Bacha bazi ("boy play") is homosexual rape, prostitution, and sex trafficking of "dancing boys" among Central Asian men, particularly Pashtun warlords, which was protected and promoted by the US military. While claiming not to want to interfere with cultural practices, some members of the US military were actually promoting and profiting from the deplorable practice.
(Katie Halper)
Sept. 11, 2025: Journalist Seth Harp talks about his hit book, which has just been picked up by HBO, investigating the American drug cartels and a string of murders plaguing the glorious and patriotic Fort Bragg U.S. Army military installation in North Carolina.
Harp discusses his own time in the U.S. military as well as what he saw in Ukraine.
To see the full discussion, join on Patreon (patreon-full-dr-138556252).
00:00 The structural context that allowed for these crimes to be committed and Afghani heroin to flood the earth
02:15 They’re trying to pretend that Venezuela is a cartel?
03:25 The special forces don’t need money, individuals within it are trafficking drugs
04:15 The history of child sex trafficking being openly tolerated by the United States in Afghanistan
08:15 Soldiers punished for beating child molesters
09:23 Why didn’t the US do something about these child sex rings?
ABOUT: Seth Harp is an investigative reporter and foreign correspondent who writes about the intersection of armed conflict and organized crime in the U.S. A contributing editor at Rolling Stone, he has reported from countries including Iraq, Syria, Mexico, Ukraine, and elsewhere for Harper’s, the New Yorker, The Intercept, and Columbia Journalism Review. He has also written for the New York Times and the Texas Observer. He is currently working on a book for Viking Press about drug-trafficking in and by the U.S. Army Special Forces and a series of unsolved murders at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Before becoming a journalist, Harp practiced law for five years and was an Assistant Attorney General for the state of Texas. During college and law school, he served in the U.S. Army Reserve and did one tour of duty in Iraq. He lives in Austin, Texas, where he was born and raised.
Support The Katie Halper Show: For bonus content, exclusive interviews, to support independent media, and to help make this program possible, please join on Patreon: thekatiehalpershow. Get Katie Halper Show merch: katiehalper.myspreadshop.com/all.
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IKITSUKI, Japan (AP) — On a small island in rural Nagasaki, Japan’s Hidden Christians gather to worship what they call their "Closet God." 🏳🌈?
In a special room about the size of a tatami mat is a scroll painting of a kimono-clad Asian woman. She looks like a Buddhist Bodhisattva [Kwan Yin, Guanyin, Avalokita] holding a baby, but for the faithful, this is a concealed version of Mary and the baby Jesus.
Another scroll shows a man wearing a kimono covered with camellias, an allusion to [Saint] John the Baptist’s beheading and martyrdom.
There are other objects of worship from the days when Japan’s Christians had to hide from vicious persecution, including a ceramic bottle of holy water from Nakaenoshima, an island where Hidden Christians were killed ("martyred") in the 1620s.
Little about the icons in the tiny, easy-to-miss room can be linked directly to Christianity — and that’s the point.
After emerging from cloistered isolation in 1865, following more than 200 years of violent harassment by Japan’s insular warlord rulers, many of the formerly underground Christians converted to mainstream Catholicism.
Factionalism in Christianity started early - Japanese LGBTQIA+ model boy toy gets in the ring.
Some, however, continued to practice not the religion that 16th century foreign missionaries originally taught them, but the idiosyncratic, difficult to detect version they’d nurtured during centuries of clandestine cat-and-mouse with a brutal regime.
On Ikitsuki and other remote sections of Nagasaki prefecture, Hidden Christians still pray to these disguised objects. They still chant in a Latin that hasn’t been widely used in centuries. And they still cherish a religion that directly links them to a time of samurai, shoguns and martyred missionaries and believers.
Related video: Losing faith? how a rare version of Christianity is heading for extinction in rural Japan (The Associated Press) もう主張を持って言われるということ以前からすれば、もう随分とそのお話を唱える機会っていうのはですね、もう減ってしまって、おまけにあのダンカーと言いますか、そういう方々ももうやめて、わかりによってですね、もうこういうふうになりましたけど、私はいずれは私たちも後継者がもうおそらく以外のもんですから、まあ、私たちのところで終わるでしょうけども、うん。
Now, though, the Hidden Christians are dying out, and there is growing certainty that their unique version of Christianity will die with them. Almost all are now elderly, and as the young move away to cities or turn their backs on the faith, those remaining are desperate to preserve evidence of this offshoot of Christianity — and convey to the world what its loss will mean.
