©John Cole

Where does one start with the new wave of propaganda that passes for US news and opinion regarding Iran? It is clear that the aim is to flood the airwaves (and our brains) with so much insanely ridiculous propaganda that we throw up our hands, give up trying to fathom the details, and retreat into a numbed state of acceptance.

What we are seeing is pure propaganda and Newspeak, and for those who know something of Pavlov and his work on Transmarginal Inhibition, the scenario is classic. People, ordinary people, do not want to go to war if left to their own devices. The kick or shove to provoke a reaction for war must come from outside. History provides us with many examples from the last 100 years: the Maine, the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, the Gulf of Tonkin, 911. In each case, the event galvanized public opinion, and war, which had been unthinkable the day before, became a certainty.

Ever since the 9/11 attacks, Sott.net, along with many others commentators (including US government officials), have repeatedly stated that "al-qaeda" is a fabricated enemy. That it is used to justify the Ziocon's military rampage though the Middle East while simultaneously terrorising the folks back home.

In the past 7 years the world public has repeatedly been treated to bogus missives from "al-Qaeda leaders" that strangely echo the Islamophobic claims of the leaders of the Western world.

Every time a member of the US or Israeli government expounded on the "Muslim terror threat to freedom and democracy everywhere", soon afterwards "al-Qaeda" obligingly popped up with a new video or statement in which they threatened freedom and democracy.

As the massive holes in the US government's official story of the 9/11 attacks continue to widen, and sites like Sott.net continue to point to the real culprits in Tel Aviv and Washington DC, disembodied internet voices that US government officials "believe to be that of Osama bin laden", set the record straight and claim responsibility. In spite of such strenuous efforts to fool the entire world, fewer and fewer people are buying the terror hysteria, and recently the desperation on the part of the Ziocons has begun to show.

©Unknown

Browsing the shelves of a bookstore this afternoon I came across The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB's - A Secret History of Jewish Punk (2006) by Steven Lee Beeber. Jewish Punk? - that stood out! The inside fly reads:

"Focusing on punk rock's beginnings in New York, this book is certain to change how we view not only punk music and culture, but the nature of Jewish identity since the Holocaust....Originally known as New York Rock, punk began in that city because it could begin nowhere else - it was all about outsiders in the shtetl-like East Village. Wiseasses with sharp minds and wounded psyches; it reflected the irony, the romanticism, and, above all, the humor of the Jewish experience."

©Unknown

The infant believes that mother/the breast/ food, everything, is part of itself; it experiences itself solely through neural input.

[T]the problem of group violence, is one of the most important issues facing society. Not only is this a most crucial topic for our American society but we are confronted with events that are occurring all over the globe, on all continents and in all countries...

So said Dr. Ernest Wolf in a talk given to the International Self-Psychology Symposium in Dreieich, Germany, in May of 2001, four months before 9-11.

This essay was recently brought to our attention, having been posted on the SOTT Forum for the express purpose of highlighting Wolf's description of Narcissistic Rage. Frankly, that was the best part of the essay; the rest was hopelessly muddled and naive.

Why?

Well, Dr. Wolf attempts to explain the causes of evil - individual and macro-social - using the framework of Heinz Kohut's theory of "Self Psychology" (or psychoanalytic psychology of the self). With all due respect to Dr. Kohut and Dr. Wolf, we think that this theory isn't bad if you are just talking about normal human beings who are born healthy and live in basically healthy environments. What this theory does not take into account is the role of pathogenic factors in our society - human beings who are carriers of abnormal psychopathological traits - who can infect groups and even entire societies, bringing pandemic evil on macro-social scales. More than that, it seeks to "spread the blame" over all people, to ignore the fact that moral evil and psychobiological evil are, in effect, interlinked via so many causal relationships and mutual influences that they can only be separated by means of abstraction. Yes, the body social must be weakened before it can succumb to an infection, but if there is no infecting pathogen, it will merely be weak and ineffectual.

In short, Wolf's essay amounts to little more than apologia for Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Psychopathy and only adds to the confusion of our times when the problems pressed upon humanity by such types are nothing short of catastrophic.

