Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
The Swarm: Zionist Attack Technique Revealed!
From Signs of the Times Best of the Web. A dissection of the methods used to marginalize anyone who dare to criticize the Zionist agenda. Currently former President Jimmy Carter is being subjected to this cowardly approach, used only when rational discussion would expose the attackers for the liars and hypocrites they are.
Read and empower yourself.
Blue Ibis
*****************************************
Carter and the Swarm
Israel Shamir
www.israelshamir.net
Sun, 28 Jan 2007 12:01 EST
Publication of Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid is a great event for America and for all of us. It's not that Carter had said something we did not know about Palestine. Before Carter came, we knew that the Zionists established a racist apartheid regime in the Holy Land where Jews have rights, and goyim have duties. Before Carter came we knew a native Palestinian has no right to vote, move, work freely in his land, that he is locked up behind the twenty-foot wall. Before Carter came we knew that the US support allowed the atrocities to occur and the apartheid regime to entrench. But we did not know that there are prominent Americans who would dare the wrath of organised Jewry and spell it out loud.
Why did President Carter do it? Why did he risk his peaceful old age and gently fading glory to endure an attack of Israel's Fifth Column as merciless as the Four Columns' onslaught on Gaza? He was moved by compassion, by this supreme Christian virtue of feeling together with the suffering and the oppressed. He saw the suffering of Palestine and he could not keep his quiet. He upheld a honourable American tradition: that of Mark Twain who condemned the US atrocities in Philippines, that of Henry Thoreau speaking against the Mexican War. This is a universal tradition, too: Multatuli unmasked the Dutch atrocities in Indonesia, Roger Casement did it to the Belgians in Congo, Radishchev bewept the fate of a Russian peasant. And their voices changed our world, though not immediately. Carter is not a radical; a man of hotter temper would call to terminate the infamy called «The Jewish State» altogether. Carter's message was soft and gentle; so soft and compassionate that only an arrogant and power-intoxicated won't be able to live with it. Others (including me) were more hard and explicit, but then the others weren't the US presidents.
Why now? The apartheid in Palestine was bad enough ten years ago to warrant his intervention, but this despondent helplessness we witness now is a new phenomenon. Hope ever kept alive up by Camp David, by peace with Egypt, by Madrid and Oslo conferences is dead. A year of severe blockade brought forth a confrontation between the Palestinian parties and the Jewish wet dream, an inter-Palestinian civil war, is about to come. The Holy Land is on the verge of collapse. President Carter is 82, and he is not afraid of anything. In this age, and at this stage of life, statesmen are likely to speak their mind, like the Malaysian PM Mohammad Mahathir did after his retirement. This is the time for unpalatable truth: the ideological and spiritual guidance of the West while dislodged from the hands of the Church, passed over to the usurpers of Zion. While they rule, Palestine has no chance.
Though most ordinary US Jews are sane and sensible, the decisions are made by super-rich, super-powerful, super-chauvinist Jews who are anything but. They are the power pushing for war. Carter wanted to stop the disaster in the Middle East, by convincing the sane and rebutting the arrogant. Thus the President joined the fracas, as the traditional WASP America tries to regain the lost ground and save the country they love from destruction. The WASPs, with all their immense property holdings, traditions and roots found themselves marginalised by the Jews with their dead hold on media and universities: indeed the spirit rules over matter. Baker-Hamilon Iraq Study Group and Walt - Mearsheimer report are the first salvos in this WASP Intifada. A Jewish American columnist (resident in Israel and writing for Israel's Haaretz) Burston correctly stated that "Carter's true intended target was the organized American Jewish community." Carter pointed out the main reasons for apartheid in the Holy Land, says Burston:
* Jewish control of [the US] government: "It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians.»
* Jewish control of the [US] media: "What is even more difficult to comprehend is why the editorial pages of the major newspapers and magazines in the United States exercise similar self-restraint, quite contrary to private assessments expressed quite forcefully by their correspondents in the Holy Land."
After Carter spoke, he was immediately counterattacked by organised Jewry. This was not a sight to miss. In my native Siberia, in its short and furious summer you may see swarm of gnats attack a horse, each tiny bloodsucker eager for his piece of action. In a while, the blinded and infuriated animal rushes headlong in mad sprint and soon finds its death in the bottomless moors. The Jews developed the same style of attack. It is never a single voice arguing the case, but always a mass attack from left and right, below and above, until the attacked one is beaten and broken and crawls away in disgrace.
Each attacker is as tiny and irrelevant as a single gnat, but as swarm they are formidable. Observe them separately: Dershowitz, an advocate of torture and of hostage killing, an apprehended plagiarist who never was elected to any position of authority and commands no respect, demands to debate the president. It is indeed beyond chutzpah; but Dershowitz is supported by other Jews in prime positions and his ridiculous demand is seconded by university and media until this thieving nonentity gets equal time on a TV channel to present "his case". Another gnat is a Deborah Lipstadt, a nonentity brought forth by the Washington Post. Plenty of others are even smaller than these two, for instance 14 Jews who gave up their positions at Carter Center. If they would not keep media in their hands, they wouldn't be heard but by their spouses.
Their technique is quite simple. They switch the focus of argument onto the personality of their adversary. Thus, instead of discussing apartheid in Israel, we discuss Jimmy Carter, whether he is a bigot and antisemite (thus Foxman, a bad Jew) or he is not (Avnery, a good Jew). The correct answer is "irrelevant": Carter's love of Jews or lack of it has no bearing on the question of apartheid in Palestine. Likewise, if we discuss the situation in Bosnia or Kosovo, we do not go into our sentiments towards Serbs, Albanians or Croats. But Jews are different.
For instance, General Wesley Clark said that rich Jews, the great donors of Washington politicians, push for war with Iran. Well, it can be discussed, maybe denied, but instead, they derail the discussion into another topic, whether Clark is an antisemite. Matthew Yglesias provides the sources for the whole kosher hog, from comparison with The Protocols, to inevitable quote from Foxman who says Clark had "bought into conspiratorial bigotry". From this moment, Clark will stick to defending himself, and the guys will take care that his hands will be full. Here again, the correct answer is a polite shrug: who cares whether Clark is a bigot? Maybe he is also a paedophile and usurer, but this ad hominem has no bearing on what he said. And an accusation "you do not love Jews" is not much different from "You do not love your aunt", and you probably have learned to live with it at the age of six.
A good book to accustom oneself to this sort of attack is Michael Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita: this marvellous book shows a Jewish critics' swarm attack on a writer who dared to write about Christ. Indeed, whoever mentions Christ will experience it sooner or later.
I also tried the taste of swarm attack. During the Tsunami disaster in Thailand I discovered that the Jewish undertakers, Zaka, forced the Thais to delay mass burial of victims for a day or two, despite the real and immediate danger of epidemic diseases, in order to avoid a real calamity: holy Jewish bodies may be inadvertently buried together with the goyim. I was told so by the members of the Zaka team who were quite proud of their feat. I wrote about it (Tsunami in Gaza). It was republished by a few sites. Then, a British Jew named Manfred Ropschitz began an ad hominem campaign - against me. Other Jews joined the fray, discussing whether I am a Jew, or a "Swedish-Russian Nazi antisemite", as if it has any bearing on the tsunami story. Instead of shrugging it off, other supporters of Palestine switched to this piquant subject. They carried their discussion from The Times to their email lists, until eventually, another Jewish "antisionist" commented with deep satisfaction: "Shamir is marginalised and brought into disrepute".
Ropschitz did not try to disprove the story, for the story was true. He wrote: "With an army of journalists crawling over the Tsunami story I'd expect to have heard such shocking news by now - if it's true. I am a journalist and I don't believe it." No, gentlemen, you won't hear a true story if it is not acceptable to Ropschitzes of this world. They will hunt you to the far-away corner of the world, and there are not many people who care to risk their well-planned attack. Indeed one should be a real kamikaze to enter this fight. The Ropschitzes, these quite ordinary Jews who fully identify with their community, are the key to the swarm attack. There are many Jewish media-lords, even more editors, but it is the Ropschitzes that clinch the party line. These willing executioners of our freedom, the foot-soldiers of the media lords, automatically defend "the Jews" i.e. the organised Jewish community at any price. Ordinary human beings of Jewish origin can be of any opinion. Likewise, ordinary Americans do not decide whether their country will attack Iran or not. But Bush and Cheney alone can't fight Iraqi war, and the Jewish media lords would be powerless without their willing executioners of freedom.
The Gentile philosemites are even worse, noticed Eustace Mullins, the legendary American writer whose best-selling books (running into the millions) were never published or distributed by the mainstream. He wrote:
"It has long been common knowledge since the incorporation of the three [US] major national television networks that each of them was owned, operated and controlled by Jews. Now at last, or so it seemed, the Christians of America would have their own Christian television network on which they could observe the tenets of the Christian religion. Or so it seemed. And when the CBN began its daily broadcasting, what was its daily message? We must love the Jews. We must support the State of Israel in all its depredations and its immoral devastation of the Holy Christian Shrines in the Birthplace of Our Saviour. We must help the Jews, and we must, above all, avoid the greatest sin, the sin of 'anti-Semitism', whatever that is. Even the Jewish networks do not broadcast as blatantly pro-Jewish propaganda as the Christian Broadcasting Network."
A man died this week in France, a real saint, who was known by affectionate appellation "Abbè Pierre", a priest who fought with the Resistance, helped homeless, provided for the poor and was a great friend of Palestinians. In 1996 he was hounded almost to death after he expressed his support for another friend of Palestine, Roger Garaudy who wrote a book The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics. A victim of Jewish swarm attack, he went into seclusion to Italy and to Switzerland, deserted by the people he fought for. His sorry fate should be remembered by the French and bother their conscience. If the Maid of Orleans was executed by the British Occupation regime (though using French collaborationists) no such excuse is available for those who ostracised the Abbè Pierre: they just got frightened by the swarm attack.
This fear of Jewish swarm attacks already brought much sorrow to mankind. In 1930s, the famous American aviator Charles Lindbergh called the US to stay out of the coming war in Europe. He was attacked by the Jewish media as a Nazi and a Hitler sympathiser, was besmirched and "overnight Lindbergh went from cultural hero to moral pariah". Now again, the US is being pushed by the same forces into a new war, this time in the Middle East. Let us try and stop it by being fearless, for as a Jewish Hassid spiritual song hath it, "haikar lo lefahed bihlal", the most important is not to be afraid at all. Carter brought us hope that there is an America the world can live with, a non-aggressive, democratic America, whose policies aren't decided by the rich donors, but by the ordinary Americans who voted against the war, and who today gather in Washington calling to stop escalation.
