Defiant Trump doubles down on threat to Iran cultural sites

AFP•January 5, 2020

Washington (AFP) - US President Donald Trump doubled down Sunday on a threat to attack Iranian cultural sites despite accusations that any such strike would amount to a war crime.

After his top diplomat, Mike Pompeo, had insisted that any military action would conform to international law, Trump said he would regard cultural sites as fair game if Iran resorted to deadly force against US targets.

"They’re allowed to kill our people, they're allowed to torture and maim our people, they’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people and we're not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn’t work that way," Trump told reporters.

"If they do anything there will be major retaliation."

His comments on his return from a break in Florida followed a welter of criticism over a Tweet on Saturday night in which he said sites which were "important to... Iranian culture" were on a list of 52 potential US targets.

Tehran's foreign minister had reacted to those initial comments by drawing parallels with the Islamic State group's destruction of the Middle East's cultural heritage.

And as Twitter was flooded with photos of revered Iranian landmarks in ancient cities such as Isfahan under the hashtag #IranianCulturalSites, leading US Democrats said the president would be in breach of international protocols if he made good on his threat.

"You are threatening to commit war crimes," Senator Elizabeth Warren, one of the top Democrats hoping to challenge Trump in November's election, wrote on Twitter.

"We are not at war with Iran. The American people do not want a war with Iran."

"Targeting civilians and cultural sites is what terrorists do. It's a war crime," added fellow Senator Chris Murphy.

In a flurry of interviews on the Sunday talkshows, Secretary of State Pompeo said the US would not hesitate to hit back hard against Iran's "kleptocratic regime" if it came under attack, but pledged that any action would be consistent with the rule of law.

Both sides have traded threats since a US drone strike in Iraq on Friday killed Qasem Soleimani -- one of the most important figures in the Iranian government.

"We'll behave lawfully. We'll behave inside the system. We always have and we always will," Pompeo told the ABC network.

"The American people should know that every target that we strike will be a lawful target, and it will be a target designed with a singular mission, of protecting and defending America."

His comments came after his opposite number in Tehran Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that "targeting cultural sites is a WAR CRIME".

"A reminder to those hallucinating about emulating ISIS war crimes by targeting our cultural heritage: Through MILLENNIA of history, barbarians have come and ravaged our cities, razed our monuments and burnt our libraries," said Foreign Minister Zarif.

"Where are they now? We're still here, & standing tall."

- Threat 'Un-American' -

Nicholas Burns, who served as US ambassador to NATO under president George W. Bush, said the Trump administration would be guilty of hypocrisy given it was part of international efforts to deter IS from destroying countless pre-Islamic artefacts, including in the Syrian UNESCO-listed site of Palmyra.

"Donald Trump's threat to destroy Iranian cultural sites would be a war crime under UN Security Council resolution 2347 – supported by the Trump Administration itself in 2017 to warn ISIS+Al Qaeda of similar actions.

"His threat is immoral and Un-American," said Burns, now a professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Others drew comparisons with the Taliban's 2001 destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan

Pompeo refused to give details on the 52 potential targets which Trump said had been drawn up to represent each and every hostage held in the standoff at the US embassy in Tehran four decades ago.

But one former official expressed skepticism that military planners would agree to target cultural sites.

"I find it hard to believe the Pentagon would provide Trump targeting options that include Iranian cultural sites," said Colin Kahl who was National Security Adviser to former vice president Joe Biden.

"Trump may not care about the laws of war, but DoD (Department of Defense) planners and lawyers do... and targeting cultural sites is war crime."

---30---

Trump warns cultural sites could be targeted if Iran retaliates for Soleimani strike

ABC News•January 5, 2020

Trump warns cultural sites could be targeted if Iran retaliates for Soleimani strike originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter Saturday night that if Iran retaliates for the U.S. airstrike that killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani near Baghdad, the U.S. is prepared to "hit very fast and very hard" at 52 sites inside Iran, including some important to "the Iranian Culture."

Targeting cultural sites could be considered a war crime under international agreements to which the U.S. belongs, according to both Trump's political foes and former national security officials.

The number 52 used by Trump in his tweets also matched the number of Americans seized in the November 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. They were held hostage for 444 days.

Iran is talking very boldly about targeting certain USA assets as revenge for our ridding the world of their terrorist leader who had just killed an American, & badly wounded many others, not to mention all of the people he had killed over his lifetime, including recently....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2020

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appeared on ABC's "This Week" Sunday and said, "The American people should know that every target that we strike will be a lawful target, and it will be a target designed with a singular mission, of protecting and defending America."

MORE: World is safer because of Iranian commander's death: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

In the days since Soleimani, leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was killed by U.S. drones, Iranian leaders have vowed revenge.

Anticipating possible Iranian retaliation in the region, the Pentagon dispatched 3,500 soldiers from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division to Kuwait and augmented security at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
PHOTO: In this photo taken on Jan. 3, 2020, President Donald Trump makes a statement on Iran at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach Florida. On Jan. 4 he warned that the U.S. is targeting 52 sites in Iran. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)More

Destroying cultural sites could be considered a war crime under the 1954 Hague Convention for the preservation of cultural sites and United Nations Security Council Resolution 2347, which was passed unanimously in March 2017 in response to the Islamic State's destruction of historic sites in Iraq and Syria.

That resolution "deplores and condemns the unlawful destruction of cultural heritage, inter alia destruction of religious sites and artifacts, as well as the looting and smuggling of cultural property from archaeological sites, museums, libraries, archives, and other sites, in the context of armed conflicts" and states that such acts could constitute war crimes.

MORE: US cities ramp up security in wake of killing of Iran's top general

"These are not legitimate military targets, and saying they are potentially opens up our cultural sites to be targets of Iran," said Mick Mulroy, an ABC News contributor and formerly the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Middle East Policy. "The statement that we are targeting culturally significant targets in Iran undermines the message to the Iranian people that we are not against them."

Trump's tweets drew criticism on social media from other former national security officials and political critics.

"The more the walls close in on this guy, the more irrational he becomes," Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden tweeted in response to Trump.

"For what it's worth, I find it hard to believe the Pentagon would provide Trump targeting options that include Iranian cultural sites," tweeted Colin Kahl, a former top Pentagon official in the Obama administration. "Trump may not care about the laws of war, but DoD planners and lawyers do ... and targeting cultural sites is war crime."

