What happened to the general up and down, back and forth, flow of events, both good and bad, that used to be our daily fare? It used to be possible to read the news and the good news somehow was able to counterbalance the bad news. Yes, there were evil things afoot, but there were also good things in the works.
And it wasn't just denial of the bad things either. There used to be serious groups working for peace and global understanding and betterment who were actually making progress even if they did have to fight for every step forward against corporations only out for money or against corrupt government power fiends. Nowadays, the news is almost unrelentingly horrible and the only "good news" seems to be from delusional characters who are paid to propagandize, trying to convince all of us that black is white and sour is sweet.
I don't know about you, but as bad as it might have been under the surface or behind the scenes, I want the old days back... the days before George W. Bush was appointed to a presidency he did not win. Since George Bush was hoisted to the highest office in the land, everything has gone downhill like nuclear train.
I mean, just take a look at some of the stories headlines here - just a few out of a much larger selection:
Shi'ite militia, insurgents clash in Baghdad
Ten imams murdered in Iraq as sectarian killings intensify :
Dozens of Mosques Attacked, Over 100 Dead, Thousands Protest :
Ted Koppel in 'NYT': Iraq for U.S. Is 'About the Oil' :
Germany admits its spies helped US in Iraq war:
Taleban kill four Afghan soldiers in ambush:
Further Evidence That Senior Officials Approved Abuse of Prisoners at Guantánamo :
Blair condones Amin-style tactics against terrorism, says Archbishop:
Balata Refugee Camp under invasion again :
Car bombers attack Saudi oil plant:
Emergency declared in Philippines:
Venezuela cuts US airline flights :
Venezuelan-Owned Citgo Faces Congressional Inquiry For Offering Discounted Oil to U.S. Poor
A Global Infrastructure for Mass Surveillance :
UAE terminal takeover extends to 21 ports:
Watchdog Group Questions 2004 Fla. Vote :
To combat hunger, more in US turn to soup kitchens:
Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Iran, Venezuela, Philippines, people in the US being spied on and going hungry while their president steals their money to give to his pals to bomb more people and stir up more violence, so he has to take more money to give to his friends to bomb more people and citizens of the US keep sliding further and further into poverty and despair.
What the HELL is going on? Four and a half years ago the world was not like this! I could read the news without feeling like the ground was being snatched from under my feet! I could read the news and not wonder who was going to bomb who first and who was going to nuke who first. Sure, there were problems - mostly caused by subversive Intell agencies trying to manipulate the global players into position so that what is being done today COULD be done, but at least they were being partly contained by actions from those seeking peace and stability. In four and a half years, we've gone from the point where postive changes could have taken the world in an entirely different direction, to a point where it looks like the days of this civilization are, indeed, numbered.
It all started when George Bush stole his first election.
Last night, my mother called. She's 84 years old, lives in a retirement village, and she tells me that nearly ALL her neighbors talk about it, that Bush is not even the legal president of the US, and what's more, he's nothing but a psychopathic liar. Naturally, the older generation are more than a little hostile, being on the "receiving" end of many of Bush's social service cutbacks to save money to make more war.
Getting back to the news that I wish I didn't have to read: here's something that really raised the hair on the back of my neck. Fear, the Mother of Violence:
So regardless of the mechanism, if the grim reaper's shadow is cast, the collective mind should begin to exhibit fear proportional to the magnitude of the menace. This should be revealed first in the markets.Now, this is a website about economics, about INVESTING, for God's sake! And what do they say? They are reading signs in the financial markets that predict "a catastrophic burst in the global bubble in human capital." The guy is absolutely spot on in using market trend analysis on human populations and that leads us almost to the core of the problem: why does it take a market analyst to see what's going on? Why aren't scientists in disciplines that we might expect to know these things telling us that there is a big problem on our planet and it's getting ready to go nuclear? More than that, why couldn't they predict it and thereby help to prevent it?
My past writings have been guided by Kondratieff. Those of us that have correctly used the long cycle to strategically manage our investments and our lives have done quite well. But the recent run up in precious metals has surprised most analysts and investors with uncharacteristic signs of strength.[...]... gold reaching parity with the Dow would be at the lower end of the range of probable outcomes. Nearly all scenarios for gold above this level include a significant role by the horsemen in reducing excess human capital.[...]
