US: At least 245 cases of taser deaths between June 2001 and June 2007, but don't talk about it!

SOTT Editors
12 May 2008

Well, it looks like something fishy is going on with a topic that has been in the news for quite awhile now: deaths due to Tasers.

We begin our little story with an article from NorthCountryGazette.org:

Pinellas County Taser Deaths - Excusable Or Not?

June Maxam
North Country Gazette
7 May 2008

Between June 2001 and June 2007, there were at least 245 cases of deaths of subjects soon after having been shocked using Tasers. Of these cases, in seven cases, medical examiners said tasers were a cause or a contributing factor or could not be ruled out as a cause of death.

In 16 cases, coroners and other officials stated that a taser was a secondary or contributory factor of death.

In dozens of cases, coroners cited excited delirium as cause of death. Excited delirium has been questioned as a medical diagnosis.

Several deaths occurred as a result of injuries sustained in struggles. In a few of these cases, head injury due to falling after being shocked contributed to later death.

In 2005, a medical examiner ruled for the first time that a taser was the primary factor in a death. [...]

Fabulous. So what's the big deal? The day after we posted this article under our Fair Use Policy, we received an e-mail as follows:

From: Sasha (at) acegm2.com
Date: 11-May-08

As a first time reader at SOT [sic], I found a story about my county in the headlines.

I was appalled. Your headline: Florida, US: At least 245 cases of tase deaths in Pinellas County

Then I went and looked at the original story from the North Country Gazette which states:

"Between June 2001 and June 2007, nationwide there were at least 245 cases of deaths of subjects soon after having been shocked using Tasers. Of these cases, in seven cases, medical examiners said Tasers were a cause or a contributing factor or could not be ruled out as a cause of death." [emphasis ours]

which is a FAR CRY from there being 245 cases of taser deaths in Pinellas County.

So now I doubt the integrity of your entire site...

Sasha

The problem here is that the word "nationwide" (bolded red text above) was not in the original article. So, was the article changed after we posted it, and then changed again to remove the word "nationwide"?

No. As it turns out, there are TWO articles. The first one is Death In Pinellas County - Excited Delirium Or Murder? This article, does, indeed, say:

Between June 2001 and June 2007, nationwide there were at least 245 cases of deaths of subjects soon after having been shocked using Tasers. Of these cases, in seven cases, medical examiners said Tasers were a cause or a contributing factor or could not be ruled out as a cause of death.

The second article, entitled Pinellas County Taser Deaths - Excusable Or Not? nowhere includes the word "nationwide." (We have taken a screenshot of it just in case it morphs!)

A bit of digging reveals that, according to Amnesty International, the 245 taser deaths were for the entire US, not just Pinellas County, Florida.

However, SOTT.net did not catch this error until after it was brought to our attention by Sasha. After all, the article we used was copy/pasted in toto, as it was and we were relying on the journalist who wrote it to at least have checked out the basic facts! In this case, not only did she not check out the basic facts, she did not even quote the article she was commenting on accurately! So, we must thank Sasha for bringing this to our attention. The end result was, of course, that the title of the article on the North Country Gazette site which is "Pinellas County Taser Deaths - Excusable Or Not?", and the content certainly does make it seem like the 245 deaths occurred in Pinellas County only.

After responding to Sasha and pointing out that the word "nationwide" is no longer (or perhaps never was) in the article text, we received another e-mail:

From: news(at)northcountrygazette.org
Date: 12-May-08

Please remove my copyrighted work from your website. You do not have permission to reprint my entire original work.

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/155956-
Florida-US-At-least-245-cases-of-tase-deaths-
in-Pinellas-County

June Maxam, Publisher
North Country Gazette

Obviously, it seems highly likely that June Maxam didn't even bother to go to our web site to check out the placement and context or even the Fair Use notice (that sott.net is a research database). How do we know? Well, she included the SOTT link with the old title. After having the error pointed out to us by Sasha, we had changed the title to "US: At least 245 cases of taser deaths between June 2001 and June 2007". This suggests to us that someone alerted her to the fact that her work was being quoted, that it was wrong, and Ms. Maxam decided to do damage control.

