• http://souloftheeast.org/2015/05/15/game-of-thrones-atrocity-exhibition/

May 15, 2015 by Branko Malic

Game of Thrones: Atrocity Exhibition

In our age it is a sign of true culture and moral sophistication when someone declares how he or she is not of the “medieval” mentality. While this statement, being as obviously superfluous as it is obviously stupid, is common to almost everyone – so that true culture and moral sophistication are democratically distributed to any and all units of human trash – there is a sublime truth in its falsity. Namely the Middle Ages are the time span between the Resurrection and the Second Coming of Christ; if one is to retain the term in its proper sense, we are still very well in the midst of this despicable era. The Age of Transition, that is. But as the pejorative meaning of the term is absolutely the only one applied in both common and scientific moralistic discourse, we can discard the original for the use of those who believe in the proper meaning of words and deem pejoratives inapt for anything better than prattle, scientific and otherwise. Few and far between as they are, their opinions are of little value in the hallowed “market of ideas.” Truth in falsity sounds intriguing, however, and is something that can be made surprisingly obvious if we but scratch the surface image Western societies have built for themselves.
Disdain towards the Middle Ages mainly stems from identifying technological development with the moral development level of a given epoch as the principle for moral evaluation. However strange it may seem at first glance, postmodern man has no real problem with the standard shortcomings of the medieval humanity he loves to abhor and ridicule: the violence, blind faith, unbridled lust for power and corresponding immutability of social stratification, insignificance of the individual, etc. For some reason, only barbecuing witches always pops up as ‘the’ crime of that epoch, although the practice was very much a Renaissance phenomenon. Meanwhile, as the top hot dog among them, we are treated to hagiographies of Giordano Bruno, an occultist, obscurantist, spy, and manipulator surprisingly similar to political-marketing experts of modernity like Edward Bernays, as the late Romanian philosopher Ion Culianu has aptly shown in his book Eros and Magic in the Renaissance.
Contemporary man has no real problem with any of this, still less than with confusion between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In fact, it seems he likes the cruel misadventures of medieval man. Does this mean modern man is a brute who will enact all those deplorable things we just listed? No. He is just a brute imagining enacting them on a spectacular scale. In postmodernity that’s more or less the same thing.

A medieval look into the modern mind. HBO

The enormously popular HBO series Game of Thrones is a glaring example of just how fascinated with the Middle Ages contemporary people are. Admittedly, not with the Middle Ages of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Meister Eckhart, but with the re-imagined – in itself highly fantastical – era of betrayal, violence, decapitations, human barbecues, and the ruthless game of power. It is all so very acceptable as a spectacle and, at first sight, harmless, as “real life” is still being conducted in a suitably moral manner, where no flies are being harmed and no ugly girls are being fat-shamed. Yet then there comes a second look, and a highly damning one at that. “Enlightened” societies are not illuminated by the light of reason – itself an eminently medieval, and hence discarded, term – but precisely by the neon light of on-screen spectacle. The real raison ‘d etre of contemporary society is literally to provide an opportunity to see and to be seen, and unqualifiedly so. It gingerly shifts real pain and suffering to the margins of focus, occasionally endowing designated victim groups with religious reverence, and projects as its own center a pure, moving image. To be in the image, to be imagined, is the sole purpose of life, as is becoming aptly obvious through the phenomena of the “selfie” and amateur sex videos; this is far beyond fashion or even a sign of decadence. It is a meaning of Being. One doesn’t need the likes of Heidegger or Deleuze to figure that one out. Just take the Game of Thrones series.
The series in question is a perfect vehicle for what postmodern reality is intended to be – an enormous playground for individuals and groups in perpetual struggle, displaying an infinite range of emotions, motives and moral stances, always betraying viewers’ expectations. The noble are killed in a most gruesome manner, while the wicked are elevated, only to be shown, a few episodes latter, to be not so wicked, moreover, becoming even nobler than their victims; the culmination of plot tension is regularly resolved in a completely random manner, defying the rules of drama supposedly to affirm the rules of reality. But: what reality? All of this is being played out in an imaginary medieval world of swords, burnings at the stake, castration, rape, crazy religions, and fire-breathing dragons. The plot scatters in all directions through the lives of numerous characters with forgettable names, always indicating that something lurks behind the next corner, and then ruthlessly betraying spectator expectations. And the spectator loves it. All that brutal reality, tough love betrayed for a few coins, friendship discarded over politics, an erect phallus chopped off when it could have done so much good work in further episodes.
That entire medieval world. The tragedy of it. The comedy of it. “Real life,” where victim groups are really victims grouped in a heap of mangled bodies, and all those forbidden fruits of racism, sexism, and homophobia are up for spectator enjoyment. The spectator imagines himself in the midst of it, amongst the heroes and heroines of this bloody anti-drama, making little thought experiments as he or she watches. “What would I do?” “Isn’t this just like in real life?” “I would stand by his side” “I would tell her to betray him.” Without immersion the spectacle is nothing. And now, when the means of immersion are being developed to perfectly imitate life, the spectacle becomes the reality. The only peculiar thing is, why do they all love the Middle Ages so much?
First of all, the Middle Ages were something rather different from what contemporary men imagine them to be, yet why is this image so popular with the masses who have accepted political correctness as their state religion? Could it be a sign of rebellion? No. Acts of rebellion can vary, but watching TV is most certainly not among them. On the contrary, we are observing an act of compliance, the act of accepting the world as it mutates into virtual reality, and political correctness slowly prepares us for acceptance of politically-correct violence.

