Tag: christian

Bits and pieces concerning the American neocon desire for World War III, and some comedic push back on all the absurdity

The cult of the Biblical end of the world and the rapture does not reflect the view of the majority of Christians. But rather it is a distortion of one of the books of the Bible, twisted, and taken way, way out of context. Mentioning it here in no way is intended to disparage any Christians, or anyone who following the writings of the Bible.

It is placed here as informative background only.

Yes, this year (2020) has really been something else. I mean it’s just been absurd.

Well, there is a human role in what is going on, don’t you know. It’s not all coincidence, and chance. It’s all part of a huge scheme of things that are all caught up within yet an even greater scheme of things.

And people like me and you, well we are trapped inside this car that is being driven by drunk madmen towards what appears to be… the end of the road.

Yikes!

Heads up!

I am going to say some nasty things about President Trump. 

Sorry, but anyone who favors WAR in any shape, size or color, and tries to justify it is going to get "bitch slapped" by me. War is not a game. War is serious, serious business. 

Stop hiding behind the soft tones of a "police action" or a "hybrid war", or a "trade war". War is war is war is war.

And anyone promoting it is a dangerous person.

This post is about the association of the United States government with hard-core neocons and evangelical Christians, I consider it a very dangerous combination. Much akin to playing with matches inside of a warehouse full of dynamite.

kapish?

This post is going to be a little bit “off the wall”.

It’s all about what happens when some ideologically motivated people, with insanely odd-ball and distorted views of their place / role in society, take the reins of power of the largest nation on the planet.

We’ve seen this in the past with Roman emperors. Like Nero.

Right?

A review of some of the madness of Nero

Nero.

Short name.

Insane.

Yeah. He was a pretty crazy guy. That is for certain, and his antics made modern politicians seem tame by comparison. But you all must keep in mind that the worst Nero could do was sack a city. He didn’t have the power to lay waste to the earth a thousand times over.

Here’s a review of what can happen when you have a psychopath in charge of a nation…

  • Nero Used Burning Christians To Light His Garden At Night
The most famous myth about Emperor Nero says that the crazed emperor actually played a fiddle while Rome burned during the Great Fire of 64 AD. That’s patently false. Nero did a bunch of crazy things, but this wasn’t one of them. When the fire broke out, Nero was actually 35 miles away at his villa at Antium. When he got the news, he rushed back to the city to begin administering aid immediately.

The reason that the “fiddling” myth arose was thanks to the Roman people’s belief that Nero was a pampered aristocrat who cared little for the plight of his people. He was considered to be so callous and carefree that he could play music while his people suffered.

After the Great Fire, the public came to the (incorrect) conclusion that Nero had actually started the nine-day blaze that engulfed two-thirds of Rome. In order to throw the scent off his trail, Nero put the blame squarely on Christians. Nero took to persecuting believers with glee. He had them thrown to dogs, nailed to crosses, and on occasion, he dipped Christians in oil, set them on fire, and used the light to illuminate his gardens at night.
  • Nero Kicked His Second Wife To Death And Then Married A Guy Who Looked Like Her
The case could be made that Poppaea Sabina was Nero’s great love. He divorced his first wife to marry her, then quickly impregnated her once they were married. Then Poppaea mysteriously perished before having their second child. Historians of the time claim that Nero actually kicked Poppaea to death. Modern historians are a bit more forgiving, and claim it's equally as likely that Poppaea perished of a miscarriage.

At any rate, what is known is that some time later, Nero fell in love with a man named Sporus whose most striking feature was his resemblance to Nero’s late wife. Nero had the boy castrated and brought back to the palace, where he took to calling him “lady” and “queen.”
  • Nero Liked To Dress Up As A Wild Animal And… Well, There’s More
As Nero’s reign progressed, so did his sexual peculiarities. Though he was content to simply hit up some brothels in his youth, as he got older, his tastes got a little more violent.

According to Roman historian Cassius Dion, “Nero would fasten naked boys and girls to stakes, and then putting on the hide of a wild beast would attack them and satisfy his brutal lust under the appearance of devouring parts of their bodies.”
  • In His Quest To Consolidate Power, Nero Ended Both His Brother And His Mother
Initially, Nero wasn’t expected to be emperor. However, after Emperor Claudius married his niece, Nero's mother Agrippina, Agrippina persuaded her husband to adopt Nero as his son. It was then - with Nero next in line for the throne - that Nero’s mother Agrippina supposedly poisoned Claudius and pinned the deed on another woman.

This plan ultimately backfired, though, as once Nero took the throne at the young age of 17, he was warned by both his advisors and his friends to watch out for Agrippina. In an attempt to secure his hold on the throne, Nero poisoned his stepbrother Britanicus and then, fearing his own mother’s wrath, he had Agrippina taken out a few years after taking the throne.
  • He Panicked And Ordered His Servant To Slay Him
In the final months of his short life, the emperor tried to flee Rome after some political hostility (and a healthy dose of paranoia). He made it as far as the port city of Ostia; unfortunately, a few of the officers in the city refused to listen when the emperor gave them commands, so Nero slunk back to the Roman palace. 

In a move of Shakespearean-level drama, a courier arrived to tell Nero that the Senate had declared him an enemy of the state and that they intended to beat him to death at their earliest convenience. This was actually a miscommunication, as the Senate was only considering bashing in Nero’s skull. Ultimately, they decided to reinstate the emperor and sent a second envoy to let him know.

Meanwhile, Nero had spent the intervening time trying to work up the nerve to take his own life. He reportedly paced around saying what amounted to “what an artist dies in me!” He tried to convince some of his buddies to end their own lives first to show him how easy it was. When the Senate messenger arrived to tell him everything was cool, Nero heard the sound of horses approaching, panicked, and ordered his secretary Epaphroditus to do the job for him. Epaphroditus obliged and stabbed Nero.

For his loyalty, Epaphroditus was met his end in 95 AD.
  • Nero Had His Own Corps Of Personal Clappers
Okay, so let’s be fair here - Nero might have been an okay performer. Some of his closest advisors supposedly encouraged him to perform publicly. According to some historians, however, the emperor had “a slight and indistinct voice, so that he moved his whole audience to laughter and tears at once.”