Normally, we would simply point correspondents such as Ms. Maxam to our Fair Use Policy. In this case, however, we now think it's pretty safe to say that the article on the North Country Gazette is really not up to SOTT.net standards anyway, so we are happy to remove it. Again, we have to thank Sasha for that, though Sasha does not seem to be a happy camper. She wrote again today as follows:

Subject:Re: Not very happy with your site - MAJOR ERROR
IN YOUR HEADLINES
Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 09:22:26 -0400
From: sasha2
To: SOTT.NET

First of all, ANY "articles" from the North Country Gazette seem to be "commentaries" which means no one is reporting the facts. YOUR headline read that 245 deaths from tasers were in PINELLAS COUNTY - the other article says there are 245 deaths NATIONWIDE. LINK- who or what are they "commenting" on?

Since we have already dealt with this above, noting that there are TWO articles on the North Country Gazette website, Sasha is beating a dead horse here. But, she continues:

So who's irresponsible here? If you are "reporting the news" you need to report the news - not just quote some commentary or change the original content.

Again, we note that there are two articles as indicated above, so Sasha's charge that we changed the content is in error. She has not investigated very thoroughly before charging SOTT with malfeasance. She continues:

There is an article in the SP Times in August 2005 that reported ONE death IN PINELLAS and NO deaths in HILLSBOROUGH at that time from tasers. That article I consider to be accurate. So would that then mean that those 245 deaths occurred between 2005 and June 2007 (which I seriously doubt)? There would be an UPROAR in the SP Times had this been occurring. LINK

****Here is an Amnesty International article dated March 28, 2006 stating that there had been only 152 taser deaths IN THE UNITED STATES from June 2001 through Feb 2006. LINK

It seems that they are the agency diligently tracking these deaths. In fact, they report 290 deaths in the UNITED STATES as of late 2007. LINK

What I am saying here is that on a first visit to your site, I have found a "sensational" headline that would cause any sane, logical person to question the credibility of ANY of the content in your site(s). All COMMENTARIES from North Country are suspect and need to be investigated unless they take one to an original report done by a credible entity.

There is certainly enough bad crap going on the world without you having to make it appear to be worse.

Sasha

Sasha is certainly entitled to her opinion about SOTT, however, as we have noted above, there is a quite simple explanation for the problem: there are two items on the referenced website, Sasha was reading one, and we had included the other on SOTT. And, for the record, as our regular readers already note, we do not just report news, we also carry a great deal of commentary.

In the end, what we can say with a high degree of certainty is that taser deaths are a serious problem in our pathocratic world, and we'll continue to bring you any news and commentary we find on the topic.

For all our readers concerned with any potential decrease in accuracy here on SOTT.net, rest assured that the editor who posted this article has agreed to exile in Siberia.

For the time being, just type "taser" in the Search box above, and you'll get plenty of food for thought! SOTT doesn't need to try to make things appear to be worse than they really are. We might also mention that it is knee-jerk reactions like Sasha's that create many of those problems. Sorry SOTT.net doesn't suit you - don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Also see: Man Files Patent For Taser-Proof Clothing

Via Golden Nuggets - Sexing Up An Iranian War

A Thousand Words

A couple of pictures via Dave Neiwert's Orcinus blog:

©Unknown

Impact Hazards on a Populated Earth?

Laura Knight-Jadczyk

Somehow, I think it is highly probable that we have a new event to add to our list of Meteorites, Asteroids, and Comets: Damages, Disasters, Injuries, Deaths, and Very Close Calls Have a look at the excerpts from the following two news items from this past week and see if something doesn't seem off about the glib and facile "explanations" for a series of extremely bizarre events. Every element of the stories is explainable in the terms presented by Clube and Napier, Mike Baillie and John S. Lewis and which have been the topic of the present series of articles on Comet hazards. At the same time, the explanations given by the "official sources" simply do not sound plausible.

Read and judge for yourself.

2008 - 15, 16, 18 April - Illinois - Maybe we had a comet fragment impact or two or three over a period of several nights? Perhaps a couple of overhead explosions and then, later, a ground impact. Read the following stories and judge for yourself:

That would explain booms and earthquake and lights in the sky spread out over three days. Damage Control: Mysterious booms, lights over Indiana were just F-16s

A sonic boom and fireballs and flaming debris that Kokomo-area residents reported seeing in the sky Wednesday night prompted Howard County's police agencies to conduct a two-hour search for what many residents thought was a crashed aircraft.

