The mullahs’ suppressive regime imposed an undeclared martial law on Tehran’s bazaar following the added-value tax regulation.
Scores of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Special Anti-Riot Units coupled with plain-cloths agents of the notorious Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) were roaming around Tehran’s bazaar forcing shopkeepers to open their businesses on Tuesday.
Since early morning hours, jewelers and carpet dealers were faced with the orders by the security forces to start work.
Some other agents riding on motorbikes wearing complete anti-riot gears were writing down license numbers of the shops refusing to obey the strict government order to open business.
Despite all suppressive measures, Tehran bazaar remained closed much of the day. Members of the MOIS were patrolling the streets leading to bazaar.
In addition to shops keeping their shutters down, some strikers set fire on used tires. According to eyewitnesses, shopkeepers stood guard outside their shops holding wooden clubs to defend themselves in case of an attack by security forces on Monday.
Other bazaars in major cities such as Isfahan, Shiraz, Mashhad, Qazvin stayed closed for most of the day on Tuesday.
Ahwaz bazaar in the southwestern part of the country was the latest in the week old string of strikes by the bazaaris in Iran.
The Saudi daily Al Watan wrote today that mullahs’ regime is blaming its opposition for the bazaar strikes. The witnesses told the daily that the security forces took in some merchants for questioning.
The installation of the new Grand Master of the Military and Hospitaller Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem recently took place at the Anglican Cathedral of Manchester, UK.
Don Carlos Gereda de Borbon, Marquis of Almazan was elected by a chapter general of the Order worldwide. Delegations represented Priories, Bailiwicks and Commanderies from Britain, European countries and also from USA, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Japan and South Africa.
The Grand Priory of the Maltese Islands Grand Cross Chev. Joseph R. Pace headed an eight-man delegation that participated throughout the event.
The solemn installation service included readings, communal prayers and hymns. A homily was delivered by Gregorious III Leham, spiritual protector of the Order and patriarch of the Greek Catholic Melchite Church.
The chapter general was organised by the Grand Bailiwick of England and Wales. It was chaired by the Grand Commander Chev. David James.
The activities ended at a gala dinner where Maltese Grand Prior presented the Grand Master, as well as Grand Master Emeritus and His Beatitude Patriarch Gregorios III with a signed copy of a book about the Order’s chequered history The Hospitaller Knights of St Lazarus by Grand Priory Hospitaller Charles Savona Ventura which was published in Malta by the Grand Priory.
Related
Deputy commander Geoff Fosberry who has been appointed grand chancellor emeritus of the Order of St Lazarus.
Malta delegation at Order’s chapter general meeting
A seven-strong delegation from the Grand Commandery of the Castello participated in a three-day chapter general meeting of the Military and Hospitaller Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem.
The delegation was led by deputy commander Geoff Fosberry, who for the last four years also occupied the position of grand chancellor of the Order.
Held in Manchester, UK, the chapter general was attended by Order members from Australia, USA, Canada, Mexico, and South Africa as well as from European countries.
The highlight of the event was the installation of Almazan Marquis Don Carlos Gereda de Borbon, as the new grand master of the Military and Hospitaller Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem. The investiture was led by Jerusalem Archbishop Joseph Zerey.
During the chapter general, the previous grand master, Duke of Seville Don Francisco de Borbon y Escasany, was appointed grand master emeritus. The chapter general also appointed Chev. Geoff Fosberry as grand chancellor emeritus.
The highlight of the Manchester Chapter General was celebrated with the formal Installation of the 49th Grandmaster, H.E. Don Carlos Gereda y de Borbón, Marquis de Almazàn, in the Cathedral of Manchester.
Surrounded by the Spiritual Protector His Betitude Patriarch Gregory III, the attending Chaplains, Prelates and Senior Prelates of the Order, the Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Ecclesiastical Grand Prior for the Order the Reverend Canon Paul Denby, who was host in the Cathedral of Manchester and acted as Master of Ceremonies, all members of the Magistral Council, the Grandmaster emeritus Don Francisco de Borbón (48th Grand Master) witnessed the oath taken by the new 49th Grand Master His Excellency Don Carlos de Gereda y de Borbòn, Marquis de Almazàn.
The Military and Hospitaller Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem is one of the Orders of Chivalry created at the time of the First Crusade. The Order was founded in 1099 and till today is an international, Christian ecumenical Order of chivalry to respect the traditional values of Christian faith, to care, help and assist poor, ill and persons in need - specially afflicted with leprosy; to work for unification of Christians, to follow the teaching of Christ. All members of the Order must be Christians.
The Order traditionally was under the protection of the French Kings, actually is under the spiritual protection of His Beatitude Gregorios III , Patriarch of Melkite Greek Catholic Church, of the cities of Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem.
The head of the Order is a Grand Master elected by the Chapter General.
The 49th Grand Master of the Order is H.E. Don Carlos Gereda y de Borbon, Marquis de Almazàn.
Saint Lazare Investment will be the largest owner of aquatic property and will thus face the prerogatives of future international ecological policies from the point of view of an influential investor in the Carbon Finance marketplace.
Water will soon become an instrument of power and influence.
The Saint Lazare Foundation aims to become an essential global player specializing in water. Its strength and distinctiveness derive from the three pillars on which it stands:
■ A think tank
■ An investment source
■ A centre of operations
Affiliations:
United Nations
- World Water Forum
- World Water Council
- UNESCO
European Union
NGOs
- International Office for Water
- Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council
The World Society was created to finance the Saint Lazare Foundation.
