Masons open up as Dan Brown plot lodges

The book sports a cover showing the Capitol building in Washington, DC, and a wax seal containing a double-headed phoenix, the numeral 33, and the words ordo ab chao, Latin for “order to chaos”, supporting rumours that freemasons are at the heart of the story.

The Australian | Sep 14, 2009

by Matthew Clayfield and Angus Hohenboken

THE books of Dan Brown may be considered by some to be mutton dressed up as literary lamb, but the American author isn’t likely to pay much attention when his latest conspiracy potboiler hits bookstores tomorrow.

Brown’s The Lost Symbol comes a full six years after The Da Vinci Code sold 80 million copies in 51 languages and three years after the Hollywood blockbuster starring Tom Hanks.

Presales have already rocketed The Lost Symbol to the top of Amazon.com’s bestseller list, and bookstores around the world are readying themselves for lengthy queues. So Brown’s publisher, Doubleday, can safely assume they’ve got another winner. Indeed, the book’s release has taken on some familiar Harry Potter-style characteristics: copies of The Lost Symbol are being kept under lock and key, and plot details guarded.

Brown — known for his reclusiveness — is staying mum, at least for the next few days.

Only the sketchiest details of the book’s contents are known. The third in a series, it features the fictional professor of religious iconology and symbology, Robert Langdon, played by Hanks in The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons.

The book sports a cover showing the Capitol building in Washington, DC, and a wax seal containing a double-headed phoenix, the numeral 33, and the words ordo ab chao, Latin for “order to chaos”, supporting rumours that freemasons are at the heart of the story.

Australian and US masonic groups — anticipating increased interest as a result of their starring role in the book — have launched a public relations offensive. The NSW and ACT branches last week opened the freemasons’ United Grand Lodge of NSW for a media tour.

The Australian masons are also about to publish a book of their own, It’s No Secret: Real Men Wear Aprons, which delves into the origins of the movement in this country. The book’s editor, Peter Lazar, a mason for more than 50 years, was last week prepared to reveal all aspects of the freemason world to The Australian, with the exception of the society’s secret handshakes and passwords.

“But there are no secrets any more; even the handshakes and words are in books and on the internet now.” He said far from being a cult, the freemasons was a society that sought to “help men live better lives”.

Brown’s book is expected to include theories surrounding the influence of the freemasons on the US bill of rights and constitution and the layout of Washington — believed to be designed to resemble the masonic straight square and compass symbol.

Lazar’s is likely to contain plenty for budding conspiracy theorists, too, acknowledging the masonic membership of the principal author of Australia’s constitution, Samuel Griffith, and Australia’s first prime minister, Edmund Barton.

Washington about to be Dan Browned

The House of the Temple, a Masonic building located at 1733 16th Street, NW in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The entrance is flanked by two stone sphinxes, Wisdom (pictured) and Power, sculpted by Adolph Alexander Weinman in 1915. The House of the Temple was designed by noted architect John Russell Pope in the neoclassical style, and is a contributing property to the Sixteenth Street Historic District. Photo and text: Wikimedia Commons.

Mysteries All Over the Map

Dan Brown’s D.C.-Set Sequel Is About to Land. The Fury & Flurry Are Already Here.

Washington Post | Sep 10, 2009

By Monica Hesse and David Montgomery

Washingtonians, brace yourselves.

In just six days, residents will awaken to find themselves in a changed city. One invaded by Founding Fathers scandal, by fictitious Harvard symbologists, by very short chapters ending in cliffhangers and exclamation points! One to which the tourists will flock, brandishing conspiracy theories. We want the real story, they’ll say to helpless docents at the Smithsonian, perhaps, or the Scottish Rite Masonic temple. This is the real story, docents will reply. No, the reeeeal story. Wink wink.

Washington is about to be Dan Browned.

The inciting incident is the release of “The Lost Symbol,” the third installment of Brown’s mondo-selling adventure zeitgeist, sequel to “Angels & Demons” and “The Da Vinci Code.” In “Angels,” professor Robert Langdon races through Rome, saving the city from an explosion and uncovering religious secrets that rock Christianity to the core. In “Da Vinci,” he races through Paris and London, solving a mysterious death and uncovering religious secrets that rock Christianity to the core.

In “The Lost Symbol,” Langdon will be back again, this time racing through Washington. What exactly he’ll be doing here is unclear. In the five-plus years Brown has been researching and writing this novel, nary an important plot point has leaked.

This much is known: The initial print run of “The Lost Symbol” is 5 million copies, the largest in Random House history, the publisher claims. Clues found on the novel’s recently released cover, combined with decoded messages from the “Da Vinci” jacket and elsewhere (“Is there no help for the widow’s son?”), suggest that Freemason history will play a central role.

People. Are. Freaking. Out.

The “Today” show has begun a week-long Dan Brown blitz, featuring Matt Lauer traipsing around the Washington locations expected to appear in the novel. Over on Amazon.com, a corporate notice assured readers that the site is securing its “Lost Symbol” stockpile “under 24-hour guard in its own chain-link enclosure, with two locks requiring two separate people for entry.” Facebookers and Twitterers have been feverishly working overtime to decipher the novel-related clues — such as “AOFACFSOA FSZWBEIC EIOA ZOHSFWQWOA OQQSDW” — frequently posted by Brown’s marketing team on his social networking pages.

Masons are preparing themselves.

“I’m expecting [tourism] to skyrocket,” says Heather Calloway, director of special programs for the Masonic House of the Temple on 16th Street NW, which receives about 10,000 visitors a year. She will double the staff of part-time tour guides, if necessary, to handle the crush.

“We might have to spend the next 25 years responding to Dan Brown’s fiction,” says Mark Tabbert, director of collections at the George Washington Masonic National Memorial in Alexandria. “That’s what I dread.” (Think he’s overstating? Wait until you hear from his European counterparts, who are still drowning in their own Brown invasions.)

Then there’s the “Lost Symbol” companion industry: the piles of documentaries, Web sites and books created to analyze the meaning of a novel that has not yet come out.

“It’s all about, what’s Dan Brown going to assert?” says author Dan Burstein, who edited companion work “Secrets of the Widow’s Son” back in 2005 based on his early research. He has another book coming out in December called “Secrets of the Lost Symbol.”

