A Post-Easter Trinity Post

The fundamentalists are on the march again. It's not surprising, times of crisis invevitably bring about an upsurge in wackos as the true believers emerge from their caves to reveal the secrets revealed to them and only them. The coming week will bear witness to a triptych of delusion, a true masterpiece that deserves to be hung alongside Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights in the Prado. For those of us on the flipside of delusion however, where reality rules supreme instead of royalty, theocracy or right-wingnuttery, the scenes out of London, the Vatican and Ottawa serve to remind us of how easily the masses are convinced to continue down the path of self-destruction.

Another crisis, another royal wedding. The parallels between today and 1981 are striking. Another conservative government pushing through a right-wing agenda provided with the perfect diversion with which to distract its population of Daily Mail readers. Kate Middleton will wed Prince William Friday in a choreographed ceremony of pomp and circumstance to rival that fairy tale marriage between Diana Spencer and Prince Charles nearly thirty years ago. Panem et circenses serving once again as cover as the ideologues in power push through an agenda to cure the nation's economic woes by doubling down on the same policies that caused the crisis to begin with.

The main difference to be found is in the rhetoric employed by Margaret Thatcher then and David Cameron today in order to justify implementing policies to further shift the wealth of the nation towards the top. While Thatcher may have referenced Francis of Assisi when she moved into 10 Downing Street, "Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope", she generally took on a confrontational tone with those who opposed her. Cameron on the other hand, due to the nature of his coalition government with the Lib Dems, employs a much more subtle divide and conquer strategy.

While Thatcher thrived on confrontation, Cameron's PR spin doctors (courtesy of the Murdoch empire) have him cloying on about a fictitious Big Society. Whether or not you believe that Thatcherism sowed the seeds of the UK's current economic distress, her policies failed to decrease the size of government while shifting the tax burden down the income scale, setting the scene for the explosion of income inequality seen today. Cameron and his Eton buddy-turned chancellor of the exchequer George Osbourne are proposing to build on this while shifting ever more wealth into the hands of the corporations and other elite. Of course, you won't hear this from their mouths in the UK, however, their minions will tell potential investors on the other side of the pond exactly what they are planning - We are making cuts that Margaret Thatcher, back in the 1980s, could only have dreamed of.



Whoops, where was I? Right, wedding. Royal. Buck-toothed balding guy and his commoner bride-to-be. Why does the public still eat up this pablum? Who cares what it costs when the working shmoes can get an eleven day holiday by simply taking three vacation days thanks to the magic of the calendar. Besides, won't the expense be offset by the benefit provided to the economy from all the tourists who plan on flocking to the British capital to take in the event? Well, in a word, no. The firm, or royal family as they are known, cost the public about £38.2 million a year, or 62p a person to defray expenses but the wedding will cost the public an awful lot more than that. Extra policing and overtime alone is estimated at more than $35 million. Add in the cost of all that extra holiday time and the costs begin to skyrocket, economists are "suggesting that it could knock something like a quarter percent off growth." That translates into a potential loss to the economy of about $50 billion.

But it's worth it right? After all, instead of watching depressing stories of British missiles raining down death on Libyans or Taliban terrorists escaping from prisons in the graveyard of empires, we get to see a princess crowned. Another aspirational lesson in which we learn that if we just believe enough, we too can have the fairy tale ending. Or not. Guess what Britons? There's only one royal family and you're not part of it, nor will you ever be. Kate will become your sixth Queen Catherine carrying on a tradition that should have died centuries ago but somehow didn't. She'll hopefully avoid the fate of Catherine Howard and probably won't have the impact of Henry VIII's first queen, Catherine of Aragon. After a 24-year marriage cursed by the stillbirths and early deaths of several sons, Henry was so desperate to have the marriage annulled that when the Pope refused to give his consent he broke away from Rome and founded the Church of England.

Ah, that church thing, the Brits are still sticking it to the Vatican, this time the royal wedding is stealing the thunder of the beatification of John Paul II. There doesn't seem to be a problem with the fact the church waved the manadatory five-year waiting period for JPII's beatification, or that maybe he shouldn't be beatified at all, no, the problem is that the Holy See's big event isn't selling enough tickets. When the date was announced in January the royal wedding date had already been set for months yet Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, former head of the Vatican's saint-making department, said he expected more than two million faithful to show up for the event. Based on that prediction, Vatican and Italian tour operators booked entire hotels in Rome and its surroundings. Enthusiasm has been tempered a bit since then, predictions have fallen to the 150,000 range despite the Vaticans best efforts to make the event go viral by setting up a beatification website, Facebook page and Twitter account.

In typical unthinking fashion, Santo subito! - Sainthood now! is the chant today just as it was then on St. Peter's Square in 2005 during JPII's funeral. Granted, he was an extraordinary man and a decent enough pope in many ways. More than a moral and symbolic force again totalitarianism, he toured his homeland giving Poles the courage to resist Soviet domination. Even after the collapse of communism, he offered a prescient warning about capitalism, "The excessive hoarding of riches by some denies them to the majority and thus the very wealth that is accumulated generates poverty." The first non-Italian pope since the renaissance, the former actor and factory worker was a skiing cardinal, a mountain-climbing poet, a kayaking philosopher, a singing author. By capturing the world's imagination he was in a position to not only influence the world outside the walls of the church but that within as well and that is where he sadly failed.

Imagine if Grima Wormtongue who whispered counsel into the ear of King Théoden to poison his soul in The Lord of the Rings coveted little boys instead of the kings niece Eowyn. Such a character would most properly be based on the Rev. Marcial Degollado, the founder of the Legion of Christ, who was formally accused of pedophilia in a Vatican proceeding yet remained John Paul’s pet. Despite nine different people accusing him of abusing them as children, the soon-to-be-blessed refused to investigate thus allowing the church's wound that is peodophilia to continue to fester and ooze pus to this day. Instead of reform and healing we get the former bishop of Bruges serenely admitting to abusing his nephews on TV and rationalizing his atrocities, "I had the strong impression that my nephew didn’t mind at all," 74-year-old Roger Vangheluwe said, smiling. "On the contrary. It was not brutal sex. I never used bodily, physical violence." He said he abused the second boy for "merely over a year".

