Image - Charlie Brooker and Parker from Thunderbirds. Related or just strange quirk of fate that they resemble one another so much ?
Review of Charlie Brookers 'You have been watching '.
Crap.
Sunday, 12 July 2009
Charlie Brooker - You have been watching review
Image - Charlie Brooker and Parker from Thunderbirds. Related or just strange quirk of fate that they resemble one another so much ?
Review of Charlie Brookers 'You have been watching '.
Crap.
Council Housing = the facts
http://www.researchonline.org.uk/fskills/search/go.do?action=document&ref=B6326
Table 5.13. Proportion of population living in social housing, by country of birth,
2005/06
Rank / Country of birth / Living in local authority or housing association housing
1= Australia 5%
1= France 5%
1= USA 5%
4= Poland 8%
4= India 8%
4= South Africa 8%
4= Canada 8%
8 China 9%
9 Italy 10%
10 Kenya 12%
11 Sri Lanka 14%
12= Pakistan 15%
12= Philippines 15%
14 Cyprus 16%
15 UK 17%
16 Zimbabwe 20%
17= Republic of Ireland 21%
17= Uganda 21%
19 Nigeria 29%
20 Iran 33%
21 Jamaica 35%
22 Ghana 39%
23 Portugal 40%
24 Bangladesh 41%
25 Turkey 49%
26 Somalia 80%
So 80 % of Somalians are in council housing.
Table 5.14.
Proportion of workforce employed in public services among the
economically-active working-age population, by country of birth, 2005/06
Rank / Country of birth / Public administration and defence / Education, Health and social work / Other community, social and personal / Total public services
1 Philippines 5% 4% 49% * 60%
2= Jamaica 7% 8% 29% 6% 50%
2= Nigeria 9% 8% 27% 7% 50%
4 Zimbabwe 6% 6% 33% 4% 49%
5 Somalia * * 30% * 48%
6 Canada 7% 13% 13% 12% 46%
7 Ghana 7% 5% 24% 4% 40%
8 Cyprus 8% 13% 10% 8% 39%
9= Republic of Ireland 5% 10% 19% 4% 38%
9= Australia 8% 9% 13% 8% 38%
11 Uganda 7% 6% 22% * 37%
12 USA 8% 13% 5% 11% 36%
13 South Africa 5% 9% 15% 6% 35%
14= UK 8% 9% 12% 5% 34%
14= India 4% 6% 20% 4% 34%
16 Kenya 7% 8% 14% 5% 33%
17 France 5% 15% 6% 5% 31%
18 Italy 3% 10% 10% 5% 29%
19 China 3% 9% 11% 5% 28%
20 Iran * 10% * * 24%
21 Portugal * 6% 10% 7% 23%
22 Sri Lanka 6% 4% 11% * 22%
23 Bangladesh 5% 3% 10% * 20%
24 Pakistan 3% 5% 9% 2% 19%
25 Poland * 2% 7% 5% 14%
26 Turkey * * * * 11%
So it appears that if it wasnt for public service jobs, employed by the Servile State, most immigrants would be out of work.
Therefore we can see that the increase of the size of the public sector jobs has been designed to employ ethnic minority groups, whilst at the same time 80 % of the new jobs in Britain since new labour came to power have gone to non-indigenous non-British people ;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-501128/80-new-jobs-gone-migrants-Labour-came-power.html
Migrants have taken four out of five jobs created since Labour came to power, Whitehall analysts have said.
Their verdict was a huge embarrassment to Cabinet ministers, who have claimed most jobs went to Britons.
It brought new criticism for Gordon Brown and his promise of "British jobs for British workers".
The calculation of how many migrant workers there really are in Britain was made by the Statistics Commission, set up by Labour to check the integrity of official figures.
It had been called in by Labour MP Frank Field during a row in October, when ministers were forced to admit their own figures were too low.
The commission said 1.4million workers born abroad had taken jobs in Britain since 1997.
That was 81 per cent of the 1.7million new jobs for people of working age
That means that the aim of the increase in the size of the Servile State was designed to take migrants out of the unemployment / social housing figures in order to create the false perception that migrants are adding to the British economy.
In fact the money that migrants add to the British economy comes mainly from the government via them being employed in public sector jobs - a neat little trick to obscure the reality that without them being employed in public sector jobs the majority of migrants would be out of work and a net drain on the British economy.
One wonders why Migrationwatch hasnt seen how this little trick has been played on us all.
The fact is that if we are to analyse the real economic benefits of migration we have to remove those migrants from the analysis who are paid by the state - as those jobs do not benefit the British economy as the wages of those people are paid for by the British state and their wages are not adding to the size of the economy as the money comes from the British taxpayer.
Table 5.13. Proportion of population living in social housing, by country of birth,
2005/06
Rank / Country of birth / Living in local authority or housing association housing
1= Australia 5%
1= France 5%
1= USA 5%
4= Poland 8%
4= India 8%
4= South Africa 8%
4= Canada 8%
8 China 9%
9 Italy 10%
10 Kenya 12%
11 Sri Lanka 14%
12= Pakistan 15%
12= Philippines 15%
14 Cyprus 16%
15 UK 17%
16 Zimbabwe 20%
17= Republic of Ireland 21%
17= Uganda 21%
19 Nigeria 29%
20 Iran 33%
21 Jamaica 35%
22 Ghana 39%
23 Portugal 40%
24 Bangladesh 41%
25 Turkey 49%
26 Somalia 80%
So 80 % of Somalians are in council housing.
Table 5.14.
Proportion of workforce employed in public services among the
economically-active working-age population, by country of birth, 2005/06
Rank / Country of birth / Public administration and defence / Education, Health and social work / Other community, social and personal / Total public services
1 Philippines 5% 4% 49% * 60%
2= Jamaica 7% 8% 29% 6% 50%
2= Nigeria 9% 8% 27% 7% 50%
4 Zimbabwe 6% 6% 33% 4% 49%
5 Somalia * * 30% * 48%
6 Canada 7% 13% 13% 12% 46%
7 Ghana 7% 5% 24% 4% 40%
8 Cyprus 8% 13% 10% 8% 39%
9= Republic of Ireland 5% 10% 19% 4% 38%
9= Australia 8% 9% 13% 8% 38%
11 Uganda 7% 6% 22% * 37%
12 USA 8% 13% 5% 11% 36%
13 South Africa 5% 9% 15% 6% 35%
14= UK 8% 9% 12% 5% 34%
14= India 4% 6% 20% 4% 34%
16 Kenya 7% 8% 14% 5% 33%
17 France 5% 15% 6% 5% 31%
18 Italy 3% 10% 10% 5% 29%
19 China 3% 9% 11% 5% 28%
20 Iran * 10% * * 24%
21 Portugal * 6% 10% 7% 23%
22 Sri Lanka 6% 4% 11% * 22%
23 Bangladesh 5% 3% 10% * 20%
24 Pakistan 3% 5% 9% 2% 19%
25 Poland * 2% 7% 5% 14%
26 Turkey * * * * 11%
So it appears that if it wasnt for public service jobs, employed by the Servile State, most immigrants would be out of work.
Therefore we can see that the increase of the size of the public sector jobs has been designed to employ ethnic minority groups, whilst at the same time 80 % of the new jobs in Britain since new labour came to power have gone to non-indigenous non-British people ;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-501128/80-new-jobs-gone-migrants-Labour-came-power.html
Migrants have taken four out of five jobs created since Labour came to power, Whitehall analysts have said.
Their verdict was a huge embarrassment to Cabinet ministers, who have claimed most jobs went to Britons.
It brought new criticism for Gordon Brown and his promise of "British jobs for British workers".
The calculation of how many migrant workers there really are in Britain was made by the Statistics Commission, set up by Labour to check the integrity of official figures.
It had been called in by Labour MP Frank Field during a row in October, when ministers were forced to admit their own figures were too low.
The commission said 1.4million workers born abroad had taken jobs in Britain since 1997.
That was 81 per cent of the 1.7million new jobs for people of working age
That means that the aim of the increase in the size of the Servile State was designed to take migrants out of the unemployment / social housing figures in order to create the false perception that migrants are adding to the British economy.
In fact the money that migrants add to the British economy comes mainly from the government via them being employed in public sector jobs - a neat little trick to obscure the reality that without them being employed in public sector jobs the majority of migrants would be out of work and a net drain on the British economy.
