Baltimore Riots: A Product Of The Soros Machine

Image source

By Brandon Turbeville

While Baltimore burns, the city has proven itself to be yet another staging ground in a long line of scenes involving “violent protests,” riots, and racial violence following an incident concerning police brutality, real or otherwise.

Although the issues that have set off the spark in most of these protests were entirely legitimate, government agencies, foundations, organizations, and NGOs immediately swooped in to divert the protests into racially charged fit throwing and often violent riots.

With a carefully orchestrated network that was capable of organizing large numbers of individuals on a moment’s notice, and a simultaneous media campaign that cleverly showed violence and riots but ignored peaceful or appropriately-directed violent acts, these organizations were able to turn what could and should have been a national movement into a racially-oriented hate-filled display of unrestrained destruction.

With this in mind, one might justifiably ask how these organizations might have such an effective network that operates in concert with a national corporate media apparatus in order to wreck legitimate movements and, out of those movements, create a counter-productive act of mindless fit-throwing?

The answer is the same as it has often been in Europe – the color revolution apparatus and George Soros.

Indeed, George Soros has been heavily involved in the social unrest and movement-wrecking activity that has taken place all across the United States in recent months. From Florida to Ferguson and now to Baltimore, George Soros’ Foundations have been involved in making sure that not only are American citizens unable to overcome racial divisions with mutual cooperation but that even the racially isolated participants are unable to accomplish anything of substance.


As Kelly Riddell of the Washington Times reported in January, 2015, regarding Soros’ involvement in Ferguson,

There’s a solitary man at the financial center of the Ferguson protest movement. No, it’s not victim Michael Brown or Officer Darren Wilson. It’s not even the Rev. Al Sharpton, despite his ubiquitous campaign on TV and the streets. 

Rather, it’s liberal billionaire George Soros, who has built a business empire that dominates across the ocean in Europe while forging a political machine powered by nonprofit foundations that impacts American politics and policy, not unlike what he did with MoveOn.org. 

Mr. Soros spurred the Ferguson protest movement through years of funding and mobilizing groups across the U.S., according to interviews with key players and financial records reviewed by The Washington Times. 

In all, Mr. Soros gave at least $33 million in one year to support already-established groups that emboldened the grass-roots, on-the-ground activists in Ferguson, according to the most recent tax filings of his nonprofit Open Society Foundations. 

The financial tether from Mr. Soros to the activist groups gave rise to a combustible protest movement that transformed a one-day criminal event in Missouri into a 24-hour-a-day national cause celebre. 

“Our DNA includes a belief that having people participate in government is indispensable to living in a more just, inclusive, democratic society,” said Kenneth Zimmerman, director of Mr. Soros‘ Open Society Foundations’ U.S. programs, in an interview with The Washington Times. “Helping groups combine policy, research [and] data collection with community organizing feels very much the way our society becomes more accountable.”

Indeed, the Open Society Institute has been promoting “democracy” all over the world if, by democracy, one means the overthrow of governments unfriendly to Anglo-American banking interests and installing new and more corrupt leadership in its place.


      Black Lives Matter

Riddell continues by writing,

Soros-sponsored organizations helped mobilize protests in Ferguson, building grass-roots coalitions on the ground backed by a nationwide online and social media campaign. 

Other Soros-funded groups made it their job to remotely monitor and exploit anything related to the incident that they could portray as a conservative misstep, and to develop academic research and editorials to disseminate to the news media to keep the story alive. 

The plethora of organizations involved not only shared Mr. Soros‘ funding, but they also fed off each other, using content and buzzwords developed by one organization on another’s website, referencing each other’s news columns and by creating a social media echo chamber of Facebook “likes” and Twitter hashtags that dominated the mainstream media and personal online newsfeeds. 

Buses of activists from the Samuel Dewitt Proctor Conference in Chicago; from the Drug Policy Alliance, Make the Road New York and Equal Justice USA from New York; from Sojourners, the Advancement Project and Center for Community Change in Washington; and networks from the Gamaliel Foundation — all funded in part by Mr. Soros — descended on Ferguson starting in August and later organized protests and gatherings in the city until late last month. 

All were aimed at keeping the media’s attention on the city and to widen the scope of the incident to focus on interrelated causes — not just the overpolicing and racial discrimination narratives that were highlighted by the news media in August. 

“I went to Ferguson in a quest to be in solidarity and stand with the young organizers and affirm their leadership,” said Kassandra Frederique, policy manager at the Drug Policy Alliance, which was founded by Mr. Soros, and which receives $4 million annually from his foundation. She traveled to Ferguson in October. 

“We recognized this movement is similar to the work we’re doing at DPA,” said Ms. Frederique. “The war on drugs has always been to operationalize, institutionalize and criminalize people of color. Protecting personal sovereignty is a cornerstone of the work we do and what this movement is all about.” 

Ms. Frederique works with Opal Tometi, co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter — a hashtag that was developed after the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida — and helped promote it on DPA’s news feeds. Ms. Tometi runs the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, a group to which Mr. Soros gave $100,000 in 2011, according to the most recent of his foundation’s tax filings. 

“I think #BlackLivesMatter’s success is because of organizing. This was created after Trayvon Martin, and there has been sustained organizing and conversations about police violence since then,” said Ms. Frederique. “Its explosion into the mainstream recently is because it connects all the dots at a time when everyone was lost for words. ‘Black Lives Matter’ is liberating, unapologetic and leaves no room for confusion.”

It should be noted that The Gamaliel Foundation, which is described as a “net-work of grassroots and interracial organizations,” is not only funded by George Soros, it was the Foundation where President Barack Obama began his career as a “community organizer” in Chicago. Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright who drew Conservative ire for a fiery sermon condemning America’s actions (his famous “Goddamn America speech), is a trustee of the Soros-funded Samuel Dewitt Proctor Conference, an organization that sent representatives to Ferguson early on.

In Ferguson, the use of clergy and ministers became a major part of the social movement as funded by Soros as well. Riddell reveals as much when she writes,

Representatives of Sojourners, a national evangelical Christian organization committed “to faith in action for social justice,” attended the weekend [Gamaliel’s weekend protest event in Ferguson]. The group received $150,000 from Mr. Soros in 2011. 

Clergy representatives from the Samuel Dewitt Proctor Conference, where the Rev. Jeremiah Wright serves as a trustee, also showed up. Mr. Wright was Mr. Obama’s pastor in Chicago before some of his racially charged sermons, including the phrase “God damn America,” forced Mr. Obama to distance himself. SDPC received $250,000 from Mr. Soros in 2011. 

During Gamaliel’s weekend protest event, Sunday was deemed “Hands Up Sabbath,” where clergy were asked to speak out about racial issues, using packets and talking points prepared for them by another religion-based community organizing group, PICO.

PICO is also supported by the Open Society Foundations, according to its website.

The Washington Times article also serves to shed light on a number of other more profile “national” organizations funded by Soros that descended upon Ferguson, now explaining some of the reasons that the protest movement on the ground in MO became such a disgraceful failure. Riddell further demonstrates this by writing,

Larry Fellows III, 29, a Missouri native, did find his voice in the chaos of Ferguson with the help of outside assistance backed by Mr. Soros. 

Mr. Fellows is co-founder of the Millennial Activists United, a key source of video and stories developed in Ferguson by youth activists used to inspire other groups nationally.

Mr. Fellows explained how he started his organization in an interview with the American Civil Liberties Union (another Soros-backed entity that sent national representatives to Missouri) in November. 

“Initially, it would just be that we would show up for protests, and the next day we’d clean up the streets. A lot of the same people were out at the protests and going out to lunch and talking about what was happening. That became a cycle until a lot of us figured out we needed to have a strategy,” Mr. Fellows explained to the ACLU, which posted the interview in its blog. 

“Then a lot of organizers from across the country started to come in to help us do the planning and do the strategizing. That helped us start doing it on our own and planning out actions and what our narratives were going to be,” he said. 

MAU has listed on its website that it has partnered with Gamaliel network churches. They’ve also received training on civil disobedience from the Advancement Project — which was given a $500,000 grant from Mr. Soros in 2013 “to build a fair and just, multi-racial democracy in America through litigation, community organizing support, public policy reform, and strategic communications,” according to the Foundation’s website. 

The Advancement Project, based in Washington, also arranged the meeting between community organizers in Ferguson and Mr. Obama last month to brief him on the situation in Ferguson and to set up a task force that examines trust between police and minority communities. 

In addition, the Advancement Project has also dedicated some of its staff to lead organizations in Ferguson, like the Don’t Shoot Coalition, another grass-roots group that preaches the same message, links to the same Facebook posts and “likes” the same articles as DPA, ACLU, Hands Up Coalition, OBS, MORE and others.

It should also be noted that the Open Society Institute, one of Soros’ main NGOs, has worked closely with Mayor Rawlings-Blake and Google in making Baltimore one of their “test cities” for smart technology and new fiber cables. Rawlings-Blake has had pleasant things to say about Soros in the past.

While the above information addresses the involvement of #blacklivesmatter groups and similar organizations active on the ground inside Ferguson as a matter of historical precedent, these organizations and similar operations such as the Black Youth Project (funded by Soros) and the Open Society Institute and its subsididiaries have had a sizable presence inside Baltimore in the time leading up to the Freddie Gray protests and continue to do so as we speak.

For instance, Baltimore United Viewfinders has received a sizeable grant from the OSI for the purpose of working with a coalition of community partners and the Maryland Institute College of Art to use digital media to engage East Baltimore youth in peer-to-peer arts and social justice programming. Other organizations and individuals have received grants from the OSI to promote “social justice” and “democracy” through theatre and the arts while others operate on a more charitable basis, providing guidance in healthcare matters and community organizing skills. As one will see from the discussion of the methodology of color revolutions below as well as the discussion of the preparation that goes into these social phenomena, the structure of “community organizations” and “community influence” is important to the color revolution apparatus. The ability to take advantage of unemployed, under-educated, lonely, and hopeless youth is one of the greatest opportunities that the Soros color revolution organizations understand and firmly grasp.

The relevance of the Soros connection may seem confusing to many. Certainly, however, no one in their right mind will suggest that a man that has made his fortune bankrupting nations and impoverishing their peoples lies awake at night wringing his hands over concerns for black people in America.

Soros is most well-known for playing a major role in the funding and facilitating of the “Bulldozer Revolution” in Serbia that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, Georgia’s “Rose Revolution” of 2003, the 2006 push to move Turkey toward a more Islamist governing structure, and even the Occupy movement in the United States among a great many others – none of which brought anything other than greater misery, impoverishment, and police state mechanisms to bear on the general public. The Occupy movement, being the only exception, still brought nothing to its participants except the opportunity to burn off excess anger and energy along with a few cracked protester skulls. It was otherwise an incredible waste of time.

Regardless, the methods being used by the Soros machine in terms of the #blacklivesmatter and other related campaigns across the country are much the same as those used in Europe to usher in greater austerity, police states, and fascism through government-coup and social protest – i.e. a coordinated media campaign to provide the general public with a false perception of events as well as a false narrative, the use of social media and slogans, and the deployment of “swarming adolescents” in the streets.

When media campaigns alone are not enough, there are other methods that are able to be implemented if need be. For instance, a Mother Jones report revealed the fact that in some areas where rioting began, there appears to have been a concerted effort on the part of the authorities to create an environment in which riots would be inevitable. For example, in an instance where it was reported that teens in Baltimore attacked police by throwing rocks, it was never mentioned that police had corralled these teens – who should have been on their way home – off the bus and into an area in between the mall and the high school. According to onlookers, it appeared that both the teens and the police were surprised at the situation – the police surprised at the lack of violence and the teens surprised that they were kept from going home. Eventually, rocks and bottles were reportedly thrown at police and the situation deteriorated from there. Of course, the entire story was never fully reported in the mainstream press. Still, while the rocks and bottles may have started from those in the crowd, others may justifiably wonder if there were not provocateurs already placed simply waiting to cause violence as soon as the tension had reached a boiling point. As it is, it is very likely that protesters and police alike were dupes in a devious game.

Consider also the fact that the Baltimore authorities, despite implementing heavy-handed tactics against high schoolers on their way home, allowed criminals, thieves, and violent thugs to prey upon innocent people, private property, and communities for quite some time without a serious effort to stop them. In fact, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake even openly admitted that the looters were allowed to riot when she stated that “We also gave those who wish to destroy space to do that as well.” The police were prevented from actually stopping the riots and were kept largely unequipped as well. In other words, the riots were both allowed and encouraged until they had reached a boiling point and the National Guard was called in.