So the action in precious metals may become more important as a prophet of obscene events than for the realization of obscene profits. Much is being revealed and it will be prudent for us all to adjust our strategies for life accordingly.
For a hundred years or so, so-called "Liberals" have been talking about birth-control, population management, ecological management, and a whole host of Environmental issues that have been fought tooth and nail by a minority of people in positions of power. Why? Are they really that stupid that they didn't foresee the results of their actions?
No, the problem is actually quite different: it is a consequence of not only dumbing down the population so that they can be controlled, it has been a process of dumbing down even those who are supposed to be well-educated so that those who are greedy for power and control can get and hold it.
"In all times, and in all places, those who are at the top of the heap will do whatever is necessary to stay at the top of the heap." (Richard Dolan)Four and a half years ago, right at the time of the bogus Muslim Terrorist Attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon (in which the current Administration was obviously complicit), we were attacked by a cyberthug who seemed to be just a disgruntled opportunist, a grifter. As a result of this relentles, ongoing attack that seemed to have a lot more behind it than just a guy who wanted to take us for our money and who was blocked from his objective, we began to do research. That research eventually led to our work in Psychopathy which has become a central feature of our message to humanity. It is central for a very good reason as we were to learn eventually from others who had, under similar circumstances, undertaken similar studies.
Last year, we were contacted by a clinical psychologist who is possibly the last remaining member of that earlier research team that was able - at great peril - to study the same phenomenon the world faces today from the "inside," so to say. They had, as their subjects, both the German Nazi and Soviet Communist Regimes. The parallels between those regimes and the current Neocon Administration in the US are legion. What is more, the parallels between the reactions of the global community at large vis a vis what is happening in the US and what happened in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia are also striking. We now come to the crux of the problem and I will quote Andrez Lobaczewski here:
When I came to the West, I met people with leftist [liberal] attitudes who unquestioningly believed that communist countries existed in more or less the form expounded by American political doctrines. These persons were almost certain that psychology and psychiatry must enjoy freedom in those countries referred to as communist...What Lobaczewski has described is the US' infamous Counter Intelligence Program, even though he was referring more specifically to the Nazi and Soviet variations.
When I contradicted them, they refused to believe me and kept asking why, why isn't it like that? What can politics have to do with psychiatry? ...
The situation in these scientific areas, of social and curative activities, and of the people occupied in these matters, can only be comprehended once we have perceived the true nature of pathocracy...
Let us thus imagine something which is only possible in theory, namely, that a country under pathocratic rule is inadvertently allowed to freely develop these sciences, enabling a normal influx of scientific literature and contacts with scientists in other countries. Psychology, psychopathology, and psychiatry would flourish abundantly and produce outstanding representatives. What would it result in?
This accumulation of proper knowledge would, within a short time, enable undertaking investigations... Missing elements and insufficiently investigated questions would be complemented and deepened by means of the appropriate detailed research. The diagnosis of the state of affairs would then be elaborated within the first dozen or so years of the formation of pathocracy, especially if the latter is imposed. The basis of the deductive rationale would be significantly wider than anything the author can present here, and would be illustrated by means of a rich body of analytical and statistical material.
Once transmitted to world opinion, such a diagnosis would quickly become incorporated into it, forcing naive political and propaganda doctrines out of societal consciousness. It would reach nations who are the objects of the pathocratic empire's expansionist intentions. This would render the usefulness of any ideology as a pathocratic Trojan horse doubtful at best.
In spite of differences among them, countries with normal human systems would be united by characteristic solidarity in the defense of an already understood danger, similar to the solidarity linking normal people living under pathocratic rule.
This consciousness, popularized in the countries affected by this phenomenon, would simultaneously reinforce psychological resistance on the part of normal human societies and furnish them with new measures of self defense. Can any pathocratic empire risk permitting such a possibility?