But, like we said, Wolf has provided one heck of a description of Narcissistic Rage. Since it really is good, let's take a look at it:

©SOTT

Some people just don't get it.

Ken Gude is a senior advisor to the Institute for Public Policy Research's Commission on National Security in the 21st Century. He wrote a piece called "Tortured Explanations" that ran this weekend in the Guardian. It is a review of a book by Philippe Sands on who drew up the current US torture policy.

Well, in the first paragraph we find this pearl:

Ever since the first horrific images from Abu Ghraib emerged almost exactly four years ago, I have repeatedly asked myself: how in the world could my country be responsible for such terrible things? I know a lot of people out there think that this is not an aberration and believe the worst about the United States, its motives and its actions. The Bush administration has certainly added a lot of fuel to that fire. But in this case, the "hate America" crowd are simply wrong: never before in the modern history of the United States has there been an officially sanctioned, government-wide system of inflicting torture and abuse on detainees. Until now.

Oh, yeah. The "hate America crowd". That group of loony tunes who have this irrational hatred of the US for no reason at all.

©Unknown

Angela Merkel discusses how to eat fish with her friend George.

Speechless.

Stunned.

Beyond the valley of the sick bag.

We've heard some incredible statements in the last few years, since the coup d'état of 911, but this one is unbelievable even by the standards of GW. Listen to Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, explain why there is a food shortage:

Somehow, I think it is highly probable that we have a new event to add to our list of Meteorites, Asteroids, and Comets: Damages, Disasters, Injuries, Deaths, and Very Close Calls Have a look at the excerpts from the following two news items from this past week and see if something doesn't seem off about the glib and facile "explanations" for a series of extremely bizarre events. Every element of the stories is explainable in the terms presented by Clube and Napier, Mike Baillie and John S. Lewis and which have been the topic of the present series of articles on Comet hazards. At the same time, the explanations given by the "official sources" simply do not sound plausible.

Read and judge for yourself.

©Unknown

We ran an article recently on the Signs page about the elite that run the world. It is from a mainstream publication, about as mainstream as they get in the US: Newsweek. It is about the group of people the author calls the "Superclass" and who are:

"part of a new global elite that has emerged over the past several decades. I call it the 'superclass.' They have vastly more power than any other group on the planet. Each of the members is set apart by his ability to regularly influence the lives of millions of people in multiple countries worldwide. Each actively exercises this power, and often amplifies it through the development of relationships with other superclass members. This new class of elites is both more permeable, and more transient, than elites of the past...

The top 10 percent of all people, for example, now control 85 percent of all wealth on the planet.

That such a group exists is indisputable. It includes the heads of the biggest financial institutions, the 14 families Blankfein joked about, and then some; the top 50 control almost $50 trillion in assets. The heads of the world's biggest corporations are also members; the top 2,000 support perhaps 500 million people, generate almost $30 trillion in sales and have well over $100 trillion in assets. The list also includes top government officials with real cross-border influence... media barons...religious leaders...cultural icons..."

©Reuters

Haitians look at the damages caused by looters at a gas station in Port-au-Prince.

Rising food prices are in the news, as riots occur in many countries in reaction to the doubling of the price of wheat and rice. Of course, it isn't the rich, the politicians, or the heads of the multinationals; it isn't any of the Pathocrats who are suffering.

It is people who are struggling to make ends meet, to find food for their families, their children, their elderly parents.

In February 2004, the Pentagon, in a secret report, predicted food riots as the result of the changing climate. It looks like they have arrived, although quite a few years before the Pentagon predicted. The article linked above includes:

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

The famine has begun. Will their other scenarios come about as quickly?

The following are a selection of articles from around the world discussing rising food prices:

On 21 October 2006 I wrote The Mystic vs. Hitler The remainder of this article will be that item in toto with additional commentary added.

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Recently, the formerly highly respected web essayist, John Kaminski, wrote a new piece entitled "Parasite alert: Outing those who pretend to be friends of the truth" in which he took a strange jab at yours truly as follows: