The Enemy Within: Islamic Jihadists Controlling U.S. Anti-Terrorism

An astounding interview. For more, see the Holy Land Foundation Trial files, the Muslim Brotherhood's long term strategy memo, and "'To Our Great Detriment': Ignoring What Extremists Say about Jihad." Links in the original:

...PJTV’s Bill Whittle has posted a very disturbing look at how U.S. counter-terrorism efforts are being controlled by the Islamic jihadists. Sources within the intelligence community have stepped forward to present some of the details about the liberal progressive politically-correct mindset that is driving an operational model that directly endangers America. You can watch the interview here but I find the information contained in it so unsettling and important that I took the time to transcribe the interview. Key points have been highlighted.

BILL WHITTLE: Hi, I’m Bill Whittle from PJTV and I’m standing in front of what is very likely the most photographed structure on the face of the earth. Inside the White House sits the President of the United States of America; the most powerful man in the world. The President bears enormous responsibilities, and primary among them is to defend the citizens of the United States of America. We’re here in Washington today to speak to a Department of Defense analyst and counter-terrorism official who, requesting anonymity, has made some very remarkable charges. Charges that both the political and the military structure of the highest levels of our government are infiltrated by the very agents of the enemy against which we find ourselves fighting today.


BILL WHITTLE: Well, you were given an assignment from the Joint Chiefs, essentially from the upper levels of the Pentagon, to understand what the Islamic jihadi enemy’s ideology and operational methods might be. Is that a fair statement?

DoD Analyst: Yes.

BILL WHITTLE: Ok. What did you discover?

DOD ANALYST: Well, I was expecting to find that, well, there was some basis to the jihadi arguments that their jihadist warfare, that there were competing arguments and that we could leverage these competing arguments but because they were claiming Islamic laws as basis for their actions we had to start there. And over a long period of time I ended up collecting a large body of Islamic law, an enormous amount of it available in English, and realized that if Islamic law is the criteria by which you measure legitimacy or illegitimacy you can’t show that the moderates have a doctrinal basis for the position they hold, and you can’t show that on the statement of the law the radicals are wrong. I was expecting to find competing views that had some merit. I was expecting to find that the moderate view would be the dominant view, and we’d have to figure out how to make these arguments so that people in the Middle East would know what it was, and could not find it. Now, I could find that you’re not allowed to fight a jihad you can’t win, and that’s a limiting factor, but when you get to actually what published Islamic law says, it supports the radicals and what they say. And you come to find, after you kind of get a sense for the language of jihad, and the language of how Islamic law works, that it’s pervasive, even in the U.S. Muslim community.

BILL WHITTLE: So you got out, you do this research that you were tasked to do by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Department of Defense; you come back and you say to them, “It’s the radicals that appear to have the doctrinal basis, not the moderates.”

DOD ANALYST: That’s correct.

BILL WHITTLE: Ok. Well, presumably, this would be an interesting piece of information for our Defense department to have. What were the consequences of you coming back with this information?

DOD ANALYST: Shock. Because what my experience brought me to was the complete unresponsiveness to facts that as a practical matter they experience every day. I think that gives way, on a different level, to one that basically has had me believing or holding that if you have no profession…if you have no factual basis to hold a position, you have no professional basis to support it. If you’re professionals, then you have a duty to be competent; that includes the duty to know. And if you are national security analysts who are professionals, you’re in violation of your oath to be competent, you’re in violation of your oath to protect and defend. It just seems they picked up our whole national security apparatus and moved it from a factual legal basis to one that supports the narratives. But it just struck me that when you hit a certain level, and I don’t want to sound too cynical, but at the same time it seemed where the point at which your future promotion was dependent upon toeing a party line as…let me rephrase that; toeing a narrative as opposed to orienting on facts, or I witnessed a complete shutdown. A friend of mine used to call my brief, “the redco brief” or the “guilty knowledge brief”, meaning you see this brief that clearly lays out facts that must be accounted for, and at a certain point they just stopped coming.

BILL WHITTLE: So when officials started telling you, “Hey, we’re not interested in this; we just really don’t care to hear this,” I mean, how pervasive was this attitude? Was it large numbers of people or one or two key individuals? I mean, just exactly what are we looking at?

DOD ANALYST: I can’t give you names and numbers; I have to say, in fairness, there are scores of senior people who got it and were supportive, but it seems that the organizational emphasis, the institutional emphasis, was in the other direction. And so you would get it in terms of people who would come up and tell you, “We really support you but we can only go so far.” You know, I supported some missions where the people who I supported made it very clear to me that using the information I used really brought success in a stunning way. And for a while there I thought that just the sheer force of those successful things would cause some people to do a double look. It didn’t happen.

BILL WHITTLE: Well, immediately after we concluded that interview here in the Mayflower Hotel, a second whistleblower came forward. We received a phone call from another gentleman who’s also extremely concerned about the infiltration of radical Islam into law enforcement and defense. Let’s go upstairs now and listen to parts of our interview with a former special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

BILL WHITTLE: Ok, can you start by giving me a quick thumbnail of your professional experience?

FORMER FBI AGENT: I spent nearly 15 years working in the government with a primary expertise on the Islamic movement in the United States, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Islamic doctrine.

BILL WHITTLE: And which department did you work for?

FORMER FBI AGENT: The FBI.

BILL WHITTLE: So you were a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation?

FORMER FBI AGENT: Yes.

BILL WHITTLE: Ok. You assert that we’re getting many of our cues on how to react to this terrorist threat from the Muslim Brotherhood, that essentially we’re letting our enemy tell us how to fight them. Now, I think this is a critical point that we really need to make clear: is this speculation on your part? Or is this credible, factual information that you’ve been able to obtain as a former special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation?

FORMER FBI AGENT: It’s all factual information and it’s open to the public to digest if they so desire. These documents from the Holy Land Foundation trial are available online. All you need to do is Google “Holy Land Foundation”. The documents also show that every major Muslim organization in the United States is a Muslim Brotherhood front, specifically the most prominent organizations. The two most prominent organizations in the United States, or three most prominent, are the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), and ISNA (Islamic Society of North America). CAIR is a Hamas entity; it is Hamas; and ISA is a huge financial entity for Hamas in the United States. And CAIR and ISNA are the two groups that the U.S. government, including the FBI, DoD, state department, DHS, look to and utilize to do their outreach with the Muslim community in America.

BILL WHITTLE: Can you tell us how these radical Islamic organizations interface directly with the federal government, in terms of the Defense Department, in terms of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, local law enforcement? How exactly do these radical Muslim groups use their connections to suppress the defenses of the United States against these type of activities?

FORMER FBI AGENT: That’s a great question. At the national level, or the FBI and DHS, they actually are invited in by general council’s office of the FBI and DHS to sit in on brainstorming about investigative techniques that FBI agents are using in the field….

BILL WHITTLE: I have to stop you because, frankly, that sounds so absurd that I have to really make sure I’m understanding you correctly. Are you saying that the radicalized Muslim groups are invited in to learn our investigative techniques? That they are invited in to get their feedback on how we’re going to fight against them? Is that…is that what I understood you to say?

FORMER FBI AGENT: Yes. So for instance, in the FBI, the general council of the FBI, Valerie Caproni, invited these Muslim organizations, as well as the ACLU and other groups, in to make sure the investigative techniques and the attorney general guidelines and the way the FBI was going to implement the attorney general guidelines was ok and not offensive to these organizations. As an investigator, and certainly speaking for many others that I know, that is…ummm…that’s nothing short of outrageous. If you can imagine any group, whether it’s the Costa Nostra or the mafia or any kind of organized crime syndicate, certainly the Muslim Brotherhood could loosely fall under that category, certainly it’s much, much more significant than the mafia was, but to invite them in to make sure that our investigative techniques aren’t offensive to John Gotti; I mean, it’s absurd on the face of it but that’s exactly what we’re doing.

