Monday, February 27, 2017

Danish man charged with ordering sex abuse of 346 Filipino children, Ex-congregants reveal years of ungodly abuse, Child abuse scandal of British children sent abroad


- Danish man charged with ordering the sexual abuse of 346 Filipino children

-  Ex-congregants reveal years of ungodly abuse
"Congregants of the Word of Faith Fellowship were regularly punched, smacked, choked, slammed to the floor or thrown through walls in a violent form of deliverance meant to "purify" sinners"

- The child abuse scandal of the British children sent abroad
"For several decades, the UK sent children across the world to new lives in institutions where many were abused and used as forced labour. It's a scandal that is still having repercussions now."


Danish man charged with ordering the sexual abuse of 346 Filipino children
16 February 2017
A 70-year-old Danish man from the Copenhagen suburb of Brøndby is at the centre of what may be the world's biggest case ever involving the on-demand sexual assaults committed over the internet.

The man is charged with a total of 346 counts of participating in rapes or sexual assaults of minors. The Dane allegedly ordered the abuse of Filipino children from his home and had it streamed to his computer....
 
The children involved were as young as three years old and were forced to perform sexual acts on each other. In some instances, the children's own parents carried out the abuse.

The charges against the 70-year-old are laid out in a 119-page indictment that details the depravity of his alleged acts. In once instance, a four-year-old girl was sexually abused by her own mother after the man paid her $35 dollars, or about 250 kroner. In another, a three-year-old girl was forced to perform oral sex on a five-year-old girl.

The man was arrested in February 2016 after Copenhagen Vestegn Police received a tip-off from a foreign law enforcement agency....
http://www.thelocal.dk/20170216/danish-man-charged-with-ordering-the-sexual-abuse-of-346-filipino-children

U.S. News
AP Exclusive: Ex-congregants reveal years of ungodly abuse
By MITCH WEISS   2/27/17

SPINDALE, N.C. (AP) — From all over the world, they flocked to this tiny town in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, lured by promises of inner peace and eternal life. What many found instead: years of terror — waged in the name of the Lord.

Congregants of the Word of Faith Fellowship were regularly punched, smacked, choked, slammed to the floor or thrown through walls in a violent form of deliverance meant to "purify" sinners by beating out devils, 43 former members told The Associated Press in separate, exclusive interviews.

Victims of the violence included pre-teens and toddlers — even crying babies, who were vigorously shaken, screamed at and sometimes smacked to banish demons.

"I saw so many people beaten over the years. Little kids punched in the face, called Satanists," said Katherine Fetachu, 27, who spent nearly 17 years in the church.

Word of Faith also subjected members to a practice called "blasting" — an ear-piercing verbal onslaught often conducted in hours-long sessions meant to cast out devils.

As part of its investigation, the AP reviewed hundreds of pages of law enforcement, court and child welfare documents, along with hours of conversations with Jane Whaley, the evangelical church's controlling leader, secretly recorded by followers....
https://apnews.com/f3ce7b57d69d4194803e68a40f4c215c/AP-Exclusive:-Ex-congregants-reveal-years-of-ungodly-abuse



The child abuse scandal of the British children sent abroad
By Tom Symonds Home affairs correspondent, BBC News
26 February 2017

For several decades, the UK sent children across the world to new lives in institutions where many were abused and used as forced labour. It's a scandal that is still having repercussions now.

Imagine the 1950s, in the years before air travel became commonplace or the internet dominated our lives. Imagine being a child of those times, barely aware of life even in the next town. An orphan perhaps, living in a British children's home.

Now imagine being told that shortly you would board a ship for somewhere called Australia, to begin a new life in a sunlit wonderland. For good. No choice.

It happened to thousands of British children in the decades immediately following World War Two, and they had little understanding of how it would shape their lives.

The astonishing scandal of the British child migrants will be the first subject for which the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse will hold full public hearings. It's first because the migrants are now nearing the end of their lives....

The Catholic institution known at one point as Bindoon Boys Town is now notorious. Based around an imposing stone mansion in the Australian countryside, 49 miles north of Perth, are buildings Walsh and his fellow child migrants were forced to build, barefoot, starting work the day after they arrived.

The Christian Brothers ruled the place with the aim of upholding order and a moral code. Within two days of arriving he says he received his first punishment at the hands of one of the brothers.

"He punched us, he kicked us, smashed us in the face, back-handed us and everything, and he then sat us on his knee to tell us that he doesn't like to hurt children, but we had been bad boys....

He describes one brother luring him into his room with the promise he could have some sweet molasses - normally fed, not to the boys, but the cows. The man sexually abused him.

He claims another brother raped him, and a third beat him mercilessly after falsely accusing him of having sex with another boy.

"We had no parents, we had no relatives, there was nowhere we could go, these brothers - these paedophiles - must have thought they were in hog heaven."

He has accused the brothers at the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the first time he has fully disclosed his experiences....

Britain is perhaps the only country in the world to have exported vast numbers of its children. An estimated 150,000 children were sent over a 350-year period to Virginia, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and what was then Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

Australia was the main destination in the final wave between 1945 and 1974.

There were twin purposes - to ease the population of orphanages in the UK and to boost the population of the colonies.

The children were recruited by religious institutions from both the Anglican and Catholic churches, or well-meaning charities including Barnardo's and the Fairbridge Society. Their motivation was to give "lost" children a new life, and it would be wrong to say that every one of Britain's exported children suffered.

But for too many, the dream became a nightmare. Hundreds of migrant children have given accounts of poor education, hard labour, physical beatings and sexual abuse....

In 2009 the Australian government apologised for the cruelty shown to the child migrants. Britain also made an apology in 2010.

The pressure for answers and reparations had been growing. Questions might never have been asked, had it not been for two seekers of the truth.

In the early 1980s a Nottingham social worker, Margaret Humphreys, came across Australian former migrants who had suddenly started to realise they might have living relatives in the UK.

