Monday, May 31, 2010

Cynthia McKinney condemns Israeli massacre of activists

from : http://www.greenpartywatch.org

Don DeBar offers this article about the Israeli Defense Force’s action against a flotilla from the Free Gaza Movement which apparently resulted in the deaths of at least ten people. McKinney, Green Party presidential nominee in 2008, was involved in two earlier attempts to deliver humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza via ship.

Cynthia McKinney Mourns the Dead of the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza:

People of the U.S. and the world must end Israeli impunity now!

I am outraged at Israel’s latest criminal act. I mourn with my fellow Free Gaza travelers, the lives that have been lost by Israel’s needless, senseless act against unarmed humanitarian activists. But I’m even more outraged that once again, Israel’s actions have been aided and abetted by a U.S. political class that has become corrupted beyond belief due to its reliance on Zionist finance and penetration by Zionist zealots for whom no U.S. weapons system is too much for the Israeli war machine, and the silence of the world’s onlookers whose hearts have grown cold with indifference.

I recently visited the offices of IHH, the Turkish humanitarian organization that sponsored one of the Freedom Flotilla boats, and that was targeted by the Israelis for its murderous rampage. Reports are still coming in as to the full extent of the senseless Israeli violence. Of course, I expect Israel’s apologists in the press and in the United States government to shift into high gear to support Israel’s lying machine. Take note of their names. The 12,000 internet squatters/written word grenade throwers, hired by the Israeli Foreign Ministry to defend Israel and attack peace activists online, are already busy spreading their orchestrated disinformation in cyberspace. Be very careful what you read and believe from special interest press and the internet. You could be reading one of Israel’s hired hacks. As a news diversion from what Israel has just done, I suspect that we can also expect to see a lot of historical footage of war’s
atrocities on television: today is Memorial Day in the United States, a day long ago set aside to remember the sacrifices of U.S. war dead.

I encouraged and supported U.S.S. Liberty veteran Joe Meadors’s participation in the Freedom Flotilla. Unfortunately, the fate of the U.S.S. Liberty innocents on the high seas, while in international waters, has now been visited upon the participants in the Freedom Flotilla, in large measure because of the Congressional- and Presidential-level cover-up of the 1967 Israeli attack on that U.S. surveillance ship. Combined with the failure of just about every other effort to hold Israel accountable for its crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide, and crimes against the peace. Belgium and Spain changed their domestic laws of universal jurisdiction after Israeli appeals to do so. The entire musical chairs gang of rotating Israeli leadership are war criminals. During my imprisonment in Israel for attempting to take crayons to the children of Gaza, I called Israel a failed state. If Israel is threatened by unarmed, humanitarian activists to the
point of massacring them, then Israel is a failed state. Israel is a failed nuclear state.

Obama’s most recent granting of an additional $205 million for Israeli “missile defense” is unconscionable, when in the same week, reports revealed for the first time, Israel’s offer of nuclear weapons to apartheid South Africa. Just last week, a paper bearing the signature of former Israeli Prime Minister, Shimon Peres, was released by South Africa, revealing that in 1975, Israel could offer South Africa nuclear weapons “in three sizes.” South Africa’s then-Minister of Defense, P.W. Botha, was South Africa’s signatory to the letter. This information would make the entire Obama Administration look sadly farcical as it points an accusing finger at Iran, except that U.S. obeisance to the Israeli bloodthirst is deadly serious. With deadly outcomes.

Earlier this month, Israel was granted admission to the Organization of Economic and Community Development (OECD), a direct affront to ongoing Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) efforts across the world. Once again, Israel has thumbed its nose at the global community–with bloody results–because it can.

I am proud to serve on the Bertrand Russell Tribunal on Palestine. Its next sitting will be in London, where we will examine corporate complicity in Israel’s crimes against Palestine. The Tribunal will sit from November 5 – 7. Please put this on your calendar. We all must do what we can, where we are to end wars against the people at home and wars against human rights abroad.

Finally, a friend just sent a message to me saying that the Israelis had lost their minds. Sadly, based on the past, the Israelis could very well conclude that they can do anything–imprison me for trying to take love to the children of Gaza and kill humanitarian activists trying to do the same–because they know, in the end, they’ll get away with it. Instead, I would suggest that we are the ones who have lost our minds, our souls, our spirits, and our human dignity if we allow the Israelis to get away with murder–again–and we do nothing.

I am calling on the people of the United States to change course now.

On this Memorial Day 2010, I am stunned and outraged beyond belief while mourning the dead of the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza.


The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.


.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

THE BIG LIE SELLING YOU WAR WITH NORTH KOREA

from : http://whatreallyhappened.com

STORY GOES HERE

What can I say; here we go again!

I hardly need to go down the list of lies used to start US wars. We have been though that over and over again.

Nor do I need to elucidate on the many reasons why the US Government is in desperate need for yet another war with which to scare the American people into acceptance of more takes and fewer rights and freedoms.

Anyone with half a brain realizes that the US Government, unable to gain support for an invasion of Iran, has changed gears and decided that North Korea will be the next step towards World War III.

Here is the big lie...

Let us start with a cloned copy of the official South Korean website detailing the sinking of the Cheosan.

From that website we get the following picture of the remains of a torpedo dredged from the bottom of the ocean.

The official claim that North Korea fired this torpedo at a South Korean warship is based on the following blueprint of a North Korean torpedo claimed to be the weapon recovered from the ocean floor.

There are several differences between the torpedo plans and the actual torpedo recovered from the floor of the ocean. But I am going to focus on just one.

Take a close look where the tail cone assembly (indicated by the bulkhead at the leading edge of the fins) attaches to the torpedo main hull. A major component of all modern torpedoes are the fin actuators. These are the small motors that adjust the rudder and dive planes of the torpedo in order to maintain the intended depth and course to target.

Note that the blueprints of the North Korean torpedo show these actuators forward of the tail cone assembly, that is to say in front of the bulkhead that marks where the fin assembly attaches to the torpedo.

Now let us look at the torpedo actually recovered from the bottom of the ocean near where the Cheosan was attacked.

Note that the recovered torpedo these actuators are built INSIDE the tail cone assembly, that is to say to the REAR of the bulkhead that marks where the fin assembly attaches to the torpedo.

And again, as seen in the official released photo of the recovered torpedo.

In short, the torpedo recovered from the ocean where Cheosan was attacked is NOT the same torpedo shown in the North Korean plans. As I stated above, there are additional differences as well between the blueprints and the actual torpedo, but the actuators are the clincher.

The torpedo recovered fronm the oceasn where the Cheosan was sunk is not the North Korean torpedo shown in the blueprints.



The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.

.

Russia rebukes US over Afghan heroin output

from : http://en.rian.ru

11:5625/05/2010

Moscow has criticised US-led forces in Afghanistan for failing to eradicate heroin production and warned at the weekend that drug smuggling was endangering Russia’s national security.

Russia says production of heroin in Afghanistan has increased almost tenfold since the US-led invasion to oust the Taliban began in 2001.

By Isabel Gorst in Moscow

Read more on http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/032fba50-672a-11df-bf08-00144feab49a.html



The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.

.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Cries From the Past: Torture's Ugly Echoes

from : http://www.truthout.org

by: H.P. Albarelli Jr. and Jeffrey Kaye, t r u t h o u t | Report

photo
(Illustration: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t)

In a superb op-ed, written by Leonard S. Rubenstein and Stephen N. Xenakis, published recently in the New York Times (Doctors Without Morals, March 1, 2010, p. A23), the issue of holding physicians and psychologists accountable for their ethical breaches in participating in the conduct of torture is expertly raised, along with a well-needed call for investigations into such violations and violators. Rubenstein and Xenakis wrote: "[Despite overwhelming evidence] no agency - not the Pentagon, the CIA, state licensing boards or professional medical societies - has initiated any action to investigate, much less discipline, these individuals. They have ignored the gross and appalling violations by medical personnel. This is an unconscionable disservice to the thousands of ethical doctors and psychologists in the country's service. It is not too late to begin investigations. They should start now."

Rubenstein and Xenakis are absolutely correct in their call for action now, as they are in their accounting of what has gone on historically the past ten years with torture at Guantanamo and elsewhere. However, their op-ed says nothing about the decades preceding the terrible events of 9-11. An examination of these well-hidden, past torture activities might serve well in shedding light on the causes for reluctance and inaction in holding torturers and their professional cohorts responsible.

