December 9, 2009

New York is New Jerusalem and this is our town


09/18'09 Christopher Strunk interviewed by Tom Freiss

@6min, Chris) You actually did a great summary there. I have sort of focused my attention here.

@9min, Tom) If you permit me, let me tell the listeners, those who don't know, the Jesuit Order was banned even by the Papacy, because the Jesuit Order had created so much political unrest and so much government usurpation, and infiltration, and subversion of legitimate governments in Europe that the Catholic kings, and queens, and potentats of Europe demanded that the Jesuits get the hell out. And that put the Pope under pressure. And the Pope banned the Jesuits. He banned them for the very political intrigues that they're committing in this country. And then, 41 years later, the Jesuits arm-twisted the Papacy, literally held them at ransom, to either re-establish the Jesuits or the Papacy is over. And the Papacy has been subservient to the Jesuits ever since.
Chris) Well, what's interesting is ... I would look at the viewpoints of some of our presidents. I have a quote here from John Adams right after the re-establishment of the Jesuits in 1814, and I quote from one of his writings. He says: "My history of the Jesuits is not eloquently written, but it is supported by unquestionable authorities ..."

@13min, Chris) But certainly it's to create the conflict.
Usually when people get together they figure out what's good for themselves and that seems to be the tendency. People want to be nice, and get along, and progress, you know, and that's a very strong force when people get together. There is conflict yet, but it's mostly about what's the best solution that will meet their group's needs. So certainly I have been studying more than I would like to do, because I got other things to do in my life, but that, in fact, I can't do some of those other things because of the very actions that are going on.

@15min, Chris) The work I started on the Logan Act started actually in 2006. It's when I met Greg in September 2007 [...] I sort of united my actions with his overview what the underlying problem is that we're facing. And I filed this case in D.C. regarding the New York province for the Society of Jesus in which they are operating in conflict with state law and that they are not registered properly for all the members in the State of New York. And I take it on as a federal issue, primarily, because the Reagan administration on January 10, 1984 had recognized the sovereignty of the Vatican, therefore creating a jackpot situation in which the agents, who were sworn members of a military order, were, in fact, the extension of the counselor structure.
Tom) The listeners need to be advised that the Jesuits swear no allegiance to any nation. They are sovereign and their loyalties lie only with the Papacy. So everyone of the Jesuits, as a matter of fact, every Roman Catholic priest is first and foremost a representative of the Vatican – they are foreign diplomats, everyone of them. And they are celibate by Canon Law, so that they don't have families in this country, so that there is no family pressure against any priest, whether it would be Jesuit or otherwise, to have loyalties to the land in which they live, because their loyalties are first and foremost to the Pope and the Vatican City State. And the American people don't realize this because it's not talked about. But you're bringing this case, this complaint to the courts that not only are they tremendously influential – if not all controlling of the federal government, they also manipulate the state governments – and that your situation in New York State is a model of all the rest of us who are similarly situated. And you are to be applauded for your efforts, and I'm glad that you recruited the expert help of Eric Jon Phelps to proof your thesis to the court, if the court will just ... you know, the Jesuit are throwing up all kinds of smoke screens and defenses and trying to dismiss you as a conspiracy theorist, albeit why conspiracy theorist when all of your allegations are well-established throughout the last 500 years in world history. This complaint needs to be heard in the courts of the U.S., because the point can be made that there is more than ample justification to register all these priests under the Logan Act as agents for a hostile enemy foreign power and that they be evicted from this country. And not only the Jesuits but the Knights of Malta, and I would go so far as to say the Knights of Columbus and Opus Dei and even Freemasonry! [...]

Chris) They all operate under a membership structure but nobody is enforcing the law since they [...] when Reagan recognized them it actually put in place a series of treaties, which other than the Immigration Nationalization Act, which deals with people who are not citizens of the U.S. or who are in fact operating under diplomatic immunity or a diplomatic structure that's defined under what's called the Vienna Conventions that started in 1961 ...
Tom) These treaties were all triggered when Ronald Reagan formally recognized Vatican City State and established diplomatic relations – this was triggered by that.
Chris) Right. The Logan Act started in 1799. It essentially said that no American citizen or nobody resident in the U.S. may interfere with the relationship between the U.S. government and another sovereign nation in which they are trying to do business with. Well, historically, the same activities in which the Jesuits were involved with [...] which they got banned for [...] in 1814 when they were re-established in the brief that re-established them, they essentially grasped control of the Pope so they would never be faced with being banned again.
So what I'm arguing in court is, that the same behaviour that they were banned for then is being done ten times over now: that – looking at the structure of the Logan Act – they are interfering with a legitimate relationship that according to Reagan there is between the Vatican and the U.S. so that when the Jesuits have their hand around the throat of the Pope – no matter how good or bad the Pope is – they are interfering.
Tom) Isn't this ironic, Christopher, that Ronald Reagan recognized the sovereignty of the City State of Vatican City and the Jesuits are destroying the sovereignty of this nation.
Chris) But they also destroyed the sovereignty of the Vatican, too. They intend to destroy the Vatican State and incorporate it here and in Jerusalem. So that's their endgame.
Tom) I have one piece of evidence that will justify and substantiate what claim you just made and that was during the Pope's visit last April on the set of EWTN. One of the Catholic big shots in New York, Neuhaus, said in front of the cameras, in front of the world:
"New York is the New Jerusalem and this is our town." That's a direct quote.

November 1, 2009

Culture is not your friend


What civilization is, is six billion people trying to make themselves happy by standing on each other's shoulders and kicking each other's teeth in. It's not a pleasant situation. And yet, you can stand back and look at this planet and see that we have the money, the power, the medical understanding, the scientific know-how, the love and the community to produce a kind of human paradise. But we are led by the least among us: the least intelligent, the least noble, the least visionary. We are led by the least among us and we do not fight back against the dehumanizing values that are handed down as control icons.
This is something – I don't really want to get off on this terra, because it's a lecture in itself – but culture is not your friend. Culture is for other people's convenience and the convenience of various institutions, churches, companies, tax collection schemes, what have you – it is not your friend. It insults you. It disempowers you. It uses and abuses you. None of us are well treated by culture.
And yet we glorify the creative potential of the individual, the rights of the individual. We understand the felt-presence of experience is what is most important. But the culture is a perversion. It fetishizes objects, creates consumer mania, it preaches endless forms of false happiness, endless forms of false understanding in the form of squirrelly religions and silly cults. It invites people to diminish themselves and dehumanize themselves by behaving like machines, meme processors of memes passed down from Madison Avenue, and Hollywood, and what have you.

How do we fight back? It's a question worth answering. I think, by creating art. Man was not put on this planet to toil in the mud, or the god who put us on this planet to toil in the mud is no god I want to have any part of. It's some kind of gnostic demon, it's some kind of cannibalistic demiurge that should be thoroughly renounced and rejected. By putting the "art pedal" to the metal, we really, I think, maximize our humanness and become much more necessary and incomprehensible to the machines.

The whole thing with culture and language is that they tend to become traps. And yet, they can become the platforms for enormous freedom, if you understand what it's all about. And what it's all about is you! You are the center of the Mandela. You are not marginalized in any way. The message that the culture gives us is that we are marginal. It doesn't matter if you have 100 million dollars (Fortune magazine will tell you that so do 10,000 other people on the North American continent!)
This is part of the democratic legacy, we are constantly told that "you're not special", "special isn't special", "anyone could do it". And so then, when you look for guidance, direction, mentorship, we always look towards institutions. 'Well, I'll go to the university, the army, someone will give me a larger purpose' ... but it is you who is the final arbiter. If you keep yourself as the final arbiter then you will be less susceptible to infection by cultural illusion. Now, it makes you feel bad not to be infected by cultural illusion – because it's called alienation. The reason that we feel alienated because the culture is infantile, trivial, and stupid. The cost of sanity in this society is a certain level of alienation. I grapple with this as a parent, and you come to this realization what will it be? Alienated cynical intellectual, or slackjawed halfwit consumer of the horseshit being handed down from on high – there's not much choice there. We all want our children to be well adjusted, it's just that there's nothing to be well adjusted to!

In the past 100 years, as these super technologies have been developed in the West, data has been arriving about the practices of Aboriginal cultures all over the planet – that they dissolve original culture values through an interaction and symbiosis to local plants that peturb brain chemistry. In this domain the cultural operating system is wiped clean. Something older, even for these people, more vital, more in touch with the animal soul, replaces the cultural operating system. Something not in touch with geography and history, but something writ in the language of the flesh itself. This is who you really are, this is true nakedness.
You are not naked when you take off your clothes. You still wear your religious assumptions, your fears, your prejudices, your illusions, your delusions. When you shed the cultural operating system, you essentially stand naked before the inspection of your own psyche. It's from that position, outside the cultural operating system, that we can ask real questions about what does it mean to be human, what kind of circumstance are we caught in, and what kind of structures can we put in place to assuage the pain, and accentuate the glory and wonder that lurks waiting for us, in this very narrow slice of time between the birth canal and the yawning grave? We have to return to first premises. I travel around a lot and get that jolting experience frequently, of let's say, leaving London on a foggy evening and arriving in Johannesburg 14 hours later to a sweltering day in a city of 14 million on the brink of anarchy. I get to change my cultural operating system frequently, and so I notice the relativity of these systems. Some work for some things and some for others. You don't have to be the victim of your culture – it's fragile. It can be remade if you wish it to be. It can be wiped out and replaced with something else.