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About Christopher Bollyn
Bollyn in Detroit with the Nation of Islam
March 1, 2017
A historic plenary session, “The War on Islam: 9/11 Revisited, Uncovered & Exposed,” will be held Saturday, February 18, 10 a.m. EST at the downtown Cobo Convention Center. Discussions and evidence concerning the true perpetrators and possible conspirators responsible for the 9/11 catastrophe will be shared during the upcoming Nation of Islam’s Saviours’ Day Convention in Detroit. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam have invited credible and concerned 9/11 experts to share their research on this critical issue. Some of their findings and questions are shocking and raise serious questions about whether the full truth about the attacks on the World Trade Center has been revealed. The tragedy of 9/11 has been used to attack civil liberties at home and instigate major wars abroad. Most recently, the Trump administration has used 9/11 to justify a ban on immigration from seven Muslim nations. Panelists for the plenary session will include investigative journalist Christopher Bollyn; Richard Gage of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth; and Dr. Kevin Barrett, an Islamic Studies scholar and author. They will present actual facts and offer listeners the opportunity to reason with their accounts of what happened and reach their own conclusions about a crime against humanity still causing death and confusion. Muslims in the Detroit area, in particular, and all people are invited to hear these presentations about the 9/11 tragedy, because many are convinced those responsible were not Muslims at all. Minister Farrakhan, just five days after 9/11, at a September 16, 2001, press conference, said: “... I remember President Johnson made the war in Vietnam the centerpiece of his administration and a great lie was told, that the Congress produced the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that led to 500,000 American soldiers being sent to Vietnam. It’s unfortunate that one of the first casualties in war is the truth.” Nine years later, in an interview with Al-Jazeera on September 10, 2010, Minister Farrakhan said: “September 11th was very, very strange: 19 Muslims were put before the American public and the world two days after this heinous attack. Qur’ans were found. But before this, the Neo-Cons that were surrounding President Bush, who were the architects of something called a ‘Project For The New American Century,’ said that America needed something like ‘Pearl Harbor’—9/11 was America’s new Pearl Harbor—to summon the American people in their anger and horror over what happened. Now there are too many strange things that we question.” Questions and answers will be delivered at Saviours’ Day 2017 during “The War on Islam: 9/11 Revisited, Uncovered & Exposed” plenary session, Saturday, February 18, 10 a.m. EST at the Cobo Convention Center, located at 1 Washington Blvd. in Detroit. #SD17DET #WARONISLAM /Contact: Dr. Wesley Muhammad
Bollyn Articles in Swiss Magazine
March 31, 2017 I wrote two articles about 9/11 and the fraudulent War on Terror for the popular Swiss magazine Zeiten Schrift, which appear in issue 89/2017. The lead article (in German) is also online at: www.zeitenschrift.com/artikel/wie-der-krieg-gegen-den-terror-erfunden-wurde
Bollyn Responds to Charges of Anti-Semitism
October 7, 2016 I have never been so upset by a poll in my life. Only 22 percent of Americans now believe "the movie and television industries are pretty much run by Jews," down from nearly 50 percent in 1964. The Anti-Defamation League, which released the poll results last month, sees in these numbers a victory against stereotyping. Actually, it just shows how dumb America has gotten. Jews totally run Hollywood… But I don't care if Americans think we're running the news media, Hollywood, Wall Street or the government. I just care that we get to keep running them. BOLLYN RESPONDS TO CRITICISM OF ANTI-SEMITISM
J'accuse! - Sander Hicks, a New York-based critic of my research, attacked me in an email to a group of NY 9-11 activists: If anyone said that the Albanians control the media and contributed to the moral decline of a society, or if anyone said that the Catholics did that, then that person would be taken to account for making a broad generalization about an entire religion or an entire ethnicity. Broad racial generalizations are inherently unfair. Because they are inherently unscientific. And this generalization is exactly what Christopher Bollyn said about the Jews. He said that they control the media and that their nature is to contribute to a moral decline of a society. It's a huge blockage and it will prevent people from reading whatever else of value he has to contribute. You'll have to take my word for it. Just look at how his events were shut down in New York. And look at how that smears 9/11 truth. I'm not talking about stuff in theory I'm talking about what has happened. It's defamatory to our movement --it has caused damages. Other people on this email list have contacted me personally. They say that it's insane that people cannot read that quotation and not think that he is being anything but anti-Semitic. It's