Read and empower yourself.
Blue Ibis
*****************************************
Carter and the Swarm
Israel Shamir
www.israelshamir.net
Sun, 28 Jan 2007 12:01 EST
Publication of Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid is a great event for America and for all of us. It's not that Carter had said something we did not know about Palestine. Before Carter came, we knew that the Zionists established a racist apartheid regime in the Holy Land where Jews have rights, and goyim have duties. Before Carter came we knew a native Palestinian has no right to vote, move, work freely in his land, that he is locked up behind the twenty-foot wall. Before Carter came we knew that the US support allowed the atrocities to occur and the apartheid regime to entrench. But we did not know that there are prominent Americans who would dare the wrath of organised Jewry and spell it out loud.
Why did President Carter do it? Why did he risk his peaceful old age and gently fading glory to endure an attack of Israel's Fifth Column as merciless as the Four Columns' onslaught on Gaza? He was moved by compassion, by this supreme Christian virtue of feeling together with the suffering and the oppressed. He saw the suffering of Palestine and he could not keep his quiet. He upheld a honourable American tradition: that of Mark Twain who condemned the US atrocities in Philippines, that of Henry Thoreau speaking against the Mexican War. This is a universal tradition, too: Multatuli unmasked the Dutch atrocities in Indonesia, Roger Casement did it to the Belgians in Congo, Radishchev bewept the fate of a Russian peasant. And their voices changed our world, though not immediately. Carter is not a radical; a man of hotter temper would call to terminate the infamy called «The Jewish State» altogether. Carter's message was soft and gentle; so soft and compassionate that only an arrogant and power-intoxicated won't be able to live with it. Others (including me) were more hard and explicit, but then the others weren't the US presidents.
Why now? The apartheid in Palestine was bad enough ten years ago to warrant his intervention, but this despondent helplessness we witness now is a new phenomenon. Hope ever kept alive up by Camp David, by peace with Egypt, by Madrid and Oslo conferences is dead. A year of severe blockade brought forth a confrontation between the Palestinian parties and the Jewish wet dream, an inter-Palestinian civil war, is about to come. The Holy Land is on the verge of collapse. President Carter is 82, and he is not afraid of anything. In this age, and at this stage of life, statesmen are likely to speak their mind, like the Malaysian PM Mohammad Mahathir did after his retirement. This is the time for unpalatable truth: the ideological and spiritual guidance of the West while dislodged from the hands of the Church, passed over to the usurpers of Zion. While they rule, Palestine has no chance.
Though most ordinary US Jews are sane and sensible, the decisions are made by super-rich, super-powerful, super-chauvinist Jews who are anything but. They are the power pushing for war. Carter wanted to stop the disaster in the Middle East, by convincing the sane and rebutting the arrogant. Thus the President joined the fracas, as the traditional WASP America tries to regain the lost ground and save the country they love from destruction. The WASPs, with all their immense property holdings, traditions and roots found themselves marginalised by the Jews with their dead hold on media and universities: indeed the spirit rules over matter. Baker-Hamilon Iraq Study Group and Walt - Mearsheimer report are the first salvos in this WASP Intifada. A Jewish American columnist (resident in Israel and writing for Israel's Haaretz) Burston correctly stated that "Carter's true intended target was the organized American Jewish community." Carter pointed out the main reasons for apartheid in the Holy Land, says Burston:
* Jewish control of [the US] government: "It would be almost politically suicidal for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest that Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians.»
* Jewish control of the [US] media: "What is even more difficult to comprehend is why the editorial pages of the major newspapers and magazines in the United States exercise similar self-restraint, quite contrary to private assessments expressed quite forcefully by their correspondents in the Holy Land."
After Carter spoke, he was immediately counterattacked by organised Jewry. This was not a sight to miss. In my native Siberia, in its short and furious summer you may see swarm of gnats attack a horse, each tiny bloodsucker eager for his piece of action. In a while, the blinded and infuriated animal rushes headlong in mad sprint and soon finds its death in the bottomless moors. The Jews developed the same style of attack. It is never a single voice arguing the case, but always a mass attack from left and right, below and above, until the attacked one is beaten and broken and crawls away in disgrace.
Each attacker is as tiny and irrelevant as a single gnat, but as swarm they are formidable. Observe them separately: Dershowitz, an advocate of torture and of hostage killing, an apprehended plagiarist who never was elected to any position of authority and commands no respect, demands to debate the president. It is indeed beyond chutzpah; but Dershowitz is supported by other Jews in prime positions and his ridiculous demand is seconded by university and media until this thieving nonentity gets equal time on a TV channel to present "his case". Another gnat is a Deborah Lipstadt, a nonentity brought forth by the Washington Post. Plenty of others are even smaller than these two, for instance 14 Jews who gave up their positions at Carter Center. If they would not keep media in their hands, they wouldn't be heard but by their spouses.
Their technique is quite simple. They switch the focus of argument onto the personality of their adversary. Thus, instead of discussing apartheid in Israel, we discuss Jimmy Carter, whether he is a bigot and antisemite (thus Foxman, a bad Jew) or he is not (Avnery, a good Jew). The correct answer is "irrelevant": Carter's love of Jews or lack of it has no bearing on the question of apartheid in Palestine. Likewise, if we discuss the situation in Bosnia or Kosovo, we do not go into our sentiments towards Serbs, Albanians or Croats. But Jews are different.
For instance, General Wesley Clark said that rich Jews, the great donors of Washington politicians, push for war with Iran. Well, it can be discussed, maybe denied, but instead, they derail the discussion into another topic, whether Clark is an antisemite. Matthew Yglesias provides the sources for the whole kosher hog, from comparison with The Protocols, to inevitable quote from Foxman who says Clark had "bought into conspiratorial bigotry". From this moment, Clark will stick to defending himself, and the guys will take care that his hands will be full. Here again, the correct answer is a polite shrug: who cares whether Clark is a bigot? Maybe he is also a paedophile and usurer, but this ad hominem has no bearing on what he said. And an accusation "you do not love Jews" is not much different from "You do not love your aunt", and you probably have learned to live with it at the age of six.
A good book to accustom oneself to this sort of attack is Michael Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita: this marvellous book shows a Jewish critics' swarm attack on a writer who dared to write about Christ. Indeed, whoever mentions Christ will experience it sooner or later.
I also tried the taste of swarm attack. During the Tsunami disaster in Thailand I discovered that the Jewish undertakers, Zaka, forced the Thais to delay mass burial of victims for a day or two, despite the real and immediate danger of epidemic diseases, in order to avoid a real calamity: holy Jewish bodies may be inadvertently buried together with the goyim. I was told so by the members of the Zaka team who were quite proud of their feat. I wrote about it (Tsunami in Gaza). It was republished by a few sites. Then, a British Jew named Manfred Ropschitz began an ad hominem campaign - against me. Other Jews joined the fray, discussing whether I am a Jew, or a "Swedish-Russian Nazi antisemite", as if it has any bearing on the tsunami story. Instead of shrugging it off, other supporters of Palestine switched to this piquant subject. They carried their discussion from The Times to their email lists, until eventually, another Jewish "antisionist" commented with deep satisfaction: "Shamir is marginalised and brought into disrepute".
Ropschitz did not try to disprove the story, for the story was true. He wrote: "With an army of journalists crawling over the Tsunami story I'd expect to have heard such shocking news by now - if it's true. I am a journalist and I don't believe it." No, gentlemen, you won't hear a true story if it is not acceptable to Ropschitzes of this world. They will hunt you to the far-away corner of the world, and there are not many people who care to risk their well-planned attack. Indeed one should be a real kamikaze to enter this fight. The Ropschitzes, these quite ordinary Jews who fully identify with their community, are the key to the swarm attack. There are many Jewish media-lords, even more editors, but it is the Ropschitzes that clinch the party line. These willing executioners of our freedom, the foot-soldiers of the media lords, automatically defend "the Jews" i.e. the organised Jewish community at any price. Ordinary human beings of Jewish origin can be of any opinion. Likewise, ordinary Americans do not decide whether their country will attack Iran or not. But Bush and Cheney alone can't fight Iraqi war, and the Jewish media lords would be powerless without their willing executioners of freedom.
The Gentile philosemites are even worse, noticed Eustace Mullins, the legendary American writer whose best-selling books (running into the millions) were never published or distributed by the mainstream. He wrote:
"It has long been common knowledge since the incorporation of the three [US] major national television networks that each of them was owned, operated and controlled by Jews. Now at last, or so it seemed, the Christians of America would have their own Christian television network on which they could observe the tenets of the Christian religion. Or so it seemed. And when the CBN began its daily broadcasting, what was its daily message? We must love the Jews. We must support the State of Israel in all its depredations and its immoral devastation of the Holy Christian Shrines in the Birthplace of Our Saviour. We must help the Jews, and we must, above all, avoid the greatest sin, the sin of 'anti-Semitism', whatever that is. Even the Jewish networks do not broadcast as blatantly pro-Jewish propaganda as the Christian Broadcasting Network."
A man died this week in France, a real saint, who was known by affectionate appellation "Abbè Pierre", a priest who fought with the Resistance, helped homeless, provided for the poor and was a great friend of Palestinians. In 1996 he was hounded almost to death after he expressed his support for another friend of Palestine, Roger Garaudy who wrote a book The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics. A victim of Jewish swarm attack, he went into seclusion to Italy and to Switzerland, deserted by the people he fought for. His sorry fate should be remembered by the French and bother their conscience. If the Maid of Orleans was executed by the British Occupation regime (though using French collaborationists) no such excuse is available for those who ostracised the Abbè Pierre: they just got frightened by the swarm attack.
This fear of Jewish swarm attacks already brought much sorrow to mankind. In 1930s, the famous American aviator Charles Lindbergh called the US to stay out of the coming war in Europe. He was attacked by the Jewish media as a Nazi and a Hitler sympathiser, was besmirched and "overnight Lindbergh went from cultural hero to moral pariah". Now again, the US is being pushed by the same forces into a new war, this time in the Middle East. Let us try and stop it by being fearless, for as a Jewish Hassid spiritual song hath it, "haikar lo lefahed bihlal", the most important is not to be afraid at all. Carter brought us hope that there is an America the world can live with, a non-aggressive, democratic America, whose policies aren't decided by the rich donors, but by the ordinary Americans who voted against the war, and who today gather in Washington calling to stop escalation.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Sunday, January 28, 2007
A. Saccus a Signs of the Times contributor, continues his illumination of the principles of Ponerology with more real life examples.
