Time: A Brief History Of The Skull & Bones Society

Time | Feb 23, 2009

By M.J. Stephey

The Skull and Bones Society Building

On Feb. 17, the 100th anniversary of Geronimo’s death, descendants of the Apache warrior filed a federal lawsuit against the secretive Skull and Bones society of Yale University demanding that the group — which it claims is in possession of Geronimo’s remains — return them to his family. “I believe strongly from my heart that his spirit was never released,” Geronimo’s great-grandson Haryln Geronimo, 61, told the National Press Club.

As legend has it, Prescott S. Bush — the father of President George H.W. Bush and grandfather to President George W. Bush — dug up Geronimo’s grave in 1918 with the help of several other “Bonesmen,” as members of the society are known, and stole the warrior’s skull, two bones and some riding gear from his grave at Fort Sill, Okla. The society allegedly put the remains on display at the “The Tomb,” an imposing, windowless crypt in New Haven, Conn. that has served as the group’s headquarters since its founding in 1832.

Conspiracy theories about the Skull & Bones Society are almost as old as the society itself. The group has been blamed for everything from the creation of the nuclear bomb to the Kennedy assassination. It’s been aped in bad teen horror films and satirized, along with fellow conspiracy-group targets the Freemasons and the Illuminati, in The Simpsons. Even CNN has done a segment on the Prescott grave-robbery saga.

Prescott Bush stole Geronimo’s Bones – CNN Report

A young Yale junior named William Russell founded the group after spending a year abroad in Germany among members of some of the most mystical and elite clubs in the world, including organizations that mimicked the Enlightenment-era Illuminati. Russell returned to the U.S. determined to found a secret society of his own and “tapped” Alfonso Taft, whose son would later become President William H. Taft, to be among the first members of “The Brotherhood of Death,” or as it was more formally known, “The Order of the Skull and Bones.” Members worshipped Eulogia, a fake goddess of eloquence, glorified pirates and reportedly hatched schemes of world domination at the “Tomb” — which is rumored to have a landing pad on the roof for the society’s private helicopter.

Skull and Bones formed at Yale University, the third-oldest school in the U.S. and an institution “known for its strange, Gothic elitism and its rigid devotion to the past,” according to journalist (and Yale secret society alumnae) Alexandra Robbins. Skull and Bones is not the only secret society at the school either: others include the Scroll and Key, Wolf’s Head, Berzelius and Book and Snake, all of which like keeping tabs on one another, some in the form of dossiers that include “reliability ratings.” Each group picks its members in a highly confidential manner and subjects them to rounds of occult hazing rituals — what pledging a fraternity might be like, perhaps, at Hogwarts.

But given the secrecy of the groups, whether a young Henry Luce (founder of Time magazine) really laid naked in a coffin and told the tales of his early sex life during his Skull and Bones initiation, or if William F. Buckley jumped into a mud pie as part of his hazing, or whether any of the three Bush Bonesman (Prescott, H.W., and W.) actually received a gift of $15,000 and the guarantee of a lifetime of financial security upon being selected — all these rumors, publicized over the years by Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times and numerous independent book authors, might never be known.

Minus the trappings of wealth, privilege and power, Skull and Bones could be a laughably juvenile club for Dungeons-and-Dragon geeks. But its rumored alumni have made up a disproportionately large percentage of the world’s most powerful leaders. (One historian has likened the society’s powers to that of an “international mafia,” for as another writer put it, “the mafia is, after all, the most secret of societies.”) Bonesmen have, at one time, controlled the fortunes of the Carnegie, Rockefeller and Ford families, as well as posts in the Central Intelligance Agency, the American Psychological Association, the Council on Foreign Relations and some of the most powerful law firms in the world.

During the 2004 presidential election, the Republican and Democratic candidates were both former Bonesmen, though neither would say much about the subject. “It’s a secret,” John Kerry said when asked about his membership; “So secret, I can’t say anything more,” George W. Bush wrote in his autobiography, as if to complete Kerry’s sentence.

The group has remained silent about the lawsuit from Geronimo’s descendants. But in a time when the Internet is opening up previously private information to the world and even Swiss banks are spilling their secrets, the activities of the Skull & Bones society might not be able to stay so clandestine for long.

Geronimo’s descendants sue Yale secret society for stolen skull

Geronimo died of pneumonia in 1909 as a prisoner of war at Fort Sill after decades spent fighting against US and Mexican expansion into Apache lands. Photo: National Archive

American Indian leader Geronimo’s descendants have launched a legal fight to have his ’stolen’ remains returned to his birthplace in the Gila Mountains of New Mexico.

Telegraph | Feb 18, 2009

By Tom Leonard in New York

They claim his body was taken by members of Skull and Bones, a secret student society, and are hidden at Yale University.

George W Bush’s grandfather and two other members of the group are said to have taken the remains of the Apache warrior Geronimo during the First World War.

