Know your BFEE: The Fellowship ‘Preys’ for America

[Octafish]

Ever hear of The Fellowship Foundation? How about The Order? They have more names, Legion, as they say.

One thing draws them all together:
They each spell the Good Lord’s name with dollar signs.
And they use the money to gain power.
And they use the power to gain money.

That does not follow Christ’s precepts.
That follows the precepts of Machiavellin and Rove.



One person suffering from it is a good man running for the U.S. Senate in Nevada, Jack Carter.
He is the son of former President Jimmy Carter, himself a good man.

Jack Carter’s opponent is a fellah named Ensign.
A bit about him and the vast Right Wing Church of Capital and Power:

Senator Ensign and The Bonds of Fellowship

guest post by myrna the minx

EXCERPT…

Nevada's junior Senator, John Ensign, has a reputation for looking good and ingratiating himself to corporate America, particularly to telecommunications giants like AT&T that help the government spy on American citizens. Nevada bloggers like the Las Vegas Gleaner, the Desert Beacon, and even the usually single-minded Nevada Scandalmonger at Vote Gibbons Out have been diligently documenting Ensign's tendency to choose the interests of corporations over consumers for years. With just about every vote he makes or position he takes, Ensign has proved that he is no friend of the real working men and women of this country. Usually operating under the radar while his more famous and influential conservative colleagues do the work of rolling back support for preventative health care, education, civil rights, and the environment, with the stem cell research debate, Ensign has been pushed into the spotlight. But hey, he likes kittens. Ensign's latest move was to be one of the 37 Senators to vote against HR 810, legislation that would have allowed federal funding for research on stem cell lines derived from embryos that would otherwise be destroyed, and one of the few pieces of legislation in a long time to have strong bi-partisan support. In state known for its strong libertarian streak, Ensign has exhibited no backbone whatsoever. He's made a career out of being a Bush lackey.

Since assuming his seat, Ensign has voted with Bush 96% of the time. He even managed a perfect score in 2004. Was his vote against HR 810 a surprise? Of course not. But any cursory look at Ensign's background brings up some pretty interesting associations with groups front and center in the culture ware between those who think Christian ideology should play a central role in government—groups on the far right like the Promise Keepers, the Christian Coalition, the Family Research Council, and the Fellowship.

Ensign's constituents are barely aware of how he votes on the issues—they're either bamboozled by his game show host good looks or deceived by ring general Harry Reid's protective order. But you've never heard of the Fellowship have you? That, my friends, is completely by design. You're probably familiar with the National Prayer breakfast they sponsor once a year and attended by the President and other influential people, but the rest of their operation is a mystery to us lay folks who don't see a place for religion in politics. When its members are asked about the Fellowship, they either deny its existence or decline to answer questions. In 2002, The Los Angeles Times published an article called "Showing Faith in Discretion" by Lisa Getter, that gives us an inside glimpse into this secretive group:

"The Fellowship is a collection of public officials, business leaders and religious ministries that defies easy description. Sometimes known as the prayer group movement, its members espouse a common devotion to the teachings of Jesus and a belief that peace and justice can come about through quiet efforts to change individuals, particularly those in positions of power. Personal outreach is paramount. ….They also share a vow of silence about Fellowship activities."

SNIP…

Clearly we can forget about the separation of church and state here. Although the Fellowship maintains its rule of working in silence is purely a religious insistence on humility, its pretty clear they remain silence to prevent the public from learning about influence they have and how they use it. I was unable to confirm whether this is still the case, but in 2002, who do you think was living in a house owned by the Fellowship on Capital Hill that just happens to be registered as a church? Why, our own Senator Ensign along with fellow soldiers of the culture war Sam Brownback and Tom Coburn (who proposed the death penalty for doctors who performed abortions, which I guess means he also believes in suicide since he has been exposed as a doctor who performed abortions). Reportedly, Tom Delay is another famous member. According to Jeff Sharlet in the January 2006 article for Rolling Stone magazine, Brownback was brought into the Fellowship fold by Frank Carlson, a former Republican senator from Kansas. Sharlet points out that at a 1955 meeting of the Fellowship, Carlson declared the group's mission to be "'Worldwide Spiritual Offensive,' a vision of manly Christianity dedicated to the expansion of American power as a means of spreading the gospel." No church and state conflict there. More on the Fellowship's god peddling from Jeff Sharlet for Rolling Stone:

"They were striving, ultimately, for what Coe calls 'Jesus plus nothing' -- a government led by Christ's will alone. In the future envisioned by Coe, everything -- sex and taxes, war and the price of oil -- will be decided upon not according to democracy or the church or even Scripture. The Bible itself is for the masses; in the Fellowship, Christ reveals a higher set of commands to the anointed few. It's a good old boy's club blessed by God. Brownback even lived with other cell members in a million-dollar, red-brick former convent at 133 C Street that was subsidized and operated by the Fellowship. Monthly rent was $600 per man -- enough of a deal by Hill standards that some said it bordered on an ethical violation, but no charges were ever brought. Brownback and Ensign also lived with Fellowship brother Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma doctor who has advocated the death penalty for abortion providers. The men in Brownback's cell talk about politics, but the senator insists it's not political. 'It's about faith and action,' he says. According to 'Thoughts on a Core Group,' the primary purpose of the cell is to become an 'invisible "believing" group.' Any action the cell takes is an outgrowth of belief, a natural extension of 'agreements reached in faith and in prayer.' Deals emerge not from a smoke-filled room but from a prayer-filled room. 'Typically,' says Brownback, 'one person grows desirous of pursuing an action' -- a piece of legislation, a diplomatic strategy -- 'and the others pull in behind.' In 1999, Brownback worked with Rep. Joe Pitts, a Fellowship brother, to pass the Silk Road Strategy Act, designed to block the growth of Islam in Central Asian nations by bribing them with lucrative trade deals. That same year, he teamed up with two Fellowship associates -- former Sen. Don Nickles and the late Sen. Strom Thurmond -- to demand a criminal investigation of a liberal group called Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Last year, several Fellowship brothers, including Sen. John Ensign, another resident of the C Street house, supported Brownback's broadcast decency bill. And Pitts and Coburn joined Brownback in stumping for the Houses of Worship Act to allow tax-free churches to endorse candidates. The most bluntly theocratic effort, however, is the Constitution Restoration Act, which Brownback co-sponsored with Jim DeMint, another former C Streeter who was then a congressman from South Carolina. If passed, it will strip the Supreme Court of the ability to even hear cases in which citizens protest faith-based abuses of power. Say the mayor of your town decides to declare Jesus lord and fire anyone who refuses to do so; or the principal of your local high school decides to read a fundamentalist prayer over the PA every morning; or the president declares the United States a Christian nation. Under the Constitution Restoration Act, that'll all be just fine."

CONTINUED…

http://www.taylormarsh.com/archives_view.php?id=24283

So, let’s meet the peeps…

Meet ‘The Family’

By Anthony Lappé, Guerrilla News Network
Posted on June 13, 2003, Printed on October 16, 2006

It sounded like a reality show on the PAX network: Six conservative politicians living in a DC townhouse owned by a fundamentalist Christian organization. What happens when you stop being polite and start finding Jesus?