Blue Ibis
*******************************************************
An Answer To The Israel Lobby - Ponerology
a. saccus
Signs Of The Times
Mon, 22 Jan 2007 10:00 EST
The Associated Press published a story over the weekend on President Jimmy Carter's new book 'Peace, Not Apartheid':
Carter defends controversial book
AP
20/01/2007
Former President Jimmy Carter said Saturday that the storm of criticism he has faced for his recent book has not weakened his resolve for fair treatment of Israelis and Palestinians.
"I have been called a liar," Carter said at a town hall meeting on the second day of a three-day symposium on his presidency at the University of Georgia.
"I have been called an anti-Semite," he said. "I have been called a bigot. I have been called a plagiarist. I have been called a coward. Those kind of accusations, they concern me, but they don't detract from the fact the book is accurate and is needed."...
"Not one of the critics of my book has contradicted any of the basic premises ... that is the horrible persecution and oppression of the Palestinian people and secondly that the formula for finding peace in the Middle East already exists," the 82-year-old Carter said.
A President of the United States an anti-Semite?
The unquestionably and most eminently Christian Jimmy Carter a "liar" and "bigot"? What's going on here?
Alexander Cockburn of Counterpunch commented on the slander and libel against Carter and his book in an article entitled 'First bomb Carter, then nuke Iran':
The unquestionably and most eminently Christian Jimmy Carter a "liar" and "bigot"? What's going on here?
Alexander Cockburn of Counterpunch commented on the slander and libel against Carter and his book in an article entitled 'First bomb Carter, then nuke Iran':
But the assault on Carter is all to no avail. With each gust of abuse, Carter's book soars higher and higher on the bestseller lists, reaching number 4 on Amazon itself. This doesn't prove the lobby has no power. It proves the lobby can be dumb....
The Israel lobby may be many things, but it is not 'dumb'. We are dealing with something much more alarming here:
A.M. Lobaczewski, in his seminal book "Political Ponerology" commented thusly:
Paranoid Character Disorders:
...arguments begin to undermine their overvalued ideas, crush their long-held stereotypes of reasoning, or forces them to accept a conclusion they had subconsciously rejected before. Such a stimulus unleashes...a torrent of pseudo-logical, largely paramoralistic, often insulting utterances which always contain some degree of suggestion. (p.110)
Look at the response from the Israel lobby to Carter's book; could there be a better description than: "a torrent of pseudo-logical, largely paramoralistic, often insulting utterances which always contain some degree of suggestion"?
This soon to be commonplace concept, "paramoralism", is so pivotal for understanding the triumphs and tragedies being enacted on the world stage today, that it merits a closer look.
Lobaczewski continues:
...Unfortunately, it has become a frequent phenomenon for...oppressive groups, or patho-political systems to invent ever-new moral criteria ("paramoralisms") ... Paramoralisms somehow cunningly evade the control of our common sense, sometimes leading to acceptance or approval of behavior that is openly pathological. ... Paramoralisitic statements and suggestions so often accompany various kinds of evil that they seem quite irreplaceable. Anything which threatens autocratic rule becomes (is labelled) deeply immoral. (pps 150, 205)
Examples of this tactic abound in modern politics, particularly in relation to the US and Israel, for example: "You are with us, or you are against us", being "against us" meaning that "you are a terrorist" and thus, immoral."
Now you know what to call such psychobabble: 'Paramoralisms'.
Cockburn continued:
The Israel lobby retains its grip inside the Beltway, but it's starting to lose its hold on the broader public debate. Why?
Lobaczewski, in "Political Ponerology", answers this question:
... time and experience confirm what a psychologist may have long foreseen: the entire effort "the goal - forcing human minds to incorporate pathological experiential methods and thought-patterns, and consequently accepting such rule - only results in producing a general stifling of intellectual developments and deep-rooted protest against affront-mongering "hypocrisy". The authors and executors of this program are incapable of understanding that the decisive factor making their work difficult is the fundamental nature of normal human beings - the majority. (p.195-6)
Cockburn continues:
You can't brutalize the Palestinian people in the full light of day, decade after decade, without claims that Israel is a light among the nations getting more than a few serious dents....
Himself a victim of both the Nazi and Soviet occupations of Poland, Prof. Lobaczewski not only lived through these horrors, but used them to forge the most penetrating analysis of the psychological and social mechanisms behind these evil chapters of recent history that I have ever read. I count this as the most important book I have ever read. His concepts hold the key to our future, if we will but grasp it.
Lobaczewski speaks of the life cycle of such episodes of societal "ponerization" or "evilizing" and their inevitable outcome:
Lobaczewski, in "Political Ponerology":
Lobaczewski speaks of the life cycle of such episodes of societal "ponerization" or "evilizing" and their inevitable outcome:
Lobaczewski, in "Political Ponerology":
The achievement of absolute domination by pathocrats in the government of a country cannot be permanent since large sectors of the society become disaffected by such rule and eventually find some way of toppling it. This is part of the historical cycle, easily discerned when history is read from a Ponerological point of view. Pathocracy at the summit of governmental organization also does not constitute the entire picture of the "mature phenomenon". Such a system of government has nowhere to go but down.
Political Ponerology - The Scientific Study of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes -Andrew M. Lobaczewski
The Sane Person's Word of the Day: PARAMORALISM
Ever wonder how you get talked into things you KNOW are a mistake/wrong/likely-to-get-you-screwed while the person doing the talking seems to skip away without a care or even a scratch? You've just been conned by a PARAMORALISM-wielding sociopath/psychopath.
Knowledge Protects. Here is another bit of protection for those who KNOW the world is crazy, but they just can't prove it.
Blue Ibis
********************************************************
Paramoralisms Where You Least Expect Them
a. saccus
Signs of the Times
Fri, 26 Jan 2007 13:43 EST
Imagine you're out in the country, visiting one fine summer's day, and you ask your host to give you a walking tour through some of the beautiful countryside surrounding his house. He's agreeable to your suggestion, and you spend a pleasant hour hiking up and down the surrounding low mountains.
"Let's sit here," he says, as you come to a nice shady spot looking down on a clearing below which forms a sort of natural amphitheatre. After a while, he excuses himself for a moment, leaving you all alone. You think back to the three large mugs of fine brazilian coffee you had before you left, and you don't feel the need to ask where he's going. Instead you soak up the weather, for it's a glorious day.
Unbeknownst to you, however, your host has not chosen this particular shady spot by chance. He is working in cahoots with a friend of his, a director for the new Reality TV show called, "You Are REALLY There," a 21st Century upgrade of the great "You Are There" series hosted by Walter Cronkite in 68 fine episodes from 1953-1957. The director has begun shooting as soon as your host left, shooting from remote-controlled cameras hidden all around the clearing and focused on you. You don't realise it, but you are the star of the show!
Sitting all alone, here is what you see:
A middle-aged man comes over the ridge on the other side of the clearing, accompanied by a young man. The middle-aged man says something you don't hear to the younger man, but you hear the younger man say, "Yes, Father."
They select a spot near the center of the clearing and set their belongings down. They begin collecting brush, twigs, sticks, and logs, and make a large pile, as if for a bonfire. Then the father binds his son's hands behind his back with stout rope, and ties his ankles together. Then the father gently lays the son upon the pile of wood. The father pulls out a large Bowie knife, and raises his hand up in such a way as to be able to strike at the son's throat. He stands there, frozen, knife-arm upraised for a long moment. Then he says something to the son, sheaths the knife, unties the son, and they both walk back over the hill from whence they came.
At this point, your host returns, and asks, nonchalantly, "Anything interesting happen while I was gone?"
You were there, what do you say? What would you tell your host?
* * * * * *
Since the "you" in the last sentence is the plural "you", there are a number of responses. But I would be very surprised if there were any among them that didn't contain at least one of the following: shock, horror, anger, fear, outrage, questions about the father's sanity. Several among you may even have run down the hill trying to stop him. Whatever your response was, I'd be willing to bet a small fortune that it was of a negative, disapproving variety. And don't forget, we do have your reaction on videotape.
So the overall conclusion, for an incident which you have seen with your very own eyes, and without anyone being present to influence you in any way, is negative.
This is your instinctive, natural response.
It is a human and a humane one.
There is, there really is, no possible excuse for inhuman behavior.
Case closed.
Or is it?
Genesis Chapter 22
Now this is precisely the same scenario as I described above, so you should have exactly the same reaction to it. Right?
But you don't, do you?
I don't know the exact proportion of you who find that your opinion of the events has changed, but again I'll wager another small fortune that there were quite a few. There's some reason, some justification, some extenuating circumstance, some excuse - something - that makes you find the events more acceptable.
That something is a Paramoralism.
From A. Lobaczewski's, POLITICAL PONEROLOGY:
In the countryside scenario, you saw the action for what it was - a pathological act - and you reacted with a fully awakened moral outrage; your conscience spoke. But when you looked at the same event through the medium of Genesis 22, something happened to your conscience.
Lobaczewski again:
Lobaczewski defines 'conversive thinking' as "using terms but giving them opposing or twisted meanings." Thus the paramoralist uses "appeasement" when we would use "peacefulness";
Thus, by conversive thinking, something that was reprehensible is somehow made to look acceptable. This is not some mystery; there is a definite mechanism at work here.
Are there any restrictions on this substitution process?
What, then, is the suggestion being made by the Biblical story The Sacrifice of Isaac?
To do whatever God commands, no matter how insane or cruel - and killing one's own child is right up there at the top of such a list - without question. All will work out in the end.
Nothing less than total submission is required.
Strangely enough though, in the experience of the overwhelming majority of the human race since the beginning of time, it turns out that God Himself only very, very, very rarely asks for anything or gives any commands in a way that we could objectively verify that the request or command actually came from God himself. That seems to make the Abraham-Isaac drama relatively useless.
However, it just so happens that there are people who identify themselves as God's representatives here on earth. They claim to speak for God, although they do not produce any verification for their "Divine Deputization", so to speak. Now for this group of the self-appointed, this story seems ideally suited to enable them to get whatever they want, by command or request. And they can claim God's backing for this.
Lobaczewski states:
If my suggestions about cui bono? (who benefits?) seem outlandish or unreasonable when it comes to God's "representative", then consider this:
In conclusion, it should be made very clear that neither Prof. Lobaczewski nor the science of Political Ponerology is against religion. Quite the contrary.
Ponerology can thus help in recovering the moral elements of the original teachings that have been lost or distorted - or completely inverted.
Perhaps you remember war movies where U.S Army chaplains blessed the troops as they were sent forth to kill - all In The Name of Jesus, The Good Shepherd, The Prince of Peace. It's not too hard to get the idea that maybe something important has been lost along the way.
And then there's also the problem that the enemy is praying for the very same thing - to the very same Jesus!
