Saturday, June 30, 2007

The Video Israel Doesn't Want You to See

Notice the family is considered by one soldier to be "dirty" , sub-human. Isn't that the same thing Jews suffered in Germany? And this was 2002. Things have only gotten worse.

Blue Ibis.
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Israeli army embarrassed by video broadcast

CBC News, 19 March 2002

The Israeli army has expressed a note of contrition after a television station aired a videotape showing an army assault on a Palestinian home in which a mother of five children died. When CBC News spoke with Ismail Hawarjeh at Bethlehem's hospital earlier this month, there was no way to verify the story he told about how his wife had died, until Israel's Channel 2 broacast the tape last weekend.

The Palestinian school administrator said his wife Huda had been killed in their home by an Israeli tank shell during the army's March 8 assault on the Aida refugee camp. The army wouldn't comment and foreign journalists weren't allowed inside the camp.

But Israeli media were allowed to ride along with the soldiers, and they went right into the Hawarjeh home. An Israeli camera recorded the army blowing off the door, and found Huda Hawarjeh bleeding on the floor.

The pictures conformed to Ismail Hawarjeh's story about his wife being hit by shrapnel in the front hallway of the house, and about the Israeli soldiers doing little to help her for an hour while she bled to death in front of her five children.

Finally, the soldiers allowed an ambulance to come to a nearby street, and soldiers helped Hawarjeh carry his wife to it. Doctors tried to revive her at the hospital but couldn't.

Huda Hawarjeh was one of seven people to die in the Bethlehem area that day.

The Israeli army allows the media such close access on the understanding it can embargo anything it doesn't want broadcast.

The tapes of the assault on the Hawarjeh home fell into that category. But Channel 2 broke the embargo anyway.

The army, government and many Israeli citizens didn't like what they saw.

Channel 2 showed Hawarjeh begging soldiers to allow an ambulance through. The camera captured the terror of the woman's daughter, and her brother's attempt to stop her from showing the soldiers her fear.

After the woman was finally taken out, one of the soldiers looked into the camera and said: "I don't know what we're doing here. Purification, maybe. It's dirty here. I don't know why a good Hebrew boy should be here, so far from his home."

The soldiers tore the home apart, evidently looking for weapons.

Another daughter begged them not to demolish the home's wall. Soldiers commonly smash walls to move into adjacent houses.

Israeli spokesman Ranaan Gissin said the government was disappointed by the decision to air the tapes. "I would have expected a little bit more self-censorship on the part of the Israeli media," he said.

Ma'ariv, Israel's second-biggest newspaper, ran the story on its front page on Monday, under a banner headline that read "Gaffe!"

[That's all the Zionists think this is. A procedural faux pas instead of what it is, yet another violation of human rights. Oh wait. I forgot. Palestinians aren't human.]

The army, after trying to suppress distribution of the pictures, admitted the soldiers' actions pushed the boundaries of public acceptance.

"Our action is so difficult to be done that it is to the extremities of acceptance," said Olivier Rafowicz, an Israeli Defence Force spokesman.

He called what happened in the Hawarjeh home "a mistake."

Comment:
At one point in the video an Israeli soldier says. "I don't know what we're doing here. Purification maybe. It's dirty here. I don't know why a good Hebrew boy should be here so far from his home."

These are people he is talking about!

That Israel is able to kill innocent Palestinians while saying what amounts to how hard it is to do the killing without being condemned is sickening.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Applying Lessons of Imperialism: Zionism Learns Fast

Crosses, double-crosses, triple-crosses. This is the history of Zionist behaviour towards the people who's land they stole. Crying "Peace, peace" but in action, promoting everything but. And it sure appears the psychopaths in charge of Israel are almost enjoying it.

Jonathan Cook is a resident of Nazareth. He knows where of he speaks.

Blue Ibis
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Jonathan Cook
The Electronic Intifada
Tue, 26 Jun 2007 11:46 EDT


©Omar Rashidi/MaanImages/POOL/PPO
After deposing the Hamas government, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abas meets with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Sharm al-Sheikh, Egypt. King Abdullah of Jordan and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak were also present at the meeting arranged to discuss Hamas' control of Gaza, 25 June 2007.

The boycott by Israel and the international community of the Palestinian Authority finally blew up in their faces with Hamas' recent bloody takeover of Gaza. Or so argues Gideon Levy, one of the saner voices still to be found in Israel. "Starving, drying up and blocking aid do not sear the consciousness and do not weaken political movements. On the contrary ... Reality has refuted the chorus of experts and commentators who preached [on] behalf of the boycott policy. This daft notion that it is possible to topple an elected government by applying pressure on a helpless population suffered a complete failure."

But has Levy got it wrong? The faces of Israeli and American politicians, including Ehud Olmert and George W. Bush, appear soot-free. On the contrary. Over the past fortnight they have been looking and sounding even more smug than usual.

The problem with Levy's analysis is that it assumes that Israel and the US wanted sanctions to bring about the fall of Hamas, either by giving Fatah the upper hand so that it could deal a knockout blow to the Palestinian government, or by inciting ordinary Palestinians to rise up and demand that their earlier electoral decision be reversed and Fatah reinstalled. In short, Levy, like most observers, assumes that the policy was designed to enforce regime change.

But what if that was not the point of the sanctions? And if so, what goals were Israel and the US pursuing?

The parallels between Iraq and Gaza may be instructive. After all, Iraq is the West's only other recent experiment in imposing sanctions to starve a nation. And we all know where it led: to an even deeper entrenchment of Saddam Hussein's rule.

True, the circumstances in Iraq and Gaza are different: most Iraqis wanted Saddam out but had no way to effect change, while most Gazans wanted Hamas in and made it happen by voting for them in last year's elections. Nevertheless, it may be that the US and Israel drew a different lesson from the sanctions experience in Iraq.

Whether intended or not, sanctions proved a very effective tool for destroying the internal bonds that held Iraqi society together. Destitution and hunger are powerful incentives to turn on one's neighbor as well as one's enemy. A society where resources -- food, medicines, water and electricity -- are in short supply is also a society where everyone looks out for himself. It is a society that, with a little prompting, can easily be made to tear itself apart.

And that is precisely what the Americans began to engineer after their "shock and awe" invasion of 2003. Contrary to previous US interventions abroad, Saddam was not toppled and replaced with another strongman -- one more to the West's liking. Instead of regime change, we were given regime overthrow. Or as Daniel Pipes, one of the neoconservative ideologues of the attack on Iraq, expressed it, the goal was "limited to destroying tyranny, not sponsoring its replacement ... Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition's responsibility nor its burden."

In place of Saddam, the Americans created a safe haven known as the Green Zone from which its occupation regime could loosely police the country and oversee the theft of Iraq's oil, while also sitting back and watching a sectarian civil war between the Sunni and Shia populations spiral out of control and decimate the Iraqi population.

What did Washington hope to achieve? Pipes offers a clue: "When Sunni terrorists target Shiites and vice-versa, non-Muslims [that is, US occupation forces and their allies] are less likely to be hurt. Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy but not a strategic one." In other words, enabling a civil war in Iraq was far preferable to allowing Iraqis to unite and mount an effective resistance to the US occupation. After all, Iraqi deaths -- at least 650,000 of them, according to the last realistic count -- are as good as worthless, while US soldiers' lives cost votes back home.

["Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy but not a strategic one."!! If that isn't a psychopath in full flight, what is?]

For the neocon cabal behind the Iraq invasion, civil war was seen to have two beneficial outcomes.

First, it eroded the solidarity of ordinary Iraqis, depleting their energies and making them less likely to join or support the resistance to the occupation. The insurgency has remained a terrible irritation to US forces but not the fatal blow it might have been were the Sunni and Shia to fight side by side. As a result, the theft of Iraq's resources has been made easier.

And second, in the longer term, civil war is making inevitable a slow process of communal partition and ethnic cleansing. Four million Iraqis are reported to have been forced either to leave the country or flee their homes. Iraq is being broken up into small ethnic and religious fiefdoms that will be easier to manage and manipulate.

[Amazing! Just what the "Clean Break" paper, prepared for Israel in 1996 by US Neocons proposed as being the most advantageous to it.]

Is this the model for Gaza now and the West Bank later?

It is worth recalling that neither Israel nor the US pushed for an easing of the sanctions on the Palestinian Authority after the national unity government of Hamas and Fatah was formed earlier this year. In fact, the US and Israel could barely conceal their panic at the development. The moment the Mecca agreement was signed, reports of US efforts to train and arm Fatah forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas became a newspaper staple.

The cumulative effect of US support for Fatah, as well as Israel's continuing arrests of Hamas legislators in the West Bank, was to strain already tense relations between Hamas and Fatah to breaking point. When Hamas learned that Abbas' security chief, Mohammed Dahlan, with US encouragement, was preparing to carry out a coup against them in Gaza, they got the first shot in.

Did Fatah really believe it could pull off a coup in Gaza, given the evident weakness of its forces there, or was the rumour little more than American and Israeli spin, designed to undermine Hamas' faith in Fatah and doom the unity government? Were Abbas and Dahlan really hoping to topple Hamas, or were they the useful idiots needed by the US and Israel? These are questions that may have to be settled by the historians.

But with the fingerprints of Elliott Abrams, one of the more durable neocons in the Bush administration, to be found all over this episode, we can surmise that what Washington and Israel are intending for the Palestinians will have strong echoes of what has unfolded in Iraq.

By engineering the destruction of the unity government, Israel and the US have ensured that there is no danger of a new Palestinian consensus emerging, one that might have cornered Israel into peace talks. A unity government might have found a formula offering Israel:

- limited recognition inside the pre-1967 borders in return for recognition of a Palestinian state and the territorial integrity of the West Bank and Gaza;
- a long-term ceasefire in return for Israel ending its campaign of constant violence and violations of Palestinian sovereignty;
- and a commitment to honor past agreements in return for Israel's abiding by UN resolutions and accepting a just solution for the Palestinian refugees.

After decades of Israeli bad faith, and the growing rancor between Fatah and Hamas, the chances of them finding common ground on which to make such an offer, it must be admitted, would have been slight. But now they are non-existent.

That is exactly how Israel wants it, because it has no interest in meaningful peace talks with the Palestinians or in a final agreement. It wants only to impose solutions that suit Israel's interests, which are securing the maximum amount of land for an exclusive Jewish state and leaving the Palestinians so weak and divided that they will never be able to mount a serious challenge to Israel's dictates.

Instead, Hamas' dismal authority over the prison camp called Gaza and Fatah's bastard governance of the ghettoes called the West Bank offer a model more satisfying for Israel and the US -- and one not unlike Iraq. A sort of sheriff's divide and rule in the Wild West.

