Book of Were-Wolves, Baring-Gould

It was a dark and stormy night. A phrase introduced to our language by the legendary Bulwer-Lytton, inspiration for both the Bullwer-Lytton Bad Fiction Prize and the Vril Society which allegedly tried to contact aliens for the Nazis based on the Bulwer-Lytton tale "Vril: The Power of the Coming Race", a tale which includes Shaver Mystery elements, a race of ancient super-humans ruled by women, and various other occult related tropes. But that's got absolutely nothing to do with this book, except that it starts with a tale about the Reverend Baring-Gould roaming the French country-side on a night of the aforementioned type. Which alarms the locals, who believe the local country to be dangerous at night due to the infestation by werewolves.

Very interesting, in that it would never happen today. Besides the unhealthy decline in the belief in were-wolves, he gets to a hamlet and goes into the local pub to find the priest, mayor and yokels all sat in there, few if any of them speaking French, despite being in France. See the relevant episode of QI, the widespread use of the unifying common language is a recent development in France. Several of them also claim to have seen a werewolf, at least one very recently.

But Baring-Gould's idea of what a werewolf really is doesn't include transmogrifying wolf-men. He thinks they're merely serial killers, some of them hallucinatory ones who think they go hairy when they kill. Obviously a common part of the werewolf mythos is the ability to become a werewolf through the application of a magical balm or item of clothing, the lotion may possibly have some hallucinogenic properties. It's commonly believed that berserkers, bear-skinners, used Fly Agaric to make themselves angry and fearless. The werewolves may be something similar.

A series of examples of lycanthropy are given from the ancient world, Greece and Rome and their writings about neighbouring lands. Not much in common, some become werewolves through curses, defying the gods, eating sacrificial offerings, the application of a "magical salve", as in the sagas and the Golden Ass, spells cast by malicious old women, or simply through an act of will. A couple of tribes even seem to have been possessed of the "wild talent" of becoming werewolves. Similarly it was sometimes possible to stop being a werewolf, through an act of will, or the expiration of a time limit, and so on. One could also become a were-donkey or were-cow, etc., and it may or may not be the case that one maintains ones own mind while in the wolf-form.

However all had in common the belief in the genuine change in shape of the person into a beast. In the later Norse mythos this is no longer the case, the belief in the change of bodily form is balanced with a belief in the transmigration of the soul, and mass hypnosis. The soul may leave the body and become an ethereal creature, or the body and mind may continue the same with only their perception by others changing. Nor is there generally the ancient limitation to one form, unless achieved by a magical amulet of some sort the ability to become a beast was an ability of the individual, and could be used to become one of a number of creatures. The norse were-wolf keeps his human mind but may also assume the predatory nature of a wolf. The eyes, reflecting their mythological place as the window to the soul, can never be changed.

A very odd story from the sagas is recounted, a king's mother is tricked into putting her tongue into the mouth of warrior Sigmund while in her witchly wolf-form, at which point he bites it out. Echos of the putative prowess of Shaka the Zulu, killing a leopard with his bare hands by ripping its tongue from its head. A badass that Shaka. Supposedly because in his adolescence his fellows taunted him for his undersized penis.

The story from Hrolf-Kraki's saga is retold, of the boy called "bear" who is torn from his love by a curse by the queen, his evil step mother if you will, who is a Finn and therefore assumed to have magical powers, similar to the assumption that Judith wife of Hereward wrongly called "the Wake" must be "skilled in the mechanical (magical) arts" because she was a fleming. But it sells books. Anyway, bear is turned into a bear, impregnates his human woman then gets killed and eaten, partly by her. Which causes birth defects, as you might expect. One of the children has a hound's feet, not sure how that might relate to the later king of England hare-foot. Of course the saga of Hrolf-Kraki, which is crying out for a movie adaptation, culminates in a battle between a were-bear backed by an army of vikings and a were-boar backed by an army of zombies. Should any Hollywood producers be reading I'm available to pitch ideas for casting next Thursday.

Baring-Gould gives his entirely false etymology of the term were-wolf. He believes, or so he claims, it merely means a criminal, that "were" comes from a word meaning a violent criminal and that wolves were invariably associated with villainy. In reality it's widely accepted that "were" refers to man, as in "were gild" and wolves were ambiguously seen, hence for example the great bishop Wulfstan titling his greatest work "The Sermon of the Wolf to the English". But the core of his position is that werewolfism is a series of superstitions which have accrued around the practice of outlaws disguising themselves in animal skins, so he's trying to support that.

It must be said this catalogue of lycanthropy eventually gets a bit samey. St Patrick turned the King of Wales into a wolf, you say? Well, that's nice to know. Let's just believe for a moment that a unified monarchy over wales existed at that time, under the suzerainity of Powys, maybe. And St Natalis made a prominent Irish family prone to werewolfery too, yeah terrific. And the Duke of Prussia... Alright, alright!

Anyway the book eventually takes a turn from the study of mythology to looking at gangs of werewolves in historical documents, often getting accused of witchcraft. A suitable approach, as he believes werewolves to be outlaws and gangs of werewolves to be criminal gangs roaming the countryside... eating people, for some reason. As they say:

1) Fancy dress
2) Cannibalism
3) ???
4) Profit!

The humourous scene of a sceptical clergyman being convinced by a talking wolf that his dying mother deserves the last rites, if only after she has peeled back her fur to show the old woman beneath. Rogueishly the priest thinks opposable thumbs better evidence of humanity than that the lupine beasty can talk perfectly good French. Going back to The Occult Causes of the Present War, why does this stuff always happen in France?

Slightly replacing the prevailing narrative of were-wolves as disguised outlaws and mentally-ill cannibals, possibly sometimes both, the next few chapters go for a more witchcraft-related aesthetic. Tales of frustrated peasants selling their souls to satan for the ability to go lupy. You know the stuff, black masses, child murdering, serial-killing, kissing satan's ring, that sort of thing. The usual. One Pierre sells his soul to satan to keep wolves from his sheep, only to go back to church after a couple of years, at which point satanists rub him all over with fatty lotions which turn him into a wolf. Witches, were-wolves, berserkir and so forth all share the quality of being exhausted in the aftermath of their activities. Reminds me of the ultraterrestrials in Keel's Mothman Prophecies. He believed mystical lights hypnotised people, and while they experienced hypnotically induced trances in which they flew to mars with friendly space men in reality their bodies were doing who-knows-what for the UTs.

Several cases on the standard witch-child-killer lines. More than one keeping the body parts in their own home, as did du Retz, but most of them have smaller homes. Lots of deals with men in black, popular description of the devil at the time. Tales from India, Ethiopia, Armenia. Very odd tale from Ethiopia, where it's claimed the natives believe blacksmiths can become Hyaenas. Werehyaenas, that is. Blacksmiths are often associated with supernatural events, hence the good luck associated with horse shoes. They also have major mythological counterparts, Hepheastius, Weyland the Smithy, who was famously involved in a romantic legend but also plays a homosexual on The Simpsons. There's also an obscure legend that a blacksmith refused to make nails for the crucifiction of Christ. This probably isn't the correct forum to point out how the Longinus and company got around that. Also, I notice the story was collected by a man called Coffin, a name of Masonic significance, as well as being the name of one of the high-born occultists behind the Seneca Falls conference. Don't know if there's any relation there. Very common name, probably.

