New Moon 1/6/27/120
This is the sixth month of the Sacred Calendar. Most of us are getting ready for the Feast of Tabernacles. It is this month that saw the final stages of the calendar under Moses at Sinai. It is appropriate that we review exactly what Moses did on the mountain up to this period. Please read the paper The Ascents of Moses (No. 70). The process that Moses went through took the entire period from the New Year on the First day of Abib all the way to the Day of Trumpets in the Seventh Month. It was a continuous process of sanctification, purification and preparation. From that time the entire nation of Israel was brought into a relationship with God. His government was established on earth in a national system.
That system of government was established within the Laws of God and it was intended that we continue in that system in obedience from the very beginning.
So what has that got to do with us in this day and age? What do the nations of the world have to do with that system?
The answer is that we are about to experience the most momentous events in the history of mankind. There is about to be a sequence of actions set in motion and systems established that would bring us to the brink of extinction.
The basic ideas of freedom that we now take for granted will be undermined and we are precariously close to losing everything we have in what have become our ideas of civilisation.
There was an extraordinary speech given by a man who almost had himself killed through a very silly series of comments regarding the Koran and the prophet termed “Muhammed.” That man was Salman Rushdie.
His book Midnight's Children, published in 1981, won him the Booker Prize and brought him international fame. But it was his fourth novel The Satanic Verses for which the Indian-British novelist is most known. In the book, Rushdie portrayed the Koran in an unconventional light and one of the novel's main characters is modelled on the Muslim Prophet called Muhammad.
The Satanic Verses was banned in India and South Africa. In Iran, the late Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to execute Salman Rushdie, and the publishers of the book. A million-dollar reward was offered for Rushdie's death. He was forced to hide and live underground for many years. The fatwa was finally lifted after a number of years in 1998.
In a rare appearance in the United States, Salman Rushdie spoke at an event last week sponsored by the PEN American Center, a fellowship of writers to advance literature, promote a culture of reading, and to defend free expression. The transcript of that meeting was provided by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! TV. In her report on the PEN conference she said that “many authors got up and read writers' works, and finally Salman Rushdie concluded the evening by reading from the works of two others.
SALMAN RUSHDIE: I wanted to start by saying that I don't think any of us who are at this event delude ourselves about terrorism. Terrorism does exist. In this city of all cities, we know that. We know what [&] when it exist[s], what it exists to do, what it has done, what it tries to do. We know it exists and must be fought. I don't think any of us would question that. How we fight it in my view is going to be the great civilizational test of our time. Will we become our enemy or not? Will we become repressive as our enemy is repressive. Will we become intolerant as our enemy is intolerant? Or will we not? Will we fight with different weapons, weapons of openness and acceptance and seeking to increase the dialogue between peoples rather than decrease it. This is a big test. Will we become, you could say, the suits of armour that our fear makes us put on, or will we not? It seems to us, to PEN, to many of us in the last month that we are not passing this test very well. And that there are serious reasons to say that there is a crisis in this country of civil liberties, freedom of speech and human rights, of exactly the kind that PEN has spent over 80 years protesting about when it happens in other countries. It's exactly the things that -- not exactly, because nothing, no power is ever exact, but the kind of things that we have tried to highlight, whether it was in Cuba or Burma or Iran or China -- those sorts of problems are beginning to crop up here. Problems of what it is possible to say without being in trouble. What is it possible to have access to the information media, to talk about. The tones which it is possible to talk about these things when one does have access to the news media. The way in which the government is becoming increasingly intrusive into areas of our lives, which the government has no business to go into. What books we read. What shops we go to. What books we borrow from universities. What do we think about? That is -- this gets very close to the thought police, and it something, which is not acceptable in a free society.