One wonders why Migrationwatch hasnt seen how this little trick has been played on us all.
The fact is that if we are to analyse the real economic benefits of migration we have to remove those migrants from the analysis who are paid by the state - as those jobs do not benefit the British economy as the wages of those people are paid for by the British state and their wages are not adding to the size of the economy as the money comes from the British taxpayer.
The Harvest Festival
This is a poem about how the Churches have become the home of Satanic paedophiles.
The poem is written from the perspective of a victim of the crimes of the priests who sees what happens to him as the pre-cursor of the Apocalypse.
I am the apocalypse, I am the revelation,
The bitter pip of truth from a fallen fruit,
Spat from the mouth of a false god,
Banished from communion with wolves,
Exiled from a church built with lies,
Whose walls are cemented with sins,
And blessed by the prayers of pederasts,
For I am witness to all that has been done,
The cross of pain and nails of kisses,
And the sullying spear of perverted desire.
He whispers to me as the agony begins,
“ Call me Holy Father my son “, he hisses,
As his fingers start to violate my flesh,
Muttering catechisms between his breaths,
To lure little children from the light,
And become mere receptacles for his lust,
Then keeping the secret in a cage of fear,
Under threat of exorcism from Eden,
Flaying the pale fleece of innocence,
From weeping lambs abandoned to their fate.
Smiling from the pulpit he praises the faithful,
Dressed in their Sunday best, with blind devotion,
They await the bleak blessings he bestows,
As the incense burns in its censure,
So too the seeds of desire in the heart of evil,
Seething with savage intent in silence,
On bended knees the faithful kneel in the dust,
Where their sons and daughters were baptised,
With the semen splashes of his lust,
The holy church corrupted, filth encrusted,
Transformed into a hollow that Christ has fled.
As the choir sings its hymns, I see what hides within,
The mocking serpent with its smile,
Offering the bread and wine of sin and lies,
To the faithful who swallow every deception.
And whose blindness is such they never see,
Their own children being raped in the name of Christ,
Whilst cardinals and bishops meet to conspire,
To hide the truth of their brothers crimes,
In their conclaves, courts and cassocks,
They secrete their secrets and whisper in corners,
Thereby consigning yet another generation,
To the living hell of excommunication
For daring to reveal, what must always be denied.
Soon they shall reap the harvest of their crimes,
And the exodus begin, for Holy Christ will lead
The faithful from the lie, the light from the dark,
And free all lambs from Egypt’s slavery,
As the Harvest Festival commences,
And the Final Judgement will sound its fury,
For every pederast in their filthy frocks,
Will feel the full force of the living God,
And Christ in his armour of adamantine hate,
Shall slay every enemy within his gates,
Until the rivers of faith run red with flood,
And the land is drowned in serpent's blood,
As with fiery sword in hand the rapture erupts,
And with Holy War a New Kingdom built,
Upon the bones and rubble of all that once stood,
For every sin and lie that the Holy Christ denied,
And every Church falls where serpents once lied.
The poem is written from the perspective of a victim of the crimes of the priests who sees what happens to him as the pre-cursor of the Apocalypse.
I am the apocalypse, I am the revelation,
The bitter pip of truth from a fallen fruit,
Spat from the mouth of a false god,
Banished from communion with wolves,
Exiled from a church built with lies,
Whose walls are cemented with sins,
And blessed by the prayers of pederasts,
For I am witness to all that has been done,
The cross of pain and nails of kisses,
And the sullying spear of perverted desire.
He whispers to me as the agony begins,
“ Call me Holy Father my son “, he hisses,
As his fingers start to violate my flesh,
Muttering catechisms between his breaths,
To lure little children from the light,
And become mere receptacles for his lust,
Then keeping the secret in a cage of fear,
Under threat of exorcism from Eden,
Flaying the pale fleece of innocence,
From weeping lambs abandoned to their fate.
Smiling from the pulpit he praises the faithful,
Dressed in their Sunday best, with blind devotion,
They await the bleak blessings he bestows,
As the incense burns in its censure,
So too the seeds of desire in the heart of evil,
Seething with savage intent in silence,
On bended knees the faithful kneel in the dust,
Where their sons and daughters were baptised,
With the semen splashes of his lust,
The holy church corrupted, filth encrusted,
Transformed into a hollow that Christ has fled.
As the choir sings its hymns, I see what hides within,
The mocking serpent with its smile,
Offering the bread and wine of sin and lies,
To the faithful who swallow every deception.
And whose blindness is such they never see,
Their own children being raped in the name of Christ,
Whilst cardinals and bishops meet to conspire,
To hide the truth of their brothers crimes,
In their conclaves, courts and cassocks,
They secrete their secrets and whisper in corners,
Thereby consigning yet another generation,
To the living hell of excommunication
For daring to reveal, what must always be denied.
Soon they shall reap the harvest of their crimes,
And the exodus begin, for Holy Christ will lead
The faithful from the lie, the light from the dark,
And free all lambs from Egypt’s slavery,
As the Harvest Festival commences,
And the Final Judgement will sound its fury,
For every pederast in their filthy frocks,
Will feel the full force of the living God,
And Christ in his armour of adamantine hate,
Shall slay every enemy within his gates,
Until the rivers of faith run red with flood,
And the land is drowned in serpent's blood,
As with fiery sword in hand the rapture erupts,
And with Holy War a New Kingdom built,
Upon the bones and rubble of all that once stood,
For every sin and lie that the Holy Christ denied,
And every Church falls where serpents once lied.
FUCK THIS GOVERNMENT AND THE PC STATE
Azard Ali - I am above the law due to my religion. I can say what I want and nothing will happen to me. I will will not be sacked even though I support the murder of British soldiers.
Join the BNP, get kicked out of the police.
Join the BNP, get kicked out of your trade union.
Join the BNP, get sacked from the Prison Service.
Join the BNP, get barred from the Methodist Church.
Join the BNP, you cant be a priest in the Church of England.
Yet if you are a Muslim radical Islamist employed by the Civil Service you can use your blog to publicise Islamist propaganda that supports the killing of British soldiers, put up posts on your blog that says it is the duty of Muslims to kill British soldiers and allow people to incite the murder of British soldiers on your blog and you get to keep your job.
One law for Muslims, one law for everyone else.
In the same week that two White Nationalists were sentenced to four years in prison for posting 'offensive' articles on the internet, neither of whom had ever put up articles that sought to propagandise or propogate the notion that the killing of ethnic minorities is ever acceptable, we can see that a sick and pernicious double standard applies.
Racism against whites is acceptable.
Propagandising the idea that the murder of British soldiers is justifiable is acceptable.
Propogating the notion that Islam justifies the murder of British soldiers is acceptable.
Yet holding a 'racist' opinion and expressing that in public is a criminal act worthy of a sentence given to murderers.
FUCK THIS GOVERNMENT AND FUCK THE POLITICALLLY CORRECT LAWS THAT THE GOVERNMENT AND THEIR LIBERAL, LEFTIST, SATANIC CHURCH SCUM PASS INTO POWER.
FUCK THEM ALL.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1199099/Kill-soldiers-Muslim-blogger-job-Treasury-civil-servant.html
'Kill soldiers' Muslim blogger is back in job as Treasury civil servant
Investigation: Azad Ali was suspended amid claims he justified killing UK troops
A Muslim civil servant suspended amid claims that he used his personal website to justify the killing of British troops in Iraq has returned to work at the Treasury.
Azad Ali, an IT worker and president of the Civil Service Islamic Society, was suspended on full pay for six months following comments on his blog.
In one post Mr Ali quoted an interview with an Islamic militant who said: ‘If I saw an American or British man wearing a soldier’s uniform inside Iraq I would kill him because that is my obligation.
'If I found the same soldier in Jordan I wouldn’t touch him. In Iraq he is a fighter and an occupier, here he is not. I respect this as the main instruction in my religion for jihad.’
Sir Gus O’Donnell, Britain’s most senior civil servant and patron of the Civil Service Islamic Society, ordered that Mr Ali be suspended while an investigation was carried out.
It is understood there were concerns that Mr Ali may have breached the Whitehall code of practice that restricts civil servants from political activities.
The investigation has now finished and Mr Ali has returned to his job.
A Treasury spokesman said last night: ‘Azad Ali is back at work. The Treasury has dealt with the matter in accordance with our disciplinary procedures. We will not comment on individual cases.’
Mr Ali refused to comment.
The Satanic Paedophile Church
The Churches ban BNP members, but protect child rapists within their own ranks.
Satanic churches spreading evil into the world.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/a-secret-shame-inside-the-latest-scandal-to-rock-the-catholic-church-1739889.html
A secret shame: Inside the latest scandal to rock the Catholic church
When Todd Carpunky was 16, he joined the Legion of Christ. I his six years with the Catholic order, he bore witness to a culture of sexual abuse that rocked the Church. Here, he talks candidly to Peter Stanford about the secretive world created by the order's founder while the papal authorities looked the other way
Sunday, 12 July 2009
Carpunky says: 'I thought he was looking into my soul. Now I think he was checking me out'
KALPESH LATHIGRA
Carpunky says: 'I thought he was looking into my soul. Now I think he was checking me out'
The papal plane is heading for Mexico and John Paul II is busy preparing for the first of his many overseas trips. It is January 1979. At his right hand, briefing him, is the Mexican-born Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the ultraconservative Legion of Christ, one of the youngest but fastest-growing religious orders in the Catholic Church. This dapper, well-connected priest, worshipped by his adoring followers as "Nuestro Padre" ("Our Father") shares with the Polish pontiff a conviction that the liberal reform of Catholicism in the 1960s needs to be halted, especially in Latin America.
That trip was the first public sign of the extraordinary bond between Maciel and the man in charge of a church of 1.2 billion souls. In the subsequent 26 years of John Paul's reign, the Legion was regularly lauded by him for its unwavering fidelity to church teaching, its intolerance of dissent, and its conviction that only Catholicism could save the world. Maciel was a prince of the Church, in the papal inner circle, sitting on the most important Vatican committees and running his own congregation of 800 priests and 2,500 seminarians, plus the 70,000 lay members of the associated Regnum Christi movement, as it spread around the globe, including a base in London.
Much has been made of the power wielded by the secretive Opus Dei under John Paul II, not least by Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code, but many Vatican-watchers believe that the Legion of Christ was bigger, richer (annual budget £435m), more influential, and even more sinister.
Parents of youngsters recruited as Legionaries described it as a cult that targeted the young and naive in particular, some of them just 13, and then "brainwashed" them. But it is Maciel himself who has proved most controversial. Nuestro Padre was, according to one biographer, "a narcissistic sociopath" with a taste for flights on Concorde and five-star hotels. He is acknowledged by the Legion to have fathered at least one child – a 23-year-old daughter said to be called Norma Hilda and now living in Madrid.
It has also been alleged that he was a paedophile. The first accusation came in 1976 from the former head of the Legion in the US. By 1998, the Vatican had received sworn statements from eight men, all detailing how Maciel had abused them when they were young recruits.
Throughout the 1990s, a series of allegations of sexual abuse of minors by priests that had been covered up by the church authorities shook Catholicism in America, Canada, Australia, Ireland, the UK and other countries. At least two cardinals were forced to retire, dozens of paedophile priests were jailed for their crimes, and the Church paid out millions of pounds in compensation to victims. The damage to its reputation in the eyes of its own congregations has been huge, and bishops have struggled to convince sceptics that they have put into place procedures rigorous enough to ensure that such a betrayal never happens again.
Yet in Maciel's case, it took 30 years – until 2006, after John Paul's death – for the new pope, Benedict XVI, finally to issue a public rebuke, and then it was simply an order that he should see out his days in private prayer rather than face a court. The long delay is evidence, some have suggested, that the Vatican still does not take the issue of paedophile priests sufficiently seriously.
A year after Nuestro Padre's death in 2008, the Vatican announced an investigation into the Legion. An unnamed official told America's National Catholic Reporter newspaper that the total number of Maciel's abuse victims was "more than 20 and less than 100". As a team of cardinals opens the locked cupboards of an organisation that prided itself on secrecy – all new recruits had to take a unique private vow (abolished by Benedict in 2007) never to speak ill of the founder and to report to superiors anyone who did – the Catholic Church is once more mired in a scandal about the sexual abuse of minors, and the abuse of power.
Ex-priests and nuns are often easy to spot. It is something to do with how uneasy they look in civvies, and their reluctance, learnt in the seminary and the convent, to look anyone in the eye. But Todd Carpunky, a corporate lawyer in the City of London, gives few outward clues of his past as a Legionary of Christ when we meet in a bar near Liverpool Street station. Tall, blond and open-faced in his well-cut suit, this Illinois-born 34-year-old has an easy sense of humour, both about the world around him, and his six years in the Legion. "My grandmother raised me," he explains. "She was great, but so Catholic she makes the Pope look like the anti-Christ. The rest of my family was just nuts. I wanted to get away from them, and the Legion knew that."
Founded by the then 21-year-old Maciel in Mexico in 1941, almost four years before he was even ordained as a priest (he had been asked to leave more than one seminary), the Legion of Christ spread rapidly, supported by bishops who felt embattled by government anti-clericalism in Mexico, the result of a church-state spilt in 1917. Soon it was running schools and universities. Its militant, old-style Catholic spirituality was directed mainly at the wealthy with the result that it members were known as "the Millionaries of Christ".
By the 1950s, it had gone international with branches in Spain, Chile, Italy, Ireland and the United States. Carpunky came across one of its recruitment drives in the early 1990s via his grandmother. "They began visiting me at home and invited me on a summer programme. It was fun and my grandmother was delighted. She's still upset I'm a lawyer." He went to one of the Legion's boarding schools in Connecticut at the age of 16, seeing it as a means of escape from an unhappy home life. "Our contact with home was strictly limited, but that suited me. All our mail was reviewed. Even the Catholic newspapers were censored. They would have great holes in them where articles had been cut out. It was to protect our vocation, we were told."
Life at the school followed a strict schedule. "We'd get up early in the morning, shower with our bathing suits on, even though there were curtains, because apparently it was faster and more chaste. We slept in our swimming trunks under our pyjamas. There was meditation – usually on the writings of Nuestro Padre. It was all very regimented. We were not allowed free time. It was cult-like. Maciel played mind games."
All of this, Carpunky acknowledges, is said with the benefit of hindsight. At the time, he quickly moved into the noviciate and was sent to Spain to train as a priest. "I felt part of something. I was happy. I didn't rationalise."
What was Maciel like? "He had charisma. He told great stories. He was the great conspiracy theorist. According to him, he had left the seminaries in Mexico because he was misunderstood and was trying to save the Church. The Jesuits, he said, were very jealous of him. He used conspiracy theories to explain away all of these things. He had been persecuted because he was just too holy, too clever, too Catholic. He actually claimed never to have said no to God – which implies he never sinned."
Maciel was also, Carpunky claims, intent on controlling every aspect of the life of every Legionary. "We had a green book of rules of etiquette and social norms," he recalls. "We'd have classes about not piercing a vegetable with a fork when we were eating, or how to eat a banana with a knife and fork."
Carpunky was singled out for attention by Maciel. "When he came to Madrid, I was asked to serve his meal. I took it as a great honour. I thought he was a living saint. So when he would follow me with his eyes, I thought he was looking into my soul. Now I think he was checking me out because apparently he liked blonds."
The first major question mark was raised over Maciel's personal conduct as early as 1956, when he was suspended by the Vatican while charges that he was addicted to pain-killing drugs were investigated. Two years later, the inquiry was dropped and he was reinstated. Then, in 1976, Father Juan Vaca, who had joined the Legion as a 10-year-old in Mexico and risen to be its US director, but subsequently left to work as a priest in a Catholic diocese on Long Island in the States, formally reported Maciel to his bishop for sexually abusing him from the age of 12. This was a time before the sexual abuse of minors by priests had been exposed. In 1978, fearing that his accusations had been swept under the carpet, Vaca sent a long statement about what had happened to him direct to the Vatican, and even received an acknowledgement. And then, nothing.
In 1998, eight other former members of the Legion (one now dead) filed sexual-abuse charges against Maciel in the Vatican's Court of Canon Law, but Rome seemed to delay. It was only in 2004 that an official investigation, headed by canon lawyer Monseigneur Charles Scicluna, was set up. That led, in 2006, to the decision to discipline Maciel.