Many had been told, as children, their parents were dead. It wasn't true. "It was about identity," she says, "being stripped of it and being robbed of it."

Her life's work has been about reuniting "lost children" with their lost relatives. Having reinstated their sense of identity, she went on to build a lifelong bond with many former migrants, and they began to disclose the physical and sexual abuse they had suffered....

Hill makes the astonishing claim that 60% of the children at Fairbridge Molong allege they were sexually abused, based on more than 100 interviews.

The Australian law firm Slater and Gordon successfully claimed compensation on behalf of 215 former Fairbridge children, of whom 129 said they had been sexually abused.

For the Christian Brothers the figures are even higher. The Australian Royal Commission on child abuse recently revealed 853 people had accused members of the order....
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-39078652

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos resigns following outrage over his past comments about pedophilia


"In a video interview early last year, Yiannopoulos condoned sexual relations with boys as young as 13 and joked about a sexual encounter he said he had with a Catholic priest as a teenager."

Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos resigns following outrage over his past comments about pedophilia

By Paul Farhi February 21 at 7:15 PM

Milo Yiannopoulos, the incendiary writer who helped make Breitbart News a leading organ of the alt-right, resigned from the news organization Tuesday after a video of him endorsing pedophilia resurfaced online over the weekend.

Yiannopoulos has been a flame-throwing provocateur whose writing has offended women, Muslims, blacks and gay people ever since former Breitbart executive chairman Stephen K. Bannon hired him as a senior editor in 2014.

Bannon, now President Trump’s senior adviser, championed the British-born Yiannopoulos’s inflammatory commentary and promoted him as a conservative truth-teller and champion of free speech. In turn, his popularity helped raise Breitbart’s profile among Trump’s supporters and the alt-right, a vaguely defined collection of nationalists, anti-immigration proponents and anti-establishment conservatives. Adherents of the alt-right are known for espousing racist, anti-Semitic and sexist points of view.

“Breitbart News has stood by me when others caved,” Yiannopoulos said in a statement announcing his resignation. “They have been a significant factor in my success.”....

But Yiannopoulos’s views on pedophilia apparently went too far even for Breitbart.

The site was under pressure to take action against Yiannopoulos, 32, from its own staff, which had threatened to revolt if he wasn’t fired or disciplined, according to people familiar with the discussions.

In a video interview early last year, Yiannopoulos condoned sexual relations with boys as young as 13 and joked about a sexual encounter he said he had with a Catholic priest as a teenager.

“You’re misunderstanding what pedophilia means,” he told the hosts of a podcast. “Pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody 13 years old who is sexually mature. Pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty.”....

Yiannopoulos, meanwhile, defended himself on Facebook on Sunday and Monday as the tide of controversy rose.

“I do not support pedophilia. Period,” he wrote. “It is a vile and disgusting crime, perhaps the very worst. There are selectively edited videos doing the rounds, as part of a coordinated effort to discredit me from establishment Republicans, that suggest I am soft on the subject.”

The openly gay writer made his name with a knack for taunting various groups and manipulating the outrage that followed. He led a Twitter campaign last year against “Ghostbusters” star Leslie Jones that was so vitriolic that Twitter banned him. He has called feminism “cancer” in his campus appearances, and he once wrote a Breitbart story headlined, “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.” ....
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/milo-yiannopoulos-resigns-from-breitbart-news/2017/02/21/0217c128-f7cc-11e6-be05-1a3817ac21a5_story.html   

Thursday, February 16, 2017

Trump and Fascism - Articles about Trump, Fascism, Mind Control and Propaganda  

Trump and Fascism - Articles about Trump, Fascism, Mind Control and Propaganda
 
Trump and Fascism

This page is a data dump of articles about Donald Trump, those working with Trump and historical articles about fascism. Fascism uses different types of mind control to control people. Donald Trump has been accused of using propaganda and mind control techniques to win the election, to control people’s opinions of him and to control their opinions of other topics. This page contains excerpts from articles related to this topic. https://ritualabuse.us/mindcontrol/trump-and-fascism/


"Our own research shows that tyranny does not result from blind conformity to rules and roles, it is a creative act of followership that flows from identification with authorities who represent vicious acts as virtuous," he said.


Befehl ist Befehl

Nazis weren't just following orders but 'took pride' in atrocities
A new study suggests that those who carry out atrocities, like Nazi concentration camp guards, weren't just following orders but actively enjoyed their work. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/9694194/Nazis-werent-just-following-orders-but-took-pride-in-atrocities.html

 A new study has shown that terrible acts involve not just obedience, but enthusiasm too.

The scientific paper - jointly authored by by a Scottish university professor - challenges a long-held belief that human beings harm others because they are programmed to obey orders.

Professor Stephen Reicher, Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of St Andrews, and Professor Alex Haslam of the University of Queensland, Australia, have published the paper in the journal PLos-Biology on the nature of tyranny and evil.

It comes 50 years after social psychological studies showed that even decent people can engage in acts of extreme cruelty when instructed to do so by others.

The beliefs can be traced back to two research study conducted by Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo in the 1960s and early 1970s.

 Milgram's research showed that people blindly obey the orders of an authority figure, while Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) revealed that people will take on abusive roles uncritically.

But, after a decade-long program of research, Reicher and Haslam have challenged the conclusions of both.

Professor Reicher said: "In short, people do harm not because they are unaware that they are doing wrong, but because they believe that they are doing right.

"It is this conviction that steels participants to do their dirty work, and that makes them act energetically and creatively to ensure its success."

The study began when the two researchers ran their own prison experiment, which was broadcast by the BBC in 2002. This showed that people did not automatically slip into role.

They found the guards only acted tyrannically when they believed that harsh measures were necessary to create order.

More recently, Professors Reicher and Haslam have conducted a series of studies which revisit Milgram's conclusions.

These show that people only go along with an authority when they believe that they are serving a greater good.

Paradoxically, they show that giving orders tends to undermine this belief and hence undermines obedience.

Although the findings of Zimbardo and Milgram remain highly influential, Professor Haslam suggests their conclusions do not hold up well under scrutiny.

"Our own research shows that tyranny does not result from blind conformity to rules and roles, it is a creative act of followership that flows from identification with authorities who represent vicious acts as virtuous," he said.

 
 
Stephen Miller’s authoritarian declaration: Trump’s national security actions ‘will not be questioned’
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/13/stephen-millers-audacious-controversial-declaration-trumps-national-security-actions-will-not-be-questioned

MILLER: Well, I think that it's been an important reminder to all Americans that we have a judiciary that has taken far too much power and become, in many cases, a supreme branch of government. One unelected judge in Seattle cannot remake laws for the entire country. I mean this is just crazy, John, the idea that you have a judge in Seattle say that a foreign national living in Libya has an effective right to enter the United States is -- is -- is beyond anything we've ever seen before.

The end result of this, though, is that our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.

Meet the White Nationalist Trying To Ride The Trump Train to Lasting Power
Alt-right architect Richard Spencer aims to make racism cool again. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/richard-spencer-trump-alt-right-white-nationalist

Several weeks after this story published in October, Spencer gave a triumphant speech at a conference in Washington describing America as a "white country" and proclaiming, "Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!" He was met with cheers and Nazi salutes. Read more in our investigation of how the white nationalist movement capitalized on the Trump campaign.

After graduating high school in 1997, Spencer went to the University of Virginia, where he double-majored in music and English and became deeply involved in avant-garde theater, trying out and discarding various radical ideologies like costume changes. The writings of Friedrich Nietzsche made a lasting impression; Spencer found his critiques of equality and democracy darkly compelling. He identified with the German philosopher's unapologetically elitist embrace of "great men" such as Napoleon Bonaparte and the composer Richard Wagner. Yet Spencer found little in Nietzsche about the organization of the state; it was only after entering the humanities master's program at the University of Chicago that he discovered Jared Taylor, a self-proclaimed "race realist" who argues that blacks and Hispanics are a genetic drag on Western society.


 
White Nationalists See Trump as Their Troll in Chief. Is He With Them
  Mother Jones http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/11/trump-white-nationalists-hate-racism-power
Trump "may be the last hope for a president who would be good for white people," remarked Jared Taylor, who runs a "race realist" site called American Renaissance and once founded a think tank that became notorious for declaring that blacks are "more dangerous" than whites.
 
Donald Trump’s Vanity Is Destroying His Presidency

The presidency isn’t changing Donald Trump. It’s revealing who he has always been. http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/02/donald-trump-vanity-destroying-presidency
Americans witnessed this childish display throughout the 2016 campaign and, it seems, his fans approved. They cheered his rhetorical assault on the establishment, the status quo, bien-pensant thinking and sensibilities. Trump’s core support never wavered, even when he ripped into the looks of Alicia Machado, or dismissed allegations of sexual harassment by claiming his accusers were not attractive enough to warrant his attention, or when he retweeted an image contrasting a less-than-flattering photo of Ted Cruz’s wife with a stunning shot of his wife, Melania (his third spouse, all three of whom were former models).

This translates into a fixation on how Trump himself is perceived, too. That’s why he could not stop talking about how well he was doing in polls and how many people showed up to his rallies. It’s why he insisted that Mexicans loved him even as he called them “rapists” and repeatedly promised to build a wall to keep “bad hombres” out of the United States. Only Trump alone would be able to save the American people from the dismal picture he painted of the state of the nation, because he was the smartest, the best deal-maker, the most respected, he would say. Perhaps this is why, too, as his doctor admitted in a recent interview with The New York Times, Trump takes a prostate-related drug, Propecia, to ward off male-pattern baldness.
 

Trump has another 'new plan' that was used by the Nazis against Jews in the 1930s
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/2/2/1629126/-Trump-has-another-new-plan-that-was-used-by-the-Nazis-against-Jews-in-the-1930s
On the White House website, inside of the press releases concerning Trump/Bannon executive actions you will find this “Executive Order: Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States.” In it, a list of immigrant crimes to be made and updated regularly and given to the public for consumption is ordered.

Well, this weekly report that he has called for recalls a number of things from the past that we have seen before, which is this move to isolate and identify and then vilify a vulnerable minority community in order to move against it. When he—I just went back last night and reread his speech from when he declared his candidacy, and the Mexican rapist comment was in from the beginning, and so this has been a theme throughout. And we see back in Nazi Germany there was a paper called—a Nazi paper called Der Stürmer, and they had a department called "Letter Box," and readers were invited to send in stories of supposed Jewish crimes. And Der Stürmer would publish them, and they would include some pretty horrific graphic illustrations of these crimes, as well. And there was even a sort of a lite version of it, if you will, racism lite, in which the Neues Volk, which was more like a Look or a Life magazine, which normally highlighted beautiful Aryan families and their beautiful homes, would run a feature like "The Criminal Jew," and they would show photos of "Jewish-looking," as they called it, people who represented different kinds of crimes that one ought to watch out for from Jews.


 
White nationalist movement growing much faster than Isis on Twitter, study finds


Twitter users who self-identify as white nationalists and Neo-Nazis have grown 600 per cent since 2012, according to a new study
  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/white-nationalist-movement-twitter-faster-growth-isis-islamic-state-study-a7223671.html


 
Progressives Push New York Attorney General To Investigate Trump


February 15, 2017
Peter Overby 

President Trump today at the White House. The New York attorney general says Democratic AGs are considering challenging state corporate charters of the president's businesses.
 
A liberal advocacy group on Wednesday called upon New York State to investigate whether the Trump Organization has engaged in fraud and illegal activity, and consider revoking its corporate charter.

The request is not falling on deaf ears.

New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman provided no specifics but told NPR a charter challenge is indeed part of a broader discussion among Democratic attorneys general about President Trump's business holdings.