In April, the AP broke the story that six U.S. congressmen were paying the bargain rate of $600 a month each to live together in a swanky DC townhouse owned by a secretive fundamentalist Christian group known as the Fellowship or the Foundation. Many, understandably, were curious. Who is this organization, and what is its agenda?

The group, the AP reported, is best known for holding the annual National Prayer Breakfast at the White House, which offers scores of national and international heavy hitters the opportunity to praise God in close proximity to the President. In the article, the congressmen boarding at the house denied owing any allegiance to the group, and several professed ignorance of even the most basic facts about the organization. Little else was reported about the group's history, motives or backers.

CONTINUED…

http://www.alternet.org/story/16167/

Gee. How weird is that? People who don’t believe in separation of church and state.



Ask George Washington: That’s un-American.

Ask Ed Meese. He should know.

Jesus Plus Nothing

Originally from Harper's Magazine, March 2003.
By Jeffrey Sharlet.

And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. —Matthew 10:36

This is how they pray: a dozen clear-eyed, smooth-skinned “brothers” gathered together in a huddle, arms crossing arms over shoulders like the weave of a cable, leaning in on one another and swaying like the long grass up the hill from the house they share. The house is a handsome, gray, two-story colonial that smells of new carpet and Pine-Sol and aftershave; the men who live there call it Ivanwald. At the end of a tree-lined cul-de-sac, quiet but for the buzz of lawn mowers and kids playing foxes-and-hounds in the park across the road, Ivanwald sits as one house among many, clustered together like mushrooms, all devoted, like these men, to the service of Jesus Christ. The men tend every tulip in the cul-de-sac, trim every magnolia, seal every driveway smooth and black as boot leather. And they pray, assembled at the dining table or on their lawn or in the hallway or in the bunk room or on the basketball court, each man's head bowed in humility and swollen with pride (secretly, he thinks) at being counted among such a fine corps for Christ, among men to whom he will open his heart and whom he will remember when he returns to the world not born-again but remade, no longer an individual but part of the Lord's revolution, his will transformed into a weapon for what the young men call “spiritual war.”

SNIP…

Two weeks into my stay, David Coe, Doug's son and the presumptive heir to leadership of the Family, dropped by the house. My brothers and I assembled in the living room, where David had draped his tall frame over a burgundy leather recliner like a frat boy, one leg hanging over a padded arm.

“You guys,” David said, “are here to learn how to rule the world.” He was in his late forties, with dark, gray-flecked hair, an olive complexion, and teeth like a slab of white marble. We sat around him in a rough circle, on couches and chairs, as the afternoon light slanted through the wooden blinds onto walls adorned with foxhunting lithographs and a giant tapestry of the Last Supper. Rafael, a wealthy Ecuadoran who'd been a college soccer star before coming to Ivanwald, had a hard time with English, and he didn't understand what David had said. So he stared, lips parted in puzzlement. David seemed to like that. He stared back, holding Raf's gaze like it was a pretty thing he'd found on the ground. “You have very intense eyes,” David said.

SNIP…

The Family was founded in April 1935 by Abraham Vereide, a Norwegian immigrant who made his living as a traveling preacher. One night, while lying in bed fretting about socialists, Wobblies, and a Swedish Communist who, he was sure, planned to bring Seattle under the control of Moscow, Vereide received a visitation: a voice, and a light in the dark, bright and blinding. The next day he met a friend, a wealthy businessman and former major, and the two men agreed upon a spiritual plan. They enlisted nineteen business executives in a weekly breakfast meeting and together they prayed, convinced that Jesus alone could redeem Seattle and crush the radical unions. They wanted to give Jesus a vessel, and so they asked God to raise up a leader. One of their number, a city councilman named Arthur Langlie, stood and said, “I am ready to let God use me.” Langlie was made first mayor and later governor, backed in both campaigns by money and muscle from his prayer-breakfast friends, whose number had rapidly multiplied.<5> Vereide and his new brothers spread out across the Northwest in chauffeured vehicles (a $20,000 Dusenburg carried brothers on one mission, he boasted). “Men,” wrote Vereide, “thus quickened.” Prayer breakfast groups were formed in dozens of cities, from San Francisco to Philadelphia. There were already enough men ministering to the down-and-out, Vereide had decided; his mission field would be men with the means to seize the world for God. Vereide called his potential flock of the rich and powerful, those in need only of the “real” Jesus, the “up-and-out.”

Vereide arrived in Washington, D.C., on September 6, 1941, as the guest of a man referred to only as “Colonel Brindley.” “Here I am finally,” he wrote to his wife, Mattie, who remained in Seattle. “In a day or two—many will know that I am in town and by God's grace it will hum.” Within weeks he had held his first D.C. prayer meeting, attended by more than a hundred congressmen. By 1943, now living in a suite at Colonel Brindley's University Club, Vereide was an insider. “My what a full and busy day!” he wrote to Mattie on January 22.

The Vice President brought me to the Capitol and counseled with me regarding the programs and plans, and then introduced me to Senator Brewster, who in turn to Senator Burton—then planned further the program and enlisted their cooperation. Then to the Supreme Court for visits with some of them . . . then back to the Senate, House. . . . The hand of the Lord is upon me. He is leading.

By the end of the war, nearly a third of U.S. senators attended one of his weekly prayer meetings.

CONTINUED…

http://www.harpers.org/JesusPlusNothing.html?pg=1

Here's the ironic part. Shouldn't American leaders be aware that the NAZIs were evil?

Author interview excerpt...

GNN: In that vein, reading your article I got the impression they are praising guys like Adolph Hitler and Ghengis Khan -- a lot. Is that a fair assessment of your intention?

SHARLET: In fact, Harpers made me cut back on that stuff. 'We know it's true, but this is already so much to absorb.' That's why I included that line at the end of the story. The leader of the group is having dinner with the younger members of that group and is talking about the bond, the covenant. And he says, "Can anyone think of someone who had a covenant?" And the answer, of course, and everyone knows it, is "Hitler."

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/16167

Wish this were simpler to detail. The story of how these phonies hijacked Jesus for the sake of capitalism is important, not just for the record, but for tomorrow – from Jack Carter in Nevada to all those troops hoping to come home from Iraq and to the frightened people around the world. The Truth shall set us free.

[conscious evolution]

1. One thing I have learned here is to

Pay attention to Octafish.

[Karenina]

7. Aren't you a "quick study!"

Welcome to DU! :toast:

[Octafish]

8. Who would Jesus vote for? Meet Sam Brownback.

Here's a bit more from Mr. Sharlet:

God's Senator

Who would Jesus vote for? Meet Sam Brownback

JEFF SHARLET

EXCERPT...