Of course, the color revolution and destabilization is not merely some communiqué presented to a small group of people that organically takes on a life of its own. There is an entire science behind the application of a movement of destabilization both when it takes place overseas as well as when it takes place domestically. As Pottenger and Frieson of Color Revolutions and Geopolitics write,

Many are the professions that utilize this type of understanding, including (but not limited to) marketing, advertising, public relations, politics and law-making, radio, television, journalism and news, film, music, general business and salesmanship; each of them selling, branding, promoting, entertaining, sloganeering, framing, explaining, creating friends and enemies, arguing likes and dislikes, setting the boundaries of good and evil: in many cases using their talents to circumvent their audiences’ intellect, the real target being emotional, oftentimes even subconscious.

Looking beneath the facade of the color revolutionary movement we also find a desire-based behavioral structure, in particular one that has been built upon historical lessons offered by social movements and periods of political upheaval.

It then makes sense that the personnel of such operations include perception managers, PR firms, pollsters and opinion-makers in the social media. Through the operational infrastructure, these entities work in close coordination with intelligence agents, local and foreign activists, strategists and tacticians, tax-exempt foundations, governmental agencies, and a host of non- governmental organizations.

Collectively, their job is to make a palace coup (of their sponsorship) seem like a social revolution; to help fill the streets with fearless demonstrators advocating on behalf of a government of their choosing, which then legitimizes the sham governments with the authenticity of popular democracy and revolutionary fervor.

Because the operatives perform much of their craft in the open, their effectiveness is heavily predicated upon their ability to veil the influence backing them, and the long-term intentions guiding their work.

Their effectiveness is predicated on their ability to deceive, targeting both local populations and foreign audiences with highly-misleading interpretations of the underlying causes provoking these events.

With this explanation in mind, consider the description provided by Ian Traynor of the Guardian regarding the “revolutions” and “mass movements” which was taking place in Ukraine, Serbia, Belarus, and Georgia in 2004 and the time of the writing of his article. Indeed, Traynor’s depiction of the methodology used by the Foundations, NGOs, and government agencies stirring up dissent and popular revolt is equally illuminating. Traynor writes,

In the centre of Belgrade, there is a dingy office staffed by computer-literate youngsters who call themselves the Centre for Non-violent Resistance. If you want to know how to beat a regime that controls the mass media, the judges, the courts, the security apparatus and the voting stations, the young Belgrade activists are for hire. 

They emerged from the anti-Milosevic student movement, Otpor, meaning resistance. The catchy, single-word branding is important. In Georgia last year, the parallel student movement was Khmara. In Belarus, it was Zubr. In Ukraine, it is Pora, meaning high time. Otpor also had a potent, simple slogan that appeared everywhere in Serbia in 2000 – the two words “gotov je”, meaning “he’s finished”, a reference to Milosevic. A logo of a black-and-white clenched fist completed the masterful marketing.

In Ukraine, the equivalent is a ticking clock, also signalling that the Kuchma regime’s days are numbered.

Stickers, spray paint and websites are the young activists’ weapons. Irony and street comedy mocking the regime have been hugely successful in puncturing public fear and enraging the powerful.

These slogans and symbols are the product of mass marketers employed by State Departments and intelligence agencies for the sole purpose of destabilizing and/or overthrowing a democratically elected or unfavorable (to the oligarchy)government.

The details and techniques of the manipulation of mass numbers of people have only continued to become more and more advanced and sophisticated, particularly with the advent of social media.

As Jonathan Mowat wrote,

As in the case of the new communication technologies, the potential effectiveness of angry youth in postmodern coups has long been under study. As far back as 1967, Dr. Fred Emery, then director of the Tavistock Institute, and an expert on the “hypnotic effects” of television, specified that the then new phenomenon of “swarming adolescents” found at rock concerts could be effectively used to bring down the nation-state by the end of the 1990s. This was particularly the case, as Dr. Emery reported in “The next thirty years: concepts, methods and anticipations,” in the group’s “Human Relations,” because the phenomena was associated with “rebellious hysteria.” The British military created the Tavistock Institute as its psychological warfare arm following World War I; it has been the forerunner of such strategic planning ever since. Dr. Emery’s concept saw immediate application in NATO’s use of “swarming adolescents” in toppling French President Charles De Gaulle in 1967.[1]

[…]

In November 1989, Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio, under the aegis of that university’s “Program for Social Innovations in Global Management,” began a series of conferences to review progress towards that strategic objective, which was reported on in “Human Relations” in 1991. There, Dr. Howard Perlmutter, a professor of “Social Architecture” at the Wharton School, and a follower of Dr. Emery, stressed that “rock video in Kathmandu,” was an appropriate image of how states with traditional cultures could be destabilized, thereby creating the possibility of a “global civilization.” There are two requirements for such a transformation, he added, “building internationally committed networks of international and locally committed organizations,” and “creating global events” through “the transformation of a local event into one having virtually instantaneous international implications through mass-media.”[2]

The American people must quickly learn the formula behind color revolutions, destabilizations, and the agendas of the world oligarchy before it becomes too late for us all. They must learn that simply because “leaders” appear to them, attempt to speak the same language and articulate rage does not mean that these leaders are men of the people.

Protests are necessary. Directed rage may also be necessary. But the wanton destruction of communities belonging to you or your neighbors is not only counterproductive, it produces rage that will be aimed back at you, and justifiably so. The entire country is being played like a fiddle. Baltimore is not an isolated collection of dupes, it is a microcosm. It is time the American people wise up and become street smart before it is too late.

• Baltimore, Police Violence and Economic Justice

• by ROB URIE

• “We need more police, we need more and tougher prison sentences for repeat offenders. The ‘three-strikes-and-you’re-out’ for violent offenders has to be part of the plan. We need more prisons to keep violent offenders for as long as it takes to keep them off the streets.”

• Hillary Clinton 1994

• The Economic Backdrop

• American politics is the realm of Immaculate Conception where actual policies and accumulated history disappear behind a veil of personal characteristics and unrelated acts. The (mis)leadership class pretends that ruling class machinations— trade agreements, financial deregulation, imperial wars, surveillance and policing have no bearing on social outcomes. American cities bear the imprint of these policies plus the residuals of slavery, genocide and the particulars of Western capitalism that have embedded history into current social relations. This is to argue that the individualist explanation of Western history may be interesting for those so-inclined, but it fails as description in every conceivable dimension.

• Freddie Gray. Original Image source: cnn.com

• Political explanations of public policies like trade agreements and financial deregulation put a political face on fundamentally economic arrangements. When Bill and Hillary Clinton instituted the ‘tough-on-crime’ policies that so exacerbated mass incarceration there was a political explanation— pandering to White suburban voters’ manufactured fears of a Black urban underclass to garner votes, but the policies tied closely to American economic history as well. From slavery to convict leasing to urban dispossession, racial repression has produced economic value that has been expropriated. The Clinton’s neoliberal trade policies exacerbated the urban industrial exodus while deregulation of finance ‘monetized’ Black wealth for the taking. Seemingly unrelated ‘political’ policies often have economic explanations.

• Economic history ties America’s cities to political and economic hierarchy through the dimensions of this hierarchy. Washington to Baltimore to Philadelphia to New York was the land route North for Southern Blacks fleeing slavery. This was also one of the routes to industrial jobs following WWII. Sequential (engineered) oil crises in the 1970s roiled industrial America. In the late 1970s and early 1980s Federal Reserve policies decimated the industrial economy by increasing the value of the U.S. dollar. Bill Clinton passed NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and his deregulation of Wall Street provided the money needed to finance the relocation of a large portion of the U.S. industrial base overseas. None of these policies were crafted by the inner-city residents.

• Modern day Baltimore, Philadelphia, Detroit and Chicago have neighborhoods left behind by policy decisions that decimated the economic bases that once supported them. When there were jobs people worked. When the jobs left people either stopped working or found other, less remunerative work in the service sector. The housing boom and bust monetized inner-city houses until the bubble burst. Rather than forcing Wall Street to clean up the mess inner city residents were left with their former wealth in the hands of bankers and an economy that imploded in the Great Recession. While this story is full of malefactors, Bill Clinton has major policy responsibility for mass incarceration, for neoliberal trade deals and for bank deregulation.

• The bankers who destroyed Baltimore discuss their bonuses
  with Congress. Image source: google images.

• The Murder of Freddie Gray

• The wholly implausible storyline that Freddie Gray severed his own spine being put out by the Baltimore police is a Rorschach test for social accountability. The political strategy of officialdom is to peel away those who will accept any explanation in favor of police actions, no matter how implausible, to marginalize protestors. That a significant portion of the population, both Black and White, wants to believe that the police always act in good faith illustrates a preconception that will only be effectively challenged through political estrangement. The fabrication adds insult to Freddie Gray’s murder and as such, to the conduct that the Baltimore police department needs to be held to account for. Freddie Gray was murdered in police custody. Technocratic explanations of the particulars only serve to obscure this basic truth.

• When videotape revealed the brutal beating the Los Angeles police inflicted on Rodney King the defense was able to convince a jury and a substantial portion of America that Mr. King had assaulted the police ‘batons’ with his head. One might wonder how graphic footage of a group of cops beating Rodney King within an inch of his life in plain public view could be construed otherwise. The tactic used was similar to the comments from officialdom, including the Black (mis)leadership class, toward protestors in Baltimore. Mr. King was alleged to have been in an angel dust rage that made him impervious to pain and to rational thought— he was an ‘out-of-control’ Black man. Likewise the protestors in Baltimore were deemed irrational ‘thugs,’ criminals with no legitimate right to political action.

• Graph (1) above: the official storyline has unknown forces producing intractable poverty in American cities when many of the forces are quite visible. Mass incarceration is racially targeted and causes wholesale immiseration by precluding meaningful employment. Wall Street’s subprime lending fiasco racially targeted neighborhoods and emptied them of residents as local wealth was transferred to the bank accounts of the already wealthy. It is paradoxical that public discussion of ‘looting’ in Baltimore has focused on angry citizens without deep discussion of what they are angry about. Home foreclosures in Baltimore (Graph (1) above) have followed the national housing boom – bust because Wall Street made predatory mortgage loans targeting neighborhoods of color. Rather than charging bankers with making fraudulent, predatory loans the citizens of Baltimore were forced to bear the consequences of banker malfeasance. Source: Baltimore Homeownership Preservation Coalition.
  In telling form, officialdom’s concern for property overshadowed care for the life of Freddie Gray and the many other Black, Brown and poor White youth and men murdered by the police. These misplaced priorities are thinly veiled socio-cide, concern with what can be replaced in place of what can’t be. The rapid vilification of protestors was accompanied by Immaculate Conception politics, denial of responsibility for the circumstances being protested. However, made apparent by events in Baltimore is that police murders only enter the American consciousness when buildings and police cars burn. Assertions that peaceful protests are the only legitimate form face the burden of history and official hypocrisy. Moral suasion through peaceful protest assumes a capacity that divergent class interests render improbable.
  Democracy Now! illustrated one such experiential divide when a Baltimore mother refused to join local youth who had volunteered to clean a burned CVS store because, as she put it, the police need to be made to understand that they can’t murder Black youth with impunity. Left unexplored, and apparently unconsidered by the youth who saw the local CVS outlet as ‘their’ store, is that through direct purchase and their Caremark consulting business CVS has put hundreds of locally owned pharmacies in inner city neighborhoods out of business and replaced them with minimum wage jobs and extractive economic practices. Likewise, the Ace Cash Express that was burned is a payday lender whose business model is to make usurious loans in poorly banked communities under terms that lead to permanent debt servitude.
  