OF course three chapters of the book are given over to the Sire du Retz, a man whose castle was found to be full of the mutilated remains of children. Don't think it mentions d'Arc extensively, although the two were close colleagues. Three chapters seems a bit over the top considering he wasn't a werewolf, and this is The Book of Were-Wolves. Baring-Gould is continuing with his thesis of were-wolf as deranged killer who ravens on the blood of the innocent, into which category du Retz falls. The agonies of mothers whose children have been kidnapped, tortured to death and disposed of. The confessions of his two servants to their master's acts. The search executed on his castle, and the bodies it discovered. The fear of the dark lord amongst the country-folk. The trial, of course, and executions.

A chapter is given over to a general theory of human cruelty. Serial-killers listed, tyrants who murder for entertainment, other reasons to kill. A chapter on myths and souls. Strange tales of beavers and brahmins.

You get the idea.

Anti-feminist documentary from Sweden

Gender War , very interesting. First bit has a group of feminists supposedly concerned about a satanist cult kidnapping a girl and holding her against her will in Norway until she recruits a local to help her escape, the police refused the challenge the feminist lobby and the feminists wouldn't even apologise. The second part is about the feminist organisations lack of interest in reducing violence against women if it means abandoning their core doctrine.

"First wave"

Not the old 90s scifi series, feminism.

Firstly the relevant parts from little dynamo's post about Seneca Falls:

Both Stanton and Lucretia Mott – kindly, grandmotherly types – attempted the practice of necromancy and ritual magick, specifically use of “angelic spirits” to impart knowledge and advice. They called their activities “Spiritualism” and likened it to a religion. Many prominent men, particularly homosexuals and artists, joined the Spiritualist/Transcendentalist movement.

But Spiritualism, like channelling today, was merely a new moniker for gynocentric Egypto-Chaldean sorcery -- the same blood-magic necromancy practiced by neo-pagan “priests” like George Bush and his pals in Skull and Bones – or by William Sloane Coffin and the other Ameican “elite” annually in the Godesses’ “terebinth” at Bohemian Grove.

(Not coincidentally, the Russian River-Guerneville area, where the Grove is located, is a noted hotbed of homosexual activity – the Fire Island of the West. The Russian River, like the Nile, also floods regularly, providing a powerful “sympathetic tool” that aids modern practitioners of Egyptian magick. Recall that Osiris is a fertility god of the “overflowing Nile.” His semen is the “fructifying water.”)

...

Cannily, Stanton and Mott-Coffin attached their true aim – female empowerment ane re-establishment of matriarchy -- to abolitionism, and vampirized that righteous cause for all ‘twas worth. Frederick Douglass attended the Seneca Falls Convention, and Convention proceedings were published by the North Star office, his press. Modern feminism still employs this tactic, as illustrated by the American Left/Democrats, essentially an identity-political voting bloc, now dominated almost exclusively by “women’s interests.”

Lucretia Mott’s Spiritualism and Transcendentalism, like New Atlantis, rose from the Atlantic Ocean, disguised as a “friend of human progress.”

Meet the New Beast. Same as the Old Beast.

...

“Ralph Waldo Emerson leaves the Unitarian church after the death of his first wife. His encounters with whaling Quakers in New Bedford are critical to the formulation of an ecumenical theology called Transcendentalism

“In 1848, radical Quakers, calling themselves Congregational Friends (later, the Friends of Human Progress), break away from the Society of Friends. A few months later, these same Friends of Human Progress are the sponsors of the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls.

“Immediately, the Friends of Human Progress press on into what is today a forgotten corner of American history. These Friends help establish the new fad of spiritualism. In addition to speaking from the inner light of Christ, they also begin to act as mediums for the spirits of the dead. Seances become a common aspect of society for an entire generation (Ann Braude characterizes it as a major American religion in this period.) The history of the women's rights movement is entwined with the spiritualist movement--a fact which was latter written out of the history books by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.”

...

Now: how about “Coffin.” Strange thing to be named, eh?

Hell, if I had a name like Coffin, I’d probably change it to Smith!

Coffin. Prominent Euro-American bloodlines.

...

Tracing the genesis of American feminism – at least as far back as the 1848 Seneca Falls Conference -- we find recurring themes of occult/magickal rituals, often involving sex-magic, especially forced anal penetration; fertility rites, usually employing a maypole/asherah, often involving crypts, coffins, or “groves of the goddess”; connection to seafaring, sea captains, impression/slavery, Leviathan, antediluvian “Atlantean” cultures, passed through Sumer, Egypt, and Babylon; and complicity of prominent American “blueblood” families with bloodrites and neo-matriarchy – right up to the modern day, with George and Laura.

...

[Downard]

Much of Boston's Irish population arrived in American in what were nicknamed the "coffin ships." Members of the Kennedy family were acquainted with the "Coffin" family. The Reverend William Sloane Coffin was the son of the theologian Henry Sloane Coffin; the younger Coffin was a member of the Peace Corps Advisory Council that Sargent Shriver headed. "Shriver" or "Shrive" has the meaning of one who grants absolution to a penitent, and it was customary to call upon a shriver before death. If the shriver was not available, a "sin eater" was summoned. The old pious cry which was connected with the request for a shriving was "Shrive me O Holy Land and Give Me Peace." To this the shriver would respond "Pax Vobiscum":
...the spell lies in two words, Pax Vobiscum will answer all queries. If you go or come, eat or drink, bless or ban, Pax Vobiscum carries you through it all. It is as useful to a friar as a broomstick to a witch or a wand to a conjurer. Speak it but thus, in a deep grave tone, Pax Vobiscum! It is irresistible-watch and ward, Knight and squire, foot and horse, it acts as a charm upon them all. I think, if they bring me out to be hanged tomorrow, as is much to be doubted they may, I will try its weights upon the finisher of the sentence. ("Wamba, son of Witless")
Sargent Shriver, a Catholic and Kennedy by marriage, as head of the Peace Corps and in association with a Coffin, might be considered to be in a sensitive position in relation to mystical onomatology.
In the ancient mysteries the aspirant could not claim a participation in the highest secrets until he had been placed in the Pastos, bed or coffin. The placing of him in the coffin was called the symbolical death of the mysteries, and his deliverance was termed a rising from the dead; the "mind," says an ancient writer quoted by Stobaeus, is afflicted in death just as it is in the initiation in the mysteries. And word answers to word, as well as thing to thing; for burial is to die and death to be initiated. The coffin in Masonry is found on the tracing boards of the early part of the last century, and has always constituted a part of the symbolism of the Third Degree, where the reference is precisely to the same as that of the Pastos in the ancient mysteries. [My emphasis.] (Encyclopedia of Freemasonry)
President Kennedy sat at the head of a coffin table at the White House. To his back, over a fireplace, hung a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, an assassinated president. On either side of the picture were urns that resembled the type called "cinerary urns" which are vessels in which the ashes of the dead are kept.
A book about JFK was called Three Steps to the White House. In Masonry are what is known as the "three symbolical steps." "The three grand steps symbolically lead from this life to the source of all knowledge." (Encyclopedia of Freemasonry)
It must be evident to every Master Mason without further explanation, that the three steps are taken from the darkness to a place of light, either figuratively or really over a coffin, the symbol of death, to teach symbolically that the passage from darkness and ignorance of this life through death to the light and knowledge of eternal life. And this from earliest times was the true symbolism of the step. (Ibid.)
The body of President Kennedy was placed in a coffin which was positioned in the center of a circle under the Capitol dome. The catafalque was "a temporary structure of wood appropriately decorated with funeral symbols and representing a tomb or cenotaph. It forms a part of the decorations of a 'Sorrow Lodge.' " This Masonic Encyclopedia entry refers to the ceremonies of the Third Degree in Lodges of the French Rite.
Pictures taken of the Kennedy coffin and catafalque show these two props of the funerary rite as a point in a circle. Fecundity is the symbolic signification of the Point within a circle and is a derivation of ancient sun worship.