"Our goal here is not to scramble around looking for ways to get Trump," he said of the Democratic AGs' strategy, but "there will be litigation relating to his [Trump's] failure to divest."

His comments came after a group called Free Speech For People presented Schneiderman's office with a 24-page letter, outlining concerns about the Trump company's past legal infractions, including settlements involving housing discrimination charges in the 1970s and recent fraud allegations involving Trump University.

It also raises questions about whether Trump might be receiving foreign payments in ways that would violate the U.S. Constitution.

Here's the issue: As a businessman, Trump has financial interests in hundreds of companies spread over about 20 countries, all grouped together under the Trump Organization umbrella. And as president, Trump could make policy decisions that could enhance the value of his businesses, creating ethical conflicts.

The Free Speech For People letter reads: "By continuing to operate under Trump family ownership and control with President Trump in the White House, the Trump Organization flagrantly abuses its state-granted powers, contrary to the public policies of New York against corruption and conflicts of interest, and contrary to the U.S. Constitution."

The group's outside counsel Jonathan Abady said in a conference call that "the president is converting the Oval Office into his own personal candy store."

Trump has taken no steps to sell off his business interests to end the conflicts, although he has been filing legal paperwork to remove himself from management of his New York-based company, which owns real estate, golf, hotel and other businesses. He has turned over management to his two oldest sons.

Ethics experts say that to be free of conflicts of interest, Trump should sell off his holdings. But Schneiderman said of the Trump family, "It's not clear to anybody what their plan is going forward to remove these entanglements." http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/15/515446176/progressives-push-new-york-attorney-general-to-investigate-trump

  
American Institutions Are Pushing Back Against Trump


The bureaucracy, the press, the judiciary, and the public are not only pushing back, they’re having some success.

Nothing Donald Trump has done since becoming President is particularly surprising. The attacks on judges and the press, the clash of civilizations worldview, the ignorance of public policy, the blurring of government service and private gain, the endless lying, the incompetence, the chaos—all were vividly foreshadowed during the campaign. The Republican-led  Congress’ refusal to challenge Trump was foreseeable too. The number of Republicans willing to oppose Trump’s agenda pretty much equals the number who refused to endorse him once he became the GOP nominee.

What Does It Mean to Have 'Repeated Contacts' With Russian Intelligence?

Less predictable has been the response of other elements of the American political system: The bureaucracy, the press, the judiciary and the public. Here, the news is good. So far, they’re not only pushing back, they’re having some success.

The latest example is the resignation of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Flynn’s resignation is a welcome development both because he held crudely bigoted views of Muslims and because he was unable to competently manage the foreign policy process. But that’s not why he lost his job. He lost his job because of an independent bureaucracy and a vigorous press.

CNN’s Brian Stelter has reconstructed the chain of events. On January 12, a “senior U.S. government official” told Washington Post columnist David Ignatius that, “Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the [Russian] hacking” of the presidential election. Three days later, CBS’ John Dickerson asked Vice President Mike Pence about the call, and Pence insisted that Flynn had not discussed “anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia.”

But the Washington Post followed up, citing “nine current and former officials” who claimed that Flynn had discussed exactly that. The New York Times reported that there was a transcript of the call. Eventually, it became impossible to deny that Flynn had lied, and caused Pence to lie. If the Trump administration had been able to deny reality, as it so often does, Flynn would likely still have his job. But good reporters, aided by government sources, made that impossible. As the Columbia Journalism Review notes, “it wasn’t the lying that got him [Flynn] fired; it’s that his lying leaked to the press”

Another leak to the Times forced the Trump administration to abandon an executive order re-opening the CIA “black sites” that the Bush administration used to torture suspected terrorists. And according to the Times, it was a leak that alerted Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner to a draft executive order repealing protections for LGBT federal employees, which they then quashed. Trump and his top advisors are so alarmed by the leaks that, according to Politico, they’re searching the phones and computers of NSC staff.

But no president faced with a dissatisfied bureaucracy and a vigorous press has been able to keep the internal workings of government secret. And Trump is facing the most energized American press corps in decades. America’s prestige newspapers have seen dramatic increases in circulation over the last year. The Post alone recently announced that it was hiring sixty new journalists.  Trump, in Jack Shafer’s words, “is making journalism great again,” and great journalism is, to some degree, restraining his power.
 https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/american-institutions-are-fighting-back-against-trump/516759/
 
Donald Trump National Security Adviser Mike Flynn Has Called Islam 'a Cancer'


The man whom President-elect Donald Trump picked as his national security adviser has said he doesn’t believe that all cultures are “morally equivalent” and once described Islam as "a cancer," comments that have many in the Muslim community worried about what his new job might mean for them.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn served as an adviser to Trump on national security and foreign policy throughout the presidential campaign. Flynn has said he agreed with Trump's initial proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States, but told Al Jazeera earlier this year it likely "wouldn't work," and that he supports the vetting of Muslims coming from Syria and places where terrorism is a major threat.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trump-national-security-adviser-mike-flynn-called/story?id=43575658
 

Impeach Trump: Ohio Republican judge

We can't let him get away with the 'dozens of dazzlingly illegal things Trump has already done.'

A president of the United States, on the official @POTUS Twitter feed, assails a department store for dropping his daughter’s merchandise. On the same day, the Pentagon is looking to rent space in the Trump Tower. Trump’s son travels to Uganda to make a Trump business deal. And, of course, foreign diplomats will stay at the Trump Hotel. The cash comes marching in.

The phony legalisms Trump has said he used to “separate” himself from his businesses – though he still owns them and his sons are running them – will be cited to make this all acceptable. Horsefeathers. No ethical expert could say with a straight face that this is not a classic conflict of interest.

In any time except our post-factual era, no office holder, much less the president, could get away with any one of the dozens of dazzlingly illegal things Trump has already done. They would forfeit office immediately.

