SOTT Focus:


Eye 2

SOTT Focus: Ponerology 101: The Psychopath's Mask of Sanity

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© M.C. Roessler 2010
A Wall Street Psychopath?

In 1960 Bernie Madoff founded his Wall Street firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. As chairman of its Board of Directors until his arrest in December of 2008, Madoff saw his firm (and himself) rise to prominence on Wall Street, developing the technology that became NASDAQ, the first and largest electronic stock exchange in America, in the process. A multimillionaire with over $800-million in shared assets with his wife and high school sweetheart, Ruth Alpern, Madoff was well-regarded as a financial mastermind and prolific philanthropist. He exuded an aura of wealth, confidence, and connections, and many trusted him as a pillar of the community. Sounds like a great guy, huh?

His humanitarian image was supported by his work for various nonprofit groups like the American Jewish Congress and Yeshiva University in New York, the various commissions and boards on which he sat, and the millions he donated to educational, political, cultural, and medical causes. As his firm's website made clear at the time (it has now been removed): "Clients know that Bernard Madoff has a personal interest in maintaining the unblemished record of value, fair-dealing, and high ethical standards that has always been the firm's hallmark." It's funny how things change with a little perspective and a pattern emerges only in retrospect. It wasn't until December of 2008 that the public became aware that this "personal interest" was anything but one of integrity, and that image stopped being taken for reality.

Comment: Go to Part 3 in the Ponerology 101 series


Star of David

SOTT Focus: Farzad Bazoft, Yellow Journalism and Middle Eastern Wars

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Farzad Bazoft - a pawn on "the grand chessboard"
An article in Sunday's UK Guardian newspaper tells the story of Observer reporter Farzad Bazoft, an Iranian who was hanged in Iraq as a spy 20 years ago by Saddam Hussein.

In penning the article, the author Donald Trelford, who was editor of the Observer when Bazoft was arrested, seeks to "remember a friend and colleague whose death served as a warning to the world about Saddam Hussein".

The official story goes like this:

In September 1989, Bazoft went to Iraq to cover elections in Kurdistan. On the day his press party arrived in Baghdad, a massive explosion occurred at a military complex in the city.

Farzad met the deputy foreign minister, Nizam Hamdoun, and asked to visit the site. He enlisted the help of Daphne Parish, a British nurse he had met on a previous visit. They went on successive days to take photographs and collect soil samples, though they always stayed on public roads.

While waiting for an Iraq Airways flight to London on the 15 September, he was picked up at Baghdad airport and taken for interrogation by Saddam Hussein's Mukhabarat secret police.

On November 1st, the Iraqis issued a tape showing him "confessing" to being a spy for Israel. Earlier the Iraqis had claimed he was spying for Britain. On March 15th 1990 he was hanged.

As a veteran journalist, it is appalling that Trelford is content to limit his analysis of the case of Bazoft to the official story. With the US and Israel winding up the world's press to prepare the public for the first Gulf "war", there was good reason to be suspicious of any reports that demonized Saddam in the 1989-1990 period. With everything we know now about how willing Western politicians are to fabricate rationale for war, it is nothing short of yellow journalism to hold fast to the official story. Worse still is the fact that a much more plausible account of the case of Farzad Bazoft, from a truly reliable source - ex-Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky - has been available to Trelford for 15 years.

Hourglass

SOTT Focus: Connecting the Dots: Cosmic Climate Change, Financial Terrorism

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© rolyateel
Earthquakes dominate once again this month as a string of strong quakes prompts us to ask, "What in Earth is going on?" That the US government would engage in such nefarious activity to induce a strategically-placed earthquake in Haiti is a frightening prospect. Could any or all of the recent cluster have been deliberately induced? Or have we just witnessed Nature's awesome retort to the Evil Empire's puny arsenal? We'll examine the political state of play in Chile on the occasion of its most powerful earthquake in 50 years and recall the notorious roots of the Pathocrats' economic shock therapy that's so prevalent today.

Record snowfall blanketed all but Hawaii in the US and freezing temperatures froze ships mid-stream in Europe, yet Canada emerged from the cruelest of winters warm and dry. We would ask the "climatologists" for their take on this but they're too busy modelling alternate realities, answering corruption charges and just generally keeping well below the radar. We'll present an alternative Cosmic Climate Change hypothesis that honours the scientific data and doesn't require sleight of hand to "hide the decline."

Financial terrorism from Wall Street's finest banksters struck gold again this month with a false-flag attack on the euro. Economic warfare, like any other form of warfare, sears a trail of tears and destruction through innocent peoples' lives, only it comes in the covert manner of currency manipulations and speculative attacks on target economies. And just as with conventional warfare, its psychopathic conspirators often hatch their murderous plans over dinner and fine wine. From a meeting in Manhattan we'll chart the Evil Empire's desperate pitch to keep its paper-worthless dollar atop the sinking pile.

