Father Elias Zahlawi: Syrian Priest’s Letters Rattle the Vatican

16 Nov 2021

Source: Al Mayadeen

Tim Anderson

Not once has the Pontiff pointed a finger at “Israel” or the USA for their roles in two decades of slaughter and ethnic cleansing, including the expulsion of Christians.

Syrian priest Father Elias Zahlawi has reportedly shaken Pope Francis over the Vatican’s vague statements on the US-driven Middle East wars. Not once has the Pontiff pointed a finger at “Israel” or the USA for their roles in two decades of slaughter and ethnic cleansing, including the expulsion of Christians.

While both men are in their 80s, Father Zahlawi has ministered in Damascus since the 1960s and, since 1975, at the Church of Our Lady of Damascus. Syrian-born, he studied in Jerusalem and founded the now famous Damascus ‘Choir of Joy’ in 1977. That huge choir has toured Europe.

Pope Francis attained the highest rank in the Catholic Church after being an Archbishop in Argentina, but he is said to be ‘haunted’ by accusations of his involvement in Argentina’s dirty war, carried out by a US-backed military dictatorship. No charge was ever laid against him but some years ago the Argentine judiciary found that the Catholic Church was “complicit in abuses”. 

According to some Syrian Christians, Father Zahlawi’s accusations over the Pope’s meaningless words – in face of the US and Israeli-led atrocities in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen – touched a raw nerve. 

The gentle, humble priest in Damascus, now 89 years old, wrote a series of letters to US and Syrian leaders, to the European Parliament, and to the last two Popes. But his first two letters to Pope Francis, in 2018 and 2019, were probably the most incisive. 

On 29 June 2018, Father Zahlawi asked Pope Francis:

“Why don’t you decisively and unequivocally adopt this very clear position of Saint Peter, against a western world that has spared nothing in its pursuit of total and absolute world dominance … including the systematic and continuous killing and destruction of total peoples and countries, including my homeland Syria?

“All of that is happening … either with complete media silence or worse yet, with the roaring noise of fabricated “facts”, designed to give credence to the worst obscenities, under the banner of “human rights, democracy, and freedom”.

“I have continued to read ‘with sorrow and dismay’ … the Roman Observer, hoping that one day I will find in it even one word of activism, [but] to be honest I only find in it … empty words, of the usual clerical content that we have gotten used to since the Emperor Constantine, with very rare exceptions. Yet outside the Church, in the west, there are many courageous and honorable voices.”

On 12 February 2019, he wrote again, after the Pope’s address to ROACO, the Board of the Society for Support of the Eastern Churches, where Francis was reported to have denounced the “great sin of war”, the thirst for “domination” of great “World Powers” and a refugee crisis which carries with it the risk of “eliminating Christians” from the Middle East. 

This was a more carefully thought out letter, in which Father Zahlawi raised eight points. He began by asking, gently: “I wonder if the many grave issues you raised … did not deserve a clearer stand of more commitment and responsibility?” 

His first point was to do with the Pope’s refusal to address the ethnic cleansing in Palestine:

“You say that “In the Middle East there is also a danger … of eradicating the Christians” … [but] do you believe that your audience and consequently your readers are ignorant, as your words suggest, of the countries which strive, with open insistence, and since the establishment of Israel, to totally eradicate the Christian existence in the whole Near East at the time they are about to accomplish this in occupied Palestine, which you call “the land of Jesus” and which has become the land of injustice, vengeance and death, and whose true name has been obliterated to become only ‘The Holy Land’?

In a second point he refers to the failure of the Pope’s generic words about the “pain” of the Middle East, and of land theft by ‘World Powers’, to address the US-led assault on his own country, Syria: 

“these ‘World Powers’, at the head of which is the United States of America … forced about 140 member states countries … to declare war on my home country, Syria, and drove to it, from a hundred countries … jihadis, haunted by the evil of money, blood, avarice, and power.”

Third, Father Zahlawi chastises the Pope for suggesting that the “diminishing” numbers of Christians in the region might be due to pressure from Muslims. “If you want to suggest that the Muslims are the ones who force Christians to leave ‘the land they love’ … how can you explain their emigration at a worrisome rate since the establishment of “Israel” while they [Christians] throughout hundreds of years, lived … side by side with the Muslims?” 

In his fourth point, he asks if the Pope while speaking of the Middle East as ‘the cradle of Christianity’ can possibly be ignorant that the “the Judaising of occupied Palestine …will very soon end every presence of Christians in ‘the land of Jesus’?”

Fifth, with regard to the Pope’s references to “great churches” in the Middle East, and ignoring the role of “Israel”, Father Zahlawi says “what you are practically doing … shackled by a horrific and sickly guilt complex towards the Jews” is to ignore and close your eyes to “the atrocities that are being committed openly and in flagrant violation of all laws, against all the Arabs, Muslims and Christians equally”, while even “some distinguished Jews” speak out against these crimes.

Sixth, he finds fault in the Pope’s overly general words about “the Middle East … [as] a land of death and emigration”, as the pontiff says nothing about the displacement of 12 million of the 23 million people in Syria, “without pointing an accusing finger at those who are responsible for these planned and inhuman emigrations in a country that was considered, before the so-called Arab Spring, as one of the safest countries on earth?”

In a seventh point, Father Zahlawi cites the Pope’s reference to “the grave sin … the sin of war”. But what does this mean, he asks, “without pointing, in the end, an accusing finger to countries such as the United States of America, Britain, and France, on the global scope, and at “Israel” on the scope of the Middle East, as they do not stop exploding totally unjust war … [in the name of] Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights?”

Finally, he refers to the Pope’s call that “the Middle East is a hope that we must take care of”, linking this to a revelation said to have taken place in Soufaniyeh Alley in Damascus in 2014, in the midst of the war on Syria. This revelation likens the wounds on Syria to those on Jesus. The clear, implicit message is: why has Pope Francis not denounced those who, like Judas, betrayed the people of Syria? 

Open Letter To Pope Benedict XVI From Arab Catholic Priest Father Elias Zahlawi

 April 1, 2010

By Father Elias Zahlawi
Father, Your Holiness

During these hard and critical times, which the world in general and our Orient in particular is undergoing, I would like to take the opportunity to tell you what is going on in my mind, what burdens my heart, especially being an Arab Catholic priest from Syria, concerning the invitation you kindly extended a few months ago to those responsible for the Eastern Catholic Churches, to hold a convention during October 2010 to discuss the conditions Arab and non-Arab Christians are passing through throughout the countries of the Orient.

There are three points that I would like to raise and discuss with your Holiness, from a son to his father.

The first subject is in relation to this conference.

I trust that all those who received your kind invitation had lauded this initiative.

But did anybody tell you that it came too late?

I am sure that the papers, which were put into their hands received their “admiration”.

But did anybody tell your Holiness that they do not reflect the facts on the ground in our Orient, past and present, except what the West sees and wants the rest of the world to see, whether the people of the Orient like it or not?

