Thursday, October 31, 2019

The Nazis and Thalidomide: The Worst Drug Scandal of All Time

pharmaceuticals drugs accountability crime medicine Nazi medicine business thalidomide

The girl's head is flung back, her mouth open in a cry of pain. She doesn't feel anything. She is a bronze sculpture symbolizing the suffering of 10,000 or more children around the world born in the '50s and '60s who did suffer greatly, and still do, as adults. Because their mothers ingested the notorious drug thalidomide, they were born without legs or arms or with foreshortened limbs like The Sick Child cast in bronze. Some were born deaf and blind; some with curved spines, or with heart and brain damage.

The over-the-counter tranquilizer was hailed as a wonder drug when released in the late 1950s. Its maker, Chemie Grünenthal, a small German company relatively new to pharmacology, marketed it aggressively in 46 countries with the guarantee that it could be "given with complete safety to pregnant women and nursing mothers without any adverse effect on mother and child." During the four years it was on the market, doctors prescribed it as a nontoxic antidote to morning sickness and sleeplessness—and it sold by the millions.

For nearly half a century, the privately owned company was silent and secretive about the epic tragedy it created while earning a vast profit. Even before its release, the wife of an employee gave birth to a baby without ears, but Chemie Grünenthal ignored the warning. Within two years, an estimated million people in West Germany were taking the drug on a daily basis.

But by early 1959, reports started to surface that the drug was toxic, with scores of adults suffering from peripheral neuritis damaging the nervous system. As profits kept rolling in, however, Chemie Grünenthal suppressed that information, bribing doctors and pressuring critics and medical journals for years. Even after an Australian doctor connected thalidomide with deformed births in 1961, it took four months for the company to withdraw the drug. By then, it is estimated to have affected 100,000 pregnant women, causing at least 90,000 miscarriages and thousands of deformities to the babies who survived.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that thalidomide caused miscarriages and birth defects, Chemie Grünenthal for years fought to resist paying the necessary compensation required for a lifetime of care—and still does. Victims say the company's payments have been derisory and far from enough to pay for the expensive care needed by those severely deformed.  (more...)


Robert McNamara’s Infamous “Project 100,000” and the Vietnam War. A Premeditated Crime against Humanity

military war technology books history

In the very long list of shocking and abominable atrocities committed by the US, there is one that stands out as especially obscene for the appalling and hypocritical inhumanity of US Government leaders. This was “Project 100,000”, a US military program enacted by then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to recruit 100,000 new soldiers per year during a time of great public opposition to the Vietnam war, and which was promoted as part of President Johnson’s ‘War on Poverty’. In McNamara’s own words, it was “a program to salvage the poverty-scarred youth of our society”, to give them two years of military service, then insert them into “a lifetime of productive activity in American civilian society”.

He further stated,
“Poverty in America pockmarks its victims inwardly. If unchecked and unreversed, that inner ghetto of the poverty-scarred personality of these men can fester into explosive frustrations of bitterness and violence. Chronic failures in school throughout their childhood, they are destined to a downward spiral of defeat and decay … If nothing were done to give them a strong sense of their own worth and potential, they, their wives and their children would almost inevitably be the unproductive recipients of some form of the dole ten years from now. Hundreds of thousands of men can be salvaged from the blight of poverty, and the Defense Department – with no detriment whatever to its primary role – is particularly well equipped to salvage them.”
That sounds good, except that this program was initiated during a time when the US was realising extremely high casualties in Vietnam, had already admitted the war was “unwinnable”, with most suitable recruits either taking student deferments or evading the draft by fleeing to Canada. McNamara’s solution was to run a sieve through the ghettos of America, an ingenious and diabolical solution to “rid the nation” of its surplus black and poor, in a program he may have hatched with the advice of Margaret Sanger, she of Planned Parenthood. In executing this program, McNamara lowered the standards to the point where these recruits were in the bottom quartile of intelligence and ability, a great many of them with an IQ of 60 or 65, and none above 80.  (more...)


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Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Project Paperclip: Nazis in America

accountability crime corruption fascism Nazi medicine science research technology

Few Americans have heard of Project Paperclip. Among those who have, the majority do not know its true extent because the U.S. government has successfully concealed most of the facts surrounding the project. Instead, the government has passed it off as a short-term operation limited to an innocent investigation of Germany's scientists after World War II. In reality, Project Paperclip, as documented by authors such as John Loftus in his book The Belarus Secret, was the largest and longest-running operation involving Nazis in the history of the United States, and its effects are still being felt today.