  

  State police or police state? Original image source: spaulforrest.com.
  National Mis-Leadership Meets Local Mis-Leadership
  When President Obama called protesters in Baltimore ‘criminals and thugs’ he neglected to mention the class divisions that have as his major campaign contributors the Wall Street bankers who engineered the housing boom – bust still devastating Baltimore and whose subsidiaries are the payday lenders who destroy lives and neighborhoods there. Some fair portion of these campaign contributors would have been ‘criminals’ if Mr. Obama’s Justice Department had not shielded them from prosecution for their crimes. The term ‘thugs’ is widely used as racist code for Black and Brown youth and could be more appropriately applied to American drone operators so regularly slaughtering wedding parties across the Middle East. And the term most certainly applies to the police who murder Black and Brown youth with alarming regularity and officially sanctioned impunity.
  Much of the reaction to events in Baltimore harkens to the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s quip that “justice is incidental to law and order.” Implied is that justice may be set to the side if order can be maintained through systematic injustice. The conceptual problem is that, as with President Obama’s and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s slander of protestors as ‘thugs,’ class interests lie behind class-based policing. Heavily armed, militarized police could storm Wall Street (as metaphor for geographically dispersed finance) and corporate executive suites kicking in doors, handcuffing everyone they meet and opening fire on those who aren’t immediately compliant under the same theorized justification they have for doing so in Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia or Los Angeles. That they don’t is evidence that neither law nor justice is behind police actions in poor communities.
  

  

  If peaceful change is possible, why have the police been militarized to prevent it?
  The Department of Homeland Security calls protestors ‘terrorists’
  and the Ferguson, MO police department calls them ‘the enemy.’
  Original image source: google images.
  The economic crises affecting communities of color in Baltimore and elsewhere tie directly to government policies like trade agreements that benefit financiers, upper class ‘professionals,’ industrialists and the owners of capital. Official indifference to the social consequences of industrial relocation has produced economic dead zones in major cities since the 1960s. Wall Street’s predatory mortgages decimated black wealth in cities like Baltimore and with it the capacity for economic investment. Elite chides that citizens are destroying their future prospects through rebellion provide cover for the economic forces they control for their own benefit. In the last decade Wall Street has destroyed more of urban America than citizen rebellions ever could.
  The problem of the economic capture of the mis-leadership class suggests that political resolution is unlikely to come through the ballot box. Blacks have joined this mis-leadership class with co-optation being the singular result. American political economy is set up to perpetuate existing class relations with the racial residual of history as a component. Martin King began addressing economic justice with the understanding that it is a prerequisite to social justice. He was murdered shortly thereafter. The interest in ‘property’ in the face of the loss of life at police hands is clear indication of what drives official concerns. Therein lies the political paradox— economics is the more dangerous dimension of social injustice to address but it is also the most necessary. The U.S. has subverted democratic movements and invaded countries to prevent implementation of a minimum wage. But how is life possible without a living wage?Rob Urie is an artist and political economist.  Weekend Edition May 1-3, 2015
  Pasted from <http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/01/altimore-police-violence-and-economic-justice/>
  

NANA BAAKAN”S COMMENTARY

In reality, when folks are connected to that which is around them, they are less likely to tear it up. But when you have disenfranchised people who are neither cared about or engaged and encouraged to be apart of what is around them in their environment, but instead are told to walk here, be there, leave this and don’t interfere with that, they are alienated. How many of those who riot are gainfully employed by the establishments that surround them? How many of them own the property? How many of them are even co-owners? How many of them care and how many of them are “unaware” that these establishments have insurance to cover damages.

What Ferguson Cops Can Learn From LAPD Response to Rodney King Riots

By Monica Alba

“The Los Angeles Police Department’s response to the Rodney King riots 22 years ago could provide a blueprint for what happens in the coming months and years in Ferguson, Missouri, as police work to repair their reputation in the wake of Michael Brown’s fatal shooting, according to experts on the LAPD’s transformation.” READ MORE

When people are policed and restrained, ordered and separated, they will not feel attached to their environment. They will see the environment as much of the enemy as they will see the Police or the so-called “Authority that Polices them”. They will not see or feel a connection to their environment but will feel caged and imprisoned by it.

Systemic racism and re-gentrification alienates the inhabitants of the community, particularly as business and corporations set up shop in the communities they do not live in. They are more representative of the oppressors than they are considered neighbors. The businesses set up in these communities have an ingrained attitude about the inhabitants of the communities that they are financially benefited by. They do not see them as humans but more as commodities. They are as alienated from those whom they depend on to support them financially as those who spend their money there.

19 Shocking Images from the Baltimore Riots

Apr 28, 2015 at 1:20 pm | By Trevor Pittinger 

EXCERPT: “There was an uprising on social media calling for a violent protest to take place, and resultantly things exploded yesterday afternoon in northwestern Baltimore around the area where Gray’s funeral had taken place that morning. Images of looting, destruction, arson, and violence have since streamed from the area as the city was placed under a state of emergency.”

It may appear reckless to riot but rioting is a deeper sign of an even deeper chasm between the haves and the have-nots. When people are actively involved in their own communities that they feel an ownership of and an ability to control, they are less likely to be destructive. It’s simply human nature, and to expect what happened in Baltimore to fall outside of the confines of human nature is cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is denial of what is truly the cause of what is happening when people riot.

Black Time Travel | Rioting isn’t new. In fact, America was founded on rioting
By Evette D. Champion
EXCERPT: In the midst of the rioting that is going on in Baltimore, many people are thinking that rioting and looting is something that has only been done within the past 50 years to show civil unrest. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Did you know that this country was founded on looting and riots?
During the 1760s in Boston, Massachusetts, there was a lot of political activity going on that rose a lot of eyebrows and ruffled a few feathers. The early settlers were in the midst of constant and violent protests against the British. A lot of the credit for the Revolution belongs to Sam Adams and the group called “Sons of Liberty.” READ MORE

Texas schools teach Boston Tea Party as act of terrorism

EXCERPT: “A local militia, believed to be a terrorist organization, attacked the property of private citizens today at our nation’s busiest port,” the part of the curriculum pertaining to the Boston Tea Party reads, according to CBS Houston. “Although no one was injured in the attack, a large quantity of merchandise, considered to be valuable to its owners and loathsome to the perpetrators, was destroyed. The terrorists, dressed in disguise and apparently intoxicated, were able to escape into the night with the help of local citizens who harbor these fugitives and conceal their identities from the authorities.” READ MORE

“There have been a lot of responses to the Cosby “Rape” Allegations but I think this one speak so succinctly to the mind of the rape “victim” and how it’s possible to keep it unreported for years.” NB

Remembering a rape/Leaving the deserted alley

by Wendy Rosenfield

December 09, 2014  in Cross-Cultural

The Bill Cosby rape allegations really started getting to me right around the time Philadelphia magazine’s Victor Fiorillo announced he was writing a theater piece about them. As a theater critic, I found myself one step deeper insidethe widening circle of accusations. But it wasn’t just that. I was raped in high school, or, more accurately, during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years.

Fiorillo, discussing the accusations on WHYY’s Radio Times, mentioned Judy Huth, who filed suit against Cosby in California for an alleged molestation that occurred when she was 15. In Pennsylvania, Fiorillo said, the statute of limitations for statutory sexual assault, a second-degree felony, doesn’t run out until the victim turns 50. I’m 45. I never knew.

With each new woman who stepped forward to accuse Cosby, with Rolling Stone’s UVA story falling to pieces and potentially damaging the credibility of a new generation of victims, my own story felt perpetually pressed against my throat,forcing its way out. Though more than 20 women have now come forward,
when my husband, an attorney with an almost unfailingly steady moral compass, watched a CNN special
with me about the case, he said, “I didn’t know what to believe until I saw their faces and heard them speak.” I was shocked. To me, from the first, their accounts held ironclad key words and themes. I knew
implicitly why regular women held back for decades, even when reporting the incident wouldn’t result in bringing down any institutions, academic or cultural. I knew I was obligated to tell my story, one that also
went unreported.

A high-school sleepover

The night I was raped, a friend whose parents were out of town hosted a sleepover. It wasn’t much as far as high school parties go — just a few girls, even fewer guys, and later, someone’s older brother and his
friend, both men in their mid-20s. There was white wine, which we drank, and much discussion of the older brother, whom the girls all liked, but who wasn’t really my type — bulldog body, cheesy mustache, slicked-back hair, his friend a shorter, stockier version pulled from the same mold.

Still, I was enough of an alpha girl to feel flattered when the older brother asked me to go upstairs with him, and insecure enough to follow. He led me into a bedroom, and whatever I imagined, a makeout session, some conversation, dissipated when he asked what I was waiting for, and roughly told me to get on the bed. Again, I did what he asked. Though it wasn’t my first time, I was disgusted, not with him, a grown man who should have known better, but with myself, for letting it happen, for being so needy, so slutty.

Afterward, I told my friends I felt sick and went to bed. I awoke to find a man on top of me. The room was dark, and, confused, I asked if it was the older brother. He answered, “Yeah, that’s who it is. Go back to
sleep.” It wasn’t; it was his friend. I didn’t fight back, because if  my own friends hadn’t protected me, hadn’t told him to leave me alone, what was the point? Instead, I waited for it to end, and when it did, he
left and again, I listened; I went back to sleep.

What could they do?

In the morning, furious, I asked my friends why they let him come upstairs. They said they didn’t know what was happening, but even if they did, what could they have done? These were men; we were girls. We
let them in and flirted with them and got what we deserved. I called my mother to pick me up. Later, rumors spread throughout our school about what I did that night. I told some of the girls I was talking to a lawyer about pressing charges, but I wasn’t. I just wanted them to know that what happened was wrong.

I got on with my life, and the decades slid past. Occasionally, some news story or Facebook post would trigger my memories, and I’d be right back in that room, waiting for it to end, but mostly, I shoved them
away. Except now, the memories shoved back. I frightened my teen daughter with warnings about serial killers, drugged drinks at parties, and the importance of traveling in groups. I indoctrinated my teen son
about rape culture and the necessity of stepping forward if he saw intoxicated friends or strangers at a party and the situation didn’t  look or feel right. It was all good advice, but delivered with a shrill sense of panic. My internal struggles were leaking into my parenting, and for the first time, I told my husband of 20 years what happened, in detail.

Saying nothing then . . .

I didn’t report my rape when it happened 30 years ago, and here’s why: I was embarrassed. The rapist was connected to friends. I was certain my own friends knew what was happening, and no one stopped it. I was so young. I didn’t know his last name. I didn’t want my friend to get in trouble for hosting the party. Within the course of that year, both of my grandmothers passed away, my parents separated, and a classmate who was there that evening was killed in a car crash. I was dealing with enough. I thought I brought it on myself. I thought it would be expensive and difficult. I was afraid my dad and brother might try to settle the issue on their own. I wanted to forget it happened. I thought I was fine.

A few years ago, I visited a therapist and mentioned the incident in a cavalier manner. “But,” she said, “you know that was rape.”

“Yeah, I know,” I answered, “but I’m fine. I’m over it.” I’m not.

If I was unwilling to report the nobody who raped me, when I had a supportive family, access to an attorney, witnesses, proof, and people who could find him, why would anyone imagine that these women, with their own lives and struggles, would report Bill Cosby at the height of his powers? Sometimes it takes a while to gain back that inner fortitude. Sometimes it takes 30 years.

. . . but now?

I’m now faced with a dilemma. Learning there are five years left on the statute of limitations is a gift because it puts power I never knew I  had squarely into my hands. Recently, my daughter and I watched an episode of The Sopranos in which Dr. Melfi, Tony’s therapist, holds onto the knowledge that if she wanted, she could ask Tony to do away with her rapist at any time. Just owning that knowledge was enough power for her. My daughter couldn’t understand why she didn’t use it, but I could.

The night after learning I could still press charges, I lay in bed, thrilled and terrified. I kept second-guessing my age at the time, until I remembered a box in our basement that held all my old diaries. I rummaged around until I found an electric blue one decorated with hearts and song lyrics and boyfriends’ names. Sure enough, there was a dated entry referring specifically to the men involved and what they did.

“Well, anyway,” I concluded, “that happened.” Even then, in my own diary, I tried to erase it away, and yet it remains all these years later, tangible evidence that rape refuses to disappear, no matter how hard you try to suppress it. Khaled Hosseini wrote in The Kite Runner, “The past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last 26 years.”

Where is he now?

Still, I wonder if the man who raped me cleaned up his act. Maybe he has a wife and children and a job, and I feel protective of them, even as I try to protect myself. Statutory sexual assault is a second-degree felony and can carry with it a ten-year sentence. Maybe I should leave him alone and assume karma had its way with him. After all, he didn’t seem to be headed for greatness. And then I read the statistics: nine out of ten campus rapes are committed by serial rapists. My circumstances were different, but I wonder if I’m his only victim, who else he attacked after I didn’t report him, or if he’s still attacking.