This was brought home to me by looking at war propaganda posters for other countries. This one is German, from World War I:
Translation of the picture's caption:
What is required is a combination of both religious insights and scientific study. Professor gives an idea of how this could be done.
The ground-breaking work POLITICAL PONEROLOGY: The Scientific Study of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes by Dr. Andrew Lobaczewski may be ordered from Red Pill Press
Christian Right, NEOCON, Paramoralism, Fundamentalism, Ponerology, Red Pill Press, Pathocrat
Para-moralisms: The conviction that moral values exist and that some actions violate moral rules is so common and ancient a phenomenon that it seems to have some substratum at man’s instinctive endowment level (although it is certainly not totally adequate for moral truth), and that it does not only represent centuries’ worth of experience, culture, religion, and socialization. Thus, any insinuation closed in moral slogans is always suggestive, even if the “moral” criteria used are just an “ad hoc” invention. Any act can thus be proved to be immoral or morally proper by means of such para-moralisms through active suggestion, and people whose minds will succumb to such reasoning can always be found.
[...]
Para-moralism somehow cunningly evades the control of our common sense, sometimes leading to an affirmation of behavior whose character is openly pathological. Para-moralistic statements and suggestions so often accompany various kinds of evil that they seem quite irreplaceable. Unfortunately, it has become a frequent phenomenon for individuals, oppressive groups, or patho-political systems to invent ever-new moral criteria for someone’s convenience. Such suggestions often partially deprive people of their moral reasoning and deform its development in youngsters.
Knowledge Protects. Here is another bit of protection for those who KNOW the world is crazy, but they just can't prove it.
Blue Ibis
********************************************************
Paramoralisms Where You Least Expect Them
a. saccus
Signs of the Times
Fri, 26 Jan 2007 13:43 EST
Imagine you're out in the country, visiting one fine summer's day, and you ask your host to give you a walking tour through some of the beautiful countryside surrounding his house. He's agreeable to your suggestion, and you spend a pleasant hour hiking up and down the surrounding low mountains.
"Let's sit here," he says, as you come to a nice shady spot looking down on a clearing below which forms a sort of natural amphitheatre. After a while, he excuses himself for a moment, leaving you all alone. You think back to the three large mugs of fine brazilian coffee you had before you left, and you don't feel the need to ask where he's going. Instead you soak up the weather, for it's a glorious day.
Unbeknownst to you, however, your host has not chosen this particular shady spot by chance. He is working in cahoots with a friend of his, a director for the new Reality TV show called, "You Are REALLY There," a 21st Century upgrade of the great "You Are There" series hosted by Walter Cronkite in 68 fine episodes from 1953-1957. The director has begun shooting as soon as your host left, shooting from remote-controlled cameras hidden all around the clearing and focused on you. You don't realise it, but you are the star of the show!
Sitting all alone, here is what you see:
A middle-aged man comes over the ridge on the other side of the clearing, accompanied by a young man. The middle-aged man says something you don't hear to the younger man, but you hear the younger man say, "Yes, Father."
They select a spot near the center of the clearing and set their belongings down. They begin collecting brush, twigs, sticks, and logs, and make a large pile, as if for a bonfire. Then the father binds his son's hands behind his back with stout rope, and ties his ankles together. Then the father gently lays the son upon the pile of wood. The father pulls out a large Bowie knife, and raises his hand up in such a way as to be able to strike at the son's throat. He stands there, frozen, knife-arm upraised for a long moment. Then he says something to the son, sheaths the knife, unties the son, and they both walk back over the hill from whence they came.
At this point, your host returns, and asks, nonchalantly, "Anything interesting happen while I was gone?"
You were there, what do you say? What would you tell your host?
* * * * * *
Since the "you" in the last sentence is the plural "you", there are a number of responses. But I would be very surprised if there were any among them that didn't contain at least one of the following: shock, horror, anger, fear, outrage, questions about the father's sanity. Several among you may even have run down the hill trying to stop him. Whatever your response was, I'd be willing to bet a small fortune that it was of a negative, disapproving variety. And don't forget, we do have your reaction on videotape.
So the overall conclusion, for an incident which you have seen with your very own eyes, and without anyone being present to influence you in any way, is negative.
This is your instinctive, natural response.
It is a human and a humane one.
There is, there really is, no possible excuse for inhuman behavior.
Case closed.
Or is it?
Genesis Chapter 22
1 And it came to pass after these things, that God did prove Abraham, and said unto him: 'Abraham'; and he said: 'Here am I.'
2 And He said: 'Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.'
3 And Abraham rose early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son; and he cleaved the wood for the burnt-offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.
6 And Abraham took the wood of the burnt-offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took in his hand the fire and the knife; and they went both of them together.
7 And Isaac spoke unto Abraham his father, and said: 'My father.' And he said: 'Here am I, my son.' And he said: 'Behold the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?'
8 And Abraham said: 'God will provide Himself the lamb for a burnt-offering, my son.' So they went both of them together.
9 And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built the altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood.
10 And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.
11 And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said: 'Abraham, Abraham.' And he said: 'Here am I.'
12 And he said: 'Lay not thy hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him; for now I know that thou art a God-fearing man, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from Me.'
13 And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt-offering in the stead of his son.
Now this is precisely the same scenario as I described above, so you should have exactly the same reaction to it. Right?
But you don't, do you?
I don't know the exact proportion of you who find that your opinion of the events has changed, but again I'll wager another small fortune that there were quite a few. There's some reason, some justification, some extenuating circumstance, some excuse - something - that makes you find the events more acceptable.
That something is a Paramoralism.
From A. Lobaczewski's, POLITICAL PONEROLOGY:
MORALIZING INTERPRETATION: The tendency to impart a moralizing interpretation upon essentially pathological phenomena is an aspect of human nature whose discernible substratum is encoded in our specific instinct; namely humans normally fail to differentiate between moral and biological evil.(p.148)
In the countryside scenario, you saw the action for what it was - a pathological act - and you reacted with a fully awakened moral outrage; your conscience spoke. But when you looked at the same event through the medium of Genesis 22, something happened to your conscience.
Lobaczewski again:
The conversive features in the genesis of paramoralisms [...] prove they are derived from [...] repression from the field of consciousness of something completely different, which we call the voice of conscience. (Political Ponerology p.151)
Lobaczewski defines 'conversive thinking' as "using terms but giving them opposing or twisted meanings." Thus the paramoralist uses "appeasement" when we would use "peacefulness";
paramoralist........................healthy
appeasement........................ peacefulness
license..................................freedom
backward.............................. traditional
mob..................................... rally
small-mindedness................... efficiency
Thus, by conversive thinking, something that was reprehensible is somehow made to look acceptable. This is not some mystery; there is a definite mechanism at work here.
The existence of psychological phenomena known to pre-Freudian philosophical students of the subconscious bears repeating. Unconscious psychological processes outstrip conscious reasoning, both in time [speed] and scope, which makes many psychological phenomena possible: including those generally described as conversive, such as subconscious blocking out of conclusions, the selection, and, also, substitution of [for] seemingly uncomfortable premises. (p.152)
Are there any restrictions on this substitution process?
Thus any insinuation framed in moral slogans is always suggestive, even if the "moral" criteria used are just an "ad hoc" invention. Any act can thus be proved to be immoral or morally proper by means of such paramoralisms through active suggestion, and people whose minds will succumb to such reasoning can always be found.
What, then, is the suggestion being made by the Biblical story The Sacrifice of Isaac?
To do whatever God commands, no matter how insane or cruel - and killing one's own child is right up there at the top of such a list - without question. All will work out in the end.
Nothing less than total submission is required.
Strangely enough though, in the experience of the overwhelming majority of the human race since the beginning of time, it turns out that God Himself only very, very, very rarely asks for anything or gives any commands in a way that we could objectively verify that the request or command actually came from God himself. That seems to make the Abraham-Isaac drama relatively useless.
However, it just so happens that there are people who identify themselves as God's representatives here on earth. They claim to speak for God, although they do not produce any verification for their "Divine Deputization", so to speak. Now for this group of the self-appointed, this story seems ideally suited to enable them to get whatever they want, by command or request. And they can claim God's backing for this.
Lobaczewski states:
Pathocracy is a disease of great social movements followed by entire societies, nations, and empires. In the course of human history, it has affected social, political, and religious movements,... and turned them into caricatures of themselves....(p.199)
If my suggestions about cui bono? (who benefits?) seem outlandish or unreasonable when it comes to God's "representative", then consider this:
In the light of historical data, it appears obvious that religious systems have also succumbed to ponerogenic processes and manifested the symptoms of a similar disease.
...Two basic possibilities for a relationship between this [pathocratic] phenomenon and a religious system can thus be adduced. The first occurs when the religious association itself succumbs to infection and the ponerogenic process...destruction [works]from within, its organism becomes subordinated to goals completely different from the original idea, and its theosophic and moral values fall prey to characteristic deformation ...(p.270-1)
In conclusion, it should be made very clear that neither Prof. Lobaczewski nor the science of Political Ponerology is against religion. Quite the contrary.
The ponerological approach throws new light upon age-old questions heretofore regulated by the dictates of moral systems and must of necessity bring about a revision in though methods. As a Christian, the author was initially apprehensive that this would cause dangerous collisions with ancient tradition. Studying the question in the light of Scriptures caused these apprehensions gradually to fade away. Rather, this now appears to be the way to bring our thought processes closer to that original and primeval method of perceiving moral knowledge. Quite characteristically, reading the Gospels can provide teachings clearly convergent with the method of understanding evil derived from naturalistic investigations on its origin. At the same time, we must foresee that the process of correction and conformation will be laborious and time consuming, [and] which ultimately probably prevent any major tumult. (p.268)
Ponerology can thus help in recovering the moral elements of the original teachings that have been lost or distorted - or completely inverted.
Perhaps you remember war movies where U.S Army chaplains blessed the troops as they were sent forth to kill - all In The Name of Jesus, The Good Shepherd, The Prince of Peace. It's not too hard to get the idea that maybe something important has been lost along the way.
And then there's also the problem that the enemy is praying for the very same thing - to the very same Jesus!
This was brought home to me by looking at war propaganda posters for other countries. This one is German, from World War I:
Translation of the picture's caption:
Go, O soldier, and fulfil thy duty.[And the good little sheep on all sides have gone forth to smite the "enemy" du jour in the name of the "Good Shepherd". What a racket!!]
Christ, The Good Shepherd, watches his flocks.
O Lord, Thy Kingdom Come,
And As Thy Will is in Heaven
May it also be on earth.
What is required is a combination of both religious insights and scientific study. Professor gives an idea of how this could be done.