Operation Dormouse

Contemporary torture's earliest, deepest and most influential roots are found in the CIA's Artichoke Project. Indeed, it is Project Artichoke that encapsulates the CIA's real traveling road show of horrors and atrocities, not MK/ULTRA which, although responsible for its own acts of mindless cruelty, pales in comparison.

That MK/ULTRA received, and continues to receive, the lion's share of the media's attention and public outrage over CIA mind control programs was a deliberately planned outcome on the part of the Agency. This outcome was the central objective of a never before revealed covert operation launched in 1975 and informally code-named Dormouse.

Dormouse, operated out of the CIA's Security Research branch, had its genesis in the 1975 Rockefeller Commission report and in the subsequent Congressional hearings into CIA illegal activities chaired by Senators Frank Church and Teddy Kennedy. Following the initial revelation of Frank Olson's alleged "suicide" by the Rockefeller Commission, a number of high-level meetings occurred between President Gerald Ford's White House and CIA General Counsel Lawrence Houston.

Houston, who had served the Agency as its doyen general counsel for over 25 years, secretly huddled on at least two occasions in June 1975 with Ford's chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld, and his chief assistant, Richard Cheney. Houston impressed upon both men that any prolonged and intense media scrutiny of Project Artichoke would lead to opening a Pandora's box of legal, institutional, international and public relations problems that could destroy the CIA.

Houston explained that the Agency's MK/ULTRA program was far less problematic for the CIA because it had been a research-based program that initiated 153 contracts to colleges, universities and research institutions nationwide. These contractors, all stalwart and prestigious institutions like Harvard, Columbia, and Tulane Universities, could serve as viable buffers to any harsh outside attacks.

Houston stressed that deliberate exposure of the MK/ULTRA program by essentially offering it to the press would serve to placate the brewing feeding frenzy over so-called mind control projects, and would divert any investigative attempts into the multi-faceted Artichoke Project.

Houston additionally explained to Rumsfeld and Cheney that, along with the release of MK/ULTRA details to the media, the names of a few former CIA employees, such as Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, would also be released to the press. Incredibly, when the subject of possible federal prosecutions of CIA officials for capital crimes and felonies, such as murder and drug trafficking, came up in their discussion, Houston informed Rumsfeld and Cheney that there was little cause for concern.

Explained the Agency's General Counsel, since early 1954, following the death of Army biochemist Frank Olson, a secret agreement between the CIA and the U.S. Department of Justice had been put in place whereby the violation of "criminal statutes" by CIA personnel would not result in Department of Justice prosecutions, if "highly classified and complex covert operations" were threatened with exposure. The agreement had been struck between Houston and Deputy Attorney General William P. Rogers in February 1954, not long after Frank Olson's death, and still remained solidly in place.

Lastly, and worth noting here, was a brief adjunct discussion between Houston, Rumsfeld, and Cheney regarding related concerns about records on former Nazi scientists who had been secretly imported into the United States in the early Fifties by the State Department and Army, as part of Project Paperclip. These German scientists performed highly-classified research at the Army's Fort Detrick and Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland, some of which involved field operations in Europe.

Without doubt, as the extant record clearly reveals, the CIA's Dormouse Operation, as expressed by Houston, was remarkably effective. Information released on the Agency's MK/ULTRA program more than sated the media's curiosity for mind control details, and even a few random Artichoke Program citations in a couple released documents failed to draw any concerted examination by anyone in the press. For example: documents revealing that Dr. Frank Olson had been part of the CIA's ongoing "Artichoke Conference" were near completely overlooked. Within a few short months, Artichoke was widely believed by the media and public to be but a small, innocuous project that had been replaced by the MK/ULTRA behemoth. Still today, numerous publications state that Artichoke was absorbed and replaced by MK/ULTRA, when actually Artichoke operated independently for nearly 17 years beyond the dawn of MK/ULTRA.

What Was Project Artichoke?

The CIA initiated Project Artichoke in August 1951 at the direction of CIA director Walter Bedell Smith and the Agency's Scientific Intelligence Director, Dr. H. Marshall Chadwell. The code name "Artichoke" was selected with sardonic humor from the street appendage given to New York City gangster Ciro Terranova, who was referred to as "the Artichoke King."

Following a brief period of bureaucratic infighting over which CIA department would have jurisdiction over Artichoke, it was decided that the project would be overseen by the Agency's Security Research Staff, headed by Paul F. Gaynor, a former Army Brigadier General, who had extensive experience in wartime interrogations.

Gaynor was notorious among CIA officials for having his staff maintain a systematic file on every homosexual, and suspected homosexual, among the ranks of Federal employees, as well as those who worked and served on Washington's Capitol Hill. Gaynor's secret listing eventually grew to include the names of employees and elected officials at State government levels, and the siblings and relatives of those on Capitol Hill.

In early January 1953, State Department employee John C. Montgomery, who handled considerable classified material, hanged himself in his Georgetown townhouse after learning of his addition to Gaynor's list. In 1954, U.S. Senator Lester C. Hunt (D-WY) killed himself in his senate office after he was threatened by Republicans, using information provided by Gaynor's staff, to publicly expose his son's homosexuality. By the early 1960s, according to one former Agency employee, "It was pretty much routine to consult Gaynor's 'fag file' when conducting background or clearance checks on individuals."

Gaynor's veiled and more despicable activities also extended to racist matters, a fixation he seemed to share with many of the CIA's early leaders, as well as with some of the Pentagon's early ranking officials. According to one former CIA official, Gaynor was once informally cautioned by Allen Dulles concerning his overt support of former Congressman Hamilton Fish III, a strident Nazi sympathizer, and for associating, along with fellow CIA official Morse Allen, with John B. Trevor Jr., an ardent racist, anti-Semite, pro-Nazi, who called for amnesty for Nazi war criminals. Before the CIA was formed, Gaynor was also associated with Trevor's father, John B. Trevor Sr., a Harvard-educated attorney who worked with Army intelligence and who once strongly advocated arming a group of citizens with 6,000 rifles and machine guns to put down an anticipated Jewish uprising in Manhattan that only took shape in Trevor's twisted mind.

In 1997, former CIA Technical Services chief, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, who had been born into a Jewish family, said, "Throughout the 1950s, and for some time beyond, the Agency was less than a welcoming place for Jews and racial minorities. Those who were actually ever hired or involved in operations learned rather quickly to keep their heads down when certain matters were discussed or rallied round."

Here it should be emphasized that inevitably lurking within, near, and around all of the CIA's early mind-control experiments was a strong element of racism that generally manifested itself through the Agency's principle objective of establishing control over the perceived "weaker" and "less intelligent" segments of society. That the CIA's initial mind control activities show a close kinship with many prominent characters within the racist and anti-immigration eugenics movement is no coincidence. Thus comprised was the central leadership of the CIA's Project Artichoke.

Here it is important to note that the Artichoke Project originated from the CIA's short-lived Project Bluebird, which operated for about two years, 1949 through summer 1951, and concentrated its efforts on former American POWs returned from the Korean War. These servicemen were placed in several Army hospitals, including Valley Forge Hospital, Pennsylvania and the Walter Reed facility in Washington, D.C. There the former POWs were subjected to various behavioral modification programs, including the use of experimental drugs, special interrogation methods, all for what the CIA deemed "offensive objectives." Joining the CIA in Project Bluebird was the Army, Navy, and Air Force (the FBI declined to participate in the project).

Reads one April 1951 Bluebird Project report: "The Navy's research efforts in regards to Bluebird objectives had actually begun in 1947 at Bethesda Naval Hospital. There, according to the Navy's Bluebird designees, J.H. Alberti and Lt. Cmdr. Hardenburg, extensive experiments had been conducted using both drugs and medical aids (polygraph machines, surgical means, hypnotism). Besides Bethesda hospital, the Office of Naval Research conducted a project in partnership with the University of Indiana which in essence [was] a search for valid indications of deception other than the mechanical indicators now being used."

CIA interest in exotic and abusive methods of detecting deception continues to the present day. In July 2003, the CIA, the Rand Corporation and the American Psychological Association conducted a series of workshops on detecting deception. One of these workshops considered the use of truth drugs ("pharmacological agents are known to affect apparent truth-telling behavior") and the use of sensory overloads. The workshop asked its classified participants, "How might we overload the system or overwhelm the senses and see how it affects deceptive behaviors?"

