President Woodrow Wilson urged legislative action against those who had "sought to bring the authority and 'good name' of the Government into contempt." He worried in his declaration of war, about "spies and criminal intrigues everywhere afoot" which had filled "our unsuspecting communities and even our offices of government."

During his presidency more than 2,000 American citizens were jailed for protest, advocacy, and dissent, with the support of a compliant Supreme Court.

The Wilson-era assaults on civil liberties; Schenck v. U.S.; Frohwerk v. U.S.; Debs v. U.S, Abrams v. U.S., were ratified by Supreme Court decisions which asserted that free speech in wartime was a hindrance to the efforts of peace.

Justice Holmes, in upholding the 1919 Schnek case, in which leaflets were distributed that expressed opposition to the draft, wrote of the words of protest: "Their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight" (referring to the war), and that "no court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right."

Justices Brennan and Holmes wrote the majority opinion which was phrased as the new "clear and present danger" test in which they argued: "The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree."

Justice Holmes said, "We think it necessary to add to what has been said in Schenck v. United States . . . only that the First Amendment while prohibiting legislation against free speech as such cannot have been, and obviously was not, intended to give immunity for every possible use of language. We venture to believe that neither Hamilton nor Madison, nor any other competent person then or later, ever supposed that to make criminal the counseling of a murder within the jurisdiction of Congress would be an unconstitutional interference with free speech."

The Court wanted to draw a clear line between free speech and harmful speech, but their reasoning was blunt The effect of the ruling was a stifling of protest and dissent.

In the case of Frohwerk, the Supreme Court used the Schnek decision to uphold the convictions of two newspaper workers for publishing articles which condemned the war. The Schnek decision was also used by the Supreme Court in 1919 to uphold the conviction of Eugene Debs under the Espionage Act for giving a public address condemning capitalism, advocating socialism, and speaking in defense of those who had been imprisoned for exercising their free speech rights. Similarly, in the case of Abrams, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction for distributing antiwar leaflets.

Eventually Holmes would move away from his ruling on Schnek in his dissent in the Court's upholding of Abrams. Justice Holmes worried in his minority opinion that, "A patriot might think that we were wasting money on aeroplanes, or making more cannon of a certain kind than we needed, and might advocate curtailment with success."

In the 1917 case of Masses Publishing v Patten, at the beginning of WWI, Masses Publishing had argued against the postmaster general's refusal to allow the distribution of its journal which attacked capitalism. Justice Learned Hand had ruled that the draft violated the First Amendment. Hand said that, ". . . the government may prosecute words that are "triggers to action" but not words that are "keys of persuasion." A reversal promptly followed his decision.

Not until 1969, would the Supreme Court unanimously abandon Schnek standard to overturn the conviction in the case of Brandenburg v. Ohio; in support of the free speech rights of a member of the Ku Klux Klan. The Brandenburg ruling braided the "clear and present danger" standard with Justice Hand's 'incitement test."

A footnote for the majority opinion observes that, "Statutes affecting the right of assembly, like those touching on freedom of speech, must observe the established distinctions between mere advocacy and incitement to imminent lawless action," for, it stated, ". . . the right of peaceable assembly is a right (related) to those of free speech and free press, and is equally fundamental."

The reversal of the Klanman's conviction affirmed the principle that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.

The broad decision in Brandenburg gave future courts room for the passage of the many protections of public expression and advocacy which we rely on today in our dissent and protest. As Justice Douglas wrote in 1958: "Advocacy that is no way brigaded with action should always be protected by the First Amendment. That protection should extend even to the actions we despise."


Gonzales argued in the Judiciary hearing that, "Presidents throughout our history have authorized the warrantless surveillance of the enemy during wartime. And they have done so in ways far more sweeping than the narrowly targeted terrorist surveillance program authorized by President Bush."

That's actually the reason for the creation of the FISA court, as a check on Executive authority. The FISA was sponsored in the ‘60's by Sen. Edward Kennedy and others in an attempt to reign in warrantless surveillance by the government. It was a remedy for abuses. Gonzales wants us to believe that the danger to America now is so great that we should go back to the paranoia and repression of earlier dark periods of our nation's history and strike out at our citizens with the full weight of government, with the hope of felling a handful of potential assailants.