Revalations of the game of hide the pedo-priest from parish to parish or the effects of the regressive stance taken on social issues and the part played in the spreading of AIDS particulary in Africa are slow evolving stories and exactly the reason for the five year waiting period before beatification. Calm rationality replaces emotional passion and allows us to weight decision properly instead of making rash choices. Instead, Pope Benedict chose to speed up the process, the third of four steps in cannonization, the path to sainthood. It was JPII himself who cheapened the whole process, beatifying almost 1,400 people, more than the total of all his predecessors since Pope Sixtus V (1585–1590).

The final panel in our tryptich features the creepiest image of all, that of a democratic nation lulled to sleep by an egomaniacal authoritarian bent on turning his country into the mirror image of their southern neighbour. I mean, it's not even the government of Canada anymore, it's the Harper government. Canada, my birthplace, has enjoyed a reputation surpassed by few nations. In fact, to those not paying attention, the word Canada still brings to mind an image of unspoiled wilderness and friendly, peace-loving people. This has been slowly eroded over the past five years by the Harper minority-government yet many seem prepared to give him and his party a free pass based on the fact that they are the only choice to ensure a stable government conducive to economic growth. The main selling point seems to be that under his stewardship, Canada was able to sail through the financial crisis relatively unscathed. This is of course a joke, a monkey could have (and would have) done a better job, being capable of giving a green light to the exploitation of resources to be ripped and burned out of the earth in order to satifsy the insatiable appetite to the south while ironically benefiting from the sound foundation provided by the financial regulations that Harper's corporate puppet-masters will have him tear down in the event of a Conservative majority. Meanwhile, the world is beginning to pay attention, sharply rebuking Canada for it's Afghanistan atrocities by denying her a UN security council seat (which of course Harper blamed on the Liberal party!) and naming the Great White North the worst environmental offender in the world.

A closer look reveals the self-destructiveness of his evil mix of policies, neocon on the social side and neoliberal on the economic, all sold to the public through lies, deceipt and cover-ups. Oh, by the way, that's why there's even an election at all, Harper's became the first government in Canadian history to be found in contempt of parliament. While Mr. Harper likes to tell Canadians what they care about, this little detail should be enough to reveal the undemocratic nature of the man, especially when combined with his unprecedented usage of an obsure parliamentary trick, proroguing government, not once, but twice. On both occasions Harper requested and was granted permission from the governor general, the Queen of England's representative in Canada (she is after the true head of the Canadian government), to shut down parliament as he was set to lose confidence votes. Yep, sounds like a democracy to me, one where if you don't like the possible outcome, you just change the game.

The financial press lauds Harper's economic program because it consists of lowering taxes on their corporate masters and shifting the tax burden to the people. Meanwhile the illusion of fiscal responsibility is nearly maintained by lowering environmental standards and subsidizing the oil giants to rape and pillage the ecosystem in a mad scramble to burn up the planet as quickly as possible. Following the American lead, the sheeple are being sold the same old bill of sale, lowering taxes on the corporations and the rich while gutting regulation will lead to economic prosperity. If people would just take the time to read the fine print they'd realize their wealth is simply being handed over to the wealthiest 1%. Canada will have cut corporate taxes virtually in half over the past 10 years once the current program is complete. The super-rich in Canada have enjoyed a decline in their tax rate of 11 percentage points while 95 per cent of Canadians averaged a decrease of 1 percentage point. In a bid to improve Canada's competitiveness, or what should be called trying to win the race to the bottom, Harper wants to lower the already-reduced corporate tax rate from 18% to 15% at a time when Canada is sporting a record $56 billion deficit. We're not competing with the US, where the rate is 35%, we're trying to compete with already broke and IMF controlled Ireland, Albania and Uzbekistan. Oh, and this tax break won't apply to 95% of the 2.2 million businesses in Canada, only the big boys on Bay Street.

Social policies? Let's see. Cut funding to the arts. Check. Cut funding to women's shelters. Check. Watch as your country falls from 6th to 24th in child mortality. Check. Spend like drunken sailors to build prisons for all the folks who fall on hard times and through the growing holes in the social safety net. Check. Add the US style get tough on crime costs to the nearly $30 billion for a bunch of F-35s without engines and then act surprised that more cuts are necessary to plug the budget deficit especially while cutting revenue earned on corporate taxes. Check. Ignore abuses of the health care system to encourage the development of an American style for profit game of life and death. Check. Orwellian surveillance laws to ensure the populations docility? Check. This seems to be what many people want as they continue, Candide style to believe that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, somehow nothing can go wrong following the US down it's suicidal path of destruction.

Truth is far stranger than fiction, yet none of this surprises anymore. How could it be surprising that billions of people would be interested in a wedding that has nothing to do with them or pilgrims are fainting like school girls at a Justin Bieber concert over the sight of a vile of a dead Pole's blood - it all explains how people could vote for the likes of Stephen "I'm not quite as bad as Robert Mugage" Harper. The fundamentalists are still firmly in control driving us ever faster towards judgment day.

The Past In Poland's Present

Upon a hill at the bend of the Vistula River in Kraków sits an ancient castle known as Wawel, the Polish seat of royalty for over 550 years. Within its walls is housed the city's cathedral known as the Cathedral Basilica of Sts. Stanisław (Stanislaus) and Vaclav whose crypt holds the tombs of Polish kings, national heroes, generals and revolutionaries. Among them, one ornate silver tomb stands out. Unlike most of the other residents of the crypt, this man was neither King nor revolutionary yet almost all of the Polish kings beginning with Władysław I the Elbow-high were crowned while kneeling before his sarcophagus which sits near the center of the cathedral above. In order to understand the significance of the decision to bury Lech Kaczynki and his wife in this sacred place, one need look no further than the story behind the man whose remains are to be found within this silver tomb.

Saint Stanislaus of Szczepanów, whose name is now born by the most important cathedral in Poland, was one of the earliest native Polish bishops. According to legend, nearly a millennium ago this man was transformed into the martyr of Poland after paying the price for opposing King Bolesław II the Bold of his then young nation. Stanislaus first gained his reputation after purportedly resurrecting the body of a man named Piotr to testify against the king in a property dispute. However, when the Bishop dared to criticize the king of sexual immorality in his punishment of the wives of soldiers returning from war and had him excommunicated, the king accused him of treason and decided to have him killed without trial. When his soldiers refused to perform his order, Bolesław slew the bishop while he was celebrating mass in the Skałka outside the walls of Kraków, hacked the body to pieces and threw them into a pool outside the church. According to the legend, Stanislaus' members miraculously reintegrated while the pool was guarded by four eagles. Public anger was so great that Bolesław the suddenly not so Bold fled to Hungary and was succeeded by his brother Władysław I Herman. 

