UK, Legal, Radicalisation,, Immortal Consciousness, Antivax, Johannes Kelpius, Cult Intervention, Mahāyāna Buddhism
The embattled former Londoner has been in Syria since February 2015.
"Shamima Begum's hopes of returning to the UK from her detention camp in northeast Syria have been dashed again, said Haroon Siddique in The Guardian.
Last week, three Court of Appeal judges ruled unanimously that Sajid Javid, as home secretary in 2019, had acted lawfully when he revoked her citizenship on grounds of national security.
The court left it to others to judge whether it had been a harsh way of treating someone who may have been "influenced and manipulated" to run off to Syria as a 15-year-old schoolgirl to join Islamic State, merely ruling that the decision had been procedurally fair. It was sufficient that Javid had considered such factors, even if he had ultimately rejected them. Begum's lawyers have promised to fight on, but it's hard to see the Supreme Court overturning this definitive ruling.
'Not entirely culpable'
A good thing too, said Niall Gooch on UnHerd. We can recognise that Begum, now 24, is in a wretched situation, and that she is "not entirely culpable, without concluding that the only right response is for her to return to Britain". There are other factors to consider, such as "the British state's ability to defend itself and assert its authority in the face of monstrous enemies".
Besides, it could be argued that the Government, by depriving Begum of citizenship, is simply recognising the reality that she has 'no allegiance to or affection for Britain, beyond a transactional desire to benefit from the services and quality of life available here'."
"No matter what expert you ask, they'll say there are still thousands of cults in the United States.
A Gilbert, Arizona woman says many of them are all around us in Arizona – and she would know.
She says she experienced a cult firsthand and wants to help others avoid what she fell for.
Flipping through childhood photos, everything seems normal.
But, Brooke Walker sees it differently now.
"We celebrated Halloween, we celebrated Easter," she said.
She says she was raised in a cult. "100%. Unfortunately."
As an 8-year-old girl, her parents moved her family to a Mesa neighborhood to live with another family and join the church of Immortal Consciousness.
"Looking for faith, but also something different than what they had," she said. "You know, the mainstream stuff."
What they found was a church leader and medium who said she could speak with and summon a 14th-century Englishman named Dr. Duran.
"You could be heavily corrected by the spirit for what you're doing," Walker explained.
She played for us her recording of what they called "a trance." Eventually, the church leader would speak as Duran.
"I had a lot of mixed emotions about it. Mostly, I'm surprised about the amount of power it used to hold over me," Walker said. "This is what the teaching is telling me. This is what the spirit is telling me. All these things are, if something is wrong, it's me. I'm the problem. So you create this belief set that if anything goes sideways, must be your fault."
The church headed north. About 150 members lived in Tonto Village."
"Andrew Bridgen was in Sweden speaking at an event hosted by Robert F Kennedy Jr's antivax group while his young son was at home facing a medical crisis.
The former Conservative MP, who has become a leading voice in the global campaign against vaccinations, ignored frantic calls from his wife, Nevena, as their five-year-old's health deteriorated, she claims.
Nevena, whose family hail from Serbia, was alone in London with her sick child, going backwards and forwards to the hospital, while she says her husband was on the streets of Sweden "acting as an antivax revolutionary and neglecting his son during a health emergency".
It was the moment Nevena, 43, finally concluded that her husband had been captured by what she considers a"cult".
Today, she reveals how her marriage and life have been torn apart by a "sect" she claims has "taken over" her husband.
She said: "The first alarming sign of radicalisation was when it was obvious that he was turning on us, when our child got terribly ill … There was no way of pleading with him. The human cost of radicalisation and the devastating impact it can have on individuals and their families, and in this case, our family, was spelled out for me for the first time in bold colours."
Nevena, a classically-trained opera singer, who filed for divorce this month, claims she and her son have been left homeless after her marriage to Bridgen, 59, broke down and he 'abandoned them'."
Nestled in a serene primordial forest glen, the Hermit's Cave is one of Philadelphia's most intriguing historical landmarks, yet most visitors come upon it by surprise or pass by it unknowingly.
Who was the Hermit?
"Johannes Kelpius, a brilliant Transylvanian scholar, led his followers to the Wissahickon wilderness in 1694 to await the end of the world. In the centuries that followed, lore and legend have surrounded this mysterious Hermit of the Wissahickon. His historic and symbolic significance has inspired many romantic gothic stories popularized by Philadelphia authors like Edgar Allen Poe and George Lippard, but what do we really know of Kelpius and the first doomsday cult in America?
Young Kelpius was part of a radical German Pietist sect led by Johann Zimmerman called the Chapter of Perfection. Zimmerman studied the Great Comet of 1680 and believed the wonders of the sky were a sign of the end times which he determined would occur in 1694. When Zimmerman died unexpectedly, just as the sect was preparing to set sail for the New World, he bequeathed all his writings, astrolabes, telescopes, and almanacs to twenty-six-year-old Kelpius who became the de facto leader of the group.
These 40 celibate monks (all of whom were men), called themselves "The Society of the Woman of the Wilderness." Their inspiration was based on an elaborate interpretation of the biblical passage from the Book of Revelations 12:16 in which a woman waited at the edge of the wilderness in prayer and meditation to prepare for the End of Days. They interpreted this verse to mean they should find a location at the edge of the wilderness to await the apocalypse."
Intervention101: From Deprogramming to the Intervention 101 Approach: The Evolution of Cult Intervention (Rachel Bernstein, Joe Kelly, Patrick Ryan)
"As the knowledge base of cults, manipulation, and control has expanded, so too has the awareness that intervention is often more complex than at first it might appear. Many cult interventionists have become aware that, in addition to the manipulative and coercive tactics utilized by high control groups, there is often a mental health component that needs to be understood and addressed in order for the intervention to succeed. Our approach begins with an in-depth assessment of the family system to evaluate whether intervention is appropriate at a particular time, what part of family dynamics might be contributing to the situation, and who in the family could be helpful during intervention. For all of these reasons we have found it valuable to collaborate with a mental health professional for a more comprehensive understanding of the overall picture. This talk will explore the development of our family-centered, non-confrontational, respectful approach to understand and effectively respond to the complexity of a loved one's cult involvement. Vignettes from our cases will be presented to illustrate how this collaboration has enhanced our effectiveness as cult interventionists."