So far, there have been no arrests of any terrorist as a result of the special powers Bush granted himself after 9-11. Not one terrorist has been arrested in the U.S. as a result of the warrantless spying on Americans authorized by this administration. Not that warrants would have necessarily made their actions acceptable.

The FISA court and the Court of Review authorize government wiretaps in foreign intelligence investigations. Under FISA, all hearings and decisions are conducted in secret. The government is normally the only party to FISA proceedings and the only party that can appeal to the Supreme Court.

In an appeal of the FISA's authority the ACLU argued that, "These fundamental issues should not be finally by courts that sit in secret, do not ordinarily publish their decisions, and allow only the government to appear before them."

The ACLU and its supporters have asserted that some of their members and many other Americans are currently subject to illegal surveillance, noting that the FBI has already targeted its members in numerous other ways. Under the FISA statute, a U.S. citizen may be subject to a FISA surveillance order for political statements and views that are determined to be unpopular by the secret Court of Review.

Gonzales also used the actions of President Lincoln to justify his warrantless spying on Americans:

"President Lincoln used the warrantless wiretapping of telegraph messages during the Civil War to discern the movements and intentions of opposing troops." he counseled in his statement.

President Lincoln spoke to the notion of divinity's mandate to vigilance when he remarked on the violence of the abolitionist, John Brown in his Cooper Union address. He said, "An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by heaven to liberate them."

"Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed," he continued. "There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling - that sentiment - by breaking up the political organization which rallies around it."

Lincoln suffered for the success of his war at the point of a terrorist's gun. It would be impossible to argue that he died merely for the defense of territory. The surrender of the southern army brought freedom for the majority of slaves. And, no matter how we judge the immediate impact of Lincoln's proclamation, the victory led to the emancipation and the subsequent empowerment of Africans in America. But, Lincoln believed that adherence to the principles of democracy would distinguish any victory in a manner that would provide for the durability of the Union and foster a national affirmation of the rights of the individual.

"It was that," he said, "which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men."

Regrettably, Lincoln would later contradict that sentiment when he set up a military tribunal and suspended the writ of habeas corpus, imprisoning more than 13,000 southerners, who he determined to be agitating unlawfully against the Union. Although he first applied the suspension only to the succeeding states which he regarded as an insurrection, he was rightly condemned for the tyrannical use of the force of government to stifle the opposition. He was wrong even though the suspension was temporary, and most of his efforts were in response to the sabotage of the railroads, and to counter those who were calling for the desertion of his northern forces.

Lincoln's actions in suppressing the rights of the "enemy" southerners reflected the attitudes of the more radical of his supporters who regarded the ascension of their Republican party in the southern statehouses as an inevitable political destiny of the war. And so it is, in all military campaigns, that in the pursuit of our ‘enemies,’ we become so convinced of the rightness of our cause that we detach ourselves from the consequences of the dehumanization of our opponents. When opposing powers war, how do we distinguish between lawful opposition and insurrection?

Lincoln addressed the question of the suspension of the privilege of the writ in a July 4, 1861 message to a wary Congress; clearly torn between defending against subversives who advocated secession, and the application of the absolute power of his Executive presidency.

"Of course," he wrote, "some consideration was given to the questions of power and propriety, before this matter was acted upon. Are all the laws, but one to go unexecuted, and the government go to pieces, lest that one be violated? . . . would not the official oath be broken, if the government be overthrown?"

Thomas Jefferson had no sympathy for a federal government which had violated its compact with the governed. He wrote in opposition to the Alien and Sedition laws that, ". . . whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void and of no effect."

Jefferson asserted that, "The several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by compact, under the style and title of the Constitution of the United States, and of certain amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for general purposes, delegated to that government certain powers."

But Lincoln felt that the preservation of the confederation took precedence over all else; noting that the Constitution was conceived, not only to secure liberty, but to secure the "formation of a more perfect Union"

However, a year after the war ended, the Supreme Court would rule that Lincoln had exceeded his authority. And despite Congress' acquiescence in its subsequent approval of Lincoln's arbitrary actions in its passing of the Habeas Corpus bill of 1863, the court found that the president was not protected by the constitution in his suspension of the citizen's rights, even in wartime.

That opinion has not dissuaded presidents in the centuries thereafter from using the power of government to mandate loyalty, stifle opposition and imprison those they considered enemies of the state. Now, it appears that this legacy of imperial assumptions is being used as a limbo bar as this Bush administration determines just how low they can go.