Was Carpunky sexually abused? "I am one of the few people who has been in Maciel's bedroom without... you know... because he has a bedroom in each of the Legion's houses, reserved for him. In the American house at Cheshire in Connecticut, he even had his own Mercedes reserved for him 'because of his back problems'. He always had these weird things. He could only drink Evian water. For medical reasons, he'd eat only steak or a specific type of chicken that had to be obtained from Spain. I wasn't sexually abused, though a friend of mine in seminary had been molested by a Brother in the Legion in his early teens. When the rector found out, he told Maciel, and within 24 hours that Brother was sent to Rome, where he was later ordained as a priest."
It raises the suggestion of a culture of sexual abuse inside the Legion, taking its lead from the founder and covered up by the "private vow". Carpunky is not convinced. "Maciel was a monster and others were abused, but they were more the exceptions than the rule."
Consider, though, the experience of Stephen Dougan – not his real name – from Belfast. Now a university student, he was wooed by the Legion as a 14-year-old. "It was hard not to be enthused by what you were shown," he recalls. "As their guest, I enjoyed good food, went on hikes, played table tennis, watched movies and did sport with happy seminarians. When I actually joined [in the early 1990s at the Legion's Dublin seminary], I did not have even a vague idea of the Legion's spirituality or its rules, only that, as I was being told, I had been called as part of God's plan."
Around the time of his 18th birthday, Dougan was summoned one night to the bedroom of his novice master. "He said he had severe cramps in his stomach. He unbuttoned his pyjama top, poured oil on his stomach and asked me to massage him. I did. Very soon he unbuttoned his pyjama bottoms and poured on more oil. He asked me to 'do it deeper'. He meant lower down. His penis was erect. I was shocked and confused. I can remember my hands in his pubic hair. I closed my eyes and prayed."
Dougan's abuse by the Father almost exactly mirrors allegations against Maciel, made by Fernando Perez, one of the eight to file charges, about what happened to him at 14. Maciel even told his victims, one reported, that he had a special dispensation from the Pope to allow him to be masturbated because of the pains he suffered as a result of his "delicate" health.
Dougan never spoke while in the Legion about what had happened, though he has subsequently reported it to the police. "The vow I had taken meant that no Legionary could in any way criticise the defects or mistakes of any superior. This included internal – in your mind – criticism." Eighteen months after the incident, he was told that he didn't have a vocation and asked to leave. "It was hard for me to adjust to normal life," he admits. "I am still battling with the belief that God has spat me out of his mouth because I left. I have been in counselling on and off ever since."
Not all ex-members – some of whom belong to the support group, ReGain – have unhappy memories. Adam Dunbar – he is not willing to use his real name because he is still in touch with former colleagues from in the Legion – is a 62-year-old bookkeeper and grandfather from Dublin. He was among the first recruits to the Legion's Irish mission which started in 1960. "What attracted me as a youngster was the energy of it, the ability to inspire, and the fact that they used young men to recruit young men and filled us full of idealism." Maciel, he reports, was "gentle, considerate, patient. My memories of him are sweet. I never had any experience of anything irregular nor did I see anything that in retrospect might be judged as misbehaviour."
Matthew Muggeridge, the 39-year-old grandson of the celebrated writer and broadcaster Malcolm, is currently working as a lawyer in the US. He joined the Legion in 1990 because he saw it as "dynamic, challenging and growing. It enthused me about my faith – and you don't get that with ordinary diocesan seminaries." Though he left six years later, he did so, he says, with no regrets and remains a supporter of the order and its defence of traditional Catholic values.
He was part of Legion plans to establish a base in London. Still a seminarian, he was sent to the affluent parish of St James, Spanish Place, in Marylebone, central London, along with an Irish Legionary priest. However, Cardinal Basil Hume, head of the local Westminster archdiocese, was not keen on their presence, Muggeridge recalls. "He tended to equate the Legion with Opus Dei, about which he also had well-recorded concerns, but we were not the same. We were so visible, whereas Opus Dei tends to act behind the scenes." The Legion is still thought to have ambitions on London. In the past year, one of its priests has been calling on parishes in wealthy areas of the capital.
Maciel had prepared himself a tomb in Our Lady of Guadalupe, the church he built in Rome in the 1950s. In the event, he was laid to rest in January 2008 in his family's modest crypt in his hometown in Mexico. The past 18 months have been a traumatic time for Legionaries. The secrecy rules meant they knew nothing of the charges against Nuestro Padre. The first they heard was when, a year after Maciel's death, Father Alvaro Corcuera, his hand-picked successor, confirmed the existence of Norma Hilda.
The Legion is tight-lipped about its current predicament. Jim Fair, its communications director, declined even to discuss the issues raised by the former Legionaries in this article. In brief written answers to questions I submitted, he said that the Legion was "grateful" for the present Vatican investigation and "sad" about the "aspects of our founder's life of which we were not aware". On the charge that the order has a cult-like approach, Fair wrote: "We listen carefully to what former members have to say. At the same time we listen to the voice of the Church and to the principles of religious life throughout the centuries as a guideline."
Adam Dunbar feels the revelations will have had a profound effect on his friends still in the Legion. "Imagine, after half a century of being told that Maciel was a living saint, you discover that this is a hall of smoke and mirrors. Who is the victim then? Apart from the sexual abuse, if it existed, what about this abuse of lives?"
Back in the City of London, Todd Carpunky has, he says, put the Legion (and his Catholicism) behind him. His doubts began when he contracted a liver infection because painful gallstones had gone untreated. His superiors advised him instead to swim and pray to Mary. Later, he was made to wait several months for an operation on a disc problem in his back that had left him disabled, because Nuestro Padre couldn't decide what to do with him. "The final straw came when I was sitting in a doctor's office and the Legionary with me admitted they had been lying about not being able to find a surgeon to see me. I was told, 'Just obey.' That's when I snapped and realised they were crazy. I checked my brain back in and left."
For him, the story of the Legion is not just another aspect of clerical sex abuse. "It really comes down to the fact that they cared more about building the Kingdom of Maciel than the Kingdom of God. The Legion calls itself Catholic but it is inhumane and really damages people. That is what distinguishes it from other religious orders." n
A catalogue of abuse
Britain Father Michael Hill (pictured) was convicted in 1997 of sexual abuse of nine children. It emerged that his local bishop, the future Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, had been aware that concerns had been raised about Hill's behaviour, but had moved him to another parish.
US Allegations of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests were first made public in 1984. In September 2003, the archdiocese of Boston paid $85m in compensation to 552 victims. Many other dioceses have made similar payments – to an estimated total of $1bn. In 2004 the archdiocese of Portland declared itself bankrupt as a result.
Austria Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër was dismissed as Archbishop of Vienna by Pope John Paul II in 1995 after it emerged that he had abused young boys at Catholic schools over a 40-year period. One expert suggested he may have had 2,000 victims.
Ireland In May 2009, High Court judge Sean Ryan published a report of his nine-year investigation detailing the beating, rape and humiliation of thousands of children by priests and nuns in the schools they ran.
Australia In July 2008 in St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney, Pope Benedict XVI made an unprecedented apology for the crimes of priests against minors. "I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured and I assure them that, as their pastor, I too share in their suffering."
Satanic churches spreading evil into the world.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/a-secret-shame-inside-the-latest-scandal-to-rock-the-catholic-church-1739889.html
A secret shame: Inside the latest scandal to rock the Catholic church
When Todd Carpunky was 16, he joined the Legion of Christ. I his six years with the Catholic order, he bore witness to a culture of sexual abuse that rocked the Church. Here, he talks candidly to Peter Stanford about the secretive world created by the order's founder while the papal authorities looked the other way
Sunday, 12 July 2009
Carpunky says: 'I thought he was looking into my soul. Now I think he was checking me out'
KALPESH LATHIGRA
Carpunky says: 'I thought he was looking into my soul. Now I think he was checking me out'
The papal plane is heading for Mexico and John Paul II is busy preparing for the first of his many overseas trips. It is January 1979. At his right hand, briefing him, is the Mexican-born Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the ultraconservative Legion of Christ, one of the youngest but fastest-growing religious orders in the Catholic Church. This dapper, well-connected priest, worshipped by his adoring followers as "Nuestro Padre" ("Our Father") shares with the Polish pontiff a conviction that the liberal reform of Catholicism in the 1960s needs to be halted, especially in Latin America.
