The most obvious drive came last September when
former President of Israel,
Shimon Peres met with the Pope
to propose the formation of a new "U.N. of religions", which the
Pope would head. Peres suggested this organization should wield
the "unquestionable" authority to declare what God does and does
not want, in order combat religious extremism.
The
implications are huge.
84 percent of the world's population has a spiritual faith
of some kind.
Together the Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist
religions are followed by more 5.3 billion people, and a diverse
mix of folk beliefs and smaller minority faiths, from Bahai to
Wicca, account for almost another half billion.
With
spirituality playing a central role in the lives of most of the
world's population, it would seem "global governance" must
inevitably take religion into account.
Various theorists have suggested a "One World Religion" will
emerge as part of a "New World Order".
-
Is it possible that
powerful people in
the global elite desire - if not an actual
monolithic world faith - then a global hegemony over the world's
spirituality, so that religions, and their followers, can be
influenced through a central authority?
-
If so, it would mean a
similar model of top-down globalization via multilateral
organizations as deployed in politics, economics and trade,
would be rolled out to spirituality.
-
But just how noble are the intentions of those vending this
idea?
-
Is their rhetoric bona fide?
A closer examination suggests
such a scheme is highly suspect, and part of broader agenda with
ominous implications.
The Blueprint for a Global Religious Authority
Before his September meeting with the Pope to discuss forming
a "U.N. of religions", Shimon Peres detailed his ideas in an
interview with Italian Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana.
Pope Francis prayed for peace
with Mahmoud Abbas and
Shimon Peres
in June 2014.
"What is needed is an
Organization of United Religions, a
U.N. of religions. It would be the best way to combat these
terrorists who kill in the name of faith", Peres was quoted.
"In
the past, the majority of wars were motivated by the idea of
nationhood. Today, instead, wars are sparked above all with the
excuse of religion," he said.
Global interfaith religious initiatives already exist, such
as the
United
Religions Initiative, but evidently Peres envisages a much
more top-down and authoritative "Organization of United
Religions".
He was quite blunt about the proposed
organization's
power:
"What is needed is an unquestionable moral authority that
says in a strong voice 'No, God does not want this and does not
permit it'."
He suggested the Pope lead it because,
"he is
perhaps the only leader who is truly respected".
Francis and Peres at the Vatican meeting in September
2014.
The Pope was
reportedly sympathetic, but made no "decision or personal
commitment" and it remains to be seen whether this new body
materializes.
Peres is not the first elite political figure to champion
such an approach however. I have
written before about Tony Blair's Faith Foundation, the
former UK Prime Minister's eponymous charity which focuses on "faith and
globalization".
"…the purpose is to change the
policy of governments: to start to treat this issue of
religious extremism as an issue that is about religion as
well as politics, to go to the roots of where a false view
of religion is being promulgated, and to make it a major
item on the agenda of world leaders to combine effectively
to combat it.
This is a struggle that is only just
beginning."
Much like Peres, Blair has argued religious extremism is the
prime cause of conflict in the world today, and world leaders
must unite to address it.
Also, like Peres, he claimed a
political authority should have the power to determine which
religious views are "false". Blair, too, also sought support
from the Vatican, which leads
the world's largest religious congregation.
However, despite
being a Catholic, Blair was
not very successful when he made overtures to the Vatican in
2011, and one prominent Catholic scholar, Professor Michel Schooyans, believed the former UK leader had sinister
objectives:
One of the aims of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation will
be that of remaking the major religions, just as
his
colleague Barack Obama will remake global society.
With this
purpose, the foundation in question will try to expand the 'new rights', using the world religions for this end and
adapting these for their new duties. The religions will have
to be reduced to the same common denominator, which means
stripping them of their identity…
This project threatens to set us back to an age in which
political power was ascribed the mission of promoting a
religious confession, or of changing it.
In the case of the
Tony Blair Faith Foundation, this is also a matter of
promoting one and only one religious confession, which a
universal, global political power would impose on the entire
world.