Ron Fullwood, bigtree_75@msn.com is an activist from Columbia, Md. and the author of the book 'Power of Mischief : Military Industry Executives are Making Bush Policy and the Country is Paying the Price'

"Today, we are defending the dignity of our Prophet with a word, a demonstration but let (U.S. President) George Bush and the arrogant world know that if we have to ... we will defend our prophet with our blood, not our voices," Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbollah, told the crowd.

The annual Shi'ite mourning ceremonies mark the death of the Prophet's grandson, Imam Hussein, killed in Kerbala in Iraq 1,300 years ago. Security sources put the turnout in Beirut at 400,000 and similar processions are due throughout the day in other Shi'ite centres; notably in Iraq and Iran.

Aid workers from Denmark were told to stay away from the ceremonies for fear of reprisals, said the Danish Red Cross, which has some 40 Danish staff in Muslim countries. Denmark's Foreign Ministry warned Danes to stay away from Lebanon.

BLASPHEMY OR FREE SPEECH?

Publication of the cartoons, one of which showed the Prophet wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a fizzing fuse, has incensed Muslims across the world and led to often violent protests in which at least 11 people have been killed.

Muslims consider any portrayal of their Prophet to be blasphemous, but the publishers of the cartoon, reprinted across Europe and in other parts of the world, have insisted they were just exercising their right to free speech.

The 25-member EU called for the media to adopt a voluntary code of conduct to avoid a repeat of the furor.

By doing so, "the press will give the Muslim world the message: We are aware of the consequences of exercising the right of free expression," European Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini told the Daily Telegraph newspaper. "We can and we are ready to self-regulate that right."

The EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana is to travel to Muslim countries to try to calm some of the anger.

But the United States accused some Muslim countries of pouring petrol on the flames.

"Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and to use this to their own purposes," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday.

Both countries are at loggerheads with the West and have witnessed attacks on Western embassy buildings. U.S. President George W. Bush urged governments to stop the violence.

The president of Indonesia, the world's most populous nation, said there was a lesson to be drawn from the cartoons.

"The rights of press freedom are not absolute," said President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. "Whatever the faith, we must respect it."

Indonesian Islamic leaders called on Muslims to avoid violence. "There may be fire in your heart but your head must be cool," said Din Syamsuddin, the leader of Indonesia's second largest Muslim group, the 30-million strong Muhammadiyah.

Two staff at a university in the United Arab Emirates were sacked after one of them, an American, made copies of the cartoons in an attempt to spur debate among her students. Her colleague, a British man, was fired when he defended her.

A Malaysian daily reported on Thursday that the government had decided to suspend the publishing license of the Sarawak Tribune newspaper for publishing the caricatures last weekend apparently to illustrate a story on the global outrage.

The directors of two Algerian television channels were also sacked for showing the cartoons during news coverage.

The cartoons have appeared in publications in Australia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, France, Fiji, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, the United States, Ukraine and Yemen.

“Kill them all, god will know his own.”
A chronicler reported that Arnold Amaury, the monk who led the Albigensian Crusade, uttered this catchphrase outside the city of Beziers on July 22, 1209. His crusaders had asked him how to tell the Catholic believers from the Cathar Heretics.

Arnold’s instructions were followed, and the entire population of Beziers - some 20,000 men, women and children - were indiscriminately murdered.
No one really knows if Arnold really said what was reported, but what is known is that such an ideology was the essence of the crusade against the Cathars, and such ideology has arisen among human beings again and again throughout history, even to the present day in the halls of government of the United States. The consequences are always and ever the same - something that the current administration does not seem to realize - proving the saying that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

There are many parallels between those times and the present that might serve us well to examine.
On the 10th of March 1208, Pope Innocent III issued a summons to all Christian nations to take up arms against fellow Christians. He declared that the destruction of these heretics was not only justified, but that it was a dire necessity because the heretics who inhabited an ostensibly Christian land were “worse than the very Saracens.”

This appeal came four years after a Crusader army had captured and pillaged Constantinople, still another Christian land, though one which claimed to be the true seat of original Christianity. The Eastern church considered the church at Rome to be
an upstart, a Frankish invention of Northern Germanic invaders that had nothing at all to do with the Christianity of the historical Jesus.

The new enemy of the church at Rome was one of the greatest princes in Christendom, Count Raymond VI of Toulouse. Raymond was a feudal sovereign whose authority extended over a very large section of what is now known as France, but was then known as Languedoc.
Raymond’s crime was that he ruled a country where the authority of the church was in decline, and he wasn’t doing anything about it.