not up to me to disprove his racist generalization. It seems false on its face. If he wants to make an assertion it's up to him to prove it. I'm organizing people in New York to get justice for 911. What are you guys doing? You're defending something that's indefensible. It's pathetic and it's weak and it's amoral. What I find sharply hypocritical is that Bollyn does all this in the name of "Christian values." BOLLYN RESPONDS I have been asked to comment on a paragraph I wrote for the first edition of “The Architecture of Terror: Mapping the Network Behind 9-11.” This material ultimately became Chapter VII of my book, Solving 9-11: The Deception that Changed the World. This particular chapter was sent to an independent fact-checker in England who, unbeknownst to me, examined 105 statements and found them to be 100 percent correct. Sander Hicks, a New York-based critic of my work who calls me an anti-Semite, sent me the paragraph he thought was proof of my so-called "anti-Semitism". In email to others he said, “I supplied the quote from Bollyn's book that displays racism, hate and Anti-Semitism.” NOT EVEN IN THE BOOK
First, I should point out that Hicks is quite wrong to say this quote is from my book. The paragraph he provided is not even in the book. The paragraph in question was written in 2008 as part of the on-line research, which was the first-draft material for the book: As an American raised with traditional Christian values, I realized that the culture I had grown up in was under attack and being reduced to a sub-culture. Through the Jewish-controlled media, a distinctly foreign and anti-Christian culture of pornography, perversion, and violence was being pushed. The producers of this "new culture" were primarily Jews of Eastern European origin. Through their control of the mass media, film, radio, and television networks, a diet of perverse entertainment and un-American values was being force-fed to the unsuspecting American people... The paragraph that was published in the book, Solving 9-11: The Deception that Changed the World (2012), reads like this: As an American raised with traditional Christian values, I came to realize that the culture I had grown up in was under attack and was being reduced to a subculture. Through the media, a distinctly foreign and anti-Christian culture of pornography, perversion, and violence was being promoted. A diet of perverse entertainment and un-American values was being pushed onto the unsuspecting American population through the mass media. The fact of the matter is that the quote that Sander Hicks says “displays racism, hate and Anti-Semitism” is not even in the book. Looking at the paragraph that was actually published in the book it is clear that Hicks is quite wrong about it being any of the things he says it is. This is what I wrote to Sander Hicks: Sander, all the points I make in that paragraph are easily proven. They are, in fact, so well-known that they are agreed upon by anyone who has looked into the subject. You may not believe it, but I would ask you to simply examine each point and you will see that I have not lied or exaggerated about anything. As the author of the draft version that I wrote in 2008, I am of course ready to defend what I wrote. To do so, it is necessary to provide the paragraph in its proper context: After spending several years in Europe, Israel, and the Middle East, I returned to the United States in the late 1970s and found the discourse in the media about Zionism to be extremely one-sided and distorted. Zionism, a racist ideology if ever there was one, was grossly misrepresented in the U.S. mass media as being a progressive and democratic movement of national liberation, while the state of Israel was depicted as being a kosher slice of America in the Middle East. It was very clear that the people providing the distorted view of the Middle East were themselves Jews devoted to a very un-American political and racial agenda called Zionism, the violent and chauvinistic nationalism of Eastern European Jews who have occupied Palestine since 1948. Honest and unbiased coverage of Israel and the Middle East became increasingly difficult to find in the U.S. during the 1980s and 1990s. The sale of Ted Turner's progressive Cable News Network (CNN) to Gerald Levine of AOL Time Warner and the transformation of the informative Christian Science Monitor marked the end of the last independent and unbiased news outlets covering the Middle East. An ethnic minority group with a foreign agenda – Zionism – had gained monopoly control over the U.S. mass media. The Jewish monopoly of the U.S. media coincided with the United States being drawn more deeply into the Arab-Israeli conflict as the primary supporter, financier, and political ally of the Zionists. This combination has been extremely detrimental for America and disastrous for the people of the region, as the criminal Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 clearly showed. Aware of the increasing prevalence and dominance of Zionist Jews in the political, financial, and academic sectors, I came to the conclusion that I was living in Jewish times. As an American raised with traditional Christian values, I realized that the culture I