Blair's attempt to claim religious
extremism is the root cause of today's global conflict, while at
the same time stubbornly justifying his deceptive role in the
invasion of Iraq - and calling for more direct military intervention
in
the Middle East - was always going to raise eyebrows.
Given his
lack of credibility as a peace advocate, it's not surprising to
see a different retired world leader lobbying for religious
globalization at the Vatican.
The recently-retired Peres seems a much better fit for the
job. While Blair has a hawkish reputation, Peres is considered
to have transformed into a "dove" in his later years in office,
where he appeared mild in comparison to some of his more
hard-line Zionist compatriots.
Pope
Francis, who has been a PR
coup for Church and was named
TIME Magazine's Man of the Year, also has the
credibility and clout to lead such an initiative, a fact Peres
seems well aware of.
So is this a legitimate initiative to promote peace, or
something else...?
Questionable Advocates
Blair and Peres in July 2014
Despite their superficial differences, the core argument
Peres and Blair make is the same: religious extremism is
responsible for today's conflict, and a global political
authority needs to wield control over religions.
While
religiously-motivated violence, particularly in the Islamic
world, is undoubtedly a major problem, this argument is
extremely deceptive and duplicitous, because it ignores the
hidden (and not so hidden) hand which inflamed this problem, and
actively works to sustain it.
The fact is the root cause of the explosion of extremist
violence in the Middle East has been destructive foreign
policies of NATO governments and its allies.
The invasion of Iraq, which Blair co-led, was based on
outright lies about the country having weapons of mass
destruction (WMDs). The war killed up to a million people,
destroyed its secular government, military and infrastructure.
The ensuing chaos enabled religious extremists to ravage the
region, first as Al Qaeda in Iraq (who had no presence there
before the war) and now via the self-proclaimed Islamic State
formerly known as ISIS.
Israel
began its secret nuclear weapons program in the 1950s, stealing
nuclear secrets and materials from many countries, including the
USA. Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan boasts that Peres
recruited him as an Israeli spy and smuggler in a Tel Aviv
nightclub in 1965 for this nuclear program.
Documents obtained by The Guardian and published in
2010 reveal that in 1975 Shimon Peres, then Israel's defence
minister, was in direct negotiations with his South African
counterpart and offered to sell the nation nukes "in three
sizes".
Both Blair and Peres have a shady association with WMDs.
In
assessing their calls for religious globalization, purportedly
to promote peace, we have to ask ourselves: can we really trust
a person who lied about WMDs, and another who tried to
proliferate them?
A False Premise
The arguments of Blair and Peres also
willfully ignore how the
foreign policy of the U.S. government and its allies has fomented
Islamic extremism since the 70's, when the CIA funded and armed
the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan to draw the Soviets into a proxy
war, a tactic which gave rise to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
After Iraq's military and government were
pulverized, NATO
later turned its attention to Libya and bombed it into a failed
state while backing jihadist rebels
to topple Gaddafi (both
countries formerly had secular governments which kept religious
extremism at bay).
When Libya fell, Jihadist fighters and
weapons began flooding into Syria, which has a secular regime
the U.S. government has also
sought to topple.
When ISIS, now calling itself the Islamic State, crossed the
border into Iraq in 2014, the war town country was unable to
resist. In Syria, where a civil war continues to rage, the
U.S. government and
its allies have been arming and training so-called
"moderate" rebels to overthrow the Assad government, despite
these rebels having links to Jihadists.
See more in the video below:
The regimes threatened by this
foreign policy are secular, and bringing war and chaos to them
only favors the rise of extremist groups like the Islamic
State, whose recruitment is bolstered further by foreign
airstrikes or drone attacks which inevitably kill civilians and
cause outrage.
At the same time, these extremists "accidently"
receive the benefits of funding and weapons provided by the U.S.
government and its allies.
-
Surely changing this destructive and self-defeating foreign
policy is the first point of order if reducing global conflict
and religious extremism is your objective?