As it turned out, the fireballs were flares fired by F-16s that are part of the 122nd Fighter Wing, an Indiana Air National Guard unit based at Fort Wayne International Airport. ...

Staff Sgt. Jeff Lowry with Indiana National Guard's headquarters in Indianapolis said the jets taking part in the training are not supposed to exceed the speed of sound, which is about 760 mph, because supersonic speeds produce sonic booms.

He said the 122nd's commander, Col. Jeff Soldner, will investigate why at least one jet reached supersonic speeds Wednesday night over Howard and Tipton counties, and also on Tuesday night over the Logansport area, shaking the ground below. ...

He said F-16 training often involves the aircraft dropping flares from more than 10,000 feet above the ground, a technique that can allow the jets to evade heat-seeking missiles in combat. ...

Logansport Police Chief A.J. Rozzi said he heard a loud sonic boom on Tuesday night, and then heard the sound of a jet high overheard. He said residents also reported seeing fire streaks in the sky.

He said it is common for the 122nd to conduct missions in the area and believes F-16 training almost certainly explains the sights and sounds.

"They've been doing that training for quite a while. I don't know what maneuvers they're actually doing, but they do shoot out streaks of light," he said.

5.4 earthquake rocks Illinois; felt 350 miles away

A 5.4 earthquake that appeared to rival the strongest recorded in the region rocked people awake up to 350 miles away early Friday, surprising residents unaccustomed to such a powerful Midwest temblor.

The quake just before 4:37 a.m. was centered 6 miles from West Salem, Ill., and 66 miles from Evansville, Ind. It was felt in such distant cities as Chicago, Cincinnati and Milwaukee, 350 miles north of the epicenter, but there were no early reports of injuries or significant damage. ....

"You could hear a roaring sound and the whole motel shook, waking up the guests,'' Vibha Ambelal, manager of the Super 8 Motel in Mount Carmel, Illinois, near the epicenter, said in a telephone interview."

Now, add the above to what happened just a little over a week earlier:

2008 - 6 April - Argentina - The space rock reportedly crashed late Sunday somewhere in Entre Rios Province, some 260 miles northwest of Buenos Aires, reports the daily Clarin, which quoted a witness, Milton Blumhagen, a student and astronomy buff: "For three or four seconds I saw an object in flames, changing color until it turned blue when it approached the ground.'' A fire department source said the impact was felt for miles around. No damage was reported.

Keep your eyes and ears open!

Via SOTT

Merkel blames the victim

Speechless. Stunned. We've heard some incredible statements in the last few years, since the coup d'etat of 911, but this one is unbelievable even by the standards of GW. Listen to Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, explain why there is a food shortage:

Bad policy, not biofuel, drive food prices - Merkel

BERLIN (Reuters) - Bad agricultural policies and changing eating habits in developing nations are primarily to blame for rising food prices, not biofuel production as some critics claim, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday...

But Merkel, whose country is Europe's largest biofuel producer, said the rise in food prices was not mainly due to biofuels but to "inadequate agricultural policies in developing countries" as well as "insufficient forecasts of changes in nutritional habits" in emerging markets.

"If you travel to India these days, then a main part of the debate is about the 'second meal'," Merkel said.

"People are eating twice a day, and if a third of one billion people in India do that, it adds up to 300 million people. That's a large part of the European Union," she said.

"And if they suddenly consume twice as much food as before and if 100 million Chinese start drinking milk too, then of course our milk quotas become skewed, and much else too," she said referring to EU limits on dairy production....

Merkel is blaming the food crisis on the poorest people, the ones who are the victims. They are eating two meals a day instead of one. And, gosh, if those Chinese start drinking milk, then we'll really be in trouble!

I'm sorry, but how can this be reported on a major news service and not provoke an outcry from anyone with a conscience! Could there be any clearer expression of disdain and contempt? Any more gut-wrenching glimpse into the psyche of the deviant?

What about the headline: "Bad policy, not biofuel, drive food prices - Merkel". Bad policy? It is bad policy when people start eating two meals a day? How many meals does Merkel eat?

And all of this is going on in public, in front of our noses!

