Archive for January 26th, 2008
Twilight of the Psychopaths
Twilight of the Psychopaths
by Dr. Kevin Barrett
“Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.” – John Lennon, before his murder by CIA mind-control subject Mark David Chapman
When Gandhi was asked his opinion of Western civilization he said it would be a good idea. But that oft-cited quote, is misleading, assuming as it does that civilization is an unmitigated blessing.
Civilized people, we are told, live peacefully and cooperatively with their fellows, sharing the necessary labour in order to obtain the leisure to develop arts and sciences. And while that would be a good idea, it is not a good description of what has been going on in the so-called advanced cultures during the past 8,000 years.
Civilization, as we know it, is largely the creation of psychopaths. All civilizations, our own included, have been based on slavery and “warfare.” Incidentally, the latter term is a euphemism for mass murder.
The prevailing recipe for civilization is simple:
1) Use lies and brainwashing to create an army of controlled, systematic mass murderers;
2) Use that army to enslave large numbers of people (i.e. seize control of their labour power and its fruits);
3) Use that slave labour power to improve the brainwashing process (by using the economic surplus to employ scribes, priests, and PR men). Then go back to step one and repeat the process.
Psychopaths have played a disproportionate role in the development of civilization, because they are hard-wired to lie, kill, injure, and generally inflict great suffering on other humans without feeling any remorse. The inventor of civilization — the first tribal chieftain who successfully brainwashed an army of controlled mass murderers—was almost certainly a genetic psychopath. Since that momentous discovery, psychopaths have enjoyed a significant advantage over non-psychopaths in the struggle for power in civilizational hierarchies — especially military hierarchies.
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Military institutions are tailor-made for psychopathic killers. The 5% or so of human males who feel no remorse about killing their fellow human beings make the best soldiers. And the 95% who are extremely reluctant to kill make terrible soldiers — unless they are brainwashed with highly sophisticated modern techniques that turn them (temporarily it is hoped) into functional psychopaths.
In On Killing, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman has re-written military history, to highlight what other histories hide: The fact that military science is less about strategy and technology, than about overcoming the instinctive human reluctance to kill members of our own species. The true “Revolution in Military Affairs” was not Donald Rumsfeld’s move to high-tech in 2001, but Brigadier Gen. S.L.A. Marshall’s discovery in the 1940s that only 15-20% of World War II soldiers along the line of fire would use their weapons: “Those (80-85%) who did not fire did not run or hide (in many cases they were willing to risk great danger to rescue comrades, get ammunition, or run messages), but they simply would not fire their weapons at the enemy, even when faced with repeated waves of banzai charges” (Grossman, p. 4).
Marshall’s discovery and subsequent research, proved that in all previous wars, a tiny minority of soldiers — the 5% who are natural-born psychopaths, and perhaps a few temporarily-insane imitators—did almost all the killing. Normal men just went through the motions and, if at all possible, refused to take the life of an enemy soldier, even if that meant giving up their own. The implication: Wars are ritualized mass murders by psychopaths of non-psychopaths. (This cannot be good for humanity’s genetic endowment!)
Marshall’s work, brought a Copernican revolution to military science. In the past, everyone believed that the soldier willing to kill for his country was the (heroic) norm, while one who refused to fight was a (cowardly) aberration. The truth, as it turned out, was that the normative soldier hailed from the psychopathic five percent. The sane majority, would rather die than fight.
The implication, too frightening for even the likes of Marshall and Grossman to fully digest, was that the norms for soldiers’ behaviour in battle had been set by psychopaths. That meant that psychopaths were in control of the military as an institution. Worse, it meant that psychopaths were in control of society’s perception of military affairs. Evidently, psychopaths exercised an enormous amount of power in seemingly sane, normal society.
How could that be? In Political Ponerology, Andrzej Lobaczewski explains that clinical psychopaths enjoy advantages even in non-violent competitions to climb the ranks of social hierarchies. Because they can lie without remorse (and without the telltale physiological stress that is measured by lie detector tests) psychopaths can always say whatever is necessary to get what they want. In court, for example, psychopaths can tell extreme bald-faced lies in a plausible manner, while their sane opponents are handicapped by an emotional predisposition to remain within hailing distance of the truth. Too often, the judge or jury imagines that the truth must be somewhere in the middle, and then issues decisions that benefit the psychopath. As with judges and juries, so too with those charged with decisions concerning who to promote and who not to promote in corporate, military and governmental hierarchies. The result is that all hierarchies inevitably become top-heavy with psychopaths.
So-called conspiracy theorists, some of whom deserve the pejorative connotation of that much-abused term, often imagine that secret societies of Jews, Jesuits, bankers, communists, Bilderbergers, Muslim extremists, papists, and so on, are secretly controlling history, doing dastardly deeds, and/or threatening to take over the world. As a leading “conspiracy theorist” according to Wikipedia, I feel eminently qualified to offer an alternative conspiracy theory which, like the alternative conspiracy theory of 9/11, is both simpler and more accurate than the prevailing wisdom: The only conspiracy that matters is the conspiracy of the psychopaths against the rest of us.
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Behind the apparent insanity of contemporary history, is the actual insanity of psychopaths fighting to preserve their disproportionate power. And as that power grows ever-more-threatened, the psychopaths grow ever-more-desperate. We are witnessing the apotheosis of the overworld—the criminal syndicate or overlapping set of syndicates that lurks above ordinary society and law just as the underworld lurks below it. In 9/11 and the 9/11 wars, we are seeing the final desperate power-grab or “endgame” (Alex Jones) of brutal, cunning gangs of CIA drug-runners and President-killers; money-laundering international bankers and their hit-men, economic and otherwise; corrupt military contractors and gung-ho generals; corporate predators and their political enablers; brainwashers and mind-rapists euphemistically known as psy-ops experts and PR specialists—in short, the whole sick crew of certifiable psychopaths running our so-called civilization. And they are running scared. It was their terror of losing control that they projected onto the rest of us by blowing up the Twin Towers and inciting temporary psychopathic terror-rage in the American public.