In times when the above-mentioned disciplines are developing swiftly in many countries, the problem of preventing such a psychiatric threat becomes a matter of to be or not to be for pathocracy. Any possibility of such a situation's emerging must thus be staved off prophylactically and skillfully, both within and without the empire. At the same time, the empire is able to find effective preventive measures thanks to its consciousness of being different as well as that specific psychological knowledge of psychopaths with which we are already familiar, partially reinforced by academic knowledge.
Both inside and outside the boundaries of countries affected by the above-mentioned phenomenon, a purposeful and conscious system of control, terror, and diversion is thus set to work. Any scientific papers publishing under such governments or imported from abroad must be monitored to ascertain that they do not contain data which could be harmful to the pathocracy.
Specialists with superior talent become the objects of blackmail and malicious control. This of course causes the results to become inferior with reference to these areas of science.
The entire operation must of course be managed in such a way as to avoid attracting the attention of public opinion in countries with normal human structures. The effects of such a bad break could be too far-reaching. This explains why people caught doing investigative work in this area are destroyed without a sound and suspicious persons are forced abroad to become the objects of appropriately organized harassment campaigns there.
Battles are thus being fought on secret fronts which may be reminiscent of the Second World War. The soldiers and leaders fighting in various theaters were not aware that their fate depended on the outcome of that other war, waged by scientists and other soldiers, whose goal was preventing the Germans from producing the atom bomb. The Allies won this battle, and the United States became the first to possess this lethal weapon.
For the present, [1980s] however, the West keeps losing scientific and political battles on this new secret front. Lone fighters are looked upon as odd, denied assistance, or forced to work hard for their bread. Meanwhile, the ideological Trojan horse keeps invading new countries.
An examination of the methodology of such battles, both on the internal and the external fronts, points to that specific pathocratic self-knowledge so difficult to comprehend [by normal people].
In order to be able to control people and those relatively non-popularized areas of science, one must know or be able to sense what is going on and which fragments of psychopathology are most dangerous. The examiner of this methodology thus also becomes aware of the boundaries and imperfections of this self-knowledge and practice, i.e. the other side's weaknesses, errors, and gaffes, and may manage to take advantage of them.
In nations with pathocratic systems, supervision over scientific and cultural organizations is assigned to a special department of especially trusted people, a Nameless Office composed almost entirely of relatively intelligent persons who betray characteristic psychopathic traits. These people must be capable of completing their academic studies, albeit sometimes by forcing examiners to issue generous evaluations. Their talents are usually inferior to those of average students, especially regarding psychological science. In spite of that, they are rewarded for their services by obtaining academic degrees and positions and are allowed to represent their country's scientific community abroad.
As especially trusted individuals, they are allowed to not participate in local meetings of the party [in power], or to even avoid joining it entirely. [Or being publicly associated.] In case of need, they might then pass for non-party.
In spite of that, these scientific and cultural superintendents are well-known to the society of normal people...
We often meet with such people abroad, where various foundations and institutes give them scientific grants with the conviction that they are thereby assisting the development of proper knowledge... These benefactors do not realize that they are rendering a disservice to such science and to real scientists by allowing the supervisors to attain a certain semi-authentic authority, and by allowing them to become more familiar with whatever they shall later deem to be dangerous.
After all, those people shall later have the power to permit someone to take a doctorate, embark upon a scientific career, achieve academic tenure, and become promoted.
Very mediocre scientists themselves, they attempt to knock down more talented persons, governed both by self-interest and that typical jealousy which characterizes a pathocrat's attitude toward normal people. They will be the ones monitoring scientific papers for their proper ideology and attempting to ensure that a good specialist will be denied the scientific literature he needs.
Controls are exceptionally malicious and treacherous in the above-mentioned psychological sciences in particular, for reasons now understandable to us. Written and unwritten lists are compiled for subjects that may not be taught, and corresponding directives are issued to appropriately distort other subjects. This list is so vast in the area of psychology that nothing remains of this science except a skeleton picked bare of anything that might be subtle or penetrating.
A psychiatrist's required curriculum contains neither the minimal knowledge from the areas of general, developmental, and clinical psychology, nor the basic skills in psychotherapy. Thanks to such a state of affairs, the most mediocre or privileged of physicians become a psychiatrist after a course of study lasting only weeks. This opens the door to psychiatric careers to individuals who are by nature inclined to serving such an authority, and it has fateful repercussions upon the level of the treatment. It later permits psychiatry to be abused for purposes for which it should never be used.