The declared aim of the crusade was to overthrow a prince of unquestioned legitimacy, who was more inclined to support his people than the church. The church in Rome saw that its continued existence in the Midi of France depended upon putting the country under the control of an alien, external government that would crush rebellion and would not rebel against the church itself.
The enthusiasm for the Holy Land had died down and the common people and the nobility alike no longer felt that they were fighting on behalf of God, and even if they were, they resented the sacrifices they were being called upon to make for the church.

Considering the spirit of the time, it is hard to understand how a Holy War preached against the Count of Toulouse ever came to the field of battle. What is ironic about the events is that this war, conducted against a Christian people who just happened to hold beliefs different than those authorized by the church, ended up destroying forever the moral authority of the church and undermined forever the foundations on which that authority was built.

What the Pope considered to be a “police action” against heretics, and to gain control of nobles who were fast becoming intractable, ended up becoming a bloodbath of such oppressive horror that, for millions of the very people the Pope hoped to bring firmly under control, the church of Rome became an object of hatred and contempt. This hatred led to the Protestant Rebellion. The powers that the French crown arrogated to itself during the Cathar Crusade (mostly by Blanche of Castile, regent to her son, King Louis IX), led ultimately to the French Revolution.

George W. Bush and the neocons should sit up and take notice.
The territories of the Count of Toulouse had been more or less heretical for over a hundred years. Up to this point in time, ever since the foundation of Christianity, there had existed various enclaves of different “Christianities,” so to say, of greater or lesser influence. At the time of the Crusades, the Slavic countries and the whole of Northern Italy were a constant battleground where Catholics and “heretics” waged war almost without a break. In the Languedoc, though heretics were still a minority, they were a most important section of the population, including much of the nobility.

The Cathars were pacifists who embraced tolerance in a period when tolerance was not what the church needed in its overweening ambition to rule the Western World. The heresy grew during a period of change and experimentation and expansion of horizons. Crusaders to the Holy Land had returned bringing new ideas, understandings that life could be organized differently and that those who lived or worshipped differently were human beings too - and interesting and valuable to an eclectic society at that. The spread of such ideas led to extreme dissatisfaction with the Medieval Catholic Church which was erected on a foundation of large monasteries and churches lording it over huddled masses of cold and hungry peasants and even aristocrats desirous of making it to heaven. The Catholic Church was basically a large corporation selling salvation and everybody else was supposed to be cogs in the wheel of this great mechanical "control of salvation" organization.
Catharism began to thrive in those areas that were growing democratic: merchant cities of Italy, and trading centers of Champagne and the Rhineland, and independent cities of the Languedoc in France. Catharism was ideally suited to the tolerant feudalism of Languedoc, and for that reason, it had to be destroyed.

The Languedoc was an anomaly in the midst of Fascist European Christianity. It shared a culture and language with its cousins, the Kingdom of Aragon, south of the Pyrenees, and Barcelona. It could even be said that Languedoc “belonged” with Aragon, and not with the Frankish northerners with their Salic laws of inheritance.

In the north, women were excluded from inheritance, and everything went to the eldest son. Younger sons and daughters who were unable to marry heiresses or heirs, were grist for the Catholic monastic factories, a system designed to incrementally increase the power of the Church. In the Languedoc, women had rights, could inherit and manage their own properties, and fiefs were divided among children. This naturally led to a more democratic spread of property, and prevented enormous power from being gathered into the hands of any one person or group of persons. It also, in a way, weakened the Languedoc because no one person or small group of persons could mobilize all the men of a region to go to war for personal ambition or greed.
Languedoc is a contraction of langue d’oc, the “language of yes,” which indicated that it was a language in which the word yes was oc, and not oui. As a note to the side, I find it interesting that the Polish word for “yes” is tak which attests to the close affiliation between the indigenous peoples of Eastern Europe and the indigenous peoples of France. Whether this has anything to do with the relationship between Catharism and the gnostic Christianity of Eastern Europe, is an interesting question.