The vicarious thrill of virtual betrayal and virtual murder. HBO

It is a peculiar thing how terms are inverted over the course of history. ‘Virtual’ in fact means ‘real’ as opposed to ‘imagined’ or ‘illusory’, much like the ‘dynamic’ originally denotes inertia of matter and modal category of possibility, while today it is an expression of activity and energy, i.e. its direct opposite. Now virtual is becoming its proper self again. And if we live in a virtual world, does this mean we can walk through walls? Yes, it does. Admittedly not yet, but we’ll be able to do so by 2050, as Ray Kurzweil triumphantly informs us. The posthumanist dream is an appropriate term to denote postmodern reality, because it is a dream and it is inhuman. An actual ability to re-imagine the world in crudely material terms, to make it what the spectator wants it to be, is a promise which will be betrayed, of course. But that doesn’t make it contradictory, because betrayal of expectation is the essence of the imaginary, as Game of Thrones artfully displays. It is always ‘almost, but not yet’, the resolution is around the corner, but – blast! – there’s still another corner and another curved path, and on, and on.
There’s nothing strange about our situation once we realized we are immersed in dream logic. Saint Augustine thanked God for not being responsible for his own dreams. Plato pointed out ‘the many headed beast’ in man that awakens in dreams, and which tyrants just love to feed and nurture in their populace’s minds by means of sound and vision. What has the postmodern spectator to say for himself? His dreams are projected on to screens for anyone to see, and they are becoming reality. And he is quite responsible for them; no use of fooling God to the contrary. He won’t be fooled.
What happens when the imaginary morality we call political correctness get recast in the fashion of the imaginary Middle Ages? Desire is manifest, and possibilities are vast. The choice of nightmares has been made, but it can always be remade. Everybody wants to imagine himself in a world of real violence and never-ending outgrowths of plots, the eradication of identity, the dissolution of good and evil, beautiful and ugly. On the condition, of course, that they don’t get their hands dirty. No worries. If Kurzweil can make brick walls diffuse, then he can very well give you a new pair of hands and new morality, though he need not bother. Morality is already dissolving, as displayed in images that the man of the Middle Ages could hardly conceive without taking an ascetic penance or at least heading to confession. An atrocity exhibition is projected onto our screens as the true content of the soul of postmodern man, not as the content of the outside world.
The screen is to exchange reality, as transition into the posthuman world demands. And the images on that screen should be an infinite game projected by the worker bees of postmodernity, controlled, observed, and occasionally punished by citizens of the world forever at the very edge of precipice, but also forever not yet over it. We can clearly observe what those images are. In their most perfect form, they are a distilled essence of primordial violence projected into the despised medieval world, a virtual Age of Transition to be forever played out and to forever betray every expectation. The censorship of artistic expression in general, now present only to protect designated victim groups, was not necessarily an act of repression in the past. It could have very well been an act of protection. Because, while in the past ages nobody in his right mind would try to censor reality, which was always present in abundant quantities, the symbols and thoughts of man were quite different and – dare we say – quite sublime, carefully crafted and protected. The emotional and philosophical content of a medieval romance would be ridiculed by the contemporary consumer of pornography, or, for that matter, your average TV viewer. It is all so unreal.
Are we to believe that the Middle Ages never discovered the tragedy of existence, Heidegger’s Dasein was still verborgen and unentschlosen? That they knew nothing of conditio humana, of the unceasing pain of it? Perhaps they really didn’t. I remember a few years ago, while doing some manual work on archaeological digs, how I dug up a 14th century grave. It was only a casket-shaped hole, walled by flat stones on the sides and topped by three big stone plates covered with earth. Nothing fancy, no pottery inside, no pieces of metal, just a female skeleton with the infant laid on top of her. The child’s little skull was split up on top as it died before the bones had chance to harden, and little milk teeth were still in its jaw, as white as in a toothpaste commercial. Perhaps they were mother and child, or maybe their fellow men just didn’t bother to dig an extra grave for someone else’s kid. They were peasants in the God-forsaken land between the East and the West, living out their lives on the barren rocks of Dalmatia’s backwoods, even today considered to be the middle of nowhere, in the last, and probably the darkest, century of the Middle Ages proper. Well, I thought to myself then, what would they tell me about themselves, these ancestors of mine who inhabited our God-forsaken land, if I asked them was there any meaning to their living and dying? I think the woman would just shrug off the question, as women usually do when men start playing their games of conquest, intellectual or otherwise.

The beast rides the woman. HBO

Or, maybe, seeing me so desperate in my existential angst, the woman would have pity and give me an answer. She would in all probability point to the skies, as there were no cathedrals in the vicinity at that time, no elaborate visual depictions of medieval metaphysics – projections of the era’s soul – so she would have to stick to the obvious in the hope that I’d get it. If this should be the answer of the medieval woman to her postmodern male simulacrum, smoking a cigarette while sitting on the edge of her sepulcher, then I declare my defeat by the riddle of this Sphinx. Our skies are to become a screen for the insane imagination of virtuality, the playground of makeshift angels watching over virtual souls, with no sense in pointing to them. Almost immortal, but not just yet; almost perfect, but not just yet; almost dead, but not just yet; almost at the end, but forever not just yet. Violence alone is our language, the violence of the soul projecting its cruel dreams into the world, remodeling it through myriad of gadgets, exploiting it ruthlessly – yet making it safe for callow enjoyment – never harming flies or fat-shaming anyone, yet baying for blood more savagely than the wolf. Only a plenum of worker bees pulses through the neon world-hive, playing their game of drones, projecting themselves in all three dimensions of time, striving for eternity, forever bowing to their own image.
If this is the future, and it is what’s implicitly imagined by postmodernity, then no Kurzweil nano-bots for me, no organ transplants, no cyber-sex, and no immortality, please. Just an opportunity to dig up that grave once again, smoke one more cigarette for the road, and then bury myself and my shame in it. For if this game of drones is the final human comment on history, if this is humanity’s triumph – the CGI-recreated never-ending spectacle of savagery and inconsequence – then those two skeletons are the only noble company with whom to share eternity. If some Kurzweil-like metaphysical psychopath will finally provide humans with the possibility to remodel the world in their own image, then a medieval peasant’s shallow grave seems an acceptable lodging; an adequate respite from the insult man has become, a good depot for the last man to intern his shame.
For spectator-man, the pain of life was never smaller, and the urge to inflict it never greater. His hands are free of blood, while his soul drowns in it. So it goes with the soul – this thing its possessors don’t even believe exists, though its closer to them than they are themselves – it holds its own judgment, whether we like it or not. “Despicable” medieval man knew beauty; we know that because his soul left its trace in stone. What trace will postmodern man leave? None, it’s not his business to make traces, but to erase them. To ensure the scam of the perpetual sold as the Eternal, the “perpetual” traditionally being known as a main feature of Hell.
Behold, then, the game of drones, rats in the labyrinth deified in image, moving icons worshipping themselves. The final judgment infinitely delayed, run perpetually through ever-branching tunnels, painting a chrome film across the heavens to close them like a tin can. The skies closed shut, not by avenging angels, but with high-conductivity particles or other works of man’s own hands. A perpetual TV party for drones, always about to commence, but not just yet. The sky becomes but a screen for everyone to see what I, always I and only I, have to offer to the pleasure of my eyes. A great “selfie” of Pantokrator.
So make room for me, skeleton-girl. It’s really snug in here, though I obviously don’t mean to fat-shame you. Embrace this prodigal son, dying of shame because he is human, almost dead… but not just yet.
Branco Malic is editor of Kali Tribune.

Trans-Species Organ Farming Involves Removing Organs From Aborted Babies To Raise In Animal-Human Chimeras

May 17, 2015 by SkyWatch Editor

There is a shortage of organs available for transplantation. Estimates are that 123,000 people in the U.S. are in need of a transplant, and about 21 people die each day waiting for one. The art and science of transplantation is so advanced as to be routine. Science sees the shortage of organs as a problem to be solved. However, the obtaining of organs from human donors is fraught with difficulties—moral, practical, and legal. An emerging possible solution to the problem of organ shortage is organ farming. That is: growing human organs inside other animals until those organs are large enough to be transplanted into humans. One experiment with organ farming was recently reported in the American Journal of Transplantation. Another science journal says laconically that this experiment is “sure to be controversial.” They got that right. In this case, the organs being experimented with were kidneys from aborted human fetuses. In other words, this experiment in growing kidneys for transplant into human beings depended on other human beings being killed. (READ MORE)

The Mysterious Disappearances of Vatican City

 

The Mysterious Disappearances of Vatican City

• http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/05/the-mysterious-disappearances-of-vatican-city/
•  May 7, 2015
•  Brent Swancer

 

Mysterious disappearances happen all of the time. For whatever reasons, some people just suddenly go missing without a trace, leaving behind a wake of confusion as authorities and loved ones try to piece together what has happened. Perhaps one may be inclined to think that these vanishings are purely the realm of dangerous places or remote wildernesses, but on occasion we come across one that happens in the last place one would expect. Such is the case of a series of unexplained disappearances that occurred in one of the world’s most holiest of cities, Vatican City, the seat of the Roman Catholic Church and a place of soaring, ornate cathedrals, chapels, museums, and basilicas; a place that seems to be as far from evil as can be possible. And yet these disappearances would go on to become a baffling unsolved crime that would eventually hint at a dark underbelly lurking beneath the sacred and holy veneer of this seat of one of the world’s most powerful religions.
Officially called Vatican City State, Vatican City is a walled enclave within the city of Rome, Italy, which is recognized as the world’s smallest independent state in terms of both area and population. An ecclesiastical, or sacerdotal-monarchical state, it is the seat of the Pope and along with the Holy See is one of the most important places of the Roman Catholic religion and it’s over 1.2 billion adherents around the world. It is also a world renowned tourist attraction, harboring some of the world’s most famous sculptures and paintings within its museums, as well as various world famous cultural sites such as St. Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel.

St. Peter’s Square

The most well-known of the Vatican City disappearances occurred in 1983, when a 15 year-old second year student of a high school in Rome by the name of Emanuela Orlandi went missing without a trace. Orlandi was a citizen of Vatican City, and the daughter of a lay official in the Vatican, whose job was organizing papal functions. On June 22, 1983, Emanuela was late for a music class at a music school she attended three times a week in Rome. Emanuela’s worried sister reported that she had received a call from the girl explaining that she was late because she had made an appointment to meet with a representative of Avon Cosmetics to talk about a job offer to sell cosmetics. Emanuela then allegedly met with the Avon representative before a music lesson and afterwards told her friend about it, after which she said farewell to the friend and allegedly climbed into a dark green colored BMW at a bus stop. She was never seen again.
When she did not return home from school as expected, Emanuela’s concerned parents contacted authorities but were told that the girl had probably just gone off with friends, as teenagers are wont to do. When the girl had still not come home the following day, her parents called the director of the music school, who informed them that the girl had never shown up for her class and was unable to provide any information on where she might be. Over the following two days, ads were placed in several newspapers begging for any information anyone might have on the girl’s whereabouts, and the family home phone number was listed. This would be where things got a fair bit more bizarre.
The Orlandi family began to receive several strange phone calls from various people with wildly varying accents. The first such call was on June 25, from a male who identified himself as a 16 year-old boy named Pierluigi. The young man told them that he had been with his fiancée at the Piazza Navona when they had met the missing girl. The man claimed that Emanuela had introduced herself as “Barbarella” and had said that she had run away from home after selling Avon cosmetics. The call at first sounded a little too bizarre to be true, but “Pierluigi” knew a lot of details about the girl, stating that she had been carrying her flute and was wearing glasses that she claimed she did not like, which was true. The young man also stated that Emanuela had had her hair cut. Another odd call came on June 28, when a man calling himself “Mario” called the home. He claimed to be the owner of a bar near the music school Emanuela had attended and said that a new customer resembling the missing girl had been to his establishment, introducing herself as “Barbara.” Mario claimed that “Barbara” had told him that she had run away from home but planned to return for her sister’s wedding.