I am certain that the Vatican’s “specialized experts” as well as your ambassadors in the Orient try to honesty report what’s going on in it.

But would any of those attending the convention, those “experts” and “ambassadors”, see in general anything bu what those responsible for the Churches of the Orient want them to see? Or what their sphere of responsibilities allows them to see?…

Last but not least, I am certain that those who shall be attending said convention had uncovered dangerous gaps in the “important” papers submitted to them.

But did anybody tell your Holiness personally or in public during the previous convention’s meetings, that there are gaps that they did not discover? And why not, the Vatican or its many or few Western “experts” just ignored in the absence or just the small number of Arab or Oriental experts?

The second point is concerning those invited to the previous and/or forthcoming councils.

It is well known that those invited are either patriarchs, archbishops and/or heads of the various monastic orders.

May I take the permission to ask your Holiness: are you fully convinced that those who are invited do really represent Oriental Christianity, in what is for or against it, especially during these critical, not to say fateful, times?

I am afraid that the majority of them are outside what the Orient as a whole expects of them, both and equally its Christians and Muslims, which is due to their costly stances and declarations, as they have learned due to their positions and their own personal considerations to avoid or mitigate them, which exclude them for incorporeal or material reasons, which is apparent to all.

I said that this conference came late… too late. But what I am afraid of is that it shall come out to the world with phoney introductions, and hollow resolutions and decisions or wishes that shall not bring advances, but rather may delay them too much, because it could add new and heavy failures and fiascos, over and above the historical heavy and exhausting weights, wrongful Western policies and internally confusing and sometimes shameful and floundering policies.

As a result, I found that it is necessary, with your permission, to suggest expending the span of invitations extended by the Apostolic See, to cover courageous and effective voices of various Christian circles both Catholic and Orthodox, both cleric and secularist, in addition to the various Islamic circles, especially as most of the inhabitants of the Orient are Muslims, it is supposed that what is to be said in this convention or what is to be issued by it, should concern them equally much as they concern Christians.

Point three, is the span of Western churches, especially the Vatican, regarding to what takes place all over the world, and especially to the Arab and non-Arab Orient.

My first question is: Is it possible that I could be distancing myself from truth if I say that everything that is taking place all over the world in general and in the Orient in particular, was done by the West, I mean the United States, Western Europe, Canada, Australia and Russia in particular, these countries that appropriate all the wealth of our globe, and solely possess the great part of the striking force around it up till now?

My second question is: Am I distancing myself from truth if I say that most of what is now taking place, first in the Arab homeland and in the Islamic world and in the second place in the Islamic areas all around the world, is nothing but a reaction to the West’s grievances, which are reactions that started and continued in most cases, demagogic, bloody and spontaneous, then some of them continued in two modes of armed movements, first legal resistance in occupied Palestine, which was unjustly described by the European Union in September 2002 as being carried out by groups they labelled as terrorist organizations, second the fundamentalist resistance, starting first in Afghanistan against Russia and later against U.S. aggression then in Iraq and Pakistan that was the case of the Taliban and the al Qaida movements.

But, is there anybody who doesn’t know that these two movements were originally created by the United States itself?

But what is taking place in the heart of the Arab homeland, which is Palestine in particular, Palestine, which you no more call it in your Western churches other than “The Holy Land”, are not but wrongful wars and occupation that deem permissible anything: killing, imprisoning, torturing, siege and displacement against all the Palestinian Arab people, Christians and Muslims, and all of that is taking place under the eye sight of the entire world, with full support of the West, and what made Mrs. Clinton say: “Attacking Israel is equal to attacking an American city like “San Diego”, and what made Mrs. Merkel, the German Chancellor, say also shamelessly: “Attacking Tel Aviv is exactly like attacking Germany in particular…”.

But what has taken place and is still taking place against Palestinian Arabs by “Israeli” Zionist occupation!

What is the relation between what happened and what is happening to the Palestinian Arab people, for longer than sixty years, by Zionist “Israeli” hands, if compared to human rights as announced in “The Human Rights Charter”, and all international treaties, especially the Geneva Conventions, as well as hundreds of resolutions taken against “Israel” by the United Nations and its miserable Security Council? Did all the West become a slave to Zionism, to follow these dissolute double standards in the West’s relations with the Zionist entity on the one hand and the rest of the world on the other, which are the weak and deemed weak peoples, on the other hand?

With all of that, all European Churches keep silent. Yes we mean all of them, starting with the Vatican itself. It kept silent after the passing away of Pope John Paul II, with the exception of the courageous the Cardinal of Boston, Bernard Law.

I have been thoroughly and regularly reading for years the Vatican’s daily newspaper “corriereromano” http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.corriereromano.it, and was aware that since you became Pope, its language was flattened and neutralized in relation to the Arab / Zionist conflict, and the same concerning war tragedies, hunger, diseases, poverty, exploitation, forgery and organized plundering, which are tragedies that their beastly spreading over the world is aggravating… day in and day out!

This became apparent in a grievous manner during your personal visit to occupied Palestine, I expected from you words that are at least equal in courage and trueness of that your predecessor, Pope John Paul II, the moment he laid foot on the land of Syria in 2001, as he immediately demanded the execution of United Nations resolutions for a just and comprehensive solution of the Arab / Zionist struggle!

I was also expecting from you words, which are sympathetic, strong and courageous towards the Palestinian Arab people, that Zionism had been subjugating for more than sixty years to a terrible and continuous uninterrupted “Shoah” (Holocaust), with unlimited Western support, words that are at least a little equal to the sweeping sympathy that you expressed towards the Jewish “people”, for example what you expressed during your meeting with some of its American leaders during your visit to the United States on Feb. 12th 2009, and during the visit of the leading “Israeli” Rabbis to the Vatican on March 12th 2009! As for what you said on January 1st 2010 on the memory day of the “Shoah”, which the “corriereromano” (Page 2) that expresses that what is taking place in what remains of Palestine (The West Bank and the Gaza Strip) for over sixty years is completely absent from your memory!

I regret to add that the complete silence of Western churches was expressed in wretched words written by some Catholic bishops in France, Germany and Canada after their visits to the “Holy Land”, where they equated between the Arab victim and the Zionist butcher. They also expressed their “great” disturbance for the pains both peoples are suffering, and they were always concluding their word with calling on their peoples to raise prayers for “peace”, and to give financial help to the: “Holy Lands”.

We feel as if they have lost their eyesight, and they can no more see, erased their brains and thus can no more remember the history of Palestine, the homeland of Jesus Christ, neither the old nor the contemporary, and the vital change that is taking place in this homeland in its historical landmarks. And what happened to its indigenous population, Christians and Muslims, of massacres, displacement and genocide/extermination!

Father, Your Holiness,
At last, I have six questions, that I find necessary to raise to you at the end of this letter:

1st Question: does the anti-Semitism that the West, the Church, authority and people, practiced against the Jews, justify today’s spilling the blood of the people of the Arab and non-Arab East, starting with Palestinian Arabs, for the sake of the “poor” Jewish “people”? And does it justify all Western Churches keeping silence, concerning this injustice, while they continue to request remission for the sin of anti-Semitism, that it alone committed, excluding Arabs and Muslims?