...

The Coffin family in England is traced back to the time of William the Conqueror, when a Norman Knight, Sir Richard Coffyn, accompanied William in his invasion of England.

The knight doubtless had his reward, for "Sir Richard Coffyn of Alwington in Devonshire," became an hereditary name for centuries---from the reign of Henry I. to that of Edward VI. Richard Coffyn was Sheriff of Devonshire in the time of Henry VIII. Curious agreements in relation to boundaries between Sir Richard Coffyn and the Abbot of Tavistock are still preserved. In one of them the Abbot grants the privilege of his church to the Coffyn family.

...


Tristram Coffin was one of the original proprietors of Nantucket, but did not himself go there until the success of the colony had become assure. In 1660, he moved to Nantucket, taking with him his four children--James, John, Stephen and Mary.

Among Tristram Coffin's descendants may be counted Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin of the British Navy, and the Admiral's brother, General John Coffin of the British Army. Two of General Coffin's sons were also British Admirals. Sir Isaac Coffin gave ten thousand dollars to the school of his name in Nantucket.

...

Note in the above account the “granting” by the “abbot” of the “privilege of his church” to the Coffyn family – precisely as if “the church” belonged to the Coffyn, and not to God.

The Coffin family – flush with war-loot – arrived in the Colonies loaded to the gills – not to mention, titled (and therefore potentially landed in the emerging Colonies.)

...

Between making nails and shearing sheep, the peaceloving Mr. Mott managed to organize and preside over many of the sessions at the Woman’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls. Indeed, he assisted his lovely Frankenstinian Bride with ferocious devotion in all her female-empowerment activities!

The Mott residence in Philadephia where the Seneca Falls Convention – and no doubt, much else – was planned, was at 338 Arch Street . . . an address suggestive not only of the ubiquitous arches in Masonic iconography and illustration, but of the ancient “arks” constructed by early “Masons” as Osiric caskets – the Hebrew Ark being only one example of “arks” or mobile deities built and used throughout the ancient Near East.

...

American occult elements are often linked, not surpisingly, to New England -- especially to Massachusetts and its whaling communites, like New Bedford. It’s no coincidence that major Catholic Church “priest-abuse” scandals occurred in Massachusetts. Particular attention was focused on incidents in the Fall River Diocese, which includes New Bedford and Martha’s Vineyard.

Why is this relevant to our subject?

Because sex-magic – especially involving children – is essential to the type of transtemporal, transcultural rites we are addressing. These rites are designed primarily to influence the mind via libido. In particular, access is sought to the collective or mass mind. Individuals OR entire cultures are susceptible to extreme influence, even control, via a brew of propaganda, suggestion, manipulation, trauma-inducement, sex, drugs, and related techniques.

...

Since femaleness suffuses creation, the pure male is cast out. He has no right to life.

-- Camille Paglia



Why would the Ark – the central symbol, the very personage, of monotheism and masculinity – remain in a “Temple” with the goddess? The whole POINT of the Temple was to provide a MALE SANCTUARY for “Yahweh” that was CLOSED OFF from the influence of the Goddess, and by extension, from the influence of woman, and from the “priests” of the Goddess – the same “priests” who planned America as the seedbed of feminism, and of the NWO under Goddess Babylon.

Get the picture?

Hurricane Camille ain’t kidding. Femaless IS material existence. It is everywhere and everything.

...

And precisely as today, the male is excluded by custom and law – custom and law manipulated into place by feminism – from having any place of exclusive male refuge. The same “rules,” of course, don’t appy to women.

[In our own country the "first wave" feminists also blew up Lloyd George's house, before he became Prime Minister. When he became PM he gave women the vote. Terrorism works.]

Finishing with ld for a minute, I found this about the Pankhursts:

Mrs. Emmeline, Miss Sylvia and Miss Christabel Pankhurst played major roles in the radical "suffragette" movement. Mrs. Pankhurst was born in 1858. Her father, Robert Goulden, a successful businessman and radical thinker, took part in the campaign against the Corn Laws and slavery. Her mother, Sophia Crane, was a feminist who took young Emmeline to suffrage meetings in the 1870s. Emmeline married a women's suffragist and socialist lawyer, Richard Pankhurst; he drafted successful legislation in 1869 that allowed women householders to vote in local elections and he was also chiefly responsible for a women's property bill passed by Parliament in 1870. Emmeline became a Poor Law Guardian in 1885: she visiting workhouses and was shocked by the way women were being treated.
-- http://www.authorsden.com/categories/article_top.asp?catid=17&id=27244

Can't argue with that. Everything wrong with feminism in a minute. I'm not even going to go into the capitalist impulse behind the Corn-Laws business, but the link is an interesting one nonetheless. Certainly for those of use who have confronted the feminist argument that the witch trials were an anti-feminist terror campaign to bring about the birth of capitalism. Obviously the usual abolitionist piggy-back. The last sentence is the one, though. She became a Poor Law Guardian, someone whose job was to ensure the poor were arrested and incarcerated in workhouses, children torn from the bosoms or their families, men set to dig ditches and fill them back in again so as to avoid the dread curse of indolence, women set to unravel rope so the fibres could be reused, entire families dragged from their home, split up, forced into slave labour on a starvation diet in some infested hell hole they may never escape from simply because of their poverty, the children beaten, all under constant threat and doing constant labour just to be allowed to survive on the conditional largesse of Panky and her cadre of Guardians. And from this picture of Dantean proportions of evil, what did Panky extract? She "was shocked by the way women were being treated". Yeah, nicely spotted Panky. Don't trip over the mangled bodies of the child slaves beaten to unconsciousness trip you up on the way back to your mansion.

cw: To it, I owe my legal status as a person. Because of it I can vote, own property, leave a spouse, expect legal protection from assault, control my own biology, attend school, hold a job, run for office, and more

I saw that on the rigint board. Bullshit, of course, but these are things commonly credited to the first-wave feminism, which this is meant to be about. Obviously owning property, being a legal person, having legal protection from assault, and holding a job (what a wondrous right to hold) have all been rights held by women since time immemorial. Leaving a spouse has always been legal, although there was a time when divorce was rather more difficult. For both sexes. "Controlling ones own biology" is rather more the work of science that feminism, I should expect. The legal status of education in this country has never discriminated, except against the poor. Free schools admitted all from the start. There were only ten years between the vote being extended to all men and all women, and only 86 years when no women could vote in Parliamentary election, from 1832 to 1918. Even when women couldn't vote they could hold office, and there were female MPs elected entirely by men. Obviously it goes without saying that men fought and died for the vote while women launched the occasional terror attack only after the hard work had been done and the principle of widespread suffrage won.

wordspeak: In my personal humble opinion, I like the term anti-patriarchy, because it is broad, and refers not just to relations between men and women, but to the whole way the society is structured. There have been cultures in the distant past in which women were revered, and I believe we need to return to that. Usually, these societies had a positive relationship with the earth and psychoactive plants, and did not include the use of "control drugs" such as alcohol, and I believe this is a very related paradigm shift. Feminism should mean returning to earth-based sacrilege, ending the ecological terrorism of capitalism. Hardly an NWO plot.