PHOTO: Protesters demonstrate over the U.S. airstrike in Iraq that killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Tehran, Iran, Saturday Jan. 4, 2020. (Ebrahim Noroozi/AP)

When reached by ABC News for comment late Saturday, a Pentagon spokesperson referred questions about Trump’s tweets to the White House.

Typically, U.S. military planners consider a "proportional" response to a provocative military act, as happened in June when Trump initially approved airstrikes on Iranian air defense systems that shot down an American drone.

Trump called off the airstrikes shortly before they were set to take place when he learned that as many as 150 Iranian casualties were possible.

The president later tweeted that the death of that number of Iranians would not be "proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone."

ABC News' Shannon Crawford and Adia Robinson contributed to this report.

Mysterious swarms of giant drones have started to appear in the Colorado and Nebraska night sky, and nobody knows where they're coming from
Irene Jiang
Dec 30, 2019, 8:30 AM
US Air Forc

Mysterious swarms of giant drones have dotted the Colorado and Nebraska night sky since last week, The Denver Post first reported.
The drones appear and disappear at roughly the same time each night in swarms of at least 17 and up to 30. The drones appear to measure about 6 feet across.
Local and federal government authorities say they have no idea where the drones are coming from. They do not appear to be malicious, however, and a drone expert says they appear to be searching or mapping out the area.

Something strange has been happening in Eastern Colorado at night.

Since the week of Christmas, giant drones measuring up to 6 feet across have been spotted in the sky at night, sometimes in swarms as large as 30. The Denver Post first reported these mysterious drone sightings in northeastern Colorado on December 23. Since then, sightings have spanned six counties across Colorado and Nebraska.

Phillips County Sheriff Thomas Elliott had no answer for where the drones came from or whom they belonged to but did have a rough grasp on their flying habits. "They've been doing a grid search, a grid pattern," he told The Denver Post. "They fly one square and then they fly another square."

The drones, estimated to have 6-foot wingspans, have been flying over Phillips and Yuma counties every night for about the past week, Elliott said Monday. Each night, at least 17 drones appear at about 7 o'clock and disappear at about 10 o'clock, staying 200 to 300 feet in the air.

The Air Force, Drug Enforcement Administration, and Army
 all say the drones do not belong to them. 
Óscar J.Barroso/Europa Press via Getty Images

The Federal Aviation Administration told The Post it had no idea where the drones came from. Representatives for the Air Force, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the US Army Forces Command all said the drones did not belong to their organizations.


As the airspace where the drones are flying is relatively ungoverned, there are no regulations requiring the drone operators to identify themselves. Elliott, however, said the drones did not appear to be malicious.

The Post spoke with the commercial photographer and drone pilot Vic Moss, who said the drones appeared to be searching or mapping out the area. Moss said drones often flew at night for crop-examination purposes. The drones might also belong to a local Colorado drone company, which could be testing new technologies.

In the meantime, Moss urges residents not to shoot down the drones, as they are highly flammable.

"It becomes a self-generating fire that burns until it burns itself out," he told The Post. "If you shoot a drone down over your house and it lands on your house, you might not have a house in 45 minutes."

---30---

So Trump Employs Undocumented Immigrants at His Properties and Nobody Really Cares?

Jack Holmes,
Esquire•January 2, 2020

Photo credit: JIM WATSON - Getty Images

From Esquire

When ICE raided some chicken plants in Mississippi last year, they rounded up nearly 700 undocumented immigrant workers. They did not arrest the managers or corporate executives who systematically employed them. This fits a pattern, according to The New York Times: between March 2018 and 2019, the feds prosecuted 112,000 people for illegal entry or re-entry, but charged just 11 employers for hiring some of these same people.

Before anti-immigrant rhetoric descended into full-on propaganda about crime and MS-13, there was a lot of talk about undocumented immigrants taking jobs from American citizens. In Mississippi, citizens did take some of the vacated jobs. (There's also the related charge that undocumented workers drag down wages, which is unproven but at least does not boil down solely to uncut racial grievance.) But the persistent refusal to enact penalties on people who choose to employ undocumented immigrants suggests these are not the most pressing concerns for decision-makers. The people who travel hundreds or thousands of miles to get to the U.S. are desperate for decent work, and feel it's worth the risk of deportation. It's employers who are primed for a change in incentive structure, yet they are rarely, if ever, punished. It's enough to make you think this is not, nor has it never been, about the plight of the American worker. It's a regime where workers can be simultaneously exploited by employers and demonized by political elites, ground up by the great American machine.

As usual, the President of the United States is a flag-bearer for all these most base instincts. It's tempting to see hypocrisy as a quaint relic of the Before Times, a dead concept in the era of post-truth politicking. (We are, after all, in a moment in which the president's allies are casting him as an International Corruption Crusader while he's orchestrating the Great American Heist.) But pointing this out can still serve as a reminder that none of these folks ever cared about this stuff. Donald Trump, you see, has always employed undocumented immigrants—at many of his properties, on many of his construction projects. He has no issue with these people except when it's convenient fodder for a rage spasm to get The Base going. The latest example arrived on the last day of 2019 via the Washington Post.


Nearly a year after the Trump Organization pledged to root out undocumented workers at its properties, supervisors at the Trump Winery on Monday summoned at least seven employees and fired them because of their lack of legal immigration status, according to two of the dismissed workers...


Two of the fired workers ... said they thought the company had held off on firing them until after the year’s work was complete, taking advantage of their labor for as long as possible. Both had worked at the winery for more than a decade.

That seems like the whole arrangement in a nutshell. Extract cheap labor from people—in this case, allow them to finish the grape harvest—then discard them as soon as it's convenient to do so. In general, the property relies on immigrant labor from Mexico in the form of seasonal workers who arrive on legal visas, according to the Post, but there are also year-round undocumented workers. They are among some 49 undocumented people the Post alone has spoken with, who worked at 11 different Trump properties across four states. For years now, the president has traveled the country railing against immigrants as violent criminals and imploring people to "Buy American, Hire American," while he profited from undocumented labor in systematic fashion. In July 2018, his Mar-a-Lago property announced it was seeking 61 foreign workers on a legal basis. Hire American for thee, but not for me.

