Recorded August 7, 2005
REALAUDIO
NB: This stream con­tains both FTRs 520 and 521 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute broadcast.

Intro­duc­ing new sto­ries and updat­ing old ones, this pro­gram begins by not­ing a grow­ing body of infor­ma­tion sug­gest­ing that the sub­ject of “seis­mic war­fare” is not as whacky as it sounds. After not­ing Yasser Arafat’s busi­ness rela­tion­ship with a Lebanese Chris­t­ian intel­li­gence chief respon­si­ble for the mas­sacre of Pales­tini­ans, the pro­gram notes that P-2 grand mas­ter Licio Gelli has been indicted for the mur­der of Roberto Calvi. The con­clu­sion of the pro­gram sets forth the fas­cist polit­i­cal con­nec­tions and strange cul­tural and recre­ational tastes of Vat­i­can scholar Mas­simo Introvigne.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Introvigne’s links with Latin Amer­i­can fas­cist ele­ments, as well as Ital­ian ultra-reactionary polit­i­cal par­ties, asso­ci­ated with the right-wing of the Vat­i­can; com­mon threads link­ing the sto­ries of Licio Gelli and Introvigne.

1. Sup­ple­ment­ing a topic made dur­ing numer­ous “For The Record” pro­grams over the years, the broad­cast begins with dis­cus­sion by Max Boot (a fel­low at the influ­en­tial Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions) about the pos­si­bil­ity that China might employ “seis­mic war­fare” against the United States. The wis­dom of the assess­ment aside, the fact that a CFR ana­lyst would give seri­ous treat­ment to the sub­ject of seis­mic war­fare in a major met­ro­pol­i­tan daily news­pa­per (Los Ange­les Times) sig­ni­fies that the con­cept is one not to be treated lightly. (For more about the sub­ject of man-made earth­quakes, use the search func­tion in this descrip­tion, being sure to exam­ine FTR#’s 69, 440, 468.) “Their dif­fer­ent approaches include . . . even eco­log­i­cal war­fare (cre­at­ing man-made earth­quakes or other nat­ural dis­as­ters. . . .”
(“China’s Stealth War on the U.S.” by Max Boot; Los Ange­les Times; 7/20/2005.)

2. Next, the pro­gram exam­ines a case of strange polit­i­cal bed­fel­lows. The late PLO chair­man Yasser Arafat appar­ently was involved in a multi-million dol­lar busi­ness rela­tion­ship with the for­mer intel­li­gence chief of a Lebanese Chris­t­ian mili­tia that mas­sa­cred Pales­tini­ans at two refugee camps in 1982. “Paris inves­ti­ga­tors look­ing into the finances of the late Pales­tin­ian leader Yasser Arafat are inves­ti­gat­ing about €7 mil­lion ($8.4, mil­lion) of trans­fers they sus­pect ben­e­fited a for­mer Lebanese mili­tia­man. They are seek­ing: to estab­lish whether the trans­fers were embez­zled from Pales­tin­ian pub­lic funds, either from the Pales­tine Lib­er­a­tion Orga­ni­za­tion or the Pales­tin­ian Author­ity, accord­ing to a Paris judi­cial offi­cial.”
(“ Probe of Arafat Finances Focuses on Trans­fers” by Benoit Fau­con Wall Street Jour­nal; p. A15 7/12/05)

3. “The inves­ti­ga­tors are con­duct­ing a wider probe into $11 mil­lion, or about €9 mil­lion, of unex­plained trans­fers to Mr. Arafat’s widow, Suha, some of which were routed through French bank BNP Paribas SA in Paris. They sus­pect that €7 mil­lion of this .was fun­neled through bank accounts belong­ing to Suha Arafat and believe some of that money was used for work on French Riv­iera vil­las owned by Pierre Rizk, a. Lebanese man with long­stand­ing con­nec­tions to Yasser Arafat. Mr. Rizk was a for­mer intel­li­gence chief of the Lebanese Forces, a Chris­t­ian mili­tia, respon­si­ble for the mas­sacre of Pales­tin­ian refugees in Beriut camps in 1982. . . .” (Idem.)