Difficult to know where to start with that. The positing of non-existent cultures, the theory of an age without alcohol, the association of ancients with virtue with eco-friendlyness... I'll just say the same bloke thinks feminism will destroy capitalism, which is supposedly a function of patriarchy, whereas the period of the rise of feminism has coincided exactly with the fall of democratic socialism and the rise of Thatcherism.

A quick quote from "Minos", a member of the Bavarian Illuminati:

"We cannot improve the world without improving women, who have such a mighty influence on the men. But how shall we get hold of them? ... We must begin with grown girls ... It may immediately be a very pretty Society, under the management of Ptolemy's wife, but really under his management."
-- 'Minos' (an Illuminati pseudonym the owner of which has never been established

Obviously from the letters reproduced in Robisons Proofs of a Conspiracy..., which links the BavIll to the French revolution, which gave us Wollstonecraft, which provides a link to modern feminism by ideology. Good fruit, bad seed, don't mix.

Weishaupt, founded of the Illuminati, had a few thoughts as to how it could be made to work: "No man must be admitted.", he wrote, "They will be our great apostles." And Weishaupt's main statement:

"There is no way of influencing men so powerfully as by means of the women. These should therefore be our chief study; we should insinuate ourselves into their good opinion, give them hints of emancipation from the tyranny of public opinion, and of standing up for themselves; it will be an immense relief to their enslaved minds to be freed from any one bond of restraint, and it will fire them the more, and cause them to work for us with zeal, without knowing that they do so; for they will only be indulging their own desire of personal admiration."

Certainly is a good job feminism ain't no New World Order plot, because if it was this would be pretty incriminating as to who was behind it. But I digress.

Flash Orrery

http://dd.dynamicdiagrams.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/orrery_2006.swf

Funny lookin'.

Sun, Sea and Satan...

...a film from Pie and Mash films. Looks like the auteur was in the march in London the other day, criticising some minister, or possibly shadow minister, I recognise but can't remember the name of. Some cunt. Video here. Thinks the biggest problem is the deficit, or claims to, putting him in that group which wants to cut deficits during a recession, namely the total fucking idiots.

Also a Pie and Mash films exclusively refused interview with Harriet Harman, known in the anti-feminist community as Harriet Harman-hater, and quite rightly so. She's not the one who was made minister for children to reward her for allowing the Islington child sex ring free reign, and she's not the one whose mortgage was paid off by billionaire paedophile gangster Silvio Berlusconi, those were Hodge and Jowell, I believe. Nor is she the one who got tax-payers to foot the bill for "her husband's" pornography, that was Smith I believe.

One of her little upper-class, wide-jawed girl-lackeys claims she can't be prosecuted for assault on our pioneering video journalist because she's a woman, then the Harman-hater has the police sent the nasty man away.

Apparently Harmann-hater once advocated legalising the taking of sexually explicit images of children, and was all in favour of that as part of her job, many years ago. He does manage to get a word with the head of the Unison union, who takes the union line, "we don't like job losses" but doesn't go any further.

A excerpt from the PA on Harman-hater:

The Leader of the House of Commons and Minister for Women and Equality, who also sits on a Cabinet committee on young people’s welfare, is being touted as a possible successor to Gordon Brown, .

But she faces fresh criticism from Opposition MPs and campaign groups after The Daily Telegraph obtained documents showing that she called on ministers to make sexually explicit photographs or films of children legal unless there was evidence that the subject had been harmed.

At the time she made the official submission, she was a senior figure in a civil liberties organisation that wanted the age of consent to be lowered to 14 and incest decriminalised. It also defended self-confessed paedophiles in the press and allowed them to attend its meetings.

Oh yeah, that ministership for Women and Equalities certainly was hard-earned. And look-it, her boss back in the paedo-friendly days of her yore was Patsy Hewitt, later her colleague in the Harman-hater years of New Labour. Small world, the world of paedo-advocacy. I see the paedo orgs in question were linked to the group now known as Liberty, which Postman Patel, in his pre-dead days, always treated with great suspicion, being led by the head-scarf adjusting pretty girl formerly a "home office solicitor", for which read spook.

Mammoths: Dead or Alive?

A Mammoth Controversy

Death Threats for Syvret

That's the man who brought the abuse of children at Haut de la Garenne in Jersey to public attention, caused a fuss just because a few kids were getting raped, and got sacked from his ministerial position.

Then, to make matters worse, he started embarrassing the Jersey government because of a few minor mistakes, a few cover-ups, a bit of millionaire child-rape and a few million tonnes of toxic waste dumped in the local sea... typical muck-raking scandal-seeker. Ought to be ashamed of himself. Well, the government's continuing campaign to keep the public safe from this pest has moved onto making death threats. By phone, through lackeys, to people he knows.

Damn good show, chaps.

Should women be allowed to vote?

Note my question, that of the Lady of the Liberals, Polly Toynbee in the Guardian.

Also, this from the evil feminist gang at the Fawcett Society:

Historically, women have been more likely than men to vote Conservative and less likely than men to vote Labour. It is estimated that if women had not won the vote, there would have been a more-or-less continuous Labour government since 1945.

The gap in voting between women and men was at its widest in the 1950s and narrowed significantly in the 1980s. But by 1992, women were once again more likely to vote Conservative (support among women being respectively 44% and 34%) and many identified Labour’s failure to win over women voters as a decisive factor in their defeat.

A key part of Labour’s 1997 election strategy was focused on appealing to women. The strategy worked; the swing to Labour was 11% among women and 9% men. In 2001 women and men supported Labour in equal proportions, but women were still more likely than men to vote Conservative. By 2005 this had changed, with 32% of women voting Conservative, compared to 34% of men and 38% of women voting Labour, compared to 34% of men. If only women had voted in May 2005 Tony Blair’s majority in the House of Commons would be around 90, rather than the less comfortable 66 he won in reality. If only men had voted it would be a considerably more precarious 23.

"Watch, not do!"

An odd film from Nigel Kneale, only now extant in black and white due to the BBC tradition of incinerating all works more than a week old, but leaving copies in distant foreign archives.

Starts with trumpet music and the words "Sooner than you think". Titles then an orgiastic scene with a tannoy saying "standby, studio". Pans to a "production pod", and then cuts to a TV production studio where a bank of TV screens shows the orgiasts, reminiscent of nothing so much as Big Brother. Appropriate as the only think I know about this film is that it is credited with predicting reality TV.

