- Signs of the Times for Fri, 21 Apr 2006 -

• Signs Editorials
• U.S. Economy On The Verge
• War Plans Continue Regardless
• Will The Lying Ever Stop?
• Americans Have Had Enough
• Earth on the Edge
• China Ready To Pull The Plug?
• Sizing Up Chavez
• They Know All There Is To Know About The...
• French Fancy
• Around The World
• Scientific Silliness

Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken.

And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools.

Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless.

You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your condition.

In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world.

You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences will most likely remain undiscovered.

How will you live your life?

What will you do with your huge and secret advantage, and with the corresponding handicap of other people (conscience)?

The answer will depend largely on just what your desires happen to be, because people are not all the same. Even the profoundly unscrupulous are not all the same. Some people - whether they have a conscience or not - favor the ease of inertia, while others are filled with dreams and wild ambitions. Some human beings are brilliant and talented, some are dull-witted, and most, conscience or not, are somewhere in between. There are violent people and nonviolent ones, individuals who are motivated by blood lust and those who have no such appetites. [...]

Provided you are not forcibly stopped, you can do anything at all.

If you are born at the right time, with some access to family fortune, and you have a special talent for whipping up other people's hatred and sense of deprivation, you can arrange to kill large numbers of unsuspecting people. With enough money, you can accomplish this from far away, and you can sit back safely and watch in satisfaction. [...]

Crazy and frightening - and real, in about 4 percent of the population....

The prevalence rate for anorexic eating disorders is estimated a 3.43 percent, deemed to be nearly epidemic, and yet this figure is a fraction lower than the rate for antisocial personality. The high-profile disorders classed as schizophrenia occur in only about 1 percent of [the population] - a mere quarter of the rate of antisocial personality - and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that the rate of colon cancer in the United States, considered "alarmingly high," is about 40 per 100,000 - one hundred times lower than the rate of antisocial personality.

The high incidence of sociopathy in human society has a profound effect on the rest of us who must live on this planet, too, even those of us who have not been clinically traumatized. The individuals who constitute this 4 percent drain our relationships, our bank accounts, our accomplishments, our self-esteem, our very peace on earth.

Yet surprisingly, many people know nothing about this disorder, or if they do, they think only in terms of violent psychopathy - murderers, serial killers, mass murderers - people who have conspicuously broken the law many times over, and who, if caught, will be imprisoned, maybe even put to death by our legal system.

We are not commonly aware of, nor do we usually identify, the larger number of nonviolent sociopaths among us, people who often are not blatant lawbreakers, and against whom our formal legal system provides little defense.

Most of us would not imagine any correspondence between conceiving an ethnic genocide and, say, guiltlessly lying to one's boss about a coworker. But the psychological correspondence is not only there; it is chilling. Simple and profound, the link is the absence of the inner mechanism that beats up on us, emotionally speaking, when we make a choice we view as immoral, unethical, neglectful, or selfish.

Most of us feel mildly guilty if we eat the last piece of cake in the kitchen, let alone what we would feel if we intentionally and methodically set about to hurt another person.

Those who have no conscience at all are a group unto themselves, whether they be homicidal tyrants or merely ruthless social snipers.

The presence or absence of conscience is a deep human division, arguably more significant than intelligence, race, or even gender.

What differentiates a sociopath who lives off the labors of others from one who occasionally robs convenience stores, or from one who is a contemporary robber baron - or what makes the difference betwen an ordinary bully and a sociopathic murderer - is nothing more than social status, drive, intellect, blood lust, or simple opportunity.

What distinguishes all of these people from the rest of us is an utterly empty hole in the psyche, where there should be the most evolved of all humanizing functions.

"Psychopathy, as originally conceived by Cleckley (1941), is not limited to engagement in illegal activities, but rather encompasses such personality characteristics as manipulativeness, insincerity, egocentricity, and lack of guilt - characteristics clearly present in criminals but also in spouses, parents, bosses, attorneys, politicians, and CEOs, to name but a few. (Bursten, 1973; Stewart, 1991). Our own examination of the prevalence of psychopathy within a university population suggested that perhaps 5% or more of this sample might be deemed psychopathic, although the vast majority of those will be male (more than 1/10 males versus approximately 1?100 females).

"As such, psychopathy may be characterized ... as involving a tendency towards both dominance and coldness. Wiggins (1995) in summarizing numerous previous findings... indicates that such individuals are prone to anger and irritation and are willing to exploit others. They are arrogant, manipulative, cynical, exhibitionistic, sensation -seeking, Machiavellian, vindictive, and out for their own gain. With respect to their patterns of social exchange (Foa & Foa, 1974), they attribute love and status to themselves, seeing themselves as highly worthy and important, but prescribe neither love nor status to others, seeing them as unworthy and insignificant. This characterization is clearly consistent with the essence of psychopathy as commonly described.

"The present investigation sought to answer some basic questions regarding the construct of psychopathy in non forensic settings... In so doing we have returned to Cleckley's (1941) original emphasis on psychopathy as a personality style not only among criminals, but also among successful individuals within the community.

"What is clear from our findings is that (a) psychopathy measures have converged on a prototype of psychopathy that involves a combination of dominant and cold interpersonal characteristics; (b) psychopathy does occur in the community and at what might be a higher than expected rate; and (c) psychopathy appears to have little overlap with personality disorders aside from Antisocial Personality Disorder. ...

"Clearly, where much more work is needed is in understanding what factors differentiate the abiding (although perhaps not moral-abiding) psychopath from the law-breaking psychopath; such research surely needs to make greater use of non forensic samples than has been customary in the past."

Certainly, there have always been shysters and crooks, but past concern was focused on ferreting out incompetents rather than psychopaths. Unfortunately, all that has changed. We now need to fear the super-sophisticated modern crook who does know what he is doing ... and does it so well that no one else knows. Yes, psychopaths love the business world.

"Uninvolved with others, he coolly saw into their fears and desires, and maneuvered them as he wished. Such a man might not, after all, be doomed to a life of scrapes and escapades ending ignominiously in the jailhouse. Instead of murdering others, he might become a corporate raider and murder companies, firing people instead of killing them, and chopping up their functions rather than their bodies."

[T]he consequences to the average citizen from business crimes are staggering. As criminologist Georgette Bennett says, "They account for nearly 30% of case filings in U.S. District Courts - more than any other category of crime. The combined burglary, mugging and other property losses induced by the country's street punks come to about $4 billion a year. However, the seemingly upstanding citizens in our corporate board rooms and the humble clerks in our retail stores bilk us out of between $40 and $200 billion a year."

Concern here is that the costume for the new masked sanity of a psychopath is just as likely to be a three-piece suit as a ski mask and a gun. As Harrington says, "We also have the psychopath in respectable circles, no longer assumed to be a loser." He quotes William Krasner as saying, "They - psychopath and part psychopath - do well in the more unscrupulous types of sales work, because they take such delight in 'putting it over on them', getting away with it - and have so little conscience about defrauding their customers." Our society is fast becoming more materialistic, and success at any cost is the credo of many businessmen. The typical psychopath thrives in this kind of environment and is seen as a business "hero."

