imposing costs on the multicultural elites...,

Video - Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie Midnight Special

Occidental Observer | The following is from an article in Al-Jazeera by Robert L. Lambert, the co-director of the European Muslim Research Centre (EMRC) at the University of Exeter (“Nationalists pose a bigger threat than Al-Qaeda“). Judging by his editorials in The Guardian, Lambert is pro-Muslim.

The fact is that Breivik very carefully chose his target. The victory of the left has meant that there is nothing but personal upside for Whites who administer the slow death of their own people. These are the Whites who are the public face of the entire mainstream political spectrum, from far left to neoconservative right. They have wonderful careers as university presidents, politicians, government bureaucrats, heads of major corporations, talking heads in the media.

Anders Behring Breivik: A Modern Hero?

Video - Journey Midnight Special

BadEagle | I feel a strange and profound admiration for Anders Behring Breivik. His actions speak louder than any words. Does he not appear to be a conscious and passionate patriot, not only for Norway, but for Europe? White Europe, consider your son.

There was a day when such men were called knights. National heroes. They drove the Muslims and their infernal religion out of Europe. Because of men like Vlad Ţepeş (Dracula), Europe remained Christian, and white.

Is that day no longer? Is it perished forever? Is there no resistance, in the name of God, or any other name, to the satanic course of Islam?

from neurons to nirvana

techno-shamanism and the democracy of bliss...,

Video - Inner City Big Fun

sarmoung | The neuroscientific breakthroughs of the last decade have established beyond doubt that given the proper type of stimulation, the ordinary human brain has extraordinary or exceptional powers, that what we call “normal” consciousness is in fact a sort of sleep from which we “awaken” when we enter peak or heightened states. And, as the neuroscientific research has made clear, these nonordinary or “metanormal” powers are not mysterious, but the result of clear and quantifiable changes in the patterns of neurological activity of the brain.

We’ve all had the experience of shifting into a heightened or metanormal state – call it lucidity, insight, mastery, wisdom, enlightenment, grace, bliss, satori, creativity, learning, waking up -a state in which we know beyond doubt that our ordinary state is a deep sleep compared to this rich awakening. And we know too, this is how we should be all the time. After all, sleep is a fine and restful state, but who among us would choose to spend our entire lives in even the most comfortable bed? Most of us would like to be in this high gear, high-efficiency state as often as possible.

In fact, it has become clear that humans are genetically programmed to seek out these altered, awakened states. I believe, and recent evidence supports my belief, that a key to human evolution, to our species’ rapid growth in brain size, and to our unique creative capacities, has been our instinctive drive to experience these metanormal or exceptional realms of consciousness and performance. From kids who spin themselves into dizzy altered states and euphorically roll down hills, to performers, surgeons, rock climbers, chess players or creative artists who find that the most vital and rewarding parts of their lives occur when they’re in a state of “flow,” humans naturally crave the experience of being awake.

Psychiatrist Stanislav Grof, M.D., who has spent his career studying the effects of nonordinary states of consciousness, observes that “the transcendental impulse is the most vital and powerful force in human beings.” This human impulse to connect with the spiritual domain, Grof has found, is so powerful that “It resembles, in its nature, sexuality, but is much more fundamental and compelling.”

Michael Murphy, founder of Esalen Institute, and author of The Future of the Body, a massive compilation of examples of exceptional human performance, has classified exceptional or peak performance into a dozen different realms, among which are:

* Extraordinary perceptions of things outside ourselves, such as transcendent beauty in ordinary things;
* Exceptional somatic or body awareness, such as voluntary control of blood pressure or heart rate;
* Nonordinary communication abilities, such as the communication of thoughts and mental states;
* Phenomenal vitality, as when we perform “superhuman” feats;
* Extraordinary movement abilities, such as uncanny athletic agility;
* Inexplicable abilities to influence events at a distance, such as spiritual healing;
* Exceptional abilities to alter pain and pleasure, such as delight that persists despite sickness or adversity;
* Extraordinary cognitions, such as creative insights, mystical experiences, and the works of genius; and
* Love that transcends personal wants and needs and manifests a fundamental unity with others.

All of us exhibit each of these attributes in an ordinary way. But we can also manifest these attributes in an extraordinary or metanormal way. In the right place, at the right time (when your child is trapped under a car, when you’re under extreme pressure, when you suddenly fall in love, when you take a certain psychedelic substance) and soon.

We all perceive external events, for example, to take the first attribute on Murphy’s list we perceive the doorbell ringing, we perceive the voice of a friend talking to us. But we’ve all had the experience of perceiving external events in an entirely different way – with a sudden cleansing of “the doors of perception,” a seeing of “ordinary” reality with extraordinary new sense of clarity, significance and illumination.

We all have movement abilities, but many of us have experienced times – often in sports – when we are suddenly playing “in the zone,” when the baseball speeding at you seems so big and slow you can count the stitches and see which way they’re spinning, when you effortlessly drive the golf ball 50 yards farther than you ever have before, when you suddenly execute with ease a perfect and seemingly impossible backhand.

In virtually every aspect of our lives, humans are capable of performing exceptionally in a peak state.