4. Updat­ing a story Mr. Emory has cov­ered for more than two decades, the pro­gram notes that P-2 Lodge grand mas­ter Licio Gelli has been indicted for the mur­der of Roberto Calvi, the head of the Banco Ambrosiano. For more about the P-2 Lodge, the Vat­i­can bank­ing scan­dals and the Vatican/fascist con­nec­tion, use the search func­tion on this page, tak­ing par­tic­u­lar note of RFA#’s 18–21—avail­able from Spitfire—as well as FTR#’s 504, 508.) “Mag­is­trates inves­ti­gat­ing the death of the Ital­ian banker Roberto Calvi under Black­fri­ars Bridge in Lon­don in 1982 are focus­ing on Licio Gelli the for­mer ‘grand mas­ter’ of the ille­gal P2 Masonic lodge that plot­ted against Ital­ian democ­racy in the 1970s. Mr Gelli denies he was involved but has acknowl­edged that the financier, known as ‘God’s banker’ because of his links with the Vat­i­can, was mur­dered. He said the killing was com­mis­sioned in Poland.”
(“Mason Indicted over Mur­der of ‘God’s Banker’” By John Phillips; The Inde­pen­dent; 7/22/05.)

5. Pur­su­ing the sub­ject Vatican-related fas­cism, the rest of the pro­gram focuses on Mas­simo Intro­vi­gne, Vat­i­can scholar, inter­na­tional fas­cist asso­ciate, cult “expert” and Vam­pire buff. Intro­vi­gne is a mem­ber of Alleanza Catholica, an ultra-reactionary Ital­ian polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion that is allied with the Knights of Malta, the P-2 Lodge and Opus Dei, as well as the Latin Amer­i­can fas­cist group Tra­di­tion, Fam­ily and Prop­erty, a some time col­lab­o­ra­tor of the CIA. Note that Opus Dei, the P-2 and the Knights of Malta are inter­twined in the sub-Rosa power pol­i­tics of the Vat­i­can. Use the search func­tion to find out more about Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta. Evi­dence sug­gests that Introvigne’s sta­tus as a cult expert serves to jus­tify and (per­haps) run PR inter­fer­ence for var­i­ous fas­cist cults. Intro­vi­gne appears to have done just that for a fas­cist sect called “New Acrop­o­lis.” “Sev­eral weeks ago, the­olo­gians wanted to have a sim­ple, nor­mal debate about a few sect ques­tions. An overly par­tial, extreme right par­tic­i­pant? Oh well, that can hap­pen. There appear to be more dis­rep­utable forces at work among the sect researchers at CESNUR. How have sects won over so many new souls in the past few years? A dozen sect experts wanted to calmly answer that ques­tion a few weeks ago at Ams­ter­dam Free Uni­ver­sity (VU). How­ever, there was trou­ble right from the very start from the direc­tion of the con­gress orga­nized by CESNUR, the Ital­ian eccle­si­as­ti­cal insti­tu­tion.” (“Dis­rep­utable Forces at Work Among the Sect Researchers at CESNUR”), By Michiel Louter; 8/13/1997; p. 1.)

6. “A mem­ber of that con­gress, a soci­ol­o­gist by the name of Her­mann de Tol­lenaere, dis­cov­ered that Maria Dolores Fernandez-Figares, who was sup­posed to make a pre­sen­ta­tion on ‘New Acrop­o­lis’, a neo-fascist sect, was, her­self, a mem­ber of that sect. Out­raged by this, de Tol­lenaere went to the TROUW news­pa­per, which
had sug­gested on its title page last Tues­day that the CESNUR insti­tu­tion was noth­ing more than a dubi­ous club of pseudo-theologians, and which occu­pied itself pri­mar­ily with white­wash­ing right-extremist sects, such as the Moonies and New Acrop­o­lis — that is, if it were not being paid by the sects them­selves. This seri­ous accu­sa­tion was quickly with­drawn.” (Idem.)

7. “Reen­der Kra­nen­borg, con­gress chair­man and mem­ber of the board of direc­tors which is allied with CESNUR, took the floor and asserted that he had never before heard of New Acrop­o­lis. That was pecu­liar. Last year CESNUR released a col­lec­tion of arti­cles enti­tled ‘Pour en Finir avec les Sectes’ — in which the authors accounted more for the ideas of the sects than with the sects them­selves. This col­lec­tion included a com­pre­hen­sive arti­cle about New Acrop­o­lis. In it, the sect was described as ‘a phi­los­o­phy which increases indi­vid­ual free­dom of choice.’” (Idem.)

8. “The direc­tor of CESNUR, an Ital­ian named Mas­simo Intro­vi­gne, sought out pub­lic atten­tion him­self after that. In inter­views with ‘Volk­skrant and TROUW he said that noth­ing was known to him of the mem­ber­ship of Mrs. Fernandez-Figarez in New Acrop­o­lis. She was in the con­gress, more or less, by coin­ci­dence. An over­sight which he had already ironed out, in that he had removed her from the list of par­tic­i­pants.” (Idem.)