BILL WHITTLE: Sure. Because you’re revealing in great detail exactly what your investigative and interrogation techniques are, right? I mean, in a meeting like that you’re giving away the farm, essentially, in terms of how you’re going to be operating in order to make sure that their feelings don’t get hurt. And then you’re essentially giving the enemy all of the details about how you plan to operate against them, right?

FORMER FBI AGENT: Certainly a significant strategic look a how we’re doing things,yes; as well as some specific techniques.

BILL WHITTLE: Well, you’d mentioned earlier that there’s no training; that people ranging from upper-level administrators in the FBI down to some local sheriff’s deputy in some county out in the middle of Arizona, some place local, local law enforcement; you mentioned that there’s no training for these people whatsoever in terms of the real nature of the threat. Why is that?

FORMER FBI AGENT: Well, again, I think there are a lot of pieces to that but number one is when the people advising the assistant directors, the special agents in charge in the FBI, the assistant secretaries, and the Department of Homeland Security, etc., when those are Muslim Brothers you’re not going to get training that discusses Islamic doctrine and who the Muslim Brotherhood is, their history and their influence, and their penetration operations here in the United States. And, to boot, the people who ARE training the FBI are groups like CAIR, which is a Hamas entity and an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing throughout the history of the United States.

BILL WHITTLE: Now I have to stop you again because this is virtually impossible for me to process. You’re saying that the training that our counter-terrorism forces get is determined by radical Islamic groups like the Muslim Brotherhood?

FORMER FBI AGENT: No, I’m not saying it’s determined. It’s given by them. They have been in our FBI field offices, they’ve been in our FBI headquarters teaching and training our agents and our employees.

BILL WHITTLE: Is this not too dissimilar to saying that the people who were determining the landing zones for the D-Day invasion of Germany were Nazi S.S. officials giving out information on gunner placements, and where the best places to come ashore are; is it too far-fetched to say that?

FORMER FBI AGENT: It’s not about analogy.

BILL WHITTLE: And then when the plans are finalized and all of the operational details are locked and sealed up in a little envelope, and then it’s handed over to the Gestapo and hopefully they won’t do anything mean with the information.

FORMER FBI AGENT: Right.

BILL WHITTLE: I think that as an average American citizen listening to this information, my first response would be, “How on God’s green earth did this happen? How did this get this far?”

FORMER FBI AGENT: This has happened because the Muslim Brotherhood has a long-term strategy; they are well-organized with hundreds of front groups that support their public relations, their research arms, they’ve insinuated themselves into our largest universities, they have Muslim student’s associations, which is the first Muslim Brotherhood group that formed in the United States in 1963. MSA is on every major college campus in the United States, recruiting people to the Brotherhood in our own campuses.

BILL WHITTLE: So even something as innocuous as a Muslim student association at any American university campus, you can categorically connect those campus groups to the most virulent, radical, anti-American organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood?

FORMER FBI AGENT: I can say that that’s 100% legally and factually true. The evidence entered into the Holy Land Foundation trial demonstrated the Muslim Students Association was the first Muslim Brotherhood entity in the United States formed in 1963 for the sole purpose of being and establishing the Muslim Brotherhood here, and it continues today to be a Muslim Brotherhood entity that has expanded and recruits students on campuses in the United States.

...Until and unless the United States proves capable of appointing and electing officials to the top ranks of our national security leadership who both understand and reject the influence of Islamic jihad groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, our country will be incapable of effective defense against either kinetic or stealth jihad attack. We can do better than this…..much better.

Jesus Barbecuing on the Beach

An interesting discussion of a book series I may have to find:

What Catholic readers will notice about Lit is that it is our fallenness -- sin, in a word -- that first puts Karr on the road to conversion. Desperately, for the sake of her young son, she yearns to be free of her addiction to alcohol, which she has inherited from both her parents. A Franciscan nun with whom she is friendly tells her to pray. One improbable prayer leads to another; soon, like Hazel Moates, the God-haunted hero of Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood, she embraces the God she is determined to spurn. Bare-assed human need, as she might put it, beyond the cold comfort of secular humanism, which the professional atheists recommend with such easy, heartless aplomb, forces her to cry out, like Christ's companion on the cross, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom" (Lk 23:42)...

Later, when I met her for dinner with a young Dominican priest attached to St. Vincent's, she recounted how astonished she was to find herself converting. When she took up the Spiritual Exercises of Loyola, she discovered an understanding of sin that only deepened her solicitude for her family's communal distress. Readers of Lit will see the hard-earned fruits of these exercises in an unforgettable scene between the author and her dying mother. And yet when Karr tackles such painful matters, it is never with dreary religiosity. She certainly jolts my cradle-Catholic smugness when she asks, after describing the many benefits of conversion, "Isn't it great being Catholic?"

For the storyteller in Karr, who battens on the concrete, it is the reality of Catholicism that is most attractive. "One of the things I love about Jesus," she tells me, "was His carnality. For example, there is the time, after the resurrection, when He is on the beach and He encounters His disciples. What is He doing? He is making a barbecue! As a writer, there is something about this carnality that I love. . . . I think a big part of the grace I have been given as a Catholic within the Church is a love of the world, which I didn't have before I converted. One of the great gifts of the Church is that we have a body on the Cross -- it's not an idea of a body or a shape of a body but an actual body, a body like our own.

"No one can look at the Crucifixion and not recognize that. I love that line from Simone Weil: "Spiritual living is accepting reality at any cost." I remember reading that when I was first getting sober, when I really had no desire to become a Christian . . . and I remember being horrified by the idea that anyone should even dream of accepting reality at any cost. I remember thinking: what an awful, awful thing. And now I take so much consolation in knowing that I don't have to manufacture reality any more. You know, I was never much good at it. So much of my drinking and depression stemmed from that. There was never any really good news attached to it. And I had this confirmed when I read the Spiritual Exercises, which stress that sin is not merely a breaking of this or that rule but a turning away from God, a turning away from reality, a turning away from the truth."

Chesterton Glory

"Gloria In Profundis" By G. K. Chesterton There has fallen on earth for a token A god too great for the sky. He has burst out of all things and broken The bounds of eternity: Into time and the terminal land He has strayed like a thief or a lover, For the wine of the world brims over, Its splendour is split on the sand. Who is proud when the heavens are humble, Who mounts if the mountains fall, If the fixed stars topple and tumble And a deluge of love drowns all -- Who rears up his head for a crown, Who holds up his will for a warrant, Who strives with the starry torrent, When all that is good goes down? For in dread of such falling and failing The fallen angels fellInverted in insolence, scaling The hanging mountain of hell: But unmeasured of plummet and rod Too deep for their sight to scan, Outrushing the fall of man Is the height of the fall of God. Glory to God in the Lowest The spout of the stars in spate -- Where thunderbolt thinks to be slowest And the lightning fears to be late: As men dive for sunken gem Pursuing, we hunt and hound it, The fallen star has found it In the cavern of Bethlehem.