I still don’t know what I’ll do with this new information, but I’m grateful to the brave women who came  forward en masse to hold Bill Cosby accountable for his alleged crimes. I know why they waited so long and why they stopped waiting, and I also know that if it weren’t for their strength, I might never have found mine.



Re-printed from: Remembering a rape | Broad Street Review

Invasion Through Conversion

“A striking example of how Christianity destroys a proud culture, by introducing “doubt”. The Christian body is imperfect, we are “sinners”. These beautiful people learn for the first time, that their behavior is a “sin”. A bigger psychological disastrous impact is the fictitious idea of the Christian afterlife, their current world is a place of sin, they are sinners, the “real life” will start in the afterlife. Makes me think what proud people we could be, if we could remove the Christian doctrine of imperfectness of the body.” ₁

Disclaimer: This was written for the purpose of discussion my own thoughts and conclusions. It is in no way an offense to anyone who may read it. In fact, I Thank you for reading this.

There have been so many questions in my mind over the years particularly as it relates to Spirituality and Religion. Before I go on, I have to admit that I too believed that “my religion” was the best religion. This belief started to wane gradually as I traveled through many religions, and in fact believed the propaganda. The propaganda was so intense that it made me feel even less righteous if I didn’t “spread the word.”

My journey started with Catholicism, then on to Protestantism, Islam, Buddhism culminating in African Centered Spirituality.  There was a common theme that flowed through them all, politics, economics and oppression. Arriving at African Centered Spirituality, I looked back in wonderment how they could possibly embrace Christianity as brought to them by outsiders from the West. After contemplation, observation, conversation and some serious study on my part, I think I have come to understand why African People, from the blackest to the lightest would embrace, preach and even die for Christianity. They literally abandon their original African Gods for the Image of the European as God. It is a bit mind boggling and what I want to do with this piece is explain from my perspective the reason why it happens and with such a fervor and fierceness sometimes to the amazement of the very people who brought it to them.

African  people are deeply religious or shall I say spiritual. So no outsider could bring to the African anything as it pertains to being deeply connected to the Divine Source, they perceived in their minds, through the ages as the most powerful being that governs the whole world, in fact, it governs the whole Universe. No one could pull from their hearts, minds and bodies what was not already deeply rooted in the psyche of the African. So what did the missionaries have that the Africans thought they did not?? This is partially what I wish to discuss here with a few additional points of reference for this topic.

Author’s Note: I am focusing on Africans and descendant Africans because I am most familiar with these people and how they process their reality. This article is not meant to offend but to just bring some clarity to the question, how can Africans become Christians (of the Western persuasion that is.)

The Politics

When you couple Religion with Politics it almost seems likes an oxymoron. But from the beginnings, religion has always been political. Ancient human history shows us that the original rulers were people who were designated as Highly Spiritual first. It was believed that a highly spiritual person was closest to God and thus would be the most fitted to rule righteously and justly.

But as time wore on things became more and more corrupted. People began to fight amongst themselves as to who should really be in power. Scandals would be exposed and the person in power at that time would be ostracized or castigated in some way, bringing shame upon he/she and their entire family.  There was an unspoken law that says, “No Chief or Queen mother should break the laws of the Village.” They are held in high esteem thus the tradition of carrying them on a litter above the heads of everyone else.  Ancient Africans strongly believed that their leaders were able to speak directly to God and in some instance, were perceived as Gods themselves. ₂

So, as with any political system of rulers and ruled, there were rivalries and outright wars over who would prevail in the position of honor such as the “Godhead” of a nation, particularly when the one in power was perceived as inept, corrupt or morally lacking.  The usurpation of one “Godhead” Chief or King for another regulated in such a way that it would not be arbitrary. Systems were set up to determine the right rules of engagement when selecting the next Leader. Politically, this bares a strong resemblance to the mentality of most of the worlds institutionalized political leaders. In traditional African society however, rather than it being put to a vote, it would be suggested by the counsel of elders, who for the most part, were deemed the law givers who maintain the order of society and settled disputes. Again, this is reminiscent of what happens in other societies around the world to this day. They may not be considered the counsel of elders but they are considered judges and magistrates, lawmakers and local politicians and law enforcement. It seems that somewhere along the way, the human being was taught that he needed to be regulated by an external entity because he could not regulate himself. Could it be that the very fact of being born an infant that has to be taught has something with this being a common feature across cultures?

NPCA Board Member Installed as a Chief

Thus, the African was not given anything they did not already have. The structure, order and operation of the Western system was strikingly different but the fundamentals were comparable, and comparable enough for the African mind to find it to be something that he could apply to his life or even discard his present experience and completely immerse himself in the “foreign” political structure. ₃, ₄

Nigerian Lawyers

The exchange is made, from the local authorities to the Invader’s authority figure who was then given all the rights and privileges of the original authority figures in their culture. Hence the dismantling of “Leaders” who looked like they did to leaders who bared no resemblance.

Let me speak briefly about the African mindset as it relates to Albinos, or albinism. While Africans are certainly aware of the various complexions they can produce from their loins, a completely pale, colorless offspring was cause for some to consult the elders and medicine men, as they felt they were cursed! Imagine the frightfulness they must have felt when these pale men came upon African shores. Imagine the gamut of emotions from those who feared them and those who loved them. Imagine the confusion. And then imagine what happened in their minds when they were told that these people were gods, leaders and bearers of good tidings.₅

   Albinism  is a rare, non-contagious, genetically inherited condition occurring in both genders regardless of ethnicity, in all countries of the world. BOTH the father and mother must carry the gene for it to be passed on even if they do not have albinism themselves.

The Economics

As historians have shown, African people were quite industrious before the advent of Western man. They had an economy that supported the land and the society. They were builders, artisans, farmers, teachers, homemakers, iron workers, textile engineers and gold and ebony harvesters and craftsmen. The adorned themselves with their products as well as paid homage to the gods, elders, chiefs, priests/medicine men and village leaders.  It was not uncommon to know who these individuals were just by looking at their housing, clothing, property, wives, children and livestock. Most of these items were given in support of their leadership and often to free them from toiling the land so they could spend most of their time taking care of their communities.

The African mindset of seeing their leaders as closer to the gods than themselves was enough motivation for them to honor them and in many cases gain favor from them, by giving them material things and physical service. Of course, human nature being what it is, in some cases, the hearts and minds of the populace were exploited by unscrupulous leaders. This could be seen in the extremes of the haves and the have-nots who just to gain favor would “sacrifice” their worldly possessions to gain favor from the gods. The exploitation of people of this mindset was easy in some instances and in others, caused the breakdown of the cohesion of the community as it became known that they were not being favored by the Gods and that they in fact, were being taken advantage of. ₆

Therefore, even in this instance, the advent of Western Style Christianity brought nothing to the African that he/she did not already have except in one sense. That is, he/she no longer had to pay a host of gods to gain favor, he/she only had to accept “Jesus” as their personal savior and that would seal the deal. No more running from one person to another seeking recourse for troubles, giving offerings and making sacrifices to the multitude of “gods” they initially served. They exchanged the many “gods” for one. However, the concept of tithing did not cease, and thus they were encouraged to build the church and volunteer at the church, and farm the land the church owned and do whatever other services the church required for the Glory of the Lord.

Here is where the exploitation became maximized as can be seen around the world, not just in Africa. Huge buildings are erected to hold the masses. These buildings become assembly rooms for the multitude to bring their money and wealth to a central location where they would be divided among the Church Officials, the newly acclaimed High Priests of the Western Christian Order. But the question remains, how do we keep them from running back to their old spiritual and political leaders? This leads us to our next topic.

Oppression/Violence/Intimidation/Abuse/Education

African people have a strong sense of family and an even stronger sense of shame and fear of what is commonly called “bad medicine or witchcraft. Most people who encounter Africans do not understand this very deep cultural aspect of the African mindset. Family means so much to them, that they are filled with dread when they are not able to uphold their family obligations. If these people are convinced that their family obligations are no longer to their physical family but to the members of the Church than they can rest at ease that they are fulfilling their duties in the eyes of the new “one God” who will bless them enormously if they forsaken their families for the Church as Christ had to do in order to gain the Kingdom of Heaven. They may have to be away from them for long periods of time in order to serve the Lord in his Holy place. Mind you, before this, there were shrines, temples and holy places peppered throughout the African community. This was not a new concept. The strangeness was demonstrated when they had to forsake their families, or leave them behind, in the bush as they did the “Devil’s” work with the primitive bushmen.

Let me move to the concept of shame and how that played a significant part in persuading the African that he would be sullied indeterminately or maybe forever in the eyes of this new “God”. Shame to the African can lead them to suicide, that is how deep and soulstirring the very thought of it is. Shame place  upon any man/woman/child in the village could lead to banishment, lack of support, no family connections or marriages, etc. A shamed individual would find it hard to live peacefully in his community because he has become a subject of social opprobrium and as a result he would rather travel some great distance where he would not feel the brunt of this shame. Shame can be placed upon an African due to any inordinate behavior that does not adhere to the laws of the community.

He/she may be able to make sacrifice for retribution, but it will still carry for some time that this person did something to bring shame upon himself and HIS/HER WHOLE FAMILY. Of course this strictness would lead these human beings to the point of secrecy, particularly in the case of the unwed mother, the thief, murderer or insane person. They become practically marked for life. Imagine the relief they felt when told that “Jesus” died for your sins and though you are a sinner to begin with, you can be saved by the “blood” of Christ and all would be cleared and  you would be welcomed into the Church family, no questions asked. The African full of shame would be more than willing to glorify in the name of the Lord, profess his sins and come to be saved by the power of the Holy Spirit, which he knows about spirits anyway.. So why not have one that can do all that? That is the message I was told when I ask a Liberian friend of mine, why did he become a Christian.
His response was, “Jesus is the final sacrifice. There is no more need to shed the blood of an animal when Jesus has shed his blood to save us all.”

I had an Eureka moment in that instance, as by this time, I was deeply involved in just that aspect of African Spiritual tradition of making sacrifices to the “gods.”

How does violence/intimidation and abuse play into this scenario? The added measure is that of the Devil and evil. Now the African is being taught that the Devil is real and that he is evil and that anyone who worships the Devil will die and go to hell for eternity. That’s intimidation. If you shirk Jesus than you must be of the Devil as you cannot serve two masters. If your family shirks Jesus then they too are of the Devil and must be punished.

Initially, this concept makes the African quite uncomfortable and uneasy, and so she/he becomes comfortable with just saving their own souls, but sermon after sermon they are told how important it is to save their families and friends, etc., that they become so guilty and shame-filled that they are not doing their Christian duty of bringing more people into the fold. Eventually,  they become strong enough and armed enough through this propaganda that they are willing to approach their families and friends and here is where the violence and abuse comes into the picture.

Now the African is armed with the knowledge that he is better than his family and friends because he has been saved, therefore, if they do not abide by his command to join the Church he has the right to smite them. In essence he is not seeing himself as smiting them, he is smiting the Devil within them.

Africans are susceptible to this type of mentality as they believe in spirits, negative, that would do harm to them or their family and loved ones. These spirits, often displayed by so-called witch doctors, medicine men or priests; were considered evil or bad medicine, but the idea of the arch deceiver being a Devil was a new concept. But again, it was workable because it could align itself with the belief they already had.

Through the teachings of Christianity, which seldom was complete except in part for those who entered the pastoral college, seminary or the like, the masses are given allegory, proverbs, myth and smatterings of historical leanings. This too is in alignment with the African mindset in that many traditions where handed down generation to generation. You did not question the origins or ethicacy of these teachings, you accepted them as “Gospel.”  How easy then, the transplanting of this style of teaching into a mind of a people who were not encouraged to question what they were being taught by the Elders. To question the Elders was consider blasphemy and very disrespectful. Therefore, the African Christian would be hard pressed to know that much of the Bible is made up from various tales, legends and myths from ancient cultures and in some instances from their very own culture. How easy is it for them to find relationship and reference to what they had been taught over the ages, presenting itself through the teachings of the Bible and Christianity.