One of the little-known strengths of the Christian right lies in its adoption of the "cell" -- the building block historically used by small but determined groups to impose their will on the majority. Seventy years ago, an evangelist named Abraham Vereide founded a network of "God-led" cells comprising senators and generals, corporate executives and preachers. Vereide believed that the cells -- God's chosen, appointed to power -- could construct a Kingdom of God on earth with Washington as its capital. They would do so "behind the scenes," lest they be accused of pride or a hunger for power, and "beyond the din of vox populi," which is to say, outside the bounds of democracy. To insiders, the cells were known as the Family, or the Fellowship. To most outsiders, they were not known at all.

"Communists use cells as their basic structure," declares a confidential Fellowship document titled "Thoughts on a Core Group." "The mafia operates like this, and the basic unit of the Marine Corps is the four-man squad. Hitler, Lenin and many others understood the power of a small group of people." Under Reagan, Fellowship cells quietly arranged meetings between administration officials and leaders of Salvadoran death squads, and helped funnel military support to Siad Barre, the brutal dictator of Somalia, who belonged to a prayer cell of American senators and generals.

Brownback got involved in the Fellowship in 1979, as a summer intern for Bob Dole, when he lived in a residence the group had organized in a sorority house at the University of Maryland. Four years later, fresh out of law school and looking for a political role model, Brownback sought out Frank Carlson, a former Republican senator from Kansas. It was Carlson who, at a 1955 meeting of the Fellowship, had declared the group's mission to be "Worldwide Spiritual Offensive," a vision of manly Christianity dedicated to the expansion of American power as a means of spreading the gospel.

Over the years, Brownback became increasingly active in the Fellowship. But he wasn't invited to join a cell until 1994, when he went to Washington. "I had been working with them for a number of years, so when I went into Congress I knew I wanted to get back into that," he says. "Washington -- power -- is very difficult to handle. I knew I needed people to keep me accountable in that system."

Brownback was placed in a weekly prayer cell by "the shadow Billy Graham" -- Doug Coe, Vereide's successor as head of the Fellowship. The group was all male and all Republican. It was a "safe relationship," Brownback says. Conversation tended toward the personal. Brownback and the other men revealed the most intimate details of their desires, failings, ambitions. They talked about lust, anger and infidelities, the more shameful the better -- since the goal was to break one's own will. The abolition of self; to become nothing but a vessel so that one could be used by God.

CONTINUED...

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/9178374/gods_senator

Thanks for the kind words, conscious evolution.

And a most hearty welcome to DU!

[cosmicdot]

17. some of the company Brownback keeps

what an unusual organization for such 'big names' to find common ground

U.S. Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce :: Profile :: Officers

HONORARY COUNCIL OF ADVISORS

James
Baker III

Zbigniew
Brzezinski

Henry
Kissinger

Brent
Scowcroft

John
Sununu

CHAIRMAN EMERITUS

T. Don Stacy

CO-CHAIRMEN OF THE BOARD

James A. Baker, IV
Partner, Baker Botts, L.L.P.

Reza Vaziri
President, R.V. Investment Group

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

The business affairs of USACC are managed by its Board of Directors which is composed of distinguished individuals with an interest in the U.S.-Azerbaijan relationship.

Tim Cejka
President, ExxonMobil Exploration Co.

Farhad Azima
Chairman & CEO, Aviation Leasing Group

Betty Blair
Editor, Azerbaijan International

Greg Saunders
Director, International Affairs, BP

Diana Sedney
Manager, International Government Relations for Chevron

Arne Holhjem
President, Caspian Region ConocoPhilips

Stanley Escudero
Consultant, Moncrief Oil International

Michael Griffin
Vice President, International Operations, Devon Energy

Gregory K. Williams
Strategic Security Manager, Coca Cola

Shapoor Ansari, MD

Serdar Canogullari
General Manager, Azercell Telecom

FORMER MEMBERS OF THE ADVISORY COUNCIL AND THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

The following individuals of high distinction have previously served on the Advisory Council and the Board of Directors:

Dick Cheney
Vice President of the United States of America


Deputy Secretary of State


BOARD OF TRUSTEES

The USACC Board of Trustees is a group of Americans and Azerbaijanis interested in promoting friendship, cooperation and commerce between the American people and the people of Azerbaijan. The Board of Trustees offers its recommendations to the USACC Board of Directors on all matters related to the Chambers programs and activities.

Ilham Aliyev
President of Azerbaijan.

Abdullah Akyuz
President, TUSIAD-US Inc.

Graham Allison
Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Sam Brownback (R-KS)
US Senator

Frank Henke
Chairman, American Bank & Trust Company

Richard Moncrief
Chairman, Moncrief Oil International

Hafiz Pashayev
Ambassador of Azerbaijan in the U.S.

Richard Perle
American Enterprize Institute, former Assistant Secretary of Defense

Joseph R. Pitts (R-PA)
US Congressman

Stephen Robertson
President, Trans Global Projects, Inc.

Frank Verrastro
Director and Senior Fellow in the CSIS Energy Program

OFFICERS

Legal Counsel
Baker Botts, L.L.P.

Mahir Iskender - USACC
Executive Director & Secretary

Taleh Ziyadov - USACC
Deputy Executive Director

http://www.usacc.org/contents.php?cid=2

[conscious evolution]

28. I remember this list

what an unusual organization for such 'big names' to find common ground

U.S. Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce :: Profile :: Officers

HONORARY COUNCIL OF ADVISORS

etc etc....


I remember seeing this a couple of years ago tied to a peak oil paper.
I remember thinking "why the fuck are these people on the Azerbaijan C of C?!?!?"
I know now.

[hootinholler]

2. It's been going on a long time...

Started with Eisenhower.

-Hoot

[Octafish]

9. Don't think they "got" Ike. Do know they got a lot of people from then to now.

Take any GOP attorney general, please.

Will Ed Meese Force Katrina Victims to Glean for Dinner?

by Kurt Nimmo Another Day in the Empire
Entered into the database on Tuesday, September 20th, 2005 @ 15:38:18 MST

EXCERPT...

It should also be noted that Meese is connected to the Council for National Policy, “a secretive forum, formed in 1981, for leading US conservative political leaders, financiers and religious right activist leaders,” according to SourceWatch. Members include Pat Robertson, former AG John Ashcroft, and Rev. Rousas J. Rushdoony, founder of Chalcedon Foundation (now deceased). Rushdoony was an advocate of Christian Reconstructionism and the Chalcedon Foundation promotes the idea that “historic, orthodox, Biblical Christianity should govern every area of thought and life. Chalcedon’s cause is simple, radical, and comprehensive. It admits no division between the ‘private’ and ‘public’ spheres. If God is sovereign and Jesus is Lord, this divine sovereignty and Lordship is designed to engulf every aspect of human existence-not just the private and ’spiritual,’ for instance.”

