Democracy presupposes civic equality,the equality of all citizens in the eyes of the law.
Elie's main goal in politics can be summarized as:
The preferred government must possess the capacity of representing different
Lebanese factions and enjoy unwavering moral values and a modern administrative
effectiveness. Only such a government is capable of taking the steps needed to
rebuild the Lebanese political system and regain the balance in the republic. Elie HOBEIKA is an Unforgettable LEADER.
The United States has been trying to run a secret intelligence service in an open democracy for sixty years. It depends on trust between politicians and spies, two professions known to wrestle with truth. Trust has been broken time and again.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent charge that the CIA lied to her about the torture of suspected terrorists under President George W. Bush has started a whirlwind of spin. The big lie–President Bush said the United States didn’t torture, though we did–has been lost in the maelstrom. So has a harsh truth: yes, the CIA has stonewalled and deceived Congress in the past, but Congress is stone deaf and derelict in overseeing the CIA.
Pelosi’s old Congressional colleague Leon Panetta, who runs the CIA, wants to set things right. “There’s been a lot of poison in the well,” Panetta said on May 18, and “it hurts this country” when “Congress and the CIA don’t feel like they’re partners.” He said he would commune with his Congressional overseers, hash things out in private, talk with them “in a way in which we can be honest with one another.”
Good luck, Leon. Others have gone before you.
Like it or not, the United States needs trustworthy intelligence. But spying is a dirty and dangerous business. The CIA depends on officers who know how to lie, cheat and steal–”to use deception, to use manipulation, to use, frankly, dishonesty,” in the words of former CIA general counsel Jeffrey Smith. But when things go wrong overseas–as they often do–the CIA is called to account in Washington from time to time. That’s where things really go wrong.
The CIA is “an organization that thrives on deception,” says John Hamre, former deputy secretary of defense. “How do you manage an organization like that?” Congress hasn’t had the will or the wherewithal to do it....ever since the Siamese twins came to be one and the same.... CIA/MOSSAD.....and OSP/AMAN......
Congress created the CIA in 1947, and for a generation most of its members did as Senator John Stennis advised: “Make up your mind that you are going to have an intelligence agency and protect it as such, and shut your eyes some, and take what is coming.” Then a newly anointed president, Gerald Ford, let slip that the CIA had run lethal plots against foreign leaders, which would tarnish every president since Harry Truman....., CIA has an institutional joint venture with Syria's military intelligence goons for special operations and political assassinations through the infamous White House Murder INC, CIA used this Syrian conduit to bomb the PANAM 103 flight over Lockerbie and recently the string of assassinations in Lebanon and Syria, starting with the savage assassination of ex-minister Mr. Elie HOBEIKA and 3 of his companions on January 24th 2002......[ The threesome of assassins CIA/MOSSAD and Asef SHAWKAT...]
Ford looked back in some anguish on this; he had been a Congressman when called to serve on the Warren Commission, which looked into the assassination of President Kennedy. Late in life he reflected on the CIA’s keeping secrets from the commission–notably its plots against President Kennedy. It was “unconscionable” that the CIA was “not giving us the full story,” Ford said....
But when he was in the White House, Ford feared that the truth about the past would destroy the CIA and damage the United States. That same kind of fear is drowning out calls for a truth commission on the conduct of the “war on terror.”
“The question is how to plan to meet the investigation of the CIA,” Ford mused at a White House meeting in February 1975. His chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld, called for “a damage-limiting operation” to save the secrets from spilling in Congress. The man Ford chose to run the CIA–George H.W. Bush–tried his best. But no one protected former CIA director Richard Helms. He drew a two-year suspended sentence in 1977 on a federal charge of deceiving Congress about his orders from President Nixon to overthrow the government of Chile.
Helms had an obligation to testify truthfully, but he thought he had a higher oath to keep secrets. America’s political history turned on which oath mattered more. For the past thirty years, Congress has fought for the right to oversee the CIA. It has failed to fulfill its responsibilities.
Before President Reagan took office, in 1981, Congress created intelligence oversight committees in the Senate and the House. Reagan’s CIA chief, William Casey, foiled them for six years. “Casey was guilty of contempt of Congress from the day he was sworn in,” said Robert Gates, Casey’s number-two man, now defense secretary. Casey obfuscated gleefully before the intelligence committees; his senior officers testified evasively. Among the consequences was the Iran/Contra affair, which blew up in late 1986. The spectacle of the United States caught shipping weapons to Iran, skimming the profits and slipping the money to anticommunists in Central America came close to wrecking Reagan’s presidency.
From 1986 to ‘94, the CIA sent ninety-five highly classified reports on Moscow’s military strength to the White House. Senior CIA officials knew some of the data were manipulated by Moscow and designed to deceive the United States. They decided it didn’t matter. The discovery of this deception in 1995 was “incredible” and “shocking,” said Fred Hitz, then the CIA’s inspector general. “What came out of this whole episode was a feeling that the agency couldn’t be trusted.” The CIA had broken “the sacred trust,” said Hitz, “and without that, no espionage agency can do its job.”
Starting in 1995, the CIA used the Peruvian air force to shoot down airplanes suspected of carrying cocaine. In April 2001, the operation attacked a plane carrying a family of Michigan missionaries over the Amazon. Veronica Bowers, 35, and her daughter, Charity, seven months old, were killed. CIA inspector general John Helgerson reported that CIA officers had violated presidential orders controlling the operation and hid their misdeeds from Congress, the Justice Department and the National Security Council.
Seven years after the shoot-down, Peter Hoekstra–the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, now running for governor of Michigan–published a few damning paragraphs from the report. He called it evidence that the CIA “operates outside the law and covers up what it does and lies to Congress.” That’s what Pelosi said about torture.
Now, on orders from President Obama to dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda, the CIA is killing suspected terrorists with remote-controlled missiles fired from drone aircraft above Pakistan and Afghanistan. The CIA decides if it has hit the right targets and whether civilian deaths are acceptable. Do we want to live in a world where the CIA’s clandestine service has the authority to decide who lives and who dies? The idea that the CIA may be killing civilians, sparking an ever wider war, is too hot for Congress to handle.
Oversight is a word with two meanings–to oversee and to oversleep. So is mislead. It means to lie, and it means a lack of leadership. Congress has a responsibility to oversee the CIA that remains largely unfulfilled. It has to ask the right questions, demand full answers and report the facts annually to the American people.
Will the CIA tell Congress the truth? Would Congress listen if it did? If trust remains broken, intelligence will fail again. And when intelligence fails, soldiers and civilians die.
How the Secret Government of the formerly United States of America will lead the world into a Luciferian Age of universal tyranny and slavery.
The United States is run by an elite Satanic cult, that has infiltrated the banking racket, industry, politics, the judiciary, the presidency, the congress, academia, the media, the press, and both branches of the reigning duopoly. Control is maintained by force, brainwashing, threats, blackmail, political prostitution, corruption, and other forms of exploitation.The cult, its adepts its initiates, its agents, and those who have come under its thrall have no loyalty to the state.
This shadow government is not secretive these days, partly because of the internet, which they plan to control more, and partly because they have sufficiently corrupted the populace (via propaganda, manipulation and drugging; and by promoting apathy and relativism and fatalism) that they feel more confident in openly discussing their objectives.
The cult despises the Lord God, the creator of this world.
The cult worships, in a sense, Lucifer/Satan, whom they regard as Man’s saviour from a tyrannical and cruel God.
More precisely they worship symbols and numbers, believing that the knowledge of such “mysteries” proves their superiority to God (who, of course, also created all symbols, and everything knowable and unknowable in the eternity before the creation of humankind).
They may be called gnostics, in the sense that they worship what they understand as “knowledge”, foolishly believing it to be something separate from creation. However, when one speaks of gnostic “knowing”, one should keep in mind that this “knowing” is not related to Christian Truth or any sense of an objective reality, and is in fact the expression of a very and complex and incestuous pagan cosmology.
Hopefully it will be understood that beyond all of the cult’s delusions, obfuscations, lies and distortions, ultimately they worship “Man”, which is the lowest form of idolatry.
Their goal, in communion with fellow Satanists around the world, is to
Overthrow Christ as God
Subvert all moral law
Destroy the family
Especially destroy Christian civilization
Pervert humanity
Abolish nations
Initiate World Government under their own oligarchic tyranny
Invent and impose a syncretic cosmotheistic (ultimately pagan and pantheistic in this realm, disguised as Unitarianism, with actual monotheistic reverence for Satan as the ruler of this world), state-sanctioned and state-supporting religion upon the world; with themselves monopolizing the High Priesthood.
