Kevin DeAnna of World Net Daily at Occupy Bilderberg 2012 [video]
Adam VS The Man
June 9, 2012
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What a holy mess: the Vatican sinks into civil war
By Richard Cottrell
Contributing writer for End the Lie
June 3, 2012
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone (Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)
There are many striking similarities between the former Soviet Kremlin and the Vatican (which has been besieged by even more scandals than usual as of late).
Consider, for example, the question of organizational bureaucracy. Commissars equal Cardinals. It is easy to swap democracy and freedom preached in the name of the people for everlasting life equally pledged to the devout and faithful by the Catholic Church.
Possession of a party card could be seen as the equivalent of obedient presence at Sunday Mass.
There are no popular elections in the Roman Church. The Pope is chosen by his own internal clique, just as Soviet leaders clambered over each other to the seat of power.
Joseph Ratzinger, alias Pope Benedict XVI, reminds me strongly of Brezhnev in his final decline. Then the corridors and chambers of the Kremlin hummed with plots, horrific acts of political treachery occurred behind closed doors as the general secretary quietly faded away, like the smile on the face of the Cheshire Cat.
The communist system effectively died with Brezhnev.
That story is being repeated right now within the sacred precincts of the Holy See.
One Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, was moved to describe the commotion inside the Vatican as the “penultimate act of a medieval battle moved to the 21st century.”
This is slightly an understatement. The Vatican is gripped by a civil war of such bitterness and furious intensity it may never fully recover.
The issue, as with Leonid Brezhnev, is largely but not fully connected to the toxic issue of the succession. Ratzinger is 85 years old, increasingly infirm, and wheeled to Mass on a kind of trolley pushed by Vatican staff. He mutters wearily, “We are an old Pope.”
Benedict’s lament echoes the Pandorian plague of crises sweeping the Roman Catholic Church.
Last week, the Pope’s formerly intimately trusted valet, Paolo Gabriele, was arrested and thrown into a four by four meter cell in the Vatican’s tiny prison. He languishes there, charged with pilfering highly sensitive documents from the Pope’s personal apartments.
The whole of Italy is reeling from the ‘what the butler saw’ scandal. There is a natural prurient desire among the faithful to discover exactly what might have been so incriminating in these documents as to thrust the church bureaucracy into blind panic.
Short list:
– The Vatican’s own piggy bank, the Institute of Religious Works, is back in the headlines yet again, on grounds of deep involvement in age-old money-laundering connected to narcotics and arms smuggling rings.
– The spreading global scandal over pedophilia practiced by the clergy. The US-based organization Survivors Network of Those Abused By Priests (SNAP, established in 1991) has tabled a case against the church at the International Court of Justice in the Hague. The leading charge being crimes against humanity.
– From the strictly internal perspective, the struggle between rival factions to bag the highest office in the Vatican government: that of Secretary of State, whose occupant is effectively the Holy See’s prime minister.
In actuality, it is probably, all of the above. This is a cipher struggle for the papacy itself, the ignition factor in the raging civil war, even as Ratzinger sinks fast into the shades.
The present Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, is an equivocal figure who has taken a leading line designing the strategy to fight off the sexual abuse claims. But he did not do himself or the Church any favors by shifting the great weight of blame to homosexuals in the ranks of the clergy.
He would not have said this without the benign consent of his patron, Ratzinger. Bertone is also responsible for the amazing statement that bishops are under no obligation to report abuse cases among the clergy “because it would infringe freedom of speech.”
Bertone is named alongside Ratzinger in the case standing before the International Court. But even so, as La Repubblica observed, “Those who live within the Walls know that the game is larger, has many more players, and has been especially hard for a long time.”
Summoned back from the everglades, the Borgias would instantly recognize the following stanza. La Repubblica does not directly attribute the quote but clearly it echoes Ratzinger directly.
“In here, as to who guides me, and helps me to understand – there’s a good amount of blackmailers, an equal amount of blackmail, a mass of employees and a small percentage of people of faith: among them the Saints, that keep the Church.”
Here is a gloomy painting of a largely secular political structure, all those jewel-encrusted gowns, bells and fancy smells amounting to little more than a deceptive pageant designed principally for entertainment. Truly, a Roman circus.
Neo-Con: Syria Has Nothing to do with Humanitarian Concerns [video included]
FDD’s Clifford May admits Syria is a proxy war with Iran and Russia, Neo-Cons in bed with Al Qaeda. Human rights merely a pretense.
by Tony Cartalucci
June 8, 2012 – Foundation for Defense of Democracies‘ Clifford May in an article titled, “The Battle of Syria: Assad’s survival would be a victory for Iran — and a defeat for the US,” openly dispels the commonly held notion among the West’s remaining public support, that their meddling in Syria’s ongoing strife has anything to do with humanitarian concerns. In fact, May openly states that defeating Syria as a proxy of Iran is far more important than “the dearth of sincere Muslim freedom fighters” or “humanitarian concerns.”
Video: Clifford May begins by playing the “humanitarian card” but ends admitting the entire conflict is a proxy war with Iran, and by implication, Russia. Amid a myriad of lies directed at Iran, May proposes worldwide occupation is necessary to maintain American “influence in the long run,” a notion that sounds suspiciously a lot like Empire.
May also makes mention of “strange bedfellows” in the current conflict, by quoting a fellow commentator who stated, “the McCain wing of the Republican party, and the rest of Washington’s progressive, Islamophilic clerisy” are aligning with “al-Qaeda emir Ayman al-Zawahiri and Muslim Brotherhood icon Yusuf al-Qaradawi.”
Aligning with Al Qaeda indeed, something that, while May claims is a spontaneous convergence of interests, was actually being planned as early as 2007, as stated in Seymour Hersh’s article, “The Redirection” in the New Yorker. And just like May concedes now, Hersh painted a picture of US-Israeli-Saudi machinations to destroy Lebanon and Syria as a means of undermining and toppling Iran – and using sectarian extremists to do so. Hersh specifically mentioned that many of the militant groups the West was arming and staging for this operation now unfolding in Syria today, were affiliated with Al Qaeda. The 2007 article specifically states:
“To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.”
May, perhaps hoping his readership is as profoundly ignorant of history as he assumes they are of current events, claims that Al Qaeda was a creation of Iran, willfully remiss of the fact that America’s CIA indeed created the terror organization in the mountains of Afghanistan to fight the Soviets in the 1980’s, and have continuously retooled it to execute Western foreign policy since, up to and including in Syria now. Essentially, May expects readers to believe that Iran created Al Qaeda and unleashed it upon its own ally. Clearly, May’s narrative not only falters at face value, but contradicts the somewhat more reputable, and certainly better cited work of Seymour Hersh.
May’s faulty conclusion is that should Syria prevail against these long-planned US machinations, with the help of Russia and Iran, the world would face a “nuclear armed” Iran emboldened by its ability to throw off American influence and would run roughshod over the peoples of the Middle East. May induces fear with the threat of an uncontrollable “nuclear armed” Iran specifically as a smokescreen for his true fear, and the fear of all Western neo-imperialists – that Iran, Syria, and Russia would begin overturning the decades old hegemonic order of Wall Street and London.
The internal documents of US policy makers, including Brookings Institution’s “Which Path to Persia?” concede that even if Iran were to obtain nuclear weapons, they would not be deployed as anything but a means of deterrence, just as the US and Soviets did during the Cold War. Brookings concedes that it is a feared shift in geopolitical influence at the expense of America and its proxies that drives Western ambitions toward regime change in Iran, not any legitimate threat to the national security of either America or Israel.
The doomsday scenario Clifford May paints is unfounded, his accusations against Iran as being a “state sponsor of terror” ring hollow as he himself backed the overthrow of the Libyan government and direct military intervention that saw millions of dollars of weapons and cash, along with air support and diplomatic backing go to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), literally a wing of Al Qaeda. May also conveniently fails to mention that the US and Israel are funding, training, and arming a US State Department-listed foreign terror organization (#29), Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) against Iran. May does however mention Al Qaeda being in Syria, and how US policy runs parallel to its agenda. Since the US is admittedly funding these armed militants, it turns out that the US is yet again a state that is sponsoring terrorism.
Image: Brookings Institution’s Middle East Memo #21 “Assessing Options for Regime Change (.pdf),” makes no secret that the humanitarian “responsibility to protect” is but a pretext for long-planned regime change.
While May’s writings may seem like throwaway statements designed to stoke fear amongst the weakest of minds, it is instructive to note, after navigating through overt contradictions, that he makes no illusions of Syria being a battle fought for humanitarian causes. His colleagues at Brookings Institution, who authored the “Middle East Memo #21” that suggested Syria be “bled” with unending violence confirms this is the general consensus of prevailing Western policy makers. The goal is to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at any cost, including the utilization of “strange bedfellows” like Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, and regardless of how high the cost is in terms of human life – with some options including US-subsidized bloodshed that extends over the period of several years.
There is nothing noble about the West’s involvement in Syria – the architects and promoters of this agenda, like Neo-Con Clifford May and those amongst the Bookings Institution, confirm this in their own words. It is and always has been about expanding Western hegemony across the planet. If common sense, healthy skepticism, and critical thinking have yet to awaken some amongst the public, perhaps their governments’ own policy makers telling them the conflict is an unjust act of aggression, will.
Syria Destabilization Is Not Internal; Impeach UN Secretary General [video]
Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
PressTV – Tarpley.net
June 8, 2012
China, Russia United Against Intervention in Syria
by Scott Stearns
VOA News
June 5, 2012
BATUMI, Georigia – China and Russia say they are united in opposing foreign intervention in Syria. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is to meet with allies Wednesday in Turkey to discuss how best to pursue a political transition to end President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.
Secretary of State Clinton says it is “pretty clear” that the main focus of international diplomacy must be on intensifying efforts to speed a political transition in Syria.
“We believe there is a way forward and we are going to continue to pursue that and we invite the Russians and the Chinese to be part of the solution of what is happening in Syria,” she said.
But China and Russia remain opposed to any effort to force Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad from power, a position their leaders re-stated again on Tuesday.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman says Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Vladimir Putin oppose a change of power by force in Syria and continue to call for a political dialogue between President Bashar al-Assad and his opponents.
President Putin and President Hu met in Beijing, where they repeated demands for an immediate end to 15 months of violence in Syria.
Russia and China, however, have repeatedly blocked tougher U.N. action against President Assad, including U.N. sanctions and the potential use of force.
Clinton spoke to reporters Tuesday in the Black Sea port of Batumi, following talks with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
She says the violence of the past 10 days shows that there must be change in Syria. “Peace and human dignity will not be possible in Syria without political change.
So I will look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues tomorrow in Istanbul,” she said.
Clinton meets Wednesday in Istanbul with diplomats from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the European Union, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates to discuss how best to pursue a political transition in Syria.
The U.N. and Arab League envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, is to brief U.N. members Thursday in New York before meeting Friday with Secretary Clinton in Washington.
[hat tip: The Intel Hub]
News Brief: Bilderberg 2012 Two Day Breakdown – Forced Vaccine Explained [audio]
The Intel Hub News Brief
June 4, 2012
Bob Tuskin of theintelhub.com News Brief is joined by Intel Hub co founder and editor Alex Thomas to discuss his time at the Bilderberg 2012 meetings. Audio a little touchy as we are using on the road equipment, we apologize.
[hat tip: Activist Post]
PN 