The World Society is a global network, which offers unique advantages to its members. It comprises those men and women around the world who are part of the economic, financial, social or cultural elite. The World Society is one of the world’s most exclusive societies. Joining the World Society is a unique opportunity, a privilege. The future is water. The members of the World Society are among ‘the happy few’ who will become key players in the future of our planet.
The object of the World Society is……the financing of the Saint Lazare Foundation and all of its activities. The World Society is a global network which offers unique advantages to its members.
It comprises those men and women around the world who are part of the economic, financial, social or cultural elite.
The World Society is one of the world’s most exclusive societies.
Joining the World Society is a unique opportunity, a privilege: fees and selection criteria are set accordingly. The future belongs to those who invest in it. The future is water.
The members of the World Society are among ‘the happy few’ who will become key players in the future of our planet.
Prince Charles-Philippe Marie Louis d’Orléans, Petit-fils de France, Duke of Anjou, was born in Paris, France on March 3, 1973. He is the eldest of two sons of Prince Michel Joseph Benoît Marie d’Orléans, fils de France, comte d’Evreux, and his wife the former Béatrice Pasquier de Franclieu. His paternal grandfather was the late Henri, Count of Paris who was the Orléanist pretender to the French throne as Henry VI. As such, Charles-Philippe would have the status of petit-fils de France with the style of Royal Highness.
In 2004, Prince Charles-Philippe was elected Grand Master of a branch of the Military and Hospitaller Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem, an Order of Chivalry that dates back to the 11th century Crusades.
Charles-Philippe recently founded the St Lazare Foundation financed by the World Society, an international think tank whose mission, inspired by the Count of Paris, is to rationalise the problem of the planet’s future needs for water.
Let’s look at Green Cross as it portrays itself. In ancient Greece, the color green symbolized victory. Green means go, as in all systems are in order. Green is youthful. Green is the symbol of living growing things, a symbol of nature. A healing color, a soothing color. It’s also the color of envy. It is also the recognized color of Muhammad and Islam. Next is the Cross. It is the Swiss adaptation of the Holy Cross, the most potent and memorable symbol of Christ and Christianity. However, there’s already a Green Cross and has been for close to nine hundred years.
The original Green Cross is attributed to the Hospitaliers of St. Lazarus, the Vert Cross. A religious order appearing in the First Crusade, famous for protecting lepers. Is Gorbachev subliminally informing us we’re lepers and he’s attempting to protect us?
The girl, who still does not know she is married, lives with her parents in the town of Unayzah, 135 miles north of the capital Riyadh. The marriage had been arranged in secret by her father.
She is preparing to start the new year at primary school in the town, which is located in the conservative Najd region of the country - the spiritual homeland of the Islamist Wahhabi movement that has long dominated the kingdom.
According to the Arabic-language newspaper Al-Watan, which reported the case, the divorce suit has been filed by the girl’s mother.
Her relatives have contacted human rights groups in the kingdom to try to arrange legal help to annul the marriage.
However, the husband has refused, saying he has done nothing wrong.
Saudi Arabia’s justice system is based on a conservative interpretation of Sharia law, but also incorporates some aspects of tribal custom from the people of the Arabian peninsula.
Polygamy is common and arranged marriages involving pre-adolescent girls and older men are occasionally reported.
The rate of child marriage rates in the Middle East is lower than in parts of Africa and south Asia, but there is a particular problem in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
In April another eight-year-old girl won a divorce after fleeing from her husband, aged 28, and arriving in the main court in the capital Sana’a.
A United Nations report on child marriage in 2005 found that 100 million girls were expected to marry by the age of 18 before 2015. The worst countries for child marriage were Niger, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, India and Bangladesh.
Former prime minister Tony Blair has promised to “spend the rest of my life” uniting the world’s religions
He said faith could be a “civilising force in globalisation”, bringing people together to solve problems such as malaria and extreme poverty.
Mr Blair, who is now a peace envoy to the Middle East, told Time magazine that religious belief had given him “strength” while in power.
He is launching a “faith foundation” in New York on Friday.
Mr Blair, who recently converted to Catholicism, said: “Faith is part of our future, and faith and the values it brings with it are an essential part of making globalisation work.”
‘Fantastic thing’
His foundation will attempt to bring religions together to tackle global issues such as the UN’s eight Millennium Development Goals, which range from eradicating extreme poverty to ensuring environmental sustainability.
One of its first priorities will be to fight the spread of malaria.
Mr Blair said: “If you got churches and mosques and those of the Jewish faith working together to provide the bed nets that are necessary to eliminate malaria, what a fantastic thing that would be.
“That would show faith in action, it would show the importance of cooperation between faiths, and it would show what faith can do for progress.”
He added that it was possible to “achieve a greater understanding between the different religious faiths, so that we make platforms for action by those faiths and deal with some of the biggest issues in the world”.
Mr Blair’s press secretary Alastair Campbell, when asked about his boss’s faith, once famously remarked that the government didn’t “do God”.
But Mr Blair, 55, has recently spoken out on the subject far more than during his 10 years in Downing Street.
Discussing decisions he made as prime minister, he told Time: “You don’t put a hotline up to God and get the answers.
“The worst thing in politics is when you’re so scared of losing support that you don’t do what you think is the right thing.
“What faith can do is not tell you what is right but give you the strength to do it.”
Mr Blair is not being paid for his work as a Middle East envoy for the “Quartet” of the United Nations, United States, European Union and Russia.
But he has lucrative consultancy posts with insurer Zurich and merchant bank JP Morgan, on top of a reported £5m deal for his Downing Street memoirs.
Pope Benedict XVI and U.S. President George W. Bush attend the arrival ceremony for the pope on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, April 16, 2008.
George W. Bush could well be the nation’s first Catholic president.