There is now strong evidence that these experiences are essential. Without our moments of being awake, in the zone, we become sick. As Stanislav Grof observes, “human beings have a profound need for transpersonal experiences and for states in which they transcend their individual identities to feel their place in a larger whole that is timeless. This spiritual craving seems to be more basic and compelling than the sexual drive, and if it is not satisfied it can result in serious psycho logical disturbances.”

debt tantrum on a sinking ship...,

postcarbon | President Obama and House Speaker Boehner are both right, but they’re both tragically wrong. And unless they can somehow wake up and see why they’re wrong, we all lose—big time.

Let me explain. But to do so will require setting three levels of context.

The immediate context is of course the fact that Republicans have created a political crisis by refusing to raise the nation’s debt ceiling unless they achieve their priorities of dramatically reducing government spending—primarily on social programs.

A larger context is the fact that the U.S. is still reeling from an epic credit crunch. During the past decade, home prices were bid up to unrealistic levels and the financial industry magically and dramatically expanded the resulting bubble with the helium of securitization and derivatives. When the bubble popped, government bailouts and stimulus packages were deployed to prevent bank failures and help stanch the exploding levels of unemployment.

The even bigger, and most important, context is that we are entering a new historic era. Oil prices are high due to the ongoing depletion of giant, easy-to-produce oilfields discovered back in the 1950s and ’60s, and the substitution of expensive oil from deepwater drilling and tar sands. Other non-renewable resources are also becoming scarcer. On top of that, the climate is changing and weird weather is helping drive up food prices. Oh, and let’s not forget, the oceans are dying. Altogether, it seems reasonable to conclude that economic growth—fueled during past decades by cheap energy and raw materials, but also made possible by a stable climate—is coming to an end.

So here we are, facing an enormous, unavoidable long-term problem (the need to transition the economy to a sustainable post-growth mode while minimizing the human suffering that is likely to ensue in the interim); a medium-term need to deal with a recession that could at any moment relapse to 1930s levels; plus an optional short-term crisis (the fight over raising the nation’s debt limit).

Okay, that’s enough context. Let’s view the arguments of both sides from this expanded perspective.

the history of the debt limit

no one advocates for the commons

Video - Tex Avery's Half-Pint Pygmy

oftwominds | Does slavishly pursuing narrow self-interest benefit the nation? Clearly, the answer is no; a nation of self-interested pygmies leaves no one to advocate for the national interest.

The great cold lie at the heart of present-day America is that the nation will magically benefit if we each single-mindedly pursue our self-interest to the exclusion of all else. The idea has a sleek quasi-free-market sheen, as it borrows the market's "invisible hand" and applies it to social, fiscal and environmental policies.

That is a magical-thinking fantasy. If I pursued only my own self-interest, I would dump the toxic effluent from my factory right into the river ( a la China's very laissez faire economy) while I lived far away in an exclusive community far from the stench and poisons. Why pay for costly remediation when the "free" river beckons? After all, it all works out wonderfully if we each pursue our own self-interest with methodical, nay maniacal, single-mindedness. (Recall that rivers in America caught fire in the 1960s, before environmental regulations limited corporate self-interest.)

"The good of the nation" is now a code-phrase for "good for me, and to heck with the country at large." Every self-serving fiefdom, every self-serving cartel and every self-serving constituency (a.k.a. special interest) claims that its pathetically obvious self-serving lobbying "serves the national interest." It's all lies, blatant emotional manipulation of the vilest, crassest sort. Yet we as a nation have sunk so low that the entire notion of a national interest which doesn't benefit a powerful lobby or constituency has been lost.

We are now a nation of self-interested pygmies, blind to any national interest that isn't devoted to enriching us personally. If we ask cui bono-- to whose benefit? (the first question in the Survival+ critique), then the answer is always self-evident: some lobby, cartel, corporation, special interest or class of citizens who hope to stripmine the assets of the less-protected citizenry to line their own pockets with swag.

We are a nation slavishly devoted to feeding our herd of fattened sacred cows by any means necessary. The National Security State, a profit machine of Federal contractors stretching all the way back to LBJ contributors Brown & Root, who built bases in Vietnam for hefty profits? Untouchable: "we're fighting the global war on Terror." I guess that's why it's always an average citizen onboard who actually stops the bad guy.

The military industrial complex, which takes ten years to start building anything, by which time it's so costly we can't afford it? Untouchable: "we're keeping our military strong." More like weakening it to the breaking point by stripmining all the resources in bloated weapons programs.

Social Security, a.k.a. generational wealth transfer? Untouchable: "I paid in, there's this lockbox with my money in it...." It was always "pay as you go," not a "lockbox." Demographically, it's broken. It worked when there were 10 workers for every retiree, and even with 5 workers for every retiree; now with millions drawing disability benefits from the SSA (and hiring specialists to help them qualify for it--good ole self-interest at its best) and only 2.5 workers for every retiree--soon to be 2-to-1--the system is unsustainable.

Medicare, the Savior State arm of the sickcare cartel complex? Untouchable: "we have the best healthcare in the world." Yeah, if you're one of the select few who have gold-plated coverage. How is it in the national interest that we devote 17% of our vast GDP to sickcare and yet 40 million people aren't even covered, millions more have simulacra coverage (nothing is covered except 80% of catastrophic care, and the remaining 20% will bankrupt all but the wealthy), and other developed nations provide better care for all their citizens for half the cost per capita?