Make them think "Sex is not to do, sex is to watch."

"Watch not do."

Stops war, breeding, etyc.

Muslamic ray Guns

"Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed."

-G. K. Chesterton

The continuing persecution of Libya for the attack at Lockerbie

From the specialist blog,

In 1991, when the indictments were issued, I first visited Gaddafi to beg him to allow his citizens to appear before a Scottish court. I also asked him to put up a picture of Flora on the wall of Hannah’s bedroom, beside one of Hannah. Beneath we put a message in Arabic and English. It was still there in 2010 when I was last in Tripoli.

It reads: “ The consequence of the use of violence is the death of innocent people.”

Also, the Scots have removed their double jeopardy law so as to allow a second crack at Megrahi's alleged, and acquitted, co-conspirator.

I’ve been in a mental hospital
I’ve been in a mental hospital
But I don’t like to talk about it – all the same
I’ve been in a mental hospital
I’ve been in a mental hospital
I’ve been in a mental hospital

Trying to iron out your problems without Jesus
Is only going to put more wrinkles on your face
Trying to sell Clan Of Xymox from your car boots
Ain’t going to get you to no sunny place
Just before you take that length of hosepipe
Just before you lock the garage door
Take a look at me, I used to surf with Satan
Now I’m landed safely on the shore

I was fooling with witchcraft
I was as ugly as sin
But then I got me a faithlift
And now I’m bubbling within
Yes sir

Economic situation

From Craig Murray:

While the perpetrators – a whole class of them – took massive rewards for the short term gains of the complex bubble scheme, they did not get punished by its collapse. Rather everybody paid up for them, resulting in there being a gross shortage of money to pay for anything else – hence the recession.

It has been argued that. in running this massive government deficit, we are in fact in the middle of the biggest Keynsian stimulus in history. The problem with that analysis is that, rather than be put into public spending which stimulates the demand, the money from this deficit has been put entirely into the banks, which use it to stimulate the appetite of their senior staff for cocaine.

...

They have to be part of a fundamental restructuring of our economy, which ties financial transactions to actual payments for real goods and services, rather than speculation on the future value of goods and services. Most importanly, redistribution of capital to the workers in companies needs to be initiated. I favour economic competition, but capitalism as currently consitituted brings an escalating concentration of capital and consequent concentration of political power, and a quite unacceptable leap in the wealth gap between rich and poor.

Child-nappers

Something here, reminded me of the practice also being conducted by the state before Franco in Nazi Germany and afterward by Pinochet, amongst others. Franco was supported by Gladio and Pinochet by Condor.

Undercover/informant/provocateurs

The FBI tried to carrot-and-stick a man into going under cover at a mosque. Similar to how Ruby Ridge started back in the nineties.

The man who was besieged there was entrapped by the FBI after he refused to inform and spy on his drinking buddies from the Aryan Nations, who had the only local beer-joint. Therefore he drank there without being one of them. So he looked like a likely candidate for spy. The FBI entrapped him first, getting him to saw off a shotgun an inch below the legal limit for one of their undercover men, then they said they'd let him off if he'd spy for them.

He said no, he stayed away from court hoping to avoid his problem so it'd just go away. Instead they came and shot his wife, his son and his dog. Drove tanks over his car. Behaved in an unsporting manner.

So nothing new.

GPS-guided, pin point precision...

...of the kind only possible with new fangled American guided missiles.

Craig Murray says here that, as seems to be common sense to me, the cruise missiles being launched several-per-target indicates less than total precision and reliability. The Tomahawk is generally guided by GPS, especially if no-one is to be risked to "paint" a target with a laser. Well, it turns out to be extremely easy to jam GPS. Not a hard sell to a dictator, put some of these gizmos in the ministry's reception block, Bob's your uncle, Fanny's your aunt and so forth. The missile goes sailing by into the orphanage next door, dictator don't mind that, America don't mind that. Orphans don't get a say.

In fact the American government, in the form of the FCC, has been running special commando operations to stop people jamming GPS in America, a $30 device jamming a signal for miles around. Oh, linky.

Female consensus

It's been suggested to me that society is inherently misogynist because women say it is, and they ought to know. Well.

Who they runnnig guns to?

Gun-running news from America, this bit:

All the partying wasn't exactly conducive to running a small business, especially one as complicated and perilous as arms dealing. As AEY grew, it defaulted on at least seven contracts, in one case failing to deliver a shipment of 10,000 Beretta pistols for the Iraqi army. Diveroli's aunt — a strong-willed and outspoken woman who fought constantly with her nephew — joined the two friends to provide administrative support. She didn't approve of their drug use, and she talked openly about them on the phone, as if they weren't present.

Made me think of this. What's the world coming to when the word Beretta makes you think of Americans running guns to their supposed enemies to keep a profitably murderous war going, rather than the funny hat it should bring to mind?

Occult Causes of the Present War

The Occult Causes of the Present War is an early example of the Nazis-as-devil-worshippers genre, but somewhat more subtle than most. It was written during the war itself. It does seem to have a rather odd slant, which is that Britain is the appointed nation of God while Germany is the historical root of all evil and specifically of the witch-cultus. The evidence provided, although studiously avoiding English history, doesn't provide evidence of a German root for the witch cult, but rather implicates France, presumably not intentionally.

He does, however, do a good job of dispelling the then-popular notion that Hitler was the root of Nazism, rather than a mere front for an ancestral and habitual evil, the witch-cultus. He presents the cultus as an anti-Christian movement but puts its origins before the advent of Christianity in Europe, opposing the religion of Jupiter (zeu pater) and Zeus.

He paints a sad picture of the former Kaiser in a library of occult books, long after his deposition, wondering where it all went wrong, looking for clues as to that force which once used him as its puppet in the first world war.

On the "the more things change the more they stay the same" front, he lists among the activities of the cult "the traffic in illegal drugs" and the "hideous trade in the souls of women" (p.9). The "ministers" of the cultus, he says, protect themselves by "assuming the guise and character of very ordinary folk", although some examples of the contrary spring to mind. A certain tower-based Sicilian black magician. Specifically mentions the cultus meeting in "faultless evening attire", a la Eyes Wide Shuti (p16).

Weishaupt gets a mention, as you might expect.

"Good ... is one and single, while evil, as the negation of rule, is multiple, and without order and system. So that good has no opposite reality confronting it at all. It stands beyond all contrasts, because evil is not a principle equal and opposite to the principle of good. It is merely the denial of principle altogether, an out-and-out negation." Compare the analysis in Levenda's Sinister Forces of the "left hand path" in tantra.

He mentions the idea that Christianity invented satanism, "a kind of bogey contrived by it to keep the masses in terrified subjection." However, he points out it was encountered by the very earliest Christians. It had, he says, "been the uncompromising foe of the official religion of imperial Rome long before the advent of Christianity", and lists some Roman measures taken against them. Again, compare Levenda. Compare also Shelby Downard's tales about elaborate inter-racial sex rituals amongst the upper ranks of the Ku Klux Klan.

