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.. .. SOTT Focus SOTT Focus: UPDATE: Connecting the Dots: The Axis of Evil in Motion Under Peculiar Cosmic Weather SOTT Focus: Neil Entwistle: Psychopath SOTT Focus: Tunguska, Psychopathy and the Sixth Extinction SOTT Focus: Signs Economic Commentary for 30 June 2008 SOTT Focus: From Cafe to Cybercafe: The Splintering of Society SOTT Focus: Enough Hand-wringing! What You Can Do

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Update: Dry weather, fires, spontaneous combustion? As it turns out the Taurid meteor event was not a complete bust, more like a combustion:

1st of July 2008 - Witnesses across Southern California say they saw an object 'moving very fast across the northern sky' and falling near the San Bernardino Mountains. Officials have no firm answers on what it was.

From Hollywood Hills to the Nevada state line, people reported seeing a fireball streaking across the sky and falling near the San Bernardino Mountains this morning. But explanations of the mysterious object were scarce.

San Bernardino County Fire Dispatch reported receiving dozens of calls related to what was described as fireball moving at high speed and falling in northwest sky around 10:40 a.m.

"We got quite a few reports. It started with a gentlemen in the Lake Arrowhead reporting a fireball in the Meadow Bay area and then we started getting calls from all over," said San Bernardino County dispatch supervisor Tom Barnes. "Fire crews in Barstow and on I-15 near Stateline came up on the radio and reported an object in the sky moving very fast across the northern sky and described it as yellowish green in color with streaks of debris. It looked like it burned up before it hit the ground."

Now isn't it a "coincidence" that California became engulfed, at its peak, in 1,783 fires across the state, scorching over 527,000 acres, including one in the San Bernardino mountains. Firefighters are still battling over 300 fires. Yet, all the fires are being blamed on "unusual early-summer lightning storms".

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An interesting sequence of events unfolds around the Axis of Evil:

- Signs appear of escalating agendas in the higher echelons of power, as heads of state slink around the globe to confer, accompanied by 'random' shootings and mysterious missiles.

- Big Brother cracks down in cyberspace - even SOTT comes under the crosshairs of mysterious hackers.

- The food crisis continues, and more vegetable species become endangered (banana, wheat, tomatoes).

- Technology goes berzerk, with serial collapsing cranes, and mysterious resurrecting WWII bombs.

- Floods and droughts abound.

- The sun loses its spots and the fireballs associated with the Taurids are nowhere to be found.

All the while, the public is kept ever more distracted by the growing media circus of Obama vs McCain.

The chain of command hands out its orders

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been in domestic political trouble with accusations of corruption. Maybe he is in need of support from outside, or in need of a distraction for the public; but the fact is that his troubles do not divert him from more important plans for the Zionist agenda. So he pays back a visit to Bush, who has just been in Israel for the country's anniversary. It was not really a secret that they were discussing an attack on Iran. Nor does it take a genius to see that the often used phrase "stopping Iran by all possible means" is a euphemism for war. But what other details can we learn about the topics keeping the most prominent Axis of Evil members so busy in meetings and private discussions? We can infer a little from the context and sequence of events.

In a move which echoes General Fallon's resignation (the man who would not allow an attack on Iran while in charge of the Middle East military operations), the US Air Force leadership quit. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates picked Gen. Norton Schwartz as Air Force chief. As 'Les Visible' rightly comments:

Now they've put CFR member, General Norton Schwartz in charge of the Air Force. Since he's the first non-fighter pilot put into that position in a long time it makes you wonder about dissension in military ranks over the ongoing neo-con worldwide murder spree. It might cause you to give thought to that missing nuke and the killing of Tony Carnaby by the Houston Police. Of course you could also flashback to other replacements in the military, notably the one that led to General Petraeus.

It appears that these changes have stimulated the development of the Axis of Evil plans, as the US Joint Chiefs of Staff decided to pay a surprise visit to Israel at the end of the month (we hope you are keeping count of how many public figures 'checked in' with the Zionists in the last two months or so - see below for more examples!).

As Olmert's feet touched ground back home in Israel, he announced that "the pendulum" was "much closer to tough military action" in Gaza, and that he was considering launching "operations that would be much harder and more aggressive". We wonder if he got a blessing from Bush, or if it was the other way around and he went to hand his orders to Bush before continuing his plans for genocide in the local area.

In any case, it was to be expected that Palestine would heat up - not that the area was not hot enough already, as the occupied land suffers crimes and abuse on a daily basis. A few days after Olmert's declaration, an explosion destroyed a Hamas commander's house. The Israeli Offensive Forces denied any involvement and CNN even blamed the victim by calling it a "work accident". Hamas, on the other hand, affirmed that the explosion was caused by an Israeli F-16 aircraft bombing the house. Whatever the cause, the fact is that twelve people died - including a baby - and the only beneficiary, as always, is Israel.

As usually happens in this conflict, there was an apparent appeasement; the fantasy of Israel as a democracy interested in peace needs to be sustained somehow. Much was said about the 'hope' that a truce with Hamas represents, but nothing positive should be expected as a couple of days after the truce, Israel closed Gaza's borders alleging that it was responding to a rocket attack. Again, only Israel benefits.

The meetings continued. Rice visited Tel Aviv just a week after Olmert's return. Ostensibly, the subject of discussion was Israeli settlements in the West Bank. However, we can surmise that this was rather a distraction: Rice called the settlements "a problem" (terribly harsh words for Israel coming from the US Secretary of State), and Israel responded by accelerating the construction of Jewish houses in the West Bank. Clearly this topic of discussion was not 'on the table', despite any comments made by Rice. So what was the real discussion about?

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Then it was Bush's turn to go to Europe, and again we see the pattern of the chain of command handing its orders out across the globe. Apparently, the purpose of his "farewell trip" was to dictate his stance on Iran to Europe - and to force it on the UK. Judging by the way in which Prime Minister Gordon Brown was so eager to please Bush, the UK government didn't need any encouragement.

Another result of Bush's 'friendly' farewell visit was a pledge by both Germany and the UK to increase the number of young men and women they will be sending to their deaths in Afghanistan. The trigger for that request was a suspicious prison break-out that enabled 700 'militants' to escape - funny that US troops were stationed just northeast of the prison and chose not to intervene while Afghan security forces and militants fought for hours. This dragged Pakistan further into the conflict, by putting pressure on their borders and enabling continued killing of civilians in Kandahar using 'vacuum' bombs. The big-wigs of the oil business must be very pleased; not only have they agreed how to divide Iraq's oil among themselves, they now have more cannon-fodder to guard their new oil pipeline. It's not about the oil at all - honest!

In the meantime, the propaganda against Iran has been increasing as usual, with talk about war being 'inevitable' now. The message was sent loud and clear as Israel was seen rehearsing an Iran attack. The arch neo-cons John Bolton and Bill Kristol are now talking about Israel attacking Iran either right before or after the US elections. Bolton in particular predicted the attack for after November but before Bush left the White House. Though they are engaging in propaganda as usual, the schedule may have been actually revealed through Bolton, as it does make sense that they would rather not disturb the electoral theatre, but would not want to miss the opportunity that the remaining Bush administration represents. Don't plan your holidays according to these dates, though - one can never be sure with psychopaths, who may even try surprises to have their war ahead of time and cancel the elections. Do, however, expect an increase in anti-Iran propaganda in the ensuing months.

This month, a series of curious incidents took place in the background which suggest that there may have been attempts of, or preparations for, terrorist attacks (and no, we are not talking about Al Qaeda™ here). A month ago, a Continental Airlines pilot reported seeing "an object with a flaming tail and a trail of smoke" flying in front of the aeroplane; other people saw it too. The official 'plausible' explanation is that this was a model rocket (i.e. a toy); however, we can't help but think of all the propaganda talk about terrorists trying to knock down passenger planes with shoulder missiles within US territory. A few days later, explosive materials were found in a stolen car near Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland - including military grade explosives. One week later, Washington experienced a widespread electric power outage and a subway fire which darkened downtown for nearly three hours. The fire and the outage did not seem to be related, and both the Treasury Department and the White House were affected. All of the above happens in the context of a public simultaneously being socially engineered through anti-terror and war exercises in Denver and Washington State, with the cooperation of Canada on the latter.

Likewise, let's remember that in Britain there was, in Exeter, a failed bombing attempt in May, and this month the UK government has developed its nasty habit of 'losing' secret documents and laptops which the media happens to recover, miraculously containing information about terrorism and Iran.

These leaks appear to have been intended to stimulate some 'shocking headlines' in the media in preparation of Bush's visit. But the runaway UK laptops appear to be almost epidemic as one with information on 20,000 British health patients was also lost.

Even more interesting was French president Nicolas Sarkozy's recent visit to Israel. Before the Knesset, he did his best to make it clear that he is on the side of the Zionists, pledging to "block" Iran from developing nuclear weapons and even offering France's soldiers and resources to aid Israel. During the farewell ceremony at Ben Gurion airport, a guard tasked with perimeter security died of a gunshot wound to the head. The official story is that he decided to commit suicide right there and then (perhaps we are meant to believe that this man didn't take goodbyes very well). This is strange enough to raise severe suspicions, especially because his family believes he had no reason to commit suicide; he was standing on a rooftop just 100 meters from Sarkozy, Olmert and Shimon Peres; and a police spokesman initially said that it was being investigated whether the man had "accidentally discharged his weapon", an unlikely scenario given that he was shot in the head.

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Raeed Ghanem. Suicide, failed assassination attempt, or something else?

It almost looks like a failed assassination attempt. Of course, we do not have enough data to confirm this hypothesis, nor can we claim that Sarkozy himself was the target, as there were enough important people on the tarmac to provide several viable targets. Perhaps it is a mere coincidence, but a day and a half after the 'suicide', Ben Gurion airport held a disaster drill testing readiness to handle a large crash - the sort of exercise that may be useful to destroy evidence and cover the tracks of any wrongdoing.

An alternative explanation is that this was no failed attempt but a message meant to intimidate Sarkozy. If this is the case, it is reminiscent of the event more than a month ago, in which Tony Blair was threatened by Israeli fighter jets while flying over the country.

So much for the US and Western Europe, all on the side of the Zionist plan to "obliterate" Iran, in Hillary's infamous words. In contrast, Russia moved closer to Iran by signing a $2.5 billion deal to build airliners. Furthermore, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov observed during a conference that Russia and the US had more trust and respect for one another during the Cold War than they do now. The prospects for a peaceful world do not look very promising, do they?

A circus ...

Oh, how much time and energy the mainstream media has spent on the race for the democratic candidacy in the US; how much will they spend now on the campaigns; and how much have they ignored the fact that Obama is not going to make any difference if he wins? What does all this hype around Barack Obama do to empower the average American? We received a letter from a correspondent that is somewhat disturbing in its implications:

I work closely with a colleague who is an African American woman. We had some heated discussions during the Clinton vs Obama battle. She couldn't decide whether being black or being a woman was more important. I just thought voting was futile when all the presidential runners are in the pockets of the CFR, AIPAC and corporate lobbyists.

She would enthusiastically ask me, "Would you vote for Hilary or Obama?" I would tell her it was a circus designed to keep Americans entranced and distracted from the real issues that they should be concerned about. Like the trillions of dollars spent on illegal wars; GMO food giants decimating the food industry with toxic crops and biofuels; economic collapse, and uncontrollable inflation.

Not surprisingly, it wasn't quite the answer she was looking for.

Towards the end of the 17 month Democratic 'race', she was beginning to think that maybe there was some truth to what I said. I could see the telltale signs of someone slowly awakening from their slumber; beginning to question the lies that have been culturally programmed into us from birth by our family, friends, leaders and the complicit media.

When it was announced that Obama would be the presidential nomination, all those questions she was about to ask stopped in an instant. She was no longer identifying with being a woman anymore, Instead she was at one with her ethnic roots. A hypnotic trance seemed to have engulfed her. She had spent the evening telling her boys that they too could achieve whatever they wanted. If a black man can run for president, then they can rise up any corporate ladder they wanted to.

I didn't know what to say. But the truth is she couldn't hear anything I said. She was lost, glazed eyes looking into the heavens of hope and the utopic change that Obama would bring to the world.

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©Unknown

The dream-like look immediately reminded of a time I caught up with a friend I hadn't seen in a long while. In our time apart he had given up his drug, alcohol and partying addictions and become a 'born again' Christian. At his house he put some popular Christian music on. In an instant he was off. A glazed carefree expression engulfed his face as he swayed and hummed along to 'Shine Jesus Shine'. He was hypnotised by his new found faith, and lost like a leaf blowing in the wind, to what ever direction his 'church' would lead him.

The same level of hypnosis had taken my colleague. I realised she is one of millions of people who will have experienced the same detachment from reality. Obama the saviour will bring about change. Belief that there is hope after the tyrannical Neocon regime.

Given Bush's standing in the opinion polls it seems quite likely that this situation is the rule, rather than the exception, in America at the moment. Barack Obama has become a savior figure that has the dreams of a desperate nation invested in him - and this is not by coincidence. On the announcement of Obama's candidacy, newspapers and magazines around the world were quick to propagate and capitalise on the news of a new presidential messiah. Rupert Murdoch likened Obama to a rock star who would win the presidency, and his tabloids in the UK used the headline "Obama has a dream" - associating Obama with civil rights leader Martin Luther King. And there was 'that' cover of Rolling Stone magazine which used the tagline "A New Hope" - a reference to the hero Luke Skywalker of the Star Wars movies:

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©Rollingstone magazine

The public relations machine has certainly done its job effectively. America and the world are now mesmerized and distracted into believing that this new presidential messiah is Martin Luther King and JFK revisited. Behind the scenes however, Obama has been more than adequately 'prepared' for the role the Powers That Be may yet allow him to play.

Recently, Obama's campaign staff duped the press in order to allow him to attend 'private meetings', at which we can only speculate about what dealings occurred. Obama may be good-looking and charismatic, but he has also made no secret about his commitment to the Corporate State. In his own words: "Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market". Nor has he shied away from his role as a hawk. In the annual AIPAC conference and wearing both an American flag pin and an Israeli flag pin, Obama declared Jerusalem indivisible - and it's not hard to see which side of the 'conflict' (read: occupation) should get the whole cake for itself in the candidate's view. Hillary Clinton made a quite explicit comment in this regard:

"Let me be very clear, I know that Senator Obama will be a good friend to Israel"

To be fair, no candidate would have any chance of being elected if they didn't go through these grotesque rituals of selling their souls (if they have any) to the elite in the first place. The structure of power would not allow it, and that is why it is most reasonable to regard the 'Obama Hope' as mere wishful thinking. As Dennis Loo writes:

If Obama really were a solution, then why should we expect him to have an awakening upon taking office if he's been slumbering, morally and legally, all of these years?

If Obama really were a solution, and did have such an awakening in the White House, why would the same system and same individuals who cooperated all these years with the monsters running our country let Obama do an about-face in the White House? [...]

Sure, there is a remote possibility that Obama is cleverly playing the game in order to get himself into the White House, hoping that he can make a difference once in there the way Kennedy tried. On that train of thought, some people have been speculating hard about a scenario in which Obama gets the same treatment as the Kennedys. Even Libya's Gadhafi suspects that Obama fears a bullet from Mossad if he doesn't support Israel enough (and who could blame him? Mossad does not believe in fair play, as Sarkozy may have learned at Ben Gurion airport).

But if he has any real intentions for change, the democratic candidate would have to prove himself to the people, and so far we haven't seen any of that. Quite the contrary, besides his discouraging declarations quoted above, the fact that people like Rupert Murdoch think he's a rock star is a disturbing sign that the status quo has nothing to fear from Obama - in fact they welcome him. Thus, his campaign is reduced to a side show - whether the rock star is a pawn of the elite, or the elections turn out to be irrelevant anyway because some shocking event (like a terrorist attack or a war with Iran) interrupts the process.

...But no bread

It is looking more likely that false hope is the only thing that people will have to eat in the future. On top of the global food crisis, the economic crisis (have you felt the rise in the cost of living already? we have!) and the deaths of key animal species, such as bats and bees, we now have enough species of fruits and vegetables in danger to start making a list:

- Bananas are dying of Panama Disease.
- One fourth of the world's wheat is at risk from a new fungus.
- Tomatoes infected with salmonella have been discovered in the US. Although this does not affect the species itself, the fact is that the fruit ends up being destroyed out of fear of the disease.

This list doesn't even take into consideration the harvests affected by floods and droughts (see below).

The noose tightens around the Internet

Meanwhile, the noose is increasingly tightening around the Internet, one of the last places where there is still some semblance of free speech. Under the guise of protecting copyrighted materials, many countries around the world are getting tough on the 'illegal' downloaders, with penalties ranging from barring broadband access to heavy fines. The irony is that the artists, the very people those Orwellian measures purported to protect, are quick to criticize the Orwellian measures. In another more extreme, if not ridiculous, example, AP news agency goes after a little known blogger for publishing fragments of their news articles and reports. It seems that their lies and propaganda get exposed so often by the army of bloggers that they have now chosen to resort to such blatant intimidations - the move of a liar protecting his lies.

Alongside the intimidations, major ISPs are throttling users with high bandwidth usage. Some ISPs even hire a company to monitor and hijack websites that these users visit. All those measures serve to do one thing: discourage users from accessing the Internet. And where will they turn for news if not from the web? The TV with 'fair and balanced' Fox News, of course!

In the background, the wiretapping measures continue to be enacted. The US Congress has just passed the new surveillance bill, which combines the worst of all alternative bills. It both allows retroactive immunity to the telecoms and gives sweeping surveillance power to the government. Even Sweden, the country that hosts controversial sites such as Wikileaks and The Pirate Bay, has passed a bill that allows wiretapping, cross-border, of all telephone and Internet communications.

The weather and the eternal shine of the spotless sun

Our notes of the climate and geological events and disasters of the last month or so include a bit of everything:

- Tropical storms: Alma and Arthur hit Central America; Alma being the first Costa Rica born tropical storm ever. Typhoon Fengshen kills more than a dozen people in southern China.

- Floods: Midwest US, India, China and Mexico.

- Droughts: Texas and California. Australia suffers the driest May on record.

- Volcanoes in the process of waking up or already awake:Cerro Azul in the Galapagos islands, Etna in Sicily, Llaima in southern Chile, Semeru in Indonesia.

- Earthquakes: Powerful earthquake in Japan. Moderate earthquake in Panama and Costa Rica. Two earthquakes in Greece, and a few days later another three. Israel and Lebanon.

Al Gore and his followers would argue that man-made global warming is to blame for storms, floods and droughts and that geology should be ignored. We, however, would like to think outside the box - or rather, outside the planet. So maybe it is time to consider the weather and tremors of Earth in the context of cosmic weather - and more specifically, solar system weather?

You may have heard that the cycle of sunspots, usually quite regular, has slowed down as the sun has refused to produce its usual eruptions for a couple of years now (with a couple of exceptions in April-March). Solar physicists are puzzled, as they were expecting an increase in activity earlier this year. Well, of course the sun could decide it is time to get back to work any time now, but if it doesn't, the most immediate consequence, based on historical record, is an ice age - an effect that would dramatically stress the importance of the weather of the solar system on our little blue marble.

Indeed, a US Army researcher claims that it is the sun, and not man, who is to blame for climate change. Is there a relationship with Jupiter's recent new storms and its own climate change? How about Mars?

The Ulysses spacecraft concluded a mission studying the sun with some interesting results:

Ulysses ends its career after revealing that the magnetic field emanating from the sun's poles is much weaker than previously observed. This could mean the upcoming solar maximum period will be less intense than in recent history.

It sounds a little too serious to us, as the sun seems to be taking a long holiday. Even more serious is this:

Ulysses also studied dust flowing into our solar system from deep space, and showed it was 30 times more abundant than astronomers suspected.

You see, with dust come pebbles, stones, rocks, comet fragments and comets; all of which seem to have the unhealthy habit of smashing our planet once in a while according to historical cycles.

The Taurid shower that did not happen

As you probably know, for the past several years SOTT has closely monitored the news for reports of meteorite and fireball sightings. Not an easy task when major news agencies have a non existent interest in covering them. In fact, extensive research indicates a possible 'deliberate avoidance' factor that plays a significant part in this rather peculiar media silence.

But still, there are times when many scientific magazines and mass media publications present the public with colorful and detailed articles about our uninvited and fiery guests from space. And those moments of publicity usually coincide with periods of major meteor showers. It is also the time when many fascinated eyes are directed toward the sky with an expectation to catch the sight of 'falling stars'.

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And what meteor stream is more famous than Taurids stream, the same stream that brought us Tunguska, and the one that produces two annual meteor showers, during June 5 to July 18 and October to November?

So with that knowledge in mind and based on data indicating an increasing number of sightings, mysterious booms, overhead explosions, etc. eager SOTT staff searched the net, anticipating news feeds flooded with reports.

But there were none.

Yes, it is well known that Beta Taurids shower is visible only during the daylight hours, so everything seems to be in order, right? Sorry, no fallen stars this season, folks... The problem with this explanation is that until this month, and during periods when there were no meteorite showers, we were able to collect a significant number of news items on those topics. But not this month. Oh yes, as was mentioned above, all kinds of magazines and news sites were packed with publications on the mystery of Tunguska and graphic doom scenarios. But real time encounters with those doom harbingers were nowhere to be found.

So we are forced to ask - what is going on? And how we are going to deal with this situation when apparently we reached the level of even deeper suppression of 'something wicked' on its way here. Maybe the solution hides between the dusty pages of history: in the testimonies of those who experienced great calamities brought by fire and pestilence:

The summer of 1871 had been excessively dry; the moisture seemed to be evaporated out of the air; and on the Sunday above named the atmospheric conditions all through the Northwest were of the most peculiar character...It was weird and unnatural. I have never seen nor felt anything like it before or since. Those who experienced it will bear me out in these statements.

At that hour, half past nine o'clock in the evening, at apparently the same moment, at points hundreds of miles apart, in three different States, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois, fires of the most peculiar and devastating kind broke out, so far as we know, by spontaneous combustion.

Dry weather, fires, spontaneous combustion? Well, in fact there was one report of a fireball seen - in California.

Perhaps the key is to look for something other than the obvious signs; like descriptions of out of ordinary precipitations or 'natural phenomena' and see if it can be interpreted in a different context. And thanks to the media preoccupation with Tunguska, we were offered at least one handy clue.

International researchers investigating the Tunguska Event, an explosion exactly 100 years ago in central Siberia, say acid rain traces in the region back up the theory that the blast was caused by a meteorite...

"Extremely high temperatures occurred as the meteorite entered the atmosphere, during which the oxygen in the atmosphere reacted with nitrogen causing a build up of nitrogen oxides," one of the authors of the joint research, Natalia Kolesnikova, told RIA Novosti.

That reminds us of another interesting event that happened in Siberia at the beginning of 2007.

There is nothing unusual about snow in the towns and endless forests of Siberia. But when locals in the small village of Pudinskoye woke up on Wednesday they immediately noticed something rather strange: the snow falling from the sky was orange...

Russia's environmental watchdog said the snow contained four times higher than normal quantities of iron as well as acids and nitrates.

Curiously enough, there was a sighting of a volleyball size meteorite in a neighboring region two week prior to the orange snow event. And if the meteorite exploded high up in the atmosphere, its very fine particles could easily float around for a couple of weeks or longer. On the other hand, thanks to Victor Clube's work we now know that meteorites are often accompanied by the phenomenon of dust suspended in the atmosphere, so it didn't have to be just an overhead explosion to cause such peculiar precipitation.

All in all, it offers many hints on how to read the news in a different way. And we encourage you, the reader, to help us to collect the clues and send us any such curious articles you may find while surfing the web.

Meanwhile, here are several examples of 'mysterious' events that happened this month and have a high probability of being an exact match and proof that traces of Taurids activity were found after all.

Mystery explosion in China causes earthquake
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.. .. Grand Theft Economics Bush-Led 'Disaster Capitalism' Exploits Worldwide Misery to Make a Buck Scorched Earth Economy Company Bankruptcies in U.S. Outpace Individual Filings in June World must brace for oil beyond $150 US: Service sector shrinks unexpectedly India's Inflation reaches highest acceleration in 13 Years

The Iraq disaster and rising gas and food prices have people across the globe in a state of fear and shock. It's high times for Bush & Co.

Once oil passed $140 a barrel, even the most rabidly right-wing media hosts had to prove their populist cred by devoting a portion of every show to bashing Big Oil. Some have gone so far as to invite me on for a friendly chat about an insidious new phenomenon: "disaster capitalism." It usually goes well -- until it doesn't.

For instance, "independent conservative" radio host Jerry Doyle and I were having a perfectly amiable conversation about sleazy insurance companies and inept politicians when this happened: "I think I have a quick way to bring the prices down," Doyle announced. "We've invested $650 billion to liberate a nation of 25 million people. Shouldn't we just demand that they give us oil? There should be tankers after tankers backed up like a traffic jam getting into the Lincoln Tunnel, the Stinkin' Lincoln, at rush hour with thank-you notes from the Iraqi government ... . Why don't we just take the oil? We've invested it liberating a country. I can have the problem solved of gas prices coming down in ten days, not ten years."

There were a couple of problems with Doyle's plan, of course. The first was that he was describing the biggest stickup in world history. The second, that he was too late: "We" are already heisting Iraq's oil, or at least are on the cusp of doing so.

It's been ten months since the publication of my book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, in which I argue that today's preferred method of reshaping the world in the interest of multinational corporations is to systematically exploit the state of fear and disorientation that accompanies moments of great shock and crisis. With the globe being rocked by multiple shocks, this seems like a good time to see how and where the strategy is being applied.

And the disaster capitalists have been busy -- from private firefighters already on the scene in Northern California's wildfires, to land grabs in cyclone-hit Burma, to the housing bill making its way through Congress. The bill contains little in the way of affordable housing, shifts the burden of mortgage default to taxpayers and makes sure that the banks that made bad loans get some payouts. No wonder it is known in the hallways of Congress as "The Credit Suisse Plan," after one of the banks that generously proposed it.

Iraq Disaster: We Broke It, We (Just) Bought It

But these cases of disaster capitalism are amateurish compared with what is unfolding at Iraq's oil ministry. It started with no-bid service contracts announced for ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP and Total (they have yet to be signed but are still on course). Paying multinationals for their technical expertise is not unusual. What is odd is that such contracts almost invariably go to oil service companies -- not to the oil majors, whose work is exploring, producing and owning carbon wealth. As London-based oil expert Greg Muttitt points out, the contracts make sense only in the context of reports that the oil majors have insisted on the right of first refusal on subsequent contracts handed out to manage and produce Iraq's oil fields. In other words, other companies will be free to bid on those future contracts, but these companies will win.

One week after the no-bid service deals were announced, the world caught its first glimpse of the real prize. After years of back-room arm-twisting, Iraq is officially flinging open six of its major oil fields, accounting for around half of its known reserves, to foreign investors. According to Iraq's oil minister, the long-term contracts will be signed within a year. While ostensibly under control of the Iraq National Oil Company, foreign firms will keep 75 percent of the value of the contracts, leaving just 25 percent for their Iraqi partners.

That kind of ratio is unheard of in oil-rich Arab and Persian states, where achieving majority national control over oil was the defining victory of anticolonial struggles. According to Muttitt, the assumption until now was that foreign multinationals would be brought in to develop brand-new fields in Iraq -- not to take over ones that are already in production and therefore require minimal technical support. "The policy was always to allocate these fields to the Iraq National Oil Company," he told me. This is a total reversal of that policy, giving INOC a mere 25 percent instead of the planned 100 percent.