The leader of the band of Mad Hatters occupying the White House has already insulted allied world leaders, issued illegal and badly written orders, impugned a “so-called” judge appointed by his own party, and appointed the least-qualified cabinet ever. The first secretary of state was Thomas Jefferson. Trump appointed a big-oil executive with close ties to Russia. The first treasury secretary was Alexander Hamilton. Trump appointed a former Goldman Sachs exec who got rich foreclosing on homeowners. The national security advisor lasted 24 days.

Basic American values — free speech, the rule of law, separation of powers, even common decency — are unknown in this White House. We now have a president who has no concept of separation of powers, or why we have three branches of government. If he knew anything about the Constitution, he would know the framers envisioned just the situation we have now — a would-be dictator. They provided checks and balances — such as an independent judiciary to protect us from presidential tyranny.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/02/15/trump-impeach-flynn-ivanka-tweet-russia-column/97944818/
 

Trump's secretary of labor pick Andrew Puzder withdraws nomination

   Puzder came under scrutiny after admitting earlier this month that he had employed an undocumented worker for years and revelations that his ex-wife alleged in 1990 that he abused her. She has since withdrawn those allegations, and Puzder — whose confirmation hearing was set for tomorrow after being rescheduled four times — has denied wrongdoing.

Puzder's withdrawal marks the first unsuccessful nomination of the Trump administration. Eleven of his 23 Cabinet-level picks are yet to be confirmed.

President Donald Trump's nominee for secretary of labor, Andrew Puzder, has formally withdrawn himself from consideration for the position, Puzder announced Wednesday — a rare move for a Cabinet-level pick.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-secretary-labor-pick-andrew-puzder-withdraws-nomination/story?id=45517721

Ex-wife of Trump's Labor Secretary pick Andy Puzder told Oprah he abused, threatened her, Inside the ‘Satanic’ home where police freed five children from their parents "The children, who all showed signs of malnutrition and abuse," U.S. Animal Abuse Records Deleted by Trump Administration from USDA website

- Ex-wife of Trump's Labor Secretary pick Andy Puzder told Oprah he abused, threatened her: 'You will pay for this'

- Inside the ‘Satanic’ home where police freed five children from their parents "The children, who all showed signs of malnutrition and abuse"

- U.S. Animal Abuse Records Deleted
"Trump Administration, thousands of documents detailing animal welfare violations nationwide have been removed from the website of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)"

Ex-wife of Trump's Labor Secretary pick Andy Puzder told Oprah he abused, threatened her: 'You will pay for this'


The ex-wife of President Trump's pick for Labor Secretary, Andy Puzder, once claimed he "vowed revenge" after she leaked spousal abuse allegations to the public, according to a new video....

The context of her identity implies she was speaking of Puzder, the CEO of the Carl's Jr. parent company, CKE, and his repeated attacks detailed in divorce documents. The couple split in 1987, when Puzder was known as an anti-abortion advocate in St. Louis....

The Senate, Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee requested the footage in January, along with about 20 other domestic violence-related episodes, ahead of Puzder's confirmation hearing on Thursday. His appointment is expected to be opposed by Democratic members of the U.S. Senate.

"I wound up losing everything. Everything. I have nothing," Fierstein recalled.

"He has a Porshe and a Mercedes-Benz. He has the home. He has everything. He was an attorney. He knew how to play the system," she added. Months after the episode aired, Fierstein recanted to maintain custody of their two children and has denied the allegations against Puzder ever since....
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ex-wife-trump-labor-secretary-pick-told-oprah-abused-article-1.2973083


Inside the ‘Satanic’ home where police freed five children from their parents
Charles White Thursday 16 Feb 2017
Five children have been freed by police after they were seen to be malnourished and were reportedly on drugs.

The police have now taken the kids away from their American-Colombian parents after neighbours saw them ‘dancing around’ with ‘Satanic symbols’ on them.

The children were freed after neighbours heard concerning screams from the Bucaramanga, Colombia, flat.

Reportedly the children showed signs of malnutrition and abuse.

Police reported the flat was filled with smoke and that they found ‘burnt offerings’ after breaking open the door....

Messages seen from outside the flat show graffiti such as ‘US=Enemies, 666’ and ‘Mundo de la mentira’ or ‘World of lies’.
http://metro.co.uk/2017/02/16/inside-the-satanic-home-where-police-freed-five-children-from-their-parents-6453142/


DEVIL'S LAIR Inside the chilling ‘Satanic’ home where ‘drugged up’ kids were rescued from parents who ‘practised devilish rituals’

The children, who all showed signs of malnutrition and abuse, were freed after a police raid following a call from neighbours who were worried about screaming
By GUY BIRCHALL 16th February 2017

FIVE kids have been taken into care by Colombian cops after their American and Colombian parents were found to be drugged up and dancing around the property covered with satanic symbols.

The children, who all showed signs of malnutrition and abuse, were freed after a police raid following a call from neighbours who were worried about screaming coming from the flat....
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2876771/inside-the-satanic-home-where-abused-kids-were-rescued-from-parents-who-practised-devilish-rituals/


U.S. Animal Abuse Records Deleted—What We Stand to Lose
By hiding online records of welfare violations, U.S. agency robs journalists, investigators, and the public of timely information—and takes pressure off abusers.

By Natasha Daly February 6, 2017

Two weeks into the Trump Administration, thousands of documents detailing animal welfare violations nationwide have been removed from the website of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which has been posting them publicly for decades. These are the inspection records and annual reports for every commercial animal facility in the U.S.—including zoos, breeders, factory farms, and laboratories.

These records have revealed many cases of abuse and mistreatment of animals, incidents that, if the reports had not been publicly posted, would likely have remained hidden. This action plunges journalists, animal welfare organizations, and the public at large into the dark about animal welfare at facilities across the country. The records document violations of the Animal Welfare Act, the federal law that regulates treatment of animals used for research and exhibition. The USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), which has maintained the online database, cites privacy concerns as justification for the removal....