When a tiny country like Israel can manipulate empires from afar, what is there to stop it walking into its neighbour's house and murdering him? Well, nothing, as the Mossad brazenly demonstrated in January. But if Dubai can have Interpol serve arrest warrants where no other country dares to tread, we wonder if the international exposure Mossad Murder Inc received this month has severely compromised its cover of darkness? More light, say we!

Join us as we Connect the Dots in February...

Take 2

SOTT Focus: Case Study on COINTELPRO and Ponerization: Report from an 'Alternative Convention'

Some days ago we received the following letter from a reader. We decided to publish it with a few observations of our own to illustrate the amount of disinformation the average seeker of truth needs to face.
truth lie
© The Christian Science Monitor / Bennett
Reader: [...] I attended the Alternative Research Community (Arc) Convention at Bath over the weekend, and I'd like to make a brief report. It was simultaneously good to be talking to people who were looking for answers, but at the same time, for me, it was also depressing. It seems the level of discernment out there is just... low, to the point of non-existent. There are many who seem to be basically nice people, including the organisers, genuinely looking for a path to knowledge and trying to navigate all the information that floods the alternative scene, but it was really hard work dealing with the simply huge problem of both disinfo and naivete. It is like they live in a whole different imaginary universe. The road to hell is paved with good intentions indeed.

People just assume that because they are on the 'alternative' side, they have the Truth and it won't be taken from them. This is a pity because quite a few of them do seem sincere, but they are like sheep under the guidance of wolves. Listening to so much crap from some of the speakers - while others were just too superficial and speculative - and seeing how much is uncritically accepted by the audience made me want to go have a shower by the end.

Star of David

SOTT Focus: Mossad Psychopaths Behind Murder of Hamas Official In Dubai

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Mahmoud al-Mabhouh exits the elevator on his floor in the Al-Bustan Rotana hotel, Dubai. Moments later he will be murdered by Mossad agents hiding in his room.
Israel is a young nation, yet its intelligence apparatus has a long and sordid history. From staging Muslim terror attacks in Egypt in 1954, to orchestrating 'Arab' terrorist hijackings in 1976, to directing 'al-Qaeda' terror attacks in 2006, there seems little that the Mossad will not do in an effort to give legitimacy to the Israeli government's slow genocide of the Palestinian people and bolster the American government's phony 'war on terror'.

That the Mossad eagerly assassinates all enemies of Israel (real, imagined and fabricated) is generally accepted, if not condoned, but the details of precisely how agents go about their dirty work has remained sketchy to say the least, with the revelations of former agents like Victor Ostrovsky the most reliable reference. The recent murder of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel, however, gives a never-before seen inside look at the extent to which the Mossad operates 'by way of deception'.

Eye 2

SOTT Focus: Ponerology 101: Lobaczewski and the origins of Political Ponerology

Psychopaths rule our world
© Sott.net
Beginning immediately after World War II and continuing in the decades after the imposition of Soviet dictatorship on the countries of Eastern Europe, a group of scientists - primarily Polish, Czech, and Hungarian - secretly collaborated on a scientific study of the nature of totalitarianism. Blocked by the State Security Services from contact with the West, their work remained secret, even while American researchers like Hervey Cleckley and Gustave Gilbert were struggling with the same questions.1 The last known living member of this group, a Polish psychologist and expert on psychopathy named Andrzej Łobaczewski (1921-2007), would eventually name their new science - a synthesis of psychological, psychiatric, sociological, and historical studies - "ponerology", a term he borrowed from the priests of the Benedictine Abbey in the historic Polish village of Tyniec. Derived from poneros in New Testament Greek, the word suggests an inborn evil with a corrupting influence, a fitting description of psychopathy and its social effects.

Most of what we know about this research comes from precious few sources. Łobaczewski's sole contact with the researchers was through Stefan Szuman (1889 - 1972), a retired professor who passed along anonymous summaries of research between members of the group. The consequences for being discovered doing this type of forbidden research were severe; scientists faced arrest, torture, and even death, so strict conspiracy amongst their little group was essential. They safeguarded themselves and their work by sharing their work anonymously. This way, if any were arrested and tortured, they could not reveal names and locations of others, a very real threat to their personal safety and the completion of the work. Łobaczewski only shared the names of two Polish professors of the previous generation who were involved in the early stages of the work - Stefan Błachowski (1889 - 1962) and Kazimierz Dąbrowski (1902 - 1980).2 Błachowski died under suspicious circumstances and Łobaczewski speculates that he was murdered by the State police for his part in the research. Dąbrowski emigrated and, unwilling to renounce his Polish citizenship in order to work in the United States, took a position at the University of Alberta in Canada, where he was able to have dual citezenship. A close reading of Dąbrowski's published works in English shows the theoretical roots of what would become ponerology.3

Comment: Go to Part 2 in the Ponerology 101 series


Eye 2

SOTT Focus: Intolerable Cruelty: Cover Stories and a Culture of Lies

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There was this boy I sent to the 'lectric chair at Huntsville Hill here a while back. My arrest and my testimony. He killt a fourteen-year-old girl. Papers said it was a crime of passion but he told me there wasn't any passion to it. Told me that he'd been planning to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he'd do it again. Said he knew he was going to hell. "Be there in about fifteen minutes". I don't know what to make of that. I sure don't. The crime you see now, it's hard to even take its measure. It's not that I'm afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job. But, I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He'd have to say, "O.K., I'll be part of this world."