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen.

I have got your Special Research Project on psychopathy by my computer. You are doing a most important and valuable work for the future of nations.[...]

I am a very aged clinical psychologist. Forty years ago I took part in a secret investigation of the real nature and psychopathology of the macro-social phenomenon called "Communism". The other researchers were the scientists of the previous generation who are now passed away.

The profound study of the nature psychopathy, which played the essential and inspirational part in this macro-social psychopathologic phenomenon, and distinguishing it from other mental anomalies, appeared to be the necessary preparation for understanding the entire nature of the phenomenon.

The large part of the work, you are doing now, was done in those times. ...

I am able to provide you with a most valuable scientific document, useful for your purposes. It is my book "POLITICAL PONEROLOGY - A science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes". You may also find copy of this book in the Library of Congress and in some university and public libraries in the USA.

Be so kind and contact me so that I may mail a copy to you.

Very truly yours!

Andrew M. £obaczewski

Lately, it sure looks like the whole Alternative News and 911 Truth movement is being subjected to the Ponerization process (being twisted to become an agent for Evil), so perhaps now would be a good time to take a look at how that process develops. First, a little background.

There is a current discussion on our Forum that was begun by a certain Dimitris following the publication of an editorial about Jeff Rense. Dimitris declared, quite self-righteously, that publishing such an editorial identified us clearly as "agents of cointelpro." Here is the article that we published that aroused the ire of Dimitris:

by Anders

I have been looking at Rense's website for the last two years and gathered from Laura's research, that he most likely, whether consciously or not, is an asset of Cointelpro. The website gives the image of having no limits on what they will put up and yet there are some glaring omissions.

One of these omissions is in regards to birdflu. The site is like a birdflu central with daily updates on birdflu occurring all over the planet. There has NOT BEEN one article in respect to the likelihood that Birdflu is a HOAX.

ANOTHER omission is in regard to drastic climate changes, METEORS, the many recent meteor sightings and the many recent discoveries of impact crater from meteors around the world. The signs website has an excellent supplement on Meteors found here: http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/site_map_qfg.htm

The last omission that I will mention here is in regard to the Signs website and the pentagon Strike video, which considering the fact that 500+million people have seen it, SHOULD feature on Rense's lefthand column as a permanent feature and a permanent link to the Producers thereof, namely SOTT.

One can look at this from the point of view of what is of paramount importance for the PTB, and what they don’t want the populace to see. If indeed it is true, that rense is an arm of COINTELPRO, then the important things are the things omitted from the site, some of which I mentioned above. It follows, that NOTHING that appears on Rense is important at all. It is only for keeping the population distracted!

Facts are:1) the US is spending as if there is no tomorrow and as though they will never ever have to pay the money back.

2) The speed with which the US is implementing a world clamp down and a control on the populace is without parallel in modern history.

3) There is hardly an attempt at disguising their fascist march for world domination as though they know, that they will not be held accountable ever.

4) There is a lack of exposure of the lies of the US from OTHER NATIONS, who have intelligence services with satellite surveillance and who surely knows what is going on.

5) The US is using Depleted Uranium in the Middle East and other places indiscriminantly, as though the consequences of radiation of vast areas (including Europe and the US) is of no concern.

Talking to a friend about this, the question that was brought up was why don't they want the populace to ponder the possibility of cataclysmic earthchanges in the very near future, if they are happy to entertain the notion of perpetual war or economic megabust or whatever else is on Rense.

One answer that we came up with is this.

If the PTB have been given advance notice of an imminent comet strike (such as the cyclical comet strike with a cycle of 3600 years as mentioned by Laura), then it would be important for the PTB to vector the attention of the populace into all kinds of areas of no real importance.

WHY you might ask?

IF the populace knew that the world would be impacted by a massive cataclysm in say april year 2009 then

1) the populace would not be as easily controlled.

2) They would probably reevaluate their life and maybe not go to work.

3) The world economy would collapse, but in a NONLINEAR FASHION, in other words not when the PTB plans to pull it.

4) The people, from journalist to military officials might not continue to compromise their souls (if they have one) for their masters in order to pay their mortgage/lifestyle unless they are also promised salvation in an underground bunker, which is doubtful.

The PTB including other world leaders (The C's mentions that the world government has been a reality for a long time) would have been promised a safe haven, most likely in some deep underground bunker or a rapture for the religious minded. This would explain why they go about things as though never to be held accountable.

Building of underground cities requires massive amounts of money, tunnel workers and industries related to the building thereof. A collapse before time of the world economy would severely hamper the effort of the PTB in creating a safe haven. If not, then maybe an angry and cheated population whose attention were not distracted on bogus terrorists and like things, would hamper the PTB. Donald Hunt mentions the issue of crowd control and possible riots in todays economic report here http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/edi ... entary.php

Dolan, as many others, mentions in a recent interview extensive tunneling going on in America. He mentions a quote from Rumsfeld of a black budget of 2.6 trillion dollars in 2001. The interview that I heard thanks to the Signs forum is found here: http://www.keyholepublishing.com/

Whether the above answer is THE ANSWER or just part of the answer is open for pondering, but the fact is that certain things are omitted from Rense and that in itself raises obvious questions. I would, as mentioned above, seriously doubt that any of the things mentioned on Rense is of any real importance, other than seeing where the PTB wants our attention directed.

The thing is, something really creepy is going on right before our eyes and we need to sit up and pay attention here!

First of all, notice this piece by a web pundit that goes by the nom de plume "Sartre":

A Fractured Conservative Movement

There is nothing new about rugged individualists disagreeing. In some respects such divergence is quite normal and appropriate. Whether there is anything that can be remotely labeled a patriot movement, to begin with is certainly a valid area of discussion. But what happens when supposed like- minded world views clash to the extent that eating one's own becomes an obsession?

By consistently targeting many of the named anti-establishment publishers for ridicule and savage attacks, the Victor-Lisa show resembles a Saturday Night skit more than serious journalism. Earning an honorable mention in their list of the unfaithful does not slant this assessment. Sure paranoid sites like Fintan Dunne's "The CIA Internet Fakes" lumps BATR with WING-TV as government disinformation projects. A careful inspection of this list indicated that BATR is included with some good company. If the Dunne goal is to damage the credibility of such sites, why does WING-TV resort to the same kind of tactics - guilt by association?