It is not difficult to connect the dots here. Meese, as the “unofficial adviser for New Orleans area reconstruction” and a follower of Christian Reconstructionism—or so we can only assume since birds of a feather flock together—will likely attempt to force his “faith-based” theocratic dogmatism on the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Not only do reconstructionists believe (under Mosaic Law) homosexuals and fornicators (and those engaging in pre-marital or extra-marital sex) should be stoned to death, they also believe minimum-wage laws should be abolished (note Bush’s revoking of the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act in ravaged areas of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi) and “old-age security would be covered by … care from adult children” (no word on what the elderly who lost their adult children to Katrina will be expected to do), and (my favorite) the poor will be allowed to “glean” (gather grain left behind by reapers) “on private farms,” according to the Christian Century. Just in case you think Meese and the Christian Reconstructionists are lone voices in the spiritual wilderness, consider the following: “approximately half of the members of the U.S. Congress say they are members of these communions,” according to a white paper released by the Boston Wesleyan Association.

CONTINUED...

http://www.lookingglassnews.org/printerfriendly.php?storyid=2579

If their actions weren't so tragic for our country, they'd be funny.

Thanks for giving a damn, Hoot.

[hootinholler]

16. I was referring to Ike as a time demarcation...

Specifically, his Veep is who was got. Prescott begat Tricky Dick, begat poppy, Rummy and the other Dick.

I know you already know that though. Thanks for caring too.

BTW, I haven't seen your thoughts about the Halliburton breaking scandle threads.

-Hoot

[Octafish]

18. Sorry Hoot. That's what I wrote, but it wasn't what I meant.

I know you know that Ike wasn't one of "Them."

Odd how he had a heart attack.



And survived.

Nixon and Bush: Presidential Parallels?

by Pete McCloskey
Published on Sunday, July 17, 2005 by the Sacramento Bee (California)

The eerie parallels between the Richard Nixon and George W. Bush administrations continue.

Once again the famous words of Lord Acton in 1887 come to mind: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Both Nixon in 1972 and Bush in 2004 won re-election to a second term. Both had impressive agendas for domestic reform, but both were at war - Nixon in Vietnam, Bush in Iraq. Both faced what they felt was disloyal, if not treasonous, conduct by former federal employees. Marine veteran Daniel Ellsberg had given the then top secret Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971, and the Times risked prosecution for publishing excerpts, among which was the damning statement by Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton that 70 percent of the reason for fighting the war was to save American face. The Nixon White House was desperate to discredit Ellsberg to preserve dwindling public support for the war - to allow a "decent interval" to elapse before South Vietnam fell to the North, in Henry Kissinger's words.

Nixon's chief domestic adviser, John Ehrlichman, ordered the burglary of Ellsberg's California psychiatrist's office to obtain records that he thought might show Ellsberg to be mentally unstable.

One of President Bush's stated reasons for going to war with Iraq was that Iraq had sought to purchase bomb-making materials from Niger. In 2003 respected former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson said it wasn't so. Then someone high on the White House staff, equally desperate to protect the president's election, sought to discredit Ambassador Wilson by suggesting to the press that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent who had suggested that her husband be sent to Niger.

Both in 1971 and 2003, the actions of these zealous presidential aides had dire results.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0717-19.htm

McCloskey is a good Republican. He ran against Nixon for the Presidential nomination in 1972. He also told the Truth about Pat "The Liquor Officer" Robertson, coward of the Korean War. That I know you know.

[hootinholler]

19. Pat "The Liquor Officer" Robertson...

No, I don';t know bout that one, please, do tell.

-Hoot

[Octafish]

21. The North Korean Army LOVES Pat Robertson

The unctuous TV preacher Marion “Pat” Robertson once was a US Marine officer when he got the call that maybe his life was too important to risk on the battlefield. Sounds familiar to a certain "first family" we know and don't admire.

The story begins in 1951 aboard a Marine troop ship on the way to the fighting on the Korean peninsula. Leading a platoon was the greasy turd Pat Robertson, a newly minted 2nd Lieutenant. A 90-day wonder, 2nd Lt. Robertson got second thoughts about the dire situation that awaited him.

So, Pat Robertson decided to call his daddy, then a very, very conservative and Democratic Senator from Virginia, to get him pulled off his troop transport ASAFP. We wouldn't know about this from all his biographical information on the Pay the Lord Club.

But Robertson did tell the the other officers he would be saying “Sayonara!” when the ship pulled into Yokohama, its final stop before heading toward Korea. The other officers thought he was joking, but when the ship shoved off, there was Pat (and another 2nd lieutenant) on the dock, waving buh-bye.

Most of the officers and Marines went on to get wounded and killed in some of the most fierce action of the Korean War. Not Pat, though. He got assigned to Tokyo and Yokohama, where he earned a reputation as an officer who could get the job done, when it came to booze.

Very odd, in a hypocritical way. Robertson claimed, when he ran for presidunt in 1988, he was a "combat Marine." PTL, at least a couple remember the Truth.

The story was repeated in 1988 when Robertson ran for president as a “Combat Veteran.” The source of the story was Pete McCloskey (R-Calif. McCloskey, then a 2nd Lieutenant leading a platoon of his own, one of the surviving USMC officers who was on the transport.

When Pat Robertson ran for President in 1988, Pete McCloskey decided to relate the story. Pat sued him for libel, but dropped the charges the day the case was to go to trial.

Here's a great resource on the subject:

THE LIQUOR OFFICER

Or PAT ROBERTSON GOES TO WAR

EXCERPT...

Robertson had sailed for Korea in January, 1951, as a new young Second Lieutenant fresh out of Quantico's 11 week basic platoon leader training course. With him was his friend and classmate from Washington and Lee, Ed Gaines. The First Marine Division had taken fearful casualties at the Chosin Reservoir in December when the Chinese had entered this war with a vengeance; new second lieutenants were needed badly and the rumored life expectancy of platoon leaders in combat was only six minutes. Robertson was one of 71 officers and 1900 enlisted men in the Fifth Replacement Draft aboard the U.S.S. General J. C. Breckenridge. The full draft was needed to bring the Divisions' three rifle regiments up to strength for General MacArthur's planned February counter-attack against the Chinese. On the last day before leaving for Korea, however, Robertson and Gaines had been pulled off the ship in Kobe, Japan, with four others whose names had the misfortune to be listed next to Gaines on the roster of lieutenants assigned to the 7th Regiment. The reason: ostensibly to train young Marines coming out of the hospitals after the Chosin Reservoir battle.

Both the First Marine Division personnel office and those officers aboard the Breckenridge who had had combat duty were offended. Captain Harry Steinmeyer, a decorated veteran of Guadalcanal wrote on February 14, 1951:

"Happy Valentines: Here's one I have to tell you. Lt. Gaines & a Lt. Robinson (Whose Father is Senator from Va) were taken off in Japan. In short there were 80 men and 8 2nd Lts pulled on the pretense of training men who came from Korea to go back there. Gaines slipped 2 days before we got to Japan and said he & the other one were going to be pulled off there. It's really rotten politics. I'd sure like to write Winchell on it. See what Walter & Daddy say about that. At least I can live with my conscience. Well so much for that"

First Lieutenant David Hartstein, the Draft's adjutant, wrote his wife the same day:

"Hi There Valentine: Oh yes, there is one thing I wanted to tell you about. When we were in Kobe yesterday a Col. came aboard to choose several officers to retrain casualties that were getting ready to 90 back to Korea. He chose 6 second Lts. none of whom have ever had any combat. Its interesting to note that two of them had said they wouldn't have to go to Korea. One was the Robertson that General Sheppard wanted to see and I'm sure that his father being the Senator from Virginia had nothing to do with it and the other was a kid named Gaines whose father is president of Washington and Lee university. it is interesting though isn't it. See that's what you get when you choose the wrong parents. Incidentally they are both very nice guys but no more anxious to go than the rest of us."

