And Now for Some Real Heretics, Part 9

Continued from Part 8:

We saw in recent posts that the category that St. Paul calls hylics (as part of the three-fold division of people into pneumatics, psychics and hylics) and what and Boris Mouravieff calls pre-Adamics can be further divided into psychopaths and more normal, harder to distinguish types with no higher centers or soul potential. All of them can cause problems for those with soul potential who share the earth with them. The pre-Adamics, estimated by Mouravieff to be half of the population evenly distributed across the globe, can divert, distract and drain energy from those with soul potential. In fact, they need to steal energy in order to appear to have higher centers.

Adding to these problems for those trying to strengthen their Real ‘I’ as opposed to the ‘I’ of the Personality is that many of the Adamics are hardly distinguishable from pre-Adamics due to the aforementioned drains on energy. In addition, not all those with higher centers are oriented towards positive spiritual development. There is another path for those who are trying to ascend: the negative path. Many of the communications that people have had with intelligences at higher levels have spoken of a free-will choice that conscious beings have with regards to whom they are serving: self or others.

According to these sources (here I include the Ra material of Carla Rueckert, the Pleadian material of Barbara Marciniak, Michael Topper’s material, and the Cassiopean material of Laura Knight-Jadczyk), the world we live in is one where we are tasked to orient ourselves towards either Service to Self or Service to Others (STS vs. STO). Furthermore, the default mode of this world we live in (third density) is STS. We are in third density STS land due to a Fall where we chose that orientation. The term “density” refers to the reality that can be seen due to our level of awareness. According to these various sources, there are seven densities ranging from inanimate matter (first density) to seventh density (union with the Absolute, All There Is, the Creator, etc.). We are travelling deep into some weird paths here, so I am leaving aside for the moment any lengthy discussion of the truth or reliability of these claims. Again, I only ask you to consider these claims as thought experiments and see if they help explain anything in your experience. We must also keep in mind that even the sources themselves say that there are inevitable distortions resulting in enough things that are not true in the communications, that we are not absolved from the need to adopt a sceptical, scientific attitude towards them. As Michael Topper put it:

In this way we come to see that, even in relation to the alleged rescue-operations of channeling, we haven't succeeded in surpassing the original problem at all. We find there is no device to which we can have recourse, that serves as proof against the possibility of deception and illusion. We find once again that we are thrown back ultimately on our own resource, stuck after all with the responsibility of developing our own discriminative faculty, our own will, our own spiritual intelligence able to act as a gyroscopic monitor of information-signals. For it becomes inescapably evident that, regardless the subtlety of the originating plane or quality of the formal Ground, the voice of Self-serving can Speak from the Other Side with as great an ease as any other orientation, and indeed takes up Residency there with as firm a sense of proprietary rights.

Many people have a strong resistance to the idea that those polarized towards evil can rise to higher levels of existence. They think that evil is a mistake due to ignorance, not a choice made with awareness by those who have souls and want to ascend. Michael Topper:

We discovered through such proffered channeling sources as the Ra material that "graduation" beyond this threshold 3rd-density existence holds ambivalent implication, of a disconcerting type, for many who'd assumed that only the "positive" alignment possessed a purchase on integration adequate to make the advance in required spiritual coherence. As it turns out, negative orientation of a virtually exclusive, self-serving type is capable of commanding a coherence and sufficient systemic integration to "make the grade" as well, as far as the necessary technical degree of mind-body organization and threshold intensity (or purposive unity) is concerned, the negative polarization can exhibit a "harvestability" equivalent to that of the positive.

… The idea that negativity or "evil" orientation not only survives this plane of blindered ignorance but is capable of holding its own and advancing through the higher spheres of more overtly spiritualized substance, is not only a distressing notion to many, it is difficult for some to accept on philosophical grounds due to the conventional understanding that "negativity" is inherently self-divisive and therefore ultimately disintegrate, so that the requisite unity consistent with Being through the higher planes is by nature beyond its grasp.

And of course this "understanding" holds, in an ultimate sense, as the Ra material explains, spiritual advance through the Negative Hierarchy reaches the pons asinorum at the mid-point of the 6th density, the cutting-off place just before consciousness merges into unity with the so-called Oversoul or Higher Self. Anywhere prior to that point the inherent deficiency with respect to negative orientation may have become apparent to the ongoing focus of consciousness assaying an "ascent" by that mode, the upper limit of friction, division and thus inanition (or unassimilable energy) may have been grasped as the inbuilt barrier to perfect resolution with the Whole in terms of the Negative tactic.

…When we turn, puzzled, to ask how this may be, we need look no further than our own 3rd density backyard. Here recent research has found, on behalf of the general Newsweek-consciousness, a medical evidence not only tending to substantiate aspects of the perennial Teaching regarding the relation of mind and body, but ripe with other implication. Scientific investigation into the "mental" influence on health now documents that those exhibiting strong positive correlation with values of will, confidence and self-motivation tend to display proportionately strengthened immunological response. Just as it has been established for some time that protracted stress of an internalized type (manifesting as "anxiety") as well as prolonged periods of grief, depression and boredom predictably correlate with depressed immunological function, so conversely it's been found that the highly purposive, self-confident psyche literally tends to amplify the available leukocytes and in general enjoys a more resilient mind-body vehicle—and this independent of
whether the personality is altruistically oriented, a self-giving soul of beneficent motivation or on the contrary a narcissistic and manipulative power-broker out in fullforce service to self!

This should be very instructive, for those who can read the implication. From this interesting data, we can locate the mechanism behind the otherwise perplexing intelligence that beings of a committed, threshold degree of inner unification whether positively or negatively oriented may equally advance to the higher ground, where their respective intentions are granted more potent substance with which to experiment.

The common key of such advance is not the character of the motivation per se, it is not a moral judgment that draws the line, at any threshold gate of progress. The common key is identifiable here as will, and its closely correlated value confidence.

That fact is frightening, especially if one thought that anything from “higher” or “spiritual” realms was good and it was just this confusing, material realm down here that had people you had to watch out for! Another thing, even more frightening, that all the abovementioned sources said is that we, as a result of the Fall of our own free will (“our” meaning the human race), are under the control of 4th density STS beings. We may be in the same relation to them as earthly cattle (2nd density) are to us. This gives new depth to the Gnostics’ concept of archons or principalities of this world.

Rumsfeld, Venezuela and World War III

World War III, the one the United States is going to lose, is getting closer and closer. On Wednesday Donald Rumsfeld told a news conference in Brazil that he “can't imagine why Venezuela needs 100,000 AK-47s.'' I’ll help you out, Don. Maybe it is because they feel they are going to be attacked by the United States, who has many more than 100,000 military assault rifles. It’s called self defense.

The United States has tried the first two options in their Hit Man arsenal (1. lend them too much money—can’t do that, they have lots of oil; 2. overthrow the government—tried and failed twice), to no effect. Not only that, but Hugo Chavez has been ridiculing Bush and his officials and making deals with Russia, China and Cuba and playing a leadership role in Latin America, befriending giants Brazil and Argentina. Options three (assassination-- they have been unsuccessful so far) and four (invasion) will soon come into play. Option three is tricky, since Chavez has announced to the world they are trying to kill him and that if he is killed George Bush will be personally responsible, and that, if Chavez is killed, Venezuela will cut off oil shipments to the United States which depends on Venezuela for almost twenty percent of its oil.

Why will the United States risk all-out war in their own hemisphere while bogged down in the Middle East without enough troops to hold Iraq let along Iran and Syria. Because they are the United States and that’s what they do. As retired CIA agent, Philip Agee said:

One thing that is very important for the Chavez movement, the Bolivarian movement here, to keep in mind always, is that the United States will never stop trying to turn the clock back. US interests are defined as the unfettered access to natural resources, to labor, and to the markets of foreign countries.

It is countries like the Latin American countries that assure prosperity in the United States. The more governments with their own agendas, with an element of nationalism, and that oppose US policies such as the neoliberal agenda come to power, the more of a threat these movement are seen to be in Washington, because what’s at stake is the stability of the political system in the United States, and the security of the political class in the United States.

So let’s see how our free press is spinning this one:

BRASILIA - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday issued the strongest U.S. condemnation yet of Venezuela's planned purchase of 100,000 AK-47 rifles, saying he couldn't ''imagine why'' Venezuela needed the weapons. Rumsfeld's denunciation on a four-day swing through Latin America appears to be the Bush administration's latest attempt to isolate Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez from his neighbors. The Herald reported last week that the administration has begun a top-to-bottom review of U.S. policy toward Venezuela, with the president becoming personally involved in the discussions.

Lower-level officials of the Bush administration have sounded the alarm for some time on the Venezuelan plan to buy the AK-47s from Russia, fearing that the weapons, munitions or rifles they replace could arm rebel groups fighting the government in Colombia. But this is the first time that a senior Cabinet-level official has used such blunt language.

In a news conference with José Alencar, Brazil's vice president and defense minister, Rumsfeld said that ''certainly I'm concerned'' when asked about the AK-47s.

''I can't imagine what's going to happen to 100,000 AK-47s. I can't imagine why Venezuela needs 100,000 AK-47s,'' Rumsfeld said of the purchase. ``And I just personally hope it doesn't happen, and I can't imagine that if it did happen, that it would be good for the hemisphere.''

The Bush administration can get some play by scaring the international public on the so-called weapons of mass destruction, but rifles? Is no other country allowed to have an army any more unless it is a US client state? Apparently not. Forget about the claim that Venezuela would hand them over to Colombian rebels. Venezuela will keep all of them to defend themselves against the United States and its client state in the region, Colombia. Most people in the United States don’t realize that Colombia is getting billions of dollars every year in military aid from the United States and has stationed there thousands of US Military “advisors” as well as uncounted thousands of US mercenaries, or “contractors” to use the euphemism currently preferred. These contractors are US military personnel who change clothes, get a pay raise, and act just like US troops would.