It was in the Occitan language that troubadour poetry flowered. In the fertile lands of Languedoc, love of a spiritual kind was revealed. Troubadours sang of courtly love, games of deferred pleasure, exalted sublimation of physical desires to spiritual goals, and even, in some cases, what seemed to be adulterous fulfillment. The ethos of amorous longing, of exalted spiritual women revealed the different mold of the Languedoc mind.
At the same time, beyond the Loire and the Rhine, the northern nobles were singing about swords dripping with blood, and viscera being scattered and exulted over, all the while masking this barbarity in a strange mix of rapacious piety.

Sounds like George W. Bush and the neocons…
Languedoc was a land where life was much less rigorous, and where the people, from the peasants to the nobility, had a kind of unity of being expressed by a common mode of thought and feeling. The Count of Toulouse was not precisely “master” of the major towns in his domains. These towns formed small autonomous republics that only acknowledged their feudal overlord if he left them alone. Trade flourished in Languedoc and its cities were prosperous. A burgher’s privileges were substantial, and every inhabitant became free the moment he took up residence in the city. Citizenship in a city of the Languedoc was so strong a guarantee of security that no external authority possessed the right to bring him to trial. Though an individual might commit a crime in a distant place, only his own city’s tribunal had the right to pass judgment on him.

The towns of the Languedoc were governed by consuls and Roman law formed the basis of all local legislation. The consuls were elected from among the city nobility and bourgeoisie, and the burgher was the knight’s equal. The Count of Toulouse lacked any legal authority in his own city, and was only obeyed so long as he respected and upheld the local common law. Every burgher had the right to buy, sell, or engage in barter without paying any duties or taxes on such transactions. There were no restrictions placed upon marriages and resident aliens enjoyed full citizens’ rights regardless of their nationality or creed. Such free towns were the centers of the country’s social life and the election of a consul was a great public event with processions, pomp and circumstance.
The Rhone and Garonne rivers carried merchandise and raw materials through the land, and Marseilles, Toulouse, Avignon and Narbonne were major seaports. There was a relaxation of the traditions of caste, and Jews and Arabs mixed freely in the melting pot towns of Languedoc. The spirit of independence from princely power was strong in the Midi.

Being predominantly commercial cities, the towns of the Languedoc were quite opulent and modern compared with the cities of the North such as Paris, Troyes or Rouen. The cities of the south had universities that taught medicine, philosophy, mathematics, astrology, and more. The works of the Arab philosophers were censored in Paris, but available in Toulouse. Arab doctors and merchants came to Languedoc, and the “infidel” was not regarded as a “natural enemy.” Jews were fully integrated into public life and were held in high regard by the general populace. In some towns, Jews were consuls or magistrates.
One thing is certain, life in the Languedoc was more secular than anywhere else, and as a result, life in general flourished to a higher degree than in those places under the jackboot of religious intolerance. The cities of the Languedoc were centers of culture and great industry and prestige.

Poetry, literature, and music also flourished and became a part of daily life as much for the bourgeoisie and the common man as for the nobility. The Poetry of the Languedoc is not only the most ancient in European history, but also the most sublime in terms of inspiration. It seems that the Occitan language was the tongue par excellence of literature. Even today, no one can think of the South of France without recalling the troubadours. The phenomenon of an aristocracy passionately devoted to spiritually inspirational poetry, that dedicated their lives to living out the ideals of that age and milieu, is unmatched by any other group or period of history. The prosaic northerners might have thought the Southerners had gone off their rockers, but then the northern nobility’s highest ambition was to help their king put on his underwear.
The nobility of the Languedoc had a different idea of honor than sacrificing his life for his king, or tying his shoes. In spite of the opulance of their surroundings, the southern aristocrat had a certain disdain for the material things of life, combined with a high regard and even exaltation of personal virtues that was possessed of a great and noble WILL. The adoration of the Lady was a declaration of free will; a proof that, even though one is giving, and giving all, it is being given to a private deity of one’s own free choice.

It is very likely that the Lady of the Languedoc was merely a symbol of something much deeper and was directly related to the knowledge that was held by the Cathar perfecti. One thing for certain is this: the nobility of the Languedoc were not only permitting heresy, but were its most famous and dedicated supporters and defenders.
Although mystery surrounds the origin of Catharism, it is clear that it was connected to the Gnosticism of the Bogomils of the Byzantine Empire. This tradition may relate directly to the tradition revealed by Georges Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspensky, and Boris Mouravieff, and may actually be a conduit of legitimate transmission of the original teachings of the man around whom the Jesus myth was formed.