Why does the pathocracy fear it is losing control? Because it is threatened by the spread of knowledge. The greatest fear of any psychopath is of being found out. As George H. W. Bush said to journalist Sarah McClendon, December 1992, “If the people knew what we had done, they would chase us down the street and lynch us.” Given that Bush is reported to have participated in parties where child prostitutes were sodomized and otherwise abused, among his many other crimes, his statement to McClendon should be taken seriously.
Psychopaths go through life knowing that they are completely different from other people. They quickly learn to hide their lack of empathy, while carefully studying others’ emotions so as to mimic normalcy while cold-bloodedly manipulating the normals.
Today, thanks to new information technologies, we are on the brink of unmasking the psychopaths and building a civilization of, by and for the normal human being — a civilization without war, a civilization based on truth, a civilization in which the saintly few rather than the diabolical few would gravitate to positions of power. We already have the knowledge necessary to diagnose psychopathic personalities and keep them out of power. We have the knowledge necessary to dismantle the institutions in which psychopaths especially flourish — militaries, intelligence agencies, large corporations, and secret societies. We simply need to disseminate this knowledge, and the will to use it, as widely as possible.
Above all, we need to inform the public about how psychopaths co-opt and corrupt normal human beings. One way they do this, is by manipulating shame and denial — emotions foreign to psychopaths but common and easily-induced among normals.
Consider how gangs and secret societies (psychopaths’ guilds in disguise) recruit new members. Some criminal gangs and satanist covens demand that candidates for admission commit a murder to “earn their stripes.” Skull and Bones, the Yale-based secret society that supplies the CIA with drug-runners, mind-rapists, child abusers and professional killers, requires neophytes to lie naked in a coffin and masturbate in front of older members while reciting the candidate’s entire sexual history. By forcing the neophyte to engage in ritualized behaviour that would be horrendously shameful in normal society, the psychopaths’ guild destroys the candidate’s normal personality, assuming he had one in the first place, and turns the individual into a co-opted, corrupt, degraded shadow of his former self — a manufactured psychopath or psychopath’s apprentice.
This manipulation of shame has the added benefit of making psychopathic organizations effectively invisible to normal society. Despite easily available media reports, American voters in 2004 simply refused to see that the two major-party presidential candidates had lain naked in a coffin masturbating in front of older Bonesmen in order to gain admission to Skull and Bones and thus become members of the criminal overworld. Likewise, many Americans have long refused to see that hawkish elements of the overworld, operating through the CIA, had obviously been the murderers of JFK, MLK, RFK, JFK Jr., Malcolm X, ChÈ, AllendÈ, Wellstone, Lumumba, Aguilera, Diem, and countless other relatively non-psychopathic leaders. They refuse to see the continuing murders of millions of people around the world in what amounts to an American holocaust. They refuse to see the evidence that the psychopaths’ guilds running America’s most powerful institutions use the most horrific forms of sexualized abuse imaginable to induce multiple-personality-disorder in child victims, then use the resulting mind-control slaves as disposable drug-runners, prostitutes, Manchurian candidates, and even diplomatic envoys. And of course they refuse to see that 9/11 was a transparently obvious inside job, and that their own psychopath-dominated military-intelligence apparatus is behind almost every major terrorist outrage of recent decades.
All of this psychopathic behaviour at the top of the social hierarchy is simply too shameful for ordinary people to see, so they avert their gaze, just as wives of husbands who are sexually abusing their children sometimes refuse to see what is happening in plain view. If deep, deep denial were a river in Egypt, American citizens’ wilful blindness would be more like the Marianas Trench.
But thanks to the power of the internet, people everywhere are waking up. The only obvious non-psychopath among Republican presidential candidates, Ron Paul, also happens to be the only candidate in either party with significant grassroots support.
If “love” is embedded in the Revolution Ron Paul heralds, that is because Dr. Paul — a kindly, soft-spoken physician who has delivered more than 4,000 babies — implicitly recognizes that government is the invention and tool of psychopaths, and therefore must be strictly limited in scope and subjected to a rigorous system of checks and balances, lest the psychopath’s tools, fear and hatred, replace love as the glue that binds society together.
The decline in militarism since World War II in advanced countries, the spread of literacy and communications technology, and the people’s growing demands for a better life, together represent a gathering force that terrifies the pathocracy, (those alternately competing-then-cooperating gangs of psychopaths who have ruled through lies, fear and intimidation since the dawn of so-called civilization).
Since nuclear weapons have made war obsolete, the pathocracy is terrified that its favourite social control mechanism — ritualized mass slaughter — is increasingly unavailable. And if war was the great human tragedy, the pathocrats’ pathetic attempt at a war-substitute — the transparently phoney “war on terror” — is repeating it as sheerest farce.
Truly, we are witnessing the twilight of the psychopaths. Whether in their death throes they succeed in pulling down the curtain of eternal night on all of us, or whether we resist them and survive to see the dawn of a civilization worthy of the name, is the great decision in which all of us others, however humbly, are now participating.
About the writer:
Dr. Kevin Barrett, co-founder of the Muslim-Christian-Jewish Alliance for 9/11 Truth, LINK, has taught English, French, Arabic, American Civilization, Humanities, African Literature, Folklore, and Islam at colleges and universities in the San Francisco Bay area, Paris, and Madison, Wisconsin. Barrett became a 9/11 truth activist in 2004 after reading David Griffin’s The New Pearl Harbor and conducting follow-up research that convinced him Griffin had accurately summarized evidence indicating 9/11 was an inside job.
In the summer of 2006, Republican state legislators and Fox newscasters demanded that Barrett be fired from his job teaching an introductory Islam class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but the University refused to buckle, and Barrett got high marks from his students. He has appeared in several documentary films, lectures widely on 9/11 and hosts three radio programs on three different patriot networks.
Hugo Chavez accuse Bogota de vouloir attaquer le Venezuela avec le soutien des Etats-Unis
Hugo Chavez accuse Bogota de vouloir attaquer le Venezuela avec le soutien des Etats-Unis
Par Jorge Rueda AP –
26/01/08 – 5:02 UT
CARACAS, Venezuela – Le président Hugo Chavez a accusé vendredi la Colombie de préparer une attaque militaire contre le gouvernement du Venezuela avec le soutien des Etats-Unis, s’appuyant sur des rapports de ses services de renseignement.
