Hurricane Sandy has come and gone, and the people of the US East Coast, in particular those living on the NY and NJ coastlines and the people of NYC itself, are left to pick up the pieces.

Right now, 250,000 people in lower Manhattan are without power. The prognosis for reconnection is not good. As the sea poured over the banks of the East River near the ConEd electricity substation on 13th Street, the transformer blew in spectacular fashion.


With the underground circuitry still under water, those 1/4 million people are looking at 10 days without power, despite promises that it would take just three days. Among the powerless are many elderly and disabled people on medication. Brooklyn resident Jonathan Maimon provided the following report on the situation in his area:

Virtually every retailer, restaurant and grocery store south of 38th street is CLOSED....There is no food, other than what you have in your refrigerator....

There is no running water or flushing toilets for people living in the Jacob Riis Houses and surrounding NYCHA buildings on the Lower East Side. In my estimate, this is roughly 20,000 people....

I did not witness a single Red Cross Truck or FEMA Vehicle or in lower Manhattan. Recall the assistance these agencies provided after 9/11 - this is NOT HAPPENING. There are bound to be hundreds of elderly people, rich and poor, who live on the upper floors of buildings with elevators that are now disabled. IF POWER IS NOT RESTORED, THIS WILL MOVE FROM BEING AN ECONOMIC DISASTER TO A HUMANITARIAN DISASTER.

At times like these, before, during and after a natural disaster, the most politicians seem able to do is to point out the obvious and try to create the impression that it is they who are mostly responsible for 'getting the country back on its feet'. Obviously, this is bullshit. It's the ordinary people of any society or country that drive the bulldozers, manually pick up the pieces, rebuild homes and fix damaged infrastructure. Yet politicians would like us all to believe that, without their leadership, nothing would get done. Obviously, this is more bullshit. Yet people believe it, mainly because the media provides them with images of presidents taking to the skies to survey the scenery and polls stating that x% of people think that the president or mayor "did a good job" in "dealing with the crisis". They do a good job at capitalizing on a crisis, but that's about it.

The truth of the matter is that, more often than not, in exercising their power in such situations, politicians tend to impede the most effective, efficient and humane response to a disaster. The reason is clear: politicians do not, and never have, worked in the public interest. They have their own vested interests and those of their corporate cronies that always come first.

When I lived in Vietnam I saw first hand the legacy of the use of Agent Orange the US forces had used for deforestation in the Vietnam war. 400,000 people were killed or maimed, and 500,000 children born with birth defects as a result of its use. I was teaching at a school that was supporting a local charity which cared for children still being born with horrific birth defects. They were the third generation to have their lives destroyed by these toxic chemicals. At the care home we visited the heroic nun in charge, who told us how she had first found the children abandoned by their parents in cages with chains around their arms. Many of those children still bore the scars on their wrists. Most would not live past 18. Their spines would curve as they grew until their organs could no longer function. They were there because they had been abandoned on the street by families too poor to look after them. I held a 4-month-old boy who had been found in a shopping bag behind a waste bin. He was deaf, blind and oblivious to the actions of others, and would be deprived of a life we take for granted.

I was recently reminded of that terrible scene after reading an article that stopped me in my tracks. It reminded me of just how horrifying, destructive and inhumane the actions of our world 'leaders' have been. And continue to be.

The news I'm referring to is a shocking revelation that is lost behind the backdrop of Halloween party costumes, the 24/7 coverage the US Presidential election circus and media hysteria of 'Frankenstom' Sandy.

A study recently published in the Environmental Contamination and Toxicology bulletin, found that the weapons and ammunition used by the US and its Imperial apparatus - NATO - in the illegal destruction and occupation of Iraq have led to significant rise in birth defects and unexplainable illnesses. In fact, there has been a five-fold increase in birth defects since the occupation began.

A couple of days ago I learned that Andrea Fornella Abbott, 41, was found guilty on Tuesday of disorderly conduct after being arrested in July 2011 at Nashville International Airport. She had faced up to 30 days in jail and a $50 fine, but the judge placed her on probation for a year because she has no criminal record. 'So what?', you may ask. The thing that bothered me was her alleged 'disorderly conduct'. Her 'crime' was to argue with TSA agents, insisting they don't touch her 14 year-old daughter's private parts during a 'routine pat-down', before refusing to go through with the invasive procedure herself. You see, the disorderly conduct did not come from a mother justifiably concerned about the privacy and intimacy of her daughter and herself, but from the agents and the TSA who have institutionalized 'disorderly' - let's be frank here - pathological conduct, all based on the Big Lie of the War on Terror.

Here is footage of the event. Although it has no audio, it is clear that Andrea Fornella was only arguing her point. So much for the illusion of free speech.