2nd Question: isn’t it clear for all the West including these Western Churches, that this situation shall end up with two formidable evils that I find no possible forgiveness for:

The first evil, is the transforming of all the “poor” Jewish “people” to become a group of killers?

The second evil, is the emptying of all the Orient from its indigenous Christians?

3rd Question: Don’t you see with me a fearful and shameful similarity between what all Western powers are doing today all over the world in general and the Arab homeland and the Islamic world in particular, and what Western powers, which invaded the American continents starting with the 15th century had done? I mean the savage and systematic extermination of about forty to fifty million people of the indigenous population as per Western researchers themselves?

4th question, in facing all these crimes against humanity, is it enough that a new Pope to come, after four hundred years, requests the forgiveness from the slaughtered peoples, as the brave Paul John Paul II did, during his extraordinary visits to the world, so as the Church would say the Church had done what it had to do?

5th question, is it not necessary for Western churches today, and before tomorrow to get out of their silence, and speak the Gospel’s words, to defend the wronged, the poor, the hungry, the sick and the prisoners of war that Jesus identified all his love for them, who are no more individuals as Matthew the Apostle’s gospel said? On the contrary, they became peoples who cover the greater part of the world? Some may hear it and we be able to liberate some of the Western, the “rich” and the “haughty”, whether those who were fully liberated from God, or those who exploited him, as what is taking place in the United States of America, so as to finish of, in his name, with the Christians and the Muslims of all the Orient, and stir the peoples against each other, through sectarian and ethnic wars that spread day after day, and shall not grant mercy to anybody?

6th Question, which is a question that I hear you forwarding to me, as many Western bishops and priests had already addressed it to me: But “is there anybody to hear?” In turn I shall tell you and the whole Western Church: You are no better then Jesus, “He came to his special people, but they didn’t accept him”. But in spite of that, he spoke, and what Jesus said, nobody had ever said it, and nobody shall ever say it!

Yes, Your Holiness, I have something else to add.

Father, Your Holiness, please, I am your son, the Arab Catholic priest from Syria, I beg you, with all the love and importunity, to take the initiative and invite the truthful elite of those responsible in Western Churches and secularists, so as to discuss with those responsible and the truthful in the Eastern Churches and the rest of the world to discuss, discuss with Christians and Muslims, during the forthcoming convention, which you called for in October 2010, about the responsibilities of what is taking place today in the Orient and the rest of the world, so as to take the required and sincere stances before it is too late.

A lot of time has passed, and days are pregnant with new tragedies, that nobody wishes upon anybody else.

God’s world is spacious, as spacious as God’s heart, so I hope that your heart shall be spacious enough to grasp my words,

You, Your Holiness,

I beg you to pray for all my brethren in the Orient, Muslims, Christians and Jews, please accept your son’s love and respect.

Father Elias Zahlawi  – 13/3/2010

Translated from Arabic by: Adib S. Kawar and revised by Mary Rizzo for Tlaxcala

This letter was published at the Palestine Think Tank on March 22, 2010

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Pope Francis meets Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq – Now what?

 

…from PressTV, Tehran

[ Editor’s Note: The Pope and Sistani held an historic meeting between two of the largest religious bodies, the 1.2 billion Catholics and Sistani’s Shia Muslims. Despite Iraq’s Covid issues, the men met without masks, despite the Vatican’s ambassador to Iraq being in isolation due to exposure. Sunni Muslims later joined the talks during the Pope’s three day visit.

The topic, as expected, was peace and secuity, not only worldwide but in Iraq, a country where its once 1.5 million Christian community is estimated to be 250,000 now. And Pope Francis did not shy away from discussing religious persecution with ISIS in the crosshairs.

“We believers cannot be silent when terrorism abuses religion,” the Pope said. “Indeed, we are called unambiguously to dispel all misunderstandings. Let us not allow the light of heaven to be overshadowed by the clouds of hatred.”

He specifically singled out the Yazidi community who suffered terribly, with its women kidnapped, sexually abused, and sold openly in ISIS slave markets, all this done under the Saudi Imams having provided cover on the mass rapes of Yazidis by classifying the events as ‘temporary marriages’.

This was an act of terrorism in itself, one which not only the US never objected to, and the Saudi religious community never santioned the perpetrators. The US coalition’s stand down acted as de facto approval, because they wanted to Balkanize Syria.

A day of religious and judicial reckoning is long overdue on this horrible tragedy, with way too many taking the easy route of just looking away. May the Pope’s visit spark a badly needed flame for justice in the region… Jim W. Dean ]

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The Vatican

First published … March 06, 2021

Pope Francis, head of the Roman Catholic Church, has held closed-door talks with Iraq’s prominent Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani on the second day of his visit to the Arab country.

The meeting took place at Ayatollah Sistani’s residence in the holy city of Najaf on Saturday morning.

The office of Ayatollah Sistani said in a statement that he highlighted challenges facing mankind and stressed the role of belief in God and commitment to high moral values ​​in overcoming them.

Ayatollah Sistani cited injustice, oppression, poverty, religious persecution, repression of fundamental freedoms, wars, violence, economic siege and displacement of many people in the region, especially the Palestinians in the occupied territories as some of the major problems which afflict the world.

The cleric touched on the role which religious and spiritual leaders can play in tackling some of these problems. Ayatollah Sistani said religious leaders have to encourage parties invovled in conflicts, particularly the world powers, to give primacy to rationality over confrontation.

He also stressed the importance of efforts to strengthen peaceful coexistence and solidarity based on mutual respect among the followers of different religions and intellectual groups.

Ayatollah Sistani emphasized that the Christian citizens of Iraq, like all other Iraqis, should live in security and peace and enjoy their fundamental rights.

He referred to the role played by the religious authority in protecting Christians and all those who have suffered from the criminal acts of terrorists over the past years. After the one-hour meeting, Pope Francis travelled to the Iraqi city of Ur, which is believed to be the birthplace of Prophet Abraham (Peace be upon him).

The pontiff arrived in Iraq on Friday for a three-day trip amid concerns about the coronavirus pandemic. In addition to Ayatollah Sistani, Pope Francis has so far met with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi and President Barham Salih.

Iraq’s Christian community has seen its numbers drop from nearly 1.5 million to about 250,000, less than 1% of the population over the last two decades. Iraqi Christians fled the country to escape the chaos and violence that ensued after the US invasion of the country in 2003.

Tens of thousands were also displaced when the Daesh terrorist group overran vast swathes in northern Iraq in 2014, targeting various ethnic and religious groups of the country.

The Takfiri terrorist group was vanquished in December 2017 after a three-year anti-terror military campaign with the crucial support of neighboring Iran. Daesh’s remnants, though, keep staging sporadic attacks across Iraq, attempting to regroup and unleash a new reign of terror.