The key to understanding Bush’s domestic policy is to view it through the lens of Rome.
By Daniel Burke
Shortly after Pope Benedict XVI’s election in 2005, President Bush met with a small circle of advisers in the Oval Office. As some mentioned their own religious backgrounds, the president remarked that he had read one of the new pontiff’s books about faith and culture in Western Europe.
Save for one other soul, Bush was the only non-Catholic in the room. But his interest in the pope’s writings was no surprise to those around him. As the White House prepares to welcome Benedict on Tuesday, many in Bush’s inner circle expect the pontiff to find a kindred spirit in the president. Because if Bill Clinton can be called America’s first black president, some say, then George W. Bush could well be the nation’s first Catholic president.
This isn’t as strange a notion as it sounds. Yes, there was John F. Kennedy. But where Kennedy sought to divorce his religion from his office, Bush has welcomed Roman Catholic doctrine and teachings into the White House and based many important domestic policy decisions on them.
“I don’t think there’s any question about it,” says Rick Santorum, former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania and a devout Catholic, who was the first to give Bush the “Catholic president” label. “He’s certainly much more Catholic than Kennedy.”
Bush attends an Episcopal church in Washington and belongs to a Methodist church in Texas, and his political base is solidly evangelical. Yet this Protestant president has surrounded himself with Roman Catholic intellectuals, speechwriters, professors, priests, bishops and politicians. These Catholics — and thus Catholic social teaching — have for the past eight years been shaping Bush’s speeches, policies and legacy to a degree perhaps unprecedented in U.S. history.
“I used to say that there are more Catholics on President Bush’s speechwriting team than on any Notre Dame starting lineup in the past half-century,” said former Bush scribe — and Catholic — William McGurn.
Bush has also placed Catholics in prominent roles in the federal government and relied on Catholic tradition to make a public case for everything from his faith-based initiative to antiabortion legislation. He has wedded Catholic intellectualism with evangelical political savvy to forge a powerful electoral coalition.
“There is an awareness in the White House that the rich Catholic intellectual tradition is a resource for making the links between Christian faith, religiously grounded moral judgments and public policy,” says Richard John Neuhaus, a Catholic priest and editor of the journal First Things who has tutored Bush in the church’s social doctrines for nearly a decade.
In the late 1950s, Kennedy’s Catholicism was a political albatross, and he labored to distance himself from his church. Accepting the Democratic nomination in 1960, he declared his religion “not relevant.”
Bush and his administration, by contrast, have had no such qualms about their Catholic connections. At times, they’ve even seemed to brandish them for political purposes. Even before he got to the White House, Bush and his political guru Karl Rove invited Catholic intellectuals to Texas to instruct the candidate on the church’s social teachings. In January 2001, Bush’s first public outing as president in the nation’s capital was a dinner with Washington’s then-archbishop, Theodore McCarrick. A few months later, Rove (an Episcopalian) asked former White House Catholic adviser Deal Hudson to find a priest to bless his West Wing office.
“There was a very self-conscious awareness that religious conservatives had brought Bush into the White House and that [the administration] wanted to do what they had been mandated to do,” says Hudson.
To conservative Catholics, that meant holding the line on same-sex marriage, euthanasia and embryonic stem cell research, and working to limit abortion in the United States and abroad while nominating judges who would eventually outlaw it. To make the case, Bush has often borrowed Pope John Paul II’s mantra of promoting a “culture of life.” Many Catholics close to him believe that the approximately 300 judges he has seated on the federal bench — most notably Catholics John Roberts and Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court — may yet be his greatest legacy.
Bush also used Catholic doctrine and rhetoric to push his faith-based initiative, a movement to open federal funding to grass-roots religious groups that provide social services to their communities. Much of that initiative is based on the Catholic principle of “subsidiarity” — the idea that local people are in the best position to solve local problems. “The president probably knows absolutely nothing about the Catholic catechism, but he’s very familiar with the principle of subsidiarity,” said H. James Towey, former director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives who is now the president of a Catholic college in southwestern Pennsylvania. “It’s the sense that the government is not the savior and that problems like poverty have spiritual roots.”
Nonetheless, Bush is not without his Catholic critics. Some contend that his faith-based rhetoric is just small-government conservatism dressed up in religious vestments, and that his economic policies, including tax cuts for the rich, have created a wealth gap that clearly upends the Catholic principle of solidarity with the poor.
John Carr, a top public policy director for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, calls the Bush administration’s legacy a “tale of two policies.”
“The best of the Bush administration can be seen in their work in development assistance on HIV/AIDS in Africa,” says Carr. “In domestic policy, the conservatism trumps the compassion.”
And other prominent Catholics charge the president with disregarding Rome’s teachings on the Iraq war and torture. But even when he has taken actions that the Vatican opposes, such as invading Iraq, Bush has shown deference to church teachings. Before he sent U.S. troops into Baghdad to topple Saddam Hussein, he met with Catholic “theocons” to discuss just-war theory. White House adviser Leonard Leo, who heads Catholic outreach for the Republican National Committee, says that Bush “has engaged in dialogue with Catholics and shared perspectives with Catholics in a way I think is fairly unique in American politics.”
Moreover, people close to Bush say that he has professed a not-so-secret admiration for the church’s discipline and is personally attracted to the breadth and unity of its teachings. A New York priest who has befriended the president said that Bush respects the way Catholicism starts at the foundation — with the notion that the papacy is willed by God and that the pope is Peter’s successor. “I think what fascinates him about Catholicism is its historical plausibility,” says this priest. “He does appreciate the systematic theology of the church, its intellectual cogency and stability.” The priest also says that Bush “is not unaware of how evangelicalism — by comparison with Catholicism — may seem more limited both theologically and historically.”
Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, another evangelical with an affinity for Catholic teaching, says that the key to understanding Bush’s domestic policy is to view it through the lens of Rome. Others go a step further.
Paul Weyrich, an architect of the religious right, detects in Bush shades of former British prime minister Tony Blair, who converted to Catholicism last year. “I think he is a secret believer,” Weyrich says of Bush. Similarly, John DiIulio, Bush’s first director of faith-based initiatives, has called the president a “closet Catholic.” And he was only half-kidding.
The Taliban-style intimidation of Afghan newspapers came to the surface after a journalist was sentenced to death for distributing an article deemed to have “insulted Islam”.
Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh’s crime was to have passed around a piece taken from a website questioning why Muslim women cannot have multiple husbands in the same way as their menfolk can legally take four wives.
Mr Kaambakhsh, who works for “The New World”, a newspaper in Afghanistan’s northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, was prosecuted for downloading this article, apparently gleaned from an Iranian website, and distributing it to his friends.
On Tuesday, a court found him guilty of “insulting Islam” and sentenced him to death.
“Based on the crimes Parwez Kaambakhsh committed, the primary court sentenced him to the most serious punishment which is the death penalty,” said Hafizullah Khaliqyar, the province’s deputy attorney general.
No lawyer represented Mr Kaambakhsh, 23, during the critical hearing, which appears to have taken place in secret in Mazar-i-Sharif. The journalist will appeal against the verdict and both Afghan and international campaigners denounced his treatment.
“This is unfair, this is illegal,” said Rahimullah Samander, president of the Afghan Independent Journalists’ Association (AIJA). “This is too big for a small mistake - he just printed a copy and looked at this and read it. How can we believe in this ‘democracy’ if we can’t even read, we can’t even study?”
The AIJA urged President Hamid Karzai to intervene in the case and quash the death sentence. The penalty must be confirmed by a higher court before it can be inflicted.
But campaigners believe that the court’s real motive was not protecting the honour of Islam. Mr Kaambakhsh’s brother, Yaqub Ibrahimi, also works as a journalist and has written a series of reports on atrocities committed by senior politicians in northern Afghanistan.
The authorities may have been trying to silence him by threatening Mr Kaambakhsh’s life. Jean MacKenzie, country director for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, which trains Afghan journalists, said: “We feel very strongly that this is a complete fabrication on the part of the authorities up in Mazar, designed to put pressure on Parwez’s brother, Yaqub, who has done some of the hardest-hitting pieces outlining abuses by some very powerful commanders in Balkh and the other northern provinces.”
The overthrow of the Taliban in 2001 brought a new era of media freedom in Afghanistan. Dozens of newspapers and television stations have sprung up across the country. In practice, however, the authorities are deeply suspicious of journalists and all media outlets face pressure and harassment. Laws protecting the good name of Islam can often be invoked to stifle press criticism.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Malaysia’s only state run by the Islamic opposition party will get stricter about enforcing separate lines for men and women at supermarkets, an official said Tuesday.
Authorities in the northern state of Kelantan — governed by the opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party — will fine supermarkets and shops if they let men and women use the same lines at checkout counters, said party spokesman Anual Bakri Haron.
Chief Minister Nik Aziz Nik Mat has called for stricter enforcement “to safeguard the ladies” from being harassed and to avoid close proximity between opposite sexes while lining up to buy groceries, Anual said. “He wants the enforcement to be looked into thoroughly.”
Kelantan is the only Malaysian state governed by the opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party. The rest are ruled by the National Front coalition, which is made up of various parties representing Malaysia’s different ethnic groups.
The coalition is dominated by Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s United Malays National Organization party, which draws its support from the ethnic Malay Muslims who account for 60 percent of the country’s 27 million people.
The Islamic opposition party, which has ruled Kelantan for more than 17 years, imposed the separate lineup rule as part of its agenda to promote Islamic values. In recent years, however, people ignored the regulation, and there was little enforcement.
by Xan Rice in Nairobi, Andrew Heavens in Khartoum
A British primary school teacher was charged yesterday in Sudan with “insulting religion and inciting hatred” after allowing children in her class to name a teddy bear Muhammad.
Sudan’s ambassador to London was summoned to the Foreign Office last night as the state prosecutor said Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, would appear before judges in Khartoum today. She has been held by police since Sunday, accused of insulting the prophet Muhammad. Despite her colleagues insisting it was an innocent mistake, Sudan’s deputy justice minister confirmed yesterday that a charge had been laid. “The investigation has been completed and the Briton Gillian was charged under article 125 of the penal code,” said Abdel Daim Zamrawi, speaking to the official Sudan news agency in Khartoum. “The punishment for this is jail, a fine and lashes. It is up to the judge to determine the sentence.”
Gibbons arrived in Sudan in August to take up a post at the exclusive Unity high school, which follows a British-style curriculum. In September, during a class on animals and their habitats, she asked her seven-year-old pupils to give a teddy bear a name. They chose Muhammad, the name of one of the boys in the class and a popular name in Sudan.
Last week the education ministry informed the school that a few Muslim parents had complained about the name, and police arrested Gibbons at her home in the school grounds.
Sudan’s top clerics, known as the Assembly of the Ulemas, said in a statement on Wednesday that parents had handed them a book the teacher was assembling about the bear. “She, in a very abusive manner, used the name of Prophet Muhammad, may Allah shame her,” the statement said.
Unity’s directors have shut the school to avoid the type of protests that greeted the publication of the notorious cartoons in a Danish newspaper last year.