While this commentary does not specifically identify the militaristic aspect of conversion, I would like to stress that I am well aware of the Blood, Guns and Steel that was also brought to the continent. The continent was heavily divided upon the arrival of the Western European version of Christianity. This division made the African even more vulnerable to the manipulation of this New Religion. It also provide plenty of free labor and various other support to maintain the existence of these Missionaries and their Churches.₇, ₈

Woman Beaten to death accused of being a witch

The Mind Control/Hypnotic Trance

I believe that the most powerful tool for conversion of the African is mind control.  This comes through a series of  Gospel passages repeated over and over again. Songs and dances and musical instruments are all used to illicit the overall submission of the congregation.

Initially, this may start off rather small, and then grow to a huge congregation with a very large church. Because Africans have been using song, dance and words spoken repetitively in rituals to honor the gods, here again we have a very neat alignment with the African mind when it comes to spirituality. This mind control is very exquisite in its ability to untrain and retrain the African into believing that Jesus Christ is there for them and that they no longer need their “Old Primitive Gods” anymore. In fact, they don’t even need to venerate the Ancestors! This cuts to the core value of the African  mind that the Ancestors are guardians and sit close to God in the Spirit realm. They can be called upon to assist in their affairs. Their names are remembered and offerings are given to them to encourage them to help the community. To tell an African that his Ancestors can no longer hear them because when they die, they are dead and there is no more need to communicate with the dead until you die and meet them in heaven. So to be told to pray “for” them as you do not need them “to” pray for you, must cause cognitive dissonance in each one who hears this.

I always say that Jesus is the baddest Ancestor around considering the fact that he died and that was 2000+ years ago according to the story, but he is being venerated as if he is alive today. To the contrary, anyone else who dies can not be heard, cannot help you and if you do hear from them, you can be sure they are demonic spirits and “not” the voice of your Ancestors. So, quite capably, they toss the traditional acknowledgement of the Ancestors, the lineage of the African and give him another Ancestor, a European looking God. Again, since he is definitely an Ancestor, the African can accept him as he once accepted his own ancestors. In fact, due to the fact that the New Eurocentric Ancestor came down and shed his blood to save them, it tugs even more so at the African conscience. How many of their Ancestors have done such a feat? There are probably stories of such things happening but due to the indoctrination by the new God, that was all of the Devil, for only Jesus Christ was appointed as the Son of God to come and save the masses from original sin and utter death and damnation.

While in school, I asked my teacher, “What happened to Jesus when he ascended? Where did he go? Did he disappear into the sky, high above the mountains where no one could see him? Or did he keep going further out into space?  As the story goes, he returned flesh and blood, showing everyone that he was not a “Ghost” so if he did go somewhere, where was that?” I never got an answer and I went to Catholic school and nobody studies the bible stories like they did when I was in Catholic school. But I digress.

The European brand of Christianity in my estimation is just another form of what Africans had known for thousands if not millions of years. This is specifically true with regards to the Catholic missionaries who not only brought them a Single God made of three parts; a Holy Spirit and a plethora of saints who took on many of the attributes of their former Gods but, the rituals that included burnt offerings and blood sacrifice and various types of “vestments.” In essence, the African could relate and from what I have read, felt that Christianity was so comparable it was welcomed with open arms. However, there was just one thing they did not realize. Traditional religion and Christianity could not co-exist. They also did not realize that the Christian missionaries had no intention of allowing them to keep their traditions while attending their schools or be a part of their congregations. In fact, the Christian missionaries insisted that the traditional practices were immodest(nudity), barbaric (blood sacrifice of animals) and immoral (shameful) and actually caused the disdain of this New God and should be abolished at all costs. This propaganda went into a feverish pitch during the sermons, particularly by those who wanted to be close to this New God and therefore, holier and better than the others. Unfortunately, even this was in alignment with African Spirituality. It had been and still is believed that those who serve the Gods are closer to the Gods than those who do not. Those who serve the Gods are revered as keepers of the culture, the staff, the umbrella, the shrine, the temple, the grove and even the Gods. They are sanctified and much more able to communicate directly to the Divine than the uninitiated.

The Churches became the new coven, the new shrine house, the new temple and the keepers of these edifices became the new gods to the Africans. They simply traded in their old pair of shoes for a new one. But they are still dealing in shoes. ₉

Ghana Possessed

Directed by Linus Mork

53 minutes

 – 

Released 2008

 by

Danish Broadcasting Corporation

Today, in modern Africa, the radical and fast spreading Pentecostal Christianity is leading a spiritual crusade against the old gods of West Africa. The Pentecostal pastors are taking up the millennia-old battle with heathendom, trying once and for all to break the ancient alliance between the Ghanaians and their ancestral spirits. In the process, the women of Ghana are given a radically different role in the moralist worldview of modern Pentecostalism.

With intensely raw and naturally dramatic footage, Ghana Possessed gives us a rare and penetrating insight into a contemporary living religion where gods and spirits enter directly into people’s lives.

Pasted from https://www.academicvideostore.com/video/ghana-possessed

Let me refer here to an article by Mansa Musa, called, “Moving From the Plantation tothe Chur-chation” reading this article put so many things into perspective as to how the African can be hoodwinked into believing that Christianity is a better brand than their “old time religion.”

Another good read, particularly for those who are deeply rooted in either, is “War In Heaven” by Kyle Griffith. In his book he speaks about religious mind control and how it permeates “all” mass gatherings. It is basically the major component of crowd control, creating a mania that is contagious for most all of the participants. This is done through repetition and highly energetic displays of emotion. See chapter 12: Excerpt:

“Religious Mind Control
Q. Exactly how does religious mind control work?
A. It involves what modern psychologists call “operant conditioning”: altering behavior and mental programming by positive and negative reinforcement on the physical and sensory level.
The Theocrats strengthen this conditioning on the physical level by transmitting ideas and emotions directly into people’s subconscious minds by telepathy.
Religious mind-control techniques are easier to understand if you realize that the Theocrats use people’s own psychic powers to control other members of the congregation.”

Unfortunately, down through the ages, Africans have been controlled by their own version of spirituality. A version that encourages the person to seek outside of themselves redemption from their various life challenges and problems. They ARE NOT taught that the answer lies within and that they need only go there to find what they are looking for. In some instances, they actually voluntarily give up control over their lives to an outside source, giving it power over their lives, and allowing it to be the answer for whatever situation they come upon. Thus we see the pantheon of gods and deities that are supplicated in a variety of ways through rituals and trance to accomplish this. The predominance of this type of mind control is mostly seen in the so-called more evolved societies where much of the Spiritual traditions have been institutionalized. The representation of these institutions being shrine houses, temples or sacred places.

As far as the spiritual African traditions would tell you, this was a workable solution to the healing and maintenance of a sane and compliant society. People are taught the rules, protocols and rituals that they must follow in order to reach a certain level of spirituality, to ward off evil spirits, to gain happiness, riches, strong families and children. The African in good faith would make these supplications and if they fell short of the desired goal it was deemed a trick by some nefarious unseen spirit and therefore, more work had to be done to get rid of it. The African was blamed for entertaining this nefarious unseen spirit and given admonishment and more rituals.

Another aspect of this mind control was the insistence that sex was sinful and that anyone who participated in it was unholy unless they were married. In fact, those who took the vow of chastity and abandoned sex altogether were considered even more holy than others. This too was in alignment with many of the traditional African spirituality practices in that abstinence for periods of time were encouraged for the initiated. In the eyes of the African, the nuns, priests, pastors, etc., were initiates, therefore it was their duty to abide by the various protocols set up.
Ironically, today, you will find more “Spiritism Churches” or “Pentecostal Churches” being attended by most Africans who become Christians. Why? Because it is most in alignment with their traditional beliefs to begin with. In these churches people speak in tongues, do the laying on of hands and get caught up in the Holy Spirit. Demons are cast out, a joyful noise is made with songs, drumming, instrumentation and even dancing. There is something about this combination that is an elixir for the African Spirit. Spirit for the Spirits, they say, as they pour libations with some form of liquor of fermented  liquid. Ultimately, the religious trance that permeates traditional African Spirituality can be clearly seen in any church where Africans gather to worship the Lord and receive the Holy Spirit. No matter how much the pastor, evangelist or minister may defy the existence of these Ancestral spirits and the Gods who nurture them, they tend to appear on every occasion where all of the above components are present.
The African is truly a spiritual as well as religious being, therefore it is of no importance who is lying on the cross or hanging on the wall in their homes and Churches. It is what he represents and since they are keen in the knowledge that it is not the thing (rock, groves, stone, water, air, fire) but the power behind it, then, naturally if that power is emanating from a being that is European, well so be it.
I once entered my God-sister’s shrine room and noticed several carved dolls that were white. They did not necessarily have African features yet they were dressed as representations of some of the “higher ancestors.” I found this curious so I asked, “Auntie, why are those dolls white?” Her response was that they were not painted yet.
Here I will conclude on one more aspect of this dynamic; the whitening of the skin during rituals. In some instances it is done with powder in other instances it is done with clay. This change of the person’s persona by whitening can be seen all over Africa during their sacred rituals. Not all participants or priests are whitened but many are and here is where I began to understand even more why a white god is in alignment with African core beliefs on spirituality. There is a difference however minimal, but the idea that whitening of the skin makes you more spiritually in tuned than not, is a curious endeavor for the African. Now we see this not only in traditional rituals but in every day life, the whitening or lightening of the African’s skin tone. Along with the straightening of the hair and abandonment of traditional garments. When looked at with a global lens it makes perfectly good sense that Africans would become Christians. They are hardwired to become Christians.
The Invisible Band Behind the CurtainHere I wish to give an explanation from my point of view of what is happening for the African and how the Invisible Band Behind the Curtain is actually the orchestrator and manipulator of all of this. Somewhere in the African Historical record this propensity toward religious adoration was fine tuned and orchestrated. But by whom?
We hear this question quite often. Who built the pyramids and why are there these structures around the world, some older than even those at Giza. What happened on Planet Earth to make it the stomping ground for giant megalithic structures going back thousands upon thousands of years?
It is my opinion, that even these structures are a form of mind control. With that being the case, it makes sense that they would be all over the planet to control the masses. When looking at a designer garment or pair of shoes we can tell which designer did them as they contain a certain style. If you attempt to attribute it to another designer, the one who is aware of this will quickly correct you. Obviously, in my estimation at least, there had to be one designer or the other designers were trained by the elder designer. Thus structures around the world “resemble” one another while not exactly alike, they bare the same constitution. Is it possible that a group of people traveled the entire planet, took their slaves with them, hired new slaves when they got there and set out to build these megalith at these strategic places on the planet, heralding the equinoxes, the solstices, the planetary bodies, etc., etc., etc.?
Even if we speculate that the planet was one land mass, again, imagine the logistics of hauling folks and 2-3 ton rocks around the entire planet on “horseback”? “Oxen”?  Archaeologists insist that these structures took hundreds of years to build with very primitive tools, yet these structures are all over the Planet and many of them are comparable in age. Does that not speak of some type of intelligence that was guiding the construction of these buildings? Who is the Invisible Band Behind the Curtain?
And while they were constructing these edifices, they were also constructing religious rituals and protocols and dignitaries to maintain them. “Who Is the Invisible Band Behind the Curtain?”
Many of these “different” cultures share a common thread, that is, offerings to the “Gods” in various forms particularly blood offerings. Why? Was there a genetic manipulation going on? Did the Invisible Band Behind the Curtain need blood, and if so, why? And to this day, they are still receiving blood offerings in the bush and in the Church. There has to be something said about this as it relates to the human psyche and its fascination with blood offerings and offerings of energy to some outside force for that matter.
In Ancient times, the people saw their leaders as Gods or descendants of Gods. This holds true for all of humanity. While there may not be a perfusion of blood being offered, the energy that the blood represents, the life force that flows on and in the blood is still being offered up to our Leaders, Politicians, Presidents, and Superstars. Why is that such a common thread in all of humanity on this Planet? And how did that come about?
Who is the “Invisible Band Behind the Curtain”?
I strongly encourage anyone who got this far in reading this to read “Alien Interview” edited by Lawrence Spencer and “War In Heaven” by Kyle Griffith  PDF format (starting with chapter 10). These two books may bring to light and some answers to this very interesting Phenomenon.
Disclaimer: This was written for the purpose of discussion my own thoughts and conclusions. It is in no way an offense to anyone who may read it. In fact, I Thank you for reading this.
More Reading:  

• “Moving From the Plantation tothe Chur-chation”  by Mansa Musa

• Demons of God?  Commentary by Nana Baakan

• Cast Out Demons in the Name of Jesus

• They Came From the Stars Commentary by Nana Baakan

• Kailasa Temple in Ellora Caves – Built with Alien Technology? by Rajesh K

• The Shamanic View of Mental Illness, Pt. 2 Commentary by Nana Baakan

Footnotes:

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrmeOCAZFKk&index=12&list=PL3CB4BC341D8A1319

2. http://www.peacecorpsconnect.org/2013/05/npca-board-member-installed-as-paramount-chief/

3. http://nicn.gov.ng/history1.php

4. http://kyg.nigeriagovernance.org/PersonsInOffices/index/appointed/page:19

5. http://kwekudee-tripdownmemorylane.blogspot.com/2012/09/albinos-in-africa.html

6. http://news2.onlinenigeria.com/headline/118146-nigerian-fake-pastors-and-church-businesses-exposed-video.html

7. This Guy Was Getting a Demon Cast Out – You Won’t Believe What Interrupted Him!

8. http://sanctifiedchurchrevolution.blogspot.com/2014/05/african-guy-answers-cell-phone-while.html

9. http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Wolves/assemblies_of_god.htm

10. Pastor Orders Female Members To Remove Underwear So God Can Enter Their Bodies

11. http://newsone.com/2939386/rev-njohi-female-undergarments/

Who Was Behind the Cyberattack on Sony?

by GREGORY ELICH

The cyberattack on Sony Pictures unleashed a torrent of alarmist media reports, evoking the image of North Korean perfidy. Within a month, the FBI issued a statement declaring the North Korean government “responsible for these actions.” Amid the media frenzy, several senators and congresspersons called for tough action. Arizona Senator John McCain blustered, “It’s a new form of warfare that we’re involved in, and we need to react and react vigorously.” President Barack Obama announced his administration planned to review the possibility of placing North Korea on the list of states sponsoring terrorism, a move that would further tighten the already harsh sanctions on North Korea. “They caused a lot of damage, and we will respond,” Obama warned darkly. “We will respond proportionally, and we’ll respond in a place and time and manner that we choose.”

In the rush to judgment, few were asking for evidence, and none was provided. Computer security analysts, however, were vocal in their skepticism.

In its statement, the FBI offered only a few comments to back its attribution of North Korean responsibility. “Technical analysis of the data deletion malware used in the attack revealed links to other malware that the FBI knows North Korean actors previously developed,” it reported, including “similarities in specific lines of code, encryption algorithms, data deletion methods, and compromised networks.” The FBI went on to mention that the IP addresses used in the Sony hack were associated with “known North Korean infrastructure.” Tools used in the attack “have similarities to a cyberattack in March of last year against South Korean banks and media outlets, which was carried out by North Korea.”

The major problem with the evidence offered by the FBI is that it is self-referential, all of it pointing back to the 2013 attack on South Korean banks and media that was carried out by the DarkSeoul gang. At that time, without supplying any supporting evidence, the United States accused North Korea of being behind DarkSeoul. In effect, the FBI argues that because the U.S. spread the rumor of North Korean involvement in the earlier attack, and some of the code is related, this proves that North Korea is also responsible for the Sony hack. One rumor points to another rumor as ‘proof,’ rendering the argument meaningless.

The logical fallacies are many. To date, no investigation has uncovered the identity of DarkSeoul, and nothing is known about the group. The linking of DarkSeoul to North Korea is purely speculative. “One point that can’t be said enough,” emphasizes Risk Based Security, “is that ‘attribution is hard’ given the nature of computer intrusions and how hard it is to ultimately trace an attack back to a given individual or group. Past attacks on Sony have not been solved, even years later. The idea that a mere two weeks into the investigation and there is positive attribution, enough to call this an act of war, seems dangerous and questionable.”

Consider some of the other flaws in the FBI’s statement. The IP addresses that were hard-coded in the malware used in the Sony hack belonged to servers located in Thailand, Poland, Italy, Bolivia, Singapore, Cypress, and the United States. The FBI implies that only the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK – the formal name for North Korea) could have used these servers. The Thai port is a proxy that is commonly used in sending spam and malware. The same is true of the Polish and Italian servers. All of the servers used in the Sony attack have been previously compromised and are among the many computers that are widely known and used by hackers and spam distributors. Anyone with the knowhow can use them.

Whether or not these machines were used is another matter. Hackers often use proxy machines with phony IP addresses to mislead investigators. No hackers use their own computers to launch an attack. Vulnerable systems are hijacked in order to route traffic. For the FBI to point to IP addresses either reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of cybersecurity or a cynical attempt to deliberately mislead the public.

The Sony hack also bears similarities with the 2012 Shamoon cyberattack on computers belonging to Saudi Aramco. Those responsible for that attack have never been identified either, although the United States accused Iran without providing any evidence. Using the FBI’s logic, one could just as easily argue that the Sony hack was the work of Iran. One groundless accusation is used to buttress another. As evidentiary matter, it is worthless. It should also be recalled that in 1998, the United States blamed Iraq for the Solar Sunrise hack into Defense Department computers, only for it be ultimately revealed that it was the act of a few teenagers.

Nor do the similarities in code between the Sony hack and the earlier Shamoon and DarkSeoul attacks indicate a shared responsibility. Malware is freely available on the black market. Hackers operate by purchasing or borrowing, and then tweaking commonly available software, including both illegal and legal components. Code is shared among hackers on forums, and malware is assembled by linking various elements together.

One of the components used in the Sony cyberattack was the RawDisk library from EldoS, a commercial application that allows direct access to Windows hardware bypassing security. Anyone can legally purchase this software. There is nothing to tie it to the DPRK.

“There’s a lot of malware that’s shared between different groups, and all malware is built on top of older malware,” reports Brian Martin of Risk Based Security. “They’re also built on top of hacking tools. For example, you’ll find lots of malware that uses pieces of code from popular tools like Nmap. Does that mean that the guy who wrote Nmap is a malware author? No. Does it mean he works for North Korea? No.”

Robert Graham of Errata Security regards the evidence offered by the FBI as “complete nonsense. It sounds like they’ve decided on a conclusion and are trying to make the evidence fit.” Graham adds: “There is nothing unique in the software. We know that hackers share malware on forums. Every hacker in the world has all the source code available.”

Trojan-Destover, the malware used in the Sony cyberattack, included at least six components utilized earlier by Shamoon and DarkSeoul. “Even in such damaging scenarios, the cyber attacker’s tools are reused,” points out Sariel Moshe of CyActive. “For them, if it worked once, tweak it a bit and it will work again. The attack on Sony demonstrates quite clearly that this method works quite well.” Indeed, while Shamoon and DarkSeoul are the most commonly mentioned predecessors to the Sony hack, it is thought that this software has been used on several occasions in the past against multiple targets.

The software utilized in the Sony cyberattack is atypical for a nation state. “It’s a night and day difference in quality,” says Craig Williams of Cisco’s Talos Security Intelligence and Research Group. “The code is simplistic, not very complex, and not very obfuscated.”

Four files used in the attack were compiled on a machine set to the Korean language. That fact proves nothing, notes computer security analyst Chris Davis. “That is pretty weak evidence. I could compile malware code that used Afrikaans and where the timestamp matched JoBerg in about five seconds.” Any reasonably competent hacker would change the language setting in order to misdirect investigators. Had North Korean conducted this attack, it certainly would have taken the basic step of changing the language setting on the machine used to compile code.

What about North Korean resentment over Sony Picture’s tasteless lowbrow comedy, The Interview, which portrays the assassination of DPRK leader Kim Jong-un? It is doubtful that Americans would find themselves any more amused by a foreign comedy on the subject of killing a U.S. president than the North Koreans are by The Interview.

Among the emails leaked by the cyberattack on Sony was a message from Bruce Bennett of the Rand Corporation. Bennett was a consultant on the film and opposed toning down the film’s ending. “I have been clear that the assassination of Kim Jong-un is the most likely path to a collapse of the North Korean government,” he wrote, adding that DVD leaks of the film into North Korea “will start some real thinking.” In another message, Sony CEO Michael Lynton responded: “Bruce – Spoke to someone very senior in State (confidentially). He agreed with everything you have been saying. Everything.” Lynton was also communicating with Robert King, U.S. Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues in regard to the film.

The Western media portray North Korean reaction to The Interview as overly sensitive and irrational, while U.S. officials and a Rand Corporation consultant saw the film as having the potential to inspire the real-life assassination of Kim Jong-un. The scene of Kim’s assassination was not intended merely for so-called ‘entertainment.’

The mass media raced to attribute the Sony hack to the DPRK, based on its reaction to the Sony film. A closer look at the cyberattack reveals a more likely culprit, however. The group taking responsibility for the hack calls itself ‘Guardians of Peace’, and in one of the malware files the alternate name of ‘God’sApstls’ is also used. In the initial attack, no reference was made to the film, nor was it mentioned in subsequent emails the attackers sent to Sony. Instead, the hackers attempted to extort money: “Monetary compensation we want. Pay the damage, or Sony Pictures will be bombarded as whole.”

In an interview with CSO Online, a person represented as belonging to Guardians of Peace said the group is “an international organization…not under the direction of any state,” and included members from several nations. “Our aim is not at the film The Interview as Sony Pictures suggests,” the hacker wrote, but mentioned that the release of a film that had the potential of threatening peace was an example of the “greed of Sony Pictures.”

For two weeks following the cyberattack, the media harped on the subject of North Korean culpability. Only after that point did the Guardians of Peace (GOP) make its first public reference to The Interview, denying any connection with the DPRK. Yet another week passed before the GOP denounced the movie and threatened to attack theaters showing the film.

It appears that the narrative of North Korean involvement repeated ad nauseam by the media and the U.S. government presented a gift to the hackers too tempting to pass up. The GOP played to the dominant theme and succeeded in solidifying the tendency to blame the DPRK, with the effect of ensuring that no investigation would pursue the group.

For its part, the Obama Administration chose to seize the opportunity to bolster its anti-North Korea policy in preference over tracking down the culprits.

There are strong indications that the cyberattack involved one or more disgruntled Sony employees or ex-employees, probably working together with experienced hackers. The malware used against Sony had been modified to include hard-coded file paths and server names. System administrator user names and passwords were also hard-coded. Only someone having full access with system administrator privileges to Sony’s computer network could have obtained this information.

The GOP could have hacked into the Sony system months beforehand in order to gather that data. But it is more likely that someone with knowledge of Sony’s network configuration provided the information. Arguing against the possibility that critical information had been siphoned beforehand through a hack, cybersecurity expert Hemanshu Nigam observes, “If terabytes of data left the Sony networks, their network detection systems would have noticed easily. It would also take months for a hacker to figure out the topography of the Sony networks to know where critical assets are stored and to have access to the decryption keys needed to open up the screeners that have been leaked.”

The most likely motivation for the attack was revenge on the part of current or former Sony employees. “My money is on a disgruntled (possibly ex) employee of Sony,” Marc Rogers of CloudFlare wrote. “Whoever did this is in it for the revenge. The info and access they had could have easily been used to cash out, yet, instead, they are making every effort to burn Sony down. Just think what they could have done with passwords to all of Sony’s financial accounts.”

Nation states never conduct such noisy hacking operations. Their goal is to quietly infiltrate a system and obtain information without detection. Sony had no data that would have been of interest to a nation state. Computer security blogger The Grugq wrote, “I can’t see the DPRK putting this sort of valuable resource onto what is essentially a petty attack against a company that has no strategic value.”

It would have been reckless for a North Korean team to draw attention to itself. Cybersecurity specialist Chris Davis says, “All the activity that was reported screams Script Kiddie to me. Not advanced state-sponsored attack.” Davis adds, “Well, the stupid skeleton pic they splashed on all the screens on the workstations inside Sony…is not something a state-sponsored attack would do…Would ANY self-respecting state-sponsored actor use something as dumb as that?” The consensus among cybersecurity experts is clear, Davis argues. “The prevalent theory I am seeing in the closed security mailing lists is an internet group of laid off Sony employees.”

Following his cybersecurity firm’s investigation, Kurt Stammberger of Norse echoes that view. “Sony was not just hacked. This is a company that was essentially nuked from the inside. We are very confident that this was not an attack master-minded by North Korea and that insiders were key to the implementation of one of the most devastating attacks in history.”