What had caused this extraordinary salvation? As the trial date of March 8, 1988 approached, Robertson found himself in an increasing dilemma. He had shocked the Republicans by strong second place finishes, in Iowa., South Dakota and Minnesota; he had nearly won Michigan, and expected to win South Carolina on Saturday, March 5. March 8, "Super Tuesday" with its 22 separate primaries, was expected to provide perhaps even a majority of delegates in the bible belt states where from whence came Robertson's strongest support. His lawsuit had suppressed any media comment on his alleged "liquor officer" background.

CONTINUED...

http://www.schlatter.org/liquor_officer.htm

Please don't feel sorry for Pat Robertson, DU. He sold PTL for billions, keeping all the money he bilked out of all those senior citizens. He invested the money into gold and diamonds, big-time. Blood diamonds.

[G_j]

3. I should say so!

"Shouldn't American leaders be aware that the NAZIs were evil?"

[Octafish]

10. Tyrant Be Thy Name, Senator

I can't make this stuff up.
I can't even plagiarize the materials right.
To do it justice, I've got to cut and paste.

Tyrant Be Thy Name, Senator

Friday June 10th, 2005, by Jason Miller

EXCERPT...

Selective compassion

Despite his professed deep concern for the plight of the genocide victims in Darfur, Sudan, Brownback has virtually ignored people experiencing similar fates in other nations. It is no coincidence that Brownback focuses his concern on the Sudanese genocide. In Darfur, Muslims are killing Christians. Non-Christians who suffer are apparently not worthy of the Senator’s attention. Like Bush, Brownback believes in the false construct of the "good Christians" versus the "evil Muslims". Obviously, his compassion is reserved for "true believers".

Where is Brownback’s holy devotion to acts of compassion when in comes to homosexuals in America? Gays are the one minority in America who receive no federal protection of their civil rights, and he aims to keep things that way. He has vigorously supported a federal ban on gay marriage and has voted against including sexual orientation to the federal definition of hate crimes. While voting against legislation that would help protect gays from battery or murder, Brownback expressed grave concerns about Terry Schiavo and others like her. Brownback’s concern for human life is both inconsistent and selective.

Wolf in sheep’s clothing

Low key and laid back, Sam Brownback likes to portray himself as a down to earth, small town “family values” man who can relate to the "average American". While he does hail from the tiny hamlet of Parker, Kansas, he can hardly relate to the plight of the average American. He is married to Mary Stauffer, an heiress to a fortune built on a Topeka-based media fortune. His membership in Opus Dei, a secretive, elitist organization with fewer than 90,000 members further distances him from relating to the "average American".

Mr. Brownback exhibited anti-Semitic tendencies and a propensity to use dirty politics in his 1996 campaign for the Senate. In What’s the Matter with Kansas, Thomas Frank wrote:

"Consider the enlightened Sam Brownback. He may be against slavery—and what a bold stand that is 140 years after the Civil War!—but when faced with a tough challenge in 1996 from Democrat Jill Docking of Wichita, his campaign inundated the state with TV commercials that sought to tarnish her by pointing out that she was raised in the now-hated state of Massachusetts and that before she was married her name wasn’t Docking at all (the Dockings are now a famous Kansas family) but Sadowsky. Get it? As though to drive this point home, voters across the state received mysterious phone calls in the week before the Election Day reminding them that ’Docking is a Jew.’"

CONTINUED...

http://www.selvesandothers.org/article9854.html

Like the NAZIs, they invade innocent countries.
Steal elections.
Demonize their opponents.
Destroy the good people who oppose them.

If they steal the elections tomorrow, there's going to be hell to pay.

Thanks for giving a damn, G_j.

[G_j]

27. omg

you are right, one couldn't make this shit up!

will they steal elections?
of course, if they can get away with it.

fortunately they are being watched closely

I suspect though that things will get quite messy in the near future.

thanks for everything Octafish, :yourock:

[AntiFascist]

4. One of the key issues here is that they are anti-democracy...

they know that the sheeple who they control through their churches are more easily persuadable than the broader range of free-thinking and voting Americans. That's why they have infiltrated the voting machine companies. Wally O'Dell thought he was buying a ticket to heaven with his comments about delivering a previous election to Bush.

[Octafish]

12. Douglas Coe runs the Fellowship Foundation.

This guy believes in uh, hierarchy, yeah, hierarchy where there's a top.



I think he's in the middle with Poppy on the left. Don't know the goof on the right. Must be the Son of Coe.

Douglas Coe

The Stealth Persuader: Many people think Congress is the host of the gala annual National Prayer Breakfast, which takes place this week. It is not. The breakfast is organized by 33 members of Congress who belong to a well-connected but secretive Christian group called the Fellowship Foundation, which is run by Douglas Coe. Coe, 76, has been called the "stealth Billy Graham." He specializes in the spiritual struggles of the powerful.

Several members of Congress live in rooms rented in a town house owned by a foundation affiliated with the group. Coe and his associates sometimes travel (on their own dime) with congressional members abroad and—according to investigations by the Los Angeles Times and Harper's—have played backstage roles in such diplomatic coups as the 1976 Camp David accords. Yet Coe also befriends dictators. "He would still hold out hope that these people could be redeemed and try to work through them to help the people over whom they have authority," says Richard Carver, president of the Fellowship's board of directors. Some skeptical Evangelicals criticize Coe's indiscriminate alliances and his downplaying of Jesus' divinity in favor of his earthly teachings—which allows Coe to pray with Muslim and Buddhist leaders. But few turn down an opportunity to confer with him.

SOURCE (a big TIME thing):

http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101050207/

Gee. I wonder who gets to sit at the right hand of Poppy in the Underworld?

[AntiFascist]

13. Another important member of the CNP is Howard Ahmanson, Jr...

a theocratic Dominionist and Reconstructionist who served on the board of the Chalcedon Foundation for over two decades.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Ahmanson_Jr.

His family also happens to have funded the founding executives of major voting machine companies:

In the early 1980s, brothers Bob and Todd Urosevich founded ES&S’s originator, Data Mark. The brothers Urosevich obtained financing from the far-Right Ahmanson family in 1984, which purchased a 68% ownership stake, according to the Omaha World Herald. After brothers William and Robert Ahmanson infused Data Mark with new capital, the name was changed to American Information Systems (AIS). California newspapers have long documented the Ahmanson family’s ties to right-wing evangelical Christian and Republican circles.