Covers the rise of the Manichaean heresy. Describes it in a way very similar to the description of Four Pi given in Ultimate Evil. Traces from it the cults of the Bogomiles, Aldonistae, Cathars, and others. Makes the Cathars, quite rightly, out to be dictatorial, "impressing their dreadful doctrines upon the people whereever they went". The Cathars, of course, were a mystery cult, levels of knowledge being stratified as in the cult of Scientology. The bottom ranks, for example, entirely abstained from sex due to believing the flesh to be of satanic origin, while the leadership ran mass orgies amongst themselves.

The book catalogues at some length the great religious criminals or European history, dominated by the French. du Retz doesn't get much of a mention, "too well known", nor does his close associate Joan d'Arc, commonly believed to have been wrongly accused for political reasons. The rest are mostly men of the highest order of society, the King of France Henri 3, with his forest lair found to contain the remains of at least one child sacrificed to his unholy lord. I have seen a dungeon once used my a mysterious cult, fourteenth century. The legend, which is local goes that the Templars were kept there during their belated confinement in this area, held for trial down the road in Lincoln. Certainly there is Templar graffiti in the dungeon, as there also is in the remains of their preceptory nearby and the tower in which they were held in Lincoln itself. This dungeon, in fact, was owned by the Bishop of Lincoln at that time. The legend continues that in 1906 a major member of the Royal family, as was, went into the dungeon and retrieved something unknown from the wall. Certainly there is a hole in the wall, behind which lay a niche in the original stonework suitable for stoarage of a small object. The confessions state the local preceptory, Temple Bruer, was one of the four places in England with a Baphomet idol. But I digress.

The list continues with Gaufridi, a priest allegedly causing a nunnery to be plagued by demonic possession at Aix, a more detailed account of which is available in Colin Wilson's Mammoth Book of the Supernatural. A couple of other French nunneries possessed by devils, too.

Onto the milieu of another King of France, Louis XIV, the famous Affair of the Poisons, involving yet another priest, the king's favourite mistress the Madame du Montesspan, La Voisin, &c.. A killer cult operated, infants were purchased from prostitutes who had given birth without the modern day prophylactics then being in use, and were sacrificed, the naked bodies of aristocratic women acting as altars. A "vile traffic in drugs" is mentioned, but I think that's just the poisons, this being prior even to the founding of HSBC, currently the most successful bank explicitly founded for the purposes of the drug trade. I do wonder if the prominence of priests may be in any way related to the infamous "Wandering Bishops", so ably retailed by Levenda in the first book of the Sinister Forces trilogy.

The Affair of the Poisons ended with the king suppressing investigation, as the Salem witch-trials ended when the wife of the Governor of Massachusetts was accused. de Sade is mentioned as a devil-worshipper, not surprising given his early adherence to the principles of social darwinism, an anarchist philosophy much beloved by Passolini's "true anarchists", the fascists. More tales, orgies, black masses, satanist chapels, from all over Europe. The modern day Nice case, too, obviously later than the book. A new edition should be written, given the revelations of later years about the transnational cults presenting Gladio, with its attendant tales of perversion, murder, illicit trade in children, drugs, guns and so on.

Bathory not mentioned.

A thought comes to me from the book The History of the Religion of Atlantis, by the same very prolific author, in which he also reports near-identical rituals met with by the first white men to meet the natives of Mexico, as it is now.

That's about a quarter of the book. After that it goes to the Nazis themselves. Hitler, Rosenberg, Eckhart.

That'll do.

for what is Chatteris

Kiddie-sex-cult news from Wales

news

...

Judge Thomas said it was a “mystery” how jobless, scruffy Batley, who has several missing teeth, managed to control his women followers, who the judge termed “not unintelligent”.

The judge dismissed The Book of the Law as “a ludicrous document” but accepted that cult members were obsessed with it.

All the women in the cult had identical Eye of Horus tattoos.

...

Batley’s wife Elaine, 47, also had a tattoo of Tutankhamen’s face on her arm, a pentagram on her leg and an entire Egyptian script on her back.

According to one of the victims in the case, Batley’s wife was treated “like a slave” but the judge said she became a willing participant in her husband’s “wickedness”.

The jury heard how a young boy was tricked into having sex with her and she was jailed for eight years for indecency with children.

Batley’s long-term lover Jackie Marling, 42, as well as being “besotted” with him, was also obsessed with The Book of the Law, said Judge Thomas, who described her as his “second in command”.

She wept as she was sentenced to 12 years in jail for offences including aiding and abetting rape.

Tears also streamed down the face of bespectacled Shelly Millar, 35, who was said by the judge to have been behind “the prostitution” side of the operation.

Millar, who listed Batley on her mobile phone as “My Lord” was found guilty of indecency with children including a 12-year-old boy and was also described during the case as Colin Batley’s “sex slave”.

The court heard she earned £2,000 a month as a prostitute in Swansea and gave 25% of her earnings to Batley.

Judge Thomas told the defendants they were evil.

“When this case was opened to the jury you Colin Batley were described as evil,” he said. “That in my view is an accurate statement of your character. You set yourself up as the ruler of a sick little kingdom surrounded by three women who danced as your willing attendants regarding you as their master.”

Bryn Alyn was in Wales too, of course. I don't feel like going into Tutankhamun's kin-group at present.

Scruffy and unemployed. Sounds like me, or more relevantly, Marc Dutroux. I wonder who the clientele for his prostitution service were.

Return to rigint

I made the mistake of looking into the misogyny thread which still rages on without me on rigint. Of course Project Willow continues to threaten to leave if her opponents aren't silenced, people continue to misrepresent me, and cetera. I had assumed my leaving might placate Willow a bit, but apparently not. Rather some other people lamented my passing and she objected to that too, which is understandable.

One statement of hers in particular: "Or is misogyny not comparable to racism, as Stephen claimed?" Well, of course not. Sexism, that is what is comparable with racism. Well, sort of, anyway. Obviously racism is largely objectionable because of the long history of slavery and conquest of other races, that's why no-one minds racism against the French, because they always gave as good as they got. More or less. The core of my position on feminism is that no similar position was ever occupied by women. The idea that women were eternally oppressed, and continue to be, that every man in history, let's forget monks and so on, has had his mortal enemy sleeping beside him each night is sheerest idiocy.

It probably comes from the historians' tendency to look at the top of society: women had privileged but constrained roles, a sort of golden cage. Look at pretty much any era in English history and you'd find men and women at the bottom working on similar terms, varied slightly due to the implications of child bearing and so forth. Even working naked together down coal mines, until prudish government types banned it for fear of a grand unifying pinko orgy overthrowing religion and the state, or something along those lines. Were the sexes equal? No. Was one sex oppressed and persecuted, maybe burned so as to break their resistance to capitalism? No. The sexes worked together, along with their children, to survive in style. Maybe a few women were prohibited from becoming heads of state, or had to pay money to hire a man to perform their feudal military obligations for them. Boo hoo.

So misogyny is not the same as racism. Even sexism isn't the same as racism, because it doesn't have the same sort of historical context. Sexism, nonetheless, is not desirable. I don't object to women becoming doctors being legalised. I don't even object in theory to measures to encourage female participation in higher education when women make up only twenty or so percent of the total, although such measures obviously become actively objectionable when women make up 60% of the total. I don't object to making it legal for women to own property. Obviously, contrary to what you might have heard, that's been legal in England since at least the end of Roman times, but I wouldn't have objected to it stopping being as it was, when it was, if it had been, and changing to how it is now, if it had ever been different. Which it wasn't. Which is sort of my point.