The Foreign Office confirmed Gibbons had been charged, prompting a statement from Gordon Brown’s official spokesman. “We are surprised and disappointed by this development,” he said. “The first step is to summon the Sudanese ambassador so we can get a clear explanation for the rationale behind these charges.”
The foreign secretary, David Miliband, is expected to see the ambassador this morning. The Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch-Brown is understood to have been in close contact with Sudanese officials. Diplomats in Khartoum, who were denied access to Gibbons on Tuesday but were allowed to see her for 90 minutes yesterday, were shocked by the decision to press charges. They had hoped that a policy of quiet diplomacy would persuade the authorities to free the teacher.
Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said he was appalled by the news. “This is a disgraceful decision and defies common sense. There was clearly no intention on the part of the teacher to deliberately insult the Islamic faith.”
Ghazi Suleiman, a human rights lawyer and Sudanese MP, said: “This should not be politicised. People must stay calm. There was a complaint made against her by certain parents. There is now a case to answer. In my opinion as a lawyer, the lady is innocent. I am sure that if she is seen by a competent court, she will be acquitted.”
Some analysts saw ulterior motives. There are tensions between Britain and Sudan over the conflict in Darfur. In a Guardian interview this month, President Omar al-Bashir expressed anger at the threat of UK sanctions against Sudan if peace talks failed.
Mudawi Ibrahim Adam, a prominent peace activist in Khartoum, said: “This was an opportunity for the government to distract people from the main issues in Sudan: the problems between the authorities in the north and south of the country, the conflict in Darfur and the question of letting in United Nations peacekeepers.”
There were reports yesterday of pamphlets being circulated in Khartoum calling on people to protest against the teacher after Friday prayers. But many people seemed to take her side. Muhammad Kamal Aldeen Muhammad, a 20-year-old student, said it was clear that she had not intended to insult the prophet. “All she was doing was trying to help her students. The government is looking at this purely from an Islamic perspective.”
The mysteries of the Order of the Knights Templar could soon be laid bare after the Vatican announced the release of a crucial document which has not been seen for almost 700 years.
A new book, Processus contra Templarios, will be published by the Vatican’s Secret Archive on Oct 25, and promises to restore the reputation of the Templars, whose leaders were burned as heretics when the order was dissolved in 1314.
The Knights Templar were a powerful and secretive group of warrior monks during the Middle Ages. Their secrecy has given birth to endless legends, including one that they guard the Holy Grail.
Recently, they have been featured in films including The Da Vinci Code and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
The Order was founded by Hugues de Payns, a French knight, after the First Crusade of 1099 to protect pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem. Its headquarters was the captured Al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount, which lent the Templars their name.
But when Jerusalem fell to Muslim rule in 1244, rumours surfaced that the knights were heretics who worshipped idols in a secret initiation ceremony.
In 1307, King Philip IV “the Fair” of France, in desperate need of funds, ordered the arrest and torture of all Templars. After confessing various sins their leader, Jacques de Molay, was burnt at the stake.
Pope Clement V then dissolved the order and issued arrest warrants for all remaining members. Ever since, the Templars have been thought of as heretics.
The new book is based on a scrap of parchment discovered in the Vatican’s secret archives in 2001 by Professor Barbara Frale. The long-lost document is a record of the trial of the Templars before Pope Clement, and ends with a papal absolution from all heresies.
Prof Frale said: “I could not believe it when I found it. The paper was put in the wrong archive in the 17th century.”
The document, known as the Chinon parchment, reveals that the Templars had an initiation ceremony which involved “spitting on the cross”, “denying Jesus” and kissing the lower back, navel and mouth of the man proposing them.
The Templars explained to Pope Clement that the initiation mimicked the humiliation that knights could suffer if they fell into the hands of the Saracens, while the kissing ceremony was a sign of their total obedience.
The Pope concluded that the entrance ritual was not truly blasphemous, as alleged by King Philip when he had the knights arrested. However, he was forced to dissolve the Order to keep peace with France and prevent a schism in the church.
“This is proof that the Templars were not heretics,” said Prof Frale. “The Pope was obliged to ask pardon from the knights.
“For 700 years we have believed that the Templars died as cursed men, and this absolves them.”
“The painful saga of modern Arab-Muslim history evokes the battles fought in Crusades of the 11th centry - when the Knights of Malta began their operations as a Christian militia whose mission it was to defend the land conquered by the Crusaders. These memories return violently to mind with the discovery of links between the so-called security firms in Iraq such as Blackwater have historic links with the Order of Malta. You cannot exaggerate it. The Order of Malta is a hidden government or the most mysterious government in the world.”
- Jordanian MP Jamal Muhammad Abidat, from an editorial in the United Arab Emirates daily Al-Bayan entitled “The Knights of Malta - more than a conspiracy”. Abidat describes the role played by the Knights of Malta during the Crusades, and that the Order is playing a similar role in the Middle East today, citing the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Successor to Fascist Dictator Francisco Franco and Knight of Malta, King Juan Carlos, with Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, Andrew Cardinal Bertie, 2000
…
Blackwater is more than just a “private army”, much more than just another capitalist war-profiteering business operation. It is an army operating outside all laws, outside and above the US Constitution and yet is controlled by people within and outside our government whose allegiance is primarily to the foreign Vatican state. In other words, Blackwater is a religious army serving the Pope in Rome through the Order of Malta, which is itself considered under international law, as a sovereign entity with special diplomatic powers and privileges. Like Blackwater, the Order of Malta is “untouchable” because it is at the heart of the elite aristocracy.