“At this point, I’m afraid we are going to be the last ones,” said Masatsugu Tanimoto, 68, one of the few who can still recite the Latin chants that his ancestors learned 400 years ago. “It is sad to see this tradition end with our generation.”
Hidden Christians cling to a unique version of the religion
Christianity spread rapidly in 16th century Japan when Jesuit priests had spectacular success converting warlords and peasants alike, most especially on the southern main island of Kyushu, where the foreigners established trading ports in Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands, by some estimates, embraced the religion.
That changed after the shoguns began to see Christianity as a threat. The crackdown that followed in the early 17th century was fierce, with thousands killed and the remaining believers chased underground.
As Japan opened up to foreign influence, a dozen Hidden Christians clad in kimono cautiously declared their faith, and their remarkable perseverance, to a French Catholic priest in March 1865 in Nagasaki city.
Many became Catholics after Japan formally lifted the ban on Christianity in 1873.
But others chose to stay Kakure Kirishitan ("Hidden Christians"), continuing to practice what their ancestors preserved during their days underground.
Their rituals provide a direct link to a vanished Japan
In interviews with The Associated Press, Hidden Christians spoke of a deep communal bond stemming from a time when a lapse could doom a practitioner or their neighbors.
Hidden Christians were forced to hide all visible signs of their religion after the 1614 ban on Christianity and the expulsion of foreign missionaries. Households took turns hiding precious ritual objects and hosting the secret services that celebrated both faith and persistence.
This still happens today, with the observance of rituals unchanged since the 16th century.
The group leader in the Ikitsuki area is called Oji, which means father or elderly man in Japanese. Members take turns in the role, presiding over baptisms, funerals, and ceremonies for New Year, Christmas, and local festivals.
Different communities worship different icons and have different ways of performing the rituals.
In Sotome, for instance, people prayed to a statue of what they called Maria Kannon, a genderless Bodhisattva of Mercy [Goddess of Compassion, originally spoken of as a male deva who got culturally converted and made more and more feminine], as a substitute for Mary.
In Ibaragi, where about 18,000 residents embraced Christianity in the 1580s, a lacquer bowl with a cross painted on it, a statue of the crucified Christ and an ivory statue of Mary were found hidden in what was called “a box not to be opened.”
Their worship revolves around reverence for ancestors
Many Hidden Christians rejected Catholicism after the persecution ended because Catholic priests refused to recognize them as real Christians unless they agreed to be rebaptized and abandon the Buddhist altars that their ancestors used.
“They are very proud of what they and their ancestors have believed in” for hundreds of years, even at the risk of their lives, said Emi Mase-Hasegawa, a religion studies professor at J.F. Oberlin University in Tokyo.
Tanimoto believes his ancestors continued the Hidden Christian traditions because becoming Catholic meant rejecting the Buddhism and Shintoism that had become a strong part of their daily lives underground.
“I’m not a Christian,” Tanimoto said. Even though some of their Latin chants focus on the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, their prayers are also meant to “ask our ancestors to protect us, to protect our daily lives,” he said. “We are not doing this to worship Jesus or Mary.… Our responsibility is to faithfully carry on the way our ancestors had practiced.”
Archaic Latin chants are an important part of the religion
Hidden Christians’ ceremonies often include the recitation of Latin chants, called Orasho.
The Orasho comes from the original Latin or Portuguese prayers brought to Japan by 16th century missionaries.
Recently on Ikitsuki, three men performed a rare Orasho. All wore dark formal kimonos and solemnly made the sign of the cross in front of their faces before starting their prayers — a mix of archaic Japanese and Latin. More
What would happen if 10 male and 10 female children were left unsupervised in a house for five days? Would they react the same or differently? Thanks to a certain social experiment in the United Kingdom, we may have the answers.
In 2002, Channel 4 released a docuseries titled "Boys And Girls Alone." The social experiment monitored 10 boys and 10 girls alone in a house and tracked their behavior and interactions.