And of course there's the "too big to fail" banks and Wall Street: Untouchable: "if you mess with us we'll bring the country to its knees!" What a nice bunch of pygmies. They have nothing but self-interest, so they must be serving the national interest.

The core problem with President Obama and the political class in Washington is that they think governance boils down to placating the most powerful self-interested pygmies. To the Demopublicans, politics is not about the national interest-- whatever that is, since the concept has lost all meaning--it's about carving up the swag so all the powerful self-interests don't upset the Status Quo apple cart.

the counter-jihad

Foreign Policy | We hope, and perhaps need, a man who would gun down teenagers in cold blood to be mad. How could a man who is not insane carry out such heinous acts? What possible justification could make anyone act so barbarously? And yet all around the world when others have carried out atrocities of similar horror -- from the genocidaires of Rwanda to the al Qaeda butchers of Baghdad -- those of us lucky enough to live in the safe and comfortable global north have asked -- what made them do it? Their political ideology? Their interpretation of their religion? Calling them mad is not enough.To do so requires an appreciation of a transatlantic movement that often calls itself "the counter-jihad." As his writings indicate, Breivik is clearly a product of this predominantly web-based community of anti-Muslim, anti-government, and anti-immigration bloggers, writers, and activists -- no matter how much the movement's leading lights may deny this and denounce his actions.

So when Anders Behring Breivik says that his killing spree on Friday, July 22, was "gruesome but necessary" -- as he reportedly told his lawyer -- we must not just dismiss him as mad, but ask why he thinks so. Having left a 1,500-page manifesto and a YouTube video -- all conveniently in serviceable English for the international audience -- he clearly wants to be understood.

In contrast, the counter-jihad movement defines itself in part in opposition to neo-Nazis, indeed taking great pains to attempt to show that the Nazis were "socialists." This is taken to rather silly lengths where modern European social democrats (and even U.S. President Barack Obama and American Democrats) are called "socialists" alongside other "socialists" like Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Marx, and -- of course -- Hitler. Breivik's manifesto reproduces in full an essay by a well-known Norwegian counter-jihad writer called only "Fjordman" that argues that socialists and Nazis are one. This may seem ridiculous to anyone with a grasp of modern world history, but clearly was very important in leading Breivik to target a youth camp of the Norwegian Labour Party.

The opposition to neo-Nazism is most visible in the counter-jihad's overt philo-Semitism. This takes the form of a strong defense of Israel and the policies of Israeli right-wing parties, including the denial of there being "occupied territories" -- only Judea and Samaria, the biblical names for the West Bank. This has led to the inclusion in the counter-jihad movement of various hawkish American voices, both Jewish -- for example, Daniel Pipes -- and some Christian evangelicals. And whereas anti-Semitism is banished, it has been replaced with a rabid fear of Islam and of Muslims. Nevertheless, by focusing on the religion and culture of European Muslims being a threat, along with its proud philo-Semitism, the movement deems itself to be non-racist.

multiculturalism and abortion to blame for massacre

Salon | Opposition to Islam was the killer's stated motivation. He targeted other white Scandinavians because he considered them race traitors. He wrote all of this down, too, so we don't even have to make guesses about it! He blamed liberals for enabling jihad by supporting "multiculturalism." (Funnily enough, that is also exactly what Mark Steyn thinks.)

If Steyn's intentionally obtuse response is the dumbest I've read, the Jerusalem Post's editorial is the most shocking. Because it basically says Breivik is right

Perhaps Brievik’s inexcusable act of vicious terror should serve not only as a warning that there may be more elements on the extreme Right willing to use violence to further their goals, but also as an opportunity to seriously reevaluate policies for immigrant integration in Norway and elsewhere. While there is absolutely no justification for the sort of heinous act perpetrated this weekend in Norway, discontent with multiculturalism’s failure must not be delegitimatized or mistakenly portrayed as an opinion held by only the most extremist elements of the Right.

They want this act of politically motivated violence to ... work.

If there's any humor in this miserable news, it is to be found at Pamela Geller's place, where she compares herself to the Beatles and Jodie Foster. The comparison isn't quite apt, though, as Charles Manson and John Hinkley were notorious for misinterpreting harmless pop cultural artifacts. The Beatles song was about a fair ride, it was not actually titled "There Is a Race War Coming." Breivik seems to have interpreted Ms. Geller's writing correctly -- he just decided to address the "problem" through horrible, violent means.

But right-wingers generally agree that no one should blame right-wing beliefs for Breivik's horrible crime. Instead, as one RedState contributor argues, we should blame the pro-choice movement. And euthanasia.And `... Al Gore. Is it any wonder that people kill people in a world where Al Gore something something overpopulation? No, no it isn't. Ye gods.

To sum up: This tragedy can obviously be blamed solely on one truly evil, insane person, and nothing else. Besides multiculturalism. And abortion. It is disgusting to pin responsibility for this massacre on anything besides one crazy person and multiculturalism and abortion. And Al Gore.

I can understand how the self-preservation instinct would make sober reflection among the professional hate-mongering Islamophobia crowd unlikely, but I didn't really expect everyone to be blaming the liberals for getting shot by a fucking Norwegian Freeper.

hmm.., lemme see..., uh, phukkem!!!

NYTimes | The Murdoch drama is now entering its fifth act, the part when the bodies start to pile up. At the hearing before a parliamentary committee, Mr. Murdoch interrupted his son near the beginning of the proceedings to say: “This is the most humble day of my life.”

His native Australian optimism may be misleading him, however. The mood in Britain seems to desire nothing less than his complete destruction. Everything he cherishes must be sacrificed. The paper. The BSkyB deal. Rebekah Brooks. Possibly his son’s takeover of the company.

We go to tragedy to watch a man be destroyed. Macbeth must be destroyed for his lust for power, Othello for his jealousy, Antony for his passion, Lear for the incompleteness of his renunciation.

They are tragic precisely because their flaws are all too human. We do not yet know how far Mr. Murdoch is implicated in the crimes of his company, so we do not know which of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes he resembles most. If he didn’t know the extent of the phone hacking, then he’s most like the bungling Richard II, who fails to spot the decay within his kingdom. If he did know, then he’s more like the conniving Richard III, whose love of the machinations of power eventually grinds him into the machinery he’s created.

Regardless, Mr. Murdoch’s distinguishing flaw is common ambition — an outsider’s desire to force his way into the establishment. He has been singled out because his flaw is so ordinary, so widespread. Putting aside for a moment the complicity of every single reader of The News of the World, nearly all journalists and politicians played the same game, only Mr. Murdoch played it better.

One of the most profound feelings that follows watching a Shakespearean tragedy, once we have witnessed the destruction we crave, is how empty the world seems. The tension of tragedy lays bare a part of our hypocrisy that we should at least recognize in the case of Rupert Murdoch: Maybe he is a monster. Maybe he needs to be punished. But he is being destroyed because we cannot stand seeing ourselves, whether on stage or before Parliament.

murdoch backed hacking behind climategate

WhatsNew | Called "Screws of the World" for its focus on celebrity sex scandals, the British tabloid was the top selling English-language newspaper in the world when owner Rupert Murdoch permanently closed the paper two weeks ago, citing its role in the British phone-hacking scandals. Why do I not believe the worlds best selling newspaper was closed because it used improper methods to get a story? It was a tabloid for God's sake! Something much bigger had to be going on here. On 20 Nov 09, just two weeks before the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change, a server was breached at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in the UK. Hackers posted thousands of private e-mails and computer files on the web for the world to see. Climate skeptics claimed the hacked emails showed climate scientists manipulating data. They showed nothing of the sort. Nevertheless, the Copenhagen Summit was held in the shadow of an ongoing investigation into groundless charges. The media focused on the victim: the Climate Unit at the U. of East Anglia. "Who did the hacking," WN asked?. The only crime was breaking into private files, but the media made scant effort to find out who did it. For the next eight months neither the media nor Scotland Yard made any attempt to identify the hackers. WN never let up asking. Now we find it was Rupert Murdoch who was behind the climate gate hacking, having added Scotland Yard to his empire.

ideas are viruses...,

Slate | Perhaps the most fateful decision in all of European history was made by Augustus Caesar, when he chose to fix the border of the Roman Empire at the Rhine. As a result, the region known to the Romans as Germania would go without the products of Roman civilization—good roads and big cities and the Latin language and Christianity. But it would also remain vigorous and untamed enough to threaten Roman power, and finally destroy it in the fifth century A.D. For the next 1,500 years, the line where Roman writ ended would remain visible on the political and cultural map of Europe. The border between Romance and Germanic languages, between Catholicism and Protestantism, even between the Entente and the Central Powers in the First World War, all shadowed the border between Germania and Rome.

It is no wonder, then, that the sense of being "not-Rome," for good and ill, did so much to shape modern German identity. But the great irony, as Christopher Krebs shows in A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus's Germania From the Roman Empire to the Third Reich, is that it was a Roman who did most to define and crystallize that proud German otherness. Cornelius Tacitus, best known for his grimly disillusioned history of Rome's wicked emperors, was also the author of a short ethnographic treatise on the German tribes, known as the Germania. This book, written in 98 A.D., was almost lost during the Middle Ages. But when it was rediscovered and disseminated in the 15th century, just as the Renaissance and Reformation were gathering force, it became something like the bible of German nationalism.

Given where that nationalism led, Krebs is quite justified in the title of his clever, learned new study, which synthesizes a great deal of classical scholarship and intellectual history into a concise, accessible story. To drive the point home, the book opens with a vignette from 1943, when SS troops were dispatched by Heinrich Himmler to a villa in Italy, ordered to retrieve the oldest extant copy of the Germania before it fell into Allied hands. They failed, but the Raiders of the Lost Ark-style mission shows just how much numinous power the Nazis attributed to this ancient book.

And they were not alone. Krebs, a German-born classicist who teaches at Harvard, shows that just about every important German intellectual movement, starting with the Reformation, made a fetish out of the Germania. Based on a simple reading of the text—and Krebs' one failing is that, in concentrating on the Germania's afterlife, he does not say enough about what it actually contains—this might seem surprising. Tacitus is hardly flattering about either the land or its people. It is "a region hideous and rude, under a rigorous climate, dismal to behold or to cultivate." The men are undisciplined and lazy, leaving all manual labor to the women, and they drink so much that "if you will but humor their excess in drinking, and supply them with as much as they covet, it will be no less easy to vanquish them by vices than by arms."

Yet if these are the vices of primitives, the Germans are also credited with the primitive virtues. They are tall, handsome, and vigorous, excellent warriors, jealous of their liberty, and sexually chaste. In short, they are the diametric opposites of the luxurious aristocrats of Rome, who were Tacitus' original readers. The historian turned the Germans into noble savages, just as later European writers would do with the American Indians, in order to reproach the excesses of his own society. As Krebs summarizes, "Freedom, fortitude, morality, and simplicity … could still, it seemed, be found, if not in Rome, at least in Germanien."

Fifteen hundred years later, when the Germania resurfaced in the library of a German monastery, it was again Romans who were most eager to read it. With a scholar's sense of the drama of bibliophily, Krebs details the quest of the Italian humanists to recover lost and unknown works of antiquity. He thrills to the brief note in the diary of a papal secretary that announces, "Cornelius Tacitus' book on 'the origin and situation of Germany' is found; seen in Rome in 1455."

But while Italians rediscovered the Germania, Germans made it a Renaissance best-seller. In an intellectual judo-flip, this Roman treatise on German primitivism was taken over by Germans who wanted to assert their historical and moral superiority to Rome. Followers of Martin Luther "produced their own Latin editions, the first German translation, and an extensive commentary" on Tacitus' work. The leading Lutheran Philip Melanchthon hoped the work would help readers "contemplate … the strength and virtuousness of ancient Germany." Fist tap Nana.

can the plot GET any thicker?

Gilad | I learned last night from an Israeli online journal, that two days before the Utoya Island massacre, AUF’s (Labour Party's youth movement) leader Eskil Pedersen gave an interview to the Dagbladet, Norway's second largest tabloid newspaper, in which he unveiled what he thinks of Israel.

In the course of the interview, Pedersen stated that he “believes the time has come for more drastic measures against Israel, and (that he) wants the Foreign Minister to impose an economic boycott against the country.”

Pederson went on to say, “The peace process goes nowhere, and though the whole world expect Israel to comply, they do not. We in Labour Youth will have a unilateral economic embargo of Israel from the Norwegian side.”

The AUF Labour Party Youth Movement have been devoted promoters of the Israel Boycott campaign, The Dagbladet newspaper reporting that “The AUF has long been a supporter of an international boycott of Israel, but the decision at the last congress, demands that Norway imposes a unilateral economic embargo on the country and it must be stricter than before.”

“I acknowledge that this is a drastic measure”, stated Pedersen, “but I think it gives a clear indication that we are tired of Israel's behaviour, quite simply”.

Yesterday we also learned that mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik was openly enthusiastic about Israel. According to a variety of internet outlets, Behring Breivik was a regular poster on several Norwegian internet sites, notably the blog document.no, which is run by Hans Rustad, a former left-wing journalist. Hans Rustad is Jewish, extremely pro-Zionist, and warns against ‘Islam-isation’, violence, and other social problems he assumes to be connected with Muslim immigration.

Alongside the UK’s infamously Islamophobic Harry’s Place and other Jewish pro-war Zionist blogs, the observant amongst us are becoming more and more aware of an increasingly pervasive trend of Jerusalemite internet journals that -- ostensibly – like to give the impression of ‘rallying for the preservation of Western culture,’ and of ‘standing up for democratic values’. For the most obvious of reasons, these blog pages are almost exclusively focused on ‘the problem of Islam,’ and on Muslim migrants’ ‘troubled and reactionary’ communities and politics, whilst all the while, simultaneously, relentlessly and forcefully propounding a propagandistic Zionist agenda. Interestingly enough, other immigrants are routinely depicted on these blog pages as being 'harmless', or as 'positive contributors to society' -- you won’t find Hans Rustad or Harry Place criticising the Jewish Lobbies, the Lord Levy’s or the Russian Oligarchs’ disastrous impact on ‘Western culture’ or on ‘democratic values’ any time soon.

Gordon Duff wrote yesterday in “Veterans Today” that the “car bombing carries the signature of an intelligence agency. Nobody else bothers with such things.”

And indeed it is after all, pretty clear that a car bomb of such magnitude, and an operation of such sophistication is not exactly something a layman can put together with such apparent ease: it would surely take some specialist knowledge, and the question here is, who could provide such knowledge, and such a vast amount of lethal explosives?

templar gang-bangin an professional dope-slangin?

Video - Aljazeera reports on Michoacan Knights Templar methamphetamine cartel.

Aljazeera | Pictures of the latest objects seized by the police in the Mexican state of Michoacan, revealed that the mysterious 'Knights Templar" drug cartel is more bizarre than most people imagine.

There were four hooded tunics, with a red cross, a metal helmet, and a pamphlet or Templar rule book. This drug cartel claims to draw inspiration from the medieval Christian warriors who fought to protect Jerusalem and the Holy Grail.