James Petras sees this as part of a strategy to get rid of both Castro and Chavez:

US strategy toward destroying the Cuban revolution is increasingly following a "two step" approach: first overthrow the Chavez government in Venezuela, cut off the energy supply and trade links and then proceed toward economic strangulation and military attack. The "two step" strategy against Cuba, involves the elaboration of a calibrated action plan to overthrow the Chavez government.

Washington's anti-Chavez efforts up till 2005 have resulted in severe defeats. These efforts have largely been based on an "insider" approach, utilizing the local ruling class, sectors of the army and the corrupt trade union bureaucracy. Not only have Washington's domestic instruments been defeated but they have been severely weakened for future use. Washington's support for the failed military coup resulted in the loss of several hundred counter-revolutionary officers who were forced to resign. Bush's support for the petroleum elite's lockout led to the expulsion of thousands of oil officials allied with Washington. The defeat of the referendum to expel Chavez, mobilized, politicized and radicalized millions of poor Venezuelans and demoralized Washington's middle class supporters. The result of these failed policies has been to turn Washington's attention to an "outsider" strategy: the key to which is incremental military intervention in association with the terrorist Uribe regime in Colombia.

The US strategy against Cuba involves a joint US-Colombian attack of Venezuela backed by internal terrorists and the ruling class. This indirect attack on Cuba, involves complex, external preparation in cooperation with Colombia. First of all Washington and Uribe have greatly strengthened military bases surrounding the Venezuelan border. Secondly "trial military incursions" involving both Colombian military and paramilitary forces occur on a regular basis ­ testing Venezuelan defenses. In 2004 six Venezuelan soldiers were killed, a number of Venezuelan officials were bribed to kidnap a Colombian resistance leader and numerous cross border attacks killing and kidnapping Colombian refugees took place in Venezuela. Thirdly the US has provided nearly $3 billion dollars in military aid to Colombia, tripled the size of its armed forces (to over 275,000), greatly increased its air force combat units (helicopters, fighter bombers), provided advanced military technology and several thousand official and "contracted" military specialists. Fourthly Washington has recruited the Gutierrez regime in Ecuador, invaded Haiti,
established military bases in Peru and the Dominican Republic, and has engaged in navy maneuvers just off the Venezuelan coast in preparation for a military attack.Fifthly Colombia (under US tutelage) signed a joint military-intelligence cooperation agreement on December 18, 2004 with the Venezuelan Ministry of Defense, providing the US with "inside information" and serving as a possible source of infiltration of the Venezuelan Armed Forces to counter pro-Cuban officers.

The US is relying on a "triangular strategy" to overthrow the Chavez regime: A military invasion from Colombia, US intervention (air and sea attacks plus special forces to assassinate key officials) and an internal uprising by infiltrated terrorists and military traitors, supported by key media, financial and petrol elites. The strategy involves seizing state power, expelling the Cuban aid missions and breaking all agreements with Cuba.

Prior to this concerted military strategy, Washington has designed a propaganda campaign against the Cuban-Venezuelan alliance, Venezuela's attempts to rectify the enormous military deficit with Colombia by purchasing defensive arms, and raising the specter of Venezuela's "subversion" of Latin American regimes. The key to US policy is to prevent Venezuela from joining Cuba as an alternative social welfare regime to the US neo-liberal clients in Latin America. US aggression escalates as the agrarian reform expands, Venezuela prepares self-defense and Chavez diversifies trade and investment ties. Cuba's powerful support for Venezuela's social welfare programs has consolidated mass support for the Chavez regime and is a main base of defense for the radicalization of the process.As Venezuela confronts Washington's threats, it consolidates its ties with Cuba. The fate of the two projects become intertwined and bound together in a single common anti-imperialist alliance, despite the differences in social systems and political composition.

The US "external" strategy toward Venezuela and its "two step" approach toward Cuba face powerful limitations.

First of all the Colombian regime faces a powerful internal opposition: 20,000 veteran guerrilla fighters and millions of Colombians sympathetic to the agrarian reform program, independent foreign policy and political freedoms of the Chavez regime. It is very dangerous for Uribe to start a "two-front war" which might open the way to attacks on the principle cities including Bogotá.

The US is heavily tied down militarily in Iraq and puts a higher priority on war against Iran/Syria than Venezuela. The US intervention would be limited to air and sea attacks and Special Forces.

The war would mobilize millions of Venezuelans in a war of national liberation, defending their own land ­ homes, neighborhoods, families and friends. Moreover popular liberation wars radicalize the population and frequently lead to the confiscation of counter-revolutionary property. A failed invasion could push Venezuela toward greater socialization of the economy and eliminate the domestic elite.

Moreover, US economy and multi-nationals stand to lose a reliable supply of petroleum in a tight market and billions of dollars in investments ­ weakening the US position in the global energy market.

An invasion would likely to lead to a joint military defense pact between Venezuela and Cuba, which would counter-US policy in the Caribbean. Such an invasion would also be likely to provoke major unrest and instability throughout Latin America, threaten US clients and undermining neo-liberal regimes and policies.

For all these reasons, Washington's attempts to pursue the external, two step policy toward Venezuela and Cuba, while extremely dangerous to both countries, could have a boomerang effect, setting in its wake a new wave of anti-imperialist struggles throughout the region.

Up to now the escalation of US diplomatic and economic aggression against Cuba has led to the greater isolation of the US in Europe and throughout the Third World. An escalation of military aggression against Venezuela as part of a "two-step strategy" against Cuba could have even more severe consequences ­ the expansion of the revolutionary struggle in Colombia and the rest of Latin America.

If this scenario plays out with an invasion of Iran and Syria at the same time, who in the world will oppose the United States? Let’s see: Russia, China, Venezuela, France, Germany, Iran (together with a new Shiite belt including most of Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon) and perhaps Brazil. In other words, the holders of vast natural resources, including most of the oil, the manufacturing colossus of China (including high-tech weapons manufacturing in France and Germany), the strongest currency (the Euro) and a vast amount of the world’s land mass. The United States can count on the United Kingdom, Israel, and maybe India. It doesn’t look good; there would be much destruction and it is totally unnecessary, but we have a crazed psychopath for a president who likes to risk everything on a long shot and won’t listen to reason.

The Only Troops We Should Be Supporting

This is an interview of a "deserter" from the World Socialist Web Site. The young man has a good question. How can we back in the United States see footage of innocent families being shot to death in cars in Iraq and still support the war? A couple of thoughts. First of all, the only people who really know what's going on in these wars are the veterans. Even the opponents of the wars don't have any idea of the scale of corruption and murderous criminality in EVERY war. I remember having several eye-opening talks with Vietnam vets about the scale of heroin trafficking by US and South Vietnamese generals and intelligence types, for example. It was just organized crime on a very large scale. The other thought is that the United States will increasingly be losing her best and brightest, just like Nazi Germany did. The intellectual dominance of the United States and its universities for the last sixty years was a direct result of German and Austrian academic refugees. The only people that will be left in the US soon may be the brainwashed and the totally defeated.

American war resister in Canada speaks with WSWS: “The wealthy oil people are making money off of this”

By Lee Parsons

24 March 2005

Early in 2005, Daryl Anderson came to Canada as a deserter from the US Army. He followed the example of Jeremy Hinzman, who became the first soldier to apply to Canada as a political refugee since the beginning of the Iraq war.Anderson’s reasons at the time were simple. He told the Toronto Sun: “I was not going back to Iraq to kill innocent people. I couldn’t see myself making another decision. I didn’t want to live a life where I was hiding in my own country.”

Along with a number of others, most of whom have not gone public, Anderson is awaiting the decision of the refugee board on Hinzman’s case, which is expected to be handed down this week. The Canadian government has already intervened to disallow any argument that the illegality of the war in Iraq is grounds for deserting
soldiers to come to Canada as political refugees. Nevertheless, the number of US deserters is growing, along with public opposition to the war.

Anderson is from a working class background in Lexington, Kentucky, where most of his family, including his mother and daughter, still live. He joined the military as a way to get medical training in the hope of becoming a physical therapist, but was transferred to combat when he failed to pass the required tests.

After training in Germany, he was posted to Iraq last year, where he spent seven
months before coming to Canada. At the age of 22, Anderson was half way through his four-year tour of duty when he heard about the case of Hinzman and decided to follow his example. Since then, Anderson has publicly spoken out against the war.In late February, the World Socialist Web Site spoke with Anderson.

WSWS: When you found out you were going to Iraq, what was the feeling in your unit about going there?

DA: I don’t know what their thinking was when they got deployed there. I know when I got there I thought I was going to go defend my country and, you know, do this great thing. When my unit got there, they didn’t really think about whether it was right to go over there. They just knew they didn’t want to be there. That’s the only thing they could really express.

WSWS: You were there for seven months. And then you came back for Christmas

DA: It was then that...you know, you’re just so caught up in the Army thing, you don’t really stop and think about what they have you doing, and the whole political view. Like, what am I doing this for? They say “Do this,” and you do this. You don’t ask questions.

WSWS: You must have been aware that there was news coming out about Abu Ghraib, the torture going on there, Guantanamo, the torture going on there. What did you make of that? Did you believe that when it first came out?

DA: Yeah, I believed it totally. The pressure that is being put on these young kids. The people that did that, if you saw them before they joined the military, that would never have been something they would have done.

WSWS: How do you explain why they would do that?

DA: You’re over in a desert country for a year or longer. Your wife or your husband
leaves you. Your girlfriend leaves you. You’re never in touch with your friends or family. Your friends are dying, you could die any day, and you don’t really have a life. Seven days a week. There are no days off, and you just go crazy. People do things they wouldn’t normally do.