had grown up in was under attack and being reduced to a sub-culture. Through the Jewish-controlled media, a distinctly foreign and anti-Christian culture of pornography, perversion, and violence was being pushed. The producers of this "new culture" were primarily Jews of Eastern European origin. Through their control of the mass media, film, radio, and television networks, a diet of perverse entertainment and un-American values was being force-fed to the unsuspecting American population. The part that Hicks says “displays racism, hate and Anti-Semitism” is the last four sentences of the final paragraph, so let’s look at what they say: As an American raised with traditional Christian values, I realized that the culture I had grown up in was under attack and being reduced to a sub-culture. Bollyn: I grew up in the Episcopalian church where I served many years as an acolyte. I was also an Eagle Scout and earned the God and Country Award. I observed that the Christian values that were essential guidelines of the culture I grew up in were very much under attack when I came back to the United States in the late 1970s after about three years spent in Europe and the Middle East. Through the Jewish-controlled media, a distinctly foreign and anti-Christian culture of pornography, perversion, and violence was being pushed. Bollyn: The fact that an “anti-Christian culture of pornography, perversion, and violence was being pushed” is obvious to anyone who is familiar with American culture of the 1980s and 90s. The offensive phrase therefore must be that this was being pushed by the “Jewish-controlled media.” It is an easily proven fact that the U.S. mainstream media is “Jewish-controlled.” Some of the sources which have documented this fact are: “Who runs Hollywood? C'mon,” Joel Stein, Los Angeles Times, December 19, 2008 “How Jews Control the American Media” by Brother Nathanael Kapner, Real Jew News, 2008 “Oliver Stone: Jewish Control of the Media Is Preventing Free Holocaust Debate,” Ha’aretz, July 26, 2010 “Seven Jewish Americans Control Most US Media” by John Whitley,Rense.com, 2003 “The Jewish Secret Society That Controls the U.S. Media” by Christopher Bollyn, Bollyn.com, December 1, 2009 The producers of this "new culture" were primarily Jews of Eastern European origin. Bollyn: Again, an examination of who controls the media in the United States will show that this is the fact. CBS News is a good example to illustrate this fact: Leslie Moonves, the great-nephew of David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, is the President and Chief Executive Officer of CBS Corp. Through their control of the mass media, film, radio, and television networks, a diet of perverse entertainment and un-American values was being force-fed to the unsuspecting American population. Bollyn: The mass media has consistently pushed “a diet of perverse entertainment and un-American values.” One could write volumes on this subject, but as an example of how this works I sent the following to Sander Hicks: “Who Murdered Black Music?” by Mike King:
Bollyn 9-11 Tour Continues in June
April 3, 2016
Bollyn Summer Tour Announcement 1. First, contact me (by email at [email protected]) so we can decide on a date for the presentation. 2. Check with your local library to see what kind and size of meeting rooms they have available. The use of these rooms in public libraries is usually free and includes use of chairs, projector, sound system, and technical support. A projector is required to show my PowerPoint slides. 3. Since it is an author presentation, ask if I can sign and sell my books. 4. Promote the event with a Facebook event page and printed flyers. Six weeks should be ample time to publicize the event once the date and venue have been confirmed. 5. Contact local peace and 9/11 truth organizations to help spread the word. 6. Remember: Don’t be intimidated – Embrace controversy. Don't be surprised if the planned event raises some controversy; embrace it. Controversy is actually a good thing because it brings attention to the 9/11 cover-up and increases public interest in the event. 
Solving 9-11 Tour Concludes in New York City
March 28, 2016
Christopher Bollyn, author of Solving 9-11, was on a speaking tour in the United States from January through March. The theme of the tour was "Solving 9-11 Ends the War." The presentation was aimed at helping people grasp the 9-11 deception and freeing themselves from fear. The "War on Terror" is, after all, a massive fraud based on the huge hoax of 9-11, which was used to drag the United States and other militaries into the Middle East. The deception was used to create an utterly false Zeitgeist, as it abused the military and bled the U.S. taxpayer of trillions of dollars. We need to turn this around! It is up to us to make the change. We need to throw the Masters of Deception and their fraudulent "War on Terror" onto the trash-heap of history and restore a real Zeitgeist with authentic government, accountability, development, and prosperity. We need to recover our long-lost sense of fun and freedom and liberate ourselves and our nation from this evil deception - as we prosecute the war criminals and terrorists who have done so much damage to the world.
