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How Terrorism Cult Leaders Persuade People to Join Them and Do Anything

I was recently watching the news about the 26 November 2008 terrorist attacks on Mumbai. Several terrorists had entered Mumbai, India from the sea route and had attacked the Taj Hotel, Oberoi, Trident and a building called Nariman House at Colaba. My spouse who was also watching with me said “I just don’t understand how these idiots can be so ruthless and kill innocent people as if they were mosquitoes and not humans. I wonder what they get out of it.” After a few moments I said “What if the terrorists aren’t idiots? What if they seriously got something out of it; maybe the greatest thing they could ever dream of?”

My spouse was stunned and thought that I had gone crazy; maybe I needed a rest after watching too much TV and urged me to go and sleep. However, I stood my words and said that I could explain. Once I received the “proceed” nod, I went on:

Anyone can be tempted. There is no human alive that can’t be broken down, provided it is the right temptation, at the right place, and at the right time. In my opinion, based on the recent research I was doing on human behavior and psychology, I said that “hope” is one of the biggest promises that these cult organizations gave to their members. They first have a group of experts, who move around in the right places and identify the “prospective converts” to terrorism by judging their mental and physical ability to do the heinous work. Or, who can be trained to do it. They especially look out for folks who are in urgent need of “finance” or a need which can be fulfilled by them. Then another group of experts are set off to “lure” or “seduce” them.

They first identify the core issues of prospective terrorists, aggravate their pain, and finally make them believe that only they hold the key to bring them out of their present pathetic situations. Cult leaders are masters at covert persuasion and human psychology and they know how to brainwash these young folks. They possess a brutally honest understanding of human nature. Although large sums of money are also given to join them to take care of any financial problems (and most personal problems are certainly solved by finance) the leaders ensure that the members totally, unconditionally, faithfully believe in the cause that they are made to believe. The incredible pictures that are painted in their prospects minds make them believe that it is truly a rare opportunity to join them; it is the ultimate path to “nirvana”, so to speak.

Cult leaders also control the hidden needs that humans are prone to, of their prospects. Some of these are:

1. People need to feel they are right: Cult leaders make their members feel that they are absolutely right in their expectations from life and certainly deserve everything that they hope to achieve in life. They show that they can get everything for a mere sacrifice of their life. They put very high stakes on their expectations and very low stakes on their life by giving examples of how cheap life really is, how people will kill even for a meal, how life is uncertain anyway and how you can lose it at the snap of a finger by an accident, earthquake, etc. On the other hand they agree that the expectations are genuine and although they are capable of achieving it, there is so much uncertainty that the chances are pretty slim. But if they join the community their expectation will be fulfilled. In fact, this is also a chance of going to jannat (heaven) if he died of jihad (the struggle to improve one’s self and / or society).

2. People need to be noticed and felt understood: This is a big one. Today, people are so busy with their lives and goals; they hardly have time to spend with their children. Recession, employee layoff, uncertainty, competition, etc add to the reason. Because of this, teens today are almost left on their own to decide what is best for them. They are bossed around, dictated, advised to improve, preached, and argued with more often than spending time to play with them, understand their point of view, and expressing the love for them. Cult leaders take full advantage of this weakness and can easily lure them into their community.

3. People need to feel needed: There is an enormous difference between telling someone that you need them and making them feel that you need them. Extending the example above, I can safely say that, sadly, most parents lack far behind in this issue. They fail to express themselves, thinking that their children will take advantage of that fact. In my opinion, you can easily separate the need with being practical. You can very well say that although you need them, you will manage without them if required; that’s how life is anyway. The takeaway here is, cult leaders take their parents place and express their need of them emotionally, and then leave it to them to decide if they wish to join. They’re actually doing a two fold manipulation – first, they’re expressing that they need them. This drives the prospect to feel that they should reciprocate in some way. And when the ball is left in their court, they feel like being treated like a grown-up and not being pushed. This way, they automatically fall in the trap.

I hope this article gave you some insights of how cults work. The purpose of writing this is not to learn how to become a cult leader, rather, how to take care of your children so that they don’t fall prey to such manipulative and misguiding people.

Nirjara Rustom moderates the Metaphysical Section of http://www.bharatbhasha.com at http://www.bharatbhasha.com/metaphysical.php - a free informative resource.

The Logistical Problems of a New World Order

Lately, the news has come in flooding waves for me. The election, bailouts, and endlessly horrible employment news have washed over me, and left a sort of numb feeling in place of my usual optimism. Capitalism seems to have died a death at the hands of worldwide greed, and I am left shaking my head at a growing list of casualties. That’s just the domestic scene. When I take a look at the sprawling, worldwide chaos, the picture becomes even darker.

India is considering a strike against Pakistan. Israel is weighing strikes against both Iran and Syria. The United States faces an impending disaster in Afghanistan, pondering the age old old question “Should I stay or should I go?”. Then, there is the Cold War posturing that Russia has rediscovered of late. They have reinserted themselves into the international conversation once again, in a very aggressive manner.

We are seeing substantial devaluation across currencies worldwide, and some of it is intentional. For instance, the Chinese have devalued the yuan to keep their exports competitive, even as consumption drops in the Western world.The Russian ruble has been dying a slow, agonizing death for months now. Its prospects against the dollar have fallen by 30%, and show no signs of hitting a solid bottom. Iceland is on the verge of anarchy, due to the insolvency of the krona, and the resulting anger at the government’s perceived culpability.

Instability is the only constant worldwide, with the occasional sprinkling of outright implosion. In all this, the cry from the international -and domestic- communities is a global solution. It makes sense, to a certain degree. Ockham’s razor would naturally deem that a problem of global scope should be paired with a solution of the same depth. While I generally have no qualms with the theory. that “All things being equal, the simplest solution is the best”, I believe Mssr.Ockham would think twice before applying his philosophy to international crises.

I can hear some of you who fervently wish for world peace asking “Why? I mean, isn’t it time we put aside our differences, our Nationalism, and our borders? Isn’t now the best time to embrace our fellow man, and weather this crisis as a member of the human race.” That is an admirable sentiment. Let us examine the logistical issues inherent in the adoption of global governance (n

How Would You Like to Own a Piece of Our History?

For the most part when it comes to commemorative coins the United States Congress authorizes commemorative pieces that lionize and honor American individuals, places, events, and institutions. Although these coins are legitimate tender, they are not coined for common circulation instead they are merely coined as “art”. Each commemorative coin is produced by the United States Mint in closed quantity and is only accessible for a specific amount of time. As far as I can tell the World Trade Center coins found underneath the Twin Towers have yet to become a part of the Mint coin program, frankly I don’t really understand why! However, these coins are a part of another program; the PCGS also known as the Professional Coin Grading Service which is the premier Internet site for collectors of coins.

These coins in particular that were found in the vaults can be worth a lot of money (from a few hundred on up to a few thousand), so under advanced security measures the coins were loaded into Brinks Armored vehicles and sent to Collectors Universe a parent company of the well-known Professional Coin Grading Service.

This particular organization is the archetypal company for collectors of coins. Once this organization collected all of the coins they then continued on to catalog, grade and encapsulate in the Professional Coin Grading Service high security tamper resistant capsules along with a specially designed commemorative United States Flag insert that identifies the coins as a genuine artifact. This is how you can actually tell if a coin is legit or not and is produced like this as a part of the grading and collection guide which can be seen on their website.

There are numerous different coins being commemorated for this particular event including the 2000 World Trade Center ground zero recovery gold eagle, silver eagle, and also a few uncirculated 1993 silver eagle gem. To buy these coins you can spend anywhere from $60 on up to $1000+. These coins truly are a piece of our history and it’s definitely a part, if you could choose any part, that you should have in your collections!

It doesn’t matter if your a master at collecting these types of coins or materials or if you are just starting out, or if you are going to hold on to these for personal reasons or sell these for some cold hard cash, this is a noteworthy part of history that you can take possession over starting right this very moment. I have known of quite a few people that have inducted these coins in to their own little collection because they had a loved one or knew someone in the World Trade Center bombings, so something like this means a lot to them not only for personal reasons but for remembrance of loved ones lost. These coins are anything but gaudy, in fact they are simply amazing to even glance at in image view. I can only imagine what they really look like in person! If you think you would be interested in something like this, check it out the next time your online. I think you will be really surprised by the craftsmanship of these coins! Absolutely stunning!

This author is a HUGE fan of WTC Gold

From Hitler’s Kangaroo Court to Judge in West Germany: Marion Countess Yorck Von Wartenburg

She was not born a countess. On the contrary she came from solid bourgeois stock. One of six children, Marion was never spoiled, but the family believed in a good education for girls no less than boys. So she was sent to the most progressive and only co-educational school in Berlin, where she was in the same class as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and – what was exceptional in her age – she went on to university to study law.

Not that Marion was a book worm. She told me that she never worried about politics as a girl or young woman and remembers only the “good times” of the “Roaring Twenties” – the period when Berlin was one of the most dynamic centers of art, literature, music and theater in the world, easily on a par with New York, London and Paris.

One day she was invited to an extravagant wedding on a large estate in Silesia. The place next to her was left vacant for a guest who came late. The young man swept in and, Marion felt, treated her far too familiarly. She thought the young count was arrogant and cynical. But Peter Count Yorck von Wartenburg fell in love at first sight.