Since they are undereducated, these psychologists then prove helpless in the face of many human problems, especially in cases where detailed knowledge is needed. Such knowledge must then be acquired on one's own, a feat not everyone is able to manage.
Such behavior carries in its wake a good deal of damage and human injustice in areas of life which have nothing whatsoever to do with politics. Unfortunately, however, such behavior is necessary from the pathocrat's point of view in order to prevent these dangerous sciences from jeopardizing the existence of a system they consider the best of all possible worlds.
Specialists in the areas of psychology and psychopathology would find an analysis of this system of prohibitions and recommendations to be highly interesting. This makes it possible to realize that this may be one of the roads via which we can reach the crux of the matter or the nature of this macrosocial phenomenon. The prohibitions engulf depth psychology, the analysis of the human instinctive substratum, together with analysis of man's dreams.
Now, let me give a specific example of how this lack of good scientific knowledge has created the environment in which such creatures as the Neocons and friends can come to power and do what they are doing. Yesterday, a member of the Signs Forum posted as follows:
I recently bought a copy of Maxim's magazine for an article it had on 911, which included the Pentagon Strike flash video. I didn't see this on SotT, but I could have missed it. If not, below is the article. Some friends saw me with the magazine and poked fun, not believing that I really 'bought it for an article'. For those not familiar with Maxim, it's better known for it's pictorials of women with few articles of clothes than for its articles covering the skinny.The poster then included the Maxim article from which I will only extract a few excerpts. Visit the forum to read the entire post.
I found a description of the Maxim audience in the below article:The American Observer
Reading between the Lines
Traditional Men's Magazines take cues from British competition.
By Eric Kay
New magazines make waves in the industry
This new breed of men's magazines, known for covers featuring scantily-clothed women and light pieces on alcohol consumption, sex and pop culture, are referred to as laddies. Maxim, the most popular of the laddies came onto the scene in 1997 and drastically altered the landscape.
With a circulation of 12.8 million, more than double GQ's and Esquire's, Maxim has forced the traditional men's magazines to make changes and incorporate certain successful laddie elements.
The key moment was the arrival of Maxim because it was hugely successful with skimpily-attired women coupled with goofy stuff about beer and marked by having few serious pieces, said Peter Carlson, magazine critic for the Washington Post. So when that formula proved successful, it spawned a lot of imitators and got the attention of GQ, Esquire and Playboy. [...]
9/11 Conspiracy Theories - Stranger Than FictionNotice the not-so-subtle patronizing attitude of this article that is in a magazine with a circulation of almost 13 million (mostly men.) The article then goes on to briefly describe the main "conspiracy theories" about 911, and following each, to suggest the psychological improbability of it.
106 WHAT REALLY BROUGHT DOWN THE TOWERS?
It's four and a half years after 9/11, and there's still much unknown about that day. We examine the theories, from remote-controlled planes to our own government's intentionally letting it all go down, no matter how absurdly bat-s*** crazy they happen to be. ...
On September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center collapsed in an implosion of concrete, flying steel, and human bodies. In Washington, D.C., the Pentagon suffered a giant, blackened gash in a recently renovated section. Meanwhile, United Airline Flight 93 plummeted into a rural Pennsylvania field, killing everyone on board.
Just about everyone agrees on that much. Four years later, a growing and increasingly prominent group of Americans believes that a government conspiracy is the only explanation of "the New Pearl Harbor" that makes any sense. Armed with a spate of books, compelling videos, and a recent high profile ad campaign, the loose community that some call the 9/11 Truth Movement has moved from the shadowy basements of the Internet out into the open. Across the board, the movement operates on the conviction that the U.S. government is keeping the whole truth under wraps. And that it either planned or allowed 9/11 to happen as a pretext for invading Afghanistan and Iraq and rolling back civil liberties at home.
"It's becoming a cause," says Jimmy Walter, the millionaire who runs reopen911.org. Walter is blowing stacks of cash on cable TV spots and full-page ads in The New York Times, plus funding the free distribution of DVDs (more than 365,000 so far, he says), to demand new investigations into the attacks. "It's hard to say it feels good, but it actually does feel good to stand up and be a patriot."
