Normally I write satire .. and so goes the title of this short  essay. But not all my articles are satire and even those which are, are designed to penetrate a peculiar myopia. If Jesus were speaking of mental acumen in a sense of riches, I’d guess this modest endeavor has as much chance of enlightening Greg Guma as would my using sorcery to pull his head through the eye of a needle and out to a place of deeper depth perception, would have credibility relating to his “Truth Decay: Conspiracy Theories and Hoaxes Are Blurring Reality”

Without going to great detail over his premise stated in his articles title, what I would point out is, and Greg missed this, it presumes a majority of people lack insights and common sense in their ability to perceive reality. Humn, I wonder what it is sets Greg apart from the rest of us fools who’ve sucked into the altered realities put forward by paranoid conspiracy theorists and diabolical hoaxers? How is it Guma is blessed with the ability to see through things that ‘we’ are not? After-all, Greg’s conclusion is:

“So, how about some accountability for the false prophets, gross opportunists, and irresponsible rumor-mongers who threaten society with truth decay? Here’s a suggestion: Call them out publicly, post their names on some Wall of Shame, and then stop listening – it only encourages them.”

Thank you Greg, for a permission to give blanket dismissal to critical thinking at events too large, too complex, too scary or just too freaking strange for me to cope with, without your ingenious insights and advice that I wish them away by not looking.

Now, with my suddenly idle mind being the devil’s playground, I will propose a cartoon based on Greg Guma’s  Truth Decay Wall of Shame, er, I mean Greg Guma’s Tooth Decay Hall of Fame. If only because his speaking to ‘truth’ inspires the image.

If you’ve read Greg’s article, you might have noticed he’d given a smidgen of credibility to asking questions pointing to clarifications of the 9/11 event and then leaps past the ‘inside job’ (I’m ok with that, if it were ‘inside’, it requires a step by step analysis of information that either does not exist in detail or is not available yet) to his:

“Still, a modern-day Reichstag fire at multiple locations does qualify as a radical conclusion”

Say what? I think I just involuntarily farted. Sorry. What we should pay attention to here is, has 9/11 been EMPLOYED as a modern day Reichstag fire, in a sense of psychological operation for subsequent public consumption? There is NO QUESTION of the consequence of 9/11 having been used to demonize enemies, whether Muslims generally, or ‘Conspiracy Theorists’ including the 1,500 trained (read college degrees) architects and engineers who belong to the so-called ‘truther’ movement.

Now, I am neither architect nor engineer, but as a former Special Forces Sergeant of Operations and Intelligence, I can point out to you, despite Guma’s ‘tooth decay hall of fame’ and his magically making those many professional, college educated conspiracy theorists vanish with the pure power of words slipped into your head, one only need to look up on youtube a classic building demolition and ignoring the twin towers altogether, compare the visual to the collapse of Building 7 at the World Trade Center site. Excuse me, but buildings do not die of fright and Building 7 was brought down with a classic professional demolition, sans airplane strikes. That is, until the tooth fairy comes up with the alternative explanation for the collapse. Sometimes ‘conspiracy’ and ‘theory’ are words that can each stand alone in their own right. Conspiracy relating to Building 7? There is a plausible theory for you.

Next, let’s pick on WikiLeaks.

Guma says, and I quote:

“Early in 2011 a rumor began circulating that Wikileaks is a CIA plot. The idea was that the leaks actually supported the US imperial agenda around the world”

Pardon me, but Mr Greg has the date totally wrong. I introduced my own version of that ‘rumor’ right here at Alternet,  “Julian Assange, Agent Provocateur”, in October 2010 and had posted it elsewhere on the Internet well before that. One particularly damning aspect is, what is missing in the WikiLeaks release of the so-called Iraq Field Reports. All reference to the epidemic rape of American woman soldiers had been culled prior to release, pointing to both: an agenda and to a party [USA psy-ops], see my related report: Covered up: More than 1/3 of American Woman Soldier Raped .. going to what could not possibly have been missing from field reports [first hand accounts, I know what field reports are, former Non-Commissioned Officers like myself had often written these reports for officers signatures] if the Iraq field reports had indeed been intact leaked accounts of actions and events in Iraq.