However, the society’s repeated refusal to comment on the story, or on rumours that new members have to kiss the chief’s skull, have prompted the extraordinary lawsuit.

In a court action that names not only Yale and the society, but also Barack Obama and Robert Gates, his defence secretary, 20 descendants of the famous American Indian leader are seeking to recover his remains so his spirit can be laid to rest in his tribal homeland.

Their legal action, filed this week in a federal-district court in Washington DC on the 100th anniversary of his death, will seek to determine the truth of rumours that Geronimo’s burial at Fort Sill in Oklahoma was not his final resting place.

Three Bonesmen, including Prescott Bush, served at Fort Sill during the First World War.

The trio were rumoured to have dug up Geronimo’s remains in 1918 and took some of them back to Yale where they are supposedly still kept in the society’s hall – known as the “Tomb” – on the university campus.

The Skull and Bones, whose illustrious membership has numbered three US presidents including both Bushes, supposedly makes new members kiss the Chiricahua Apache’s skull.

The lawsuit – which also names Pete Geren, the Army Secretary, as a defendant – seeks to “to free Geronimo, his remains, funerary objects and spirit from 100 years of imprisonment at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, the Yale University campus at New Haven, Connecticut and wherever else they may be found”.

Mr Obama and his colleagues were included in the action because Geronimo was initially buried on US government land.

The remains would be returned to Geronimo’s birthplace in the Gila Mountains of New Mexico for a traditional Apache burial, said his great-grandson, Harlyn.

He stressed that such a burial was one of the most important sacred rites in his tribe’s culture.

“It’s been 100 years since the death of my great-grandfather in 1909. It’s been 100 years of imprisonment,” Mr Geronimo said outside court.

“The spirit is wandering until a proper burial has been performed. The only way to put this into closure is to release the remains, his spirit, so that he can be taken back to his homeland in the Gila Mountains, at the head of the Gila River.” The suit contends that Geronimo’s descendants are entitled to his remains and funerary possessions under the 1990 American Indian Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

The Geronimo family are being represented by Ramsey Clark, who was attorney general under President Lyndon Johnson.

“In this lawsuit, we’re going to find out if the bones are there or not,” he said.

Mr Geronimo said he hoped the people named in the suit would take it seriously.

A spokesman for Yale said the university had “no relics or bones belonging to Geronimo” but stressed it could not answer for Skull and Bones because it was independent. The society has so far refused to comment.

Aged 79, Geronimo died of pneumonia in 1909 as a prisoner of war at Fort Sill after decades spent fighting against US and Mexican expansion into Apache lands.

Skull and Bones, about which George W Bush once wrote that it was “so secret, I can’t say anything more”, has never said whether any of Geronimo’s remains are in its possession.

However, in 2006, the Yale Alumni magazine published a letter written at the time of the alleged grave robbery in which a Skull and Bones member confirmed that Geronimo’s skull, femurs and some of his riding gear had been taken to the society’s hall.

The letter prompted Harlyn Geronimo to write to President Bush, but he said he never got a reply.

‘Goth Butcher’ and Accomplice Allegedly Ate Girl in Pie

Associated Press | Feb 6, 2009

By Irina Titova

Two young men — one of them a butcher — have been arrested on suspicion of killing and dismembering a 16-year-old girl and eating parts of her body, Russian prosecutors said Wednesday.

Media speculation has suggested that the suspects styled themselves as “Goths” or were part of the “emo” youth culture in which young people dye their hair, have face piercings and wear hoodies and drainpipe trousers.

“Goths ‘ate girl in a pie’” was a headline in Britain’s Mirror tabloid on Thursday.

The girl disappeared after leaving her home in St. Petersburg for school on Jan. 19, city prosecutor spokesman Sergei Kapitonov said. He said she was killed that night, and that body parts believed to be hers were later found in plastic bags scattered around the city.

Police arrested Yury Mozhnov, a florist, and Maxim Golovatskhikh, a street-market butcher and one-time psychiatric patient, Kapitonov said. Prosecutors believe they drowned the girl in a bathtub, cut her body into pieces and ate some of her internal organs.

“The arrestees said they ate the girl’s body parts because they were hungry,” Kapitonov said. They told investigators they baked some of her insides with potatoes in a stove, he said.

They allegedly then bagged up her remains and disposed of them in garbage containers and bodies of water. He said both men are being held on suspicion of murder.

The suspects, both 19, knew the victim, and she accompanied them voluntarily to an apartment rented by another acquaintance on the day she went missing, Kapitonov said.

They were arrested Saturday, a day after plastic bags — one containing a girl’s head and others holding other body parts — were found in at least two separate locations, he said.

St. Petersburg news web site Fontanka.ru cited a top city prosecutor, Andrei Lavrenko, as saying investigators believe the suspects decided to kill the victim after an argument erupted between her and Golovatskikh.