WSWS: Do you think that there’s anything in terms of the training or the message that’s being given by officers or the leadership?

DA: Well, yes. Whatever they tell you to do, you do. If I wanted to question something, if my superior was making me do something I shouldn’t be doing—to question something is serious, it’s not even an option.

WSWS: What are you hoping will happen here? Jeffrey House is your lawyer and you applied for refugee status?

DA: The main fight is to get Canada to let me stay, but it’s also a fight against the US government and Bush and what they’re doing in Iraq, to pull the troops out of Iraq and stop making further advances in other countries. That’s the whole idea of the campaign.

WSWS: How would you hope to carry that out? What sort of movement do you see doing that?

DA: To bring people to face up to what is going on over there—I mean rallies, protests. The more people who become aware, the more people who are against it, the better the chance. You can’t change the world in a day, but you can’t just say we’re not going to do anything. At least we’re doing something.

WSWS: You realize that the Canadian government has bent over backwards to try and smooth things out with Washington?

DA: That’s just the pressure that Bush is putting on Canada. He’s just trying to bully them around with the weapons defence programme...I don’t think the people want it. The whole thing has got the government distracted, but I know it’s not what the people want.

WSWS: If you actually went back into the US at this point, you’d be thrown in jail immediately?

DA: Yeah, I’d be thrown in jail or apprehended, tried and put in jail for a couple of years.

WSWS: How does your family feel about this?

DA: Proud. They’re proud that I’m up here doing this.

WSWS: How would the other guys in your unit feel?

DA: I don’t know, I have no clue. I know they all liked me and they were all buddies with me, but I can’t really talk to them.

WSWS: Do you think they would know why you were doing this? They wouldn’t think it was because you were afraid?

DA: No, no, because I got a Purple Heart in combat. I fought in the war. I never got scared once, you know. I stood my ground. So it’s not about that.

WSWS: Was there ever any talk in your unit about incidents where civilians were shot?

DA: Before you leave Iraq, you have to sign papers, a government document, saying you will not talk to the media about what is happening over here, the tactics used and all this stuff. So if you sign it, you can’t talk about it. You can’t go to a political meeting and talk about it.

WSWS: But just between yourselves, if things would happen, would you talk about it?

DA: Yeah. Guys would talk about the fact that they hadn’t killed a person before, and they would talk about the struggle with that. But you can’t really put your fist in there and say “No.” You have to keep your thoughts to yourself.

WSWS: Do you think at this point you may end up making Canada your home?

DA: Oh yeah, definitely, if they let me stay, I’m staying.

WSWS: What about everything you left behind—friends and family?

DA: I’ve been gone for three years now—Army training, Iraq. I’d be there right now if I could, but I can’t, and I’m used to dealing with that. I have a sister there. I have a brother, but I haven’t seen him in ten years, maybe fifteen years.

WSWS: When you were in the Army, did you hear about people deserting?

DA: No, they don’t tell you about that. I never even knew about people deserting up to Canada until I came back for Christmas. My mom told me.

WSWS: Were you aware of what had happened during the Vietnam War?

DA: A little bit, but not really. In school they didn’t teach you that all these people were up here during the Vietnam War. I heard it on “The Simpsons” or something—they mentioned it. But I never really was expecting to meet all these Vietnam-era people, or for it to be such a significant thing. Like the guy who did the piece for the [Toronto] Sun, his dad was a Vietnam-era guy, so it runs deep in the people that have a connection.

WSWS: There is some talk that they may be re-introducing the draft.

DA: If they do that, so many people who have a plaque of George Bush hanging on the wall will just automatically not support him. I asked some people, rich people whose kids are in college.My mom said, “You support Bush, but what if he drafts your kid?” “Oh well, we’ll go to Canada.” And she said, “It’s OK for my son to go over there and die for this, but not your kid? So why would you all of a sudden have a different position, why don’t you have it now instead of waiting until your kid goes?”I had an army buddy, he was going to vote for Bush in the election, and I showed him the video of Fahrenheit 911, and he ripped up his ballot.

WSWS: What do you think about the war on terror?

DA: You go there because of these weapons of mass destruction. But if they had these bombs, why would they have taken all this time, all these years to plan to fly a plane into a building? If they had the bombs, they would have already used them. They exist, but they’re not in Iraq, they’re in other places.What was the main thing in Iraq? Why did we have to go to Iraq? That’s the question they can’t answer. But all the people who support Bush’s campaign and give him money, they’re all wealthy oil people, they’re making money off of this. They’re costing the government money, but individually they’re making money off of this.

WSWS: What do you think the alternative is to Bush?

DA: Is there a better alternative? Or is that just how corrupt the government has gotten in the states? Is there really a better alternative?At the very bottom, where it really starts, the little rallies and the little groups, the Democratic Party people, you know, it’s for good, and it’s just regular working class people wanting to do better in the world. But, you know, the money comes into play the higher up you get, the money’s there, and it gets to be all about money. It’s how everybody bases their decisions—on how it’s going to affect them financially. But when you’re questioning your morals, the human rights thing, you’re going too far for the money. Because it’s plain to see, it’s not like it’s hidden. Every time they bring this argument up, the Republican Party will just say, “Oh, well, that’s just some crazy-thinking person—and that’s their only defence. Once a month I see in the paper, “Innocent family fired on.” Kids, parents are dead, the kid’s got blood on her face and she’s crying and the soldier is taking the kid away. Do people just not look at that, or read it? It doesn’t bother them because they’re still going to work tonight?You have to do something, and this is the best I can do right now.

WSWS: Do you think this has changed you?

DA: Yeah, I wouldn’t be the person I am today if my life hadn’t taken this course. I’d probably be at home just playing video games, going to a girlfriend’s house, or not even thinking about what’s going on in the world. I had to see it for myself, because I always had faith in my country, that’s how you’re raised up you don’t want to question that. So I had to see it for myself.

And Now for Some Real Heretics, Part 8

Continued from Part 7.

In the last part we discussed a sub-set of the hylics or pre-Adamics: the psychopaths, those without any conscience. According to clinical studies, they make up about 4% of the population. If what Boris Mouravieff said is true, that is, that pre-Adamic anthropoids make up 50% of the population, than that leaves another 46%. I don’t mean to get too bogged down on exact numbers; let’s just use these as thought experiments. Laura Knight-Jadczyk has introduced the concept of “Organic Portals” to describe these other hylics. The idea of “portals” here describes a possible function for them: they are able to be used as puppets in order to prevent the 50% with soul potential from advancing.

They are agents, in a sense, of the General Law and the Law of Accident. The General Law refers to the working out of cause and effect for the benefit of all organic life, while the Law of Accident refers to its effect on an individual personality, being buffetted about in a mechanical fashion. While identifying with the ‘I’ of the Personality, Mouravieff’s exterior man’s

…life will be in effect a factitious existence, as he himself will change from moment to moment. Since these changes will occur as a result of external shocks which he can almost never foresee, it will also be impossible for him to predict in advance the exact way he will change internally. Thus he will live subject to events as they occur, always preoccupied by constantly ‘patching up (‘replastering’). He will in fact progress towards the unknown, at the mercy of chance. This state of things, named in the Tradition The Law of Chance or the Law of Accident, is—for man as he is—the principal law under whose authority he leads his illusory existence. (Mouravieff, Gnosis I, p. 6)

What does this mean? For Mouravieff, that means that the seeker who is trying to re-establish connection with his or her soul needs to escape the Law of Accident by increasing their subjection to the Law of Exception.

What then is the meaning of human life in this Cosmos as we know it? Man’s existence has two main purposes:
-- as an element of the universal organism, it serves the aims of the latter;
-- as an isolated individual, he can pursue his own aims.

To better understand why and how these two objectives are bound together, let us take an example:

The position of man in the Universe is analogous to that of a cell in the human body. Each cell is part of an organ which, in its turn, is an element of a group of organs that assures proper accomplishment of some definite function of the organism.

From this point of view, let us examine the lot of a cell in our bodies. It is subject to two categories of laws. To simplify, let us say that it is placed under the rule of two laws.

The first keeps the cell in its place. In esoteric science we call it the General Law. The second leaves a certain liberty of action for the cell, and is called The Law of Exception.

The first law, which is conservative, ensures that the organ of which this cell is a part accomplishes its function with no impediment. To this end, the first condition is that during their lives the cells which compose the organ fulfil the role given them. This law obliges these cells to remain in their own places, to complete their work, and to dedicate their lives to it.

It is evident that if this law did not keep the cells of the body within the limits of each organ, if it did not oblige them to fulfil their function, the latter would not be able to exist. Thus this law is beneficial; by ensuring the existence of the organs, it permits the whole body to endure.

We know, however, that the total removal of certain organs is compatible with survival. In the current state of our knowledge it even seems that removal of some of them lead to no serious functional inconvenience. Even more; the organism tolerates partial resection of some organs without compromising the roles played by the latter in the general economy. This shows that the disappearance of a few cells, an infinitesimal part of an organ, goes unnoticed: its functioning is not impaired. As the essential role of the General Law is to watch over continuity of function, this disappearance passes unnoticed by it. Therefore it places no further obstacles. Symbolically, one can say that cells which escape from this law now enter the domain of the Law of Exception.