Now, if WikiLeaks were proposed to be a CIA plot, and one wished to determine whether this were in fact the case, it would be as simple as employing a counter-intelligence analysis to render a degree of probability. This is done, example given, by employing intelligence analysis method, that could be assembling information to try and make a sensible profile emerge with pieces that DO NOT fit the image of WikiLeaks. It is generally painstaking work using information culled bit by bit from open or other available sources, to create a picture like a jigsaw puzzle. This is actually the basis for a high form of ‘profiling’ employed by intelligence agencies around the world, to include our own intelligence agencies such as the Defense Intelligence Agency and CIA, examples given. This is exactly what I’d done.

Other than the mundane, what has WikiLeaks actually informed us of, that was not already in the public domain? Example given, in  recent months, one of my NOT favorite people, Alex Jones, among others, have made a big show of the State Department cables revealing the USA had put tremendous pressure on the government of Spain to stop the investigations and court cases relating to international law provisions of ‘Universal Jurisdiction’ and America’s Extraordinary Renditions, as though this were some great revelation. In fact I was living in Catalonia [Spain] a year before the cable was leaked and the very same information had been all over the Spanish papers, including the English version of El Pais. The WikiLeaked cable, suddenly sensationalized, was in fact NO REVELATION AT ALL.

Why is it I suspect Greg Guma’s real problem with people looking at the things he does not wish you to look at, has to do with his own salvation syndrome and tacit mental infrastructure, or that is to say, he is uncomfortable with threats to his own mythology.

Vine DeLoria had penned a title, ‘Evolution, Creationism and Other Modern Myths’ pointing to tacit infrastructures based on fallacies in the western world which can rightly point to institutions so soundly grounded in ‘science’ in our minds, it is frightening when these ‘myths’ are tampered with. And so the political left is no different to the Whiteman, when it comes to preserving a culture or collective self-image, that is the myth, with dishonest apologetics. Myths can, and often do, serve as the protective ego of a group and its ideologies.

Justice William J Brennan’s myth is of a titan-hero to the left, in the annals of social justice. How inconvenient of me to wipe away the left’s amnesia of Brennan having been a conservative Democrat appointed by a Republican, that is, a man with some sound conservative views flatly rejected tampering with our First and Fourth Amendment rights [particularly see Bivens as compared to today's reality], and took what is yet today a view championed by common conservatives [and myself, but not the present day neo-con corporate lap dogs Scalia, Roberts, Alito and Thomas] that is the Bill of Rights is meant to apply to the States in their entirety, and furthermore Brennan realized morality cannot be legislated and so championed many a liberal cause in his opinions which found a wide consensus, from both sides, liberal and conservative. A man who championed a woman’s right to choose despite his Catholicism, upholding his confirmation hearings pledge the Constitution trumped his personal views and religion. Why the amnesia? The Republican appointed fact of Brennan does not serve the myth of Brennan, for a left that would herniate its rectum before it would give credit to a honest and open minded conservative. However these days, Brennan’s mentor to the Supreme Court, Republican Dwight Eisenhower, himself a liberal by comparison to neo-cons, is finding a ‘rehabilitation’ in the myth-making of the left, for his incredible foresight to warn us all to ‘beware of the military/industrial complex’, advice largely ignored by liberals until the moron Bush began forcing people to pay attention to what Eisenhower had said. Less known is a statement made five years previous:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger, and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. The cost of one modern bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed 8,000 people” -Dwight D Eisenhower, April, 1953.

Now, pointing to events absolutely too ‘mainstream’ to qualify as ‘conspiracies’ for folk like Greg Guma .. if the crimes of Kissinger are proof positive of the excesses of the right, the failure to prosecute him under Carter, Clinton and Obama are proof positive of criminal negligence on the left. This should come as no surprise with a present Democratic Attorney General who not only shields the Bush era criminals from justice with a ’state secrets’ doctrine, but also has given the crimes of the bankers a pass, does not investigate and pursue charges against present ongoing crimes of this administration in relation to the war in Afghanistan, and is complicit in shielding American corporate executives from murder for hire prosecutions, and I’m not talking about Blackwater. Barring any ‘conspiracy’, this is only possible with a ‘get out of jail free’ pass, that is, an inexcusable failure to bring political pressure necessary to prosecute [by liberals]

I do believe the left’s ‘myth’ presuming the ethical high ground on truth and social justice is just a bit over-stretched.

“As you may recall, this treasure trove of TOP SECRET papers was delivered to the New York Times, and other newspapers in mid-June, 1971, by a then-unknown “Hippie” of that period. His name was Daniel Ellsberg. What few people have learned since that time is the fact that .. Daniel Ellsberg .. had worked in the office of International Security Affairs (ISA)”

Colonel Prouty, who has described the Pentagon Papers as a “Contrived History”, goes on to state:

“The “misappropriation” of those documents was not the work of some “true patriots” as Noam Chomsky wrote in 1972. Rather it was an inside job. That ISA office had been the home of many of the “big names” of the Vietnam War period, among them Paul H. Nitze, John T. McNaughton, Paul C. Warnke and William Bundy, among others. The fact that I had many of them in my office, that I had worked with them, and that I had written parts of some of them [Pentagon Papers] proves that they were not genuine Pentagon papers, because my work at that time was devoted to support of the CIA”

Now, I happen to be a great admirer of Noam Chomsky, a champion for the rule of law in a world of lawless governments run amok, but we all have our blind spots and in a sense of associations, I would NOT touch Daniel Ellsberg with the proverbial ten foot pole. MYTH.

Daniel Ellsberg is the fulcrum on which the MYTH of the Pentagon Papers had achieved shifting responsibility for the immense policy failures in Vietnam, from the CIA, to the Pentagon. Fortunately for the myth of the left, Colonel Prouty happens to be a conservative (just like William Brennan, same era, same principles) and so we can defer his excellent exposé on the Pentagon Papers to amnesia. And the fact that Colonel Prouty’s work had been subsequently, at least somewhat, vindicated by the investigative journalist Jeff Sharlet’s seminal expose of ‘C Street.’ God forbid Daniel Ellsberg could ever be tied to a long standing conspiracy of the religious right in the military/industrial complex, and has been a mole in the left for four decades. Or was a dupe like Private Manning. That would be altogether too much for the culture and ego/myth of the left, let’s all run off a cliff like lemmings, instead. Oh yeah.

Now, in the case of Julian Assange, Agent Provocateur, I will allow that Greg Guma’s qualifications and skill surpass my own, not actually knowing him personally, with my past mere sergeant of operations and intelligence for special forces position, and further allow Greg’s experience may surpass my highly valued ten years as an investigator for a law firm closely associated with Trial Lawyers for Public Justice and Gerry Spence. Because I’m just a nobody who lives in Berlin on account of having tied Condoleezza Rice, John Yoo and Jay Bybee to crimes in concert with both the Bush I and Clinton administrations, predating ‘le petite moron’ sworn in, in 2001. I dare not return home, that is, until open investigations in both Germany and Spain are resolved, related to several attempted assassinations of myself. Just call me paranoid, like a label.

But to do that, you would also have to dispose of (in your minds, by not going there, as Greg Guma suggests) Wayne Madsen. His maintaining WikiLeaks is a CIA pys-ops program is not dismissed as easily, if only because, Wayne is a former member of The United States National Security Agency. And Wayne, however he may have arrived at his opinion, arrived at it independently of this [yours truly] experienced forensics investigator.

All (true lefties) hail Greg Guma! Saint Dogma to the Sheeple!

Flamey Prudeman of Demented Neighborhoods: Today we interview Glenn Beckwald on the Obama administration’s openly gay foreign policy and the war in Liberacestan. Glenn has been the most effective liberal anti-war shill or, alternately, accused of being the most effective possible shill for the witch hunting, child torturing closet-gay neo-con agenda when it comes to the closet gays exercising impunity in the public eye, a necessary propaganda ploy in our homosexual nationalist culture, to make certain people feel by merely donating, rather than demonstrating in the streets, they are doing more than wringing their hands and shedding a tear or two, to fight the fascist-closet-gay war agenda.

DN: It has been stated the liberal openly gay agenda you support has in fact propped up the neo-con closet gay agenda you oppose, or restated, all things being equally gay in our interventionist policies, the closet gays’ claim transparency is a threat to National Security, and this is the gay issue which most turns you on. How do you respond to that?

Beckwald: Flamey, nothing could be further from the truth. The closet gays suffer immense moral turpitude and for anyone to claim my open ‘gayness’ could in any way prop up the closet gay agenda is simple non-sense. The only healthy culture is an openly gay culture and I’ve not heard any liberal or otherwise credible source claim ‘in the closet’ is a good thing. Herein lie the problem: until the closet gays are outed, and these most insidious of National Security secrets are revealed, our nation’s policies will be dishonest. A national security policy kept in the closet is not a healthy national security. It’s simply not possible for my openly gay position to prop up the closet gay agenda.

DN: Bacha Bazi, also known as bacchá, is sexual slavery and child prostitution, in which prepubescent and adolescent boys are sold to wealthy or powerful men for entertainment and sexual activities. This business thrives in Liberacestan, in fact our military aid has put many of these boys into Liberace army mascot uniforms. Some of the individuals involved report being forced into sex. The authorities have been reluctant to crack down on the practice by military commanders. Your organization ‘Re-weinerize Liberacestan’ has made this a ‘seminal issue’ by demanding the boys be volunteers, paid equitably, and the pedophile commanders come out of the closet and demonstrate authentic gay pride by legitimizing their homosexual child concubines with legal same sex partnerships. This should temper the exploitation of these children, correct?

Beckwald: Absolutely Flamey. This a cornerstone of ‘Re-weinerize Liberacestan’ policy, to raise awareness and impart democratic values to what has been to now a hopelessly backwards culture. The sooner the closet gay commanders become comfortable with their sexuality in public, we all can begin to kiss and make up, the Taliban commanders, American neo-con generals and Karzai’s war lords can all find common ground. Male sexuality is SO misunderstood and when repressed it leads to ALL sorts of malevolent behaviors which manifest as being SO angry. The sooner Liberacestan is openly gay, there will be no need for wars, we will have created heaven on earth, heck, I might live part time there!

DN: This past week in Philadelphia, three priests and a teacher were charged with raping boys. Their supervisor, Monsignor William Lynn, was not accused of molesting children but of endangering them. A damning grand jury report said at least two boys were sexually assaulted because he put two known pedophiles in posts where they had contact with youngsters. Comparatively speaking, is there not a conflict, to describe Liberacestan’s homosexual pedophile culture as backwards? It’s not like this is some isolated incident in Western culture.

Beckwald: Flamey, this is not only a crass intrusion on Church affairs in violation of the wall between church and state, this is a nature versus nurture thing. Without openly nurturing homosexuality in children, how would the misogynist western culture’s males ever be able to express their true sexuality without hate and consequent wars? Homosexual pedophilia should be decriminalized, otherwise we must criminalize ALL male hierarchal order based in masculine narcissism, and all associated judeo-christian derived misogynist/homosexual religions which are behind aggression and war. You know I live in Brazil, where these problems don’t crop up for the Catholic Church and there is a wide open gay culture where it is SO easy to find and live openly with your male same sex partner. When pedophilia is decriminalized, the Church as well, will be free to come out of the closet, stop inspiring torture, inciting wars, et cetera and the Pius X Society will surrender its fascism for free love with children. This is why ‘Re-weinerize Liberacestan’ is in the forefront of the fight against fascism with raising national awareness of how Bacha Bazi could be a force for peace and why it should come into the American public eye. The sooner we legitimize these boys sexually comforting the closet gays in American minds, including our neo-con generals, the sooner there can be peace. This should be a prioritized focus of the USAID programs in Liberacestan, it would be so much better more American tax dollars are stolen from there, than current expenditures on CIA drone missiles fed bad targeting information through closet gay mercenary contractors like Iran-Contra associated criminal Michael Furlong at Strategic Command, resulting in murdering entire families.

DN: ‘Re-weinerize Liberacestan’ associated experts express a sentiment we should be very gentle in liberating the closet gays. Is this why you’ve not gone after the individual generals with your resources, those generals involved in crime personally, hands on? For example Colonel Ann Wright has documented numerous cases of raped and murdered American women soldiers who’d the misfortune to be assigned to corrupt commands in Iraq, including rape and murders of women assigned directly to General Petreaus command. Why not help Colonel Wright on this issue with your tremendous organizational resources? Why not go after the individual commanders and push these identifiable corruption associated rapes and murders that can be tied to top commanders into the public eye and mainstream news? Or for that matter, the epidemic rape of our women soldiers overall? Wouldn’t this be a powerful tool to get a real examination of the war on track and public outrage demanding answers and the wars shut down?

Beckwald: Many liberals don’t understand how these things must be finessed, Flamey. Yes, we must be very gentle liberating the closet gays, because as soon as we start naming names to specific crimes, the closet gays become paranoid and come after us. Just more violence and you know that it is the violence we are against. Especially violence against us. For instance, we are perfectly aware since 2008 specific war crimes can be tied to specific closet gay commanders in Liberacestan, but if we push neo-con “C Street” associated individuals like Generals Petreaus, McChrystal and Odinero into the spotlight, the chances of them ever coming out of the closet on their own, as gentle and beautiful, openly gay people, are practically nil.

It would appear to me a world fascist movement is making its play on Assange released chaos, based on impunity. We do not see a single figure that counts in front of the International Criminal Court, no speaking of arrests by the democratic leaders and of course the message is impunity’s ‘we do as we wish’ and there is no accountability- ever.

What I comprehend in the simplest terms is, with Obama having completing a $60 billion contract for weapons sales to the Saudis, money talks, human rights walk. Meanwhile the entire world is aware women are literal property in that nation, worse than Egypt by far. Impunity. The people selling the weapons profit from the chaos in the name of ’security’, and make BIG $$ with keeping it all in flux and chaos

Another element is the foreign aid. Some people think foreign aid should be suspended until the USA economy turns around because we can’t afford it. But the way the system is rigged, it actually cannot work like that. Most foreign aid is military, i.e. subsidized weapons sales. Suspend foreign aid and the economy actually suffers through job losses and investor confidence shaken with stock devaluation. Our system is, in a real sense, satanic. That the entire thing could be restructured on green business and humanitarian aid such as education, sustainable living and teaching national self sufficiency is inconceivable if only because CHEVRON board of directors has provided National Security Advisors to both Bush [Condoleezza Rice] and Obama [General James Jones] example given

WikiLeaks is paradox. I expect their motive is at the least intelligence agency manipulated, their purpose is chaos. In the paradox, just or socially conscious people must side with the forces unleashed. And there is a HUGE hole in the WikiLeaks story:

The epidemic rape of American woman soldiers would be in the leaked Iraq field reports, no doubt. As a former sergeant of operations, I am familiar with field reporting. It stretches credibility to assume all the incidents were not reported or somehow covered up, particularly this is impossible when the death of the victim attends the rape- and the evidence for the reports having been culled is overwhelming. There is the question unresolved, however, did wikileaks cull the reports or did whoever leak cull them of the rape references? Either way it points to wikileaks as an information outlet with an agenda other than unbiased and unedited reporting.

My impression is, wikileaks is a criminal intelligence operation meant to create chaos. Who profits? Neo-con corporate boards that proliferate weapons sales worldwide, police state apparatus with renewed instability justifying greater ’security’ expenditures via deliberately engineered social disorder and attending fear-mongering, all overlapping at “C Street” whose personalities are as insane as Hitler’s inner circle ever was-

The element of paradox is, is ethical people will have to side with the unleashed chaos as it is all based on generations of an ugly state repression and this will manifest and identify people with natural leadership skills on the side of social justice and certainly they are being identified and will be eliminated at first opportunity- it is all being studied at the intelligence agencies, personalities, tactics, everything.