The purpose of the documentary was to keep track of kids as they were left unsupervised in a home over the course of five days.
The first installment of the social experiment, "Boys Alone," followed 10 boys, ages 11-12.
The boys were sent off to a home that was fully stocked with food and contained a variety of toys, games, books, and paint to keep the children entertained.
A camera crew was present to film in the house during the day but did not engage or intervene with the boys unless there were safety concerns.
The cameras were installed in each of the bedrooms to monitor the boys during the night. There were two bedrooms in the home, one larger room that constrained six beds, and a smaller room that contained four.
A bell was placed in the home so the boys could ring it anytime they needed help. They could speak to the production team, a nurse, their parents, or a child psychiatrist whom they had all met beforehand.
They were given the option to leave the home at any point in time.
Before entering the home, none of the boys had ever met.
Racist rite of passage: With time, shameless boys may become "Proud Boys"
.
Chaos ensued the moment the boys walked through the front door.
They started by painting the walls, throwing food on the floor, and squirting each other with water guns.
Most of the boys continued to behave in this manner before the third day when a few of them attempted to clean the paint off the walls.
Despite all of them taking a cooking class the week before living in the home, none of the boys appeared to utilize their skills. Instead, they mostly snacked on sugar and cereal for meals. The closest any of them came to cooking was throwing a frozen pizza in the oven.
The boys had also divided themselves into two groups, one of them being noisy and the other laying low and being quieter. They often whacked each other with various objects for fun. Michael, one of the boys in the group exhibiting what others deemed as strange behavior, became a target of the other boys.
By the time the fifth day rolled around, the house was trashed, with food, toys, and chairs strewn about and nearly none of the food being used to cook with.
What about the girls?
After the success of “Boys Alone,” the channel decided to launch a second documentary with the exact same concept — except this time with 10 girls instead of boys.
The second installment of the social experiment titled "Girls Alone" proved that girls had a much different approach to cooking, cleaning, and interacting.
Unlike the boys, the girls all gathered at the kitchen table and ate their first meal together. After the meal was over, some of the girls decided to organize a fashion show and bake cakes to entertain themselves.
The social experiment sparked conversations regarding gender roles and how women are often overlooked for leadership roles.
Though the series was somewhat controversial when it was originally released, clips recently shared online sparked a widespread conversation.
People were quick to point out that the girls were organized and worked together to achieve clear decisions while the boys wreaked havoc even though both groups had the same resources. More
Twitter user @aguavrgo noted:
“So ALL of them took a cooking course? And only one group cooked? Only one group cleaned? Only one group organized meetings? Only one group delegated tasks? And that’s the group that would make terrible leaders because they’re “too much drama and too emotional????”
The story of true Norwegian black metal and its most
notorious practitioners -- a group of young men with a flair for
publicity, church-burning, and murder: MAYHEM.
Oslo, 1987, 17-year-old Euronymous is determined to escape his idyllic
Scandinavian hometown and create “true Norwegian black metal” with his
band, MAYHEM. He’s joined by equally fanatical youths, Dead and Varg.
Believing that they’re on the cusp of a musical revolution, the group
gets even darker driven by the black metal dogma to spread evil.
They
begin burning down churches throughout the countryside and stealing
tombstones for their record store. But when the press catches up with
them and Euronymous takes more credit than he’s earned for the group’s
violent acts, Varg, fresh out of jail, arranges a dark encounter to
settle the score and ultimately determine who the darkest black metal musician is. Tickets
FilmWeek on AirTalk (scpr.org, Feb. 15, 2019) is a one-hour weekly segment looking at films, offering movie reviews, filmmaker interviews, and discussions on various aspects of the film industry. Today's film is all about extremely heavy Scandinavian metal and the kids who took (take) it very seriously: lordsofchaosfilm.com
(VICE) It's true: true Norwegian black metal and chaos
"Lords of Chaos" (Noisey) is a teenager's quest to launch Norwegian black metal in Oslo in the early 1990s. It results in very violent outcomes. In theaters Feb. 8, 2019 (On Demand Feb. 22, 2019). Directed by Jonas Åkerlund. CAST: Rory Culkin, Emory Cohen, Jack Kilmer, Sky Ferreira, and Valter Skarsgård. WEBSITE: lordsofchaosfilm.com. Like "Lords of Chaos" on facebook.com, twitter.com, instagram.com.