In order to ensure that his poor ego wasn’t hurt, however, Nero pulled together a special squad of 5,000 soldiers, called Augustans, whose only job was to clap when Nero’s performances prompted it. These soldiers were also encouraged to get the audience involved in the shouting and applause, as well.
  • He Instituted Juvenalia, Games In Honor Of His Own Beard
In 59 AD, when Nero was 22, he finally started getting enough facial hair to merit a shave. In honor of this rite of passage, the boy emperor instituted Juvenalia, or "the games of youth," literally a festival commissioned because Nero was going to shave.

The festival distinguished itself as a showcase for the performing arts, consisting of every known kind of theatrical performance. Rome’s most prominent members were expected to join the cast and look like they enjoyed doing it. When some members put on masks to hide their identities, Nero demanded their faces be shown to the public.
  • Nero Emptied The Roman Treasury Rebuilding His Palace
After the Great Fire, Nero opted to spend the expansive Roman treasury not on rebuilding the city at large, but on building an opulent 100-acre palatial complex that came to be known as the Domus Aurea, or the “Golden House.”

At the center of the Domus Aurea was a 100-foot-tall bronze statue of Nero himself, which the emperor dubbed the Colossus Neronis.
  • Nero Seriously Breached Protocol By Giving Public Performances
Until his mother’s passing in 59 AD, Nero wasn’t doing half bad as emperor. He spoke out for Rome’s slaves, he did away with capital punishment, and he even lowered taxes in the empire. Though he always had a reputation for hitting brothels and taverns and acting a fool, Nero was able to keep it together. Once Agrippina passed, though, the boy emperor quickly lost control.

Around this time, with his popularity waning, Nero felt the need to increase his popularity. Just like any struggling star of today, the emperor began to perform in public by singing songs he’d written. Though his performances were a huge no-no because of his standing in the hierarchy, some historians suggest that Nero was actually encouraged to play in public by the Senate and his inner circle.
  • He May Have Been The Model For The Antichrist
When Nero passed in 68 AD, there were some who believed that his “suicide” couldn’t have been real and that the mad emperor still lived. There were even several occasions when men who claimed to be Emperor Nero - men who resembled the ruler and sang to the music of the lyre - would arise in the public eye momentarily.

Typically, these men were strung up and slain with a quickness.

The image of Nero as dastardly was so pervasive that his actions might have contributed to the personification of the Antichrist in the New Testament, and the belief that when said Antichrist arose, he would do so in the form of the emperor.

But…

But…

But, you say. “America is different.” “America is the shining light on the hill.”, and “America is special.”

We know.

We know.

We know.

America today

It’s true that there is nothing in America today that comes close to these distortions, right?

Or maybe not.

After all, there’s no such thing as gender in America, and the amount of money that flows in and out of Washington DC is staggering. I would say that (while it is both substantively, and qualitatively, different) than what Rome was like under Nero, that the belief structure of the two rulers are disturbingly similar.

For example… Both Nero and Trump believe(d)…

  • That God empowered them for their role.
  • That they have full control of the treasury and can spend it without limits.
  • That they can pretty much do what they want, and the Senate and Congress will not stop them.

And that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

And so we have this modern incarnation of an ideologically religious leader who represents the largest and most powerful nation on the planet…

The Trump neocon Administration

The truth is that from 2016 though 2020, the Trump administration has been in charge of America. He has staffed his administration with hard-core neocons, and their vision of the world is a very different from the one that you and I have.

They think differently.

Their experiences are different from ours. They live differently, and their view of themselves and the world around them is quite different from the rest of us.

They want WAR!

If you think that the last 75 years of America have been war-like, all I can say is that “you haven’t seen anything yet.” Those predecessors to the Trump Administration were “pikers” in comparison. To them, war was business. You attack a nation, you secure it. You seize it’s resources, and then you move on.

No. Not with these people.

To them. War is a religious duty.

You know, many of President Trumps followers do not follow him for his policy positions. Instead, they follow him because the evangelical Christian movement has assigned him as the savior of the American culture; the American society, and as the hope for the entire world.

War is a religious duty.

America has, over the last 75 or so years, really been involved in global war, and military activities. And while the last fifty or so years has been off fighting numerous small scale conflicts all over the world, the truth is that things are different now.

For, this time, it’s a cadre of far-Right neocons in America that earnestly believe that their role is to start World War III.

What?

Yes.

Since 2001, the US ‘war on terror’ has killed, injured and displaced millions across 24 countries, while America’s defense spending is nearly 40 per cent of the global total. In contrast, China has waged one foreign war in the past 50 years

-Forget China, America is the biggest warmonger by far

Yes, that is correct.

They believe that it is their role to initiate this thing called “the rapture“.

The Rapture.
The rapture is an eschatological concept of a minority of Christians, particularly within branches of American evangelicalism, consisting of an end-time event when all Christian believers who are alive, along with resurrected believers, will rise "in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air."

-Wikipedia

And during this rapture, Jesus will fly down from Heaven and grant blessings to the annotated, and punish the heathen. (And by “heathen”, I mean about 99% of my readership.) Unless you’ve been “birthed” in the “blood of our Lord”, you will spend life as the eternally damned.

You think that I am exaggerating, eh?

Hardly.

First some supporting evidence

The identification of the 45th president with an ancient Middle Eastern potentate isn’t a fringe thing, says @kathsstewart 
https://t.co/VOPxWVGKJk

— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) January 1, 2019

Most outlandish statements at least need some kind of background. You don’t think that I pulled all this out of my ass, do you?

Do you think that I am making it up?

And further, you must realize that I am not talking about everyone, or every Christian.

A chilling op-ed in the NY Times by author Katherine Stewart, who has extensively studied and written about the Christian right, says that the far right have been pushing a meme for several years now that Donald Trump, conman and egomaniac, has been sent by God to be “a vessel for the purposes of the faithful” in the role of King of the United States of America.

Oh…

My…

I will repeat…

A chilling op-ed in the NY Times by author Katherine Stewart, who has extensively studied and written about the Christian right, says that the far right have been pushing a meme for several years now that Donald Trump, conman and egomaniac, has been sent by God to be “a vessel for the purposes of the faithful” in the role of King of the United States of America.