In response, animal-rights groups have launched a counterattack. On February 6, the Humane Society of the United States initiated legal action against the USDA, arguing that the removal of records violates a 2009 settlement between the two parties. Other groups, including PETA, the Physicians Committee For Responsible Medicine, and Born Free USA, have filed a joint lawsuit against the USDA, arguing that in removing this data, the department is in violation of FOIA and that the action hinders the groups’ ability to identify violations of the Animal Welfare Act. The USDA has yet to respond to either legal action....
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/02/wildlife-watch-usda-animal-welfare-trump-records/

Monday, February 13, 2017

Ex-Penn State coach Sandusky's son accused of child abuse, Is Trump A Fascist? 10 Quotes On Nationalism, Militarism And Violence

           

Ex-Penn State coach Sandusky's son accused of child abuse

The adopted son of Jerry Sandusky, the US college football coach convicted of child abuse, has been accused of sexually abusing two teenage sisters.

Jeffrey Sandusky, 41, allegedly sent explicit text messages to children, asking for nude photographs.

The arrest comes nearly five years after his father, who worked for Pennsylvania State University, was found guilty on similar charges.

The elder Sandusky is serving a lengthy prison sentence for molesting 10 boys.

The son - who attended many of his father's court proceedings - faces 14 counts, including statutory sexual assault, unlawful contact with a minor, sexual abuse of a minor and photographing or depicting sexual acts....
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38959793



Is Trump A Fascist? 10 Quotes From The President On Nationalism, Militarism And Violence
By Cristina Silva  02/06/17
Donald Trump is a fascist, to hear many of his critics tell it. But what exactly does that mean?

An image from the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., warning about the early signs of fascism went viral recently after Trump's opponents linked the bullet points detailed in the exhibit to his administration. The warning signs included “disdain for human rights” and “powerful and continuing nationalism.”

Fascism has also become a trending search in recent months for the Merriam Webster Dictionary website, which defines the term as a “political philosophy, movement, or regime… that exalts nation and often race above the individual.” It states that fascism silences opposition and involves “severe economic and social regimentation."

The Washington Post took a look at Trump's campaign pledges in October and compared them to fascist traits such as hyper-nationalism, militarism, glorification of violence, a desire to purge the disloyal and theatricality, among other things. It concluded that Trump was an “amateurish imitation of the real thing.”

Since taking office in January, Trump has vowed to put "America first" and banned refugees and people from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States. He has told his opponents at the State Department and Department of Justice to get with his program or move out. And he has promised to overhaul the nation's trade deals and economy.

Below are 10 quotes from Trump that critics claim show that his administration might be embracing the nationalistic, militaristic and violent rhetoric of extreme right-wing fascist regimes built around a leadership cult.
http://www.ibtimes.com/trump-fascist-10-quotes-president-nationalism-militarism-violence-2487260

Thursday, February 9, 2017

Nazi's defense "just following orders", 5 year old detained and handcuffed (Trump's immigration order), Child abuse: 7% of Australian Catholic priests, Child Abuse Figures Rise 3rd Year in a Row


- How the Nazi's defense of ‘just following orders' plays out in the mind  "
people actually feel disconnected from their actions when they comply with orders, even though they're the ones committing the act."
- White House claims five-year-old boy detained in US airport for hours 'could have posed a security threat' (reportedly handcuffed)
"
detained following President Donald Trump's immigration order"

- Child abuse: 7% of Australian Catholic priests alleged to be involved
- Teenage boy forced by barrister to join in 'cult’ beating of friends
"John Smyth QC, a friend of the Archbishop of Canterbury, is being investigated by police over claims that he beat 22 teenagers"

- Federal Child Abuse Figures Rose for Third Year in a Row, Neglect at the Top of the List


Child abuse: 7% of Australian Catholic priests alleged to be involved
6 February 2017 Australia

An inquiry examining institutional sex abuse in Australia has heard 7% of the nation's Catholic priests allegedly abused children between 1950 and 2010.

In one religious order, over 40% of church figures were accused of abuse.

Over 4,440 people claim to have been victims between 1980 and 2015, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse was told.

The commission, Australia's highest form of inquiry, is also investigating abuse at non-religious organisations.

It has previously heard harrowing testimony from scores of people who suffered abuse at the hands of clergy....

Gail Furness, the lead lawyer assisting the commission in Sydney, said more than 1,000 Catholic institutions across Australia were identified in claims of sexual abuse, with a total of 1,880 alleged perpetrators between 1980 and 2015.

The average age of the victims was 10.5 for girls and 11.5 for boys. On average, it took 33 years for each instance of abuse to be reported....

Abuse survivor Andrew Collins told the BBC it had been "drummed into his head" by the four men who abused him between the ages of seven and 14 - two teachers, a priest and a Catholic Brother - that he was the one who had "done wrong".

"I did try to tell my mum once and she said it was absolute rubbish and a man of God would never do such a thing," he said....

The royal commission also detailed the number of abuse claims against 10 religious orders, with data showing that four orders had allegations of abuse against more than 20% of their members. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-38877158


Teenage boy forced by barrister to join in 'cult’ beating of friends 

by Patrick Foster Nicola Harley Peta Thornycroft, Johannesburg
5 February 2017 

A barrister accused of subjecting teenage boys to savage sadomasochistic beatings forced one of his victims to join in with the attacks, it has emerged.

John Smyth QC, a friend of the Archbishop of Canterbury, is being investigated by police over claims that he beat 22 teenagers in his garden shed in the late Seventies.

A report by the Iwerne Trust, the charity that ran the Christian camps at which Mr Smyth met many of the victims, documents how he persuaded one of the boys to assist with the attacks....

He wrote in the 1982 report: “There was considerable persuasion for anyone who held back. It had almost become a cult, with a powerful group dynamic.