Via SOTT

Signs Of The Times Simply the BEST News Site on the Web. If you aren't reading the Signs, you aren't in the know.

Sorcha Faal: COINTELPRO

Remember my post back on February 13 about Barack the Terrible? Remember the question at the conclusion: "In the end, you just have to wonder what the "Sorcha Faal" psy-op is trying to do here." As I mentioned, I was pretty certain that the source calling itself "Sorcha Faal" with its hokey background story was a psy-op, but I couldn't quite figure out what they were up to an who might be backing them. For all I knew, they were backed by Russians or French or god-knows-who just to keep the noise factor high. And item that caught my eye today may, however, gives us the solution to this problem. Have a look at this:

Why the War on Obama While some cynics still view Barack Obama’s appeal for “change” as empty rhetoric, it’s starting to dawn on Washington insiders that his ability to raise vast sums of money from nearly one million mostly small donors could shake the grip that special-interest money has long held over the U.S. government.

This spreading realization that Obama’s political movement might represent a more revolutionary change than previously understood is sparking a deepening resistance among defenders of the status quo – and prompting harsher attacks on Obama.

Right now, the front line for the Washington Establishment is Hillary Clinton’s struggling presidential campaign, which has been stunned by Obama’s political skills as well as his extraordinary ability to raise money over the Internet. Obama’s grassroots donations have negated Clinton’s prodigious fundraising advantage with big donors.

Powerful lobbies – from AIPAC to representatives of military and other industries – also are recognizing the value of keeping their dominance over campaign cash from getting diluted by Obama’s deep reservoir of small donors. It’s in their direct interest to dent Obama’s momentum and demoralize his rank-and-file supporters as soon as possible.

So, neoconservatives and other ideological movements – heavily dependent on grants from the same special interests – are now joining with the Clinton campaign to tear down Obama by depicting him as unpatriotic, un-vetted, possibly a “closet Muslim.”

On Feb. 25, the New York Times’ new neocon columnist William Kristol attacked Obama’s patriotism by citing the Illinois senator decision to stop wearing an American flag lapel pin because, Obama said, he saw how George W. Bush was exploiting the flag to stampede the nation toward war with Iraq.

Well, well, well. I guess now we know something about Sorcha Faal - a pretended opponent of the pathocrats that does their dirty work from the alleged "other side." Maybe some of those billions of dollars the U.S. gives to Israel each year as "foreign aid" ends up in the pockets of groups like whoever is behind "Sorcha Faal". Can we say COINTELPRO? How about Protocol 12?

The essence of war in an image

I saw this picture on the web today and I thought I would share it with you. It made a great impression on me as it reflects what war is really all about: the destruction of the human spirit and of anything that is good and creative about us. Children in uniform who are ordered to murder strangers and get exposed to being murdered; all for the sake of some concepts invented by schizoids and psychopaths in power who care not for those concepts, nor for the well being of anyone except their own. Even if these children survive they will have to face the desolation of trauma for the rest of their lives. Each and every human story becomes a tragedy - and war is nothing but millions of personal tragedies.

Maslow the schizoidal humanist

"Peak performance", "human potential". These terms have entered our vocabulary thanks to the work in humanistic psychologist of Abraham Maslow.

The book Fascism And Democracy In The Human Mind: A Bridge Between The Mind And Society by Israel Charny includes some excerpts from the diary Maslow that reveal a rather disturbing mindset.

Seems he may have had a rather good mask of a very warped mind.

From pg 42-44 of Charny:

An excellent and sadly shattering example of the way the mind of a devoted humanistic psychologist can move along the same track of the fascist paradigm to a point where he calls for execution [sic] of the nonbelievers -- in this case, nonbelievers in humanism! -- is found in the posthumously published writings of no less than Abraham Maslow, recognized and beloved as the founder of modern humanistic psychology! The same Maslow who conceptualized the unfolding development of the mind and personality of a person as the highest state of human development, and who attributed to the "self-actualized" person an ethical and empathic orientation toward other human beings and the society in which he lives, was revealed after his death to be a highly self-involved, bitter loner filled with contempt and rage at the many people who did not appreciate him or his ideas, and who dared to conceive on a broader community level the identification and execution of those who opposed proposed humanistic policies for the betterment of society.