The fact is, the so-called Cathar Heresy was really a rival religion that was rapidly gaining ground in Europe, and it claimed to be the original Christianity. These believers were not dissidents; they were fully conscious of belonging to a faith that was more ancient than the Church at Rome itself.
Some modern historians have theorized that Catharism was not a heresy due to the simple fact that it was a completely alien religion that had nothing at all in common with Christianity as we know it.

The so-called Cathar heresy was predicated upon the question of Good and Evil. The irreducible bone of contention between the Cathars and the Catholic Church was the role and power of Evil in the life of human beings.
For the Cathars, the god of Judaism, was an evil Archon of Darkness. They rejected entirely the Old Testament as being the work of this evil god. The Cathars considered worldly authority, based on so-called Divine Sanction such as the Church claimed, to be a fraud.

The Cathar God was a god of light who ruled invisible consciousness and did not meddle in human affairs. The God of the Cathars simply didn’t care if you got into bed before getting married, associated with or intermarried with Jews or Arabs, black or white, and whether or not you were a woman or a man. For the Cathars, it was material life, pursuit of material things, money, power and possessions, that was the hallmark of Idolatry.
The Cathars believed that it was a free choice for every person as to whether or not they wanted to renounce the materialistic life for a life of self-denial so as to purify oneself of material desires and thus “ascend” to a different world - an Edenic like state of purity. The only “hell” the Cathars admitted was that if a person did not choose to purify themselves, they would reincarnate over and over again until their material desires and passions were burned away in the sufferings of material life. In short, to be damned was to live again and again in this vale of tears we call Earthly life.

Good grief! What kind of religion doesn't try to control people with fears of hellfire and damnation?
Such Gnostic Dualism isn’t new; it is a notion that has been shared by other creeds throughout history. For the Cathars, however, the unique crossroads of choice lay within each and every human being. It was in the human consciousness that the divine spark was found - the “Kingdom of Heaven within” - and this spark was a remnant of an earlier, angelic state of existence that had the potential to be redeemed. It was there, in everyone, waiting to be set free from the cycle of reincarnation.

Now, what was so evil about this?
It should be obvious. If such ideas were true, the sacraments of the Catholic Church were null and void, and the Church itself was a fraud, a cruel hoax played by those who were only seeking power. If such ideas were true, the status of human beings could never be looked at the same way again. If everybody believed, as the Cathars did, that a king in one life could be a serving wench in the next, and that women could be highly evolved spiritual beings - even leaders - it put a whole different spin on how humans ought to behave toward one another.

One of the more serious charges against the Cathars was their repugnance against swearing oaths. It’s hard to understand this now, but it can be compared to the idea that a modern earthly contract has no binding power when issues of morality and ethics come into the picture. The swearing of oaths, especially oaths of fealty, was the contractual underpinning of a feudal society. It gave a “sacred weight” to the controllers of the hierarchy, the Catholic Church. If an individual broke an oath, he could be condemned by the authority of the Church to Hell. Kingdoms, estates, bonds of service, all were created, transferred, and maintained by the mediation of the Church. You could say that “swearing oaths” was medieval Corporatism.
The Cathars believed that linking the activities of business and government to the Divine was an exercise in Wishful Thinkingif not out and out blasphemy. From their point of view, god was detached from such things and any idea that he was either interested, or cared about the business and government doings of human beings was a fanciful house of cards. For anyone to claim that they had the power to control human dealings by threatening the wrath of God just on their say-so was hubris in the extreme.

Catharism taught that man and woman were one. A human being was reincarnated over and over again - as peasant, king, boy, girl, master, servant - but what really mattered was one’s divine, immaterial, androgynous - or rather, sexless - spiritual self. That did irreparable damage to the Catholic churche's teachings about the sinful state of women, the exclusion of women from inheritance, the "fall of man" via the temptation of Eve, and so on.
In short, Catharism was one of the greatest threats to the Powers That Be that has ever existed. The church, and kings and rulers who relied on the Church to control people and to give weight to their contracts, could not allow such a heresy to spread. Spurred on by the Catholic Church in its unholy alliance with power seeking aristocrats, the might of Feudal Europe fell upon Languedoc in a righteous fury. In a certain sense, you could say that it was a war between spiritual freedom and spiritual corporatism. Western Civilization had reached a crossroad similar to the crossroad that the Cathars taught existed within the hearts of individual humans: a return to consciousness of Angelic realms, or a new cycle of repeating again and again the pain and suffering of existence in this vale of tears we call Earth.