Emanuela Orlandi

By this time, the search for the girl had become desperate. Thousands of posters with Emanuela’s face on them had been put up all over the city and the Pope himself even came forward on many occasions, pleading to those responsible to let her go. It was around this time that the anonymous phone calls started to become at once more frequent and also more menacing. A series of calls to the family said that the girl had been captured by terrorists who intended to exchange her for the release of a man by the name of Mehmet Ali Ağca, a Turkish man who had been detained after attempting to assassinate Pope John Paul II at St. Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981.
One of the more persistent of these callers was a man with an American accent who came to be known as l’Americano, or “The American.” The American was an eloquent sounding man who suggested that an exchange could be made for Ali Ağca and demanded that the negotiation be approved by the Pope and carried out within 20 days. The American was extremely persuasive, as in one call he produced a recording of a voice that highly resembled Emanuela’s and he would offer more evidence of having the girl as well, such as photocopies of her music school ID, sheets of music that she had been studying, and even a handwritten note from the girl. The man also claimed that the previous callers, including “Pierluigi” and “Mario,” were all part of the same terrorist organization and were in on the kidnapping. In total, The American would make 16 phone calls, all traced to public telephone booths. As promising a lead as these sounded, things all fell through when the authorities in charge of handling the kidnapping case denied that there was any evidence to link the abduction and the attempted assassination of the Pope.
On July 8, yet another strange call came, this time from a man with a Middle Eastern accent. In this case, the call was much more ominous than the others, with the man claiming that he had the girl and planned to kill her if demands were not met. The unidentified man demanded the release of Ağca within 20 days or the girl would be killed. The demand was refused and after this the case went cold and has gone unsolved to this day, remaining one of history’s most inexplicable, mysterious disappearances. For years authorities have followed numerous tips, leads, and alleged sightings of the missing girl, all of which have invariably led to nowhere

VaticanCity

Various theories have been put forth over the years as to what happened to Emanuela Orlandi, ranging from the somewhat plausible to the truly bizarre, all with varying degrees of evidence to back them up. One is that the girl had actually in fact been kidnapped by a terrorist organization in a bid to free Mehmet Ali Ağca, just as had been claimed by the various mysterious phone calls. The main suspect in this scenario is a Turkish ultra-nationalist, neo-fascist youth organization called the Grey Wolves, to whom Ağca belonged. Ağca himself would go on record as saying as much in a prison interview with an Italian news program. In the interview, Ağca claimed that Emanuela Orlandi had been captured by the group and that she had eventually been moved to a cloistered convent where she remained alive and well, although there was no credible evidence to back up these claims.
Up until recent years Ağca would go on to continue to make such statements. In 2006, he published a letter in which he claimed that both Orlandi and yet another young woman who had also vanished in 1983 by the name of Mirella Gregori had both been abducted by the Grey Wolves to echange for his release and had subsequently been brought to an unspecified “royal palace” in Liechtenstein. Ağca was released from prison in 2010, after which he gave a televised interview in which he made even more bizarre, paranoid claims. In addition to stating that the Vatican itself had hired him to assassinate the Pope, he also said that in fact Orlandi had been kept prisoner by the Vatican and was currently alive and well, living in a Catholic monastery as a nun in a Central European country. None of Ağca’s increasingly bold claims have ever been supported by any strong evidence, and seem perhaps more like the ravings of a madman.
A common sentiment that underlies many of the theories is that the Vatican itself had a hand in the disappearances, or that it at least made efforts to stall the investigation at every turn. One theory is that Orlandi was kidnapped under the orders of Paul Marcinkus, who was an Archbishop at the time and ran the Vatican’s bank, after evidence of criminal activities was uncovered by the girl’s father, Ercole Orlandi. Marcinkus consistently used his standing and connections to avoid answering any questions on the matter and perhaps took the truth with him to his grave when he died in 2006.

Vatican City

The bank connection would get even deeper and more bizarre in 2011, when Antonio Mancini, a member of the Italian organized crime syndicate Banda della Magliana, claimed that the kidnapping of Orlandi had been an attempt by the mafia to get the Vatican to repay large amounts of money that had been borrowed from them. The claims show links to the death of the banker Roberto Calvi, also known as “God’s Banker” due to his Vatican connections. Calvi was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London in June 1982, his corpse’s pockets stuffed with cash and precious stones, after what is believed to have been from a falling out with the mafia after a botched money laundering operation.
The mafia connection is perhaps most noticeable in one of the weirdest, yet intriguing leads that has come in the case over the years. In 2005, an anonymous caller to the Italian crime show Who Has Seen? suggested that the secret to solving the case lay in opening the tomb of the infamous gangster Enrico de Pedis, who allegedly had killed the girl as a favor to the vicar general of Rome at the time, Cardinal Ugo Poletti. The mysterious claim was imbued with a bit of renewed credibility when the mobster’s former girlfriend admitted that he had told her he had killed Orlandi. Various anonymous callers would go on to bolster the claims that there was some clue to be found within De Pedis’ tomb.
Enrico De Pedis, also known as Renatino, was known as a rather charismatic gangster who was the leader of a gang called Banda della Magliana, a vicious group known to have had a hand in a lucrative drug trade in Rome, the very same gang that had been plying the Vatican for money, had been linked to the death of the banker Roberto Calvi, and who reportedly had the police in their pocket. The gangster De Pedis was brutally gunned down in an ambush by rival gang members in 1990 in the picturesque cobbled streets of an area known as Campo de’ Fiori. After the anonymous calls, it was believed that the mobster’s tomb might actually hold the body of Orlandi, which had never been found.

Enrico De Pedis

The tomb of the gangster De Pedis is in itself a bit of an anomaly. Despite his checkered criminal past, the burial was made at the Opus Dei Basilica of Sant’Apollinare, close to Piazza Navona in the centre of Rome, a sacred burial site mostly reserved for only the most senior and prestigious of church officials. The burial of such a notorious and ruthless criminal here was unheard of and a clear violation of cardinal law, and was oddly sanctioned by Poletti himself, reportedly because the criminal had repented for his crimes in prison and had made large donations to the church, as well as actively participated in charity work helping the poor.
Oddly, the Vatican resisted any attempts to open the tomb for seven years, during which time, in 2008, the former girlfriend of De Pedis came forth with the information that the late Archbishop Paul Marcinkus had had a hand in hiring the gangster, which along with the lack of cooperation in opening the tomb bolstered rumors of a church cover-up. Since Poletti had died in 1997, and so was unable to give any say in the matter, no one knew what they would find in the mysterious tomb. Finally, after much pressure from the public and Orlandi’s family, the Vatican finally agreed to open up the tomb to see what clues may lie within. Many expected that Orlandi’s body would be found right there next to that of the gangster De Pedis, or that De Pedis’ body would be absent altogether.
De Pedis was apparently not a subtle or humble man, as his name was emblazoned upon the tomb with an estimated £12,000 of diamonds. When the tomb was finally opened to a breathless public, De Pedis’ corpse was found to indeed be in the tomb, dressed in a dark suit and tie and in rather remarkably good condition. No other bodies were found to be in the tomb. At least, not intact ones. Scattered around the crypt, investigators made the macabre discovery of over 200 boxes of assorted, unidentified human bones. The find was so shocking that authorities went about checking for more hidden vaults before getting down to analyzing the remains. It was found that they all seemed to date back to pre-Napoleonic times, but an in-depth DNA analysis was planned. So far, the results are inconclusive, the promise of an answer elusive, and the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi remains as mysterious as ever.

Vatican City

Perhaps one of the creepiest claims involving Orlandi’s disappearance came in 2012 from one of the Catholic church’s top exorcists, Gabriele Amorth. The exorcist, who claims to have overseen thousands of exorcisms, sensationally said that Emanuella Orlandi was kidnapped in order to be used as a slave in sordid Vatican sex parties, after which she was murdered in cold blood; claims to which the Vatican has been unwilling to answer. The 84 year-old Amorth, who was ordained a priest in 1954, also said that the alleged sex parties also involved members of an unspecified country’s foreign embassy to the Holy See. Amorth said of the incident:

It has already previously been stated by (deceased) monsignor Simeone Duca, an archivist at the Vatican, who was asked to recruit girls for parties with the help of the Vatican gendarmes.
I believe Emanuela ended up in this circle. I have never believed in the international theory (overseas kidnappers). I have motives to believe that this was just a case of sexual exploitation.

In all fairness, the exorcist’s claims should be taken with a grain of salt, as Amorth has made numerous far-out statements over the years. He once stated that the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and Russian dictator Josef Stalin were both possessed by the devil and that Pope Pius XII had attempted a long distance exorcism of Hitler. He also proclaimed that the popular series of Harry Potter books were the evil work of the devil.

Gabriele Amorth

Despite all of the theories and false leads, some pieces of alleged solid physical evidence as to the fate of Emanuela Orlandi have surfaced over the years. In particular, on the morning of 14 May 2001, a skull was discovered in the Gregory VII Church, near the Vatican. The skull was found in a confessional, and was small, lacking a jawbone, and was packed together with an image of Padre Pio. Tests were launched to see if it might be the skull of Orlandi, but these turned out to be negative. Sightings of Emanuela continue to crop up from time to time, in many disparate locations, but these have led to little conclusive evidence.
For all of the tantalizing promises of answers and false leads, the answers to what became of Emanuela Orlandi, and indeed the other missing teen, Mirella Gregori, who vanished just 40 days prior, have never been found. Their whereabouts remain as much a mystery today as they have ever been. Throughout, the church has allegedly shown relatively little interest in getting to the bottom of the case, and there are those who think that Vatican officials know more than they are telling. One investigator stated:

There are still people alive, and inside the Vatican, who know the truth.

For over four decades, the mystery of the Vatican disappearances has haunted the Orlandi family, and closure has remained elusive. No new evidence, leads, or suspects have been forthcoming and all we have are speculation, wild claims, and unproven theories. What happened to this young girl all of those years ago? Was it simple terrorism, the case of a confused runaway, or are there darker motives that point to sinister workings and machinations deep within one of the world’s most powerful religious institutions? To this day, no one knows for sure, and the mysterious Vatican disappearances remain as murky and unsolved today as they have always been.

Chemtrails, Aerosol Geoengineering and Bioengineering: A Massive Biological Experiment of Unknown Purpose    ~ hehe yer 2 fucking lazy 2 look the fuck UP ...."somebody" IS spray~in shit on U.S.    & the kooks just go on "their" merry ..way ?    on fuck~in believable ,eh :o  spray~in ???   i don't C no spray~in LOL

By Prof. James F. Tracy

Global Research, May 13, 2015

14 December 2012

Region: USA

Theme: Biotechnology and GMO, Environment, Science and Medicine

“The ultimate solution is a multiplication of leverage by citizens to the point where it simply cannot be denied”. -Clifford Carnicom

The materials disbursed in stratospheric aerosol geoengineering operations contain a combination of ionizable metallic salts, filaments, gel-type materials, and crystals. These are the longstanding and deeply interrogated observations of independent environmental research scientist Clifford Carnicom given on a December 10 conference call organized by GlobalSkywatch.com director Russ Tanner. During the meeting, coincidentally held on International Human Rights Day, Carnicom asserted that because the system of responsible government has failed, the immediate collective efforts of citizens are necessary “to claim their rights upon this planet.”[1]

His remarks were made just three months after his presentation at the Consciousness Beyond Chemtrails conference held in Los Angeles last summer. In that talk, “Geoengineering and Bioengineering: The Unmistakable Link,” Carnicom upheld his research detecting such a correlation. “’Is there a direct relationship between the alteration of living systems (us) and ecosystems (the environment)?’” he asks. “My answer is unequivocally, ‘Yes.’”