The following are shocking, almost unbelievable excerpts from Maslow's posthumously published writings:

Humanistic psychology absolutely needs a doctrine of an elite, degrees of humanness, health and sickness, winners and losers, aggridants (whether by heredity or by learning), good specimens, no equal votes, non-equal weighting. The taste or judgment of one superior can and should outweigh 1000 or a million blind ones.

The Third-Force philosophy is antideath-wish, anti-exploiting of others, antistunting or crippling, antivalue-destroying, antibaby-crippling and diminishing; anti-unrealism = antifake.... We keep alive many of the people whom nature left to itself would kill off. So we are hurting the human gene pool, which must be deteriorating. We can certainly continue to do this, to be compassionate with anyone living, but this right to reproduce might very well be limited. In the immediate future -- within the next century -- we must anyway cut hack the population of the world. The right to reproduce must surely become rather a privilege which is socially controlled and socially granted.... One could speculate that the worsening gene pool is partly responsible for the large number of naysayers, death-wishers and born losers and schlemiels.

I find myself secretly entertaining all sorts of "cold-blooded" possibilities... drug users are performing a kind of biologically unselfish act, a sort of noblesse oblige for the good of the species and voluntarily killing themselves "for the good of the gene pool." ... Sooner or later, after the catastrophes force us to pace theoverpopulation, we'll stop with all the crap about more food, or better strains of rice {which just produce more people). How can we give up on humanitarianism? But how can we not permit voluntary (or maybe involuntary) euthanasia and suicide? One day we'll have to talk about the exposure or killing of monster-babies, or even of healthy surplus babies.

As with some, nothing will work ultimately but shooting.

These are terrifying statements from anyone, let alone a great psychologist, especially one who is recognized as one of the fathers of "humanistic psychology." Maslow's fascist intolerance of lesser beings and his readiness to call for real murderous actions on behalf of a super race of humanists is a powerful warning to all of us to look for the corresponding readiness in us, and to overcome such readiness with what we will be describing as a democratic mindset.

Sounds like Maslow was in agreement with what Łobaczewski calls the schizoidal declaration, so let's look at the traits of the schizoidal type:

Literature provides us with descriptions of several varieties of this anomaly, whose existence can be attributed either to changes in the genetic factor or to differences in other individual characteristics of a non-pathological nature. Let us thus sketch these sub-species’ common features.

Carriers of this anomaly are hypersensitive and distrustful, while, at the same time, pay little attention to the feelings of others. They tend to assume extreme positions, and are eager to retaliate for minor offenses. Sometimes they are eccentric and odd. Their poor sense of psychological situation and reality leads them to superimpose erroneous, pejorative interpretations upon other people’s intentions. They easily become involved in activities which are ostensibly moral, but which actually inflict damage upon themselves and others. Their impoverished psy- chological worldview makes them typically pessimistic regarding human nature. We frequently find expressions of their characteristic attitudes in their statements and writings: “Human nature is so bad that order in human society can only be maintained by a strong power created by highly qualified individuals in the name of some higher idea.” Let us call this typical expression the “schizoid declaration”.

Human nature does in fact tend to be naughty, especially when the schizoids embitter other people’s lives. When they become wrapped up in situations of serious stress, however, the schizoid’s failings cause them to collapse easily. The capacity for thought is thereupon characteristically stifled, and frequently the schizoids fall into reactive psychotic states so similar in appearance to schizophrenia that they lead to misdiagnoses.

The common factor in the varieties of this anomaly is a dull pallor of emotion and lack of feeling for the psychological realities, an essential factor in basic intelligence. This can be attributed to some incomplete quality of the instinctive substratum, which works as though founded on shifting sand. Low emotional pressure enables them to develop proper speculative reasoning, which is useful in non-humanistic spheres of activity, but because of their one-sidedness, they tend to consider themselves intellectually superior to “ordinary” people.

I wonder how many other "great psychologists" are as sick as Maslow? And they are the ones setting the standards by which the rest of us are measured! It is amazing that someone with such a distorted capacity for psychological insight could become such a highly regarded psychologist. But in a world where deviant values rule, up is down and right is left.

What's all the fuss about your rights?