Attacking Jeff Rense and Alex Jones because both refuse to deal with WING-TV is hardly a persuasive argument. The claims and charges of censorship have been a long standing disagreement with Ms. Guliani. What she sees as an obligation to have her viewpoint echoed on other sites, we view as a privilege to earn the trust of another publisher. What WING-TV has done by their consistent and comprehensive smear vendetta is to destroy it's own credibility as a truth teller. Such devices of desperation are reflected without the trace of rational self-control or cogent wisdom. Read closely Mr. Thorns angry outburst and judge for yourselves:

Message to a Eunuch (Sartre: BATR) by Victor Thorn

'For once in your lives, stand up and do something. If you're men, start acting like it. Your feeble articles are not only boring beyond words (i.e. Sartre), but they're weak in spirit, weak in delivery, with an emotional void that leaves the reader so filled with ennui that it's no wonder our country is in the mess it's in. If you were around during the American Revolution, our nation would have lost miserably because each and every one of you would have turned coat and ran back to England to suck on the King's tit.'

This example typifies the conduct used against anyone who takes issue with the purity of vision that only exists in the mind of a self-proclaimed soaring eagle of the alternative media. BATR does not play this name game or sink to the level of crass verbiage. The publisher calls the shots and any editor worthy of the name is well within their right to exclude the rants of disinformation specialists. Likewise the reader is the sole arbitrator of who is worthy of their trust. Who is telling the absolute and definitive truth requires the honesty of the divine and surely none of us aspire to such lofty heights.

For this reason BREAKING ALL THE RULES has severed all relations with WING-TV. Regretfully this decision is based not only upon significant differences in strategy and tactics but mainly upon a profound loss of respect. It is the task of each individual to find the value in the work of any journalist or columnists. We urge you to recognize some of the factual contributions that have been published on WING-TV. However, Thoreau was right: 'If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.'

Take that to the bank.

There are quite a number of people, besided Dimitris, who "deplore" the so-called "infighting" of the 911 truth movement. Among them is a woman named Judy Andreas.

Now, this Judy Andreas is a strange phenomenon. Judy sort of "appeared" on the scene out of nowhere. She was dating John Kaminski all the while she was making "advances" toward Stan Hess who ended up marrying her though the marriage only lasted for two weeks, as I understand.

If you read some of the stuff on her site, linked above, and "read between the lines," you will perceive that she has made advances toward several people with internet radio shows/websites - generally those with well-known names. It's almost as though she is a sex bomb "working the circuit." From what several people who have interacted with her have told me, it seems to be her assignment to get these individuals she hooks up with to turn their 'thinking" around. Pretty clever feat for a sexy granny in her 60s, eh?

Andreas is a "regular columnist" on Rense, and we notice that Rense has dumped Kaminski... I guess because John was not manipulatable by Judy.

Now, notice on her webpage that she reproduces a "fan letter" from someone that says:

"I'm overwhelmed...there on the counter sat the package. Couldn't wait to

open it --- love the format for easy reading. It is impressive to have John foreword it and Cindy Sheehan with Jeff Rense- terrific! I like the piece by Pamela Icke. I

shall keep the book by the computer and pick it up to read (& savor) piece by

piece. I'll tell the universe to have a major publisher pick it up!

Thankyou! Arhata "

Aside from making the normal human being want to lose their cookies just reading it, what is interesting about this letter? Notice the reference to the inclusion of a piece by Pamela Icke.

From:

http://www.enlighteneddating.com/softbi ... .php?id=21

"Pamela Icke is the wife of one of the most popular regular guests on News

for the Soul -- David Icke -- and she too has quite the story to tell. And

find out about enlightened relationship from someone who is in one... Don't

miss this raveling hour of enlightening talk radio ..."

In any event, since we now have hard evidence that abovetopsecret.com is hooked up with Wayne Jaeschke and that they claim Morrison and Foerster as their legal reps, and Jaeschke has been implicated as participating in the creation of the "Project Serpo" hoax, (see previous posts here), this connection between Judy Andreas and the Icke people is highly suggestive.

I seem to recall that Rense and Icke were good buddies at one point and then either drifted apart or had a falling out. Since we have learned that this is a typical tactic, maybe that "falling out" was just for public consumption because Judy Andreas sure must like Icke and Rense likes Judy.

Coming back to our problem, one of the forum members brought to our attention an interesting comment from Wing TV regarding a phone conversation with Sartre referred as "Mr. X" (identified in another link: http://www.wingtv.net/thornarticles/2005awards.html (scroll down to #137)).

From: http://www.wingtv.net/thornarticles/opm.html

OPM: Other People's Money

by Lisa Guliani

Several months ago I received a phone call from a journalist who happens to be a regular columnist for Jeff Rense. I'll call him Mr."X". We were discussing the whole "patriot/truth/9-11 movement" and he wanted to give me some advice on how he thinks Victor and I should be "playing the game".

When he asked how we finance WING TV, I told him we work day jobs. His response to this was hearty laughter, followed by the comment, "Listen, your problem lies in the fact that you guys don't have a racket. You need to get a racket."

My reply: "We're not interested in getting a racket."

Mr. "X": "Haven't you ever heard of OPM?"

Me: "OPM? No. What is OPM?"

Mr. "X": OPM is an acronym for 'Other People's Money'. "X" then went on to tell me how much easier it would be to run WING TV if we'd simply get other people to foot the bills for doing what we're doing. According to "X," that's how anybody who is successful is doing it. That's how the "big boys" like Jones and Rense are doing it. After all, you don't see them working day jobs, do you? The reason they're successful is because they understand how to play the game. And the name of the game is OPM.

I was pretty disgusted with this type of advice coming from someone who I'd presumed to be a person operating under honorable and ethical guidelines. I made it clear to "X" that we have no intention of playing their "OPM game". "X" said we're stupid if we don't do it because "everybody's doing it."

Everybody's doing it? No, not everybody. There are people like Thorn and me in the alternative media who are not feeding off the OPM free cash cow.

We ended the phone call, but this man's words have haunted me ever since.

Think about it. He's correct in saying that shysters atop the alternative media food chain are sucking money out of you like your pocket is a sieve, and that their shows and websites are breeding grounds to foment irrational fear and paranoia in the listening audience. And it works masterfully, because the most suggestible listeners dutifully pay up.

You don't see the "big boys" like Jones and Rense out there working for a living, do you? No. They don't have to, because they've got you doing all the work --- then forking over your hard-earned money to them.

Their websites are slick, polished, and highly suggestive that there is quite a bit of money behind them. So, where does the bulk of that money come from? It comes out of your pocket.

By buying their "end of the world" and "New Age" remedies, energized water, fake food (Ener-Food), toe fungus, British water filters, etc, you are enabling the OPM racket to flourish and thrive. You, the listener and consumer, are making it possible for these shysters to peddle their snake oil and propaganda on an ongoing basis. This makes it possible for the fear-mongers to sit back and watch the dollars roll in. With a scam like this, why should they go out and get a real job? The OPM racket is not a new one. We've all seen this before with unscrupulous televangelists. Peter Schaenk even compared these individuals to the huckster Elmer Ganty. You're their meal-ticket as long as you remain freaked out and sweating bullets. These men are fully capable of working (even part-time jobs) to pay their own bills. But y'see, they'd rather have you do that for them. That's why it's called a "racket".

In essence, you are paying them to bullshit you and feed you heavy doses of fear on a daily basis, and they hold themselves to be above questioning. The snake oil salesmen have no accountability because YOU don't hold them accountable. No wonder they're so smug.

Nice little racket, huh?

But back to what I want to talk about today: As I mentioned above, it sure looks like the whole Alternative News and 911 Truth movement is being subjected to the Ponerization process, so perhaps now would be a good time to take a look at how that process develops by a lengthy but, oh so worth reading, quote from Andrzej Lobaczewski's book.

Lobaczewski wrote:

We shall give the name "ponerogenic association" to any group of people characterized by ponerogenic processes of above-average social intensity, wherein the carriers of various pathological factors function as inspirers, spellbinders, and leaders, and where a proper pathological social structure generates.

Smaller, less permanent associations may be called "groups" or "unions".

Such an association gives birth to evil which hurts other people as well as its own members. We could list various names ascribed to such organizations by linguistic tradition: gangs, criminal mobs, mafias, cliques, and coteries, which cunningly avoid collision with the law while seeking to gain their own advantage. Such unions frequently aspire to political power in order to impose their expedient legislation upon societies in the name of a suitably prepared ideology, deriving advantages in the form of disproportionate prosperity and the satisfaction of their craving for power.

A description and classification of such associations with a view of their numbers, goals, officially promulgated ideologies, and internal organizations would of course be scientifically valuable. Such a description, effected by a perceptive observer, could help a ponerologist determine some of the properties of such unions, which cannot be determined by means of natural conceptual language.

A description of this kind, however, ought not to cloak the more factual phenomena and psychological dependencies operating within these unions. Failure to heed this warning can easily cause such a sociological description to indicate properties which are of secondary importance, or even made "for show" to impress the uninitiated, thereby overshadowing the actual phenomena which decide the quality, role, and fate of the union. Particularly if such a description is colorful literature, it can furnish merely illusory or ersatz knowledge, thus rendering a naturalistic perception and causative comprehension of phenomena more difficult.

One phenomenon all ponerogenic groups and associations have in common is the fact that their members lose (or have already lost) the capacity to perceive pathological individuals as such, interpreting their behavior in a fascinated, heroic, or melodramatic ways. The opinions, ideas, and judgments of people carrying various psychological deficits are endowed with an importance at least equal to that of outstanding individuals among normal people.

The atrophy of natural critical faculties with respect to pathological individuals becomes an opening to their activities, and, at the same time, a criterion for recognizing the association in concern as ponerogenic. Let us call this the first criterion of ponerogenesis.

Another phenomenon all ponerogenic associations have in common is their statistically high concentration of individuals with various psychological anomalies. Their qualitative composition is crucially important in the formation of the entire union's character, activities, development, or extinction.

Groups dominated by various kinds of characteropathic individuals will develop relatively primitive activities, proving rather easy for a society of normal people to break. However, things are quite different when such unions are inspired by psychopathic individuals. [...]

Two basic types of the above-mentioned unions should be differentiated: Primary ponerogenic and secondary ponerogenic. Let us describe as primarily ponerogenic a union whose abnormal members were active from the very beginning, playing the role of crystallizing catalysts as early as the process of creation of the group occurred. We shall call secondarily ponerogenic a union which was founded in the name of some idea with an independent social meaning, generally comprehensible within the categories of the natural world view, but which later succumbed to a certain moral degeneration. This in turn opened the door to infection and activation of the pathological factors within, and later to a ponerization of the group as a whole, or often of its fraction.

From the very outset, a primarily ponerogenic union is a foreign body within the organism of society, its character colliding with the moral values held or respected by the majority. The activities of such groups provoke opposition and disgust and are considered immoral; as a rule, therefore, such groups do not spread large, nor do they metastasize into numerous unions; they finally lose their battle with society.

The same is being done with alternative news and the 911 truth movement. It is being infiltrated and turned around because it is way too dangerous to the Nazis that have taken over the U.S. political scene under the guise of being republicans or democrats or neo-conservatives, or whatever names they have created to bamboozle the public.

Lobaczewski wrote:

In order to have a chance to develop into a large ponerogenic association, however, it suffices that some human organization, characterized by social or political goals and an ideology with some creative value, be accepted by a larger number of normal people before it succumbs to a process of ponerogenic malignancy. The primary tradition and ideological values of such a society may then, for a long time, protect a union which has succumbed to the ponerization process from the awareness of society, especially its less critical components.

When the ponerogenic process touches such a human organization, which originally emerged and acted in the name of political or social goals, and whose causes were conditioned in history and the social situation, the original group's primary values will nourish and protect such a union, in spite of the fact that those primary values succumb to characteristic degeneration, the practical function becoming completely different from the primary one, because the names and symbols are retained.

This is where the weaknesses of individual and social "common sense" are revealed.

That is why Sartre and Judy Andreas and others decrying the "name calling" in the 911 Truth Movement are either agents themselves or woefully naive and will never survive the nazification/ponerization of the movement. The so-called "commonsense" that they subscribe to is NO DEFENSE against psychological deviants! But such "commonsensical" sayings and motifs will be brought up and flung around with great abandon by agents seeking to put the more critical members of the public back to sleep.

Lobaczewski wrote:

Ponerogenic unions of the primary variety are mainly of interest to criminology; our main concern will be associations that succumb to a secondary process of poneric malignancy. First, however, let us sketch a few properties of such associations which have already surrendered to this process.

Within each ponerogenic union, a psychological structure is created which can be considered a counterpart or caricature of the normal structure of society or a normal societal organization. In a normal social organization, individuals with various psychological strengths and weaknesses complement each other's talents and characteristics. This structure is subjected to diachronic modification with regard to changes in the character of the association as whole. The same is true of a ponerogenic union. Individuals with various psychological aberrations also complement each other's talents and characteristics.

The earlier phase of a ponerogenic union's activity is usually dominated by characteropathic, particularly paranoid, individuals, who often play an inspirational or spellbinding role in the ponerization process. Recall here the power of the paranoid characteropath lies in the fact that they easily enslave less critical minds, e.g. people with other kinds of psychological deficiencies, or who have been victims of individuals with character disorders, and, in particular, a large segment of young people.

At this point in time, the union still exhibits certain romantic features and is not yet characterized by excessively brutal behavior. Soon, however, the more normal members are pushed into fringe functions and are excluded from organizational secrets; some of them thereupon leave such a union.

An example would be a paranoid character who believes himself to be a Robin Hood type character with a "mission" to "rob from the rich and give to the poor." This can easily transform to "rob from anyone to gain for the self" under the cover of "social injustice against us makes it right."

Lobaczewski wrote:

Individuals with inherited deviations then progressively take over the inspirational and leadership positions. The role of essential psychopaths gradually grows, although they like to remain ostensibly in the shadows (e.g. directing small groups), setting the pace as an éminence grise.