PEN has identified three particular areas of concern in the Patriot Act and the many related laws and executive orders, which have been enacted since September 11, 2001. These concerns have to do with privacy, access to information, and compliance with the international law and human rights standards. We have launched the campaign, which this event is here to support, which we are calling the campaign for core freedoms in an effort to restore fundamental protections in these areas. People like me came to America because of our admiration for the protections afforded by the first amendment. And it is extremely saddening to see those protections being eroded. So, this is not -- it is really not a question of left or right. It seems to me whatever kind of American you are, you, you should know that the first amendment is the jewel in the crown. And to erode that is to do terrible damage to one's sense of what it is to be an American and a citizen or a resident of this country.
And just by way of starting off, I’m going to read one paragraph of the great text, John Stuart Mills' Text on Liberty written -- well, getting on to 200 years ago but feels fresh as a daisy. And just to -- the warning he offers us is that if we do not fight for our rights, we lose them. “The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another until they pass into common places but which all experience refutes. History teems with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not suppressed forever, it may be thrown back for centuries. To speak only of religious opinions the reformation broke out at least 20 times before Luther was put down.” Another very long list of such things. “It is a piece of idle sentimentality, that truth nearly as truth has any inherent power denied to error of prevailing against the dungeon and the stake. Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error and a sufficient application of legal or even of social penalty will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either. The real advantage which truth has, consists in this -- when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice or many times, but in the course of ages, there will generally be found persons to rediscover it until someone of its reappearances falls on a time when from favourable circumstances it escapes persecution until it is made such head as to withstand subsequent attempts to suppress it.
I'm going to finish just by reading two short pieces sent in by writers who were not able to be here today. The writer, Francisco Goldman sent in this piece, which is written by the Cuban independence hero and poet, Jose Marti, who was actually for a long time a New Yorker. He lived in New York from 1880 to 1895, observed the politics of the time very closely and wrote a piece about the presidential election of 1884, which pitted James G. Blaine against Glover Cleveland and is often called the dirtiest campaign in American history. During the course of which the Republicans found if Cleveland had had a child out of wedlock and he acknowledged paternity and won the election anyway. By 48.5% to 48.2%, including Florida. [ laughter] This is what Marti said about that election. "It's brutal and nauseating, a presidential campaign in the United States. The mud comes up to the chairs. The white beards of the newspapers forget all about the decorum of old age, they dump buckets of mud on all of our heads. They knowingly lie and exaggerate. They stab each other in the belly and the back. Any defamation is treated as legitimate. Any blow is good as long as it staggers the enemy. He who invents an effective slander proudly struts. A good faith observer has no idea how to analyze the battle in which everyone considers it legitimate to campaign in bad faith. But he who observes this country without rancour, as much as he is disgusted by the primacy ceded to the appetites here and the forgetfulness if not the distan[ce] which the general qualities are held also has to recognize whenever it appears that a danger is imminent or an institution has been profaned beyond redemption or that some vice has half devoured the nation, there arises with the reliability of a law and without great operators and when the evil can still be cured, the men and systems that can avoid ruin. They appear, do what they have to do and drop from sight. And it also appears that a condition of this law is that the evil has to be extreme, as if the prosperous peoples never decide to change direction or perturb their habits until the reality is so dire that it is impossible to ignore. This was the law affirmed by the election of Grover Cleveland. The evil was grave. The Republicans entrenched in power cynically abused it. They subverted the integrity of the vote and of the press. They mocked the spirit of the constitution through partisan legislation, and copying the tactics of tyrants and used overseas wars to deflect attentions from their actions. " It's history. "Who had a chance to compete against them, defeat against them: If elections are won by the force of money, if the Republicans have a free hand with the national coffers? But a wave rose up, that no one saw forming on the margins and no one knows how it came, breaking over the heads of all of the ambitious and illustrious politicians of the nation, despite the anger of the members of his own Democratic Party, despite time proven practices and conceits, and landed in the white house, a man just a little more than barely known; a tough but humble man fit for the task of fearlessly and patiently reforming the corrupt government. The wave brought Cleveland. Up close, you see that that the change has not been essential or durable, but circumstantial and like a proof. An eruption proving it can be done. That the eruption of a fistful of men, a fistful of vulnerable people, nothing more than that, have given victory to Cleveland. A thousand votes less among 10 million voters and the president would have been an impure and sinister man, a brilliant sophist… He would have been Blaine. [laughter] [applause]
Finally, from former president of PEN, Norman Mailer. He sent us the briefest contribution of anybody. From John Dos Passos in U.S.A. All right then, we are two nations. However, I also wanted to read from -- [ laughter ] so, what Norman said in the interview, that is in the current issue of the New York magazine, he had a conversation with his son, and this is how it ends. Norman writes, or says, "Wisdom is ready to reach us from the most unexpected quarters. Here I quote from a man who became wise, a little too late in life. ‘Naturally, the common people don't want war. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always the simple matter to drag the people along whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or parliament or communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.’ That was Herman Goering speaking at the Nuremburg Trials after World War II. It is one thing to be forewarned. Will we ever be fore-armed?" Thank you.