Bush wants to get his wiretap bill renewed. It's called the 'Protect America Act' and it gives him the right to continue with warrantless wiretapping. You gotta love that Orwellian name. According to this story, News: What's all this fuss over FISA? | bill, court, fisa, intelligence, government - OCRegister.com, the Republicans want Bush to have a free hand:

"It's not dumb luck that we haven't been hit since 9/11," says Rep. Ed Royce. The Fullerton Republican says that the government needs to continue to intercept the phone calls and other communications. He says those methods have thus far thwarted attempts to get money transferred to terrorist organizations, stopped terrorists from obtaining guns and ammunition and stopped attempts to plan future terrorists attacks in the United States, England, France, the Middle East and Pakistan.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher brought the issue closer to home.

"Just think about shutting down the interceptions because of some misplaced notion about protecting American rights and we end up with families being murdered at Disneyland because some messages weren't intercepted," said Rohrabacher, R-Huntington Beach."

I guess the message is to stay away from Disneyland.

Barack the Terrible?

How many of you get those e-newsletters from "Sorcha Faal"? Admit it! You read them surreptitiously whenever they come out! And you wonder "just who the heck is "Sorcha Faal." Well, we have an idea that it is a well funded psy-op that plays on what people really may wonder or think about things, but think it is too crazy to voice it. Only Faal always takes things the wrong way or gives it a misleading half-twist at the end.

Be that as it may, we always find these little psy-op bytes to be fascinating because they always lead to more reasonable assessments of our own.

Take today's edition for example. The "mysterious Sorcha" (supposed to be a title, not a person doncha know?) writes:

Reports from the United States today are trumpeting the primary election victories of US Senator Barack Obama [pictured top left] as he nears his coronation as the Democratic Party’s Presidential Candidate and is likely to become the next President of the American People.

More interestingly about these events, for our purposes of discussion, are the Western Media reports describing Senator Obama’s ‘messianic’ appeal to masses of American people seemingly intent upon breaking away from their current War Leaders. So popular to the American people has Senator Obama become that an Internet video promoting his candidacy has become the most popular in history with nearly 4 million views.

However, not to Senator Obama should these American people be looking for their greatest insight into this man, and their future, but rather their attention should be placed upon last centuries great Kenyan Prophet, Johanwa Owalo, the founder of Kenya’s Nomiya Luo Church, and who among the Kenya people of the Luo religion is believed to be a prophet similar to Jesus Christ and Muhammad, and who in 1912 made this horrific prophecy about the United States:

“So far have they [the United States] strayed into wickedness in those [future] times that their destruction has been sealed by my [father]. Their great cities will burn, their crops and cattle will suffer disease and death, their children will perish from diseases never seen upon this Earth, and I reveal to you the greatest [mystery] of all as I have been allowed to see that their [the United States] destruction will come about through the vengeful hands of one of our very own sons.” [1]

To the greatest accuracy of the Kenyan Prophet Johanwa Owalo’s words we must note the striking coincidence that this nearly 100-year-old prophecy seemingly echoes into our troubled times, Senator Obama does appear to be the fulfillment of this prophecy as he is, indeed, a ‘son’ of the Kenyan Luo tribal religion (a mixture of Christianity and African tribal beliefs) as he was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii to Barack Obama, Sr. (born in Nyanza Province, Kenya, of Luo ethnicity) and Stanley Ann Dunham (who was given her fathers first name). [...]

One of the questions we must ask ourselves in the light of the messianic rise of Barack Obama, towards the most powerful military/political office in the World, is if the current events of his fathers homeland, Kenya, and when juxtaposed with the prophecies of Johanwa Owalo, are providing us with a vision of the United States future as it too appears to be boarding upon open civil war due to the destruction of its Middle Class and the continued rise to total rulership of its Imperial Class?

Another curious aspect of this new messianic figure Barack Obama, and in the context of the United States Presidential election as a whole, are that the two major American political parties have both fielded candidates whose families pasts included adherents to the practice of polygamy, with the Republican candidate Mitt Romney (currently not campaigning) being an adherent to the Mormon faith (whose mainstream members shun this practice), and Senator Obama, whose father, Barack Obama Sr., and upon his death in 1982 from an automobile accident, left behind 3 wives, 6 sons, and one daughter.

