An example of a Virgin Mary Iron Maiden which was described as being used by the Vehme

Recently I came across a bit of intriguing history. It turns out that the Ku Klux Klan was inspired by the romantic tales of the Holy Vehme; specifically what was written about them by Sir Walter Scott. During the time of the formation of the Ku Klux Klan, everyone in the South, it seems, was obsessed with Scott’s novels. And his 1829 Anne of Geierstein, in particular, contains detailed descriptions of the Vehme.

Below you’ll find a succinct overview of the “Vehmgerichte,” Vehmic Courts or Secret Tribunals, from Charles William Heckethorn’s The Secret Societies of All Ages, followed by the 1922 article, “Goethe and the Ku-Klux Klan” by James Taft Hatfield.

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The Holy Vehm, by Charles William Heckethorn

Origin and object of Institution. — In this book we are introduced to an order of secret societies altogether different from preceding ones. Hitherto they were religious or military in their leading features; but those we are now about to give an account of were judicial in their operations, and arose during the period of violence and anarchy that distracted the German empire after the outlawry of Henry the Lion, somewhere about the middle of the thirteenth century. The most important of these were the secret tribunals of Westphalia, known by the name of Vehm-Gerichte, or the Holy Vehm. The supreme authority of the emperor had lost all influence in the country; the imperial assizes were no longer held; might and violence took the place of right and justice; the feudal lords tyrannized over the people; whosoever dared, could. To seize the guilty, whoever they might be, to punish them before they were aware of the blow with which they were threatened, and thus to secure the chastisement of crime — such was the object of the Westphalian judges, and thus the existence of this secret society, the instrument of public vengeance, is amply justified, and the popular respect it enjoyed, and on which alone rested its authority, explained.

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Lars Schall - March 12, 2011

Mr. Engdahl, is the oil price by and large driven by massive speculation? Mike Norman, the Chief Economist at the Wall Street firm John Thomas Financial (http://www.johnthomasbd.com), wrote to me in October of last year for example:

“Total NYMEX open interest in crude is 1.4 m contracts or about 1.4 billion barrels of crude. Daily volume of crude traded on NYMEX is over 1 billion barrels per day. Total daily global demand is only 83 million barrels per day. The amount traded on one single exchange is more than 10 times total daily consumption. It’s a giant casino with prices being driven up by speculators and consumers having to pay more and more.” (i)

What’s your opinion on that?

FWE: I wrote back in the 2008 period, when oil briefly spiked-up to $ 147 per barrel and Goldman Sachs was issuing client-advisories that it was going quickly to $ 200, and when JP Morgan was advising the Chinese government that China ‘buy all the physical crude you can get your hands on because it is going to $ 200,’ at that point I wrote that roughly 60-70% of the price of oil then was pure speculation, manipulated by the GSCI, the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index. It’s a perfect scenario that they have created on Wall Street to control the oil price irrespective of supply and demand. (ii) I would just add that the crucial ingredient these days is not the NYMEX for the global oil price benchmark, but the ICE Futures in London.

Why do I say that? Because the ICE Futures is a daughter company of the International Commodity Exchange of Atlanta in Georgia, owned by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase etc. – the big oil banks that benefit enormously from the inside. There is absolutely no serious regulation of the ICE Futures. The British keep their hands off it, and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the CFTC, since 2006 under the “Commodity Modernization Act of 2000“ allows ICE Futures to trade energy futures without disclosure to CFTC in the U.S. market through London. So, in fact, it has deregulated and taken away from any government supervisory role the entire trade in energy futures, especially oil.

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Noah Shachtman - Wired April 2011

Finally, the investigation was over. The riddle solved. On August 18, 2008—after almost seven years, nearly 10,000 interviews, and millions of dollars spent developing a whole new form of microbial forensics—some of the FBI’s top brass filed into a dimly lit, flag-lined room in the bureau’s Washington, DC, headquarters. They were there to lay out the evidence proving who was responsible for the anthrax attacks that had terrified the nation in the fall of 2001.

It had been the most expensive, and arguably the toughest, case in FBI history, the assembled reporters were told. But the facts showed that Army biodefense researcher Bruce Ivins was the person responsible for killing five people and sickening 17 others in those frightening weeks after 9/11. It was Ivins, they were now certain, who had mailed the anthrax-filled letters that exposed as many as 30,000 people to the lethal spores.