Prosecutors referred to the body parts as the girl’s, but Moscow-based tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda on Wednesday cited a department head at the St. Petersburg forensic medicine office, Vitaly Sysoyev, as saying they had not been positively identified as hers and that the alleged victim was still officially listed as missing. “Her father could not recognize her,” Sysoyev was quoted as saying.

Kapitonov said he was unaware of such information.

Without citing a source, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported that the suspects at first denied involvement. But, the newspaper said, after investigators found suspicious evidence at the apartment, they acknowledged drowning her and eating a calf muscle and part of her left hip — supposedly a Satanic practice.

Lavrenko said investigators found traces of blood when they ripped out plumbing and floorboards in the apartment, Fontanka.ru reported.

Mozhnov was convicted of robbery in 2005, while accusations against Golovatskikh of murder threats and cruelty to animals were subsequently dropped, Kapitonov said. He said Golovatskikh had been treated in the past at a psychiatric hospital.

Belgian creche ‘killer’ may have murdered weeks before

Belgium’s state-run media has issued a photograph of Kim De Gelder

Belgian man Kim De Gelder who has been charged with the “Joker” murders of two babies and a child carer may have killed before, officials have said.

The police officer who arrested Mr De Gelder, described the suspect as being in a passive and trance-like state.

Telegraph | Jan 27, 2009

By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels

The 20-year-old was arrested last Friday shortly after two babies and one of their carers were stabbed to death in a gruesome attack that has stunned Belgium.

He is now also suspected of murdering a 73 year old woman in a knife attack on Friday January 16.

Christian Du Four, a state prosecutor, linked De Gelder to the “abominable crime”.

“There were very concrete elements linking the two incidents,” he said.

The elderly woman was found stabbed to death in her apartment in Beveren, near the northern city of Antwerp and also close to Dendermonde scene of the nursery killings.

The woman’s husband was out visiting neighbours when she was attacked.

Police sources have revealed that Mr De Gelder quoted Heath Ledger from the Batman film when he was arrested.

He was dressed and apparently wearing make-up that gave him the appearance of the Batman character the Joker when carrying out the crime.

Investigators are examining whether the attack was timed to mark the first anniversary of the death of Heath Ledger, the actor who played the Joker in the film Batman, The Dark Knight.

It has emerged that when he was arrested, Mr De Gelder’s only words were: “I have a question”.

The words echo a scene in Batman: the Dark Knight when the Joker violently gatecrashes a party looking for a the fictional Attorney General of Gotham City, Harvey Dent.

“I only have one question: where is Harvey Dent? I’ll settle for his loved ones,” says the character played by Ledger, before threatening a woman with a knife.

Patrick De Mey, the police officer who arrested Mr De Gelder, described the suspect as being in a passive and trance-like state.

“When I asked him to step off his bicycle and put his backpack on the ground he obeyed perfectly,” he told the Gazet Van Antwerpen.

“But in answer to my questions, he clearly had no understanding. He continued to stare at me all the time with wide open eyes and a large grin on his face.”

Mr De Gelder has been described by former schoolmates and work colleagues as a “film freak” and “movie addict”.

Since his capture, he has not spoken and has gone on hunger strike.

He was reported to be on an intravenous drip in a medical facility in a prison in Bruges.

Ledger died of a drug overdose on Jan 22, 2008, a year and a day before Mr De Gelder is accused of carrying out the attack.

According to witness statements and police drawings, the suspect had painted his face white, blackened his eyes and had coloured his hair red.

His gruesome and bizarre garb prompted investigators to make the Joker comparison and make a link to another cult Goth film, The Crow, which inspired Ledger in his Batman role.

Belgium’s Le Soir newspaper has even speculated on the significance of the fact that the name Gelder is an anagram for Ledger.

The Fabeltjesland, or Storyland, creche in the town of Dendermonde where the attack took place has been permanently closed to prevent children and parents being “constantly confronted with the buildings where the attack occurred”.

Corneel Vermeir, aged six months, Leon Garcia, nine months, and their carer Marita Blindeman, 54, were killed on Friday when the assailant entered the creche and began to slash at the children and their adult supervisors.

Judicial sources have said that when Mr De Gelder was arrested he had the addresses of three other nurseries on his person.

The theory that more attacks were planned is supported by evidence that the suspect was armed with three knives, an axe and a replica pistol.

Mr De Gelder will be examined by three psychiatrists before a closed court hearing on Tuesday decides if he is mentally responsible for his actions.

The young man, who lived his whole life within three miles of the family home, in the Eksaarde district of Sinaai, has emerged as a troubled loner.

Former classmates at the Roman Catholic Sint Carolus school, in the town of Sint Niklaas, described him as a fan of Goth music who could sometimes behave oddly.

He was nicknamed Satan because of his long black hair.