Just as in Iraq, Israel and the US have made sure that no Palestinian strongman arises to replace Yasser Arafat. Just as in Iraq, they are encouraging civil war as an alternative to resistance to occupation, as Palestine's resources -- land, not oil -- are stolen. Just as in Iraq, they are causing a permanent and irreversible partition, in this case between the West Bank and Gaza, to create more easily managed territorial ghettoes. And just as in Iraq, the likely reaction is an even greater extremism from the Palestinians that will undermine their cause in the eyes of the international community.

Where will this lead the Palestinians next?

Israel is already pulling the strings of Fatah with a new adeptness since the latter's humiliation in Gaza. Abbas is currently basking in Israeli munificence for his rogue West Bank regime, including the decision to release a substantial chunk of the $700 million tax monies owed to the Palestinians (including those of Gaza, of course) and withheld for years by Israel. The price, according to the Israeli media, was a commitment from Abbas not to contemplate re-entering a unity government with Hamas.

The goal will be to increase the strains between Hamas and Fatah to breaking point in the West Bank, but ensure that Fatah wins the confrontation there. Fatah is already militarily stronger and with generous patronage from Israel and the US -- including arms and training, and possibly the return of the Badr Brigade currently holed up in Jordan -- it should be able to rout Hamas. The difference in status between Gaza and the West Bank that has been long desired by Israel will be complete.

The Palestinian people have already been carved up into a multitude of constituencies. There are the Palestinians under occupation, those living as second-class citizens of Israel, those allowed to remain "residents" of Jerusalem, and those dispersed to camps across the Middle East. Even within these groups, there are a host of sub-identities: refugees and non-refugees; refugees included as citizens in their host state and those excluded; occupied Palestinians living under the control of the Palestinian Authority and those under Israel's military government; and so on.

Now, Israel has entrenched maybe the most significant division of all: the absolute and irreversible separation of Gaza and the West Bank. What applies to one will no longer be true for the other. Each will be a separate case; their fates will no longer be tied. One will be, as Israelis like to call it, Hamastan, and other Fatahland, with separate governments and different treatment from Israel and the international community.

The reasons why Israel prefers this arrangement are manifold.

First, Gaza can now be written off by the international community as a basket case. The Israeli media is currently awash with patronizing commentary from the political and security establishments about how to help avoid a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including the possibility of air drops of aid over the Gaza "security fence" -- as though Gaza were Pakistan after an earthquake. From past experience, and the current menacing sounds from Israel's new Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, those food packages will quickly turn into bombs if Gaza does not keep quiet.

As Israeli and US officials have been phrasing it, there is a new "clarity" in the situation. In a Hamastan, Gaza's militants and civilians can be targeted by Israel with little discrimination and no outcry from the international community. Israel will hope that message from Gaza will not be lost on West Bank Palestinians as they decide who to give their support to, Fatah or Hamas.

Second, at their meeting last week Olmert and Bush revived talk of Palestinian statehood. According to Olmert, Bush "wants to realize, while he is in office, the dream of creating a Palestinian state." Both are keen to make quick progress, a sure sign of mischief in the making. Certainly, they know they are now under no pressure to create the single viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza once promised by President Bush. An embattled Abbas will not be calling for the inclusion of Gaza in his ghetto-fiefdom.

Third, the separation of Gaza from the West Bank may be used to inject new life into Olmert's shopworn convergence plan -- if he can dress it up in new clothes. Convergence, which required a very limited withdrawal from those areas of the West Bank heavily populated with Palestinians while Israel annexed most of its illegal colonies and kept the Jordan Valley, was officially ditched last summer after Israel's humiliation by Hizballah.

Why seek to revive convergence? Because it is the key to Israel securing the expanded Jewish fortress state that is its only sure protection from the rapid demographic growth of the Palestinians, soon to outnumber Jews in the Holy Land, and Israel's fears that it may then be compared to apartheid South Africa.

If the occupation continues unchanged, Israel's security establishment has long been warning, the Palestinians will eventually wake up to the only practical response: to dissolve the Palestinian Authority, Israel's clever ruse to make the Palestinian leadership responsible for suppressing Palestinian resistance to the occupation, thereby forcing Israel to pick up the bill for the occupation rather than Europe. The next stage would be an anti-apartheid struggle for one state in historic Palestine.

For this reason, demographic separation from the Palestinians has been the logic of every major Israeli policy initiative since -- and including -- Oslo. Convergence requires no loss of Israel's control over Palestinian lives, ensured through the all but finished grid of walls, settlements, bypass roads and checkpoints, only a repackaging of their occupation as statehood.

The biggest objection in Israel to Olmert's plan -- as well as to the related Gaza disengagement -- was the concern that, once the army had unilaterally withdrawn from the Palestinian ghettoes, the Palestinians would be free to launch terror attacks, including sending rockets out of their prisons into Israel. Most Israelis, of course, never consider the role of the occupation in prompting such attacks.

But Olmert may believe he has found a way to silence his domestic critics. For the first time he seems genuinely keen to get his Arab neighbors involved in the establishment of a Palestinian "state". As he headed off to the Sharm al-Sheikh summit with Egypt, Jordan and Abbas this week, Olmert said he wanted to "jointly work to create the platform that may lead to a new beginning between us and the Palestinians."

Did he mean partnership? A source in the Prime Minister's Office explained to The Jerusalem Post why the three nations and Abbas were meeting. "These are the four parties directly impacted by what is happening right now, and what is needed is a different level of cooperation between them." Another spokesman bewailed the failure so far to get the Saudis on board.

This appears to mark a sea change in Israeli thinking. Until now Tel Aviv has regarded the Palestinians as a domestic problem -- after all, they are sitting on land that rightfully, at least if the Bible is to be believed, belongs to the Jews. Any attempt at internationalizing the conflict has therefore been strenuously resisted.

But now the Israeli Prime Minister's Office is talking openly about getting the Arab world more directly involved, not only in its usual role as a mediator with the Palestinians, nor even in simply securing the borders against smuggling, but also in policing the territories. Israel hopes that Egypt, in particular, is as concerned as Tel Aviv by the emergence of a Hamastan on its borders, and may be enticed to use the same repressive policies against Gaza's Islamists as it does against its own.

Similarly, Olmert's chief political rival, Binyamin Netanyahu of Likud, has mentioned not only Egyptian involvement in Gaza but even a Jordanian military presence in the West Bank. The "moderate" Arab regimes, as Washington likes to call them, are being seen as the key to developing new ideas about Palestinian "autonomy" and regional "confederation." As long as Israel has a quisling in the West Bank and a beyond-the-pale government in Gaza, it may believe it can corner the Arab world into backing such a "peace plan."

What will it mean in practice? Possibly, as Zvi Barel of Haaretz speculates, we will see the emergence of half a dozen Palestinian governments in charge of the ghettoes of Gaza, Ramallah, Jenin, Jericho, and Hebron. Each may be encouraged to compete for patronage and aid from the "moderate" Arab regimes but on condition that Israel and the US are satisfied with these Palestinian governments' performance.

In other words, Israel looks as if it is dusting off yet another blueprint for how to manage the Palestinians and their irritating obsession with sovereignty. Last time, under Oslo, the Palestinians were put in charge of policing the occupation on Israel's behalf. This time, as the Palestinians are sealed into their separate prisons masquerading as a state, Israel may believe that it can find a new jailer for the Palestinians -- the Arab world.

Jonathan Cook, a journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, is the author of Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State (Pluto Press, 2006). His website is www.jkcook.net

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Bush Past 2008?? You Are Now Warned

Here is one of the many gems to be found on the SOTT Forum, the most lucid, intelligent group of people to be met on the planet.

From the thread "Bush Term Ends in 2008". :

"Any clue how it is possible for a military dictatorship to occur before his term ends before 2009 or do you think that a major event will occur preventing a normal primary election for a new president? I mean, why are there candidates lining up now and not next year since there is a full year and a half left of his term?"

A stark summation by ScioAgapeOmnis:

It might go something like this..

From _http://www2.dsu.nodak.edu/users/dmeier/Holocaust/hitler.html

The Creation of the Nazi Dictatorship, 1933-1939

Phase One, 1933-1934
Nazi domestic policy can be broken into three phases beginning with 1933-34. During these years, Hitler consolidated his authority through the destruction of all other political parties, "coordination" of all aspects of German life, and the liquidation of dissent among Nazis and conservatives. After taking office as chancellor, Hitler quickly out maneuvered Papen and the conservative nationalists.

The Reichstag Fire, February 1933
A new Reichstag election was scheduled for early March 1933. Only a few days before the election, on February 27, the Reichstag building was partially destroyed by fire. The Nazis may well have set the blaze, but they blamed the Communists, charging that the Communists were plotting to seize power. Hitler convinced Hindenburg to take strong action against the supposed Communist threat, and the president suspended freedom of speech and the press and other civil liberties.

March 1933 Election
The Nazis stepped up their harassment of their political opponents, and the March 5 election was held in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. Polling 44 percent of the votes, the Nazis won 288 seats in the Reichstag. With the support of their conservative nationalist allies, who held 52 seats, the Nazis controlled a majority of the 647 member Reichstag. The Nazi majority was even more substantial, since none of the 81 Communist deputies were allowed to take their seats.

The Enabling Act, March 1933
On March 23, 1933, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, which gave dictatorial authority to Hitler's cabinet for four years. Armed with full powers, Hitler moved to eliminate all possible centers of opposition. His policy is known as Gleichschaltung, which translates literally as coordination. In this context, however, it meant more precisely subordination, that is, subordinating all independent institutions to the authority of Hitler and the Nazi Party.

It was the Enabling Act of March 23, 1933, which in a legal way conferred dictatorial powers on Adolf Hitler. Only 94 Social Democratic votes were cast against it. The date for its abrogation (see Article 5) was never kept. Indeed, the Enabling Act is the last measure which the Reichstag passed under the republican and democratic Constitution of the Republic. It spelled its end and the beginning of National Socialist dictatorship.

From: _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic

At the meeting of the new cabinet on March 15, Hitler introduced the Enabling Act, which would have authorised the cabinet to enact legislation without the approval of the Reichstag. [...]