Shea on the Immaculate Conception

Mark Shea doing what he does best:

Mary too is addressed by a title when Gabriel appears to her: Kaire, Kecharitomene. It's a title that is too full of meaning to render accurately in English; "Hail, Full-of-Grace" is part of it. Hail, Favored One" is another part of it. "Hail, Full-of-Divine-Life" touches on it as well. The western tradition, especially in the Rosary, has settled on "gratia plena," or Full-of-Grace, as the preferred rendering. And in this title, the Catholic tradition has always seen the biblical reflection of the Church's ancient apostolic faith in the sinlessness of Mary. Note that I say "reflection" and not "basis." That's because the Church is not "based on the Bible" but rather based on the Word made flesh. The Bible does not come first, like a foundation, and then the Church gets built on top of it, "deriving" various doctrines from tenuous and ambiguous sentence fragments here and there (as though some medieval pope said to his secretary one day, "Oh look! Here's a passage where Gabriel calls Mary "full of grace"! How about we say, on the basis of this passing reference, that . . . oh, I don't know . . . How about, 'Mary is immaculately conceived and preserved from all sin, both original and actual?' Think people will buy that whopper? It's just wild enough that they may go for it!"). Rather, the belief is already implicit in the Faith of the apostles, and the biblical passage is the reflection of the apostolic teaching that goes out to all the churches. That's why, from east to west, across a dozen different cultures, tongues, and rites of the ancient Church, the overwhelming consensus of the Fathers is that Mary is "most pure," "formed without any stain," "all-Holy," "undefiled," "spotless," "immaculate of the immaculate," "inviolate and free from every stain of sin," and created in a condition more sublime and glorious than all other natures.

Zmirak and Spirit of VII Creep

John Zmirak is almost always awesome. This piece is no exception:

Here's what we Trads have realized, that the merely orthodox haven’t: Inessential things have power, which is why we bother with them in the first place. In every revolution, the first thing you change is the flag. Once that has been replaced, in the public mind all bets are off -- which is why the Commies and Nazis filled every available space with their Satanic banners. Imagine, for a moment, that a newly elected president replaced the Stars and Stripes with the Confederate battle flag. Or that he replaced our 50 stars with the flag of Mexico. Let's say he got away with doing this, and wasn't carried off by the Secret Service to an "undisclosed location." What would that signify for his administration? If people accepted the change, what else would they be likely to accept?

...The perception that the Church was in a constant state of doctrinal flux was confirmed by the reality that her most central, sacred mystery was being monkeyed with -- almost every year. I remember being in grammar school when they told us, "The pope wants us to receive Communion in the hand now." (He didn't; it was an abuse that was forced on the Vatican through relentless disobedience until it became a local norm, but never mind.) Then, a few years later, "The pope wants us to stand for Communion." A few more grades, and we heard, "The pope wants us to go to Confession face to face." What had seemed a solid bulwark of formality and seriousness was suddenly shifting with every year's hemlines -- which is precisely what the heretics conspiring to change the Church's teaching had in mind. That is why they pushed for these futile, pastorally destructive changes of "inessentials" -- as a way of beating down resistance to changing essentials. And, in a worldly sense, they almost succeeded...

At this point in my discussion of the gravest theological issues that threatened the faith of Catholics in this country, I wish to call your attention to a stupid YouTube video, which gave this essay its willfully illiterate title: "All Your Base Are Belong to Us." For those of you too young to have experienced the incessant assault upon the sacred that was the liturgical "reform," or grateful converts who don't understand all the fuss, I beg of you: Please watch this video. In fact, stop reading and watch the video first, then come back to finish this essay. I can wait...

That is how it felt to be young and Catholic in the 1970s. Every sacred thing had to be changed, every old thing replaced with a new one, every complicated beauty plastered over by the cheap and the easy. The message was almost subliminal, but by that means all the more powerful: All Your Church Are Belong to Us. And by changing back the flag, by taking back our Mass, we are saying: Go back to Hell. Our Church belongs to Christ.

"Vatican" Not Synonymous with "the Pope"

Well, this upends a lot of the usual stereotypes:

The Vatican's failed attempt to dominate the newspaper of the CEI is therefore one chapter in a struggle between much more than two newspapers: between two visions of Church governance, on a worldwide scale. In addition to the Italian Church, in fact, the Vatican secretariat of state has put itself at odds with other national Churches, including some of the most vigorous. The actors and the script are almost always the same: Cardinal Bertone, "L'Osservatore Romano," a very lively national episcopate, battles in defense of the life and the family. On a war footing with Rome today, among others, are the two most numerous episcopates in the world, that of the United States and that of Brazil. In the United States, the combative wing of the bishops, headed by Chicago archbishop Cardinal Francis George, was first stirred up by an editorial in "L'Osservatore Romano" that, in evaluating the first hundred days of Barack Obama's presidency, not only gave him a positive assessment, but acknowledged the new president for a "rebalancing in favor of motherhood," which according to the American bishops was far from the truth, because the exact opposite had happened. A second element of conflict was the decision of the University of Notre Dame, the most renowned Catholic university in the United States, to give Obama an honorary degree. About eighty of the bishops rebelled against the honor being given to a political leader whose positions on bioethics are contrary to Church teaching. And before and after the degree from Notre Dame, they manifested their disappointment at seeing their criticisms almost completely ignored by "L'Osservatore Romano." Other disagreements broke out between the United States and Rome over withholding communion from Catholic politicians who support abortion. Many of the American bishops refuse to compromise on this, and see the silence of the secretariat of state and of the Vatican newspaper as a discrediting of them, as well as a moral surrender. The desire to have peaceful institutional relations with the established powers, of whatever shade they may be, is typical of Bertone. In this, he is applying a classic canon of Vatican diplomacy, which is traditionally "realist," even at the cost of clashing with the national episcopates that are often critical of their respective governments.

In other words, the Cardinal Secretary of State is acting to quieten those bishops in the American episcopate who support the papal/Roman teachings. Does this make sense to anybody within the American scene?

The Next Steps in the Financial Crisis

Europe faces a stark future:

The European single currency is facing an 'inevitable break-up' a leading French bank claimed yesterday.

Strategists at Paris-based Société Générale said that any bailout of the stricken Greek economy would only provide 'sticking plasters' to cover the deep- seated flaws in the eurozone bloc.

The stark warning came as the euro slipped further on the currency markets and dire growth figures raised the prospect of a 'double-dip' recession in the embattled zone. Claims that the euro could be headed for total collapse are particularly striking when they come from one of the oldest and largest banks in France - a core founder-member...

The eurozone faces the danger of a 'doubledip' recession after Germany's economy retreated into stagnation.

Figures published yesterday revealed that the countries who have joined the euro collectively grew a mere 0.1 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year - equal to Britain's own faltering performance.

Germany was the biggest drag, recording zero growth in the final three months of 2009 after emerging from recession earlier in the year.

Axel Weber, President of Germany's Bundesbank, warned this week there is a chance his nation's economy will contract in the first quarter of 2010, in part because of the severe winter, in a major blow to recovery hopes.

It was only a matter of time. More:

In just a few words, my oft-cited friend the "Lord of the Dark Matter" captured the situation: "Mechanically, it is absolutely no different than what happened to Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers." Except, of course, that we're talking about sovereign/quasi-sovereign entities, not corporations like those two failed brokerages -- a situation that he characterized as a "silent sovereign run." The problem is so pernicious because none of the individual European countries in trouble has a printing press for the euro. They can't use the Federal Reserve's money-printing approach to solving problems... As an aside, I think Greece itself is probably less of a problem than California and some other U.S. states might be -- though for the moment, the fact that we as a country have a printing press and no rules governing its use is carrying the day. Perversely, when you've got a printing press running full throttle (as do the U.S., the United Kingdom and Japan), you can be as irresponsible as you want to be and your credit will be fine. But try to enforce a little bit of discipline, as the European Central Bank is attempting to do, and things go kablooey. As such, the PIIGS' predicament continues to push people toward the dollar.