Unbeknownst to people with even a tenuous grip on reality, prior to the midterms a thousand theaters showed “The Trump Prophecy,” a film about a firefighter who, in a blinding orgiastic epiphany, picks up a Bible and turns to Isaiah 45, “which describes the anointment of King Cyrus by God.”

Do you get it, Isaiah “45”?

Trump “45”?

What more proof do you need, right?

Stewart goes on, saying that evangelical author and speaker Lance Wallnau has said:

I believe the 45th president is meant to be an Isaiah 45 Cyrus [who will] restore … us from cultural collapse.

And in this telling it is not at all paradoxical that Trump is a non-believer intent on wrecking our democracy and government. Apparently the story of Cyrus is of a nonbeliever who becomes the first emperor of Babylon (“Babble-on” — it’s all starting to come together now, isn’t it?) and…

… frees the Jews.

Stewart provides numerous quotations from across the spectrum of the religious right leadership pushing this meme that God sent Trump to be King. This includs Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and Ralph Drollinger who leads weekly bible study groups at the White House attended by Mike Pence and members of the Cabinet.

In her article Stewart confirms our worst suspicions about what Trump’s core followers see in him:

This isn’t the religious right we thought we knew. 

The Christian nationalist movement today is authoritarian, paranoid and patriarchal at its core. 

They aren’t fighting a culture war. 

They’re making a direct attack on democracy itself.

And, according to Stewart, Trump has been egging them on, goading their preachers for becoming too “soft” — as he openly muses about becoming “President for life”.

"The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children" by Katherine Stewart. 

https://t.co/tFb2w1QTi5 
pic.twitter.com/ittduwioTd

— Church and State (@ChurchAndStateN) January 2, 2019

This all sounds so absolutely outrageous.

But it’s more than that. It’s not just the evangelical Christian (political) base that supports this notion. It is about another group of very, very dangerous people.

I am talking about a special group of people inside America known as “neocons”. You know these people. They are the ones in charge of the United States right now. And most specifically the observation that [1] many of these neocons are also [2] American evangelical Christians…

And you all think that I am a little crazy. To repeat these beliefs.

Because the beliefs of others will be strange, and appear strange to the uninitiated.

You know what I mean. Me, going on and on, talking about intention, and world-lines and thought imposition, and slides to alternative realities. Well, my point is that everyone is different, and some people live really off the mainstream world-line paths into these realms of other possibilities. People call me “crazy”.

But at least I have a documented “back story”. At least I can provide substantive proofs, understandings and relationships.

Not so with these people. They have nothing. Instead they want you to believe blindly. “Have faith they say. Have faith they implore. Have faith and listen to me, they demand.”

Some of these people are mad. “Mad” as in crazy.

Mad as Hatters!

Mad as a hatter means absolutely crazy. 

The most famous illustration of the phrase mad as a hatter occurs in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, with the character the Mad Hatter. In the nineteenth century, milliners or hatmakers used mercury in the processing of hats, and many succumbed to mercury poisoning.

-Mad as a hatter Idiom Definition
Many Hard-Right Christians believe that Donald Trump is a savior of traditional conservative thought that will lead the United States into the “End Times”.

And that means…

Yikes!

World War III and the rapture

Some fun links from the collective minds of the dangerously insane.

You see they equate [1] what is written in the Bible with global war. And that [2] the war will be nuclear, and [3] it will involve China and Russia, and [4] and it will be exactly what is foretold as “the rapture”, and [5] a savior will appear (maybe a prophet) who will do the bidding of God to bring the rapture to a climax. And [6] the “Jews” and the “Jewish nation” will be central to this event. As they are the “chosen ones”.

Yah.

And you think that I am crazy.

Many Hard-Right Christians believe that Donald Trump is a savior of traditional conservative thought that will lead the United States into the “End Times”.

And many of these people believe that President Trump is that “savior”.

In Denial…

Of course this connection between Donald Trump and the writings of the Biblical Book of Revelation has caused a kind of schism in the Hard-Right American evangelical Christians conservative movement. There was “push back” that has existed for years now, where the conservative Christians say…

“Oh no! We do not believe that Donald Trump is my savior and will lead us into the “End Times”. Donald Trump is my President, Jesus is my Savior.”

And as such, an entire line of products (all made in China, of course) have promoted this narrative…

“Push back” in the form of commercialism.

China and Russia’s role

Well that is well and good, I suppose.

The point is that a percentage (how small is unknown) actually believe that the White House is occupied by a man who (call him a savior, or something else) is going to perform some Biblical level of activity that will result in the prophesies foretold in the Bible.

  • The world that we know it is going to end.
  • There will be a great purge of the righteous from the infidels.
  • A prophet will come and lead this effort.
  • Jesus will come down from Heaven and start a killing people left and right.
  • The world will be remade.
  • Those that are “annotated” will be spared. The rest will suffer terribly.
Many Hard-Right Christians believe that Donald Trump is a savior of traditional conservative thought that will lead the United States into the “End Times”.

Uh. Huh.

Well, of course, with the 800+ military bases around the world, and the USA busily fighting eight simultaneous hot wars, and an active hybrid-war with China, it’s all someone else’s fault. I mean the USA is totally innocent, because Americans are “God’s people”, right?

So, of course, it would be the evil and nasty Russians and China that would start it…

Not America, Right? America would never try to provoke anything. Right?

Meanwhile the march of American “color revolutions” for “democracy” is still on going. Today it is Thailand…

Let me guess. “Targets the government”, and “demands for democratic reform”, and “want more freedom”. And so on and so forth…

Yada Yada Yada.

NED.

Funded and trained by the United States government, as a line item budgetary allocation under the Central Intelligence Agency. All under the control of Mike Pompeo.

Make a case against either Russia or China

Apparently US think tanks believe they can occupy Beijing and overthrow CCP without even using nukes
https://youtu.be/FxYwD_n21wI

-Bo Chen

Or course not all America feels this way.

Only the small minority of neocons do. So they must “make a case” and validate their reasoning so as to get the rest of the nation to support them in a war. And that means a relentless propaganda onslaught. Which is pretty much what has been going on all 2020.