“Une agression militaire contre le Venezuela est en préparation et il s’agit des Etats-Unis”, a déclaré M. Chavez, mettant en garde la Colombie contre toute “provocation” supplémentaire.
Le porte-parole du gouvernement colombien Cesar Mauricio Velasquez a indiqué que Bogota ne souhaitait pas commenter pour l’heure ces accusations.
Hugo Chavez a par ailleurs prévenu que son pays suspendrait toutes les exportations de pétrole en cas d’attaque militaire.
“Dans le cadre d’un tel scénario, écrivez-le: le prix du baril de pétrole atteindra les 300 dollars car il n’y aura plus de pétrole pour personne”, s’est-il adressé aux journalistes.
Invité à préciser son propos, le leader socialiste a indiqué que les relations entre les deux pays allaient “continuer à se détériorer” et que le commerce frontalier serait le premier secteur à pâtir de ce climat hostile.
“J’accuse le gouvernement de Colombie de fomenter une conspiration, d’agir en pion de l’impérialisme nord-américain, de fomenter une provocation belliqueuse contre le Venezuela”, a lancé M. Chavez, s’exprimant lors d’une conférence de presse aux côtés du président du Nicaragua Daniel Ortega, à Caracas.
Hugo Chavez a ajouté que la secrétaire d’Etat américaine Condoleezza Rice, qui se trouvait en visite en Colombie vendredi, ainsi que deux autres hauts responsables américains récemment passés à Bogota, étaient “venus pour attaquer le Venezuela”.
Selon lui, les Etats-Unis et le gouvernement colombien “ne veulent pas de la paix en Colombie car il s’agit de l’excuse parfaite pour avoir sur place des milliers de soldats, des bases militaires, la CIA, des avions espions et qui sait d’autres opérations dirigées contre le Venezuela”.
“Ils pensent que nous sommes dans les cordes, affaiblis. Et bien faites attention”, a-t-il lancé au président américain George Bush et à ses alliés.
Les relations entre Caracas et Bogota se sont envenimées depuis que le président colombien conservateur Alvaro Uribe a mis fin le 20 novembre à la médiation de son homologue socialiste dans les négociations entre le gouvernement colombien et la guérilla des FARC.
Les deux hommes ne cessent depuis de se répandre en invectives l’un contre l’autre, s’accusant à tour de rôle de perturber le processus de négociation avec la rébellion colombienne. AP
Implication du Mossad israélien dans l’assassinat du ministre et ancien député libanais, Elie Hobayka
L’agence nationale libanaise d’informations indique aujourd’hui que les aveux d’un réseau d’espionnage israélien arrêté au Liban au printemps de l’an 2004 révèlent l’implication du Mossad israélien dans l’assassinat du ministre alors et ancien député libanais, Elie Hobayka, et de trois de ses compagnons par l’explosion d’une voiture piégée au moment de son passage au quartier al-Hazimyah.(alors que les usa , les libannais pro us , israel ainsi que l’Europe avait accusé la Syrie de cet assassinat)
L’agence indique qu’une femme, qui serait l’un des piliers actifs de ce réseau, a avoué avoir entendu que Hobayka serait assassiné parce qu’il entendait témoigner contre Ariel Sharon dans l’affaire de Sabra et de Chatila.
L’agence ajoute que ce réseau ne s’était pas limité à la planification d’un assassinat du secrétaire général de Hezbollah et au dynamitage des lieux relevant de ce Parti dans la banlieue sud de Beyrouth, mais qu’il avait commercialiser au Liban et dans nombre de pays arabes des marchandises israéliennes nuisibles, dont des parfums causant la toxicomanie, des ceinture comportant des radiations provoquant la stérilité chez les hommes …
L’agence s’est étonné que le dossier de l’assassinat de Hobayka n’avait pas eu de suite après l’acte d’accusation présomptif publié contre le réseau il y a trois ans.
Gh.H. Sana
South Carolina voters voice economic concerns – 26 Jan 08
South Carolina voters voice economic concerns – 26 Jan 08
South Carolina has one of the US’s highest unemployment rates and with the current economic slowdown the, the state’s Democratic primaries are likely to be dominated by the issue of the economy.Al Jazeera’s Nick Spicer reports form Florence, in South Carolina.
Who Are the Insurgents?
Who Are the Insurgents?
The Progressive
15 January 2008
“SUPPOSE IRAQ INVADED AMERICA. And an Iraqi soldier was on a tank passing through an American street, waving his gun at the people, threatening them, raiding and trashing houses. Would you accept that? This is why no Iraqi can accept occupation, and don’t be surprised by their reactions,” says “The Imam,” a young man from a mixed Sunni-Shia family, as he explains the genesis of the insurgency in Iraq and its exponential growth.
He is one of the protagonists that Meeting Resistance presents as unmistakable evidence that the root cause of the conflict in Iraq is the occupation itself. The film has resistance fighters themselves tell their story.
Bingham teamed up with Connors, a photographer who has covered ten conflicts and is a former British soldier who served in Northern Ireland in the early 1980s. Between the two of them they share thirty-three years of experience in covering conflicts around the globe.
In August of 2003, they began working on the film. The project kept them in Baghdad for ten months, as Connors filmed and Bingham wrote the script.
The eighty-five-minute groundbreaking film focuses on ten members of the Iraqi resistance. Interspersed with stunning footage of the aftermath of car bomb attacks, of frightened soldiers aiming their weapons at crowds of Iraqis, and of burning remains of destroyed military vehicles, the meat of the film is the words of the fighters themselves.
“I felt a fire in my heart,” one of them recounts. “When they occupied Iraq, they subjugated me, subjugated my sister, subjugated my mother, subjugated my honor, my homeland. Every time I saw them I felt pain. They pissed me off, so I started working [in the resistance].”
The complex nature of their lives speaks to the intricacies of the Iraqi resistance.