Peter too was a lawyer, and he had soon won Marion over – maybe in part because he never suggested she give up her studies. On the contrary, he helped her get her PhD in jurisprudence. They married shortly after he completed the equivalent of the bar exam in 1930. Although Marion had not yet completed the three-year practical training that was then a required part of German legal training before she could sit for the final exam, Marion was already 26 and wanted to have children. She stopped her studies, and devoted herself to making a home of the little apartment Peter and she shared.

Marion could not tell me exactly when she and Peter slid from opposition and disapproval of the Nazis to resistance and treason. One key factor was their friendship with Helmuth Count Moltke, whom the Yorcks met n 1940. Soon Peter and Helmuth, both sons of families that had produced some of Germany’s most famous generals of by-gone eras, were discussing with increasing energy all that was wrong with Nazi Germany – and what had to be done to set things right.

Neither Moltke nor Yorck were in a position to change anything. Both were civil servants. Nor did the two men initially know about the military conspiracy to depose Hitler. But it was obvious to them from 1941 onwards that Germany would lose the war and that the Nazi regime would one-day fall, and they wanted – in part just to keep themselves from despair, as Marion told me – to think about what a post-Hitler Germany ought to look like. Gradually, they drew other people into their circle, selecting men, who had expertise in one area or another, so that all aspects of a future, German state could be properly thought through. Eventually, the connection was made to members of the military resistance, and a loose alliance was formed. While the military conspirators were responsible for getting rid of Hitler and his regime, the Kreisauer Circle, as the group of thinkers around Counts Yorck and Moltke came to be called, was responsible for developing the outlines of a future, post-Nazi German government and constitution.

Molke, it should be noted, opposed an assassination of Hitler. He felt that killing Hitler would enable a martyr-legend to evolve. The German people, he argued, would claim that Germany would have won the war “if only the F

Part III - A Cavalry Officer on the Road to Calvary: Philipp Baron Von Boeselager

Philipp Baron von Boeselager made no claim to be a hero – despite his Knight’s Cross and other lesser decorations for bravery he had received during the war. Others have begged to differ. Philipp von Boeselager is possibly the only recipient of Hitler’s Knight’s Cross, who is also an Officer of the French Legion of Honor. The latter was awarded him in 2004 in recognition of his role in the coup d’etat against Hitler on July 20th 1944. Boeselager, accepted the honor “for those who are no longer with us.” Boeselager provided me with unusual insight into the Wehrmacht and its command apparatus.

In the winter of 1941 Philipp Baron von Boeselager was severely wounded on the Eastern Front. Following a stomach wound, he could only walk with crutches and had extreme pain which he could only master with morphine. Nevertheless, he was deemed fit for staff work and asked whether he would be willing to serve as aide (Ordonnanzoffizier) to Feldmarschall von Kluge, then commanding Army Group Center on the Eastern Front. Just before the train pulled into Smolesk, Russia, where the headquarters of Army Group Center was located, Boeselager threw his crutches out the window. He feared that if he reported to his new superior on crutches, that the Field Marshal would send him home again as unfit for duty. He continued to take morphine until the end of the war.

The staff at Army Group Center was dominated by the First General Staff Officer, Henning von Tresckow, and Tresckow had turned the staff of Army Group Center into a nest of opposition to Hitler. Tresckow had been a witness to the slaughter of the Jewish population of Babi Yar by SS Special Units (Einsatzkommandos). By the time Boeselager joined the staff of Army Group Center, Tresckow was already working closely with the two nerve centers of resistance in Berlin, the General Army Office under General Friedrich Olbricht, and Military Counter Intelligence under Admiral Canaris. Olbricht had already developed the blue-print for a coup, disguised as an official plan for suppressing domestic unrest, Plan Valkyrie. Meanwhile, Canaris’ right-hand man, Hans Oster, was working on finding a means and opportunity to assassinate Hitler. Tresckow’s role was to get his superior, Field Marshal von Kluge, on board the conspiracy, and so provide the conspirators with fighting troops with which to hold on to power and put down any counter-revolt by SS troops loyal to the Nazis.

Kluge had been an opponent of Hitler since before the war. He had been part of the coup plans against Hitler in 1938. He was also a first class general. It was his 4th Army that had broken through the ostensibly impassable Ardennes and so turned the French Maginot Line, and it was his Army that cut off the British Expeditionary Force with its back to the sea just weeks after the start of the Western offensive in 1940. It is an irony that the name of one of his subordinate divisional commanders, Erwin Rommel, is more famous today.

When Boeselager joined Kluge’s staff, Kluge was more disillusioned with Hitler than ever before – but he was not yet ready to move from opposition to resistance, from criticism to treason. As the situation on the Eastern Front deteriorated, Boeselager became a first-hand witness of Kluge’s cruel dilemma as Hitler’s Field Marshal.

One of the duties of a field marshal’s aide was to listen to every official telephone conversation that the field marshal conducted. Thus Boeselager heard everything Kluge said to his subordinate Army Commanders – and every talk with Hitler. Boeselager remembered vividly the way Hitler would manipulate conversations and confuse matters. He remembered the absurdity of Hilter – the Commander-in-Chief of millions of troops – ordering the re-location of individual battalions. He remembered that Hitler would try to distract Kluge from a specific request by talking at length in rambling language about his strategic plans for conquering India – or change the subject by saying something like, “Oh, and by the way, I have allowed myself to send roses to your wife on the occasion of her birthday.”

Boeselager’s duties also took him to Hitler’s headquarters, where on occasion he was included in the inner circle. Boeselager is probably one of the only witnesses, who could testify to the fact that in a small circle, Hitler could be a witty and amusing conversationalist. Boeselager told me that at one dinner he was practically convulsed laughter, although he later could not remember exactly what the dictator had said. Nor did the incident in anyway change his abhorrence of man.

At least once, Boeselager’s inability to disguise his contempt for Hitler’s entourage got him arrested. On this occasion, Kluge was closeted with Hitler and other senior officers and Boeselager was left to take a meal with Martin Bormann and others of Hitler’s personal staff. Boeselager had flown in from the front with Kluge to plead for the right to pull back 100,000s of troops in danger of being cut off in a “mini-Stalingrad.” He could hardly eat for worry about what was happening on the front, but Hitler’s staff was complaining about the lack of fresh strawberries! Boeselager couldn’t contain himself. He told Bormann what he thought of him, and the next thing he knew he was locked in a small chamber with a guard posted outside. Kluge found him there and with a rhetorical “What are you doing here?” got him out. But Kluge also warned his aide that next time “he might not be so lucky.”

On another occasion, Boeselager overheard a conversation in which Hitler’s entourage discussed the fact that “once they were finished with the Jews” they would “go for the Catholics.” Boeselager interrupted immediately and told them that they could start with him. Bormann dismissed the objection, saying, “Recipients of the Knight’s Cross would be exempted from extermination.” A response, which did nothing to reduce Boeselager’s loathing of Hitler and his minions.

Boeselager was also a witness to Kluge’s honest, tenacious and sometimes desperate attempts to get Hitler to allow Army Group Center to withdraw and re-group as the pressure from the Red Army became overwhelming. To no avail. By March 1943, Kluge could take no more. He agreed to join the conspiracy against Hitler – on the condition that Hitler was killed. Kluge argued that unless Hitler was dead, most officers would remain true to their personal oath to Hitler and there would be civil war. He approved a plan developed by his staff to shoot Adolf Hitler in a collective assassination attempt when Hitler visited Army Group Center Headquarters in Smolensk.

The plans were made. The location set: the Officer’s Mess of Army Group Center. The date: March 13, 1943. Hitler came to Smolesk, he ate in the Mess surrounded by officers determined to eliminate him, and nothing happened. At the last minute, Kluge apparently lost his nerve. Boeselager believes that the Field Marshal did not want to go down in history as a murderer and traitor.

But there is another explanation. As Hitler left Smolensk that day, Tresckow smuggled a bomb into his aircraft with the 30-minute fuse already running. If the bomb had detonated, Hitler’s aircraft would have gone down over partisan-infested territory. Plan Valkyrie would have gone into effect and the Army would have taken control of the entire military and government apparatus before the wreckage of the plane could even be recovered. The British explosives used in the bomb would have suggested a foreign plot, and the conspirators would have been given a chance to consolidate power. In short, this means of killing Hitler was far superior to a joint pistol attack that instantly incriminated the German Army in the assassination. Is it possible that Tresckow informed Kluge of this option, and this was the real reason Kluge told his officers not to shoot? We will never know. But Boeselager had had enough staff work. He asked for and received a transfer back to the troops, to his beloved cavalry.

When July 1944 came, Philipp was commanding a cavalry regiment on the Eastern Front. His brother Georg commanded the cavalry brigade to which his regiment was attached and was working closely with Tresckow, who was now Chief of Staff of the 2nd Army. Tresckow knew about Count Stauffenberg’s plans to carry out the assassination against Hilter himself, and Georg Baron von Boeselager passed the word to Philipp. Philipp was ordered – by the conspiracy, not his military superiors – to re-deploy a 1,200-man cavalry task-force composed of six squadrons to Berlin to protect the post-Hitler government that would take power after the coup on July 20.

On 18 July 1944, Boeselager set the plan in motion. One thousand two hundred cavalrymen were withdrawn from their positions on the front and given orders to ride west toward a rendezvous point where they would transfer to motorized transport which would then take them to an airfield. Only a few of the cavalry officers knew what they were doing, but the troops trusted Boeselager implicitly and Boeselager did not act irresponsibly. Wherever he withdrew his selected squadrons, he ensured that sufficient troops remained behind to hold the front against the Red Army. Philipp himself stayed behind at his HQ as long as possible, and only at the last minute boarded a staff car to catch up with his troops, whom he reached on the evening of 19 July 1944.

His troops had now been riding for 36 hours straight. Philipp mounted and rode with his men. As the cavalry rode through the second night, some of the men were so exhausted they fell asleep even at a trot; some fell right out of their saddles and had to be helped back on their horses by their comrades. At three am, the cavalry task-force finally reached the rendezvous point with motorized transport and embarked.

Before they reached the airfield, however, a messenger for Georg Boeselager overtook them: Return to Base. Georg Boeselager had learned what many of the conspirators in Berlin didn’t know yet: Stauffenberg had failed. The bomb he set off in Hitler’s HQ detonated – but failed to kill the dictator. With Hitler alive, the Nazi apparatus was still intact, and counter-orders, countermanding all the coup instructions, were already going out to all the various units. Even as Olbricht and Stauffenberg in Berlin tried desperately to bring down the Nazi government, Boeselager’s cavalry task-force was rushing back toward the front. Because the entire maneuver had nothing to do with the war and had not been sanctioned by his chain-of-command, Boeselager risked being exposed as a supporter of the coup d’etat. Despite the exhaustion of the men, Boeselager could not let them rest. They needed to return to their positions even faster than they left them.

Philipp summarized the urgency of the situation by saying that he gave the order to maintain a trot even on paved roads – something anathema to a good cavalry officer. As one of his squadrons trotted over a paved cross-road, they ran into Georg von Boeselager, the more senior of the brothers, and the troops – afraid of getting Philipp in trouble – immediately reduced pace to a walk. When Georg von Boeselager signaled them to keep trotting, they knew that whatever they had been doing was very serious indeed! As the news broke that evening of the failed assassination attempt against Hitler, they all guessed the truth. But not one of the 1,200 men involved in the action betrayed their commanders, Philipp and Georg von Boeselager.

Philipp survived to tell the story. Georg was killed leading his cavalry brigade on August 27, 1944. He was one of the most highly decorated army officers of the entire German Wehrmacht, a devout Catholic and a bitter opponent of Hitler from start to finish.

Award-Winning Novelist Helena P. Schrader describes people she met during her research on the German Resistance to Hitler. For more information about the novel, An Obsolete Honor, and the German Resistance to Hitler, visit her website at: An Obsolete Honor.

Part II - Dietrich Bonhoefer’s Niece: Renate Bethge

She was a quiet, unassuming woman, apparently the perfect “Hausfrau” – housewife – to a famous man. Her husband Eberhard Bethge was famous because he had been Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s closest friend, his confidant and his disciple. Eberhard Bethge had willingly and passionately taken up the burden of publishing Bonhoeffer’s papers, of explaining and interpreting his theological legacy, and of keeping the memory of a great Christian alive in a modern world that was often hostile to faith and religion. But Renate Bethge was herself a woman of great courage and intelligence, and she provided me with some of the most significant insights into what life in Nazi Germany was really like.

Renate was the daughter of R

Part 1 - A Suicide-Bomber Targeting Hitler: Axel Baron Von Dem Bussche

“The survivors of a failed coup are never its heroes,” Axel Baron von dem Bussche told me the first time we met, but by most standards Bussche was a hero. At the age of 24, while a captain in the German Army, Bussche agreed to carry out a suicide-bombing against Adolf Hitler.

The time was November 1943 and the conspiracy against Hitler headed by former Chief of the German General Staff Ludwig Beck had already made several unsuccessful attempts on Hitler’s life. Twice explosive devices had been activated in Hitler’s proximity, but in one case the bomb failed to detonate and in the other Hitler got out of range before the device could go off. Opportunities to get explosive devices near to the increasingly paranoid German dictator were few and far between, and the conspirators recognized that Hitler’s insistence on the new officer’s uniform being modeled before him personally was a rare and perfect opportunity for an assassination attempt. Under normal circumstance, anyone admitted to Hitler’s presence was first searched for arms, but a man modeling a uniform would have to be fully outfitted with side-arms - and grenades.

Axel Baron von dem Bussche was known to the conspirators as a “reliable” officer – i.e. a man who was a bitter opponent of Hitler. He was also tall, blond, blue-eyed, and good-looking. Furthermore, he was a veteran with multiple wound badges and he had been highly decorated. Bussche had the Iron Cross First and Second Class, and the German Cross in Gold at this time; he would later receive the Knight’s Cross. In short, he made an ideal “model.” Bussche was asked if he was willing to carry out an assassination attempt and agreed without hesitation.

Bussche traveled to Hitler’s HQ in East Prussia and prepared for the fateful meeting. The Conspiracy provided him with English plastic explosives and a fuse that could be set to various lengths, but Bussche preferred to use a German hand grenade instead. “I was a lot bigger and stronger than Hitler,” Axel told me bluntly, “and I figured I could hold on to him long enough for a three second fuse to go off. The plastic explosives were too unreliable.”

The date for modeling the uniform in front of Hitler was set: Nov. 23, 1943. Bussche waited impatiently, but the uniform failed to arrive. It had been destroyed in the previous night’s air-raid. Meanwhile, Bussche’s leave had run out. His division was involved in the heavy fighting on the Eastern Front, and as a company commander he was needed there urgently. He could not wait for another uniform to be sent. He returned to duty – and was shortly afterwards so severely wounded that his leg needed to be amputated. He was in an SS hospital recovering from surgery on his leg – with the English explosives he had not used in a suitcase under his bed - when Claus Count Stauffenberg made his assassination attempt on July 20, 1944. That night he ate his address book page by page to prevent it getting into the wrong hands, and vowed that the first person to come and visit him would be asked to dispose of the incriminating explosives in the suitcase under his bed. Unfortunately, the first person who came to see him was “a young lady” and, as Axel put it, “of course I couldn’t ask her to deal with the explosives.” So he had to wait for a second visitor, this time a fellow officer, who obligingly took the suitcase and threw it in a near-by lake – without asking any questions.

But in Berlin, more and more of Axel’s friends and comrades were being swept up in the Gestapo investigation of the July 20th Coup. Guilt by association was the rule, and over the remaining months of the war, men and women would hang for nothing more serious than giving a friend a place to stay the night, or merely expressing sympathy with the conspirators. As Axel made sure I knew, I had the opportunity to meet him only because friends and comrades did not betray his name - even under Gestapo torture.

So Axel survived the war, and I will never forget the first time Axel contacted me. I was sitting at my desk, working for a Washington area consulting firm, when the phone rang. I answered unsuspecting with the company name and the standard question, “How can I help you?”

On the other end of the line a deep male voice barked: “Bussche. Ludwig Hammerstein says we should meet. I want you to come to dinner on Thursday.” The address and time followed. I really wasn’t given a choice – but I would have jumped at the opportunity any way. I knew who Axel Baron von dem Bussche was because by the time I got that call I had been researching the German Resistance for some time; I knew Ludwig Baron von Hammerstein, the son of the Chief of Staff and C-in-C of the German Army in the 1930s, quite well.

That dinner in Georgetown was the start of a long friendship which included many conversations particularly during my visits to Axel’s baroque manor outside of Geneva, Switzerland. Axel had a way of telling stories that kept one breathless – but the laughter was never far behind. And, yet, by the time I knew him he not only suffered from severe “phantom pains” in his missing leg, but from a severe guilt complex. He felt guilty for having failed to kill Hitler – although it was not his fault. And he felt guilty that so many of his friends had died in the war and in the aftermath of July 20th, but he was still alive. Last but not least, he felt guilty for not having done more to stop Hitler’s atrocities. This was largely because Axel was one of the few members of the German Resistance who had actually witnessed the atrocities.

It was the summer of 1942. Bussche, having finally recovered from a lung wound that had kept him in Germany “convalescing” in the position of Adjutant to his Regiment in Potsdam, was back on the Eastern Front. He was an Infantry First Lieutenant. One quiet day, a sergeant, one of the company couriers, rode up on a motorcycle. “Herr Leutnant, you better come and see this for yourself,” was all the man said. It was an unusual request but something about the man’s demeanor made Bussche go along with the messenger without question.

When he told me the story he turned on me at this point and, scowling fiercely, and growled: “You grew up knowing about Auschwitz! You know that we murdered millions! But I grew up thinking we were a civilized people – the people of Goethe and Beethoven. I had to stare at what was happening for five minutes before my brain would accept what my eyes told me: civilians were being brought up by the truck-load. The SS made them strip off their clothes – men, women and children – and then climb into an open pit which was already filled with a layer of corpses – some of them still twitching. The SS ordered them to lie face down on the others and then the SS shot them in the back of the head.”

Axel was never the same after this experience, and more than 40 years later he told me that he had given much thought to what he should have done. At the time, he said, he had wanted to rush to his superiors and demand that the Army intervene to stop the SS. But he soon recognized that this was futile. The Army had no control over the SS. Only Hitler could stop the SS – and Hitler had given the orders. So Axel became an even more fanatical opponent of Hitler than he had been before. He was prepared to kill himself in order to kill Hitler. But he did not have an easy conscience. He told me that after much soul-searching he had finally realized that what he should have done was step up to the edge of the pit, remove his officer’s uniform with the many decorations for bravery and recording his wounds, and climbed into the pit with the victims.

Axel Baron von dem Bussche was a hero by almost any definition of heroism – except his own.

Award-Winning Novelist Helena P. Schrader describes people she met during her research on the German Resistance to Hitler. For more information about the novel, An Obsolete Honor, and the German Resistance to Hitler, visit her website at: An Obsolete Honor.

Pollution: Not an Individual Concern, It’s Global (And Vice Versa)

There is only one planet for us and we live in it. But due to modernization, the environment has suffered and most inhabitants of this planet just shrugged their shoulder for a time. Now, that the planet is complaining through so many natural ways and tragedies, nobody can just shrug a shoulder anymore. Everyone needs to contribute to make things better - to start reducing the pollution that’s killing this planet.

Individual efforts in many simple ways can help save this planet. Developing a concern for nature and doing something to conserve and preserve it could help but a concerted effort from these awakened individuals would create a much bigger impact for the cause.

Yes, this is a global concern. Yes, this is a concern for every country. Most definitely, it is a concern of each person in the city or town. Everyone should start becoming aware of the consequences of modernization. There really is nothing wrong with wanting to advance but from hereon, there should be great consideration on whether the whole planet will be affected yet again.

Advances in technology and advances in the way we live are great achievements to boast about. It would be best if these technologies that make our lives so much easier and convenient would also make it easier for the entire planet.

Pollution is a very big concern for everyone. Air, water, and noise pollutions are byproducts of modernization because humans have simply overlooked the environment for so long a time. Again, there is nothing wrong in wanting to advance to the next level - but we owe it to the planet to consider its needs as well.

Now that so many groups and individuals (even businesses) have started to go green and to think green, it may not really be too late for this planet. Every citizen of every country who makes the effort to build a concern for his environment matters a lot. Each family should raise the awareness among the children about the effects of pollution to the environment and these kids should be taught to care for the planet too.

The next generations of children, after all, are the ones who will suffer the consequences if nobody will start to do something today. Little ways of introducing the bad effects of pollution can help make these kids aware of their surroundings.

The awareness campaigns should continue from the home to the community. Many adults are still not aware and many still do not care. People abuse nature here and there. Factories that make a lot of consumer products disregard the pollution they cause just to profit. Money has continuously become the driving factor and it has become the priority of almost everyone.

Governments have projects that would need a lot of cooperation from every citizen. There are socio-civic groups in every community that also do what they can to help save the planet. If every individual will do his share even in his own little ways and each one will tag along somebody, soon a much larger group will have grown to purposely save this only planet that we have.

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It May Sound Strange But Al-Qaeda and Neocons Were Indeed “Useful” To Each Other!

Before the September 11 attacks, Washington’s Neo-cons had waited in frustrated hope for an event that would serve as the excuse needed to enable them to rouse public support for a war against Iraq and other “rogue states” where they were sure American power could easily dispatch. Their project for the New American century proposed to remake the oil-rich-Middle-East in America’s image. Vice President Dick Cheney was also dreaming to restore the imperial presidency that had been lost with Richard Nixon’s Watergate.

In 1999, when George W. Bush was considering for the Presidency, he contracted with Houston Journalist Micky Herskowitz for a ghost-written autobiography. No more than two months passed before Bush’s team of advisors dismissed Herskowitz. The gregarious governor was telling Mickey too much. What’s interesting about the Russ Baker interview with Mickey Herskowitz is the reasons Bush gave for wanting to attack a small country: he wanted to emerge from his father’s shadow and become more popular.

From a strategic point of view the most effective way to fight terrorism is by intelligence operations and police work. However, for all the above reasons, militarizing the fight into a perpetual state of “war” would most easily facilitate the expansion of presidential powers.

On the other side of the world, the extremist Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were also making their plans. The people and government of Muslim nations from Algeria and Egypt, to Saudi Arabia and the Sudan, wanted to run the extremists out of their country, because they were inflicting violence to those they considered “not Muslim enough”. In Algeria the radicals had began eliminating each other over perceptions that many of their own members were not “pure enough”. For these reasons extremist Osama bin Laden had been chased from Saudi Arabia to the Sudan and then back to the caves of Afghanistan. Even in Afghanistan, Mullah Omar, concerned for the well-being of his Taliban government, had ordered bin Laden to quit giving interviews to the western press declaring jihad against Israel and the U.S.A.

Rudyard Kipling had described “Afghanistan” as the “place where empires go to die“. Bin Laden knew that, and believing that Israel and its supporter, the United States, were instruments of oppression for the muslin people, was looking for an opportunity to drag the United States into a long and costly war similar to that they had engaged the Soviet Union in the 1980s. They hoped to slowly wear Americans down as they had already succeeded with the Soviet forces. Their goal was to provoke such a heavy military response from the Americans that would offend the Muslin world, destabilize the region, and increase the oil prices (which were cheap through the previous two decades) bringing further damage to the American economy while the Middle East was prospering.