The US military announced Friday that it is deploying armored vehicles and other military assets to Syria to protect US troops fighting ISIS amid tensions with Russia as President Donald Trump told a White House news conference that "we are out of Syria," saying the remaining US forces are there exclusively "guarding the oil."

-US sending armored vehicles into Syria as Trump says 'we are out'

But even that’s not good enough so the neocons want an excuse. And just like the invasion of Syria was searching for (nonexistent) WMD’s…

… the Trump army of neocons are trying to blame China for the COVID-19.

The thing is, everything goes right back to them directly. All of the lies, all of the distortions, all of the confusion, and all of the war-mongering can all be traced back (one way or the other) to a neocon associated with the White-house.

You can go on and on…

On the other hand, don't underestimate the crude simple mindedness of
Washington's war monger armchair Neocons. They have had a hand in
steering US foreign policy for decades now and they can't remember
whether they are Israelis or Americans.

-Len

Down this endless “rabbit hole” of insanity, propaganda and nonsense. But, I really don’t want to go there.

The Big Picture is that America is falling apart at the seams and desperately wants a scapegoat to distract the population from their misery. And right now, China is that scapegoat.

The Little Picture is that this methodology is designed, concocted, and implemented by radical evangelical Christian neocons who have the power, and the resources of America behind them.

And now for some perspective

The following are some videos are this situation. They are on the lighter side. I mean, why not? You just cannot get too caught up in other people’s madness. Please enjoy.

Let’s start with the idea that China does not lie.

It’s pretty stunning to an American. Of course, all governments lie. It’s what government so, and China must be the absolute worst that is because they drink bat soup, are stinky and are book smart, but cannot do anything but copy things. Tight?

Well…. right?

Check it out.

He’s a pretty funny guy. Check this out…

And now for some words from other Americans…

And this too…

China does not want anything that the American media is saying that they want.

And this too…

And of course after a solid year of hate-hate-hate China, the American citizenry are nearly ripe for a war. You can hear it in the speech patterns, and this is something that the neocons want to happen. They want “blood lust”.

The Chinese are helping people. That’s bad, and evil!

This is pretty much the neocon “end game”…

Quint and funny, eh?

Well, let’s be serious. There is nothing different from the American nationalist; Mr. Trump and his fellow neocons and another famous nationalist. Mr. Hitler. Both came to power because the domestic issues were a complete mess. And both had tried to galvanize their nation against an external source.

  • Hitler’s war on the Jews.
  • Trump’s war on China.

And with Hitler, all of Germany followed him. They followed him right up until the absolute collapse of the nation, and the absolute sacking of everything German.

Do NOT be under the impression that history does not repeat itself. It does.

The sacking of America

After a period of time that involved ineffectual leaders, corrupt politicians, and a collapsing society, Rome was invaded. Numerous times. And sacked. Numerous times.

As I watch the incredibly inept leadership at all levels) in America today, I am reminded of Rome and how oblivious the Roman elite were to the dangers outside the borders of the once great Roman Republic.

Perhaps it’s time to remind everyone that losing in war can happen to anyone, and history has shown that the more oblivious the leadership is to the dangers of military consequences, the greater the collapse of that society, and the horrific consequences of the resulting purges and sacks of the population.

And…

America WILL be sacked.

And you can well expect all the horrors of war; torture, rape, pillage, murder, destruction of things, and mindless retribution to be normalized.

To sack a city is a concept imported from the latin languages [esp. French, mettre à sac] in the mid-16th Century to mean, essentially, putting a town or community ‘in the sack’, in the sense of taking its goods.

-law - Why was the the sack of cities acceptable?

Let’s not forget that as soon as the Russians moved into Germany, they allowed all their soldiers to rape every single German woman that they could find. This is history. And if you think that any war that America sets up will be yet another televised war in a remote, remote place that American can watch from their social media feeds, you are sorely mistaken.

America will relive the German experience…

One young officer coming upon a unit that had overtaken a column of German refugees fleeing westward later recalled: ‘Women, mothers and their children lie to the right and left along the route, and in front of each of them stands a raucous armada of men with their trousers down. The women who are bleeding or losing consciousness get shoved to one side, and our men shoot the ones who try to save their children.’ A group of ‘grinning’ officers was standing near by, making sure ‘that every soldier without exception would take part’.

Women and girls were subjected to serial rape wherever they were encountered. Rape was often accompanied by torture and mutilation and frequently ended in the victim being shot or bludgeoned to death.

The raging violence was undiscriminating. Often, especially in Berlin, women were deliberately raped in the presence of their menfolk, to underline the humiliation. The men were usually killed if they tried to intervene. In East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia it is thought that around 1.400.000 women were raped, a good number of them several times. Gang-rapes were the norm rather than the exception. The two largest Berlin hospitals estimated that at least 100.000 women had been raped in the German capital. Many caught a sexually transmitted disease, and not a few fell pregnant; the vast majority of the latter obtained an abortion, or, if they did give birth, abandoned their baby in hospital. The sexual violence went on for many weeks, even after the war formally came to an end. German women learned to hide, especially after dark; or, if they were young, to take a Soviet soldier, preferably an officer, as a lover and protector. On 4 May 1945 an anonymous Berlin woman wrote in her diary: ‘Slowly but surely we’re starting to view all the raping with a sense of humor -gallows humor.’

She noted with a certain satisfaction that the Russian soldiers tended to prefer plump and well-fed women as their victims after the initial fury was over, and that these, unsurprisingly, were usually the wives of Nazi Party functionaries.