Perhaps one of the best examples of this was the treatment of "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla, who by the time he entered a U.S. courtroom had suffered tremendously, and irreversibly, from the abuses of deliberately induced sensory and systems overload.

In early summer of 1951, just weeks before Bluebird was renamed Artichoke, officials within the CIA's Security Office - working in tandem with cleared scientists from Camp Detrick's Special Operations Division, who in turn worked closely with a select group of scientists from a number of other Army installations, including Edgewood Arsenal - began a series of ultra-secret experiments with LSD, mescaline, peyote, and a synthesized substance, sometimes nicknamed "Smasher," which combined an "LSD-like drug with pharmaceutical amphetamines and other enhancers."

This substance was used in a number of highly classified field experiments, at least four of which were conducted outside the United States. While details of these experiments are sketchy, former Fort Detrick biochemists report, "None of the field experiments produced the type of results desired," and as a result, "ranking Army Chemical Corps officials elected to focus LSD and other drug experiments on more narrowly defined groups, as well as individuals." Chief among the field experiments that failed in the "desired results" category were the horrifying events that took place in Pont St. Esprit, France in 1951. There in a small, peaceful village one early summer morning nearly 700 people went stark raving mad with 4 people killing themselves. (This incident is detailed in my book, "A TERRIBLE MISTAKE: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments") This experimental focus remained in place when Project Artichoke was initiated.

At its inception, the Artichoke Project needed a steady supply of experimental subjects. Wrote CIA Security Research chief Paul Gaynor in a never before revealed February 1953 memo: "It is imperative that we move forward more aggressively on identifying and securing a reliable, ready group, or groups, of human research subjects for ongoing Artichoke experimentation. There can be no delays in this extremely important work."

Other CIA reports reveal that the CIA's Security Research Staff was not sitting idly by while awaiting the securing of ready groups of human subjects. Teams of Agency officials and contract physicians were traveling frequently to locations in Europe where, in the isolation of CIA safe houses, enhanced interrogations and behavior modification experiments were being conducted on various defectors, double-agents, and kidnapped foreign agents.

Reads a November 1956 Artichoke report that could have easily been written today at Guantanamo, Cuba: "The team physician administered a suppository containing a small amount of heroin to the subject so as to increase subject's pain threshold." The physician referred to in this report, a well-known Washington, D.C. psychologist, made over 90 Artichoke-related trips abroad.

In September 1953, Artichoke Project director Morse Allen, a former Naval intelligence officer and State Department employee, hand-carried a two-page memorandum to Paul Gaynor. The memo bears the subject: "Artichoke Research Program." It reads in part: "[T]here are some four thousand (4,000) American military men who are serving court martial sentences in the federal prisons at the present time. These men are scattered through the federal institutions according to their age - some being at reformatories, others at prisons. It is administratively possible that the sentences of these men can be reduced by direction of the Adjutant General's office. Therefore, if these men should be wanted for work on a dangerous research project, it might be possible to motivate their interest by promising that recommendations would be made to the Adjutant General's office to have their sentences appropriately reduced if they co-operated in the experimentation. Also many offenses of military men were committed in circumstances which might tend to lessen the feeling of guilt on the part of the individual and such cases might reveal interesting information."

Allen next suggested that federal prisons "that have hospital setups with doctors on the permanent staff" be used for experiments. Wrote Allen, "Such things as the size of the institution and current population would have to be considered but it is a fact that the federal prisons are not overcrowded as is the case with many state prisons, thus it would be much easier to obtain working space in a federal institution." Artichoke teams secretly working in the prisons could be passed off as "coming from nearby universities or research institutions," explained Allen. About a week later, Allen amended his September memo to include "federal hospitals and institutions under the control of the [U.S.] Public Health Service."

Wrote Allen, "There are a large number of USPHS-controlled facilities that can be used for experiments, these in addition to the facilities recommended in the earlier memorandum bearing the same subject."

Gaynor promptly approved Allen's recommendations, ordering their immediate implementation. Within a few weeks, progress reports concerning the conduct of experiments at three federal prisons, as well as a reformatory in Bordentown, New Jersey, were submitted to Gaynor. Experiments were also conducted at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C., a Veterans Administration hospital in Detroit, Michigan, and at the Federal Narcotics Farm in Lexington, Kentucky. Experiments at the Narcotics Farm, somewhat romanticized in some current publications, were specifically targeted at African-American inmates, who were considered by the program's director to be inferior to white inmates at the facility.

When the newly created U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) was created just weeks later with Nelson A. Rockefeller as Under-Secretary, the CIA found it remarkably easy to gain HEW's approval for use of Federal medical facilities as fronts for covert drug and interrogation experiments using unwitting human subjects. Inevitably, nearly all those unwitting experimental subjects chosen for HEW-sponsored projects were African-Americans and persons from immigrant groups and what one Agency document referred to as the "lower classes."

A central Artichoke objective, according to one CIA document, centered on: "The problem exists of ascertaining whether effective and practical techniques exist, or could be developed, which could be utilized to render an individual subservient to an imposed will or control, thereby posing a potential threat to National Security." [Italics added]

The same document explained that the Agency also wanted to put the same techniques to their own effective uses in the field offensively. Reads the document: "We need to also explore the 'subtle' means of making an individual say or do things he would normally not consider through the use of covertly administered drugs, 'Black Psychiatry'*, hypnosis, and brain damaging processes. Dr. Chadwell feels these processes may be tried but they are 'elaborate, impractical and unnecessary.'"[Italics added. Dr. Chadwell was H. Marshall Chadwell, the CIA's director of Scientific Intelligence.]

A subsequent April 1954 Artichoke Conference meeting, attended by Frank Olson's Fort Detrick superior, Col. Vincent Ruwet, explored the real nitty-gritty of Artichoke experimentation. Noted a CIA report on the meeting, "It was also recognized [by conference participants] that if Morse Allen and his group could produce bodies and if certain very rough, primitive, and ultimate tests could be carried out then a more accurate prediction could be made in connection with the ultimate goal of the group which is the running of selected foreign nationals back into Europe for specific work for this Agency."

CIA Security Research chief Paul Gaynor, attending the same Artichoke Conference meeting, reminded the gathered Agency and Fort Detrick officials, "All individuals can be broken under mental and physical assaults and by such techniques as denying sleep, exhaustion, persuasion, starvation, pain, humiliation, and sickness."

Added Gaynor, "The capacity to endure assaults of all kinds varies in individuals. We need to teach the Artichoke techniques to medical officers in the field... we also need to combine these techniques with the work carried on at Edgewood Arsenal and at Camp Dietrich [sic] ...and the special use of ergots, as well as Lysergic Acid. Experiments with new ideas, for example the hypo-spray instrument (owned by the E.R. Squibb Company) using criminals and the criminally insane, have been very successful."

An italicized and revealing note at the end of the Artichoke meeting report reads: "Morse Allen and Paul Gaynor emphasized the fact that this type of work must not be overwhelmed and overburdened in a maze of statistics, technical reports and learned academic experimentation since previous experiences along these lines clearly indicate that when this appears the end results are almost always negative." Reportedly, much of these very same statements and thinking are contained in a number of the training manuals used today by CIA and Army interrogators.

Project Artichoke Operational Overseas

Beginning in January 1954, following a series of experimental field assignments, the CIA began to systematically dispatch special assignment Artichoke Teams from the U.S. to locations throughout Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia, and the Philippines. Team assignments were given by special "EYES ONLY" cables with each assigned a tracking number. By 1961 the numbers had reached as high as 257 specific assignments. Nearly all of these assignments would fall under today's definition of "enhanced interrogations."

Through a number of Project Artichoke documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, we are able to obtain glimpses into those activities and techniques employed by the dispatched teams, which appear to have been at least a dozen in number.

A February 6, 1954 team report, delivered to CIA headquarters by "Diplomatic Courier," provides partial insight into one seemingly unique Artichoke field assignment in Europe. The report states: "These two subjects [foreign agents] are disposal problems, one because of his lack of ability to carry out a mission and the other because he cannot get along with the chief agent of the project. Both have extensive information concerning (other) assets and thus are security risks wherever they are disposed of. Anything that can be done in the Artichoke field to lessen the security risk will be helpful since the men must be disposed of even at maximum security risk. The urgency of consideration of this case is due to the fact that one of the men is already somewhat stir crazy and has tried to escape twice."

Another field report reads: "Subject was given a sedative suppository to increase his resistance to pain, this in order to intensify his ordeal midway through the planned session." Another reads in part: "This A [Artichoke] session involved four subjects all of whom present serious disposal problems after results are produced."