“The Teacher,” for instance, is married with three children, and always loathed the Ba’ath Party.
“The Wife” is a Shiite woman who works as a courier, carrying messages and weapons between groups when she is not watching her two children.
Other members, Sunni and Shia alike, work as consultants, weapon producers, and strategists.
In the spring of 2004, a twenty six-year-old photographer in Baghdad told me in an interview that “this is not a rebellion, this is a resistance against the occupation. The media concentrates on the Americans, and does not care about Iraqis.” He had been opposed to the regime of Saddam Hussein, and had even welcomed the U.S. invasion, but had quickly grown weary of watching his fellow countrymen humiliated and killed by the occupiers. Like the people in Meeting Resistance, he had subsequently taken up arms.
Connors understands this frustration toward Western media coverage of the occupation.
“A major weapon in the arsenal of a modern military is the use of information operations,” he says. “These operations, which often take the form of misinformation or disinformation, are directed as much at the enemy population as it is at our own population, without whose
support the military cannot continue to execute a war.”
He aims to counteract this propaganda.
“To place an opponent like the Iraqi resistance in the human space of ordinary people defending their right to self-determination is to challenge our view of ourselves as liberators,” says Connors.
While laying bare the motivations of the resistance, the film also does a forceful job of dispelling other myths.
One of the interviewed, referred to as “The Republican Guard” since he was a career officer in Saddam Hussein’s military, is a Sunni married to a Shia woman. “The Sunni and Shia are bound together by blood and family ties,” he explains. “I am married to a Shia, my sister is married to a Shia. I can’t kill my own children’s uncles or kill my wife, the mother of my children.”
One scene includes a butcher hacking away at a side of beef. “Iraq is our homeland, it’s our Iraq,” he says. “If you don’t defend your land, you will not defend your honor.”
The film recognizes that the resistance has the tacit support of a large percentage of the population, even though the Bush Administration doesn’t acknowledge this.
“The Administration chooses to portray people who oppose their will in Iraq as terrorists or extremists who live on the fringes of Iraqi society, isolated from their own countrymen,” says Bingham. “Without doubt some individuals involved in attacking U.S. troops are ‘extreme’ in their beliefs, and they are relentless fighters in the pursuit of their goals, but they are very human and very much part of the social structure of Iraqi society, and move within it. If we removed the context of occupation—in all its forms—from Iraq, most of them would stand down and return to their lives.”
Aside from screenings at international film festivals and numerous private and public shows, Connors and Bingham screened the film at West Point, the U.S. Marine Corps staff college at Quantico, and Baghdad.
Bingham feels that the film represented a radically different perspective to the military personnel who viewed it.
“The bulk of the people were taking on new information that was a dramatic paradigm shift for them,” she says. “To see their enemy as largely fighting for their homeland because of nationalism and religion, rather than being terrorists, is a big deal.”
Dahr Jamail is the author of the recently released book “Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq.” Jamail spent eight months reporting from Iraq, and has been covering the Middle East for over four years for the Inter Press Service, The Sunday Herald, Foreign Policy in Focus, and The Independent, among others.
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/newscommentary/000723.php#more
Egyptian forces have attempted to close the border with Gaza
Egyptian forces have attempted to close the border with Gaza, breached by Hamas days earlier, but Hamas fighters used a bulldozer to keep the border open.
26/01/08
Inside Story – Gazans pour into Egypt – 24 Jan 08 – Pt 1
Inside Story – Gazans pour into Egypt – 24 Jan 08 – Pt 2
La crise de 29, l’effondrement de l’éphémère montée de libéralisme au lendemain de la première guerre mondiale conduit à la victoire du fascisme ou la folle logique de la décadence impérialiste
La crise de 29, l’effondrement de l’éphémère montée de libéralisme au lendemain de la première guerre mondiale conduit à la victoire du fascisme ou la folle logique de la décadence impérialiste
Les enchaînements qui, dans les années 30, ont conduit brutalement le monde de l’euphorie économique qui devait ouvrir un avenir de prospérité et de paix à l’effondrement, puis à la dépression, au recul profond de toute la société, pour déboucher sur la barbarie d’un nouvel affrontement mondial, moins de 25 ans après le premier, donnent l’apparence d’une logique implacable et irrationnelle s’imposant à la volonté des hommes, impuissants à la conjurer.
Ce mythe de la catastrophe que l’on ne pourrait pas plus comprendre que prévenir est une vision fataliste qui vise à dominer les consciences, à l’opposé de la compréhension qui arme la révolte et la conscience pour agir. La crise des années 30 est le produit d’un emballement irrationnel du capitalisme, excès impossible à maîtriser, qui résulte de sa nature même, de la barbarie qu’impose quotidiennement la dépossession de millions d’homme des fruits de leur travail par la minorité des possédants.
La Bourse est le symbole même de cette folle logique qui échappe aux hommes et les domine, et c’est sans doute ce qui explique que le krach boursier de 1929 aux Etats-Unis, baptisé “ jeudi noir ”, est souvent présenté comme étant à l’origine de l’effondrement de l’économie mondiale, de la dépression et du profond recul de la société qui a suivi. Le krach ne fut en réalité que le révélateur de causes bien plus profondes, de la violence que la propriété privée impose au travail social de millions d’hommes, et de la folie des rapports qui en découlent. L’effondrement boursier survint à l’issue d’une période euphorique de croissance, marquée par la confiance dans l’avenir. Au lendemain de la guerre, épargnée par les destructions, l’économie américaine renforcée avait réalisé un prodigieux bond en avant. Les progrès techniques avaient conduit à une modernisation de la production et de toute la société. Les progrès croissants de la production de masse, le développement de l’automobile, de la radio, des moyens modernes de communication, qui commençaient à devenir à la portée de tous, tout laissait croire à un avenir prospère et pacifique. “ Paix et progrès ”, le drapeau dont se parait l’agressivité conquérante de l’impérialisme américain face à ses rivaux exsangues
La bourgeoisie américaine et ses représentants se vantaient de ce progrès, qui devait apporter à tous le bien-être, non seulement à la population américaine elle-même, mais au monde entier. Victorieuse de la guerre, elle inondait de ses dollars les économies de ses rivales européennes ruinées et orchestrait le redémarrage économique de l’Europe ravagée par la guerre. La bourgeoisie américaine incarnait le pacifisme, le début d’une ère nouvelle basée sur la prospérité économique qui devait mettre fin pour toujours à la barbarie guerrière des vieilles bourgeoisies européennes. Les agents principaux de cette illusion réformiste étaient alors les partis sociaux-démocrates européens, qui, après avoir servi les buts guerriers de leur bourgeoisie, tentaient de se refaire une virginité et de redonner du crédit à la démocratie bourgeoise en devenant les valets du nouvel impérialisme dominant.