This speech has a series of important elements in it. Rushdie may well have recovered from his own ill-considered opinions that brought a fatwa on his own head. We all grow in wisdom over time and especially in hindsight.
The problem he mentions here in regard to the Republican/Democratic controversy, that saw Blaine removed and Cleveland elected, occurred in 1884. It saw a problem in the USA that was very serious and one that could well have changed the direction and the very nature of the democratic experiment that was the United States of America. The cynical attacks on the laws of the nations and the misuse of the powers of the administration had occurred over the period 1880 to 1884.
The observers of the political situation in the USA, such as Rushdie and the intellectuals of the left that we see taking issue with the situation as it now stands in the USA, actually face a different situation than that which faced Cleveland and Blaine in 1884.
In 1878 the Posse Comitatus Act had been in operation for over six years. The Act was introduced and championed by Southern lawmakers of Congress who had been under the heel of army occupation since the Civil War in the middle of the previous decade. It was that Act that stopped more of the actual seizure of power and the use of force to bring about the destruction of any organised opposition to what had become the entrenched system under the Republicans.
It is appropriate to review the provisions of the Posse Comitatus Act of June 18 1878.
The following extract is derived from US Northern Command’s own site at:
http://www.northcom.mil/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.factsheets&factsheet=5
“Posse Comitatus Act
The "Posse Comitatus Act" (PCA), Title 18 of the U.S. Code (USC), Section 1385, states:
"Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."
Department of Defense (DoD) Directive 5525.5 extended the PCA to the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps. The PCA does not apply to the U.S. Coast Guard.
The PCA generally prohibits U.S. military personnel from interdicting vehicles, vessels and aircraft; conducting surveillance, searches, pursuit and seizures; or making arrests on behalf of civilian law enforcement authorities. Prohibiting direct military involvement in law enforcement is in keeping with long-standing U.S. law and policy limiting the military's role in domestic affairs.
However, Congress has enacted a number of exceptions to the PCA that allow the military, in certain situations, to assist civilian law enforcement agencies in enforcing the laws of the United States. The most common example is counterdrug assistance (Title 10 USC Sections 371-382). Other examples include:
• The Insurrection Act (Title 10 USC Sections 331-334). This act allows the President to use U.S. military personnel at the request of the State Legislature or Governor to suppress insurrections. It also allows the President to use federal troops to enforce federal laws when rebellion against the authority of the United States makes it impracticable to enforce the laws of the U.S.
• Assistance in the case of crimes involving nuclear materials (Title 18 USC Section 831). This statute permits DoD personnel to assist the Justice Department in enforcing prohibitions regarding nuclear materials, when the Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense jointly determine that an "emergency situation" exists that poses a serious threat to U.S. interests and is beyond the capability of civilian law enforcement agencies.
• Emergency situations involving chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction (Title 10 USC Section 382). When the Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense jointly determine that an "emergency situation" exists that poses a serious threat to U.S. interests and is beyond the capability of civilian law enforcement agencies, DoD personnel may assist the Justice Department in enforcing prohibitions regarding biological or chemical weapons of mass destruction.