Steyn on the West: "Lights Out on Liberty"

An epic speech:

On August 3, 1914, on the eve of the First World War, British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey stood at the window of his office in the summer dusk and observed, "The lamps are going out all over Europe." Today, the lights are going out on liberty all over the Western world, but in a more subtle and profound way.

Much of the West is far too comfortable with state regulation of speech and expression, which puts freedom itself at risk. Let me cite some examples: The response of the European Union Commissioner for Justice, Freedom, and Security to the crisis over the Danish cartoons that sparked Muslim violence was to propose that newspapers exercise "prudence" on certain controversial subjects involving religions beginning with the letter "I." At the end of her life, the Italian writer Oriana Fallaci—after writing of the contradiction between Islam and the Western tradition of liberty—was being sued in France, Italy, Switzerland, and most other European jurisdictions by groups who believed her opinions were not merely offensive, but criminal. In France, author Michel Houellebecq was sued by Muslim and other "anti-racist groups" who believed the opinions of a fictional character in one of his novels were likewise criminal.

In Canada, the official complaint about my own so-called "flagrant Islamophobia"—filed by the Canadian Islamic Congress—attributes to me the following "assertions":

America will be an Islamic Republic by 2040. There will be a break for Muslim prayers during the Super Bowl. There will be a religious police enforcing Islamic norms. The USS Ronald Reagan will be renamed after Osama bin Laden. Females will not be allowed to be cheerleaders. Popular American radio and TV hosts will be replaced by Imams.

In fact, I didn’t "assert" any of these things. They are plot twists I cited in my review of Robert Ferrigno’s novel, Prayers for the Assassin. It’s customary in reviewing novels to cite aspects of the plot. For example, a review of Moby Dick will usually mention the whale. These days, apparently, the Canadian Islamic Congress and the government’s human rights investigators (who have taken up the case) believe that describing the plot of a novel should be illegal.

You may recall that Margaret Atwood, some years back, wrote a novel about her own dystopian theocratic fantasy, in which America was a Christian tyranny named the Republic of Gilead. What’s to stop a Christian group from dragging a doting reviewer of Margaret Atwood’s book in front of a Canadian human rights court? As it happens, Christian groups tend not to do that, which is just as well, because otherwise there wouldn’t be a lot to write about.

These are small parts of a very big picture...

The Death of Reason

Chesterton on the passing of the age of reason in the modern world:

The eclipse of Christian theology during the rationalist advance of the eighteenth century is one of the most interesting of historical episodes. In order to see it clearly, we must first realize that it was an episode and that it is now historical. It may be stating it too strongly to say that it is now dead; it is perhaps enough to say that it is now distant and yet distinct; that it is divided from our own time as much as any period of the past. Neither reason nor faith will ever die; for men would die if deprived of either. The wildest mystic uses his reason at some stage; if it be only by reasoning against reason. The most incisive sceptic has dogmas of his own; though when he is a very incisive sceptic, he has often forgotten what they are. Faith and reason are in this sense co-eternal; but as the words are popularly used, as loose labels for particular periods, the one is now almost as remote as the other. What was called the Age of Reason has vanished as completely as what are called the Ages of Faith.

It is essential to see this fact first, because if we do not see its limitations we do not see its outline. It has nothing to do with which period we prefer, or even which we think right. A rationalist is quite entitled to look back to the eighteenth century as a golden age of good sense, as the medievalist looks back to the thirteenth century as a golden age of good faith. But he must look back, and look back across an abyss. We may like or dislike the atmosphere of the modern world, with its intense interest in anything that is called psychological, and in much that is called psychical. We may think that speculation has gone more deep or that it has grown more morbid. We may like or dislike the religions of faith-healing or spirit-rapping; or a hundred other manifestations of the same mood, in fields quite remote from the supernatural or even the spiritual. We may like or dislike, for instance, that vast modern belief in "the power of suggestion" expressed in advertising or publicity and educational methods of all sorts. We may like or dislike the appeal to the non-rational element; the perpetual talk about the Sub-conscious Mind or the Race Memory or the Herd Instinct. We may deplore or we may admire all these developments. But we must fix it in our minds as a historical fact that to any one of the great 'Infidels' or

Freethinkers of the eighteenth century, this whole modern world of ours would seem a mere madhouse. He might almost be driven, in pursuit of the reasonable, to take refuge in a monastery...

Read the whole thing. The age of the worship of reason is gone, except in the hard sciences where one cannot do without it. The age of relativism is in full swing, but shall probably be ushered out the door as a drunkard is shown the porch by an irritated hostess...or by an accommodating intruder who sees his opportunity.

Fr. Schall on the War on Terror

As any good Catholic thinker should do, he calls for the definition of terms before the argument begins:

The war in which we are currently engaged confuses us, in part because many will not admit it is a war. We do not know what to call it. Nor do we know what to call the self-declared enemy who has been attacking us in one form or another for some twenty-five years, ever more visibly and dangerously since 9/11, 2001, with subsequent events in Afghanistan, Iraq, Spain, London, Bombay, Bali, Paris, Lebanon, and Israel. There are those who insist that it is not a "war" at all but perhaps, at best, a police issue -- no big problem. Others contend that it is a result of American or Western expansionism so that its cure is simply for us to return to our frontiers and be content with what we have. If we do this withdrawal, every threat will immediately cease at this point. In another view it is due to poverty and oppression, even though most of the perpetrators of the war are quite rich. Yet another interpretation is that this turmoil stems from a very small minority with no relation to national or religious origins, a kind of floating international brigade of bandits, like the Mafia, out for their own profit and glory. The variants on these themes are almost infinite. What names should we use that will accurately define and designate the cause? Calling things by their right names is the first requirement of reality; refusing to do so, the first cause of confusion, if not defeat...

Schall on Solzhenitsyn

Fr. Schall speaks:

The virtue that I most associate with Solzhenitsyn is "courage"—not military courage but intellectual courage, the courage to tell the truth when the regime, any regime, is built on a lie. The soldier is courageous in war. The prophet is courageous in peace, or at least the relative peace of the totalitarian state in which war is mostly directed not against enemies, but only against its own citizens. We think an internal war like this cannot happen in democratic societies. We are not cautious. Solzhenitsyn gave the commencement address at Harvard in 1978 to assure us that such a war can and is happening in our very souls... "...it was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not thorough states, not between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts." This, of course, is the teaching of Scripture. I remember that when I first came across that passage I took it to class and read it aloud. I could no help it. The passage continues: "This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains...an un-uprooted small corner of evil." Aristotle would have no trouble with this. The doctrine of original sin is here, as is the presence of hope in the hearts of men if they would but just greet it... A poignant passage in the Gulag Archipelago recalls the moment when Solzhenitsyn realizes that he is free of the tyrants and the ideology precisely because everything is taken away from him. When nothing else can be done, the powers of the state no longer can reach him through fear or pain. Hobbes, as the spokesman of modernity, had said that men's ideas could be controlled through fear of violent death. In prison, Solzhenitsyn learned, with Socrates, that something worse than death is found even in this world. Given a choice between death and doing evil, Socrates said, we do not know that death is evil. Solzhenitsyn realized this truth also... Solzhenitsyn began a 1974 address entitled "Repentance and Self-limitation in the Life of Nations," a theme we find in John Paul II's Memory and Identity, with these memorable words: "The Blessed Augustine once wrote: 'What is the state without justice but a band of robbers?' Even now, fifteen centuries later, many people will, I think, readily recognize the force and accuracy of this judgment...

Read the whole thing. Then go and read Solzhenitsyn, or Joseph Pearce on Solzhenitsyn.

Technophilia and Modernity

Along a predictable and predicted path:

Western civilization has always had an almost unlimited openness to technological change -- more so than any other culture in the world -- and only rarely has there been significant resistance to such changes. Today what is broadly called environmentalism does question technology, but there is an odd contradiction here... -- people who are opposed to human "meddling" with nature, who want only natural foods and who decry pollution, are rarely concerned about contraception and cloning. Things having to do human reproduction are still new, exciting, and liberating, whereas pesticides, dams, and gasoline engines are old hat. These changes have been sold under the slogan of freedom, as each new development promises to liberate people from inconvenient limits on their behavior. Thus radical interference with the human reproductive cycle is welcomed, because the idea of sexual "liberation" has become almost sacred. But unnoticed amidst all these changes is an idea invented in the twentieth century and promoted under a variety of names -- social engineering, which is the claim that most people do not really know what is best for themselves and for society. However, instead of calling for naked force, social engineers call for "education," meaning propaganda, and for manipulating people through social agencies. These radical changes have themselves made people less free, because they have destroyed signposts of thousands of years' duration and plunged us into a confusion in which it is difficult to make rational judgments -- what is a family and does it matter, is gender real, what indeed is a human being? We have a profile of the kind of person the social engineers consider the ideal citizen -- someone who questions the wisdom of bringing children into the world and approves of having at most one or two, who wholeheartedly approves of homosexuality, who considers gender merely a "social construct," who welcomes laboratory experiments with human life, and who urges people not to delay unduly their exit from this life. Social engineering hopes to create a perfect society, which in turn requires that people not be allowed to exercise their freedom by standing in the way. Abortion is a "choice," but the right to choose cannot be extended to people who reproduce "irresponsibly," and the creation of human beings through technology might produce a higher type of person. People who cling to outmoded moral beliefs cannot be allowed to indoctrinate even their own children, much less have a voice in public policy. The chronically ill and those deemed biologically deficient cannot be allowed to use a disproportionate share of medical resources, so that their deaths must in some cases be facilitated by the state. Decades ago Aldous Huxley wrote a novel whose title entered our language --Brave New World. Much of this sounds like science fiction, and its full realization may be some distance in the future, but there is no doubt that society is headed in that direction. The only thing that can prevent it is a vigilant citizenry who, unfortunately, often seems confused and timid and fails to see how offers of present "freedom" have become the basis for future enslavement.

The Marxist Face of Saul Alinsky

Wow. Really?

Like Machiavelli, whom he has studied and admires, Alinsky teaches how power may be used. Unlike Machiavelli, his pupil is not the prince but the people... In his view, the end of achieving power justifies a wide range of means. "To get anywhere," Alinsky teaches, "you've got to know how to communicate. With city hall, the language is votes, just as with a corporation it's stock power. This means that they never hear with their ears but only through their rears." He knows how to kick. To force slumlords, corporations or city officials to clean up buildings, provide jobs or stop cheating consumers, he resorts to picketing, boycotts, rent strikes and some imaginative dramatic stunts. He had garbage dumped on an alderman's driveway to make the point that collections were inadequate in the slums; ghetto rats were ceremoniously deposited on the steps of city hall. If the occasion requires, Alinsky's forces will not refrain from spreading rumors about an antagonist or indulging in something that comes very close to blackmail. "Our organizers," he says, "look for the wrong reasons to get the right things done." He has only contempt for liberals who appeal to the altruism of their opponents: "A liberal is the kind of guy who walks out of a room when the argument turns into a fight... Alinsky deliberately cultivates his split personality; he believes that a well-developed case of schizophrenia is essential to successful radicalism. The radical knows in his heart that life is tragic, men are complex, and every course of action involves a choice of evils. Nevertheless, he must act as if he were utterly convinced of the righteousness of his cause. Only by so doing can he rally his supporters and intimidate the opposition... When he is not performing, however, Alinsky hardly fits the radical stereotype...Alinsky deliberately cultivates his split personality; he believes that a well-developed case of schizophrenia is essential to successful radicalism. The radical knows in his heart that life is tragic, men are complex, and every course of action involves a choice of evils. Nevertheless, he must act as if he were utterly convinced of the righteousness of his cause. Only by so doing can he rally his supporters and intimidate the opposition... After graduation, he received his first lesson in the realities of power when, as a graduate fellow in criminology, he studied Al Capone's gang. He learned that in the Chicago of the 1930s, crime was the Establishment. "When one of those guys got knocked off, there wasn't any court. Most of the judges were at the funeral, and some were pallbearers." ...Alinsky wonders how white liberals can believe in the dignity of all races when they are so willing to surrender their own by submitting to outrageous attacks from blacks. "During the trial of Black Pan ther Leader Huey Newton, many liberals wore buttons reading 'Honkies for Huey!' " he notes. "Can you imagine, if a white civil-rights leader were on trial, that blacks would go about with buttons reading 'Niggers for so-and-so'?" ...Alinsky is equally impatient with white student radicals because of their innocence about power. "You never take an action," he says, "without first figuring out the reaction. Periodic mass euphoria around a charismatic leader is not an organization." He feels that Utopian militants are just as much dropouts from society as hippies, because both "dogmatically refuse to begin with the world as it is." He has little faith in the staying power of some of the more belligerent radicals; often they are the first to give up when the going gets rough. "He who lives by the sword shall perish by the champagne cocktail." ...After life? "They'll send me to hell, and I'll organize it."

Left and Right

There is no substantial difference between the left and the right anymore, only causes. They have decided that whatever it takes for the cause to succeed shall be done. For example:

Conservatives have long criticized the lingering effects of the 1960s, and not without reason...Among the era’s gifts to posterity is the continued popularity of the in-your-face tactics that Saul Alinsky promoted in his cult classic Rules for Radicals, which begins with an “acknowledgment” giving props to “the very first radical… Lucifer.”

When purported revelations emerged during the 2008 campaign which were held to show that Barack Obama was in some way influenced by the Chicago organizer (and which were somewhat verified, oddly, by Alinsky’s son), opponents of The One fell over themselves to denounce Rules for Radicals.

But a curious thing happened along the way of exposing the alleged Alinsky-like tactics of the modern Left: Some conservatives became Alinskyites themselves.

Read the whole thing, even if only to see the comparison between Chesterton and Alinsky. Mark Shea has been hammering away at the same point re: the left and the right for some time now. What's to be done? Actually get out the Catholic social teaching and use it, starting with Vatican II:

27. Coming down to practical and particularly urgent consequences, this council lays stress on reverence for man; everyone must consider his every neighbor without exception as another self, taking into account first of all His life and the means necessary to living it with dignity, so as not to imitate the rich man who had no concern for the poor man Lazarus. In our times a special obligation binds us to make ourselves the neighbor of every person without exception. and of actively helping him when he comes across our path, whether he be an old person abandoned by all, a foreign laborer unjustly looked down upon, a refugee, a child born of an unlawful union and wrongly suffering for a sin he did not commit, or a hungry person who disturbs our conscience by recalling the voice of the Lord, "As long as you did it for one of these the least of my brethren, you did it for me" (Matt. 25:40). Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator.