Le “ pacifisme ” des USA n’était que l’expression du nouveau rapport de forces issu de la guerre, les Etats-Unis imposant leur loi au monde entier non par le militarisme et la guerre mais par l’arme bien plus efficace de leurs capitaux. Les appétits conquérants de la bourgeoisie américaine étaient d’autant plus aiguisés que le bond en avant de son économie, dès 1923, dépassait les limites du marché intérieur et se heurtait déjà au besoin impérieux de débouchés extérieurs.
Enrichie par la guerre, à la tête d’une machine économique devenue la plus puissante du monde, qui devançait largement celle de ses rivales anglaise, française et allemande réunies, elle voyait s’offrir à elle un monde à conquérir. Elle devint la créancière du monde, s’ouvrant par ses dollars le marché des Etats européens ruinés, et commençant à disputer aux vieilles puissances coloniales et à la plus puissante d’entre elle, l’Angleterre, l’influence sur les chasses gardées de leur immense empire colonial.
L’illusion et le mensonge d’une croissance sans limite qui profiterait à tous
Le dollar forçait toutes les portes. C’était l’euphorie du libéralisme, de la libre entreprise. Enivrées par les perspectives de profit, que rendait possible l’afflux des dollars qui irriguaient le système financier mondial, les bourgeoisies se lançaient à corps perdu dans la production et anticipaient l’espoir de profits toujours croissants dans une fuite en avant spéculative.
Dans les pays industrialisés où les bourgeoisies, avec l’aide américaine, avaient réussi à stabiliser leur économie, mais où le chômage restait encore important et les salaires très bas, la croissance avait repris, grâce aux prêts et au crédit américains illimités, utilisés tout autant à investir qu’à spéculer. La croissance et la flambée des profits reposaient sur le crédit. Jusqu’à ce que cette fuite en avant aveugle trouve ses limites.
Les revenus des masses ouvrières dont l’exploitation nourrissait les profits, ne suivaient pas. Alors que les profits des entreprises américaines avaient augmenté de 62 % en dix ans, les salaires n’avaient progressé que de 17 %. La consommation des masses ne pouvait absorber la croissance illimitée de la production.
Brusquement, la tendance s’inversa. Les ventes ralentissant et s’essoufflant, l’inquiétude succéda à l’euphorie jusqu’à atteindre la panique à la Bourse de New-York, Wall Street, le “ jeudi noir ” d’octobre 29.
L’avidité du libéralisme américain se heurte aux barrières protectionnistes des vieux Etats européens défendant leurs chasses gardées
L’effondrement des actions entraîna des faillites bancaires et comme toute l’économie fonctionnait à crédit, les investissements se ralentirent puis chutèrent. Elle sombra dans la récession.
Ce sont les masses salariées et les paysans qui payèrent le prix de l’effondrement par des vagues de licenciements, des millions d’ouvriers devenus chômeurs étaient jetés sur les routes, réduits à la misère et la mendicité, dans le même temps où on détruisait en masse les richesses produites invendues qui ne réalisaient plus les profits escomptés.
Le recul de la production provoquait de nouvelles faillites, aggravait le chômage, entraînant toute l’économie dans la spirale infernale de la crise, qui s’alimentait elle-même.
La crise gagna l’Europe. Le retrait des capitaux américains investis dans tous les rouages des économies du vieux continent européen provoqua une vague de faillites bancaires, d’abord en Allemagne puis en Angleterre.
L’évolution de la crise en Europe connut sa propre logique, celle qui découlait des rapports de force issus de la guerre. L’Allemagne vaincue, étranglée par les conditions du traité de Versailles, s’effondra la première.
La profondeur de la crise fut proportionnelle au prodigieux endettement grâce auquel la bourgeoisie allemande avait en cinq ans augmenté sa production industrielle de 55 % et reconstruit une industrie puissante, moderne et concentrée, dont l’essentiel de l’activité était tournée vers l’exportation.
Les rapports se tendirent entre les vieux Etats européens concurrents, dont les bourgeoisies tentaient de protéger leur industrie par des mesures protectionnistes qui aggravaient d’autant la paralysie et le blocage des échanges internationaux. Au plus profond de la récession, en 1932, ceux-ci n’atteignaient plus que le tiers de leur niveau de 29, alors que la production industrielle mondiale avait chuté de plus de 40 %.
L’Angleterre dut dévaluer sa monnaie, accélérant l’internationalisation de la crise.
La livre jouait encore le rôle de monnaie dominante dans les échanges internationaux, même si l’impérialisme anglais décadent marquait maintenant le pas devant la puissance américaine, qui n’avait pas encore réussi pour sa part à s’imposer face à ses rivaux européens.
Le fascisme, dernier recours contre les travailleurs pour les bourgeoisies acculées par la crise
Les illusions pacifistes dissipées, la bourgeoisie se trouva confrontée à la révolte sociale que provoquait sa faillite, et aux luttes ouvrières.
Les bourgeoisies les plus à l’étroit dans leurs frontières, étranglées économiquement et menacées par la révolte des masses ouvrières, au premier rang desquelles la bourgeoisie allemande, s’en remirent au fascisme, utilisant la rage de la petite-bourgeoisie ruinée pour briser les organisations ouvrières, balayer la démocratie, mettre au pas la population, l’embrigader et la mobiliser dans la préparation de la guerre pour un nouveau partage du monde, seule issue à la crise.