Employ mass-murder and ruthless eugenics measures to create a slave race – the “barbarians” and “savages” and “profane”, as they call them — dedicated to the service of the elite Masters.
Their hoped-for World Religion is essentially a gnostic, Freemasonic regurgitation of Babylonian and Egyptian mystery cults, served up with liberal New Age doses of Theosophy, Mandeaenism, Alevism, Sufiism, Bahai’ism, Wicca, Communism, Humanism, Mormonism, “Christian Science”, Queerism, Yoga, Ecumenism, Sabbateanism, Scientism, Ghandiism, Lamaism, Environmentalism, Feminism, Frankism, Druidism, Cabbalism, Psychotherapy, Jubuism, Viennese Voodoo, and whatever flotsam and jetsam of similar syncretic religious cults and pseudo-sciences and anti-God ideologies and occult rites that may be drawn into service.
This New World Order is therefore in fact the most ancient world order of Lucifer. This scheme of anti-Christ involves power, money, the material world, the obliteration of free will, fatalism, an assault on the soul.
Immediate plans include the destruction of Russia and Iran and Pakistan, and the subjugation of China. They hope to initiating war on them, get others to do the fighting, or get them to go to war against each other. This was their technique in destroying the Russian, Austrian, German, and Ottoman Empires. In the course of this objective, the world was immersed in a century of blood.
NATO will then form the basis of what they hope will become the World Police.
In the formerly United States of America (the basis of material — especially military — power; the other key locus of power is the City of London, which remains the banking capital of the world in spite of the increasing emiseration of the British “citizenry” who are subjected to increasing austerity measures as their overlords expand totalitarian domination), the immediate objective is to weaken and eventually abrogate the prerogatives of the separate states, to draw all power to Washington, gathered in the office of one branch of government — the Imperial Presidency. This will be greatly achieved by the looting of the treasury (which proceeds apace), the continuing drugging of the populace, the continuing abandonment of U.S. border sovereignty, the continuing infiltration of their foreign agents (Mexican gangs, Mafiosi of various stripes, Columbian narco-terrorists, Saudi Wahabbi missionaries, Arab assassins, Afghan narco-warlords, King (actually zlachta) Zbigniew Brzezinski, Queen Heinz Kissinger, High Prince Rahm Emanuel, etc), and the establishment of a national state of emergency after further terror attacks, which they will have coordinated.
They will suspend the constitution, attempt to disarm the populace, declare dissenters to be “terrorists”, perpetrate further Shock and Awe terror attacks (most likely also involving the elimination of President Obama) that they will blame on patriots and dissenters, whom they will then proceed to eliminate. “Human rights” “laws” and media control through politically correct propaganda will also be employed to further enslave the American people.
Previous attempts, foreshadowings, trial runs, and preparations for this scheme have included: The Kennedy Sacrifice (Mafia, CIA, FBI, Military Intelligence, Secret Service), the Gulf of Tonkin (Military Intelligence), USS Liberty (Military Intelligence), Jonestown (CIA), Ruby Ridge (ATF, FBI), Waco (ATF, FBI), Oklahoma (Military Intelligence, ATF, FBI), WTC 93 (CIA, FBI, Military Intelligence), and 911 (Military Intelligence, CIA, FBI, the White House, Congress, The Democratic Party, The Republican Party).
For one brief moment, a group of Patriots attempted to prevent this conspiracy from achieving its objectives. The Party they formed introduced a number of democratic innovations to the American political process, and ran on the main platform of opposing the treasonous secret societies that have run the Federal government since it’s inception. They were soon infiltrated by conspirators and only ended up having some state successes. Nevertheless, their manifesto is very revealing.
The Anti-Masonic Party
The Lion’s Grip of the Order
In 1828, hoping to avert the total subversion of the democratic process; the Anti-Masonic Party was formed to counterbalance the threat of secret societies to both Church and State; this through the most peaceful and practical means at our disposal, the ballot. But what happened to Capt. Morgan more than 150 years ago was not only revisited in 1963, but grievously exceeded in cruelty and depravity; as the execution was carried out not in secret, as was the case with Morgan’s murder; but before the world in Dallas, before women and children.
The Proceedings of the United States Anti-Masonic Convention; Address to the People of the United States
Held in Philadelphia, September 11, 1830.
“In this alarming emergency, the agents of government seemed paralyzed. Our public institutions and provisions for the preservation of tranquility, and the repression of crime, seemed nugatory. And without the use of other means than the law, and its official ministers, the most daring and brutal inroads, upon our dearest rights, would have passed off, without effort to understand their origin, punish their instruments, or provide against their recurrence. No arts were left untried by freemasons to baffle the pursuit of truth, and defeat the administration of justice.
“The lion’s grip of the order was upon our courts, and loyalty to that, displaced fealty to the state. If freemasonry ought to be abolished, it should certainly be so abolished as to prevent its restoration. No means of doing this can be conceived so competent as those furnished by the ballot boxes.
“These means are commended to our adoption, by the most urgent considerations, by their mildness, their safety, their sufficiency, and the tested insufficiency of all others. They are the means provided, by the most venerated of our political fathers. Who shall disparage them? Whoever is opposed to freemasonry and really desires its extinction, must use them, or confess himself a slave or tyrant. To extinguish it, by violence, would be tyranny, if it were possible. To extinguish it, by the expression of honest convictions against it, would not be tyranny, but it cannot be accomplished, unless a majority unite in such expression; and whether they do or not, cannot be ascertained, without a general vote. To desire its [freemasonry's] extinction, and do nothing to effect it, must proceed from indolence, fear, or the imagined force of assumed obligations in its favour, either of which amounts to a degrading slavery. To such slavery who is willing to submit? In truth none, who are not opposed to using every other means against it, are opposed to using our elective rights against it; and those who are opposed to using our elective rights against it, uniformly use their elective rights in its favour. The higher freemasons are expressly sworn to do it. Thus they adopt a conduct, which they stigmatize in us, as oppressive and persecuting, and which is so, when adopted secretly, by virtue of unlawful obligations, and in favour of a class of citizens, who associate for securing to themselves unequal privileges.
“Anti-masons would defend their rights, the laws of their country, and the most sacred treasures of liberty, from a fearful assault. Seeking to preserve and perpetuate all the blessings intended to be secured, by our government, they would proceed, in the spirit of strict conformity with its provisions. And they invite all, who appreciate these blessings, to join them. They have no secret purposes to accomplish– no selfish objects to promote– no time, nor means to cast away, in idle ostentation, or for useless notoriety. They know the country is in danger; and they come forth, from their retirements, to shield it. On their farms, in their shops, at their counters, in their offices, and at their desks, they have heard the wail of the bereaved widow and orphans, and, feeling the sympathies of humanity, they have inquired how they became so…
“Murder and treason they cannot help regarding with abhorrence, however disguised; and will resist, whoever may perpetrate or abet them. Their chosen weapon of resistance is the right of suffrage– a weapon of equal power in every freeman’s hand, and which is so tempered, as they trust, in the armory of patriotism, that neither the keen nor solid of freemasonry may resist its edge.
“Fellow citizens, are we called to be anti-masons by the best feelings of our nature? Are our objects the highest that can effect the civil character? Are our means the most approved and indispensable? Unite with us– not for our sakes, but your own– Aid us in working out the redemption of our country from freemasonry. We are misrepresented and calumniated, as the chief public means of defeating the cause we have espoused. Examine by whom, and inquire into their motives. Be not deceived. If individuals among us are in fault, through ignorance, or passion, or interest, or profligacy, refuse them your confidence. But do not, therefore, betray your rights, and those of your country; nor let those beguile you into their support, who prefer secrecy to publicity, and freemasonry to republicanism. We are for practical, peaceable, and most necessary reform– not for the destruction, but the establishment of right. Freedom, in every beneficial sense, is the soul of anti-masonry.
“The first and most prominent injunction of freemasonry is secrecy. Any violation of this it punishes with infamy and death. Secrecy is the shutting up of the mind from communion with other minds. And so far as it prevails, in relation to any social good, it is selfish, sour, ignorant, and restless….
“But there are other members of very different character, who adhere to it, with a tenacity exactly proportioned to their estimate of its adaptation to their evil designs. [George] Washington represented it as capable of being employed for the basest purposes, and never visited a lodge, but once or twice, in the last thirty years of his life.