At the close of World War II, U.S. officials and the Allied countries discovered that Germany had developed a technical superiority far beyond what they had imagined. In Nazi Germany, 20,000 scientists had revolutionized the weapons of war, and reports written by Allied investigators described the Germans' "astonishing achievement" and "superb inventions." In order to learn about the new German technology and weaponry, Russia, France, Britain and the United States began transporting German experts to their respective countries for interrogation. The Cold War was now beginning, and U.S. officials were determined to use any means necessary to keep the scientists responsible for Germany's scientific supremacy out of Russian hands. At the same time, they aimed to acquire a technological lead against Russia. Thus, in the name of national interest, the United States began recruiting the Nazi scientists.

In 1946, President Harry S. Truman authorized Project Paperclip, a program designed to bring selected German scientists to work for the United States during the Cold War. However, Truman expressly forbade anyone found to have been "a member of the Nazi party and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazism." The War Department's Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) was to conduct background investigations of the scientists, to be approved by the State Department.

Against Truman's orders, however, the JIOA, Army intelligence and the CIA actively concealed incriminating information about the Germans they were hiring. Many of the 1,600 scientific and research specialists and their dependents brought to the U.S. under Project Paperclip had been deeply involved in Nazi society during the war. However, U.S. officials were determined to recruit these men and chose to ignore their appalling pasts. They sidestepped the problem of their Nazi backgrounds by "cleansing" and re-writing their information files to eliminate incriminating evidence. As a way of identifying the German scientists, American officials put an ordinary paperclip on their personnel files--thus the origin of the operation's name.

While official American policy after the war was to prosecute war criminals for the atrocities committed under Adolf Hitler, many sectors of the U.S. government were actively concealing incriminating evidence in order to bring these very men into the U.S.   (more...)



Further exploration:


Exposing Giuliani's Russian Ties


Part 2 of Narativ's pop-up pod: There's Something About Rudy exposes Rudy Giuliani's and Donald Trump's curious business ties to Ukrainian oligarch Pavel Fuchs.

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Holy Bean Counters! Vatican cardinals linked to missing millions and financial scandal

Catholic Vatican money laundering accountability business crime corruption

Vatican City, Oct 29, 2019 / 02:03 pm (CNA).- An Italian dermatology hospital and two senior cardinals are at the center of a burgeoning financial scandal involving a Vatican bank, the U.S.-based Papal Foundation, and millions of euros from misallocated government grants.

The events concern the financial collapse of the Istituto Dermopatico dell’Immacolata (IDI), an Italian hospital.

According to media reports and new sources, Cardinal Angelo Becciu and Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi have been key players in a complicated series of transactions that financed the Vatican Secretariat of State’s 2015 acquisition of the hospital, which had collapsed under large-scale acts of theft and money laundering that led to the imprisonment of its president.

Multiple sources in the United States and in Rome have confirmed to CNA that then-Archbishop Becciu was responsible for organizing a concerted effort by other Vatican officials and American cardinals – including then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick – to pressure the board of the U.S.-based Papal Foundation to approve a grant of $25 million in 2017.  (more...)


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Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Mobster's New Book: I Helped Murder Pope John-Paul I

Catholic Vatican banks finance corruption business crime assassination Mafia

... I'd like to give a big "thank you," because it concerns a subject that I have written about, in my book Covert Wars and Breakaway Civilizations, that subject being what I have called "the hidden system of finance." In this case, the story concerns an alleged member of the Mafia, Anthony Raimondi, a nephew of the notorious America mob boss, Lucky Luciano, and his claims stated in his recent "tell all" book, When the Bullet hits the Bone, that he was part of a team that had murdered Pope John-Paul I (Albino Cardinal Luciani), who was pope for a mere 33 days. Pay attention to that number, because we'll be getting back to that...

...

Now before I get to today's high octane speculation, it's necessary for me to lay my cards on the table: I do not believe, and have never believed the idea that Pope John-Paul I simply died quietly in his sleep. I do believe, and have always believed, that John-Paul I was murdered, and murdered precisely for his probable knowledge of, and determination to eliminate, the financial corruption in and around the Vatican bank and its connections. There are a number of "contextual" stories and events at that time that would indicate such. John-Paul I was the Cardinal Archbishop and Patriarch of Venice when he was elected Pope... let that one sink in for a moment. And since we're mentioning weird coincidences, perhaps it is more than a little significant that Mr. Raimondi is a nephew of Lucky Luciano, whose surname bears an uncomfortably close clannish similarity to that of the murdered Pope. In any case, in 1978, during John-Paul's brief pontificate, both Italy and the Vatican were poised on the cusp of the notorious P2 Masonic lodge scandal, which would break out in 1981 when Italian financial authorities, probing the finances of  Italian banker Michele Sindona, discovered links to the lodge, which in turn had deep links into the Vatican, and the Vatican bank. In the culture of corruption that is in my opinion Grand Orient masonry, the number 33 has especial status and significance... interesting that John Paul I  was murdered on the 33rd day of his pontificate.  (more...)