Historian R. I. Moore has noted that the years around 1200 were a turning point that led to the “formation of a persecuting society. Choices were made then that are still reverberating in human society.

It is clear what choice was made then.

We are facing a similar choice today.

On their side, the Cathars referred to Christianity as created and promoted by the Catholic Church as “the Harlot of the Apocalypse” and the “church of wolves,” in sheep’s clothing, no doubt.

When the Corporatist Church and Nobility went after the Democratic Cathars, the people of the Languedoc did not go down without a fight. But, as it is in all times, those who fight for the rights of free will for all are hindered by their very humanity; they are unable to achieve the single-minded rapacity that denies humanity to others so as to be able to mercilessly destroy them.

Pope Innocent III needed an explosive incident that would fire the public imagination and justify a declaration of war. The Pope had no army, and crusades were, essentially, volunteer operations. The Pope couldn’t force anyone to fight, and so the idea was to persuade the landed nobles with their retinues of soldiers to agree to join in. This incident was provided by the murder of Peter of Castelnau which was blamed on Count Raymond. There are very good grounds, according to the historical experts, to think that Raymond had nothing to do with the murder of the Papal Legate.

A propaganda campaign was launched. Papal emissaries, carrying Peter’s bloodstained habit from place to place, expiated on the tragedy of a country abandoned to the ravages of heresy. Just as we see in the present day - and so it has been throughout history - fantastic slanders were created and spread about the Cathars. They were said to consume the ashes of dead babies and to indulge in incestuous orgies. They were accused of homosexuality and sodomy. The heretics were said to desecrate communion chalices and to declaim blasphemies against the saints, declaring they were all damned. They singled out John the Baptist for particular calumny. You might call it Medieval COINTELPRO.

The propaganda efforts were so successful that volunteers streamed in from all quarters. Not only knights with no lands, and hopes of acquiring a fief of their own, but also peasants and burghers.

Crusades in general had long formed a part of the social structure of the Western European aristocracy. It was a way to grab land and plunder. The thing that made Crusades so popular was the approval of the Church. Those who went to war “for the Church,” were convinced that, by practicing a profession - that of warrior and murderer - that, under different circumstances would contribute nothing to their salvation, they were not only serving God, but were saving their own souls. Crusaders enjoyed indulgences, privileges, and could win forgiveness for the most heinous sins while grabbing property, plunder, fame and fortune.
What a deal! Sounds like the Bushies and Halliburton in Iraq.

Another lure to the Crusades was that it was a handy way of getting out of debt. A Crusader’s goods and property were sacrosanct for the whole period of his absence, and his creditors could touch nothing no matter how much he might owe them.

Sounds like the deals offered to the Bush cronies who stand behind him, eh?

The faith of the Crusaders who could exterminate fellow human beings for the Glory of God may seem contemptible to us now, but is what America is doing in Iraq any different? It seems that, to such minds, ordinary human morality cannot be considered when God’s interests are at stake. Never mind that “god’s interests” are surprisingly blood-thirsty and similar to the interests of whoever happens to be in power. Thus it is when a religion is based on a construct of human imagination.

Catholic Faith in the Middle Ages was deep, sincere, and violent in its attachment to external manifestations. It was a period of “mundane religions,” since the urge to perceive God as more or less human and concrete with a special interest in his chosen human beings was a vigorous movement. When the Church had outlawed the sublime mysticism of the ancient Celts (which was surprisingly similar to the beliefs of the Cathars, by the way), they also took over the related myths and legends, transforming them into Saints and stories of martyrdom for Christianity rather than the other way around which it actually was, in many cases.

The world of the Medieval Christian was filled with the lives of Saints and readings from sacred books which took the place of theatre, cinema, magazines, and what we would call best sellers. Literature that was NOT religious in character, was almost unknown, and generally reserved for the pleasure of a small elite. The creative energy of the entire society was wholly focused on religious life. The frantic urge to incarnate the Divine, to make it concrete, suggests a very deep materialism; a high regard for the values of the physical world mixed with contempt for human life. Those who were listeners to the words of the envoys of the popes undoubtedly thought that a mutilated crucifix was more distressing than a mutilated human body.

And so, a heresy that was opposed to the massive Corporate constructions of faith - cathedrals, churches, monasteries, and royal power granted by that faith - was opposed most strenuously by those who clung most frantically to their religious customs as though they were a national heritage.