In ponerogenic unions on the largest social scales, the leadership role is generally played by a different kind of individual, one more easily digestible and representative. Examples include frontal characteropathy, or some more discreet complex of lesser taints.

A spellbinder at first simultaneously plays the role of leader in a ponerogenic group. Later there appears another kind of "leadership talent", a more vital individual who often joined the organization later, once it has already succumbed to ponerization. The spellbinding individual, being weaker, is forced to come to terms with being shunted into the shadows and recognizing the new leader's "genius", or accept the threat of total failure. Roles are parceled out. The spellbinder needs support from the primitive but decisive leader, who in turn needs the spellbinder to uphold the association's ideology, so essential in maintaining the proper attitude on the part of those members of the rank and file who betray a tendency to criticism and doubt of the moral variety.

The spellbinder's job then becomes to repackage the ideology appropriately, sliding new contents in under old titles, so that it can continue fulfilling its propaganda function under ever-changing conditions. He also has to uphold the leader's mystique inside and outside the association. Complete trust cannot exist between the two, however, since the leader secretly has contempt for the spellbinder and his ideology, whereas the spellbinder despises the leader for being such a coarse individual. A showdown is always probable; whoever is weaker becomes the loser.

The structure of such a union undergoes further variegation and specialization.

A chasm opens between the somewhat more normal members and the elite initiates who are, as a rule, more pathological. This later subgroup becomes ever more dominated by hereditary pathological factors, the former by the after-effects of various diseases affecting the brain, less typically psychopathic individuals, and people whose malformed personalities were caused by early deprivation or brutal child-rearing methods on the part of pathological individuals.

It soon develops that there is less and less room for normal people in the group at all. The leaders' secrets and intentions are kept hidden from the union's proletariat; the products of the spellbinders' work must suffice for this segment.

An observer watching such a union's activities from the outside and using the natural psychological world view will always tend to overestimate the role of the leader and his allegedly autocratic function. The spellbinders and the propaganda apparatus are mobilized to maintain this erroneous outside opinion. The leader, however, is dependent upon the interests of the union, especially the elite initiates, to an extent greater than he himself knows. He wages a constant position-jockeying battle; he is an actor with a director. In macrosocial unions, this position is generally occupied by a more representative individual not deprived of certain critical faculties; initiating him into all those plans and criminal calculations would be counterproductive.

In conjunction with part of the elite, a group of psychopathic individuals hiding behind the scenes steers the leader, the way Borman and his clique steered Hitler. If the leader does not fulfill his assigned role, he generally knows that the clique representing the elite of the union is in a position to kill or otherwise remove him.

We have sketched the properties of unions in which the ponerogenic process has transformed their original generally benevolent content into a pathological counter-part thereof and modified its structure and its later changes, in a manner sufficiently wide-scale to encompass the greatest possible scope of this kind of phenomena, from the smallest to the largest social scale. The general rules governing those phenomena appear to be at least analogous, independent of the quantitative, social, and historical scale of such a phenomenon.

Ideologies

It is a common phenomenon for a ponerogenic association or group to contain a particular ideology which always justifies its activities and furnishes motivational propaganda. Even a small-time gang of hoodlums has its own melodramatic ideology and pathological romanticism. Human nature demands that vile matters be haloed by an over-compensatory mystique in order to silence one's conscience and to deceive consciousness and critical faculties, whether one's own or those of others.

If such a ponerogenic union could be stripped of its ideology, nothing would remain except psychological and moral pathology, naked and unattractive. Such stripping would of course provoke "moral outrage", and not only among the members of the union. The fact is, even normal people, who condemn this kind of union along with its ideologies, feel hurt and deprived of something constituting part of their own romanticism, their way of perceiving reality when a widely idealized group is exposed as little more than a gang of criminals. Perhaps even some of the readers of this book will resent the author's stripping evil so unceremoniously of all its literary motifs. The job of effecting such a "strip-tease" may thus turn out to be much more difficult and dangerous than expected.

A primary ponerogenic union is formed at the same time as its ideology, perhaps even somewhat earlier. A normal person perceives such ideology to be different from the world of human concepts, obviously suggestive, and even primitively comical to a degree.

An ideology of a secondarily ponerogenic association is formed by gradual adaptation of the primary ideology to functions and goals other than the original formative ones. A certain kind of layering or schizophrenia of ideology takes place during the ponerization process. The outer layer closest to the original content is used for the group's propaganda purposes, especially regarding the outside world, although it can in part also be used inside with regard to disbelieving lower-echelon members. The second layer presents the elite with no problems of comprehension: it is more hermetic, generally composed by slipping a different meaning into the same names. Since identical names signify different contents depending on the layer in question, understanding this "doubletalk" requires simultaneous fluency in both languages.

Average people succumb to the first layer's suggestive insinuations for a long time before they learn to understand the second one as well. Anyone with certain psychological deviations, especially if he is wearing the mask of normality with which we are already familiar, immediately perceives the second layer to be attractive and significant; after all, it was built by people like him. Comprehending this doubletalk is therefore a vexatious task, provoking quite understandable psychological resistance; this very duality of language, however, is a pathognomonic symptom indicating that the human union in question is touched by the ponerogenic process to an advanced degree.

The ideology of unions affected by such degeneration has certain constant factors regardless of their quality, quantity, or scope of action: namely, the motivations of a wronged group, radical righting of the wrong, and the higher values of the individuals who have joined the organization. These motivations facilitate sublimation of the feeling of being wronged and different, caused by one's own psychological failings, and appear to liberate the individual from the need to abide by uncomfortable moral principles.

In the world full of real injustice and human humiliation, making it conducive to the formation of an ideology containing the above elements, a union of its converts may easily succumb to degradation. When this happens, those people with a tendency to accept the better version of the ideology will tend to justify such ideological duality.

The ideology of the proletariat, which aimed at revolutionary restructuring of the world, was already contaminated by a schizoid deficit in the understanding of, and trust for, human nature; small wonder, then, that it easily succumbed to a process of typical degeneration in order to nourish and disguise a macrosocial phenomenon whose basic essence is completely different.

Additional note: Fascism seems to be the diametric opposite of Communism and Marxism, both in a philosophic and political sense, and also opposed democratic capitalist economics along with socialism and liberal democracy. It viewed the state as an organic entity in a positive light rather than as an institution designed to protect collective and individual rights, or as one that should be held in check.

Fascism is also typified by totalitarian attempts to impose state control over all aspects of life: political, social, cultural, and economic which accurately describes what was passed off under the name of Communism.

The fascist state regulates and controls (as opposed to nationalizing) the means of production. Fascism exalts the nation, state, or race as superior to the individuals, institutions, or groups composing it. Fascism uses explicit populist rhetoric; calls for a heroic mass effort to restore past greatness; and demands loyalty to a single leader, often to the point of a cult of personality. Again, we see that Fascism was passed off as Communism.

So, what actually seems to have happened is that the original ideals of the proletariat were cleverly subsumed to State corporatism. Most people in the west are not aware of this because of the Western propaganda against Communism.

The word "Fascist" has become a slur throughout the world since the stunning failure of the Axis powers in World War II. In contemporary political discourse, adherents of some political ideologies tend to associate fascism with their enemies, or define it as the opposite of their own views. There are no major self-described fascist parties or organizations anywhere in the world. However, at the present time, in the U.S., the system is far more Fascist than Democratic which probably explains the existence of the years of anti-Communist propaganda. That would demonstrate an early process of ponerization of Western democracy which, at present, has almost completed the transformation to full-blown Fascism.

Lobaczewski wrote:

For future reference, let us remember: ideologies do not need spellbinders. Spellbinders need ideologies in order to subject them to their own deviant goals.

On the other hand, the fact that some ideology degenerated along with its corollary social movement, later succumbing to this schizophrenia and serving goals which the originators of the ideology would have abhorred, does not prove that it was worthless, false, and fallacious from the start. Quite the contrary: it rather appears that under certain historical conditions, the ideology of any social movement, even if it is sacred truth, can yield to the ponerization process.

A given ideology may have contained weak spots, created by the errors of human thought and emotion within; or it may, during the course of its history, become infiltrated by more primitive foreign material which can contain ponerogenic factors. Such material destroys an ideology's internal homogeny. The source of such infection by foreign ideological material may be the ruling social system with its laws and customs based on a more primitive tradition, or an imperialistic system of rule. It may be, of course, simply another philosophical movement often contaminated by the eccentricities of its founder, who considers the facts to blame for not conforming to his dialectical construct.

The Roman Empire, including its legal system and paucity of psychological concepts, similarly contaminated the primary homogeneous idea of Christianity. Christianity had to adapt to coexistence with a social system wherein "dura lex sed lex" , rather than an understanding of human beings, decided a person's fate; this then led to the corruption of attempting to reach the goals of the "Kingdom of God" by means of Roman imperialistic methods.

The greater and truer the original ideology, the longer it may be capable of nourishing and disguising from human criticism that phenomenon which is the product of the specific degenerative process. In a great and valuable ideology, the danger for small minds is hidden; they can become the factors of such preliminary degeneration, which opens the door to invasion by pathological factors.

Thus, if we intend to understand the secondary ponerization process and the kinds of human associations which succumb to it, we must take great care to separate the original ideology from its counterpart, or even caricature, created by the ponerogenic process. Abstracting from any ideology, we must, by analogy, understand the essence of the process itself, which has its own etiological causes which are potentially present in every society, as well as characteristic developmental patho-dynamics.

The Ponerization Process

Observation of the ponerization processes of various human unions throughout history easily leads to the conclusion that the initial step is a moral warping of the group's ideational contents.

In analyzing the contamination of a group's ideology, we note first of all an infiltration of foreign, simplistic, and doctrinaire contents, thereby depriving it of any healthy support for, and trust in, the necessity of understanding of human nature. This opens the way for invasion by pathological factors and the ponerogenic role of their carriers.

So, are they "useful idiots" or conscious agents?

We don't know. What we can know is that taking their simplistic and doctrinaire paramoralisms as truth is setting a dangerous example.

Lobaczewski wrote:

The example of the Roman legal system vis a vis early Christianity mentioned above, is a case in point. The Roman imperial and legal civilization was overly attached to matter and law, and created a legal system that was too rigid to accommodate any real aspects of psychological and spiritual life. This "earthy" foreign element infiltrated Christianity resulting in the Catholic church adopting Imperial strategies to enforce its system on others by violence.

This fact could justify the conviction of moralists that maintaining a union's ethical discipline and ideational purity is sufficient protection against derailing or hurtling into an insufficiently comprehended world of error. Such a conviction strikes a ponerologist as a unilateral oversimplification of an eternal reality which is more complex. After all, the loosening of ethical and intellectual controls is sometimes a consequence of the direct or indirect influence of the omnipresent factors of the existence of deviants in any social group, along with some other non-pathological human weaknesses.

Sometime during life, every human organism undergoes periods during which physiological and psychological resistance declines, facilitating development of bacteriological infection within.

Similarly, a human association or social movement undergoes periods of crisis which weaken its ideational and moral cohesion. This may be caused by pressure on the part of other groups, a general spiritual crisis in the environment, or intensification of its hysterical condition. Just as more stringent sanitary measures are an obvious medical indication for a weakened organism, the development of conscious control over the activity of pathological factors is a ponerological indication. This is a crucial factor for prevention of tragedy during a society's periods of moral crisis.

For centuries, individuals exhibiting various psychological anomalies have had the tendency to participate in the activities of human unions. This is made possible on the one hand by such group's weaknesses, i.e. failure in adequate psychological knowledge; on the other hand, it deepens the moral failings and stifles the possibilities of utilizing healthy common sense and understanding matters objectively. In spite of the resulting tragedies and unhappiness, humanity has shown a certain progress, especially in the cognitive area; therefore, a ponerologist may be cautiously optimistic. After all, by detecting and describing these aspects of the ponerization process of human groups, which could not be understood until recently, we shall be able to counteract such processes earlier and more effectively. Again, depth and breadth of knowledge of human psychological variations is crucial.

Any human group affected by the process described herein is characterized by its increasing regression from natural common sense and the ability to perceive psychological reality. Someone considering this in terms of traditional categories might consider it an instance of "turning into half-wits" or the development of intellectual deficiencies and moral failings. A ponerological analysis of this process, however, indicates that pressure is being applied to the more normal part of the association by pathological factors present in certain individuals who have been allowed to participate in the group because the lack of good psychological knowledge has not madated their exclusion.

Thus, whenever we observe some group member being treated with no critical distance, although he betrays one of the psychological anomalies familiar to us, and his opinions being treated as at least equal to those of normal people, although they are based on a characteristically different view of human matters, we must derive the conclusion that this human group is affected by a ponerogenic process and if measures are not taken the process shall continue to its logical conclusion. We shall treat this in accordance with the above described first criterion of ponerology, which retains its validity regardless of the qualitative and quantitative features of such a union: the atrophy of natural critical faculties with respect to pathological individuals becomes an opening to their activities, and, at the same time, a criterion for recognizing the association in concern as ponerogenic.

Such a state of affairs simultaneously consists as a liminal (watershed) situation, whereupon further damage to people's healthy common sense and critical moral faculties becomes ever easier. Once a group has inhaled a sufficient dose of pathological material to give birth to the conviction that these not-quite-normal people are unique geniuses, it starts subjecting its more normal members to pressure characterized by corresponding paralogical and paramoral elements.

For many people, such pressure of collective opinion takes on attributes of a moral criterion; for others, it represents a kind of psychological terror ever more difficult to endure. The phenomenon of counter-selection thus occurs in this phase of ponerization: individuals with a more normal sense of psychological reality leave after entering into conflict with the newly modified group; simultaneously, individuals with various psychological anomalies join the group and easily find a way of life there. The former feel "pushed into counter-revolutionary positions", and the latter can afford to remove their masks of sanity ever more often.

People who have been thus thrown out of a ponerogenic association because they were too normal suffer bitterly; they are unable to understand their specific state. Their ideal, the reason they joined the group, which constituted a part of the meaning of life for them, has now been degraded, although they cannot find a rational basis for this fact. They feel wronged; they "fight against demons" they are not in a position to identify. The fact is their personalities have already been modified to a certain extent due to saturation by abnormal psychological material, especially psychopathic material. They easily fall into the opposite extreme in such cases, because unhealthy emotions rule their decisions. What they need is good psychological information in order to find the path of reason and measure. Based on a ponerologic understanding of their condition, psychotherapy could provide rapid positive results. However, if the union they left is succumbing to deep ponerization, a threat looms over them: they may become the objects of revenge, since they have "betrayed" a magnificent ideology.

This is the stormy period of a group's ponerization, followed by a certain stabilization in terms of contents, structure, and customs. Rigorous selective measures of a clearly psychological kind are applied to new members. So as to exclude the possibility of becoming sidetracked by defectors, people are observed and tested to eliminate those characterized by excessive mental independence or psychological normality. The new internal function created is something like a "psychologist", and it doubtless takes advantage of the above-described psychological knowledge collected by psychopaths.

It should be noted that certain of these exclusionary steps taken by a group in the process of ponerization, should have been taken against deviants by the ideological group in the beginning. So rigorous selective measures of a psychological kind taken by a group is not necessarily an indicator that the group is ponerogenic. Rather one should carefully examine what the psychological selection is based on. If any group seeks to avoid ponerization, it will want to exclude individuals with any psychological dependence on subjective beliefs, rites, rituals, drugs, and certainly those individuals that are incapable of objectively analyzing their own inner psychological content or who reject the process of Positive disintegration.

In a group in the process of ponerization, spellbinders take care of "ideological purity". The leader's position is relatively secure. Individuals manifesting doubt or criticism are subject to paramoral condemnation.

Maintaining the utmost dignity and style, leadership discusses opinions and intentions which are psychologically and morally pathological. Any intellectual connections which might reveal them as such are eliminated, thanks to the substitution of premises operating in the proper subconscious process on the basis of prior conditioned reflexes. An objective observer might wish to compare this state to one in which the inmates of an asylum take over the running of the institution. The association enters the state wherein the whole has donned the mask of ostensible normality. In the next chapter, we shall call such a state the "dissimulative phase" with regard to macrosocial ponerogenic phenomena.

Observing the appropriate state corresponding to the first ponerological criterion - the atrophy of natural critical faculties with respect to pathological individuals - requires skillful psychology and specific factual knowledge; the second, more stable phase can be perceived both by a person of average reason and by public opinion in most societies. The interpretation imposed, however, is unilaterally moralistic or sociological, simultaneously undergoing the characteristic feeling of deficiency as regards the possibility of both understanding the phenomenon and counteracting the spread of said evil.

However, in this phase a minority of social groups tend to consider such a ponerogenic association comprehensible within the categories of their own world view and the outer layer of diffusing ideology as a doctrine acceptable to them. The more primitive the society in question, and the further removed from direct contact to the union affected by this pathological state, the more numerous such minorities would be. This very period, during which the customs of the union become somewhat milder, often represents simultaneously its most intensive expansionist activity.

This period may last long, but not forever. Internally, the group is becoming progressively more pathological, finally showing its true qualitative colors again as its activities become ever clumsier. At this point, a society of normal people can easily threaten ponerologic associations, even at the macrosocial level.

Again: "The only thing necessary for the takeover of the 911 Truth Movement by Fascist agents of CoIntelPro is for the members of that movement to NOT expose such agents when and if they spot them, and for the movement as a whole to utilize the most careful hygiene in keeping itself clean of pathological elements."

This is NOT a game, people.

The oil trade is uneasy about the increasing impossibility of reinvesting the petrodollars they are accumulating, whereas the bank world is pondering over the dollar's real value. A downturn in trade has just begun on the stock exchanges of the Gulf, even as the Asian Development Bank was warning its members against a possible collapse of the US currency. What if the dollar was really no longer anything but fiat money?

For several months a lively debate has been developing within international financial circles: is the dollar so overvalued as to be at risk of a brutal collapse, on the order of 15 to 40% depending on the commentator? The controversy is kept alive by a disputed rumour whereby some oil contracts might be on the verge of being converted from dollars into euros. This, in turn, would spawn a depreciation of the US currency.

Until now, official statements on this issue seemed to belong to the realm of psychological warfare between rival powers. As such, they were subject to question. But suddenly, on March 28th, 2006, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) chose to put its credibility at stake among its members by issuing a memo advising them to be ready for a collapse of the dollar.

In the same note, the ADB specifies that there is a certain degree of uncertainty as to whether this might happen or not, but that the immediate consequences would be severe if it were to happen [1]. The ADB is already in the process of working on the creation of a regional alternative to the dollar - the ACU, a basket of currencies modelled on the principles of the European ECU.

The ADB was founded as an institution by sixty-four national states. Contrary to what its name might otherwise suggest, its member states are not only countries from Asia and the Pacific Rim, but also countries from the South Sea Islands, North America and Europe (including France, Belgium and Switzerland). It is controlled in equal parts by Japan and the USA, owning 15% each. This makes the ADB's warning of an impending monetary turmoil all the more significant.

In spite of being located in Asia, the countries of the Persian Gulf are not members of the ADB. Six of them have preferred to set up their own regional organization, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). They are actively putting efforts into bringing their economies closer together with the aim of creating a single currency on the model of the euro. The project's aim is not to give in to the fads of our time; rather, it is a response to a particular need. These countries' oil reserves are declining [2] and, accordingly, there is no question of their reinvesting their petrodollars into the development and modernisation of their oil infrastructure - only maintenance needs to be taken care of. They only want to reinvest their dollars in the US, or to convert them into other currencies in order to reinvest them in other countries. In the latter case, the conversion of such large monetary assets would have dramatic consequences on the dollar and on the US economy.

Thus, everyone is looking for a solution to the problem that is agreeable to all parts involved. Yet, the US, which produces increasingly fewer consumer goods, is in need of extensive and highly lucrative investments in order to expand its imports of manufactured goods from China. This is why the Gulf states have resolved, on the one hand, to endow themselves with the world's most impressive air cargo fleet and, on the other hand, to buy and develop the six largest commercial ports in the US. This was a convenient solution for the Bush administration, which was already working together with the United Arab Emirate consortium Dubai Ports World, whose Jebel Ali shipping terminal serves as a hub for the flow of military cargo towards Afghanistan and Iraq.

Nevertheless, US congressmen, who believe in those Bush administration fairy tales that characterize all muslims as terrorists, have been frightened by the idea of surrendering their ports to Dubai Ports World. In the name of their national security phantasms, they have demanded that the consortium's assets be relinquished to a US group that would manage them on behalf of the Emirates - a scheme which, needless to say, was bound to be rejected by the latter, as they would stand to lose most of the return on their investment and perhaps even the whole of it at some point in the future.