Les travailleurs allemands furent écrasés sous la botte nazie, tandis la bourgeoisie espagnole se réfugiait à l’ombre du fascisme après avoir vaincu le soulèvement révolutionnaire des travailleurs espagnols qui ne réussirent pas à inverser le cours des choses.
Le fascisme fut le produit non pas d’une prétendue “ nature ” des peuples, agressive ou disciplinée jusqu’à l’embrigadement, comme tentent de l’expliquer ceux qui veulent masquer la violence et la barbarie de la bourgeoisie en en rejetant la responsabilité sur les populations et les victimes elles-mêmes, mais de l’agressivité des bourgeoisies acculées par la crise, qui utilisaient le désespoir des masses petites-bourgeoises ruinées pour mener la guerre civile contre leurs classes ouvrières, avant de les dresser les unes contre les autres dans une nouvelle boucherie mondiale, pour que se tranchent les nouveaux rapports de force entre bourgeoisies rivales.
Le fol enchaînement de ces années qui avaient entraîné l’humanité dans les pires souffrances et la barbarie balaya les illusions démocratiques et pacifiques, l’illusion que la bourgeoisie était capable d’apporter le bien-être et la prospérité à tous, de faire progresser l’humanité.
La modernisation de la société et les immenses progrès qui avaient été réalisés, progrès scientifiques et techniques, étaient ceux du travail, gaspillés et détruits par la concurrence entre minorités possédantes assoiffées de profits. Ces années de violence et de recul éclairent l’opposition irréconciliable entre l’appropriation privée et les richesses produites par l’immense majorité dans le cadre d’une production toujours plus socialisée, globalisée, et mondiale.
Elle faisaient apparaître aux yeux de tous que le progrès, dans la société de classe, ne peut se faire sans violence, sans crises qui ramènent brutalement la société en arrière, au prix de la misère, du désespoir et de millions de victimes…
car, la classe ouvrière n’ayant pu, par ses luttes, inverser le cours des choses, la crise devait déboucher sur la barbarie d’un nouvel affrontement mondial dans lequel la bourgeoisie allait entraîner les peuples, pour une redistribution de son droit au pillage, pour que le dollar s’impose au monde et avec lui, l’hégémonie américaine.
Catherine Aulnay
___________________________________________
Juin 1923
Faillite de l’économie allemande
Rudolf Havenstein, le président de la Reichsbank devant laquelle se rassemblent des foules de plus en plus importantes, reconnaît que la situation du mark est absolument désespérée. Le conflit de la Ruhr, dont le chancelier Wilhelm Cuno estime qu’il a duré trois mois, se solde par d’incroyables charges : des millions de personnes ont besoin d’assistance et il faut acheter du charbon pour l’ensemble du territoire allemand, que n’approvisionnent plus les mines de la Ruhr.Que peut mettre une ménagère allemande sur la table avec un billet de banque de20 000 marks, lorsqu’on observe les prix (en marks) aux Halles de Berlin le 9 juin 1923 :
|
| Mais la poursuite du conflit de la Ruhr empêche de maintenir désormais quelque barrière que ce soit. Le cours du change s’établit par exemple ainsi : il faut alors 10000 marks pour obtenir 1,60 F. Pour avoir une idée de la dégradation vertigineuse de la valeur du mark, il nous suffit de rappeler que le dollar cotait le 1er du mois 74500 marks et, le 22, 136000. |
D’après
Larousse, “ Chronique du XXe siècle ”, Jacques Legrand SA, 1985, p. 313
L’hyperinflation
| En cette année 1923, les prix changent d’heure en heure… Ceux qui ont emprunté – comme certains industriels – peuvent rembourser leurs dettes à peu de frais. En revanche, les ouvriers et les fonctionnaires dont le pouvoir d’achat diminue connaissent la misère. |
16 octobre 1923
Folie du mark
Dépréciation vertigineuse
|
Cours du dollar (en marks) entre 1914 et 1923 |
|
D’après
Larousse, “ Chronique du XXe siècle ”, Jacques Legrand SA, 1985, p. 318
Gold price soars on S African power cuts
Gold price soars on S African power cuts
By Alec Russell in Johannesburg Javier Blas in London
Published: January 25 2008 09:28
The halt in operations came as South Africa’s government had to take the drastic step of rationing power after the embattled state electricity company Eskom said it could provide only about 50 per cent of normal needs.
Mining executives warned of a potentially devastating impact on the industry, a mainstay of the economy, as Eskom said the mines might have to stay closed for up to six weeks.
The prospect of a long stoppage pushed spot bullion in London to a record of $923.4 a troy ounce while platinum jumped to a record high above $1,697 an ounce. South Africa is the world’s largest platinum producer, with a global market share of nearly 80 per cent, and the second largest gold producer.
Rhodium also jumped to a record high above $7,000 an ounce – South Africa accounts for more than 70 per cent of the world’s supply.
Precious metals traders warned of problems in the automobile industry since platinum and rhodium are key components of the autocatalysts used to clean tailpipe emissions.
Anglo Gold Ashanti, Gold Fields, Harmony Gold and the world’s two largest platinum producers, Impala Platinum and Anglo Platinum were all hit by the power problems.
Ian Cockerill, chief executive of Gold Fields said it was working at “survival rates” only keeping the mines “dewatered” and ventilated. “We don’t know how long this will be. We are looking at various scenarios such as limited production and concentrating on higher-value areas.”
The power outage came a week after Sough Africa lost to China its century-held position as the world’s top gold producer. The country’s gold output declined last year 12 per cent to 272 tonnes against the 276 tonnes produced by China. The closure also capped a fortnight of rolling blackouts across the country.
Analysts warned that the economy would suffer from the stoppage. However, Alec Erwin, South Africa’s public enterprises minister, said that, if people became more energy efficient, the economy would not be hit.
“It is . . . critical to stress that the growth of South Africa’s economy at the current healthy levels can continue if we change our behaviour and become more energy efficient,” Mr Erwin said.
But Eskom executives accept that even if the new measures are enforced and swiftly implemented, South Africa will still lack electricity for the next five years given that their reserve margin is all but exhausted.