…As a cell of humanity, man forms part of organic life on Earth. This life in its ensemble represents a very sensitive organ of our planet, playing and important role in the economy of the solar system. As a cell of this organ, man finds himself under the influence of the General Law, which keeps him in its place. In fact, this law leaves him a certain margin or tolerance. It allows him some free movement within the limits it sets. Within these boundaries, which are very limited objectively although subjectively they appear vast, man can give free rein to his fantasies and his ambitions. Without going too far into the definition of these limits… we can say as an example, that one of those factors is hunger: the servitiude of working to assure our subsistence. The chain: sexual instinct; procreation; and the care of parents for their children, is another factor… Lastly, fear in its many forms consitutes the third group of factors in question. On the whole, the permitted margin for free movement tolerated by the General Law is limited by something best described in a term less scientific than colorful: bourgeois happiness. Careers in every branch of human activity; fortune; family; love; honors, etc.; all are subject to the sine qua non condition of unconditional if only subconscious acceptance of the inevitability of Death.

As long as man accepts the principle of the final annihilation of his Personality without a fight, he can carry on in life without attracting the increasing pressure of the General Law itself.

The case is totally different if he struggles to surpass the limits which it imposes. He then runs against the action upon him of this Law and its derivatives. It acts simultaneously on several planes: physical, mental and moral. Its action on the moral plane is conceived by man, since time immemorial, in the form of a personification: the Devil. (Ibid., p, 68-9)

…It must be realized that in placing himself under the aegis of the Law of Exception, man goes against the General Law, which he is even called upon to overthrow, if only on the individual scale. He must not forget—under penalty of ‘surprise attack’—that salvation depends on victory over the Devil, which as we have said, is the personalized moral aspect of the General Law. (Ibid., p. 69)

According to Mouravieff, pre-Adamics can pursue only what he terms “A influences,” that is, conventional understandings of what are good goals to pursue: desires, status, success, wealth, sex, etc. Mouravieff says that those who have potential connections with higher centers can be also influenced by B and C influences which are what might call spiritual values. B and C influences make no sense to hylics or pre-Adamics. And, not only that, but these hylics or pre-Adamics, or organic portals, can help distract those with soul potential from establishing better contact with their real ‘I’. Many spiritual traditions speak of the distractions, the stumbling blocks coming from A influences and the agents of the General Law: the ‘wide way’ versus the ‘narrow path’, in the Christian tradition, for example (“Wide is the way that leads to perdition”). The hylics not only provide distractions but they can also drain the energy needed for the task from those with soul potential.

What exactly is meant by “soul potential?” According to Mouravieff, the personality has three mental centers: the motor, the emotional and the intellectual center. The term “soul” or ‘higher self” refers to two other centers: the higher emotional center and the higher intellectual center, “independent of the physical body and of the Personality.” (Gnosis I, p. 45)

In ensemble, these two higher centers truly represent our Soul, of which our current language speaks in the third person. Their presence in our innermost heart, and the rarity of the impartial and objective messages that we are able to receive through the medium of these centers, give us our impression of the real ‘I’ as a Judge residing in his courthouse. (Ibid.)

…While the lower centers in the exterior man are not fully developed, the higher centers are perfect and work at full capacity. But as we are, we cannot receive more than a negligibly small part of their communications. The reason for this is that man views himself as nothing but Personality. This illusion has as its immediate effects, pride, egocentricity and egotism. These form a kind of screen, only allowing the most rudimentary messages from the higher centers to pass, although their communication continues non-stop. They knock at the door; but it is for us to hear the voice and open.

If we leave the picturesque language of St. John, we can say that the deficiency of our lower centers is the reason why we do not receive the communications of higher centers. (Ibid.)

The pre-Adamics, then don’t have a soul, in the sense of an individual, immortal soul. Instead, they partake of a collective soul. They can also steal energy from souled beings to create a reflection of a real soul, which is one of the reasons it is so difficult to identify a non-psychopathic hylic.

To be continued...

Fifteen Years of War

Many people are observing the second anniversary of the Iraq War today, but really, the war has been going on for fifteen years.

Think back to the late eighties and early nineties. The fall of Marcos, the freeing of Nelson Mandela, and the end of apartheid, the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Soviet Union after the beating back of the counter-coup by the old Stalinist guard, the fall of Marcos non-violently by “people power,”the fall of the Duvalier regime and the election of Aristide in Haiti —all these events and more like them, gave new optimism to people at that time. To people, that is, not to the repressive, militaristic, right-wing members of the American ruling class. Dick Cheney all along thought Nelson Mandela should remain in prison.

I will never forget the reaction of George Bush the First the day the Berlin Wall fell, when some TV newsperson asked him a question, lobbing him a softball asking “Isn’t this great?” But Bush had this panicked, pained expression on his face. You could tell that he didn’t think it was great at all, but that he knew he had to say it was. Then, when the Stalinists took control and overthrew Gorbachev for a day, the Bush I Administration, immediately issued friendly remarks about the Stalinist generals, saying they were sure they could work with them, etc. Why is this? Part of it, I think, is that the Bush people didn’t like seeing people rise up against corrupt and repressive ruling groups. That hits a little too close to home for them. Also, Gorbachev issued this curse against the American cold-warriors and military-industrial complex: he said he would do the worst possible thing to them, he would take away their enemy.

I also remember the tour of U.S. by Nelson Mandela in the summer of 1990, there was such optimism. Then, shortly after, something happened which seemed to instantly throw the world back into something out of the 1930s: Iraq invaded Kuwait, and there were reports that they were massing troops on the border with Saudi Arabia. It turned out that the massing troops on the border part was a propaganda lie disseminated by then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. And as for the “naked agression” of Saddam Hussein, the record of documents and sworn congressional testimony by the US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, indicate that the United States gave the green light to Saddam Hussein when he asked if it was okay to invade the border oil fields with Kuwait. It was a trap set by Bush and Saddam fell right into it.

Think about it. The entire fifteen-year (and counting) Iraq War (I say fifteen years because the United States bombed Iraq constantly throughout the nineteen nineties and hundreds of thousands died due to sanctions and the bombed-out infrastructure) was created by the Bush cabal to prevent people power and world peace and to provide an excuse for US military control of the world, beginning with the major oil reserve regions. Before 1990, the United States had no troops to speak of in Saudi Arabia, for example. The reason April Glaspie was instructed to say the United States had no objection to Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait was to scare US allies in the Persian Gulf region into accepting more US military bases and to intimidate US opponents with those stationed troops.

It was also, in classic gangster fashion, a display of high-tech destructive power intended to send a message to regional strong men who might be tempted to stop following Washington’s orders. The tragedy is, throughout the whole period beginning with the aftermath of the invasion of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein was desperate to cut a deal again with the United States, but that was the last thing the leaders in the United States wanted, since they wanted to make an example of Saddam Hussein and to intimidate the rest of the world. Bush administration officials admitted as much in memoirs, saying that the one thing they feared most in the lead-up to the war was that Saddam would accept the terms for peace.

Although the strategic goals were the same, the Bush I, Clinton and Bush II administrations differed sharply on tactics. Bush I and Clinton (notice how well they are getting along lately?) both thought it wise to contain Saddam Hussein, preserve the bogey-man and avoid a messy occupation. That was smart because througout the nineteen-nineties, the world was in awe of US military power. I don’t think that is the case now. A few thousand dollars of rocket-propelled grenades and improvised bombs can easily destroy millions of dollars in US military equipment. Of course, that is no problem for the weapons manufacturers—every time some American equipment blows up, they make more money at taxpayer expense: A win-win for the Bush cabal and their financial backers. It costs even less to blow up an oil pipeline which, come to think of it, is also not a problem for the Bush administration. As long as they have troops stationed in Iraq, they have ultimate control of the oil fields. If Iraqi production ramped up quickly, oil prices wouldn’t rise as much and the oil companies would make less money. So the constant blowing up of oil pipelines is not a problem. They just keep repairing them, again at taxpayer expense and profits for military contractors. Do we want the children of Iraq and the United States killed, maimed and psychologically damaged for this?

The Power of Nightmares, Part 2

Continued from Part 1:

I'm going to post some more excerpts from the third part of The Power of Nightmares documentary that ran on BBC. First, though, I want to make some comments. Since it was run on BBC, a British state-run network, there are some things they couldn't say. Two things, actually, so let's say them now. First, Osama Bin Laden is a CIA asset. He is working for the CIA and Bush. I could cite a whole bunch of links on this but you could look it up and use your head. The so-called terrorist threat is even more fake than the documentary makes it out to be. And, second, while the documentary does an admirable job of exposing the Straussian nature of the Neoconservative movement, as well as their pragmatic ties with right-wing Christian Fundamentalism, they completely leave out their well-documented, complete, intimate, and well-coordinated ties with the State of Israel and the racist, right-wing Likud party. There are many reasons why this is important (and many reasons why they would be afraid to mention it-- think of Michael Moore blaming the Saudis intead of Israel in Fahrenheit 911. If he blamed Israel, do you think he could have gotten his movie shown?) but the most important one in this context is the Mossad's (Israel's covert intelligence agency) skill in conducting "false flag" operations. These are operations conducted by one group but blamed on another. They have infiltrated every Islamic terrorist group, and even have founded and funded many of them (including Hamas). We should keep this in mind when we hear of any bombing, beheading, etc. in the Middle East (or even in the United States). For a historical background on fake terrorism, see A History of False Terror. Or watch the movie, Brazil, by Terry Gilliam.

Here are the excerpts from Part 3 of The Power of Nightmares:

At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neoconservatives, and the radical Islamists. Last week’s episode ended in the late ‘90s with both groups marginalized and out of power. But with the attacks of September 11th, the fates of both dramatically changed. The Islamists, after their moment of triumph, were virtually destroyed within months, while the neoconservatives took power in Washington. But then, the neoconservatives began to reconstruct the Islamists. They created a phantom enemy. And as this nightmare fantasy began to spread, politicians realized the newfound power it gave them in a deeply disillusioned age. Those with the darkest nightmares became the most powerful.