Mr De Gelder studied to become a chemist’s assistant and successfully completed his exams in 2006.

Blair, his ’sexy’ Catholic aide, and their new Yale HQ near her Opus Dei father’s office

Still close: Tony Blair and Ruth Turner, his controversial former Downing Street aide, at Yale last month. Turner accompanied Blair to Yale for his seminars on faith and globalization in support of his new religious charity

Professor Turner is a prominent writer and scholar who once described himself as a ‘Marxist Catholic’. And intriguingly he is a former member of Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic lay organisation shrouded in mystery with rituals that include wearing a cilice – a spiked chain strapped around the thigh.

Daily Mail | Jan 4, 2009

By SHARON CHURCHER in New York and SIMON WALTERS in London

Tony Blair is setting up an American office for his religious charity in a move that sheds new light on his close links with Ruth Turner, his controversial former Downing Street aide.

Ms Turner, 38, who was at the heart of the cash-for-honours inquiry in 2006 and 2007, was chosen by the former Prime Minister last spring to run his new Tony Blair Faith Foundation.

It has become a highly lucrative vehicle for the ex-premier, concentrating its activities at America’s Yale University, where Mr Blair teaches a course on ‘faith and globalisation’ – and where Ms Turner’s British-born father, Denys, is a theology professor.

Yale, which is one of America’s top three universities, has paid the foundation more than £127,000 since it appointed Mr Blair as its Howland Distinguished Fellow.

A recent posting on the foundation’s website announced that ‘a small team of staff’ will be based on the campus to ‘extend the [foundation’s] reach across North America’.

Yale maintains that Mr Blair’s post has nothing to do with Ms Turner’s father. But yesterday the university confirmed that the foundation’s office will be in the picturesque neo-Georgian divinity school complex, where Ms Turner’s father is based.

The foundation insists it wants to promote understanding between world religions. But The Mail on Sunday has been told that several of its key figures are Catholics.

Mr Blair converted to Catholicism in 2007 with his wife Cherie, a Catholic, as his sponsor. It is less well known that it is a faith he shares with Ms Turner and her father. Sources close to the Blairs say that Ms Turner was one of the figures in whom Mr Blair confided as he decided whether to convert to Catholicism.

Professor Turner is a prominent writer and scholar who once described himself as a ‘Marxist Catholic’. And intriguingly he is a former member of Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic lay organisation shrouded in mystery with rituals that include wearing a cilice – a spiked chain strapped around the thigh.

Author Dan Brown is accused of exaggerating its alleged secretive sadomasochistic practices in his best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code. According to Catholic magazine The Tablet, Professor Turner was a member of Opus Dei for eight years and faced threats that he would ‘lose his soul’ when he left.

The magazine said that Professor Turner believed Opus Dei ‘traded on the instinct which Catholics had for obedience, exercised a kind of mind control and cultivated a psychology of dependence’.

The article continued: ‘He des-cribes leaving as a catastrophic experience for him and was told he would lose his soul over it.’

Ms Turner accompanied Mr Blair to Yale last month for his seminars on faith and globalisation. And breaking her silence about her association with him for the first time, she contributed to an article about him in New York magazine.

Speaking warmly about Mr Blair’s devotion to the new charity, she declared: ‘You can make the case extremely convincingly for why religion is an absolutely terrible thing, and you’ll be right in every respect. Except for the fact that it’s not only like that and, anyway, it’s not going to go away.’

She disclosed that she is so close to him she can predict his choice of clothing when he visits his old haunts in the North-East of England. ‘Whenever he goes back, it’s fantastic,’ she said gushingly. ‘He wears a tracksuit all day.’

Ms Turner was born in Dublin in 1970 and spent her childhood moving between university towns as her father’s career took off. He was a professor of theology at Cambridge before his appointment at Yale.

She is a committed socialist and launched the Northern version of Big Issue magazine, where she earned a formidable reputation for using her charm to raise big sums of money from businesses. It was when she joined Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee in 2000 that she caught the eye of Mr Blair, who promptly recruited her to No 10. A former Downing St aide said: ‘Ruth is clever, sexy and has a sparkling personality. Everybody loved her at No 10. Underneath it all, she is very tough, but she has this delicate vulnerable look that makes you want to put your arm round her.’

Ms Turner worked 18-hour days at Downing Street, often reporting directly to Mr Blair.

He displayed fierce loyalty to her when she was arrested and quizzed by police in the cash-for-honours row, and took the unusual step of issuing a statement defending her. ‘Ruth is a person of the highest integrity for whom I have great regard and I continue to have complete confidence in her,’ he said.

After being cleared in the scandal, Ms Turner remained loyal to Mr Blair. When he left No 10 in 2007, she was top of the list of Downing Street staff he wanted to take with him.