Oil traders are increasingly reluctant to entrust investment funds with their money. They know that international accounting standards have been modified in such a manner that nowadays, both national states and multinational corporations have assets they do not own entered in their balance-sheets. The shares they hold are being posted in their accounting, not at the purchase price, but at the actual stock quotation. While this is of no consequence at times when markets are on the rise, it will prove fatal in the case of a stock market crash. From one day to the next, central banks and major corporations could find themselves completely ruined.

The Gulf countries, therefore, are trying as a matter of course to invest their money in Europe. This should lead them to converting their dollars into euros, to the USA's great detriment. In this context, Sultan Al Suweidi, the governor of the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, has announced on March 22nd, 2006 that he was considering the conversion into euros of 10% of the bank's dollar reserves, and his Saudi counterpart, Saud Al Sayyari, publicly condemned the decision of the US House of Representatives in the Dubai Ports World affair [3].

These decisions are being taken even as some of the oil-producing countries, with whom Washington has entered into a state of latent conflict, are in the process of diverting their capital flows to invest them outside of the dollar zone. This is the case of Syria, which has gradually been converting its reserves into euros during the past two years [4]. It is also the case of the recent rapprochement between Venezuela and the Vatican Bank for the purpose of exchanging the oil-producing country's dollars, mainly into euros and Chinese yuan.

Above all, this could well be the case with Iran. As a matter of fact, rumours are multiplying that the Islamic Republic is about to open an oil exchange in euros [5]. This project, announced for March, has not yet seen the light of day, and has been called propaganda by numerous commentators. We have attempted to verify its existence with the authorities in Tehran. At first, they refused to either confirm or deny the information, but later, special advisor to Iran's Oil Minister Mohammad Asemipur declared that the project would be brought to completion in spite of the typical delays when realizing this type of endeavour [6]. The Oil Bourse in euros will be established on Kish, a small island in the Persian Gulf turned by Iran into a free trade zone. Oil corporations TotalFinaElf (France) et Agip (Italy) have already set up their regional headquarters on Kish.

Be that as it may, the Bourse will only handle a small portion of Iran's energy markets. Substantial contracts have already been signed between national states: with China for the sale of crude oil [7], and with Indonesia for oil refining [8].

To counter this activity, Washington is betting on natural gas, the role of which, as we all know, is bound to be strengthened by the growing scarcity of oil. The Bush administration has encouraged Qatar - which hosts CENTCOM, the US Central Command's Deployable Headquarters and which holds the world's third largest reserves of natural gas - to lay the foundations for a gigantic "Energy City". $2.6 bn. are to be invested for the purpose of attracting the energy market's global actors to a gas exchange in dollars [9]. Microsoft has already offered to provide for the bourse's electronic brokerage infrastructure.

For his part, Norwegian Bourse director Sven Arild Andersen is studying the possibility of creating an oil exchange priced in euros in his country, which would compete advantageously with the City of London [10]. As a matter of fact, as British oil production is slumping (minus 8% in 2005), the weight of the City's influence is appearing increasingly disproportionate.

The ADB warning of a pending monetary turmoil will undoubtedly bring about a hastening of all this large-scale scheming. Independent of the oil trade's reasoning with regard to the possibilities of reinvesting petrodollars, the banking sector is also concerned with the real value of today's dollar.

One might remember that the US were not able to finance their war effort in Vietnam for very long. Mired in a conflict without end, they resolved to let their allies bear the brunt of the situation, and, in 1971, they stopped guaranteeing their currency's gold convertibility. From then on, its value has only been resting on the confidence placed in it. The dollar is no longer supported by the economy of the issuing country, but by the economies of those utilizing dollar reserves; banks, however, are able to verify the currency's adequacy using the M-3, an annual indicator which establishes the volume of greenbacks in circulation. Presently, the USA is bogged down in Iraq and is incapable of financing its military occupation there. The only way it can pay its suppliers is to keep the printing press running. The announcement, late in March 2006, that the publication of the M-3 indicator would be suspended, together with all the sub-indicators which could have made feasible its reconstruction by aggregates, means that the actual volume of dollars in circulation has become a secret that cannot be divulged. It is no longer possible to precisely evaluate the currency's real value.

Through a cascading effect, the US are also concealing the costs of their presence in Iraq in order to hide the size of the fraud they are committing.

Refusing to cover up for an escapist monetary policy which sooner or later is bound to lead to a catastrophe comparable to 1929, several senior officials of the FED, the US Federal Reserve, have tendered their resignations [11].

In an interview to the German weekly Der Spiegel, Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics Joseph Stiglitz has estimated the real budget of the US war effort in Iraq to be in range of $1 to $2 trillion over the first four years [12], in other words two to four times higher than the official figures. The hidden part of the war budget thus stands at $500 billion to $1.5 trillion. This sum, if it were to be publicly accounted for, would have to be added to the US public deficit, which is already soaring at over $400 billion per year. It is being absorbed by the printing of worthless paper dollars. In a true market economy, this use of the Mint would lead to a corresponding depreciation of the currency.

For the past three weeks, signs of a bear market have begun to make their appearance on the Gulf Bourses [13]. From now on, any political crisis could trigger a panic on the international markets.

Read Original Here

[1] "Asia must prepare for dollar collapse", Al Jazeera with AFP, March 28, 2006.
[2] For further details on the "oil peak" phenomenon, see "The Power of Oil in the 21st Century", by Arthur Lepic and Jack Naffair, Voltaire, May 10, 2004.
[3] "UAE, Saudi considering to move reserves out of dollar", Middle East Forex News, March 22nd, 2006.
[4] "Syria switches from dollars to euros", Associated Press, February 14th, 2006.
[5] "L'Iran va lancer une place d'échanges pétroliers alternative... en euros", Voltaire, February 10th, 2005.
[6] "Iranian oil exchange is 'on hold' ", by Jim Willie, Kitco, March 21st, 2006.
[7] See in particular "Iran allies with China to face the United States", Voltaire, November 17th, 2004 and "The India-Iran Alliance", Voltaire, February 17th, 2005.
[8] "Indonesia, Iran to sign multi-billion-dollar investment deal in refinery", Xinhuanet via Tehran Times, March 14th, 2006.
[9] "Qatar to build 'Energy city'", Emirates News Agency, May 5th, 2005.
[10] "Norwegian Bourse Director wants oil bourse - priced in Euros", by Laila Bakken and Petter Halvorsen, NRK via Energy Bulletin, December 27th, 2005.
[11] "Is the federal reserve preparing for Iran?", by Robert McHugh, February 26th, 2006.
[12] "The War Is Bad for the Economy", Der Spiegel, April 5th, 2006.
[13] " Black Tuesday : Mideast stock markets nosedive ", Middle East Online, March 14th, 2006.