“Could he go in the direction of human cloning?” Burstein wonders. “Could some Freemasons . . . could they have known something about the cloning? And now we hear that Dan Brown is interested in the Rosicrucians,” a secret society of mystics formed in medieval Europe. “So what does that mean? Some theories say the Rosicrucians had a piece of the cross. Maybe if you had bloodstains on some pieces of the cross, you could clone Christ.”

Burstein is one of many scholars who operate in a tiny and speculative field: What Would Dan Brown Do?

Why Should Anyone Care?

Brown might be one of the best-sellingest authors of recent times (81 million copies for “Da Vinci”), but almost everyone agrees that, literarily, he stinks. The linguist Geoffrey Pullum once described his writing as “not just bad; it is staggeringly, clumsily, thoughtlessly, almost ingeniously bad,” which might explain why in some circles people brag about not having read “The Da Vinci Code.”

Still, there is something exuberant about that preposterous prose. Brown’s books contain everything the human brain thrives on: breakneck pacing, bite-size didja-knows, looming conspiracies, Scooby-Doo plot twists. His books are literary crack, or, in PG terms, they are Harry Potter for grown-ups. His notorious reclusiveness only adds to his mystique; for every interview he declines and cryptic clue his team tweets, his persona increasingly resembles the enigmatic characters of his novels. Like Robert Langdon, the man wears tweed.

But his greatest achievement, arguably, is the outsize impact his fictitious novels have had on the cities in which they’re set.

When Dan Brown comes to town, things get a little bit nutty.

Just ask Colin Glynne-Percy, director of the Rosslyn Chapel Trust, the rural Scottish church featured in “The Da Vinci Code,” which Langdon believed to be the location of the Holy Grail.

“Before the book came out, we had about 40,000 visitors a year,” Glynne-Percy says. “It went to 80,000. Then to 120,000. Then to 175,000. We had very small facilities. We had only two restrooms. We could survive on that for 40,000 but . . .” They’ve put in temporary bathrooms and added several new staff members.

Just ask Robin Griffith-Jones, master of the Temple Church in London, which makes the eensiest of cameos in “Da Vinci.” (Langdon pops in to search for clues on the stone effigies’ decorative orbs, then pops out.)

This minor role hasn’t stopped tourists from roaming the circular nave in search of the orbs examined by Langdon.

Small problem: “There is no question of any orb in this church,” Griffith-Jones says. “Knights didn’t have orbs. Only kings had orbs,” and it’s mostly knights depicted at the temple. Griffith-Jones began offering a weekly lecture to dispel the myths of “Da Vinci” and eventually wrote a book on the subject. Still the tourists come. “I feel like King Canute, with the rising ocean tide I cannot stem.”

In Italy, more of the same. One Roman tour guide describes how her tours of the Colosseum were so frequently interrupted by tourists more interested in “Angels & Demons” faux-history that she had to create a special tour for them.

Washingtonians, we are next.

Already, Old Town Trolley Tours is considering a Secret Symbols tour of Washington. Already, the Masonic Service Association in Silver Spring is readying a special truth-squad Web site to fact-check “The Lost Symbol.”

“We’re in the cross hairs,” says S. Brent Morris, managing editor of the Scottish Rite Journal. “It could be good; it could be bad. We’ve decided to take a deep breath, take a chill pill and see what happens.”

Back in Britain, Griffith-Jones is also keeping an eye on the release of “The Lost Symbol.”

“I’m very slightly worried that if the next book focuses on the Freemasons, then there will be mention of the Knights Templar,” he says.

Which would be a problem because . . .

“We were built by the Knights Templar. It will all start again.”

___________

The Lost Symbol: Dan Brown’s Pentagram City

Dan Brown’s new book features a hidden Washington—does the city’s design conceal strange secrets?

Dan Brown’s new book—set in Washington—is expected to feature another secret society with an elaborate history and illustrious membership: the Freemasons.

Washingtonian | Aug 26, 2009

By Sophie Gilbert

Conspiracy theorists are awaiting Dan Brown’s new book, The Lost Symbol. Building on his super-bestsellers The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, about conspiratorial elements of the Catholic Church, Brown’s latest—set in Washington—is expected to feature another secret society with an elaborate history and illustrious membership: the Freemasons.

As a May 2006 Washingtonian article explored, the Washington area has a deep, rich history with the Masons. (To read the article, go to washingtonian.com/masons.) As the new book’s release approaches, Brown fans have been looking for hints to the plot—and some have been released on The Lost Symbol’s Twitter feed. Here’s what might come up in the novel:

1. Washington traffic is bad for a reason.

You don’t need to burn shoe leather looking for Masonic symbols in the nation’s capital—all you need are Google Maps and a Sharpie marker. It’s no secret that George Washington was a Freemason, but what about Pierre L’Enfant, the architect of DC? The layout of the city’s streets and landmarks seems to suggest as much—triangles and pentagrams abound.

Occult theorists have speculated that the six points of Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, Scott Circle, Washington Circle, Mount Vernon Square, and the White House form a pentagram (the five points of the outer star and one vertex of the pentagon inside it); the coordinates of the six places were recently posted as a clue on Twitter. Dupont, Scott, and Washington circles all have six major streets leading into them, encoding the satanic number 666 into the city’s structure.

That may sound sinister, but the pentagram is an ancient symbol occurring in the three major religions as well as a prominent Masonic feature. In the 2006 article, authors Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen also noted that the four points of the White House, the Capitol, and the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials form a diamond when linked on a map—the shape of the Masonic logo.

2. That pyramid on the $1 bill isn’t just a picture.

Speculation mounted when the Lost Symbol Twitter feed posted a clue: “29.979093, 31.133891.” If you put those coordinates into Google Maps, they point to the Great Pyramid of Giza, prompting guesses that pyramids will play a role in the novel. The pyramid symbol dates back thousands of years, implying not only order and symmetry but also divine unity. The pyramid on the dollar bill (also referred to in The Da Vinci Code) is a Masonic symbol for the all-seeing eye of God, which dates back to Egyptian mythology but also appears in Christianity as the Eye of Providence.