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Retrial begins for former Kingston teacher and OHL billet accused of sex crimes against minors

abuse boys crime homosexuality education misconduct rape sports pedophilia

The retrial for Neil Joynt, the 78-year-old former teacher and long-time hockey billet, accused of sexual assaulting two boys in the 1960s and ’70s, began Monday in Napanee superior court.

In October 2016, Joynt was convicted of two counts of indecent assault against two boys that he taught, and was sentenced to eight months in jail. He was found not guilty of assaulting a third boy.

Joynt never served jail time, since he appealed his conviction the day of sentencing.

According to Crown counsel Roberto Corbella, the retrial was granted because the judge failed to deliver two pieces of information to the jury — a summary of the evidence and failing to provide the jury with prior consistent statements of a witness.

When asked if granting a retrial on such elements are common, Corbella said he’s never experienced a retrial in his over 20 years of working in the job.  (more...)


Background:

abuse boys crime homosexuality education misconduct rape sports pedophilia

Monday, October 28, 2019

The Billionaire Murders: The Mysterious Deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman

books crime murder pharmaceuticals generic drugs business police technology medicine

A top journalist crosses the yellow tape to investigate a shocking high-society crime.

Billionaires, philanthropists, socialites . . . victims. Barry and Honey Sherman appeared to lead charmed lives. But the world was shocked in late 2017 when their bodies were found in a bizarre tableau in their elegant Toronto home. First described as murder-suicide — belts looped around their necks, they were found seated beside their basement swimming pool — police later ruled it a staged, targeted double murder. Nothing about the case made sense to friends of the founder of one of the world’s largest generic pharmaceutical firms and his wife, a powerhouse in Canada’s charity world. Together, their wealth has been estimated at well over $4.7 billion.

There was another side to the story. A strategic genius who built a large generic drug company — Apotex Inc. — Barry Sherman was a self-described workaholic, renowned risk-taker, and disruptor during his fifty-year career. Regarded as a generous friend by many, Sherman was also feared by others. He was criticized for stifling academic freedom and using the courts to win at all costs. Upset with building issues at his mansion, he sued and recouped millions from tradespeople. At the time of his death, Sherman had just won a decades-old legal case involving four cousins who wanted 20 percent of his fortune.

Toronto Star investigative journalist Kevin Donovan chronicles the unsettling story from the beginning, interviewing family members, friends, and colleagues, and sheds new light on the Shermans’ lives and the disturbing double murder. Deeply researched and authoritative, The Billionaire Murders is a compulsively readable tale of a strange and perplexing crime.

Book excerpts:


books crime murder pharmaceuticals generic drugs business police technology medicine

Sunday, October 27, 2019

Basilian Fathers lose appeal in sexual abuse case

Basilians Catholic abuse boys education gay clergy misconduct pedophilia rape

The Ontario Court of Appeal has dismissed the two main components of a three-pronged appeal by the Basilian Fathers of Toronto concerning the awarding of $2.57 million in damages to a former St. Charles College student in the 1960s.

In its decision announced Friday, Justice Julie A. Thorburn, on behalf of the three-member court of appeal panel, did rule in favour of the Basilian Fathers on a third.

Critically, the ruling does not affect the $2.57 million awarded to former student Rod MacLeod.

William Hodgson Marshall sexually abused MacLeod more than 50 times while he was a student at St. Charles College from 1963-67, a school run by the Basilians.

Eventually, MacLeod sued Marshall, Basilian Fathers, the Sudbury Catholic District School Board, and the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation of the Diocese of Sault Ste. Marie, which he won.

The Basilians, however, appealed the amount of money they have to pay, arguing the jury instruction on how to assess damages for past income loss was wrong, the punitive damages award was excessive and that prejudgment interest should not have been awarded at the rate of five per cent.  (more...)


More coverage:

The declassified history of Hitler’s British traitors

treason espionage sabotage Nazi Britain accountability history cover-up coup fifth column

For almost 80 years, Britain has told itself – and the world – a powerful story about the country’s heroism during the dark days of World War Two. Newspapers, television and the cinema have portrayed the years between 1939 and 1945 as the country’s finest hours: the spirits of Dunkirk, the Blitz and a nation bonded by the rubrics of ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’, ‘Make Do and Mend’, are repeatedly invoked to create an enduring narrative of brave stoicism.

That narrative is not false.  It is simply not the whole story. Hundreds of once-secret Security Service (MI5) and British government files have now revealed an uncomfortable truth:  that for all the genuine unity and determination of the vast majority of the population to defeat Hitler, there was also a small – but dangerous – sub-stratum which yearned for the day when his troops could goose-step down Whitehall amid an orgy of swastika flags.

The files, quietly de-classified and released to the UK National Archives in the years between 2000 and 2018, show that more than seventy British men and women were convicted – mostly in secret trials – of working to help Nazi Germany win the war.  Additionally, hundreds of other British Fascists were interned without trial on detailed evidence that they were spying for, or working on behalf of, Germany.  Collectively, these men and women were part of a little-known Fifth Column Four. Two members were executed, whilst most of the others received lengthy prison sentences or were detained throughout the war.

If these men and women were, for the most part, lone wolves or members of small, localized networks, others were very much more dangerous. The de-classified Security Service files document three plots led by well-connected British Nazi leaders to launch a violent “fascist revolution”.  (more...)


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Saturday, October 26, 2019

HITLER’S SECRET ARMY: A Hidden History of Spies, Saboteurs, and Traitors in World War II


This dramatic exposé of Allied subterfuge and betrayal uncovers the treachery of undercover fascists and American Nazi spy rings during the height of World War II.

Between 1939 and 1945, more than seventy Allied men and women were convicted―mostly in secret trials―of working to help Nazi Germany win the war. In the same period, hundreds of British Fascists were also interned without trial on specific and detailed evidence that they were spying for, or working on behalf of, Germany. Collectively, these men and women were part of a little-known Fifth Column: traitors who committed crimes including espionage, sabotage, communicating with enemy intelligence agents and attempting to cause disaffection amongst Allied troops. Four of these traitors were sentenced to death; two were executed, whilst most of the others received lengthy prison sentences or were interned throughout the war.

Hundreds of official files, released piecemeal and in remarkably haphazard fashion in the years between 2002 and 2017, reveal the truth about the Allied men and women who formed these spy rings. Most were ardent fascists: all willingly betrayed their own country in the hope and anticipation of a German victory. Several were part of international espionage rings based in the United States.

If these men and women were, for the most part, lone wolves or members of small networks, others were much more dangerous. In 1940, during some of the darkest days of the war, two well-connected British Nazi sympathizers planned overlapping conspiracies to bring about a “fascist revolution.” These plots were foiled by Allied spymasters through radical―and often contentious―methods of investigation. Its agents set up elaborate agent provocateur and sting operations which uncovered scores of the Nazi sympathizers seeking to pass military and defense secrets to the enemy.

accountability treason Nazi war crime Britain fifth column espionage fascism


Did Nazis really try to make zombies? The real history behind one of our weirdest WWII obsessions

Ahnenerbe Nazi fertility gnosticism research occult neopaganism Hollywood

From the pages of "Hellboy" and the pixilated corridors of "Wolfenstein 3D," popular culture has wondered whether the Nazis, who had no shortage of well-documented kooky ideas, might have researched the possibility of reanimating the dead. Nazi zombies make for a grabber of a headline, but what real evidence is there that raising the dead was on the agenda for even the most outrageous among the Nazis?

We can begin with the conclusion, because that is really just the start. No reliable evidence has been found that the Nazis tried to raise the dead. But though even asking the question may sound preposterous, a world of people believe that such a program was in the works — and knowing what facts we do about Nazi research and beliefs, this concept is entirely plausible.

The idea that the Nazis looked into the possibility of raising the dead might sound like an outtake from an Indiana Jones movie. But this is only because those plots were inspired by real, but little-known, facts. The Nazis did, in fact, have teams of researchers hunting for supernatural treasures, religious relics and entrances to a magical land of telepathic faeries and giants (I wish I were making this up). Relatively few people are aware of a very real organization that was the inspiration for the Indiana Jones plots: the Nazi Ahnenerbe, or the Ancestral Heritage Research and Teaching Organization.  (more...)


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Ahnenerbe Nazi fertility gnosticism research occult neopaganism Hollywood
Pachamama of Doom?

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Five Minutes to Midnight: The Sicilian and New York Mafias, the Catholic Church and a huge finance scandal

Catholic corruption crime Mafia freemasonry politics Vatican

“You never know what enough is unless you know what is more than enough.” - William Blake   

It’s a story with more twists and turns than a novel by Agatha Christie. A list of characters, narratives and story-lines that range from failed, wannabe-gangster Henry Hill, to Pope Paul VI, the Sicilian and New York Mafias, the Italian Secret Service, an illegal Masonic Lodge, several of the most prominent banking institutions in Europe and America, two former presidents of the United States, and the head of the Italian government.

A chronicle of greed and financial corruption with problem-solving by murder.

Intrigue, and double-dealing along with political manipulation, on a scale that is bigger than Ben Hur.

Some of the leading players will end up dead.