...

The Ahmanson family sold their shares in American Information Systems to the McCarthy Group and the World Herald Company, Inc. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel disclosed in public documents that he was the Chairman of American Information Systems and claimed between a $1 to 5 million investment in the McCarthy Group. In 1997, American Information Systems purchased Business Records Corp. (BRC), formerly Texas-based election company Cronus Industries, to become ES&S. One of the BRC owners was Carolyn Hunt of the right-wing Hunt oil family, which supplied much of the original money for the Council on National Policy.

CNP members are also tied to Iran-Contra and other anti-Communist notables and, as I recall, a clique of CNP members surround Blackwell in the political machinations of Ohio.

According to Group Watch, in the 1980s Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr. was a member of the highly secretive far-Right Council for National Policy, an organization that included Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, Major General John K. Singlaub and other Iran-Contra scandal notables, as well as former Klan members like Richard Shoff. Ahmanson, heir to a savings and loan fortune, is little reported on in the mainstream U.S. press. But, English papers like The Independent are a bit more forthcoming on Ahmanson’s politics.

“On the right, figures such as Richard Mellon Scaife and Howard Ahmanson have given hundreds of millions of dollars over several decades to political projects both high (setting up the Heritage Foundation think-tank, the driving engine of the Reagan presidency) and low (bankrolling investigations into President Clinton’s sexual indiscretions and the suicide of the White House insider Vincent Foster),” wrote The Independent last November.

[cosmicdot]

23. I'm leaning toward the CNP being home to the octopus's head

being secretive, it should lose any 501(c)(3) tax exempt status pronto

of course, CNP might just be 'the committee' for delegating money and effort ... the Octopus Danny Casolero was investigating could lead to the top of the BFEE

"We are no longer working to preserve the status quo. We are radicals, working to overturn the present power structure in this country." Paul Weyrich

Names, names, names

Jack Abramoff, Howard Ahmanson, Jr., Gary Aldrich, Richard V. Allen, Richard K. Armey, Gary Bauer, Morton Blackwell, John R. Bolton, Pat Boone, L. Brent Bozell, III, Anita Bryant, Dan Burton, Holland (Holly) Coors, Jeffrey Coors, Joseph Coors, Thomas D. DeLay, Rich DeVos Richard M. DeVos Jr., John T. (Terry) Dolan, Pierre S. du Pont, Jerry Falwell, J. Peter Grace, Jesse Helms, Bob Jones III, Jack Kemp, Dr. D. James Kennedy, Alan Keyes, Beverly LaHayem, Lee LaHaye, Dr. Timothy LaHaye, Trent Lott, Edwin Meese III, Senator Don Nickles, Grover Norquist, Dr. Gary North, Oliver North, George S. Patton III, Ralph E. Reed, Jr., Pat Robertson, Kathleen Teague , Rev. R. J. Rushdoony, Richard M. Scaife, Phyllis Schlafly, John H. Sununu, Richard Viguerie, James G. Watt, Diana Weyrich, Paul Weyrich.

http://www.seekgod.ca/topiccnp.htm

Selected Organization/Media/Project (the tentacles; most all operating under tax exempt/tax deductible IRS regs)

With CNP Members who are involved/connected in some manner.

Accuracy in Media
Accuracy in Academia, Inc
Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty
Agency for International Development
American Center for Law and Justice
American Civil Rights Union
American Coalition for Traditional Values
American Conservative Union
American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies
American Family Association, Inc.
American Freedom Coalition
American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD)
American Political Action Committee
Americans Against World Empire
American Security Council
American Sovereignty Action Project
American Spectator
Americans United for Life
AmeriCares
AMERICA'S VOICE
Ankerberg Theological Research Institute
Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations
Aspen Global Change Institute
Aspen Institute of Humanistic Studies - where "New Democrat/DLCer Simon Rosenberg was a "Fellow")
Ban the Soviet Coalition ~ Dr. David Balsiger
Billy Graham Evangelical Assoc./Training Center/etc.
Bohemian Club
Bott Radio Network
Brigham Young University/ Mormon/ THE CHURCH of JESUS CHRIST of Latter-day Saints
Brookings Institution
California Independent Business PAC
Campaign for Working Families
Campus Crusade for Christ Int’l
Capitol Publishing Co
Capital Research Center
Capitol Resource Institute
Cato Institute
CAUSA (Confederation of Associations for the Unification of the Societies of the Americas, Moon's multinational anti-communist and political organization. CAUSA served as the vehicle for Rev. Moon's funding of the New Right.)
CBN
Center for Futures Education
Center for Individual Rights
Center for Reform
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Center for the American Founding
Center for Peace and Freedom > nixoncenter.org/boardac.htm
Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), FBI or other Intelligence branch
Chalcedon Institute
Christian Action Council ~ Thomas Glessner
Christian Coalition
Christian Film & Television Commission
Christian Financial Concepts., Inc.
Christian Heritage Foundation (CHF) (Moon funded) (Falwell)
Christian Inquirer
Christian Solidarity International
"Christian Voice."
Church League of America
Churches Alive, International
CITIZENS AGAINST GOVERNMENT WASTE
Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms
Citizens for America
Citizens for a Sound Economy
Citizens Intelligence Digest
Citizens United
Claremont Institute
Coalition for a Democratic Majority, > which was associated with the Committee on the Present Danger, The Coalition for Peace Through Strength and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) ~ H. L. "Bill" Richardson
Coalition for Freedom
Coalition for Peace through Strength
Coalition for Religious Freedom
Coalition on Revival (COR)
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Concerned Women for America Inc
Conservative Campaign Fund
Conservative Caucus or it's Leadership Council
Conservative Caucus Research and Education Foundation
Conservatives Against Liberal Legislation (CALL)
Conservative Digest
Council for Government Reform (CGR)
Council for Inter-American Security
Council for the Defense of Freedom
Council on Foreign Relations
Creation Research Society
Discovery Institute
Eagle Forum
Eagle Publishing
Empower America
English First
Ethics and Public Policy Center
Evangelicals and Catholics Together
Family Research Council
Federalist Society
Fellowship of Christian Athletes
Focus on the Family
Free Congress Foundation
Free Congress Research and Education Foundation
Freedom Alliance
Freedom Council
Freedom House
Freedoms Foundation
Free Enterprise Institute
Free Market Foundation
Freemason
Friends of the Americas
Friends of the Democratic Center in Central America (PRODEMCA)
Gideons International
GOPAC
Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
Gospel Films/ Gospel Communications International (GCI)
Gun Owners of America
Gun Owners of California
Heritage Foundation
"High Frontier."
Hillsdale College
Home School Legal Defense Assoc.
Hoover Institution
Hudson Institute
Human Events
Institute for Creation Research
Ku Klux Klan (Conservative Citzen Council)
Landmark Legal Foundation
Legislative Studies Institute
Lehrman Institute
Liberty University
Luis Palau Crusade
Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
Media Research Center (Parents Television Council)
Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem
Mises Institute
Mont Pelerin Society
Moral Majority
National Advisory Board on International Education
National Association of Churches
National Association of Evangelicals
National Center for Policy Analysis
National Center for Privatization.(1983) which has since become the Council for Government Reform
National Center for Public Policy Research's
National Christian Action Coalition
National Congressional Club
National Conservative Political Action Committee
National Council of Churches, also called the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, NCBCPS
National Council on Education Research
National Defense Council Foundation
National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA)
National Legal and Policy Center
National Legal Center for the Public Interest
National Pro-Life PAC
National Religious Broadcasters
National Review or National Review Online
National Rifle Association
National Right to Life Committee or Foundation
National Right To Work Organization/ Legal Defense Foundation
National Right To Work Committee
Nevada Policy Research Institute
Newcomen Society
Nicaraguan Freedom Fund
Outreach Working Group on Central America
Pepperdine University ~ Dr. James Dobson, H. Preston Hawkins, Howard Kaloogian, Richard A. Riddle, Richard M. Scaife
Philadelphia Society
Phillips Foundation
Pioneer Fund
Plymouth Rock Foundation
Promise Keepers
The Prophecy Club
Radio Free Europe or Radio Liberty ~ J. Peter Grace, Dr. Stanley Monteith, Frank Shakespeare
RAMBO Coalition~ Young Americans for Freedom, Students for America, Freedom's Friends, The Conservative Caucus, Alpha 66, American Coalition for Traditional Values, Alive and Free, National Young Vietnamese for Freedom, and Nemesis
Refugee Relief International
Religious Roundtable/ Council of 56
Republican National Coalition for Life
Restore a More Benevolent World Order (RAMBO)
Sacramento Union
Second Amendment Foundation
Soldier of Fortune magazine (SOF)
Sovereign Military Order of the Knights of Malta
"Steeling the Mind of America"
"Strategies to Eliminate Poverty" (STEP) Program and Foundation
The Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation of Texas
The Freemen Institute
The International Freedom Foundation (IFF) ~ Jack Abramoff, Senator Jesse Helms, Alan Keyes, Duncan Sellars
The Independent Institute
The Leadership Institute (where Gannon got his journalism degree in 24 hrs)
The Lincoln Review
The Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty
The Radvanyi Chair in International Studies
The Reason Foundation
The Religious Heritage Freedom Foundation
The Rockford Institute
The Roe Foundation
The Rutherford Institute
The Viguerie Company ~ Richard Viguerie, Morton Blackwell, Carolyn Malenick
The Washington Times ~
Thomas Nelson Publishers
Transnational Association of Christian Schools
United Schools of America, Inc ~ Carlos Benitez
United States Global Strategy Council ~
United Students of America Foundation ~ Jack Abramoff
U.S. Council for World Freedom or it's pre-cursor, American Council for World Freedom
United States Taxpayers Party, now called The Constitution Party ~ Howard Phillips, Brig. General Albion W. Knight , Richard Viguerie, Lawrence D. "Larry" Pratt
U.S. Youth Council, {CIA funded and parent of the International Youth Year Commission}
Western Center for Law and Religious Freedom ~ Howard Ahmanson, Jr.
Women of Our Hemisphere Achieving Together
Women's Federation For World Peace Conference ~ ~ Hon. Gary Bauer
World Anti-Communist League
World Business Council
World Council of Churches
WorldNetDaily
World Vision
Wycliffe Bible Translators International
Young America's Foundation
Young Americans for Freedom >
Young Life
Young President's Organization
Young Republicans
Young Republican National Federation or Young Republican Federation of California
Youth For Christ