The Knights of Malta is not merely a “charitable organization”. That’s just an elaborate front, as should become clear to you later. As the name Sovereign Military Order of Malta confirms, it is a military order based on the crusader Knights Hospitaller of Jerusalem and is interwoven with Freemasonry. Most people have never even heard of SMOM, much less that it is a part of Freemasonry. But that is the way the aristocratic elite like it.
One of the symbols of the military orders of the Vatican, the masonic double-headed eagle emblazoned with the Maltese cross, signifies omnipotent royal dominion over both East and West. The orb signifies temporal dominion over the globe of Earth, and the scepter signifies control over the spiritual and religious impulses of humanity. This eagle symbol is used in the masonic rite of Memphis and Misraim, under which it reads, “Order Out of Chaos”, the Hegelian method of crisis creation. It is found on the seals of many European and Eurasian nation states including that of Russia, indicating direct Vatican control over those countries. It symbolizes the desire of a predatory elite with virtually unlimited resources, to totally dominate the entire world under a New World Order global government system using secrecy, manipulation, coercion and terror with the ends justifying the means.
The two-headed eagle emblem of the Byzantine Empire (Roman Empire) on a Red Shield was adopted in 1743 by the infamous goldsmith Amschel Moses Bauer. He opened a coin shop in Frankfurt, Germany and hung above his door this Roman eagle on a red shield. The shop became known as the “Red Shield firm”. The German word for ‘red shield’ is Rothschild. After this point, the Rothschilds became the bankers to kings and pontiffs alike, among the richest families in the world. Ever since, they have financed both sides of every major war and revolution using the Hegelian Dialectic to engineer society toward their New World Order.
The Rothschilds and their agents, such as the Rockefellers, have been engineering America and its foreign policy almost since its inception. They and their Skull and Bones Wall Street partners staged and funded both sides in WWII, and out of that hellish nightmare was born their infant global government, the United Nations, and their tool of tyranny, the CIA. The father of the CIA, “Wild Bill” Donovan, was a Knight of Malta. In order to be a director of the CIA you must be a crusading Knight of Malta and it doesn’t hurt if you are a member of Skull and Bones either. In order to reach the highest levels in the Pentagon establishment, you must be an illuminated Freemason and/or a Knight of one order or another. Notable US military members of SMOM include top crusading generals such as Alexander Haig, William Westmoreland, and Charles A. Willoughby, an admitted Fascist.
Other notable members include:
Reinhard Gehlen (Nazi war criminal)
Heinrich Himmler (Nazi war criminal)
Kurt Waldheim (Nazi war criminal)
Franz von Papen (Hitler enabler)
Fritz Thyssen (Hitler’s financier)
Rupert Murdoch
Tony Blair
Pat Buchanan
William F. Buckley, Jr.
Precott Bush, Jr.
Edward Egan (Archbishop NY)
Licio Gelli
Ted Kennedy
David Rockefeller
Phyllis Schlafly (Dame)
J. Edgar Hoover
Joseph Kennedy
Henry Luce
Thomas ‘Tip’ O’Neill
Ronald E. Reagan
Giscard d’Estaing
Allen Dulles
Avery Dulles
Frank C Carlucci
Nelson Mandela
Rick Santorum
Juan Carlos (King of Spain and Jerusalem)
Oliver North
George H.W Bush
Augusto Pinochet
William Randolph Hearst
Francis L. Kellogg
Such a list should make you sit up and pay attention, but it is only the tip of the iceberg unfortunately. Then we come to another SMOM member, important to what is transpiring in Iraq. Educated at the Jesuit Georgetown University, former Pentagon Inspector General Joseph Edward Schmitz, Blackwater’s operations chief, is a member of both SMOM and Opus Dei.
Former Pentagon Inspector General Joseph Edward Schmitz quit in 2005 to work for Blackwater. He is a member of Opus Dei and Knights of Malta. At least $2 trillion went “missing” from the Pentagon during his watch.
An American investigative journalist compared the US firm Blackwater, the biggest security services provider in post war Iraq, to the Knights of Malta.
The company is currently in the midst of a controversy after some of its 20,000 personnel stationed in Iraq killed a number of civilians.
In his book, ‘Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army’, Jeremy Scahill links the modern security firm to the Knights of Malta.
The writer argues that “Blackwater’s employees… share the same religious zeal of ancient crusaders”, the Egyptian weekly newspaper Al-Ahram reported.
All the top Nazis in our government are connected in some way to the Vatican, Jesuits and Knights of Malta and have been for decades, as were the Italian Fascists and German Nazis of WWII. After all, what was their favorite symbol after the swastika? The Maltese Cross of course!
Catholic Nazi Connections
These SMOM knights are behind most of the trouble in the world and they must be exposed as the criminals that they are. They are not nice people helping the poor, though they use good people in the lower ranks as useful idiots. They are behind drug-trafficking, assassinations, most wars, communism, fascism, feudalism, theocracy, Nazism, Zionism, globalization, crime-syndicates, major terrorist events, a new torture inquisition, total information surveillance, economic collapses, social demoralization and seek to completely enslave the human species in a global Big Brother totalitarian regime as they kill off the majority of us in the process. In fact, all of it has either come to pass or is in the process of being implemented. We are on the brink of WWIII which has been entirely staged by these profoundly evil men. Therefore, we have no time left for pussyfooting around.
But don’t take my word for it, do you your own research, find out and expose them yourself before these dirty Blackwater mercenary thugs are allowed to patrol American streets and confiscate guns during the next staged disaster. We can’t let this happen in America.
PW
BlackWater coming to a disaster near you.