Professor Turner told The Mail on Sunday that he had gone to great lengths to avoid any connection to Mr Blair’s activities at Yale. ‘I have been careful to be sure that my relationship with Ruth is kept entirely out of the way of her professional relationship with Tony Blair,’ he said.

Explaining why he left Opus Dei, Professor Turner said: ‘I moved in a pendulum-like way into a rather opposed position politically and eventually the pendulum settled down in the middle somewhere.

‘I am a Catholic, but I wouldn’t describe myself as a Marxist now. I’ve been through that phase and came out of it at the other end.’

A spokesman for Mr Blair said yesterday: ‘Professor Turner is a highly respected member of the [Yale] faculty but he had no role in establishing the partnership between Yale and the foundation.’

Asked about the foundation’s expansion plans and whether Catholicism played a role in it, his spokesman drew attention to an article on its website, which said: ‘As Prime Minister of Britain, Tony Blair was officially an Anglican. Unofficially, though, he was a practising Roman Catholic.’

It goes on to quote Mr Blair as saying: ‘My wife’s Catholic, my kids are brought up as Catholics, I’ve been going to mass for 25 years,’ and it comments: ‘In a way, Blair’s foundation is the culmination of his life as a double agent.’

Mega-orgy in Tel Aviv cancelled due to public pressure

The Raelian swastika/hexagram logo

Sex fest scheduled to be held on ‘International Orgasm Day’ and seeking to promote world peace called off after owner of venue meant to host event caves in to threats

Ynet | Dec 24, 2008
By Yoav Zaitun

After weeks of preparations for the largest sex event of its kind in Israel, organizers were forced to cancel it this week due to public pressure and threats exerted on the owner of the venue where the sex fest was to take place.

The event in question, which was scheduled to take place on “International Orgasm Day,” aimed to bring together some 250 participants seeking to promote world peace through multiple orgasms reached by masturbation or sex.

The orgy was organized by the Raelian movement, a UFO religion whose followers believe humankind was created by aliens. The group’s spokesman, Kobi Drori, said that the orgy was meant to include straights, gays, lesbians and bisexuals, all of them over 18.

“The purpose of the event was to try and bring world peace through mass orgasm, this by experiencing consensual sex and natural, uninterrupted pleasure. It was important to make love without feeling guilty or shy,” he explained.

Drori protested the fact that nowadays the words “war,” “violence” and “murder” have become more legitimate than “sex,” “orgasm” and “pleasure.”

“It should be the other way around. Several years ago an Iraqi boy whose limbs were amputated was shown on TV and everybody treated this as if it was okay, but when Janet Jackson exposed her breast during the Superbowl the American nation was appalled.

“We wanted to put into practice the saying ‘make love, not war’.”

‘Society based on self-fulfillment’

According to Drori, the orgy was just the first in a series of events dedicated to promoting this objective. On January 22 the movement will hold a conference on sexuality and masturbation with experts and writers in the field.

He also vowed that the cancelation of this year’s orgy would not deter the Raelians from setting up another sex fest next year.

The Raelian movement has several hundreds followers in Israel and some 70,000 members worldwide.

“We don’t believe in demons, ghosts and gods,” said Drori. “The group’s primary goal is to inform humanity, without attempting to persuade, regarding scientific messages that deal with the origins of life on earth.

“The second goal is to expedite the establishment of a society based on the principles of non-violence, solidarity, self-fulfillment and pleasure. To establish one global currency, one global government and harness science to the service of humanity, and not against humanity,” he concluded.

The sinister resurrection of Stalin

The Soviet leader’s triumphant imperialism is the key to his rehabilitation under Putin, believes Anne Applebaum.

Telegraph | Dec 29, 2008

Who is the greatest Russian of all time? In the unlikely event that you answered “Stalin”, you would be in good company. One of the 20th century’s most horrific dictators has just come third in an opinion poll conducted by a Russian television station. Some 50 million people are said to have voted.

Myself, I have some doubts about the veracity of this poll, particularly given that the television station in question is state-owned, and therefore manipulated by the Kremlin. Also, first place went to Alexander Nevsky, a medieval prince who defeated German invaders – and an ideal symbol for the Putinist regime, which prides itself on its defiance of the West. Second place went to Piotr Stolypin, a turn-of-the-century economic reformer who, among other things, gave his name to the cattle cars (Stolypinki) in which prisoners were transported to Siberia – another excellent symbol for the “reformer with an iron fist” label to which both Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev aspire.

Both seem too good to be true; neither had ever before seemed like candidates for such an august title. Had the poll been completely free, I expect Stalin would have come in first place. Why wouldn’t he? After all, the government, media and teaching professions in Russia have spent a good chunk of the past decade trying to rehabilitate him – and not by accident.