While Walter may be the Truth Movement's most prominent promoter, it's not a one-man crusade: Just check out the six million hits on a google search for "9/11 conspiracy." Or a 2004 CNN.com poll in which 89 percent of respondents said they believe there's a U.S. government cover-up surrounding 9/11.
The surest sign of the conspiracy movement's growing momentum: opposition. Two major magazines, Popular Mechanics and Scientific American, recently devoted features to debunking various 9/11 conspiracy theories. In September 2005, a book by two British journalists, titled 9/11 Revealed, prompted the U.S. State department to post a detailed critique of the authors "absurd, sinister interpretations" on the agency Web site.
"That's the first time the government has ever taken notice of any alternative ideas," says David Ray Griffin, professor emeritus of philosophy at California's Claremont School of Theology, who dropped his respected and prolific scholarly work to write 9/11 conspiracy books (The New Pearl Harbor, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions). "We all thought that was a pretty big step."
In fact, the government had refuted earlier 9/11 rumors. But the movement has an answer for everything. One might ask, for instance, wasn't it the threat of WMDs, not 9/11, that sold the American public on the need for war in Iraq?
"September 11 was very important to Iraq because it squelched domestic dissent," explain Hicks. "They waged the invasion of Iraq on the heels of the Afghanistan invasion, which conveyed the sense that we were unbeatable. You've got to remember the context." In other words, it all fits together - if you listen carefully to the way they tell it.
THEORY #1 There were no suicidal Islamic highjackers. [...]Shane, our forum poster, then commented:
Fuel for the fire: Some say the four 9/11 planes' light passenger loads - the most crowded had 81 aboard while Flight 93 had just 37 - suggest someone deliberately capped ticketing for the four flights. As for the hijackers themselves, conspiracy theorists cite numerous media reports of alleged 9/11 jihadists (or at least Arab dudes with the same names) turning up alive after the attacks.
Believe it or not? To believe this (and many 9/11 conspiracy theories), you have to believe that the government is evil enough to cook up a head-spinningly complicated plot against its own people in its largest city. Once you've made that leap, remote-controlled decoy planes don't seem that far-fetched.
THEORY #2 Explosives - not planes - really brought down the World Trade Center towers. [...]
Fuel for the fire: The implosions were highly unusual, as the magazine Fire Engineering pointed out in 2002. Bringham Young University physics professor Steven Jones, who recently released a scientific paper questioning the cause of the Twin Towers' collapse, notes that even FEMA concluded the official reasons for WTC7's collapse had a low probability of occurrence.
Believe it or not? In Popular Mechanics' anti-conspiracy feature, engineers say steel doesn't need to melt to lose it structural integrity. And for this theory to work, you have to believe that someone could booby-trap some of the world's busiest buildings without anyone noticing.
THEORY #3 American Airlines Flight 77 never crashed into the Pentagon.
The Case: Officially terrorists piloted American Airlines Flight into America's military headquarters. But if you watch Pentagon Strike, a hair-raising video widely circulated on the internet, you see a much different version of events.
Set to a throbbing backbeat of ominous techno, the video fires a barrage of questions and statements aimed at contradicting the accepted story. IN REALITY, A BOEING 757 WAS NEVER FOUND, it says, going on to claim that the debris at the Pentagon shows no evidence that such a massive plane hit the building. AIRPLANE CRASHES LEAVE WRECKAGE, screams one screen shot. Eyewitness quotes scroll over pictures of the buring building, suggesting a small commuter plane...or a missile...or a military jet...or explosives. Why the video asks, did the Feds hustle to clear debris away and seize surveillance film? (The video can be seen at pentagonstrike.co.uk.)
Fuel for the fire: Hani Hanjour, the alleged hijacker pilot, reportedly sucked so bad in lessons that he couldn't safely fly a single-engine Cessna, much less pilot a 155-foot-long Boeing 757 into a 7,000-foot dive, turning 270 degrees into a ground-level target at 530 mph.
Believe it or not? Many eyewitnesses did report a full-size plane, and many in the Truth Movement refute this as the type of wild fantasy that discredits their more reasonable claims.
THEORY #4 OK, maybe Al Qaeda did it. But the government let it happen. [...]
Fuel for the fire: Beside Able Danger, skeptics point to major miscues. On August 6, 2001 President Bush was given a now-infamous intel brief titled Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S., which cited potential hijacking plans. So how off guard, they ask, could the government really have been?
Believe it or not? Obviously someone f***** up. Does this mean 9/11 was deliberately allowed to happed? No. But the fact that, for example, guys like Dick Cheney's indicted ex-chief if staff Scooter Libby, teamed up to write a 2000 report for the Project for the New American Century think tank speculating that a new Pearl Harbor would be needed to rebuild America's defenses gives the theory plenty to go on.
THEORY #5 Someone else did it, but there's too much we don't know.
The case: One of the most common threads of conspiracy holds that some other hostile force either helped Al Qeada with the attacks, failed to warn the U.S., or did the job itself. Suspicions about Pakistani intelligence, the Saudis, Hussein, and others are out there, but suggestions that Israel had a hand in the attacks - or at least knew about them - are most commonplace.
Between May and September 2001, for example, the Feds deported more than 100 young Israelis who earlier in the year had shown up at Drug Enforcement Agency offices, military bases, and agents homes, snooping around under the pretext that they were art students looking to make sales. (The shady kids carried portfolios of shoddy, mass-produces art.) The strange visits occurred around the country, including areas where 9/11 hijackers are thought to have lived. According to a Salon.com report, several of these possible spooks lived just down the block from Mohamed Atta. Did the know something was up?
The most shocking smoking-gun thing we have is the way Israeli intelligence were tracking Atta and were ejected from the U.S. on August 21 for getting too close, says Hicks. It shows the levels of protection Atta had.
Fuel for the fire: Then there's Saudi Arabia, home to most of the hijackers. The U.S. allowed prominent Saudis to scurry home at a time when no commercial planes were flying, a move that still looks either strange or sinister, depending on your point fo view. Meanwhile, Griffen notes allegations that Pakistan - up to its neck in the funding of Afghan jihadist - may have been in contact with Atta.
Believe it or not? Many of these theories stretch the patience of the most credulous. But, dismissing an entire tree for one rotten apple may be rash. For those who simply can't wrap their minds around such an epic deception, many are eager to frame things in a more pragmatic perspective.
Losing a couple of buildings in New York is nothing compared to the global capital at stake, Hicks says. It's like Jack Nicholson and John Hudson in Chinatown. As Jake Gittes, Nicholson asks Hudson, the magnet who's monopolizing L.A.'s water supply, why he's doing it. You've got cars, women, and houses, so why are you doing it? Is it greed or power?' And Hudson has this great pause before he says, The future, Mr. Gittes - it's the future.
There were also some smaller 'mini-articles' within this article. Of interest, below 'Theory #3' was one with David Icke: "David vs. Goliath - Among other things, uber-conspiracy theorists David Icke blames 9/11 on our shape-shifting, reptilian overloards."I still believe that the Pentagon event is the weakest point of the whole 911 operation. Notice that they only have "eyewitnesses," and it is common knowledge in our culture as to how easily eyewitnesses can be "created" or bought. But that's their WHOLE proof... and that says something. Problem is, there are more believable eyewitnesses who tell a different story.
Isn't it interesting that right under the 'Pentagon strike section (where there is no mention of Signs-of-the-times), David Icke is indulged ...as a crackpot.
So if the Maxim reader does do any internet searching of the above and comes across SotT (and according to a 2001 Mediamark research study the average Maxim reader is more internet active than the average American and readers of other men's magazines) they are already likely perverted (discouraged?) with their notions of David Icke, osit. David Icke, You're Not Helping!
I also found it interesting that the 'theory three' section was substantially shorter than the rest, although in reading it, it seemed to me the most powerful; of course it was then discredited as 'wild fantasy'.
I also think that if ALL pressure was brought to bear on this one event, on demanding the surveillance videos be released, that would do the deed. You can talk endlessly about explosives in the WTC, melting point of steel, and on and on. One expert against another. The same with all the other theories. But with the Pentagon, there are surveillance videos that exist and have never been released.