“What is striking here is how well they knew to exploit Sony’s vulnerabilities,” reports Nimrod Kozlovski of JVP Labs. “The malware itself is not creative or new; there are plenty of actors that could have manifested this particular attack.” The hackers “knew more about the company, Sony, and its vulnerabilities than they knew, or needed to know, about hacking.”

As an indication of the hacker’s real motivation, it should be noted that the first communications focused on a different issue than the Sony film. The content of an email sent by the GOP to the IDG News Service refers to Sony’s restructuring, in which thousands of employees lost their jobs: “Sony and Sony Pictures have made terrible racial discrimination and human rights violation, indiscriminate tyranny and restructuring in recent years. It has brought damage to a lot of people, some of whom are among us. Nowadays, Sony Pictures is about to prey on the weak with a plan of another indiscriminate restructuring for their own benefits. This became a decisive motive for our action.” In an email to The Verge, the GOP wrote, “We want equality. Sony doesn’t…We worked with other staff with similar interests to get in.”

Seeking to diffuse tensions, North Korea proposed to conduct a joint investigation with the United States into the Sony cyberattack. Predictably, the United States quickly rebuffed the offer. National Security Council spokesman Mark Stroh arrogantly responded, “If the North Korean government wants to help, they can admit their culpability and compensate Sony for the damages this attack caused.” North Korea can hardly be expected to accept blame for an act it did not commit. But getting to the truth of the matter was the farthest thing from the Obama Administration’s mind. Similarly, U.S. officials are ignoring requests from cybersecurity experts to be allowed to analyze the Destover code. “They’re worried we’ll prove them wrong,” Robert Graham concludes.

The Obama Administration’s outrage over the Sony attack contains more than a small measure of hypocrisy. It was the United States that launched the Stuxnet attack that destroyed many of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. According to a Washington Post article published in 2013, the United States conducted 231 cyber operations throughout the world two years before. The National Security Agency, as is now well known, regularly hacks into computer networks, scooping up vast amounts of data. The GENIE program, the Post reported, was projected to have broken into and installed implants in 85,000 computers by the end of 2013. It was reported that GENIE’s next phase would implement an automated system that could install “potentially millions of implants” for gathering data “and active attack.” According to former deputy of defense secretary William J. Lynn III, “The policy debate has moved so that offensive options are more prominent now.”

Contrast the mild treatment the media gave to the recent large-scale hacks into Target, Home Depot and JP Morgan, in which millions of credit cards and personal information were stolen, with the coverage of the cyberattack on Sony Pictures. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that political considerations are driving the media furor over the latter case.

After six years in office, the Obama Administration has yet to engage in dialogue or diplomacy with North Korea. It prefers to maintain a wall of hostility, blocking any prospect of progress or understanding between the two nations.

Already, North Korean websites have been targeted by persistent denial of service operations. Whether the attacks were launched by a U.S. government cyber team or independent hackers inspired by media reports is not known. In any case, President Obama has already promised to take unspecified action against the DPRK. Actual responsibility for the Sony attack is irrelevant. Backed by media cheerleading, U.S officials are using the cyberattack as a pretext to ratchet up pressure on North Korea. Any action the Obama Administration takes is likely to trigger a response, and we could enter a dangerous feedback loop of action/counteraction.

Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and the Advisory Board of the Korea Policy Institute. He is a member of the Committee to Defend Democracy in South Korea and a columnist for Voice of the People. He is also one of the co-authors of Killing Democracy: CIA and Pentagon Operations in the Post-Soviet Period, published in the Russian language.

Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and the Advisory Board of the Korea Policy Institute. He is a member of the Committee to Defend Democracy in South Korea and a columnist for Voice of the People. He is also one of the co-authors ofKilling Democracy: CIA and Pentagon Operations in the Post-Soviet Period, published in the Russian language.

Nana’s Christmas Rant

xmas traffic accident

Well, the holiday season is upon us and here we go again. I must admit that 2014 was one hell of a year for everybody on Planet Earth. We got mass extinctions of animals and humans, executions of guilty and innocent, carnage, disease, plummeting gas prices along with Pres. Obama’s approval ratings, terrorists so nondescript that they weren’t sure what to call them, more wars and occupation that you can shake a stick at, scandals of the seedy kind, and various weather anomalies that boggle the mind. It has been a war of truth and lies and truth and more lies and confusion to boot with the common phrase being, “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

The so-called alternative media has stuck its fingers into the corporate pie and are now mouthing so much disinfo you have to take out your ouji board to determine who is moving things around. We have had so many false flag announcements about the coming apocalypse it makes your head spin, as the checkerboard trails cross the skies, the denials of Mon”santan”o, the cover-ups on Mars, the loose change falling of Tower 7 and 3d Holograms you can cuddle with. I mean, we have practically seen it all except the missing MH370.

We have had a herd of celebs take their last breaths and mourn the lost of a woman who openly proclaim Michelle Obama as a tranny! There is so much more that I could list here but it would detract from my original reason for this post.

I guess I have a bone to pick with the so-called NEW AGERS! I don’t understand  how they can continue to persist in the most commercialized cycle of insanity that hits this planet every year moving into the so-called New Year. Now, I am not pointing a finger at ALL of them, so let me just say MOST OF THEM!

All year round we get the love and light spew. We get the “we are awakening” or the “awakening is upon us” or the “Guardian Forces” and the “Ashtar Command” are helping us, or even we are “moving into the 4-5th dimensions.” How do we do all that and still celebrate Christmas?

Channelers Alert! 

If you are channeling, and particularly if you are channeling “Jesus” or Sanada as some call him, how in the world do you celebrate Christmas? Do you mean to tell me that he is not telling you the truth about this holiday? Do you mean to tell me that he is encouraging you to go out and purchase a tree and various other odds and ends so that you can celebrate his birth? Did he not tell you the true story, the whole shebang, the real deal about all this? If he did not, then who, pray tell are you channeling?

I have subscribed to various “Love and Light” blogs and websites. I have also subscribed to various UFO stuff on the internet. So I thought the above picture was quite apropos for my rant today. Seriously, as Mr. Claus is traversing through the inner and outer planes surely, even he knows the TRUTH ABOUT CHRISTMAS. He has to be multi-dimensional to be in all those places around the world at one time, wouldn’t you think? How come ain’t nobody channeling Santa Claus?? He is real, right?

But I digress. My real rant is how unnerving it is to receive “Season’s Greetings”, “Merry Christmas” etc., etc., etc. from these so-called “New Agers”. Don’t they know that it’s all a hoax, at best and quite fabricated? If they are contacting “Ancient Aliens” and/or “Mary” haven’t they been told that this is a bunch of boulderdash to just grab people’s money?

Well, I am seriously questioning these folks now. It was bad enough that they had folks running helter-skelter over 2012. But here we are 2 years later and they have not deterred in their participation in this horrendous disinformation campaign called Christmas. As spiritual beings, they should know the truth and as beings of integrity, they should live by it. Otherwise, these 50 million channelers are just in it for the money. What other reason could there be? They have to be politically correct and keep in touch with their constituency. That is, if they step too far away from the status quo, they may lose their bread and butter, fine cars and nice houses and expensive seminars that they invite folks to come to to ASCEND.

THIS ASCENSION THING MUST BE A CROCK OF BS!

If people are truly ascending, channeling and talking to ET’s how can they participate in this massive disinfo campaign and call themselves true leaders of the movement? I am beginning to seriously question the authenticity of the so-called ASCENSION movement when I see ASCENDED MASTERS, not pulling the coat tail of their followers and telling them to stay away from the tripe. Or, do these so-called ASCENDED MASTERS have a hidden agenda? It just makes you wonder. Where are they during the times when we are sold a huge hypnotic bill of goods, that keeps us treading for another year and/or lifetime, trying to keep our heads above water on a Prison Planet such as this one. If these folks are willing to defy all logic and participate in this scheme of disenfranchisement, then it certainly makes anything they say after the said, ‘New Year’ holiday, dubious and base.

These people, have played on the heart strings of the masses for decades if not longer than that. I assume the so-called NEW AGE movement has been going on for more than 50 years from checking out the print date on many of these materials. These folks have been giving information about the Sun, the moon, the stars, the galaxies, the other worlds, the other worldlies, the inner earth, magnetosphere, the comets, asteroids and errantly massive dustballs and light/space ships, orbs, etc. and they have not come to the conclusion that Christmas is disinfo. How is that possible?


Maybe I will answer my own question….
They are not really channeling anything. They are not channeling beings of high integrity.They are not listening to whomever they are channeling.They are reticent to change things in their personal lives for fear of losses.They don’t want to upset the boat.They are liars.They are all frauds.
Believe me, I am inclined to believe all of the above but most inclined to believe the last one. If these folks are truly contacting these entities and they are not adjusting their lifestyles accordingly then something is really and truly wrong with the so-called NEW AGE movement.

The Mighty Wurlitzer Plays On
Sony Propaganda
by BILL BLUNDEN

A few days ago both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal cited anonymous officials who claimed that North Korea was responsible for the recent cyberattack on Sony. These agenda-setting elements of the press conveyed the information without question, despite the fact that the evidence provided has been (as journalist Kim Zetter put it) flimsy. Contemplating the corresponding headlines is instructive.

As I wrote in the Times back in September of 2014, sophisticated anti-forensic technology is actively being developed by both American intelligence services and private sector companies. To think that other countries aren’t doing the same is naive. False flag attacks are standard spy tradecraft.

Furthermore high ranking, ostensibly credible, national security officers like Keith Alexander, James Clapper, and John Brennan have demonstrated the tendency to lie to the American public. Not small innocent lies but rather colossal brazen lies. Lies regarding essential constitutional rights. Why, pray tell, should we trust what we’ve been told by officials?

Your author contacted Zetter to offer the proverbial high-five and she voiced her frustration about the utter lack of skepticism by reporters like Sanger and Perlroth. Blind acceptance is part of the miracle of modern propaganda. As Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman described in their classic text Manufacturing Consent the large multinational corporations that constitute the mainstream press are able to frame debate and control the acceptable boundaries of public discourse by leveraging an apparatus which burns through literally hundreds of billions of dollars each year.

Of course this isn’t the only instance in which the stalwarts of the corporate media have botched their job as society’s watchdogs. Anyone following what’s happening over in Ukraine will also notice an astounding groupthink on behalf of the press corp. What’s painted as Russian expansion is really a NATO expansion. Putin is responding to Western incursion. Even an establishment figure like Henry Kissinger admits as much (and when a guy like Kissinger starts making sense it’s a sign that something is seriously amiss).

Asia Pacific

U.S. Said to Find North Korea Ordered Cyberattack on Sony

North Korean Role in Sony Hack Presents Quandary for U.S.

All of this underscores the role of modern propaganda as an incredible tool of social control, a textbook application of the science of coercion. The public is so distracted with celebrity gossip, mindless entertainment, wildly inflated alleged national security threats, and empty consumption that they fail to recognize the unraveling of our social fabric. Officials hyperventilate over an obscure contingent of jihadists while disregarding far greater, but less spectacular, threats.

Sadly the countervailing ideologies and organizations that served to keep capitalism in check in the aftermath of World War II have dwindled. Hence the plutocrats who funded the neoliberal revolution have a captive audience and they’re free to kick and beat the rest of us with relative impunity, while sanctioned policies like Quantitative Easing and offshoring allow them to swallow up nearly all economic gains.

And to think that former NSA director Keith Alexander had the audacity to claim that Chinese cyber espionage entailed the greatest transfer of wealth in history? Never mind the trillions spent on the self-perpetuating military conflict in the Middle East.

As inequality grows and the global climate becomes less habitable, the immiseration of the average Joe will inevitably lead to mobilization. The ruling class is well aware of what happened to French aristocrats in the eighteenth century. To save themselves from a similar fate they will switch the cogs of the Mighty Wurlitzer into high gear to give voice to popular discontent and subsequently co-opt emerging movements. That’s how fascism normally works. Mass interception will also be employed to identify activists and independent thinkers who see through the deluge of clever propaganda. Likewise a militarized police force guided by programs like Garden Plot will be waiting in the wings as a last resort.

When this juncture is reached, where a critical mass of people are angry enough to take action, the likelihood of a positive outcome will depend in part upon people acquiring access to alternative sources of accurate information. In this way organizations can foster accountability and properly apply the sustained pressure necessary to alter large systems. Looking out over a media landscape flooded by corporate money and an endless series of murky deep-pocketed foundations, a modest reader–funded outfit in Petrolia, California, is an encouraging sign: Season’s Greetings CounterPunch.