All nations politicise history to some extent, of course. But in Russia, the tradition of falsification and manipulation of the past is deeper and more profound than almost anywhere else. In its heyday, the KGB retouched photographs to remove discredited comrades, changed history books to put other comrades in places where they had not been, monitored and tormented professional historians. Russia’s current leaders are their descendants, sometimes literally.

But even those who are not the children of KGB officers were often raised and trained inside the culture of the KGB – an organisation that believed that history was not neutral but rather something to be used, cynically, in the battle for power. In Putinist Russia, events are present in textbooks, or absent from official culture, because someone has taken a conscious decision that it should be so.

And, clearly, a decision has been made about Stalin. In a recently released, officially sanctioned Russian history textbook, in public celebrations and official speeches, the attitude towards him runs something like this: “Mistakes were made… errors were committed… but great things were achieved. And it was all worth it.”

This public portrayal of Stalin is highly selective. The many, many millions who died in the Gulag, in mass deportations or in mass murders are mentioned only as a kind of aside. Stalin’s purges of his closest colleagues and revolutionary comrades are given short shrift. The terror that made people afraid to speak their minds openly, that made children turn their parents in to the police, that stunted families and friendships, is absent from most contemporary accounts. Even Stalin’s programmes of industrialisation and agricultural collectivisation – which modernised the country at enormous cost to the population, the environment, and Russia’s long-term economic health – are not dwelled upon.

Instead, it is Stalin’s wartime leadership that is widely celebrated, and in particular his moment of imperial triumph in 1945, when Soviet-style communism was imposed on Russia’s western neighbours. In that year, Eastern Europe became a Russian colony and, more to the point, Stalin negotiated as an equal with Roosevelt and Churchill.

Annually, Russia’s May celebrations of the anniversary of victory in 1945 grow more elaborate. Last year, they included several thousand Russian soldiers dressed in Soviet uniforms, waving the Soviet flag and singing Soviet songs. Major pieces of weaponry were paraded across Red Square, just like in the old days, to enormous applause.

Books about the war have also now become a major publishing phenomenon in a country that, up until a few years ago, hardly published any popular history at all. Most major bookstores now have a war section, often featuring books like one I picked up in Moscow a few months ago. Entitled We Defeated Berlin and Frightened New York, it is the memoir of a pilot who describes the joy of bombing raids and revels in Russia’s long-lost power to frighten others.

Even more significant is the role that the celebration of the Soviet Union’s imperial zenith now plays in a larger narrative about recent Russian history, namely the story of the 1980s and the 1990s. Famously, Putin once said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the “biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”, presumably larger than either world war. He, along with the Russian media and the current Russian president who echo him, now considers the more open discussion of the Stalinist past that took place during Gorbachev’s glasnost to have been a distraction, a moment of national weakness. More to the point, they openly attribute the economic hardships of the 1990s not to decades of communist neglect and widespread theft, but to deliberate Western meddling, Western-style democracy and Western-style capitalism.

In fact, this argument now lies at the heart of the current Russian leadership’s popular legitimacy. Summed up, it goes something like this: communism was stable and safe; post-communism was a disaster. Putinism, within which Medvedev fits naturally, represents a return at last to the stability and safety of the communist period. Cheer for Stalin, cheer for Putin, cheer for Medvedev, and the media will once again be predictable, salaries will be paid on time, Russia’s neighbours will be cowed, and Russia’s leaders will, once again, negotiate on equal terms with the leaders of the West.

Besides, the more people take pride in the Stalinist past, the less likely they are to want a system that is more genuinely democratic and genuinely capitalist – a system in which the Russians might, for example, vote their president out of power, or hold a street revolution of the kind that brought down corrupt, post-Soviet governments in Georgia and Ukraine. The more nostalgia there is for Soviet-era symbols, the more secure the KGB clique is going to be.

None of which implies that the current Russian government is itself Stalinist either. As the recent election of Medvedev proved, Putin does not need that level of repression in order to stay in power. Too much violence might even threaten his legitimacy which is, as I say, based on an implied guarantee of stability and safety.

Nor was this rewriting of history ever inevitable. Despite the clichés people often spout about Russians invariably leaning towards authoritarianism or dictatorship, Russia was never condemned to celebrate this version of history.

On the contrary, a future government could, instead, rediscover the legacy of Russian liberalism at the beginning of the 20th century or even the legacy of the Russian dissidents, who in the 1960s and 1970s essentially invented what we now call the modern human rights movement. Every country has a right to celebrate some positive elements of its past, and Russia is no exception. But that Putin and his colleagues have chosen, of all things, to celebrate Stalinist imperialism tells us a good deal about their vision of their country’s future.

Anne Applebaum is the author of ‘Gulag: a History’ (Penguin)

Madonna aims to tempt troubled Britney Spears back into kabbalah

‘Call me mom’: Madonna is once again trying to convert US singer Britney Spears to kabbalah

Related

Kabbalah Bracelets Replacing Diamond Bracelets in Hollywood
‘Madonna is determined she can get Britney back into kabbalah. She has offered her a suite of rooms at her apartment in New York and has told Britney she is her surrogate mother.