That'll do to be getting on with.

"The Lights Are Going Out All Over Europe"

Dalrymple describes it:

Yet for all this success, there is a pervasive sense of doom. Prosperous and long-lived as never before, Europeans look into the future with fear, as if they have a secret sickness that has not yet made itself manifest by obvious symptoms but is nevertheless eating away in their vital parts. They are aware that, in Chinese parlance, the mandate of heaven has been withdrawn from them, and that in losing that, they have lost everything. All that is left is to preserve their remaining privileges as best they can; après nous, as a mistress of Louis XV is said to have remarked, le deluge.

The secularization of Europe is hardly a secret. Religion’s long, melancholy, withdrawing roar, as Matthew Arnold put it, is a roar no longer, and hardly even a murmur. In France, the oldest daughter of the Church, fewer than 5 percent of the population attend Mass regularly. The English national church has long been an object of derision, and the current Archbishop of Canterbury succeeds in uniting the substance and appearance of foolishness and unworldliness not with sanctity, but with sanctimony. In Wales, where nonconformist Christianity was the dominant cultural influence, most of the chapels have been converted into residences by interior decorators. Vast outpourings of pietistic writings molder on the shelves of secondhand booksellers, which themselves are closing down daily. In the Netherlands, some elements of the religious pillarization of the state remain: state-funded television channels are still allotted to Protestants and Catholics respectively. But while the shell exists, the substance is gone...

God is dead in Europe, and I do not see much chance of revival except in the wake of catastrophe...

He describes what post-God culture looks like:

For the person with no transcendent religious belief, this life is all he has. He must therefore preserve and prolong it at all costs and live it to the full...For most people, living to the full means consuming as much as possible, having as many experiences as possible, and not only many experiences, the most extreme experiences possible.

But the problem with consumption is that it soon ceases to satisfy. How else can one explain the crowds that assemble in every city center every weekend to buy what they cannot possibly need and perhaps do not want? Will another pair of shoes supply a transcendent purpose?

The same might be said of the experiences that people feel they must seek if they are to live life to the full. Sports become more extreme in their competitive urgency, holidays more exotic, films more violent, broadcasting more vulgar, the expression of emotion more crude and obvious. Compare advertisements showing people enjoying themselves 60 years ago and now. Mouths are open and screams, either of joy or pain, emerge. Quiet satisfaction is not satisfaction at all; what is not expressed grossly is not deemed to have been expressed.

...overall, most Europeans do not believe in any large political project, whether it be that of a social class, the nation, or of Europe as a whole. Most Europeans have no concept any longer of la glorie, that easily derided notion that can nevertheless impel people to the highest endeavor, to transcend themselves and their most immediate interests. Most Europeans now mock the very idea of a European civilization and therefore cannot feel much inclination to contribute to it.

This miserablism leads to a mixture of indifference toward the past and hatred of it. This is visible in the urban planning of Europe since the war. The monster Le Corbusier, whose main talent was self-promotion, wanted to raze the whole of Paris and turn it into a French reinforced-concrete Novosibirsk. This mania for destruction was by no means confined to France. Dutch Prime Minister Joop den Uyl wanted to pull down much of 17th-century Amsterdam, some of the most elegant domestic architecture in the history of the world, to build a highway and “socially just” housing projects.

Of course, too strong a sense of having inherited what is worth preserving can induce a paranoid defensiveness and incline you to see enemies everywhere; but too weak a sense inclines you to see enemies nowhere. And because of their history, or rather their obsession with the worst aspects of that history, Europeans do not feel able to admit that they wish to preserve their own way of life.

I think this holds true for the American Congregations of Women Religious currently fighting the Apostolic Visitation tooth and claw. I think this holds for a large swathe of post-Vatican efforts to change the Church and the churches. I think this loss of faith/secularization has much farther reach and broader implications than many have even begun to acknowledge. For more on the state of Europe, see this speech by Mark Steyn, later adapted into this book, as well as Benedict's book.

The Slide to Modernity

So I was prompted by John C. Wright's rather good post on the possession of the modern age to do an overview of the current situation.

The vision of Pope Leo XIII indicates the past century held the freest action of the devil out of any age in the history of humanity--or any age to come. When one looks at the means of obscuring the truth, blinding humans to reality, and the sheer extent of the turn from reason/nature/God & supernature/Lewis's tao accomplished and set in train, it is not hard to believe that this was the time of the Lord of the Lie.

I would argue that the dictatorship of relativism described by Pope Benedict XVI and the movements towards post-modern deconstruction in academia are strong contributors to obscuring the natural order and rendering humanity far more susceptible to their own fallen natures and the lie.

Dr. Scott Hahn has been doing a discussion of fundamental/natural theology based around Romans 1:20ff, tracing out the pattern of human sin. Once God is rejected for the natural and the natural (animals, plants, whatever) are worshiped, we are given over to our fallen nature. But the slide continues, straight on past the natural to the unnatural, and eventually to the anti-natural.

Well, God was rejected for the natural a long time ago. As I'm discovering while reading Joseph Pearce's excellent biography of Solzhenitsyn, the turn began with the Renaissance repudiation of a God/spiritually centered society (in reaction to purported excesses of the Middle Ages) to an embrace of an anthropocentric society, in which Man assumed the center stage. That right there is the turn to nature, away from supernature.

Since nature is fallen and a wrongful object for worship (which belongs to God alone), worship of nature will make the devotee like the object of devotion. Sin/fallenness increases, and the process of corruption goes forward. For one bit of evidence of this, I offer you the introduction of Machiavellian realpolitik. For another, look at the spectacle of the Borgias and the explosion of clerical corruption only taken care of with the Catholic Counter-Reformation. (I acknowledge the splendors of Renaissance art, the amazing cultural contributions, and the genius pouring out of Italy during that time period. Still, the turn to Man went too far.)

From the new emphasis on Man and in revulsion against the corruptions of society/Church in the course of the Renaissance, we get the Reformation, with the turn to the personal/subjective absolute power to interpret Scripture over against any institutional authority, even if such an authority could claim the apostolic succession. And from the rejection of one external authority, we get the Enlightenment rejection of Scripture as well, repudiating all external authority in favor of the common rule of reason, leading to the dictatorship of the supposedly smarter. Worship of nature grows stronger, perhaps even reaching its height, with the enthronement of the goddess Reason in Notre Dame Cathedral in place of the Christian God. And, as Chesterton points out:

...when the dregs of Diderot's bitterness were reached; when they dragged the Goddess of Reason in triumph through Notre Dame, the smouldering Gothic images could look down on that orgy more serenely then than when Voltaire began to write; awaiting their hour. The age was ended when these men thought it was beginning. Their own mystical maenad frenzy was enough to prove it: the goddess of Reason was dead.

From the Enlightenment, we reach the very strange position of the high modern mind, teetering in the wind on the edge of a cliff. Predominantly, the venerators of the Enlightenment hold that Reason is the highest thing, the governing thing. This belief is dealt some serious blows with the world wars and is only toppled in the wild times of the 60s. Reason did not secure peace or end injustice, as promised--therefore, we must delve deep into emotion, into feeling, into sheer sentimentality. If it feels good, do it.

With the repudiation of reason comes the repudiation of even the God of the philosophers, the God accessible through natural reason, who ruled the world at the beginning, even if we hold that he's never taken a hand in things since. We repudiate the natural and in so doing open the way to choose the unnatural. We repudiate the existence of the God knowable by reason and thereby repudiate his law, written into nature, also knowable by reason.