Rather, my position is that the main pushers of sexism in the world today are the feminists, peddling myths, fear-mongering, presenting men as the scapegoats for all society's ills, trying to better the relative position of women to men when they are already privileged in so many ways. Despite all the talk of equality you rarely get a feminist so much as paying lip service to, say, the preferential treatment of women in family courts, the lack of women in dangerous jobs which are left to men, the lack of female selective service in America, national service in Norway, &c., the lack of higher education for men, the higher rate of male unemployment and incarceration and victimisation by violent crime and so on. When something is, or can be made to seem to be, bad for women, the feminists are right on it. When there's a bigger problem for men, they are conspicuous by their absence. So much for equality.

Another RI poster, one "Kate", writes 'However, here's the bright line, I think. When Stephen would refuse to stop beating the drum, the rhythm of which kept signalling the message, "There IS gender oppression; and WOMEN ARE THE OPPRESSORS. And any historical analysis which concludes that women have been oppressed for many centuries in many ways which are still ongoing in many cultures, is a MISUNDERSTANDING OF HISTORY. (cf. the history of laws concerning rape/marital rape)." (Obviously a paraphrase, not a direct quote, and how I understood what was offensive by my lights.)'

Well, on the rape issue I was actually saying that domestic violence had always been illegal and therefore that rape, although not a criminal offence in itself in a marriage, could still be prosecuted as assault which was illegal even against one's own wife. Also, my entire position is based on English history. I don't mind delving a bit into foreign cultures, Europe and America are pretty similar even if Holland don't have no juries and so on, or I don't mind arguing against the feminist claim that 90% of the work in Africa is ddone by the women, which seems like a rather racist impugning of dem damn lazy niggers to me. I can see there might be oppression of women in, say, Saudi Arabia, although it's hardly a picnic being a man there either. But there is a disparity against women in Saudi Arabia.

Also it's my position that there is oppression, but it's not women behind it, it's the elites. Feminists, by sowing division between men and women, by pushing the pro-women line which encourages the growing disparity in favour of women in our culture, by mongering fear of the male other to women, stops change for the better. It keeps the poor divided, divide and rule. It makes "progressives" channel their efforts into the counterproductive cul-de-sac of feminism, rather than the more productive values of socialism. So it is that since feminism rose back in the seventies our democratic socialist state, as seen from 1945 to 1979, in its declining form, has been destroyed. We lost the battle because they set us against each other, with feminism the cat amongst the pigeons and the elites as an aristocrat with a gun, blowing us out fo the sky.

So it goes.

Scape-scrotes

The man shot by Ashley Cole, apparently a thoroughly unpleasant individual even when unarmed, the incident of his telling a young tart she should feel privileged the great Ashley Cole had drunkenly vomited in her car comes to mind, but his victim on this occasion was called Cowan. An interesting surname of supposed Masonic significance. There was also a Cowan mentioned in the book "The Ultimate Evil" as being involved in the Son of Sam murders.

Blast from the past

Banking crisis as bust-out

As the old saying goes, if you owe the bank a thousand and you can't pay you're in trouble. If you owe them a million and you can't, or won't, pay, the bank's in trouble.

More interesting news from Private Eye.

Following their revelations about money owed to RBS by Lebedev and others, and the looting of Irish banks by their own executives, they've now revealed internal shenanigans at Kaupthing in Iceland. Not surprisingly for anyone following bank scandals from the Texas rent-a-bank scandal through S&L and BCCI to the present day, it's all theft. Not just incompetence as the MSM might have led you to believe.

It's the best way to rob a bank: own it, "lend" all the money to yourself, don't pay it back. Maybe collect a nice big bail-out too.

In the case of the Icelanders, Stamford (a billionaire already, retail magnate), the Tchenguiz brothers, the Gokal family and the Qatari royal family were all involved in the looting.

The Eye links it all to BCCI, the Bank of Cocaine and Crooks International as they call it.

A little fact they mention: the bank formerly known as Kaupthing Luxembourg is now owned by one Mr Rowland, a big Tory financier, and was ceremonially opened by Prince Andrew, but let's not go down that road.

News from the Eye

Britain sold Libya "spacecraft", according to MoD documents.

The house bought from Prince Andrew for a price well over the odds, which definitely was in no way any sort of bribe, will be turned into a school for impoverished children, in the fullness of time, according to Andrew (and Saif al-Gaddafi)'s friend as quoted in the paper of their friend Lebedev, currently still in default of several thousand million pounds owed to tax-payer owned RBS.

Trouble with LibDems and feminists in the Commons, as a debate timed for international women's day nearly scuppered by life boat talk. Profile of Labour MP from Liverpool, not actually from Liverpool of course, a rich woman who's never heard of Shankly, doesn't know why the locals don't read The Sun and brags about all the jobs she's had.

Blacklists in the Olympic workforce at Skanska.

A one two three four,
John the Baptist knows the score

Eye on Assange

As always.

Prince Andrew

Why are people surprised he had a friend who was a paedophile billionaire? Apart from the fact that there's a hell of a lot of paedophile billionaires about, one doesn't become an international trade envoy without being involved in shady international deals. International trade is all about shady deals, and is largely driven by billionaires and the criminal underworld. Not that those two are all that seperate, of course.

Also, on that front, Wootton Bassett is to be renamed "Royal" Wooton Bassett. A great honour, apparently. Ed, 'ead of the Labour party, things it's what they deserve for their sterling support of the armed forces. Something of a tactical error, I think, of Labour to continue to associate themselves with the creeping militarism of Blair and co..

Dutch paedophiles

Trouble in the low countries, again, not shocking. Not quite the Dutroux affair all over again, not the same link to the elites and intelligence services and gun-runners and bankers and Royals and diplomats and secret NATO operations and so on. And Holland, not Belgium. Of course all the evidence points to the international network being international, the paedophile network following the Gladio network which formed an international fascist terror conspiracy of the global elites.

Columbia

News from Alex Constantine about events in Columbia, a company found to be hiring mercenaries to patrol their territory, and more specifically to be hiring the local murderous paramilitaries to kill their enemies, several dozen innocent civilians included.

Not a first, the corruption and death of Columbia isn't due to any inherent flaw in its people, but the intrusion of the West. The drug money, the drug cartels run by the CIA (see Barry and the Boys, Daniel Hopsicker)...

The first "person" caught under the post-9/11 anti-terror-funding laws was Chiquita, once upon a time the United Fruit Company, famed for theatrically subverting the democratic government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, who had been sending the empty banana boats south loaded up with weapons for the right-wing paramilitaries. In return the paramilitaries kept order, by slaughtering attempted Trade Unionists and dissentient farmers. Funnily enough they gave up on the policy of monopolising land, which caused them to get rid of Arbenz, years ago and now let the natives own the land and kill them if they do anything but grow bananas for a pittance. Stops any sort of rebellion based on land redistribution.

BP, also, have had a bit of bother, being sued in Columbia, but happily being able to intimidate the natives so much that the lawyer of the farmers victimised by BP had to flee the country to London to avoid being killed.