Mr. Carnicom’s work began in 1999 when he noted clear changes in the skies overhead. He has since produced a large body of sound and meticulous yet accessible research reports examining the nature and contents of such aerosols, all of which are available at carnicominstitute.org.

The implications of his observations—that virtually every breathing organism is an unwitting participant in a massive biological experiment of unknown purpose—have proven terrifying enough to prevent many individuals from even tentatively considering his investigations and hypotheses. “There’s a personal journey everyone has to take about the reality of this,” Carnicom told call participants.

The most well-known manifestation of such nano-biologicals is the oft-misunderstood Morgellons ailment, an especially unusual and disturbing condition marked by painful dermal lesions through which such nano-fibers protrude. Tammy, a participant on the conference call suffering from Morgellons who became intimately informed about the sickness because of Carnicom’s work, asked if the broader population was also susceptible.

“I want to be as accurate as possible if I’m going to make a public declaration,” Carnicom stated. “The diplomatic way of saying this is that the evidence indicates that the general population is subject to the very same symptoms that Tammy is experiencing.”

How can one determine whether they are an unknowing subject of bioengineering? In 2008 Carnicom presented a simple technique developed by naturopathic physician Gwen Scott for the lay population to detect the presence of nano-fibers in their bodies. A mouthwash consisting of two teaspoons dry red wine and one teaspoon hydrogen peroxide vigorously applied for five minutes yielded observable clumps of fibrous strands comprised of an “encasing filament, sub-micron filament network, Chlamydia-like structures and the ‘hybrid form’” in fourteen subjects tested from diverse geographic locations across the US.

According to Carnicom such organisms “have now been discovered repeatedly across all major body systems and functions, including skin, blood, hair, saliva, dental(gum), digestive, ear and urinary samples.” [2]

US Government’s Conflicted Interest

Shortly after Carnicom began his research in the late 1990s major government and corporate entities with probable ties to this program made numerous repeated visits to the researcher’s website. Their interest suggests the threat Carnicom’s investigations posed in making such programs publicly known. IP addresses employed to peruse the site included offices as high as the Secretary of Defense and Air Force Headquarters, as well as over one dozen US Air Force bases, several US-based research laboratories, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the corporate offices of Lockheed, Boeing, Merck Pharmaceuticals, Arco Chemical, Kaiser Permanente, and the Mayo Clinic.[3]

Yet such curiosity fails to permeate the US agencies entrusted with the preservation of the environment and public health. Even though Carnicom is producing especially valuable research and has persistently called for regulatory intervention on the public’s behalf, the EPA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been wholly dismissive of his findings and requests to actively enforce existing laws intended to protect the environment and public health. Nor have these agencies presented comparable evidence of their own refuting Carnicom’s findings and justifying their failure to act upon the standards under which they are purportedly governed.

For example, when Carnicom sent the EPA samples of fibrous pollutants for analysis several years ago the agency responded, “It is not our policy to identify unsolicited materials.” Carnicom characterized this key instance of bureaucratic denial as “a powerhouse of innuendo and obfuscation that has never been resolved. When you have a specific mission statement you do not adopt a policy that suits the person in office at the time.”

Along these lines in early 2012 the CDC announced the findings of its inquiry into Morgellons by stating that it could not identify an origin for the fibers and concluding that individuals demonstrably suffering from the condition were “delusional.” Environmental writer Randy Ananda commented that the obfuscation merely provided cover for the Department of Defense’s ongoing experimentation.[4]

The US Government and Human Experimentation

The US government and military have long possessed the capacity and demonstrated the will to violate the Nuremberg Code by using nerve, biological, and radiological agents on unsuspecting human subjects.The fluoridation of public water supplies and above-ground nuclear testing are but a few dramatic and irrefutable examples. The premeditated will to do so further resounds in the government’s overt sponsorship of over 700 Nazi scientists under Operation Paperclip. The fruits of their research included the noxious and debilitating mycoplasma stealth pathogen derived from the brucellosis bacterium that likely infects many today.

Further, the US military’s ability to administer lethal substances on civilian populations is well established. In 1969 testimony before the House Defense Appropriations Committee the Pentagon’s Deputy Director of Research and Technology Dr. Donald MacArthur explained how “[l]ethal chemicals … about ten times more potent than the most toxic of World War I gases” could be released “in artillery shells or bombs, rockets, or you can deliver them from spray tanks … [T]o attack a complete city of many millions of people,” MacArthur continued, “let’s say a densely populated city like New York—it would take 300 to 400 tons efficiently dispersed to immobilize the city.”[5]

There are likewise numerous historical instances of the US government using citizens as nothing short of guinea pigs. For example, in 1994 Freedom of Information Act requests forced the US Army to divulge how in the mid-1950s it sprayed hundreds of pounds of zinc cadmium sulfide into a densely populated and predominantly black district of St. Louis.

“I’m wondering if it got into our system,” said former resident Lisa Martino-Taylor, who lost four brothers and sisters to cancer early in their lives and suspects that radioactive particulates were mixed with the metallic substance. “When I learned about the testing, I thought ‘Oh my god. If they did that, there’s no telling what else they’re hiding.’”

