AS THE WORLD SQUIRMS

Outgoing defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib, the prison's former US commander said in an interview on Saturday.

A Senate Mystery Keeps U.S. Torture Alive - and Its Practitioners Free

By Jeff Stein
Congressional Quarterly

11.22.06

(Excerpt)

With all the lawsuits over kidnapping and torture marching toward the Bush administration, you might think the top officials running the global war on terror would be worried just a little about the prospect that some day they might end up in court — if not having nightmares about getting measured for orange jumpsuits at Danbury Federal Prison.

Alas, no. Thanks to the legerdemain of Bush administration lawyers, a provision quietly tucked into the Military Commissions Act (PL 109-366) just before it was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush on Oct. 17, would ease any worries they might’ve had. It not only redefines torture upward, removing the harshest, most controversial techniques from the definition of war crimes, it also exempts the perpetrators — interrogators and their bosses — from punishment all the way back to Nov. 1997.

Winning Hearts And Minds?!?

Bush Visit Threatens to Fracture Iraqi Government

New York Times

11.24.06

(Excerpt)

As the death toll from a series of devastating car bombs in a Shiite district here rose today to more than 200, a powerful legislative bloc loyal to firebrand Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr threatened to withdraw from the government if Iraq’s prime minister attends a scheduled meeting with President Bush in Jordan next week.

Frank Boyle, Edinburgh Evening News, Scotland

Gates Advocated Bombing Nicaragua

His 1984 memo called for 'hard measures' against Nicaragua.

By Julian E. Barnes, Times Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times

11.25.06

(Excerpt)

Robert M. Gates, President Bush's nominee to lead the Pentagon, advocated a bombing campaign against Nicaragua in 1984 in order to "bring down" the leftist government, according to a declassified memo released by a nonprofit research group. In the memo, Gates, who was deputy director of the CIA, argued that the Soviet Union was turning Nicaragua into an armed camp and that the country could become a second Cuba.

UNDER THE RADAR

~NATIONAL ID~

U.S. to Require Passports for Nearly All

11.22.06

(Excerpt)

Nearly all air travelers entering the U.S. will be required to show passports beginning Jan. 23, including returning Americans and people from Canada and other nations in the Western Hemisphere.

The date was disclosed Tuesday by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in an interview with The Associated Press. The Homeland Security Department plans to announce the change on Wednesday.

“Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder

respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

~George Orwell~

Psycho-Babel: A Ponerological Approach to Modern Doublespeak and the Distortion of Language

EDITORIAL: Harrison Koehli and members of the Signs of the Times forum
Signs of the Times

24/11/2006

(Excerpt)

In his book, Lobaczewski approaches the question of political evil as a physician approaches the pathodynamics of an infectious virus, following the causal links between psychopathic individuals in positions of political power and the negative effects they have on a non-psychopathic population. One of the key concepts throughout his analysis is the psychopath's use of language. From an early age, psychopaths become aware of their difference from the vast majority of their peers, and learn to recognize each other in a crowd. As a psychopath does not have the in-born ability to feel complex emotions, expressions of such emotion in normal humans (like an expression of love, a widow in mourning, a man fearing for his life or family) are seen by the psychopath as contemptible signs of weakness and naiveté, and only provoke in him a misplaced sense of superiority. Normal humans are seen by psychopaths as little more than cattle, and are treated accordingly by them.

However, while psychopaths are aware of their difference (they might say 'superiority') from 'the mob' of general humanity, they learn to act as if they, too, are 'normal'. Growing up, they learn to mimic the movements and expressions that accompany specific human emotions. They do this because appearing normal is essential to their own survival at the expense of their victims. A psychopath can appear to be in emotional pain, eliciting pity and material support; he can seduce women with his air of confidence (the textbooks are full of unattractive psychopaths who are surprisingly successful in this venture); he can lead a church congregation with high-sounding words, while embezzling the funds they give in support. However, psychopaths know that if what lies behind their mask of sanity were to be publicly exposed, and if the masses of normal people were suddenly to understand that psychologically deviant human beings in positions of power are the real source of war, the most the Pathocrats could hope for would be long stretches in the nearest penitentiary. The people would rebel against the terror they have been subjected to under their influence - the manipulation, the lying and injustice that have led to interminable war, death and suffering. But for a psychopath, the only injustice is not getting what he wants: power.

Once a group of psychopaths has reached a position of such power in government (although the dynamic applies to any organization or hierarchy), such a government must work to make itself and its policies appear acceptable to the non-psychopathic human's sense of morality. If such a government were to lower its mask prematurely and truthfully say, "We, the government of psychopaths, despise you as much as we despise our so-called 'enemy'. We will work our hardest until you, our very own citizens, and those of any hostile foreign power, are utterly destroyed. Through poverty, total war, and genocide we will kill you all", the people would naturally revolt. As such, the government of psychopaths (or pathocracy) must mask its language in an acceptable ideology. Thus, a war of aggression becomes a "holy war" or "pre-emptive" war, not for the purpose of imperialistic invasion, but to "protect the homeland". This language is immediately recognized for what it is by other psychopaths, and they can pledge their support accordingly. But with experience, and after extensive observation and research, a non-psychopathic individual, too, can develop an ability to read the hidden meaning.

The effect of such language on the minds of normal individuals is that which Lobaczewski calls 'conversive thinking'. This is a subconscious selection of premises that leads to false or paralogical conclusions. The conscious manipulations of psychopaths are unconsciously converted in the mind of the normal person and taken for truth. For example, we see evidence of this in the irrational fear many Americans have come to have for Muslims. It is not uncommon to hear emotional pleas to "nuke them all", or "turn the whole Middle East into a glass parking lot". A recent CNN commentator, Glenn Beck, even went so far as to ask a Muslim congressman, Keith Ellison, why he should not suspect him of being "a terrorist". The net effect of this hysteria is that the guilt of the minority of every population (i.e., the psychopathic minority) is projected onto a separate and identifiable religious or racial group.

An extraordinarily prescient TV interview with General Norman Schwarzkopf and Robert Gates - Deputy National Security Advisor to Former President George Bush Sr.

Why Invading Iraq Was A Very Stupid Idea…

(Click on blinking dot above for video)