There is a Facebook page dedicated to the Solving 9-11 Tour 2016 at:
For more detailed information on Christopher Bollyn's speaking tour go to: www.facebook.com/BollynSpeaking2016/
Open Mind Conference Succeeds in Holland
June 8, 2015
The venue of the Open Mind Conference NL was: Centrum Zonnewijzer
Rev. Farrakhan cites Bollyn 9-11 Research
March 6, 2015 Minister Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam is the first high-profile religious leader in the United States to openly discuss the Israeli role in the false-flag terrorism of 9-11. In the following clip, from a recent sermon, Rev. Farrakhan mentions my name and cites some of my 9-11 research. Rev. Farrakhan's recognition of my research is the result of my having sent a set of books to the Nation of Islam in 2012 and more recent discussions with people closely connected to the NOI. It should be noted that the other person mentioned by Rev. Farrakhan, a Victor Thorn (aka Scott Makufka) of American Free Press, basically plagiarized my research about 9-11 and then had it published by Willis Carto in a book - after they had ousted me from the same organization. Scott Makufka, who writes under the name Victor Thorn, actually played a key role in having me ousted from AFP, and was then brought into the organization to take my place - and steal my thunder about the Israeli role in 9-11.
Source: "Farrakhan on 9-11: What You Need to Know #FalseFlag", The Final Call, YouTube, March 3, 2015
Bollyn at The Oscars
February 23, 2015
Christopher Bollyn held a one-man manifestation for 9-11 truth outside The Oscars with a sign that read "Solving 9-11 Ends the War." This is also the title of his current presentation, which he will be giving in five California cities in the coming weeks. Photos by Mike Chickey - smu.gs/1JBV1Ps
Why Solving 9-11 is Our Most Urgent Task
December 11, 2014
What none of us (myself included) wish to accept is that the unsolved assassination is a symptom of something wrong today, not just in 1963, in the heart of the society in which we live. … Official investigations of the Kennedy assassination have failed, not because the case is inherently insoluble, but because both the case and the investigations have been governed by deeper political processes, which have not yet been discerned. These forces are still with us, and they are not benign. I was recently asked why I persevere in my efforts to speak about the truth about what happened on 9-11 to the public. This is a good question that deserves a logical and sensible answer, which is what I will try to provide here. Most Americans would readily agree that our nation seems to have lost its way and that the political leadership is not serving the best interests of the people or the republic. So, what’s wrong with our country? If we want to rectify the problems and restore the integrity of our nation we need to have a very clear understanding of precisely what ails it. One sure way to get a grasp of our political predicament is to logically analyze what the political leadership has done – and what it has failed to do – about the terror atrocity of 9-11. Since September 11, 2001, four successive administrations and fourteen Sessions of Congress have utterly failed to conduct a proper criminal investigation of 9-11, a criminal atrocity that profoundly affected the course of the nation. Rather than investigate the mass murder of 3,000 people on 9-11, successive U.S. administrations have engaged in a criminal deception, using lies to take us into foreign wars while imposing police state measures at home. The government’s egregious failure to conduct a proper criminal investigation into the events of 9-11 is exactly like the failure by the newly-installed president, Lyndon B. Johnson, to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. In both cases, rather than conducting proper criminal investigations, the government appointed commissions that produced seriously flawed reports that were simply meant to support the official, but false, version of events. So, let’s look at this logically. A government that willfully covers up the truth about an atrocity like 9-11 is clearly not serving the people or the republic. By failing to investigate the crime, the government (and the controlled media that supports it) is actually protecting the culprits of 9-11, which means that our government and media are serving the very people who carried out the false-flag terrorism that hijacked our nation. As Peter Dale Scott described the people who obstructed the investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy: “These forces are still with us, and they are not benign.” Scott is absolutely right about the nature of these “deeper political” forces. The people who are behind the 9-11 cover-up and deception are certainly “not benign.” They are rather like a malignant cancer that has afflicted our American political system. Because America is a leading nation, its seriously diseased state affects the welfare of the whole world. This is the simple logic that explains why solving 9-11 and exposing those behind the crime and the cover-up is absolutely essential to our personal and national well-being. It is, in fact, our most urgent task because it is the only way we can save our republic - and our sanity. The Solving 9-11 books reveal the true culprits behind the false-flag terrorism of 9-11, knowledge which empowers us by freeing us from their evil deception. Understanding the nature of the deception is the real cure for pessimism and negativism because it enables us to grasp the essence of the problem we face as a nation. This is why I persevere in my efforts to spread the truth about what happened on 9-11. Your support is essential in this important endeavor - and greatly appreciated. To donate by PayPal, send donation to:
The Solving 9-11 Tour Goes On
March 23, 2015
The “Solving 9-11 Ends the War” tour was a great success. In February, I spoke at fourteen events from Austin and Seguin, deep in the heart of Texas, to Dallas, St. Louis, Kansas City, and central Iowa. The last leg of the tour was in central California, from Oakland and the Monterey Bay up to Santa Rosa with the final stop in Visalia – in the shadow of the giant Sequoias.