-2 million German women aged 13-70 were allegedly raped …
If the German advance into the Soviet Union previously could be characterized as horrifyingly systematic and industrialized in its genocidal slaughter of the innocent, then the Soviet advance into Central Europe was brutal, primitive, and bestial in nature. Millions of German women joined their female brethren raped in Hungary, Romania, Poland, wherever the Red Army conquered; albeit with far worse excesses committed against the women from Axis nations such as Hungary, Austria and Germany. More Slavic Axis nations, such as Bulgaria fared somewhat better, though try telling that to a Pole. Eastern and Central Europe’s women were raped repeatedly and viciously, by desensitized individuals for whom killing had become meaningless, or bent on vengeance after witnessing Germany’s crimes in Eastern Europe. Many of these women either expired from their wounds, were killed outright once used up as mere objects, killed by their own families, or died at their own hand in shame. The Swiss Embassy in Hungary reported,

The worst suffering of the Hungarian population is due to the rape of women. Rapes-affecting all age groups from ten to seventy-are so common that very few women in Hungary have been spared. They are sometimes accompanied by incredible brutalities. Many women prefer suicide to these horrors…The misery is made worse by the sad fact that many Russian soldiers are diseased and there are absolutely no medicines in Hungary.

In addition, the Red Army did not reserve the wholesale rape of Central and Eastern Europe’s women to just foreign women. The Red Army’s men repeatedly raped liberated Russian female forced laborers. When the Red Army captured the Ravensbruck concentration camp, located 50 miles north of Berlin, Soviet soldiers gang-raped the surviving emaciated female concentration camp victims. Even teenage girls hailing from the western Soviet Union were not immune. The Russian archives detail these mass assaults, as reported by the deputy chief of the political department from the 1st Ukrainian Front, by members of the Red Army upon Russian, Ukrainian, and Byelorussian women.

“On the night of 24 February a group of thirty-five provisional lieutenants on a course and their battalion commander entered the women’s dormitory in the village of Grutenberg, ten kilometers east of Els, and raped them...an unknown senior lieutenant of tank troops went by horse to where girls were gathering grain. He left his horse and spoke to a girl from the Dnepropetrovsk region called Gritzenko, Anna, ‘Where are you from?’ he asked. She answered this senior lieutenant. He ordered her to come closer. She refused. So he took his gun and shot her, but she did not die. Many similar  incidents took place…In the town of Bunslau, there are over 100 women and girls in the headquarters….On March 5, late at night, sixty officers and soldiers entered, mainly from the 3rd Guards Tank Army. Most of them were drunk, and they attacked and offended against women and girls…This is not the only incident. It happens every night…On the night of February 14-15 in one of the villages where the cattle are herded a shtraf company under the command of a senior lieutenant surrounded the village and shot the Red Army soldiers who where on guard there. They went to the women’s dormitory and started their organized mass rape of the women, who had just been liberated by the Red Army.”

Freed Soviet prisoners of war and male forced laborers fared only marginally better. They underwent screening processes at the hands of the NKVD, to “guarantee” they were not traitors, via political re-education instead of receiving desperately needed medical care. Others were immediately sent, with no training or medical attention, to flesh out the ranks of the Red Army’s woefully under strength Rifle Divisions.The Red Army and NKVD also rounded up German civilians by the thousands and forcibly marched them to the Soviet Union for use as forced labor. The NKVD processed back to Russian farms and factories 66,680 German forced laborers by March 9, 1945. The enslaved women faced not only backbreaking work, but also constant sexual assault and disease.

There is no question the Red Army’s appalling behavior emanated from the Soviet leadership. Stalin implicitly authorized the Red Army to rape its way through Eastern Europe. Stalin’s cavalier attitude toward rape had earlier begun through the process of dehumanizing women, by referring to women employed by the Red Army as “campaign wives” (pokhodno-polevaya zhena) for the officers. Stalin’s casual attitude toward sexual exploitation and violence easily carried over to the treatment of civilian women in captured lands. The men joined in their officers predations upon these female populations. Ideology and propaganda played an important role. So did the low quality of the men serving in the Red Army’s ranks. Beginning in April 1943 former prison convicts joined teenage boys and other ill-trained conscripts in fleshing out the rifle companies. Revenge also has to be considered, with more and more White Russians and other recently liberated ethnic groups in the Red Army’s ranks men that had seen their villages destroyed and families and friends regularly killed by German soldiers during years under tyrannical Nazi rule had their chance to turn the tables.

-The Red Army's Rape of Europe | The Globe at War

And let’s never forget history…

With this agreed, they divided up the spoils. The imperial palace, along with 25% of the city and Byzantine lands would go the the new emperor. The other 75% would be divided between the Crusaders and the Venetians equally. There was no mention of any expedition to Egypt.

All seemed in reasonably good order that night when the Venetian Doge and the crusading nobles gathered in the imperial palace. Then the Doge made his announcement --his final act of vengeance on the Greeks for the blinding facial wound he had received as a youth. As a reward for all their suffering and hardships, the army would have three days to plunder the city! This they did with wanton abandon --killing, desecrating, raping, burning, destroying.

After the 3-day debauchery, the army was brought to a reasonable state of control, although many resisted the order that their plunder should be delivered to three collection points throughout the city. A French count hanged one of his own knights for hoarding some loot; and Greek citizens were routinely tortured for hiding treasure.

The first payment made from the plunder was the money owed to the Venetians: the Crusader's debt, which Emperor Alexius had promised to pay. These rest was divided equally with the Venetians, a sum of 400,000 marks, which one chronicler noted was seven times the annual royal revenue of the entire kingdom of England.

Next came the division of the land. With the whole empire to hand out, there was more than enough. Commander Boniface of Monferrat (the patron of the late Alexius) received broad territories, including the island of Crete, which the Venetians were more than happy to buy from him with part of their treasure.
. . . Historians who wax eloquent and indignant - with considerable reason - about the sack of Constantinople . . . rarely if ever mention the massacre of the Westerners in Constantinople in 1182 (only 22 years before) . . . a nightmarish massacre of thousands [about 2000 Greeks were killed in Constantinople in 1204, according to secular historian Will Durant], . .

 . in which the slaughterers spared neither women nor children, neither old nor sick, neither priest nor monk. Cardinal John, the Pope's representative, was beheaded and his head was dragged through the streets at the tail of a dog; children were cut out of their mother's wombs; bodies of dead Westerners were exhumed and abused; some 4,000 who escaped death were sold into slavery to the Turks.
The Gauls
The story of the first sack of Rome is steeped in myth and legend, but it most likely began when the young city became embroiled in a conflict with a band of Gallic Celts led by the warlord Brennus. On July 18, 387 B.C., the two sides met in battle along the banks of the River Allia. The Romans had yet to perfect the fighting style that would make their legions famous, and many of their men scattered at the first charge of the wild-haired, bare-chested Gallic army. The rest were butchered, leaving Brennus with a clear road to Rome. His men entered the city a few days later and commenced with an orgy of rape and pillage. Buildings were burned or plundered of all their valuables, and most of the Roman senate was put to the sword at the Forum.

