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

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.

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.

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

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.

To those who have grown up in countries considered "free", the vision of George Orwell's 1984 strikes us as a threatening nightmare, a warning of a not-so-distant future where freedom is but a word. Like seed perpetually scorched before it even has a chance to take root, all that it means to be human is actively degraded, denied, and punished at even the smallest display.

The vision of the Party's rule, its inhumanity and utter ruthlessness and mendacity frighten us and we hope it will never come to pass here. But we have no clue how to prevent it, and just like the people in Orwell's fictional world, we are perpetually caught off guard when it comes to pass in our own lives. One day we wake up and realize we are living in a nightmare, and we have been for a long time. "It'll never happen here" and "We've taken every precaution" become "When did it happen" and "How did we get to this point?" This perennial sickness takes hold of a nation and we are at its mercy.

The Obama administration is merely one more in a line of bought and paid for actors in the theater of the absurd that is politics today. If readers still have any illusions about this fact, a look at Cass Sunstein, Obama's appointee to the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs should help shatter them.

First of all, to put some of his more absurd ideas in perspective, Sunstein advocates a "libertarian paternalism" type of government. As Paul Hsieh writes:

The basic premise of libertarian paternalism is that the government should use its power to "nudge" people into acting in their best interest, while leaving them the choice to "opt out." If the government decides that saving money is good, it would automatically divert a percentage of your paycheck into a savings account in your name unless you explicitly declined. Supporters claim that this preserves freedom because government is only changing the default, while leaving individuals the final choice. It is merely a gentle "nudge," not a hard push.

Obama's State of the Union speech is occurring as I write this, and against my better judgment I actually turned it on. It's about 20 minutes into the incongruous jocularity of the President and the Chamber - and he just said that he will encourage legislation to reverse the ruling of the Supreme Court that Corporations are 'persons' and can donate to election funding. He says this is wrong - this will allow society's most powerful to influence elections, as well as foreign interests - he won't have it.

The Supreme justices sit there on camera like stunned corpses as a bipartisan standing ovation explodes in the Chamber. He's addressed ear mark spending, lobbying limits and transparency, changing political discourse, the super-majority dictated by the Republican minority leadership (60% majority needed to do anything), and further tax cuts for education and child credits. He states that voting no on everything is hindering progress (what an astonishingly brilliant observation!).

Saddam Hussein's former defense Chief Ali Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikritieh, cynically dubbed 'Chemical Ali' by the US government was hung yesterday by the US puppet government in Iraq. That is to say, yesterday, the US government hung a former Iraqi politician in an effort to justify its almost 7 year old invasion, occupation and wholesale destruction of Iraq and the genocidal murder of millions of Iraqi civilians.

The US government has long claimed that Saddam, and Ali Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikritieh were responsible for the gassing of thousands of Iraqi Kurds in the town of Halabja in 1998 as part of the Iran-Iraq war. Strong evidence however suggests that the Iranians were responsible for the attack. Even stronger evidence exists to support the argument that the US government far-surpasses any other nation in the use of chemical and biological weapons against innocent civilians.

Many civil liberties groups in the US are up in arms over Thursday's Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United V Federal Election Commission, that gives corporations free reign to spend as much money as they can afford (which is a lot) to influence American political election outcomes. This is the same gaggle of Supreme Court Justices (more or less) that gave us, literally, the glorious reign of George Dubya Bush. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann dedicated one of his 'special messages' to the ruling which he said made all US politicians 'prostitutes' to big corporations.

Eh....so what's new?