So what makes such lousy deals possible in Iraq, which has already suffered so much? Ironically, it is Iraq's suffering -- its never-ending crisis -- that is the rationale for an arrangement that threatens to drain its treasury of its main source of revenue. The logic goes like this: Iraq's oil industry needs foreign expertise because years of punishing sanctions starved it of new technology and the invasion and continuing violence degraded it further. And Iraq urgently needs to start producing more oil. Why? Again because of the war. The country is shattered, and the billions handed out in no-bid contracts to Western firms have failed to rebuild the country. And that's where the new no-bid contracts come in: they will raise more money, but Iraq has become such a treacherous place that the oil majors must be induced to take the risk of investing. Thus the invasion of Iraq neatly creates the argument for its subsequent pillage.

Several of the architects of the Iraq War no longer even bother to deny that oil was a major motivator. On National Public Radio's To the Point, Fadhil Chalabi, one of the primary Iraqi advisers to the Bush Administration in the lead-up to the invasion, recently described the war as "a strategic move on the part of the United States of America and the UK to have a military presence in the Gulf in order to secure [oil] supplies in the future." Chalabi, who served as Iraq's oil under secretary and met with the oil majors before the invasion, described this as "a primary objective."

Invading countries to seize their natural resources is illegal under the Geneva Conventions. That means that the huge task of rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure -- including its oil infrastructure -- is the financial responsibility of Iraq's invaders. They should be forced to pay reparations. (Recall that Saddam Hussein's regime paid $9 billion to Kuwait in reparations for its 1990 invasion.) Instead, Iraq is being forced to sell 75 percent of its national patrimony to pay the bills for its own illegal invasion and occupation.

Oil Price Shock: Give Us the Arctic or Never Drive Again

Iraq isn't the only country in the midst of an oil-related stickup. The Bush Administration is busily using a related crisis -- the soaring price of fuel -- to revive its dream of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). And of drilling offshore. And in the rock-solid shale of the Green River Basin. "Congress must face a hard reality," said George W. Bush on June 18. "Unless members are willing to accept gas prices at today's painful levels -- or even higher -- our nation must produce more oil."

This is the President as Extortionist in Chief, with gas nozzle pointed to the head of his hostage -- which happens to be the entire country. Give me ANWR, or everyone has to spend their summer vacations in the backyard. A final stickup from the cowboy President.

Despite the Drill Here. Drill Now. Pay Less bumper stickers, drilling in ANWR would have little discernible impact on actual global oil supplies, as its advocates well know. The argument that it could nonetheless bring down oil prices is based not on hard economics but on market psychoanalysis: drilling would "send a message" to the oil traders that more oil is on the way, which would cause them to start betting down the price.

Two points follow from this approach. First, trying to psych out hyperactive commodity traders is what passes for governing in the Bush era, even in the midst of a national emergency. Second, it will never work. If there is one thing we can predict from the oil market's recent behavior, it is that the price is going to keep going up regardless of what new supplies are announced.

Take the massive oil boom under way in Alberta's notorious tar sands. The tar sands (sometimes called the oil sands) have the same things going for them as Bush's proposed drill sites: they are nearby and perfectly secure, since the North American Free Trade Agreement contains a provision barring Canada from cutting off supply to the United States. And with little fanfare, oil from this largely untapped source has been pouring into the market, so much so that Canada is now the largest supplier of oil to the United States, surpassing Saudi Arabia. Between 2005 and 2007, Canada increased its exports to the States by almost 100 million barrels. Yet despite this significant increase in secure supplies, oil prices have been going up the entire time.

What is driving the ANWR push is not facts but pure shock doctrine strategy -- the oil crisis has created the conditions in which it is possible to sell a previously unsellable (but highly profitable) policy.

Food Price Shock: Genetic Modification or Starvation

Intimately connected to the price of oil is the global food crisis. Not only do high gas prices drive up food costs but the boom in agrofuels has blurred the line between food and fuel, pushing food growers off their land and encouraging rampant speculation. Several Latin American countries have been pushing to re-examine the push for agrofuels and to have food recognized as a human right, not a mere commodity. United States Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte has other ideas. In the same speech touting the US commitment to emergency food aid, he called on countries to lower their "export restrictions and high tariffs" and eliminate "barriers to use of innovative plant and animal production technologies, including biotechnology." This was an admittedly more subtle stickup, but the message was clear: impoverished countries had better crack open their agricultural markets to American products and genetically modified seeds, or they could risk having their aid cut off.

Genetically modified crops have emerged as the cureall for the food crisis, at least according to the World Bank, the European Commission president (time to "bite the bullet") and Prime Minister of Britain Gordon Brown. And, of course, the agribusiness companies. "You cannot today feed the world without genetically modified organisms," Peter Brabeck, chairman of Nestlé, told the Financial Times recently. The problem with this argument, at least for now, is that there is no evidence that GMOs increase crop yields, and they often decrease them.

But even if there was a simple key to solving the global food crisis, would we really want it in the hands of the Nestlés and Monsantos? What would it cost us to use it? In recent months Monsanto, Syngenta and BASF have been frenetically buying up patents on so-called "climate ready" seeds -- plants that can grow in earth parched from drought and salinated from flooding.

In other words, plants built to survive a future of climate chaos. We already know the lengths Monsanto will go to protect its intellectual property, spying on and suing farmers who dare to save their seeds from one year to the next. We have seen patented AIDS medications fail to treat millions in sub-Saharan Africa. Why would patented "climate ready" crops be any different?

Meanwhile, amid all the talk of exciting new genetic and drilling technologies, the Bush Administration announced a moratorium of up to two years on new solar energy projects on federal lands -- due, apparently, to environmental concerns. This is the final frontier for disaster capitalism. Our leaders are failing to invest in technology that will actually prevent a future of climate chaos, choosing instead to work hand in hand with those plotting innovative schemes to profit from the mayhem.

Privatizing Iraq's oil, ensuring global dominance for genetically modified crops, lowering the last of the trade barriers and opening the last of the wildlife refuges ... Not so long ago, those goals were pursued through polite trade agreements, under the benign pseudonym "globalization." Now this discredited agenda is forced to ride on the backs of serial crises, selling itself as lifesaving medicine for a world in pain.

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..tr> ..table> ..table> SOTT Focus SOTT Focus: Tunguska, Psychopathy and the Sixth Extinction SOTT Focus: Signs Economic Commentary for 30 June 2008 SOTT Focus: From Cafe to Cybercafe: The Splintering of Society SOTT Focus: Enough Hand-wringing! What You Can Do SOTT Focus: Signs Economic Commentary for 23 June 2008 SOTT Focus: In Memoriam: Andrzej M. Łobaczewski ..tr>..table> One hundred years ago today, on the night of 30 June and 1 July, one of the most extraordinary events in modern history occurred. The first reports of a strange glow in the sky came from across Europe. Shortly after midnight on 1 July 1908, Londoners were intrigued to see a pink phosphorescent night sky over the capital. People who had retired awoke confused as the strange pink glow shone into their bedrooms. The same ruddy luminescence was reported over Belgium. The skies over Germany were curiously said to be bright green, while the heavens over Scotland were of an incredible intense whiteness which tricked the wildlife into believing it was dawn. Birdsong started and cocks crowed - at two o'clock in the morning. The skies over Moscow were so bright, photographs were taken of the streets without using a magnesium flash. A captain on a ship on the River Volga said he could see vessels on the river two miles away by the uncanny astral light. One golf game in England almost went on until four in the morning under the nocturnal glow, and in the following week The Times of London was inundated with letters from readers from all over the United Kingdom to report the curious 'false dawn'. A woman in Huntingdon wrote that she had been able to read a book in her bedroom solely by the peculiar rosy light. There were hundreds of letters from people reporting identical lighting conditions that went on for weeks... (Tom Slemen) None of the people witnessing this strange phenomenon had any idea that, in the central Siberian plateau, just after 7:15 a.m. local time, the planet had been hit by a cometary impactor that exploded - as most such impactors do - in the atmosphere just above the Earth's surface. There was, of course, a great deal of comment about the strange, glowing sky in newspapers and scientific journals at the time. A theory was proposed that icy particles had somehow formed high in the atmosphere and were reflecting sunlight. Another theory suggested that a strange auroral disturbance was involved. The Danish astronomer Kohl pointed out that several very large meteors had recently been observed over Denmark and he suggested that comet dust in the high atmosphere might account for the phenomenon. He was getting close, but in general, there was no agreement as to what had happened. An Irkutsk newspaper dated 2 July reported that, in a village more than 200 miles from the Tunguska river, peasants had seen a fireball brighter than the sun approach the ground, followed by a huge cloud of black smoke, a forked tongue of flame and a loud crash as if from gunfire. All the villagers ran into the street in panic. The old women wept and everyone thought the end of the world was approaching. Nearly 400 miles south-west of the explosion, at 7:17 a.m. on 30 June, a train driver on the Trans-Siberian express had to stop his train for fear of derailment due to the tremors and commotion. In towns 300 to 400 miles away, hurricane-like gusts rattled doors, windows and crockery. This was followed within minutes by shock waves which knocked down horses and hurled people working on boats into the river. Over 550 miles to the south of the explosion, a seismograph in the city of Irkutsk near Lake Baikal, close to the Mongolian border, registered strong earth tremors. Local Siberian newspapers carried stories of a fireball in the sky, and a fearful explosion, but by the autumn of 1908 these stories had died out, and they went unnoticed in St. Petersburg, Moscow and the West. The region was arguably one of the most inaccessible places on Earth, in the center of Siberia. The closest observers of the explosion were reindeer herders asleep in their tents in several camps about 30 km from the site. They were blown into the air and knocked unconscious; one man blown into a tree later died of his injuries. Early in the morning when everyone was asleep in the tent, it was blown up in the air along with its occupants. Some lost consciousness. When they regained consciousness, they heard a great deal of noise and saw the forest burning around them, much of it devastated. The ground shook and incredibly prolonged roaring was heard. Everything round about was shrouded in smoke and fog from burning, falling trees. Eventually the noise died away and the wind dropped, but the forest went on burning. Many reindeer rushed away and were lost. [earthsci.org] Thousands of reindeer, in the general area around ground zero, were killed. Many campsites and storage huts belonging to the herders that dotted the area were destroyed. Rumors of an extraordinary event persisted, transmitted back by geologists and other researchers working in the area. These stories attracted the attention of a meteorite researcher, Leonard Kulik. But, it was not until 1927 that he could finally lead an expedition to the site of the 1908 explosion. Kulik got off the Trans-Siberian railway at the Taishet station and on horse-drawn sledges they set off on an arduous three-day odyssey through 350 miles of ice and snow until he and his men reached the village of Kezhma, situated on the River Angara. At the village Kulik and his party of researchers replenished their supplies of food, then struggled on for a three-day journey across wild and unchartered areas of Siberia until they reached the log-cabin village of Vanavara on 25 March. Kulik then tried to make headway through the untamed Siberian forests, or taiga as the Russians call it, but was forced to turn back after heavy snowdrifts almost froze the horses to death. For three days Kulik was forced to remain in the snow-bound village of Vanavara, but during this period he interviewed many of the Evenki hunters who had witnessed the Siberian fireball's arrival on this planet. The tales of the sky being ripped open by a falling sun and of a great thunder shaking the ground made Kulik even more eager to penetrate the taiga to find his holy grail. When the weather gradually improved, Kulik set out for the Tunguska Valley. When he finally reached the site of the mysterious explosion, he was almost speechless. From a ridge overlooking the scene, Kulik took out his notebook and scribbled down his first impressions of the damage wreaked by the cosmic vandal. Kulik wrote: From our observation point no sign of forest can be seen, for everything has been devastated and burned, and around the edge of the dead area, the young, twenty-year-old forest growth has moved forward furiously, seeking sunshine and life. One has an uncanny feeling when one sees twenty to thirty-inch [thick] giant trees snapped across like twigs, and their tops hurled many yards away. ©Unknown How the Tunguska object may have appeared. ..tr>..table> There were three further expeditions to the site of the Tunguska explosion, all of them headed by Kulik. In 1941, Hitler attacked Russia. The 58-year-old Leonid Kulik volunteered to defend Moscow, but was wounded by the Nazis. He was captured by German troops and thrown in a prison camp where he died from his wounds. [Tom Slemen] The energy of the explosion has been calculated from the extent of the flattened forest and from the small pressure waves which arrived at the speed of sound and were recorded on barographs around the world including stations between Cambridge, 50 miles north of London, and Petersfield, 55 miles south. Interestingly, it took the meteorologists in England twenty years to make the connection between their records and the devastation in Tunguska. The wave trains were unlike any others which had been recorded up until that time but nowadays we know that they do resemble those obtained from a hydrogen bomb explosion. It seems that the impact had an energy of 30 to 40 megatons, the combined force of a few dozen ordinary hydrogen bombs. According to John Baxter and Thomas Atkins, in their book The Fire Came By, the explosion resulted in an enormous "pillar of fire" and the blinding column was visible for hundreds of miles. The series of thunderous claps that followed could be heard for 500 miles or more. ©Unknown Aftermath of the Tunguska explosion ..tr>..table> The noise of the explosion deafened those close to the blast. Following that, a searingly hot thermal current from the fire in the sky raced across the forests. Tall conifers were scorched and ignited and the fires burned for days. Residents of Vanavara, a small trading post about forty miles distant, felt the fierce draft of heat. Some individuals there were flung into the air as the shock wave arrived; pieces of sod were gouged up, ceilings collapsed, and windows were shattered. ©Unknown What the Tunguska explosion may have looked like. ..tr>..table> As it happens, the date of fall, 30 June, corresponds to the passage of the Earth through the maximum of the Beta Taurid stream. From this and its trajectory, it appears that the Tunguska object was part of the Taurid complex. Probably the Earth passed through a swarm within the stream. The scientific investigation undertaken by Kullik in 1927 revealed that near the center of the blast many of the trees were still standing upright, even though denuded of limbs and leaves. Further from ground zero the trees were blown down and seared, forming concentric circles with the bases of the trees all pointing in the direction of the center of the blast. All of this evidence pointed to the fact that the blast almost certainly occurred in mid air. ©Unknown Aftermath of the Tunguska explosion ..tr>..table> The occurrence, this century, of an impact with the energy of a really big hydrogen bomb does give one pause. Had the incident occurred today, it would probably trigger World War Three. Just a few hours earlier or later and the impact could have been over a major city or urban area. But that didn't happen. As noted, it was twenty years before anyone really had an inkling of what DID happen. That was partly due to the fact that the Russians in 1908 were somewhat occupied with politics. The previous year, 1907, Czar Nicholas had found himself faced with revolutionaries being elected in large numbers to the newly created parliament - the Duma. The eventual revolution began in 1918. One might even say that the Tunguska event was a harbinger of things to come. And maybe in more ways than anybody thinks. ©Unknown This image shows the directions of the blast ..tr>..table> Eighty-six years later, in July of 1994, there was another harbinger: the fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy struck Jupiter. ©Unknown This diagram shows the area of damage in Tunguska as compared to the size of Washington D.C. ..tr>..table> If they were able to brush Tunguska off as a fluke, scientists were not so easily able to put aside the spectacle of a whole string of comets hitting another planet in our solar system, one after the other, as the planet spun in space. In the same year, a book entitled Hazards due to Comets and Asteroids was published in reaction to this, then impending, event. The book is a collection of papers which I have referenced before in this series. One of the papers in that book says: Our understanding of the history of Earth and its inhabitants is undergoing a radical change. The gradual processes of geologic change and evolution, it is now clear, are punctuated by natural catastrophes on a colossal scale - catastrophes resulting from collisions of large asteroids and comets with Earth. It is, to use the popular term, a "paradigm shift." This "new catastrophism," is not unlike the revolutions brought about by the heliocentric solar system of Copernicus, or Darwinian evolution, or the big bang. In retrospect, such revolutionary ideas always seem obvious. On reading the Origin of Species, Thomas Huxley remarked simply: "Why didn't I think of that." Now, looking at the Moon, we find ourselves wondering why it took so long to ask whether the process that cratered its surface is still going on. (Robert L. Park of The American Physical Society, Lori B. Garver of the National Space Society and Terry Dawson, a staffer for the House Committee on Science, Technology, and Space working for the Committee's then Chairman, Rep. George Brown ) Let me repeat that most important remark: Our understanding of the history of Earth and its inhabitants is undergoing a radical change. The gradual processes of geologic change and evolution, it is now clear, are punctuated by natural catastrophes on a colossal scale ... That may be the understatement of the millennium. It has been suggested by a number of researchers that the current "climate change" issues are actually due to the earth moving through cosmic dust clouds and that all the hoopla about global warming is simply a cover-up of this fact. Astrophysicist Victor Clube suggests that it is a cometary cosmic dust cloud, left over from the break-up of a giant comet that, for a long period of the Earth's history, threatened and bombarded our planet with unspeakably horrible, civilization destroying fragments, i.e. the progenitor of the Taurid stream, including the Tunguska comet. Clube also argues that these events were the basis for the formulation of humanity's ideas about the cosmos, god and religion and even astrology. Over time, as the giant comet spent most of its mass in its Titanic fury, dying away to occasional less than civilization destroying bombardments, our conceptions of gods changed; the reality was tossed out the window in favor of fairy tales for both science and religion, not to mention astrology. He writes: Three thousand years ago, in accordance with age-old practice, the kings of Babylon were still employing astronomer-priests to give warnings of cosmic visitations. A thousand years ago, the emperors of China were still relying on similar skills, while in Europe the Pope saw messages in the sky and urged Holy War. But this latter was an aberration; for the last two and a half thousand years have seen the decline and fall of the sky gods, and the growing presumption that the cosmos is stable and regular. The shift of paradigm has been unconscious, convenient, insidious and thorough. Probably, the rediscovery of a lost tradition of celestial catastrophe could not have been made through analysis of ancient texts alone; a key had to be provided, and it has been, by the paraphernalia of modern science. It is a salutary lesson both on the capacity of human reasoning to get it wrong for long periods of time, and on the essential unity of knowledge. It would be naïve to think, however, that one merely has to point to deep-seated cracks in the structure of modern knowledge to have scholars setting to and constructing a better framework within which mankind might plan his future. There is considerable intellectual capital invested in the status quo, enough to ensure that those with an interest in preserving it, the 'enlightened' and the 'established', will continue to present the cosmos to us in a suitably non-violent form. The history of ideas reveals that some will even go further and act as a kind of thought police, whipping potential deviants into line. For them, temporal power takes precedence over the fate of the species. (Clube, The Cosmic Winter) This problem of the "status quo" and "thought police" is not a minor issue. In this series of articles that were kicked off by Mike Baillie's book New Light on the Black Death, we have repeatedly come face to face with the obvious fact that those in positions of power and authority lie to the masses of humanity as a rule rather than an exception. Again and again in this series, we have discussed historical cometary bombardments, the consequences for humanity being dire enough to begin with, but which were then exacerbated and capitalized upon by pathological deviants, following which the facts were covered up by lies. Worse, again and again we have seen that the masses of humanity that suffer the most from these assaults and manipulations appear to be quite willing to be deceived even to their own death and destruction (if only someone will give them something warm and fuzzy to believe in and a scapegoat to blame). At present, we are observing this phenomenon playing out on the global stage in real time and again and again we shake our heads and ask "why?!" What is it about our world, our present day culture, the human beings that occupy our planet, that gives rise to this bizarre condition that lies are preferred over truth, death over life? As I have pulled on the many threads that lead to and away from these matters, what I see repeatedly is a small group of people on the planet who rule over the masses of people, who do not have humanity's best interests at heart - another staggering understatement, but I'm on a roll so why stop now? What I see is the constant - and mostly successful - efforts of this small group driving to enforce totalitarianism in one guise or another - from politics to religion to all fields of science - on the entire world. And again and again they utilize disasters as a means to consolidate their power. Read Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine to get a good grip on exactly how this works now, and how it has always worked. There is nothing new under the sun! Parallel to the growing awareness of pathology in power is the expanding research among a few maverick scientists and researchers showing plainly that cometary disasters are cyclic and it is altogether possible that there are still a few big bangs left in the Taurid meteor stream. It is also possible that there are new swarms of comets heading our way as recent "global warming" and "moon capture" events on the other planets seem to indicate. Something is definitely going on in our solar system and we need to know what it is. What seems certain is that if disasters are in our future, it will be seen by the elite as just another opportunity to use their Shock tactics to consolidate their power over the entire globe, never mind that there might be so few people left that it will only amount to being a big frog in a small pond - and possibly a frozen one at that. In her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt wrestles mightily with the problem, never quite reaching a complete explanation nor solution. After all she saw, all she experienced, all her research, in the introduction she wrote: Two world wars in one generation, separated by an uninterrupted chain of local wars and revolutions, followed by no peace treaty for the vanquished and no respite for the victor, have ended in the anticipation of a third World War between the two remaining world powers. This moment of anticipation is like the calm that settles after all hopes have died. We no longer hope for an eventual restoration of the old world order with all its traditions, or for the reintegration of the masses of five continents who have been thrown into a chaos produced by the violence of wars and revolutions and the growing decay of all that has still been spared. Under the most diverse conditions and disparate circumstances, we watch the development of the same phenomena - homelessness on an unprecedented scale, rootlessness to an unprecedented depth. Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest - forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries. It is as though mankind had divided itself between those who believe in human omnipotence (who think that everything is possible if one knows how to organize masses for it) and those for whom powerlessness has become the major experience of their lives. On the level of historical insight and political thought there prevails an ill-defined, general agreement that the essential structure of all civilizations is at the breaking point. Although it may seem better preserved in some parts of the world than in others, it can nowhere provide the guidance to the possibilities of the century, or an adequate response to its horrors. Desperate hope and desperate fear often seem closer to the center of such events than balanced judgment and measured insight. The central events of our time are not less effectively forgotten by those committed to a belief in an unavoidable doom, than by those who have given themselves up to reckless optimism. [...] This book [...] was written out of the conviction that it should be possible to discover the hidden mechanics by which all traditional elements of our political and spiritual world were dissolved into a conglomeration where everything seems to have lost specific value, and has become unrecognizable for human comprehension, unusable for human purpose. To yield to the mere process of disintegration has become an irresistible temptation, not only because it has assumed the spurious grandeur of "historical necessity," but also because everything outside it has begun to appear lifeless, bloodless, meaningless, and unreal. The conviction that everything that happens on earth must be comprehensible to man can lead to interpreting history by commonplaces. Comprehension does not mean denying the outrageous, deducing the unprecedented from precedents, or explaining phenomena by such analogies and generalities that the impact of reality and the shock of experience are no longer felt. It means, rather, examining and bearing consciously the burden which our century has placed on us - neither denying its existence nor submitting meekly to its weight. Comprehension, in short, means the unpremeditated attentive facing up to...reality. In this sense, it must be possible to face and understand the outrageous fact that so small (and, in world politics, so unimportant) a phenomenon as the Jewish question and anti-Semitism could become the catalytic agent for first, the Nazi movement, then a world war, and finally the establishment of death factories. [...] or the curious contradiction between the totalitarian movements avowed cynical "realism" and their conspicuous disdain of the whole texture of reality. [...] The totalitarian attempt at global conquest and total domination has been the destructive way out of all impasses. Its victory may coincide with the destruction of humanity; wherever it has ruled, it has begun to destroy the essence of man. (Hannah Arendt, Summer, 1950) Hannah's comments and observations of our world, wrung from her own pain and experiences, have never been more poignant than today when we face exactly what she was describing: Global Totalitarianism rising like a mighty juggernaut with the end of humanity in sight. And never have we seen more clearly that characteristic of the authoritarian type Hannah also saw: "avowed cynical "realism" and ... conspicuous disdain of the whole texture of reality." If you want to see a stunning portrayal of this type of individual, get a copy of Lions for Lambs and watch Tom Cruise deliver a drop-dead performance. Here at SOTT we regularly discuss the problem of pathological deviance and how pathology can drive an individual to seek power over others. We have brought forward the work of Andrzej Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology, and this goes a long way toward providing a framework in which the history of evil - particularly political evil - can be understood. As far as I can tell, Hannah Arendt did not consider the problems of pathology and how it operates in society as a corrupting element, nor did she consider the factor that Judaism and its offspring, Christianity and Islam, could be the carriers of the disease of totalitarianism. In this sense, it is really important to come to the knowledge of how religions are created and by whom - generally pathological deviants - and how they are used, in combination with politics, to control masses of people. This, of course, takes us back to the problem of comets in our skies and impacting our planet. As it happens, after pulling on so many threads relating to the topic, it occurs to me that comets may, indeed, have a great deal to do with the major social problem on our planet today: psychopaths. One might reasonably ask: Is some evolutionary process at work here? Clearly, staggeringly large numbers of people die repeatedly when they place their trust in lies and liars. And nearly as often do the liars in power find themselves in difficult situations as a result of their over-reaching and ignoring facts. Obviously, if evolution is at work here, those individuals - and their offspring who believe lies are ultimately eliminated from the gene pool. What happens to those who, as Arendt suggests, try to comprehend, understand, and face the facts of our reality, remains to be seen. As she also states, this comprehension must not deny the outrageous, nor attempt to deduce the unprecedented from precedent. You see, evolutionarily speaking, psychopaths should not exist. Throughout history it can be seen that human beings have needed to co-operate and care about one another in order to survive and produce a new generation that will carry on the processes of society. Most human dynamics are based on people trying to work out their problems and come to resolutions agreeable to the greatest number or, at the very least, in the interactions between two people. The issue of trust is paramount. Someone who betrays your trust is someone you cannot live or work with. Therefore, psychopaths, who are untrustworthy should have long ago become extinct. But that isn't the way things are. It appears, in fact, as if psychopathy has increased! As we can observe throughout history right down to the present day, being the only psychopath in a group of trusting people can be a very good thing for the psychopath. As groups get larger, they can accommodate more psychopaths. It seems that when the number of people carrying the psychopathy gene is small enough, those few who carry it can achieve phenomenal breeding success. As Glenn Whitman explains it: What's nice about this explanation is that it not only explains why psychopaths exist, but also why we're not all psychopaths. If there are few enough psychopaths in the population, then being a psychopath makes sense because you'll mostly have winning confrontations with nice people. But if there are too many psychopaths, then the gains from taking advantage of nice people will be swamped by the losses from confronting other psychopaths. In equilibrium, you'll get both psychos and nice folks, with each strategy generating approximately equal returns, and with the precise balance determined by the relative payoffs of different interactions. The problem is, as noted, we are living in a time when psychopathy seems to have increased almost exponentially. Moreover, as Hannah Arendt notes - and this was never more true than today - the broad sweep of history indicates that the psychopaths are winning and that means destruction for all, including the psychopaths. Which leads us to the problem: psychopathy being what it is and doing what it does, should certainly have brought the human race to total destruction a long time ago IF, as a taxon, it had existed throughout the development of humankind. And that suggests that it did not. In fact, the studies of Marija Gimbutas indicate that there was a time when psychopathy was not "at the top". As far back as we can go with archaeological records; i.e. "hard science," we find that the worship of the Great Celestial Goddess was the act of veneration of the Universe and all within it as the living body of the Goddess-Mother-Creatrix. This goddess was symbolized by the double wavy lines of water - both the cosmic sea of potential/activation, as well as the life giving moisture that emanated from the body of the Goddess and all women as her representatives on earth; the oceans and seas, rivers and springs and wells. She was the sky Goddess and the Earth was her womb and all upon it were her children. The "Son/Sun-King" died every year and was reborn in the passing of the seasons. Rites and rituals were enacted to insure the rebirth of the "Son-Sun" through the "womb of the Earth," the generative organ of the Cosmic Mother. There was a purity and innocence... a pastoral, Arcadian simplicity and symmetry to life. Men and women were equals in importance as the "Twin offspring" of the Goddess. Women were honored and cherished in their three manifestations: the virgin-future-mother; the mother-nourisher; and the crone-mother of wisdom. Men were partners and protectors of women, thereby protectors of their own being since all were born and nursed by women. The male energy served the femal ©Unknown