The terrorist group has intensified its deadly attacks in Iraq since January 2020, when the US assassinated legendary anti-terror Iranian commander General Qassem Soleimani and his Iraqi trenchmate Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis near Baghdad airport.

Saraya Awliya al-Dam group, part of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units better known as Hash al-Sha’ab, announced in a statement that it had stopped all its anti-terror operations during the pope’s visit and out of respect for Ayatollah Sistani.

The statement also condemned the assassination of al-Muhandis and General Soleimani who was targeted during an official visit to Iraq.

“We, Arabs, warmly receive our guests. Unlike the United States which betrayed the official guest of Iraq and warrior of Islam, General Soleimani, we will never follow such an approach,” the statement said.

Saraya Awliya al-Dam group also published a poster, featuring General Soleimani’s severed hand after the US drone airstrike and the Arabic words, “Does the Pope know this is the hand that brought the ringing of bells back to churches.”

Ahead of the visit, infectious disease experts had expressed concern about Pope Francis’ trip to Iraq, given a sharp rise in coronavirus infections there, a fragile health care system and the unavoidable likelihood that some people would crowd to see him.

Health experts say from a purely epidemiological standpoint, as well as the public health message it sends, the papal trip to Iraq amid a global pandemic is not wise.

Their concerns were reinforced with the news last week that the Vatican ambassador to Iraq, the main point person for the trip who would have escorted Francis to all his appointments, had tested positive for COVID-19 and was self-isolating.

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The Dangerous Alliance of Rothschild and the Vatican of Francis

22.12.2020 

Author: F. William Engdahl

Holy Moly! The most globalist and interventionist Pope since the Crusades of the 12th Century has formalized an alliance with the largest figures in global finance led by none other than that noble banking family, Rothschild. The new alliance is a joint venture they call “Council for Inclusive Capitalism with the Vatican.” The venture is one of the more cynical and given the actors, most dangerous frauds being promoted since Davos WEF guru and Henry Kissinger protégé, Klaus Schwab, began to promote the Great Reset of the world capitalist order. What and is behind this so-called Council for Inclusive Capitalism with the Vatican?

On their website they proclaim in a typical UN doublespeak, “The Council for Inclusive Capitalism is a movement of the world’s business and public sector leaders who are working to build a more inclusive, sustainable, and trusted economic system that addresses the needs of our people and the planet.” A more sustainable, trusted economic system? Doesn’t that sound like the infamous UN Agenda 21 and its Agenda 2030 daughter, the globalist master plan? They then claim, “Inclusive Capitalism is fundamentally about creating long-term value for all stakeholders – businesses, investors, employees, customers, governments and communities.”

They continue, “Council members make actionable commitments aligned with the World Economic Forum International Business Council’s Pillars for sustainable value creation—People, Planet, Principles of Governance, and Prosperity—and that advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.”

In announcing the deal with the Vatican, Lynn Forester de Rothschild declared, “This Council will follow the warning from Pope Francis to listen to ‘the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor’ and answer society’s demands for a more equitable and sustainable model of growth.”

Their reference to Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum is no accident. The group is yet another front group in what is becoming a globalist bum’s rush to try to convince a skeptical world that the same people who created the post-1945 model of IMF-led globalization and giga-corporate entities more powerful than governments, destroying traditional agriculture in favor of toxic agribusiness, dismantling living standards in industrialized countries to flee to cheap labor countries like Mexico or China, will now lead the effort to correct all their abuses? We are being naïve if we swallow this.

Rothschild and pals

First off it is useful to see who are the “inclusive” capitalists joining forces with the Pope and Vatican. The founder is a lady who carries the name Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild. She is the wife of the 90-year old retired mega-billionaire head of London’s NM Rothschilds Bank, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild. Lady Lynn however is from “commoner” roots, born into a US working class family in New Jersey whose father, as she tells, worked two jobs to put her and her brothers through law and medical schools. She seemed to have had some influential mentors, as she went to Wall Street then to telecoms including Motorola and made reported tens of millions before hooking up with Sir Evelyn and his reported $20 billion in assets. Reports have it that Henry Kissinger played a personal role in encouraging the Transatlantic union of the two.

Lady Lynn is interesting as well beyond her famous husband. According to the list of names of those who flew on the private jet of convicted child sex trafficker and reported Mossad operative Jeffrey Epstein, one name that appears is “de Rothschild, Lynn Forester.”

It is interesting to note, that the same Lynn Forester in 1991, before she took Sir Evelyn as her husband, generously let a British friend have full use of one of Lynn’s Manhattan apartment properties, following the apparent murder of the woman’s father, British media tycoon and Mossad agent, Robert Maxwell. The British friend of Lynn, Ghislaine Maxwell, today is awaiting trial for complicity in child sex trafficking as the partner of Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell reportedly maintained the Manhattan address of Lady Lynn until very recently to register a bizarre non-profit called Terramar that she and Epstein set up in 2012, allegedly aimed at saving our oceans. When Epstein was arrested she quickly dissolved the non-profit. One of the donors to Ghislaine’s TerraMar was something called the Clinton Foundation, which leads to the next friend.

Lady Lynn has another long-time friend named Hillary Clinton, whose husband, Bill, was also logged on Epstein’s Lolita Express private jet, around two dozen times. Lynn and her new husband, Sir Evelyn, in fact were so close to the Clintons that in 2000 the Rothschild newlyweds spent part of their honeymoon as guests at the White House of Mr and Mrs Clinton. Lady Lynn after that became a major fund-raiser in 2008 and again 2016 for a possible Hillary bid for President, called a “bundler.” She also advised Hillary on her economic program, a free market one based on Adam Smith as she described it in an interview once.

Lady Lynn’s “Guardians”

The Rothschild venture with the Vatican at this point, in addition to co-founder Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, includes hand-picked money moguls and their select foundations who pompously call themselves the “Guardians.” That’s a term sounding more like a South Side Chicago gang or some kind of mafia overlords. They call themselves the moral guardians, together now with their new friends at the Vatican, for reform of capitalism.

The Guardian member list includes Rajiv Shah, the CEO of the Rockefeller Foundation, and former partner of the Gates Foundation’s AGRA scam to introduce GMO seeds in Africa. The Rockefeller Foundation has been involved in promoting a pandemic “lockdown” since 2010, and is a core part of the WEF Great Reset agenda. He just released a Rockefeller report, Reset the Table: Meeting the Moment to Transform the US Food System.

Rothschild’s Guardians also include Darren Walker the CEO of the Ford Foundation. Those two foundations, Ford and Rockefeller, have done more to shape an imperial American foreign policy than even the US State Department or CIA, including the funding of the failed Green Revolution in India and Mexico, and the creation by Rockefeller funds of GMO crops.