That trip was the first public sign of the extraordinary bond between Maciel and the man in charge of a church of 1.2 billion souls. In the subsequent 26 years of John Paul's reign, the Legion was regularly lauded by him for its unwavering fidelity to church teaching, its intolerance of dissent, and its conviction that only Catholicism could save the world. Maciel was a prince of the Church, in the papal inner circle, sitting on the most important Vatican committees and running his own congregation of 800 priests and 2,500 seminarians, plus the 70,000 lay members of the associated Regnum Christi movement, as it spread around the globe, including a base in London.
Much has been made of the power wielded by the secretive Opus Dei under John Paul II, not least by Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code, but many Vatican-watchers believe that the Legion of Christ was bigger, richer (annual budget £435m), more influential, and even more sinister.
Parents of youngsters recruited as Legionaries described it as a cult that targeted the young and naive in particular, some of them just 13, and then "brainwashed" them. But it is Maciel himself who has proved most controversial. Nuestro Padre was, according to one biographer, "a narcissistic sociopath" with a taste for flights on Concorde and five-star hotels. He is acknowledged by the Legion to have fathered at least one child – a 23-year-old daughter said to be called Norma Hilda and now living in Madrid.
It has also been alleged that he was a paedophile. The first accusation came in 1976 from the former head of the Legion in the US. By 1998, the Vatican had received sworn statements from eight men, all detailing how Maciel had abused them when they were young recruits.
Throughout the 1990s, a series of allegations of sexual abuse of minors by priests that had been covered up by the church authorities shook Catholicism in America, Canada, Australia, Ireland, the UK and other countries. At least two cardinals were forced to retire, dozens of paedophile priests were jailed for their crimes, and the Church paid out millions of pounds in compensation to victims. The damage to its reputation in the eyes of its own congregations has been huge, and bishops have struggled to convince sceptics that they have put into place procedures rigorous enough to ensure that such a betrayal never happens again.
Yet in Maciel's case, it took 30 years – until 2006, after John Paul's death – for the new pope, Benedict XVI, finally to issue a public rebuke, and then it was simply an order that he should see out his days in private prayer rather than face a court. The long delay is evidence, some have suggested, that the Vatican still does not take the issue of paedophile priests sufficiently seriously.
A year after Nuestro Padre's death in 2008, the Vatican announced an investigation into the Legion. An unnamed official told America's National Catholic Reporter newspaper that the total number of Maciel's abuse victims was "more than 20 and less than 100". As a team of cardinals opens the locked cupboards of an organisation that prided itself on secrecy – all new recruits had to take a unique private vow (abolished by Benedict in 2007) never to speak ill of the founder and to report to superiors anyone who did – the Catholic Church is once more mired in a scandal about the sexual abuse of minors, and the abuse of power.
Ex-priests and nuns are often easy to spot. It is something to do with how uneasy they look in civvies, and their reluctance, learnt in the seminary and the convent, to look anyone in the eye. But Todd Carpunky, a corporate lawyer in the City of London, gives few outward clues of his past as a Legionary of Christ when we meet in a bar near Liverpool Street station. Tall, blond and open-faced in his well-cut suit, this Illinois-born 34-year-old has an easy sense of humour, both about the world around him, and his six years in the Legion. "My grandmother raised me," he explains. "She was great, but so Catholic she makes the Pope look like the anti-Christ. The rest of my family was just nuts. I wanted to get away from them, and the Legion knew that."
Founded by the then 21-year-old Maciel in Mexico in 1941, almost four years before he was even ordained as a priest (he had been asked to leave more than one seminary), the Legion of Christ spread rapidly, supported by bishops who felt embattled by government anti-clericalism in Mexico, the result of a church-state spilt in 1917. Soon it was running schools and universities. Its militant, old-style Catholic spirituality was directed mainly at the wealthy with the result that it members were known as "the Millionaries of Christ".
By the 1950s, it had gone international with branches in Spain, Chile, Italy, Ireland and the United States. Carpunky came across one of its recruitment drives in the early 1990s via his grandmother. "They began visiting me at home and invited me on a summer programme. It was fun and my grandmother was delighted. She's still upset I'm a lawyer." He went to one of the Legion's boarding schools in Connecticut at the age of 16, seeing it as a means of escape from an unhappy home life. "Our contact with home was strictly limited, but that suited me. All our mail was reviewed. Even the Catholic newspapers were censored. They would have great holes in them where articles had been cut out. It was to protect our vocation, we were told."
Life at the school followed a strict schedule. "We'd get up early in the morning, shower with our bathing suits on, even though there were curtains, because apparently it was faster and more chaste. We slept in our swimming trunks under our pyjamas. There was meditation – usually on the writings of Nuestro Padre. It was all very regimented. We were not allowed free time. It was cult-like. Maciel played mind games."
All of this, Carpunky acknowledges, is said with the benefit of hindsight. At the time, he quickly moved into the noviciate and was sent to Spain to train as a priest. "I felt part of something. I was happy. I didn't rationalise."
What was Maciel like? "He had charisma. He told great stories. He was the great conspiracy theorist. According to him, he had left the seminaries in Mexico because he was misunderstood and was trying to save the Church. The Jesuits, he said, were very jealous of him. He used conspiracy theories to explain away all of these things. He had been persecuted because he was just too holy, too clever, too Catholic. He actually claimed never to have said no to God – which implies he never sinned."
Maciel was also, Carpunky claims, intent on controlling every aspect of the life of every Legionary. "We had a green book of rules of etiquette and social norms," he recalls. "We'd have classes about not piercing a vegetable with a fork when we were eating, or how to eat a banana with a knife and fork."
Carpunky was singled out for attention by Maciel. "When he came to Madrid, I was asked to serve his meal. I took it as a great honour. I thought he was a living saint. So when he would follow me with his eyes, I thought he was looking into my soul. Now I think he was checking me out because apparently he liked blonds."
The first major question mark was raised over Maciel's personal conduct as early as 1956, when he was suspended by the Vatican while charges that he was addicted to pain-killing drugs were investigated. Two years later, the inquiry was dropped and he was reinstated. Then, in 1976, Father Juan Vaca, who had joined the Legion as a 10-year-old in Mexico and risen to be its US director, but subsequently left to work as a priest in a Catholic diocese on Long Island in the States, formally reported Maciel to his bishop for sexually abusing him from the age of 12. This was a time before the sexual abuse of minors by priests had been exposed. In 1978, fearing that his accusations had been swept under the carpet, Vaca sent a long statement about what had happened to him direct to the Vatican, and even received an acknowledgement. And then, nothing.
In 1998, eight other former members of the Legion (one now dead) filed sexual-abuse charges against Maciel in the Vatican's Court of Canon Law, but Rome seemed to delay. It was only in 2004 that an official investigation, headed by canon lawyer Monseigneur Charles Scicluna, was set up. That led, in 2006, to the decision to discipline Maciel.
Was Carpunky sexually abused? "I am one of the few people who has been in Maciel's bedroom without... you know... because he has a bedroom in each of the Legion's houses, reserved for him. In the American house at Cheshire in Connecticut, he even had his own Mercedes reserved for him 'because of his back problems'. He always had these weird things. He could only drink Evian water. For medical reasons, he'd eat only steak or a specific type of chicken that had to be obtained from Spain. I wasn't sexually abused, though a friend of mine in seminary had been molested by a Brother in the Legion in his early teens. When the rector found out, he told Maciel, and within 24 hours that Brother was sent to Rome, where he was later ordained as a priest."
It raises the suggestion of a culture of sexual abuse inside the Legion, taking its lead from the founder and covered up by the "private vow". Carpunky is not convinced. "Maciel was a monster and others were abused, but they were more the exceptions than the rule."
Consider, though, the experience of Stephen Dougan – not his real name – from Belfast. Now a university student, he was wooed by the Legion as a 14-year-old. "It was hard not to be enthused by what you were shown," he recalls. "As their guest, I enjoyed good food, went on hikes, played table tennis, watched movies and did sport with happy seminarians. When I actually joined [in the early 1990s at the Legion's Dublin seminary], I did not have even a vague idea of the Legion's spirituality or its rules, only that, as I was being told, I had been called as part of God's plan."
Around the time of his 18th birthday, Dougan was summoned one night to the bedroom of his novice master. "He said he had severe cramps in his stomach. He unbuttoned his pyjama top, poured oil on his stomach and asked me to massage him. I did. Very soon he unbuttoned his pyjama bottoms and poured on more oil. He asked me to 'do it deeper'. He meant lower down. His penis was erect. I was shocked and confused. I can remember my hands in his pubic hair. I closed my eyes and prayed."
