of financing, identify the people buying oil from them, and identify the source of the arms supplies and put a stop to it. The air-strikes wouldn’t even be necessary. Of course, there’s probably a reason such investigations aren’t conducted; because no government wants to conduct an investigation in which they’d have to implicate or prosecute elements of its own state or call into question the activities of many of its allies. And any genuine investigation of the ISIL nightmare would lead any genuine investigator ultimately not to simply Baghdad or Syria, but to Qatar, Riyadh, Washington, Brussels and other problematic sources.
‘ISIS’ is an existential threat only in one part of the world and that’s the Middle East. It is an existential threat to the people and the nation of Syria and to Iraq and to post-Gaddafi Libya, even to parts of Egypt and possibly Lebanon. In those places, it is a matter of life and death; and not the life and death of just people, but of entire nations, national identities and cultures. But of course ISIL wouldn’t *be* there at all but for the US-led invasion of Iraq, US-led covert ops in Syria and the French-led NATO decimation of Libya.
But in terms of Europe or Western civilisation, ISIL is only a ‘threat’ to whatever extent it is enabled or allowed to be by the real orchestrators of the entire conspiracy. What now appears to be being played out is a very bloody, very disgusting pantomime for various purposes; we may in fact be approaching a Rubicon from which it might be very difficult to turn back.
At least 300 campesino leaders have been killed in Colombia in 2015, according to Andres Gil, human rights leader and spokesperson of the Marcha Patriotica.
Many of these deaths have come as campesino leaders are attempting to defend their land and their natural resources. Another 7,000 campesino leaders have been jailed.
Land distribution in Colombia is extremely unequal. Less than 1 percent of the population owns roughly half of the land, and 70 percent of the population owns only 5 percent of the land. Campesinos who fight for their land are often risking their lives.
At least three campesinos leaders where killed just in the last two weeks, including the young Afro-descendent leader Jhon Jairo Ramirez Olaya in the Valle region; the environmental and campesino leader Daniel Abril, in the Orinoquia region; and the representative of Afro-descendent victims from Cordoba, Luis Francisco Hernandez Gonzales.
Another young campesino leader allegedly killed by the armed forces last Friday, according to Marcha Patriota.
According to Verdad Abierta — an investigative project on the armed conflict of Colombia’s Semana magazine — Abril accused various state officials of corruption, and was fighting against multiple oil corporations with extensive land interests.
Feliciano Valencia, another indigenous leader from the region of Cauca who was controversially sentenced to 18 years in jail, was also victim of a homicide attempt on Tuesday, as four men opened fire on his home, according to local social organizations.
Still in Cauca, in the end October, the armed forces were recently involved in the murder of indigenous leader Alfredo Bolaño, the 58th victim from security forces in the region, one of the most affected by violence because of its highly fertile lands.
On Friday, the Colombian army killed one campesino and wounded five others after it raided a rural area in what military officials said was an effort to “manually eradicate” illegal coca crops.
According to the local community, the armed forces opened fire on a peaceful march last Thursday in Argelia, Cauca.
The country’s ombudsman Fabian Laverde told teleSUR that this issue was rooted in several causes.
“First, the national government refuses to recognize the existence of paramilitarism. Second, the complaints from the social movements made about situations of threats or concrete actions against residents of these territories have been completely ignored,” he said.
Reknowned economist M. Shahid Alamoffers this excellent critique of Noam Chomsky’s defective analysis of the relative influence of Oil versus the Israel lobby over US foreign policy: … continue
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