Symbologists have noted that the dollar’s pyramid has 13 steps, while the Latin script underneath reads novus ordo seclorum, or “new order of the ages.” Conspiracy theorists have long believed that the term refers to an organization of globalists seeking to rule the world, and they’ve linked this belief to Freemasonry.

Full Story

Dan Brown’s new book suggests Freemason Washington was a traitor

Washington laid the cornerstone of the Capitol while apparently dressed in his Masonic apron. Source: Library of Congress. Scanned from Richard Cavendish (ed.), Man, Myth, & Magic, Vol. 4, Marshall Cavendish, NY (1983), “Freemasonry” (pp. 1034-1040)

Interview: Robert Cooper – Breaking the code

Scotsman | Aug 7, 2009

By Kath Gourlay

‘I CANNOT tell a lie.” The famous quote from America’s first president, George Washington, is about to be called into question, according to leaked information on the plot of Dan Brown’s new book.

The Lost Symbol looks set to create a huge uproar across the USA, with its allegations that far from being the country’s ‘founding father,’ Washington was actually a traitor who had been secretly negotiating with the British during the American War of Independence.

His treachery – revealed in a deathbed confession – was apparently concealed by his fellow Freemasons.

Worse still, assertions that the original confession was concealed in George Washington’s coffin is creating panic around the grounds of Mount Vernon where Washington is buried.

Historian Robert Cooper, curator of the Grand Lodge of Scotland and a world authority on Freemasonry says, “It seems they’re planning security precautions to safeguard against what has become known as the ‘Rosslyn effect,’” referring to the way that, after the publication of Brown’s bestseller The Da Vinci Code, Rosslyn Chapel in Midlothian was deluged by grail seekers and treasure hunters.

According to The Da Vinci Code, descendants of a union between Christ and Mary Magdalene still lived near Rosslyn Chapel, safeguarding secrets hidden there about the true origins of the Christian church. Not surprisingly, the furore – particularly in Catholic quarters – was off the scale. This time, it seems Freemasons are being hauled over the coals. But Cooper doesn’t seem overly concerned.

“Brown’s novels are renowned for introducing sensational claims. These involve ‘facts’ suggesting that something which generations of people have taken for granted, is actually untrue. He weaves some real facts among the highly controversial stuff and has a good guys and bad guys race against the clock to decipher the clues. At the end of the day, it’s simply a piece of formulaic fiction.”

Maybe so, but with six weeks to go and millions of copies of The Lost Symbol already printed in anticipation of another blockbuster, Freemasons in the US have been accusing Doubleday, Brown’s publishers, of cranking up the controversy and deliberately leaking details of the plot. Masons are worried enough to be setting up a website recruiting teams of “experts” to carry out a page by page analysis as soon as the book hits the shelves.

Cooper, who has recently returned from lecturing on Freemasonry in the USA, appears to have undertaken a pretty comprehensive analysis already, and if he knows where the plot leaks are coming from, he’s not saying. “Of course I could be the victim of a double bluff but I don’t believe so. My knowledge of the source convinces me of its reliability, and of course there is some conjecture on my own part, based on the comprehensive knowledge I have of the background to the story.”

He claims his recent book Cracking the Freemason’s Code – The Truth about Solomon’s Key caused Dan Brown to change the title of his new novel from The Solomon Key to The Lost Symbol. “I don’t know what other changes my book caused, but as a Masonic historian, I deal in facts, not fiction.”

One fact about George Washington shows he became a Freemason in 1752, aged 20. Almost without exception the other founding fathers of the United States – including Benjamin Franklin and James Madison – were Freemasons, and the American constitution itself is said to be based on Masonic principles.

According to Cooper, Scottish Masons took the principles of Freemasonry over to America in the first place. “Scotland is different from the rest of the world in that we go back before Freemasonry as an 18th century organisation. We were ordinary working guys – craft guilds – with our own ancient knowledge and rituals. It was the original egalitarian society, and that’s what we took to America.”

He says the first known Freemasons in North America were Scotsmen from Aberdeen and Melrose. “That was in 1648, a hundred years before George Washington. A hundred years after George Washington, during a Masonic ceremony, a Scotsman laid the foundation stone for the Statue of Liberty. Not a bad bit of continuity…”

Scottish Masons took the spark of revolution across the Atlantic, too. The Lodge of St Andrew met in the Green Dragon Tavern in Boston, and on St Andrew’s night 30th November, 1773. it was recorded that the Lodge meeting was adjourned as ‘consignees of tea took up the Brethrens’ time.’ The men dressed as Mohawks who tipped the British tea into Boston harbour (the act that started the revolution) were Lodge members. One of the brothers was the famous revolutionary Paul Revere. After the revolution the new nation used skilled stonemasons from Scotland (personally recruited by Washington) to work on the prestigious buildings around Washington DC. These included the capitol building and the White House (where the Scottish masons wouldn’t use slaves because they were not free men.)

All very stirring stuff, and not surprisingly, the present-day Freemasonic fraternity in Washington is incensed at the thought of a spanner being thrown into the works by Dan Brown. But could there be any basis behind the story?

The facts about the American Revolution show that in the early days, in the mid 1770’s, the colonialists suffered a series of defeats. Strategic secrets were being passed to the British. The facts also show that an American army general, Benedict Arnold, was a traitor who plotted to surrender the fort at West Point to the British and turn the tide of war against his own side. The facts link Washington with Arnold when it comes to Freemasonry and the facts show that the day the plot was discovered, Washington was due to meet Arnold at West Point. “The hard facts stop there.” says Cooper

It seems that in The Lost Symbol Washington has been working with Arnold and passing secrets to the British. But why on earth would Washington want to subvert the cause of American freedom?

“Ah, that I’m not clear about,” admits Cooper. “I don’t know what Brown has up his sleeve there, but I’ve been led to believe he’s suggesting George Washington could be bought like anyone else, and the English Tories had made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

When Arnold was rumbled, Washington did a huge about-turn, covered his tracks and wholeheartedly embraced the cause of American independence.”

