[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Sign-in] [Mail] [Setup] [Help]
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
|
Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: Hillary and the Huckster's cult following While the "mainstream" media complain about small donations from "extremists" to the campaign coffers of the populist maverick Ron Paul, little if anything is made of much larger donations made to the campaigns of Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Mike Huckabee by a shadowy group often characterized as a "cult." According to small, backpage style reports, people connected to a group called NXIVM (pronounced "nexium," like the acid reflux medication) gave the Hillary juggernaut $30,000, while Huckabee raked in $20,000. NXIVM, originally known as Executive Success Programs (ESP), is a new age "human potential" group that describes its mission as "a new ethical understanding that allows us to build an internal civilization and have it manifest in the external world. It allows us to explore our most fundamental nature and to begin to redirect our power of creation, a power that we all possess in a very human sense. It is a place where humanity can rise to its noble possibility." Opponents call it a cult, complete with famous devotees, deep pockets, and a guru named Keith Raniere, a high IQ Svegali who says he understood quantum physics at age 4 and sleeps only two to four hours each night. Raniere is also known to his followers as "Vanguard." Among Vanguard's adoring female acolytes are hypnotist Nancy Salzman, former ("first woman"/"first Hispanic") U.S. Surgeon General Antonia Novello, Black Entertainment Television cofounder Sheila Johnson, East Coast "high society" figure Pamela Cafritz, Ana Cristina Fox, daughter of Vicente Fox the former president of Mexico, and Clare and Sara Bronfman, the daughters of liquor emperor Edgar Bronfman Sr., head of the World Jewish Congress. According to the Progressive Review, before NXIVM "Raniere ran a $30 million multilevel marketing business that imploded after federal agencies and regulators in 23 states alleged it was an illegal pyramid scheme." Keith Raniere was based in Arkansas, when the alleged ponzi scheme went bust in 1992 when Bill Clinton was governor. Huckabee is also a former Arkansas governor. Both Hillary Clinton and "Vanguard" are now residents of New York State. Keith Raniere and his "human potential" group have attracted the kind of attacks reserved for "cults." One accusation is that NXIVM/ESP lie to attract followers to programs like two week "intensives" (price tag: up to $7,500). Progressive Review quotes an article alleging that "detractors say [Raniere] runs a cult-like program aimed at breaking down his subjects psychologically, separating them from their families and inducting them into a bizarre world of messianic pretensions." A brochure NXIVM issued for a programs claimed that "As mentioned in Forbes magazine: 'There is probably no discovery since writing as important for humankind as Mr. Raniere’s technology.'" What NXIVM neglected to add was that the Forbes article, called "Cult of Personality," was anything but laudatory, with the reporter saying of NXIVM's teachings: "You might think it pure genius. Or maybe horse manure." The "no discovery since writing" quote in the article actually came from a NXIVM devotee, the hypnotist Nancy Salzman, Vanguard's second in command and known inside the group as "Prefect." The group has also been blamed for at least one suicide, another par for the course accusation for "cults." Suicide victim Kristin Snyder's last recorded words were, "I attended a course called Executive Success Programs (a.k.a. Nexivm) ... I was brainwashed and my emotional center of the brain was killed/turned off. I still have feeling in my external skin, but my internal organs are rotting. Please contact my parents ... if you find me or this note. I am sorry life, I didn't know I was already dead." It is no surprise that Hillary Clinton would take cash from such a source. After all, she's able to boast backers like drug smuggler Jose Cabrera; Passaic, New Jersey mayor Samuel Rivera, arrested in a federal corruption sting; Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton's national security adviser who pleaded guilty to stealing Clinton era documents from the National Archives; Abdul Rehman Jinnah, a Pakistani frozen yogurt salesman on the run from federal grand jury indictments after "chanelling" cash into the Clinton campaign; suspected Chinese "agent of influence" and convicted criminal Johnny Chung; and convicted thief/fugitive Norman Hsu. (Hillary gave back the donations organized by Hsu, setting another Clinton sleaze record: the Hsu circle's $850,000 was one of the largest sums ever returned by a politician.) However, as usurprising as it is to find Hillary Clinton up to her neck in corruption, what about "Jesus freak" Republican Mike Huckabee, a fire breathing fundamentalist, preacher and Christian Zionist, who says things like "Politics are totally directed by worldview. That's why when people say, 'We ought to separate politics from religion,' I say to separate the two is absolutely impossible"? A man who allies with lunatic anti-Catholic hatemongers and relies on deep seated fundamentalist distrust of Mormons to stave off his rival, Mitt Romney? Huckabee used to be connected with televangelism, and so his financial ethics may be somewhat "situational" given the climate of that overall milieu. After all, while governor of Arkansas he commuted the six year prison sentence of a serial drunk driver who also was a generous donor to various Christian aid groups; the man's wife also donated to Huckabee's Republican state machine. The driver went on to rack up yet another DWI only two years after Huckabee signed off on his release. Among the Huckabee warchest donors are Wal-Mart, Murphy Oil, Deltic Timber, and the Stephens Group. Huckabee, like Clinton, is a corporate shill, a bad enough fact pretty much ignored by the same media that castigate Ron Paul for tiny donations from people deemed politically incorrect. But why is this Christian fundamenalist taking payola from a "cult" like NXIVM? After all, Huckabee is hardly a religious pluralist. He was forced to apologize to Romney for saying "Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?", a remark which reveals the hatred he seeks to stoke among fellow evangelicals for Mormon "cultists." And Huckabee allies with the demented Christian Zionist televangelist John Hagee, who thinks the Pope is the Antichrist and that the "anti-Semitic" Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon. Clearly, both the Mormons and the Catholics are members of "cults" in the sick worldview of Huckabee's base. But not the likes of NXIVM members, apparently. As Judicial Watch said of Huckabee, "Governor Huckabee enjoyed a meteoric rise in the polls in December 2007, which prompted a more thorough review of his ethics record. According to The Associated Press: "[Huckabee’s] career has also been colored by 14 ethics complaints and a volley of questions about his integrity, ranging from his management of campaign cash to his use of a nonprofit organization to subsidize his income to his destruction of state computer files on his way out of the governor’s office." And what was Governor Huckabee’s response to these ethics allegations? Rather than cooperating with investigators, Huckabee sued the state ethics commission twice and attempted to shut the ethics process down." Perhaps both Clinton and Huckabee should heed the wise words of Keith "Vanguard" Raniere: "Humans can be noble. The question is: will we put forth what is necessary?"
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 1.
#1. To: X-15 (#0)
Clinton, Bush, Clinton, Bush. Huckabee, Romney. Same famiglia.
There are no replies to Comment # 1. End Trace Mode for Comment # 1.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest |
||
|
[Home]
[Headlines]
[Latest Articles]
[Latest Comments]
[Post]
[Sign-in]
[Mail]
[Setup]
[Help]
|
||