Of course, probably by now, they have been destroyed.
Sometimes I wonder why they didn't have a hollywood studio just create some videos and release them. I guess that is because there are too many independent experts who could take such a video apart if it was faked.
So yeah, the most dangerous part of the whole operation, the weakest point, has to be defended the only way they can defend it: debunking and ridicule. You might even think, based on the way the article is set up, that it is primarily to debunk the Pentagon Strike. And again we notice that the SOTT site is conspicuous by absence of mention. COINTELPRO in action.
Now, let's come back to the "answer" to "Conspiracy Theory # 1" (Geez, it sounds like a game show!) The debunking comment was: "To believe this (and many 9/11 conspiracy theories), you have to believe that the government is evil enough to cook up a head-spinningly complicated plot against its own people in its largest city. Once you've made that leap, remote-controlled decoy planes don't seem that far-fetched."
And that's the core of the problem. Normal human beings, having lived under a regime that has throttled science for over 50 years, particularly the psychological sciences, is incapable of understanding the pathological origins and nature of a Pathocracy. Having been under the control of the ideological vectoring of COINTELPRO and the Scientific Thought Police for over 50 years, a couple of generations of human beings on this planet have grown up completely without any idea or concept of psychological reality.
The problem is, our materialist scientific culture does not readily admit that evil actually exists, per se. Yes, evil plays a part in religious discourse, but even there it is given short shrift as an error or a rebellion that will be corrected at some point in the future, which is discussed in another theological division: eschatology, which is concerned with the final events in history of the world, the ultimate fate of humanity.
There are quite a number of modern psychologists who are actually beginning to move in the direction of what Dr. Lobaczewski said had already been done behind the Iron Curtain many years ago. I have a stack of their books on my desk. Some of them seem to be falling back into the religious perspective simply because they have no other scientific ground on which to stand. I think that is counterproductive. As George K. Simon, Jr., writes in his book In Sheep's Clothing: (HIGHLY recommended)
[W]e've been pre-programmed to believe that people only exhibit problem behaviors when they're troubled inside or anxious about something. We've also been taught that people aggress only when they're attacked in some way. So, even when our gut tells us that somebody is attacking us and for no good reason, we don't readily accept the notion. We usually start to wonder what's bothering the person so badly underneath it all that's making them act in such a disturbing way. We may even wonder what we may have said or done that threatened them. We almost never think that they might be fighting simply to get something, have their way, or gain the upper hand. So, instead of seeing them as merely fighting, we view them as primarily hurting in some way.Robert Hare talks quite a bit about psychopaths in the business world. He points out that, yes, there are many psychopaths who are also "anti-socials" but there seem to be far more of them that would never be classified as anti-social or "sociopathic."
Not only do we often have trouble recognizing the ways people aggress us, but we also have difficulty discerning the distinctly aggressive character of some personalities.
The legacy of Sigmund Freud's work has a lot to do with this. Freud's theories (and the theories of others who built upon his work) heavily influenced the psychology of personality for a long time. Elements of the classical theories of personality found their way into many disciplines other than psychology as well as into many of our social institutions and enterprises. The basic tenets of these theories and their hallmark construct, neurosis, have become fairly well etched in the public consciousness.
Psychodynamic theories of personality tend to view everyone, at least to some degree, as neurotic. Neurotic individuals are overly inhibited people who suffer unreasonable fear (anxiety), guilt and shame when it comes to securing their basic wants and needs. The malignant impact of overgeneralizing Freud's observations about a small group of overly inhibited individuals into a broad set of assumptions about the causes of psychological ill-health in everyone cannot be overstated.[ ]
Therapists whose training overly indoctrinated them in the theory of neurosis, may frame problems presented them incorrectly. They may, for example, assume that a person, who all their life has aggressively pursued independence and demonstrated little affinity for others, must necessarily be compensating for a fear of intimacy. In other words, they will view a hardened fighter as a terrified runner, thus misperceiving the core reality of the situation.[ ]
We need a completely different theoretical framework if we are to truly understand, deal with, and treat the kinds of people who fight too much as opposed to those who cower or run too much.