The rest, as they say, is history – except that in the novel, it appears Washington has a crisis of conscience on his deathbed and writes a detailed confession to be published after his death. His personal physician and friend, Dr James Craik – also a Freemason – is known to have attended the dying president, whose sealed coffin is buried at Mount Vernon. In true Dan Brown tradition, details of the confession and the events surrounding it have been hidden somewhere, and veiled references to it are found a couple of centuries later by a researcher working at Mount Vernon.

He seems to think something highly secret and important has been buried in Washington’s coffin. This secret – and the details surrounding it – have been concealed within Freemasonic codes of reference and the researcher can’t make sense of the symbolism disguising what he knows is a significant find.

He contacts symbologist Robert Langdon but is murdered before he can explain his findings.

Langdon, the CIA and the FBI are now in a race to find the confession, which the secret services must destroy to safeguard the integrity of the country’s founding father and the creation of the world’s first democracy.

Langdon is the front runner since he’s been contacted by a high ranking Freemason with knowledge of the symbolism of the Order. Apparently there’s a surprise twist when it comes to the identity of this Freemason – a twist which has more orthodox members of the craft siding with the CIA and FBI in suppressing the truth.

“If this plotline is anywhere near accurate,” says Cooper, who insists again that he has no reason to doubt his source, “then it’s going to create a huge uproar across the USA.”

LIFTING THE VEIL

THE Lost Symbol is set to lift the veil on the mysterious Masonic symbols carved into the historic streets and buildings around the American capital

Dan Brown has located his hero, Robert Langdon, right in the heart of Washington, which could reveal some interesting details for history buffs. “For the first time, Langdon will find himself embroiled in a mystery on US soil. This new novel explores the hidden history of our nation’s capital,” Brown has written in a posting on his official website.

George Washington is said to have demanded the city be laid out in a symbolic square, and for those of esoteric bent, it seems the shape of a square and compass can be formed by drawing a line on a map between two of the city’s major landmarks, the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial, and following through along the walls of the White House and the Jefferson Memorial.

The square and compasses is one of the best-known Masonic symbols, where the measurements of a square showed that something previously imperfect had been perfected.

Masons apply the square metaphorically to themselves and their brethren.

Inside the Capitol, which sits at the dead centre of the square, lies the cornerstone laid by George Washington. In a Masonic ritual of 1793, a visual representation of the ceremony shows him dressed in his Masonic apron.

Britain Putting Big Brother Cameras Inside Private Homes

Wired | Aug 3, 2009

By Charlie Sorrel

As an ex-Brit, I’m well aware of the authorities’ love of surveillance and snooping, but even I, a pessimistic cynic, am amazed by the governments latest plan: to install Orwell’s telescreens in 20,000 homes.

£400 million ($668 million) will be spend on installing and monitoring CCTV cameras in the homes of private citizens. Why? To make sure the kids are doing their homework, going to bed early and eating their vegetables. The scheme has, astonishingly, already been running in 2,000 family homes. The government’s “children’s secretary” Ed Balls is behind the plan, which is aimed at problem, antisocial families. The idea is that, if a child has a more stable home life, he or she will be less likely to stray into crime and drugs.

It gets worse. The government is also maintaining a private army, incredibly not called “Thought Police”, which will “be sent round to carry out home checks,” according to the Sunday Express. And in a scheme which firmly cements the nation’s reputation as a “nanny state”, the kids and their families will be forced to sign “behavior contracts” which will “set out parents’ duties to ensure children behave and do their homework.”

And remember, this is the left-wing government. The Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling, batting for the conservatives, thinks these plans are “too little, and too late,” implying that even more obtrusive work needs to be done. Rumors that a new detention center, named Room 101, is being constructed inside the Ministry of Love are unconfirmed.

American Corporate Complicity Created Undeniable Nazi Nexus

Cutting Edge News | Mar 9, 2009

This article is based on the just released book, Nazi Nexus: America’s Corporate Connection’s to Hitler’s Holocaust (Dialog Press).

By Edwin Black

Adolf Hitler was completely responsible for the Holocaust. But Hitler had help.

When zealous Nazis were motivated to wage war against an imaginary generation-to-generation Jewish conspiracy… when Nazis created ghastly extermination plans to help ensure their master race would rule the world… when the German military was enabled to smash across Europe with lightning speed in heavy Blitz trucks, bomb mercilessly from the air in advanced JU-88s, and create carnage across the seas with deadly torpedoes… when Josef Mengele saw the scientific need to undertake heinous medical experiments on twins in Auschwitz… when the Reich was enabled to identify the Jews everywhere in Europe and then systematically pauperize and destroy them… when all these terrible things were done, the shape and scope of the horror was pivotally determined by major American industrial giants.

Now the dots can be connected. They create an undeniably Nazi nexus between iconic American corporations and the greatest crime of the twentieth century: the Holocaust.

Who gave Hitler the initial basis for transmogrifying centuries of outgroup religious hatred into a new twentieth century political anti-Semitism? It was Henry Ford, acting directly through the Ford Motor Company. In 1920, the gullible but mercurial Ford acquired a forged typescript convincing him of an evil international Jewish cabal determined to subjugate the world through devious manipulation of the world’s governments, newspapers, and economic systems. The revelations were contained in the notorious and fake Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

To purvey this new brand of Jew hatred to the world, Ford purchased a failed newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, which serialized The Protocols for 91 weeks. His company then published the series as a book, The International Jew. Using the techniques of mass production, Ford was able to escalate the Protocols from a negligible, randomly circulated irritant to a national sensation of 500,000 copies. Devoting the national sales force and the assets of the Ford Motor Company to the task hatred made Henry Ford the first to organize political anti-Semitism in America. Indeed, he was the hero of anti-Semites the world over.

In Germany, where Ford was venerated, The International Jew was translated and published in February, 1921. It enjoyed six editions in two years with thousands of copies in print. Ford’s book quickly became the bible of German anti-Semites and early incarnations of the Nazi party. Nazis shipped the work throughout the country “by the carload.”

Among the many Germans massively influenced by the book was Adolf Hitler. Der Führer read the work at least two years before Mein Kampf was written. It shows. In Mein Kampf, chapter 11, Hitler wrote, “The whole existence of this people is based on a continuous lie [as] shown incomparably by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion… With positively terrifying certainty, they reveal the nature and activity of the Jewish people and … their ultimate final aims.” Hitler described Ford as his hero. No wonder Ford received Hitler’s German Eagle medal in a lavish Berlin ceremony. The medal was reserved for foreigners who rendered special service to the Reich.