There may be no other nation in which history, martyrdom, the church and politics are so deeply intertwined. Most history books point to the AD 965 Catholic baptism of Prince Mieszko I as the birth of Poland and since Stanislaus' killing just over a century later, on either April 11 or May 8, 1079, the nation has seen more than her share of martyred symbols to go along with a long list of tragedies. Last Saturday saw another catastrophe added to the list as the Polish presidential Tupolev Tu-154 exploded short of the airport in Smolensk, where the presidential party was landing on their way to attend a remembrance ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre. In one stroke, 96 members of the Polish elite were wiped out leaving a nation to grieve a second national disaster on the same site. “First the flower of the Second Polish Republic is murdered in the forests around Smolensk,” said former president Aleksander Kwasniewski. “Now the intellectual elite of the Third Polish Republic die in this tragic plane crash when approaching Smolensk airport.”

It's not everyday that you wake up and find that the president of the country you're living in has perished in a plane crash. After the shock and sadness came the practical questions of what constitutes 'a week of national mourning' (does one work? are the stores going to be open? Yes, and some - not the national chain stores); why did the pilot try to land after being warned off by the tower (more conspiracies at work, Kaczynski may have pushed the pilot as he did in Georgia a couple years back, do you really think we'll get the real black box?); why were so many important people on the same plane (um, did I say conspiracy theory?). Most importantly today, seeing that life is going on and the constitution ticking like clockwork, there will be an election much sooner than the original October plan, an election that Kaczynski was virtually assured to lose. The date will be announced following the funeral, but June 20th seems the most likely date that will answer the question of whether Poland will allow the church and PiS to continue to keep the past in the way of her future.

Leave it to the conservative PiS party and their Catholic allies to turn a tragedy into a controversy by trying to take advantage of a disaster for political gain. Immediately following the crash, the well-practiced Poles were flying the national flag with a black ribbon of remembrance attached while gathering to pay their respects in public places, many of them laying candles used to mark the numerous mournful anniversaries across the country. Despite the unpopularity of the incumbent president, the nation was unified in its grief and condolences, with tributes pouring in from all points on the political spectrum. Both the leftist SLD party and the Kaczynski right-wing PiS have been left without candidates as Jerzy Szmajdziński was also on the passenger list of the ill-fated flight. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Lech's twin brother, along with the cardinal of Krakow, Stanislaw Dziwisz, have fired the first shot in the election campaign in an attempt to replicate the miraculous reintegration of Bishop Stanislaus body. Their answer, turn Lech into a martyr in order to re-brand his image and somehow resurrect his failed presidency.

The decision to bury Lech Kaczynski in the most sacred site has predictably turned a unifying moment into a political circus. Where just a few days ago Poles were amazed at the unity they had shown and the were proud of the resilience of their constitution, in its place we're seeing the return of the defeatist attitude so common here that expects nothing better than life gives them. When a major trauma occurs, the kind that is both individual and collective, something happens that Jungian psychology calls an “abaissement du niveau mental" a lowering of the level of consciousness. Intellect gives way to the gloom of the collective psyche. The horrified mind tries to find meaning, but lets itself be seduced by old myths. If only Kaczynski had done more than reinforce and perpetuate hatred and intolerance during his political career it would be easier to swallow his elevation to martyrdom. As mayor of Warsaw he banned a gay rights parade two years running while supporting a demonstration dubbed by the organizers as a "normality parade". This homophobia needs no encouragement here in Poland having been found guilty of violating human rights by the European Court.

Some critics of Cardinal Dziwisz’s decision to bury the Presidential couple in the Wawel Cathedral of Cracow next Sunday argue that his consent might have been imposed by an “election committee” of the PiS party, whose members wanted to use the national mourning and the burial of President Lech Kaczynski to promote his twin brother, the party’s Chairman, Mr. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, for the next President of Poland. What better boost to a presidential campaign than a martyred brother. The viral text meme quickly spread that "History has come full circle. Mickiewicz’s Poland as the Christ of Nations is returning. Let us be united by this love from God. Let us strengthen the fatherland through brotherhood." Senators begin comparing Kaczynski to past heroes. Before you know it, "The president, who died a heroic death when flying to Katyn to pay homage to the martyrs, and his wife will get a dignified place for their eternal rest," said Cardinal Dziwisz. "The final decision is that the most dignified place is Wawel, where he can rest together with those who have achieved so much for our fatherland—kings, heroes, commanders."

Lech Kaczyński became president in the 2005 election. His victory was a come from behind for the ages. Polish presidential elections are held on a two day system, where the first round sees the elimination of the whole field but the two leading vote getters. The first round on October 5th saw Donald Tusk (today's prime minister) win 36.3% of the vote to Lech Kaczynski's 33.1%. Yet two weeks later on the 23rd, Lech carried 54% to Donald's 46%. (Funny aside, Kaczynski is a variant of the word 'duck' in Polish, making the campaign the Donald Duck election). How did Kaczyński manage to turn the tables so drastically? Simple, operatives of his party, PiS, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, or Law and Order, circulated reports to the media on the eve of the presidential election's decisive second round that Tusk’s grandfather served in the Wehrmacht during the final months of the second world war. His ten days of service following forced conscription before escaping to fight for the Allies in the west were enough to tip the scales of the voting. Even though Tusk had no way to know this history as it was never discussed in the family, it was enough to turn the election, such is the mark left on the Polish psyche by the war.

The worst was yet to come for Polish politics. Just prior to the presidential election of 2005, Lech's twin brother Jarosław, with whom he founded the PiS party in 2001, had pledged not to take the position of prime minister in the event their party won the general election in order to not diminish Lech's chances of victory. This enabled the PiS party to build a coalition along with two other lunatic fringe parties, the Self-Defense of the Republic of Poland (Polish: Samoobrona) and the conservative Christian League of Polish Families party as party-member of the latter, Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, was appointed Prime Minister. Predictably, less than a year later, a rift appeared forcing Marcinkiewicz's resignation and Lech had his brother anoint him as PM. Together, the twins tried to forge a ultra-conservative Catholic reality in their homeland. Often paradoxical, get your head around to pass a constitutional amendment to eliminate rape or incest as grounds for terminating a pregnancy while trying to reintroduce the death penalty, usually ridiculous, Lech opposed on-line voting as the internet attracts people who enjoy "pornography while sipping a bottle of beer"  and always intolerant, the Kacynski reign was fortunately short lived as 2007 elections saw Donald Tusk's PO party sweep into power. Kaczynki's added further comedy when he said that Internet users are "the easiest group to manipulate, to suggest who to vote for." Enter captain irony as the brothers' support base is principally composed of the most gullible and malleable of society, playing with the politically dangerous mix of Polish nationalism and religious conservatism.