I met new people every place I went, starting with the person who arranged the venue and organized the event. Videos were made of every event and these have already been viewed by tens of thousands of people. The 58-minute video of the event in Santa Rosa, for example, has more than one thousand new viewers per day.
Besides giving presentations, I also made important new connections. One supporter, for example, arranged an interview just before Christmas with a high-level person with the Nation of Islam. I was, therefore, very pleased to see Rev. Louis Farrakhan mention my name and research in a lecture he gave on March 1 in Chicago. Farrakhan is the first high-profile religious leader to address the evidence of Israeli involvement in the false-flag terror attacks of 9-11.
On February 22, I held a one-man protest for 9-11 truth at the Oscars in Hollywood with signs that read “9-11 Truth Ends the War” and “Solving 9-11 Ends the War” in front of the VIP limousines waiting to pass through the security check outside the theatre. The Hollywood moguls may want to ignore 9-11 truth but they will not be able to do so for much longer; the truth is coming out all over.
On the final day of the tour, March 10, I did a studio interview in Beverly Hills with Sean Stone, the son of Oliver Stone, for his “Buzzsaw” program. Sean Stone’s interview and Farrakhan’s speech have opened the door to 9-11 truth for whole new segments of the public. All in all, the success of my winter tour greatly exceeded my expectations, with many thanks to my friends and supporters of 9-11 truth.
This spring, my 9-11 truth tour continues in Europe. In April, I will be speaking at three events in Holland. Then, on June 6-7, I will be speaking at the Open Mind Conference in Amsterdam, along with Ken O’Keefe and others. Open Mind Conference website: www.openmindconference.nl/ on FaceBook at: www.facebook.com/OpenMindConferenceNL My American tour lasted three months and stretched my budget beyond its limit. It was only thanks to a couple generous donors and the hospitality of friends that I was able to carry on. Perseverance is required if we are to win the crucial battle for 9-11 truth. I do what I can, but I can only do it with your help. Please support my efforts by making a donation by PayPal to bollyn at bollynbooks dot com or by sending a personal check or money order to: Christopher Bollyn or: Christopher Bollyn With many thanks and all the best wishes, Christopher Bollyn
Sources: Photos by Mike Chickey, wemustspeak.smugmug.com/
Final Event of Solving 9-11 Tour - Visalia, California
March 5, 2015
THE "SOLVING 9-11 ENDS THE WAR" TOUR Austin, Texas Seguin, Texas Dallas, Texas St. Louis, Missouri Kansas City, Missouri Adel, Iowa Kansas City, Missouri - Note New Venue Kansas City, Missouri - Note Change of Date Oakland, California Monterey, California Santa Cruz, California
Santa Rosa, California
Visalia, California
Bollyn's U.S. West Coast Tour
October 28, 2014 My recently concluded tour of the West Coast of the United States and western Canada was a great success. I started out on the trip with just one invitation to speak before a group called San Diegans for 9/11 Truth, and permission to have a book table at the 9/11 Truth Film Festival in Oakland. During the 6-week tour, however, I wound up speaking to audiences in San Diego, San Dimas, and Davis, California, before moving on to Portland, Seattle, Jasper (Alberta), Calgary, Denver, and Bountiful, Utah. I also met many important people in the 9/11 truth movement and activists for Middle East peace and justice, such as Alison Weir of IfAmericansKnew.org and Gideon Atzmon. I was very fortunate to meet Jeff Gates, the author of Guilt by Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit took America to War, and Greg Felton, author of The Host and The Parasite: How Israel's Fifth Column Consumed America. I was also very happy to meet Barbara Honegger in Portland. I am very grateful to the many kind and generous people who helped me on this tour. A big thanks to those who helped me raise the funds to make the trip in the first place, and to those who helped me along the way. I am looking forward to doing another speaking tour in America this winter, probably in January/February. If you would like me to speak at a Solving 9-11 truth event in your town, please contact me through Feedback on Bollyn.com.