Who gave Hitler the pseudo-scientific medical rationales to justify a war to achieve a blond, blue-eyed master race with the duty to obliterate all other races deemed inferior? It was the Carnegie Institution, the philanthropic incarnation of America’s greatest steel fortune that propagated the deadly American race science of eugenics. Beginning in 1911, Carnegie Institution scientists argued successfully that millions worldwide who did not conform to a blond, blue-eyed Nordic stereotype were unworthy of existence on earth.

American eugenics believed such social traits as poverty, prostitution, and laziness were genetic. The continuation of racially inferior bloodlines— a broad swath encompassing some 90 percent of humanity—was to be combated by various methods. These methods included organized identification, seizure of assets, marriage prohibition or nullification, forced surgical sterilization, segregation into camps, and publicly operated gas chambers. Various eugenic notions were enacted into law in 27 states. Ultimately, some 60,000 persons were forcibly sterilized, thousands more incarcerated in state camps, and untold numbers unmarried and in some cases subjected to organized lethal medical neglect. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes enshrined these policies as the law of the land when he ruled such acts justified. “It is better for all the world,” Holmes wrote, “if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.”

The Carnegie Institution and its sponsored movement spent millions to propagate American eugenic theories in post-WWI Germany, financing race science programs in universities and official institutions. These included the idea that Jews must be eliminated.

While in prison, Hitler closely studied American eugenics. In Mein Kampf, Hitler insisted, “There is today one state, in which at least weak beginnings toward better conception… are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States.” Hitler proudly told his comrades, “I have studied with great interest the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock.” Hitler merely exchanged the American term “Nordic” for the Nazi term “Aryan” and then medicalized his pre-existing virulent anti-Semitism and fascist nationalism, to formulate the concept of the blond, blue-eyed Master Race he deified in Mein Kampf.

Hitler was so steeped in American race science that he even wrote a fan letter to American eugenic leader Madison Grant, called his writing “my bible.”

The Third Reich implemented all American eugenic principles with great ferocity and velocity backed up by a conquering army. “While we were pussy-footing around,” fawned Leon Whitney, executive secretary of the American Eugenics Society, “the Germans were calling a spade a spade.” As Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess insisted, “National Socialism is nothing but applied biology.”

Who gave Hitler’s odious medical eugenic experimentation the wherewithal to commit unspeakable crimes against innocent twins? It was the Rockefeller Foundation, the philanthropic incarnation of Standard Oil. The foundation acted as a full partner with Carnegie in establishing eugenics across America and in Germany. In the quest to perfect the master race, millions of Depression-era dollars were transmitted by Rockefeller to Hitler’s most anti-Jewish doctors. In this quest, one specimen was desired above all: twins.

Rockefeller funded Hitler’s chief raceologist Otmar Verschuer and his insatiable twin experimentation programs. Twins, it was thought, held the secret to industrially multiplying the Aryan racial type, and quickly subtracting biological undesirables. Verschuer had an assistant, Josef Mengele. Rockefeller funding stopped during WWII. But by that time, Mengele had transferred into Auschwitz to continue twin research in a monstrous fashion. Ever the eugenicist, he sent precise clinical reports weekly to Verschuer.

Who took Hitler off the horse and put his killing armies into trucks to wage Blitzkrieg or lightning war against Europe? It was General Motors which built the Blitz truck for the Blitzkrieg. As the Reich’s largest car and truck maker, GM became an indispensible partner in Hitler’s war. From the first weeks of the Third Reich, GM president Alfred Sloan committed the company and its German division, Opel, to motorizing a substantially horse-drawn Germany, preparing it for war. Prior to this, Germany had been a nation devoted to legendary automotive engineering but only one vehicle at a time built by craftsman. GM brought mass production to the Reich, converting it from a horse-drawn threat to a motorized powerhouse.

Sloan and GM knowingly prepared the Wehrmacht to wage war in Europe. Detroit even secretly moved massive stores of spare Blitz parts to the Polish border in the days just before the September 1, 1939 invasion to facilitate the Blitzkrieg.

Using a charade of interlocking boards and special executive committees, Sloan kept GM’s role secret as long as possible. Where Opel lacked parts or foreign currency, Detroit ordered other international subsidiaries to stealthily assist.

In addition to motorizing the military, Sloan launched massive re-employment programs to help revive the Nazi economy—this at a time when the company declined to put Depression-wracked Americans back to work. GM’s success led to the need for the Autobahn. GM’s chief executive in Germany James Mooney received the same medal Ford was awarded, for special service rendered to the Reich.

Who custom-designed and co-planned the Nazi solutions to Jewish existence? It was International Business Machines, inventor of the Hollerith punch card, precursor to the modern computer. IBM enjoyed a monopoly on information technology. Under the micromanagement of its president, Thomas Watson, and advertising itself as “a solutions company,” IBM in 1933 reached out to the new Hitler regime. It offered to organize and systemize any solution the Reich desired, including solutions to the Jewish problem.

With IBM as a partner, the Hitler regime was able to substantially automate and accelerate all six phases of the twelve-year Holocaust: identification, exclusion, confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, and even extermination.

As it did with any other customer, IBM simply asked the Hitler regime what result was desired. Then company engineers devised custom-tailored punch card systems to deliver the results. First, who was Jewish and where did the Jews live–exactly. IBM solution: a customized racial and religious census designed and tabulated by the company. Second, once identified, systematically expel Jews from all segments of society. IBM solution: create databases cross-tabulating ordinary organizational and community directories from association membership rosters to lists of marriages, deaths and births.

Third, confiscate Jewish assets. IBM solution: all banks and financial institutions were run by IBM cards which could be programmed to seek out the Jewish names and their accounts for seizure. Fourth: ghettoize the Jews. IBM Solution: cross-match families from their existing residences into crowded dilapidated slums so that in a single day, thousands of people could be efficiently transferred from point A to point B. Fifth, deport the Jews to camps. IBM solution: most of the railroads in Europe were routed by IBM punch cards. Create special depots to ensure that trains with cattle cars were made available to transport Jews to camps. Inbound, these trains were crowded with helpless humans. Returning, they were empty.

Sixth: the Jews were to be systematically and industrially murdered. IBM Solution 1: establish different codes for each classification of concentration camp prisoners. Prisoner Code 8 designated a Jew. Status Code 6 designated killed by gas chamber. In this way, the Reich always knew how many Jews it was killing. In extermination camps, almost all Jews were murdered upon arrival in an IBM-aided system that metered victims from ghettos to train to death camp in murderous synchrony. IBM Solution 2: create the “Extermination by Labor” program using custom IBM punch card programs that matched the skills of Jewish prisoners wherever they were to Reich labor needs wherever they were. Once moved to the labor site, Jews were worked to death. There was an IBM customer site in every concentration camp.

Had it not been for the continued conscious involvement of iconic American corporations in Hitler’s war against the Jews, the speed, shape and statistics of the Holocaust as we know it would have been dramatically different. No one knows how different, but the astronomical dimensions could have never been achieved. For their part, American corporate collaborators have long tried to obscure or hide the details of their collusion using the well-known tools of corporate misinformation, financial contributions, and bought and paid for historian reviews. But in era when people no longer believe big corporations, the dots can be fully connected to unveil the outlines of an indispensible Nazi nexus.

Edwin Black is the New York Times best selling investigative author of IBM and the Holocaust, and his just released book, Nazi Nexus: America’s Corporate Connections to Hitler’s Holocaust (Dialog Press 2009), which can be see at www.nazinexus.com.

Scientists debate a robot war in new book ‘Wired for War’

Canadian Press | Feb 11, 2009

In the 1921 play that invented the word “robot” – Czech writer Karel Capek’s “Rossum’s Universal Robots” – mechanical, highly intelligent slaves mount a revolt and kill all humans but one.

Ever since, science fiction has explored the idea of robots outsmarting, dominating and destroying the human race. Author P. W. Singer, at 33 a Senior Fellow at the highly serious Brookings Institution, can’t resist the fascination of the topic, but he isn’t writing fiction. He treats the possibility with appropriate seriousness in “Wired for War,” a meticulous account of the latest military robots.

Two earlier books by him have explored two of the hottest issues in 21st century military developments. One was “Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry,” the reinvigorated ancient profession of mercenaries. The other deals with something relatively new: “Children at War” – the recruitment and enslavement of boys and girls in their teens and even younger.

Singer says some 40 countries are making military robots. The motive: reduced casualties. “When a robot dies, you don’t have to write a letter to its mother,” Singer quotes one unit commander as saying.

Military robots are already being built with greater endurance, firepower, precision and – for the moment, submissiveness – than human soldiers. The trend is to make them more autonomous, able to take decisions according to built-in commands, unmoved by fear, pity, revenge or other human emotion.

Whether they can or should be endowed with a system of ethics is controversial. How to tell a ragged soldier from a ragged civilian?

Scientists foresee the day when robots will develop what is called “strong AI” – high level artificial intelligence – and use it reproduce themselves without human intervention. Singer quotes Vernon Vinge, mathematician, computer scientist and science fiction writer, as predicting more than 15 years ago: “Within the next 30 years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly thereafter, the human era will be ended.”

Rodney Brooks, chief technical officer at iRobot, is more optimistic. The firm takes its name from Isaac Asimov’s “I, Robot,” which posits “laws” that robots must never harm humans. The firm also makes the first mass-produced robotic vacuum cleaner. Brooks says there’ll never be a robot takeover because by then, people will be part computer, part human.

Singer’s exhaustively researched book, enlivened by examples from popular culture, ends with a hint that he’s worried, too.

“We are creating something exciting and new, a technology that might just transform humans’ role in their world, perhaps even create a new species,” he concludes. “But this revolution is mainly driven by our inability to move beyond the conflicts that have shaped human history from the very start. Sadly, our machines may not be the only thing wired for war.”

New book claims women under Hitler were just as ruthless as men

Women who served under the Nazis, including those involved in the Hitler Youth, were just as ruthless as men according to a German historian

Behind every Nazi mass murderer was a woman: New book claims women under Hitler were just as ruthless as men

Daily Mail | Feb 3, 2009

By Alan Hall

Women who worked under Adolf Hitler were just as ruthless as men, a shocking new book reveals.

Female Perpetrators; Women Under National Socialism exposes the myth that women under Hitler were the fairer sex and were simply caught up in the cruel actions of men.

In Nazi art, films and magazines, women were always portrayed as the fairer sex, fighting on the home-front as their menfolk fought on the battlefields.

But the book, which goes on sale in Germany this week, shows this was all propaganda and that women who worked under Hitler were just as brutal as men.

In the first German post-war reckoning of the role of women in underwriting the crimes of the Nazis, historian Kathrin Kompisch has revealed what has been swept under the carpet since 1945.

‘The history of National Socialism has long been reduced to one that blamed men for everything,’ Ms Kompisch said. ‘This was and is the popular picture.’

But the fairer sex venerated by the propaganda machine of Josef Goebbels was, according to Ms Kompisch, every bit as eager to turn the thumb-screws on the victims held in Gestapo cellars across Europe.

Her book shows that women were also every bit as fanatical as the men when it came to crushing resistance to the state.

This was partially portrayed by Kate Winslet, who plays a Nazi guard accused of war crimes, in the Oscar-nominated film The Reader.

‘Apart from a few particularly cruel examples, the participation of women in the crimes of the Nazis has been blended out of the collective conscious of the Germans for a long time,’ Ms Kompisch wrote.

‘I tried to analyse the motives and the personal circumstances of the women involved and to pose the question about their own personal responsibility for what occurred.’

She found that Hitler and his satraps virtually hypnotised women to do the bidding of a regime founded on violence and race hatred.

As such they became handmaidens to the S.S.; staffed the ‘baby farms’ where ’supermen’ children were born and assisted the doctors who first sterilised.

Later women went on to become murderers of the disabled as well as guards in the gulag of concentration camps.

‘One should never forget the legions of women who supported their menfolk as they killed people by the tens of thousands in Russia, in Poland, in places like Auschwitz and Treblinka,’ Ms Kompisch said.

‘Women typed the statistics of the murdered victims of the S.S. Action Squads in the east, operated the radios which called up for more bullets, were invariably the secretaries – and sometimes much more – in all the Gestapo posts,’ Ms Kompisch said.

‘And at the end of the war they tried to diminish their responsibility by saying they were just cogs in the all-male machine which gave the orders.’

Analysing pre and post-war statistics, Ms Kompisch found there were more government, private sector and military jobs to be had for women under Hitler than in peacetime.

But even those who didn’t work bloodied their hands in other ways.

It was largely housewives who queued up at government warehouses to buy the furniture, jewels, household appliances and clothes of their Jewish neighbours who had disappeared in the night without a word.

She found the high-testosterone, all-male hierarchy of the Nazi state blocked out women from leadership positions from the very start, but the regime actively encouraged female participation in enforcing the Nazi terror at grassroots levels.

Most ‘Blockwaerts’ – apartment house snoops who reported on un-Nazi activities to the party – were female.

They also made unofficial denunciations to the Gestapo of suspicious neighbours, Jews and other enemies of the state at a rate of three-to-one compared to men.

The surviving files of the Gestapo in the city of Duesseldorf noted that they ‘try to change the power balance of the household by denouncing their husbands as spies or Communists or anti-Nazis.’

‘The cliché of Gold Mother Cross-wearing women having 10 babies and baking bread was as much of a myth as all women in the 1920’s drinking absinthe and doing the Charleston,’ she said.

‘Women could and did advance themselves massively through the Third Reich.’

Some 3,200 women served in the concentration camp gulag.

Ms Kompisch draws on several case histories of other more outwardly normal, intelligent women to try to get to the core of the corruption of their sex in Nazi Germany.

One of them Karin Magnussen, born in 1908 in Bremen, was a brilliant biologist and physicist.

She was a woman venerated by her profession, unaffected by the financial and political upheavals that propelled Hitler to power.

The book shows she ended up using the eyeballs from still-living prisoners at Auschwitz by the demented Dr. Josef Mengele for experiments on the pigmentation of the human iris.

Ms Kompisch concludes; ‘The fact is that women allowed their female characteristics to be suppressed to bind themselves to the Nazi state and its agencies.

‘To say, as most did at the end of the war, that they knew nothing of the terror and torture, is absolutely unbelievable. They supported and underwrote such terror and torture.’

Aristocratic occultist may have been model for Shakespeare’s Prospero

Prospero, The Tempest, RSC, Aldwych Theatre, 1983

Stewart was implicated in plots to kill the King and was rumoured to be heavily involved in witchcraft and sorcery. In 1590 he was said to have dressed as the devil during a witches’ sabbath, and cast a spell, summoning up a storm – just as Prospero did – in an attempt to wreck the king’s ship. He failed, and James survived to ascend the English throne as well 13 years later.

Exiled earl may have been the model for Prospero

The Times | Jan 24, 2009

Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, has always been one of Shakespeare’s most mysterious creations. Part mystic, part wizard, he weaves spells and conjures up storms. At the end of The Tempest he utters one of the great speeches in all the Shakespearian canon – “Now my charms are all o’erthrown; and what strength I have’s mine own.”

No one has ever been able to say with certainty what, or who, inspired the creation of Prospero, though many of Shakespeare’s characters were based on real people and events. Now, however, an amateur historian, rifling through the papers of an eccentric 16th-century Scottish Earl, has uncovered the life of a man he says may have given Shakespeare the idea for the character.

Brian Moffat, a 64-year-old retired policeman from Teviothead, in the Borders, said he stumbled upon the revelation after he and his wife bought an old chest that turned out to be the marriage trunk of Francis Stewart, the Fifth Earl of Bothwell, whose extraordinary antics and rebellious behaviour caused a political and religious scandal.

Mr Moffat decided to investigate carvings of Christian, pagan and satanic symbols on the trunk.

Stewart believed that his cousin, James VI, should invade England to avenge the execution of Mary Queen of Scots. When the King refused to consider it, he turned against him.

Stewart was implicated in plots to kill the King and was rumoured to be heavily involved in witchcraft and sorcery. In 1590 he was said to have dressed as the devil during a witches’ sabbath, and cast a spell, summoning up a storm – just as Prospero did – in an attempt to wreck the king’s ship. He failed, and James survived to ascend the English throne as well 13 years later. Stewart was imprisoned.

Mr Moffat believes that Shakespeare may have heard the stories of his eccentric behaviour from King James’s jester, Archie Armstrong, a high-ranking member of the king’s court who is thought to have inspired the character of the fool in King Lear.

“In 1590 Francis Stewart appeared in a pulpit at North Berwick Kirk dressed as the devil and summoned a storm to sink the King’s ship,” said Mr Moffat. “That incident is the starting point of The Tempest. There you have an exiled nobleman, who is also a necromancer, who summons up a storm to sink the ruling Duke’s ship. The similarities between the accounts and Shakespeare’s plot are striking. It is very likely Stewart is the inspiration for Prospero.”

Now Mr Moffat has written a book, Death, Resurrection and the Sword, in which he claims that Stewart’s link to Shakespeare’s play has been over-looked by scholars because, at the time, Stewart’s links to Freemasonry and the occult, along with his “dangerous” political beliefs, caused him to be “written out of history”.

He said: “This is an incredibly important piece of our history. Francis Stewart’s castle, Branxholme Castle, still stands. This is Prospero’s castle. This is Homecoming year, so we should really be celebrating this important link.”

Like Prospero, Stewart was finally exiled by his political rival, James VI. He was charged with treason for his part in a plot to abduct the King from Holyrood Palace in 1589, and also stood trial in 1591 on charges of witchcraft after the North Berwick Kirk incident. In 1594 he fell out with the King again.

He was finally exiled in 1595 and died penniless in Naples in 1612.

Dr Sarah Carpenter, who lectures on Shakespeare at the University of Edinburgh, said Moffat’s theory could not be proved beyond doubt, but a link with Stewart was possible.

