Minor update to Occult Origins of the Counterculture

Over the past couple years, growing awareness of the neofascist undercurrent in conspiracy culture has led me to alter some of the statements in the original article, most recently regarding the presence of eugenics in the present day, which is an idea that has been co-opted by organizations I would never want to be associated with such as the Quiverfull movement. My main concern has never been declining birth rates but instead the possibility that developing technologies will permanently alter the genetic code, in the process destroying natural immunities and leading towards further acceptance of increasingly invasive, as well as traumatic, medical treatments. Reference the frightening medical industry expose, How Doctors Die, and contrast that with the numerous histories of gentle, effective holistic therapies that have been suppressed by regulatory agencies.

As for reproductive technologies, within Chinese medicine there is the idea that the emotional state of the parents at the moment of conception determines the overall vitality of the child. How would artificial insemination affect this process, and can it ever fully approximate the natural variety? My opinion is that the normalization of reproductive technologies is problematic, especially because researchers have discovered that in vitro fertilization has many disturbing health risks, such as an increased rate of birth defects, premature births, multiple births and low birth weight. And yet, ironically, despite the righteous indignation of fundamentalists who say abortion is driving the new eugenics, it may actually be a cult of reproduction-as-social-necessity that is behind its modern incarnation. For example, many people don't know that, during Hurricane Katrina, a special rescue team was sent in to retrieve frozen embryos while fully grown human beings were dying in the streets without the most basic necessities. Also, religious organizations that have worked to make adoption all but impossible for gay couples have contributed to the exploding number of lesbians who choose artificial insemination, which is legally a far easier process. Many of these problems are created by the atomization of social structures, since isolated family units are not in a position to easily interact with orphaned children as they would have in many indigenous cultures, meaning that they will be more likely to turn to risky methods of conception in order to realize the dream of having a family.

By the way, did you know that the single family home is a modern invention of real estate companies? Prior to the 19th century, extended families living under the same roof were the norm and not the exception. Try looking for the supposedly traditional nuclear family prior to the past couple of centuries and it will be a rare find. It's interesting that this development is promoted as a civilizing influence despite the terrible consequences for elderly people who typically pass their final days in institutionalized settings. The argument has also been made that domestic violence thrives in isolated settings, and its occurrence is noticeably lower in the context of extended family environments. With these ideas in mind, I've made a few minor alterations to the article, although it will be awhile before the implications are fully articulated.

What Rick Santorum Doesn’t Know About Sex

source: Psychology Today

In case you thought the Freemasons were the only fraternal organization involved in social engineering, just check out some of the religious insanity that Knight of Malta Rick Santorum has been spouting lately...

Rick Santorum doesn’t know what sex is for.

In a recent appearance in New Hampshire, he summarized his thoughts on the subject, saying, “God made man and woman, and men and women come together to have a union to produce children, which keeps civilization going and provides the best environment for children to be raised.” While this may seem a common-sense understanding of the function and purpose of sexuality, it doesn’t apply to human beings.

What Santorum is missing can be expressed in simple math. The vast majority of species have sex only to reproduce—a function reflected in a very low ratio of sex-acts-to-births. Gorillas, for example, have intercourse at most about a dozen times per birth...The female of most mammals only has sex when she is ovulating. Otherwise, no go. But the sexuality of human beings—and our closest primate relations, bonobos and chimps—is utterly different. We and our chimp and bonobo cousins typically have sex hundreds—if not thousands—of times per birth, with or without contraception. Santorum has argued that contraception is morally wrong because, “It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”...Leaving aside the many “perversions” happily practiced by humans the world over, the human female is available even for Vatican-approved missionary position intercourse—at least theoretically—when she’s menstruating, already pregnant, post-menopausal, or otherwise precluded from conceiving. Is this, too, an abomination?...It’s the nature of the human beast. For Homo sapiens, sex is primarily about establishing and maintaining relationships. more...