Source: All photos by Mike Chickey
Photos of Solving 9-11 Event in San Diego
September 17, 2014
Bollyn Joins "Face of Truth" Campaign
September 10, 2014
"There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia."
Bollyn's Solving 9-11 on Facebook
August 19, 2014 In April, we created a Facebook site for the Solving 9-11 books. The page has 441 likes, which means these people are notified as soon as a new article is posted. If you would like to join this group, visit my Facebook page at www.facebook.com/bollynbooks911 - and click to like it.
Spread the Word
February 1, 2013 Christopher Bollyn is an American journalist who has investigated the events of 9-11. He helped Professor Steven E. Jones in the spring and summer of 2006, when Jones found solid evidence of Thermite in the dust of the Twin Towers. The discovery and discussion of Thermite in the demolition of the World Trade Center led to serious trouble for both Jones and Bollyn.
In August 2006, Bollyn was attacked at his home in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, by a heavily-armed three-man team of undercover police that had been prowling around his house for several days in a row. The result of the police assault on Bollyn was that he was falsely charged with assault and resisting arrest; both misdemeanor charges. He pled innocent and went through a four-day trial in which the police openly lied and presented false evidence. Bollyn’s evidence, on the other hand, was not allowed to be presented and his expert witness was not allowed to testify. After the seriously flawed trial, Bollyn was found guilty of both charges and faced sentencing from the same judge who had overseen the trial. Rather than submitting themselves to injustice the Bollyn family left their home near Chicago and moved to Europe in June 2007. He then wrote a set of books based on his 9-11 research entitledSolving 9-11: The Deception that Changed the World. His daughter has started a petition to the Obama White House to pardon her father. Her petition needs 25,000 signatures by February 9, 2013, to get a presidential response. In order to get that many signatures her petition needs to reach as many people as possible who are inclined to sign the petition. Please help spread this message by email or any other network you know of. Your signature makes a difference. One does not need to be a U.S. citizen to sign the petition. Please sign her petition at: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-my-father-christopher-bollyn/8DH08Pqh The following is the text of her petition: We petition the Obama Administration to: Pardon My Father, Christopher Bollyn I witnessed my father being brutally attacked by undercover police at my home on 8/15/06. He had called 911 to report a suspicious vehicle with three men wearing body armor prowling near our house. These men then showed up and my mother and I faced them on our driveway. My dad ran out asking who they were. The men wore no uniforms and refused to identify themselves. When my dad turned to get my uncle, the men tackled him and pinned him to the ground. One knelt on his head while the other handcuffed and TASERed him. Suddenly many police cars appeared and he was taken away. He was falsely charged with assault and resisting arrest. He pled innocent in court. The police videos were destroyed and he was found guilty. We have now lived 5 years in exile. I want to go home. Please pardon my dad. Created: Jan 10, 2013
Pardon My Father, Christopher Bollyn
February 9, 2013 Update: The petition has expired - While Catherine's petition received more than 1,285 signers from people all across America and around the world, it failed to get the 25,000 needed to get a White House response. We would have needed to get about 1,000 signatures per day on average to have reached that number. Catherine's petition succeeded in increasing public awareness of what happened to our family when a squad of undercover police attacked me at our home. This, and much worse, is what happens to journalists that dare to expose the truth in the United States today. Many thanks to the hundreds of Americans who signed the petition and to my supporters from all over the world, especially Norway and France. A French website, www.egaliteetreconciliation.fr joined the cause on February 3 and helped spread the word to readers in France:
Catherine Bollyn started her petition on January 10 to ask for a presidential pardon for her father. Her petition needed to have a total of 25,000 signatures, by February 9, in order to get a presidential response. Shortly after submitting her petition the White House moved the goalposts for new petitions to 100,000! We received quite a bit of positive feedback, such as the following note: Dear Christopher, Note: We are also contacting the office the Governor of Illinois, Pat Quinn (D), to prepare a formal request for a pardon. Illinois residents can send messages to the governor at: http://www2.illinois.gov/gov/Pages/ContacttheGovernor.aspx
The text of Catherine's petition read: We petition the Obama Administration to:
The Boleyns and the English Bible
February 3, 2011 Wherefore I do beseech you all, for the love of our Lord God, that you do at all seasons hold by the truth, and speak it, and embrace it.