Domestic Artichoke Operations

In February 1954, with over 65 Artichoke Team visits to sites in Europe and the Far East having already occurred, Paul Gaynor decided to open a new Artichoke Project front. This front would be located within America's borders despite the fact that many people in the nation's capital believed that the CIA's founding charter forbade the organization from conducting domestic operations. In numerous ways, this new front gave initial shape and direction for the CIA's still-to-come "rendition" activities that we witness today.

Gaynor outlined this in a memo sent to the Agency's Technical Services Division, explaining that Artichoke officials were about to embark on creating "a mechanism within the United States which will be a ways and means of contacting alien citizens in the United States" whereby they could be "branded as alien threats and removed from the United States as 'undesirable aliens.'" The objective of establishing this mechanism was to facilitate "legal entree" for the contacted aliens so that they might, following careful "screening and testing," conduct covert missions in targeted foreign countries.

Gaynor's memo continued, stating the best technique for "contacting these people" was through the use of "sympathetic fake left-wing organizations" secretly established by the CIA. Remarkably, the memo went on stating the best process established by Artichoke officials for identifying those aliens to use involved "selection, screening, indoctrination and ultimately hypnosis." However, states the memo, "the sixty-four dollar question is can individuals be commanded under hypnosis to do things they would not otherwise do because of morals, training, ethics, etc."

Earlier, in March 1952, Security Research officials along with CIA Scientific Intelligence Branch researchers had made a concerted decision to pursue hypnotism toward the principle objective that, "Two hundred trained [CIA] operators, trained in the United States, could develop [and command] a unique, dangerous army of hypnotically controlled agents" who would carry out any instructions they were given without reservations. Several years later, CIA officials would describe the abilities of this "unique, dangerous army" as "mildly hair-raising."

Artichoke Evolves into Assassination Project

Perhaps it was inevitable that Project Artichoke would eventually develop an "executive action" or assassination component. The CIA had been seriously contemplating such a capacity since its founding. In 1952, one Artichoke official wrote: "Let's get into the technology of assassination, figure most effective ways to kill - like Empress Agrippina - do you want your people to be able to get out of the room? Do you want it traced?"

Other hard evidence of the CIA's leanings toward assassination as a feature of policy and operations is yet another memorandum by the Agency's Security Office and Artichoke official Morse Allen. Wrote Allen about Martin Luther King in 1965: "It is [redacted]'s belief that somehow or other Martin Luther King must be removed from the leadership of the Negro movement, and his removal must come from within and not from without. [Redacted] feels that somehow in the Negro movement, at the top, there must be a Negro leader who is 'clean' who could step into the vacuum and chaos if Martin Luther King were exposed or assassinated."

Rewriting History and Creating Disinformation

In recent years there has been a concerted effort on the part of some groups and writers to deliberately disown and downplay the horrors of Project Artichoke. Perhaps the finest recent example of this is an article written by Charles S. Viar of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Intelligence Studies, a private group. Viar's article entitled PANDORA'S BOX: MKULTRA and the Weaponization of the Human Psyche is posted on the center's web site.

Viar, who claims to have been a student of James Jesus Angleton in 1986 and 1987, and an expert on intelligence affairs, erroneously claims in his article that the Artichoke Project and its techniques had been "developed and successfully refined by the Soviets, Nazi, and Western intelligence services between 1920 and 1973." This rewriting of history appears as nothing short of an amazing effort to distort the truth; as is well established by the CIA's own records, the term Artichoke was never applied to any program or techniques prior to 1952, when the Agency first employed the project codename.

Viar also appears to buy into and promote the cover story invented by Cheney and Rumsfeld in 1975 that Project Artichoke was, in 1953, replaced by MK/ULTRA. Additionally, he buys into the "unwitting" dosing of Frank Olson as "part of an MKULTRA experiment," this despite that Olson was a member of the CIA's Artichoke Conference and never worked with MK/ULTRA projects. Viar then remarkably writes, "There is no evidence that either the CIA or the US military operationalized Artichoke," a statement that is shattered to pieces by the numerous Artichoke operational reports and records filed by both the CIA and army from 1954 through to at least 1970. If this is not enough, Viar then states that it was "the Soviets" who "shared Artichoke with their Arab allies," and then equates Project Artichoke to "suicide bombers" and "Al Qaeda." Lastly, Viar also writes that the CIA's delving into parapsychology matters is near completely overlooked by historians, despite the ample writings and exposure of the Agency's MK/ULTRA subprojects, which extensively dealt with ESP and other parapsychology matters.

Project Artichoke Today

With today's media reports concerning the CIA and Department of Defense black sites cropping up all over the world map, and with horrifying reports concerning alleged "suicides" at US-operated compounds holding "enemy combatants" that make Frank Olson's suicide-turned-murder case look like a stroll through atrocity park, readers should be ever mindful that the roots of the CIA's secret mind control and enhanced interrogation programs are firmly planted in the soil of Project Artichoke.

Over the past months, new secret black sites prisons have been discovered at Guantanamo Naval Base and at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan. The Guantanamo site has been linked to the deaths of three prisoners in 2006, while Bagram secret prison, said to be run by the Defense Intelligence Agency, has been the subject of investigations by the New York Times, Washington Post, and BBC, exposing widespread use of beatings, isolation, sleep deprivation, and other techniques derived from Appendix M of the 2006 Army Field Manual. This portion of the manual outlines abusive forms of interrogation reserved only for captives that supposedly don't warrant prisoner-of-war status.

Interest in the use of drugs and mind control techniques in military research and operations persists to the present day. A November 2006 instruction from the Secretary of the Navy (3900.39D) informs that the Undersecretary for the Navy would heretofore be the "Approval Authority for research involving: (a) Severe or unusual intrusions, either physical or psychological, on human subjects (such as consciousness-altering drugs or mind-control techniques)."**

A public presentation of the new policy at the Defense Department Training Day in Washington, D.C. on November 14, 2006, only 16 days after the new policy was released, deleted the parenthetical remarks on drugs and "mind control," but left intact the instruction two paragraphs later that the Undersecretary also be responsible for research of, "Potentially or inherently controversial topics (such as those likely to attract significant media coverage or that might invite challenge by interest groups.)"

Like a modern day Ministry of Truth, U.S. government agencies and their partners are busy trying to erase the evidence of their crimes, whether from sixty years ago, or six. Most recently, the American Psychological Association (APA) has changed the web pages that describe their 2003 workshop conducted with the CIA and the Rand Corporation on deception. One webpage has dropped the link to another page that described the workshops investigation of sensory overload and truth drugs. The descriptive page on workshops has been scrubbed entirely, and is only available through the use of web archives sites. Worth noting is that throughout the 1950s and 1960s the APA worked quite closely with both the CIA and Army on mind control projects, many of which completely crossed ethical lines, as well as the APA's Code of Ethics, into areas described by many observers as sheer madness.

Attempts to prevent judicial review of the rendition and torture programs are moreover an official position of President Obama's administration. On May 12, the administration filed a brief to the Supreme Court about whether to hear an appeal from Maher Arar in his lawsuit against former Attorney General Ashcroft and other Bush administration figures. Arar was kidnapped from New York's JFK Airport and rendered secretly to Syria, where he was tortured for almost a year. His suit was dismissed by a federal circuit appeals court. Now, President Obama's Acting Solicitor General, Neal Katyal, has pronounced the administration's position that further deliberations on Mr. Arar's suit are "unwarranted." The former Solicitor General, Elena Kagan, who was involved in U.S. decision-making on the case, is now a nominee for the Supreme Court.

Finally, the release last year of the CIA's 2004 Inspector General report on the "enhanced interrogation" program revealed an operation that with its use of doctors as control agents, its reliance on methods of psychological and physiological torture, and the experimental nature of the program, led Physicians for Human Rights to release a white paper that concluded that "possible human experimentation" was taking place, and emphasized the urgent need for a thorough investigation.

---

*According to one former CIA official: "'Black Psychiatry' refers to psychiatric methods used by trained and licensed physicians on subjects. These methods may not be in the best interest of the subject's mental well-being and health." The same official remarked, "There was no shortage of or problems recruiting psychologists in the 1950s and 1960s who would willfully, and sometimes enthusiastically, practice 'Black Psychiatry.'" The various methods of 'Black Psychiatry' were provided in a training setting in the 1950s through to at least the 1970s at the CIA's Butler Health Center facility in Rhode Island, where many physicians, including Dr. Robert Hyde, worked for the Agency. The Butler Center also served as the CIA's central site for exposing its own officials and agents to the effects of LSD and other drugs.