The head of DuPont, a GMO giant and chemicals group is another Guardian as well as scandal-ridden vaccine and drug companies, Merck and Johnson & Johnson. Merck lied about the risks of its arthritis drug Vioxx until more than 55,000 users died of heart attacks. Johnson & Johnson has been involved in numerous frauds in recent years including around negative effects of its anti-psychotic drug Risperdal, illegal presence of cancer-causing asbestos in its baby powder, and potentially thousands of legal actions for its role as a leading supplier of the opioid in Purdue Pharma’s deadly prescription painkiller OxyContin.

Other Guardians include CEOs of Visa, Mastercard, Bank of America, Allianz insurance, BP. In 2016 Visa along with USAID were behind the catastrophic Modi experiment to introduce a cashless economy in India.

Notable also is Guardian Mark Carney, former Bank of England head and also advocate of cashless digital central bank currencies to replace the dollar. Carney is now United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance.

Carney is also a Board member of the Davos World Economic Forum, the public promoter of the Global Reset of capitalism to impose the dystopian Agenda 2030 “sustainable” economy. In fact several of Rothschild’s Guardians are on the WEF Board, including billionaire Marc Benioff, founder of cloud computing Salesforce, and OECD head Angel Gurria. And ex-Credit Suisse CEO, Tidjane Thiam is on the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum.

Other Guardians of the inclusive capitalism transformation include the head of Bank of America, which bank was sued by the US Government for fraud connected with the 2008 US subprime mortgage crisis, as well as for laundering money for the deadly Mexican drug cartels and Russian organized crime. The select Guardian list also includes Marcie Frost, the controversial head of CalPERS, the huge fraud-ridden California state pension fund managing over $360 billion.

The head of State Street Corporation, one of the world’s largest asset management companies with US$3.1 trillion under management, is another Guardian. In January 2020 State Street announced it would vote against directors of companies in major stock indices that do not meet targets for environmental, social and governance changes. This is what is called Green Investing, as part of so-called Socially Responsible Investing. The WEF strategy, pushed also by WEF board members like Larry Fink of BlackRock, reward companies that they deem “socially responsible.” This is the key to the inclusive capitalism agenda of not just Rothschild’s inclusive capitalism Guardians, but also the WEF.

Their website claims that the Guardians manage more than $10.5 trillion dollars and control companies that employ 200 million workers. Now a brief look at their new Vatican partner.

Vatican Morals?

Ironically, or maybe not, Pope Francis, the partner chosen to give Rothschild’s group of mega-capitalists “moral” credibility, is himself embroiled in what could be the largest financial scandals, fraud and misuse of church funds in the modern history of the Vatican. That, despite the fact Pope Francis declared as new Pope in 2013, one of his main tasks would be to clean up the scandal-ridden Vatican finances. That has hardly taken place even after more than six years. Some Vatican observers even claim the financial corruption has worsened.

The unravelling scandal revolves around now-disgraced Cardinal Angelo Becciu who until 2018 was de facto chief-of-staff to the Pope and regular confidante. Becciu was Substitute for General Affairs in the Secretariat of State, a key position in the Roman Curia until June, 2018 when the pope elevated him to Cardinal, ironically enough, responsible for the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Becciu, clearly no saint, was able to invest hundreds of millions even billions over years of Church funds, including donations for the poor in Peter’s Pence, into projects he chose with a former banker from Credit Suisse. Projects included €150 million share in a luxury London real estate complex and $1.1 million into a film, Rocketman, about the life of Elton John. That comes to light as the ongoing Vatican child sex scandals caused Pope Francis to defrock Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, the first Cardinal to fall in the Church’s deep sexual abuse charges.

Italian press reports that the Pope knew about the dubious investments of Becciu and even praised them before the depth of the scandals broke. In November, 2020 Italian police raided the residence of Becciu’s former Vatican accountant and found €600,000 in cash and evidence the Vatican employee received $15 million in fake invoicing over years.

With a background like this, the new Council for Inclusive Capitalism with the Vatican of Lynn de Rothschild warrants close scrutiny as they clearly plan big things along with Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum to “reform” the world economy, and it won’t be nice or moral we can be sure.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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Phoenix and the rebirth of evil part I:

By Ken Leslie for the Saker Blog

The Poglavnik of the East^[1]

“I know no way of judging the future but the past.”

Patrick Henry, 1765

“This time, it’s different”

Any gambler bleeding thousands of dollars at a table in Las Vegas

These days we all seem preoccupied with daily events which are taking a turn for the worse. No, not everything is “bad” but only those who are sound asleep do not hear the cold winds of war rattling the windows. My previous essay “Two clicks to midnight” has caused quite a stir with over 20000 views and hundreds of comments. I put it to you that this is not the result of my brilliant writing and analytical skills (I mean this) but the ability to express something that many people keep hidden inside—questions about the true nature of the system in which we live, their inchoate fears and half-buried memories. I believe in the cathartic power of the truth (the way I see it) and it appears that so do many others. This in itself is encouraging because it means that under layers of lies, anxieties, complexes and dogmas, there lies a good human heart capable of love and redemption. Given the current state of the world, this is the only way I know of fighting for a more hopeful tomorrow—warts and all.

Our gracious host has achieved fame (he might disagree!) through a knowledgeable and timely analysis of the Western military-political nexus that is using all its power to destroy Russia and China. His prescient and nuanced assessments of the situation in the “East” have made many of us loyal visitors and contributors to this blog. Now, I can’t hope to offer anything like the military analysis a la Saker of Andrey Martyanov. And that is just as well because they are doing an excellent job. What I can do well is to observe certain historical patterns and try to interpret them in the modern setting. As knowers say, history does not repeat itself but it rhymes. It is these “rhymes” or similarities between historical events that tell us all we need to know about the limited cognitive grasp of the human beings as well as partial predictability of human behaviour. Of course, the complexity of the systems in question precludes any confident claims but nevertheless—past is all we have and we’d better learn how to use its lessons pronto.

Of course, there is danger of overestimating the importance of past events but it is equally dangerous to ignore them. In applied probability, these two types of bias are called “Hot Hand” and “Gambler’s fallacy” and they hamper any analysis of complex events. Yet, as noted by Patrick Henry above, all we have is the past and we’d better study it carefully—if judiciously.^[2] And then, there are the emotions—yearning for justice in the face of a blatant injustice and anger at the abandon with which criminal elites hiding behind the holiest of principles have destroyed innocent human lives. After decades if not centuries of demonisation of Russia in all its forms, the time has come to fight back—to turn the light of history on its enemies. As some of you might have noticed, I have focussed almost exclusively on Roman Catholicism at the risk of alienating some readers. This does not mean that evil is the exclusive province of the Vatican but that a large proportion of recent historical tragedies are closely linked with if not caused by it. Given the nature of these tragedies, I intend to explore the nefarious role of this “Official” Christianity in some detail.

In the infernal Encyclopaedia of human beastliness that is kept bound and chained to the gates of Hell there are few events as heart breaking and anger provoking as the War in Vietnam, one of the longest and bloodiest conflicts in modern history. “Conflict” is not the right term here. Rather, the Wars in Vietnam which started in 1945 and ended in 1975 represent an archetype of naked criminal aggression and genocide waged by all weapons in the arsenal of the Western “democracy” against an old and proud people which only wanted to see the backs of foreign invaders. 19^th Century was very unkind to the peoples of East Asia in that it brought with it an unstoppable surge of Western imperialism greedy for raw materials and cheap labour. The British, the Dutch and finally the French swooped on the rich rubber and timber-growing fields of Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam respectively, crushing any resistance with the aid of modern weapons and advanced political warfare techniques. Although each of these examples deserves in-depth treatment, I wish to devote and dedicate this essay to Vietnam, whose suffering brings tears to any feeling person’s eyes even today 45 years after colonel Ted Serong clambered up the rickety ladder on the roof of the Saigon embassy leaving the long-suffering country in utter ignominy. If you are wondering who this is, you’ll need to wait for part II.

You may ask—why now? There are several reasons. First, historical amnesia is very dangerous and as stated by President Putin, deliberate attempts by those who fought on the side of evil to embellish their role and soothe their ravaged consciences can only bring us closer to another global tragedy. Change is inevitable and needed but not at the expense of the rehabilitation of the worst human instincts and thirst for iniquity. Second, even in the bloody milieu of European colonial conquest, Vietnam stands out as a symbol of martyrdom—in the Christian sense, despite or because most crimes against the Vietnamese people were committed in the name of a Church which calls itself the only true Christian faith. Third, obsessed by Eurocentrism, we tend to forget that lives and struggles of other peoples are equally as important. Finally, the topic I shall focus on is highly relevant in the modern era of limited and “targeted” military and paramilitary operations underpinned by a vast human and electronic intelligence apparatus and the largest military in the world. There are a lot of parallels between what happened in South Vietnam from 1967 to 1973 and more recent US-sponsored or executed crimes in different parts of the world.

Although I’d love to expound, this is not the place to retell the story of the tragedy of Vietnam which began with a mid-19^th Century scouting expedition by several French Jesuits on behalf of French capital. Their demise at the hands of Vietnamese patriots served as a pretext for what Wikipedia describes as follows: “Vietnam’s sovereignty was gradually eroded by France, which was aided by the Spanish and large Catholic militias in a series of military conquests between 1859 and 1885.”^[3] Although the Vietnamese fought bravely against the legions of newly-converted “rice Christians”, they could not withstand the onslaught of one of the premiere imperial powers of the day.^[4] After a couple of decades of resolute resistance, the kingdom of Vietnam became another French colony to be exploited and visited by adventurers.

In their obsession with the hard-nosed “it’s all about the money” agenda, many seem to ignore the fact that the conquest of a people requires the destruction and erasure of their spiritual and cultural identity. While money is of paramount importance, it is useless if the people resisting are aware of their history and culture. This allows them to draw from deep wells of history and replenish their strength. Very often, they come out victorious in the end. The strategists of the global spiritual conquest in the Vatican have been well aware of the power of religion as a weapon to be wielded against indigenous cultures. The psychology of religious conversion is a fascinating psychological topic which deserves a separate article. Once a person converts (for personal gain or under duress), he or she becomes isolated from or ostracised by their family and wider community. Exposed to the opprobrium and shame, the new convert turns to his new family—priests and laymen who are masters at leveraging the sense of guilt and anger. This is combined with the “carrot”—the convert is told that they are special because they belong to the “true” faith. They are initiated within the new ingroup and are soon ready to turn their anger against their former friends and kin.^[5]

In Vietnam, this spiritual war (which for me is the most pernicious and least explored form of aggression) resulted in the formation of a class of Vietnamese Catholic converts who struggled to reconcile their origins with a foreign religion and culture to which they were now irrevocably bound. These people became members of a nascent Vietnamese middle class whose ambition to better themselves involved supporting the French occupation and generally renouncing their Buddhist heritage. They often received a French education and tried to emulate French culture and mores. The ones who excelled were employed as low-level bureaucrats or officers. This soon brought them into conflict with those Vietnamese who saw French presence and religious encroachment for what it really was—a brazen attempt to behead the Vietnamese civilisation (which owes a lot to China) and replace it with a docile population of useful “supplétifs”, that is, deracinated aboriginals who are given just enough incentives to keep them in check. The hatred of their community would do the rest.

The ignominious defeat of the French state in 1940 was momentous for France’s colonies which soon had to decide between Petain’s Vichy and De Gaulle’s Cross of Lorraine. That same year, the seemingly unstoppable Japanese Imperial Army occupied the French Indo-China and hammered out a pragmatic agreement with the Vichy colonial government which allowed the latter to continue governing the colony with the Japanese taking on a largely overseeing role. Needless to say, the fruits of the colonial plunder started travelling due East resulting in deadly famines and the birth of a movement of Vietnamese patriots who were guided by (but never subservient to) the precepts of Marxism-Leninism.^[6] This cell of exceptional individuals who devoted their lives to the struggle for freedom having spent (cumulatively) over 300 years in French prisons were led by the most exceptional of their number—one Nguyễn Sinh Cung better known as Ho Chi Minh. A tireless revolutionary, socialist, humanist and fighter against oppression, Ho had led an incredible life of adventure, adversity and reincarnation. After being largely side-lined for most of his political life, Ho grabbed the moment in 1944, when he and his comrades organised and led the indigenous guerrilla resistance to Japanese occupation. The name of the movement for the liberation of Vietnam became world-famous as the Viet Minh.

Following the war, Ho Chi Minh declared the independence of Vietnam in August 1945. He was keen to enlist the help of the United States whose anticolonialism under Roosevelt offered hope to many liberation movements. However, with the death of FDR, the US foreign policy doctrine experienced a U turn. Instead of continuing their assistance to Ho provided by the OSS in the fight against the Japanese, the newly-hatched American Empire decided to defend the colonial status quo on the pretext of fighting communism. Although exhausted and shamed by its wartime record, France reneged on any promises made by the pre-war Blum government and decided to restore its colonial empire in the hope that the false grandeur of pith helmets and white dress shoes would constitute a sufficient recompense for being a willing partner of Hitler’s own empire just a year earlier (resistance excepted).

To cut a long story short, after eight years of bloody struggle, the Vietminh succeeded in liberating their country following a brilliant victory at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. This gave rise to an international conference at which the USSR and China convinced Ho to agree to a temporary partition and a unification following a “free and fair” election in 1956. There was some anger at the time at the role Ho’s two mentors played but their reticence was understandable given the current political and economic situation as well as the hawkishness of the US foreign policy apparatus. Nevertheless, this was the crucial point in the evolution of Vietnamese Golgotha because the names of Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap became household names overnight—the great heroes of the liberation struggle—so much so that even the Americans knew that were an election to take place, the Viet Minh would take the vast majority of votes. This was absolutely unacceptable to warmongering criminals the Dulles brothers and their minions. A free Vietnam friendly to China and the USSR was a nightmare which called for a nightmarish solution. The first task for the dark cabal was to find somebody who could rival Ho as a figure of national prominence and significance. This was impossible in principle because most prominent Vietnamese politicians (including the emperor Bao Dai) were in France’s employ and the people of Vietnam at that point would rather eat raw nettles than countenance another French puppet ruling over them. However, everything was not lost.