At the last internal Centre meeting prior to the debate on the Enabling Act, Kaas expressed no preference or suggestion on the vote, but as a way of mollifying opposition by Centre members to the granting of further powers to Hitler, Kaas somehow arranged for a letter of constitutional guarantee from Hitler himself prior to his voting with the centre en bloc in favor of the Enabling Act. This guarantee was not ultimately given. Kaas, the party's chairman since 1928, had strong connections to the Vatican Secretary of State, later Pope Pius XII. In return for pledging his support for the act, Kaas would use his connections with the Vatican to set in train and draft the Holy See's long desired Reichskonkordat with Germany (only possible with the co-operation of the Nazis).

Ludwig Kaas is considered along with von Papen as being one of the two most important political figures in the creation of a National Socialist dictatorship.[5]

From: _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933

The Enabling Act (Ermächtigungsgesetz in German) was passed by Germany's parliament (the Reichstag) on March 23, 1933 and signed by President Paul von Hindenburg the same day. It was the second major step after the Reichstag Fire Decree through which the democratically-elected Nazis obtained dictatorial powers using largely legal means. The Act enabled Chancellor Adolf Hitler and his cabinet to enact laws without the participation of the Reichstag.

The formal name of the Enabling Act was Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich ("Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Nation").

Enabling Act Text

Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Empire
The Reichstag has enacted the following law, which is hereby proclaimed with the assent of the Reichsrat, it having been established that the requirements for a constitutional amendment have been fulfilled:

Article 1
In addition to the procedure prescribed by the constitution, laws of the Reich may also be enacted by the government of the Reich. This includes the laws referred to by Articles 85 Paragraph 2 and Article 87 of the constitution.[1]

Article 2
Laws enacted by the government of the Reich may deviate from the constitution as long as they do not affect the institutions of the Reichstag and the Reichsrat. The rights of the President remain undisturbed.

Article 3
Laws enacted by the Reich government shall be issued by the Chancellor and announced in the Reich Gazette. They shall take effect on the day following the announcement, unless they prescribe a different date. Articles 68 to 77 of the Constitution do not apply to laws enacted by the Reich government.[2]

Article 4
Treaties of the Reich with foreign states which affect matters of Reich legislation shall not require the approval of the bodies of the legislature. The government of the Reich shall issue the regulations required for the execution of such treaties.

Article 5
This law takes effect with the day of its proclamation. It loses force on 1 April 1937 or if the present Reich government is replaced by another.

[...]

While there had been previous enabling acts in the earliest years of the Weimar Republic, this one was more far reaching since Article 2 allowed for deviations from the constitution. The law therefore formally required a two-thirds majority in the Reichstag. Hitler had taken care of that: under the provisions of the Reichstag Fire Decree, the Communist Party deputies — and a few Social Democratic deputies as well — were already jailed, and the Communist mandates were declared "dormant" by the government shortly after the elections.

From: _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_Fire_Decree

The Reichstag Fire Decree (Reichstagsbrandverordnung in German) is the common name of the decree issued by German president Paul von Hindenburg in direct response to the Reichstag fire of February 27, 1933. The decree nullified many of the key civil liberties of German citizens. With Nazis in powerful positions of the German government, the decree was used as the legal basis of imprisonment of anyone considered to be opponents of the Nazis, and was used to suppress publications not considered "friendly" to the Nazi cause. The decree is considered by historians to be one of the key steps in the establishment of a one-party Nazi state in Germany.

Adolf Hitler had been named chancellor of Germany and invited by President von Hindenburg to lead a coalition government only four weeks previously, on January 30, 1933. Hitler's government urged von Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag and to call elections for March 5.

On the evening of February 27, 1933 — six days before the parliamentary election — fire broke out in the Reichstag chambers. While the exact circumstances of the fire remain unclear to this day, what is clear is that Hitler and his supporters quickly capitalized on the fire as a means by which to speed their consolidation of power. Seizing on the burning of the Reichstag building as the opening salvo in a communist uprising, the Nazis were able to throw millions of Germans into a convulsion of fear at the threat of Communist terror. The official account stated:

The burning of the Reichstag was intended to be the signal for a bloody uprising and civil war. Large-scale pillaging in Berlin was planned.... It has been determined that ... throughout Germany acts of terrorism were to begin against prominent individuals, against private property, against the lives and safety of the peaceful population, and general civil war was to be unleashed....

The decree was improvised on the day after the fire (February 28) after discussions in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, which was led by Hermann Göring, and was then brought before the Reich cabinet. In the ensuing discussions, Hitler stated that the fire made it now a matter of "ruthless confrontation of the KPD" and shortly thereafter, President von Hindenburg, 84 years old and lapsing in and out of senility, signed the decree into law.

The decree, officially the Verordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat (Order of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State), invoked the authority of Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution which allowed the Reichspräsident to take any appropriate measure to remedy dangers to public safety.

The decree consisted of six articles. Article 1 suspended most of the civil liberties set forth in the Weimar Constitution — freedom of the person, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the right of free association and public assembly, the secrecy of the post and telephone, not to mention the protection of property and the home. Articles 2 and 3 allowed the Reich government to assume powers normally reserved to the federal states (Länder). Articles 4 and 5 established draconian penalties for certain offenses, including the death penalty for arson to public buildings. Article 6 simply stated that the decree took effect on the day of its proclamation.

Text of the decree

The preamble and Article 1 of the Reichstag Fire Decree show the methods by which the civil rights protections of the Weimar Republic's democratic constitution were abolished in a legal manner by the Nazis:

Order of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State

On the basis of Article 48 paragraph 2 of the Constitution of the German Reich, the following is ordered in defense against Communist state-endangering acts of violence:

§ 1. Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. It is therefore permissible to restrict the rights of personal freedom [habeas corpus], freedom of opinion, including the freedom of the press, the freedom to organize and assemble, the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications, and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.

The decree was not accompanied by any written guidelines from the Reich government; this omission gave wide latitude in interpreting the decree to Nazis like Göring, who as Prussian interior minister was in authority over the police forces in Germany's largest province.

I'm not posting anything we don't already know, but sometimes the striking parallels are worth another look, as a shocking reminder of just where we are today. There were plenty of "presidential candidates", Hitler was simply one of them. This has nothing to do with what is planned, and what is to come, it's just "business as usual". And with that let me come to the present situation.

Bush steals election.
September 11 attacks occur.

The Patriot Act is "enabled":

Introduced into the House of Representatives as H.R. 3162 by Congressman James F. Sensenbrenner (R, WI), the Act swept through Congress remarkably quickly and with little dissent. House Resolution 3162 was introduced in the House of Representatives on October 23, 2001. Assistant Attorney General Viet D. Dinh and future Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff were the primary drafters of the Act. The bill passed in the House of Representatives on October 24, 2001, and in the Senate (Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) cast the lone dissenting vote, and Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) was the sole non-voting member) on October 25, 2001. President George W. Bush signed the bill into law on October 26, 2001.

From: _http://www.citypages.com/databank/24/1168/article11196.asp

Some of the provisions:

It is a crime for anyone in this country to contribute money or other material support to the activities of a group on the State Department's terrorist watch list. It is a crime for anyone in this country to contribute money or other material support to the activities of a group on the State Department's terrorist watch list. Organizations are so designated on the basis of secret evidence, and their inclusion on the list cannot be challenged in court. Members of any such targeted organization can be deported even if they have not been involved in any illegal activities. The government freely admits that some of the groups it will designate are broad-based organizations engaged in lawful social, political, and humanitarian activities as well as violent activities.

The FBI can monitor and tape conversations and meetings between an attorney and a client who is in federal custody, whether the client has been convicted, charged, or merely detained as a material witness.

Americans captured on foreign soil and thought to have been involved in terrorist activities abroad may be held indefinitely in a military prison and denied access to lawyers or family members. No federal court can review the reason for the detention.

The FBI can order librarians to turn over information about their patrons' reading habits and Internet use. The librarian cannot inform the patron that this information has been provided.

Foreign citizens charged with a terrorist-related act may be denied access to an attorney and their right to question witnesses and otherwise prepare for a defense may be severely curtailed if the Department of Justice says that's necessary to protect national security.

Resident alien men from primarily Middle Eastern and Muslim countries must report for registration. And hundreds of the ones who have reported have been detained and arrested for minor immigration infractions. It recently came to light that immigration authorities are refusing to let the men appear with their attorneys, a refusal that is a violation of Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS, formerly the INS) regulations.

Lawful foreign visitors may be photographed and fingerprinted when they enter the country and made to periodically report for questioning.

The government can conduct surveillance on the Internet and e-mail use of American citizens without any notice, upon order to the Internet service provider. Internet service providers may not move to quash such subpoenas.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) can search any car at any airport without a showing of any suspicion of criminal activity.

The TSA can conduct full searches of people boarding airplanes and, if the passenger is a child, the child may be separated from the parent during the search. An objection by a parent or guardian to the search will put the objector at the risk of being charged with the crime of obstructing a federal law enforcement officer and tried in federal court.

The TSA is piloting a program to amass all available computerized information on all purchasers of airline tickets, categorize individuals according to their threat to national security, and embed the label on all boarding passes. The Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS II) program is designed to perform background checks on all airline passengers and assigns each passenger a "threat level." Passengers will not be able to ascertain their classification or the basis for the classification.

The TSA distributes a "no-fly" list to airport security personnel and airlines that require refusal of boarding and detention of persons deemed to be terrorism or air piracy risks or to pose a threat to airline or passenger safety. This is an expansion of a regulation that since 1990 has looked out for threats to civil aviation. Names are added daily based upon secret criteria. Several lawsuits that challenge these regulations are now pending, some from irate passengers who were mistaken for people on the list.

American citizens and aliens can be held indefinitely in federal custody as "material witnesses," a ploy sometimes used as a punitive measure when the government does not have sufficient basis to charge the individual with a terror-related crime.

Immigration authorities may detain immigrants without any charges for a "reasonable period of time." The BCIS need not account for the names or locations of the detainees, and what constitutes a "reasonable period of time" is not defined.

American colleges and universities with foreign students must report extensive information about their students to the BCIS. BCIS in turn may revoke student visas for missteps as minor as a student's failure to get an advisor's signature on a form that adds or drops classes. College personnel cannot notify students to correct the lapse in order to save them from deportation. To a very large extent, campus police and security personnel have become agents of the immigration authorities.

Accused terrorists labeled "unlawful combatants" can be tried in military tribunals here or abroad, under rules of procedure developed by the Pentagon and the Department of Justice. All it takes to be named an unlawful combatant is the affidavit of a Pentagon employee, who is not required to provide the rationale for his or her decision, even to a federal judge. (In the case of Yaser Hamdi, the federal appellate court ruled that it has no authority to look behind this affidavit and question the determination.) Unlawful combatants are also denied counsel and contact with family members. In fact, hundreds of "unlawful combatants" are still being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without attorneys, without family contact, and under conditions said by some to be tantamount to physical and psychological torture. A federal court ruled in March that these persons had no access to the federal courts since they were on Cuban, not American, soil.