The transnational elites.

Microsoft searching for blackmail material?

The usual funny take approach to a serious story. Isn't Frank Olsen's son laughable? Isn't Barney being blasted at detainees a laff riot?

On my departure from the rigourousintuition.ca message board

"Never wrestle with a pig: you get dirty and the pig enjoys it?"

Such is my newly adopted position on arguing with feminists. It's an impossible task, akin to repeatedly banging one's head against a brick wall. Hell, as they say, is the impossibility of reason, and feminists seem to provide evidence of Hell on earth.

This isn't my normal position, I've been repeatedly and in many different places deemed a "contrarian". Which is fair enough. I don't just disagree for the sake of it, as the term implies, but pretty much whatever I hear from any side of any argument I instinctively pick holes in and come to oppose. And the louder and more dogged and dogmatic someone is about their own brand of bullshit the more likely I am to oppose it. Well, you don't get a more fanatical band of bullshit peddlers anywhere than internet feminists. And there bullshit is so egregious I can't just say "eh, never mind, each to his own". Like this guy, I just can't back down from the argument:



Well feminists, as with all bullies, are very quick to play the victim. Obviously with feminism that also forms the basis of their ideology, that women are and always have been a persecuted and oppressed class along with their alleged advocates in the feminist movement.

Now, obviously, the rigint board has always been quite friendly to the feminists. You wouldn't know it if you were to be stupid enough to listen to them, mind, as one of their constant claims is that the board is "hostile to women", in some ephemeral way incapable of proof. The fact that the two moderators are outspoken feminists supposedly doesn't disprove this, or that the feminist contingent never hesitate to spread their bile in any thread that takes their fancy.

Most recently a bizarre and absurd thread was posted with the OP taken from a review of a book about the witch-trials, claiming those to be a patriarchal conspiracy to terrorise women into a life a subservient housewifery and involuntary labour for men, which somehow brought about the capitalism system. You don't need to be too much of a historian to see the flaws in this.

The review made a big deal of the psychological terror caused by burning witches and attributed to this the rise of capitalism, for fucks sake. Capitalism arose in England, where a grand total of 2 witches were ever burned. A very large minority of witches prosecuted were men. A majority of heretics, a far larger group than witches, prosecuted were men, and they actually were burned. Where does that leave the theory that witches were burned as a psychological warfare exercise againt women to force them into servitude to men and the capitalist state?

And, you know, housebound female work with men working out of the house didn't really become the norm for anyone but the rich until the twentieth century, the books laments the fall of serfdom, and so on, it's a big long pile of bullshit. But, that's characteristic of feminism, if you look at something you have to find a way in which in indicates the eternal subjugation of women, even if that means looking at it dishonestly.

And, obviously, rigint was full of feminists willing to defend this claptrap. More than that, full of feminists who started another thread about misogyny to spread the debate a bit wider. Claiming all of society is, and forever has been, some sort of conspiracy against women.

Obviously what those threads, which went to dozens of pages, eventually produced was nothing. Rather, the feminists maintained that they were right, that society is inherently misogynistic, that the board is hostile to women, and so on, with no evidence or argument, or even something as simple as a definition. I mean, an argument like "the misogyny of society is shown by the level of violence against women" can be refuted by showing statistics for violence against members of each sex. An argument could be made that the forms of violence, limited as they are, of which females are the majority of the victims, which are sex crimes, are somehow more oppressive to women. I could have argued with that. "It just is", however, isn't a reasonable argument.

More alarming, on a board which is normally civil and well-humoured, is the sort of vitriol which comes out of feminists. Contrary to their claim that the board is inherently hostile to women I was just about the only poster who was even sceptical of their most absurd claims, the rest of the participants in the thread steadfastly avoiding conflict or, more often, siding with the feminists. A poster going by "wallflower", for example, who was in sympathy with the feminists was hesitant to post, as a man, to a gender issues thread. Rightly so.

On the other hand Project Willow, one of the more feminist inclined posters, saw absolutely nothing wrong with accusing me of being a physical threat to other members of the board, conjuring up images of female posters reading my messages about how women have nothing to be afraid of due to being statistically unlikely to be victims of violent crime and reacting by cowering in their homes of a night, armed and waiting for the arrival of I, the teddy-bear of Damocles. And obviously she has repeatedly called for me to be banned, which to my mind is a faux pas. It's a bookable offence in football to call for the booking of another player, but football is a fairer place than the internet. For that matter if I'd been accused of being a lurking ever-present danger to harmless and terrified women, ever on-guard against my feared approach in a national newspaper I would currently be benefiting from a generous libel pay-off.

Incidentally I've always quite liked the idea of being wrongly branded a murderer by the Mail or Express, both of which have done so to others in the last few years and ended up paying out million-pound compensation.

So as I say, it's a very hostile sort of place for anyone not following the established feminist dogma on the board. I was getting pretty tired of arguing about it to be honest, although arguing isn't really the right word. As if I had a load of sandwiches and then said "I've had enough chocolate". But the point is, I'm not hungry any more, the only experience you ever have arguing with feminists is presenting facts and argument, the building blocks of debate, and getting nothing but personal abuse in return. Most feminists go in for LaSalle's Law, the ever-increasing likelihood during a discussion with a feminist that she will at some point insult one's sexual prowess, but at rigint they like to pretend to be on the side of the angels, so they accuse you of being a misogynist. Don't believe society is inherently misogynist? Well, that's because you're a misogynist.

But rigint has now jumped the shark, as they say. Formerly it was a place where it was worth arguing, rather than letting feminist dogma go unchallenged, due to its usefullness on other, less feminist-related topics, but they've gone too far now. I didn't mind when they made Canadian_watcher a mod, after all barracuda was already a mod and a more abrasive and irrational person it would be hard to discover.

No, the straw which broke the camel's back, as it were, was a decree from on high that no more debate on the issue of feminism was allowed. It has been announced from on high: women have been oppressed, continue to be oppressed and no questioning of this position is to be allowed under any circumstances. The first response to this was from someone scared of making jokes in case he violated the new law. Now I like Jeff Wells, he seems alright, his blog was one of the best around, and I can see why he might want to minimise discord on the board and so forth, and no doubt behind the scenes he's had complaints from the large and extremely vocal feminist contingent on the board. However, what he's done is take a board already overshadowed by a feminist gang and eliminate discord by banning opposition. He now has a board where people are scared of making jokes, where the mods admit the official policy is stalinist and where men are afraid to post to feminist-related threads even if they agree with the feminists, and now where opposition is simply forbidden by executive fiat.

Well, it would seem to be the logical way to do things. If you've been arguing that society is misogynist, and in response to evidence that women are, in fact, a priveleged class* you can only make personal accusations the only alternative to looking foolish is to lobby for banning of the opposition to which you have no logical response. That's the chilling effect of the feminist caucus on the board. You can argue on the basis of the accuracy of the evidence, of the relevance of the evidence, of the train of logic which leads from evidence to conclusion. Or, you can simply shout insults until your opponent goes away or is forced away.

Moral of the story: those with the loudest voices have the quietest enemies.





* On the basis that women have lower incarceration rates, lower unemployment rates, lower chance of being victims of violent crime, and are basically better off in every objectively measurable way.