In one of many Roman Catholic seminaries in the United States, an austere, celibate Vietnamese man, short in stature but full of noblesse oblige was waiting to be interviewed by one of the leading RC politicians of the era, Senator Michael Mansfield. Diem had left Vietnam in 1950 ostensibly to take part in a Vatican celebration but in reality, to lobby for the RC takeover of Vietnam under his family. Diem’s reputation as a nationalist who equally opposed the French and the Vietminh was played up for the media.^[7] What was kept in the background was that Diem was a scion of the most powerful RC family in Vietnam as well as the fact that he had collaborated with the Japanese during the war. One of his brothers, Bishop Ngô Đình Thục was one of the most senior RC clerics in Vietnam and the co-ordinator of the takeover of this largely Buddhist country. Having been vetted by “Hitler’s Pope” Pius XII, Diem immediately acquired access to various offices discretely tucked away inside the massive brownstone buildings of Georgetown in which the fate of Vietnam was being decided at that very moment.^[8] Having received the necessary instructions from his Padron in Rome, the ultra-powerful Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Francis Spellman put into motion a process that would result in one of the greatest instances of unprovoked carnage in history.

Diem’s religious zealotry and hatred of Buddhism made him an immediate hit with the Roman Catholic elites in the USA who yearned to redeem the catastrophic “loss of China” to the Communists. Immediately, a “Vietnamese Lobby” was formed consisting of some of the most prominent and influential Roman Catholic personalities on the US scene including Cardinal Spellman, Joseph and John Kennedy, judge William O. Douglass, senator Mike Mansfield and many others. Needless to say, Diem was favoured by the Dulles brothers who would play a crucial role in the formation of his semi-secret system of oppression. Under their tutelage and boosted by American money, the hitherto unknown Catholic zealot would turn Vietnam into a bulwark of anti-Communism modelled on fascist Catholic satrapies such as Spain, Croatia and Slovakia. It did not matter that Diem was almost completely unknown to the people or that up to 90% of Vietnamese population was Buddhist. These inconvenient facts would be overcome by enthusiastic CIA engineers of chaos whose task was to ensure Diem’s rule at all costs.

What happened after this is generally well known. With the help of the CIA man Edward Lansdale, Diem crushed his opponents and became president of Vietnam after a 98.2% victory in a sham election. Soon after, he instituted a reign of terror primarily targeted against Buddhists, Cao Dai and Hoa Hao sects as well as members of the Viet Minh who had remained in South Vietnam after the partition. On the instigation of his American bosses, he reneged on the promise of reunification and in order to strengthen his shaky hold on power organised a massive transfer of Roman Catholics from North to South Vietnam. Despite the North’s leniency towards their religion, many fell for the expensive and effective propaganda campaign funded by various US Catholic Charities and the CIA. “Virgin has gone to the South” was a potent call for hundreds of thousands of Catholic believers to leave their ancestral homes and start afresh in the newly born Civitas Dei.^[9]

This unprecedented demographic shift had a twofold effect: it strengthened Diem’s popular base with Northern Catholics being vastly over-represented in his oppressive apparatus including military, intelligence, police as well as countless Catholic militias strewn around South Vietnam (e.g. Father Nguyen Lạc Hoa’s “Sea Swallows).^[10] On the other hand, the population movement increased the political homogeneity of the North making its preparations for a war of liberation easier. Here is a quote from a research essay by Peter Hansen: “Jean Lacouture, for example, suggested that Ngô Đinh Diệm deliberately created a “ring of steel” by strategically placing settlements of loyalist Bắc Di Cư around Sài Gòn to protect himself both from communists and from potential enemies within the RVN: ‘As a result, surrounded by fortifications turning them into strategic hamlets, some villages filled with refugees formed a sort of a belt surrounding Saigon; it was as though the beleaguered [Ngô Đinh Diệm] regime wanted to fortify its capital with an iron guard composed of those people most hostile to communism and most violently attached to militant Catholicism.’”^[11]

By 1955 everything was in place. The influx of American military and academic advisers, law-enforcement officials and economic experts gave Diem an ostensibly modern system of state repression together with his own FBI, special units, a plethora of secret services and even his own political party (Can Lao, a child of his brother Nhu’s political ambitions) which underpinned the regime’s security through the infiltration by its members into all important institutions. Diem’s secret police was headed by Dr Tran Kim Tuyen, a Catholic who excelled at cruelty and pro-regime zeal. The signal was given for an all-out campaign of anti-Buddhist and anti-left terror. Tens of thousands of innocent Buddhists were imprisoned in animal-like cages or killed by Diem’s assassination squads (akin to the Nazi Einsatzgruppen).

Like in Croatia, whole villages converted to Catholicism in order to avoid imprisonment, torture and death.^[12] Hundreds of thousands were relocated into American-funded Potemkin villages called Agrovilles which were supposed to disrupt the traditional patterns of village life deemed unfriendly to the ways of the Catholic puppet Poglavnik. The terror reached its peak in 1958 and 1959. Hitherto dormant on the orders of the Hanoi government, the surviving remnants of the Vietminh started to organise and offer minimal resistance to the crazed crusader. The signal from the North to transition to armed struggle was issued with great reluctance—only after the vast majority of old and experienced cadres was eliminated by Diem’s death squads and there was a serious risk of a rebellion against the Socialist Lao Dong party by the disgruntled activists in the south.

Despite his best (worst) efforts, Diem could never overcome the ultimate barrier which separated him from the people of Vietnam—his religion. He always viewed his role as that of a Roman Catholic autocrat who holds the power of life and death over his flock. Like most religious transplants, he did not appreciate the deep animistic, Buddhist, Confucian and Daoist roots of the ancient Vietnamese civilisation. He did try to emulate these superficially for the sake of appearance but ultimately failed. He even emulated Pavelic and his successors by trying to create a congregation of “loyal” Buddhists who would support his anti-Buddhist crusade.^[13] Nevertheless, for a short time, Diem was lionised by his masters in Washington as… oh, think of something… George Washington of Asia who stood alone in his deadly struggle against “Communist oppression”!. The honeymoon might have lasted longer but for the rapaciousness and zealotry of Diem, his family and his regime enforcers. The rumours of the nation-wide killing spree which had resulted in a large number of dead, imprisoned, dislocated and dispossessed non-Catholics started to reach the pricked ears of the Western media. No amount of slick propaganda could hide the horrors of Diem’s torture chambers and death squads (shades of Papa Doc Duvalier and his Ton Ton Macoutes). Not only did Diem antagonise the absolute majority of Vietnamese people including many hitherto loyal Catholics, but his masters in Washington were starting to get alarmed—similar to the German and Italian unease with the genocidal rage of Pavelic’s Ustashe whose cruelty threatened to upset Hitler’s European apple cart.

