Society's ChildS


Eye 2

Best of the Web: Psychopaths in the Gulf

Image
© SOTT.net
We have never faced anything like what we are facing today. Most of us have planned our lives in terms of a world that is quickly disappearing and we have not set new sails based on the prevailing winds that will blow across our future bows. What will surprise most people is the fact that our true enemies are not terrorists in far away countries but psychopaths that walk among us and populate corporate boardrooms, banks and government chambers.

We have not learned what to do about the world's psychopaths so we will see our civilization ripped asunder. Psychopaths and sociopaths have little choice but to hurt others as well as the environment because it is in their very nature to do so. These vicious individuals and the institutions they manage are at war with the peoples of the world and there is little defense against them. The very nature of our civilization encourages these people to seek the pinnacles of power and they certainly found just that inside the oil companies.
They aren't that rare. In fact millions of people are 'psychopathic enough' to destroy other people's lives.
The concept of "corporate psychopaths" is an emerging realization and has been described by Dr. Robert Hare who is a world-renowned psychiatrist and professor at the University of British Columbia. The 2008 Australian documentary, I, Psychopath, points out that the vast majority of psychopaths are not crazed axe murderers: "Most of them function incognito in high-powered professions, all the way to the very top." These are people who have no conscience. They are described as being manipulative, charming, glib, deceptive, parasitic, irresponsible, selfish, callous, promiscuous, impulsive, antisocial, and aggressive. Their main defect - what psychologists call "severe emotional detachment" or a total lack of empathy and remorse - is concealed and harder to describe than the symptoms of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder."

Hourglass

Best of the Web: The Permanent Dehumanizing of Humanity?

Permanent Dehumanizing of Humanity
© Unknown
On the day after Thanksgiving, 2008, a holiday season employee died from asphyxiation when he was trampled by some 2,000 bargain hunters smashing through the doors of a Long Island Wal-Mart store on what is traditionally, and in this case quite appropriately, called Black Friday. A 34-year-old, 6-foot-5, 270-pound giant, Jdimytai Damour had been sent to the vestibule as a crowd control measure because of his size. The throngs, who had had been standing outside or waiting in their cars for the 5 AM opening, and who were in competition with each other to get to the bargains, crumpled a metal portion of the door frame like an accordion as they fought their way into the store. Wal-mart employees scurried atop vending machines to avoid the masses, but Damour was knocked down and trampled while he was trying to shield a pregnant shopper.

Other employees were knocked down as they tried to rescue Damour. Nassau police and paramedics trying to save Damour were also jostled and pushed to the ground. Police and witnesses said shoppers continued to surge inside, simply stepped over Damour, and kept shopping even as the store announced it was closing because of the death. Witness Kimberly Cribbs said "all those people who got in went right on shopping after the worker was run over and was seen gasping for air." Four shoppers, including a woman eight months pregnant, were injured and treated at hospitals.

In the ensuing debate regarding whether Damour's death was a prosecutable crime, experts were divided. "In order to prosecute a homicide, you have to establish that someone caused a death," said one lawyer. "If I stepped on his arm, or chest, or leg, even if you have that on video, how are you going to establish that I caused his death?" [1]

Our moral sense finds this legal argument repugnant, and insists on calling a spade a spade: a man was unnecessarily killed as a result of obsessive consumerism in which human beings acted less than human.

Gold Coins

The Debtors and the Savers - Adjusting our economic concepts

Image
© Unknown
Ever hear the one about the little old lady living in an old but paid-off house, with a shoe box full of gold coins in the basement? Across the street lived a big guy, in a big McMansion. It had a special garage for the RV, and another four-car garage for the other four cars. He had a boat at the side and a trailer with two jet skis in front of the boat. Then one day little old lady noticed big guy was gone. The bank had taken back his house.

Most people thought big guy was rich and little old lady was poor. How wrong most people were.

Tiger's Tail

I watched a pretty forgettable movie the other night on TV. It was just so-so from a film-maker's perspective, but it had at least one redeeming quality from my blog-maker's perspective. It highlighted a point I had been thinking about.

The film is called "The Tiger's Tail", and the basic back story is identical twin brothers that were separated at birth when one was given up for adoption. The adopted brother is destitute when he discovers he has a twin who is a very public multi-millionaire businessman. So, filled with envy and anger over being given up as an infant, he hatches a plan to "steal" his brother's identity and life for just long enough to liquidate his assets and make off with the cash.

Comment: Deprogramming ourselves of concepts/beliefs resulting from generations of life in the "easy money camp" is not easy, and requires much thought and a little rewiring.


Arrow Down

UK: 5-Year-Old Girl is Second Child to be Crushed to Death by Electric Gates in a Week

Image
© Press AssociationFloral tributes are fixed to metal railings where five-year-old Carolena died after she was trapped by an automatic sliding gate outside flats in Bridgend, south Wales
A girl of five has became the second child to die in a week after being trapped by an electric gate.

The youngster, who is Polish and has been named locally as Carolena, became caught in sliding automatic gates outside a block of flats in Bridgend, south Wales.

Paramedics rushed the little girl to the Princess of Wales hospital after the accident on Saturday evening, but she was dead on arrival.