A warrant to conduct widespread surveillance on any American thought to be associated with terrorist activities can be obtained from a secret panel of judges, upon the affidavit of a Department of Justice official. If arrested as a result of the surveillance (as was the case with the attorney, Lynne Stewart), the defendant has no right to know the facts supporting the warrant request.

The FBI can conduct aerial surveillance of individuals and homes without a warrant, and can install video cameras in places where lawful demonstrations and protests are held. Facial recognition computer programs are used to identify persons the FBI deems suspicious for political reasons.

Most of these restrictions on liberty were not part of the letter of the Patriot Act; they were shaped by means of rules and regulations adopted in agencies and departments of government with little notice to the public. That's because the Patriot Act granted sweeping new powers to agencies like the Department of Justice, the FBI, and BCIS to go their own way in prosecuting the war on terror.

Now let's look at the Executive Orders:

From: http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/exec_tyranny.htm

Here we have a nation that has and will invade other countries in order to bomb and kill thousands of civilians to further its despotic aims under a pretext of "preemptive strikes" that is deeply insulting to anyone with half a neuron of humanity. These are dangerous psychopaths at the helm of a country that has reduced it’s populace to some of the most mind controlled people on this earth, where successive executive orders most particularly during the Nixon, Carter, Reagan and Clinton administrations have brought us to a very dangerous stage indeed. And following the crimes of the PATRIOT Act, the recently passed obscenity that is PATRIOT Act II, and the Home Security Act, we find the following executive orders in the Federal Register which are passed without a whiff of red tape. And should a National emergency suddenly materialize then an executive tyranny will replace all notions of just governing. Most importantly, prior congressional approval is not needed for such directives - they are instantly effective once the National Emergency is declared:

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10990 allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10995 allows the government to seize and control the communication media.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10997 allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10998 allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11000 allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11001 allows the government to take over all health, education and welfare functions.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11002 designates the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11003 allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11004 allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11005 allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways and public storage facilities.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11051 specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11310 grants authority to the Department of Justice to enforce the plans set out in Executive Orders, to institute industrial support, to establish judicial and legislative liaison, to control all aliens, to operate penal and correctional institutions, and to advise and assist the President.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11049 assigns emergency preparedness function to federal departments and agencies, consolidating 21 operative Executive Orders issued over a fifteen year period.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11921 allows the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency to develop plans to establish control over the mechanisms of production and distribution, of energy sources, wages, salaries, credit and the flow of money in U.S. financial institution in any undefined national emergency. It also provides that when a state of emergency is declared by the President, Congress cannot review the action for six months.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 12148 created the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that is to interface with the Department of Defense for civil defense planning and funding. An "emergency czar" was appointed. FEMA has only spent about 6 percent of its budget on national emergencies, the bulk of their funding has been used for the construction of secret underground facilities to assure continuity of government in case of a major emergency, foreign or domestic.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 12656 appointed the National Security Council as the principal body that should consider emergency powers. This allows the government to increase domestic intelligence and surveillance of U.S. citizens and would restrict the freedom of movement within the United States and granted the government the right to isolate large groups of civilians. The National Guard could be federalized to seal all borders and take control of U.S. air space and all ports of entry. Many of the figures in the Iran-Contra scandal were part of this emergency contingent, including Marine Colonel Oliver North.

Let’s not forget a selection of long forgotten acts that are now being homogenized into the above executive orders:

National Security Act of 1947

Allows for the strategic relocation of industries, services, government and other essential economic activities, and to rationalize the requirements for manpower, resources and production facilities.

1950 Defense Production Act

Gives the President total control over all aspects of the economy.

International Emergency Economic Powers Act

Property of a national or foreign country can be seized by the President. These powers were transferred to FEMA during the Carter administration and the unearthing of further executive orders in 1979.

The Violent Crime Control Act 1991

Provides additional powers to the President allowing the suspension of the Constitution and Constitutional rights of Americans during a "drug crisis". It provides for the construction of detention camps, seizure of property, and military control of populated areas.

Let's check out the more recently enacted "Military Commissions Act"

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_C … ct_of_2006

The Act changes pre-existing law to explicitly forbid the invocation of the Geneva Conventions when executing the writ of habeas corpus or in other civil actions [Act sec. 5(a)]. This provision applies to all cases pending at the time the Act is enacted, as well as to all such future cases.

If the government chooses to bring a prosecution against the detainee, a military commission is convened for this purpose. The following rules are some of those established for trying alien unlawful enemy combatants.

‘‘(b) NOTICE TO ACCUSED.—Upon the swearing of the charges and specifications in accordance with subsection (a), the accused shall be informed of the charges against him as soon as practicable.

* A civilian defense attorney may not be used unless the attorney has been determined to be eligible for access to classified information that is classified at the level Secret or higher. [10 U.S.C. sec. 949c(b)(3)(D)]

* A finding of Guilty by a particular commission requires only a two-thirds majority of the members of the commission present at the time the vote is taken [10 U.S.C. sec. 949m(a)]

* In General- No person may invoke the Geneva Conventions or any protocols thereto in any habeas corpus or other civil action or proceeding to which the United States, or a current or former officer, employee, member of the Armed Forces, or other agent of the United States is a party as a source of rights in any court of the United States or its States or territories. [Act sec. 5(a)]

* As provided by the Constitution and by this section, the President has the authority for the United States to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions and to promulgate higher standards and administrative regulations for violations of treaty obligations which are not grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. [Act sec. 6(a)(3)(A)]

* No person may, without his consent, be tried by a military commission under this chapter a second time for the same offense. [10 U.S.C. sec. 949h(a)].

The Act also contains provisions (often referred to as the "habeas provisions") removing access to the courts for any alien detained by the United States government who is determined to be an enemy combatant, or who is 'awaiting determination' regarding enemy combatant status. This allows the United States government to detain such aliens indefinitely without prosecuting them in any manner.

These provisions are as follows:[5]

(e)(1) No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination. (2) Except as provided in paragraphs (2) and (3) of section 1005(e) of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 (10 U.S.C. 801 note), no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any other action against the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement of an alien who is or was detained by the United States and has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.

Just like in Nazi Germany, currently everything above is perfectly and 100% legal. The most horrible tyranny imaginable is already in the law books. "Terrorism" is not defined. "Enemy Combatants" is not defined. The government can accuse anyone of terrorism, and the evidence is legally classified so they don't have to have any. This is all perfectly legal. It is not a question of us becoming "like Nazi Germany" - clearly and without a single doubt we have reached every possible limit of control that the Nazis have reached, and superceded them in many areas due to modern technology that enables the tyranny much more powerful. The question is now - when will the above executive acts be used? The answer is simple - when the opportunity presents itself. Are psychopaths known to sit around waiting for life to throw them a bone? No, they are creating this "opportunity" as we speak. All we need is either an economic depression, a terrorist act, or anything else that can oh so easily be created, and all of the above laws will be in full utilization, all our rights are gone, and not a word, not a peep, not a thought will be allowed that is not friendly to the system, else you're assisting the terrorists, you ARE a terrorist. I hope the above answers the question how it is possible for military dictatorship to occur, because it is shockingly simple. It's already here, all the laws and precepts of a military dictatorships are already legal and active. We just haven't been informed of it on Fox News just yet, and so most Americans don't realize that their constitution has already been suspended, it is null and void. The next step is Bush announcing it for us on Fox News, as the next step in the "war on terror". And let's not forget that most of the above acts and "laws" are currently being tested and used on thousands of innocent people, Americans and foreigners alike. Soon, EVERYONE will be included.

It's really that simple.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Hannibal is the Least of Your Worries

A lovely article by an editor of Signs of the Times. Sometimes a complex concepts can be illuminated with the the simplest of stories. Many thanks to Keit for sharing her insights into the nature of the Sociopath Next Door.

For further reading on this this subject see here.

Blue Ibis
******************************************
If The Sociopath Is Next Door - Move Upstairs


by Keit, SOTT editor
SOTT
Sun, 24 Jun 2007 04:22 EDT



©PA Game Commission

I recently finished reading "The Sociopath Next Door" by Martha Stout Ph.D. and wanted to share with you some realizations. I hope they are helpful.

Before reading the final pages of the book, I was sure that the idea that psychopaths are NOT like most of other people was pretty much "accepted" in my mind. I was sure that I "understood" it intellectually, even if I did not "believe" it 100% yet. Well, somehow, those few final pages organized everything in my mind, and the realization is profound and shocking: psychopaths ARE different. I'll try to explain what I've understood.

First, some words from Laura Knight-Jadczyk about the importance of "believing":
"Today it came to me: The biggest problem most of us have (yours truly included) is BELIEVING that there can be human looking beings that are simply not human inside, or are deviant from normal humans, or cannot be fixed, or whatever.

We keep wanting to try this or that or the other thing because in our heart of hearts, we do not WANT to believe it. We do not want to acknowledge that our reality is that cruel, that human beings are not at the top of the food chain, that there ARE different sub-species of human beings that prey on other sub-species.

It's just too damn far out.

And that is because we have been taught something entirely different from infancy, and so we can't BELIEVE it.

What is so important about understanding it this way?

What I notice is that many of you still do not "believe" it and you have not reached that point where you have nothing to lose to try a different hypothesis of reality. You continue on every day in low-level interactions with teensy tinesy petty tyrants and don't really believe that quite a number of them could, just possibly, be intra-species predators... It's all theoretical and interesting and all that, but not really real. It is not part of your BELIEF.

And your belief about reality which is shaped by psychopaths seeking to conceal their existence and reality and control is still a LIE. And as long as you continue to believe a lie, you are blocked from the cascade of events that can transpire if the "truth" binds to your psychic receptors.

When I first read the above comments, I hadn't yet read the book, and I have to admit that my understanding of psychopaths being "different" was mainly theoretical, even if I had lot of opportunities to observe their nature and experience it in the flesh. But it didn't "click" until I finished "The Sociopath Next Door".

Here is a quote from the book that made all the difference. It is a story about Tillie - the female psychopath next door. Notice her thinking processes.
Fred takes the light out of his pocket, holds it close to the ground, and turns it on. After a few moments, they find the melon-size rock, somewhat more easily than they could have hoped, because the rock is smooth and white and the surrounding earth is dark. Catherine exhales and pushes a loose strand of hair behind her left ear. She and Fred bend down and lift the rock together, revealing a surprisingly small hole in the ground, considering it is used by a fat little groundhog.

Catherine has an impulse to shine the penlight into the hole to check on its occupant. But then she realizes that she will not see much and that she may scare the animal.

Arm in arm, whispering and containing their laughter, she and Fred stumble home.

Tillie does not see them. As they return from their mission, she has already been drinking and sulking for several hours, as usual. She sits on a sofa in her living room and pours herself glasses of Glenlivet, trying to drown out the monotony of her life and the idiots she continually has to deal with. The only thing that makes this evening different from any other is the accumulation of packing boxes now stacked around her.

Inside her drunken fog, she congratulates herself on her brilliant idea not to put up a "FOR SALE" sign this time. She thinks, "I'll take those cretins by surprise. Their stupid mouths will gape."

The good-for-nothing real estate agent keeps telling her that not using a sign is shooting herself in the foot, and that he really thinks she should wait for a higher offer. This buyer came in under her price. But Tillie cannot wait. She has never liked waiting. She will have her moment, and her moment will be tomorrow morning. And then everyone in this whole horrible neighborhood will be in complete shock about her move. She is sure of it. The agent does not understand why secrecy matters, but he is a fool, so why listen to him? She has taken losses before when she wanted to get out of the house fast. "It's all in the game", she thinks to herself, "All in the game. You can't stay in a place where people won't listen to you. And giving them a parting shot is extremely important."

Nothing is very interesting, really. Suffocating the rodent [by placing a rock over the burrow opening] was okay for a few minutes, and she hopes Catherine was watching. Catherine would have a stroke. But then that project was over, and there was nothing else to do. She cannot imagine what these absurd people on all sides of her do that seems to occupy them so completely as they scurry about their little lives. They must have brains the size of peas.

In the house up the hill, Greta has the weekend off, and she and Jerry sleep late. When they slowly rouse themselves and go out to the sunroom to drink their coffee, they notice a big moving truck in Tillie's driveway.

"Does that mean what I think it means?" Jerry asks, staring at the truck. "Or are we in bed, dreaming?" "Got to be dreaming," says Greta, also staring. "I never saw a sign. Did you ever see a sign over there?" "Nope"

Just now, two men wearing canvas coveralls come out of Tillie's house, each carrying one end of a sofa. Greta and Jerry look at each other and begin to laugh. Jerry laughs so hard, he spills some of his coffee.

Greta asks him, "Why do you suppose she kept it a secret?" "Why does she do anything? But it doesn't matter anymore, does it? Unbelievable."

Greta is thoughtful for a moment, and then says, "How old do you suppose she is?" "I don't know. Not young." "I wonder whether she ever had any children. Oh wow. Can you imagine being one of her children?" "Worse yet, can you imagine being her?" "So do you think we should feel sorry for her?" Greta asks.

Jerry grins and waves his hand dismissively at the furniture-moving scene in the distance, "Well, I am not sure sweetheart. But if we're going to feel sorry for her, let's do it over breakfast, okay? Remember that strudel?"

"Yes!" says Greta, smacking her lips. She picks up both coffee mugs, and they abandon the view from the sunroom, for the pastry in the kitchen.

Since they are in the house next door to Tillie's, Catherine and Fred also notice the activities of the men from the moving truck, and wonder why they never saw a FOR SALE sign or heard from Tillie that she was moving. Fred rolls his eyes again, and Catherine shakes her head. But then they are distracted by another phone call, this one from their daughter and son-in-law, who say that in two weeks they and four-year-old Katie are flying out for another visit. Catherine is beside herself with excitement, and Tillie's moving day, still in progress outside is forgotten.

As Tillie said: it is "all in the game". All thinking capabilities are busy observing and calculating the outcome. There are no disruptions from those silly and foreign "things" called emotions. Tillie saw emotions as buffers, interferences, something her stupid neighbors didn't know how to get rid off. Tillie's thinking process is so drastically different from her neighbors, the only thing they can do afterwards is shake their heads while witnessing such absurdity.

But for Tillie this thinking is not absurd. It is crystal clear and obvious. She sees everything around her as a game, chess maybe. And all the people are chess pieces, and her life goal is to win the game and gain the maximum power she can gain. There is nothing above this goal.

And there is this boredom. Tillie must be so frustrated that those stupid neighbors don't "dance" to her tune, and she gets only short pleasure from time to time.

But what does she do, and how does she see it?

Imagine a very strange and lazy person sitting near an ant hill. He has been sitting there for a very long time and is extremely bored (too lazy to get up and go somewhere else). He takes a small tree branch and sticks it into the middle of the ant hill and thinks: "Oh, cool! Those tiny creatures started to move. Not boring! Lets see what will happen if I do this", and he disrupts the hill structure a little bit more. "Oh, this is just great! All this action, and I am the one who controls it. Definitely not boring. What a great way to spend time". And he continues to play with the ants, each time inventing new ways to torture them and entertain himself. After a while all the ants are either dead or have left the place. It is boring again.

Luckily for this person, some tourists just happen to be in the area, and this strange person decides to see if he can play with them as with the ants. Apparently it is so easy, they don't have a clue! Not boring again.

So from Tillie's point of view it was very important that Catherine would watch Tillie throwing the stone onto the groundhogs burrow door, without it there is no fun, only boredom. Catherine's strong reaction is fun, because Tillie is the one who makes her squirm and feel this emotional chaos inside. "Oh, this is so invigorating!" It is the game, and Tillie is the master player. She knows exactly what makes people tick. This is easy for her, and she cannot understand how stupid others can be for not getting it. The thrill of winning is all that counts.

So after realizing this, it is very easy to understand why she decided to keep her moving as a secret.

She wanted to poke the human ant hill one last time. She wanted to make them run frantically, with confusion in their minds. And Tillie as a "game master" is the reason for this chaos. She introduced this unexpected event into their lives, and now she will enjoy seeing them coping with the consequences.

If Tillie was less lazy, she could be some municipal clerk, making decisions on who will get registration papers and who will not. Oh, it could be a thrill. To see people crying after telling them that their papers are lost and the date for appeal is expired! What chaos, what fun! She could hold the control keys to their lives in her hands. She could do even so much more if she could be president.

And this in fact is what is happening. We are those ants, at the mercy of strange bored creatures, who are not able to grasp the thing called "emotion" or "conscience" or "empathy". This is who they are - soulless game masters. We cannot outsmart them in direct confrontation, because all their thinking capabilities go into calculating and analyzing our natures - we just will make them more thrilled from an opportunity to play the game with engaging ants. But we can fight them still, by learning their natures and avoiding being their "ants" - learning not to play the game. We must learn how to be above the game, a concept that they simply cannot grasp.

Maybe that is why psychopaths have an ability to "sense" wounded souls, people who were hurt in childhood and are generally more susceptible to manipulation. They are much more fun than "healthy" ants! Every tiny suggestion creates chaos in a wounded mind, they can be shaped so easily - a rich source of "fun".

All of this reminded me of a dialog from a great movie "The Fifth Element", between the psychopathic character of Zorg, and the Priest:

Zorg: It's nice to see you again, Father.

Priest Vito Cornelius: Ah, I remember you now. The so-called art dealer.

Zorg: I'm glad you got your memory back. Because you're gonna need it.

[directs his men out of the office]

Zorg: Where are the stones?

Priest Vito Cornelius: I don't know. And even if I did know, I wouldn't tell somebody like you.

Zorg: Why? What's wrong with me?

Priest Vito Cornelius: I try to serve life. But you only... seem to want to destroy it.

Zorg: Oh, Father, you're so wrong. Let me explain.

[closes office door, places an empty glass on desk]

Zorg: Life, which you so nobly serve, comes from destruction, disorder and chaos. Take this empty glass. Here it is, peaceful, serene and boring. But if it is...

[pushes glass off table]

Zorg: destroyed...

[robot cleaners move to clean broken glass]

Zorg: Look at all these little things. So busy now. Notice how each one is useful. What a lovely ballet ensues so full of form and color. Now, think about all those people that created them. Technicians, engineers, hundreds of people who'll be able to feed their children tonight so those children can grow up big and strong and have little teeny weeny children of their own, and so on and so forth. Thus, adding to the great chain... of life.

[Desk prepares a glass of water and a bowl of fruit]

Zorg: You see, Father, by creating a little destruction, I'm actually encouraging life. In reality, you and I are in the same business. Cheers.

[drinks water with cherry, only to choke on cherry stuck in throat. Zorg frantically presses all buttons on his desk in an attempt to get something to clear his throat]

Priest Vito Cornelius: Where's the robot to pat you in the back? Or the engineer? Or their children, maybe?

[Desk brings out Zorg's pet Picasso; Zorg motions it to try and help him]

Priest Vito Cornelius: There, you see how all your so-called power counts for absolutely nothing? How your entire empire of destruction comes crashing down. All because of one little... cherry.

[Slaps Zorg in the back, causing him to spit the cherry at Picasso]

Zorg: [opens doors, throws Cornelius to guards] You saved my life, and in return, I'll spare yours... for now.

Priest Vito Cornelius: You're a monster, Zorg.

Zorg: I know.

[directs guards to take Cornelius away]

Zorg: [snaps fingers] Torture who you have to. The President, I don't care. Just bring me those stones. You have one hour.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Political Ponerology



A powerful presentation. It gets right to the heart of this most important book. Available from Red Pill Press (www.redpillpress.com) This is a book the fate of the world might depend on.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Israel Forty Years On: What Has Been Wrought

Short and powerful, SOTT editor Henry See, exposes the shallow hypocrisy of the average well-heeled Israeli illegal immigrant to the land of the Palestinians

Blue Ibis
***********************************************************

Henry See
SOTT
Sat, 09 Jun 2007 11:08 EDT

©Mike DuBose, UMCom
A Palestinian child swings over the
rubble of the family home,demolished by
Israeli bulldozers in a valley east of
Hebron.


The Forward, which bills itself as "the Jewish daily", had an article this week on American Jews who choose to become illegal settlers on occupied Palestinian land. The "difficulties" they face are illustrated by the following comment:

"'Before we found Neve Daniel, my husband told me, 'I love you and I want to live in Israel, but I'm very materialistic and if I don't have a nice house, we're not moving,' said Lara Kwalbrun, a peppy mother of six, as she gave a tour of her luxurious new home while toting a baby in her arms."
As long as moving into an illegal settlement meant life in a mobile home, a large number of American Jews weren't interested. They left it up to their more pioneering and violent brethren to go out and "colonize" the area, to actually confront the owners of the land with clubs and guns and chain saws and bulldozers. Now that the out and out outlaws have "claimed" the land, so to speak, and the base can move into a gated community fed by water siphoned away from the Palestinians and policed by troops paid for by American taxpayers, these new settlers can move in and never have to come into contact with the people they have displaced. You know, the ones walled up in the concentration - uh, refugee - camps out of sight and out of mind.