The Army claimed that it only used blowers atop buildings to distribute the toxins. Yet a resident of another targeted neighborhood in St. Louis, Mary Helen Brindell,

recalled a summer day playing baseball with other kids in the street when a squadron of green Army planes flew close to the ground and dropped a powdery substance. She went inside, washed it off her face and arms, and then went back out to play. Over the years Brindell has battled four types of cancer—breast, thyroid, skin and uterine. “I feel betrayed,” said Brindell, who is white. “We pointed our finger during the Holocaust, and we do something like this?[6]

With such instances in mind the question is no longer, “Would the government partake in such human experimentation that may be injurious or fatal to its own population?” It is instead, “What safeguards and systems of accountability exist that would prevent the government from using members of the general population as unwitting lab animals?” The bureaucratic shenanigans of the EPA and CDC and the abandonment of their respective mandates to protect the environment and public health make the answer more than obvious.

“Our World Has Been Transformed”

In a 2011 paper Carnicom demonstrates how the filament samples likely originating from aerial spraying are identical to those found in Morgellons’ victims. “The fact that this traces itself to a repeatedly occurring environmental sample represents, in my opinion, the worst crime in human history.”[7]

Indeed, such observations suggest how the unspeakable horrors of Dacchau and Auschwitz are not the stuff of a seemingly distant historical past. As Carnicom’s deep research suggests, such profound crimes have been resurrected in the skies above and worlds within. “Our biology is being negatively affected by this intrusion into our lives,” Carnicom warns, “whether it will be fifteen or fifty years.”

Drawing a conclusion to his remarks on the GlobalSkywatch call, Mr. Carnicom responded to an attendee articulating frustrations shared by many conscious and concerned citizens. “How do we get this to stop? How do we get the government to respond to us?”

“I will be inadequate in terms of what I can offer,” Carnicom began.

I have an obligation as a human being to do what is within my means to make the world a better place. As an individual I have that obligation, and so I do that to the best of my ability, so much so that it has occupied the past 15 years of my life and I have to spend a good part of it managing a non-profit. I’m one person that has certain particular talents and a background. I’m not the best public speaker in the world. I’m not the best activist in the world. I’m not the best money raiser in the world. But I do some things hopefully reasonably well.

To start answering this question I have to extend it to each one of you. Do you remember the old JFK [challenge]? I know it’s a cliché but clichés sometimes have some meaning. “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” Just skip the patriotic aspect of it and ask yourself what you’re going to do.The first thing that I would do is extend to every one of us the necessity for involvement and using your talents.

The second thing is that our world has been transformed now. Normal things don’t work. Frustration does not eliminate the call for duty that exists upon each of us … This is more a level of consciousness and awareness; of planting a seed, but the level that is going to be required is so different in this world than anything that has been imagined in terms of the demand for the right to a healthful and peaceful existence on this planet. It’s going to have to happen at a level that we’re not thinking of right now because the normal processes are not working. The Million Man March doesn’t cut it. I wish that I could answer simply what it is going to be. But it is going to [require] a shift in consciousness and awareness that is so forthright and direct that all of the games and manipulations–and the business of three, four, six companies controlling the media–no longer works and no longer applies. I don’t want for it to be decades in our future.

Notes

[1] Clifford E. Carnicom, Remarks to GlobalSkyWatch Weekly Phone Meeting, December 10, 2012, http://globalskywatch.com/go/ Unless otherwise noted, all quotes are from this December 10 event.

[2] Clifford E. Carnicom, “’Morgellons’:The Wine – Peroxide Test,” Carnicom Institute, March 9, 2008. For an example of Morgellons plaguing an entire family see, “Famous Baseball Player Gets Morgellons,” KTVU San Francisco/Youtube, October 2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnR8vhrS4go

[3] “Visitors to www.carnicom.com,” n.d., http://www.carnicominstitute.org/articles/visitors.htm

[4] Rady Ananda, “CDC Calls Morgellons’ Nanoworms a Delusion—Protects DARPA,” Activist Post, January 30, 2012,

[5] United States House of Representatives, Ninety-First Congress, Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, First Session. In Jesse Ventura with Dick Russell, 63 Documents the Government Doesn’t Want You to Read, New York: SkyHorse Publishing, 2011, 65-66.

[6] Jim Salter, “The Army Sprayed St. Louis with Toxic Aerosol During a Just Revealed 1950s Study,” Business Insider/Associated Press, October 4, 2012.

[7] Clifford E. Carnicom, “The Biggest Crime of All Time,” Carnicom Institute, March 1, 2011.

THE SPACE SCRAPBOOK: INTERNET SIGNALS POSSIBLE ON THE MOON…

Posted on May 14, 2015 by Joseph P. Farrell • http://gizadeathstar.com/2015/05/the-space-scrapbook-internet-signals-possible-on-the-moon/

Now this is a really intriguing story, one brimming over with H.O.S. (High Octane Speculation) possibilities. It was shared by Mr. M.D.(to whom goes a big thank you). Scientists at NASA has successfully demonstrated that Internet links to the Moon are possible:
The Moon is Now a Wi-Fi Hotspot
Now the article suggests, humorously, that one reason for the test is so that the first lunar Starbuck's franchise can have its wyfy connection assured:

"Complimentary Wi-Fi is so commonplace that a business advertising its “hotspot” in the window seems somewhat passé. But a new hotspot location should impress even the most jaded among us: For the first time, scientists have demonstrated it’s possible to beam a wireless Internet signal across the 238,900 miles separating Earth from the moon.
"The demonstration, done by researchers at NASA and MIT, means that future moon explorers could theoretically check in at Mare Imbrium and post lunar selfies with greater speed than you do from your home network."

