Speculative Swiss-mania (Pt. II): the Int'l Red Cross Mvmt, Sus Swiss Founders, Templar Diaspora, Arms Trader Alfred Nobel, & the Perpetuation of Warfare

I'm finally back on my shit, folks. Lots of PPM coming at you. 

The second part of the Things Observed/ PPM crossover will be dropping in a day or two. 

In this second part of our survey of curious evidence possibly indicating that there is a continuum from Catholic military orders like the Knights Templar, Hospitaller, & Knights of the Cross with the Red Star to esoteric Protestant movements like Rosicrucianism... on to Freemasonry and all the way to the Red Cross, we discuss: 

The Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ & the Temple of Solomon origin story; the Knight & Grand Master Hugues de Payens; Pope Innocent II; King Baldwin; Patriarch Warmund; Temple Mount; Solomon's Temple; passing mention of Baphomet & decapitated reliquary legends; Bernard of Clairvaux; Cistercians; the Templars as favored "charity" of Euro aristocracy & the Holy See (another Red Cross similarity); transmutation into transnational corporation; Red Cross & Swiss neutrality kinda mirrored in the fact the vast majority of Templars were noncombatants; Knights Hospitaller history; Blessed Gerard; Church of the Holy Sepulchre; militarization during Raymond du Puys reign; Hospitaller heraldry also evoking RC & Templars; the "Bohemian" (Austrian, Czech, & German) Knights of the Cross w/ the Red Star, which was directly inspired by the Hospitallers; similar pattern to Templars & Red Cross where a society initially intended to serve the poor & sick gradually morphs into amorphous corporation; the Archbishop of Prague becoming de facto Grandmaster of the Order for a 150 years in the 16th & 17th centuries, using Red Star coffers to subsidize the Archbishop's lifestyle; the Swiss founders of the Red Cross; Swiss General & army engineer Guillaume Henri Dufour; his service as Captain w/ Napoleon's forces; reception of the Legion d'Honneur; engineering suspension bridges & gas lights; his tutelage of Napoleon's nephew at a military academy (possible indication of Freemasonic connections—have to look into this more); Dufour's parents living in exile from Switzerland at the time of his birth bc of their involvement in the Genevan Revolution of 1782; Dufour playing a major role in the transition from the Old Swiss Confederacy to the modern Swiss confederation thru his military campaign against the Catholic cantons of the Sonderbund; the most famous of the Swiss founders—Henry Dunant; Calvinist upbringing; Dunant's very instructive involvement in the founding of the first YMCA in Switzerland; discussion of the uncanny connections b/w the YMCA & the Red Cross, which doubles back to previous EPs on the Wall St. Putsch & William Dudley Pelley; Biz. Plot organizer & American Legion financer Grayson MP Murphy serving as American Red Cross commissioner for Europe; "muscular Christianity"; stray thoughts about the utility of these kinds of orgs for both espionage & colonial purposes; Henry Dunant's colonial business venture in French-controlled Algeria; the Battle of Solferino, which he witnessed because he was traveling to try & meet Napoleon III to secure land rights; the likelihood that Dunant's business was, at the very least, super exploitative if not dependent on slave labor; his ouster from the Red Cross "Committee of Five" after Credit Genevois went bankrupt & Dunant became embroiled in scandal; his probable embezzlement of Red Cross funds, judging from the fact that Moynier et al wouldn't give him awards monies that had initially been intended for him; following 25 years of poverty & obscurity, Dunant becoming the darling of Europe's aristocrats & getting awarded the VERY FIRST Nobel Peace Prize; which takes us to a brief survey of the interesting life of Alfred Nobel; Swedish chemist, businessman, & industrial espionage agent; studying w/ the designer of the USS Monitor; invention of dynamite; the 90s armaments manufactories around the world that he owned at the end of his life; accusations in the French press that Nobel committed "high treason" & spied on a French inventor following Nobel's decision to sign a production contract for 100ks of kgs of the propellant "Ballistite" w/ the Italian gov't, which they went on to use in warfare; a ton more beyond; all of which brings us back to the question of the Red Cross's role in the perpetuation of warfare. 

Songs: 

| Death Grips - "Bitch Please" (had to for the Templar reference) | 

| Tyler, the Creator feat. Lil Wayne - "Hot Wind Blows" | 

| Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - "Higgs Boson Blues" |