Another choice quote:
"Jerusalem has evolved to be like Manhattan in terms of prices and having to live in an apartment," said Michael Chernofsky, an orthopedic surgeon from Pennsylvania who recently moved with his family to Efrat, a Gush Etzion settlement. "If you want to live in a house, you need to move out to the suburbs."

Language is a powerful means of creating an illusory world. We make up words to replace other words, antiseptic words to replace bothersome and ugly words, neutral or comfortable words that point away from injustice and suffering. The Palestinians are being ejected out of Jerusalem by force and by a series of laws that mandate that if they are essentially imprisoned on the West Bank and unable to return to their homes in East Jerusalem, after a certain amount of time, the state can confiscate their property.

"Suburbs" brings to mind the manicured lawns of the New Jersey many of these settlers have left. "Suburbs" has associations of being the epitome of American life. The word "Suburbs" is a telling example of how language is used to create an illusory world that we take for reality.

Settlements on Palestinian land are illegal according to international law. The settlers are criminals. Not only that, they are actively aiding and abetting the genocide of the original inhabitants of the land, the Palestinians who have been walled off into compounds on their own land.

If such actions don't make your blood boil, then you probably don't have a conscience. When I say "conscience," I'm not talking about a set of rules you live by that allows you to believe you are a 'good person', the kind of things you can apply mechanically as a series of if-then statements that allow you to see how much you can get away with in any given situation. We all go through that stage as kids, and some people do actually outgrow it, though from the state of the world, it is clear that it is a small percentage. There are unfortunately large numbers of people for whom this stage represents the pinnacle of their moral development.

Illegal settlers are certainly counted among their number. They are, moreover, buttressed in their selfishness by the ideology that justifies killing off the Palestinians in the name of their psychopathic god, so their crimes, crimes to anyone of conscience; holy acts according to the ideology of Judaism as well as to their Christian supporters. American intervention in Iraq is based upon pretty much the same thought process where the religion descends from the Almighty Dollar and "Democracy" rather than the bloodthirsty Yahweh.

There is no excuse for the seizure of this land and the justifications of "Chosen People" or "God-given right". None. Those are fairy tales told to cover up theft and murder. And anyone with a functioning conscience knows this, feels this deep in his or her gut. Any attempt to justify or explain away the theft of land and genocide of the people of Palestine is a clear marker that the individual has no conscience or that it is so totally anaesthetized that it may as well not exist.

Note: If you wish to take a voyage into the very pit of soullessness, some black and clammy void that would not be out of place in the works of H.P. Lovecraft, then go to Wikipedia and do a search on "Gush Etzion" and start following the links.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

It Was Forty Years Ago This Week . .

Amid all the nausea inducing hoopla this week about the fortieth anniversary of the "great Zionist victory" against those who never had a chance (see here) comes another anniversary. One which, like the Palestinian cause, is still waiting for justice. How is it that such a small country, kept afloat only by the obscene level of aid given by the United States, can apparently dictate the results of an investigation into its own crimes?

Blue Ibis
**************************************************************
Searching for the Truth About the USS Liberty

Ward Boston
Counterpunch
Sat, 09 Jun 2007 23:04 EDT

Forty years ago this week, I was asked to investigate the heaviest attack on an American ship since World War II. As senior legal counsel to the Navy Court of Inquiry it was my job to help uncover the truth regarding Israel's June 8th 1967 bombing of the USS Liberty.

On that sunny, clear day 40 years ago, Israel's combined air and naval forces attacked our American intelligence-gathering ship for two hours, inflicting 70 percent casualties. Thirty four American sailors died and 172 were injured. The USS Liberty remained afloat only by the crew's heroic efforts.

Israel claimed it was an accident. Yet I know from personal conversations with the late Admiral Isaac C. Kidd -- president of the Court of Inquiry -- that President Johnson and Secretary of Defense McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of "mistaken identity".

The ensuing cover-up has haunted us for forty years. What does it imply for our national security, not to mention our ability to honestly broker peace in the Middle East, when we cannot question Israel's actions ­ even when they kill Americans?

On June 8th, survivors of Israel's cruel attack will gather in Washington, DC to honor their dead shipmates as well as the mothers, sisters, widows and children they left behind. They will continue to ask for a fair and impartial congressional inquiry that, for the first time, would allow the survivors themselves to testify publicly.

For decades, I have remained silent. I am a military man and when orders come in from the Secretary of Defense and President of the United States, I follow them. However, attempts to rewrite history and concern for my country compel me to share the truth.

Admiral Kidd and I were given only one week to gather evidence for the Navy's official investigation, though we both estimated that a proper Court of Inquiry would take at least six months.

We boarded the crippled ship at sea and interviewed survivors. The evidence was clear. We both believed with certainty that this attack was a deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew.

I am certain the Israeli pilots and commanders who had ordered the attack knew the ship was American. I saw the bullet-riddled American flag that had been raised by the crew after their first flag had been shot down completely. I heard testimony that made it clear the Israelis intended there be no survivors. Not only did they attack with napalm, gunfire, and missiles, Israeli torpedo boats machine-gunned at close range three life rafts that had been launched in an attempt to save the most seriously wounded.

I am outraged at the efforts of Israel's apologists to claim this attack was a case of "mistaken identity."

Admiral Kidd told me that after receiving the President's cover-up orders, he was instructed to sit down with two civilians from either the White House or the Defense Department, and rewrite portions of the Court's findings. He said, "Ward, they're not interested in the facts. It's a political matter and we cannot talk about it." We were to "put a lid on it" and caution everyone involved never to speak of it again.

I know that the Court of Inquiry transcript that has been released to the public is not the same one that I certified and sent to Washington. I know this because it was necessary, due to the exigencies of time, to hand correct and initial a substantial number of pages. I have examined the released version of the transcript and did not see any pages that bore my hand corrections and initials. Also, the original did not have any deliberately blank pages, as the released version does. In addition, the testimony of Lt. Lloyd Painter concerning the deliberate machine-gunning of the life rafts by the Israeli torpedo boat crews, which I distinctly recall being given at the Court of Inquiry and including in the original transcript, is now missing.

I join the survivors in their call for an honest inquiry. Why is there no room to question Israel ­ even when they kill Americans -- in the halls of Congress?

Let the survivors testify. Let me testify. Let former intelligence officers testify that they received real-time Hebrew translations of Israeli commanders instructing their pilots to sink "the American ship".

Surely uncovering the truth about what happened to American servicemen in a bloody attack is more important than protecting Israel. And surely forty years is long enough to wait.

Ward Boston served as chief counsel to the Navy's Court of Inquiry into the attack on USS Liberty and as a naval aviator in World War II on the carrier Yorktown, and as an FBI agent prior to his assignment to the Navy's Judge Advocates General Corps. He is a graduate of the Law School of the College of William and Mary, and a resident of Coronado, California.

For more information see this story in Navy Times by Bryan Jordan.

Saturday, June 09, 2007

The Six-Day "War" at 40: The Theme is Fraud

So, it's the anniversary of the "great Zionist victory". An illegal state born of deception (no Arab states were present at the UN when the resolution was passed) and fed on the blood of those who's homes and futures and very lives were taken from them to give space to these interlopers. And they know it. . . . . .

Blue Ibis

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Even after 40 years, Abba Eban's great fraud defines the official version of the 1967 War

Greg Felton
Canadian Arab News
Thu, 07 Jun 2007 15:21 EDT

Some people make history; some people invent it. Abba Eban falls into the latter category. As Israel's foreign minister at the time of the 1967 War, Eban delivered a speech to the Security Council that must rank as the most erudite, sophisticated fraud ever heard by the world body.

He did nothing less than invent for our consumption the twin myths of Egyptian aggression and Israeli self-defence, all the while intoning the requisite verities of peace and international law. Eban stood history on its head and the non-Arab world was only too willing to embrace his dissembling and deceit.

Eban was an easy man to like, respect and believe, because he was cultured and thoroughly Western. He was one of us. Born Aubrey Solomon Meir, in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1915 Eban was educated in Britain and spent much of his adult life in politics. Among his numerous accomplishments are:

- Israel's first permanent delegate to the United Nations (1949-1959);
- Ambassador to the United States (1950-1959); and
- Israeli foreign minister (1966-1974).

Compared to the brutal gangsterism of Begin, Sharon, Shamir, Olmert, and Netanyahu, Eban stands like a colossus of conspicuous decency. Unfortunately, the comparison is purely relative. For all of his dovishness and diplomatic acumen Eban was still a zionist, and therefore an apologist for aggression and a spokesman for an outlaw state.

As the world marks the 40th anniversary of the 1967 War, Eban's looking-glass reality is given new life as the zionist media dutifully reinforce the founding myths of the war. Even today, with the benefit of the Internet and hindsight, those who point out the errors of fact and tendentious arguments in Eban's speech stand little chance of a fair hearing, if they get a hearing at all.

If Israel's illegal Occupation of Palestine is to end, as it must, Eban's speech must be subjected to honest analysis, because a polite liar is still a liar, and the fruit of this particular lie is the genocide of Palestine.

Eban's speech runs more than 4,800 words and can be viewed here: For brevity's sake, I will focus on two key themes.

Israel's existence was threatened.

Abba Eban: "Two days ago...an army, greater than any force ever assembled in history in Sinai, had massed against Israel's southern frontier. Egypt had dismissed the United Nations forces which symbolized the international interest in the maintenance of peace in our region. Nasser had provocatively brought five infantry divisions and two armoured divisions up to our very gates; 80,000 men and 900 tanks were poised to move.

"...As time went on, there was no doubt that our margin of general security was becoming smaller and smaller. Thus, on the morning of 5 June, when Egyptian forces engaged us by air and land, bombarding the villages of Kissufim, Nahal-Oz and Ein Hashelosha we knew that our limit of safety had been reached, and perhaps passed. In accordance with its inherent right of self-defence as formulated in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, Israel responded defensively in full strength. Never in the history of nations has armed force been used in a more righteous or compelling cause."

First, Egypt's president Gamel Abdel Nasser did not "provocatively" bring five infantry divisions and two armoured divisions up to "[Israel's] very gates." Eban's doom-and-gloom scenario is propaganda, as Israel's generals and politicians later confessed, e.g.:

Mordechai Bentov, cabinet minister: "This story about the danger of extermination has been a complete invention and has been blown up a posteriori to justify the annexation of new Arab territories." (cited in Le Monde, June 3, 1972)

Menachem Begin, leader of Gahal Party: "In June 1967 we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him." (cited in New York Times, Aug. 21, 1982.)