The FBI unraveled the mystery, officials said, thanks in part to the microbiologists seated at a U-shaped table in the front of the room. Among them was Paul Keim, who first identified the anthrax strain used in the attacks, and genetic specialist Claire Fraser-Liggett, who led the team that sequenced the DNA of the anthrax in the letters, tracing the spores back to their genetic match: a flask of superconcentrated, ultrapure anthrax held by Ivins. Several of the researchers at the table had previously counted Ivins as a peer and even a friend. Now they were helping brand him a monster.

Between the officials and the scientists, it was a convincing display. It had to be. Ivins had killed himself three weeks earlier. There would be no arrest, no trial, no sentencing. Absent a courtroom and a verdict to provide a sense of finality or some measure of catharsis, all the FBI could do was present its findings and declare the case closed.

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Eric Margolis - March 24, 2011

The US government just decided Islamic shariah law is not so bad after all – at least not in the case of jailed CIA agent Raymond Davis.

The burly Davis, an ex-US Special Forces soldier, former Blackwater gunman, and now CIA “contractor” (jargon for mercenary) was jailed in Pakistan after shooting dead two Pakistanis, who were either robbers or government security agents. A third Pakistani was killed by a car driven by a CIA rescuer racing up a one-way street the wrong way.

Pakistanis were outraged, but their weak government, which subsists on $3 billion of annual US aid, caved in to its American patrons. After weeks of intense negotiations over US claims that Davis had diplomatic cover, some $2.3 million or more “diyaa,” or blood money, was paid to the grieving families of Davis’ victims. Case closed.

The CIA’s man in Islamabad was quickly rushed out of Pakistan to a US base in Afghanistan. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has become as adept at bending the truth as her hubby Bill, stoutly denied Washington had paid any money to get Davis released.

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Alex Newman - 10 March, 2011

The Zeitgeist Movement is described on its website as “a grass-roots campaign to unify the world through a common ideology based on the fundamentals of life and nature. It is based on the social/technological work of Jacque Fresco and his Venus Project.” The Venus Project, for its part, “proposes a feasible plan of action for social change, one that works toward a peaceful and sustainable global civilization” — essentially creating Heaven on Earth.

The Zeitgeist Movement has already attracted a large following, claimed to be over a half a million people so far — worldwide. Numerous Facebook groups — one with more than 70,000 people, another with more than 35,000, and still one more with almost 20,000 — transmit instructions and ideas to the activists around the globe. Various local and national groups have memberships in the thousands, using social-networking services to coordinate their campaigns and events.

It is led by a man who calls himself Peter Joseph. He refuses to release his last name, citing privacy concerns about his family and friends. Regardless of his true identity, he has made certain statements that have caused great concern amongst various groups. For example, in one video posted online, Joseph called people who bear children “self-serving,” saying they don’t care about the “carrying capacity of the Earth.” When things get really bad, he said, “I might not be against governments imposing one-child policies.”

The worries of some aside, today he is a truly famous man. His first video reportedly received 100 million views in just its first year. The New York Times published a glowing article about a “Z-Day” event Joseph hosted in New York, offering not one critical word about any of the ideas presented by Joseph — or his mentor, Fresco. One of Joseph’s movies won an “Artivist” award at a prominent film festival backed by the United Nations.

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NB: Scattered (though scant) evidence gleaned online, suggests that Peter Joseph is one P. J. Merola, solo percussionist; multimedia designer; short-term equities trader.

Dave Johnson - March 20, 2011

Just what is this Koch Industries? Should it be called a “company?” If so we need to re-think the idea of what a company and a business is supposed to be. Even the brother of Koch Industries owners David and Charles Koch called the company an “organized crime” operation.

Koch money is a key driver of the conservative movement. Almost every conservative-movement rock you turn over has Koch money crawling around under it. As the movement becomes more and more of a pay-to-play operation, conservatives of every stripe do more and more to protect and enrich the Koch operation. This has included blocking, disrupting and avoiding official investigations of accusations. It also includes funding front groups to advance the political and financial interests of the company and its owners.

Theft Of Oil From Reservations

Oppose The Future has the story of how Koch Oil was caught stealing oil from an Indian Reservation, reducing or removing the incomes of so many poor residents.

At some point in 1987, Thurmon Parton’s royalty checks for the three oil wells he inherited from his mother suddenly dropped from $3,000 a month to a little over $1,000. He and his sister, Arnita Gonzalez, members of the Caddo tribe, lived near Gracemont, Oklahoma, a town of a few hundred people on a small grid on the prairie.