- Sheriff Bell in No Country for Old Men
Over the last decades the Coen brothers have repeatedly proven themselves to be masters of portraying the tragicomic realities of American life. From the quirky and trivial to the depths of moral failings and utter depravity, their films often focus on the criminal mind and its varied psychological roots. They get to the heart of human weakness, the tempting lure of a "free lunch", and the inscrutable darkness of the psychopathic mind. Most notable of recent years was Javier Bardem's rendition of Anton Chigurh, the psychopathic killer from the Coens' Academy Award-winning adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel, No Country for Old Men. In many ways recalling the Coens' earlier work, Fargo, the audience experiences the film's drama through the eyes and conscience of a county Sheriff in West Texas, Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). We share his confusion and pained desire to understand the senseless violence against which he struggles every day.

Vader

SOTT Focus: Connecting the Dots: Mass murder in Haiti, plane madness in the skies

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© Associated PressWet cops invasion: the US troops land on the grass of the Presidential Palace in Port au Prince after its demolition by the forces of nature. The forces of nature, really?
It's been a year since Obama swept to power on a wave of euphoria many hoped would bring relief from these traumatic times. He has indeed brought hope to some, but not to humanity. He has indeed brought change, alas it is change for the worse. Behind the carefully groomed image of a man of peace, beneath the thinly veiled disguise of benevolent intentions, dark forces wield the US machinery of government as a Weapon of Mass Destruction.

In this month's Connecting the Dots we witness how, at one fell swoop, the Evil Empire decimated and invaded yet another country. Environmental warfare and cyberwarfare have come to the fore and joined forces with the drone Reapers in the frontline of the Pentagon's quest for full-spectrum domination. Al Qaeda's Christmas Day Special was followed up with a wave of hysterical aftershocks in January that have sinister implications at many levels.

Against a backdrop of freezing weather all across the northern hemisphere the tower of global warming is crumbling. The collusion of big government and big pharma to inoculate us against a non-existent pandemic masks the one true pandemic confronting humanity: the psychopaths that bring us targeted assassinations, wars, torture, toxic vaccines... then blame humanity for their consequences. No vaccine can protect conscience, only awareness of the predators in our midst. "Swine Flu" appears to have receded, but the swine are still with us.

If events in 2010 keep up this pace, then humanity is in for a rough ride. Hang on as we navigate the month that was January.

Better Earth

SOTT Focus: Kevin Barrett interviews Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Joe Quinn (Full Transcript)

Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Joe Quinn are interviewed by Dr. Kevin Barrett on the topics of psychopathy, political ponerology, and 9/11.


Star of David

SOTT Focus: Underwear Bomber Redux - Was Mutallab An Israeli "Secret Weapon"?

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By way of deception... thou shalt control key airports
After repeatedly denying that the Christmas Underwear Bomber had any help in his misguided attempt to blow up Detroit-bound Flight 253 on Christmas day 2009, or that there was any sign of an accomplice on over 200 hours of Amsterdam airport security tapes, the US government recently, and very quietly, chose to admit that it had been watching Mutallab all along and that it's now looking for his accomplice at Amsterdam airport.

In one of only a few mainstream news reports on the US government's reversal, the Detroit News stated:
The State Department didn't revoke the visa of foiled terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab because federal counter-terrorism officials had begged off revocation, a top State Department official revealed Wednesday.

Patrick F. Kennedy, an undersecretary for management at the State Department, said Abdulmutallab's visa wasn't taken away because intelligence officials asked his agency not to deny a visa to the suspected terrorist over concerns that a denial would've foiled a larger investigation into al-Qaida threats against the United States.

"Revocation action would've disclosed what they were doing," Kennedy said in testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security. Allowing Adbulmutallab to keep the visa increased chances federal investigators would be able to get closer to apprehending the terror network he is accused of working with, "rather than simply knocking out one soldier in that effort."
ABC News also reported:
Federal agents also tell ABCNews.com they are attempting to identify a man who passengers said helped Abdulmutallab change planes for Detroit when he landed in Amsterdam from Lagos, Nigeria.
Of course, that's not an admission that Mutallab had an accomplice, but it says a lot following six weeks of repeated denials on the existence of accomplices.