One is shot outside his home in Milan. Another is hung by a rope under a London Bridge; a hit-man crushed under a 400-pound Cuban drug dealer after they both fall off a prison roof. The leading actor poisoned by cyanide in a maximum-security prison while under watch by 15 guards.

Like Eulerian Circles, the links are overlapping, chasing each other in ever-decreasing orbits to that final day when the piper is paid in Voghera, Lombardy.

If this were a movie pitch, no self-respecting Hollywood producer would even look at it. So outlandish a shooting-script, it will never get past the first assistant PA.

And yet it happened.

Here’s how.  (more...)



Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Violence against indigenous peoples explodes in Brazil

violence Brazil Amazonia politics business fascism

On the same day that President Jair Bolsonaro made his anti-indigenous speech at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Brazil’s Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) released its annual report, “Violence Against Indigenous Peoples in Brazil.” The data collected are from 2018, but the report also includes preliminary information for 2019, and the findings are alarming.

In the first nine months of the Bolsonaro government, which took office at the start of 2019, there have already been reports of 160 cases of land invasion, illegal exploitation of natural resources, and damage to property in 153 indigenous territories. This is a significant increase from 2018, both in number and scope: according to CIMI’s report, 111 incidents of this type were reported in 76 indigenous territories last year. With 2019 not yet over, the total area that has come under attack is already double last year’s.

The report does not include homicide data for 2019, but reveals that 135 indigenous people were murdered in 2018 — an increase of almost 23 percent from 2017, when 110 indigenous people were murdered. The state of Roraima stands out as the most violent, with 62 homicides, followed by Mato Grosso do Sul, with 38. Combined with data provided by Sesai (the Special Indigenous Health Secretariat) and state health departments, CIMI recorded violent deaths of indigenous peoples in 12 Brazilian states.

“This is the result of the policy of genocide initiated under the Temer government, with stripping of agencies that provide assistance and protection, like INCRA and Funai, emphasizing the idea that indigenous territories should be exploited,” said Roberto Liebgott, CIMI’s southern region coordinator and one of those responsible for producing the report. According to Liebgott, Bolsonaro’s statement as presidential candidate that “not a centimeter will be demarcated either as an indigenous reserve or as a quilombola” — land owned by descendants of runaway slaves — was the “trigger that authorized a criminal state, allowing that land to be pillaged for the benefit of the sectors who elected him.”  (more...)


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Amazonian face of the Church?

Post-election Depression: Technocracy: I never voted for this, did you?


technocracy business politics technology fascism population control corporations military industry science education

Yeah. That's why I can't get excited about lobby groups and political parties. My advantage is that I had an elite technocratic education and career. I know how may trustfund kids and sycophants populate that cohort. Here are some of my former classmates. Really.

technocracy business politics technology fascism population control corporations military industry science education


Could they have known Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell? Maybe the Bronfmans?

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Meet the mobster who claims he helped whack Pope John Paul I over stock fraud

Vatican banks securities Catholic books corruption crime violence business assassination Mafia fraud

He helped kill the pope — so his pals could stay out of hell.

That’s the shocking claim from longtime Colombo gangster Anthony Raimondi, who says that, in 1978, he went to Italy with a team of hit men who whacked John Paul I. They allegedly poisoned him with cyanide just 33 days into the pontiff’s reign, according to Raimondi’s new book, “When the Bullet Hits the Bone,” out now from Page Publishing.

Raimondi, the nephew of legendary godfather Lucky Luciano, claims he was recruited for the murder at the age of 28 by his cardinal cousin, Paul Marcinkus, who ran the Vatican bank. Raimondi’s job was to learn the pope’s habits and be on hand to observe as Marcinkus knocked out John Paul by spiking his nightly cup of tea with Valium.

“I stood in the hallway outside the pope’s quarters when the tea was served,” he writes, adding that the drug did its job so well that their victim wouldn’t have stirred “even if there had been an earthquake,” he recounts. “I’d done a lot of things in my time, but I didn’t want to be there in the room when they killed the pope. I knew that would buy me a one-way ticket to hell.”  (more...)



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Competitive Spirits - Latin America's New Religious Economy

Pentecostalism paganism Catholic evangelization proselytization business economy modernism politics poverty

For over four centuries the Catholic Church enjoyed a religious monopoly in Latin America in which potential rivals were repressed or outlawed. Latin Americans were born Catholic and the only real choice they had was whether to actively practice the faith. Taking advantage of the legal disestablishment of the Catholic Church between the late 1800s and the early 1900s, Pentecostals almost single-handedly built a new pluralist religious economy. By the 1950s, many Latin Americans were free to choose from among the hundreds of available religious "products," a dizzying array of religious options that range from the African-Brazilian religion of Umbanda to the New Age group known as the Vegetable Union.