Gen. Matityahu Peled: "To pretend that the Egyptian forces massed on our frontiers were in a position to threaten the existence of Israel constitutes an insult not only to the intelligence of anyone capable of analyzing this sort of situation, but above all an insult to the Zahal [Israeli army]." (cited in Ha'aretz, March 19, 1972.)

The second fallacy, related to the first, is the idea that Israel's use of armed force was the most righteous and compelling in history. Leaving aside the sanctimonious hyperbole, Eban makes no mention of Israel's repeated border aggressions against Syria that precipitated the conflict, or that Egypt and Syria had signed a mutual defence pact the previous year.

Israel precipitated the 1967 War by staging border aggressions against Syria and seizing Syrian land in the demilitarized zone between the two countries. From 1948 to 1967, Syria reported more than 1,000 armed clashes, and in a candid 1976 interview, Moshe Dayan admitted that Israel provoked 80 percent of them:

"We would send a tractor to plow some [disputed] area... and we knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was.... I made a mistake in allowing the conquest of the Golan Heights. As defense minister I should have stopped it because the Syrians were not threatening us at the time."

Therefore, Nasser's provocative [sic] build-up on the Sinai had nothing to do with Israel, per se, but with the need to come to Syria's aid. Moreover, and this point is never mentioned, Nasser had reluctantly sent 100,000 of his best troops to fight in Yemen's civil war and was in no position to start hostilities.

Nasser did evict the UN peacekeeping force, and he did close the Red Sea port of Eilat, but these were marginal actions, as Israel well knew. Nevertheless, Eban blew them out of proportion and repeatedly invoked Eilat as justification for invasion: "There was in this wanton act a quality of malice. For surely the closing of the Strait of Tiran gave no benefit whatever to Egypt except the perverse joy of inflicting injury on others. It was an anarchic act, because it showed a total disregard for the law of nations..."

Israel's "right to exist"

Abba Eban: "The central point remains the need to secure an authentic intellectual recognition by our neighbours of Israel's deep roots in the Middle Eastern reality. There is an intellectual tragedy in the failure of Arab leaders to come to grips, however reluctantly, with the depth and authenticity of Israel's roots in the life, the history, the spiritual experience and the culture of the Middle East.... There are not two categories of States. The United Arab Republic, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon - not one of these has a single ounce or milligram of statehood which does not adhere in equal measures to Israel itself."

Eban is reinforcing the Israel-as-victim myth, which is still heard to day as "picking on Israel." Of course, the Palestinians get no mention because at this time they are not even deemed to exist. Note also how Israel's equivalence with other states is merely asserted, not proven. The reason is simple - Israel's roots have no depth or authenticity - it is an artificial, un-Semitic, Western creation born of guilt, terrorism and blackmail. It has no place in the culture of the Middle East; it is a foreign body that is destroying the very culture of which Eban claims it is a part.

The real perversity of Eban's speech is his genteel hypocrisy. He condemned Nasser for violating the law of nations, but says nothing of Israel's transgressions against Palestine or Syria. He spoke of the equality of sovereignty, but made no mention of Israel's conditional admission to the UN or of its refusal to finalize its borders. He spoke of peace, yet said nothing about Israel being responsible for breaking the peace.

Less than two weeks after he addressed the Security Council, Eban gave a more accurate account of Israel's contempt for international law: "If the General Assembly were to vote by 121 votes to 1 in favor of 'Israel' returning to the armistice lines [pre June 1967 borders] 'Israel' would refuse to comply with the decision." (New York Times, June 19, 1967.)

Eban seemed so reasonable, educated and Western that to disbelieve him was unthinkable. Now, we must do more than think about it - we must recognize Eban as an artful liar, and engender public discussion about the real cause of the 1967 War.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Why are "They Comin' to America"?

Put on your thinking caps ladies and gentlemen, one of this week's features is a serious neuronal workout (staves off Alzheimers, didn't you know?). Here is the first part of a thought-provoking essay by author Laura Knight-Jadczyk, on the US immigration debate which considers this problem from a truly unique angle.

Blue Ibis

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Immigration: Ignota nulla curatio morbi!
(Do not attempt to cure what you do not understand)

Laura Knight-Jadczyk
SOTT
Mon, 04 Jun 2007 06:06 EDT

Today I'd like to talk a bit (in a special way) about several items that have caught my eye over the past week or so, all of them having to do with immigration, or mass movements of people in various places around the planet.

Mexicans fear U.S. immigration plan

South Carolina's Republican convention "boo" new immigration proposal

Bush Praises Bipartisan Immigration Deal Nobody Else Likes

Illegals deal alienates everyone

Illegal immigrants refrain: 'Leaving America is not an option'

France says no to mass legalisation of undocumented immigrants

France sends back 24,000 immigrants in 2006

Iran expels 70 000 Afghans

Afghan refugees forced home, but to what?

Too Bad

The Bush Implosion

There is a lot more to this immigration issue than meets the eye!

In the last two articles linked above, we find that the immigration problem is what is turning the Far Right Fundies against Bush. Peggy Noonan, a loyal Republican who is not on the fringe, writes in Too Bad:

The White House doesn't need its traditional supporters anymore, because its problems are way beyond being solved by the base. And the people in the administration don't even much like the base. Desperate straits have left them liberated, and they are acting out their disdain. Leading Democrats often think their base is slightly mad but at least their heart is in the right place. This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place.

For almost three years, arguably longer, conservative Bush supporters have felt like sufferers of battered wife syndrome. You don't like endless gushing spending, the kind that assumes a high and unstoppable affluence will always exist, and the tax receipts will always flow in? Too bad! You don't like expanding governmental authority and power? Too bad. You think the war was wrong or is wrong? Too bad.

But on immigration it has changed from "Too bad" to "You're bad."

The president has taken to suggesting that opponents of his immigration bill are unpatriotic--they "don't want to do what's right for America." His ally Sen. Lindsey Graham has said, "We're gonna tell the bigots to shut up." On Fox last weekend he vowed to "push back." Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff suggested opponents would prefer illegal immigrants be killed; Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said those who oppose the bill want "mass deportation." Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson said those who oppose the bill are "anti-immigrant" and suggested they suffer from "rage" and "national chauvinism." [...]

The beginning of my own sense of separation from the Bush administration came in January 2005, when the president declared that it is now the policy of the United States to eradicate tyranny in the world, and that the survival of American liberty is dependent on the liberty of every other nation. This was at once so utopian and so aggressive that it shocked me. For others the beginning of distance might have been Katrina and the incompetence it revealed, or the depth of the mishandling and misjudgments of Iraq. [...]

One of the things I have come to think the past few years is that the Bushes, father and son, though different in many ways, are great wasters of political inheritance. They throw it away as if they'd earned it and could do with it what they liked. Bush senior inherited a vibrant country and a party at peace with itself. He won the leadership of a party that had finally, at great cost, by 1980, fought itself through to unity and come together on shared principles. Mr. Bush won in 1988 by saying he would govern as Reagan had. Yet he did not understand he'd been elected to Reagan's third term. He thought he'd been elected because they liked him. And so he raised taxes, sundered a hard-won coalition, and found himself shocked to lose his party the presidency, and for eight long and consequential years. He had many virtues, but he wasted his inheritance.

Bush the younger came forward, presented himself as a conservative, garnered all the frustrated hopes of his party, turned them into victory, and not nine months later was handed a historical trauma that left his country rallied around him, lifting him, and his party bonded to him. He was disciplined and often daring, but in time he sundered the party that rallied to him, and broke his coalition into pieces. He threw away his inheritance. I do not understand such squandering.

Peggy Noonan knows she is seeing something ugly, but she really has no clue about what she is observing and that there really is a simple explanation, and if she had the knowledge she so desperately needs, she would have seen it a long time ago as so many others have. But, of course, they call the ones who can actually SEE what is really going on "conspiracy theorists." There are several issues here that I would like to cover, so bear with me.

The first thing that occurred to me as I read some of these items was that the reason people wish to emigrate is because of some situation in their homeland that makes living either uncomfortable or impossible. Let's face it, nobody picks up and emigrates just for fun. And if someone emigrates to "make more money," it's usually because they cannot make enough where they live to survive. Of course, there are those that want to do more than just make enough money to send home so that the family can have a roof over their head and food on the table, but we will get to that.

So, considering that emigration is a symptom of a country's failure in some sense, it's decline in equitable distribution of wealth, what can be at the root of such a problem? Why are so many countries full of people who want to go somewhere else?

Exploitation. The global economy has, by and large, been rigged to benefit a small ruling elite and to begger everyone else.

The fact is, poverty in most of the world is directly caused by large landholdings - the big estates of the ruling elite, and the war mongering of same in their efforts to acquire more land, more resources, more wealth. That is why Mexico has a flood of dispossessed seeking escape to the US; that is why Iran has so many Afghan refugees; that is why there are so many Muslims in France; that is why urban areas are so poor and overcrowded and crime ridden and wages are so low for everyone. And in most cases, it is due to the covert or not-so-covert U.S. involvement in the finances and internal policies of those countries.

In the present day, society is not much different from the time of Dickens when there were huge estates of England and starving, dying masses of people in East End London. Just look at South America and the stupendous land holdings of the Rockefellers and other international bankers.

So, what is at the root of the exploitation problem?

Psychopathy: those who seek to feather their own nest to an obscene degree at the expense of others.

It is psychopaths who have arrogated the world's wealth to themselves. Psychopaths are always and ever monopolists of the world's wealth, and they justify their having the wealth by their various pathological economic theories. It is psychopaths that say that "common" people "breed like rabbits and that if the masses had money and land and leisure they would just increase the population until their new land was just as teaming with poverty and stench as before". What is hidden behind this paramoralistic ideology is the truth that psychopaths fear the population of normal humans with conscience and a feeling of connection to other human beings. Noonan reports that Bush "declared that it is now the policy of the United States to eradicate tyranny in the world, and that the survival of American liberty is dependent on the liberty of every other nation. This was at once so utopian and so aggressive that it shocked me." She is only reporting the perspective of essential psychopathy. On this topic, let's take a look at what psychologist Andrew Lobaczewski has written about pathocrats:

In a civilization deficient in psychological cognition, hyperactive individuals [psychopaths and other deviants] driven by the[ir] feeling of being different usually find a ready echo in other people's insufficiently developed consciousness. Such individuals are dreaming of imposing their power and their different experiential manner upon their environment and their society; unfortunately, their dreams have a chance. [...]