Dougan's abuse by the Father almost exactly mirrors allegations against Maciel, made by Fernando Perez, one of the eight to file charges, about what happened to him at 14. Maciel even told his victims, one reported, that he had a special dispensation from the Pope to allow him to be masturbated because of the pains he suffered as a result of his "delicate" health.
Dougan never spoke while in the Legion about what had happened, though he has subsequently reported it to the police. "The vow I had taken meant that no Legionary could in any way criticise the defects or mistakes of any superior. This included internal – in your mind – criticism." Eighteen months after the incident, he was told that he didn't have a vocation and asked to leave. "It was hard for me to adjust to normal life," he admits. "I am still battling with the belief that God has spat me out of his mouth because I left. I have been in counselling on and off ever since."
Not all ex-members – some of whom belong to the support group, ReGain – have unhappy memories. Adam Dunbar – he is not willing to use his real name because he is still in touch with former colleagues from in the Legion – is a 62-year-old bookkeeper and grandfather from Dublin. He was among the first recruits to the Legion's Irish mission which started in 1960. "What attracted me as a youngster was the energy of it, the ability to inspire, and the fact that they used young men to recruit young men and filled us full of idealism." Maciel, he reports, was "gentle, considerate, patient. My memories of him are sweet. I never had any experience of anything irregular nor did I see anything that in retrospect might be judged as misbehaviour."
Matthew Muggeridge, the 39-year-old grandson of the celebrated writer and broadcaster Malcolm, is currently working as a lawyer in the US. He joined the Legion in 1990 because he saw it as "dynamic, challenging and growing. It enthused me about my faith – and you don't get that with ordinary diocesan seminaries." Though he left six years later, he did so, he says, with no regrets and remains a supporter of the order and its defence of traditional Catholic values.
He was part of Legion plans to establish a base in London. Still a seminarian, he was sent to the affluent parish of St James, Spanish Place, in Marylebone, central London, along with an Irish Legionary priest. However, Cardinal Basil Hume, head of the local Westminster archdiocese, was not keen on their presence, Muggeridge recalls. "He tended to equate the Legion with Opus Dei, about which he also had well-recorded concerns, but we were not the same. We were so visible, whereas Opus Dei tends to act behind the scenes." The Legion is still thought to have ambitions on London. In the past year, one of its priests has been calling on parishes in wealthy areas of the capital.
Maciel had prepared himself a tomb in Our Lady of Guadalupe, the church he built in Rome in the 1950s. In the event, he was laid to rest in January 2008 in his family's modest crypt in his hometown in Mexico. The past 18 months have been a traumatic time for Legionaries. The secrecy rules meant they knew nothing of the charges against Nuestro Padre. The first they heard was when, a year after Maciel's death, Father Alvaro Corcuera, his hand-picked successor, confirmed the existence of Norma Hilda.
The Legion is tight-lipped about its current predicament. Jim Fair, its communications director, declined even to discuss the issues raised by the former Legionaries in this article. In brief written answers to questions I submitted, he said that the Legion was "grateful" for the present Vatican investigation and "sad" about the "aspects of our founder's life of which we were not aware". On the charge that the order has a cult-like approach, Fair wrote: "We listen carefully to what former members have to say. At the same time we listen to the voice of the Church and to the principles of religious life throughout the centuries as a guideline."
Adam Dunbar feels the revelations will have had a profound effect on his friends still in the Legion. "Imagine, after half a century of being told that Maciel was a living saint, you discover that this is a hall of smoke and mirrors. Who is the victim then? Apart from the sexual abuse, if it existed, what about this abuse of lives?"
Back in the City of London, Todd Carpunky has, he says, put the Legion (and his Catholicism) behind him. His doubts began when he contracted a liver infection because painful gallstones had gone untreated. His superiors advised him instead to swim and pray to Mary. Later, he was made to wait several months for an operation on a disc problem in his back that had left him disabled, because Nuestro Padre couldn't decide what to do with him. "The final straw came when I was sitting in a doctor's office and the Legionary with me admitted they had been lying about not being able to find a surgeon to see me. I was told, 'Just obey.' That's when I snapped and realised they were crazy. I checked my brain back in and left."
For him, the story of the Legion is not just another aspect of clerical sex abuse. "It really comes down to the fact that they cared more about building the Kingdom of Maciel than the Kingdom of God. The Legion calls itself Catholic but it is inhumane and really damages people. That is what distinguishes it from other religious orders." n
A catalogue of abuse
Britain Father Michael Hill (pictured) was convicted in 1997 of sexual abuse of nine children. It emerged that his local bishop, the future Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, had been aware that concerns had been raised about Hill's behaviour, but had moved him to another parish.
US Allegations of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests were first made public in 1984. In September 2003, the archdiocese of Boston paid $85m in compensation to 552 victims. Many other dioceses have made similar payments – to an estimated total of $1bn. In 2004 the archdiocese of Portland declared itself bankrupt as a result.
Austria Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër was dismissed as Archbishop of Vienna by Pope John Paul II in 1995 after it emerged that he had abused young boys at Catholic schools over a 40-year period. One expert suggested he may have had 2,000 victims.
Ireland In May 2009, High Court judge Sean Ryan published a report of his nine-year investigation detailing the beating, rape and humiliation of thousands of children by priests and nuns in the schools they ran.
Australia In July 2008 in St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney, Pope Benedict XVI made an unprecedented apology for the crimes of priests against minors. "I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured and I assure them that, as their pastor, I too share in their suffering."
Afghanistan - A HERO SPEAKS THE TRUTH
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/12/afghanistan-taliban-troops-helmand-letters
Letters sent from the front line in Helmand province by an experienced soldier. They have been edited by the Observer only for operational security.
25 June
Dear S,
The army have binned the "snatch wagon" and replaced it with Vixen and we thought, fucking hell, they are really screwing the nut [doing well] this Labour government. That is until we saw a Vixen, which is a snatch with fancy wheels, and we think some wriggly tin slapped underneath. Basically it's a PR stunt so the government can say, yes, we can confirm all snatch Land Rovers have been withdrawn from theatre and replaced by the Vixen. They are better at smoke and mirrors than Paul Daniels. It's like painting an elephant red and renaming it a fire engine.
I am moving again, mate ... to take more ground off the Taliban, but the way the head shed [headquarters] are mate it's a fucking joke, we nod [see] 4 x Taliban 150m away in a compound the other day and we were denied to go in there and kill them. The OC [officer commanding] said it wasn't worth the risk and here was me thinking the infantry's mission was to close with and kill the enemy.
I really still cannot understand why we are here. These cunts are still harvesting the poppies and growing them right outside the comps [compounds]; it's a fucking joke. The positions must really believe everything they're told by the army commanders. If anything happens to me, don't let them tell people I believed in the mission, because I don't. I am here because I'm a paratrooper. I wanted to test myself in combat and that's the truth.
This place is a fucking joke and we should fuck these money-grabbing, smelly, lazy fuckers off [MPs] and spend the money on our own.
Well, mate, enough of the rant. I am off back to Camp Bastion for two days to have pizza, coke, tea from a mug, full English, get my clothes washed, shower, air conditioning, pie chips + gravy, newspaper and some decent sleep.
16 June
Dear J,
Well we are definitely not fucking winning anything and are just going out getting shot at, shooting back, waiting for some cunt in the ops room to make decision whether we can have fire support or not because we might set fire to a field of wheat and upset the locals (fucking criminal). Well, mate, I have been blown up again, but was in one of the new Mastiff vehicles and they can take a fair old fucking wallop. I am a bit deaf but none the worse for wear. We don't get to know much in the fobs [forward operating base] about what's going on around Afghanistan.
The head sheds are really bad mate and I think they make it up as they go along. The fob I am now in doesn't have vehicles come to it because they keep getting ambushed and keep going over IEDs at a bridge at a crossroads. You would think with all the surveillance assets we possess we could do something about it but we can't. I don't fucking rate the Taliban; in fact; they are shit houses. One minute they fight, the next they hide their weapons and say they are farmers. They are fucking cowards still I keep shooting them. I hit one last week who stepped onto the road because he thought he hit me.
We don't patrol out during the day from this fob because the Taliban are quick to react and as I said they are farmers one minute and Taliban the next. They must keep their weapons close to these compounds and bring them out when called. We mount a lot of night ambushes but to no avail ... it's about time we got stuck in and battered these fuckers.