While the Gauls wreaked havoc on the rest of the city, the surviving Romans fortified themselves atop the Capitoline Hill. They repelled several Gallic attacks, but after several months of siege, they agreed to pay 1,000 pounds of gold in exchange for Brennus and his army leaving the city. Legend has it that Brennus used rigged scales to weigh out the ransom. When the Romans complained, he threw his sword on the scales and cried out “Vae Victis!” (“Woe to the Vanquished!”). The Romans rebuilt after the Gauls departed, but the defeat at the River Allia left deep wounds. For the rest of Roman history, July 18 was considered a cursed day.

The Visigoths

Rome recovered from the Gallic debacle and went on to flourish for nearly 800 years, but its second sacking in A.D. 410 marked the beginning of a long and excruciating fall. At the time, the Roman Empire was divided and on the decline. Marauding Germanic tribes had begun making incursions across the Rhine and Danube, and one of them, a group of Visigoths led by a king named Alaric, had already besieged Rome on two separate occasions. When the barbarians returned for a third siege, a group of rebellious slaves opened the Salarian Gate and allowed them to pour into the city. Alaric and his hordes proceeded to burn buildings, murder aristocrats and steal anything that wasn’t nailed down. Three days later, having stripped the city of all its valuables, they withdrew from Rome and disappeared along the Appian Way.

The Visigoth sacking had been relatively controlled. Many of Rome’s most famous monuments and buildings were left untouched, and since the Goths were Christians, they allowed people to take refuge inside the basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul. Nevertheless, news that the Eternal City had fallen sent shockwaves across the Mediterranean. “My voice sticks in my throat, and, as I dictate, sobs choke me,” wrote the Christian St. Jerome. “The city which had taken the whole world was itself taken.”

The Vandals

Use of the word “vandalism” to describe the wanton destruction of public property owes it origins to the Vandals, a Germanic tribal people who carried out a famous sack of Rome. The raid was triggered by the assassination of the Roman Emperor Valentinian III, who had previously pledged his daughter Eudocia to the son of the Vandal King Genseric as part of a peace treaty. Claiming the deal was invalidated by the Emperor’s death, Genseric invaded Italy and marched on Rome in 455. The Romans were powerless to stop his advancing army, so they sent Pope Leo to negotiate. The pontiff persuaded Genseric not to burn the city or murder its inhabitants, and in exchange, the Vandals were allowed to pass through the gates of Rome without a fight.

Genseric and his band spent the next two weeks gathering up all the booty they could carry. They looted the city’s patrician homes of gold, silver and furniture, and even ransacked the imperial palace and the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. True to their word—if not their name—they refrained from destroying buildings or killing anyone, but they did claim a few prisoners. Chief among them was Valentinian’s daughter, Princess Eudocia, who was later married to Genseric’s son in accordance with their earlier agreement.

The Ostrogoths

After the ousting of the last Western Emperor in A.D. 476, Rome was ruled by a series of Germanic and Ostrogoth kings. The Eastern Emperor Justinian succeeded in recapturing the region during the sixth century, but the Ostrogoth resistance later returned courtesy of Totila, a magnetic leader who rallied the Goths under his banner and laid siege to Rome. According to the historian Procopius, Totila and his men gained access to the city in 546 by scaling its walls under cover of darkness and opening the Asinarian Gate. Rome’s small garrison immediately fled in terror, leaving it defenseless and open to plunder.

The Ostrogoths spent several highly profitable weeks sacking the city, but despite having previously vowed to turn Rome into a sheep pasture, Totila avoided demolishing it when he departed in early 547. Even with most it buildings still standing, the once-great metropolis was rendered a barren ruin. It had boasted more than a million inhabitants during the glory days of the Empire, but by the time the Goths finally left, its population had dwindled to only a few hundred.

The Normans

Only a few years after his countryman William the Conqueror launched his 1066 invasion of England, the Norman warlord Robert Guiscard carried out a grisly sack of Rome. Guiscard—a name meaning “cunning” or “wily”—marched on the city in 1084 after receiving a plea for aid from his ally Pope Gregory VII, who was under siege by the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV. Guiscard easily captured the city and rescued the Pope, but his soldiers were greeted as enemies by the Roman citizenry, many of whom had thrown their support behind Henry. When the people rose up against him, Guiscard crushed their revolt and allowed his men to indulge their lust for rape and plunder. Fires broke out across the city, and many of its inhabitants were butchered or sold into slavery. Sources differ on just how destructive the three-day rampage really was, but some historians would later blame Guiscard and his Normans for demolishing many of Rome’s most priceless ancient monuments.

The Holy Roman Empire

“They wept a lot; all of us are rich.” That was how one of the participants summed up the events of May 1527, when a mutinous army under the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V savaged the city of Rome. The imperial troops were fresh off a campaign against the League of Cognac—with whom Pope Clement VII was allied—but they hadn’t been paid in months. To keep them on the march, their commander, the Duke of Bourbon, had promised them a chance to plunder Rome. The impoverished soldiers arrived on May 6 and launched an assault. The Duke was killed during the fighting, but his men breached the defensive walls and poured into the city. The Vatican’s Swiss Guard was all but annihilated during a famous last stand near St. Peter’s Basilica. Pope Clement, meanwhile, was forced to escape via a secret tunnel and barricade himself in the impregnable Castel Sant’Angelo.

Once inside Rome, the leaderless army devolved in a bloodthirsty mob. Buildings were looted and burned; men and children were tortured and killed; and women—even Catholic nuns—were raped or auctioned off at public markets. By the time the imperial army finally left the city, Rome was stripped bare and half of its 55,000 inhabitants were either dead or homeless. The cultural blow was equally severe. Scores of artists had been killed, and many priceless artworks were destroyed or missing. Some scholars have since used the 1527 sacking as the official end date of the Italian Renaissance.
The Roman legend of the sack is that Brennus devastated the city in an orgy of chaotic looting and besieged those who remained in the Capitol before they were forced to offer an enormous ransom for their city. At this point, but before the ransom could be paid, Cammilus returned from exile, defeated the Gauls and drove them out.