Monarch Project analysis as potential disinformation, once again

Obviously, most of the "occult-symbolism-in-the-media" sites function as jack off material for social conservatives while simultaneously providing fuel for fundamentalist agendas. And although there isn't necessarily anything wrong with being physically attracted to someone who has been through an abusive situation, it becomes more than a little exploitative when people start speculating in graphic detail about the particular abuses (almost always sexual) that celebrities may or may not have suffered through. Of course, this speculation is typically treated as fact, and almost invariably occurs without the consent of the celebrity in question. Think about it like this: if your mother and/or wife was raped, would you want someone to publish the explicit details of that assault on the internet, or to spraypaint those explicit details on walls all around town? Probably not, right? In fact, you might even be inclined to go out and cause physical harm to someone who decided to do this (not that I am in any way recommending that course of action). Because, in a situation where someone you cared about was directly affected, hopefully there would be more of an understanding about the obvious way that publicizing details of sexual assault can vastly further the trauma said victim was already experiencing. So why treat celebrities as if they are less than human and not deserving of the same respect?

Emmylou Harris Playlist Number 2*

This playlist contains some new songs as well as a few old, removed-by-Youtube tracks from the previous Emmylou Harris playlist, a post that someone seems to be fixated on. ;) Watch them now before Youtube takes them down! Long term readers will have to excuse the repetition. On a related note, the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) Bill will hopefully be shot down today, otherwise the internet as we know it will essentially be over. As the internet is the world's single largest base of information and culture, providing education and freedom of expression to people who would otherwise have none, the bill has the capacity to herald a new era of censorship while severely impeding the democratic process. However, freedom of expression comes with its own problems, and one of those problems happens to be the death of independent music since artists are basically now forced to work for free while manufactured, corporate-sponsored pop music is its sole replacement. In the present economy, this means that artists are focused on survival at the expense of creative expression, and we all suffer from cultural impoverishment. Even though the incredible luxury of free music is sill available, at least for the time being, please remember that freedom in its highest form comes with responsibility towards others. So, please support local artists and record stores, otherwise there may come a time when soulless corporate pop is the only option available.














*The first version of this post kept crashing my computer so down it went.

Principal Linked to ROTC Programs Charged After Hypnotizing Students Who Committed Suicide

source:CBS

By William McGuinness

NORTH PORT, Fla. (CBS TAMPA) – North Port police have charged the town’s high school principal with two counts of second-degree criminal misdemeanors after students he hypnotized ended up committing suicide.

Over six months, the North Port Police Department conducted around 70 interviews with students claiming to have been hypnotized by Dr. George Kenney and 100 adults either from among the school’s staff or parent community after receiving a complaint from the Florida Department of Health Services.

In documents provided to CBS Tampa detailing the Sarasota School Department’s internal investigation, Kenney routinely hypnotized students in one-on-one sessions and in group settings. They often involved the school athletics teams or ROTC programs.

Kenney told investigators it allowed students to relax, improved their performance in tests and helped some with anger issues. Documents show, however, that Kenney occasionally raised tempers and eyebrows within the school’s community.

He was limited to hypnotizing students during psychology classes and then only with parent-signed permission slips and another teacher in the classroom — conditions insisted upon in 2009 by Steven Cantes, executive director of high schools for the Sarasota County School System.

Kenney’s many supporters expressed gratitude for his help and admiration of his character throughout the report. They were not enough, however, when Kenney eventually admitted to hypnotizing two students who committed suicide shortly after one-on-one sessions that were explicitly against Cantes’ orders. more...

German priest admits 280 counts of sexual abuse

source: BBC, via Cryptogon

A German Catholic priest has admitted 280 counts of sexual abuse involving three boys in the past decade, saying he did not think he was doing harm. Named only as Andreas L, the priest told a court in Braunschweig that he had first abused the nine-year-old son of a widowed woman parishioner.

After being banned by his diocese from making further contact with the boy, he abused two brothers, aged nine and 13...Sexual assaults were made on the three boys in various settings: at the priest's house, on skiing holidays, in a parental home, on a trip to Disneyland Paris and at a church shortly before Mass...About 2,800 pornographic images were found on the priest's computer, including several of his victims. more...

Franz Schubert: Unfinished Symphony No. 8

Here is the highest quality sound recording I could find of Schubert's unfinished symphony, a personal favorite of mine from the Romantic era.

Jesuits involved with organized sex abuse of Haitian boys

source: ABC News

By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN Associated Press
NEW HAVEN, Conn. January 5, 2012 (AP)

Seventeen Haitian men are suing Fairfield University in Connecticut, the Society of Jesus and others alleging they failed to protect them from a man who sexually abused them when they were poor children or young adults attending a school he founded in Haiti.

The lawsuits bring to 21 the number of alleged victims suing Douglas Perlitz and the others. Perlitz was sentenced in 2010 to nearly 20 years in prison for sexually abusing children at Project Pierre Toussaint. The victims ranged from ages 9 to 21 at the time of the abuse and are now 18 to 29....The Rev. Paul Carrier, a Jesuit priest who was Fairfield University's chaplain, saw Perlitz show a student a pornographic video and saw boys in his bedroom, according to the lawsuits. A school board member, Hope Carter, flew to Haiti in 2008 and removed Perlitz's computer, according to the lawsuits.

"It appears that Carter removed the computer or computers to prevent investigators, including, ultimately, federal law enforcement personnel, from discovering pornographic material, which may have included pornography relating to young boys, stored on the computer or computers," the lawsuit states....The lawsuits argue that Fairfield University, which is operated by the Jesuits, raised more than $600,000 for the school and hired Perlitz in connection with the Haitian school and was negligent in its duty to supervise him. The suits say the Society of Jesus had the same responsibilities with Carrier, who served as chairman of a fund that ran the school. more...

Duncan O'Finioan speaks about Project Talent

I'm posting a video interview with Duncan O'Finioan just so I don't have to think about Rick Santorum every time I log into the blog. Duncan claims to have been abducted by the U.S. military as a child and programmed as an assassin through highly developed techniques of trauma-based mind control. I find his story to be very credible.

Teen patient murdered by staff at Rick Santorum-connected health care chain

Well, I had been planning on taking a break...but the following article was just too important not to spread around.

At Rick Santorum-Connected Health Care Facility, Herpes, Porn and Drug Dealing

WASHINGTON -- T. entered The Pines Residential Treatment Center, located in Portsmouth, Va., needing help for his emotional disorders, gender identity issues and violent outbursts. This month, after a year and a half there, the eighth-grader left the facility with herpes.

Heather Pinon, T.'s sister, believes he got the sexually transmitted disease after having sex with other boys in his restricted unit. There might be at least one other culprit. Both Pinon and the boy's adoptive mother, Lorraine Honeycutt, believe that he also carried on a sexual relationship with a Pines employee. Pinon says she knows of letters that hint at such an affair.

"The information was given to the therapist," Pinon said. "The therapist destroyed the letters. When we asked my brother about it, he confirmed that he did write the letters and that he had a special relationship with that staff member."

The staff member, they said, was assigned to T. to prevent him from having sex with other kids...The disease was just another complication in a life that had many; T. called this latest his "herpes thing." But it still devastated the boy who wasn't yet old enough for algebra. "I felt extra scared," he told The Huffington Post in a recent interview. "I wanted to cry and that's all I did for two days is cry when they did tell me that."

For The Pines, T.'s diagnosis was just part of another day. The Pines is the biggest for-profit residential treatment center in Virginia. During the past three years, it has also kicked up more abuse and neglect allegations than any other facility there, state records show, earning an unprecedented level of scrutiny from investigators with the state's licensing office and Office of Human Rights. The facility, which covers three campuses that span the tidewater region -- Brighton, Kempsville and Crawford -- has routinely faced state orders to correct itself, according to licensing records.

The Pines may be exceptional in terms of racking up state violations, but it also boasts a singular distinction: The board of the center's parent company, Universal Health Services, which bought The Pines in November, included former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.).