-
But what if that is not the real objective?
Problem Reaction Solution
The pattern of arming and backing extremists, and fighting
them later, has been going on for so long that it's difficult to
believe these "side effects" are purely accidental.
"Problem,
Reaction, Solution" describes a process where rulers create a
problem, provoking a reaction from the public who demand
something be done about it, which then allows the government to
bring in its pre-prepared "solution" to solve the problem it
created.
The war on terror is a case in point.
By continually fuelling
the fires of extremism, it keeps the war going. This justifies
continued military expenditure, foreign interventions, and the
reduction of civil liberties on the home front where a security
state is constructed.
Since the enemy, "terrorism", is vague and
interchangeable, the war has no end in sight. This means police
state measures like mass surveillance can become permanent and
entrenched.
The "war on terror" serves multiple ends. While the political
and military impacts are more understood, the spiritual
implications are less so.
It has made religious extremism,
presently of the Islamic persuasion, the scapegoat for today's
global conflict - not the foreign policy which has fuelled it,
funded it, and enabled it to thrive.
In the case of the wars in the Middle East, there is
evidently an attempt to pit Christian and Muslim societies of
the world against each other in a manufactured "clash of
civilizations" which serves the military industrial complex.
Perhaps it is from the ashes of this conflagration that
a one
world religion will emerge; because increasingly this same
manufactured "extremist" threat is being invoked in calls for
the top-down globalization of religion.
This is where the global agenda towards spirituality
intersects with the war on terror in the new world order.
In
addition to sustaining perpetual war, it provides a pretext for
a one world religious authority.
Parallels between War on Terror and the War on Alternative
Spirituality
If a one world religious authority is the end game elites are
working toward, then it would not be the first strategy employed
to control spiritual options by exploiting fear toward a
manufactured threat.
Many people do not realize that a concerted campaign against
alternative spirituality has been raging in the West for many
decades now. It was sparked by a major catastrophic event, much
like the war on terror: the
Jonestown massacre.
This tragedy at a remote Christian
commune in the jungles of Guyana in 1978 resulted in the largest
death toll on U.S. civilians by human acts until September 11
terrorist attacks, and its aftermath sparked a deluge of
fear-based propaganda.
Contrary to popular belief, most people did not commit
suicide at Jonestown by drinking "Kool Aid". There was not even
any Kool Aid there.
Most people were systematically murdered by
lethal injection, a finding confirmed by coronary evidence from
the scene, where massive quantities of psychiatric mind control
drugs were also discovered.
The coronary evidence was "lost" by
U.S. officials and autopsies of the dead were "botched" behind
closed doors on a U.S. base. The mass suicide story originated from a CIA report
dispatched from Guyana before any officials had investigated the
crime scene.
This story was repeated in the mainstream media by
"experts" - the most prominent being medical professionals with
ties to U.S. government mind control research programs such as
MK-ULTRA (under which covert illegal experiments were done
on inmates of prisons and psychiatric institutes).
The Dark Alliance between the
Anti-Cult Movement, Government
and Media
Capitalizing on the hysteria generated by the Jonestown
massacre, the anti-cult movement became a powerful force
fuelling a moral panic
with a media platform.
Psychologist
Margaret Singer, one of its leading luminaries with a background
in mind control research for the U.S. military, touted the
unsubstantiated theory that so-called "cults" (the new de facto
label for any organized belief operating outside a major
religious institution) use sophisticated brainwashing
techniques.
The CIA claimed its own mind control attempts were
unsuccessful and "useless" in spite of having vast funds
channeled into black projects, secrecy, qualified scientists,
drugs, sophisticated technology, and electroshock "therapy" at
its disposal.
Yet the former government researcher Singer, and
her high-profile associate Louis
Jolyon West, an MK-ULTRA psychiatrist, wanted people to
believe that small, poorly resourced spiritual groups could
accomplish what the entire machinery of U.S. government claimed it
could not.
Jonestown Guyana.
The media bought it, and embraced it.