Those modest royalties were the only source of income each of them had.

. . . What happened to Mr. Parton, Ms. Gonzales and Ms. Limpy had nothing to do with the wells or how they were producing. Their oil was being stolen. And all of the evidence pointed to the same culprit: Koch Oil, a division of Koch Industries.

Full story

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THE TRUE STORY OF KOCH OIL’S MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR SWINDLE

Michael S. Rozeff - March 19, 2011

The U.N. intervention in Libya is a major political event. The U.N. is intervening inside a country that has not aggressed against another country. Whether or not this is the first time that this has happened, it is surely an important and clear-cut instance of this happening.

The U.N. is intervening to take down the Gaddafi administration and replace it by another, of undetermined nature. This means that the U.N. places its power over that of the Libyan state. The U.N. makes itself the Supreme Governor in the sense that it decides on a critical feature of a State, namely, who has “consent,” or who is entitled to rule that State when protests against the existing rule emerge.

It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the U.N. launch a drone attack to kill Gaddafi.

Before going further in analyzing this, let’s recognize openly that the entire development is within the existing framework of States. The term “State” hides the fact that every State is an armed gang. The U.N. gives too much credence and respect to States. Let’s recognize that this framework is morally flawed. The weight of history and the apparent reality of this system should not, at a fundamental level, cause us to evaluate States positively and accept them. They are negative for human beings.

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James P. Tucker Jr. - (Issue # 13, March 28, 2011)

The shadowy group known as Bilderberg will be gathering this year for its annual meeting at the resort city of St. Moritz, in southeastern Switzerland, June 9-12, but they will have a lot of company. St. Moritz is a short distance from Davos, the site of the regular high-priced meeting of thousands of bankers, political leaders and other notables called the World Economic Forum. But unlike at Davos, where the press is always welcome, Bilderberg still tries to maintain absolute secrecy.

Bilderberg has met in Switzerland four times over the years but never in the same city. Normally, when their sibling in crime, the Trilateral Commission (TC), meets in North America, Bilderberg does, too. This year, the TC will meet in Washington on April 8 to 10, but the Bilderbergers are avoiding the United States, in what may be an effort to fool the press.

Bilderberg has been called the most exclusive and secretive club in the world. To be admitted, you have to own a multinational bank, a multinational corporation or a country. Since its first meeting in 1953, it has been attended by the top powerbrokers, financial minds and world leaders.

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Richard Lightbown - March 15, 2011

Press TV on 4 March 2011 reported that cancer cases in Gaza had increased by 30 per cent, and that there was a link between the occurrence of the disease and residence in areas that had been badly hit by Israeli bombing.

Zekra Ajour from the Al-Dameer Association for Human Rights told the channel that Gaza had been a testing ground for illegal weapons.

Birth defects

On 20 December 2009 Al-Dameer had published another paper in Arabic on the increase in the number of babies born in Gaza with birth defects, thought to be the result of radioactive and toxic materials from Operation Cast Lead.1 The birth defects included incomplete hearts and malformations of the brain.

During August, September and October 2008 the number of cases had been 27. In the comparable months in 2009 the numbers had risen to 47. There was a similar rise in aborted foetuses. Al-Dameer had called for scientific monitoring throughout the Gaza Strip to obtain statistics on deformed foetus cases relating to the intentional use of internationally banned weapons.

Similar dramatic increases in birth defects over a longer period have been recorded in Iraq and have been linked to widespread use of depleted uranium (DU) weapons. (It is reported that local midwives no longer look forward to births as they don’t know what is going to come out.)

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Ian Shapira - March 10, 2011

The Obama administration may not be lending arms to dissidents in the Middle East, but it is offering aid in another critical way: helping them surf the Web anonymously as they seek to overthrow their governments.

Federal agencies - such as the State Department, the Defense Department and the Broadcasting Board of Governors - have been funding a handful of technology firms that allow people to get online without being tracked or to visit news or social media sites that governments have blocked. Many of these little-known organizations - such as the Tor Project and UltraReach - are unabashedly supportive of the activists in the Middle East.

But the United States’ backing of these firms has the potential to put the government in an awkward diplomatic position, not only with the countries where uprisings are active, but also with economic partners such as Saudi Arabia and China, which are known to block Web sites they deem dangerous.