** Recent reports concerning the CIA and Army have both organizations experimenting on a selected basis with a new mind altering drug whose effects are described as "incredibly mind altering yet at the same time allowing subjects to adhere to a sufficient sense of sanity thus allowing better opportunity for truth inducing techniques..." The drug, described by one former intelligence official as "ETX," is said to last for "about 48-hours."


H.P. Albarelli Jr. is the author of "A TERRIBLE MISTAKE: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments." He has written numerous newspaper and magazine articles on biological warfare and intelligence affairs. He can be contacted through his Web site: www.albarelli.net.

Jeffrey Kaye, a psychologist living in Northern California, writes regularly on torture and other subjects for Firedoglake. He also maintains a personal blog, Invictus. His email address is sfpsych at gmail dot com


The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.

.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

sick science : Artificial life? Synthetic genes "boot up" cell

from : http://www.reuters.com

A scanning electron micrographs of M. mycoides JCVI-syn1 courtesy  of the J. Craig Venter Institute. REUTERS/J. Craig Venter  Institute/Handout

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers trying to make synthetic life in the lab have "booted up" a hollowed-out bacterium using a human-made genome in a major step toward making synthetic life.

Science | Health

They hope to use their stripped-down version of a bacterium to eventually engineer custom-made microbes.

"This is the first synthetic cell that's been made, and we call it synthetic because the cell is totally derived from a synthetic chromosome, made with four bottles of chemicals on a chemical synthesizer, starting with information in a computer," said genome pioneer Craig Venter, who led the research.

"This is the first self-replicating species that we have had on the planet whose parent is a computer," he added.

Venter has said he would like to try to make bacteria to produce fuel, to design algae that can vacuum up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and to use in making better vaccines.

"This becomes a very powerful tool for trying to design what we want biology to do," Venter said at a news conference.

Reporting in the journal Science, Venter's team said they worked with a synthetic version of the DNA from a small bacterium called Mycoplasma mycoides transplanted into another germ called Mycoplasma capricolum, which had most of its insides removed.

After many false starts, the new microbe came to life and began replicating in the lab dish.

"This is an important step we think, both scientifically and philosophically. It's certainly changed my views of the definitions of life and how life works," Venter said in a statement.

THWARTED SUCCESS

It took years to first figure out how to make an artificial chromosome with assembled artificial genetic sequences. They then had to figure out how to transfer this into another bacterium.

At first, nothing happened. It turned out there was a single error in the more than one million "base-pairs" in the genetic sequence. "Our success was thwarted for many weeks," they wrote in their report.

"So accuracy is essential," Venter told the news conference.

The researchers do not claim to have created a completely synthetic life form.

Their eventual goal: "Can a complete genetic system be reproduced by chemical synthesis starting with only the digitized DNA sequence

contained in a computer?" they asked in their paper.

Venter said the team consulted many different experts in ethics before they started. The institute's Dan Gibson said they also briefed the White House because of the security implications -- the technique might be used to synthesize biological weapons, for instance.

Several other researchers said the study was a landmark.

"Venter is creaking open the most profound door in humanity's history, potentially peeking into its destiny," Julian Savulescu of Britain's University of Oxford, said in a statement.

"He is going toward the role of a god: creating artificial life that could never have existed naturally, creating life from the ground up using basic building blocks."



The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.

.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has passport confiscated

from :

Sophie Tedmanson in Sydney

May 17, 2010

The Australian founder of the whistleblower website Wikileaks had his passport confiscated by police when he arrived in Melbourne last week.

Julian Assange, who does not have an official home base and travels every six weeks, told the Australian current affairs program Dateline that immigration officials had said his passport was going to be cancelled because it was looking worn.

However he then received a letter from the Australian Communication Minister Steven Conroy’s office stating that the recent disclosure on Wikileaks of a blacklist of websites the Australian government is preparing to ban had been referred to the Australian Federal Police (AFP).

Last year Wikileaks published a confidential list of websites that the Australian government is preparing to ban under a proposed internet filter – which in turn caused the whistleblower site to be placed on that list.

Mr Assange, 37, told The Age newspaper that half an hour after his passport was returned to him an AFP officer searched one of his bags and questioned him about a previous criminal record for computer hacking offences when he was a teenager.

He was then told his passport status was classified as "normal" on the immigration database

In 1991 Mr Assange, described by Wikileaks as "Australia’s most famous ethical computer hacker", was charged with 30 offences over the alleged hacking of police, Telco’s and US military computers. He admitted to 24 charges and was fined and placed on a good behaviour bond.

Mr Assange told the Dateline program that Australia is one of a few countries he is wary of travelling in as a result of documents published on the Wikileaks website.

"There are places … Dubai, who is trying to have us arrested, Switzerland under the bank secrecy laws, Cayman Islands," he said. "Australia had the federal police in relation to its censorship list so there are some jurisdictions that from time to time it wouldn’t be sensible to go there."

Wikileaks, which publishes anonymously sourced confidential documents from governments and corporations, was launched in January 2007.

The site has since exposed secrets about corruption in Kenya, Nato’s plans for the war in Afghanistan and the operations manual for the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay.

Last month Wikileaks created international headlines when it published classified US military footage of an American attack helicopter gunning down Iraqi civilians and a Reuters photographer in 2007.

Until recently Mr Assange has kept a very low profile, rarely granting interviews or making public appearances.

He is believed to have boltholes in Iceland, Sweden and Kenya, but does not have an official home base. He says he travels every six weeks, running his Wikileaks empire from a laptop and a backpack while on the road.




The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.

.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Who is Bombing in Iraq?

from : http://www.globalresearch.ca

Are the bombers Al-Qaeda, the CIA or Israel?


Global Research, May 14, 2010


0diggsdigg
StumbleUpon Submit

Christopher King argues that it is likely that the American CIA – or Israel acting on its behalf – is responsible for recent atrocities in Iraq, in order to extend and consolidate the occupation, just as it is probable that the Times Square bomber was, wittingly or otherwise, acting for the CIA or Israel, to justify the US military intervention in South Asia.

On 10 May there were more than two dozen bombings and shootings in
Iraq that killed at least 85 people and injured at least 300.These were coordinated attacks, clearly by the same organization.

The American response to this and other recent attacks is to delay plans for withdrawal of troops from
Iraq. Obama’s election promise was to withdraw troops from Iraq by May this year. Not only is that obviously not going to happen but we learned after his election that “withdrawal” meant leaving 50,000 troops as ‘trainers’ as well as 4,500 special forces and tens of thousands of para-military contractors.

Now, the
US is reviewing even the slipped drawdown schedule out of concern for the security of the Iraqi people. Considering the million killed by the US and the four to five million refugees created by them I would not have thought that they would be bothered by fewer than one hundred dead in a little internal trouble. It might be said to be an improvement on US outcomes.

As these attacks are providing the
US with an excuse for delaying even its token withdrawal however, we need to think about who is behind them.

I wrote on 20 April that the probability is that the United States Central Intelligence Agency is behind these attacks, using local groups. It’s dirty tricks of this sort that the CIA does and is well financed by the US government to do. The US will never leave Iraq while there is oil in the ground, as I said in April 2008. I’m amazed that the media and even the US anti-war brigade still have faith that leaving will happen. The US didn’t go there in the first place, nor build its fortresses, in order to leave. As it happens, however, the elections to keep their puppet in place did not go to plan.

This latest series of attacks on top of a long series of lesser but still deadly attacks is not the work of a small group. It’s a large, well disciplined, well financed group with substantial support.

The usual unnamed officials of unspecified nationality say that Al-Qaeda is doing the attacks. Well they would, wouldn’t they? Am I mistaken in recalling that General David Petraeus’s great success in
Iraq was the elimination of Al-Qaeda? Or was that only while he was paying the Awakening Councils to go after them – if indeed Al-Qaeda was ever in Iraq at all. Since the Iraq invasion itself was based on a pack of lies there is no reason to believe anything that we are subsequently told about what is happening there or anywhere else where the US is involved.

Actually, even people on the ground in
Iraq often don’t know who is doing what and allegiances are constantly changing. It’s suggested that Al-Qaeda doesn’t want the Americans to leave because the cost of the occupation is damaging America. There are also Iraqi groups who have done well out of the occupation and would like to see the Americans stay. Whether any of these groups would be capable of attacks on this scale, or would be willing to carry them out, is doubtful. I don’t buy Al-Qaeda. That’s the standard US scare story and it’s worn out, like the dozens of accusations that Iran was behind the Iraqi resistance and supplying arms and bomb technology without a scrap of evidence. All propaganda and rubbish – like Saddam’s nuclear programme, his weapons of mass destruction, his collaboration with Al-Qaeda, his mobile chemical laboratories. All now officially certified lies.

This is certain: the
US invasion caused extraordinary devastation in Iraq and its continued presence is the problem for Iraqis. It’s most likely that because they have no intention of leaving, it’s the US itself that is behind the attacks. Or maybe the Israelis on their behalf, using locally organized groups.

Yes, the Israelis are in Iraq and they have no love for Arabs. In 2005 they were reported to be training Kurds in northern Iraq, now a semi-autonomous region. Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, who was blamed for the atrocities in Abu Ghraib prison, said that she was shocked to meet an Israeli interrogator in Iraq. There’s plenty of scope here for deniability on the part of both the US army and the CIA which sometimes gets asked questions. With the Israeli-US axis operating in Iraq anything is possible. The Israelis are beginning to pop up in trouble spots such as Georgia where they were “trainers” as well.

The Israelis, CIA, US and UK military all regularly assassinate suspected militants along with innocent men, women and children. They consider no-one to be innocent. Nor would false-flag provocations be beyond the US-Israeli axis. On 8 June 1967 the Israelis attempted to sink the USS Liberty in an attack that left 34 American sailors dead and 173 wounded. The American Department of Defence colluded with Israel. It recalled fighter aircraft that had been launched from a nearby carrier to give assistance and probably co-planned the incident. The crew was threatened and warned not to talk about the attack.

This was clearly a false flag attack that was bungled, the probable intention to blame the Syrians or Egyptians with willingness of the
US to sacrifice its own ship and crew. For the story, visit the Liberty Veterans’ Association website or read their report. The US-Israeli axis operates deeper than Americans or Europeans realize and we must be prepared to follow their thinking.

Why should we believe that the
Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, was briefed by the Pakistani Taliban – even if he believes it himself? Did they show him their membership cards, perhaps? Perhaps his Pakistani handlers were Taliban-certified by someone of reliable reputation and good character? I prefer a group backed by the CIA which is now publicly known to be active in Pakistan and who would like to supply evidence of the Taliban’s wish to attack the US itself. It justifies their atrocities and keeps the war going.

Faisal Shahzad’s crude construct didn’t explode and it wasn’t going to. It wasn’t even a bomb – just some petrol cans, propane cylinders, fireworks and fertilizer of the wrong sort for bomb-making. A nuisance but harmless. He had never been trained by a real bomb-maker or if he was, the crude construct was intended to merely burn. Remember the USS Liberty when you read these accounts.

These people think that it’s clever to get others to do their dirty work for them or better still, to suborn nationals of their target countries. Empires are only possible if collaborators with the occupiers can be found – and it’s never difficult. The Palestinians have Mahmoud Abbas, Iran had the Shah, Afghanistan has Karzai, Iraq has Maliki, the UK had Anthony Blair and Gordon Brown as well as the collaboration of most of the UK’s political class both in the US’s wars of aggression and its occupation of the UK with its bases. Our government has changed but as the French say, plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose (more change, more of the same thing).

We are getting a constant stream of conflicting messages from the Americans and our own war criminals whom they have suborned: they’re leaving Iraq and Afghanistan soon but at the same time are in it for the long haul of 10 years or so. The purpose of this apparent nonsense is to give everyone something that they can hear and believe in while shutting out what they don’t want to hear. These messages have collaborating psychologists’ fingerprints on them.

This is a critical time when we need men of honesty and goodwill who will act for the good of the
UK and Europe. That means leaving the Middle East and detaching from America and its crimes. Some countries are finding out how leech-like this parasitic country holds on. The Japanese in Okinawa are finding that the US won’t remove its bases on request. Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium have called for the removal of US nuclear weapons from Europe. The US says that this is an issue for NATO to decide and an unnamed official says: “Single countries shouldn’t be coming forward with decisions or unilateral reviews.” So there you have it.

With the NATO First Act of the
United States, getting the US, its bases and its nuclear weapons out of Europe will be found to be impossible when Europeans realize that it is necessary. This extraordinary Act has it that either the US Congress or host countries can have US bases closed or redeploy nuclear weapons. Well, already it seems that individual countries can’t ask for nuclear weapons to be removed from their soil. Once on the statute books, it’s a small step to make either into both – and that seems to be the case already.

You might think that the present economic crisis and Middle Eastern war situation is bad. It’s actually much worse than that. Do you think that the
US wouldn’t do in Europe what it’s doing in the Middle East? What it has done in Guantanamo? The crimes it has Europe’s politicians collaborating in? And who got the money from the worthless derivatives that our banks bought and European taxpayers are paying for? Europe’s politicians are either paralyzed in a state of wilful blindness and denial or they can view with equinamity the Wikileaks Collateral Murder video and think that they and their families will be looked after no matter what the crimes – like Anthony Blair.

With
America under economic and geopolitical pressures of its own making, the future for Europe is every bit as bad as it is for other countries that the US occupies. We should recall the crimes of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, among which was the torture and murder of about 7,000 persons in the Santiago Stadium in 1973, outlined in this Washington Post obituary. What the newspaper neglects to mention is that the United States was Pinochet’s backer.


Christopher King is a retired consultant and lecturer in management and marketing. He lives in London, UK.


Global Research Articles by Christopher King




The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.

.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Sheeple: Signs That You Might Be Part Of The Herd…

from : http://waronyou.com

Giordano Bruno

Millions of people from countries across the world have begun to wake up to the very real threat of repressive and engineered Globalism, or what the financial elite and the politicians who work for them often refer to as “The New World Order”. The movement against this centralization of economic and social power has gained traction in nearly every sphere, to the point where even the mainstream media has been forced on occasion to acknowledge its existence and prevalence. Those of us who have been working more than a few years in this activist organization, what many of us call the “Patriot Movement”, or the “Liberty Movement”, have seen incredible leaps and bounds in the fight against disinformation and the spread of unadulterated truth. Our work has gone viral, and our membership has skyrocketed, however, the task of diluting ignorance in the overall populace is far from over.

Every researcher, writer, and filmmaker who tackles the New World Order issue will suffer the unfortunate experience of running into people who are almost criminally uninformed, and this will happen on a regular basis. For a long time, our frustration was magnified by our inability to specifically define what it was that made these people the way they were. Were some just mentally inadequate, and unable to effectively process the facts? Were they so indoctrinated by the MSM that there was no turning back? Was there an innate difference in intuitive faculties that made some people quick in picking out a lie, and others slow? Many theories abound, but one thing was certain; in our quest to inform the masses, there were always going to be those who were incapable of hearing or understanding what we had to say, no matter how factual, rational, and refined our arguments. We now call these wonders of intellectual rustication “Sheeple”…

Sheeple can be found in every country, every ethnic background, every religious organization, and every subculture. After years of examination and experience, it has become much easier for the Liberty Movement to identify and categorize the various forms of sheeple, and come to terms with the triggers in the human mind that cause some to willfully ignore logic and wisdom. I have written in the past about some of these triggers, including my article “Sheeple: Why They Are The Way They Are”: http://neithercorp.us/npress/?p=182

I believe it is important to cover this issue once again, especially in light of recent attempts by the MSM, along with the ADL and SPLC, to demonize our movement and paint us as villainous cartoon characters in the minds of the general public, which will make things even more difficult for us in the near future if we are not prepared. For those in the movement, knowing when you are dealing with sheeple, why they function cognitively the way they do, and how you might be able to get around their mental blocks, is of utmost importance today. Every new person who is awakened to the abyss they are about to plunge into could tip the balance away from tyranny and establish a cultural foothold for free-thought. Every person counts. With the world on the edge of financial and political ruin due to the manipulations and mechanizations of elitism, we must work harder than ever before.

Identifying Sheeple

Not everyone who is unaware or uneducated on the intricacies of Globalism, Central Banking, and the NWO, is necessarily “sheeple”. All of us, at one time or another, were nearly clueless as to the real workings of our government and our economy behind the proverbial curtain. I have found that many people are quite open to the information I make available as long as I make it available in a way that is not immediately overwhelming for them, and as long as I present solid evidence to back every claim that I relate. It is very important to be able to make the distinction between those who are brazenly dim-witted, and those who simply have not been adequately exposed to the facts.