“To this government freemasonry is wholly opposed. It requires unresisting submission to its own authority in contempt of public opinion– the claims of conscience– and the rights of private judgment. It would dam up the majestic current of improving thoughts, among all its subjects throughout the earth, by restricting beneficial communication. In attempting to do this, it has stained our country with a brother’s blood, tempted many of our influential citizens into the most degrading forms of falsehood, and burst away, with its powers undiminished, its vengeance provoked, and its pollution manifest, from the strong arm of distributive justice…
“It is one of the striking evidences of the wisdom of the framers of our constitution, and a bright presage of its perpetuity, that it is fit for all emergencies. It [the Constitution] contains provisions, which are abundantly adequate to the subversion of freemasonry. Perfectly convinced, that such a subversion must be effected or our liberties wrested from us, let us inquire, what are these provisions?
“They consist in the just exercise of the rights reserved by the people to themselves, as the great constituent, supervising proprietors of the republic…
“The abuses of which we complain involve the highest crimes, of which man can be guilty, because they indicate the deepest malice, and the most fatal aim. They bespeak the most imminent danger, because they have proceeded from a conspiracy more numerous and better organized for mischief, than any other detailed in the records of man, and yet, though exposed, maintaining itself, in all its monstrous power. That murder has been committed, is now acknowledged by all. That it has been so committed, and the malefactors have acted under such authority, and have been so aided and comforted, as to carry the guilt of treason, cannot be doubted. Protection from these crimes, is the first duty of government, and the object for which it is invested with its highest powers. But protection cannot be secured, by the ordinary means. Shall it therefore be abandoned? Shall we forego, in behalf of’ freemasonry, or through fear of it, the primary purpose of civil organization? If we are true to ourselves it is certain we need not forego it; we can practically enforce it: for the rights of election remain. In these may be found full means– not of punishing the criminals– but of precluding any repetition of their crimes– of giving us that security against them, which is better than punishment; which is, indeed, the only proper object of all human punishment. The use of these means we advocate. Our adversaries reprobate it, and represent it as oppressive and persecuting.
“The exercise of the elective franchise is as much a function of our government as any one performed, by legislatures, executive magistrates, or judges. And the honest, intelligent, and fearless use of it, by all to whom it pertains, is as much a duty, in every case, as a similar use of other functions is, in any case, by those to whom they pertain. Such a use of the elective function is the duty most imperious, because it is the great corrective, in the last resort, of all other functions.
“To say that the powers of government should not be applied to the masonic outrages at all, would be so preposterous, as justly to excite suspicion of being implicated in them. Besides, it is now too late for any persons to say this with consistency; for since the inadequacy of all judicial application to them has been apparent, even adhering freemasons say it was not improper to appeal to the courts: “punish the guilty.” But if it was proper to appeal to the courts, in the first place, and that appeal has been rendered nugatory by the criminal interference of freemasonry, the reason for appealing to the powers of government against the outrages is immeasurably strengthened, not diminished. There is, therefore, no impropriety in resorting to the elective franchise to correct the evils of freemasonry. It invades no man’s rights. It gives no man reason to complain. It is no more disreputable than it is to resort to a legislature, or a court of law, for the correction of an evil, which they were instituted to redress. Would it be tolerated, for a moment, to stigmatize as oppression and persecution a resort to our legislators for the passage of a law to promote the public security; or to our judicial tribunals, for the punishment of crime? Neither can it be, thus to stigmatize a resort to the elective franchise, for the abolishing of freemasonry, which is fatal to all security, and the very charnal house of crime…”
An Account of the Savage Treatment of Captain William Morgan, in Fort Niagara
Who was subsequently murdered by the masons, and sunk in Lake Ontario, for publishing the SECRETS OF MASONRY.
by Edward Giddins, formerly keeper of the fort and a Royal Arch Mason.
Boston, 1829
INTRODUCTION
CAPTAIN WILLIAM MORGAN, of New York, an intelligent man, and an inflexible republican, convinced of the dangers of Secret Societies, in a free Government, resolved to use his best endeavors for their suppression. Being a Royal Arch Mason, he had witnessed the corruption of the Institution. He saw it was an engine of personal advantage and political aggrandizement; that it gave to its members unfair advantages and extra privileges over the unsuspecting community; that its insidious influence extended to every transaction in society, raising as it were the Masonic combination unto a PRIVILEGED ORDER, who, under the Royal Names of GRAND KINGS, Grand Sovereigns, and Grand High Priests, in darkness and secrecy, ruled and plundered the people.
CAPTAIN MORGAN was a soldier and a brave man. He saw this detestable conspiracy and he dared to risk his life by bursting its shackles and warning an injured people! He was seized by a gang of Masonic desperadoes, who came 60 miles after him, in the morning about sunrise, Sept. 11, 1826, under a pretended process of law, (in the manner Mr. Jacob Allen was taken by Masons at Reading) and carried 60 miles, and placed for safe keeping in a county jail, in the care of a masonic jailer. Thence he was taken in stillness of the night, crying murder! murder! and transported one hundred miles further, and placed in a U.S. fortress, also in the keeping of a Mason. Here Mr. Giddin’s account commences. Thus it appears that our county jails and our national fortresses are all at the service of the Masons, to carry their bloody schemes of kidnapping and murder into execution.
Will a free and patriotic people submit to these things in silence? Fellow citizens! Read this pamphlet, and answer the question, ought a secret society to exist amongst us whose members can commit murder and yet escape punishment? MASONS HAVE done this, and their brethren, as may be seen by the oaths on our last page, are sworn to protect them.
Fellow citizens, are men bound by such Obligations and possessing such principals, FIT to be rulers of a FREE PEOPLE?
Read this and lend it to your neighbor.
A Statement of the facts
Relative to the confinement of WILLIAM MORGAN in Fort Niagara, and such parts of that conspiracy as fell within the knowledge of the writer
In presenting the following statement of facts, I beg leave to observe that I have no other excuse to make for the part I took in this foul transaction, than that I was a Royal Arch Mason, and did at that time consider my masonic obligations binding upon my conscience; and now, since these obligations are before the public, I am willing to abide by their decision, how much I was actuated by principles and how much by fear; one thing, however, is certain, that although nothing could have been more repugnant to my natural feelings, yet a sense of duty, and the horrid consequences of refusal, outweighed every other consideration.
In justice to those who took part in this transaction, I would observe, that as far as I am acquainted with them, I feel warranted in saying, that they were urged to those excesses by a strong sense of duty, they blindly thought themselves bound by the most horrid penalties, to perform; and it is to be hoped that the world will be charitable to them by commiserating their misfortunes and extenuating their faults, should they renounce this iniquitous combination, and honestly and fearlessly disclose the parts they acted in this conspiracy, and the causes which urged them to it; but, should they still persist in their obstinate silence, they must not expect that lenity which they otherwise might be entitled to from an indulgent public.
It is to be hoped that an institution whose very principles lead directly to such horrid outrages, and which is entirely made up of dissimulation and fraud, will be completely suppressed in this country and throughout the world, and that a barrier be instituted to prevent it from ever again polluting the earth with its insidious influence. But the public must not expect to accomplish this desirable object without unwanted pains and incessant vigilance; their task is but commencing, and, should they lack in circumspection or perseverance, the monster will yet flourish with more power and commit greater enormities than ever.
Masonic Cull
“The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings.”
John Quincy Adams
From Letters on the Masonic Intitution, 1847:
The Institution of Masonry was introduced into the British Colonies of North America more than a hundred years ago. It went on slowly at first, but from the time of the Revolution it spread more rapidly, until in the first quarter of the present century it had succeeded in winding itself through all the departments of the body politic in the United States, and in claiming the sanction of many of the country’s most distinguished men. Up to the year 1826 nothing occurred to mar its progress or to interpose the smallest obstacle to its triumphant success. So great had then become the confidence of the members in its power, as to prompt the loud tone of gratulation in which some of its orators then indulged at their pubic festivals, and among these none spoke more boldly than Mr. Brainard, in the passage which will be found * quoted in the present volume. He announced that Masonry was exercising its influence in the sacred desk, in the legislative hall and on the bench of justice, but so little had the public attention been directed to the truth he uttered, that the declaration passed off, and was set down by the uninitiated rather as a flower of rhetoric with which young speakers will sometimes magnify their topic, than as entitled to any particularly serious notice. Neither would these memorable words have been rescued from oblivion, if it had not happened that the very next year after they were uttered was destined to furnish a most extraordinary illustration of their significance.
In a small town situated in the western part of the State of New York, an event occurred in the autumn of the year 1826, which roused the suspicions first of the people living in the immediate neighborhood, and afterwards of a very wide circle of persons throughout the United States. A citizen of Batavia suddenly disappeared from his family, without giving the slightest warning. Rumors were immediately circulated that he had run away; but there were circumstances attending the act which favored the idea that personal violence had been resorted to, although the precise authors of it could not be distinctly traced. The name of the citizen who thus vanished as if the earth had opened and swallowed him from sight, was William Morgan. He had been a man of little consideration in the place, in which he had been but a short time resident. Without wealth, for he was compelled to labor for the support of a young wife and two infant children, and without influence of any kind, it seemed as if there could be nothing in the history or the pursuits of the individual to make him a shining mark of persecution, on any account. So unreasonable, if not absurd, did the notion of the forcible abduction of such a man appear, that it was at first met with a cold smile of utter incredulity. Among the floating population of a newly settled country, the single fact of the departure of persons having few ties to bind them to any particular spot, would scarcely cause remark or lead to inquiry. Numbers, when first called to express an opinion in the ease of Morgan, at once jumped to the conclusion that he voluntarily fled to parts unknown. So natural was the inference that even to this day, many who have never taken any trouble to look into the evidence, are impressed with a vague notion that it is the proper solution of the difficulty. In ordinary circumstances the thing might have passed off as a nine days’ wonder, and in a month’s time the name of Morgan might have been forgotten in Batavia, had it not been for a single clue which was left behind him, and which, at first followed up from curiosity, soon excited wonder, and from this led to astonishment at the nature of the discoveries that ensued.
The single clue which ultimately unwound the tangled skein of evidence was this. The sole act of Morgan, whilst dwelling in Batavia, which formed any exception to the ordinary habits of men in his walk of life, was an undertaking into which he entered, in partnership with another person, to print and publish a book. This book promised to contain a true account of certain ceremonies and secret obligations taken by those who joined the society of Freemasons. The simple announcement of the intention to print this work was known to have been received by many of the persons in the vicinity, acknowledged brethren of the Order, with signs of the most lively indignation. And as the thing went on to execution, so many efforts were made to interrupt and to prevent it, even at the hazard of much violence, that soon after the disappearance of the prime mover of the plan, doubts began to spread in the community, whether there was not some connection, in the way of cause and effect, between the proposed publication and that event. Circumstances rapidly confirmed suspicion into belief, and belief into certainty. At first the attention was concentrated upon the individuals of the fraternity discovered to have been concerned in the taking off. It afterwards spread itself so far as to embrace the action of the Lodges of the region in which the deed was done. But such was the amount of resistance experienced to efforts made to ferret out the perpetrators and bring them to justice, that ultimately the whole organization of the Order became involved in responsibility for the misdeeds of its members. The opposition made to investigation only stimulated the passion to investigate. Unexampled efforts were made to enlist the whole power of the social system in the pursuit of the kidnappers, which were as steadily baffled by the superior activity of the Masonic power. In time, it became plain, that the only effectual course would be, to go if possible to the root of the evil, and to attack Masonry in its very citadel of secret obligations.
The labor expended in the endeavor to suppress the publication of Morgan’s book, proved to have been lost. It came out just at the moment when the disappearance of its author was most calculated to rouse the public curiosity to its contents. On examination, it was found to contain what purported to be the forms of Oaths taken by those who were admitted to the first three degrees of Masonry,-the Entered Apprentice’s, the Fellow Craft’s and the Master Mason’s. If they really were what they pretended to be, then indeed was supplied a full explanation of the motives that might have led to Morgan’s disappearance. But here was the first difficulty. Doubts were sedulously spread of their genuineness. Morgan’s want of social character was used with effect to bring the whole volume into discredit. Neither is it perfectly certain that its revelations would have been ultimately established as true, had not a considerable number of the fraternity, stimulated by the consciousness of the error which they had committed, voluntarily assembled at Leroy, a town in the neighborhood of Batavia, and then and there, besides attesting the veracity of Morgan’s book, renounced all further connection with the society. One or two of these persons subsequently made far more extended publications, in which they opened all the mysteries of the Royal Arch, and of the Knight Templar’s libation, besides exposing in a clear light the whole complicated organization of the Institution. Upon these disclosures the popular excitement spread over a large part of the northern section of the Union. It crept into the political divisions of the time. A party sprung up almost with the celerity of magic, the end of whose exertions was to be the overthrow of Masonry. It soon carried before it all the power of Western New York. It spread into the neighboring States. It made its appearance in legislative assemblies, and there demanded full and earnest investigations, not merely of the circumstances attending the event which originated the excitement, but also of the nature of the obligations which Masons had been in the habit of assuming. Great as was the effort to resist this movement, and manifold the devices to escape the searching operation proposed, it was found impossible directly to stem the tide of popular opinion. Masons, who stubbornly adhered to the Order, were yet compelled under oath to give their reluctant testimony to the truth of the disclosures that had been made. The oaths of Masonry and the strange rites practiced simultaneously with the assumption of them, were then found to be in substance what they had been affirmed to be. The veil that hid the mystery was rent in twain, and there stood the idol before the gaze of the multitude, in all the nakedness of its natural deformity.
Strange though it may seem, it is nevertheless equally certain, that the most revolting features of the obligation, the pledges subversive of all moral distinctions, and the penalties for violating those pledges, were not those things which roused the most general popular disapprobation. Here, as often before, the shield of private character, earned by a life and conversation without reproach, was interposed with effect to screen from censure men who protested that when they swore to keep secret the crimes which their brethren might have committed, provided they were revealed to them under the Masonic sign, they did nothing which they deemed inconsistent with their duties as Christians and as members of society. It is the tendency of mankind to mix with all abstract reasoning, however pure and perfect, a great deal of the alloy of human authority, to harden its nature. Multitudes preferred to believe the Masonic oaths and penalties to be ceremonies, childish, ridiculous and unmeaning, rather than to suppose them intrinsically and incurably vicious. They refused to credit the fact that men whom they respected as citizens could have made themselves parties to any promise whatsoever to do acts illegal, unjust and wicked. Rather than go so far, they preferred to throw themselves into a state of resolute unbelief of all that could be said against them. Hence the extraordinary resistance to all projects of examination, that great wall of brass which the conservative temper of society erects around acknowledged and time-hallowed abuses. Hence the determination to credit the assurances of interested witnesses, who seemed to have a character for veracity to support, rather than by pressing investigation, to undermine the established edifice constructed by the world’s opinion.
Neither is there at bottom any want of good sense in this sluggish mode of viewing all movements of reform. Agitation always portends more or less of risk to society, and tends to bring mere authority into contempt. It is therefore not without reason that those who value the security which they enjoy under existing institutions, hesitate at adopting any rule of conduct which may materially diminish it. Such hesitation is visible under all forms of government, but it is no where more marked than in the United States, where the popular nature of the institutions makes the tendency to change at all times imminent. The misfortune attending this natural and pardonable conservative instinct is, that it clings with indiscriminate tenacity to all that has been long established the evil as well as the good, the abuses that have crept in equally with the useful and the true. It was just so in the case of Masonry. A large number of the most active and respected members of society had allowed themselves to become involved in its obligations, and rather than voluntarily to confess the error they had committed, and to sanction the overthrow of the Institution by a decided act of surrender, they preferred to support it upon the strength of their present character, and upon the combination of themselves and the friends whom they could influence to resist the assaults of a reforming and purifying power. Great as was the strength of this resistance, it could only partially succeed in accomplishing the object at which it aimed. The opposition made to the admission of a palpable moral truth, had its usual and natural effect to stimulate the efforts of those who were pressing it upon the public attention. Admitting in the fullest extent every thing that could be said in behalf of many of the individuals, who as Masons became subjected to the vehemence of the denunciations directed against the fraternity, it was yet a fact not a little startling, that even they should deem themselves so far bound by unlawful obligations as at no time to be ready to signify the smallest disapprobation of their character, not even after the fact was proved how much of evil they had caused. After the disclosures of the Morgan history, it was no longer possible to pretend that the pledges were not actually construed in the sense which the language plainly conveyed. That after admitting the possibility of such a construction, the association which for one moment longer should give it countenance, made itself responsible for all the crime which might become the fruit of it, cannot be denied. Yet this reasoning did not appear to have the weight to which it was fairly entitled, in deterring the respectable members of the society from giving it their aid and countenance. DeWitt Clinton still remained Grand Master of the Order after he had reason to know the extent to which it had made itself accessory to the Morgan murder. Edward Livingston was not ashamed publicly to declare his acceptance of the same office, although the chain of evidence which traced that crime to the Masonic oath had then been made completely visible to all. When the authority of such names as these was invoked with success, to shelter the association from the effect of its own system, it seemed to become an imperative duty on the part of those whose attention had been aroused to the subject, to look beyond the barrier of authority so sedulously erected in order to keep them out, to probe by a searching analytic process the moral elements upon which the Institution claimed to rest, and to concentrate the rays of truth and right reason upon those corrupt principles, which if not effectively counteracted, seemed to threaten the very foundations of justice in the social and moral system of America.....