Santorum, who recently launched a presidential bid, resigned from the UHS board on June 15, a week after the publication of a Huffington Post report on UHS facilities during his tenure. The former senator had served on the UHS board since 2007, a period which saw the company twice sued by the Department of Justice.

Santorum's presidential campaign did not return calls seeking comment.

The health care chain has faced accusations of Medicaid fraud and employee grievances over pay. At one facility, a teen died while being restrained by staff. The death was ruled a homicide.

The Pines had long teetered on the brink of a shutdown, but the UHS takeover of the facility appears to have erased what standards had been put in place. A short time after the facility fell under UHS control in mid-November, it earned serious punitive sanctions. Two months into the company's tenure, a sense of lawlessness pervaded the facility, according to a review of documents obtained by The Huffington Post through a public records request.

North Carolina, which had sent more than 100 kids to The Pines, stopped doing so this past spring, when that state's Division of Medical Assistance, along with other agencies, found widespread and systemic breakdowns in how the facility treated its children, according to the documents. In mid-April, the state concluded that it had to pull all 140 or so of its children -- including T. -- out of The Pines, according to email records.

Virginia has since barred new admissions and slapped the facility with a provisional license. According to the documents, Virginia inspectors found that Pines staff had been caught watching a pornographic DVD with residents, that one resident admitted to selling drugs and buying drugs from a Pines employee and that records concerning the care of one resident had been "fabricated."

Physical restraints were the staff's go-to method of control, according to T. Even when he was held down, T. said, staff took cheap shots -- jabbing him, pinching him and punching him. In one incident, he said, he was slammed against a wall.

"They bend your arm in all different directions and stuff," he said, adding that the staff called him "faggot."

"One time, I was in a restraint and a man punched me in my nose and my nose started bleeding," he said.

The center's low-I.Q. inhabitants were particularly targeted, he said: "They would always hit in the special residents."...Rather than providing rehabilitation or care, Mercer said, the facility deepens old wounds and even creates some new ones among the young residents. She said one boy with no history of sexual abuse has started acting out sexually....She recalled one incident in which an employee threatened to kill a child; another called a kid a "piece of shit."

Mercer said she quit over what she described as unsafe staff-to-patient ratios, meaning that the kids often didn't receive basic necessities. She said she knew of a child who waited eight months to get a pair of glasses, another who endured a toothache for five months before seeing a dentist and still another kid who went without underwear.

"I've seen staff buy soap, socks, underwear, shoes," Mercer said. "I mean, the kids don't have any soap."

In one case, Mercer recalled, she had to move some residents to a new unit, but found that it had not been cleaned. There were urine-stained floors, semen stains on a desk and a pair of mattresses, a bloody mixture left on a bulletin board. She described a different unit as a "dog pen."

In February, a Pines staff member was caught punching a child in the face and torso after being bitten during a restraint, records show. The incident was not immediately reported to authorities. The staffer admitted, according to a licensing investigation, that she had no experience in working with residential treatment center kids. That same month, licensing found that "staff currently providing therapy is not licensed or licensed eligible. ... THIS IS A REPEAT VIOLATION."

At the same campus a short time later, according to records and interviews with Mercer, who saw a video recording of the incident, and another staffer, a Pines worker grabbed a 9-year-old boy and dragged him across a table during a therapeutic group session. Another worker then took the boy into a room and was captured on video repeatedly bashing his head against a wall.

By then, North Carolina had concluded it could not continue to send children to The Pines. The state had launched an investigation after parents came forward with an allegation that their son had been sexually abused at the facility.

According to a subsequent report by Virginia authorities, The Pines concluded that on at least one occasion the abuse had indeed taken place. But the facility had failed to immediately notify the parents. The Pines had described one incident of inappropriate touching as "horse playing."

...In a statement released to The Huffington Post, Universal Health Services defended its practices: "The Pines management team is continually reviewing clinical programming, procedures and staff training to enhance the provision of safe, effective, and patient-centered treatment," the company statement reads. "The Pines is actively addressing any and all concerns relating to the treatment of our residents." more...