This goes all the way back to the '80s, of course, when Trump had hundreds of undocumented Polish immigrants building Trump Tower. He paid them as little as $4 an hour—and always well below union wage—because that's why people like Donald Trump employ people without papers. He ultimately settled a lawsuit around the workers' treatment. It's fitting that the people who made his flagship project possible would fit the theoretical description of the people he has built a political career smearing as criminals. (In practice, he is referring to brown immigrants.) But it also fits because Trump is merely a particularly garish emblem of the post-Reagan plutocrat class, where greed is good and other people—whether they're undocumented workers or they own a small contracting business—are just marks waiting to get fleeced.

That hustle now extends to the angry and isolated people who show up to his rallies in search of community and solidarity against The Other. They will not mind that he's profited so handsomely off undocumented labor, because it's about the performance of demonstrating who's a Real American with a say in how this country is run. Also, anything he does is excusable on the basis that Democrats do it, too, or anybody who's smart would do it, or everybody does it. Now there's some truth to that: the president is indeed one of a huge number of employers who uses undocumented labor with zero consequences.

---30---

Australia wildfires: Entire species may have been wiped out by inferno, conservationists say


‘We are seeing kangaroos and koalas with their hands burned off ... It’s been quite emotional,’ says wildlife park owner
Kate Ng
Sunday 5 January 2020 14:34

Conservationists and wildlife experts are anxious that raging bushfires sweeping through Australia have resulted in “catastrophic losses”, amid fears an entire species may have been wiped out.

Populations of small marsupials called dunnarts and glossy black cockatoos may have been destroyed in the fires that burned a third of Kangaroo Island, experts say.


The island, located off the country’s southern coast, is known as Australia’s answer to the Galapagos Islands – but what remains has been described as a “scorched wasteland”.

Ecologists are hoping to find survivors of the dunnart population and rescue them “before they are completely gone”.

Heidi Groffen, an ecologist and coordinator for the nonprofit Kangaroo Island Land for Wildlife, said the mouse-like marsupials are too small to outrun wildfires and the population of around 300 may have been wiped out.

Devastating wildfires rage across Australia: In pictures
Show all 40

But she remained hopeful some may have found refuge in the crevices of rocks.

“Even if there are survivors, there is no food for them now,” she said. “We’re hoping to bring some into captivity before they are completely gone.”


Pat Hodgens, a fauna ecologist for the same nonprofit, told the The Independent: “It’s early days, fires are still burning but we have lost a lot of critical refugia for endangered species which will affect long term viability of these species.

“The Kangaroo Island dunnart is our main species of concern and it looks like its entire known [habitat] range has been fried. We are locating unburnt remnant patches of its habitat to see if we can locate it through camera trapping.”


Mr Hodgens said a team has already set cameras to try and detect any survivors, and hope to locate all potential areas the species may persist in through drone mapping.

The 50,000-strong koala population on the island has also suffered devastating losses, with as much as half the population believed to have been killed by the fires.​



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And it is unclear how many from a unique flock of the rare glossy black cockatoos escaped the blazes and whether they have a future on an island where much of their habitat has turned to ash.

Daniella Teixera, a conservation biologist working on a doctoral degree about the birds at the University of Queensland, said: “We don’t know the extent of the damage on the KI glossy habitat but we do know that critical areas of feeding and breeding areas have been burnt. Currently a waiting game.”

She believes the birds were in “the best position to escape” the fires because they were able to fly away, but like the dunnarts, the cockatoos may find they don’t have enough food left on the island.


The birds only feed from a single type of tree known as the dropping she-oak, and many hot spots on the island continue to burn.

Ms Teixera said careful conservation work over the past 25 years has seen the glossy black cockatoo population increase from 150, but those gains have been wiped out in the space of a week.

Sam Mitchell, co-owner of the Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park, said: “We are seeing kangaroos and koalas with their hands burned off – they stand no chance. It’s been quite emotional.


“We will do whatever we can to rehabilitate the native wildlife but it’s going to take years to recover,” he told Adelaide Now.
Watch more
Australia wildfire crisis escalates to ‘entirely new level’
Bright red haze shrouds sky at 2.30am as deadly blaze rages
Australian Navy evacuates hundreds trapped on beaches due to fires
Firefighter who lost home refuses to shake Australian PM’s hand
Australia’s ex-PM says world ‘in grip of climate cult’ – as fires burn

A fundraiser set up for the Kangaroo Island Wildlife Park has raised A$183,464 (£97,400), far more than its original A$15,000 goal.

The park said funds will go towards “veterinary costs, koala milk and supplements, extra holding/rehabilitation enclosures, as well as setting up a building to hold supplies to treat these animals”.


Throughout the country, officials estimate that half a billion animals have been affected since the fires began raging.

Professor Chris Dickman from the University of Sydney told 7News the challenge of rebuilding wildlife populations is a long-term one.

“There are a lot of people out there helping by going into areas that have been burned to look for koalas and any other native wildlife [that have] been affected.


“In the longer term, the rebuilding of populations of many native species is going to be the issue,” he said. “A lot will have been undoubtedly very badly affected by these fires.”​

A spokesperson for the Australia’s Department of the Environment and Energy said: “Planning is already underway through the Australian government Department of the Environment and Energy to work with scientists, state organisations, national parks authorities, natural resource managers and indigenous land managers to identify recovery priorities and future protection strategies.

“Funding is already in place for koala hospitals and additional funding will be directed towards koala habitats. Mapping is already commencing in some areas of northern NSW to understand fire impacts on koala habitats and determine the most effective options going forward.”

The spokesperson added there was a waiting period for fire-affected areas to be declared safe before authorities can begin to fully assess the impact of the blazes.

Israel’s crime of stealing Palestinian organs continues

Israeli forces arrest a Palestinian woman at a military checkpoint in Hebron after she posted a comment on Facebook on Al-Aqsa Mosque [Shehab News]

Sari Al-Qudwa
December 31, 2019

The Israeli occupation government practices the worst forms of organised terrorism against the Palestinian people, including theft, destruction, forgery, looting and seizing Palestinian rights. These practices are evidence of the atrocity of the organised terrorism led by the Israeli intelligence services known as the Shin Bet, Aman and Mossad, as this audacity has reached the level of stealing organs from the bodies of Palestinian martyrs that have been seized.