...

While the Roman account of the sack and the city’s salvation does appear to be somewhat heavily embellished. – which, given the notorious unreliability of Roman reports on casualty numbers is not very surprising-  the sack did have a profound effect on Rome, which can be seen projected into their legend. The vulnerability and paranoia derived from that disaster certainly informed later Roman behavior, particularly towards the idea of a continued Gallic threat and a near bloody minded determination not to submit to other powers in future.
You're looking at this with 21st century eyes. Back then, pillaging and looting were part of war. It was customary to let your troops plunder for a few days (typically three) after winning a siege - doing so basically was how you'd pay your troops.

A few examples of atrocities that shocked by the standards of the time:

After the Romans defeated Carthage, they sold its population into slavery, and burnt and razed it to the ground. The event was unusual in that the Romans additionally salted the grounds for good measure.

After the Crusaders captured Jerusalem for the first time, they massacred the Muslim and Jewish population wholesale, leaving few survivors behind.

The Sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade went down in history as one that a 20th century author described as having been "on a scale which even the ancient Vandals and Goths would have found unbelievable".

The Mongols practiced the "promise" of wholesale execution, which is best described as a form of psychological warfare: they'd massacre every last person in cities that would resist them, bar a few survivors who were then let loose so they could spread the word that resistance should not be an option.

During the Franco-Dutch War of 1672-1678, Turenne chocked Europe in 1674 by plundering the Palatinate far and wide, essentially burning the whole region to the ground, in an scorched earth effort to cause logistics-related problems to Imperial troops arriving as reinforcements.

At the other extreme, history also tells us of milder sacks and unusually generous surrender terms:

When the Visigoths sacked Rome, it shocked contemporaries but it was actually restrained by the standards of the time: there was no general slaughter of the inhabitants, the two main basilicas of Peter and Paul were nominated places of sanctuary, and most of the city survived intact - though stripped of its valuables.

When the Vandals sacked Rome a few years later, they were a bit more thorough - staying 14 days vs three, with a bit more damage done. But Pope Leo I had convinced Genseric to not raze the city or kill the population wholesale - certainly a welcome concession.

Saladin, in stark contrast with the First Crusaders, offered the Christians surprisingly generous terms by the time's standards when he reconquered Jerusalem. He went as far as allowing many families who could not afford their ransom to leave, against the wishes of his treasurers.

Mindsets and the standards of troop behavior eventually evolved. Restraint was expected by the early 20th century. To illustrate this, consider how Kaiser Wilhelm II sent his German troops to China as part of the punitive expedition against the Boxer Rebellion: he instructed them to show no restraints and basically behave like Huns. The anecdote is particularly telling, but not because it shocked some at the time or because it was used a few years later for WW1 propaganda purposes. Rather, it's because behaving like Huns would have been such a matter of course a few centuries earlier that it would not have been worth mentioning. Times had changed.

And now, let’s go back to reality

The things that happened back in the past is what we call “history”. There are many people who mistakenly believe that “once in the past; always in the past”. They believe that “what you don’t know, won’t hurt you“. Ah, so dangerous.

The past, and “history” tells us, and illustrates to us in a most graphic way, what the human race actually is.

And we are oh… so very close to reverting back to a more feral existence. Once of great barbarism, and great pain and suffering. All it takes is one lunatic that is in charge of weapons and systems of great power and even greater control.

There will always be lunatics.

But it is our job, and our responsibility, as humans to police society so that these dangerous people never get near any levers of power. We need stable people who sees the big picture and who sees their role as something minor in the big scheme of things. Not as someone who believe that they are the hand of God and everything that they do will have the blessings of the angels.

I have illustrated the that United States is run by a cabal of neocons.

Whether President Trump is one such neocon is not clear. What is clear is that this cabal is driving America into dangerous territory and walking straight forward to dangerous situations. And while all this is going on, the rest of the world watches in horror and rising apprehension.

And you know…

The rest of the world aren’t some barefoot peasants riding bicycles, and using the water buffalo to plow the fields. they are pretty darn contemporaneous and equals with Americans. You all just don’t realize it. Because the PTB want to think otherwise.

It makes it easier for them to launch their “dream war”. The one that the angels told them personally to launch. You know… “for democracy” and for the “American way of life”.

Here’s a reminder of just WHO, and WHAT Donald Trump…

… and Mike Pompeo…

… and Steve Bannon…

… and John Bolton want to destroy…

…for “freedom”, and “the American way of life”, don’t you know.

Take a good hard look at what they want to destroy. For the truth is, and YOU MUST FACE IT. They want to destroy average people, doing average things in average places…

Again…

I will repeat myself.

Call it a “trade war”. Call it a “hybrid war”. Call it a “police action”. Call it “enforcing peace”. Call it “making the world safe”…

A war.

Is a war.

Is a war.

is a WAR.

And this, ladies and gentleman is what they HATE, and what they WANT TO DESTROY…

…this…

Here’s a video of a pretty much average (but pretty) girl in China. She’s walking down a typical Chinese street with typical Chinese buses and Chinese kids and Chinese old ladies. This all must be DESTROYED for the “American way of life and freedom!”.

And speaking about pretty Chinese girls…

Here’s another video of some more pretty girls. A smart person appreciates the world around them as it is. They don’t try to “improve” it by killing people, forcing them to adopt their culture, or kill them outright because they enjoy watching cat videos that you hate. The neocons think that the world would be a better place if all these people were KILLED.

They are so filled with hate, and the belief that they are better and smarter than every one else…

…and that since they are all so much smarter than the rest of us, that they are doing the right thing by starting a global thermonuclear conflation. It’s what Jesus has personally empowered them to do…

…to kill and slaughter people like this…

This video clearly shows how dirty and filthy the rest of the world is. How they need to be killed and destroyed and their history erased, and so that they can be fed drugs again so that they would be easy to control and that “the American way” can manifest the real and true reality; One where they are the masters, and everyone else in the world serves them. Why? Because they are anointed by God.