Military support to civilian law enforcement is carried out in strict compliance with the Constitution and U.S. laws and under the direction of the President and Secretary of Defense.”
So on the face of it ,we have a situation that short of an Emergency situation there can be nothing more that can happen in the USA and the election will be a fair and reasonable contest between two structures with two candidates who seem to represent the same establishment.
So how might it not be that way? What could happen to change events? Certainly the US people are viewing this election with a sense of foreboding. There is a great marshalling of the left to oppose President George W. Bush. Many see freedom of speech itself under threat. The powers now created for the intelligence systems intrusion into the normal lives of US citizens is unsurpassed in its entire history. Many citizens now view the situation with cynicism and there are now conspiracy theorists in great profusion that are levelling conspiracy claims against the administration for even the very acts of terrorism that occurred around September 11 2001 and since that date.
Many people do not share the concepts of freedom that we have fought so long and hard to achieve in the British Common Law systems at all. In fact Europe is based on the code Napoleon and its systems of justice would not be considered just or equitable within the British Commonwealth and US systems at all.
So what is it that people are concerned with in the USA? What is happening there and what is it that some people see happening to their society and why is it of such importance that CCG is even commenting on it, seeing we don’t get involved in politics and don’t normally even comment on them except where war and the conduct of wars and war crimes are concerned?
The reality is that this is not 1884 and the USA and the world is very different place to the rough and tumble of frontier politics in post Civil War USA.
The USA is a superpower and now the pre-eminent superpower of the world with no rival except for the emerging dragon that is the Peoples Republic of China.
It is faced with the fact that it has just embarked on a war of dubious validity and its military and administration have committed a series of war crimes for which the leadership can be tried and may well face trial upon a new administration. The war crimes trials may not be confined to the generals of the US Armed Forces alone. There is no doubt that the Australian and British systems were aware of the conduct of these crimes and the intelligence officers of all three systems may well also be charged.
The fact is that the administration wants another four years to complete its undisclosed objectives in the Middle East. The home situation is also in a parlous situation. The infrastructure is deteriorating and the opposition is marshalling now, as has not been seen for decades and indeed since 1884 when the Democrats managed to put Grover Cleveland in the White House and change the face of US politics.
There is a very real perception in the US that the system of voting will be “rigged” to entrench the administration using mechanical voting systems that are prone to wrongly registering the intents of the voters that are perhaps not as literate or informed as they might be.
Is this simply another dirty election in the US that concerns them and no one else? The fact of the matter is that those days are gone and whatever happens in the US is of importance both to their enemies and their allies, and the in between get trampled in the confusion.
Why should we all be concerned?
Let us look at the situation. If it is simply a matter of an internal election between two candidates for election representing two above board parties conducting themselves in a heated but perhaps excusable situation, then the world simply has to watch what Kerry does if he is elected. There will certainly be a redirection of internal expenditure in the US. He may commit the USA to remain in Iraq for the foreseeable future. The opportunism going on at present over the commodity prices for oil and petroleum products is indicative of another problem also. However, the strategic interests of the USA were not really disclosed or discussed and we don’t know if they will pull out of there at all, no matter who gets in.
Whether the US and the world like it or not, there is another player on the block now with a very powerful political system and a very numerous population base. That nation is China. However, there is another player emerging who is also seeking superpower status and that is India.
Those two nations are placing a massive demand on the world oil production and they have the power to divert the resources from its traditional distribution and place upward costs on the traditional Western cost of living.
The world is going to compete for scarcer and scarcer resources and the opportunists will exacerbate that situation.
The next unknown is the effect of Global Warming on world politics. There is an increasing lift coming in ocean levels and that will cause flooding in the lowlands of Bangladesh, India and China. These countries are the very ones that contain massive population centres and two of them are emerging world powers.