…VO: But, as previous episodes have shown, the neoconservatives distorted and exaggerated the Soviet threat. They created the image of a hidden, international web of evil run from Moscow that planned to dominate the world, when, in reality, the Soviet Union was on its last legs, collapsing from within. Now, they did the same with the Islamists. They took a failing movement which had lost mass support and began to reconstruct it into the image of a powerful network of evil, controlled from the center by bin Laden from his lair in Afghanistan. They did this because it fitted with their vision of America’s unique destiny to fight an epic battle against the forces of evil throughout the world.

VINCENT CANNISTRARO , HEAD OF COUNTER – TERRORISM , CIA , 1988-90: What the neoconservatives are doing is taking a concept that they developed during the competition with the Soviet Union, i.e., Soviet Communism was evil, it wanted to take over our country, wanted to take over our people, our classrooms, our society. It was that kind of concept of evil that they took—an exaggerated one, to be sure—and then apply it to a new threat, where it didn’t apply at all, and yet it was layered with the same kind of cultural baggage. The policy says there’s a network, the policy says that network is evil, they want to infiltrate our classrooms, they want to take our society, they want all our women to wear, you know, veils, and this is what we have to deal with and therefore since we know it’s evil let’s just kill it, and that will make it go away.

…VO: The terrible truth was that there was nothing there because Al Qaeda as an organisation did not exist. The attacks on America had been planned by a small group that had come together around bin Laden in the late 90s. What united them was an idea: an extreme interpretation of Islamism developed by Ayman Zawahiri. With the American invasion, that group had been destroyed, killed or scattered. What was left was the idea, and the real danger was the way this idea could inspire groups and individuals around the world who had no relationship to each other. In looking for an organisation, the Americans and the British were chasing a phantom enemy and missing the real threat.

JASON BURKE , AUTHOR, “AL QAEDA” : I was with the Royal Marines as they trooped around eastern Afghanistan, and every time they got a location for a supposed Al Qaeda or Taliban element or base, they’d turn up and there was no one there, or there’d be a few startled shepherds, and that struck me then as being a wonderful image to the war on terror, because people are looking for something that isn’t there. There is no organisation with its terrorist operatives, cells, sleeper cells, so on and so forth. What there is is an idea, prevalent among young, angry Muslim males throughout the Islamic world. That idea is what poses a threat.

[ CUT TO WASHINGTON , D.C., MONUMENTS AND SKYLINE ]

VO: But the neoconservatives were now increasingly locked into this fantasy, and next they set out to uncover the network in America itself.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ , US DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE : This is a network that has penetrated into some 60 countries, including very definitely our own, and it's got to be rooted out. Our intelligence priority, in many ways, is getting after the network here in the United States first. We will do whatever we need to do to go after these networks and dismantle them.

[ CUT TO FLYOVER OF NEW ENGLAND TOWN ]

VO: The American government set out to search for the Al Qaeda organisation inside its own country. Thousands were detained as all branches of the law and the military were told to look for terrorists.

[ CUT TO VIEW OF GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE , SAN FRANCISCO ]

CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL OFFICER : You don’t really know what a terrorist looks like, what kind of car they drive, or anything else, so it’s just basically everything and everybody and anything out here.

[ CUT TO NEWS TITLE : “AMERICA UNDER ATTACK” ]

[ CUT TO SCENES OF EMERGENCY RESPONSE VEHICLES ]

VO: And, bit by bit, the government found the network: a series of hidden cells in cities around the country from Buffalo to Portland.

[ CUT TO PRESIDENTIAL PODIUM ]

GEORGE W BUSH : We’ve thwarted terrorists in Buffalo and Seattle, Portland, Detroit, North Carolina, and Tampa, Florida. We’re determined to stop the enemy before he can strike our people.

VO: The Americans called them “sleeper cells,” and decided that they had just been waiting to strike. But in reality there is very little evidence that any of those arrested had anything at all to do with terrorist plots. From Portland to the suburb of Buffalo called Lackawanna, yet again the Americans were chasing a phantom enemy.

DAVID COLE , PROFESSOR OF LAW , GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY : They say “terrorist sleeper cell.” That’s what—they—they call the Lackawanna people a terrorist sleeper cell, the Detroit people a terrorist cell, the Portland people a terrorist cell. But when you look at the details, the facts just don’t support that, and they have not proved that any group within the United States has plotted to engage in any terrorist—uh—activity within the United States in all of the cases that they've brought since 9/11.

[ CUT TO HOME VIDEO OF YOUTHS AT DISNEYLAND, CALIFORNIA ]

VO: The evidence behind all of the sleeper cell cases is flimsy and often bizarre. This tape was one of the central pieces of evidence in the first of the cases. It was found in a raid on this house…

[ CUT TO EXTERIOR VIEW OF HOUSE ]

VO ... in Detroit. Four Arab men were arrested on suspicion of being an Al Qaeda sleeper cell.

[ VIEWS OF ARREST PHOTOGRAPHS OF SUSPECTS . TITLE : DETROIT ACCUSED ]

VO: They had been accused by another immigrant called Mr Hmimssa. But Mr Hmimssa was, in reality, an international con man with 12 aliases and wanted for fraud across America.

[ CUT TO PHOTOGRAPH ; TITLE : YOUSSEF HMIMSSA , US GOVERNMENT WITNESS ]

VO: Despite this, the FBI offered to reduce his sentence for fraud if he testified against the men. And to back up Mr Hmimssa’s allegations, the FBI turned to the videotape. On the surface it was the innocent record of a trip to Disneyland by a group of teenagers who had nothing to do with the accused, but the government had discovered a hidden and sinister purpose to the tape.

RON HANSEN , REPORTER – THE DETROIT NEWS : The government expert who has looked into surveillance tapes—“casing tapes,” as he referred to them—said that one of the objectives of making these kinds of tapes is to disguise the nature, the real purpose, of the tape, and he explained it that the tape is made to look benign, made to look like a tourist tape to obscure its real purpose as a tape to case Disneyland, and that the very appearance of it as being just a tourist tape is actually evidence that it's not a tourist tape.

[ CUT TO DISNEYLAND VIDEO ; YOUTH IS SPEAKING TO CAMERA ]

YOUTH [ HOLDING IMAGINARY MICROPHONE ]: Al-Jazeera, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. Hello?

[ CUT TO DISNEYLAND VIDEO ; INTERIOR OF INDIANA JONES RIDE ]

RON HANSEN : I could never get past the fact that the tape just looked like a tourist tape. The Disneyland ride, for example, was a lengthy queue, people just making their way to the ride. The camera occasionally pans to look at the rocks on the wall, made to look like an Indiana Jones movie, and after several minutes the camera pans across and shows a trash can momentarily, and then continues off to look into the crowd. The expert basically said that, by flashing on that trash can for a moment, the people who are part of this conspiracy to conduct these kinds of terrorist operations, they would understand what this is all about: how to locate a bomb in Disneyland in California.

[ CUT TO VIEW OF YOUTHS IN RESTAURANT ]

YOUTH , WAVING : Hello!

RON HANSEN : All the talking and bantering were intended to disguise the hidden message contained within the tape.

[ CUT TO VIEW OF YOUTHS DANCING ON VIDEOTAPE ]

VO: The government was convinced that the tape was full of hidden messages. A brief shot of a tree outside the group’s hotel room was there, they said, to show where to place a sniper to attack the cars on the freeway.

[ CUT TO SHAKY VIEW OF SHADOW ALONG SIDEWALK AS INDIVIDUAL CARRIES CAMERA ]

VO: And what looked like a camera which had accidentally been left running was in reality a terrorist secretly counting out distances to show others where to place a bomb.

[ CUT TO VIEW OF US AIR FORCE JET LANDING ]

VO: And the government also said that the Detroit cell was planning to attack US
military bases around the world. Yet again, they found hidden evidence of this in a day planner they discovered under the sofa in the house in Detroit. What looked like doodles were in reality, they said, a plan to attack a US base in Turkey.

WILLIAM SWOR , DEFENCE LAWYER , DETROIT SLEEPER CELL TRIAL , INDICATING COPY OF DRAWINGS FROM DAY PLANNER : The government brought in its security officer from the base to testify that she interpreted this as being the main runways. She identified these as being AWACS airplanes and these as being fighter jets. She said that these solid lines were lines of fire and she also said that this down here was a hardened bunker.

VO: But the drawings in the day planner were discovered to have actually been the work of a madman. They were the fantasies of a Yemeni who believed that he was the minister of defence for the whole of the Middle East. He had committed suicide a year before any of the accused had arrived in Detroit, leaving the day planner lying under the sofa in the house. Despite this, two of the accused were found guilty. But then, the government’s only witness, Mr Hmimssa, told two of his cellmates that he had made the whole thing up to get his fraud charges reduced. The terrorism convictions have now been overturned by the judge in the case, but it was acclaimed by the President as the first success in the war on terror at home.

…EXCERPT , CBS EVENING NEWS ]

DAN RATHER : First, a CBS News exclusive about a captured Al Qaeda leader who says his fellow terrorists have the know-how to build a very dangerous weapon and get it to the United States.

VO: And the media took the bait. They portrayed the dirty bomb as an extraordinary weapon that would kill thousands of people, and, in the process, they made the hidden enemy even more terrifying. But, in reality, the threat of a dirty bomb is yet another illusion. Its aim is to spread radioactive material through a conventional explosion, but almost all studies of such a possible weapon have concluded that the radiation spread in this way would not kill anybody because the radioactive material would be so dispersed, and, providing the area was cleaned promptly, the long-term effects would be negligible. In the past, both the American army and the Iraqi military tested such devices and both concluded that they were completely ineffectual weapons for this very reason.