http://www.seekgod.ca/cnporganizations.htm

[AntiFascist]

25. The wealthy Richard M. Scaife might be one candidate...

who Steven R. Kangas was pursuing when he was mysteriously suicided. His mission was to "bring back the head of the Octopus"?

http://www.post-gazette.com/regionstate/19990314suicide1.asp

http://victorian.fortunecity.com/brambles/499/Kangas_Kronicles/Kangas3/kangas3.html

Painted by the media as a fringe lunatic and drunk, who had traveled from Las Vegas to Pittsburgh with the intention of killing Scaife, but wound up killing himself instead , Kangas's web site is well done, impressively researched--more like two doctoral theses--and reasonable, though there is some far-out stuff about the Knights of Malta, and he did think the CIA has extraordinary reach--a faith in conspiracy shared by Scaife, who had once run a CIA front: the World News Forum in London. One article on the growth of the underclass under Reagan contains 150-odd graphs and charts. Scaife is mentioned, but not prominently featured in the Website. Recent articles on the CIA's influence in creating the "overclass" are more extreme, though still scrupulously documented.

...

It's possible Kangas, a former Army intelligence specialist (Berlin and Central America Soviet eavesdropper/analyst) and proprietor of a comprehensive liberal Internet site: "Liberalism Resurgent" (http://www.scruz.net/~kangaroo), went to Scaife's Pittsburgh offices and committed suicide as a frustrated last ditch effort to start a serious investigation of Scaife (who is estranged from his own family-Carnegie/Mellon, and most former associates), a theory Kangas's father, conservative Christian Robert Esh espouses.

It is interesting that Scaife is also one of the principle funders of PNAC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Scaife_Foundation

All kinds of CIA-related info on Scaife here, courtesy of Lyndon LaRouche who was pursued by Scaife:

http://members.tripod.com/~american_almanac/scaife.htm

Origins of the secret government

As the Iran-Contra scandals played out in televised Congressional hearings in 1987, many Americans began to get a glimpse of what some Congressmen called the ``parallel'' government, and others simply called the ``secret government.'' What most Americans didn't know, is the intellectual foundations were developed by Richard Mellon Scaife's hirelings.

Two Scaife-funded operations played central roles in preparing the way for the creation of this ``secret government'' machinery. The first was a series of national security seminars held during 1973-79 by the International Security Studies Program at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University--organized by Prof. Uri Ra'anan. The second was a series of seven conferences held during 1979-84 by the ``Consortium for the Study of Intelligence,'' organized by Roy Godson.

...

Scaife's network did not just provide the ``intellectual'' underpinnings for the ``secret government'' and offline intelligence operations. In a couple of instances, his operatives were caught directly laundering money for the drug-running Contras, and they almost found themselves indicted as a result of the Iran-Contra investigation.

[bobthedrummer]

5. K&R

"For from the least of them even unto the greatest of them every one is given to covetousness; and from the prophet even unto the priest every one deals falsely."
Jeremiah 6:13 KJV

"They are swindlers and liars, from the least of them right to the top! Yes, even my prophets and priests."
Jeremiah 6:13 The Living Bible

[Octafish]

20. They chose the Beast.

The eye of the needle would have to be so big.

Meet 'The Family'

By Anthony Lappé, Guerrilla News Network. Posted June 13, 2003.

EXCERPT...

GNN: Are they codified like the Masons or something?