The cornerstone of the Kaczynski ideology was their fanatical abhorrence of all things communist. In the 1970s, the brothers joined the anti-communist underground and later Walesa's Solidarity movement with Lech even thrown in prison for 11 months by the communist government after the declaration of martial law in 1981. Their disdain for the communist era and populist sound bites won over much of the country. "We must turn the state around to face its citizens," he said during his campaign for the presidency. "The scale of the repair will be so great that Poland will become a new republic." Yet their plans proved over-zealous as their Lustration Laws that they attempted to pass were exposed for the witch-hunt it was that made "the McCarthyites of the US in the 1950s look like amateurs at the practice of anti-Communism". Before being struck down by the constitutional court, it appeared that 700,000 Poles, all senior civil servants, university professors, lawyers, headmasters and journalists born before 1972 were to be given two months to fill in a form and answer the question: "Did you secretly and knowingly collaborate with the former Communist security services?". Unwittingly, the Polish Catholic church also got caught up. Fortunately, they seem to be experts in denial and cover-up. It is perhaps the effect that Lech Kaczyński's death has had on the world's knowledge of one of atheist Soviet Russia's greatest atrocities, the Katyn Massacre that is being used to justify his martyrdom - martyrologia in Poland.

It's hard not to catch the symbolism (not irony as so many have called it) surrounding the location of the plane crash. The Polish presidential Tupolev Tu-154 exploded short of the airport in Smolensk, where the party was landing on their way to attend a remembrance ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre. Perhaps even more than the near half century of repression Poland lived under thanks to the Soviets, this place is the source of greater animosity felt towards Russia to this day. On Stalin's direct orders, almost 22,000 of Poland's 2nd republic's elite were killed by the NKVD (the forerunner to the KGB, today it's the FIS) mostly with single bullets to the back of the head . The event was denied for decades and forbidden to be spoken of in Poland under Soviet domination then partially recognized by Gorbachev and Yeltsin before again threatening to erupt as Putin's Russia reasserted her nationalism collided with the Kaczynski twins anti-Russian foreign policy.

Ironically (now this is irony I think), 72 hours before the disaster saw tangible signs that the wound was going to be given a chance to heal as Putin joined Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk shake hands under the pines and over the graves. Putin went so far as to say "this crime cannot be justified in any way". He went on to condemn condemn Stalin's claims that the missing officers had "fled to Manchuria" as "cynical lies" and the "inhuman totalitarianism" during his speech in Katyn. What's more, everyday Russians were recently given a chance to catch Poland's take on those 1940 killings at various sites in the area, including Katyn forest, Tver and Kharkov as state television broadcasted the film "Katyn" by Polish director Andrzej Wajda, whose father was murdered by the Soviets there. Some 4,000 Polish officers, priests, officials and other "counterrevolutionary elements" were murdered by the Soviets in Katyn alone, killed by targeted shots to the neck with their hands tied behind their back.

Mind you Putin did hedge his words a bit and the movie was only shown on a niche art channel. After the ceremony he said Stalin was seeking revenge for the death in 1920 of Red Army soldiers in Polish prisoner of war camps, where around 32,000 troops under Stalin's command who had been captured by the Poles died of hunger and disease. "It is my personal opinion that Stalin felt personally responsible for this tragedy, and carried out the executions [of Poles in 1940] out of a sense of revenge". Oh yeah, he didn't forget to remind us that the Nazis killed a few folks in WWII as well, a fact Poles don't need reminding of any more than the scale of the most recent tragedy. “First the flower of the Second Polish Republic is murdered in the forests around Smolensk,” said former president Aleksander Kwasniewski following the crash, “now the intellectual elite of the Third Polish Republic die in this tragic plane crash. It is a damned place. It sends shivers down my spine." The atrocity committed at Katyn by Stalin's goons was intended to preemptively remove any threat of Polish resistance to the carving up of the nation agreed upon by the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact. Yet even Poland, a place where, as one of its great poets, Wislawa Szymborska, wrote, “History counts its skeletons in round numbers” couldn't imagine the scale of destruction she would suffer at the hands of her enemies during the war. The nation was literally transformed by the Nazis as it became the epicenter of their program to annihilate European Jewry, land of Auschwitz and Majdanek, killing field for millions of Christian Poles and millions of Polish Jews. No Pole could have viewed the failure of Hitler's Operation Barbarossa leading to the turning of the war at Stalingrad and the ensuing collapse of the Nazis with anything but joy, yet it was also impossible to view the prospect of Soviet liberation without anxiety as Katyn left an imprint on the Polish soul. Now the cover up has led to Poland's second leader dying in a plane crash, almost 70 years after her first.

A space next to General Sikorski has been apparently selected for Lech and his wife Maria. Sikorski was the WWII leader of the government constituted abroad in France and then later England after the occupation by Nazi and Soviet forces. It is general assumed, as a proper investigation was never held, that Sikorki was murdered when his RAF Liberator bomber went down July 4, 1943 a few minutes after take off from Gibraltar. The plane plummeted into the harbour, killing 16 passengers on board including Sikorski’s daughter, Zofia. The Czech pilot was the sole survivor who confirmed the cause of the crash to be a failure in the elevation controls. Not coincidentally, Sikorski had just gotten official word from the Red Cross report that the Nazi's hadn't been responsible for Katyn, but in fact, the Soviets were and was on his way back from visiting Polish troops in North Africa to confer with Churchill. Many point to this period as the origin of the cold war - the truth about Katyn may have fractured the Allies which may have changed the outcome of the war, so the truth had to be suppressed at all costs. We all know the history from there as Stalin's USSR was allowed to dominate the eastern third of Europe for the next half decade. Just to tie up history in a nice bow, another victim of last weekend's crash was the last "president-in-exile" during the Soviet years, 90-year-old Ryszard Kaczorowski.

“His approach is to first destroy and then think about what to build,” Lech Walesa, hero of the Solidarity movement and former president, said in 2006 of Lech Kaczynski, who once served as Mr. Walesa’s national security chief. Born June 18, 1949, in Warsaw, the Kaczynski twins came to public attention in the 1960s as mischievous boys in the allegorical film "The Two Who Stole the Moon". Their family history was replete with stories of Polish bravery. Their father was a fighter with the Polish resistance during World War II; their mother nursed wounded soldiers. In the 1970s,ine the brothers joined the anti-communist underground and later Walesa's Solidarity movement. Kaczynski was not a charismatic speaker, but his steely disdain for the communist era and populist sound bites won over much of the country. His courageous stand with Solidarity leader Lech Walesa and others in the movement that challenged Poland's communist regime made Kaczynski a touchstone of the post-World War II era.

Also among the 96 dead was Anna Walentynowicz, the shipyard worker whose dismissal in 1980 sparked the Solidarity union protests that eventually led to the collapse of Polish communism and made the symbolic first chink in the Berlin Wall. Lech's presence in Walesa's Solidarity movement was key to the negotiations as his labour law background made him indispensable at the Round-Table discussions on the eve of the restoration of capitalism in 1989 where the “oppositional” Solidarity trade union agreed with the Stalinists to forget the pre-1989 past. The Kacynski lustration crusade of this decade was a result of what they saw after these agreements. A battle for influence among the two wings of the new corrupt ruling class in Poland erupted as the post-Stalinist “red managers” scrambled to fill important posts in the state and privatized industry at the expense of the Solidarity wing of the ruling class, from which the Kaczynski brothers hail. Kaczynski was not a charismatic speaker, but his steely disdain for the communist era and populist sound bites won over much of the country. For many Poles, remembering his courageous stand with Solidarity leader Lech Walesa and others in the movement that challenged Poland's communist regime, Kaczynski was a touchstone of the post-World War II era.

Even though Poland joined the European Union in 2004, Mr. Kaczynski often preferred dealing with the United States. He distrusted the EU, but he hated Russia. Much of the popularity that he had, which wasn't much with approval ratings just over 20%, came from playing upon the Russophobia fears held by many mainly rural Radio Marya type listeners found predominantly in the east of the country. "We must turn the state around to face its citizens," he said during his campaign for the presidency. "The scale of the repair will be so great that Poland will become a new republic." Admittedly, Poland's political spectrum is wonky as Lech's brother Jaroslaw's Law and Justice Party offers Poland the only other choice to Tusk's ultra neoliberal Civic Platform PO party. Where the PiS are very far right socially, the PO is as far right economically, witness their sell-off of $10 billion in state assets - welcome Goldman Sachs. So you either have PiS selling you out militarily to the US, remember their support for Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and of course the missile shield or the PO to it's investment banks. Did we mention that the President of the central bank of Poland, Sławomir Skrzype was yet another victim of the crash?

Sunday's burial ceremony was to see heads of state from around the globe jet in to pay their respects. It seems as though mother Earth is going to prevent many of them from coming, volcanic glass in engines isn't very good apparently. While this may lose much of the foreign media coverage, the death of the chief of the Institute of National Remembrance, Janusz Kurtyka in the crash won't cause Poland to suddenly develop amnesia. All sports events have been cancelled this past week to make sure we don't get distracted, heck, there isn't even any commercials on TV, all I've seen is Lech and Maria black and white homage reels at half time on Canal sport plus football - even El Classico (which wasn't very classic) between Barcelona and Madrid was shown with commentary. There still wasn't commentary for today's Manchester derby, but folks in Krakow are getting it even worse as there are no alcohol sales this weekend due to the funeral. Last time this happened was B-16's first papal visit to the city - I lived in Krakow at the time, we threw a helluva Pope Party as we'd stocked up on booze while those who didn't seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of homemade vodka.

The church and her allies are happy Lech was a good Catholic unlike his soon to be neighbour, Józef Piłsudski, whose atheism caused his internment in Wawel to be controversial as well - the church has enough controversies to deal with right now. He was no king either but Piłsudski and World War I brought about the rebirth of Poland after disappearing off the map for 123 years following the three step partition process that saw Russia, Prussia and those pesky Austro-Hungarian swallow up Poland entirely in 1795. The First Marshall led his country into independence then successfully defended it against the Russians in the 1920 war. His Wawel burial forever links Poland's immaculate re-conception in 1918 with the place of worship of St Stanislaus, ... the grave of the martyr has been considered the Altar of the Homeland. The crypt holds 17 kings including Casimir III the Great and John III Sobieski, saviour of Vienna. Other non-noble new neighbours for the Kaczynskis will be national poet Adam Mickiewicz, whose name is born by my university and Tadeusz Kościuszko, hero of the American Revolution and leader of the 1794 uprising against Imperial Russia and the Kingdom of Prussia. Lech Kaczynski was none of these things, just a "good, modest man" who happened to die in a plane crash at a place from which an urn of soil already sits in the sacred tomb. Poles and good Catholics are being instructed to muzzle the complaints out of respect for the dead, but using Katyn and the past to once again refashion the present is what I find the most disrespectful of all.

See no evil...

Evil comes in many forms. Sometimes it make itself known up front, Darth Vader or Dick Cheney style. They're easy to spot, often commanding headlines and front page stories around the world. Other times, one man's evil is another's hero; here you find folks like Hugo Chavez or Vladimir Putin. However, the most dangerous evil is often the one that flies in under the radar; depending on which media you use, you might not even know they exist until it's too late. Since we don't all have Hugo's ability to identify the sulfur smell of evil and top ten lists are all the rage, here's a top 10 most evil people in the world you may never have heard of.

#10. Joseph Kony - Leader of the Ugandan rebel group the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). So bad ass the US coordinated an attack with the Ugandan army to try wipe him out at his base in northern Congo. Unfortunately it went Black Hawk Down, worse really as the rebels slipped away and have since been on a wild killing spree from village to village. It's estimated that Kony is responsible for the abduction of an estimated 20,000 children (a number that could be 2 or 3 times higher) to fight in his army since 1988. It appears his rebellion began in northern Uganda as his Acholi people had been excluded from power, then by pledging to rule the country according to the 10 Commandments, he took the religious moniker LRA. He holds the distinction of being the first man indicted by the International Criminal Court. Having been driven out of Uganda, he now makes northern Congo and southern Sudan his killing zone. Maybe Kony has made a deal with the devil as he's never lost a battle and always seems to slip away.