In short, the papal emissaries had little trouble working up the anger and indignation of large audiences, and the Cathars became “God’s Enemies.”

The war against the Cathars, then, was a war that symbolized a particular view of God and the Universe that was held by those whose motives of sentiment and passion were peculiarly brutal and Corporatist.

Throughout the merciless Crusade against the Cathars, it seems that it became more and more clear that the presence of heretics in Languedoc was merely an excuse. The real aim of the Church, the French Crown, the Crusaders, was genocide and grabbing of plunder via the destruction of the entire country and its aristocracy. The destruction of Catharism was only achieved by the obliteration of everything that made up the living traditions of the Languedoc.

The story of the crusade against the Cathars is a terrible story of the triumph of the Evil Archon of Darkness over the Light of the Spirit and Freedom. We have lived, ever since, in that persecuting society that was formed by Western Christendom at that time.

"They are all the enemy of Islam. They are occupiers in our country and must be driven out," Mohammed said.

Wednesday's violence began when hundreds of protesters tried to storm the U.S. base, said Ghulam Nabi Malakhail, a provincial police chief. When warning shots failed to deter them, police shot into the crowd, killing four and wounding 11, he said.

Flying rocks injured eight police and one Afghan soldier, he said.

Two Pakistanis arrested for allegedly firing at police were being questioned to see whether they were linked to al-Qaida, Malakhail said. Some officials accuse al-Qaida of inciting three days of bloody riots across Afghanistan that have left 11 dead.

Protesters also burned three fuel tankers waiting to deliver gasoline to the base, said Malakhail. He said U.S. troops fired warning shots into the air.

U.S. military spokesman Col. James Yonts said the American forces fired flares above the crowd, but he said it was not clear whether they fired their weapons.

Muslims around the world have demonstrated over the images - including one depicting the prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb - printed in Western media. Islam is interpreted to forbid any illustrations of the prophet.

In Baghdad, Iraq's top Shiite political leader criticized attacks on foreign embassies by Muslims.

"We value and appreciate peaceful Islamic protests," said Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. "But we are against the idea of attacking embassies and other official sites."

In the West Bank, about 300 Palestinians overpowered a Palestinian police detail and attacked an international observer mission in the city of Hebron.

Sixty members of the mission were inside, said Gunhild Forselv, spokeswoman for the Temporary International Presence in Hebron. A few protesters forced their way in, where unarmed observers waved clubs in an attempt to drive them off. Police reinforcements eventually restored order.

Muslims also demonstrated in Indian-controlled Kashmir, Bangladesh, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and in Turkey.

In Washington, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Iran and Syria of instigating protests in their countries, and President Bush called upon governments to stop the violence and protect the lives of diplomats overseas.

The United States and other countries were looking into whether extremist groups may be inciting protesters to riot, said Yonts, the U.S. spokesman in Afghanistan.

Iranian vice president Isfandiar Rahim Mashaee rejected Rice's assertion that Iran was inflaming Muslim anger over the cartoons. "That is 100 percent a lie," Mashaee said in Jakarta, Indonesia. "It is without attribution."

Zahor Afghan, editor for Erada, Afghanistan's most respected newspaper, said the riots in his country have surprised him.

"No media in Afghanistan has published or broadcast pictures of these cartoons. The radio has been reporting on it, but there are definitely people using this to incite violence against the presence of foreigners in Afghanistan," he said.

Afghans who rioted Wednesday said they heard about the cartoons on the radio but none questioned had seen printed versions.

"The radio is talking about them all the time. Everybody heard about them this way," said 28-year-old shopkeeper Ramatullah, who uses only name.

Wednesday's riot erupted despite an appeal from Afghanistan's top Islamic organization, the Ulama Council, for an end to the violence.

"Islam says it's all right to demonstrate but not to resort to violence. This must stop," senior cleric Mohammed Usman told The Associated Press. "We condemn the cartoons but this does not justify violence. These rioters are defaming the name of Islam."

In France, President Jacques Chirac asked media to avoid offending religious beliefs as another French newspaper reprinted the caricatures. The satirical French weekly Charlie-Hebdo also printed a new drawing under the headline "Muhammad Overwhelmed by the Fundamentalists" that showed the prophet with his head in his hands, remarking, "It's hard to be loved by idiots."