“S, wanting to 'be the best for God’, beat as hard as he could. “Immediately after the beating, the man lay on the bed, while [Mr Smyth] and/or S would kneel and pray, linking arms with him and kissing him on the shoulder and back.

“[Mr Smyth] and S saw this as a 'ministry’ from God. But the 'ministry’ of discipline in this sense was secret, self-appointed and never approved by other Christian leaders.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/05/teenage-boy-forced-barrister-join-cult-beating-friends/


Federal Child Abuse Figures Rose for Third Year in a Row, Neglect at the Top of the List 
Feb 8, 2017 

Neglect tops the list of abuses that children endure, according to a new report that finds cases of abuse and neglect edged up for the third consecutive year during 2015.

The Child Maltreatment 2015 report by the Administration on Children, Youth and Families noted 683,000 victims of child maltreatment or 9.2 victims per 1,000 children. The slight increase from 2014's 9.1 victims per 1,000 is concerning, experts said, because not all maltreatment is reported and in some cases abuse or neglect exists but there's not enough evidence to substantiate it, leading to the suspicion that the count is actually undercounted....

Daniel Heimpel, executive director of the nonprofit Fostering Media Connections, which produces three publications for foster and adoptive parents...."The number of kids in foster care also has gone up over this period of time," he said. "Abuse rates have gone up, reports of abuse have gone up and the number of kids entering the system has gone up after a huge decline for many years."

The report estimates 1,670 child deaths in 2015 related to maltreatment. Actual reporting from 49 states documented 1,585 child deaths....

Infants were three times more likely to die from abuse or neglect than a year-old child.

Fifty-five percent of child victims who die from abuse or neglect are boys.

At least one parent was involved in 77 percent of the deaths, and alcohol, drug abuse or domestic violence were often factors. Women were more likely than men to be perpetrators, 54 percent vs. 45 percent. In the other cases, gender wasn't known.

Three-fifths of maltreatment reports to child welfare systems came from professionals, including teachers, lawyers, social workers and police officers.

Demographically, the biggest category of victims were white at 43.2 percent, compared to Hispanic at 23.6 percent and African-American at 21.4 percent.... http://www.wtxl.com/news/federal-child-abuse-figures-rose-for-third-year-in-a/article_110684b6-ee22-11e6-a06e-73fa4a6ae341.html


How the Nazi's defense of ‘just following orders' plays out in the mind
A handwritten request for clemency by Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Nazi Holocaust, who said he shouldn't be held responsible for his actions because he and other low-level officers were following orders from their superiors. A new study released Thursday offers one reason why people can be easily coerced into carrying out heinous orders.

In other words, people actually feel disconnected from their actions when they comply with orders, even though they're the ones committing the act.

In a 1962 letter, as a last-ditch effort for clemency, Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann wrote that he and other low-level officers were "forced to serve as mere instruments," shifting the responsibility for the deaths of millions of Jews to his superiors. The "just following orders" defense, made famous in the post-WWII Nuremberg trials, featured heavily in Eichmann's court hearings.

But that same year Stanley Milgram, a Yale University psychologist, conducted a series of famous experiments that tested whether "ordinary" folks would inflict harm on another person after following orders from an authoritative figure. Shockingly, the results suggested any human was capable of a heart of darkness.

Milgram's research tackled whether a person could be coerced into behaving heinously, but new research released Thursday offers one explanation as to why.

"In particular, acting under orders caused participants to perceive a distance from outcomes that they themselves caused," said study co-author Patrick Haggard, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London, in an email.

In other words, people actually feel disconnected from their actions when they comply with orders, even though they're the ones committing the act.

The study, published in the journal Current Biology, described this distance as people experiencing their actions more as "passive movements than fully voluntary actions" when they follow orders.

Researchers at University College London and Université libre de Bruxelles in Belgium arrived at this conclusion by investigating how coercion could change someone's "sense of agency," a psychological phenomenon that refers to one's awareness of their actions causing some external outcome.

Unlike Milgram's classic research, Haggard's team introduced a shocking element that was missing in the original 1960s experiments: actual shocks. Haggard said they used "moderately painful, but tolerable, shocks." Milgram feigned shocks up to 450 volts.

According to Milgram's experiments, 65 percent of his volunteers, described as "teachers," were willing (sometimes reluctantly) to press a button that delivered shocks up to 450 volts to an unseen person, a "learner" in another room. Although pleas from the unknown person could be heard, including mentions of a heart condition, Milgram's study said his volunteers continued to shock the "learner" when ordered to do so. At no point, however, did someone truly experience an electric shock.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/how-the-nazis-defense-of-just-following-orders-plays-out-in-the-mind/



White House claims five-year-old boy detained in US airport for hours 'could have posed a security threat'

The little boy is reportedly a US citizen who lives with his mother in Maryland

The White House has said a five-year-old boy was detained for more than four hours and reportedly handcuffed at an airport because he posed a "security risk".

The boy, reportedly a US citizen with an Iranian mother, was one of more than 100 people detained following President Donald Trump's immigration order.

In a press briefing, Mr Trump's press secretary Sean Spicer was unrepentant about the incident.

He said:  "To assume that just because of someone's age and gender that they don't pose a threat would be misguided and wrong."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/white-house-five-year-old-boy-detained-dulles-international-airport-hours-sean-spicer-pose-security-a7554521.html


Child and Ritual Abuse Research   https://ritualabuse.us


Articles by Neil Brick  http://neilbrick.com  

Thursday, February 2, 2017

Trump’s not Orwellian. He’s the distracter-in-chief, Media keep falling for Trump's mind control tricks


Trump’s not Orwellian. He’s the distracter-in-chief.

Matt Bai  Yahoo News February 2, 2017
But Orwell’s dark prophecy isn’t actually the one that best explains the moment we’re living through right now. And to the extent that we focus on fears of statist mind control and mass disinformation, we may miss the subtler thing that’s really going on.