They are so terrible!

They are drinking alcohol, and we all know that Donald Trump doesn’t drink alcohol. Why? Well, if you don’t know, you need to read the Bible. But let’s be real about this. Go to any evangelical church and ask them if it is ok and fine to drink alcohol. And they will tell you flatly NO! God’s chosen people do not drink alcohol.

So yes…

Even “normal” people like me and you are automatically damned. For we are sinners and in the “eyes of the Lord”, we are beyond redemption.

This video shows how toxic the association of the Chinese people are with “normal” Westerners. Where now they drink hard alcohol in their coffee. And not avoid and abstain from the evils of the flesh like a good Christian would.

In the mind of these evangelical neocons, “we gave Hong Kong a chance“. We failed, so now they must be destroyed and eradicated off the face of the world.

Sounds so strange you know.

That anyone at the other side of the world would have such a large ego that they could possibly believe that they have ANY association with such a far away and distant land. But, they do. They really and earnestly believe that they have a role in telling others how to live their life.

What arrogance.

Name another nation that tells others how to live their lives, run their businesses, or do things their way. Does China tell Americans “You MUST use this app.”, or say “You Americans cannot…”

But the current American government does.

Why?

Because they believe that they have the power to do so, and that it comes straight to them by God himself.

Here’s Hong Kong, China today. Well, do they look all that repressed after the CIA and the NED were kicked out of the country? Does it look like they need the “proud American soldier to rescue them”? Does it look like it needs a few bombs dropped on these party-goes to “straighten them out”?

A video of a group of repressed Hong Kong Chinese that are terribly abused, and you can see it in how downtrodden they are. They must need to be given the harsh slap of “freedom” and awaken to a new life in the “blood of the annotated one”.

And some more…

… here’s some more Hong Kong folk that really need to stop their evil fornication and ways….

Another video of more Hong Kong youth showing off their devil ways and evil mannerisms. Can you not see why they all must be killed? How else can the savior clean off the earth and make way for the chosen people? All these heathens must be killed off, don’t you know. (Maybe they would be better off having a nice “gig job” in the United States, eh? And living in a nice quiet suburb, with a nice home, nice car payments, and nice taxes… for democracy, don’t you know.)

You must understand…

These neocons do not see the world like we do. They do not see people, families, relationships, actions and activities. They see serfs, peasants, and the uncouth. And in their world, the earth must be cleaned and sterilized from these vermin to make the world a better place. A place for them and their families.

Not for me and you.

But for them. And them only.

And while these kinds of blurbs on the “news” goes in one ear and out the other, combined… when everything is all added up, it makes for a very dangerous and threatening picture.

It is a picture of some dangerous people, with some strange and warped ideas are trying to remake the world in their vision of what it should be.

Heaven Help Us!

…

Personally…

I don’t want any of their “improvements”. I pretty much like things as they are already. I don’t need to have someone like Mike Pompeo or Donald Trump tell me how to live my life, or threaten me and my family because I cannot conform to their idea of perfection.

This is what I have now…

I don’t think it needs any improvement…

This video is what China is right now. I just cannot imagine that Donald Trump, John Bolton, or Mike Pompeo could improve upon this. I really don’t think so.

I think that China is just doing fine.

It doesn’t need any “improvements” that are being discussed so earnestly on all the major and alternative American media outlets. China is doing well. It is clean, and prosperous. The people are smart and industrious. And they are doing things unfettered with the crime and corruptions out of the American landscape.

China today is actually quite nice.

Much nicer than many places in America.

This video says it most clearly. China is doing just fine and does not need any more of that American bullshit. It doesn’t need to be saved. Or attacked… “for democracy”.

Quick Update

This October, Donald Trump is going to have a “special meeting” with the Presidents of Japan, India, Australia, and the US. I wonder what they are going to talk about.

Conclusion

Andy Browne makes a persuasive case that Trump's trade war with China is a failure: "On just about every metric that matters, China is ahead. At every turn, Trump seems to have been outplayed and outsmarted throughout the global trade war that began shortly after he took office."

-Bloomberg New Economy: China is Winning the Trade War With Trump

The human condition is still as primitive as it has ever been. We still exist and small bands of very wealthy leaders determine our fates.

Do not think that anything has changed. It hasn’t.

Right now, the President of the United States is no different from any other megalomaniac ruler from the past.

You don’t need to use (the offensive example) of Hitler. Pick any other ruler of any other city or nation. Consider the cities in Hungry prior to the attacks by Genghis Khan. Consider the wars in Syria when the ISIS took over. Consider the former Yugoslavia. Consider what happened in many of those nations that the CIA has had it’s hand in…

Sigh.

And to be truthful, most Americans just want to live their lives, and be left alone. And that is the same with the people anywhere. And I can tell you all specifically, that is what China wants. they just want to be left alone and stop the crazies from hassling them because “they are empowered” to do so.

Chinese people are like anyone else. Just like in this video. They just want to live their lives freely. Eat what they want to eat, go to school. Go to work, and have productive and meaningful lives. They don’t need some busybody who believe that GOD empowered them to kill all heathens to get int their face and fuck things up.

Sigh.

Big Sigh.

I have to tell youse guys that I am horrified that any one in the present administration, regardless of political affiliation, is even considering doing ANY KIND OF ACTION against another major nation. It doesn’t matter if it is China, or Russia, or Germany, or Iran.

The next war is going to be a “game changer”.

it’s not going to be another “police action”, or isolated to the South China Sea. It’s going to be “in your face”, up front, and very, very personal.

How personal?

Keep in mind that when the victorious American servicemen came to occupy Japan, that they were NOT “enlightened” in the least. And they sacked that nation just like any other conflict in all of history. And it was the local non-military civilians that paid that price.

Now. It is American’s turn “to face the music”.

Being led by their savior and leader.

Donald Trump in Bible prophecy? 
January 20, 2017 by Gene Veith 

Many End Times preachers are saying that the rise of Donald Trump was prophesied in the Bible …

-Donald Trump in Bible prophecy? | Gene Veith

And going up against hard working and determined people…

China is a serious, serious nation that does not play.

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