Hezbollah spices up Israel-Iran mix By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Where Iran has Hezbollah, Israel has Jundallah, given Israel's apparent efforts to destabilize Iran by playing an "ethnic card" against it. This, by some reports, it is doing by nurturing the Sunni Islamist group Jundallah to parallel Tehran's support for Lebanon's formidable Shi'ite group, Hezbollah, that is favored to win parliamentary elections on June 7.
Should the Hezbollah-led coalition win as anticipated, the result will be even closer military-to-military relations between Iran and Lebanon, reflected in Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrollah's recent statement that he would look to Tehran to modernize Lebanon's army.
Rattled by the prospect of an even-stronger Iranian influence in Lebanon in the near future, the Israeli government, which is on the defensive internationally over its stance on the Palestinian issue, has gone on the offensive. It is upping the ante against Iran by focusing on covert activities inside Iran, according to a recent report in the Washington Post, to "disrupt Iran's nuclear program" - so far without much success.
Israeli Brigadier-General Yossi Baidatz, head of the research division of Israel's Military Intelligence, said on Monday that Iran could have enough fissile material to build a nuclear bomb by the end of 2009.
"By the end of the year, Iran will have enough fissile material for a first nuclear bomb," Baidatz told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset (parliament). Iran vigorously insists its uranium-enrichment program is for peaceful purposes.
If Tehran won't halt its nuclear program, Israel may have better results in exploiting the tensions in the ethnically and religiously mixed border provinces of Iran, the scene to terrorist attacks in recent weeks.
The finger of suspicion points to the activities of Israel and its secret service, Mossad, instigating instability among Iran's ethnic populations, particularly the vulnerable and economically deprived Balochis in the province of Sistan and Balochistan bordering Pakistan, where many of the country's minority Sunnis live.
Here, there has been a spate of Sunni-Shi'ite violence. In the most recent incident, a Shi'ite mosque was bombed on May 28 in the city of Zahedan, with 25 people killed and 125 injured.
This has had an unnerving effect on the government as Iran edges closer to presidential elections on June 12. Jundallah (Soldiers of Allah) claimed responsibility for the mosque attack. Jundallah has launched other attacks in the area, including a 2007 bombing in which more than 10 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps were killed.
"The Israelis have said that they are willing to enter a pact with the devil himself against Iran and Mossad's signature is all over Jundallah," a Tehran political analyst told the author on condition of anonymity. He said that in his opinion, Israel could be receiving assistance from some regional actors.
Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has said, "There is no doubt that the political architects of some interventionist forces and their spy apparatuses were involved in this bloody incident [in Zahedan]."
In a press conference, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki explicitly linked the Zahedan terrorism to "foreign forces in Afghanistan", though without elaboration.
Some Tehran analysts, however, are hedging their bets on a growing web of intrigue, ranging from dissident elements among the 1.5 to 2 million Iranian Balochis to Jundallah operating from across the border in Pakistan, to al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Israel, the United States and US coalition partners in Afghanistan.
Officially, the US government has condemned the Zahedan bombing and is slowly considering the idea of putting Jundallah on the list of terrorist organizations, much as it did with the Party for the Free Life of Kurdistan in February.
However, despite evidence of al-Qaeda's involvement with Jundallah and its Sunni crusade against the Shi'ite Iranian regime, the US has dragged its feet, something Iranian analysts attribute to the influence of pro-Israel lobbyists, not to mention pro-Jundallah spin by aspects of the US media.
For instance, Dan Rather in his CBS cable news program Dan Rather Reports, painted Jundallah as a home-grown organization that receives backing from expatriate Balochis living in Europe, without mentioning any Mossad or US role in propping up the group - even though such support has been exposed by veteran US investigative reporter and Pulitzer prize-winner Seymour Hersh.
In contrast, Iranian Interior Minister Sadegh Mahsouli has directly pointed at US and Israeli operatives as the culprits of the attack on the mosque in Zahedan.
Ahmad Reza Radan, the head of security forces in Zahedan, has announced the arrest of scores of individuals, both Shi'ite and Sunni, following disturbances that have "aimed to foment inter-ethnic violence". Already, three individuals accused of playing a role in these incidents have been executed in Zahedan.
This swift justice reflects a very edgy government that wants to ensure internal peace and stability throughout Iran ahead of the presidential elections in less than two weeks.
In seeking calm between Sunni and Shi'ite groups in Zahedan, the Supreme Leader's special representative, Ayatollah Abasali Soleyman, has met with the imam of a Sunni mosque in Zahedan, Mousavi Abdulhamid Ismail Zehy, and they issued a joint statement on the need to perpetuate the "peaceful coexistence" of Shi'ites and Sunnis.
Inevitably, this issue has seeped into the presidential campaigns and some newspapers associated with the reformist camp and its leading contender, Mir Hossein Mousavi, blame the government of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad for neglecting the "poor and deprived provinces". The Ahmadinejad camp vigorously denies this, pointing at its plans for a free-trade zone in the region.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) . For his Wikipedia entry, click here. His latest book, Reading In Iran Foreign Policy After September 11 (BookSurge Publishing , October 23, 2008) is now available.
Authorities downplaying the number of those infected with avian flu H1N1
WMR has learned from an informed source in the virus research community that little-known U.S. Navy medical groups, known as Naval Medical Research Unit Number 2, headquartered in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Naval Medical Research Group Number 3, headquartered in Cairo, are carrying out research on the artificially-created A/H1N1 human-swine-avian hybrid virus. WMR has also learned that the number of avian flu cases in Indonesia and Egypt are being downplayed by health officials and the international corporate media.
WMR has also learned that the NAMRUs in Jakarta and Cairo have only used local employees to collect avian flu samples from the general population and they are not permitted to conduct research within the laboratories. We have also learned that cases of infections in both Egypt and Indonesia are on the rise but the news is being censored by the Egyptian and Indonesian governments.
During the avian flu outbreak in Indonesia in 2006, the activities of NAMRU 2 were questioned by Indonesian lawmakers. NAMRU personnel have the diplomatic authority to travel anywhere in Indonesia to conduct medical investigations and collect samples. In 2008, Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari paid a surprise facility to the unit in Jakarta. NAMRU 2's operations were suspended temporarily but this past February the Indonesian House of Representatives authorized the renewed operations of NAMRU 2. However, there are suspicions that NAMRU is involved in the obscure area of medical intelligence gathering or "MEDINT" and that much of this intelligence ends up in U.S. biological warfare laboratories in the United States, including Fort Detrick, Maryland.
NAMRU 2 was also accused by Indonesian authorities of taking avian flu and other disease samples from Indonesia and using them to produce vaccines without any compensation or sharing agreement with Indonesia.
NAMRU 2 began in Guam during World War II as a joint operation between the Navy and the Rockefeller Institute. NAMRU 2 then moved to Taipei, Manila, and eventually, Jakarta. NAMRU 2 has detachment units in Laos, Singapore, Thailand, and Cambodia.
WMR has learned the same situation now exists with NAMRU 3 in Egypt. NAMRU 3 is collecting all the avian flu samples in Egypt. NAMRU 3 has a sophisticated laboratory but only Americans work on the research. Egyptians are only authorized to collect samples that are then delivered to a window at NAMRU 3. The same situation is said to exist at NAMRU 2 in Jakarta.
NAMRU 3 has existed in Cairo since World War II. Even during the break in U.S.-Egyptian diplomatic relations after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, NAMRU 3 remained operational.