A number of Israeli doctors supervise the implementation of the most accurate and dangerous organised organ theft from the bodies of Palestinians without the consent or knowledge of their families. After it stole the Palestinian land and history, the occupation is stealing human organs in complex operations carried out by its gangs, thus violating all laws. This is considered a heinous crime and bitter reality by all standards.

After Arab and international journalists and institutions published reports on this and several human rights organisations called for the prosecution of the occupation for carrying out the most heinous thefts in modern history, seizing the bodies of Palestinian martyrs and stealing their organs to save the lives of Israelis. This is considered one of the ugliest crimes and organised terrorism brutally led by the Israeli security agencies’ gangs.

Israel Mossad chief: Iran at the top of priorities

Swedish journalist Donald Bostrom published a report in August 2009 in Sweden’s Aftonbladet newspaper in which he revealed that the occupation government stole the organs of the martyr, Bilal Ghanem, 19, who died in 1992. According to the report, his body was handed over and it was clear that Bilal had been cut open from his neck to his abdomen and his organs had been stolen. The matter was very clear when he was being prepared for burial, which proves that the doctors from the forensic medicine institute took part of the body. Organs have been taken from bodies still held in the cemetery of numbers, where the occupation government keeps the bodies of Palestinian martyrs and still refuses to hand them over to their relatives.

In a past investigation, Director of the Abu Kabir Institute of Forensic Medicine, Yehuda Hiss, admitted stealing the organs of Palestinian martyrs while performing autopsies. The recorded confessions of Dr Hiss in 2000 addressed the way the forensic medicine institute was managed and how skin and corneas were stolen from the bodies that were sent to the institution illegally. Dr Hiss and the doctors working under him would steal corneas from the eyes of Palestinian martyrs. Palestinian families mentioned they would notice large incisions in the abdominal and chest of their relatives who were killed in Israeli attacks during the First Intifada that took place in 1987. The occupation army had seized their bodies before handing them over.

What we need is to open this file and consider it seriously in order to demand supervision over the occupation’s crimes and ending it by opening a major investigation. A team of international lawyers informed of these crimes must be formed and they must work to expose them on an international level in order to prosecute the occupation leaders. No matter how far the occupation government’s arrogance, practices and crimes against the Palestinian people go, we cannot allow them to avoid international prosecution. We must work to activate Arab and Palestinian efforts, as well as official and popular European efforts to hold the occupation leaders accountable for the war crimes they continue to commit against the Palestinian people.

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=ORGAN+HARVESTING

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=BODY+SNATCHER

WASN'T THIS A TV COP SHOW BACK IN THE EIGHTIES?

Barnie Sanders announces intention to 

block funds for war on Iran

US Congresswomen condemn Trump threats to bomb Iran cultural sites

US Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have condemned US President Donald Trump for threatening ‘war crimes’.

US congresswoman Ilhan Omar in Minnesota, US on 4 October 2016 [Lorie Shaull/Flickr]

January 5, 2020

US Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have condemned US President Donald Trump for threatening ‘war crimes’.

In a tweet, New York Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez responded to Trump’s threats to hit Iran ‘fast and hard’, after claiming the US had 52 Iranian sites, some of cultural heritage, in its crosshairs if Iran responded to the assassination of top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.


This is a war crime.

Threatening to target and kill innocent families, women and children – which is what you’re doing by targeting cultural sites – does not make you a “tough guy.”

It does not make you “strategic.”
It makes you a monster. https://t.co/IjkNO8BD07

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 5, 2020



She said: “This is a war crime. Threatening to target and kill innocent families, women and children – which is what you’re doing by targeting cultural sites – does not make you a “tough guy.”

She continued: “It does not make you strategic, it makes you a monster.”

Minnesota representative Omar also condemned Trump’s threats as war crimes.

She tweeted: The President of the United States is threatening to commit war crimes on Twitter. God help us all!”


The President of the United States is threatening to commit war crimes on Twitter.

God help us all! #25thAmendment https://t.co/nYZSvpo8rG

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) January 5, 2020



Iran FM: Trump’s attack threat ‘war crime’

Targeting sites of heritage and cultural significance is a tactic terror group Daesh use.

In response to Trump’s threats, Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib shared a video of the late British politician and veteran of the anti-war movement Tony Benn. She said: “This is how we need to talk about war.”


This is how we need to talk about war. https://t.co/IVqxVPAj7x

— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) January 5, 2020



Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has slammed Europe for not being ‘supportive enough’ of the assassination, and claimed the US ‘friends in the Middle East region’ had been very supportive of his actions.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has so far remained silent and decided not to cut his holiday in the Carribean short in response to US actions.

However, UK foreign minister Dominic Raab has said that the UK are ‘on the same page’ as the US following the assassination, and claimed the act of aggression was self defence.

Iran: ‘Like ISIS, Like Hitler…Trump is a terrorist in a suit’

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that if there were further Iranian attacks on US targets, Washington would respond with lawful strikes against decision-makers orchestrating such attacks. Democratic critics of the Republican president have said the strike that Trump authorised was reckless and risked more bloodshed in a dangerous region.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who gave Soleimani the country’s highest honor last year, vowed “severe retaliation” in response to his killing. Thousands mourned his death in Iraq, Iran and Gaza.

Qassem Soleimani was the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force and the mastermind of its regional security strategy. He was killed early Friday near the Baghdad international airport along with senior Iraqi militants in an airstrike ordered by President Donald Trump. The attack has caused regional tensions to soar and tested the US alliance with Iraq. Fearing escalation, NATO has suspended it’s training activities in Iraq, while the British Navy has committed to escort every UK-flagged ship across the Straits of Hormuz.

Showing no signs of seeking to reduce tensions, the US president has since issued a stern threat to Iran on Twitter, saying that the US has targeted 52 Iranian sites that it would strike if Iran attacks Americans or US assets in response to the US drone strike that killed Soleimani. He later added that the US will use ‘new’ equipment to strike Iran.

US Democratic White House contenders condemn Trump’s strike against Iranian commander, warn of war

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders delivers a speech during his first presidential campaign rally at Brooklyn College in New York, United States, March 2, 2019. 
 [Atılgan Özdil/Anadolu Agency]

January 3, 2020 at 9:00 pm




Democratic presidential contenders on Friday condemned the air strike that killed prominent Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, saying President Donald Trump’s decision was reckless and could lead the United States to another war in the Middle East, Reuters reports.