SHARLET: There is an inner core group that is codified in their documents, called the Core. I don't know who is in it other than Doug Coe. The documents I saw only went up to the late 80's with senators, congressmen, and a lot of military men. Before he died, Senator Harold Huges was Core. Former Senator Mark Hatfield used to be Core, and may still be. In the AP article, there is an Air Force officer who I hadn't known about. Then there are associates, usually about 150 associates and they are the key individuals in their areas, and then there are the people who are in a cell with an associate and they are very close. And then there are close friends. Senator James Inhofe, Republican from Oklahoma, is frequently, for instance, referred to as a close friend. President Museveni of Uganda is a close friend. There is no membership card. In all of their letters there is a paragraph that says this is a private, confidential relationship and we don't talk about it when they are recruiting a new person into the group.

GNN: Are there formal events and meetings, other than this national prayer breakfast?

SHARLET: There are literally thousands of governors', mayors', prayer breakfasts around the country. Some of those probably launched forty, fifty years ago and have long since lost their connection to the mothership, as it were. But that's the idea. They're part of the movement. The system is in place, that we should turn to God to make all our decisions. Up until the 1970's, they had Core meetings around the world, but that's as far as I saw in the documents.

GNN: So how scared are you of this group? Are they a force for fascism or some sort of cult-like group with big connections that comes and goes?

SHARLET: I think they are definitely a force for fascism. I think a lot of the way the world looks is a result of their work. They were instrumental in getting U.S. government support for General Suharto, for the generals' juntas in Brazil. Just take those two countries alone, they are two of the biggest countries on Earth. Those countries might have been progressive democracies a long time ago had it not been for U.S. support for those regimes ...

GNN: But don't you think the CIA and the U.S. government's own agenda had a lot to do with those decisions?

SHARLET: Yeah, but they made those connections.

GNN: What are the connections between the CIA and the Fellowship?

SHARLET: A lot of their key men in a country would be the intelligence officers in the American embassy. Throughout their correspondence, that's the kind of guy they would like to have involved. They always had a lot of Army intelligence guys involved, Pentagon guys.

Doug Coe in the early 70's was touring the frontlines in Vietnam with intelligence officers and South Vietnamese generals. That's the level of connections they are talking about, like the Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez . They are the people who brought those people in. They said you need to meet this person. That's how it works.

Their diplomacy can affect some good things, like the truce in Rwanda. They had a lot of connections with the South African regime, where they were generally a moderate, even a progressive force. But it's kinda hard to name a nasty regime around the world that doesn't have really well-documented connections to them. Franco was a hold-out. So they started winning over a bunch of ministers in the Franco regime and then they went to Franco and said this is a good group, we can do business with them.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/16167

Or else they are so small.

[Megahurtz]

6. Hijacked Jesus is Right.

Wolves in sheep's clothing. Looks like they're setting the stage for The AntiChrist to me.
And what's bad is how many of the Fundy-Sheeps have no idea what's really going on
behind closed doors, and if they do they think that "it's the will of the Lawrd!" :eyes:

So. A fairly new "Secret Society". :eyes:

Looks like Poppy is setting up his "New World Order" :scared:

Not looking good. Not looking good at all. :(

[kineneb]

11. you got it

for personal amusement, I sat down last night and read through the Synoptic Gospels- focusing on the "red letter" parts. Man, have all these guys got it totally wrong.

apparently they didn't read this:

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. (Matt.6:24)


...Verily I say unto you, that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.
And again I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than a rich man to enter into the kindom of God. (Matt.19:23-24)

Those are just the NT quotes.

[Octafish]

22. They preach to the rich and decision-making classes.

Very convenient for America's own ruling class.

Now what they ARE afraid of is the light of day.

That's why they do all they can to remain anonymous and to keep their workings secret.

Sounds like Poppy to me, too.

Remember "Team B"? It's how they make real money.

Team B were the intel "pros" who cooked the books for the Cold War. Instead of using the money for better schools, health care, roads, jobs, we used "your money" to pad the pockets of the military-industrial complex and their beards, the BFEE.

Team B: The trillion-dollar experiment

Two experts report on how a group of Cold War true believers were invited to second-guess the CIA. Did the "outside experts" of the 1970s contribute to the military buildup of the 1980s?

By Anne Hessing Cahn
April 1993 pp. 22, 24-27 (vol. 49, no. 03) © 1993 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

lection years have much in common. They produce a profusion of punditry, media attention, and politically expedient action, quickly forgotten, and with little lasting impact. But not always; sometimes events are set into motion that have long lifetimes. This was the case in 1976 when, as in 1992, an incumbent Republican president faced a strong challenge from the right wing of his own party. Then (as last year) sops were offered to placate the far right and, while it is too early to know which of the 1992 capers will endure, we now know a great deal about one of the most political events of 1976, and its remarkably long-lasting effects on U.S. policy.

Late last year, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released the 1976 "Team B" reports. Team B was an experiment in competitive threat assessments approved by then-Director of Central Intelligence George Bush. Teams of "outside experts" were to take independent looks at the highly classified data used by the intelligence community to assess Soviet strategic forces in the yearly National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs). NIEs are authoritative and are widely circulated within the government. U.S. national security policy on various issues as well as the defense budget are based on their general conclusions. Although NIEs represent the collective judgment of the entire intelligence community, the lead agency is the CIA.

There were three "B" teams. One studied Soviet low-altitude air defense capabilities, one examined Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) accuracy, and one investigated Soviet strategic policy and objectives. But it is the third team, chaired by Harvard professor Richard Pipes, that ultimately received considerable publicity and is commonly referred to as Team B.

The Team B experiment was concocted by conservative cold warriors determined to bury détente and the SALT process. Panel members were all hard-liners. The experiment was leaked to the press in an unsuccessful attempt at an "October surprise." But most important, the Team B reports became the intellectual foundation of "the window of vulnerability" and of the massive arms buildup that began toward the end of the Carter administration and accelerated under President Reagan.

SNIP...

The vehicle chosen from within the administration to challenge the CIA was the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). Formed as the Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Affairs by President Eisenhower in 1956, PFIAB was reconstituted by President Kennedy in 1961 after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Members are appointed by the president but hold no other government positions (except possibly on other advisory committees or panels). By 1975, PFIAB was a home for such conservatives as William Casey, John Connally, John Foster, Clare Booth Luce, and Edward Teller.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=apr93cahn

The Truth is out of the bag.
We got them on the run.
If they steal the election, We the People will know.

[DemBones DemBones]

14. Harper's magazine is very informative about ultra-right wing Christians.

http://www.harpers.org/SoldiersOfChrist-20061103288348488.html

This is about Ted Haggard. It's a long article but if you never heard of him until recently and want to know more, read it.

[AntiFascist]

15. Kick for the NIGHT PEOPLE!

[Karenina]

26. Again for the morning!

:kick:

[Wilms]

24. Thanks as always, Oct. n/t

[Rex]

29. It looks good for us tonight Octafish.

Maybe soon we will get busy cleaning up the mess of the past 50 years. I smell Dem landslide.