Tenants Rights Organizing Meeting facilitated by the Los Angeles Tenants Union (LATU), Northeast Los Angeles Chapter.
Every 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month, 7:00 PM
FREE (feel free to join LATU as a member)
info@latenantsunion.org
Un movimiento para este momento (SILA)
FIGHT TO STOP GENTRIFICATION! Is a lease-buyout your best option? Organize with neighbors to stay in your apartments. LEARN YOUR RIGHTS AS A RENTER!
¡LUCHA CONTRA EL ABURGUESAMIENTO! ¿Que te compren tu alquiler será la mejor opción? Organiza con tus vecinos para permanecer en sus aprtmentos. ¡APRENDE TUS DERECHOS COMO INQUILINO!
For more information on the L.A. Tenants Union (LATU), para más información del Sindicato de Inquilinos de Los Ángeles (SILA):
P.O. Box 27354, LA, CA 90027
Voicemail (buzón de voz): (213) 986-8266
LATU Solidarity Casework Hotline: (213) 986-8266 or Línea directa para apoyo solidario de casos del SILA: (213) 986-8266
We are often told that the United States is, was, and has always been a "Christian" nation. But in One Nation Under God, Princeton University historian Prof. Kevin M. Kruse (a member of the Executive Committee of the Center for the Study of Religion) reveals that the idea of a “Christian America” is an invention -- a very recent one.
As Kruse argues, the belief that America is fundamentally and formally a Christian nation originated in the 1930s when libertarian businessmen enlist Christian religious zealots and activists in their fight against FDR’s New Deal.
Corporationsfrom General Motors (GM, Inc.) to Hilton Hotels bankrolled conservative clergymen, encouraging them to attack the liberal New Deal as a program of “pagan state-ism” that perverted the central principle of [Protestant] Christianity: the salvation of the individual.
Princeton Prof. Kevin M. Kruse
The right-wing's campaign for “freedom under God” [instead of the far more practical and egalitarian American virtue of freedom from a state God or state religion] culminated in the election of their Republican ally Pres. Eisenhower in 1952 and Eisenhower's warmonger running mate Dick Nixon. But this apparent triumph had an ironic twist:
In Eisenhower’s hands, a religious movement born in opposition to the government was transformed into one that fused faith and the federal government as never before.
TV is what we Americans really worship, judging by the time we spend being hypnotically programmed by the CIA's Hollywood, FOX, and "experts" all over the mainstream media.
Would white Jesus join the NRA?
During the 1950s, Pres. Eisenhower changed the role of religion in American political culture, inventing new traditions from inaugural prayers to the National Prayer Breakfast.
Meanwhile, Congress added the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance and made “In God We Trust” the country’s first official motto. With private groups joining in, church membership soared to an all-time high of 69%.
For the first time, many Americans began to think of their country as an “officially” Christian nation, which it was never intended to be -- according to its founders.
Then virtually all Americans -- across the [Judeo-Christian] religious and political spectrum -- really believed that their country was “one nation under [one] God.” But as we Americans moved from broad generalities to the details of issues like school prayer, cracks began to appear.
Real black Jesus of Nazareth, Africa
Religious leaders rejected this “lowest common denomination” public religion, leaving conservative political activists to champion it alone. In Pres. Dick Nixon’s hands, a politics that confused religious piety and patriotism became the sole property of the right-wing.
Provocative and authoritative, One Nation Under God reveals how the unholy alliance of money, religion, and politics created a false origin story that continues to divide and define American politics to today. More
What's a Jewish Buddhist? “Jubu” is the colloquial term to describe a Jewish Buddhist, someone with a Jewish ethnic and/or religious background who has a taken on Buddhist practice of some sort, whether meditation or spirituality. The term was first brought into wide circulation with the publication of The Jew in the Lotus by Rodger Kamenetz, a book which chronicled a meeting between the Dalai Lama and several rabbis. The Dalai Lama wanted to know how the Jews survived as a people without a country for 2,000 years. The rabbis wanted to know what so many Jews were seeking in Buddhism.
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