On May 13, 2009, WMR reported, "scientists are predicting that the molecular clock of the A/H1N1 virus, coupled with modern transportation, means that almost all the countries of the world will experience an A/H1N1 outbreak within the next few months." According to recent reports, the prediction of scientists about the spread of the A/H1N1 appears to be correct. The virus has now spread to Greece, Slovakia, Estonia, Lebanon, Dominican Republic, Russia, Venezuela, the remote Canadian Arctic territory of Nunavut, Alaska, Romania, Bolivia, Cyprus, Hungary, Uruguay, Taiwan, Paraguay, Honduras, Iceland, Wales, and Ireland.
Abu Zubaydah, alleged "Abu Qaeda" mastermind, is a CIA veteran
WMR has learned from an informed source knowledgeable about the detention and torture of U.S. detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba that imprisoned "Al Qaeda" leader Abu Zubaydah, born in Saudi Arabia and raised until he was a teen on the West Bank where he was also active in demonstrations against the illegal Israeli occupation, was a paid agent of the CIA while in Afghanistan from 1991 to 1992 fighting with the mujaheddin against the Afghan communist government and its Soviet military allies. Zubaydah, who speaks Arabic and English, was injured by a mortar in 1992 and left him without an eye and memory loss. Zubaydah was so badly injured, he forgot how to use a rifle and was not allowed back on the front lines to fight the Afghan Communist forces under President Najibullah.
In March 2002, Zubaydah was captured in Faisalabad, Pakistan by a CIA team after the United States paid a $10 million bribe to the Pakistani government to produce "Al Qaeda" leaders. Zubaydah, who was partially handicapped from his original injuries while on the payroll of the CIA, was shot three times during his capture. Zubaydah's presence in Faisalabad was no secret as he was well-known in the community.
From the outset, the U.S. case against Zubaydah was full of holes. Federal prosecutors declined to link Zubaydah to the "Millennium Plot" a plan to blow up Los Angeles International Airport on January 1, 2000. Zubaydah's status as an "Al Qaeda" leader was suspect from the beginning. Zubaydah, one of the first CIA "ghost prisoners," was detained in CIA-run prisons in Pakistan, Thailand, Afghanistan, Poland, Diego Garcia, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, and Morocco before being placed in the Guantanamo Bay prison.
According to a heavily-redacted court motion submitted by Zubaydah's counsel to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, CIA contractors involved in the transport and torture of Zubaydah included: Air Security International/Air Routing International of Houston; Mitchell, Jessen & Associates of Spokane, Washington; Jeppesen Dataplan of San Jose, California; Aero Contractors/Aviation Specialties of Smithfield, North Carolina; Tepper Aviation of Crestview, Florida; Richmor Aviation of Hudson, New York; Windrose Aviation of Berlin, Germany. The following contractors were also involved in Zubaydah's transport and/or torture: James E. Mitchell of Florida, Bruce Jessen of Washington state, Eric Ernest Jividen of Virginia, Lyle E. Lumsden of Virginia, Adam Buzzard of Virginia and Florida, Leroy Doland Buell of Washington, DC and Florida, and Thomas Medina. Mitchell and Jessen were consulting psychologists to the CIA.
An FBI team, that included anti-torture agent Ali Soufan, withdrew from the interrogation of Zubaydah after the two CIA psychologists, Mitchell and Jessen, began to apply torture tactics on Zubaydah, including water boarding. In fact, according to court documents obtained by WMR, the CIA flew a doctor from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore to treat Zubaydah's wounds to make him healthy enough to begin the torture sessions.
Zubaydah's torture by the CIA, given the detainee's past association with the agency, indicates that the interrogators were interested in much more than intelligence on "Al Qaeda." When Zubaydah was captured by the CIA, he was carrying two ATM bank cards, each issued by a Saudi and Kuwaiti bank. The cards were sent to Washington but fell into a "black hole." The Bush administration failed to investigate where the money in the accounts originated. It was reported that the Saudi bank was close to the House of Saud.
From the beginning of his detention in 2002, it is highly unlikely, given the American torture, that Zubaydah ever provided any "actionable intelligence." According to WMR's source, Zubaydah was repeatedly subjected to "walling," being slammed up against a wall; sleep deprivation; water boarding, and being subjected to biting insects. Zubaydah has suffered 200 seizures since being captured in 2002. In addition, he has confessed to a number of plots that either never happened or those where a connection would have been impossible.
In fact, a source who has spoken to Zubaydah said that Zubaydah, said to be a mere shell of a human, would confess to having assassinated George W. Bush if he were asked the question.
WMR learned from another source involved in investigating torture that there are an additional 2,000 photographs of torture that have not been released by the Pentagon. WMR has also learned that private contractors played a "major role" in torturing detainees in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, Iraq. Ethnic Uighurs from China, who are innocent of any involvement in terrorism, were also subjected to torture, according to our sources.
America's support for torture has also resulted in rising incidents of torture in 150 countries around the world, according to a Catholic University in Washington source. A recent Pew Research poll of different religious groups in the United States revealed that a majority of evangelical Christians support torture, Roman Catholics are evenly split, a majority of mainstream Protestants are opposed to torture, and an overwhelming majority of non-religious secular respondents are opposed to the practice. Although a number of leading Jewish commentators and leaders such as Charles Krauthammer and Alan Dershowitz favor torture, Pew did not poll the Jewish community because the national percentage in relation to the overall population was considered too low.
This includes Robert Gates, 'the real boss in Washington', Brent Scowcroft and certain generals.
They want to:
Keep troops inAfghanistan.
Reach an agreement withIran and Syria.
Neutralise Russia and China.
Keep the Pentagon as the strongest institution in the USA.
2. The Treasury and the Department of Commerce.
This includes Geithner and Paul Volcker, 'the Rockefeller protégés'.
They have the support of the Trilateral Commission.
They want to save both Wall Street and the City.
They see an opportunity to 'concentrate capital and to trample the resistance to globalization underfoot.'
They 'can grow richer by buying back industrial jewels for next to nothing.'
Unlike the Pentagon, they want an alliance with China.
They want to prevent the rise of an economic block centered on China and 'draining raw materials from Africa.'
And they note that China owns 40% of the US Treasury bonds.
3. The Department of State Faction.
This is led by Hillary Clinton, a Zionist.
They want unconditional support of Israel.
The Zionists 'will likely push for the Korbel-Albright-Rice project aiming at transforming the UN into a large impotent forum and creating a competing organization: the Community of Democracies backed by NATO, its armed wing.'
They aim 'to impose their men in the Ministries of Finance and at the head of the banking institutions all around the world.'
4. The National Security Council.
This is under the influence of Zbigniew Brzezinski.
They believe it's 'the astronomical debt required to fund the Iraq war that triggered the economic collapse of the United States.'
Unlike 1929, 'war won’t be the solution.'
They want to:
'Force the money back into the US by destroying the competing foreign tax havens and destabilizing the economies of the developed countries,' as 'tested in Greece.'
(And India?)
'Maintain the illusion of the US military power in pursuing the occupation of Afghanistan.'
Prevent an alliance between Syria, Iran and China.
Prevent an alliance between Russia and China (Shanghai Cooperation Organization).
...........................................................? We need a CI squad especially for the SriLankan and Ethiopian MOSSAD/CIA conduits.....in Lebanon urgently.....
Sri Lankan foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, a Tamil Christian, was bringing peace to Sri Lanka.
This was bad news for the arms dealers.
On 12 August 2005, Lakshman Kadirgamar was shot dead as he climbed out of the swimming pool at his luxury home.
SP Thamilselvan, leader of the Tamil Tigers’ political wing, denied that the Tigers were involved. He suggested that elements of the majority Sinhalese might be responsible. “We know there are sections within the Sri Lankan armed forces operating with a hidden agenda to sabotage the ceasefire,” he said.
Arms dealers? Sri Lanka’s arms dealers, ‘a shadowy bunch of politicians, servicemen, bureaucrats and their relatives and friends, who conclude multi-million-dollar deals nearly every day pocketing hefty commissions’ are the beneficiaries of trouble in Sri lanka.
“In the early 1970s, the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) began establishing training camps and secret arms caches under the cover of a chain of Refugee and Rehabilitation Farms of the Gandhian Society.
“Funds for the farms came from Oxfam (Oxford Famine Relief), one of the most powerful and secretive British intelligence organizations acting under non-governmental organization cover…
“John Glover, a British feature writer, wrote to the Western Mail in Wales about the ongoing and future training programs for Tamil youth by British mercenaries.