If individuals and groups believing in God are able to accept an objective understanding of macro-social pathological phenomena, especially this most dangerous one, the natural outcome will thus prove to be a certain separation of religious and ponerological problematics, which qualitatively occupy different levels of reality. Church attention can then revert to questions regarding man's relationship with God, an area for which churches have a calling. On the other hand, resistance to ponerological phenomena and their worldwide spread should be largely assumed by scientific and political institutions whose actions are based on a naturalistic understanding of the nature and genesis of evil. Such a separation of duties can never be quite consistent, since the genesis of evil includes the participation of human moral failings, and overcoming these based on religious premises has been the responsibility of religious associations since times immemorial.
[...]
In spite of existing differences of conviction and tradition, the basis for cooperative effort on the part of people with good will should contain that characteristic convergence of the conclusions we deduce between the precepts of the Christian Gospels (and other monotheistic religions) and a ponerological view of the genesis of evil. The faithful of various religions and denominations do in fact believe in the same God, and at present they are threatened by the same macrosocial pathologic phenomenon. This creates sufficient data to enable a search for cooperation in affecting achievements whose value is so obvious.(276-7)
The ground-breaking work POLITICAL PONEROLOGY: The Scientific Study of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes by Dr. Andrew Lobaczewski may be ordered from Red Pill Press
Christian Right, NEOCON, Paramoralism, Fundamentalism, Ponerology, Red Pill Press, Pathocrat
There is No More Sand to Hide Your Head In
Blizzards, hurricanes, tornados windstorms and floods have washed it all away. What will you DO about it?
Blue Ibis
**************************************************************************************
SOTT Focus
Wake The World Up Campaign
Signs of the Times editorial staff
Signs of the Times
Thu, 25 Jan 2007 09:40 EST
How many of you have seen the movie "The Day After Tomorrow?" If you haven't, the thesis of the movie is that Global warming causes large areas of the Arctic to melt, so that the northern Atlantic ocean is diluted by large amounts of fresh water which changes the density of the water layers causing a disruption of the Thermohaline current.. This then leads to a rapid and unnatural cooling of the northern hemisphere which triggers a series of anomalies, eventually leading to a massive "global superstorm" system consisting of three gigantic hurricane-like superstorms, which suck up heat and drop the super-cold upper atmospheric air down onto the planet resulting in an "instant Ice age."
This idea is nothing new and it didn't really originate with Art Bell and Whitley Strieber. A NASA report from 2004 tells us "Andrew Marshall, a veteran Defense Department planner, recently released an unclassified report detailing how a shift in ocean currents in the near future could compromise national security."
In a 2003 report, Robert Gagosian cites "rapidly advancing evidence [from, e.g., tree rings and ice cores] that Earth's climate has shifted abruptly and dramatically in the past." For example, as the world warmed at the end of the last ice age about 13,000 years ago, melting ice sheets appear to have triggered a sudden halt in the Conveyor, throwing the world back into a 1,300 year period of ice-age-like conditions called the "Younger Dryas." It is also now known that the Gulf Stream weakened in 'Little Ice Age'
On 6 December 2005 Michael Schlesinger, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, leading a research team, said "The shutdown of the thermohaline circulation has been characterized as a high-consequence, low-probability event. Our analysis, including the uncertainties in the problem, indicates it is a high-consequence, high-probability event." See also: Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age.
There is another danger that comes with Global Warming: release of huge amount of methane from the methane clathrates buried in the arctic seabed, and even from other subterranean sources as the earth struggles to shift around and balance itself. Methane can contribute to Global Warming, but it is a highly unstable gas. Mostly it just stinks and can kill. Consider a September, 2006 report Methane gas leak kills miners in Ukraine which says:
SOTT Focus
Wake The World Up Campaign
Signs of the Times editorial staff
Signs of the Times
Thu, 25 Jan 2007 09:40 EST
How many of you have seen the movie "The Day After Tomorrow?" If you haven't, the thesis of the movie is that Global warming causes large areas of the Arctic to melt, so that the northern Atlantic ocean is diluted by large amounts of fresh water which changes the density of the water layers causing a disruption of the Thermohaline current.. This then leads to a rapid and unnatural cooling of the northern hemisphere which triggers a series of anomalies, eventually leading to a massive "global superstorm" system consisting of three gigantic hurricane-like superstorms, which suck up heat and drop the super-cold upper atmospheric air down onto the planet resulting in an "instant Ice age."
This idea is nothing new and it didn't really originate with Art Bell and Whitley Strieber. A NASA report from 2004 tells us "Andrew Marshall, a veteran Defense Department planner, recently released an unclassified report detailing how a shift in ocean currents in the near future could compromise national security."
In a 2003 report, Robert Gagosian cites "rapidly advancing evidence [from, e.g., tree rings and ice cores] that Earth's climate has shifted abruptly and dramatically in the past." For example, as the world warmed at the end of the last ice age about 13,000 years ago, melting ice sheets appear to have triggered a sudden halt in the Conveyor, throwing the world back into a 1,300 year period of ice-age-like conditions called the "Younger Dryas." It is also now known that the Gulf Stream weakened in 'Little Ice Age'
On 6 December 2005 Michael Schlesinger, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, leading a research team, said "The shutdown of the thermohaline circulation has been characterized as a high-consequence, low-probability event. Our analysis, including the uncertainties in the problem, indicates it is a high-consequence, high-probability event." See also: Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age.
There is another danger that comes with Global Warming: release of huge amount of methane from the methane clathrates buried in the arctic seabed, and even from other subterranean sources as the earth struggles to shift around and balance itself. Methane can contribute to Global Warming, but it is a highly unstable gas. Mostly it just stinks and can kill. Consider a September, 2006 report Methane gas leak kills miners in Ukraine which says:
Emergency Situations spokesman Ihor Krol said "an unexpected eruption of a coal and gas mixture" - later identified as methane - occurred early this morning at a depth of 3,500ft ... Methane probably emitted from rocks..."
We learn from further research that a high number of mining accidents are the result of methane pockets either igniting or poisoning miners.
In short, if big bubbles of methane gas are released from the ground, if a flock of birds happen to be in the area, they could very easily die and fall to the ground within a few minutes.
Now, of course, methane itself is odorless, but it is a byproduct of organic decomposition and, as a consequence, is often associated with hydrogen sulfide, a "rotten egg" smell. If you can smell it, the level is probably unsafe.
Of course, there is a tremendous dispute about this with a whole raft of critics (some of them scientists with questionable loyalties) pooh-poohing the idea and continuing along the line of "it's all Global Warming" and if we concentrate on cutting emissions, over time, things will stabilize."
Not very likely.
Why do we think so?
Last month, for almost a week, the Gulf Stream ceased to flow northward to Europe. Go here: http://rads.tudelft.nl/gulfstream/ ... and scroll down to "Animations of the Gulf Stream velocities are here".
Click, and when the page loads, select "Last 26 weeks (Jan 23 21 bytes)" and observe. After the images load and the animation plays, you will see a short period of about a week between Dec 11th and 19th when the Gulf Stream actually stopped flowing toward Europe and flowed back South without completing its normal circuit.
Here are still images from the event:
In short, if big bubbles of methane gas are released from the ground, if a flock of birds happen to be in the area, they could very easily die and fall to the ground within a few minutes.
Now, of course, methane itself is odorless, but it is a byproduct of organic decomposition and, as a consequence, is often associated with hydrogen sulfide, a "rotten egg" smell. If you can smell it, the level is probably unsafe.
Of course, there is a tremendous dispute about this with a whole raft of critics (some of them scientists with questionable loyalties) pooh-poohing the idea and continuing along the line of "it's all Global Warming" and if we concentrate on cutting emissions, over time, things will stabilize."
Not very likely.
Why do we think so?
Last month, for almost a week, the Gulf Stream ceased to flow northward to Europe. Go here: http://rads.tudelft.nl/gulfstream/ ... and scroll down to "Animations of the Gulf Stream velocities are here".
Click, and when the page loads, select "Last 26 weeks (Jan 23 21 bytes)" and observe. After the images load and the animation plays, you will see a short period of about a week between Dec 11th and 19th when the Gulf Stream actually stopped flowing toward Europe and flowed back South without completing its normal circuit.
Here are still images from the event:
©rads.tudelft.nl
©rads.tudelft.nl
©rads.tudelft.nl
Now, keeping those dates in mind, let's look at some headlines selected from the SOTT Weather Archive from the days during and after the temporary reversal of the Thermohaline current:
14 Dec 2006 Duck die-off in Idaho sparks fears
19 Dec 2006 Lewiston residents unnerved by dead crows
21 Dec 2006 Colorado reels under blizzard
26 Dec 2006 Christmas storm brings devastation
02 Jan 2007 Sections of Colo. Remain Buried in Snow
03 Jan 2007 Cherry Blossoms Bloom In Brooklyn
03 Jan 2007 Record snowfall buries Anchorage
04 Jan 2007 Warm winter wreaks havoc
04 Jan 2007 Scientists Say 2007 May Be Warmest Yet
05 Jan 2007 2 dead after strong storms, tornadoes rip through southern Louisiana
08 Jan 2007 Gas-like odour blankets Manhattan
08 Jan 2007 Ducks die en mass in Vietnam's southern province
08 Jan 2007 Dead birds shut down Austin
08 Jan 2007 Outgassing: The environmental "surge" you're not hearing anything about.
08 Jan 2007 NY gas smell shuts trains, forces evacuations
08 Jan 2007 Wacky warm weather throws birds and bees off balance
09 Jan 2007 Warm December Pushes 2006 to Record Year
10 Jan 2007 Are the dead porpoises on Scottish beaches more evidence of global warming?
10 Jan 2007 Freak tornado-like storm hits Barbados
12 Jan 2007 Storm Warnings Across UK
13 Jan 2007 Icy Weather Hits U.S. Midwest
13 Jan 2007 Record Cold, Snow in Southern California!
13 Jan 2007 Smelly Outgassing in Louisiana
13 Jan 2007 Staten Island: More Bad Smells - Outgassing?
14 Jan 2007 Powerful storm dumps ice and rain on central U.S
14 Jan 2007 Ice Storm lashes much of U.S. - 20 dead
15 Jan 2007 Near Hurricane Force Storm Batters Baltic States - 2nd time in 2 years for "once in a lifetime event"
17 Jan 2007 Schwarzenegger Seeks Disaster Aid For Freeze Ruined Crops
17 Jan 2007 Ice plays havoc with U.S. power grid
17 Jan 2007 Thousands Shiver As Storm Death Toll Hits 51
17 Jan 2007 Big freeze hits $1bn crop
17 Jan 2007 Wildfires Burn in Southern Australia
17 Jan 2007 Scores killed, crops devastated in harsh US winter weather
17 Jan 2007 Warm Spell in Russia Wakes Up the Bears
17 Jan 2007 Storms forecast to batter UK
18 Jan 2007 Snow in Malibu!!!
18 Jan 2007 Severe storms batter northwestern Europe
18 Jan 2007 Travel in Europe Disrupted by Wild Storm
19 Jan 2007 Hurricane Force Winds rip into eastern Europe
19 Jan 2007 Storm kills 27 in northern Europe
19 Jan 2007 Germany Limps Back To Life After Storm Claims 10 Lives - Wind Gusts Up to 202 KPH
19 Jan 2007 Killer of 29, Kyrill Hurricane Approaches Russia - "The Day After Tomorrow?"
19 Jan 2007 Experts Can't Find Source Of Mysterious NYC Odor
19 Jan 2007 Okla., Mo., and Texas Brace for Storm
19 Jan 2007 Icy Storm Blamed for 65 Deaths in U.S.
19 Jan 2007 Germans Told to Stay Indoors as Hurricane Nears
20 Jan 2007 Europe counts cost of storms as stricken freighter is beached
20 Jan 2007 New winter storm stalks Southern Plains
21 Jan 2007 Snow Storm Rolls Across Plains; 8 Dead
25 Jan 2007 Getting Colder in U.S. Northeast - Polar Plunge Underway
25 Jan 2007 Anchorage Hit with Twice Normal Snowfall
The 64,000 $ question: Is there a connection between the reversal of the Gulf Stream in December and the numerous reports of birds falling dead from the sky and the wild and deadly weather during the first half of January?
The next question is: Does this small example suggest what might happen if the now highly unstable Gulf Stream finally and completely stops flowing North to Europe?
Meanwhile, on Jan 23rd, President Bush told the American Congress "we must confront the serious challenge of global climate change". However, the main thrust of his speech was to ask that Congress and the American People give his war escalation plan yet another chance.
Now, even though Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) responded to this nonsensical speech in a very appropriate way, telling Bush that "The majority of the nation no longer supports the way this war is being fought; nor does the majority of our military, nor does the majority of Congress," Senator Webb himself is probably not aware of the truly great danger that may be looming over all of us, rich and poor, in every country of the world. Just as Nero fiddled while Rome burned, the leaders of our world are acting as though they have unlimited time to play their political games.
The question is, will any of us survive the threat to our civilization that is inherent in a Global Warming that can turn into an Ice Age in an instant while Bush and other world leaders engage in endless arguments about wars and economics? The real enemy is not "over there," it is "out there," in terms of changes to our environment that we all need to understand as fast as possible. And here we mean, all people. When the Sword falls, the billionaire oil tycoons will suffer just as much, if not more, than the Third World subsistence farmer.
We desperately need to reach these people and inform them so that all of humanity can act together as one to bring this senseless war-mongering to a halt and work together to solve our mutual problems that threaten to destroy us more completely than any nuclear bomb ever could.
But here's the problem: through the distortion and outright censoring of events in America and the world, the US media, in concert with the Bush government, are denying the American people access to knowledge and awareness that would allow them to play a pivotal role in their own future and that of their children. How many Americans truly know how many of their fellow citizens are totally opposed to the actions of the Bush government? If you read the US media you would have no idea whatsoever. If you read the international press however, you get a much better idea. Consider the following images from the front page of a French regional paper for 25th January 2007:
The text reads: "America Says 'No'
Increasingly isolated, George Bush has asked congress for 'another chance'. Less than one third of Americans are inclined to trust him. (click on image for large version)
The text reads:
"America against Bush. An ever increasing number of opponents of the Iraq war" (Click on image for large version).
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Initially, we're planning a sustained campaign of distribution of educational materials via the same processes that are used in political campaigns; only in this case, it will not be a campaign to elect anyone; it will be a campaign to wake up and stop the madness before we are all wiped off the face of the Earth forever. These materials will make people aware of SOTT and will give them further information about how to either find SOTT on the web, or how to sign up for the new, weekly printed SOTT that is in the pipeline.
We have volunteers around the world just waiting for the materials to be printed and shipped to them so that they can begin the distribution process. using our successful Signs Of The Times website as a backbone. We'll use mail-out flyers, posters, stickers, book-marks, and web productions to inform the people of just what danger we are all in while our so-called leaders bicker over killing more people. If they don't stop that wrangling now, and attend to the business at hand, there won't be anybody to bomb anyway.
This is the moment. Look at the Gulf Stream. Remember the movie "The Day After Tomorrow." Consider what happened within two weeks of a one week reversal of the Gulf Stream. It may not be that bad or that fast, but we can see from what we have already experienced that it will certainly be bad enough. Getting the information out to as many people as possible is going to require concentrated effort and funding. Once the people are fully aware of what is really going on, it is our belief that they will, en masse, do what is right and demand, in tones that cannot be refused, that our leaders take care of the most important business on our planet: preparing us for a massive, shift in climate that undoubtedly will happen much, much, much faster than anyone currently thinks possible.
But that's not going to happen unless we have the support.
That is the plan - flood the world with information - the Whole World! But it will require ongoing funding. Can you help with $15 per month? (You can cancel easily any time.) Click here to contribute:
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Every dollar, every flyer, poster, sticker, book, newsletter, we distribute together could save lives - perhaps the life of someone you love.
Together, we can wake the world up.
Together, we will wake up the world.
Thank you.
Laura, Ark, Joe, Scott, Henry, Jason, Anna, Amy, Juliana, and the rest of the SOTT team.
The Day After Tomorrow,Freak Weather, Global Warming, Methane Gas, Mini-Ice Age, Media Censorship, Gulf Stream Reversal, Thermal Haline Current
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Silencing the 'other side' of the Palestinian story
Silencing the 'other side' of the Palestinian story
Salma Abu Ayyash, P.F. Soto
Bridge News
Tue, 23 Jan 2007 14:18 EST
Last year the Center for Palestinian Human Rights (CPHR) rented office space in the basement of the First Church Congregational UCC in Cambridge. For several months the group screened documentaries on Palestine in the church. Then late in October, the leadership of the church sent CPHR a curt letter:
CPHR was asked to vacate by mid November, even though their lease ran through December.
The Jewish Advocate gave credit for this eviction to groups like the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC). "Jewish activists are at the forefront of ousting a series of Palestinian advocacy groups held at a cluster of churches in Cambridge."
The article referred to First Church and Christ Church (home of Sabeel, a Christian pro-Palestine group) as "red hot centers of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activity."
The charge of anti-Semitism is hurled with abandon at any one who dares to challenge Israel's perspective on the Middle East, which dominates the US media. At stake is over $4 billion a year in military and economic grants to the State of Israel. The "other side of the story" might not sit well with American taxpayers.
Last July 20th, in the midst of Israel's attack on Lebanon, business and political leaders in Massachusetts, including all Democrat and Republican candidates for governor, signed the "We Stand With Israel" ad in the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald.
We have to imagine that these people either didn't know or didn't care that Israel was committing atrocities, atrocities that infuriated the rest of the world; didn't know or didn't care that Israel showered the south of Lebanon with one million cluster bombs, as the remains of hundreds of children, many refugees, piled up; or that Israel's total devastation of Lebanon severely diminished the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians.
Israel right or wrong
A cynic might even wonder if professional or personal gains were too much to pass up. The fear is that going against the Israel Lobby is a formula for political suicide.
In January this year, all hell broke loose when a Palestinian human rights group tried to speak at Andover High School. Six social studies teachers, including teachers union president Tom Meyers, originally invited the Wheels of Justice Bus Tour [justicewheels.org], to speak in October. Zionists were successful in getting the principal to dis-invite the Wheels of Justice at the very last minute, late in the night before the scheduled visit!
On behalf of the organizers, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) contacted the school and the Wheels of Justice was invited back.
Over 300 parents, students, and community members assembled on January 5th in the school Library. Zionists mobilized and let loose their wrath on the speakers. Zionist agitators and parents who agree with them put on the most despicable display of incivility the tour group has ever encountered - and Wheels of Justice has visited over 200 high schools.
It was too much for the distressed principal, who eventually shut down the event. This was precisely what the Zionists were after, but they didn't gain any friends on that sad and shameful night. The hate and venom was laid bare for all present to see, though TV viewers did not see it on the news.
Joe Carr, a member of a Christian Peacemaker Team for months in Palestine and Iraq, and a speaker on the bus tour, said, "It never ceases to amaze me how far some people will go to hide the truth - though it shouldn't be surprising, considering that lies and propaganda is all the Zionist movement has to stand on. Once enough Americans learn the truth about what our government is supporting in the Middle East, Zionist imperialism is done for." Let's hope Joe's right.
We see what is happening to former President Jimmy Carter, who had the audacity to call his latest book, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. He's not the first and he won't be the last to be shunned, disavowed, or called liar by those who cannot or will not take on the Israel Lobby.
Because he speaks about Israeli violations of human rights, a deluge of politicians have disassociated themselves from Carter. In a democratic country you might think there ought to be a pluralistic response among high ranking politicians. But it seems pure McCarthyism prevails.
There most definitely is an "other side" of the Palestinian story. We can't rely on the US media or elected representatives to get it. But if we are funding crimes against humanity, shouldn't we know about it?
Comment:
Jeff Blankfort comments: Jewish pro-Israel lobbyists don't have to wear brown shirts and jackboots with armbands embellished with the Magen David, or cover themselves with white sheets with hoods to browbeat their targets, just their telephones and their checkbooks. The leave the outright violence to the Israeli Wehrmacht.
Jimmy Carter
Palestine Apartheid
Hebron
Illegal Settlements
Center for Palestinian Human Rights
ACLU
Wheels of Justice Bus Tour
Salma Abu Ayyash, P.F. Soto
Bridge News
Tue, 23 Jan 2007 14:18 EST
Last year the Center for Palestinian Human Rights (CPHR) rented office space in the basement of the First Church Congregational UCC in Cambridge. For several months the group screened documentaries on Palestine in the church. Then late in October, the leadership of the church sent CPHR a curt letter:
"During the last five weeks, our office has been receiving numerous calls expressing concern about the nature and purpose of your organization. Some of these calls have come from individuals and organizations with whom we have important relationships."
CPHR was asked to vacate by mid November, even though their lease ran through December.
The Jewish Advocate gave credit for this eviction to groups like the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC). "Jewish activists are at the forefront of ousting a series of Palestinian advocacy groups held at a cluster of churches in Cambridge."