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Ethan A. Huff - March 14, 2011

Since 2006, the use of nanoparticles in consumer products has skyrocketed by over 600 percent. Nanotechnologies, which involve the manipulation of elements and other matter on the atomic and molecular scale, are now used in over 1,300 commercial and consumer products. And that number is expected to jump nearly three-fold by 2020. But are these nanoparticles safe for humans and the environment, particularly when used in food-related applications?

According to data provided by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN), a group formed in 2005 for the purpose of “creat[ing] an active public and policy dialogue” on nanotechnology, nanoparticles are now used in everything from car batteries and appliances, to aluminum foil and non-stick cookware. The “Food and Beverage” section of PEN even includes various vitamin and mineral supplements that contain nanoparticles, as well as McDonald’s hamburger boxes.

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Extensive new article by the Collins brothers.

• Freedom House: Imperialists Under One Roof
• The National Endowment for Democracy: Human Rights, Covert Wrongs
• The Apotheosis of George Soros
• Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Co-Option of the Global Political Awakening
• The Muslim Brotherhood: The Nexus of Jihadists, Spooks, and Deviant Elites
• The CFR, the State Department and Weaponized Foreign Policy
• The Death of a Nuclear Free Middle East
• Spreading the Disease: The Political Contagion of Revolutionary Gnosticism
• Sources Cited

Ms. Smith - Sun, 03/06/11

We’ve heard how if you don’t like TSA screenings, then don’t fly; instead take a bus, a train, or drive your car. If gas prices keep climbing, driving may not be an affordable option in the future. In that same future, Homeland Security had considered hitting the streets with TSA airport-like body scanners to covertly peek under your clothes, into your bags, and even into your vehicles. Whether you call it a police state, a peep show, or plain old privacy invasion, the increasing surveillance needs to stop.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) discovered that the Department of Homeland Security paid contractors “millions of dollars on mobile body scanner technology that could be used at railways, stadiums, and elsewhere” on crowds of moving people. EPIC acquired the 173-pages of contracts and reports [PDF] via the Freedom of Information Act.

Homeland Security said it dropped the project, but EPIC lawyer Ginger McCall called Homeland Security’s project “disturbing” because the “department obviously believed that this level of surveillance is acceptable when in fact it is not at all acceptable,” USA Today reported.

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Michael Tennant - 14 March 2011

Americans concerned about exposure to potentially dangerous levels of radiation from the Transportation Security Administration’s full-body scanners just got another reason to worry: USA Today reports that on March 11 the TSA announced “that it would retest every full-body X-ray scanner that emits ionizing radiation — 247 machines at 38 airports — after maintenance records on some of the devices showed radiation levels 10 times higher than expected.” The TSA, of course, insists that all the machines are safe and that the records indicating the high radiation levels are the result of recordkeeping errors by technicians. TSA spokesman Nicholas Kimball told USA Today that, for example, “the testing procedure calls for the technician to take 10 separate scans” for radiation levels, “add them up and then divide by 10 to take an average. They didn’t divide by 10.” In addition, says the paper, “even the highest readings listed on some of the records — the numbers that the TSA says were mistakes — appear to be many times less than what the agency says a person absorbs through one day of natural background radiation.”

The agency posted reports from 127 X-ray devices, including some used to scan checked luggage, on its website. “Of the reports posted, about a third showed some sort of error,” Kimball told USA Today. Even more alarmingly, of the reports from 40 backscatter (i.e., full-body) scanners, 19 had errors, including six that were described as “considerable.”

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M. Catharine Evans - February 28, 2011

Reverend Al Sharpton called a press conference this past week to denounce an anti-abortion billboard overlooking New York City’s Soho district. The sign depicting a young black girl read “The Most Dangerous Place for an African-American is in the Womb.” Sharpton’s spokesman characterized the message as “classic racial profiling.”

The pro-life non-profits responsible for the billboard positioned it in close proximity to three Planned Parenthood facilities who reported performing 17,000 abortions between them for the year 2010.

Sharpton’s charge of racial profiling prompted Lifealways to remove the sign before the Friday press conference. The fact that for every 1000 African-American births there are 1,489 aborted black babies in New York City did not convince the Reverend that something is going on in his community besides racism.

There’s an old African proverb that states “if you want to know the end, look at the beginning.” The adage is good advice for African-Americans like Sharpton who still defend Planned Parenthood. The billion dollar international organization has never been a friend to people of color, so it’s devastating that civil rights activists as well as the first black president would not do their homework. When confronted with pro-life activist Lila Rose’s undercover videos of PP personnel condoning underage sex trafficking, Obama stated that “in the past they did good work.”

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