Eskom is developing an expansion programme but the first of its planned large power station only comes on stream in 2013.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d5cacc02-cb23-11dc-97ff-000077b07658.html
Long Range H5N1Transport and Transmission by Migratory Birds
Long Range H5N1Transport and Transmission by Migratory Birds
Recombinomics Commentary 20:41
January 24, 2008
“We know that some wild birds have probably moved short distances carrying viruses and then they died, but we have not been able to identify carriage of H5N1 across large scale spatial distances and then resulting in spread to other birds and mortality in poultry flocks,” Newman told Reuters.
He said fecal tests on some 350,000 healthy birds worldwide had to date only yielded “a few” positive H5N1 results.
Furthermore, in instances and places where wild birds were found with the disease, there were no concurrent outbreaks of the virus in poultry.
“So we don’t have at this point in time a wildlife reservoir for H5N1 … so they can’t be a main spreader of the disease,” Newman said.
The above comments on negative data on testing of fecal samples from live wild birds are remarkable. The fatally flawed approach was used over two years ago in Mongolia, when wild bird deaths were reported at the remote Erhel Lake. The failure to detect H5N1 in the live birds at the lake left little doubt that the approach was flawed. Now two and half years and 350,000 tests later, these data are used to “prove” that migratory birds are not the major transport and transmission vehicle of H5N1 in the 50 countries reporting H5N1 since the outbreaks in the spring and summer of 2005.
The role of the migratory birds was really decided in the summer of 2005, when false negatives were being generated at Erhel Lake. In the spring of 2005, H5N1 was found in long range migratory birds at Qinghai Lake in central China. The H5N1 reported was a novel variant, which had unique genetic features, including the acquisition of a “human” change in one of the enzymes used to copy the viral genome. This change PB2 E627K was a concern because it had never been reported in H5N1 from a bird, and the change allowed the virus to replicate more rapidly at 33 C, the temperature of a human nose or throat in the winter. Since the body temperature of a bird is 41 C, the “human” change slowed down the replication of the virus in birds. However, the H5N1 could still be quite lethal, since 5,000-10,000 wild birds died at Qinghai Lake.
The high number of deaths raised the possibility that the strain would “burn out” at the lake. However, Qinghai Lake is the largest lake in China and attracts a large number of species of birds, so when H5N1 was reported at Chany Lake in southern Siberia, which was 2,000 miles from Qinghai Lake, the role of long range migratory birds was becoming clearer. Prior to the summer outbreak at Chany Lake, Russia had never reported highly pathogenic H5N1, so the wild birds were the prime suspect.
H5N1 was isolated from a healthy grebe, and the sequence was the Qinghai strain. Thus, at that point there was little doubt about the role of wild birds in the transport to Chany Lake, and the transmission to nearby poultry in Russia and Kazakhstan.
Any doubt that remained was removed by a similar, almost simultaneous outbreak at Erhel Lake in Mongolia. Like Russia and Kazakhstan, Mongolia had also never reported H5N1 prior to the summer of 2005. When wild birds began to die at the remote lake, conservation groups joined in the study. These groups initially said that the bird deaths couldn’t be due to H5N1 because there were fewer than 100 dead birds. When initial results of H5 came back, they again maintained that the H5 would not be from H5N1 because there were not enough dead birds. Then when the H5 was determined to be from Qinghai H5N1, the conservation groups said H5N1would not pose a problem because the live birds at the lake tested negative for H5N1.
At that point it was clear that the Qinghai H5N1 had the potential of causing greater problems because it was killing a small number of birds. Thus, it was more likely that live birds would transport the H5N1. The failure to detect the H5N1 in live birds in an area where dead birds were H5N1 positive, signaled a fatally flawed assay.
In Siberia, the number of reports of H5N1 in wild birds continued to grow during the summer, signaling further spread in the fall when the wild birds would head south. The potential for spread was great, because Chany Lake and other small lakes in southern Siberia or northern Kazakhstan hosted a large number of waterfowl in the summer, and these locations were in intersecting flyways, so the H5N1 could fly off in several directions. The flyways predicted that the H5N1 would move into Europe, the Middle East, and Africa in the ensuing months, which happened.
Although none of the countries west of China had previously reported H5N1, the reports began in the fall of 2005. H5N1 was found in mute swans near the Volga Delta, at the northern end of the Caspian Sea. That was followed by H5N1 in mute swans in the Danube Delta on the western shores of the Black Sea, which was followed by H5N1 in wild birds in the Crimea Peninsula, which juts out into the Black Sea, which was followed by H5N1 in a healthy teal in the Nile Delta at the end of 2005.
Although H5N1 was reported in wild waterfowl at the above locations, countries in the EU denied H5N1 infections, as did countries in the Middle East and Africa through the end of 2005. However, after H5N1 caused human fatalities in eastern Turkey at the beginning of 2006, H5N1 was widely reported at all of the above locations in February and March of 2006. Moreover, all H5N1 reported was the Qinghai strain of H5N1, although there were regional differences in sequences, reflecting independent introductions by wild birds.
In the summer of 2006, the cycle repeated. This time there was a massive wild bird H5N1 outbreak at the largest lake in Mongolia, Uva Lake near the Russia / Mongolia border. Most countries again denied H5N1 infections in the fall of 2006 and early 2007, but in the summer of 2007, H5N1 was found in multiple wild bird outbreaks in Germany, the Czech Republic, and France. In all cases the H5N1 was the Uva Lake strain, which was a variant of the Qinghai strain.
The outbreaks in the summer in Europe signaled more activity in the fall and winter, which happened, and all reports in Europe have been the Uva Lake strain.
Thus, the role of wild birds in the transport and transmission of H5N1 in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa is quite clear, fatally flawed live wild bird screening notwithstanding.
WHERE Are America’s Gold Reserves?
Feds accused of gold-price manipulation
Alleged objective to ‘conceal the mismanagement of the U.S. dollar’
Posted: January 25, 2008
1:00 a.m. EasternBy Jerome R. Corsi
© 2008 WorldNetDaily.com
 U.S. Treasury |
The Wall Street Journal has agreed to publish a full-page ad in which the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee charges the U.S. government surreptitiously utilizes gold reserves to engage in international swaps and other market manipulations.