The article referred to First Church and Christ Church (home of Sabeel, a Christian pro-Palestine group) as "red hot centers of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activity."
The charge of anti-Semitism is hurled with abandon at any one who dares to challenge Israel's perspective on the Middle East, which dominates the US media. At stake is over $4 billion a year in military and economic grants to the State of Israel. The "other side of the story" might not sit well with American taxpayers.
Last July 20th, in the midst of Israel's attack on Lebanon, business and political leaders in Massachusetts, including all Democrat and Republican candidates for governor, signed the "We Stand With Israel" ad in the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald.
We have to imagine that these people either didn't know or didn't care that Israel was committing atrocities, atrocities that infuriated the rest of the world; didn't know or didn't care that Israel showered the south of Lebanon with one million cluster bombs, as the remains of hundreds of children, many refugees, piled up; or that Israel's total devastation of Lebanon severely diminished the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians.
Israel right or wrong
A cynic might even wonder if professional or personal gains were too much to pass up. The fear is that going against the Israel Lobby is a formula for political suicide.
In January this year, all hell broke loose when a Palestinian human rights group tried to speak at Andover High School. Six social studies teachers, including teachers union president Tom Meyers, originally invited the Wheels of Justice Bus Tour [justicewheels.org], to speak in October. Zionists were successful in getting the principal to dis-invite the Wheels of Justice at the very last minute, late in the night before the scheduled visit!
On behalf of the organizers, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) contacted the school and the Wheels of Justice was invited back.
Over 300 parents, students, and community members assembled on January 5th in the school Library. Zionists mobilized and let loose their wrath on the speakers. Zionist agitators and parents who agree with them put on the most despicable display of incivility the tour group has ever encountered - and Wheels of Justice has visited over 200 high schools.
It was too much for the distressed principal, who eventually shut down the event. This was precisely what the Zionists were after, but they didn't gain any friends on that sad and shameful night. The hate and venom was laid bare for all present to see, though TV viewers did not see it on the news.
Joe Carr, a member of a Christian Peacemaker Team for months in Palestine and Iraq, and a speaker on the bus tour, said, "It never ceases to amaze me how far some people will go to hide the truth - though it shouldn't be surprising, considering that lies and propaganda is all the Zionist movement has to stand on. Once enough Americans learn the truth about what our government is supporting in the Middle East, Zionist imperialism is done for." Let's hope Joe's right.
We see what is happening to former President Jimmy Carter, who had the audacity to call his latest book, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. He's not the first and he won't be the last to be shunned, disavowed, or called liar by those who cannot or will not take on the Israel Lobby.
Because he speaks about Israeli violations of human rights, a deluge of politicians have disassociated themselves from Carter. In a democratic country you might think there ought to be a pluralistic response among high ranking politicians. But it seems pure McCarthyism prevails.
There most definitely is an "other side" of the Palestinian story. We can't rely on the US media or elected representatives to get it. But if we are funding crimes against humanity, shouldn't we know about it?
Comment:
Jeff Blankfort comments: Jewish pro-Israel lobbyists don't have to wear brown shirts and jackboots with armbands embellished with the Magen David, or cover themselves with white sheets with hoods to browbeat their targets, just their telephones and their checkbooks. The leave the outright violence to the Israeli Wehrmacht.
Jimmy Carter
Palestine Apartheid
Hebron
Illegal Settlements
Center for Palestinian Human Rights
ACLU
Wheels of Justice Bus Tour
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Bringing You All WAR, ALL the Time . . . .
From the Signs of the Times new feature BEST OF THE WEB:
Perle: Bush Will Green Light Iran Attack
Kurt Nimmo
Another Day In The Empire
Mon, 22 Jan 2007 16:14 EST
Perle: Bush Will Green Light Iran Attack
Kurt Nimmo
Another Day In The Empire
Mon, 22 Jan 2007 16:14 EST
Richard Perle, more accurately referred to by his moniker, the Prince of Darkness, tells us from Herzliya, Israel, that Bush will eventually give the order to kill Iranians. [" uuuhhh, they's almost the same as them eye-rakians, ain't they? . . . . guess that's jes' fahn then. It'll lern 'um some demokracy."]
"If all options were exhausted in the attempt to stop the Iranian nuclear project, and US military involvement was needed for a successful strike on Tehran, US President George Bush would give the green light for the operation, former director of the US Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, Richard Perle, told the Herzliya Conference on Sunday evening," reports Yedioth Internet.
Perle may fool a few Israelis, even more than a few Americans, those who bother to notice, but for the rest of us, those who have followed this gang of criminals for nearly five years, he is simply blowing smoke out of a certain orifice.
Asked if Bush and the neocons would "do it," that is engage in mass murder, Perle responded, "I think that until the day he leaves office, this is a president that, if he is told, 'Mr. President, you are at the point of no return,' I have very little doubt that this president would order the necessary military action."
The Prince of Darkness would have us believe the "point of no return" is Iran armed to the teeth with nukes, a demonstrable fairy tale. In fact, Bush's "point of no return" is the day he leaves office, failing to accomplish the neocon plan of sowing ruin and chaos in the Middle East.
"Perle expressed astonishment at the lack of support granted by the West to Iranian opposition movements who wish to overthrow the regime of the Ayatollahs," the Israeli news site continues. "I'm not convinced that we have a lot of time. Given the peril that would result, its astonishing to me that we do not now have a serious political strategy with Iran.... If we continue on our current course, we have only a military option. So what I'm urging, and this should have happened a very long time ago, is that we make a serious effort to work with the internal (Iranian) opposition."
Of course, for Perle, the Israel First neocons, and the Likudniks in Israel, the idea of subverting an Islamic government from within is natural as rain. Indeed, Israel has messed with its neighbors since the Zionists state was established - after running off a large number of Palestinian Arabs and stealing their land - a historical fact evinced by the Lavon Affair, the Mossad's framing of Libya for the LaBelle Disco bombing, the attack on the USS Liberty, killing 34 Americans and wounding 171, the botched assassination of U.S. ambassador John Gunther Dean in Lebanon, and Israel's connection to the Abu Nidal Organization, to name a few.
As well, the CIA and Pentagon are no strangers to attacking, subverting, undermining and overthrowing governments, as they have a long and sordid track record beginning in the late 1940s, following up on more than a hundred years of interventions, from the Philippines in 1899 to Honduras, Panama, Guatemala, China, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Haiti, even the Soviet Union near Vladivostok during the Bolshevik revolution, right up to the present day.
Naturally, Perle understands full well any effort to "work with the internal opposition" in Iran is doomed to failure, as this opposition consists basically of the son of the late Shah, Reza Pahlavi, who lives in exile in Virginia, and a scattering of other groups, including Mojahedin-e-Khalq, a terrorist organization involved in killing Iranian civilians. Perle actually expects us to believe the people of Iran will support the butchers of MEK or reinstall a monarch, the son of a dictator who unleashed SAVAK, a particularly brutal secret police, on the people of Iran for over three decades. [so much for the reality-creating neocons]
In fact, Perle and the neocons are impatiently waiting for Bush to attack Iran, as their plan is to destroy Iranian society, not free the Iranian people from the mullahs. Perle, like a demented carnival barker, is setting the stage, telling us Bush will "do it," when in fact the neocons will, as Bush is little more than a trained monkey from an elite family that made its way in the world after rubbing elbows with Nazis
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
How DARE You Call Israel Apartheid???
Well, maybe intelligent, compassionate people call the State of Israel apartheid because of things like this:
From Wanye Madsen's Report:
And from Jonathan Cook, an even more frightening long-term assessment:
Palestine Occupation
West Bank
Illegal Settlements
Avigdor Lieberman
Gilad Erdan
Palestinian Authority
From Wanye Madsen's Report:
January 22, 2007 -- President Carter remains under assault by a coalition of right-wing Christian fundamentalists, neo-cons, and pro-Israel expansionist organizations. His book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid is being attacked by this unholy alliance of religious nut cases, right-wing political extremists, and dual loyalty Americans. Nothing illustrates President Carter's points better than the photo below of young Israeli West Bank settlers harassing an older Palestinian woman (note the boy kicking the woman) while Israeli soldiers stand idly by. Such physical harassment of black South Africans by whites during apartheid was also commonplace. Carter's detractors should stop attacking him and start explaining the scene below.
And from Jonathan Cook, an even more frightening long-term assessment:
Israel's Dark FutureIDF
Jonathan Cook
http://www.jkcook.net/
Sun, 21 Jan 2007 14:34 EST
When I published my book Blood and Religion last year, I sought not only to explain what lay behind Israeli policies since the failed Camp David negotiations nearly seven years ago, including the disengagement from Gaza and the building of a wall across the West Bank, but I also offered a few suggestions about where Israel might head next.
Making predictions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might be considered a particularly dangerous form of hubris, but I could hardly have guessed how soon my fears would be realized.
One of the main forecasts of my book was that Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line - those who currently enjoy Israeli citizenship and those who live as oppressed subjects of Israel's occupation - would soon find common cause as Israel tries to seal itself off from what it calls the Palestinian "demographic threat": that is, the moment when Palestinians outnumber Jews in the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
I suggested that Israel's greatest fear was ruling over a majority of Palestinians and being compared to apartheid South Africa, a fate that has possibly befallen it faster than I expected with the recent publication of Jimmy Carter's book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. To avoid such a comparison, I argued, Israel was creating a "Jewish fortress," separating - at least demographically - from Palestinians in the occupied territories by sealing off Gaza through a disengagement of its settler population and by building a 750km wall to annex large areas of the West Bank.
It was also closing off the last remaining avenue of a Right of Return for Palestinians by changing the law to make it all but impossible for Palestinians living in Israel to marry Palestinians in the occupied territories and thereby gain them citizenship.
The corollary of this Jewish fortress, I suggested, would be a sham Palestinian state, a series of disconnected ghettos that would prevent Palestinians from organizing effective resistance, non-violent or otherwise, but which would give the Israeli army an excuse to attack or invade whenever they chose, claiming that they were facing an "enemy state" in a conventional war.
Another benefit for Israel in imposing this arrangement would be that it could say all Palestinians who identified themselves as such - whether in the occupied territories or inside Israel - must now exercise their sovereign rights in the Palestinian state and renounce any claim on the Jewish state. The apartheid threat would be nullified.
I sketched out possible routes by which Israel could achieve this end:* by redrawing the borders, using the wall, so that an area densely populated with Palestinian citizens of Israel known as the Little Triangle, which hugs the northern West Bank, would be sealed into the new pseudo-state;When I made these forecasts, I suspected that many observers, even in the Palestinian solidarity movement, would find my ideas improbable. I could not have realized how fast events would overtake prediction.