Even though Singer's
theory lacked scientific acceptance - and the courts ended her
lucrative career as a paid "expert" witness in religious cases
after
her theories were debunked and rejected - her ideology
continued to be sold by the anti-cult movement and uncritically
repeated by journalists.
The result was a massive disinformation campaign.
A shift in
perception occurred where any group that was small and
unconventional was, by default, now a "cult".
This pejorative
label, rare before Jonestown, was used with astounding
regularity in the media after the massacre, and became conflated
with death and suicide.
It was vague enough to encompass
anything, which meant thousands of harmless groups became guilty
until proven innocent and associated with evil. Jonestown also
maligned the idea of living in an alternative community,
religious or otherwise.
Gathering with others to pursue a
lifestyle different from the status quo became suspect.
Drastic Impacts
Government tanks at the siege and destruction
of the
Branch Dravidian community
This hysteria sometimes had tragic consequences.
The
military-style raid and siege, in which tanks and helicopters
surrounded the ranch and pyrotechnic military tear gas rounds
were fired against the community's premises, precipitated a
disaster, with most of the members dying in a fire inside their
ranch while besieged.
The mind control psychologist
Margaret Singer (who is now deceased) was on its advisory board.
A composite of WACO images
At the WACO siege, the controversial founder of this
institute was influencing both the media's coverage and the
government's actions, despite having no formal qualifications
beyond a high school diploma.
He was hired by CBS as an analyst
and appeared widely on other networks. He reportedly had
unparalleled access to, and influence upon, agents of the FBI
and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF/ATF) who
were conducting the siege.
Although the Justice Department later
claimed the FBI did not "rely" on his advice, according to
Professor Nancy T. Ammerman, the FBI's interview transcripts
reveal he was "closely involved" with both the FBI and BATF,
and,
"The BATF interviewed the persons he directed them to and
evidently used information from those interviews in planning
their February 28 raid."
Ammerman alleges he recommended that
agents "attempt to humiliate Koresh" (the community's leader)
and "the FBI was evidently listening" based on the strategy it
employed to embarrass Koresh.
All of this occurred despite the
FBI being aware that this "cult expert" had "…a personal
hatred for all religious cults" and would willingly aid law
enforcement in an attempt to "destroy a cult."
There was more about his background that should have raised
red flags.
This same "expert", who was convicted of burglary in
his 20s, had another run-in with the law in 1991 after he was
hired as a "deprogrammer" to detain and "deprogram" an
18-year-old member of the Pentecostal church, who was
wrestled to the ground and dragged into a van by the
"deprogrammer's" associates.
In a civil trial later filed by the abductee, the jury found the
"deprogrammer" had,
"intentionally
or recklessly acted in a way so outrageous in character and so
extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency
and to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in a
civilized community".
The court found him liable for conspiracy
to deprive an individual of his civil rights and religious
liberties.
Chinese officials destroy
in Wenzhou
in 2014.
The communist
government in China only sanctions five government-controlled
religions, and
labels and suppresses anything else an "evil cult",
including
Christians and Buddhists.
It is rather
telling that the views of a Western anti-cult activist are in
accord with an authoritarian communist regime suppressing
religious freedom and committing human rights violations.
In the West however, the anti-cult campaign mostly takes
place on the internet.
To this end, the
Cult Education Institute
website hosts a forum which, while claiming to be a "free speech
zone", actually functions something like a virtual inquisition:
anonymous posters can start their own witch hunt and accuse
people and groups of anything without any accountability, while
attempts by those accused to refute allegations are, by
some
accounts, met with censorship, deletion and being banned
from the forums.
Not exactly free speech...
The Cult Education Institute is just one component in a
bigger machine working against alternative spirituality, but the
way its founder has successfully influenced the media and
government is an example of how this larger machine operates.
While the dark alliance between government, media and the
anti-cult movement is unofficial in most Western countries, it
has been
legally codified in France where the anti-sect movement has
installed its inquisitorial ideology into the country's
institutions.