We've suggested as much ourselves in various blogs on this site, as have other commentators: a permanent human presence on our neighboring planet would, as a matter of simple human psychology, require as many creature comforts from home as possible, and one of the most essential, from a psychological point of view, would be the feeling of "remaining connected" to the bulk of the human family. Joking aside, therefore, the internet, which now forms such a crucial component of human culture and social interaction, might in a very real sense be a necessity, as would that "lunar starbuck's" or some similar means of socialization and conviviality.
But beyond this, what might this development be signaling? Quite simply and frankly this: that any permanent lunar base or colony would of necessity have to be hardwired into the global social, scientific, financial, and military architecture, and to achieve all of this, communications would be essential, and that means that the internet capability would have to be demonstrated - which they have just done. After all, the world's biggest user of the Internet is not the millions (or perhaps, now, billions) of individual users like you or me; it's CERN and its Large Hadron Collider, as the sheer volume of data gathered from each experiment, and the need to shift and share that data with scientists worldwide is a necessity.
Similarly with any lunar presence, as financial clearing between the Earth and Moon, military and secure communications, scientific data gathered on the Moon from any such permanent manned colony, would likely be a huge volume of data.
So NASA's little announcement might be heralding that such a manned colony is a public event that is just around the corner...
...or... for those who've really been paying attention and indulging in High Octane Speculation, perhaps it is more of a hint or suggestion that it's already there... I can't help but recall, in this context, a show that aired many years ago on America's popular overnight radio talk show, Coast to Coast Am with Art Bell. That night the guest made a statement that "we" could "get to the Moon and back before lunch" with the black technologies available. Of course, this is a contextual and circumstantial argument, one depending on piling up all the data and evidence for the existence of such technologies, and then projecting speculative developments from the public record. Even then, the record is suggestive. Which leaves the question of how one would pay for lunch at the Tiffany's Selene Salon, without a form of clearing. How would one transfer data to and from the Moon, without some such "lunar internet"?
So the real question here is, is this announcement a portent of future developments? or is it the drawing back of the curtain, just a little, to reveal what might already have occurred to some small degree?                    

THE SPACE SCRAPBOOK: AIR FORCE’S X-37B SLATED TO TEST ION PROPULSION ENGINE

Posted on May 15, 2015 by Joseph P. Farrell •http://gizadeathstar.com/2015/05/the-space-scrapbook-air-forces-x-37b-slated-to-test-ion-propulsion-engine/

Yesterday, you'll recall, I blogged about that strange announcement that they had successfully tested the feasibility of internet connections on the Moon, and I speculated that this announcement may have either been a portent of a near future development, or possibly, a drawing back of the veil to suggest that some permanent human presence on the Moon had already been established. My "logic" there - if such it was - was rather simple: if there is to be a permanent human presence on the Moon, then staying "connected" to the rest of humanity on Earth might not just be a military, financial, and scientific necessity, but also a crucial psychological one. One hundred years ago, one's "community" was largely determined by the physical space one could easily access, and hence was limited, for most people and for the most part, to one's locality. Now, however, the internet has transformed culture, allowing people to connect with each other all over the globe, in "virtual" communities of shared interests, ideas, and so on. This might be extremely crucial to the psychological and sociological well-being of human colonies on our celestial neighbors.
In that blog, however, I also entertained the High Octane Speculation that the inernet feasibility announcement may not have been the announcement of a future development, but the drawing back of the veil on a current reality. Would a permanent human base on the Moon be possible? Most certainly, but with difficulty with current chemical rockets, but add off-the-books types of exotic and/or secret technologies, and the game changes immensely, as do the contexts for "High Octane Speculation". Consider only this technology, which has been around since the 1960s, and used successfully on satellites:
Secret Air Force Space Plane Gets Darth Vader-Style Engine
The subtlte here is highly suggestive: a Darth Vader-Style Engine for "secret reasons, like turning in secret directions." Now note these important paragraphs:

"In a press release, the Air Force Research Lab described the purpose of the upcoming test:

"'The experiment will include collection of telemetry from the Hall thruster operating in the space environment as well as measurement of the thrust imparted on the vehicle. The resulting data will be used to validate and improve Hall thruster and environmental modeling capabilities, which enhance the ability to extrapolate ground test results to actual on-orbit performance. The on-orbit test plans are being developed by AFRL and administered by RCO.'

"Putting an engine like this on a secret space plane means that the Air Force, which includes space in their mandate, will learn how to maneuver unmanned vehicles efficiently outside the Earth’s atmosphere. That’s essential for any future space fighters that may come to be, but I wouldn’t count on the Air Force developing actual TIE fighters just yet."

Now what's really intriguing here are the following constellations of technologies (1) a robotic space plane, like the shuttle, which can be launched and re-landed on the Earth and (2) its testing of a ion propulsion engine for maneuvering in the vacuum environment of deep space... or, alternatively, a vacuum environment like the surface of the Moon...
In other words, might we be looking at an Earth-Selene shuttle system, staring us in the face? Perhaps, but a lot of that case would depend on how much noble gases could be carried aboard a craft for thrusting and maneuvering for a lunar round trip. But nonetheless, the general possibility is implied, and in this case, both technologies - the shuttle-space plane idea, and the ion thruster - are demonstrated and proven technologies. What intrigues is therefore there combination in a platform that would seem, at least at this simple level of analysis, almost taylor made for an Earth-Moon transport system. One can envision upscale manned versions, or, like the X37B, a kind of robotic resupply system.  It should be noted that tests of thrust and maneuvering in deep space on board the X37B would be equally beneficial for thrusting an manaeuvering during a Moon landing, where the XB37's wings would be useless.
And bear in mind, this is a known and proven technology. We have not even talked about T.T. Brown's gravitors, John Searl, microwave solenoid effects, or weird end-of-life statements by Ben Rich, former head of the Lockheed Skunk Works.
So the question again arises, this time in a different context: are we being shown portents of future developments? or is the veil being drawn back, just a crack, to reveal current actualities?
The bottom line here is, in the light of these two questions, this is another development to watch.