#9. Grace Mugabe - OK, you know her husband, but do you know what a bitch this lady is? She's also pretty good with her fists, beating up a photographer last month as her bodyguard held him down. She steals land, just like her husband who took Zimbabwe from independence, pride, early success with education to pariah state. He stole land from whites, she steals it from blacks he gave it to like Judge Ben Hlatshwayo, who presides in the High Court in Harare. Ironically, the nation's downfall was accelerated with the land invasions that began 2 weeks after the defeat of the constitutional vote in 2000, Hlatshwayo was on the committee that drew up that constitution. Cholera is rampant, store shelves are empty as the economic activity of the nation has been ground to a halt. With the recently issued 500 trillion notes already worthless by now, foreign currency, basically dolarization, has been sanctioned for use. But there's a glimmer of hope as Robert seems to be on the verge of ceding a bit of power to the MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, as early as Feb. 11th, but we've all heard it before... Did we mention that Grace isn't too bright? Could just be the syphilis. Plus she made my brother miss a plane once.

#8. General Than Shwe - Leader of the Myanmar (Burma) military junta. An army junta has held power since a coup in 1962, led first by the charismatic and superstitious Ne Win, now his rather less magnetic successor Than Shwe. Along with his fellow generals, they control all aspects of politics and the economy. The army has repeatedly turned its guns against its own people, most tragically in 1988 when a student-led protest movement was crushed, leaving some 3,000 dead. Remember Rangoon, the capital of Burma? Yeah, me too. In 2005, the ruling junta mysteriously moved the nation's capital from Rangoon to a new city called Naypyidaw, carved out of the jungle at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. As the masses have grown poorer, the military has enriched itself through timber and natural-gas deals. Last year, a video of Than Shwe's daughter getting married made the rounds in Rangoon, most of the country has no access; Burmese were shocked by the number of jewels dripping from her body — and by wedding gifts valued at an estimated $50 million. Meanwhile, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, don't know where the Daw came from either, the former Nobel Peace Prize winner languishes and bitches from house arrest. How many years now? 13 of the last 19. You'd be bitching too. Yeah, there was that little flood and land slide thing in 2007, to go along with killing a few monks, but we couldn't get in to see how bad it really was. Dude, crazy town, right across the border from Thailand.

#7. Abdul Qadeer Khan ; Pakistani nuclear proliferator. Or hero. Could fit into the above Chavez/Putin category, but c'mon, he sold nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya! Anyway, Islamabad sees him as the father of their nuclear program/hero these days and released him last week; was it a snub at the Americans? I live in Poland, there was just a Polish engineer executed, first westerner since Pearl in Pakistan; it's a miracle because today I can understand the TV, rare for me: scary music, kill the Muslims. Fact is though, I can't think of a country that is more dangerous than Pakistan today. Nuclear weapons and religion don't mix, just look at Israel. Khan sees himself as a hero - is it possible Pakistan needed the bomb because India had it? Balance of power craziness.

#6. Father Floriano Abrahamowicz: Fellow holocaust denier along with Bishop Richard Williamson who is at the centre of a schism healing attempt by Pope Benedict XVI gone awry. The more I read about Vatican II and the ensuing split in the Catholic church and now the personal prelature similar to that of Opus Dei being contemplated for Williamson's Society of Pius X, the more frightened I am. Religious hatred is the biggest problem in the world, they remember in Germany, as Angela Merkel shamed the pope on behalf of the massacred masses enough to cause him to order the good bishop to study up about the holocaust. In an interview with a Swedish station Williamson said there were only a couple hundred thousand Jews killed during WWII and there were no gas chambers in the concentration camps. He also has wacky 9/11 and 1984 stories. John Paul II kicked out Williamson, the Borat of the schismatic ultra-reactionaries, along with two Frenchmen, a Spaniard, an Italian, and an Englishman for being ordained without Vatican permission. Now they're being un-excommunicated in an effort to bring his sect back into the flock. Breaking news is that Williamson has lost his post at an Argentine seminary. (Is it because Poland is a Catholic country that I can't get the video with the Swedish channel: this link comes up "This video is not available in your country", even though Williamson lost the court case to restrict it.)

#5. Pramod Mutthalik: Leader of the Sri Ram Sena, an extreme right-wing Hindu group often referred to as the Hindu Taliban, connected with the ruling BJP government. Spotting the religious theme yet? If you missed the attack he ordered carried out two weeks ago against women in a college-town bar, here you go:

The Taliban comparison is apt, as in addition to hating women, they smash art, attack rivals, disdain fashion, abduct and torture, and are even being linked to the 2006 Malegaon terrorist blasts which killed 37 and injured over 125.

#4. Ronald Larsen: American land owner in eastern Bolivia. A Montanan no less, so it's the wild west in eastern Bolivia. Hypocritical of me as well, seeing as the indigenous leader of his nation (Evo Morales playing the part of Robert Mugabe) is trying to force whitey off the land. Morales won another Constitution vote last month, making it certain that there will be more armed confrontations as the government tries to move Larsen and other land owners off their land. Limits on land holdings of 5000 hectares have led to Larsen trying to reduce his holdings by giving them to his Bolivian born sons, one of whom was Mr. Bolivia in 2004 (and he's married to a former Ms. Bolivia). One of his ranches, Caraparicito, where most of the confrontations have occurred, is 37,000 hectares alone. He's got over 104,000 more. Accused of slavery, kidnapping and obstruction already, the government will come for the gas rich land, in the name of saneamiento - sewage, running water, that kinda thing. Did anybody else notice that Bolivia is now known to have the most lithium in the world, enough to power the battery-powered car boom, not the Hunter S. Thompson stuff. Pro Larsen arguments here - I feel guilty, the Mugabe parallels, I really like Evo Morales.

#3. Avigdor Lieberman: Leader, Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Homeland) party. In case you missed it, with the Gaza massacre distraction for land grab going on, there's an election in Israel today and unfortunately Lieberman and his party will probably hold the key to power if the results are as tight as polls indicate they will be between Netanyahu and Livni. Bibi and Tzipi. Being so close, the winner will need at least a few other parties to join the coalition. Lots of kids are gonna vote extreme right, Lieberman, for "security" with the top concerns being Gaza, rockets and of course Iran - always nearing the point where they can wipe out the country, launching satellites and now preparing for an election of their own. Of course this all plays together, an Ahmadinejad victory later this year combined with a hard right leaning Knesset equals trouble. Imagine, in a few months we'll all be watching an Irani election closely, and cheering for a guy named Khatami.