This has led to the
circulation and use of a blacklist of so-called sects (the
French equivalent of "cults") created by Parliament, and the
creation of the Orwellian agency
MIVILUDES (Inter-ministerial
Mission for Vigilance and Fighting against Sectarian Deviances)
which
targets "thought crime", which it defines as the
'sin' of
holding,
"certain ideas which differ from the ideas generally
accepted by society".
This creates a situation where people's
freedom of belief and association is actively repressed by the
government, media and anti-spiritual organizations acting in
concert.
As explained by the European Interreligious Forum for
Religious Freedom (EIFRF):
"MIVILUDES, throughout the years, has engaged in numerous
campaigns not only against new religious movements targeted as
'sects', but also against small communities of older religions,
whether Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical or other.
They have
even organized raids in communities, arriving with journalists
and making strong derogatory comments in order to further their
agenda of labeling these communities as 'sects'.
…someone could think that this only applies to new groups,
small unusual groups, New Age or Satanist or any small religion,
and think that 'this will only happen to others'.
The truth is
that MIVILUDES and anti-sect associations have been targeting
Catholic communities, Evangelical Christians, Hindu communities,
amongst others, as 'sects'.
The sect is the religion someone
wants to get the rid of."
The Bigger Picture - A War on Consciousness
If we step back and look at the bigger picture, it becomes
apparent the campaign against alternative spirituality, and the
global push for consolidation of the world's major religions,
may function as two prongs of a global strategy to contain and
control spiritual freedom in a war on consciousness.
In both cases, people with religious or spiritual beliefs are
portrayed as the source of major scourges threatening society,
breeding either "cults" or "extremists":
-
There are shady government connections to major crimes
committed by heinous villains, and these crimes are then
exploited to galvanize a response.
-
The crimes of the heinous few are invoked in fear-based
propaganda to fabricate the perception of a broader
and existential threat menacing society, which
fuels a moral panic.
-
This results in the public calling for authorities to
rectify the problem, and manufactures their consent for the
imposed solution, which, though it involves stripping
freedoms away, people believe is in their best interests.
The campaign against alternative spirituality may be the
first step in this war on consciousness.
It has served to cut
down on spiritual options within society, while conditioning
people to
fear alternative spiritual possibilities. It has made taboo
any attempt to organize in a spiritual group or community
outside of major establishment religious institutions.
When
operating outside the status quo is automatically suspect,
people are more likely to conform, and less likely to venture
outside the box
The global control of religions may be the next step. After
the options have been cut down, this strategy may serve to
control and influence the spiritual options that remain.
The world's major religious institutions are too big and too
established to simply be suppressed like smaller groups are.
However, creating a global body with the "unquestionable"
authority to dictate what God considers acceptable or not,
allows those in that elite position to set their parameters
across various major faiths.
A global consensus can be set.
Anything operating outside of the elite body's guidelines, or
without its endorsement, would then be isolated and excluded,
seen as rouge or wrong - a "cult".
That would include
alternative spiritual groups already being targeted, but also
denominations of major religions that refuse to fall under the
command of a one world authority.
Under
such a model, religions need not be replaced with a single
monolithic faith as some predict.
Rather a central body could
influence and infiltrate the world's major faiths while leaving
their external appearance intact. Central decrees could be fed
out and passed down within the guise of the tradition people are
most accustomed to in different cultures.
Under this model, the "one world religion" would be more like
an octopus, where each arm may appear different, but ultimately
links back to the same source, and serves it.
Divide and Conquer - The End Game for Spirituality
The consequences of a one world religion are immense, if you
think about it.
Whatever differences people in the world may have, ultimately
we are of the same source and substance. If a global elite limit
and control how human consciousness can experience the world,
won't they essentially control humanity?
"Spirituality", in its broadest sense, gives people a conduit
to a higher source, a power which the rulers of this world
cannot control.
Whatever people call that power - God, Divinity
or Higher Consciousness - spirituality can provide a way for
people to connect to and derive strength from that higher source
in some way.