The girl's death comes just seven days after six-year-old Semelia Campbell was killed by a gate in an almost identical tragedy in Moss Side, Manchester.

Carolena's parents were last night too upset to comment at their nearby three-bedroom semi-detached home. But a relative said: 'We're all devastated.'

Attention

US: Illinois Stops Paying Its Bills, but Can't Stop Digging Hole

Image
© Sally Ryan/The New York TimesIllinois Comptroller Daniel W. Hynes. The state faces a deficit of at least $12 billion.
Even by the standards of this deficit-ridden state, Illinois's comptroller, Daniel W. Hynes, faces an ugly balance sheet. Precisely how ugly becomes clear when he beckons you into his office to examine his daily briefing memo.

He picks the papers off his desk and points to a figure in red: $5.01 billion.

"This is what the state owes right now to schools, rehabilitation centers, child care, the state university - and it's getting worse every single day," he says in his downtown office.

Mr. Hynes shakes his head. "This is not some esoteric budget issue; we are not paying bills for absolutely essential services," he says. "That is obscene."

For the last few years, California stood more or less unchallenged as a symbol of the fiscal collapse of states during the recession. Now Illinois has shouldered to the fore, as its dysfunctional political class refuses to pay the state's bills and refuses to take the painful steps - cuts and tax increases - to close a deficit of at least $12 billion, equal to nearly half the state's budget.

Light Sabers

G20 protesters clash with police in Toronto

Toronto demonstrations
© Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press Demonstrators protest near riot police in downtown Toronto on Saturday, June 26, 2010
A roving band of violent G20 protesters is running amok in Toronto's financial district.

The protesters, dressed like the anarchist group Black Bloc, have taken over the streets smashing bank windows as riot police defend Toronto's summit security zone.

Police have moved into the area and are clearing pedestrians from surrounding streets.

Riot police armed with a tear gas cannon and gas masks are holding a line north of the zone.

No Entry

Cyprus probes weapons on Sudan-bound ship

Cyprus bound ship
© unknown
Cyprus has intercepted a vessel carrying military equipment thought to be bound for Sudan, under an arms embargo by the United Nations and the European Union. Authorities said yesterday the Antigua and Barbuda flagged cargo vessel had been prevented from leaving Cypriot waters since June 11, when it anchored off Limassol requesting refuelling.

"There is material (on board) which is considered prohibited from leaving Cyprus right now," Commerce Minister Antonis Paschalides told state radio. "When we speak of prohibited material it means explosives or military material." Police said the vessel was sailing to Sudan and then Singapore.

Book

SOTT Focus: Protocol 12 in Action Or The Dissemination of Truth

Image
© SOTT.netA recent picture taken at a Barnes & Noble store (one of the largest bookstore chains in the U.S.). Notice that the top shelf of the bookcase is filled with books about "2012," face out. Inquiring minds want to know!
The 'Dissemination of Truth' - where would we be without it? It's one thing to discover and then find ways to clearly articulate the Truths about humanity's current condition in some written form. It's another thing altogether to find the means to share or disseminate these Truths in a quantitatively significant way; in a way that reaches ever greater numbers of people who may be asking for knowledge of those Truths. For once again, and much to our chagrin - but not to our surprise - the editors of this site have come smack dab against the invisible lines of force blocking us from sharing what we have learned with an ever-widening public who wants to see what is.

As regular readers of the SOTT page know, the Rabbit Hole goes down very far indeed. In addition to the many Focus articles and Special Features we present here, our editors also publish books and make them available for purchase in the QFG wing of our sites. Not only do book sales help us to finance our activities, but there are some ideas that can only be adequately communicated in their full depth and breadth in the format of a book.

USA

Best of the Web: Video: US Cop Punches 17-Year-old Girl In Face For Jay-Walking

This is the moment a white American police officer punches a teenage black girl in the face after a dispute about how she and her friend crossed the road.

Video footage of Officer Ian Walsh lashing out at the 17-year-old in Seattle has shocked the U.S.


Alarm Clock

SOTT Focus: Changing Perspectives In The US, But Is There A Breaking Point?

Image
I was catching up with some of my friends this past weekend, and the subject of the oil leak came up, and I was surprised by the direness of their prognostications. They are what I would call "Mainstream California Conservative" in the sense they do not buy Fox news, but are counter-culturally aware, a group of cross-cultural sports fans who like to bash conspiracy theory but hate Rush Limbaugh. They are plugged directly into mainstream media 'only,' and they were saying stuff along the lines of: "The end of the world;" "The cause of a world-wide depression and collapse and war and totalitarianism, etc."

On the one side I am happy to see that they begin to understand the danger of the potential tyranny before us all, but I am also concerned for them because their hearts really are heavy and they really are afraid. As if a lightning bolt hit them, I could not believe I heard them say how the corporate model they formerly swore by is out of control, and how our entire system is FUBAR and we are totally screwed by the selfish rich, they've been working on their plan for 50 years etc., creating a faceless corporate clan to hide behind. (Oh, in this case the choice of what word to fill in for the R in FUBAR for them was 'repair,' not 'recognition.')