We got smashed the other day, mate, and got pinned down in a compound 150 metres from the base. We fired the Javelin to cover our withdrawal but had to wait 10 minutes for smoke again - fucking criminal. I can honestly say mate I was fucking terrified and now know what the blokes went through waiting for the whistle in the trenches in WW1.
We sprinted 150 metres with tracer and dust flying everywhere and how nobody got killed or even hit I will never know. Life's OK out here; we have plenty of water and the new ration packs are great. We know if we get hit the choppers will come but if it's too dodgy then it's the Yanks who have more fucking balls than the RAF, they will come and get you. However in the Chinooks they have a surgical team in the back who are fucking brilliant. The new Mastiff wagons are great and have been blown up about 8 times with 1 minor back injury.
27 May
Dear S,
Well things here are very fucking strange mate and the head shed couldn't organise a chimp's tea party let alone fight the Taliban. We have 30 blokes here to defend a compound that doesn't stop 7.62 [calibre ammunition] and is limited when it comes to defence. We have 4 sangers, 1 in each corner, but no front gate (you could march the entire Mexican TA band in here) and it would be hard to stop ... in our fob we haven't a qualified medic.
The only person we have is an advanced team medic, but don't let that fool you, all he can do is a, b, c, d. or the 4 bases as they know them. He asked me if I knew how to drip people as he doesn't know how to. We have been promised a medic but none has arrived but we are still patrolling.
Every field here is overflowing with poppies and from the sangers we watch the farmers go about collecting the resin to make heroin and silly me, thought we were here to stop all that but maybe not.
When we go out on patrol we can only go 300 meters to our south and the shit hits the fan big time, as the Taliban are there and open up with everything when we step into the turf. All we own mate is the fob. And about 100m around it. Everywhere else mate is poppy fields and wheat and fuck all else.
Well mate there is loads more I can tell you, but I have to go. You need to get out here mate to see this fucking circus.
Letters sent from the front line in Helmand province by an experienced soldier. They have been edited by the Observer only for operational security.
25 June
Dear S,
The army have binned the "snatch wagon" and replaced it with Vixen and we thought, fucking hell, they are really screwing the nut [doing well] this Labour government. That is until we saw a Vixen, which is a snatch with fancy wheels, and we think some wriggly tin slapped underneath. Basically it's a PR stunt so the government can say, yes, we can confirm all snatch Land Rovers have been withdrawn from theatre and replaced by the Vixen. They are better at smoke and mirrors than Paul Daniels. It's like painting an elephant red and renaming it a fire engine.
I am moving again, mate ... to take more ground off the Taliban, but the way the head shed [headquarters] are mate it's a fucking joke, we nod [see] 4 x Taliban 150m away in a compound the other day and we were denied to go in there and kill them. The OC [officer commanding] said it wasn't worth the risk and here was me thinking the infantry's mission was to close with and kill the enemy.
I really still cannot understand why we are here. These cunts are still harvesting the poppies and growing them right outside the comps [compounds]; it's a fucking joke. The positions must really believe everything they're told by the army commanders. If anything happens to me, don't let them tell people I believed in the mission, because I don't. I am here because I'm a paratrooper. I wanted to test myself in combat and that's the truth.
This place is a fucking joke and we should fuck these money-grabbing, smelly, lazy fuckers off [MPs] and spend the money on our own.
Well, mate, enough of the rant. I am off back to Camp Bastion for two days to have pizza, coke, tea from a mug, full English, get my clothes washed, shower, air conditioning, pie chips + gravy, newspaper and some decent sleep.
16 June
Dear J,
Well we are definitely not fucking winning anything and are just going out getting shot at, shooting back, waiting for some cunt in the ops room to make decision whether we can have fire support or not because we might set fire to a field of wheat and upset the locals (fucking criminal). Well, mate, I have been blown up again, but was in one of the new Mastiff vehicles and they can take a fair old fucking wallop. I am a bit deaf but none the worse for wear. We don't get to know much in the fobs [forward operating base] about what's going on around Afghanistan.
The head sheds are really bad mate and I think they make it up as they go along. The fob I am now in doesn't have vehicles come to it because they keep getting ambushed and keep going over IEDs at a bridge at a crossroads. You would think with all the surveillance assets we possess we could do something about it but we can't. I don't fucking rate the Taliban; in fact; they are shit houses. One minute they fight, the next they hide their weapons and say they are farmers. They are fucking cowards still I keep shooting them. I hit one last week who stepped onto the road because he thought he hit me.
We don't patrol out during the day from this fob because the Taliban are quick to react and as I said they are farmers one minute and Taliban the next. They must keep their weapons close to these compounds and bring them out when called. We mount a lot of night ambushes but to no avail ... it's about time we got stuck in and battered these fuckers.
We got smashed the other day, mate, and got pinned down in a compound 150 metres from the base. We fired the Javelin to cover our withdrawal but had to wait 10 minutes for smoke again - fucking criminal. I can honestly say mate I was fucking terrified and now know what the blokes went through waiting for the whistle in the trenches in WW1.
We sprinted 150 metres with tracer and dust flying everywhere and how nobody got killed or even hit I will never know. Life's OK out here; we have plenty of water and the new ration packs are great. We know if we get hit the choppers will come but if it's too dodgy then it's the Yanks who have more fucking balls than the RAF, they will come and get you. However in the Chinooks they have a surgical team in the back who are fucking brilliant. The new Mastiff wagons are great and have been blown up about 8 times with 1 minor back injury.
27 May
Dear S,
Well things here are very fucking strange mate and the head shed couldn't organise a chimp's tea party let alone fight the Taliban. We have 30 blokes here to defend a compound that doesn't stop 7.62 [calibre ammunition] and is limited when it comes to defence. We have 4 sangers, 1 in each corner, but no front gate (you could march the entire Mexican TA band in here) and it would be hard to stop ... in our fob we haven't a qualified medic.
The only person we have is an advanced team medic, but don't let that fool you, all he can do is a, b, c, d. or the 4 bases as they know them. He asked me if I knew how to drip people as he doesn't know how to. We have been promised a medic but none has arrived but we are still patrolling.
Every field here is overflowing with poppies and from the sangers we watch the farmers go about collecting the resin to make heroin and silly me, thought we were here to stop all that but maybe not.
When we go out on patrol we can only go 300 meters to our south and the shit hits the fan big time, as the Taliban are there and open up with everything when we step into the turf. All we own mate is the fob. And about 100m around it. Everywhere else mate is poppy fields and wheat and fuck all else.
Well mate there is loads more I can tell you, but I have to go. You need to get out here mate to see this fucking circus.
The Slow Suicide of Christianity
In the same week the Methodist Church embraces politics and political correctness, this article must be read.
The Churches no longer worship Christ, they worship Satan.
Therefore they support the satanic in our world.
http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/c2009/cbarchive_20090710.html
Good For Nothing Christians
by Chuck Baldwin
July 10, 2009
"Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men." (Matt. 5:13 KJV)
Jesus said that salt without savor is "good for nothing." Savor is the ingredient, the character that gives salt its quality--and its value. When salt is as it should be, it is a most precious commodity. Not only is it used as a seasoning; it is, more importantly, a preservative. As most everyone knows, salt was the primary source of food preservation before the days of refrigeration. Salt has been deemed to be so valuable at times that wars have actually been waged over it. During times of unusual deprivation, salt can be even more valuable than precious metals. But when salt loses its saltiness, it is absolutely worthless; it is "good for nothing."
Jesus plainly proclaimed that He viewed His disciples as being the salt of society. In other words, when believers have the character they should have, they provide the preservation of the land. They hold back and retard the putrefying properties of spoilage and decay. But when Christians lose their character, when they lose the internal resistance to decay, they become "good for nothing" and the result is, the land is "trodden under foot of men."
It grieves me to say that, for the most part, the modern Christian, the modern pastor, and the modern church have lost their savor. Taken as a whole, we have lost our inner character: the ability to resist decay and preserve the land has long departed, and America is fast being "trodden under foot of men."
Our churches are no longer places of respite from the world: they are mirrors of it: the same dress; the same attitudes; the same carnality; the same spirit; the same stubbornness; the same pride. Churches are no longer bastions of truth: they are glorified social clubs or mere corporations, where Christianity is never allowed to interfere with business. Instead of being watchmen on the wall, our pastors are CEOs or, even worse, politicians. Popularity and personal ambition far outweigh commitment to truth and an independent mind. And as for Christian homes, forget it. The modern American home is straight out of Isaiah chapter three: "babes shall rule over them." In the average "Christian" home, children rule the mothers, and mothers, in turn, rule the fathers. Discipline and instruction are out; leniency and ignorance are in.