In ancient times, spiritual figures venerated in major
religions had a profound impact on people and the world.
Even in
recent history, spirituality has been central to the lives of
extremely influential people, such as Gandhi and Martin Luther
King. Whatever one may think of their individual religious
views, there is no denying their convictions empowered them, and
through their actions, they had a profound positive impact on
society.
Having a spiritual connection can allow people to awaken
their perception to a bigger picture of life, and activate and
awaken consciousness. This can make someone less easy to
manipulate and control.
However, at the same time, it cannot be
denied that spiritual and religious beliefs can also be used by
corrupt people to manipulate and control others, and suppress
alternative points of view - which may explain the drive to
create a one world religious authority.
That is why, I believe, there is an ongoing agenda to cut
down on the spiritual options people have, and then
control the options which remain.
It seems to me there are
certain powerful forces operating in this world that do not want
people to awaken consciousness and connect with a higher
spiritual power.
For
this anti-spiritual war on consciousness to be effective, people
have to be divided.
Once divided they can easily be conquered:
divide and conquer is a strategy used by elite powers
throughout history.
A lucid description of how this strategy succeeds is found in
the famous quote attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller, who
initially supported the rise of Nazism in Germany because he
opposed communism like the Nazis did, but became disillusioned
when the regime sought to control the churches and
persecuted Christians.
By the time he opposed the
dictatorship, the Nazi regime was entrenched and he was put in a
concentration camp.
Although the exact wording of his quote is unclear because he
used different versions, the most widely used version is this:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not
speak out -
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did
not speak out -
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak
out -
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me - and there was no one left to
speak for me.
Other versions mention the Jehovah's Witnesses, who were
completely wiped out in Germany at that time.
But regardless of
which version is used, the key message is the same.
On a global scale, divide and conquer is happening in the way
Christian and Muslim societies are being pitted against each
other in a perpetual war serving the military industrial complex
and hollowing out civil liberties in the West.
While the wars
continue to rage, few notice the hidden hand moving the
geopolitical pawns on both sides of the chessboard - playing
them off against each other - as the spectre of religious
extremism fuelled by the conflict paves the road to a one world
religious authority.
In the case of the campaign against spirituality within
Western society, divide and conquer also applies.
A "new age"
group is unlikely to defend a Christian community being
persecuted, because they are not Christian. In reverse, a
Christian group may not defend a new age group attacked as a "cult" because its beliefs are different.
And even within a
major tradition like Christianity, a large denomination may not
defend the persecution of a smaller one, because it considers it
heretical, and therefore may even seek to destroy it.
Unfortunately, due to fanaticism, some religious bodies
actively work to persecute other groups, because they wish to
assert their own religious supremacy.
Witness the Christian
counter cult movement, whose definition of a "cult" is
roughly equivalent to the definition of a "heresy", being
basically anything which does not conform to their own beliefs.
Those who work to attack the spiritual freedom of others fail
to realize they are aiding forces that ultimately have all
spirituality and religions in their cross hairs in a divide and
conquer strategy.
Once the smaller targets are picked off, those
forces will seek to assimilate the larger institutions into
their greater plan too.
It is from this strategy that a one world religious authority
may eventually emerge.
Finding Common Ground
When there is freedom of spiritual expression, all
individuals benefit from having the right to explore
spirituality by the avenue they wish, even if it may be
different from what others choose (or if they choose to abstain
from spirituality completely).
Freedom is the common ground - the common right
- that benefits everyone.
In a society where
this freedom exists, spiritual expression can flourish and
consciousness can awaken.
People can defend freedom without endorsing what others
choose to do with it, by understanding the common interest it
serves. Everyone who values spirituality has a stake in freedom.
If we cannot find that common ground, and respect each other's
differences, then we are easy to divide and conquer. If we continue to allow ourselves to be divided, by the time
we come to understand the end game for spirituality in a new
world order, it may be too late.