Today, the Bible is the most popular book in the English language. When we read the Holy Scripture or hear it read in church we treat it with reverence, but it has not always been that way. In the 1520s, hundreds of Bibles, the first copies printed in English, were burned by the Roman Catholic Bishop of London.
In 1536, William Tyndale, the Roman Catholic priest who translated the Bible from Greek and Hebrew, was strangled and burned at the stake near Brussels. Branded a heretic and hounded by agents of Rome, Tyndale lived and worked on the English Bible in exile in Antwerp, Marburg, and Worms for the last 12 years of his life. His New Testament, translated directly from Greek, was first published in Worms in 1526.
"While William Tyndale was praying in his dying moments that God would open the eyes of the King of England, God had already answered the prayer in his own way: he had used a woman to influence the King and the nation with the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ. That woman was Anne Boleyn," wrote Kath Dredge in Anne Boleyn: One Short Life that Changed the English-speaking World by Colin Hamer. The four-hundred year old King James Bible that we use today is essentially the Tyndale translation, which is the basis for about 85 percent of the King James Version of 1611. The Tyndale Bible allowed the people to read the Scriptures in English for the first time. The first book of Holy Scripture printed in England was a copy of Tyndale’s New Testament, printed on vellum and presented to Anne Boleyn, the Queen of England, in 1536. Anne already had a personal copy from the Antwerp printing in 1534, which she openly displayed - although it was a banned book.  "The Newe Testament, dylygently corrected and compared with the Greke by Willyan Tindale. Antwerp, 1534." Anne Boleyn's personal copy of Tyndale's New Testament, with her coat of arms at the bottom. The Boleyn family had been instrumental in bringing the Scripture to the people in the English language. “Promoting the vernacular Bible was clearly a Boleyn family enterprise,” Eric Ives writes in The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn. To understand how revolutionary the English Bible was in the 1530s we need to consider that for seven centuries after the conversion of England to Christianity (in the Third Century), the common man had no access to the text of the Scriptures. It was not until 1538, when Henry VIII commanded the clergy to install the Great Bible in a convenient place in every parish church that the common people were able to read the Bible in English.  The Gospel of John translated by William Tyndale In Catholic England the Scriptures were in Latin, often read by priests who understood very little of the text. The Church of Rome wielded immense political power and owned one-third of the land in the kingdom. Keeping the Holy Scriptures out of the hands of the people was essential for the Church to maintain its power over the people and their king. Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII, was dedicated to liberating England from the clutches of the Church of Rome, a mission for which she paid the ultimate price. In "George Boleyn, Religion and the Reformation," Claire Ridgway points out that the Boleyns were "reformist Catholics": Until Henry VIII broke with the Church of Rome, England was a devoutly Roman Catholic country. Henry himself was fervently Catholic and, until his desire for a divorce led him to a break with Rome, he actively persecuted religious reformists. This led to the Pope giving him the title, ‘Defender of the Faith’, a title he was immensely proud of. Despite Henry’s active persecution of those who failed to conform to the orthodox Catholic faith, Thomas Boleyn favoured reform of the church, as did his youngest two children. It was their religious idealism which bred in zealous Catholics a hatred of them which continued long after their deaths, and which spawned many of the rumours, innuendos and slanders against them that persist to this day. Reform amounted to a desire to rid the church of increasing greed and corruption, for the rites of the faith to be reformed, and for the word of God to be accessible to the masses. George and Anne Boleyn were not only devotees of this idealism; in time they came to embody it...They sought reform of the Catholic religion, not a complete departure from it, and both of them died as Catholics. They obviously supported a break with Rome because that was essential in order for Anne to become Queen, but their passion for reform did not mean that they altered their basic religious beliefs, and for them, the break also meant that the reforms which they envisioned could be brought to