Below, I will list my observations on the various ‘types’ of sheeple, and how to recognize them. Keep in mind some people might fall into more than one category.

The ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’ Sheeple:

Also known as the “Yuppie”. Life is a party for these folks. As long as they are not affected by the immediate circumstances of the troubles surrounding them, they couldn’t care less about politics, economics, war, or governmental deceit. They may even be aware of the terrible facts behind a certain issue, but as long as the routine of their mundane existence remains intact, they will have little motivation to effect changes in their thinking or their world. In fact, some ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’ Sheeple ENJOY a random catastrophe or two, because it gives them conversational fodder for the small-talk around the water cooler that they love so much. Their primary drives are unchecked consumerism (the accumulation of useless things), and emotionally empty sexual exchanges (the accumulation of false self-confidence). Most of what they know about the world they derive from watching fifteen minutes of mainstream television news a day. They often parrot talking points they overheard on MSNBC or CNN, and rarely have an original thought.

I have found that these men and women are normally from upper middle-class, white collar families. They have likely been coddled and sheltered from the suffering that goes on outside of the affluent bubble they were born into, and have probably never had to truly struggle for anything in their lives, giving them an audacious sense of entitlement. Plenty of these people break out of this one track thinking pattern on their own. I have known quite a few. But others will refuse to see the obvious unless confronted with the prospect that they personally might lose something if they do not take action.

The ‘Quasi-Intellectual’ Sheeple:

My favorite kind of sheeple. These people hold themselves in very high esteem. Some even see themselves as part of the elite (though most of them are not). Normally from the “professional class”, they often hold positions as Doctors, Lawyers, Bankers, Investors, Professors, Scientists, etc, though some have not yet left the university setting, and are simply getting a head start on their superiority complex.

Quasi-Intellectual Sheeple believe in the world of academia as unerring, as opposed to true scholars, who always have the wisdom to question the conclusions of academia. To me, an Ivy League degree is little more than a $100,000 piece of paper; it tells me nothing of the true intelligence of the person holding it. One need only look at the thousands of mainstream “professional” financial analysts who blindly supported Keynesian economics and refused to acknowledge the bubbles being facilitated by the private Federal Reserve’s artificially low interest rates and free money mentality. Their expensive education counted for nothing, and the economy is now on a ruinous downward slide.

At bottom, most “higher education” is really indoctrination. People attaining degrees in economics learn what the financial establishment WANTS them to learn, and nothing more. The same goes for any other field of study in which information is extremely centralized and filtered. Yet, Quasi-Intellectual Sheeple have such misplaced faith in the ivory tower that they assume through the system they have reached the pinnacle of knowledge. Those who have not assimilated themselves into this system as the Quasi-Intellectual has are to be ignored or ridiculed when presenting an opposing view.

This type of sheeple is driven by the desire for respect, power, and sometimes sycophantic admiration. Actually being intelligent is less important to them than having others believe they are intelligent without question. When asked to prove their intelligence, they often respond with indignance. They rarely if ever consider the possibility that they may be wrong on any subject, especially if it’s a subject they received a degree in. When they find themselves facing someone who has a better grasp of an issue than they do, they will not relent. Instead, they will turn towards subversive debate tactics to confuse the discussion, go off on tangents to avoid direct confrontation, and when he is really cornered, he will throw out barrages of obscure vocabulary in an attempt to impress others and distract them from the fact that he has no idea what he is talking about.

Quasi-Intellectual Sheeple are easy to identify by their arrogant demeanor. They tend to distance themselves from FOX and CNN and read periodicals like Forbes and Foreign Affairs, which are still propaganda, just of a more complex nature. They respond to most arguments with a smile, due to overconfidence, until they realize they are being soundly outmatched, and then they tend to lose composure. It takes a lot of public embarrassment before they will mend their ways.

The ‘Working-Class Idiot’ Sheeple:

Otherwise known as “the good ole’ boy”. (Special Note: I came from a parallel background, and am highly familiar with these sheeple.) You would think that people who fancy themselves as hardcore conservatives would be aware of the push towards global government and the fact that groups like Al-Qaeda are a fairytale distraction away from the real threat: Socio-Corporate Elitism and overgrown Federal bureaucracy. Apparently, they would ‘love’ to hear about it, but the football game is on and their wife is in their ear and the rugrats won’t stop eating all the damn frosted flakes. Such is the life of men without valid priorities.

These folks are usually Neo-Conservative lapdogs, an ideology suspiciously identical to Socialism with a corporate twist. Mussolini had a name for this combination, though the term escapes me…

Its not that they LIKE big government, Socialism, and the loss of liberties, it’s just that they are too ignorant to realize that that’s what they are supporting when they support the current Republican Party. These sheeple are very competitive. Sadly, however, they are often not accomplished in much of anything, which forces them to live vicariously through the exploits of others; like sports teams, political figures, and soldiers sent to third world hell-holes to blow up “bad guys”. Winning, regardless of whether or not the fight is legitimate or justified, is at the top of the Working Class Idiot’s list.

They like to believe that they have a deep relationship with their conscience, which adds pain when attempting to explain anything to them. These men are vindicated in their own minds by a set of logical fallacies that would boggle the likes of Freud. Being rational is not important to those who are vehemently self righteous. They ARE the “good guys”, anyone who disagrees is a “bad guy”, and that is that. This mindset makes them very easy to dupe, and very easy to lead.

The Working Class Idiot worships television. More than a couple of days without it and he shivers like a starving drug addict. He watches FOX religiously, and not intelligent commentators like Andrew Napolitano. He’s a much bigger fan of frothing psychotics such as Bill O’ Reilly, spewing baseless nonsense like a third grader’s baking soda volcano spews foam. When cornered in an argument, this type of sheeple will try every trick he knows to degrade or intimidate his opponent. When that does not work, he has no problem resorting to violence. How to get through to this sheeple? Find a sports figure, prominent Republican, or military man who talks openly about the NWO (there are some out there). Only then will he take the blinders off.

The ‘New Age’ Sheeple:

Otherwise known as “unabashed collectivists”. Not to be confused with people who do legitimate study into mythology, spiritualism, and the teachings of the ancient past. These are the folks who read Oprah throwaway books like “The Secret”, and think they have actually learned a secret.

You don’t have to walk on egg shells with New Age Sheeple when it comes to the NWO. They are just as likely to approach you about it. The problem is, they think it’s the best thing since patchouli sticks! Why? Because their vision of a one world order comes from an overexposure to Gene Rodenberry-esque fantasy and a subversive form of propaganda I like to call “Positivism”.

Most ‘New Agers’ are people who have at one point or another in their lives met with serious struggle, unlike the ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’ sheeple. However, instead of holding steady through this struggle, they gave up, curling into a ball never to put any real effort into anything substantial again. They often make elaborate excuses for themselves, and adopt Eastern philosophical concepts they don’t really understand. Zen becomes an excuse to ignore the rest of the world and focus on something pointless like underwater basket weaving. Karma becomes an excuse and vindication for any unfortunate event. Self awareness gets confused with self-centeredness. While Happy-Go-Lucky sheeple focus superficially on the outside world, New Agers focus superficially on their inner world.

New Age Sheeple do not set out to actively and physically fix problems. They follow the Positivist view, which is to ignore bad things and hope they go away, or make them go away “with their minds”. No, I am not joking. Every New Ager I have ever met holds stubbornly to the belief that if they think happy thoughts and wish hard enough, their invisible “mental energy” will change their surroundings for them. “If only everyone was blindly optimistic about everything,” they think to themselves, “our society would be perfect…” I hate to break it to them, but no amount of ‘happy vibes’ will stop an inflationary dollar implosion, or stop people who have deliberately chosen to ignore their consciences from doing terrible things.

I have spent over two decades in the martial arts, so I am well aware of the mental and spiritual energy idea. However, in the martial arts, you are taught (rightly I think) that priming ones inner focus only prepares you for struggle, it does not make struggle disappear. What the New Age really boils down to is an attempt to cut corners and slap together easy answers for the very complex and intricate problems of life. It is a lazy man’s methodology of denial in which there is no concrete reality, only “point of view”. This breeds hive-mindedness, because the search for individualism is in itself an exhausting marathon, one they would rather not undertake. Overt collectivism is much easier. All you have to do is follow the swarm. And because New Agers force themselves to become so mutable, over the years they will mindlessly adapt to any horrifying circumstance. If reality is only a “point of view”, then why not rationalize wars and holocausts as illusory blips in time?