The candidates, vying for the right to challenge Trump in the November 2020 election, questioned whether the president had a broader strategy in dealing with Iran, and used the action to highlight their approach to dealing with foreign adversaries.

“President Trump just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox,” former US Vice President Joe Biden said in a statement.

At a campaign event in Dubuque, Iowa, he added that no American would mourn Soleimani’s death but “the prospect of direct conflict with Iran is greater than it has ever been.”

Liberal US Senator Bernie Sanders, who has consistently opposed US military intervention overseas, said the move “brings us closer to another disastrous war in the Middle East that could cost countless lives and trillions more dollars.”


I was right about Vietnam.

I was right about Iraq.

I will do everything in my power to prevent a war with Iran.

I apologize to no one. pic.twitter.com/Lna3oBZMKB

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 3, 2020



The overnight attack against the general, regarded as the second most powerful figure in Iran, was a dramatic escalation of hostilities in the Middle East between Iran and the United States and its allies, principally Israel and Saudi Arabia.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the strike aimed to disrupt an “imminent attack” that would have endangered Americans in the Middle East. But it was a risky gamble for Trump, who has criticized longstanding US entanglements in the region and promised to end “endless wars.”

Republicans said the move was a sign Trump – who was impeached by the Democratic-led House of Representatives last month and faces a Senate trial on charges he abused his office and obstructed Congress – was restoring American strength and leadership.

“At a time when the president is under impeachment by the Democrats, there’s nothing wrong with him showing strength and resolve in the face of a foreign threat,” said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean, who is close to the White House.

Democrats said it was another troubling indication of Trump’s erratic approach to foreign policy.

READ: Soleimani’s assassination -America’s declaration of war on Iran

“We’re on the brink of yet another war in the Middle East,” said liberal US Senator Elizabeth Warren. “We’re not here by accident. We’re here because a reckless president, his allies and his administration have spent years pushing us here.”

Many of the Democratic White House candidates, who will face voters for the first time in a month when Iowa kicks off the state-by-state nominating battle on Feb. 3, pounced on the strike to emphasize their own foreign policy philosophies and credentials.

Biden, a former chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee who emphasizes his foreign policy experience, released a 30-second online ad on Friday calling Trump “an erratic, unstable president” and portraying himself as “someone tested and trusted around the world.”

Sanders mentioned in his statement his 2002 vote against authorizing war in Iraq, which he frequently uses as a contrast to Biden, who backed the war.

Biden, Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and other Democrats made clear in their statements that they viewed Soleimani as a threat, but Warren, Sanders and entrepreneur Andrew Yang did not mention the Iranian commander.

Trump’s reckless gamble with world peace


Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani attends Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's meeting with the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) in Tehran, Iran on September 18, 2016


Yvonne Ridley
@yvonneridley
January 3, 2020

Iran is not given to knee-jerk reactions, but those who run the country are extremely unpredictable nonetheless. That is why it is so difficult to anticipate what will result from the assassination of the nation’s well-loved and respected Major General Qassem Soleimani.

Just a few days ago, the equally unpredictable US President publicly threatened Iran for an attack on the American Embassy in Baghdad. When the heavily-defended embassy compound was targeted by demonstrators following US air strikes in the Iraqi capital, Donald Trump responded: “Tehran will pay a very big price. This is not a warning. It’s a threat.” His words did indeed translate into a killing which could unleash yet another war in the Middle East with implications for world peace.

Trump’s assassination of Qassem Soleimani has been called both reckless and disproportionate, involving air strikes against five targets on either side of the Iraq and Syria border followed by the drone strike killing the Iranian general. Others were also killed alongside Soleimani, including Mohammed Reza Al-Jaberi, a senior Iraqi commander and head of public affairs of the Popular Mobilisation Forces militia, and Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, the deputy chairman of the group.

Parallels are already being drawn between General Soleimani’s death and the killing in June 1914 of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. He was shot dead by a hot-headed 18 year-old Bosnian who was outraged his country had been taken over by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The assassination triggered a chain reaction which escalated very quickly into World War One.

READ: Trump hawkish in first tweet after Soleimani’s death

We know that Trump is also hot-headed and prone to outlandish statements, usually on Twitter, but by ordering the US drone strike against Soleimani — without Congressional approval — some observers believe that he has turned an aggressive war of words into deadly action which can only lead to open conflict between Iran and America. While America’s neocons will be salivating at the prospect of war with Iran — as will, no doubt, Israeli hawks and the Saudi regime — we have to wonder just how much thought went into the assassination.

Did Trump see the strike as a welcome distraction from his impeachment and a further excuse to rally public opinion behind him to ensure a second term as US President? Back in October 2012 he accused the then US President Barack Obama of planning to launch a war against Iran “because he can’t negotiate” and thus “ensure” a second term in the White House. Whatever the truth behind Trump’s claim — and we know that no war ensued — it reveals much about the mindset of Obama’s successor.

It also exposes Trump as a political gambler, something which the 62-year-old Iranian general recognised. Soleimani ridiculed the US President very publicly on a number of occasions. It is quite possible, therefore, that the thin-skinned Trump ordered the drone attack on a personal whim. Whatever the reason, America is now faced with the prospect of a full-scale war with Iran which could suck the whole of the Middle East and Asia into a war of unimaginable proportions.

Trump’s reaction to Soleimani’s killing was to tweet the image of the US flag. While he continues to indulge his juvenile fantasies, most eyes are now focussed on Tehran, where a more mature leadership tends not to be prone to petulance.

I remember speaking to an Iranian Embassy official in London in September 1998, the day after nine of his fellow diplomats were murdered in Afghanistan where the Taliban government was in control. If ever there was a reason for going to war this was it, surely? In response to my question, though, I was told that Iran wasn’t a natural aggressor and the response, whatever it was, would be measured and would certainly not lead to war.

READ: Hamas condemns US assassination of Qassem Soleimani

Since then, of course, it could be argued that Iran’s involvement in the Syrian civil war has been anything but measured. The military mastermind behind the regime in Damascus has previously been cited as none other than Soleimani, the commander of the elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Love him or loath him, though, Soleimani was universally respected by friends and foes alike for his military skills. Such was his reputation that he was considered to be one of the most powerful figures in Tehran who reported directly to the country’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Ayatollah Khamenei awarded him the Order of Zolfiqar medal, Iran’s highest military honour, last year in recognition of his services to the country and for masterminding Iran’s growing military influence across the Middle East-North Africa region. Some said that he was as influential as Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani.