“Anybody Seen Our Gold?” is the title of the ad, which alleges U.S. gold reserves held at depositories such as Fort Knox and West Point may have been seriously depleted. GATA asserts U.S. gold reserves are being shipped overseas to settle complex transactions utilized by the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury to suppress the price of the precious metal.
“The objective of this manipulation is to conceal the mismanagement of the U.S. dollar so that it might retain its function as the world’s reserve currency,” the ad copy reads in a pre-publication version GATA provided to WND.
The U.S. Treasury denies the claim, insisting the stock is accounted for regularly.
GATA’s chairman, William J. Murphy III, told WND his group was willing to pay the Wall Street Journal’s cost of $264,000 to run the ad “to get the message out that the U.S. enters world markets without public disclosure to prop up the dollar and depress the price of gold.”
GATA cites as evidence the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee reports dating back to Jan. 31, 1995, showing the U.S. Treasury Department’s Exchange Stabilization Fund had undertaken gold swaps.
GATA, a non-profit 501 headquartered in Manchester, Conn., further asserts the federal government strategy to manipulate the price of gold has begun to fail.
“Gold’s recent rise toward $900 per ounce shows that the price suppression scheme is faltering,” the GATA ad reads. “When it is widely understood how central banks have been suppressing gold, its price may rise to $3,000 or $5,000 an ounce or more.”
“The gold reserves of the United States have not been independently audited for half a century,” the ad charges.
The U.S. Treasury disagrees.
“While the entire gold stock is not physically re-counted in any one year, over a period of years, by our continuous sampling process, the entire stock has been counted, and is effectively re-inventoried,” Rich Delmar, counsel to Treasury’s inspector general, told WND in an e-mail.
Delmar explained that the annual Office of Inspector General audits of mint facilities involves a physical inspection of certain vaults, which are subject to a 100-percent bar count and assaying. At the end of the inspection, each vault is sealed.
“During each visit, all previously sealed vaults are checked to ensure that the seals have not been compromised or tampered with,” he wrote. “This process is the basis for the conclusion that there has been a complete physical inventory.”
Delmar said the OIG’s work consists of more than reviewing documents.
“Our auditors physically observe the inventory work done at the mint facilities, and we are responsible for the assay sampling process,” he said.
WND asked the Treasury if there is a comprehensive listing and accounting of any encumbrances or other restrictions on the gold in the U.S. Mint that may affect ownership.
“This is not within OIG’s purview,” Delmar responded. “You may want to ask the mint directly.”
‘Dodging the question’
Murphy called the response “ridiculous.”
“The mint does not make complex gold transactions with other countries,” he said. “That is the role for the U.S. Treasury. The mint just houses the gold. The Treasury is dodging the question.”
GATA has filed a Freedom of Information Request asking the Fed and Treasury to disclose information on encumbrances and swapping or leasing of U.S. gold.
“The Fed and Treasury have not even acknowledged receiving our FOIA request,” Murphy said. “It’s idiotic to tell you that the mint would have that knowledge.”
Murphy asked, “Is the gold in the mint truly U.S. gold reserves or is it just ‘custodial gold’ held for some other country? That’s why we need to know what encumbrances there are on the gold as well as whether any U.S. gold has been shipped overseas to fulfill swap obligations.”
The 2006 annual report published on the website of the U.S. Mint lists KPMG as outside auditor.
The KPMG signed audit report in the 2006 Annual Report of the U.S. Mint takes full responsibility for auditing the balance sheets and includes a statement of the custodial activity of U.S. gold reserves.
According to the balance sheets, custodial gold and silver reserves make up 90 percent of the U.S. Mint’s total assets.
Still, there is no specific statement in the U.S. Mint’s annual report or the KPMG audit report describing any KPMG involvement in a physical inspection of the gold reserves.
KPMG’s role as independent auditor for the U.S. Mint is also confirmed in the 2006 audit report prepared by the Office of Inspector General of the Treasury.
Dan Ginsburg, a KPMG spokesman, declined to provide any detail to WND concerning his company’s audit procedures for the U.S. Mint, citing client confidentiality.
Greater force
Craig R. Smith, founder of Swiss America Trading Corp., told WND he accepts the GATA arguments because “there has to be a force greater than normal market conditions that has repressed the price of gold.”
Smith noted any number of financial crises since the late 1980s that “should have propelled gold way beyond the 1980 high of $850,” including the savings and loan debacle and the birth of the Resolution Trust Corporation, as well as the on-going devaluation of the U.S. dollar against virtually all major foreign currencies.
“Gold has been playing catch-up with current world economic conditions,” Smith told WND in an e-mail, “and future movements should easily prove gold to be a great value at $900 an ounce. That price will look cheap going forward as the world starts to turn its back on debt-laden currencies and returns to money with a real value.”
But the U.S. Treasury, in a statement on its website, denies the Exchange Stabilization Fund has been used to manipulate gold prices.
“The ESF does not engage in any transactions in the market for any metal such as gold, either in spot markets or in any of its derivative forms,” the Treasury statement declares. “We would like to emphasize that the Treasury Department does not seek to manipulate the price of gold or any other metal by intervening in or otherwise interfering with the market.”
Yvanka Wallner, advertising sales representative for the Wall Street Journal in New York City, confirmed to WND the GATA ad has been approved by the Journal’s lawyers and is being prepared to be run next week.
Swiss America, a WND advertiser, specializes in investment-quality numismatic gold coins.
Gold yesterday closed at an all-time high of $911 an ounce, up $28, on a weaker dollar and higher oil prices.
Jerome R. Corsi is a staff reporter for WND. He received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972 and has written many books and articles, including his latest best-seller, “The Late Great USA.” Corsi co-authored with John O’Neill the No. 1 New York Times best-seller, “Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry.” Other books include “Showdown with Nuclear Iran,” “Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil,” which he co-authored with WND columnist Craig. R. Smith, and “Atomic Iran.”