We have a pandemic all right, but it's not the swine flu: it is a pandemic of spineless Christianity. Parents who cannot stand up to their own children; pastors who cannot stand up to their own congregations; religious leaders who cannot stand up to politicians; and churches that cannot stand up to unconstitutional government.
Our so-called "conservative Christian" special interest groups are far more concerned about not losing financial contributions than they are about confronting the real evils of society. And as far as the Religious Right is concerned, it lost its soul somewhere early on in the first administration of George W. Bush.
If one is looking for someone to blame America's demise on, don't look to the prostitutes, drug dealers, or crooked politicians: look no further than the doorsteps of America's churches. While the ominous clouds of oppression and tyranny boil overhead, our churches are content to play kid games and wallow in their own materialism and laziness. I realize there are exceptions to the rule, of course, but they are few and far between.
Sadder still is the lack of anything on the horizon that points to any kind of spiritual awakening. Look at the churches that are growing: for the most part, they are of the Joel Osteen and Rick Warren variety, where conviction has been replaced with compromise, and popularity has replaced principle. Genuine Bible prophets usually occupy the pulpits where hardly anyone attends. Truth has been replaced with entertainment, and calls for repentance are drowned out by the clamor for prosperity theology.
I can tell you from personal experience that, in more than 34 years of Gospel ministry, it has never been harder to continue to carry the torch of truth than it is today. It takes a toll on one's physical health and emotional being, and even on one's family. Any pastor desiring to carry the torch of truth today need not expect to have many friends. And any evangelist desiring to carry the torch of truth today need not expect to get many meetings. Truth is about as popular as a bad case of the measles, and yes, I mean among today's professing "Christians."
Should it surprise us, then, that we see the encroachment of our liberties and the erosion of constitutional government coming hard and fast? Should it surprise us that America is losing its conscience--not to mention our heritage? Should it surprise us when we see hundreds of large, empty internment camps popping up everywhere? Should it surprise us when we read of would-be tyrants in Washington, D.C., trying to pass egregious legislation that would strip us of our Bill of Rights? Should it surprise us when we see multinational corporations working with foreign governments to erode the sovereignty of these United States? Should it surprise us when we see both Republican and Democratic Presidential administrations look the other way while our borders are being invaded and even erased?
When the salt loses its savor, it is "cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men." And that is exactly what is happening to us today.
Does all this make me fatalistic? Not at all. I am absolutely convinced that God will always reserve to Himself a faithful remnant and a land of liberty for those who desire it. But before we talk about the land, we must be sure that our hearts are willing to pay the price to obtain it. We'll leave that discussion for another time.
In the meantime, the clarion call to "come out" of this apostate, compromising, and carnal "church" is a good place to begin. We created our Black Regiment directory to help people find churches that were willing to stand up for Christ and liberty, as did colonial preachers of old. To locate Black Regiment churches and pastors in your area, or to volunteer to be a Black Regiment pastor, go to
http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/blackregiment.php
*If you appreciate this column and want to help me distribute these editorial opinions to an ever-growing audience, donations may now be made by credit card, check, or Money Order. Use this link:
http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/donate.php
The Churches no longer worship Christ, they worship Satan.
Therefore they support the satanic in our world.
http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/c2009/cbarchive_20090710.html
Good For Nothing Christians
by Chuck Baldwin
July 10, 2009
"Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men." (Matt. 5:13 KJV)
Jesus said that salt without savor is "good for nothing." Savor is the ingredient, the character that gives salt its quality--and its value. When salt is as it should be, it is a most precious commodity. Not only is it used as a seasoning; it is, more importantly, a preservative. As most everyone knows, salt was the primary source of food preservation before the days of refrigeration. Salt has been deemed to be so valuable at times that wars have actually been waged over it. During times of unusual deprivation, salt can be even more valuable than precious metals. But when salt loses its saltiness, it is absolutely worthless; it is "good for nothing."
Jesus plainly proclaimed that He viewed His disciples as being the salt of society. In other words, when believers have the character they should have, they provide the preservation of the land. They hold back and retard the putrefying properties of spoilage and decay. But when Christians lose their character, when they lose the internal resistance to decay, they become "good for nothing" and the result is, the land is "trodden under foot of men."
It grieves me to say that, for the most part, the modern Christian, the modern pastor, and the modern church have lost their savor. Taken as a whole, we have lost our inner character: the ability to resist decay and preserve the land has long departed, and America is fast being "trodden under foot of men."
Our churches are no longer places of respite from the world: they are mirrors of it: the same dress; the same attitudes; the same carnality; the same spirit; the same stubbornness; the same pride. Churches are no longer bastions of truth: they are glorified social clubs or mere corporations, where Christianity is never allowed to interfere with business. Instead of being watchmen on the wall, our pastors are CEOs or, even worse, politicians. Popularity and personal ambition far outweigh commitment to truth and an independent mind. And as for Christian homes, forget it. The modern American home is straight out of Isaiah chapter three: "babes shall rule over them." In the average "Christian" home, children rule the mothers, and mothers, in turn, rule the fathers. Discipline and instruction are out; leniency and ignorance are in.
We have a pandemic all right, but it's not the swine flu: it is a pandemic of spineless Christianity. Parents who cannot stand up to their own children; pastors who cannot stand up to their own congregations; religious leaders who cannot stand up to politicians; and churches that cannot stand up to unconstitutional government.
Our so-called "conservative Christian" special interest groups are far more concerned about not losing financial contributions than they are about confronting the real evils of society. And as far as the Religious Right is concerned, it lost its soul somewhere early on in the first administration of George W. Bush.
If one is looking for someone to blame America's demise on, don't look to the prostitutes, drug dealers, or crooked politicians: look no further than the doorsteps of America's churches. While the ominous clouds of oppression and tyranny boil overhead, our churches are content to play kid games and wallow in their own materialism and laziness. I realize there are exceptions to the rule, of course, but they are few and far between.
Sadder still is the lack of anything on the horizon that points to any kind of spiritual awakening. Look at the churches that are growing: for the most part, they are of the Joel Osteen and Rick Warren variety, where conviction has been replaced with compromise, and popularity has replaced principle. Genuine Bible prophets usually occupy the pulpits where hardly anyone attends. Truth has been replaced with entertainment, and calls for repentance are drowned out by the clamor for prosperity theology.
I can tell you from personal experience that, in more than 34 years of Gospel ministry, it has never been harder to continue to carry the torch of truth than it is today. It takes a toll on one's physical health and emotional being, and even on one's family. Any pastor desiring to carry the torch of truth today need not expect to have many friends. And any evangelist desiring to carry the torch of truth today need not expect to get many meetings. Truth is about as popular as a bad case of the measles, and yes, I mean among today's professing "Christians."
Should it surprise us, then, that we see the encroachment of our liberties and the erosion of constitutional government coming hard and fast? Should it surprise us that America is losing its conscience--not to mention our heritage? Should it surprise us when we see hundreds of large, empty internment camps popping up everywhere? Should it surprise us when we read of would-be tyrants in Washington, D.C., trying to pass egregious legislation that would strip us of our Bill of Rights? Should it surprise us when we see multinational corporations working with foreign governments to erode the sovereignty of these United States? Should it surprise us when we see both Republican and Democratic Presidential administrations look the other way while our borders are being invaded and even erased?
When the salt loses its savor, it is "cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men." And that is exactly what is happening to us today.
Does all this make me fatalistic? Not at all. I am absolutely convinced that God will always reserve to Himself a faithful remnant and a land of liberty for those who desire it. But before we talk about the land, we must be sure that our hearts are willing to pay the price to obtain it. We'll leave that discussion for another time.
In the meantime, the clarion call to "come out" of this apostate, compromising, and carnal "church" is a good place to begin. We created our Black Regiment directory to help people find churches that were willing to stand up for Christ and liberty, as did colonial preachers of old. To locate Black Regiment churches and pastors in your area, or to volunteer to be a Black Regiment pastor, go to
http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/blackregiment.php
*If you appreciate this column and want to help me distribute these editorial opinions to an ever-growing audience, donations may now be made by credit card, check, or Money Order. Use this link:
http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/donate.php
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