Further Google the following:
P-2 freemasonry, Gladio, Nazi Concordat, Vatican CIA, Knights Templar, Order of the Seraphim, Order of the Garter, Hospitallers, Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, Knights of Malta, SMOM, Knights of Rhodes, Illuminati, 9/11, Jesuits, Opus Dei, Black Pope, Maltese Cross, Fascism, Zionism, Blackwater Katrina, etc
Combine these in various searches to uncover the linkages.
The highest levels of Freemasonry, including and especially, the Knights of Malta and the Royal Orders of Chivalry are guided by the Vatican, the hub of both religious and temporal power on planet Earth.
Many knights of the Order of St. John and some of the Maltese nobility were freemasons. In 1756, the Grand Master of the Order was a freemason named E. Pinto de Fonseca. De Rohan, who was Grandmaster of the Order of St. John between 1775 and 1797, is reported also to have been a freemason, and is said to have helped the spread of freemasonry in Malta…This lodge noted in its petition that the most important members of the Order of St. John ranked amongst its membership. The lodge obtained an English warrant as the Lodge of St. John of Secrecy and Harmony.
Since 1738, one can find traces of this Rite filled with alchemical, occult and Egyptian references, with a structure of 90 degrees. Joseph Balsamo, called Cagliostro, a key character of his time, known how to give it the impulse necessary for its development. Very close to the Grand Master of the Order of the Knights of Malta, Manual Pinto de Fonseca, Cagliostro founded the Rite of High Egyptian Masonry in 1784. He received, between 1767 and 1775, from Sir Knight Luigi d’Aquino, the brother of the national Grand Master of Neapolitan Masonry, the Arcana Arcanorum, three very high hermetic degrees. In 1788, he introduced them into the Rite of Misraïm and gave a patent to this Rite.
The European Parliament report describes these as shell companies operating as subsidiaries of Blackwater USA, ‘an important contractor for the CIA and the US military’ which bases the planes in Malta. Tracking technology shows that the plane was en route from Canada to Greenland two days before it was sighted at Mildenhall: the internet software does not extend beyond American airspace, but the expert explained that its route would be consistent with a refuelling stop in the Arctic – it only has a range of about 2,000 miles – followed by a further refuel in East Anglia, before heading to Malta.
A European Parliament working document drawn up by Giovanni Claudio Fava has claimed “Malta is the operational base of Blackwater, the organiser of private military militia which are increasingly taking on more and more roles which used to be undertaken by US forces in Iraq and elsewhere”. In 2004, Cofer Black passed from CIA to the State Department and thence became Blackwater’s vice-president. While still in the CIA, Black was in charge of the “special extraditions” organising the secret transfer of prisoners from Iraq or Afghanistan to countries less rigid against the practice of torture, such as Poland, Romania, Egypt, and so on. These planes, which travelled between Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Afghanistan often made stopovers in many European countries such as the UK, Italy, France, Germany and Malta many times without the countries themselves being informed what was going on. Now the Swiss procurator Dick Marty has sent documents regarding the “CIA’s flying prisons” to the European Parliament and names two Blackwater subsidiaries – Presidential Airways and Aviation Worldwide Services.
First it became a brand name in security for its work in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now it’s taking on intelligence. The Prince Group, the holding company that owns Blackwater Worldwide, has been building an operation that will sniff out intelligence about natural disasters, business-friendly governments, overseas regulations and global political developments for clients in industry and government. The operation, Total Intelligence Solutions, has assembled a roster of former spooks — high-ranking figures from agencies such as the CIA and defense intelligence — that mirrors the slate of former military officials who run Blackwater. Its chairman is Cofer Black, the former head of counterterrorism at CIA known for his leading role in many of the agency’s more controversial programs, including the rendition and interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects and the detention of some of them in secret prisons overseas.
Blackwater has repeatedly cited Rumsfeld’s statement that contractors are part of the “Total Force” as evidence that it is a legitimate part of the nation’s “warfighting capability and capacity.” Invoking Rumsfeld’s designation, the company has in effect declared its forces above the law — entitled to the immunity from civilian lawsuits enjoyed by the military, but also not bound by the military’s court martial system. While the initial inquiries into Blackwater have focused on the complex labyrinth of secretive subcontracts under which it operates in Iraq, a thorough investigation into the company reveals a frightening picture of a politically connected private army that has become the Bush Administration’s Praetorian Guard.
Neither Iraqi nor U.S. laws apply to its contractors, so a controversial shooting may go unpunished. ‘They can get away with murder” has been the cry of critics of hiring private companies such as Blackwater to provide security for the U.S. military and diplomats in Iraq and other war zones. Now it looks as though the critics may be right — and in the worst way.
Pope Benedict with SMOM Grandmaster Andrew Willoughby Ninian Bertie
The Sovereign Military Order of Malta, also known as the original Sovereign Military Order of St. John of Jerusalem, is a closed fraternity of the Roman Catholic Church. Its initiated members must be Catholic and have served in the military. They participate in secret ceremonies and feudal ritual dress, and embrace a strong class/caste mentality as part of their initiation into Rosicrucian dogma.
The upper grades are fastidiously aristocratic and must be able to display a family coat-of-arms dating back at least 300 years in unbroken succession from father to son. The Sovereign Grand Master of the order is recognized as a head of state, and his authority is ensured by his secular ranking as a Prince, and his ecclesiastical ranking as a Cardinal. Under international law this organization has independent Sovereign status, which assures nationalistic loyalty from its members, above and beyond allegience to their own country–they also have Permanent Observer status at the United Nations. The current Grand Master, Andrew Willoughby Bertie, is descended from Mary Stuart (Mary Queen of Scots) which places him firmly in the Sion/Grail historical scenario.