This case illustrates in micro-cosmos the situation in which we the people find ourselves at this point in time in relation to the holders of power and their agents. Things have gone far beyond basic management of the population you would expect from government. Similar to some of the darker moments in history, we are facing pathological extremes. Think of the systematic imprisonment and extermination of entire groups of people as "lice", to use Hitler's expression for Jews. Or the excesses of Roman Emperors. Or the Stazi in East Berlin suspicious of households which had their TV antennas facing west. Although the manifestations are not always the same, the nature and essence of the pathological conduct are. It is about treating people as objects. Nowadays, however, I think we are going through a particularly bad phase of the historical cycle of abuse. Some of the things being done to innocent people you would not even do to objects you value.

I recently had a rather interesting conversation with one of those people who, in a way that's hard to come by in America these days, can look you in the eye and treat you like a human being.

How rare, I thought.

I was impressed by how simple, how nice, this man was. Before I realised it, we'd spent nearly an hour talking while the sun set and the dull darkness fell on our dull American street, a street made momentarily more habitable by the genuine kindness of a stranger.

And then, the inevitable occurred. The dreaded question: "So, who are you going to vote for?" I looked away for a moment. "You do vote, don't you?" he pressed.

Being respectful toward a person who had just offered me the simple pleasure of conversation, I gave as real an answer as I thought was suitable. "Nope. I'm pretty burnt out by the whole thing." And surprisingly, he actually acknowledged my answer before, well, you know, 'the lecture'.

"The simplest explanation for some phenomenon is more likely to be accurate than more complicated explanations." Occam's razor

For those of us keeping up-to-date in the alternative-news-a-sphere, political theatre has become increasingly predictable. Events occur, tragedies happen, 'evil' scapegoats are blamed, politicians say craftily scripted words and the media exalts them. Innocent victims suffer and the general 'herd' are delivered top-ups of fear to maintain their terror-anxiety levels and faith in Governments to protect them from non-existential threats. This process has played out time and time again, especially over the last decade in the wake of 9/11, and remains effective on an ill-informed populace that is unaware the FBI organizes almost all terror plots in the US.

In the run-up to elections, terror-related popularity-boosting events are laid out for politicians to capitalise on. They are normally precise and clearly orchestrated. Take the recent case of the FBI foiling their own terror plot against the New York Fed. This is a classic tried and tested method of framing a patsy in order to perpetuate the myth of Islamic extremists for political gain. However, when a terror attack happens that causes confusion and finger-pointing amongst the political elite in the run-up to a presidential election, then clearly something is not quite 'optimal'.

Five weeks after the assault on the US consulate in Benghazi resulted in the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, the way that the Obama administration, intelligence services and media have reacted has been somewhat perplexing. No elected official has yet to reveal with certainty who led the attack, and at times, both the White House and the US State Department have provided completely different explanations for the assumed motives of the attackers.

What on earth is going on?

"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 fascinated, heroic, or melodramatic ways. When the habits of subconscious selection and substitution of thought-data spread to the macrosocial level, a society tends to develop contempt for factual criticism and to humiliate anyone sounding an alarm."

- Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology

The presidential elections in the US are coming up soon. Many people argue for their chosen candidate to vote for. As usual it is Republicans vs. Democrats. Romney vs. Obama. I've written before about the futility of engaging in this circus side show that is designed to give the illusion of choice and simply re-enforces the prison without bars where people get distracted by the shadows on the wall in a global Stockholm Syndrome. It doesn't speak much for a "shift in consciousness" or "global awakening", especially if many self-proclaimed "spiritual" and "aware" folks still ignore the facts and are driven by identification and wishful thinking, participating in a system that is deeply ponerized.

Many scientists are quite happy to talk openly about a 'sixth extinction' being underway for the past 10,000 years or so because they blame humans for it. Blaming humans carries with it the anthropocentric implication that we are in some way immune to sudden extinction and can do something about the extinction of other species, if only we would change our 'global warming' ways! The true facts of the history of life on earth, however, suggest that, from 'nature's' point of view, humans are just one more species whose days are also numbered. Indeed, the historical record shows that nature has, time and again, proven itself very adept and creative at resetting the clock on even the most 'advanced' civilizations.

For those who don't want to read any further (or be confronted with the evidence), the nitty gritty is that, over the past few years, the celestial signs, in the form of an increasing number of meteorites/comet fragments invading our not-so-rarefied atmosphere, point to humanity being on the verge of an 'extinction-level event'.