We arrive at atheism--the repudiation of natural religion. We get the defiant challenge to the notion of any God at all, even one who does not reveal, does not claim any sort of interfering authority, and merely laid down laws at the beginning of all things which ought to be obeyed. One ends up with Nietzche--antiChristly and proud of it, rejecting the Jewish religion and heritage as enslavement, rejecting the rule of reason as an awful dominance of the mind over the strength and energy at the heart of vital life--and Marx--foul is fair and fair is foul because the system is oppressive, and all that it approves merely serves to enslave the individual human. We must therefore draw every circle counterclockwise, turn every crucifix upside down (ala Frost's "objectivity training" in Lewis's That Hideous Strength), because anything evil that is done by the oppressed is really the fault of the oppressor, because we wouldn't be in this war if it weren't for God, now, would we? Cause he made us this way. And it is now all his fault.


So--gender is a cultural construct. Heteronormativity is a cultural construct, as is any imposed system of ethics such as a belief in the right to life (which depends on rational acceptance on the nature of the human person, the existence of natural law, and a law-giver as outlined in the Declaration of Independence--this country and its remarkable understanding of human freedom was founded on natural law/theology/religion), anything factual/true to reality which does not follow the party line, and cultural constructs must each be an artifact of an oppressive patriarchal society, ultimately set in place at the dawn of all things by a Father who art in heaven in order to grind the fascist boot in the face of Lucifer...who is the first Marxist rebel in the history of...history.

The ideology is systematically applied to every aspect of life. Anything which we believe is oppressive becomes a legitimate target for anything and everything necessary to "fix" the problem. We get the spectacle of Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed as well as the spectacle of "conservative" adoption of Saul Alinsky's tactics. Of course, ever since Machiavelli, the belief that the ends justify the means has dogged politics on both ends of the spectrum--the left focusing on "social justice", the right on "national defense/law and order/security/stability"--but it wasn't until the remarkably successful repudiation of natural law/natural theology/natural religion that the full force of the Machiavellian moves could be felt.

Solzhenitsyn chronicled what this looked like in Soviet Russia. Orwell predicted it in 1984 and Animal Farm. Chesterton warned of it and all the consequences of modernity throughout his works. Such moves were played out on the world stage by Hitler, and Lenin, and Stalin, and Mao, and on, and on, till the present day, the most recent political news.

So, in the name of human autonomy, liberation, and choice, we worship the anti-natural, seek to undo the natural by means of everything we have. Looking out upon the world, it is clear that we are plumbing the depths of the anti-natural as we speak. The biological engineering that promises to alter the very meaning of being human (ala Aldous Huxley's Brave New World), the refusal to see or accept the logic of the natural law, and all the revolt against even the Enlightenment faith in reason is the logical consequence of the initial revolt against revelation, against supernature, against the logic of the divine plan.

Fatima gives us the prediction that unless Russia is consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary by the Bishops of the world in communion with the Pope, there shall be the spread of the errors of Russia throughout the world and the destruction of many nations. John XXIII, the pope of 1960, did not do the consecration. He said that the third secret was not for the present time. John Paul II completed the consecration in the mid 80s--it appears to have served to mitigate matters, not to heal or reverse.

The possession of the world is well in hand. The powers and principalities of the heavens, the rulers of this present darkness, cling close to their kingdoms because their time is short. Fatima also predicted a triumph of the Immaculate Heart, which is not dependent on human cooperation--it will come in time. There is a limit to the destruction permitted to the devil, as Pope Benedict wrote in his collection of essays "Values in a Time of Upheaval," and we are called as Christians to live in hope.

Heck, there's a limit to the destruction God permits, period. Even the Apocalypse is full of portions, and times, and half a time, and so forth. So the Devil grasps what he can while he still can. But we have ways to fight him--always have, always will. For more on that, Father Gabriele Amorth's books are good, as well as Matt Baglio's The Rite. For more on what we can do to help turn things around, see Carl Anderson's Civilization of Love and Fr. Robert Spitzer, SJ's Healing the Culture.

We Live in a Novel

I swear. Honestly. This is insane:

Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain — known now as the PIIGS, if Ireland is included — are the weak sisters of Europe, with high structural deficits matched with low prospects for the kind of economic growth and productivity improvements that can bring them back to health.

The north-south split is partly geographic, partly cultural, partly religious and partly historical, but the southerners tend to be poorer and to have less competitive economies.

The capitalist pigs are failing. Gotcha. The Orthodox/Catholic countries tend to be poorer, partly from religious/cultural reasons. Uh-huh. The good EU needs to get its act together and assert power over the member states for the good of the whole. Yeah. George Orwell, Europe just became Animal Farm. Well, at least they're still flying the flag of the Apocalyptic Great Sign...

Propaganda Due

An overview from a piece published in 1992 on the trial and conviction of one of Italy's most powerful businessmen, Carlo de Benedetti:

In a statement issued in March 1991, Mr. de Benedetti said he had been forced off the bank's board because he was alone in "openly and strongly" contesting the management methods of its then chairman, Roberto Calvi. Mr. Calvi's body was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London on June 18, 1982, officially a suicide, although the belief that he was murdered is still widely held in Italy.

Other famous names convicted today as accessories to fraudulent bankruptcy included Licio Gelli, a leader of the outlawed Masonic lodge known as P-2, who was sentenced to 18 1/2 years in prison; and Giuseppe Ciarrapico, a Rome financier and close friend of Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, who was sentenced to 6 years and 4 months.

The unraveling of the bank began in 1981 when the discovery of the P-2 Masonic lodge, with many prominent names among its nearly 1,000 members, brought down the Italian Government. Not only was P-2, for Propaganda Due, suspected of responsibility for some rightist bomb attacks, but Mr. Gelli was later found to have used Banco Ambrosiano for money laundering.

Under Mr. Calvi, who took over the bank's presidency in 1975 and was also a member of P-2, the bank expanded rapidly abroad, notably in South America and in offshore financial centers. Evidence that it laundered some Mafia money and provided credit for some Mafia operations later formed part of the prosecution's case.

The Roman Catholic Church's embarrassing involvement came through the friendship between Mr. Calvi and an American prelate, Archbishop Paul C. Marcinkus of Cicero, Ill., who was head of the Institute for Religious Works at the Vatican. 'God's Banker'

Known as the Vatican Bank, the institute owned 1.5 percent of the Banco Ambrosiano as well as 10 shell companies in Panama and Luxembourg to which the bank lent $1.3 billion. Mr. Calvi's well-known ties to the Vatican earned him the nickname of "God's banker," but it was when the Vatican's shell companies could not repay their loans that the bank finally went under.

After the Banco Ambrosiano's collapse in August 1982, the Vatican contended that it played no role in the bank's management. In 1984, insisting that it was a gesture of good will rather than an admission of guilt, the Vatican nonetheless paid $250 million to the bank's creditors.

In 1988, arguing that it was a sovereign state, it also persuaded the Italian Supreme Court that Archbishop Marcinkus was protected from prosecution by diplomatic immunity. The Archbishop stepped down as head of the Vatican Bank in 1989 and retired the following year.