The order and its members have been proven to be linked with the “Rat Run”, the post-WWII escape route used by high-ranking Nazis and death camp scientists from defeated Germany to the Americas. Sovereign Knight of Malta passports were issued with false identities that allowed escape from prosecution for war crimes.
The killing of 11 civilians in Baghdad two weeks ago has once again put Blackwater on the spot. The US security firm first came into the public eye in early April 2004, when four of its personnel were killed and mutilated by mobs in Falluja. Although Iraqi religious parties denounced the attacks at the time, Bush gave the town four days to deliver the perpetrators before ordering an all-out attack, one in which thousands of Falluja inhabitants perished. In his book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, American investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill links the modern security firm to the Knights of Malta, an offshoot of the Knights Templar. Blackwater’s employees, he argues, share the same religious zeal of ancient crusaders.
Many has been written about the privatization of the Iraq war, but in his new bestseller book Jeremy Scahill sheds much needed light on the ideological roots of the largest US private mercenary firm and its links to the theocons and the Christian militia Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Prince, writes Scahill, shows how “politically powerful Christian fundamentalists and Neocons are pressing forward with their battle for what they call ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy.’” He has connections with conservative Catholic groups and funds rightwing organizations through his Freiheit Foundation. Senior Blackwater executives such as Joseph Schmitz do not only subscribe to the theocon ideology but are also members of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, a Christian militia that had a mission of defending territories the Crusaders captured from Muslims.
Schmitz, says Scahill, “comes from one of the most bizarre, scandal-plagued, right-wing political families in US history.” The Sovereign Military Order of Malta began as a Christian charity in Al-Quds in 1080 to provide care for poor and sick pilgrims to the Holy Land. After the conquest of the holy city in 1095 during the First Crusade it became a Catholic Military Order. After the Muslims restored Al-Quds, the Order operated from Rhodes and later from Malta where it administered a vassal state under the Spanish viceroy of Sicily. The Order’s fighters, known as the Knights Hospitaller, helped the Crusaders in raids on Muslim countries near the coasts of Italy, including Tunisia, Libya and Morocco. The Sovereign Military Order of Malta is now a state located in Rome and is recognized by 50 countries worldwide.
Joseph Edward Schmitz is the son of the late John G. Schmitz, former California State Senator, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and U.S. Presidential candidate (1972). Columba Bush’s sister is married to John P. Schmitz, a beneficiary of the fellowship programs subsumed under the Carl Duisberg gesellschaft and the brother of Joseph Schmitz, currently the head of the Blackwater security outfit. John P. Schmitz has close links to the elder George Bush, the 9/11 milieu… Ex-Pentagon IG Joseph Schmitz At Prince/Blackwater
Joseph Schmitz is active in the Washington Lawyers’ Chapter of the right-wing Federalist Society, the same group with which the new Chief Justice John G. Roberts was affiliated. Schmitz is also a member of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Schmitz was accused of covering up several investigations into fraud, waste and abuse within the Rumsfeld Pentagon.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Joseph Edward Schmitz is an American lawyer, former Inspector General of the Department of Defense and executive with Blackwater USA, a private contractor providing security services to the U.S. military.Schmitz attended Catholic schools as a child and Georgetown Preparatory School while his father served in Congress. He is a member of Opus Dei and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
In addition to Prince, “A number of Blackwater executives are deeply conservative Christians, including corruption-smeared former Pentagon Inspector General Joseph Schmitz, who is also a member of the Sovereign Order of Malta, which Scahill describes as ‘a Christian militia formed in the eleventh century [to defend] territories that the Crusaders had conquered from the Moslems,’” Chris Barsanti wote in a review of the book for In These Times. Blackwater USA is the brainchild of Erik Prince — a former Navy SEAL and son of Edgar Prince, a wealthy Michigan auto-parts supplier — described by Scahill as a “radical right wing Christian mega-millionaire” who is a strong financial backer of President George W. Bush, as well as a donor to a host of conservative Christian political causes.
In the 1980s “the Prince family merged with one of the most venerable conservative families in the United States,” when Erik’s sister Betsy — nine years his senior — married Dick DeVos, whose father Richard, founded the multilevel marketing firm Amway. The two families exercised enormous political influence both inside and outside Michigan. “They were one of the greatest bankrollers of far-right causes in U.S. history, and with their money they propelled extremist Christian politicians and activists to positions of prominence,” Scahill writes.
One of the symbols of the military orders of the Vatican, the 
The two-headed eagle emblem of the Byzantine Empire (Roman Empire) on a Red Shield was adopted in 1743 by the infamous goldsmith Amschel Moses Bauer. He opened a coin shop in Frankfurt, Germany and hung above his door this Roman eagle on a red shield. The shop became known as the “Red Shield firm”. The German word for ‘red shield’ is Rothschild. After this point, the Rothschilds became the bankers to kings and pontiffs alike, among the richest families in the world. Ever since, they have financed both sides of every major war and revolution using the Hegelian Dialectic to engineer society toward their New World Order.
First it became a brand name in security for its work in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now it’s taking on intelligence. The Prince Group, the holding company that owns Blackwater Worldwide, has been building an operation that will sniff out intelligence about natural disasters, business-friendly governments, overseas regulations and global political developments for clients in industry and government. The operation, Total Intelligence Solutions, has assembled a roster of former spooks — high-ranking figures from agencies such as the CIA and defense intelligence — that mirrors the slate of former military officials who run Blackwater. Its chairman is Cofer Black, the former head of counterterrorism at CIA known for his leading role in many of the agency’s more controversial programs, including the rendition and interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects and the detention of some of them in secret prisons overseas.