...[I]n each society there are people whose basic intelligence, natural psychological world-view, and moral reasoning have developed improperly. Some of these persons contain the cause within themselves, [genetic] others succumbed to childhood influences o[f] psychologically abnormal people. Such individuals' comprehension of social and moral questions is different, both from the natural and from the objective viewpoint; they constitute a destructive factor for the development of society's psychological concepts, social structure, and internal bonds.

At the same time, such people easily line the social structure with a ramified network of mutual pathological conspiracies poorly connected to the main social structure. These people and their network participate in the genesis of that evil which spares no nation. This substructure gives birth to dreams of obtaining power and imposing one's will upon society... [...]

Their dreams do not lack a certain idealism similar to the ideas of normal people. They would like to reform the world to their liking but are unable to foresee more far-reaching implications and results. Spiced by deviance, their visions may influence naive rebels or people who have in fact suffered injustice. Existing social injustice may look like a justification for a radicalized world-view and the assimilation of such visions. [...]

[Pathological deviants] are aware of being different as they obtain their life-experience and become familiar with different ways of fighting for their goals. Their world is forever divided into "us and them" their little world with its own laws and customs and that other foreign world full of presumptuous ideas and customs in light of which they are condemned morally. Their sense of honor bids them to cheat and revile that other human world and its values. In contradiction to the customs of normal people, they feel non-fulfillment of their promises or signatures is customary behavior. They also learn how their personalities can have traumatizing effects on the personalities of those normal people, and how to take advantage of this root of terror for purposes of reaching their goals. This dichotomy of worlds is permanent and does not disappear even if they succeed in realizing their youthful dream of gaining power over the society of normal people. This proves that the separation is biologically conditioned.

In such people a dream emerges like some youthful Utopia of a "happy" world and a social system which would not reject them or force them to submit to laws and customs whose meaning is incomprehensible to them. They dream of a world in which their simple and radical way of experiencing and perceiving reality would dominate, where they would of course be assured safety and prosperity. Those "others", different, but also more technically skillful, should be put to work to achieve this goal. "We", after all, will create a new government, one of justice. They are prepared to fight and to suffer for the sake of such a brave new world, and also, of course, to inflict suffering upon others. Such vision justifies killing people, whose suffering does not move them to compassion because "they" are not quite conspecific. They do not realize that they will consequently meet with opposition which can last for generations. [...]

Every society worldwide contains individuals whose dreams of power arise very early. ... They would like to change this unfriendly world into something else. Dreams of power also represent overcompensation for the feeling of humiliation, the second angle in Adler's rhombus. A significant and active proportion of this group is composed of individuals with various deviations who imagine this better world in their own way, of which we are already familiar. [...]

The following questions thus suggest themselves: what happens if the network of understandings among psychopaths achieves power in leadership positions with international exposure? This can happen, especially during the later phases of the phenomenon. Goaded by their character, such people thirst for just that even though it would conflict with their own life interest ... They do not understand that a catastrophe would otherwise ensue. Germs are not aware that they will be burned alive or buried deep in the ground along with the human body whose death they are causing.

If such and many managerial positions are assumed by individuals [lacking] abilities to feel and understand most other people, and who also betray deficiencies in technical imagination and practical skills-(faculties indispensable for governing economic and political matters) this must result in an exceptionally serious crisis in all areas, both within the country in question and with regard to international relations. Within, the situation shall become unbearable even for those citizens who were able to feather their nest into a relatively comfortable modus vivendi. Outside, other societies start to feel the pathological quality of the phenomenon quite distinctly. [...]

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, as well as the accompanying ideologies characteristic for the time and the ethnological conditions, and turned them into caricatures of themselves. This occurs as a result of ... participation by pathological agents in a pathodynamically similar process. That explains why all the pathocracies of the world are and have been so similar in their essential properties. Contemporaneous ones easily find a common language, even if the ideologies nourishing them and protecting their pathological contents from identification differ widely. [...]

The moment at which a movement has been transformed into something we can call a pathocracy as a result of the ponerogenic process is a matter of convention. The process is temporally cumulative and reaches a point of no return at some particular moment. Eventually, however, internal confrontation with the adherents of the original ideology occurs, thus finally affixing the seal of the pathocratic character of the phenomenon. Hitlerism most certainly passed this point of no return, but was prevented from all-out confrontation with the adherents of the original ideology because the Allied armies smashed its entire military might. [...]

A great ideology with mesmerizing values can also easily deprive people of the capacity for self-critical control over their behavior. The adherents of such ideas tend to lose sight of the fact that the means used, not just the end, will be decisive for the result of their activities. Whenever they reach for overly radical methods of action, still convinced that they are serving their idea, they are not aware that their goal has already changed. The principle "the end justifies the means" opens the door to a different kind of person for whom a great idea is useful for purposes of liberating themselves from the uncomfortable links of normal human custom. Every great ideology thus contains danger, especially for small minds. Therefore, every great social movement and its ideology can become a host upon which some pathocracy initiates its parasitic life.

The actions of [Pathocratic rule] affect an entire society, starting with the leaders and infiltrating every village, small town, factory, or collective farm. The pathological social structure gradually covers the entire country, creating a "new class" within that nation. This privileged class feels permanently threatened by the "others", i.e. by the majority of normal people. Neither do the pathocrats entertain any illusions about their personal fate should there be a return to the system of normal man.

A normal person deprived of privilege or high positions goes about performing some work which would earn him a living; but pathocrats never possessed any solid practical talent, and the time frame of their rule has eliminated any residual possibilities of adapting to the demands of normal work. If the law of normal man were to be reinstalled, they and theirs could be subjected to judgment, including a moralizing interpretation of their psychological deviations; they would be threatened by a loss of freedom and life, not merely a loss of position and privilege. Since they are incapable of this kind of sacrifice, the survival of a system which is the best for them becomes a moral idea. Such a threat must be battled by means of psychological and political cunning and a lack of scruples with regard to those other "inferior-quality" people. [...]

Pathocracy survives thanks to the feeling of being threatened by the society of normal people, as well as by other countries wherein various forms of the system of normal man persist. For the rulers, staying on the top is therefore the classic problem of "to be or not to be".

We can thus formulate a more cautious question: can such a system ever waive territorial and political expansion abroad and settle for its present possessions? What would happen if such a state of affairs ensured internal peace, corresponding order, and relative prosperity within the nation?

The overwhelming majority of the country's population would then make skillful use of all the emerging possibilities, taking advantage of their superior qualifications in order to fight for an ever-increasing scope of activities; thanks to their higher birth rate, their power will increase. This majority will be joined by some sons from the privileged class who did not inherit the corresponding genes. The pathocracy's dominance will weaken imperceptibly but steadily, finally leading to a situation wherein the society of normal people reaches for power. This is a nightmare vision [to the pathocrats].

The biological, psychological, moral, and economic destruction of this majority [of normal people] is thus a "biological" necessity. Many means serve this end, starting with concentration camps and including warfare with an obstinate, well-armed foe who will devastate and debilitate the human power thrown at him, namely the very power jeopardizing pathocrats rule. Once safely dead, the soldiers will then be decreed heroes to be revered in paeans, useful for raising a new generation faithful to the pathocracy. ...

After all, pathocrats give short shrift to blood and suffering of people they consider to be not quite conspecific. Kings may have suffered due to the death of their knights, but pathocrats never do: "We have a lot of people here." ...

Pathocracy has other internal reasons for pursuing expansionism through the use of all means possible. As long as that "other" world governed by the systems of normal man exists, it inducts into and within the strivings of the non-pathological majority, thereby creating a certain sense of direction. The non-pathological majority of the country's population will never stop dreaming of the reinstallment of the normal man's system in any possible form. This majority [of normal people] will never stop watching other countries, waiting for the opportune moment; its attention and power must therefore be distracted from this purpose, and the masses must be educated and channeled in the direction of imperialist strivings. This goal must be pursued doggedly so that everyone knows what is being fought for and in whose name harsh discipline and poverty must be endured. The latter factor effectively limits the possibility of "subversive" activities on the part of the society of normal people. ...

The ideology must of course furnish a corresponding justification for this alleged right to conquer the world and must therefore be properly elaborated. Expansionism is derived from the very nature of pathocracy, not from ideology, but this fact must be masked by ideology. Whenever this phenomenon has been witnessed in history, imperialism was always its most demonstrative quality. [...]

Economic factors constitute a non-negligible part of the motivation for this expansionist tendency. Since the managerial functions have been taken over by individuals with mediocre intelligence and pathological character traits, the pathocracy becomes incapable of properly administering anything at all. The area suffering most severely must always be whichever one requires a person to act independently, not wasting time searching for the proper way to behave. Agriculture is dependent upon changing climate conditions and the appearance of pests and plant diseases. A farmer's personal qualities have thus been an essential factor of success in this area, as it was for many centuries. Pathocracy therefore invariably brings about food shortages.

However, many countries with normal man's [social and political] systems abound in sufficiency as far as industrial products are concerned and experience problems with their food surpluses even though there are temporary economic recessions and the citizens are by no means overworked. The temptation to dominate such a country and its prosperity, that perennial imperialist motive, thus becomes even more strong. The collected prosperity of the conquered nation can be exploited for a time, the citizens forced to work harder for paltry remuneration. For the moment, no thought is given to the fact that introducing a pathocratic system within such a country will eventually cause similar unproductive conditions; after all corresponding self-knowledge in this area is nonexistent [to pathological deviants].

Unfortunately, the idea of conquering rich countries also motivates the minds of many poor non-pathological fellows who would like to use this opportunity to grab something for themselves and eat their fill of good food.

As has been the case for centuries, military power is of course the primary means for achieving these ends. Throughout the centuries, though, whenever history has registered the appearance of the phenomenon [of the rise to power of pathological types] (regardless of the ideological cloak covering it), specific measures of [achieving and maintaining control] have also become apparent: something in the order of specific intelligence in the service of international intrigue facilitating conquest. This quality is derived from the ... personality characteristics inspiring the overall phenomenon [that of psychopathy]; it should constitute data for historians to identify this type of phenomenon throughout history.

[Political Ponerology]

As the above excerpt indicates, the problem of most scarcity on this planet is created by psychopathy, a criminal class that controls psychologically damaged or uncritical human beings and uses them to control the money and credit systems. They then use these systems to imperialistically grab land and resources, to charge monopoly prices for production and offer less that living wages to labor.

Read more here . . . .