“A band of mercenary soldiers recruited in South Wales is training a Tamil army to fight for a separate state in Sri Lanka. About 20 mercenaries were signed up after a meeting in Cardiff and have spent the last two months in southern India preparing a secret army to fight the majority Sinhalas, in the cause of a separate Tamil state in Sri Lanka,” he said…
“According to accounts by retired officials of the Israeli secret service, the Mossad, the Israelis were simultaneously training the Sri Lanka Army and the Tigers, and providing arms to each.
“Victor Ostrovsky, author of By Way of Deception, told Indian Abroad news service in 1991 that the Tigers were trained in Israel in 1985. “These groups kept coming and going. It was part of our routine job to take them to training camps and make sure that they were getting training worth what they paid for, not more and not less.” The groups paid in cash.
“Ostrovsky said that the arrangement for the training was made by the Mossad liaison in India, who lived there under a British passport.
“A December 1983 Sunday Mail article reported that the Mossad was arming and training the Tigers, as well as the Sri Lankan Armed Forces.
“The British Special Air Services (SAS) firm Keenie Meenie Services, was simultaneously training the Sri Lankan Army and the LTTE…
The LTTE is reported to be involved in trafficking heroin…
“According to intelligence reports, most of the arms used by the LTTE are purchased from Singapore, India, Afghanistan, and the Mideast.
“In 1987, the Hindustan Times reported that large quantities of arms with Pakistani and Israeli markings were seized by the Indian Peacekeeping Force in Jaffna from the LTTE.
“In 1989, according to a Sri Lankan government secretary, the LTTE was receiving armaments directly from the Sri Lankan government of President Ranasinghe Premadasa, who wanted to force the expulsion of the Indian Peacekeeping Force from Sri Lanka, and who was also using the LTTE to wipe out the JVP (People’s Liberation Front) Sinhala insurgency…
“The LTTE reportedly has bought Russian-made Strela anti-aircraft missiles from Belgian arms dealers.”
Rajiv Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, was killed in 1991 by the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers -Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
Justice Jain’s final investigated the conspiracy to assassinate Gandhi.
He came across evidence that one suspect known as Chandraswami had links with the CIA and Mossad, and through them with the LTTE.
Justice Jain ’seems convinced’ that Chandraswami was involved.
According to Asia Times:
Justice Jain ‘has linked Chandraswami with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) in which arms dealer Adnan Kashoggi, several terrorist groups, and intelligence outfits like the CIA and Mossad had accounts.
‘The money in it was used for terrorist operations and political assassinations. The report is quoted as saying that $4 million of Mr Kashoggi’s money was transferred to the LTTE’s accounts. Justice Jain had said this on the basis of a 130-page document prepared by US Senator John Kiri.
‘The commission quotes evidence of former cabinet secretary Zafar Saiffullah who said Chandraswami had links with Mossad and the CIA, and that the government had received intercepts of wireless communication between Israel (where Mossad is based) and Jaffna (where the LTTE was operating till recently) which established Chandraswami’s involvement…
‘Money transactions in Chandraswami’s name and his links with international arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and the now defunct Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) have made the commission point an accusing finger…’
Quote from a review by Sachi Sri Kantha of “By Way of Deception; The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer”, the famous book on the inner secrets of the Mossad by Victor Ostrovsky and Claire Hoy:
“Ostrovski’s disclosures on the deals made by the military and political power-brokers of the ruling UNP and the Mossad had been published in excerpts in the Tamil Nation of Oct.15, 1990.
“What shocked the Sinhalese ruling establishment and the journalists (including the editor of Lanka Guardian, Mervyn de Silva) was the revelation of Ostrovski that Mossad had trained the Sinhalese military personnel and ‘a group of Tamil guerrilla factions’ simultaneously….
“Oh, and here’s the good part. Israel trained the Sri Lankan resistance in the mid 1980’s. The very first Tamil Tiger suicide attack was on July 5, 1987.
“Obviously influenced by the success of the Tamil Tigers, and prompted by the Israeli state terrorism against the Palestinian people, the Palestinians started using suicide bombers in the 1990’s.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
“Is it just possible that the technique of suicide bombing - now of course migrated to such places as New York, Iraq, and London - is the ultimate example of ‘blowback’, as it was taught to the Sri Lankans in the mid 1980’s by the Israelis, who ended up on the wrong side of it when the Palestinians picked it up in 1993, and used it particularly from 2000 on.
“Where would the Israelis have learned of its success? From Lebanon in the 1980’s. The technique was first used in Lebanon in December 1981 by the Islamic Dawa Party (the current Prime Minister of Iraq is a member of this party!)…..
“If Israel learned of the tactical success of the technique by studying Hezbollah’s use of it in Lebanon, and passed it on to the Sri Lankans in the mid-1980’s - possibly just to cause enough conflict in Sri Lanka to generate more business training the Sri Lankan army at expensive rates! - it would be very ironic if the Palestinians took it up as the only alternative open to them at a time when the similarly powerless Tamils were using it to great success in Sri Lanka. The example of the Palestinians has led to the technique being used everywhere….”
Although the corporate media is focusing on Sri Lanka's military assistance from China, little mention is being made of the island nation's military links with Israel.
After the establishment of diplomatic ties between Jerusalem and Colombo, Israeli military technicians arrived to maintain Sri Lanka's Israeli-made Kfir fighter-bombers and Russian MiG-27 aircraft and provided Sri Lanka with Dvora fast naval attack craft. Israeli arms and ammunition also began flooding into Sri Lanka.
Soon, Israeli military advisers and "consultants" were regular visitors to Colombo's new Access Lanka Building, owned by relatives of Sri Lanka's top military officers. Among Israel's security exports to Sri Lanka was state-of-the-art electronic and imagery surveillance equipment. Israeli air force pilots reportedly flew Sri Lankan attack aircraft against Tamil Tiger targets on the Jaffna peninsula. Israeli military personnel were also reported to have taken part in Sri Lankan military attacks on Tamil units.
Due to Israel's military assistance to Sri Lanka, Palestinians reportedly began aiding the Tamils in the 1980s. It is also believed that Israel's Mossad recrtuited agents among Sri Lanka's large contingent of foreign workers in the Persian Gulf Arab states. There were also reports that Israelis were also providing weapons and training to Tamil guerrillas in order to maintain a "market" for Israeli arms suppliers in the civil war-wracked island nation.
On March 2, 2007, WMR reported: "WMR visited Phnom Penh, Cambodia and discovered that the Mossad and Cambodian criminal syndicate allies continue to obtain bought-back Cambodian weapons from Cambodian government warehouses and are selling them to guerrilla groups throughout Asia, including Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers, anti-Laotian Hmongs, the small anti-communist Free Vietnam Movement, and Burmese tribal guerrilla groups. WMR photographed a number of Zim shipping containers portside along the Mekong River in Phnom Penh. From this and other port facilities, including the port of Sihanoukville, bought-back Cambodian weapons, some originally provided to the Khmer Rouge by [Israeli tycoon Shaul] Eisenberg and the Chinese, are making their way to insurgent groups around Asia, possibly including Iraqi guerrillas battling U.S. forces in Iraq."
Tamil guerrillas have claimed to have destroyed an Israeli-made Sri Lankan fast naval attack craft, perhaps reminiscent of Hezbollah's destruction of the INS Hanit, a Saar-V class missile corvette, which was deployed off the Lebanese coast during the 2006 Israeli attack on Lebanon, with a C-802 Iranian-made Noor missile.
Although Sri Lanka suspended diplomatic ties with Israel in 1970 over the failure of the Israelis to withdrawal from illegally-occupied Palestinian territory, However, operating an Interests Section within the U.S. embassy in Colombo, Israeli-Sri Lankan ties began to grow closer in the mid-1980s. Israel provided Sri Lanka with military advisers and established a special commando unit for the Sri Lankan police.
In 1990, Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa ordered the Israeli Interests Section at the U.S. embassy to close its doors and two Israeli diplomats in Colombo were ordered t leave. Premadasa was said to have come under pressire from Muslim ministers in his government. In 1990, Premadasa also ordered a government investigation of charges that Mossad was training both Sri Lankan and Tamil guerrilla forces. On September 25, 1991, Reuters reported from Colombo: "Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa, fighting against a campaign to have him impeached, yesterday accused the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad of plotting against him because he closed the Israeli interests section in the U.S. embassy. He spoke at the opening session of parliament."