John F. Kennedy who had by then replaced an aging Eisenhower was faced with a serious problem. As a loyal Roman Catholic and a protégé of Cardinal Spellman, he was a passionate supporter of Diem and his Independent Croatia on the Mekong. As a young senator, Kennedy owed the support of his (mainly Irish Catholic) Boston constituents who were clamouring for a war against the USSR to his rabidly anti-Soviet and anti-communist pronouncements. Once he reached the top spot, he had to face some hard truths: First, Roman Catholics were still a minority in the USA and he had to moderate his inclinations and instincts in order to appeal to the majority. Second, the instability of South Vietnam caused by Diem’s persecution of the Buddhists (large-scale resistance started only in 1961) was threatening America’s wider interests in South-East Asia. Until the very last moment, he procrastinated. Removing Diem would not only end Spellman’s dream of a Catholic Vietnam but Kennedy would have to betray all that he held dear.

To assuage his guilt, he decided to revamp the war strategy in order to bolster Diem’s regime. First, he ordered a large increase in the number of “military advisers” who by now were taking an active part in the fighting. Second, following the doctrine outlined by General Maxwell Taylor, Kennedy placed the accent on the role of the special forces—specially trained paramilitary units used for targeted attacks, sabotage, training various collaborationist forces and assassination. The so-called Green Berets have their origins in the darkest days of the Cold War when the 10^th Special Forces Group was placed in Germany in order to create an elite stay-behind army. The Lodge-Philbin act ensured that large numbers of East European Catholics, many of them with strong Nazi inclinations, received the green headgear and later proved their “mettle” in Vietnam.^[14]

Kennedy’s efforts proved in vain. The elan and fighting spirit of the Viet Minh (now called Viet Cong by its enemies) could not be matched even by the heavily armed and US-assisted South Vietnamese ARVN (Army of the Republic of South Vietnam). Helicopters and fighter-bombers flown by American officers and large-calibre artillery were largely helpless against a lithe and mobile guerrilla force motivated by patriotism and belief in a better future. The most egregious example of the impotence of Diem’s military and their US advisers was the battle of Ap Bac which took place in early 1963 and was described in great detail by Neil Sheehan in his famous book.^[15] The defeat of Diem’s army and the US strategy reverberated far and wide. But this was only a side issue. By the spring of 1963, the Buddhists of Vietnam had had enough. Having failed to stop Diem’s terror through protest and civil disobedience, they resorted to the ultimate weapon of non-violent religions—public suicide.

A number of monks and nuns burned to death in city centres in full view of foreign news cameramen. Diem’s obduracy and unwillingness to heed the protest convinced many in the United States that Diem was beyond salvation (pun not intended) and that America’s interest would be better served by somebody else. The two quarrelling factions bickered for months until the newly-appointed ambassador to Saigon, Henry Cabot Lodge (a protestant and a political rival of the Kennedys) started organising a coup. Diem and his brother Nhu were aware of America’s deadly grudge and tried at the last minute to start negotiations with the North Vietnamese government. But time had run out. The ever-loyal Kennedy had to accept his advisers’ recommendation and OK the removal of the would-be Catholic emperor of the East. This was executed by a junta of non-Catholic generals with a little help from an experienced CIA agent of French extraction, Lucien Conein.

Diem was overthrown soon and after an adventurous escape attempt ruthlessly killed, together with his brother while on his way to surrendering to the new government. When he heard the news, Kennedy was genuinely distraught and bereaved. Clearly, his emotions had nothing to do with the fight against communism in which Diem had been failing terribly, and everything to do with the fact that he himself was responsible for the murder of the last openly Catholic leader in Asia. Only three weeks later, he, the first Catholic leader of America would meet the same fate.

The early hope that a less repressive regime in Saigon would motivate the people to turn against the Viet Cong proved empty. Disaster after disaster followed with the guerrillas strengthened by infiltrators from the North Vietnam destroying large ARVN units without suffering major losses. Indeed, the Buddhists were not as good as Diem at killing “commies” and after a couple of years of chaos, the chastened and worried US empire decided to up the ante. The new strategy was two pronged. On the one hand, the old Catholic hands had to be quietly reactivated in order to form a “patriotic” core within the government and the army and second, the fighting would have to be done by the Americans.

By 1964, the stage was set for a drawn-out and bloody denouement of Vietnam’s struggle for freedom and independence. In its attempt to crush the Vietnamese resistance, the Americans employed every weapon and killing technique known to (in)humanity. Having laid out the broad historical context, in part II of this essay I shall analyse the strategy behind and impact of one of the most horrifying weapons wielded in an already horrific war—the Phoenix Programme.

1. “Poglavnik” was the official title (meaning the Head or Leader) of Ante Pavelic, the leader of one of the bloodiest regimes in modern history—The Independent State of Croatia. ↑
2. Another analogy is the distinction between a person suffering from delusions seeing connections and references everywhere (which does not necessarily mean they don’t exist) and another person with amnesia who is incapable of learning from past experiences. ↑
3. This is not quite correct. The Jesuit infiltration into Vietnam began much earlier. The fact that these early “explorers” happened to be Portuguese is relevant for what is to follow. Numerous Catholic militias existed well into the 1960s and were an inextricable part of the French and American war efforts. They are also mentioned in Grahame Green’s “The Quiet American”. ↑
4. There are close parallels between the Vietnamese struggle and the Chinese Boxer rebellion which was also triggered by the excesses of the (mainly RC) missionaries. ↑
5. Please remember this bit because it is directly related to the topic of the essay. Also, what I describe here has been the modus operandi not only of the right wing of the Roman Catholicism but also many militant schools of Sunni Islam. ↑
6. An excellent analysis of Vietnamese communism can be found in Gabriel Kolko’s “Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the United States, and the Modern Historical Experience”. ↑
7. That this was total nonsense became clear when Diem started to arrest, kill and torture anyone who had fought against the French. ↑
8. This refers to the book by John Cornwell: Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII. ↑
9. The personal accounts by Catholic refugees largely fail to mention Lansdale (who might have been inflating his own role) and ascribe the decision to move to the local clergy—disciplined soldiers of the Vatican. ↑
10. JFK was particularly impressed by Father Hoa and his fiery anticommunism. ↑
11. Hansen, P. (2009). Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Vol. 4, Issue 3, pps. 173–211. ↑
12. Exactly the same thing happened in the Independent State of Croatia. ↑
13. From “Vietnam: Why did We Go?” by Avro Manhattan: “Before engaging upon a thorough persecution against the Buddhists, President Diem attempted to form a body of Buddhists who would support his policies of coordination and integration.” ↑
14. See William Simpson’s “Blowback” for a detailed account of this infamous episode. ↑
15. The book “A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam” is an excellent if sanitised source of facts on the American strategy in Vietnam. One just needs to fill in the gaps with executions, secret torture chambers and other CIA special desserts. ↑

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The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!