[ CUT TO INTERIOR , LIVING ROOM ]

INTERVIEWER : How dangerous would a dirty bomb be?

DR THEODORE ROCKWELL , NUCLEAR SCIENTIST AND RADIATION RISK EXPERT : The deaths would be few, if any, and the answer is, probably none.

...[ CUT TO VIEW OF ATOMIC BOMB EXPLODING , DESTROYING TEST HOUSES AND OBJECTS ]

BRITISH NARRATOR : Ladies and gentlemen, this is not the end of our show; however, something very much like this could happen at any moment. We just thought we ought to prepare you and more or less put you in the mood. Thank you.And now, back to our story.

[ CUT , CITY SKYLINE ]

VO: The scale of this fantasy just kept growing as more and more groups realised the power it gave them—above all, the group that had been instrumental in first spreading the idea: the neoconservatives. Because they now found that they could use it to help them realise their vision: that America had a special destiny to overcome evil in the world, and this epic mission would give meaning and purpose to the American people.

VO: The driving force behind these new global policies in the war on terror was the power of a dark fantasy: a sinister web of hidden and interlinked threats that stretched around the world. And such was the power of that fantasy that it also began to transform the very nature of politics because, increasingly, politicians were discovering that their ability to imagine the future and the terrible dangers it held gave them a new and heroic role in the world.

[ CUT TO SCENE OF FUTURISTIC ROADWAY AND COUPLE DRIVING
IN FUTURE CAR ]

VO: In the post-War years, politicians had also used their imaginations, but to project optimistic visions of a better future that they could create for their people, and it was these visions that gave them power and authority.

[ CUT , INTERIOR , DOWNING STREET : ANGLE ON TONY BLAIR ]

VO: But those dreams collapsed, and politicians like Tony Blair became more like
managers of public life, their policies determined often by focus groups. But now, the war on terror allowed politicians like Blair to portray a new, grand vision of the future. But this vision was a dark one of imagined threats, and a new force began to drive politics: the fear of an imagined future.

[ CUT , INTERIOR, TONY BLAIR ADDRESSING AUDIENCE ]

TONY BLAIR : Not a conventional fear about a conventional threat, but the fear that one day these new threats of weapons of mass destruction, rogue states, and international terrorism combine to deliver a catastrophe to our world. And then the shame of knowing that I saw that threat, day after day, and did nothing to stop it.

[ CUT , ANOTHER ADDRESS ]

BLAIR : It may not erupt and engulf us this month or next, perhaps not even this year or next …

[ CUT , CLOSE-UP ON TONY BLAIR , SPEAKING TO INTERVIEWER BEFORE STUDIO AUDIENCE ]

BLAIR : I just think these—these dangers are there, I think that it’s difficult sometimes for people to see how they all come together—I think that it’s my duty to tell it to you if I really believe it, and I do really believe it. I may be wrong in believing it, but I do believe it.

[ CUT , EXTERIOR , MOONLIT , DARK CITY SKYLINE ]

VO: What Blair argued was that faced by the new threat of a global terror network, the politician's role was now to look into the future and imagine the worst that might happen and then act ahead of time to prevent it. In doing this, Blair was embracing an idea that had actually been developed by the Green movement: it was called the “precautionary principle.” Back in the 1980s, thinkers within the ecology movement believed the world was being threatened by global warming, but at the time there was little scientific evidence to prove this. So they put forward the radical idea that
governments had a higher duty: they couldn’t wait for the evidence, because by then it would be too late; they had to act imaginatively, on intuition, in order to save the world from a looming catastrophe.

[ CUT , INTERIOR , MEETING ROOM ]

DURODIE : In essence, the precautionary principle says that not having the evidence that something might be a problem is not a reason for not taking action as if it were a problem. That’s a very famous triple-negative phrase that effectively says that action without evidence is justified. It requires imagining what the worst might be and applying that imagination upon the worst evidence that currently exists.

[ CUT , INTERIOR , HALL ; ANGLE ON TONY BLAIR ADDRESSING STATE FUNCTION ]

BLAIR : Would Al Qaeda buy weapons of mass destruction if they could? Certainly. Does it have the financial resources? Probably. Would it use such weapons? Definitely.

[ CUT , INTERIOR , MEETING ROOM ]

DURODIE : But once you start imagining what could happen, then—then there’s no limit. What if they had access to it? What if they could effectively deploy it? What if we weren’t prepared? What it is is a shift from the scientific, “what is” evidence-based decision making to this speculative, imaginary, “what if”-based, worst case scenario.

[ CUT , EXTERIOR , CAMP X-RAY , Guantnamo Bay, Cuba ]

VO: And it was this principle that now began to shape government policy in the war on terror. In both America and Britain, individuals were detained in high-security prisons, not for any crimes they had committed, but because the politicians believed—or imagined—that they might commit an atrocity in the future, even though there was no evidence they intended to do this. The American attorney general explained this shift to what he called the “paradigm of prevention.”

[ CUT , INTERIOR , HEARING ROOM , UNITED STATES CONGRESS ]

ASHCROFT : We had to make a shift in the way we thought about things, so being reactive, waiting for a crime to be committed, or waiting for there to be evidence of the commission of a crime didn’t seem to us to be an appropriate way to protect the
American people.

[ CUT , INTERIOR , OFFICE ]

DAVID COLE : Under the preventive paradigm, instead of holding people accountable for what you can prove that they have done in the past, you lock them up based on what you think or speculate they might do in the future. And how—how can a person who’s locked up based on what you think they might do in the future disprove your speculation? It’s impossible, and so what ends up happening is the government short-circuits all the processes that are designed to distinguish the innocent from the guilty because they simply don’t fit this mode of locking people up for what they might do in the future.

VO: The supporters of the precautionary principle argue that this loss of rights is the price that society has to pay when faced by the unique and terrifying threat of the Al Qaeda network. But, as this series has shown, the idea of a hidden, organised web of terror is largely a fantasy, and by embracing the precautionary principle, the politicians have become trapped in a vicious circle: they imagine the worst about an organisation that doesn't even exist. But no one questions this because the very basis of the precautionary principle is to imagine the worst without supporting evidence, and, instead, those with the darkest imaginations become the most influential.

[ CUT , INTERIOR , RESTAURANT ]

DAVID JOHNSTON , INTELLIGENCE SPECIALIST , NEW YORK TIMES : You’ll hear about meetings where terrorist matters are discussed in the intelligence community, and always the person with the most dire assessment, the person with the—who has the, kind of, the strongest sense that something should be done will frequently carry the day at meetings. We thus believe the most dire estimate of what could happen here. The sense of disbelief has vanished.

INTERVIEWER : So the person with the most vivid imagination becomes the most powerful.

JOHNSTON : In a sense, that’s correct.

[ CUT , INTERIOR , FBI OFFICE ]

FBI OFFICIAL : We knew that Al Qaeda’s tentacles were beginning to become far-reaching.

[ CUT , INTERIOR , BRITISH MEETING ROOM ]

BRITISH OFFICIAL : There will be an attack. It is “when” within the United Kingdom; I think the “if” is academic.

[ CUT , TONY BLAIR AT PODIUM , ADDRESSING AUDIENCE ]

BLAIR : It is only a matter of time, and its potential is huge.

[ EXCERPT , GODZILLA: WALL OF WATER SLAMS INTO CITY ]

[ CUT , INTERIOR , RESTAURANT ]

JOHNSTON : How will we ever know when it’s over? How will we ever know when the threat is gone? In the mindset we are now in, once we declare it to be over will be exactly the time that we believe that they will strike.

[ CUT , BRITISH NEWSSTAND ]

NEWS VENDOR : You know, uh, it’s just—it’s the way we live today. We’re living on a knife edge.

[ CUT , AERIAL VIEW OF LONDON , FOLLOWED BY SCENES OF DISASTERS , ETC ]

VO: This story began over 30 years ago as the dream that politics could create a better world began to fall apart. Out of that collapse came two groups: the Islamists and the neoconservatives. Looking back, we can now see that these groups were the last political idealists who, in an age of growing disillusion, tried to reassert the inspirational power of political visions that would give meaning to people’s
lives.

[ CUT, VIEW OF ARABIC CROWD ]

[ SUBTITLES OVER CROWD SCENES: We will fight for an Islamic state, we will die for it.]

[ CUT , PAUL WOLFOWITZ ENTERING PRESS BRIEFING ROOM ]

VO: But both have failed in their attempts to transform the world and, instead, together they have created today’s strange fantasy of fear which politicians have seized on. Because in an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power.

[ CUT , INTERIOR , HALL , REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION ]

BUSH : And we have seen Americans in uniform storming mountain strongholds and charging through sandstorms. We have fought the terrorists across the earth because the lives of our citizens are at stake. And America and the world are safer.

[ CUT , INTERIOR , HALL , DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION ]

JOHN KERRY , UNITED STATES SENATOR AND PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The stakes are high. We are a nation at war, a global war on terror against unlike we’ve ever known before….

[ CUT , RNC ]

BUSH : Faced with that choice I will defend America every time.

[ CUT , ANGLE ON CHEERING CROWDS OF REPUBLICANS ]

[ CUT , INTERIOR , MEETING ROOM ]

DURODIE : In a society that believes in nothing, fear becomes the only agenda. Whilst the 20th century was dominated between a conflict between a free-market Right and a socialist Left, even though both of those outlooks had their limitations and their problems, at least they believed in something, whereas what we are seeing now is a society that believes in nothing. And a society that believes in nothing is particularly frightened by people who believe in anything, and, therefore, we label those people as fundamentalists or fanatics, and they have much greater purchase in terms of the fear that they instill in society than they truly deserve. But that’s a measure of how much we have become isolated and atomised rather than of their inherent strength.