No one knows if its founder, Servando Gomez, a school teacher, was a history entuthiast or simply read the Da Vinci Code.

The rules in the modern day 'templar bible' call for observance of 'gentleman' like behaviour and respect for women – but also state that any disclosure of knights templar activities will result in the death of the person and his whole family, and confiscation by the cartel of the snitch’s property. Watch my tv report from Michoacan.

The cartel is like a secret society.

The Mexican Templars have an initiation ritual, which apparently includes dressing up like knights from the Middle Ages, and performing blood pacts.

The cartel recruits drug users and enrolls them in the organisation's rehabilitation centers; the process is closely monitored and has a strong religious component.

The double standard is striking: the Templars can not take drugs, and yet they run one of the biggest methamphetamines traffic corridors to the United States.

A resident of Morelia, the capital of the Michoacan province, tells me the cartel that preceded the Templars, La Familia, hired 'cooks' who had learnt to manufacture meth (known as ice or crystal) in the US.

As the government regulated the sale of one of meth's core components, pseudoephedrine (found in cold medicine), the 'crystal makers' or cristaleros moved back to Mexico and now get supplies from China through ports on the Pacific coast.

The young recruits are told to be 'gentlemen', the word for 'knight' in Spanish means a 'gentleman', but they have to kill those who they judge as thieves, rapists, or kidnappers, hanging them from bridges and attaching messages to their bodies.

The government of Felipe Calderon has declared war on the cartels.

It receives substantial military aid from the US to combat these drug gangs.

The national security spokesperson says the Templars are an offshoot of La Familia and their beliefs are a mere PR campaign to gain support of Michoacan residents.

President Calderon is from Michoacan, and his sister is running for governor.

But others see the religious element as a calculated move by its founder to prevent his hit men leaking information, while giving the group an aura of mystery that could inspire fear and respect. It is hard to know

The cartel's structure, wealth, and size. It is perhaps the second most notorious Mexican cartel in terms of killing methods, the most vicious one, the 'Zetas', is a group formed by Mexican army special forces in the 90s. Fist tap Dale.

black robes brought dark ages...,

Credo in unum Deum,
Patrem omnipoténtem,
Factórem cæli et terræ,
Visibílium ómnium et invisibílium.
Et in unum Dóminum Iesum Christum,
Fílium Dei Unigénitum,
Et ex Patre natum ante ómnia sæcula.
Deum de Deo, lumen de lúmine, Deum verum de Deo vero,
Génitum, non factum, consubstantiálem Patri:
Per quem ómnia facta sunt.
Qui propter nos hómines et propter nostram salútem
Descéndit de cælis.
Et incarnátus est de Spíritu Sancto
Ex María Vírgine, et homo factus est.
Crucifíxus étiam pro nobis sub Póntio Piláto;
Passus, et sepúltus est,
Et resurréxit tértia die, secúndum Scriptúras,
Et ascéndit in cælum, sedet ad déxteram Patris.
Et íterum ventúrus est cum glória,
Iudicáre vivos et mórtuos,
Cuius regni non erit finis.
Et in Spíritum Sanctum, Dóminum et vivificántem:
Qui ex Patre Filióque procédit.
Qui cum Patre et Fílio simul adorátur et conglorificátur:
Qui locútus est per prophétas.
Et unam, sanctam, cathólicam et apostólicam Ecclésiam.
Confíteor unum baptísma in remissiónem peccatorum.
Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum,
Et vitam ventúri sæculi. Amen.

Constantine chose Christianity, and not one of the other dying god cults chosen by his predecessors. Perhaps because his mother had been a Christian, perhaps because he was attracted to the authoritarian nature of what the early bishopricks had managed to organize. Constantine planned to use the organization of the bishopricks to help him unite and control what remained of his empire. The problem was that the bishops had been disagreeing with one another since the beginning of their hustle.

Constantine's solution? He organized the first ever pan-bishoprick conference and invited all the important bishops to Nicea to ratify a common Christian playbook. No sooner had the dogmatic bishops arrived, than they began petitioning Constantine to adopt one or another of their irrelevant little creeds in preference to the others. Constantine's solution? He burned all their inconsequential petitions, asserted a unitary creed and enforced it.

A unitary and literally magical-thinking creed was composed and imposed at Nicea via a simple carrot and stick. Those bishops who signed on to Constantine's new playbook got to stay on for months of lavish entertainment as Constantine's guests, those who refused were banished from the Roman empire as criminals. The Nicene Creed was constructed by a despotic Roman emperor, imposed on the bishopricks by force, and is still mindlessly repeated in churches all across the world today.

Bishop Eusebius arrived at the Council of Nicea in opposition to the what became the creed, and he left the Council as Constantine's right-hand man. Eusebius became Constantine's biographer and wrote The Oration which praised the evil Roman as a living saint. (When Constantine returned to Rome from Nicea, he had his wife suffocated and his son murdered) You would never know this, however, from reading Eusebius.