Will Iran lash out at America, forcing a reluctant, war-weary Iraq to become the battleground between Tehran and Washington? Or will the already serious escalation between the two countries spread far beyond Iran’s neighbours?

Such questions would have been unimaginable just a few days ago, when a series of rocket attacks hit an Iraqi military base in the northern city of Kirkuk. The attack killed a US civilian contractor and wounded several American and Iraqi soldiers. Washington claimed to have proof that the Iranian-supported Kataib Hezbollah militia was responsible and warned outgoing Iraq Prime Minister Adil Abdel-Mahdi that the US would respond accordingly; it ignored Abdel-Mahdi’s pleas for restraint.

In these uncertain times only one certainty remains: the Middle East does not need another war and neither does the rest of the world. Trump’s reckless gamble with world peace has to be one that he loses.

READ: Iran names new Quds Force commander after US kills Soleimani

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Iran Parliament Speaker: Soleimani’s killing is violation of UN Charter



An Iranian woman carries an image of Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, who was killed by a US airstrike in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, during an anti-US rally to protest the killing at Palestine Square in the capital Tehran, Iran on January 4, 2020 [Fatemeh Bahrami / Anadolu Agency]

January 5, 2020 at 1:40 pm


Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said Sunday the killing of senior military commander Qasem Soleimani in a US airstrike was an “outright violation” of the United Nations Charter.

“US President [Donald Trump]’s brutal act is a war crime,” he said in an address to parliament cited by the official IRNA news agency.

Larijani said Soleimani’s killing has changed the political balance of both the region and the international community.

His death marked a dramatic escalation in tensions between the US and Iran, which have often been at a fever pitch since Trump chose in 2018 to unilaterally withdraw Washington from a 2015 nuclear pact world powers struck with Tehran.

Under the 2015 Vienna agreement, most international sanctions against Tehran were lifted in 2016, in exchange for limitations on Iran’s nuclear work. US President Donald Trump’s administration however pulled out of the deal.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who gave Soleimani the country’s highest honor last year, vowed “severe retaliation” in response to his killing. Thousands mourned his death in Iraq, Iran and Gaza.

The Pentagon accused Soleimani of plotting the embassy attack and planning to carry out additional attacks on US diplomats and service members in Iraq and the region.

Read: Pope calls for dialogue and restraint amid growing US-Iran tensions

Qassem Soleimani was the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force and the mastermind of its regional security strategy. He was killed early Friday near the Baghdad international airport along with senior Iraqi militants in an airstrike ordered by President Donald Trump. The attack has caused regional tensions to soar and tested the US alliance with Iraq. Fearing escalation, NATO has suspended it’s training activities in Iraq, while the British Navy has committed to escort every UK-flagged ship across the Straits of Hormuz.

Showing no signs of seeking to reduce tensions, the US president has since issued a stern threat to Iran on Twitter, saying that the US has targeted 52 Iranian sites that it would strike if Iran attacks Americans or US assets in response to the US drone strike that killed Soleimani. He later added that the US will use ‘new’ equipment to strike Iran.

The US strike on Soleimani’s convoy at Baghdad airport also killed Iranian-backed Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and it raised the specter of wider conflict in the Middle East.

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SATANISM; GOTHIC MODERNISM

The text of the Missa Niger (Black Mass) presented here is clearly based on a particular, apparently older, edition of the standard Roman Catholic Latin Missal. Each and every phrase throughout the Missa Niger, is taken verbatim from this as yet undetermined edition of the Roman Missal (albeit with modifications to reflect a Satanic viewpoint). A variety of verses from the Psalms are present in the Black Mass, all of which also appear in the context of various portions of ceremonies and rites found in the Latin Missal (some found only in versions at least earlier than the 1930s). The English translations in the Black Mass are also taken from Roman Catholic English translations of a Roman Missal (it may be that the compiler of the Black Mass was working from an early dual-language Latin-English version of the Roman Catholic Missal). The creators of the text chose their verses and selections very carefully, to express in the best way possible the Satanic meanings hidden within a slight reworking of the Latin phrases. It should be noted that, although the writers of the medieval drinkers and gamblers masses had a different goal for their masses, the techniques they used to invert the Latin phrases into a parody of the Mass, are very similar to those used by the writer(s) of the present Latin Black Mass.

It goes without saying that the Missa Niger only has meaning to someone who was well versed in Roman Catholic tradition, and who is immersed in the world of the Latin writings and liturgy of the Church.  In a certain sense, it can be said that the people who performed the Missa Niger were Roman Catholics, or at least were practicing a ritual which would only have meaning to one who was either Roman Catholic, or who was so deeply involved with the Roman Catholic rituals that it would be difficult to refer to them as something other than Roman Catholic.  The fact that they were expressing hatred of Christ and of Christian doctrines, does not preclude the possibility that the rite of the Missa Niger sprang forth purely and naturally from within the Roman Catholic Church itself.

The methods for obtaining a consecrated host are especially significant.  In order to obtain a consecrated host, the Satanic practitioner would have to somehow trick the Church into believing that they were sincere in their acceptance of the Sacrament - the body of Christ.  When they were given the consecrated host by the priest, instead of swallowing it, they secretly smuggled it out of the Church and took it to use as the central focus of the Missa Niger.  With the body of Jesus Christ, in the form of the consecrated host, being successfully "kidnapped" from the protection of the Church, there was nothing to prevent it from being subjected to the rites of the Black Mass and the will of the Devil.

Missa Niger - The Black Mass

The text of the Black Mass presented here is based directly on the text published by Aubrey Melech. Corrections to the text have been made only where the errors in the Latin text are obvious - as in grammatical errors or misspelled and missing words, which can be easily corrected when comparing the text with the original Latin of the Roman Missal .

Missa Niger PDF 

Doctors and Poischers 
Dr. Gabriel Legué 
1893

In a book which has just been published and which is entitled Physicians and Poisers, Dr. Legue has endeavored to prove that in the days of Molière the humoral theories of Galen triumphed in the Faculty, leading to the murderous abuse of bloodletting, - the small benign, benign clyster. He pointed out the puerile dissertations to which these merticoles devoted hours.