The only way to get through to New Age Sheeple that I have found is to show them succinctly that the New World Order the Global Elites are constructing is not the same as the one they like to imagine. Making them read through UN white papers on global governance and federal documents like PDD 51 and the Civilian Inmate Labor Program can help. They will still probably think a one world government is a good idea, but at least they won’t support the Elite’s version.

The ‘Quasi-Activist’ Sheeple:

Also known as “the rebel with too many causes and not enough knowledge”. At least these sheeple are willing to leave their houses and fight for something, even if they know little to nothing about what they are fighting for or over. The problem is that their lack of insight and in-depth understanding on most issues makes them highly susceptible to manipulation. These are the “useful idiots” we hear so much about; the people who support Anarchist groups that promote Socialist ideals (uh, Socialism is contrary to the tenets of real Anarchism, guys…), the people who believe everything they are told by the CRU on global warming even though the CRU has never released original source data proving that anything they say is true, the people who blame Capitalism and free markets for the economic collapse even though we haven’t had legitimate Capitalism and free markets in over a century. Without knowing the facts behind these issues, how can one effectively involve himself in them?

Quasi-Activist Sheeple protest not so much to change the world, but to FEEL like they are changing the world. Being a part of something greater, even if it’s a sham, is a major motivator. These people are under the impression that they have an inside track on the workings of politics and culture, but the information sources they use are ultimately narrow and biased. NPR for example is not a reliable news source, and just because they speak in a monotone voice with a British accent does not mean they are educated on social undercurrents or that they are objective. Most “progressive” journalism is merely the leftist equivalent of FOX; highly saturated with disinformation and emotional button pushing. This helps to create a subculture that sees itself as “alternative”, when it is actually the flipside of the same old false paradigm coin.

The advantage of dealing with Quasi-Activists is that they do realize something is very wrong with the world. This is more than most other sheeple accomplish in an entire lifetime. The key is showing them the inaccuracy of the information sources they are too dependent on, and breaking them out of the fake left/right mental trap. As long as they continue to blame all the problems of the planet on “the right”, as long as they continue to blame generalized and fictitious opponents that were designed for them by the media, they will never understand why America continues on its self-destructive path despite all their civil discourse.

Common Sheeple Arguments

Below are listed some of the most often uttered sheeple arguments, as well as the rational responses to them.

1) The NWO is just a “conspiracy theory”:

Set aside the fact that politicians and leaders of finance talk about the New World Order constantly in speeches, books, and on nighttime television. The temptation here is to push the sheeple label and start a battle of insults. When someone accuses you of “conspiracy theory” what they are really saying is that you are a liar, crazy, or both. Of course, calling someone a liar or crazy does not negate their arguments. Hollow character attacks like this are meant to interfere or defuse legitimate and logical discussion. Force the sheeple to address the information you present instead of allowing them to make your personal character the subject of the debate. This rule goes for you too. Don’t just call them sheeple without backing up your claims and pointing out the inconsistencies in their beliefs.

2) I’m well informed and have never been a “sheep”:

Most human beings, regardless of the time they live in, think they have it all figured out. Even men in the dark ages thought they had reached the summit of understanding. They are able to perpetuate this illusion because they are rarely challenged to prove the accuracy of their information or the wisdom in their perspective. Challenge their knowledge on specific issues, and show them there is always more to learn.

3) I’m not the “sheeple”! You are because you believe in conspiracy theories:

Yes, full grown adults still use the rubber/glue tactic. Remember, one of the main threads linking all sheeple is that they believe what they believe so that they can belong, so that they can be a part of a majority. Delving into NWO research is the last thing anyone does to “fit in”. Just mentioning it can alienate friends, family, potential hot dates, etc. No one follows this information because they expect to feel accepted by the masses. They follow it because they know it is the truth.

4) The NWO is not possible because it would involve too many people. Someone would let the cat out of the bag eventually:

Actually, the Global Elites themselves let “the cat out of the bag” constantly. They speak openly about plans for world government, world financial control, population control and reduction, and they write bills and legislation that are designed to limit or erase our civil liberties. The proof is hidden in plain sight.

5) You’re connecting dots that are not there:

Neither I nor any other researcher needs to “connect dots” when we have the public admissions and documents of the Elites themselves.

6) You’re just fear mongering to get attention:

The term “fear mongering” denotes the use of lies to induce hysteria. If the information we present is true and supported by tangible facts, then how other people are affected by it is not our problem, it is theirs. Frankly, learning the truth should make a person feel empowered, not hysterical.

7) Everything is just chaos. There is no such thing as an organized conspiracy to control the world:

The events they see as chaos make perfect sense to us because we have an insight into information they do not. It’s that simple. The numerous movements in a complex time-piece might seem like chaos to someone that doesn’t know what a time-piece is, or the purpose of a gear, or second hand. Try to explain the concept of color to a blind person. Without a full accounting of the facts, it is very hard for one to know a thing. Also, a quick glance through any encyclopedia, even those with heavy editing, will reveal numerous “conspiracies” throughout history by small groups of men to rule the known world at the expense of the rest of us. Why was it perfectly plausible a hundred years ago, or fifty years ago, but not today?

8) Yeah, I know the NWO exists, but who cares! We can’t stop it, so just live your life and have fun while you can:

Nihilism is the worst kind of mental illness because it allows a person to constantly fulfill his own prophecies by doing nothing. When it comes to cultural progression, there is no such thing as the insurmountable scenario. Anything can be accomplished with the right amount of intelligence and effort. Nihilists make no effort to fix the problems they are confronted with, then claim they were right to be nihilistic because nothing changed. We have a responsibility not just to ourselves, but to the future. We have a responsibility to deal with the problems of the present, instead of pawning them off on the next generation.

9) Its all our fault that Globalists get away with murder. Most of us are just stupid:

This is only partly true. The average person does share part of the blame for not educating himself on circumstances, and for not taking action, however, ultimately it is the Elites who initiate the crimes we are then forced to either face or ignore. They are the ones that literally spend billions of dollars on propaganda designed to keep us in a fog. In the end, it is they who carry the principal culpability, not “the people”.

10) What’s so bad about a one-world government? It would be the end of war, right?:

Global government designed around a collectivist structure and ruled by men who believe themselves to be “genetically and philosophically superior” to the rest of us would not fix anything, it would only make our current problems much worse. War would be perpetual, because there will always be people who fight to be free from despotism, and even planetary governments need to create fear to manipulate the citizenry towards certain goals. Our economy would be equalized; meaning it would be equally oppressive and feudalistic for everyone. And, the liberties we hold dear today would be a distant memory tomorrow. Anyone who truly thinks that more government makes them “safer” is not just extraordinarily naïve; they are sheeple…

Breaking The Sheeple Barrier

Sheeple can change. I have seen it with my own eyes on numerous occasions. If the sheeple you are dealing with at any given moment is a stranger, or mere acquaintance, you may not feel that it is worth the immense effort necessary to enlighten them to the problems at hand. But, if said sheeple is a family member or loved one, you might have no other choice but to push forward. There is nothing worse than seeing the people you care about suffer because you were unsuccessful in warning them of impending danger.

The above sections can help in easing through the process of waking up a member of the herd, though the best efforts will be wasted without patience and persistence. In every person there are barriers and doorways to truth. The trick is finding the unique keys which open those doors and break down those barriers. There are some who will claim that it is futile to make the attempt. That we should leave well enough alone. That many are too far gone to be helped. I beg to differ. If that was true, then the Liberty Movement would not be making the tremendous strides it is today. We did not get to where we are now by giving up when the waters became choppy, and I believe when this age is chronicled and spoken of, it will be our perseverance above all else that defines us. It is a grueling task to defeat an opponent who cannot be dissuaded, who cannot be made to give up. It is nearly impossible to defeat that same opponent when he is also right. To those in the New World Order, we are such an opponent. As long as we do not falter, the sheeple will grow thinner in number, replaced by cognizant vibrant individuals, and the warped ambitions of Globalists will not come to pass…

About: :
I'm just a American patriot who believes in freedom for all, even the ones I don't like. It's time to make a stand and take over the media, government, and police of this nation. Join me in the movement and join the forums.


The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website..