Here I turn again to the late Neil Postman, whose classic critique of mid-’80s culture, “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” is as relevant today as it was then. In his foreword, Postman compared Orwell’s vision of fascist repression with the trivial, substanceless society envisioned by Aldous Huxley in his 1932 novel “Brave New World.”

In Huxley’s vision, Postman wrote, “no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.”

It’s worth hearing a bit more of Postman’s comparison: “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. … Orwell feared that truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.”

As it happens, in 1949, just after the publication of “1984,” Huxley drew much the same contrast in a letter to his countryman Orwell. Much as he liked Orwell’s book, he suggested that tyrannical governments would soon abandon “boot-on-the-face” tactics in favor of “animal magnetism and hypnotism.” Cable TV had yet to be invented....

In some ways, though, Trump is the perfect embodiment of a Huxleyan culture, endlessly distracted by the superficial or the spectacular. He doesn’t want to control what you think — only what you think about, which is him. He cares that you’re watching the performance, and it doesn’t matter whether you watch because you love it or because you find it too grossly compelling to look away.

I’ve written before that Trump is an emotional extremist, not an ideological one. His gift is for channeling the passion in an audience, for provoking adoration or outrage or whatever’s most visceral....

And the danger here is that the constant trivia can too easily distract us from decisions that have deadly serious consequences. Like Huxley’s Alphas and Betas, we can be lulled into thinking that the ephemeral is all there is....

t’s not as if the immigration ban and a seat on the high court aren’t important — they really are. But at the same time, the public is less focused on Trump’s decision, made with no theatrical flourish, to give Steve Bannon, his liaison to the world of white nationalists, a permanent seat on the National Security Council’s principals committee — rather than allotting it to, say, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

There’s not so much discussion about Trump’s prompt withdrawal from the Asian trade pact, which a lot of Democrats applauded but which has grave implications for our economic power in the region. Likewise on Trump’s proposed tariffs on exports, which could lead us quickly into an all-out trade war.

There’s not much focus on what’s happening now in the Middle East, where Israel, emboldened by Trump’s rhetoric, is about to vastly accelerate settlements in the occupied territories. The public isn’t buzzing about the imminent dismantling of the EPA....
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-not-orwellian-hes-the-distracter-in-chief-100035222.html


Schneider: Media keep falling for Trump's mind control tricks
Christian Schneider , Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Published Jan. 27, 2017

....But in Trump's version, it is he who is controlling other peoples' brains — most specifically, he is directing the hive mind of the American media, bamboozling them into covering superfluous nonsense while his actual policies evade proper scrutiny.

His detractors often chalk up Trump's erratic behavior to lack of impulse control and a shortage of maturity. And sure, it is hard to deny Trump exhibits those traits — there are likely plenty of 1980s comedy writers who are shocked to find their rejected "Kid President" scripts have become a documentary....

But when journalists wail about Trump's wild misstatements, they are getting the "story" but missing the "news." Certainly, Trump's mistaken belief that between 3 million and 5 million people voted illegally is worth covering, as it indicates the president might be living in a world of delusion — but it very well could be a smokescreen to obscure other actions that actually matter far more....

http://www.jsonline.com/story/opinion/columnists/christian-schneider/2017/01/27/schneider-media-keep-falling-trumps-mind-control-tricks/97141590/  

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Top private schools Scottish child abuse inquiry, Archbishop admits Church ‘failed terribly’ over abuse revelations


Top private schools included as part of Scottish child abuse inquiry


Inquiry chair Lady Smith has said more than 100 locations so far have been identified for investigation, including current and former boarding schools

Tuesday 31 January 2017
More than 60 residential care establishments including several top private schools are being investigated by Scotland’s national child abuse inquiry.

They are among more than 100 locations where the abuse of children is said to have taken place, chair Anne Smith confirmed.

Six boarding schools or former boarding schools, including Fettes college and Gordonstoun, are being investigated. Several faith-based organisations, other major care providers and local authority institutions are also being looked at by inquiry staff.

Lady Smith, a senior judge who was appointed to the role in July, named a list of places being investigated as she provided an update on the inquiry’s progress at a preliminary hearing.

The inquiry is examining historical allegations of the abuse of children in care and has been taking statements from witnesses since last spring....
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jan/31/top-private-schools-included-as-part-of-scottish-child-abuse-inquiry


Archbishop admits Church ‘failed terribly’ over abuse revelations
Cathy Newman Presenter 1 Feb 2017 UK

The Church of England has tonight apologised unreservedly after a Channel 4 News investigation revealed that a prominent Anglican evangelical and former colleague of the Archbishop of Canterbury is alleged to have severely assaulted boys and young men for decades.

The alleged abuse was carried out by prominent QC and part time judge called John Smyth, who was chairman of the Iwerne Trust, a charity closely linked to the church which ran Christian holiday camps for public school students.

The Church admitted that it had “failed terribly”, after this programme learned that the Trust had discovered the alleged abuse in 1982, but failed to report it to the police.

Winchester College, where some of the young men met Smyth, was made aware of the alleged abuse, but also failed to report it to the police at the time. There is no suggestion that any abuse took place at the College or with the knowledge of its staff.

The Archbishop’s apology comes after a six month investigation by Channel 4 News, in which we tracked down and spoke with many of Smyth’s alleged victims. One man told us that he and other boys were beaten so violently by Smyth that they had to wear nappies to staunch the bleeding....

It described what it called the “beatings” of 22 young men.

“The scale and severity of the practice was horrific…8 received about 14 thousand strokes: 2 of them having some 8000 strokes over three years,” the document, written in 1982, noted.

Despite the findings of the report, the Iwerne Trust did not inform the police. Instead, a senior figure in the Iwerne Trust wrote to John Smyth, telling him to leave the country. He went on to live in Zimbabwe, and then South Africa....
https://www.channel4.com/news/archbishop-admits-church-failed-terribly-over-abuse-revelations