Then he exposed the doctors' reports with the great ladies, the Sable marquises and Sévigné among others.

Finally poison and poisoners naturally led him to take care of the Brinvilliers, the Voisin, and more particularly of Mademoiselle de Fontanges, who did not die poisoned as has hitherto been believed, and Racine, so well accused of poisoning the Park, his mistress, that Louvois did not hesitate to sign the arrest order of the poet.

He took advantage of this opportunity to describe the famous black mass said by the Abbe Guibourg on the body of Madame de Montespan.

It is this chapter of the book that we publish here.

THE BLACK MASS

It was at the time of the greatest vogue of La Voisin, at the end of the month of January, 1678. That evening, the curfew had long been sounded, when a curtained chair with curtains hermetically sealed leather, stopped rue Beauregard in front of a house located a short distance from Notre-Dame-de-Bonne-Nouvelle church. The knocking was probably a signal agreed because the door opened almost immediately. The stranger came down from her chair, and then a woman dressed with the luxury of high-ranking people appeared, her face covered with a mask. A young girl received the visitor and brought her into a low room. This house was none other than that of La Voisin. We then crossed a garden. At the

A room all stretched with black was arranged, and at the bottom stood an altar prepared as for the sacrifice of the mass. Behind, there was a funerary drapery, carrying a white cross woven into the fabric. The altar consisted of a mattress covered with a mortuary cloth with a tabernacle surmounted by a cross in the middle and surrounded by black candles. These candles were made with the fat of the condemned hanged by the executioner (2). A venerable priest, about seventy years old, was there, clad in white vestments, embroidered with black pine cones. He was waiting for the stranger. It was the Abbé Guibourg (3).

As we can see, the staging was prepared by a clever hand, by an ingenious brain who knew his time, and who knew that before anything else it was necessary to strike the imagination.

When the one expected - followed by the young person who was none other than Marguerite Voisin, daughter of the Voisin - came in, she undressed immediately. Then one of those splendid nudes appeared, made to try the chisel of a Coysevox or a Coustouet who revealed forms of a marvelous opulence: the fleshy and serpentine hips supported a torso with impeccable lines and the overflowing throat accused all the power and the ardor of a fiery temperament. The face was still masked, but a crinkled blond hair was seen rolling down to the ground, heavy, well made to bear the weight of a diadem, and in which had had to stray many times the lips of a prince in love, because this woman, we guessed it, did not

Yes, it was she, the beautiful, the provocative, the immodest creature, for whom La Valliere had cried all her tears. It was she who indulged in the obscene curiosity of an old man, she who voluntarily offered her body to serve as an altar for the celebration of a sacrilegious mass and on which a minister of the Catholic religion was going to bring down the host by pronouncing the words of the consecration. It was Montespan, as Mignard painted it, before showing us Francoise d'Aubigne in a smart dress and devout headdress, and who introduced us to the proud graces of Athenais de Mortemart, to that opulent nudity gilded by a last ray of youth. And this woman,

She lay down on this strange altar, her legs hanging down on one side, and on the other, her head resting on a pillow that supported an upturned chair. Abbe Guibourg placed the cross on the marchioness's chest, spread a napkin over his belly, and set down the chalice; after which the impious ceremony began, Marguerite Voisin fulfilling the office of clerk.

At the different phases of the sacrifice, when the celebrant must kiss the altar, Guibourg kissed the body of the Marquise de Montespan.

The obscene form that this mass took is thus sufficiently demonstrated by these lustful touches. But precisely because of this impious parody of the Catholic rite, in agreement with the Marquise de Montespan, an aged priest had been chosen on whom such an act was no longer to produce any effect (5).

The moment of consecration had arrived. The bell of Marguerite Voisin resounded; but it was a knell she was ringing! A door opened. A woman was seen carrying a child of two or three years in her arms. The mind turns away with horror from this sinister scene. The imagination can hardly conceive the details. A frail being, a little boy bought a shield from the one who gave it to the world, to the most abject of creatures, threw the strangeness of his touching grace into this cursed sanctuary. A frightful mystery, that night there was a priest, a minister of the Gospel, to kill one of those whom Christ had said while stroking their fair heads: "Let the little children come to me! " Mute, bewildered, the unhappy little being looked around him. Guibourg seized the frail victim and raised him above the chalice, pronouncing the satanic words: "Astaroth, Asmodeus, princes of friendship, I implore you to accept the sacrifice that I present to you of this child for the children. things I ask you. " (6) then setting it on the table and killed it without being troubled by his sweet look, without the sight of her delicate envelope where he had cut his life in flower startled by the slightest fiber .

What terrifying cry, promptly stifled by the associates of Guibourg, answered this monstrous act!

History shows us that there are assassins whom an innocent look has set back in the execution of the murder, but, more barbarous than the worst scoundrels, the priest (7) did not hesitate to commit this dreadful crime. So the child let his head fall, like a lamb under the butcher's knife, and the blood streamed in the gold of the chalice, on the priest's clothing, and defiled the naked limbs of the one who served him as an accomplice. The descendant of one of the noblest lineages in France had not a cry, not a revolt, to prevent the accomplishment of such a monstrosity.

We who evoke, through the past, this atrocious scene, we are moved to the bottom of the soul, and it seems to us to hear the voice of Guibourg pronouncing the sacramental words, waving in the chalice the red dew human: "This is my body, this is my blood. "

This consecration ended, the officiant read aloud this strange and incomprehensible formula written on virgin parchment:

"I (here Guibourg spoke in a low voice the names, names and qualities of Francoise Athenais de Mortemart, Marquise de Montespan), request the friendship of the King and that of Monseigneur the Dauphin, and that it be continued to me; that the queen be sterile; that the King leaves his bed and his table for me and my parents; may my servants and servants be agreeable to him. Darling and respected by the great lords, may I be called to the advice of the King and know what is going on there; and that this friendship redoubling more than in the past, the Roy leaves and does not look at Fontanges; and that the Queen being repudiated, I can marry the King. » (8)

At last, when the odious mass was completed, the priest tore the entrails of the child, laid them in a prepared receptacle, with the blood and the remaining host fragment of the communion, and handed them to the Marquise de Montespan.

Now, this Mass, which was said in 1678, was the last of all those which had been celebrated for the same purpose and with the same ceremonial, since the year 1667 (9), at which time the Marquise entered into relations with the Voisin.