The Power of Nightmares, Part 1

Who are the people who have overthrown our government?

As we saw in our post on Nelson Rockefeller, the roots of our present-day situation can be found in a power grab which took place in the 1970s. Early in the 1970s a small group of dedicated public servants uncovered a dangerous and highly malignant growth on our body politic. No, I’m not talking about Watergate and the courageous whistle-blowers. I am talking about the Neoconservatives. These “dedicated public servants” are the major villains of today: Perle, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Feith and Ledeen along with their talking heads on television and in the American Enterprise Institute. These people also saw Nixon as a threat but not for the reason most people would think. They saw Nixon as a threat because Nixon was working, in his own twisted way, for peace with the Soviet Union and China. For the Neocons, that peace was the malignant threat to the nation. The one thing the neoconservatives can’t stand is peace, unless it’s the peace of the vanquished and they are the ones doing the vanquishing.

Last year, the BBC showed a remarkable documentary entitled, The Power of Nightmares. You can bet that your local PBS outlet will never show it. Which is a shame because it is something that EVERY person in the United States should see. Thanks to the Internet, you can download a copy or read the transcript. Here http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1037.htm is one place you can do it. Let’s take a look.

In the past, politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this. But their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered to their people. Those dreams failed. And today, people have lost faith in ideologies. Increasingly, politicians are seen simply as managers of public life. But now, they have discovered a new role that restores their power and authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares. They say that they will rescue us from dreadful dangers that we cannot see and do not understand. And the greatest danger of all is international terrorism. A powerful and sinister network, with sleeper cells in countries across the world. A threat that needs to be fought by a war on terror. But much of this threat is a fantasy, which has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It’s a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services, and the
international media. This is a series of films about how and why that fantasy was created, and who it benefits. At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neoconservatives, and the radical Islamists. Both were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world. And both had a very similar explanation for what caused that failure. These two groups have changed the world, but not in the way that either intended. Together, they created today’s nightmare vision of a secret, organized evil that threatens the world. A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. And those with the darkest fears became the most powerful.

The documentary draws a parallel between Islamic fundamentalists and Western Neoconservatives. According to the filmakers, the late nineteen forties saw two movements that shared a revulsion against individualism and liberal tolerance. One was founded in Egypt by Sayyed Qutb. He spent time as a student in the United States and grew increasingly disgusted by American individualism and sexual license. He returned to Egypt, founded radical Islam as a revolutionary or reactionary movement and was tortured and executed by Egyptian authorities, thereby sealing his martyrdom.

Since you can find information about the threat posed by radical Islam in every place you look in the West, let’s concentrate on what they have to say about the roots of Neoconservatism.

But Qutb was not alone. At the same time, in Chicago, there was another man who shared the same fears about the destructive force of individualism in America. He was an obscure political philosopher at the University of Chicago. But his ideas would also have far-reaching consequences, because they would become the shaping force behind the neoconservative movement, which now dominates the American administration. He was called Leo Strauss. Strauss is a mysterious figure. He refused to be filmed or interviewed. He devoted his time to creating a loyal band of students. And what he taught them was that the prosperous liberal society they were living in contained the seeds of its own destruction.

Professor HARVEY MANSFIELD, Straussian Philosopher, Harvard University: He didn’t give interviews, or write political essays, or appear on the radio—there wasn’t TV yet—or things like that. But he did want to get a school of students to see what he had seen: that Western liberalism led to nihilism, and had undergone a development at the end of which it could no longer define itself or defend itself. A development which took everything praiseworthy and admirable out of human beings, and made us into dwarf animals. Made us into herd animals—sick little dwarves, satisfied with a dangerous life in which nothing is true and everything is permitted.

VO: Strauss believed that the liberal idea of individual freedom led people to question everything—all values, all moral truths. Instead, people were led by their own selfish desires. And this threatened to tear apart the shared values which held society together. But there was a way to stop this, Strauss believed. It was for politicians to assert powerful and inspiring myths that everyone could believe in. They might not be true, but they were necessary illusions. One of these was religion; the other was the myth of the nation. And in America, that was the idea that the country had a unique destiny to battle the forces of evil throughout the world. This myth was epitomized, Strauss told his students, in his favorite television program: Gunsmoke.

Professor STANLEY ROSEN, Pupil of Leo Strauss 1949: Strauss was a great fan of American television. Gunsmoke was his great favorite, and he would hurry home from the seminar, which would end at, you know, 5:30 or so, and have a quick dinner so he could be at his seat before the television set when Gunsmoke came on. And he felt that this was good, this show. This had a salutary effect on the American public, because it showed the conflict between good and evil in a way that would be immediately intelligible to everyone.

BAD MAN on Gunsmoke: Let’s see what happens!

JAMES ARNESS: No! [ SHOOTS bad man; bad man DROPS to the ground ]

ROSEN: The hero has a white hat; he’s faster on the draw than the bad man; the good guy wins. And it’s not just that the good guy wins, but that values are clear. That’s America! We’re gonna triumph over the evils of… of… that are trying to destroy us and the virtues of the Western frontier. Good and evil.

VO: Leo Strauss’ other favorite program was Perry Mason. And this, he told his students, epitomized the role that they, the élite, had to play. In public, they should promote the myths necessary to rescue America from decay. But in private, they didn’t have to believe in them.

ROSEN: Perry Mason was different from Gunsmoke. The extremely cunning man who, as far as we can see, is very virtuous and uses his great intelligence and quickness of mind to rescue his clients from dangers, but who could be fooling us—because he’s cleverer than we are. Is he really telling the truth? Maybe his client is guilty!

Strauss’s student began their steady climb to power, often working in the Defense Department using game theory to analyse nuclear weapon policy vis. a vis. the Soviet Union. By the late nineteen-sixties, they were on their way, right at the time that everything they held dear seemed to be falling apart.

[ TITLE: AMERICA 1967 ]

VO: But at the very moment when Sayyed Qutb’s ideas seemed dead and buried, Leo Strauss’ ideas about how to transform America were about to become powerful and influential, because the liberal political order that had dominated America since the war started to collapse.

[ TITLE: 11pm, JULY 25th 1967 ]

PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON: Law and order have broken down in Detroit, Michigan. Pillage, looting, murder…

VO: Only a few years before, President Johnson had promised policies that would create a new and a better world in America. He had called it “the Great Society.”

[ TITLE: President LYNDON JOHNSON, 1964 ]

JOHNSON: The Great Society is in place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind. It is a place where the City of Man…

VO: But now, in the wake of some of the worst riots ever seen in America, that dream seemed to have ended in violence and hatred. One prominent liberal journalist called Irving Kristol began to question whether it might actually be the policies themselves that were causing social breakdown. …

VO: The neoconservatives were idealists. Their aim was to try and stop the social
disintegration they believed liberal freedoms had unleashed. They wanted to find a way of uniting the people, by giving them a shared purpose. One of their great influences in doing this would be the theories of Leo Strauss. They would set out to recreate the myth of America as a unique nation whose destiny was to battle against evil in the world. And in this project, the source of evil would be America’s Cold War enemy: the Soviet Union. And by doing this, they believed that they would not only give new meaning and purpose to people’s lives, but they would spread the good of democracy around the world.

Professor STEPHEN HOLMES, Political Philosopher: The United States would not only, according to these—the Straussians, be able to bring good to the world, but would be able to overcome the fundamental weaknesses of American society, a society that has been suffering, almost rotting, in their language, from relativism, liberalism, lack of self-confidence, lack of belief in itself. And one of the main political
projects of the Straussians during the Cold War was to reinforce the self-confidence of Americans, and the belief that America was fundamentally the only force for good in the world, that had to be supported, otherwise evil would prevail.

VO: But to do this, the neoconservatives were going to have to defeat one of the most powerful men in the world. Henry Kissinger was the Secretary of State under President Nixon, and he didn’t believe in a world of good and evil. What drove Kissinger was a ruthless, pragmatic vision of power in the world. With America’s growing political and social chaos, Kissinger wanted the country to give up its ideological battles. Instead, it should come to terms with countries like the Soviet Union, to create a new kind of global interdependence. A world in which America would be safe.

HENRY KISSINGER, Interviewed 1975: I believe that with all the dislocations we know—now experience, there also exists an extraordinary opportunity to form, for the first time in history, a truly global society, carried by the principle of interdependence. And if we act wisely and with vision, I think we can look back to all this turmoil as the birth pangs of a more creative and better system.

VO: Kissinger had begun this process in 1972, when he persuaded the Soviet Union to sign a treaty with America limiting nuclear arms. It was the start of what was called “détente.” And President Nixon returned to Washington to announce triumphantly that the age of fear was over.

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON, June 1, 1972: Last Friday, in Moscow, we witnessed the beginning of the end of that era which began in 1945. With this step, we have enhanced the security of both nations. We have begun to reduce the level of fear, by reducing the causes of fear—for our two peoples, and for all peoples in the world.

VO: But a world without fear was not what the neoconservatives needed to pursue their project. They now set out to destroy Henry Kissinger’s vision. What gave them their opportunity was the growing collapse of American political power, both abroad and at home. The defeat in Vietnam, and the resignation of President Nixon over Watergate, led to a crisis of confidence in America’s political class. And the neoconservatives seized their moment. They allied themselves with two right-wingers in the new administration of Gerald Ford. One was Donald Rumsfeld, the new Secretary of Defense. The other was Dick Cheney, the President’s Chief of Staff. Rumsfeld began to make speeches alleging that the Soviets were ignoring Kissinger’s treaties and secretly building up their weapons, with the intention of attacking
America.