Eusebius also wrote the hugely influential History of the Church, which history is as accurate an account of Christian origins as The Oration is an accurate portrait of Constantine. The History of the Church is a complete fiction crafted to serve the authoritarian aims of the new Holy Roman Church. Yet this complete fabrication serves as the basis of the traditional understanding of Christian history because for centuries it was all anyone had to rely upon as a source. Why? All alternative accounts of Christian origin were banned and burned.

From the 4th century forward, the Holy Roman Church (the embodiment of the Roman empire) began violently persecuting their Gnostic and Pagan rivals completely out of existence. Armed with a New Testament that repudiated heretics and an Old Testament (Tanakh) that advocated and validated scorched earth and genocide, the Holy Roman Empire enforced Constantine's Christianity with centuries of black-robed violence. Not only did the Holy Roman Empire manage to exterminate all other religions, it even managed to destroy civilization itself, plunging Europe into many centuries of the Dark Age.

The wealth of temples was plundered and shared between the emperor and his bishopricks. Priests and priestesses were murdered, temples burned and razed. Libraries were put to the torch and nearly all the literature of antiquity was destroyed. The lights of civilization went out all across Europe and the west reverted to a brutal life of apocalyptic ignorance and superstition vaguely but resonantly preserved for us in the Grimm's Faery Tales....,

templars in the 21st century?

CBSNews | Breivik laid out his extreme nationalist philosophy as well as his attack methods in a 1,500-page manifesto. It also describes how he bought armor, guns, tons of fertilizer and other bomb components, stashed caches of weapons and wiped his computer hard drive — all while evading police suspicion and being nice to his neighbors.

Meanwhile, police in France raided the home of Breivik's father on Monday. Jens Breivik lives in southern France. It wasn't immediately clear whether investigators believed he might share his son's extremist views.

Breivik claims in his writing to be part of a new Knights Templar group, and he hints that there may be others waiting to execute similar attacks, though his lawyer said he insists he acted alone.

"Will attempt to initiate contact with cell 8b and 8c in late March," he writes at one point, but doesn't reference them again or explain if these are aliases.

Norwegian police declined to comment on whether they're concerned about similar attacks. European security officials said they were aware of increased Internet chatter from individuals claiming they belonged to a new Knights Templar group that Breivik describes, in fantastical terms, in the manifesto. The Knights Templar was a medieval order created to protect Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land after the First Crusade in the 11th century.

The officials said they were still investigating claims that Breivik, and other far-right individuals, attended a London meeting of the group in 2002. The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the investigation.

too much information too fast?

Video - Russia Today interviews Stephen Lendman about Norway attacks.

SJLendman | Who gains and loses from every terror incident must also be asked, certainly not suspects charged, convicted and imprisoned. Geopolitical interests are central. This time Western and Israeli ones are key.

On July 22, New York Times writers Elisha Mala and J. David Goodman were in battle mode headlining, "At Least 80 Dead in Norway Shooting," saying:

"A lone political extremist bombed the government center here on Friday, killing 7 people....before heading to an island summer camp for young members of the governing Labor Party and killing at least 80 people."

A July 23 follow-up headlined, "Death Toll Rises to 91 in Norway Attacks," saying:

"The Norwegian police charged a 32-year-old man (Anders Behring Breivik, identified as) a Christian fundamentalist with right-wing connections, over the bombing of a government center here and a shooting attack on a nearby island that together left at least 91 people dead."

Police didn't know if he was part of a greater conspiracy. "What we do know," said police official Roger Andresen, "is that he is right-wing and a Christian fundamentalist." Oslo police chief of staff Johan Fredriksen said he wasn't surprised that a blond, blue-eyed man was involved. He likely would have made a harsher statement if a Muslim was charged, homegrown or otherwise.

Police also said very likely the two incidents were connected. No evidence proves it despite claims of explosives found on Utoya island where the shootings occurred.

An anonymous police official said that "it seems that this is not linked to any international terrorist organizations," adding it's "probably more Norway's Oklahoma City than (its) World Trade Center."

Reuters said Breivik belonged to Norway's Progress Party, the second largest in Parliament, was a member from 2004 - 2006, and in its youth party from 1997 - 2007. Progress leader Siv Jensen indicated he left the party, wanting to disassociate it from anyone charged with terror attacks.

Obama's initial reaction stoked war on terror fears, saying:

"It's a reminder that the entire international community has a stake in preventing this kind of terror from occurring, and that we have to work cooperatively together both on intelligence and in terms of prevention of these kinds of horrible attacks," implying Islamic involvement to justify America's imperial aggression.

It's much too early to know or draw conclusions about Oslo. Yesterday on Russia Today television, this writer told viewers to be wary of official accounts, especially early ones later proved false. Red flags were also mentioned, notably when accusations are made quickly, naming names, followed by arrests.

Police work takes time. Often weeks or months are needed to solve crimes. In fact, many end up unsolved in closed case files. Quick conclusions should make everyone wary.

targetting the children of liberal elites?

NYTimes | It has been a rite of passage for Norway’s liberal elite for decades: a summer camp set on a verdant Nordic isle called Utoya, where this week hundreds of young people gathered to meet government ministers, dive into election strategy sessions and maybe find a little summer romance.

But for Helen Andreassen, a 21-year-old aspiring politician, a celebration of bright futures became something horrifyingly different when she and her friends jumped from a second-story window to escape the bullets of a man who was hunting them specifically because of their politics.

They ran for their lives, she said, tumbling down the rocky heights to the sea shore, hoping the man in the police officer’s uniform would not pursue them into the water. But he kept shooting.

“He was standing just by the water, using his rifle, just taking his time, aiming and shooting,” Ms. Andreassen said. “It was a slaughter of young children."

For more than an hour, the gunman stalked the forests and steep, rocky shores of the island. There were no bridges to provide escape. Time was on his side.

The young people desperately silenced their cellphones and stripped off colorful clothing. But the shooter was methodical. After killing several people on one part of the island, he went to the other, and, dressed in his police uniform, calmly convinced the children huddled there that he meant to save them. When they emerged into the open, he fired again and again.

“He shot a boy in the back,” said Stine Renate Haaheim, 27, a member of Parliament who was also among those hiding. “I saw that some people were falling, and we turned around and ran. At that point I didn’t look back.”

The police have identified the suspect as Anders Behring Breivik, who in his writings has portrayed himself as a modern knight, charged with driving out Islam and immigrants and the political correctness that he said had been wrongly invited into Norway and was thriving there.

The campers at Utoya appeared to be the embodiment of his hatred.

fear of islam and plan for war....,

NYTimes | The Norwegian man charged Saturday with a pair of attacks in Oslo that killed at least 92 people left behind a detailed manifesto outlining his preparations and calling for a Christian war to defend Europe against the threat of Muslim domination, according to Norwegian and American officials familiar with the investigation.

As stunned Norwegians grappled with the deadliest attack in the country since World War II, a portrait began to emerge of the suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, 32. The police identified him as a right-wing fundamentalist Christian, while acquaintances described him as a gun-loving Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threats of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration.

“We are not sure whether he was alone or had help,” a police official, Roger Andresen, said at a televised news conference. “What we know is that he is right wing and a Christian fundamentalist.”

In the 1,500-page manifesto, posted on the Web hours before the attacks, Mr. Breivik recorded a day-by-day diary of months of planning for the attacks, and claimed to be part of a small group that intended to “seize political and military control of Western European countries and implement a cultural conservative political agenda.”

He predicted a conflagration that would kill or injure more than a million people, adding, “The time for dialogue is over. We gave peace a chance. The time for armed resistance has come.”

The manifesto was signed Andrew Berwick, an Anglicized version of his name. A former American government official briefed on the case said investigators believed the manifesto was Mr. Breivik’s work.

The manifesto, entitled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” equates liberalism and multiculturalism with “cultural Marxism,” which the document says is destroying European Christian civilization.

The document also describes a secret meeting in London in April 2002 to reconstitute the Knights Templar, a Crusader military order. It says the meeting was attended by nine representatives of eight European countries, evidently including Mr. Breivik, with an additional three members unable to attend, including a “European-American.”

The document does not name the attendees or say whether they were aware of Mr. Breivik’s planned attacks, though investigators presumably will now try to determine if the people exist and what their connection is to Mr. Breivik.

Thomas Hegghammer, a terrorism specialist at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, said the manifesto bears an eerie resemblance to those of Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders, though from a Christian rather than a Muslim point of view. Like Mr. Breivik’s manuscript, the major Qaeda declarations have detailed accounts of the Crusades, a pronounced sense of historical grievance and calls for apocalyptic warfare to defeat the religious and cultural enemy.

my name paul: that isht between y'all...,

Phillipians 3:5-8Though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: 5 Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; 6 Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. 7 But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. 8 Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,

The Tanakh (a.k.a. Old Testament) has been a part of our culture for so long that we seem incapable of applying the same critical standards to this musty collection of cut and pasted literature that we would apply to any other such quaint material. After all, if we found this material today, we would we even for half a hot minute pretend that Noah and his wife had actually herded all the world's animals onto their little rickety, non-Phoenician raft? Or that Joshua had blown down the walls of a city with a magical trumpet?

We would give this material less credence than we give the Epic of Gilgamesh or the story of Beowulf, with the clear-eyed understanding that anything even remotely historical in this material is buried beneath so much silly accretion as to be ridiculous. We would certainly not be in the absurd situation in which we find ourselves in which a nuclear-armed garrison state of European refugees has laid claim to Palestine on the basis of fraudulent mythology and threatens to thrust the world into the chaos of nuclear war later this year.

Two thousand years ago a Jew born of the tribe of Benjamin, circumcised on the eighth day, a zealous Pharisee, fully righteous and down by law described the sacred texts of Judaism as isht. We know this cat as the "apostle" Paul, and although he was entirely right back in the day to describe the Tanakh as so much isht, he was wrong about them being supplanted by the entheogenic gnosis of the Christ. Instead, the coded literature of the gnostic cults of the entheogenic Christ was subverted and distorted into the wholly made-up scriptures of the Church of Rome which also adopted the Tanakh isht as its Old Testament. This fustercluck was further compounded when another later engineered scientological formation calling itself Islam based itself on much of this same old musty isht. Now, almost half of the world's population calls itself Jewish, Christian, or Moslem and this fact has left the rest of us up to our eyebrows in isht.