On May 1, 1993, Premadasa was assassinated in Colombo during May Day festivities by a suicide bomber said to be a Tamil guerrilla. Twenty three other people were killed in the blast. On May 28, 1993, Abdul Hameed Mohammed Azwer, Sri Lankan minister of state for Muslim affairs, said in Jeddah: "Israel was enraged by when they were expelled from Sri Lanka by Premadasa and I suspect the Mossad was behind the dastardly murder of this respected leader."
Those behind Premadasa's assassination remains an Asian "cold case." On September 23, 1997, Attorney General Sarath Silva released 18 Tamil suspects in the assassination of the president, citing lack of evidence. Silva declared the case would be officially deemed as "unsolved."
During a March 2009 trip to Israel by Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake, talks were held with Israel's leading arms suppliers on increased military aid by the Israelis to Sri Lanka.
Israel continues to supply Sri Lanka with arms and military training even after the United States and Britain cut off military supplies to Sri Lanka over the government's human rights violations.
Lebanon does not march in lockstep with Iran, .... It is defined by a kaleidoscope of alliances....
Despite the conviction in Washington, D.C., that Lebanon is becoming an Iranian outpost, the reality is more complex. The Levantine country is a playground for oil-rich governments and investors. Smaller than Connecticut, and with a population of only about 4 million, it is uneasily wedged between Israel and Syria. Its employed workers are mainly in the financial services and tourism sectors (three-fourths of the labor force), while nearly a fifth work in industry and only 5 percent still farm. A fifth of Lebanon's population is unemployed, and over a fourth lives below the poverty line. Its major city, Beirut, consists of boxy white towers crowding the edges of the indigo Mediterranean and extending up rolling hills. In times of political calm, Beirut hosts summer music festivals for European youth and pilgrims from nearby puritanical societies seeking the profane shrines of nightclubs and casinos. Smart hotels and fashionable shopping districts lace through a city reeling from the negative effects of wars and bombings.
Lebanon's sectarian and ethnic divides, between Christian and Muslim, Sunni and Shiite, Armenian and Palestinian, do not produce polarization so much as kaleidoscopic alliances and feuds that shift with head-spinning alacrity; they often pit members of the same group against one another. A little less than a century ago, Lebanon was a majority Christian society carved out of Syria by French colonial masters. Today its population is probably only 30 percent Christian. Among the Muslim majority, the fastest-growing group is the Shiites, who are also the poorest community. Good statistics on Lebanon's population are not easy to come by, but my own estimate is that Lebanon is now 45 percent Shiite and that in twenty years it will likely be a majority Shiite society.
Despite their political support for Hizbullah, Lebanese Shiites should not be assumed to share its puritanical attitudes. Many Shiite young women are every bit as chic and oriented toward Paris fashion as their Maronite Catholic peers, and cosmopolitan Shiite families often have outposts in Brazil or West Africa. One of the more scandalous video music stars in Beirut, known for her baby face and steamy dance moves, is Haifa Wahbi, whose father is a Shiite. In December 2007, I flew to Lebanon to give a talk at the American University of Beirut. On my trip I had a conversation with a Shiite graduate student from the village of Qana in the south, who was studying comparative literature at Lebanese American University and enjoying Arundhati Roy's "God of Small Things" -- an Indian novel about a star-crossed romance that transgresses caste taboos.
In 2006, the Pew Charitable Trust's Global Values Project released the results of a poll showing that nearly half of Lebanese Muslims are secular in outlook. It concluded, "Although Lebanese Muslims consider Islam an important part of their lives, they place less emphasis on their faith than do Muslims elsewhere." Only 54 percent of Lebanese said that "religion is very important." In societies such as Pakistan and Morocco, over 90 percent of respondents assent to this sentiment. Likewise, less than a third of Lebanese Muslims say they think of themselves first as Muslims and only secondarily as Lebanese. An equal number openly asserts that being Lebanese is more important to them than their religious identity. Fully 86 percent of Lebanese Muslims have a favorable view of Christians (which is natural since they have far more Christian neighbors and friends than Muslims in most other countries in the region).
Nevertheless, the U.S. mass media cannot mention the word "Hizbullah" without showing stock footage of its small paramilitary marching in ski masks. Former president George W. Bush denounced the movement as a form of "Islamic fascism." But it is obvious, as noted earlier, that large numbers of Lebanese Shiites who vote for Hizbullah are not very religious and that they back the party for secular reasons. Likewise, they may take money from Iran, but they are mostly uninterested in Khomeinist Puritanism, .
During my 2007 trip, I spoke on a Tuesday afternoon at the university, and Wednesday was a Muslim holy day, so I had it free. My host, the geographer Patrick McGreevy, and his wife, Betsy, kindly took me on a whirlwind afternoon tour of Shiite areas south of the capital. McGreevy, who sports a shock of gray hair, a salt-and-pepper mustache and a chic black wardrobe, heads the university's innovative Center for American Studies and Research, endowed by Saudi billionaire al-Walid bin Talal to promote knowledge of the United States in the Arab world. McGreevy and his wife had bravely stayed in Beirut during the 2006 war to show their devotion to their new home, unlike most foreign residents of the capital and unlike a lot of middle-class Beirutis, who headed ABROAD....
On July 23, 2006, McGreevy circulated to friends a poignant meditation on how the war affected the Shiite slums and rural south far more deeply than it did swanky Ras Beirut, referring to that part of the capital as the uppermost, least uncomfortable ring of hell. He described how some 50,000 refugees had streamed into the port of Sideon. The far south, from which many of the refugees came, was the lowest rung of hell, an inferno of exploding munitions and villagers set on the road by horror. At the end of that war, in its last three days, the Israelis dropped 2 million cluster bombs on south Lebanon, an act that had no legitimate military purpose but rather was designed to discourage Shiite villagers from returning to their homes. The ploy failed, but the cluster bombs did kill civilians, including children. It was a war crime, since the bombs were clearly intended to harm civilians in typical IDF fashion and history since Sabra And Shatila in 1982...
A year and a half later, as we headed through Beirut on our one-hour journey to Tyre, we could see to the west, along the seashore, massive piles of rubble that bulldozers had cleared from the slums of south Beirut (the Dahiya quarter). Those residential neighborhoods had been so heavily bombed by the Israelis during the summer war that the damage was visible even from outer space. Entire city blocks began to look vacant in satellite photographs. The Hizbullah offices were the primary Israeli targets here, but these administrative centers were located in the midst of crowded civilian tenements.
The intensive Israeli bombing campaign inflicted $3.6 billion in infrastructural damage and killed as many as 1,400 persons, most of them civilians. Hundreds of thousands of Shiites huddled in schools and other public buildings, having fled their homes in the south, and they were received with open arms by all Lebanese.
Hizbullah's impressive resistance and emergency fund, to which Iran is said to have contributed, allowed it to give out food and other aid to Shiites displaced by the war. Afterward, some of the rebuilding of south Beirut was carried out by Hizbullah's Holy War for Reconstruction, which receives funding from Iran as well as from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. One engineer working with the organization, Yasser al-Hajj, boasted to an American reporter, "We are going to rebuild Dahiya before you [Americans] rebuild New Orleans from Katrina." On the road through the southern suburbs, I saw wooden posts placed in highway islands that bore images of the Lebanese, Hizbullah and Iranian flags.
One can see the wisdom in his very visage. The hazel eyes, glowing from sockets lined with deep suntan emotions, beam with the brilliance of a limelight. His hair, looking like spun silver, sits neatly in place upon his head. Yet, as he nods slightly, it sparkles, each strand in concert, as if to echo the exuberance of his own nature.
His nose, strong and stately, arcs proudly above the overshadowed yet undaunted mouth. The lips, bold as they are, show incredible kindness and generosity, especially when he curls them into one of his particularly boyish grins. His countenance mirrors his being and in that beautiful angel face one can see a child playing in a meadow.
His forty six years do not show themselves in his posture. He stands tall, erect; and moves with unmitigated grace. Always dressed in perfect clothes, his bright colors dazzle and shine in the Lebanon sun. What a sight this man is to behold! The experiences, heartbreaks, loves, joys, and victories of forty six years of living, all combine into one fascinating embodiment within him, a Heroes' Hero and the greatest man ever.
HK RIP
ونتقدم من عائلة الفقيد الكبير الوزير الراحل ايلي حبيقة وأبناء بسكنتا والجوار خصوصاً واللبنانيين عموماً بأحرّ التعازي بفقدان هذه الأسطورة التي قد لا يتكرّر مثيل لها.
Disclaimer: the posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