Related

Francis Stewart Hepburn, 5th Earl of Bothwell

Francis Stewart, Earl Bothwell (b. c December 1562 – d. April 1612, Naples), was Commendator of Kelso Abbey and Coldingham Priory, a Privy Counsellor and Lord High Admiral of Scotland. Like his stepfather, Archibald Douglas, Parson of Douglas, he was a notorious conspirator, who died in disgrace.

Francis was son to John Stewart, Lord Darnley, Prior of Coldingham (d.1563), an illegitimate child of James V of Scotland by his mistress Elizabeth Carmichael. John Stewart’s wife was Jane Hepburn, Mistress of Caithness, Lady Morham (d.1599) sister to James Hepburn, the fourth Earl Bothwell. Francis is said to have been born in his mother’s tower house at Morham.

Francis Stewart Hepburn, 5th earl of Bothwell

Nephew of the 4th earl; by his dissolute and proud behaviour he caused King James VI of Scotland (afterward James I of Great Britain) gradually to consider him a rival and a threat to the Scottish crown and was made an outlaw. Through his father, John Stewart, prior of Coldingham, he was a grandson of King James V and was thus related to Mary, Queen of Scots, and the regent Moray.

Created earl of Bothwell in 1581, he became lord high admiral of Scotland and was a person of some importance at the court of James VI during the time when the influence of the Protestants was uppermost. He was eager that Mary Stuart’s death should be avenged by an invasion of England, and in 1589 he suffered a short imprisonment for his share in a rising. By this time he had completely lost the royal favour. Again imprisoned, this time on a charge of witchcraft, he escaped from captivity in 1591 and was deprived by Parliament of his lands and titles; as an outlaw his career was one of extraordinary lawlessness. In 1591 he attempted to seize Holyroodhouse, and in 1593 he captured the King, forcing from him a promise of pardon. But almost at once he reverted to his former manner of life, and, although James failed to apprehend him, he was forced to take refuge in France about 1595. He died at Naples in extreme poverty. He had three sons, but his titles were never restored.

The Devil & King James

Both ground breaking and revelationary, this book reveals the life, times and associates of Francis Stewart,”The King Devil” who has, until now, been almost entirely written out of history, although he came within an ace of becoming King of both Scotland and England.

The first Boys From Brazil: Nazi graveyard discovered deep in the Amazon rainforest

Final resting place: Brazilian natives at a Nazi grave in the Amazon. The wooden cross decorated with swastikas carries the inscription: ‘Joseph Greiner died here on 2.1.1936′

Daily Mail | Oct 24, 2008

By Alan Hall

A graveyard of former Nazis bent on creating a ‘foreign Fatherland’ in the Amazonian rainforests from which to spread Hitler’s maniacal beliefs has been discovered in Brazil.

The relics betray a madcap plan back in the 1930s to create a master race thousands of miles from Germany.

The graveyard and other ruins that fanatical Nazis left behind are chronicled in a new book.

Entitled ’The Guayana-Projekt. A German Adventure on the Amazon’ it says die-hard Nazis believed they were destined to settle the world like pioneers of the wild west in America.

It has long been known that Nazis wandered post-war into the remote regions of South America, befriended by fascist governments and military dictatorships.

The 1978 film Boys From Brazil told a of a bizarre plot to clone Hitler that was hatched by Joseph Mengele in his jungle hideout.

But the harshness of the Amazonian jungle was a strange choice of destination.

Historical Nazi ‘footprints’ are found in grave markers with swastikas, photos found in archives back home and the remains of dwellings.

On an island on a tributary of the River Jary in Brazil author Jens Gluessing found a nine-foot high wooden cross decorated with swastikas that testified to one of the explorers who never made it back to Berlin.

It carries the inscription: ‘Joseph Greiner died here on 2.1.1936, a death from fever in the service of German Research Work.’
nazi

Locals call the site ‘The Nazi graveyard’ but it was originally destined to be part of a string of Nazi settlements across the Amazon which Hitler missionaries would use as jumping-off points to spread the gospel of totalitarianism.

In archives of the Brazilian State Department and the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, Gluessing found details of Greiner’s jungle mission.

Greiner arrived in 1935, bankrolled by the Nazi government and died of yellow fever or Malaria. He was one of three sent out by S.S race specialists as the vanguard of what they perceived would be a wave of settlers.

Greiner and his compatriots had dozens of helpers with them exploring the region bordering French Guyana with a view to populating it for the Reich. They also had their sights on the neighbouring British and Dutch colonies.

They sent back to Berlin details of how a German soldiers should live in Brazil, even though their cover story was that they were collecting specimens of fauna and wildlife.

Schulz Kampfhenkel, an officer in the S.S. and leader of the expedition which claimed Greiner’s life, returned from the jungles and submitted to his boss Heinrich Himmler details of the ’Guayana Project.’

‘The two largest scantly populated, but rich in resources, areas on earth are in Siberia and South America,’ he wrote to Himmler. ‘They alone offer spacious immigration and settlement possibilities for the Nordic peoples.’

As Siberia semed likely to fall at that time to China, he recommended colonising Amazonia for ‘people without living space.’

He added in typically Nazi fashion: ‘For the more advanced white race it offers outstanding possibilities for exploitation.’

A film was produced showing Greiner’s work in the jungle in the 1930s. He believed the Nazis could colonise ‘Amazonia’

As befitting an S.S. man who bought wholly into concepts of Nazi race purity he said the people who lived there ‘cannot be measured in civilised terms as we known them in Germany.’

With one million German settlers in Brazil already, he argued the seedcorn was already there for the expansion of the Third Reich and that they could secure a ‘bridgehead’ against American influence in the region.

The author found evidence, however, that Himmler had ’scant interest’ in his grandiose settlement plans. A Nazi film was made of his travels – but no mention made of the Guayana Project: it remained classified by S.S. intelligence.

‘Given time, the plan may be submitted again,’ Himmler wrote to his jungle emissary.

But his experiences were put to use by the Nazi war machine: he became Nazi Germany’s leading expert in aerial photo-reconnaissance interpretation.

After the war the Americans arrested him and he was placed in a POW camp in Salzburg, Austria. Released, he died in 1989, still dreaming of a German colony amid the rain forests.