#2. Angelo Mozilo - Former head of Countrywide, the largest sub-prime mortgage lender in the US. These lenders have of course been accused of using misleading marketing to push unsuitable mortgages on sub-prime homeowners who could not afford to service the debt, the root cause of the credit crunch. During the housing boom, Mr Mozilo reportedly earned $470 million in salary and other income. Yes, even kickbacks to politicians are involved while he unloaded $141 million in stock options before the company's share price collapsed. Could of picked any of a number of people in the financial industry; runner-up - Kathleen Corbet, head of the biggest credit agency Standard & Poors back when they were rating Mr. Mozilo's and whoever else's debt derivatives AAA in a crazy system where companies pay for ratings. The Japanese "yen from heaven" scam guy Kazutsugi Nami a close third representing the Bernie Madoffs of the world

#1. Ken Ham: Some may think I'm giving Ken a raw deal making him numero uno. Perhaps you'd prefer Carl Baugh, Ben Stein, or "Dr" Kent Hovind. Just pick one, they're all evil. Fact is, in celebration of Charles Darwin's 200th birthday this week, there is no more fitting spot than atop this list for this group of lie spreading creationists. Ken just happens to be perhaps the most public face, what with his Creation Museum and all. These are some sick puppies. If you've made it to the end of this top 10, then you deserve to watch these freaks taking the piss out of Ken, poor Aussie never knew what hit him. (read accompanying story of the first day of the creation museum from another perspective here)


Well, that got a little long, and there's so much more to say about each plus so many more names to add to the list. Let me know who you think belongs in the comments below.

What did he say?

"We must be aware of the superiority of our civilisation, a system that has guaranteed well-being, respect for human rights and - in contrast with Islamic countries - respect for religious and political rights, a system that has as its value understanding of diversity and tolerance...

"The West will continue to conquer peoples, even if it means a confrontation with another civilisation, Islam, firmly entrenched where it was 1,400 years ago." - Silvio Berlusconi

You do have to watch the slippery slope, it's not only easy to slip and hit your head, but before you know it the hate could be turned on you. I wrote a few months back about the racial violence in South Africa caused by the upsurge in Zimbabwean refugees, quickly brushed over some American intolerance and also mentioned some problems they'd been having in Italy. Yes, in case you missed it, Silvio Berlusconi is back in power in Italy, having ridden to victory partially on a wave of old-fashioned, finger-pointing, it's their fault intolerance. Well my friends, it seems that even the Vatican is sitting up and taking notice.

There's been talk in the past, mostly whispers mixed with the occasional warnings from Nobel laureate Dario Fo that what we are witnessing in Italy can only be called creeping fascism. However, when Fo would say of Italy that "the new style fascism is already with us", the right would just call him a communist looney. Then last week I noticed a story about an Italian Catholic magazine called Famiglia Cristiana that ran an editorial claiming that Italy may be witnessing the re-birth of fascism and finishes with "Let's hope their fears are unfounded that another form of fascism is looming here". This is the Catholic Church, to whom most right wing politicians swear allegiance. In an odd schoolyard type reply, junior minister Carlo Giovanardi, attacked the magazine saying: "You are fascists, with your bludgeoning tone". The government had previously labeled the magazine Catho-communist for an earlier editorial against anti-crime measures. The head of Berlusconi's People of Freedom party in the upper house of parliament, Maurizio Gasparri, said he would sue the editor of the magazine. Still, it's not like the Pope called them fascists...oops!

"I am the Jesus Christ of politics. I am a patient victim, I put up with everyone, I sacrifice myself for everyone." - Silvio Berlusconi, 2006

Yesterday as Pope Benedict XVI (B16) was delivering his weekly Sunday sermon, he was telling a story from the gospels about Jesus meeting a pagan woman and rising above his initial misgivings to perform a miracle for her daughter. A little later the pope said: "One of humanity's great conquests is the overcoming of racism. Unfortunately, however, there are new and worrying examples of this in various countries, often linked to social and economic problems that nonetheless can never justify contempt or racial discrimination." Later he reminded Catholics of their duty to steer others in society away from "racism, intolerance and exclusion [of others]".

Um, dude, er, Il Cavieliere, Berlusconi, the pope just called you a racist. I'd love to see him try to keep that smarmy smile on his face as he reads the news. He seems to be having some problems with the Church, this on top of the whole marriage problem he's trying to 'fix'. Seems he's been trying to get them to lift the ban on communion for divorcees. If only it were as easy as changing the laws of your country for your own purposes when you're a fascist dictator. Berlusconi has faced multiple charges of corruption, tax fraud, false accounting and illegally financing political parties over the years but has always protested his innocence. He has even been found guilty, only to have the decisions overturned on appeal. In under a month between June 26th and July 24th his government managed to introduce and pass two bills to protect himself and his buddies. The first froze long-running trials, including one involving Il Cavieliere for a year. The second, and perhaps most audacious, grants himself, the president and the speakers of the two parliamentary chambers immunity for the time they are in office. Berlusconi has long criticized what he sees as the power of the magistrates but now has a strong enough majority to pass such laws. Most people see the magistrates' power as necessary as their dates back to the post-war era, when a strong court system was seen as a bulwark against a repeat of fascism.

"If I, taking care of everyone's interests, also take care of my own, you can't talk about a conflict of interest." - Silvio Berlusconi

Fascists are easy to spot, they us the same repertoire and shout the same slogans: freedom, effort, fatherland, Italy, defense of the race, culture of our civilization, original civilization. In Italy, Berlusconi swept back into power while the far right won the mayor's race in Rome where liberals had ruled for years. Berlusconi's coalition is an assortment of far-right extremists and dangerous, deluded rabble-rousers. The Popolo della Libertà coalition, for example, includes Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of you-know-who. It also includes the remains of the so-called post-fascist party, the National Alliance. Its leader, Gianfranco Fini, once said that Mussolini was the greatest statesman of the 20th century. Perhaps most worrying of all is that the Northern League, led by Umberto Bossi, won 8% of the national vote. Their xenophobic rantings are truly evil, one recently suggested that foreigners should be forced to use separate train carriages; Bossi himself has, in the past, urged the Italian navy to use live rounds against the thousands of immigrants arriving on Italian shores. If you don't like it Bossi has said the rifles are still warm and that he has 300,000 martyrs ready to battle those who get in his way. It's been seen before, first you whip the people up into a rage about the problems of a country being the fault of Others, intolerance grows and violence breaks out, in this case a concerted action along with the authorities. New laws are passed, against immigrants, particularly Roma, they gradually grow more menacing, to the point where they are identifying people according to ethnicity, not only those you don't like, but everyone.

"Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini used to send people on vacation in internal exile." - Silvio Berlusconi

I'm not the only one comparing Italy 2008 to 1922, or Hitler's treatment of minorities to the creeping xenophobia that's entering Italy's mainstream. The celebrations following Berlusconi's victory saw amid the sea of tricolour flags were hundreds of people raising their right arms to the skies, their fingers tense and straight. Everywhere you could see the old fascist salute. It is back in fashion and many are now wondering if the boot-boys themselves are back in power. There is much indifference in Italy to this movement, as usual there are other, more important things to worry about, the timing is right with Europe nose-diving into recession. The concentration of power, particularly in the media allows Berlusconi to shape public opinion. Making things even scarier is the shift in how the fascist past of Italy is now being looked upon. Mussolini has been reconsidered and rehabilitated. Fascism is nearer than you think and not only in Italy, who knows, maybe this time the pope is the only one who can save us from its grips.

"A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned ... to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors, and schoolteachers."
Brave New World (P.S.)

Sex, Lies and The Holy Grail

A lunatic is easily recognized...You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.
-Umberto Eco Foucault's Pendulum

It was only a matter of time until my cover was blown and I was exposed as the lunatic I am, but if it wasn't for the headline in the Spanish newspaper El Pais, I'm sure I could have kept it secret a bit longer. "Los Templarios Demanden al Papa" (Templars Sue Pope), must click..., reveal the truth, unlock the mystery! Maybe we'll learn the truth about Mary Magdalene or even the location of the Holy Grail. Afraid not...

It seems that a group claiming to be Spanish Templars (La Asociación Orden Soberana del Temple de Cristo - something along the lines of The Association of the Sovereign Order of the Temple of Christ) are simply suing the pope to restore their ancient order. The reason they are suing poor ol' Benedict XVI (B16) is that he is the heir of Pope Benedict V who put the ban on the Templars order way back in 1307. Yawn, but for those of you who haven't read everything to do with the Templars since they first got their hands on the DiVinci Code, the Orders story is truly fascinating, from their birth to gory demise.

Around 1115 a small group of knights banded together for the purpose of escorting pilgrims to the newly won holy lands. In 1118 the group swore an oath to protect the pilgrims and observe the monastic vows of poverty, obedience and chastity and it was their devotion to these ideals that led to their rapid growth and their estabilishment as a military-religious order in 1124 by the Council of the Catholic Church. Generous donations began to flow in and their power and range grew along with the increased wealth. Preceptories (look it up, a word specifically meaning a subordinate house or community of the Knights Templar - basically branches, think banks) were opened in Jerusalem, Antioch, Tripoli, Aragon, Portugal, Hungary, Germany, Sicily and Greece. By 1129 they also were well represented in England, France and Scotland. This created the perfect base for what essentially became the world's first international banking network. So, having been founded on the basis of poverty, they were now into usery, money lending, deposit and withdrawals, just like any bank.

Until the fall of Acre to the muslims in 1291 the order had a purpose, but with the holy lands lost, the purpose of existence seemed to be lost with it. Charges of blasphemy, idolatry and sodomy were brought to Phillip IV (The Fair) in France who, hungry for a share of the Templar wealth informed the pope in 1305. Eventually on September 15th of 1307 Phillip sent sealed instructions for the seizure of all members of the Order and their property throughout France. Once confessions were extracted under torture, the pope issued a command to all Christian princes to arrest Templars on their lands, their wealth confiscated and passed on to the Hospitallers.

That's the short story, but the Templars have given us much more than just modern banking and DaVinci Code spin-offs. The day the order was rounded up and executed, Friday the 13th, 1308, could be the origins of, at the very least has added to, the bad luck image of that day. The final Grand Master Jacques DeMolay lent his name to DeMolay International (or the Order of DeMolay), an organization started in Kansas City in 1919 as an international fraternity for young men. Currently with 17,000 members worldwide, some of it's past and present members include Bill Clinton, Walt Disney, seven US governors, a few men who have been to space and even Mel Blanc.

The Templars first headquarters and home for 75 years was the Temple Mount, believed to be the former location of Solomon's Temple and home to the Ark of the Covenant. Did they find it? No one knows for sure, but it's a good story. How about the Holy Grail? Well, the story seems more realistic in terms of the discovery of and passing down of the knowledge of the bloodline of Christ. Most interesting of all are the stories surrounding their demise and resurrection in far-flung lands. Stories abound that the Templars were tipped off before their arrest and that their treasures were loaded on ships bound for a variety of destinations, from Portugal to Scotland and as far away as the New World. The Scottish case rests with the Battle of Bannockburn, where it is alleged that the Scots, led by Robert the Bruce, were able to defeat the English due to Templar aid. In Portugal the Templars didn't disband, they simply changed their name to the Knights of Christ and we're among the navigators on Columbus' voyage to the Americas. Vasco de Gama was a Knight of Christ. Perhaps they fled east and founded Switzerland. Most far-fetched of all, some believe that the Templars actually beat Columbus to the Americas by a century.

Finally, the legends surrounding the death of that final Grand Master, Jacques DeMolay. Before being burned on an island on the Seine, many have claimed that DeMolay's last words summoned the king of France and the pope to meet him in a tribunal before God before the end of the year. Pope Clement died a month later and King Philip died later that year in a hunting accident. Furthermore, legend tells of three Templars searching the site of his burning and finding only his skull and femurs. Taking these with them, they were allegedly the inspiration for the first Jolly Roger flag of piracy, a symbol also used by the Yale Skull and Bones society as well as the Bohemian Grove.

And what of the Templar treasure? Many say it is hidden within Rosslyn Chapel, near Edinburgh, Scotland with the Grail or even the mummified head of Christ hidden within the Apprentice Pillar. Or, it could lie buried deep underground on a small island off Nova Scotia. Oak Island has been labelled the Money Pit, as many believe that treasure valued over a billion dollars could lie hidden deep underground, protected by an intricate system of booby traps straight out of The Goonies.

That's not even the half of it my friends, it's not hard to see why the Templars are featured in so many books. It seems that the general feeling about the order switched from the 18th century when most writers portrayed them as devil worshippers, praying to idols such as Baphomet, whereas modern writers take a more sympathetic view and convert things such as Baphomet to the Shroud of Turin or even the head of Christ (more legends attached to the Templars). Enough's enough however, go find out more on your own!