fruition. They died as reformist Catholics, not as Protestants. Anne and her brother George were beheaded in May 1536. George Boleyn, a close advisor of King Henry VIII, said these last words before he was killed: Truly so that the Word should be among the people of the realm I took upon myself great labour to urge the king to permit the printing of the Scriptures to go unimpeded among the commons of the realm in their own language. And truly to God I was one of those who did most to procure the matter to place the Word of God among the people because of the love and affection which I bear for the Gospel and the truth of Christ’s words. - George Boleyn’s scaffold speech, 17 May 1536  Anne Boleyn in the Tower by Edouard Gibot (1835) "True religion in England had its commencement and its end with your mother." - Alexander Ales to Elizabeth I from 'A brief treatise or cronikelle of the most vertuous Ladye Anne Bulleyne, late Queen of England' by William Latimer. Sources and Recommended Reading: Hamer, Colin, Anne Boleyn: One Short Life that Changed the English-speaking World, Day One Publications, Leominster, U.K., 2007 http://www.dayonebookstore.com/product/491/anne-boleyn “Biblical Literature”, The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, University of Chicago, 1974 Chambers Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Edinburgh, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd., 2003 Denny, Joanna, Anne Boleyn: A New Life of England’s Tragic Queen, Da Capo Press 2007 Ives, Eric, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, Blackwell Publishing 2005 Ridgway, Claire, "George Boleyn, Religion and the Reformation", TheAnneBoleynFiles.com, 16 April 2010 http://www.theanneboleynfiles.com/george-boleyn-religion-and-the-reformation/5115/
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Support Christopher Bollyn's As an independent researcher and journalist, I traveled through the Middle East and studied the region's history and languages before earning a degree from the
About Christopher Bollyn
Christopher Bollyn was born in Chicago and grew up during the 1960's in suburban Schaumburg, Illinois. He was raised in an educated middle class family. He delivered newspapers before school and became an Eagle Scout at age 15. He served as an altar boy in the Episcopalian Church and earned the God and Country award. His father, Albert, grew up in Chicago's Austin neighborhood and graduated with a degree in journalism from University of Illinois after serving the Army Corps of Engineers in Germany. Christopher's father was his first proofreader and editor. Albert Bollyn owned an interior decoration business and enjoyed acting in the theatre guild. The Bollyn family is related to Sir Thomas Boleyn, the father of Queen Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII and mother of Queen Elizabeth I.
The Crest of Anne Boleyn, Queen of England His mother, Charlotte, grew up in southwestern North Dakota, the daughter of Scandinavian and Swiss homesteaders. Charlotte was an educator and interior designer who held advanced degrees from Columbia University. When she studied in New York, Charlotte worked as governess for the Farish family and took care of the young William S. Farish III, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom and friend of the Bush family. Christopher's parents both served in World War II. After graduating from high school, Christopher traveled extensively in Europe and the Middle East. For several winters he lived and studied in Oslo, Norway. In spring he would cycle across Europe and the Near East. In Norway, he lived with an erudite Swedish countess and studied Middle Eastern history and Semitic languages at the University of Oslo.
Christopher returned to the United States in the late 1970s and began studies at the University of California at Davis. He has a degree in history from U.C. Santa Cruz. His emphasis was on Palestine/Israel. His last year of university was spent in Norway, Greece, and the newly liberated Baltic States where he researched the psychological effects of the Soviet occupation on the native population.
Christopher met his wife, Helje, in Oslo. Helje is a Swedish citizen who was born and educated in Estonia. She has a degree in English Language and Literature from Tallinn University. They were married in the Chapel of Kalmar Castle, Sweden. After the birth of their second child, Christopher and Helje wrote a book ABC Zoo and dedicated it to the children who love to read. "The primary necessity to the very existence of a family is peace."
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Favorite Places
Frauenkirche in Dresden, Germany
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