9. “At the same time, Intro­vi­gne made a point of men­tion­ing that the fear of sects had been grossly exag­ger­ated by com­pletely unaca­d­e­mic, venge­ful anti-sect groups. He would have pre­ferred to sim­ply let Fernandez-Figarez par­tic­i­pate in the debate, said Intro­vi­gne sev­eral days later to the Alge­men Dag­blad. They have to know that this woman has an aca­d­e­mic degree,’ and why should the­olo­gians be excluded because of their con­vic­tions? ‘I, myself, am a con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian demo­c­rat. Does that need to affect me in my role as a the­olo­gian?’” (Idem.)

10. “As far as the Dutch press was con­cerned, that set­tled the mat­ter. How­ever, fur­ther research showed that the sit­u­a­tion was not as clear as Intro­vi­gne claimed. In view of French, Bel­gian, Ital­ian and Ger­man sources, New Acrop­o­lis appears to be a par­tic­u­larly fright­en­ing sect with approx­i­mately 8,000 mem­bers, mainly in South Amer­ica and south­ern Europe. It was founded in 1957 by an Argen­tin­ian born Ital­ian, Jorge Agel Livraga. He was an art his­tory stu­dent who con­ferred a false aca­d­e­mic degree upon him­self, and, based on Madame Blavatzky’s theo­soph­i­cal teach­ings on the ori­gin of race, selected him­self as God’s ordained ‘leader’ on earth.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

11. “An ideal state, accord­ing to Livraga, who died in 1991, weeds out every­thing which is ‘weak and stu­pid,’ begin­ning with the gath­er­ing of homo­sex­u­als into con­cen­tra­tion camps. Adher­ents are attracted with pop­u­lar courses about Plato, theos­o­phy, med­i­ta­tion tech­niques, et al. In con­junc­tion with these, the stu­dents are taught fas­cis­toid ideas in para­mil­i­tary units, where they are also trained in march­ing, weapons use and the Nazi form of address. The goal is the vio­lent over­throw of democ­racy. ‘Sense­lessly stamp­ing on an ant is a greater injus­tice than the death of a man in the name of an ideal,’ wrote Livraga in one of his let­ters to his friend, Delia Gutz­man. After his death, she [Gutz­man] took over the lead­er­ship of the sect which had, since the writ­ing of that let­ter, spread world­wide.” (Idem.)

12. “The head­quar­ters [of New Acrop­o­lis] is cur­rently in Brus­sels. From there, con­tacts are estab­lished with fas­cis­toid groups such as the French ‘Front National’ and the Bel­gian West­land­post. The con­tro­ver­sial par­tic­i­pant, Fernandez-Figarez, cer­tainly appears to be known in the ranks of New Acrop­o­lis. She is the daugh­ter of Maria Angela Lig­ardi, who is the ‘National Com­man­dant’ of the Bel­gian branch of New Acrop­o­lis, which also has its seat in Brus­sels. Her father, Fer­nando Fernandez-Figares Muller, was the past ‘National Com­man­dant’ and was (unsuc­cess­fully) respon­si­ble for the estab­lish­ment of a Dutch branch. Their dear daughter’s name is in texts pub­lished by New Acrop­o­lis on two of their inter­net sites. It is dif­fi­cult to believe, then, that Intro­vi­gne, the CESNUR direc­tor, knew noth­ing of other sect mem­ber­ship. All the more so since Intro­vi­gne is to make a pre­sen­ta­tion this com­ing fall to a soci­ety of Amer­i­can theosophists enti­tled, ‘Post-theosophicaI Groups: Ex-members of New Acrop­o­lis in France.’ . . .” (Idem.)

13. Intro­vi­gne is also a mem­ber of an ultra-reactionary Ital­ian polit­i­cal party—the CCD. “ . . . Intro­vi­gne, by the way, is a mem­ber of the CCD, a right-extremist fla­vor of the Ital­ian Chris­t­ian Democ­rats, who, in the past year, ended an alliance with the neo-fascist ‘Liga Nord,’ and who barely lost the elec­tion to the ‘Forza Italia!’ with Berlus­coni, their strong leader. What do you really think about fas­cism? ‘Hahaha! In my own coun­try, I pre­fer to describe myself as mid­dle right. Look, our alliance could have won the elec­tion if they had taken the proper fas­cists of the MSI on board. But we didn’t do that. And don’t for­get the rest of it, that the total­i­tar­ian spir­its and the com­mu­nists with their glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of Stalin and his gulags.’” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

14. “Intro­vi­gne is also a mem­ber of the mil­i­tant Catholic splin­ter move­ment Alleanza Cat­tolica, which he joined 18 years ago. The AC is a daugh­ter orga­ni­za­tion of the inter­na­tional Tra­di­tion, Fam­ily and Prop­erty [T.F.P.] an ultra-conservative club of rich, influ­en­tial Catholics who are admit­tedly ‘ready to fight tooth and nail” against “per­verted ele­ments of soci­ety such as abor­tion, social­ism, unions, drug use and homo­sex­u­al­ity.’” (Idem.)