* by continuing the process of corralling the Negev's Bedouin farmers into urban reservations and then treating them as guest workers;
* by forcing Palestinian citizens living in the Galilee to pledge an oath of loyalty to Israel as a "Jewish and democratic state" or have their citizenship revoked;
* and by stripping Arab Knesset members of their right to stand for election.
The first sign came in October with the addition to the cabinet of Avigdor Lieberman, leader of a party that espouses the ethnic cleansing not only of Palestinians in the occupied territories (an unremarkable platform for an Israeli party) but of Palestinian citizens too, through land swaps that would exchange their areas for the illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Lieberman is not just any cabinet minister; he has been appointed deputy prime minister with responsibility for the "strategic threats" that face Israel. In that role, he will be able to determine what issues are to be considered threats and thereby shape the public agenda for next few years. The "problem" of Israel's Palestinian citizens is certain to be high on his list.
Lieberman has been widely presented as a political maverick, akin to the notorious racist Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose Kach party was outlawed in the late 1980s. That is a gross misunderstanding: Lieberman is at the very heart of the country's rightwing establishment and will almost certainly be a candidate for prime minister in future elections, as Israelis drift ever further to the right.
Unlike Kahane, Lieberman has cleverly remained within the Israeli political mainstream while pushing its agenda to the very limits of what it is currently possible to say. Kadima and Labor urgently want unilateral separation from the Palestinians but are shy to spell out, both to their own domestic constituency and the international community, what separation will entail.
Lieberman has no such qualms. He is unequivocal: if Israel is separating from the Palestinians in parts of the occupied territories, why not also separate from the 1.2 million Palestinians who through oversight rather than design ended up as citizens of a Jewish state in 1948? If Israel is to be a Jewish fortress, then, as he points out, it is illogical to leave Palestinians within the fortifications.
These arguments express the common mood among the Israeli public, one that has been cultivated since the eruption of the intifada in 2000 by endless talk among Israel's political and military elites about "demographic separation." Regular opinion polls show that about two-thirds of Israelis support transfer, either voluntary or forced, of Palestinian citizens from the state.
Recent polls also reveal how fashionable racism has become in Israel. A survey conducted last year showed that 68 per cent of Israeli Jews do not want to live next to a Palestinian citizen (and rarely have to, as segregation is largely enforced by the authorities), and 46 per cent would not want an Arab to visit their home.
A poll of students that was published last week suggests that racism is even stronger among young Jews. Three-quarters believed Palestinian citizens are uneducated, uncivilized and unclean, and a third are frightened of them. Richard Kupermintz of Haifa University, who conducted the survey more than two years ago, believes the responses would be even more extreme today. [the brainwshing program has been a resounding success]
Lieberman is simply riding the wave of such racism and pointing out the inevitable path separation must follow if it is to satisfy these kinds of prejudices. He may speak his mind more than his cabinet colleagues, but they too share his vision of the future. That is why only one minister, the dovish and principled Ophir Pines Paz of Labor, resigned over Ehud Olmert's inclusion of Lieberman in the cabinet.
Contrast that response with the uproar caused by the Labor leader Amir Peretz's appointment of the first Arab cabinet minister in Israel's history. (A member of the small Druze community, which serves in the Israeli army, Salah Tarif, was briefly a minister without portfolio in Sharon's first government.)
Raleb Majadele, a Muslim, is a senior member of the Labor party and a Zionist (what might be termed, in different circumstances, a self-hating Arab or an Uncle Tom), and yet his appointment has broken an Israeli taboo: Arabs are not supposed to get too close to the centers of power.
Peretz's decision was entirely cynical. He is under threat on all fronts - from his coalition partners in Kadima and in Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu, and from within his own party - and desperately needs the backing of Labor's Arab party members. Majadele is the key, and that is why Peretz gave him a cabinet post, even if a marginal one: Minister of Science, Culture and Sport.
But the right is deeply unhappy at Majadele's inclusion in the cabinet. Lieberman called Peretz unfit to be defense minister for making the appointment and demanded that Majadele pledge loyalty to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. Lieberman's party colleagues referred to the appointment as a "lethal blow to Zionism."
A few Labor and Meretz MKs denounced these comments as racist. But more telling was the silence of Olmert and his Kadima party, as well as Binyamin Netanyhu's Likud, at Lieberman's outburst. The center and right understand that Lieberman's views about Majadele, and Palestinian citizens more generally, mirror those of most Israeli Jews and that it would be foolhardy to criticize him for expressing them - let alone sack him.
In this game of "who is the truer Zionist," Lieberman can only grow stronger against his former colleagues in Kadima and Likud. Because he is free to speak his and their minds, while they must keep quiet for appearance's sake, he, not they, will win ever greater respect from the Israeli public.
Meanwhile, all the evidence suggests that Olmert and the current government will implement the policies being promoted by Lieberman, even if they are too timid to openly admit that is what they are doing.
Some of those policies are of the by-now familiar variety, such as the destruction of 21 Bedouin homes, half the village of Twayil, in the northern Negev last week. It was the second time in a month that the village had been razed by the Israeli security forces.
These kind of official attacks against the indigenous Bedouin - who have been classified by the government as "squatters" on state lands - are a regular occurence, an attempt to force 70,000 Bedouin to leave their ancestral homes and relocate to deprived townships.
A more revealing development came this month, however, when it was reported in the Israeli media that the government is for the first time backing "loyalty" legislation that has been introduced privately by a Likud MK. Gilad Erdan's bill would revoke the citizenship of Israelis who take part in "an act that constitutes a breach of loyalty to the state," the latest in a string of proposals by Jewish MKs conditioning citizenship on loyalty to the Israeli state, defined in all these schemes very narrowly as a "Jewish and democratic" state.
Arab MKs, who reject an ethnic definition of Israel and demand instead that the country be reformed into a "state of all its citizens," or a liberal democracy, are typically denounced as traitors.
Lieberman himself suggested just such a loyalty scheme for Palestinian citizens last month during a trip to Washington. He told American Jewish leaders: "He who is not ready to recognize Israel as a Jewish and Zionist state cannot be a citizen in the country."
Erdan's bill specifies acts of disloyalty that include visiting an "enemy state" - which, in practice, means just about any Arab state. Most observers believe that, after Erdan's bill has been redrafted by the Justice Ministry, it will be used primarily against the Arab MKs, who are looking increasingly beleaguered. Most have been repeatedly investigated by the Attorney-General for any comment in support of the Palestinians in the occupied territories or for visiting neighboring Arab states. One, Azmi Bishara, has been put on trial twice for these offenses.
Meanwhile, Jewish MKs have been allowed to make the most outrageous racist statements against Palestinian citizens, mostly unchallenged.
Former cabinet minister Effi Eitam, for example, said back in September: "The vast majority of West Bank Arabs must be deported ... We will have to make an additional decision, banning Israeli Arabs from the political system ... We have cultivated a fifth column, a group of traitors of the first degree." He was "warned" by the Attorney-General over his comments (though he has expressed similar views several times before), but remained unrepetant, calling the warning an attempt to "silence" him.
The leader of the opposition and former prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, the most popular politician in Israel according to polls, gave voice to equally racist sentiments this month when he stated that child allowance cuts he imposed as finance minister in 2002 had had a "positive" demographic effect by reducing the birth rate of Palestinian citizens.
Arab MKs, of course, do not enjoy such indulgence when they speak out, much more legitimately, in supporting their kin, the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, who are suffering under Israel's illegal occupation. Arab MK Ahmed Tibi, for example, was roundly condemned last week by the Jewish parties, including the most leftwing, Meretz, when he called on Fatah to "continue the struggle" to establish a Palestinian state.
However, the campaign of intimidation by the government and Jewish members of the Knesset has failed to silence the Arab MKs or stop them visiting neighboring states, which is why the pressure is being ramped up. If Erdan's bill becomes law - which seems possible with government backing - then the Arab MKs and the minority they represent will either be cut off from the rest of the Arab world once again (as they were for the first two decades of Israel's existence, when a military government was imposed on them) or threatened with the revocation of their citizenship for disloyalty (a move, it should be noted, that is illegal under international law). [not that Isreal ever gave a fig for international law unless it could be bent to serve the Zionists . . . ]
It may not be too fanciful to see the current legislation eventually being extended to cover other "breaches of loyalty," such as demanding democratic reforms of Israel or denying that a Jewish state is democratic. Technically, this is already the position as Israel's election law makes it illegal for political parties, including Arab ones, to promote a platform that denies Israel's existence as a "Jewish and democratic" state.
Soon Arab MKs and their constituents may also be liable to having their citizenship revoked for campaigning, as many currently do, for a state of all its citizens. That certainly is the view of the eminent Israeli historian Tom Segev, who argued in the wake of the government's adoption of the bill: "In practice, the proposed law is liable to turn all Arabs into conditional citizens, after they have already become, in many respects, second-class citizens. Any attempt to formulate an alternative to the Zionist reality is liable to be interpreted as a 'breach of faith' and a pretext for stripping them of their citizenship."
But it is unlikely to end there. I hesitate to make another prediction but, given the rapidity with which the others have been realized, it may be time to hazard yet another guess about where Israel is going next.
The other day I was at a checkpoint near Nablus, one of several that are being converted by Israel into what look suspiciously like international border crossings, even though they fall deep inside Palestinian territory.
I had heard that Palestinian citizens of Israel were being allowed to pass these checkpoints unhindered to enter cities like Nablus to see relatives. (These familial connections are a legacy of the 1948 war, when separated Palestinian refugees ended up on different sides of the Green Line, and also of marriages that were possible after 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza, making social and business contacts possible again.) But, when Palestinian citizens try to leave these cities via the checkpoints, they are invariably detained and issued letters by the Israeli authorities warning them that they will be tried if caught again visiting "enemy" areas.
In April last year, at a cabinet meeting at which the Israeli government agreed to expel Hamas MPs from Jerusalem to the West Bank, ministers discussed changing the classification of the Palestinian Authority from a "hostile entity" to the harsher category of an "enemy entity." The move was rejected for the time being because, as one official told the Israeli media: "There are international legal implications in such a declaration, including closing off the border crossings, that we don't want to do yet".
Is it too much to suspect that before long, after Israel has completed the West Bank wall and its "border" terminals, the Jewish state will classify visits by Palestinian citizens to relatives as "visiting an enemy state"? And will such visits be grounds for revoking citizenship, as they could be under Erdan's bill if Palestinian citizens visit relatives in Syria or Lebanon?
Palestine Occupation
West Bank
Illegal Settlements
Avigdor Lieberman
Gilad Erdan
Palestinian Authority
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