One thing we can be sure of is that there will be massive desertification ongoing in China and there will be massive population dislocation in the subcontinent as well as China. There is no doubt that China will be forced further and further west, and by 2025 China will occupy Siberia and share its resources with Japan and that system is now underway, with Russian agreement. By 2025, China will be compelled to stretch to the former Central Soviets and almost to the Urals by peace or by force.
The more alarming scenario facing the world is this. What if the opposition claims in the USA are actually true? What if the administration did actually aid and abet or indeed cause the terrorism of 9/11 2001? If they are capable of that scenario, perhaps indeed they are simply indifferent or facilitative to the drug wars also.
What most do not realise is that the USA economy is a house of cards that operates on the confidence of its own middle class. That confidence has been milked to the full and stands now fully stretched. Its own pension funds are so entrenched in it that they cannot afford to make genuine long term political decisions for the welfare of the nation, such as closing down the tobacco giants.
Given all these what ifs, there is a more frightening situation that could easily develop and this is the danger some US observers and intellectuals see in part.
I was interested to see the terminology also emerging from the Athens games. I noted in Sydney four years ago that the officials were referring to the Athens games as the last games. This week I also noticed that the Greek officials and the Athenians themselves were referring to the fact that they were proud that the first games of the modern Olympiad were held there in Athens, and now the last games were being held there. There was no doubt in the discussion then and now that this was to be the last Olympic games. Yet, we are theoretically looking towards the Beijing Olympics in 2008. They obviously do not believe they will be held then.
Why would these people take this view? Why would the demons want to stop the Olympic games taking place when they are of an ancient heathen system? The answer is that the next few years will see such war and devastation that they will be a thing of the past.
Ok, so what is the scenario that is in danger of unfolding? Let us assume that the current legal challenges to the election voting system are upheld and the new mechanical systems are put off. The entrenched system falls back on the terrorist bogey (perhaps as has been claimed, some even staging a terrorist attack using biological agents, such as anthrax). They invoke emergency powers where the Attorney General and Secretary of State certify the emergency and override the provisions of the Posse Comitatus Act. The election is “deferred”. This is not far fetched as those options are allegedly being canvassed legally by the administration at present.
Military intervention will promote civil disorder. Indeed disorder will need to be promoted to justify the sustained declaration.
Mass movement in the money supply will occur out of the USA, to the Euro. More intervention will occur to control the economy. The stock market will degenerate or collapse entirely. Dissidents will be interred.
This will create a window of opportunity for the enemies of the USA. A reorganisation of the power structure of the Asian systems and Middle East oil supplies will occur by force of necessity. Central Soviet oil will be diverted from its proposed direction through Iran to the open market and into China and India. Supply will be dislocated.
The situation will continue to deteriorate, accelerated by the problems associated with Global Warming and its refugee crisis.
Australia, having failed to develop its resources correctly and allocate its population resources, store water and develop the infrastructure efficiently, will be faced with refugee crises the like of which it has not even imagined. It will not cope and finally will be invaded. All of the North will be invaded and occupied down to the Brisbane line, which will become a reality. Australia will become a battleground of the power blocks.
The European system will force the religious problems to degenerate and we will see the wars against Islam. While the USA is in a parlous internal situation, they can offer no real help to anyone. They will be under threat overseas. Nuclear exchanges are then likely. They may emerge as the world’s fascist dictatorship but not for long. Europe will move to occupy the Middle East.
From 2005 to 2012 the world will degenerate inexorably to environmental breakdown. Over the years to the next jubilee it is a downward spiral. By the time the world is ready to face their Messiah they will have forgotten what it is they are expecting. The last system to be dealt with is that of the kings of the east mentioned by the Bible as they are brought down to the Middle East to have their armies destroyed (see the paper The Last Thirty Years: The Final Struggle (No. 219)). The army of the Asian superpower will face Messiah at Megiddo being destroyed.
So it is not just another election at all. What is done over the next few months will affect the way the world operates for the decades ahead. Trust in God and stand in awe.
Wade Cox
Coordinator General
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