"I've always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it isn't? What if it is built on insanity?"

So asks Jon Ronson in his latest book, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry. Ronson is probably best known for his book, The Men Who Stare at Goats, which was adapted for the big screen and starred George Clooney. It documented a slightly loony group of American Army men who were convinced they could walk through walls and kill goats by simply glaring at them menacingly (apparently they took the phrase "looking daggers" a tad too literally). He also wrote a book on fundamentalists, extremists and radicals, even tailing David Icke for a spell. For research, of course. Having already spent much of his career peering into the fringe boundaries of normality, The Psychopath Test pushes him further into the sphere of madness and the science that attempts to explain it. The result is entertaining, sometimes informative, yet a mixed-bag that never really answers the questions he set out to tackle.

I'm going to avoid giving a chapter-by-chapter rundown of the book. As I said above, it's an entertaining, and easy, read. I'm not a particularly fast reader but wolfed this one down in three sittings over two days. So if you've the time, cash, and/or inclination, check it out. Rather, I want to focus on what I'll call the good, the bad, and the so-so. Ronson gets a lot of things right. First of all, he's a great writer. The book is peppered with entertaining, funny, and somewhat disturbing accounts of his interviews with people he comes to believe are genuine psychopaths. Pitting a self-described neurotic, over-anxious journalist against some of the world's most dangerous criminals and manipulators is a recipe for a good story, and in this regard, Ronson delivers.

[Note: We're rerunning this 2009 article (with 2013 update below) for consideration in light of the missing Malaysian Airliner.]

Air France Flight 447 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris disappeared over the Mid-Atlantic (just north of the equator) at approximately 1.33UTC on June 1st 2009.

No mayday signal was received from the aircraft and almost two weeks later, aviation officials have yet to give a coherent explanation as to what could have caused the sudden demise of a high tech Airbus 330-200 passenger plane.

As usual, the media are missing (or concealing) some very obvious yet understandably disturbing data about the nature of the threats to life on planet earth, and as usual, it is left to Sott.net to spell out the details.

A friend just sent me a link to an article: Iran accused of September 11 role

All I can say is: that is just PATHETIC!

Anyway, the only reason I'm writing this late is because something is bugging me.

What struck me tonight were a number of strange juxtapositions. First off, there are the items about weather and earthquake weapons that made the rounds over the past week or so. The first one was about former Defense Secretary Cohen openly referring to HAARP when he admitted to programs that could "alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves." Search for it on the net, you'll find it on a bunch of conspiracy sites (not that we don't think there's a whole bunch of conspiring going on ourselves here on SOTT.net).

Admitting to programs that can alter climate, set off earthquakes, etc., is a bit ambitious and really has nothing to do with HAARP. HAARP is for mind control.

However, earthquakes can be set off with EMP weapons from satellites.

I think these clowns would love people to think that they can control climate - and maybe they can if they set off a volcano. But what they are really trying to do is blow smoke around REAL Earth Changes; changes that they have no weapons to stop. And these Earth Changes are what could, conceivably, destroy most of life on Earth.

Between the mass animal deaths, the deadly earthquakes and tsunamis in the Pacific rim, the record-setting extreme weather across the US, and the once meandering gulf-stream now shutting down, clearly something is up on the big blue marble this year. And now we may have a new one to add to the list: exploding transformers.

In the last couple weeks numerous electrical transformers have malfunctioned or exploded, in some cases causing major fires. Many of these are not your usual explosions either; some consisted of an almost fireworks-like display of electrical arcing as shown in some of the videos below. Given the sheer number of out-of-control transformers, this appears to be a new phenomena, or perhaps a sign of things to come.

With the connections we've noted between electrical activity in space and major events such as tornadoes, cyclones, volcanoes and earthquakes, one might suspect that the same electrical phenomena responsible for these displays of nature's fury could be responsible for these exploding transformers too. Typically large spikes in electrical current are the cause of transformer explosions. It seems that, like the exploding transformers, our planet is being electrically overloaded in ways it can't properly handle either, causing all manner of weather and ground-shaking chaos. Perhaps what we've seen so far this year in terms of crazy weather and earthquakes is only the start of things to come.

[This article first appeared in Issue 13 of The Dot Connector Magazine]

"We can't prevent what we don't identify, we can't treat what we don't diagnose. And we can't teach how to spot them unless we understand pathology ourselves."

Millions of dollars have been spent researching and writing about psychopaths while almost nothing has been spent, either in terms of time or money, on the profoundly disturbing byproduct of psychopathy - its victims. Since male psychopaths outnumber the female variety by about 3 or 4 to 1, I'll be talking mainly about female victims of male psychopaths in this article.

Despite the fact that psychopaths devastate everyone in their path including the women and children who love them, why have clinicians not seen fit to study and write about the single most obvious source of insight into this issue: the survivors of intimate relationships with psychopaths? The study of any disease involves carefully collecting and examining its symptoms, and psychopathy is definitely a societal disease. Even our legal system gathers information about criminals by taking testimony from on-site, first hand witnesses. So again, I ask: why is there no clinical material about - much less interest in - the psychopath's partner?