An article available to subscribers only, though it looks like an early overview sort of piece. Probably worth reading. And Propaganda Due appears to have been only the tip of the iceberg of the total network of corruption in Italy:

What started a year ago as a modest bribe for a cleaning contract in Milan has grown into one of the most extraordinary scandals of postwar Europe, revealing the vast corruption that cements patronage and power among Italy's political barons. ...the recent revelations have exposed startling levels of bribery involving the power elite, once an untouchable network of dynasties, family money, state largesse and high-flying entrepreneurs. At a time of broadening economic and political discontent, the so-called Mani Pulite, or "clean hands" affair, has brought broad demands for an end at last to the way politicians run Italy as a jigsaw of fiefs.

There are Propaganda Due connections in the story:

The accusations against Mr. Martelli, the former Justice Minister, are even more opaque. In a seven-hour interview that he requested with Mr. Di Pietro last month, Mr. Martelli is said to have acknowledged that he knew of a bank account in Lugano, Switzerland, in the name of a Socialist party boss in Milan, Silvano Larini. But he has denied he was involved in corruption. According to his testimony, during a walk in 1980 with Mr. Craxi and Mr. Martelli, the Socialist party leader asked him if he knew of a Swiss account the party could use. Mr. Larini said his father had such an account. Mr. Martelli is said to have told Mr. Di Pietro that he wrote down the account number -- 63369 -- but never became involved in its operation. But investigators say the account was a conduit for illicit payments to the Socialist Party, most notably in 1981, when $7 million was deposited by Roberto Calvi, a financial adviser to the Vatican and head of Banco Ambrosiano. Mr. Calvi was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982 in still mysterious circumstances. The money was a payoff to the Socialist Party, Mr. Larini testified, after its political appointees at ENI, the state oil company, organized a $50 million loan to Banco Ambrosiano in a vain effort to stave off its collapse. The Vatican held a large chunk of the bank's shares but denied involvement in the mismanagement and corruption allegations that accompanied its fall. The Vatican ended up paying $250 million to the bank's creditors as a "goodwill gesture"; the bank's bad debts totaled $1.3 billion.

Considering the apparent right-wing ties of Propaganda Due, here's an odd little tidbit of information:

Mr. Craxi himself has been accused of seven incidents in which unspecified millions of dollars were said to have been diverted to the Socialists. The party officials said to have acted on his behalf include two former mayors of Milan, one of whom, Paolo Pilliteri, is Mr. Craxi's brother-in-law.

Mr. Craxi has denied all criminal charges and has said he will answer accusations regarding illicit party funds but not those alleging corruption.

Still protected from prosecution by parliamentary immunity, he faces accusations involving kickbacks of $200,000 from a Fiat subsidiary, fraudulent bankruptcy in connection with the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano and efforts to extort $2.5 million for a power-plant contract and $20 million for contracts on the Milan subway... Bettino Craxi -- Socialist Party leader. He resigned on Feb. 11 after being served with a sixth formal notice that he was under investigation in connection with the scandal. He denies wrongdoing.

The more I look at this, the more fascinated I am. But where's the books on it? Where's the scholarly exposition of the networks and Byzantine plots?

Gladio According to the NY Times

Before we dive in--I discovered the existence of Gladio through researching Propaganda Due after reading Malachi Martin's Vatican. Vatican was published in the mid-80s. The Gladio scandals appear to have broken in the early 90s. Martin had some interesting sources of information. An overview from the New York Times:

A Western cold-war conspiracy to fight what seemed imminent danger is coming to light in Europe. It is already rocking the Italian Government and will touch many others. There was, it is revealed, an organized underground, provided with hidden arms depots, prepared to launch guerrilla wars and resistance in the event of invasion from the East or overthrow of democratic governments from within.

There were different epic names for the operations -- "Gladio" in Italy (manned by secret gladiators), "Rose in the Wind" in France, "Red Fleece" in Belgium. They were sometimes directed, but generally coordinated, by NATO with participation of the C.I.A. and British secret service.

Former C.I.A. Director William Colby has confirmed some of this in recent interviews with Italian journalists. They also reported that meetings of the clandestine groups were held as recently as a few weeks ago in Brussels, though several governments claim it all ended by the 80's.

The Italian Government has said there were 139 caches of clandestine arms, explosives and communications equipment of which 127 were recovered years ago. They haven't accounted for the rest.

There's some astounding stuff in this article from 1990, when the Gladio scandal broke in Italy:

New "gladiators" are still recruited, and two members of Parliament say they visited a military base on the island of Sardinia where guerrilla training exercises were held last spring. But Admiral Martini told the investigating commission that nearly three-fourths of the 622 members were over the age of 50, or were dead.

Nevertheless, the network continues, and several officials reported that a supervisory committee of European secret services met in Brussels only a month ago. Nourishing conspiracy theories are assertions from key European leaders that they knew nothing about the operation until recently. Joseph Luns, who was NATO secretary general from 1971 to 1984, said he had never heard of it.

The network extended throughout Western Europe, even beyond the NATO countries though it was a NATO operation:

The Prime Minister said last week that Gladio later evolved into a branch of an extensive network, operated within NATO and abetted by a 1956 agreement between the United States and Italian secret services. Over the years, he says, 622 Italians belonged to the operation -- civilians who were trained by intelligence operatives and who had fought in World War II or served in the peacetime forces.

Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece and Luxembourg have all acknowledged that they maintained Gladio-style networks to prepare guerrilla fighters to leap into action in the event of a Warsaw Pact invasion. Many worked under the code name Stay Behind. Greece called its operation Red Sheepskin.

News reports in recent days assert that similar programs have also existed in Britain, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Austria, Turkey and Denmark, and even in neutral countries like Switzerland and Sweden.

The network also had supplies. Caches of arms were planted across Europe. Some caches of arms and supplies were never recovered. The chief of Italian military intelligence, Adm. Fulvio Martini, claimed that Gladio had no connection to any plots or neo-fascist organizations. That claim seems to lack support:

The Grey Wolves group, with which he [Mehmet Ali Agca, attempted assassin of Pope John Paul II] was associated at the time of the shooting, was linked to an underground network known as Gladio.

This was set up with CIA support in a number of European countries during the Cold War to prepare resistance to a possible Soviet invasion.

In both Italy and Turkey, Gladio networks are believed to have been behind numerous bombings and assassinations.

In Italy, the networks have been exposed and dismantled; in Turkey, they are still widely believed to exist as a so-called "deep state", with support from elements of the military.

There are ongoing trials of dozens of people accused of involvement in illegal, deep-state activities.

Agca was certainly helped to escape from prison in 1979 by his guards and some well-known underground right-wing figures. He was given false passports and enough funds to enable him to travel around Europe for several months before the attempted assassination.

The Turkish connection to Gladio is almost present-day news, as shown by this 2008 piece:

One of the most sensational public trials in Turkish history began Monday, as a court started hearing a case against 86 people — among them retired army generals, journalists and a former university rector — charged with assassinations, bomb attacks and trying to topple the government...

Turkey is a democracy with an elected government, but a powerful elite of military officers, judges and senior bureaucrats has helped steer the country since its inception in 1923, carrying out four coups. This trial is the first real attempt in Turkish history to prosecute the leaders of this country’s violent nationalist fringe, who prosecutors say have had links to the elite.

The case has riveted Turkish society because public criticism of the military, a vaunted institution in Turkey, is extremely rare. The military has denied any role in the plots; the officers identified in the indictment are all retired.

Prosecutors say the Ergenekon organization is the Turkish equivalent of the Italian Gladio network, a code name for operatives who infiltrated Italian society after World War II to counter Communism and who were responsible for a series of political assassinations and bombings in the 1970s. Turkey, according to the indictment, has allowed Ergenekon “to turn our country into a mafia and terror haven."

And more.