This particular [pentecostal] scourge of torture and murder of accused child “witches” finds its roots in fundamentalism in dark ages or medieval Europe with an initial focus on women. With the ‘enlightenment’ and spread of literacy, the Catholic church lost much of its authority and its ability for public pursuit of the ‘witchcraft’ agenda. However the overt persecution of innocents continued to manifest in extremist breakaway protestant sects which had been largely driven out of Europe and America inherited one of the more extreme of these- the English Puritans [of Cotton Mather fame] from which our modern Pentecostalism is derived and from whence child murder over ‘witchcraft’ has spread to Africa via missionaries. In today’s Catholic church there is a related resurgence of dark ages hate directed at women with a fascist Hitler Youth Corps Pope Ratzinger having only recently made the ordination of a woman equal to being a pedophile in formal church law [related article] Pentecostal and Catholic fundamentalism and related superstitions are both resurgent and this is a great threat to humanity as a whole, not only children and women. However the Pentecostals fundamentalist Catholics may differ in minor details, both believe in literal Armageddon and in today’s world of lethal armaments, it does well to consider where fundamentalism ties to power and politics in a modern weapons world with resurgent dark age superstition gone so far as murdering kids as witches

An excellent history of fundamentalism in America has been recently written by Jeff Sharlet, a New York University researcher and Harper’s Magazine investigative journalist in his work The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power

“At the HEART of American Power” Think about that, then read this new article on child torture that has spread from Africa, returning full circle to ENGLAND [read article]

Meanwhile the BBC is reporting a sharp rise in child witch accusations and murders in Africa [read BBC article]

Considering this recent manifestation of dark age superstition is an USA export via missionaries to Africa- what’s worse is the people tied up in this religion in the USA are not gone out of power, it is not only Bush/Cheney and friends, it is Obama National Security Advisor Jones and it is Obama Secretary of Defense Gates and anyone who is paying close attention should wonder how it is Barak and Hillary goose step out in front of Jones and Gates as though Bush/Cheney had never left. Incidental to this, the Secretary of Defense holds the President’s nuclear key as noted by former Colonel Prouty in his The Secret Team -a man who worked for a decade in the Pentagon for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Colonel Prouty states there is a ’secret team’ working inside government that had not laid its hand on the nuclear trigger “yet” and Colonel Prouty’s secret team matches for “The Family” in our intelligence community and military. Colonel Prouty’s assessment of not holding the nuclear trigger “YET” predates Bush/Cheney and their choice of Robert Gates inherited by Obama as Secretary of Defense

Paying attention?

Here’s just a few more observations relating to a piece I picked up from the AP WIRE

1) This evangelical import to Africa from the USA has supplanted traditional African culture and is preying on superstition and exploiting poverty but it is not limited in a virulent form to Africa.
2) Robert Gates military contractors are infected in a big way [watch video] and the worst of them, Blackwater, has just been given hundreds of millions of dollars in new contracts as private pentecostal armies are being created in the shadow of Iraq and Afghanistan
3) Pentecostal people are not all evil- BUT Christians need to put their house in order, because the worst of the Pentecostals are evil beyond belief. It was pentecostal Bishop Thomas Muthee of Kenya that anointed Sarah Palin as Queen Esther and cast a prayer over her to protect her from “witchcraft” and “make her a way” in politics. In Kenya also there are routine murders of accused witches by pentecostals, not only children, often they are the indigenous African culture’s faith healers. Pentecostal John Ashcroft introduced, via his United States Department of Justice, torture of people of other faith (Muslims) into United States history. John Ashcroft has been identified as a member of The Family

4) Both Sarah Palin and John Ashcroft cut their teeth as Pentecostals in the Assemblies of God church. The Pentecostal belief concerning Muslims is not so different to Pentecostal superstition concerning child witches, the Assemblies of God teach “Muslims are the Children of Satan” [that is for real folks, they have traveling teachers who give 'advanced' Bible studies of which Sarah Palin was a student] All of the people you see mentioned in the The Family article are Pentecostal or fundamentalist Catholic, fear mongers, hate mongers, and intolerant of other beliefs (including many ‘christian’ sects.) The Family includes Senators, Congressmen, Generals et cetera, and their cult heroes are not only Jesus, but Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot. Hitler controlled Germany with 8% of the population, the NAZI party members practicing point 22 of the NAZI Party Platform: “Positive Christianity.” A pentecostal element known as “dominionists” are behind this evil in today’s USA, at more than 12% in today’s populace and representing a wealthy clique in the corporate elite. Pentecostalism is the brand of fundamentalism Obama’s White House “Faith Director” practices and dominionist fundamentalism is what Defense Secretary Robert Gates is force feeding our soldiers and promoting to the highest positions in our armed forces [related article]

5) These murders (article below) are the result of exploiting ignorance and fear. If you think this cannot happen in the USA, think again. The USA is where this has originated, and when you read The Family article you will discover some of the people attempting to make this fear and loathing our nations and the world’s primary faith. This intolerance must be fought. It is not going to be wished away with love and turning the other cheek will not make it go away either.
**
Oct 17th, 2009 | EKET, Nigeria — The nine-year-old boy lay on a bloodstained hospital sheet crawling with ants, staring blindly at the wall.

His family pastor had accused him of being a witch, and his father then tried to force acid down his throat as an exorcism. It spilled as he struggled, burning away his face and eyes. The emaciated boy barely had strength left to whisper the name of the church that had denounced him — Mount Zion Lighthouse

A month later, he died

Nwanaokwo Edet was one of an increasing number of children in Africa accused of witchcraft by pastors and then tortured or killed, often by family members. Pastors were involved in half of 200 cases of “witch children” reviewed by the AP, and 13 churches were named in the case files

Some of the churches involved are renegade local branches of international franchises. Their parishioners take literally the Biblical exhortation, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

“It is an outrage what they are allowing to take place in the name of Christianity,” said Gary Foxcroft, head of nonprofit Stepping Stones Nigeria

For their part, the families are often extremely poor, and sometimes even relieved to have one less mouth to feed. Poverty, conflict and poor education lay the foundation for accusations, which are then triggered by the death of a relative, the loss of a job or the denunciation of a pastor on the make, said Martin Dawes, a spokesman for the United Nations Children’s Fund

“When communities come under pressure, they look for scapegoats,” he said. “It plays into traditional beliefs that someone is responsible for a negative change … and children are defenseless.”

——–

The idea of witchcraft is hardly new, but it has taken on new life recently partly because of a rapid growth in evangelical Christianity. Campaigners against the practice say around 15,000 children have been accused in two of Nigeria’s 36 states over the past decade and around 1,000 have been murdered. In the past month alone, three Nigerian children accused of witchcraft were killed and another three were set on fire

Nigeria is one of the heartlands of abuse, but hardly the only one: the United Nations Children’s Fund says tens of thousands of children have been targeted throughout Africa

Church signs sprout around every twist of the road snaking through the jungle between Uyo, the capital of the southern Akwa Ibom state where Nwanaokwo lay, and Eket, home to many more rejected “witch children.” Churches outnumber schools, clinics and banks put together. Many promise to solve parishioner’s material worries as well as spiritual ones — eight out of ten Nigerians struggle by on less than $2 a day

“Poverty must catch fire,” insists the Born 2 Rule Crusade on one of Uyo’s main streets

“Where little shots become big shots in a short time,” promises the Winner’s Chapel down the road

“Pray your way to riches,” advises Embassy of Christ a few blocks away

It’s hard for churches to carve out a congregation with so much competition. So some pastors establish their credentials by accusing children of witchcraft

Nwanaokwo said he knew the pastor who accused him only as Pastor King. Mount Zion Lighthouse in Nigeria at first confirmed that a Pastor King worked for them, then denied that they knew any such person

Bishop A.D. Ayakndue, the head of the church in Nigeria, said pastors were encouraged to pray about witchcraft, but not to abuse children

“We pray over that problem (of witchcraft) very powerfully,” he said. “But we can never hurt a child.”

The Nigerian church is a branch of a Californian church by the same name. But the California church says it lost touch with its Nigerian offshoots several years ago

“I had no idea,” said church elder Carrie King by phone from Tracy, Calif. “I knew people believed in witchcraft over there but we believe in the power of prayer, not physically harming people.”

The Mount Zion Lighthouse — also named by three other families as the accuser of their children — is part of the powerful Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria. The Fellowship’s president, Ayo Oritsejafor, said the Fellowship was the fastest-growing religious group in Nigeria, with more than 30 million members

“We have grown so much in the past few years we cannot keep an eye on everybody,” he explained

But Foxcroft, the head of Stepping Stones, said if the organization was able to collect membership fees, it could also police its members better. He had already written to the organization twice to alert it to the abuse, he said. He suggested the fellowship ask members to sign forms denouncing abuse or hold meetings to educate pastors about the new child rights law in the state of Akwa Ibom, which makes it illegal to denounce children as witches. Similar laws and education were needed in other states, he said

Sam Itauma of the Children’s Rights and Rehabilitation Network said it is the most vulnerable children — the orphaned, sick, disabled or poor — who are most often denounced. In Nwanaokwo’s case, his poor father and dead mother made him an easy target

“Even churches who didn’t use to ‘find’ child witches are being forced into it by the competition,” said Itauma. “They are seen as spiritually powerful because they can detect witchcraft and the parents may even pay them money for an exorcism.”

That’s what Margaret Eyekang did when her 8-year-old daughter Abigail was accused by a “prophet” from the Apostolic Church, because the girl liked to sleep outside on hot nights — interpreted as meaning she might be flying off to join a coven. A series of exorcisms cost Eyekang eight months’ wages, or US$270. The payments bankrupted her

Neighbors also attacked her daughter

“They beat her with sticks and asked me why I was bringing them a witch child,” she said. A relative offered Eyekang floor space but Abigail was not welcome and had to sleep in the streets

Members of two other families said pastors from the Apostolic Church had accused their children of witchcraft, but asked not to be named for fear of retaliation

The Nigeria Apostolic Church refused repeated requests made by phone, e-mail and in person for comment

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At first glance, there’s nothing unusual about the laughing, grubby kids playing hopscotch or reading from a tattered Dick and Jane book by the graffiti-scrawled cinderblock house. But this is where children like Abigail end up after being labeled witches by churches and abandoned or tortured by their families

There’s a scar above Jane’s shy smile: her mother tried to saw off the top of her skull after a pastor denounced her and repeated exorcisms costing a total of $60 didn’t cure her of witchcraft. Mary, 15, is just beginning to think about boys and how they will look at the scar tissue on her face caused when her mother doused her in caustic soda. Twelve-year-old Rachel dreamed of being a banker but instead was chained up by her pastor, starved and beaten with sticks repeatedly; her uncle paid him $60 for the exorcism

Israel’s cousin tried to bury him alive, Nwaekwa’s father drove a nail through her head, and sweet-tempered Jerry — all knees, elbows and toothy grin — was beaten by his pastor, starved, made to eat cement and then set on fire by his father as his pastor’s wife cheered it on

The children at the home run by Itauma’s organization have been mutilated as casually as the praying mantises they play with. Home officials asked for the children’s last names not to be used to protect them from retaliation

The home was founded in 2003 with seven children; it now has 120 to 200 at any given time as children are reconciled with their families and new victims arrive

Helen Ukpabio is one of the few evangelists publicly linked to the denunciation of child witches. She heads the enormous Liberty Gospel church in Calabar, where Nwanaokwo used to live. Ukpabio makes and distributes popular books and DVDs on witchcraft; in one film, a group of child witches pull out a man’s eyeballs. In another book, she advises that 60 percent of the inability to bear children is caused by witchcraft

In an interview with the AP, Ukpabio is accompanied by her lawyer, church officials and personal film crew

“Witchcraft is real,” Ukpabio insisted, before denouncing the physical abuse of children. Ukpabio says she performs non-abusive exorcisms for free and was not aware of or responsible for any misinterpretation of her materials

“I don’t know about that,” she declared

However, she then acknowledged that she had seen a pastor from the Apostolic Church break a girl’s jaw during an exorcism. Ukpabio said she prayed over her that night and cast out the demon. She did not respond to questions on whether she took the girl to hospital or complained about the injury to church authorities

After activists publicly identified Liberty Gospel as denouncing “child witches,” armed police arrived at Itauma’s home accompanied by a church lawyer. Three children were injured in the fracas. Itauma asked that other churches identified by children not be named to protect their victims

“We cannot afford to make enemies of all the churches around here,” he said. “But we know the vast majority of them are involved in the abuse even if their headquarters aren’t aware.”

Just mentioning the name of a church is enough to frighten a group of bubbly children at the home

“Please stop the pastors who hurt us,” said Jerry quietly, touching the scars on his face. “I believe in God and God knows I am not a witch.”