Daily Mail | Nov 23, 2008

With her divorce settled, Madonna is focusing her energy into converting more A-list stars to kabbalah, and her latest target is troubled singer Britney Spears.

The 50-year-old has already converted actress Gwyneth Paltrow to the controversial Jewish-based faith that she follows.

Now she is attempting, for a second time, to persuade Britney to follow suit.

Madonna cooled her friendship with Britney when Spears announced after the birth of her second son, Jayden James: ‘I no longer study kabbalah. My baby is my religion.’

Message from the missus: Madonna in concert in the U.S. as her ‘quickie divorce’ was approved

‘Britney used to wear the red kabbalah bracelet and read the books Madonna gave her and she is thinking about giving it another chance.’

A spokesman for Britney tells me: ‘Britney wouldn’t really comment on that, it’s just a case of wait and see what happens.’

Madonna also apparently plans to take her new friend, baseball star Alex Rodriguez, and Britney to Malawi next year in the hope they will make donations to the kabbalah centre she has set up there.

Why White Supremacists Support Barack Obama

How do racists, anti-Semites and all-purpose hate-mongers view the possibility of America’s first black president? Not necessarily the way you think they would.

Esquire | Oct 30, 2008

By David Peisner

If recent polls are to be believed, white voters favor John McCain over Barack Obama by nearly ten percentage points, but the McCain and Obama camps probably haven’t factored in the following fact: In an informal Esquire survey, three out of four white supremacists prefer Obama, while McCain is the clear favorite among black nationalists. (Sure, our methodology suffered from an extraordinarily low sample size–limited to four white supremacists and one black nationalist–but just because it wouldn’t fly with Gallup doesn’t mean there ain’t a kernel of truth in there.) This is just one of many surprising views that emerged after we talked to extremists about this historic electoral showdown between a 46-year-old black man and a 71-year-old white man.

Tom Metzger

Who: Director, White Aryan Resistance

Likes: White people, karaoke, environmentalists

Dislikes: Race-mixing, Jews, the federal government, capitalism

Career Highlights: Was Grand Dragon of Ku Klux Klan in the 70s; won the Democratic primary during his bid for Congress in 1980; appeared on the episode of Geraldo Rivera’s show in 1988 when Rivera’s nose was broken in a brawl.

“The corporations are running things now, so it’s not going to make much difference who’s in there, but McCain would be much worse. He’s a warmonger. He’s a scary, scary person–more dangerous than Bush. Obama, according to his book, Dreams Of My Father, is a racist and I have no problem with black racists. I’ve got the quote right here: ‘I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother’s white race.’ The problem with Obama is he’s being dishonest about his racial views. I’d respect him if he’d just come out and say, ‘Yeah, I’m a black racist.’ I don’t hate black people. I just think it’s in the best interest of the races to be separated as much as possible. See, I’m a leftist. I’m not a rightist. I hate the transnational corporations far more than any black person.”

Ron Edwards

Who: Imperial Wizard, Imperial Klans of America

Likes: Guns, bed sheets, burning crosses

Dislikes: Black people, homosexuals, immigrants

Career Highlights: Sued in 2007 by the Southern Poverty Law Center for inciting the brutal beating of a Latino teenager; building the IKA into one of the nation’s largest Klan groups by allowing non-Christians to join.

“Obama, I think he’s a piece of shit. I don’t care that his mother was white. I don’t think he has enough brains to do anything good. All he’s living off of is the color of his skin to get elected. I don’t think America wants a black president. Most of them are too afraid to say that they believe the way I believe. They sit around their dinner table and talk the way I do, but when they get out in public, they have two faces and show the other face. When people are voting in the booth privately, they’ll vote Republican even if they’re a Democrat. If he wins, I’ll laugh. I don’t like McCain, but he’s the only one I can vote for. He’s against a lot of the things that I’m for. I’m afraid that he’s going to mess with gun laws. But I’m going Republican and I talked to my guys and most of them are voting for McCain too.”

Erich Gliebe

Who: Chairman, National Alliance

Likes: Third Reich, the movie Rocky

Dislikes: Integration, Jewish-controlled media

Career Highlights: Turning white-power record label, Resistance Records, into a million-dollar-a-year business juggernaut; an 8-0 record as a professional boxer under the nickname, “The Aryan Barbarian.”