DONALD RUMSFELD, US Secretary of Defense, Speaking in 1976: The Soviet Union has been busy. They’ve been busy in terms of their level of effort; they’ve been busy in terms of the actual weapons they’ve been producing; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding production rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their institutional capability to produce additional weapons at additional rates; they’ve been busy in terms of expanding their capability to increasingly improve the sophistication of those weapons. Year after year after year, they’ve been demonstrating that they have steadiness of purpose. They’re purposeful about what they’re doing. Now, your question is, what ought one to be doing about that?

VO: The CIA, and other agencies who watched the Soviet Union continuously for any sign of threat, said that this was a complete fiction. There was no truth to Rumsfeld’s allegations. But Rumsfeld used his position to persuade President Ford to set up an independent inquiry. He said it would prove that there was a hidden threat to America. And the inquiry would be run by a group of neoconservatives, one of whom was Paul Wolfowitz. The aim was to change the way America saw the Soviet Union.

MELVIN GOODMAN, Head of Office of Soviet Affairs CIA, 1976-87: And Rumsfeld won that very intense, intense political battle that was waged in Washington in 1975 and 1976. Now, as part of that battle, Rumsfeld and others, people such as Paul Wolfowitz, wanted to get into the CIA. And their mission was to create a much more severe view of the Soviet Union, Soviet intentions, Soviet views about fighting and winning a nuclear war.

VO: The neoconservatives chose, as the inquiry chairman, a well-known critic and historian of the Soviet Union called Richard Pipes. Pipes was convinced that whatever the Soviets said publicly, secretly they still intended to attack and conquer America. This was their hidden mindset. The inquiry was called Team B, and the other leading member was Paul Wolfowitz.

Professor RICHARD PIPES: And the idea was then to appoint a group of outside experts who have access to the same evidence as the CIA used to arrive at these conclusions, and to see if they could come up with different conclusions. And I was asked to chair it, because I was not an expert on nuclear weapons. I was, if anything, an expert on the Soviet mindset, but not on the weapons. But that was the real key, was the question of the Soviet mindset, because the CIA looked only at—they were known as “bean counters,” always looking at weapons. But weapons can be used in various ways. They can be used for defensive purposes or offensive purposes. Well, all right, I collected this group of experts, and we began to sift through the evidence.

VO: Team B began examining all the CIA data on the Soviet Union. But however closely they looked, there was little evidence of the dangerous weapons or defense systems they claimed the Soviets were developing. Rather than accept that this meant that the systems didn’t exist, Team B made an assumption that the Soviets had developed systems that were so sophisticated, they were undetectible. For example, they could find no evidence that the Soviet submarine fleet had an acoustic defense system. What this meant, Team B said, was that the Soviets had actually invented a new non-acoustic system, which was impossible to detect. And this meant that the whole of the American submarine fleet was at risk from an invisible threat that was there, even though there was no evidence for it.

Dr ANNE CAHN, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1977-80: They couldn’t say that the Soviets had acoustic means of picking up American submarines, because they couldn’t find it. So they said, well maybe they have a non-acoustic means of making our submarine fleet vulnerable. But there was no evidence that they had a non-acoustic system. They’re saying, “we can’t find evidence that they’re doing it the way that everyone thinks they’re doing it, so they must be doing it a different way. We don’t know what that different way is, but they must be doing it.”

INTERVIEWER (off-camera): Even though there was no evidence.

CAHN: Even though there was no evidence.

INTERVIEWER: So they’re saying there, that the fact that the weapon doesn’t exist…

CAHN: Doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It just means that we haven’t found it.

PIPES: Now, that’s important, yes. If something is not there, that’s significant.

INTERVIEWER: By its absence.

PIPES: By its absence. If you believe that they share your view of strategic weapons, and they don’t talk about it, then there’s something missing. Something is wrong. And the CIA wasn’t aware of that.

VO: What Team B accused the CIA of missing was a hidden and sinister reality in the Soviet Union. Not only were there many secret weapons the CIA hadn’t found, but they were wrong about many of those they could observe, such as the Soviet air defenses. The CIA were convinced that these were in a state of collapse, reflecting the growing economic chaos in the Soviet Union. Team B said that this was actually a cunning deception by the Soviet regime. The air-defense system worked perfectly. But the only evidence they produced to prove this was the official Soviet training manual, which proudly asserted that their air-defense system was fully integrated and functioned flawlessly. The CIA accused Team B of moving into a fantasy world.

PIPES: The CIA was very loath to deal with issues which could not be demonstrated in a kind of mathematical form. I said they could consider the soft evidence. They deal with realities, whereas this was a fantasy. That’s how it was perceived. And there were battles all the time on this subject.

INTERVIEWER: Did you think it was a fantasy?PIPES: No! I thought it was absolute reality.

CAHN: I would say that all of it was fantasy. I mean, they looked at radars out in Krasnoyarsk and said, “This is a laser beam weapon,” when in fact it was nothing of the sort. They even took a Russian military manual, which the correct translation of it is “The Art of Winning.” And when they translated it and put it into Team B, they called it “The Art of Conquest.” Well, there’s a difference between “conquest” and “winning.” And if you go through most of Team B’s specific allegations about weapons systems, and you just examine them one by one, they were all wrong.

INTERVIEWER: All of them?

CAHN: All of them.

INTERVIEWER: Nothing true?

CAHN: I don’t believe anything in Team B was really true. VO: The neoconservatives set up a lobby group to publicize the findings of Team B. It was called the Committee on the Present Danger, and a growing number of politicians joined, including a Presidential hopeful, Ronald Reagan.

[ TITLE: The Price of Peace and Freedom / Committee on the Present Danger, propaganda film 1978 ]

VO: Through films and television, the Committee portrayed a world in which America was under threat from hidden forces that could strike at any time, forces that America must conquer to survive.

ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN, through interpreter: A concentration of world evil, of hatred for humanity, is taking place. And it is fully determined to destroy your society. Must you wait until the young men of America have to fall defending the borders of their continent?!

VO: This dramatic battle between good and evil was precisely the kind of myth that Leo Strauss had taught his students would be necessary to rescue the country from moral decay. It might not be true, but it was necessary, to re-engage the public in a grand vision of America’s destiny, that would give meaning and purpose to their lives. The neoconservatives were succeeding in creating a simplistic fiction—a vision of the Soviet Union as the center of all evil in the world, and America as the only country that could rescue the world. And this nightmarish vision was beginning to give the neoconservatives great power and influence.

HOLMES: The Straussians started to create a worldview which is a fiction. The world is not divided into good and evil. The battle in which we are engaged is not a battle between good and evil. The United States, as anyone who observes understands, has done some good and some bad things. It’s like any great power. This is the way history is. But they wanted to create a world of moral certainties, so therefore they invent mythologies—fairytales—describing any force in the world that obstructs the United States as somehow Satanic, or associated with evil.

To be continued…

And Now for Some Real Heretics, Part 7

Continued from Part 6:

Are the psychics Adamic or Pre-Adamic, to use Mouravieff’s scheme? Mouravieff would say they are Adamic, but ones who have not passed the threshold. More on that later. Now, however, might be a good time to look more closely at the hylics. Clearly, whoever they are, they are, in Mouravieff’s terms, pre-Adamic. Can we further divide hylics into sub-groups? Where do psychopaths fit in? Where do “organic portals” fit in? What about “exterior men” who just don’t have higher centers, who are mostly mechanical?

We should probably define some terms. Let’s take the most extreme version of hylics first. Most people have heard of psychopaths (or sociopaths). These are people who have absolutely no conscience.

Imagine—if you can—not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken. And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools. Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless. You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your condition. (Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless versus the Rest of Us, New York: Broadway Books, 2005, p. 1)

The author of that book, the Harvard psychologist Martha Stout estimates that psychopaths (or sociopaths as she calls them) make up four percent of the population: one in twenty-five.

Here is what Kurt Vonnegut (http://www.inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=38_0_4_0_C) has to say about them:

I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.

What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!

If psychopaths make up four percent of the population as a whole, it stands to reason that they make up a much higher percent of the elite business, political and entertainment leaders. Imagine the strain of being CEO of Enron or President of the United States if you actually had a conscience. It would be much, much easier if you didn’t have any conscience at all. Joe Trippi, a political consultant for Howard Dean, said during the last presidential campaign that people who run for president are not like the rest of us. He said, imagine if you were told that there is a suitcase, and in the suitcase is a machine in which you can enter codes and, if you enter the right code, you could destroy all life larger than cockroaches on earth for millennia. Most, people, Trippi said, would run as far as they could from such a suitcase, but each four years eight or twelve people say, “Give me that suitcase!”

Here is Stout again:

One of the more frequently observed of these traits is a glib and superficial charm that allows the true sociopath to seduce other people, figuratively or literally—a kind of glow or charisma that, initially, can make the sociopath seem more charming or more interesting than most of the normal people around him. He or she is more “complex,” or sexier, or more entertaining than everyone else. Sometimes this “sociopathic charisma” is accompanied by a grandiose sense of self-worth that may be compelling at first, but upon closer inspection may seem odd or perhaps laughable. (“Someday the world will realize how special I am,” or “You know that after me, no other lover will do.”)

In addition, sociopaths have a greater than normal need to stimulation, which results in their taking frequent social, physical, financial, or legal risks. Characteristically, they can charm others into attempting dangerous ventures with them, and as a group they are known for their pathological lying and conning, and their parasitic relationships with “friends.” Regardless of how educated or highly placed as adults, they may have a history of early behavior problems, sometimes including drug use or recorded juvenile delinquency, and always including a failure to acknowledge
responsibility for any problems that occurred. (Stout, p. 7)

Sound like any United States presidents we know?

So if pychopaths make up 4 percent of the population and pre-Adamics make up one half, than 8 percent of the pre-Adamics are psychopaths. What about the rest?

To be continued...