It is impossible to explain how the love, the eloquent and sublime movement which is the noble commentary of the origin of the races, could have given birth to these sanguinary instincts, these terrifying vertigos of desire, this irresistible need to profane the divine idea and to parody a holy ceremony? Can the man who loves be cruel? Is not the true and immutable privilege of passion to communicate to the hardest, the most vain of mortals, that delicate bending of the heart, this tenderness and this immolation of the will to a superior principle, to the interests of a to be loved above all beings? When prehistoric legends show us Herakles, hitherto invincible, tamed by a woman's gaze, and spinning with ivory spinning the tenuous and silky thread, symbol of the bond with which Omphale chained him, did they not wish to show by that the heart of the beast vanquished by the mysterious and adorable wound, by the sacred sting of love? If it was enough for a woman's look, for a caress of the voice to soften the impassibles and demi-gods, how, I repeat, to explain that modern passion has seen the emergence of. barbaric customs that, on the contrary, the only name of Eros made disappear from the earth at the dawn of humanity. explain that modern passion has seen the emergence of. barbaric customs that, on the contrary, the only name of Eros made disappear from the earth at the dawn of humanity. explain that modern passion has seen the emergence of. barbaric customs that, on the contrary, the only name of Eros made disappear from the earth at the dawn of humanity.

Dr. G. LEGUE

It was about ten o'clock in the evening when Madame de Montespan came to Beauregard Street. According to the daughter Voisin she did not leave until midnight.

Library. Nat. Brother 7608, Trial of the Neighbor.

(2) The learned and regretted M. Ravaissoa, in the very interesting notes of his Archives de la Bastille, says that La Voisin was the mistress of Sanson, the executioner, who lived on Rue Beauregard. It is a mistake. Charles Sanson de Longval was appointed executor of the high works in Paris on September 23, 1688, that is to say, eight years after the execution of the Voisin. (National Archives, V, 540.)

On July 11, 1699, Charles Sanson married Notre-Dame-de-Bonne-Nouvelle, Jeanne-Renée Dubut, daughter of a master turner on Beauregard Street. The Sanson lived in a large building in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Jean, in the Faubourg Poissonniere.

The famous Me Guillaume, the very one who executed the Marquise de Brinvilliers so hastily, was also designated as having been the lover of La Voisin. My opinion is that the executioner in question here was none other than Nicolas Levasseur, said Lariviere, who was dismissed in 1588 by Parliament's decree. This Levasseur lived in the Rue Beauregard, and was the lover of the neighbor, and at the same time the friend of the husband. He had taken for confessor and confidant the too celebrated abbot Davot, vicar of Bonne-Nouvelle, burned alive in the Place de Greve for impiety and sacrilege. Levasseur, in the circumstances, obtained not to act as executioner, and Gavot was executed by his assistants.

(3) Thus the daughter Neighbor, in her declaration describes the priestly vestments of Guibourg.

(4) Library Nat. manuscripts F. Fr. 7608. Trial of the Neighbor, declaration of Marguerite Voisin.

(5) Here is translated in a few Latin words the way one proceeded in the black masses: Quotiescumque altare osculandum erat Presbyler osculabatur corpus, hostiamque consecrabat super pudenda, quibus hostio portiunculam inserebat: Missa tandem peracta, Presbyter mulierem inibat, and manibus suis in calice mersis, pudenda sua and muliebria lavabat.

(6) Nat. Library Manuscripts Fonds Fr. 7608.

(7) In a second note addressed to Louvois, La Reynie again portrays Guibourg: "This man who can not be compared to any other, on the number of poisonings, on the trade of poison and evil spells, on sacrilegious and ungodly, knowing and being known of all that is scoundrels, convinced of a great number of horrible crimes and suspected of having been part of many others, this man who slaughtered and sacrificed several children, who besides the sacrileges of which he is convinced confesses abominations which can not be conceived. »(Nation Library Manuscripts F. Fr. 7608.)

(8) Nat. Library Manuscripts Fonds Fr. 1608.

(9) Beynie, in one of the many memoirs addressed to Louvois, insists particularly on the black masses celebrated by Guibourg, and he firmly believes in the guilt of Madame de Montespan. "Guibourg, La Filastre, and Galet," he writes, "have agreed upon it after the question of the Filastre woman and the confrontation, and have made a complete proof of these facts with each other. "

Colbert, frightened by these revelations, wished at all costs to save Madame de Montespan, of whom he was the ally and the friend. He had recourse to the lights of a famous lawyer, Claude Duplessis, and communicated to him the reports of La Reynie and the interrogations of the accused. Duplessis, who had the talent to confuse everything, was able to draw from these documents, while not believing himself in them, a semblance of proof for the guilt of Mme. De Montespan and Vivonne, and the memoir which he composed. A real plea in favor of the favorite, was given to the king. After having read it, Louis XIV decided that Madame de Montespan would not be involved in this sad affair, and he had himself addressed directly to the minutes "in thought," adds La Reynie, "to give notice of the charges against Mme. Montespan to those who,

For his part, the lieutenant of police sent to Louis XIV, through Louvois, an absolutely overwhelming memory for Madame de Montespan concerning black masses and powders intended for the king. From this report it follows that "the charges against Madame de Montespan were again confirmed, the Filastre having retracted only the first fact" that is to say that relating to the poisoning of Mme de Fontanges. This second memorial proved to the king how well the accusation was founded, and to put an end to these monstrous revelations, Louis XIV did not hesitate to order President Boucherat to close the sittings of the Ardent Chamber.

EUGENE COMMENTS 

THE NATURE OF ROMAN CATHOLIC SATANISM IN FRANCE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION WAS A COVER FOR THE MEDICAL ART OF ABORTION CONDUCTED BY VOISIN AND A CATHOLIC PRIEST FOR THE LADIES OF THE COURT OF COURSE A CHURCH FATHER WAS NEVER ONE TO WASTE A SACRIFICE, AS F.T. RHODES POINTS OUT IN HIS BOOK THE SATANIC MASS, THE MISSAE IN USE ACTUALLY ORIGINATED EARLIER IN THE PERIOD OF HEAVY TITHING, WHERE YOU COULD PAY OFF ANY SIN, THE POOR BROTHERS IN CHRIST WOULD DO A MURDER OR DEATH MASS FOR A FEW SOU.