“Obama might be a better candidate for our cause because he’s racially conscious. One of our big things in the National Alliance is to raise the racial consciousness of our people. Young whites in universities, they’ve been stripped of any kind of racial identity. Obama may be a racist in a positive sense for his people–that will awaken a lot of the whites, knock some sense into them. They’ll see that non-white Americans are allowed to be proud of who they are, to be racially conscious, to talk about their people or their community without being attacked as being racist. Let’s face it, white people aren’t going to fight for their causes, for their kind with a white president. I don’t think McCain even acknowledges that a white race exists. He’s all about granting amnesty to illegal aliens. The fact he wants to keep us in wars in the Middle East for 100 years, that’s not a good thing. I give Obama credit, he seems to have stuck to his guns as far as pulling the troops out of Iraq. He’s a very intelligent man, an excellent speaker and has charisma. John McCain offers none of that. Perhaps the best thing for the white race is to have a black president. My only problem with Obama is perhaps he’s not black enough.”

Rocky Suhayda

Who: Chairman, American Nazi Party

Likes: Hitler, white people

Dislikes: Jews, immigrants, multinational corporations

Career highlights: Being widely quoted bemoaning in the fact that so few Aryan-Americans had the cojones of the 9/11 hijackers: “If we were one-tenth as serious, we might start getting somewhere.”

“White people are faced with either a negro or a total nutter who happens to have a pale face. Personally I’d prefer the negro. National Socialists are not mindless haters. Here, I see a white man, who is almost dead, who declares he wants to fight endless wars around the globe to make the world safe for Judeo-capitalist exploitation, who supports the invasion of America by illegals–basically a continuation of the last eight years of Emperor Bush. Then, we have a black man, who loves his own kind, belongs to a Black-Nationalist religion, is married to a black women–when usually negroes who have ‘made it’ immediately land a white spouse as a kind of prize–that’s the kind of negro that I can respect. Any time that a prominent person embraces their racial heritage in a positive manner, it’s good for all racially minded folks. Besides, America cares nothing for the interests of the white American worker, while having a love affair with just about every non-white on planet Earth. It’d be poetic justice to have a non-white as titular chief over this decaying modern Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Yahanna

Who: General, Israelite School Of Universal Practical Knowledge

Likes: Segregation

Dislikes: White oppressors, black women, American culture, Muslims, Christians, Martin Luther King Jr.

Career Highlights: Featured in 1999 BBC program about black supremacists; his street corner rants in Washington D.C. spurred changes in the local noise ordinance.

“Finding out Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee for president was one of the saddest days in black history. Another legacy of black death is about to begin, just like it began back in the ’60s with probably the greatest traitor to black people in modern-day history, Martin Luther King. Every black leader that has some form of power has given black people false hope, when in fact, the closer they get to the white establishment, the more they become an actual enemy to black people. Black people need to move away from the establishment and towards a moral change. As for Obama, first of all, he’s not even a black man in the terms of what real black people consider a black man. He’s of African and white descent. How easily he dismissed his affiliation with Reverend Wright, was a clear indication that this is a politician, not a man of any real conviction. The same way he threw away that Reverend, once he becomes president, he must throw away black people. He’s going to have to harm black people to make white people satisfied that he’s not Reverend Wright’s boy. The disappointment we’re going to suffer from him is going to set us back another fifty years. McCain is definitely the better shot for black people.”

Opus Dei benefits from Da Vinci Code

Dan Brown’s fictional portrayal of the controversial Catholic group has boosted numbers

Times Online |  Sep 30, 2008

On the eve of the 80th anniversary on Thursday of the founding of the conservative Roman Catholic organisation Opus Dei, a leading Catholic writer has claimed that the prelature has benefited rather than suffered from the controversy over Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.

Vittorio Messori, who has collaborated on books with both Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessor, John Paul II, said that on the verge of its 80th birthday Opus Dei could count on over 85,000 members “in all continents”, 98 per cent of them lay people.

He said that while some considered Saint Josemaria Escrivá de Balaguer, the founder of Opus Dei, a “megalomaniac”, others saw his life and testimony as one of humility. Writing in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Mr Messori said that the “tsunami” set off by the book and film of The Da Vinci Code had been thought by many to have caused “irreparable damage” to the image of Opus Dei.

In reality, however, Opus Dei had responded not only with protests but also with its own “information campaign”, which had been so effective that it was now studied in US journalism schools. The result had been not only praise for the prelature’s stance of “elegant understatement” but also a rise in the number of adherents. This had been helped by Mr Brown’s errors, such as making his Opus Dei assassin a monk when Opus Dei is not a monastic order and has no monks, Mr Messori said.

Opus Dei (The Work of God) teaches that everyone is called to sanctity through their daily lives. Founded in Spain on October 2 1928, when Josemaria Escrivá said he experienced a “vision” in which he “saw” Opus Dei, it was approved in 1950 by Pope Pius XII. John Paul II made it into a personal prelature in 1982.

Critics say it is secretive and elitist, with arcane rituals for some members including mortification of the flesh. However Josemaria Escrivá was canonised in 2002 by John Paul II, and in 2005 Pope Benedict blessed a statue of him in an outside niche of St Peter’s Basilica.