15. “A report called Prayer-Power-Profit by Mar­is­hane, a South African sect researcher, was writ­ten under com­mis­sion of the Uni­ver­sity of Ams­ter­dam in 1989. It makes con­nec­tions between TFP and other right-wing Catholic orga­ni­za­tions such as Opus Dei and the Order of Malta. It accepts rela­tion­ships to the MOON sect, the ter­ror­is­tic Freema­son Lodge P2 and the CIA. The report even announced back­ground oper­a­tions of the T.F.P. in coups d’etat and death squadrons in Chile and Brazil. Intro­vi­gne has never made a secret of his mem­ber­ship in this orga­ni­za­tion. He reg­u­larly writes arti­cles for the AC organ Chris­tianita and also gives instruc­tion for one week a year to the youth depart­ment at Legionare Christi.” (Idem.)

16. “May Intro­vi­gne offi­cially bear the title of ‘doc­tor of reli­gious stud­ies’? After major­ing in phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­sity of Rome, Intro­vi­gne, 42 years old, com­pleted his stud­ies at the Uni­ver­sity of Law in Turin in the late 1970’s. Noth­ing is known of the ten years fol­low­ing that in the course of his life. Until the lawyer sud­denly appeared as direc­tor of CESNUR, a ‘Church Ser­vice Research Insti­tute’ which was said to be ‘com­pletely inde­pen­dent of polit­i­cal or eccle­si­as­ti­cal orga­ni­za­tions,’ and whose chair­man was an Ital­ian bishop.” (Idem.)

17. “…The sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent how­ever in Latin Amer­ica, where the old land-owning ‘aris­toc­racy’ has for cen­turies claimed reli­gious author­ity for its right to exploit the labor of peo­ple whom God, they hold, made sub­or­di­nate to them. In this remote comer of the world, reac­tionary inter­ests and reac­tionary ide­al­ism go hand in hand. . . .”
(“Alleanza Cat­tolica and ‘Tra­di­tion, Fam­ily and Prop­erty’” by Miguel Mar­tinez; p. 5.)

18. Curi­ously, Intro­vi­gne is also a vam­pire buff/promoter. In edi­tion to being fas­ci­nated with vam­pires him­self, Intro­vi­gne is part of a vam­pire soci­ety that pro­motes var­i­ous social/professional events about vam­pires. Mr. Emory won­ders aloud abou

t the pos­si­bil­ity that Introvigne’s vam­pire tech­niques might well serve as a cover for var­i­ous types of fas­cist activ­ity. “ . . . Cur­rent inter­est in things occult, mys­ti­cal or mys­te­ri­ous as evi­denced by the pop­u­lar­ity of shows such as ‘the X-Files’ ‘can be attrib­uted to people’s con­fu­sion over reli­gion, intrigue with the devil, and uncer­tainty about the after­life’, said Mas­simo Intro­vi­gne, a teacher of soci­ol­ogy reli­gion at one of the 13 Vat­i­can uni­ver­si­ties in Rome. It’s dur­ing peri­ods like this that the idea of vam­pires gains some cre­dence. . . .”
( “Cof­fin Break To Vam­pires Every­where, Fangs For The Mem­o­ries” By Carol Bid­well The Los Ange­les Daily News; 7/23/1997; p. 1.)

19. “ . . .We’re talk­ing Drac­ula ’97, the four-day gath­er­ing in cel­e­bra­tion of the cen­ten­nial of Bram Stoker’s Gothic vam­pire novel, Drac­ula. . . . ‘There are 100 schol­ars com­ing to present papers on vam­pires, but it’s really a party,’ said J. Gor­don Melton, who is orga­niz­ing the event with Mas­simo Intro­vi­gne. ‘The major­ity of peo­ple com­ing are just like us peo­ple who like vam­pire and hor­ror movies. It’s going to be fun–a bunch of silly peo­ple dress­ing up and bit­ing each other on the neck.’ . . . ” (Ibid.; p. 2.)