Louisiana Explosion - Just one more in a long list

Sott.net has been tracking the startling increase in reports of meteorite/comet fragment sightings and impacts for at least 8 years, and there have been many hundreds of such reports in that time period. This alone should give us cause for concern. Check out the above link to get an idea of just how frequent meteorite/comet fragment sightings have become. Of course, you might say that this apparent increase could just be the result of us paying more attention, but the numbers don't lie. For example, browsing the right bar links on the above Sott.net blog, you'll notice that in 2004, 2005 and 2006, reports were consolidated into two month periods, and there were, on average, less than 10 sightings over that 2-month period. By contrast, in 2008, reports were plentiful enough to begin collating them into monthly records and, since then, their number has increased steadily.

Coming back to the present; over the past few days, several reports of meteorite/comet fragment sightings and impacts across the globe have been registered. However, I want to look at one specific event that occurred two days ago on Monday 15th October.

When I first saw the headline in the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, I thought it was a joke and wondered if the WSJ had started publishing satirical pieces. But when it appeared to be genuine that the EU was this year's recipient of the Nobel peace prize, I checked to see which other mainstream propaganda outlets were carrying the story. To my surprise it was real and I was immediately reminded of the absurdity of the US government's war commander-in-chief (assassination 'kill list' to boot) receiving the prize in 2009.

My second reaction was to write a satirical piece, putting forward an equally unlikely candidate organisation for a peace prize such as the Federal Reserve or U.S. Congress. But it would have been too easy to mock the Nobel committee and, in any event, like many others, I really wanted to know the reason behind the choice. Reading some of the comments on The Telegraph and The Guardian, it's clear there is an overwhelming sense of bewilderment and frustration at what a farce the Nobel peace prize has become.

Now, It's pretty clear that the European Union is no Mother Teresa! But what on earth is the reason behind the EU winning the (formerly) preeminent international peace prize? Here are some ideas I've come up with so far:

1. The committee has been corrupted by political and corporate influences
2. The committee has been tasked with extending the limits of Orwellian double-speak
3. A publicity stunt
4. A smokescreen
5. An insiders' joke

John Major Jenkins has made a point of claiming to be the sole originator of the 2012 "Mayan galactic alignment" hypothesis. Jenkins has gone to great lengths to present himself as a scientist and his theories as based in hard science. But first:

I. Who is John Major Jenkins?

A. Background

Online Jenkins is touted as a "leading expert in the mysteries of ancient Mesoamerican cosmology and calendars."

He is also touted (and touts himself) as the "originator of the '2012 alignment theory'"

Jenkins describes himself as an "independent researcher who has devoted himself to reconstructing ancient Mayan cosmology and philosophy" and as "a visiting scholar, [who] has taught classes at The Institute of Maya Studies in Miami, The Maya Calendar Congress in Mexico, The Esalen Institute (more on that below), Naropa University and many other venues both nationally and abroad", though the term "scholar" should be read lightly as he apparently completed only one semester of college as stated in this online article: "How John Major Jenkins, Jonathan Zap and Terence McKenna met during a Weekend of High Strangeness in 1996":

A recent SOTT Focus article "The 2012 Collective Shift & the Secret History of End-Times Prophecies", written by yours truly, received some expected criticism. One such commentator was the renowned John Major Jenkins, himself. I was honored that Mr. Jenkins would consider little ol' me worthy of the hassle, to be honest. But as he has raised some complaints, the SOTT editors suggested that I respond accordingly. It's only right, after all.

John Major Jenkins, for those of you who don't know, is the principle architect of the December 21st, 2012 buzz. By his own admission, the idea didn't begin with him exclusively, however, Mr. Jenkins has taken the 'transformation 2012' concept to new heights with several books (eight, by my count) and a great deal of lectures and presentations, including at the Institute of Maya Studies, the Society for American Archaeology, and various universities - at least that's what he tells me. He has published and presented in a wide spectrum of venues and written a rather impressive number of essays on the topic. Mr. Jenkins has provided material for Joseph Gelfer's 2012 anthology (released in 2011), in a forthcoming anthology on archaeoastronomy by Benfer and Adkins (University of Florida Press), and his work has been debated in a discussion sponsored by Dr. Ed Barnhart at the Maya Exploration Center. AND - I'd like to mention in good will - his love of the Mayan community prompted him to help build a school in San Pedro, Guatemala.

It's safe to say that Mr. Jenkins is a heavy hitter in the "2012" arena, and that he has done his homework. I'm betting there is nothing I could possibly say that could contend with his expertise on the topic. So why the fuss about a few claims I made in an article? Surely a nobody like me poses no threat to the empire Jenkins has built? Well, as Laura Knight-Jadczyk has assured me on more than one occasion, and knows all too well: "Being attacked often means you're doing something right."