Of course Bin Laden was taking the risk that Americans would strike and destroy al-Qaeda in a way it would not alienate U.S. from the rest of the Muslims. But that did not happen. The Bush administration was not focusing its attention on bin-Laden, because they were planning to attack Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Instead of using U.S. troops to seal the border, President Bush relied on hired Pakistanis, who were receiving money also from Al-Qaeda! In the battle of Tora Bora the local “allies” who had mixed sympathies towards al-Qaeda, let many of them escape… Marine officials, who foresaw Al-Qaeda’s strategic withdrawal from Tora Bora were not allowed to patrol the border and seal off bin Laden’s caves. Some reports suggest that bin-Laden had escaped by the end of November, 2001. A witness present in the Tora Bora claims that Osama escaped around December 10, 2001.

“I don’t know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority.” George W. Bush, Washington, D.C. March 13, 2002. Six months after September 11.

President Bush should be grateful to Osama Bin Laden for his re-election in 2004, when the race for presidency was neck-to-neck with Democrat Kerry. While the Neo-con political adviser Karl Rove was orchestrating Bush’s image as “resolute” and Kerry’s as “weak flip-flopper”, Osama bin Laden released a tape saying “Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or Al-Qaeda. Your security is in your hands. Any nation that does not attack us will not be attacked“. Bin Laden knew that by demanding the Americans to surrender, they would proudly want to fight back and consequently vote for the “resolute” presidential candidate Bush instead of the “weak” Kerry. Bin Laden knew that Bush would continue his clumsy war in Iraq that depleted our economy and deteriorated diplomatic relations with Middle East.

The war on Iraq was not as easy as Americans had expected. Sad to admit, the “war on terror” made Americans fall in bin Laden’s trap, resulting to all the things that Bin Laden had wanted. One of the things that bin Laden demanded years ago was the oil should cost $144 barrel, Charles Edmund writes in “W got his war” of The Coyote Report.

Coddie Adwar writes exclusively for THE COYOTE REPORT, a POLITICAL NEWS BLOG, the home of “GOOD RIDDANCE BUSH, THE END OF AN ERROR” bumper stickers. and “W GOT HIS WAR” e-book written by Charles Edmund Coyote Get a FREE CHAPTER on how we let bin LADEN escape from Tora Bora

Why Do We Need Renewable Energy Solutions?

That may seem like a silly question. Surely everyone knows that we need to begin to develop renewable energy solutions sooner, rather than later. Our current energy policies are doing a number on the planet’s ecological systems. Increasing pollution in the air and the seas, environmental impacts like oil spills and global warming are all, at least in part, due to our planet-killing energy habits.

There are numerous theories on the eventual exhaustion of the world’s oil reserves and everyone from global leaders to the average American is fighting against nuclear power because they all group nuclear power together with the nuclear bomb devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It isn’t a pretty picture.

Even so, you may be unaware of many of the important reasons to embrace renewable energy solutions. Here are some statistics:

According to top geologists and other intelligent people throughout the world, we will run out of oil by the year 2056. If you don’t believe me, you can look it up on Google. The theories are usually under the term “peak oil”. The recent spike in oil prices prompted several online discussions on whether we were closing in on peak oil now vs. later.

While it likely won’t affect me personally, as I’ll be either very old, or maybe even dead, many people that are alive today will still be on this planet in 2056, including most of our children, and grandchildren. Then what? Do we just hope for the best, or do we find alternatives now? Do we leave it such a terrible legacy for our progeny?

Now, to be honest, according to David Hume, a Scottish philosopher, economist and historian, we’ll never run out. But I place little trust in a man who’s been dead for over 230 years. I mean after all, back then we didn’t have the consumption that we have now.

We didn’t even have cars, let alone trains and jet planes, and the world’s commerce wasn’t carried from one place to another on diesel-powered transport trucks. In fact, the world had barely entered the industrial phase. Because of that, I don’t think that David Hume’s philosophy is a good yardstick with which to judge the potential energy crisis.

If you really need proof that the world has an energy problem, consider the wars that have essentially been fought over this very problem. Much of the ado in the Middle East is not about nothing–it’s about one thing and one thing only…oil.

And the US in particular is very aware that its days are numbered as far as relying on other sources for oil. As a result, the country is in somewhat of a panic mode right now.

For these reasons and tons more, we need to focus on renewable sources of energy. Otherwise, we’re going to be reverting back to the days when we rubbed two sticks together to cook our barbeque ribs, and living and working within the small radius that our legs (or bicycles) can carry us.

Change begins with you. Learn more about how you can create renewable energy for use in your home. Save energy and the environment using solar energy and wind power. For more information, visit http://solarpoweredhome.blogspot.com