R. Andrew Chesnut shows how the development of religious pluralism over the past half-century has radically transformed the "spiritual economy" of Latin America. In order to thrive in this new religious economy, says Chesnut, Latin American spiritual "firms" must develop an attractive product and know how to market it to popular consumers. Three religious groups, he demonstrates, have proven to be the most skilled competitors in the new unregulated religious economy. Protestant Pentecostalism, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and African diaspora religions such as Brazilian Candomble and Haitian Vodou have emerged as the most profitable religious producers. Chesnut explores the general effects of a free market, such as introduction of consumer taste and product specialization, and shows how they have played out in the Latin American context. He notes, for example, that women make up the majority of the religious consumer market, and explores how the three groups have developed to satisfy women's tastes and preferences. Moving beyond the Pentecostal boom and the rise and fall of liberation theology, Chesnut provides a fascinating portrait of the Latin American religious landscape.

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Pentecostalism paganism Catholic evangelization proselytization business economy modernism politics poverty

Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and the Pathogens of Poverty

books Pentecostalism Evangelical Catholic Brazil evangelization Rockefeller geopolitics resources proselytization

A spiritual revolution is transforming the religious landscape of Latin America. Evangelical Protestantism, particularly Pentecostalism, has replaced Catholicism as the leading religion in thousands of barrios on the urban periphery. But in few Latin American nations have Protestants multiplied as rapidly as in Brazil. What accounts for this rise? Combining historical, political, and ethnographic research, R. Andrew Chestnut shows that the relationship between faith healing and illness in the conversion process is integral to the popularity of Pentecostalism among Brazil's poor. He augments his analysis of the economic and political factors with extensive interview material to capture his informants' conversion experience. In doing so, he presents both a historical framework for a broad understanding of Pentecostalism in Latin America and insight into the personal motivations and beliefs of the crentes themselves.

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books Pentecostalism Evangelical Catholic Brazil evangelization Rockefeller geopolitics resources proselytization

Hitler's Willing Archaeologists

neopaganism Aryanism education science research Nazi gnosticism archaeology history New Age New World Order One World Religion

In 1935, Heinrich Himmler, head of the Gestapo and the SS, founded an elite Nazi research institute called the Ahnenerbe. Its name came from a rather obscure German word, Ahnenerbe (pronounced AH-nen-AIR-buh), meaning "something inherited from the forefathers." The official mission of the Ahnenerbe was to unearth new evidence of the accomplishments and deeds of Germanic ancestors "using exact scientific methods."

In reality, the Ahnenerbe was in the business of mythmaking. Its prominent researchers devoted themselves to distorting the truth and churning out carefully tailored evidence to support the ideas of Adolf Hitler, who believed that only the Aryans--a fictional "Nordic" race of tall, flaxen-haired men and women from northern Europe--possessed the genius needed to create civilization. Most modern Germans, he claimed, were descended from these ancient Aryans. But scholars had failed to uncover any proof of a such a master race lighting the torch of civilization and giving birth to all the refinements of human culture. The answer to this problem, in Himmler's mind, lay in more German scholarship--scholarship of the right political stripe. So he created the Ahnenerbe, which he conceived of as a research organization brimming with brilliant mavericks and brainy young upstarts who would publicly unveil a new portrait of the ancient world, one in which Aryans would be seen coining civilization and bringing light to inferior races, just as Hitler claimed.

Before 1938, the Ahnenerbe largely confined its studies to ancient texts, rock engravings, and folklore. But in February of that year, Himmler transferred the Excavations Department of the SS into the Ahnenerbe. Himmler had created the department to sponsor or direct archaeological digs at major sites in Germany. He intended these excavations to be exemplars of German research where SS men could be trained in the science of recovering the ancient Germanic past from the ground.  (more...)


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Sunday, October 20, 2019

Vatican documents detail suspicious investments at Secretariat of State

Vatican Catholic accountability Corruption crime money laundering embezzlement real estate

Vatican City, Oct 20, 2019 / 04:33 pm (CNA).- A confidential report from the Vatican’s anti-corruption authority shows that the Secretariat of State has used about $725 million, most of which came from the pope’s charity fund, in off-books operations.

Italian weekly L’Espresso published a report Oct. 20, revealing information from three confidential Vatican documents, one of which is a report from the pope’s anti-corruption authority, called the Office of the General Auditor, claiming to have found serious financial crimes and corruption within the Secretariat of State.

The documents, L’Espresso reported, detail the use and management of extra-budgetary funds by the Secretariat of State, “deriving in large part from the donations received by the Holy Father for charitable works and for the sustenance of the Roman Curia.”

At least most of the money was drawn from Peter’s Pence, the annual collection through which Catholics are invited to support the charitable activities of the pope.

L’Espresso reported these funds are being used “in reckless speculative operations,” and that the same report by the General Auditor says about 77% of the assets (about $558 million) were put into Swiss and Italian branches of the investment bank Credit Suisse.  (more...)


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Saturday, October 19, 2019

There's Something About Rudy


Narativ investigative reporter Zev Shalev reports on Rudy Giuliani's crackdown of the Italian mob in the 80's, and his decades-long friendship with Donald Trump.

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Enter The Beast: An Anatomy of The Canadian Mining Industry

accountability transparency business corruption politics fascism mining corporations finance
Did you know that you live in the home of a beast? Many people are unaware that Toronto is safe haven to a tentacled, slippery-slimy, shape-shifting monster called the Kraken. The danger of this Kraken lies in the fact that over the many years it has occupied this city, it has found a way to be entirely invisible to the untrained eye of most people in Toronto while exacting terrifying and sometimes deadly brutality in other places around the world.

We, here at KrakenWatch, have dedicated ourselves to monitoring the Kraken’s behaviour, migration patterns, and its double-speak way of communicating. In this process, we have come to understand that people in government, in media, in the geosciences, and on Bay Street commonly refer to the Kraken as “the Canadian mining industry”.

It’s tricky, it’s violent, and we let it live here.  (more...)



How unlike the robotic Greta Thunberg. Unscripted. Articulate. Genuine. On target. And utterly invisible to corporate media. 

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Think of this when you cast your vote.

accountability transparency business corruption politics fascism mining corporations finance

Friday, October 18, 2019

The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and the Holocaust

books Ahnenerbe history eugenics crime Nazi fascism war education research pseudoscience religion occult neopaganism

A groundbreaking history of the Nazi research institute whose work helped lead to the extermination of millions

In 1935, Heinrich Himmler established a Nazi research institute called The Ahnenerbe, whose mission was to send teams of scholars around the world to search for proof of Ancient Aryan conquests. But history was not their most important focus. Rather, the Ahnenerbe was an essential part of Himmler's master plan for the Final Solution. The findings of the institute were used to convince armies of SS men that they were entitled to slaughter Jews and other groups. And Himmler also hoped to use the research as a blueprint for the breeding of a new Europe in a racially purer mold.

The Master Plan is a groundbreaking exposé of the work of German scientists and scholars who allowed their research to be warped to justify extermination, and who directly participated in the slaughter--many of whom resumed their academic positions at war's end. It is based on Heather Pringle's extensive original research, including previously ignored archival material and unpublished photographs, and interviews with living members of the institute and their survivors.

A sweeping history told with the drama of fiction, The Master Plan is at once horrifying, transfixing, and monumentally important to our comprehension of how something as unimaginable as the Holocaust could have progressed from fantasy to reality.

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Thursday, October 17, 2019

A Catechism of Modernism

Catholic heresy modernism books

Modernism is a heresy condemned by Pope St. Pius X (1903-1914), yet it is the predominating error in the Catholic Church since Vatican II (1962-1965). This book exposes its errors, called by St. Pius X the "synthesis of all heresies." St. Pius X commended the author of this catechism, expressing the hope it would receive wide circulation.

Catholic heresy modernism books

PRAYER OF JOHN PAUL II IN THE BASILICA OF APARECIDA

Brazil Catholic Marian devotion prayer Pope John Paul II

Aparecida (Brazil), 4 July 1980

Our Lady Aparecida!

1. At this solemn and exceptional moment, I wish to open before you, O Mother, the heart of this people, in whose midst you have wished to dwell in such a special way—as in the midst of other nations and peoples—as in the midst of that nation whose son I am. I wish to open before you the heart of the Church and the heart of the world to which this Church was sent by your Son. I wish to open to you my heart also.

Our Lady Aparecida! The woman revealed by God to crush the serpent's head (cf. Gen. 5:15) in your Immaculate Conception! Chosen from all eternity to be the mother of the Eternal Word, who, at the annunciation of the angel, was conceived in your virginal womb as the Son of Man and a real man!

United more closely to the mystery of the redemption of man and of the world at the foot of the cross on Calvary!

Given on Calvary as mother to all men in the person of John, the Apostle and Evangelist!

Given as mother to the whole Church, from the community that was preparing for the coming of the Holy Spirit to the community of all those who are pilgrims on earth, in the course of the history of peoples and nations, of countries and continents, of eras and generations!...

Mary! I greet you and I say to you Ave! in this sanctuary where the Church of Brazil loves you, venerates you and invokes you as Aparecida, as revealed and given to her in a particular way. As her mother and patroness! As mediatrix and advocate with the Son whose mother you are! As the model of all souls that possess true wisdom and, at the same time, the simplicity of the child, and that deep trust that overcomes all weakness and all suffering!

I wish to entrust to you particularly this People and this Church, this whole great and hospitable Brazil, all your sons and daughters, with all their problems and their worries, their activities and their joys. I wish to do so as Successor of Peter and Pastor of the universal Church, entering into this heritage of veneration and love, dedication and trust, which for centuries has been part of the Church of Brazil and of all those who form it, without considering differences of origin, race, and social position, and wherever they live in this immense country. At this moment they have all been looking to Fortaleza and asking themselves: "Where are you going?"

O Mother! Let the Church be for this Brazilian people a sacrament of salvation and a sign of the unity of all men, adopted brothers and sisters of your Son and children of the heavenly Father!

O Mother! Let this Church following the example of Christ by serving man constantly, defend everyone, especially the poor and the needy, those living on the fringes of society and in want. Let the Church of Brazil always be at the service of justice among men and at the same time contribute to the common good of all and to social peace.

O Mother! Open the hearts of men and let everyone understand that only in the spirit of the Gospel and observing the commandment of love and the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount will it be possible to construct a more human world, in which the dignity of all men will really be given new value.

O Mother!  Let the Church which in this land of Brazil has carried out a great work of evangelization in the past and whose history is rich in experience, accomplish her tasks today with new zeal, with new love of the mission received from Christ. For this purpose grant her numerous priestly and religious vocations, so that the whole People of God may benefit from the ministry of the stewards of the Eucharist and of the witnesses to the Gospel.

O Mother! Accept in your heart all Brazilian families! Accept all adults and old people, the young and children! Accept the sick and all those who live in solitude! Accept workers in the fields and factories, intellectuals in schools and universities, all those who are working in any institution. Protect them all!

Do not cease, O Virgin Aparecida, to demonstrate with your own presence in this land that love is stronger than death, more powerful than sin! Do not cease to show us God, who so loved the world that he gave it his only Son, that none of us should perish but have eternal life (cf. Jn. 3:16). Amen!

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Brazil Catholic Marian devotion prayer Pope John Paul II

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

The Occult and the Third Reich: The Mystical Origins of Nazism and the Search for the Holy Grail

Luciferianism Nazi occult fascism eugenics gnosticism Aryanism neopaganism

THE NAZI NIGHTMARE - THE LAST BUT NOT THE FINAL ACT

"The Occult and the Third Reich marks a giant step forward in Hitler scholarship. It is the first work to demonstrate that the Nazi cosmology was an intricate synthesis of the occult, nurtured by an ancient neo-Paganism... The ability of neo-Paganism to militantly reaffirm itself and contest with Christianity for men's minds and bodies tells us that the Nazi nightmare is only the last, but not the final act in a larger human tragedy still being played out... The authors are doubtless right in predicting that certain practitioners of the black arts will yet play a major role in determining the shape of a not-too-distant future."


Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Protecting students from dangerous teachers

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A teacher in B.C. has been banned from the classroom for life. The province’s Commissioner for Teacher Regulation made the ruling after an investigation revealed the individual had exchanged inappropriate text messages with a 17-year-old student.

The teacher also admitted to having had a sexual relationship with the student. (Neither the teacher’s name, nor that of the student, has been made public to protect the student’s privacy.)

What separates this case from similar instances in years gone by, is that the story doesn’t end there.

For decades, it was known that teachers across Canada could be fired for improper behaviour and find a teaching job elsewhere.

In effect, school boards hushed the matter up, leaving new employers to uncover the truth. Often, they failed.

On one occasion, a teacher in B.C., dismissed for sexual misconduct, was hired at another school and went on to re-offend. It was only then that his prior history became known.

The country’s education ministries spent years trying to tackle this problem. Part of the difficulty they faced was that even if news of a dismissal were circulated within a given province, there was nothing to prevent the offender simply relocating to a different part of the country and continuing to prey on pupils.  (more...)



British pedophile who operated in Malaysia, Cambodia found dead in prison

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LONDON — One of Britain’s most prolific child sex offenders, Richard Huckle, has died three years into a life sentence for abusing Malaysian and Cambodian children, Britain’s Ministry of Justice said on Monday, with media saying he had been stabbed to death.

Huckle, 33, who abused children and babies during a nine year period, was sentenced to life in prison in 2016 after pleading guilty to 71 offenses.

Dubbed the country’s worst pedophile by Britain’s media, he was found stabbed to death in prison on Sunday after being attacked with a makeshift knife, the BBC reported.

“HMP Full Sutton prisoner Richard Huckle died on 13 October,” a prison service spokesman said, referring to the high-security jail where Huckle was being held.

“It would be inappropriate to comment further while a police investigation is ongoing.”

Using the pretext of being a photographer, English teacher and western philanthropist, Huckle won the trust of impoverished families before carrying out the abuse.  (more...)


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