Connecting the Dots is a new series of short videos about...well, about everything.

This installment is about the death of Bin Laden and other lies. It's everything you need to know about U.S. politics in a song you can sing along to!

In 1866, Russian scientist Alexander Saytzeff isolated a most curious and peculiar chemical compound. It was crystalline, odor-less, non-toxic and had a garlic-like taste when consumed. At the time, Saytzeff had no way to predict that his discovery was going to prove highly controversial throughout its entire medical history, that it was going to be tested in thousands of studies and provide miraculous relief for numerous patients.

I'm talking here about dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), an organic sulfur compound which was used only as an industrial solvent, that is, until its medical properties were discovered in 1963 by a research team headed by Stanley W. Jacob, MD.

DMSO is a by-product of kraft pulping (the 'sulfate process') which converts wood into wood pulp leaving almost pure cellulose fibers. As industrial as it may sound, the process simply entails a treatment of wood chips with a mixture of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide, known as white liquor, breaking the bonds which link lignin (from the Latin word lignum, meaning wood) to the cellulose.

DMSO is useful as a pain reliever and also in burns, acne, arthritis, mental retardation, strokes, amyloidosis, head injury, scleroderma, it soothes toothaches, eases headaches, hemorroids, muscle strains, it prevents paralysis from spinal-chord injuries and softens scar tissues. In fact, it is useful in well over 300 ailments and is safe to use. You might think that a compound that has so many alleged uses and benefits should be automatically suspect, so let's have a close look at its properties and the data available and we'll shed some light in this miraculous chemical.

Interview by Geoff Brady from In Other News Radio with Harrison Koehli on Political Ponerology and psychopaths.

There is a great deal of attention surrounding UFOs and Disclosure these days. Sightings have increased worldwide and it seems the veil is thinning. Many people, including certain UFO researchers, talk about an imminent disclosure of perhaps the biggest secret in the history of mankind.

The alternative community is fascinated by this topic, giving us all kinds of explanations and information about "the topic of all topics". But anyone who has looked into the UFO phenomenon a bit deeper knows that there is more to it than what meets the eye. There are certain issues that are overlooked or even ignored by some prominent advocates of disclosure and exopolitics.

One of the most misunderstood aspects of the UFO subject is the hyperdimensional and paraphysical nature of the phenomenon, as well as the idea that humanity may not be as "special" and untouchable as we believe ourselves to be.

Be it history, politics, religion, psychology, science, education or health, we're being lied to in virtually all areas of our lives and our attention is being vectored away from the truth. As a matter of fact, those who get too close to the truth are often attacked and ridiculed. Truth is no good for business in a ponerized society with psychopaths in power, steering the ship where pathological traits have become the accepted norm in our official culture.

However, wishful thinking and denial about the state of the world creates even more self-deception with people dreaming to wake up, yet still asleep. The topic of UFOs and disclosure is certainly not exempt from being used as a way to misinform and distract the masses from the truth, yet behind the smoke screen and disinformation it may hold major clues in regards to what is happening to us and the world, present and past. The task, as always, is to separate truth from lies, within and without.

This following video series explores the secrecy surrounding the greatest cover-up of all time, presenting an overview of the UFO phenomenon, aliens, abductions, disclosure, and hyperdimensional realities. It's easy to come to hasty conclusions and assumptions about this topic, so make sure to watch all 8 parts and look up the the resources mentioned in the video for more information.

Full length version:

I'm sure we're all very tired by now of the Osama bin Laden nonsense, I know I am, and I really wish it would just go away. Sadly, that seems an unlikely prospect in the near future.

I've already provided more than enough evidence for all rational people to seriously doubt the authenticity of the "Osama bin Laden is dead" story. I've also exposed the many faked images and videos of the alleged terrorist mastermind that were released over the past 10 years. But the US government and CIA aren't ready to quit just yet. It would appear that they're determined to push the boundaries of belief and exploit public credulousness to the max (and perhaps beyond).

You're probably aware that yesterday, Sat. 7th May 2011, the US government released "new" videos of 'bin Laden' that they claimed were part of the haul from the 'compound' in Pakistan, which, by the way, is very conveniently scheduled for destruction.

These new videos include footage that is similar to previous 'bin Laden' tapes, but also include footage of some guy sitting in a room watching news reports about Osama bin Laden. The US government and the fawning Western media are claiming that the guy sitting on the floor watching television is Osama bin Laden in his 'compound' and that the video could have been made as recently as Spring 2011. The problem is that we only get to see the man sitting on the floor from the side, there are no front-on shots that would allow us to see the man's face and ascertain whether or not he looks anything like bin Laden and there is no audio (apparently it was edited by the Pentagon). Again, this is very convenient, and I think you will agree that, even from the side-on angle, the man on the floor does not look like any of the images of the person we know to be the real bin Laden.

But the real smoking gun is to be found in the videos allegedly taken from the Pakistan 'compound' and which provide higher resolution images of a man who appears to be the same person that appeared in a 'bin Laden' video released in 2007.