Bill Blunden is an independent investigator whose current areas of inquiry include information security, anti-forensics, and institutional analysis. He is the author of several books, including The Rootkit Arsenal and Behold a Pale Farce: Cyberwar, Threat Inflation, and the Malware-Industrial Complex. Bill is the lead investigator at Below Gotham Labs.




Sony Propaganda » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Anti-Police Organizing in the Wake of Ismaaiyl Brinsley’s Death

by MICHELLE MATISONS

Cop Killer Ismaaiyl Brinsley Had Pocket Full of $100 Bills – But No Job or Home

Remember how the 9/11 attack led people to cancel or pull back from anti-globalization protests?  It appears a similar dynamic could be at work as a shocking event challenges and divides a growing and effective movement making serious headway.  Like anti-globalization protests before it, the anti-police brutality/ policing movement is going through its own birth pangs as the tactics debate (when is property violence appropriate?) and issues such as how to foreground anti-black racism (#BlackLivesMatter vs. #AllLivesMatter) have taken center stage in the multifaceted and large scale resistance efforts underway.

Saturday, December 20th, was a big day for movement news.  While Minnesota’s Mall of America protest had people occupying space in the US’s largest mall to demand an end to police violence, half way across the country in Brooklyn, two police officers were shot and killed by a young black man who had ostensibly posted on social media before the shootings about his intention to “put wings on pigs”, citing revenge for the deaths of Brown and Garner as motive.  The accused shooter, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, shot himself dead on a nearby subway platform after shooting the officers.  As of Sunday afternoon, there is little information and much speculation about the accused murderer’s life (including that the murders were part of a counter-intelligence plot to discredit the movement and justify extreme force).  Much is uncertain, but it’s certain that the NYPD is already using this to suppress protest, repress entire communities, and further foment divisive public relations–especially with NYC Mayor deBlasio.  How can recent police union behavior and statements be considered anything but a naked admission of a police force’s own extra-legal/ paramilitary ambitions?

At this writing we do know a few things for certain: the corporate state’s policing apparatus will do everything in its power to use this event as a further call to arms against protesting U.S. residents and communities of color.  They will attempt not only to discredit a growing direct action-based movement, but also to aggressively attack protest groups and individuals they have been trying to get their hands on anyway.  If Ismaaiyl Brinsley had been arrested  and charged with the killing of two police officers in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, clearly the anti-policing movement would be having very different debates and discussions.  Now, in his death, many people righteously struggle to contextualize his motives or opportunistically use his actions for their own political reasons.

Not that probing Brinsley’s motives is entirely irrelevant–he shot a woman, possibly an ex-girlfriend, before the officers, for example– but the movement can hurt itself by participating in the posthumous quasi-legalistic media charade of “nailing down” his motives or state of mind.  (This activity already inculcates participants in the state’s judgmental logic of condemnation/ exoneration–echoing media character assassinations of murder by police victims like Brown and Martin.)   What if he was acting in concert with counter-intelligence forces? What if Mao’s little red book was in Brinsley’s pocket?  What if he was an active member of a local Cop Watch group?  What if he was a well-known local homeless man struggling with mental illness and addiction?

Initial activist reactions offer a range of responses: some grapple with the delicate issue of expressing compassion about the shooter’s life, death, and family; some timidly, or not so timidly, tiptoe around self-defense concepts and a deep understanding of the extreme nature of “revolutionary suicide”; some routinely denounce Brinsley’s actions–acting as guardians of the “real non-violent movement” against  “unstable violent outsiders”; some have decided that was a police action he got entangled in.  Then there’s those (new to the issue white activists, I am talking to you) who may have been active and supportive of the anti-police brutality movement, but will use this as an excuse to pull back.  (Controversial events function as a movement’s filtering process, losing people who are too challenged to keep fighting and were just waiting for a chance to fold anyway.)

If there’s anything I am reminded of by this event, it’s the power of social movements, and anti-racist struggles in particular.  For me, there is a connection between the cop murders and the movement.  Before you jump down my throat insisting that I am “feeding the cops’ ideology” by saying this–hear me out, please, and don’t take my statements out of context.  Since the drug war and mass incarceration/ deportation practices, many black and brown lives have been destroyed.  You don’t have to be a front lines long term activist to have strong opinions about policing and institutional racism in America, and feel hopeless in the face of it, too.  Frustration and anger is woven into the everyday fabric of people’s lives, and this includes individual consciousness, rhetoric, and self-understanding.  Add to this an endless flow of social media, news commentary, and live feeds of protests and demonstrations all over the U.S.  Some people may not be able to attend protests for various reasons (work, childcare, transportation, not living close to one, or a shy demeanor) but social media offers a strong way to feel emotionally connected to events since Ferguson began.

This access and ability to connect is both reason for the movement’s effectiveness and a reason to prepare for more controversial actions taken up by individuals in the name of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, or against violent police generally. (And then there’s always police counterinsurgency activities…)  In a large, multifaceted, international movement such that the Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!/ anti-policing movement has become, no one can ultimately judge who’s a protestor or a non-protestor, who cares or doesn’t care, about “the issues”. (Who has an authentic political consciousness gauge and where can I get one?) We can only state if we support certain actions as part of strategies our organizations or ideologies endorse.

I believe, from what I understand about Brinsley’s biographical facts and his presumed state of mind before the murders, he understood himself as a target of racist policing.  Go figure: young, black, and male in the U.S. A. But, As Dr. Johanna Fernandez wrote in CounterPunch, he could have also been acting in concert with authorities to execute a state plot to discredit the movement.  We will never know the facts here, and it shouldn’t deflect from our understanding of institutionalized racism, anyway.

Whether or not Brinsley acted alone or in concert with the state, his life had a truly tragic end.  If we admit understanding or empathy with people espousing extreme tactics — even cop murder — to express oppositional feelings, are we only throwing the police state, and its rabid NYPD, another reason for street level preemptive attack? (As if it ever needed a reason.  We’ve clearly seen over the decades, if the state doesn’t have a reason to justify aggression it’ll make one up.)  What about attempts to understand how social pressures like racist policing and mass incarceration damage people–like Ismaaiyl Brinsley? If we deny a careful consideration of the incalculable impacts movements can have, which include tapping into very real frustrations/ psychological dynamics leading individuals to act alone or as police agents, we sacrifice any potential unity than can be derived in a process of self-reflection and greater political awareness. Collective analysis may not lead to the unity of a shared position, but it could lead to an “agree to disagree” unity or a commitment to explore unpopular perspectives.  Something beyond simple condemnation or exultation is called for here.

It’s a daunting situation and the corporate state wins again if we play into the terms of engagement it always sets by the very nature of its power.  If Ismaaiyl Brinsley had survived and faced his accusers in court, we would see the movement split around “just” court procedures and outcomes.  Some would want him evaluated to qualify for mental health rehabilitation services, some would want him routinely punished, and some would call for his freedom, with an understanding his actions were committed under extreme duress due to the pernicious police state apparatus (a kind of “black rage” defense– if you will.)  From the looks of his social media posts, he knew he was probably going to die Saturday.

I shudder to think about what the state would do to Brinsley, and how the movement would split around his “just” punishment and desirable “rehabilitation.” (How are we going to rehabilitate psychotic racist police?  Any ideas?)  We would have to painfully endure a real trial of the Left’s anti-policing/ abolitionist positions. Instead, we are left to grapple with three dead bodies, many unanswered questions, and a big question mark about our ability to buoy the turbulence of building and sustaining a mass movement, focused specifically on the deep and festering wound of racist police violence, in the age of social media activism.

On Tuesday police Commissioner William Bratton said Ismaaiyl was carrying $100 bills in his pocket.
But he had no job or home.The Yeshiva World reported:

If we are going to posthumously speculate on Ismaaiyl Brinsley’s life, dare I suggest we use the very commitment to institutional analysis and human compassion that has served as a foundation of the Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!/ anti-policing movement–and previous anti-racist movements– since its inception?  As the saying goes, let’s “keep our eyes on the prize.”

Michelle Renee Matisons, Ph.D. has  written for Counterpunch, Black Agenda Report, Z Magazine, Mint News Press, the NJ Decarcerator, Rethinking Schools, Alternet, and other publications. She can be reached at michrenee@gmail.com.

Anti-Police Organizing in the Wake of Ismaaiyl Brinsley’s Death » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Hysterical!

LOL, these assholes, sorry my bad language, but if they are trying to have an American Spring, they are really doing it all wrong. That stuff worked in the Middle East. 

People here have seen them do it over there, so now they are very suspicious and are ready with easy social media access to tell all. 

What part of retarded do they not understand? Even switching sides is retarded. LOL, now they can go from breaking the law to keeping the law, when they were just seen tearing up shit??? I’m sorry, but sometimes 4 letter words says it all!!


Undercover Cop Pulls Gun and Threatens Oakland Police Brutality Protesters | Alternet

December 11, 2014  |  (Editor’s Note: This report has been updated with new developments at 8.30 PM PST on Thursday).A white undercover California Highway Patrol (CHP) detective pulled a gun and threatened protesters at Wednesday night’s march to end racist policing and police brutality in Oakland, California.He was seen losing his cool and pointing the gun at protesters and a photographer before other uniformed police arrived to arrest a black protester, as can be seen on numerous videos of the incident on the Twitter feeds, #berkeleyprotest and #oaklandprotest.The incident was photographed and posted to storify.com and #oaklandprotest, where it quickly went viral. These Twitter feeds have been documenting the ongoing East Bay protests following the two grand jury decisions in Ferguson, Missouri and New York City, in which white officers who killed unarmed black men escaped facing charges.Late Thursday, the Los Angeles Times extensively quoted California Highway Patrol Chief Avery Browne discussing the incident, where Browne concluded that “no one has provided any evidence that the officers were inappropriate in what they did.”Browne recounted his chronology of the event. He said the gun-pointing detective was one of several undercover cops posing as demonstrators at Wednesday’s march in Oakland. He the detective said a fellow undercover officer had been “attacked” by protesters. He said the detective who pulled the gun told him, “Chief, I didn’t know if I was going to make it out of this thing alive.”That line of defense–that a police officer is entitled to use deadly force while doing his job if he fears for his life–is the standard in law that absolves police officers from facing charges for harm caused by excessive force. That was seen as the legal linchpin that allowed two grand juries to exonerate the white officers who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in Staten Island.The protests across the country demand, among other things, that this standard protecting police who lose control and use excessive force must be changed. They say, as the LA Times’ report indicates, that police who too quickly rely on deadly weapons know that they can say those magic words–they feared for their lives–and escape accountability.The CHP Browne made another telling admission to the LA TImes, saying that many undercover officers were spooked by protesters who recognized that they were cops and called them out in front of other protesters. The Times wrote:“The CHP and other law enforcement agencies have been using plainclothes officers to observe and gather information about the protests, and Browne said tensions have risen among officers as several protesters have posted pictures of themselves on social media claiming to be armed with handguns, rocks and explosive devices.”Despite Wednesday’s incident, Browne said he will continue to deploy plainclothes officers to gather intelligence from protesters. Officers have also been creating Twitter accounts, on which they don’t identify themselves as police, in order to monitor planned demonstrations.”This video, posted by WeCopWatch on YouTube on Thursday, identified two other undercover Oakland police officers who posed as protesters and were unmasked by marchers. However, there is nothing in that exchange that can be described as threatening.The Oakland incident comes after police in nearby Berkeley rioted this past Saturday night, lunging into the crowd and using smoke bombs, nightsticks and tear gas to disperse a crowd of several hundred protesters. That confrontation led the Berkeley police to reconsider their tactics during protests on the following nights.But as the protest marchers crossed into other police jurisdictions, closing several interstate highways, other police agencies, such as the California Highway Patrol, said they would respond forcefully.This latest development shows that police are not changing their use of excessive force as the protesters have been demanding. It is a sobering reminder of how entrenched police policies and practices are, which is one reason that the protests are continuing. Steven Rosenfeld covers national political issues for AlterNet, including America’s retirement crisis, democracy and voting rights, and campaigns and elections. He is the author of “Count My Vote: A Citizen’s Guide to Voting” (AlterNet Books, 2008).