In a recent paper, "Construct Validity of Psychopathy in a Community Sample: A Nomological Net Approach," Salekin, Trobst, Krioukova, Journal of Personality Disorders, 15(5), 425-441, 2001), the authors state:
In short, if you want to learn about psychopathy, don't read about the criminal types. They are the failures of the taxon, the ones who ended up in jail or psychiatric hospitals."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."
Now, one last quote from another Forum Member, EsoQuest:
Lobaczewski's work is a foundation, and an anchor for understanding the human condition, written not as cold science but from the heart as a testament of evolutionary social necessity. It is not the theory of one person but the results of hard experience in vivo.And so again, we ask for your help. We are working steadily and surely to spread this information to the proper places and people where it can do the most good. I'm sure you can all realize why Cassiopaea and SOTT have been subjected to such vicious, unrelenting attacks for the past four and a half years. Even before we proceeded to study psychopathy, we aimed to study those areas of our reality, including religion and beliefs, that reveal the manipulative and controlling nature of the Pathocrats. For that reason, we were targeted, and each day, there is more and more evidence that this has been deliberate and systematic.
As such, it is a seed that needs to be planted in fertile ground so that it can branch in all manner of domains of social applicability that thirst for its wisdom, although they may not currently know it. Its clarity and coherence brings a real rational calm so that each of us can shake the cobwebs of fear and disinformation. It provides a rational (as opposed to rationalized) reference to start making sense of the chaos, and serves as an attractor for our creative potential.
The real power of this wisdom has not even begun to manifest. Because of Lobaczewski, the suffering of the Stalinist era will not have been in vain. Because of Lobaczewski, we have a concise map that finally grounds us into the reality confronting us, so we may be spared the dangers of being lost in blind alleys. ...
By seriously asking "how can I apply this in my neck of the woods?", creativity is challenged and solutions can begin to germinate for every pathocratic issue in every aspect of our lives. Humans are creative beings, and when creativity is suffocated, freedom is suffocated, and life itself is not far behind.
One thing the pathocrats have provided to otherwise complacent yet healthy individuals is motivation. We are being suffocated and we need to breath. In the past the road to freedom has been through violence, and for the most part this has been a false path. For once, we can chart the road to freedom through the unfathomable (yet often initially hidden) treasures of human creative potential.
Lobaczewski gives us a focus for this simply because it makes blatantly obvious crystal clear sense. This is not an ideology, and does not require leaps of faith. It's right there for the visionary and the pragmatist to creatively forge and temper for each case of social applicability. It is not a revelation in any high and mighty sense, and it is not a bible in any sense. It is simply the manifestation of pure INSIGHT, based on the hard experience of suffering. In this age of confusion, such objective insight is what we direly need. ...
One thing I believe we have to consider, however, is that psychopaths in all areas of society are seriously allergic to even the mention of such solutions. They can smell anti-pathocratic solutions a mile away. When Zbigniew Brzezinski got wind of Lobaczewski's work, he tried not only to stifle it, considering it dangerous, but apparently gave it to think tanks so they could find a way to undermine any potential ponerologic movements.
In my view, the bottom up propagation of ponerologic principles means that the top should be the last to know that these principles are being applied, unless one is sure that there are those in top positions who are anti-pathocratic. [T]here are too many programs in all areas of society that simply do not make rational sense without the ponerologic angle.
Simply put, pathocrats are not rational. They can surely fake it, and all deserve Oscar nominations for their performances, but the person behind the mask is not sane, and that insanity is contagious. I have seen it everywhere from universities and research laboratories to the military. The pathocratic pressure from those at the top drives those at the bottom crazy, because the message is ONLY THE INSANE WILL SURVIVE: YOU ARE EITHER WITH US OR AGAINST US!
We have chosen "Big Dick" Cheney as the symbol of all that is wrong in the world today. (Bush is an ignorant puppet, Cheney is a true psychopath.) Each contribution will help us to symbolically and literally send Dick and his kind to the Moon.
I'm tired of reading the news about my world being a powder keg just waiting for someone to casually light the fuse. Four and a half years is enough for me. How about you? Give generously today.. Because the Future is Always Open...
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