This last bit caught my eye: 3 wives? I just had to go and check out the link. There I found the following information about Barack's parents:

Barack Hussein OBAMA Sr. was born in 1936 in Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya and died in a car crash in Nairobi, Kenya in 1982, leaving three wives, six sons and a daughter. All but one of his children live in Britain or the United States. One of the brothers died in 1984. He is buried in the village of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya.

Shirley Ann DUNHAM was born on 27 November 1942 in Wichita, Kansas and died in 1995 of ovarian cancer.

Barack Hussein OBAMA Sr. and Shirley Ann DUNHAM were married in 1960 in Hawaii and had the following children:

1 i. Barack Hussein OBAMA, Jr.

Then, there are the grandparents, the parents of Barack's father:

Hussein Onyango OBAMA had several wives. His first wife was Helima, with whom he had no children. Second, he married Akuma and they had the following children:

i. Sarah OBAMA 1. ii. Barack Hussein OBAMA, Sr. iii. Auma OBAMA

Onyango's third wife was Sarah, the one often referred to by Barack as his "grandmother." She was the primary caregiver for Barack OBAMA Sr. after his mother, Akuma, left the family when her children were still young.

Well, who am I to criticize a woman who leaves her family when she is one of three wives? But, in that particular culture, being one of several wives was common, so it strikes me strange that this woman would abandon her child to another wife to raise. But that's what seems to have happened.

Apparently, the genealogists have been busy because you can track Obama's family on his American mother's side back a few more generations without much of interest about any of them.

So, why is this interesting?

Research shows that there are powerful genetic components to much of what we consider to be "personality" - including deviant personalities like psychopaths.

Now, I'm not saying that Barack is a psychopath, but I am saying that we ought to know as much about his forebears as possible because it is there that we will find the clues to what makes up Barack Obama and whether or not he has the potential to be "Obama the Terrible" or not. Frankly, other than having a grandmother who abandoned her child to another woman to raise on one side, and a suicide on the other, the whole family appears to be drearily mediocre.

And that is not to say that I even think that there is anything to this crazy "prophecy" quoted above. If you will notice, there is a little [1] at the end of the italicized quote that tells you there is a footnote source to the text. The footnote says: ""Visions of the Great Nyasaye, A Study of the Luo Religion in Kenya", Order of Sorcha Faal, Sister Mary McCrea © 1915"

Yeah, right! Cooked up by ole Sorcha his/herself! (Or is that "itself"?)

The only thing I could find on the net about this Kenyan Prophet, Johanwa Owalo, was the following:

In the Luo religion, troublesome spirits may cause misfortunes if they are not remembered or respected. Luo refer to spirits by the term juok, or "shadow." The Luo refer to God by many names that indicate his power. For example, Were means "one certain to grant requests"; Nyasaye, "he who is begged"; Ruoth, "the king"; Jachwech, "the molder"; Wuon koth, "the rain-giver"; and Nyakalaga, "the one who flows everywhere." Prayers and requests are addressed to God by those in need of his assistance.

Christianity has fused most notably with traditional religious beliefs and customs in "independent Christian churches," which have attracted large followings. For example, the Nomiya Luo Church, which started in 1912, was the first independent church in Kenya. The founder of this church, Johanwa Owalo, is believed to be a prophet similar to Jesus Christ and Muhammad. Owalo later teamed up with a Catholic priest and began teaching a new theology that rejected both the Pope and the doctrine of the trinity. [ LUO ]

So, no cigar!

In the end, you just have to wonder what the "Sorcha Faal" psy-op is trying to do here.

We are ruled by monsters

We are ruled by monsters: "This is an unbelievable statement from one of our top medical advisors. Heroin overdoses kill many people; there is a cheap rescue option, though, kits called Narcan that cost a mere $9.50 and allow people to save lives. The Bush administration opposes their distribution."

We are indeed ruled by monsters. As Myers points out:

And it just gets worse. She opposes saving lives because watching a friend go into delirium, spasm, turn blue, and die in front of you is a pretty good deterrent to drug use. Even better, if you turn blue and die you won't be repeating your filthy drug habits ever again — the War on Drugs chalks up a win! We have a public health official advocating more deaths among victims of drug abuse as part of their compassionate approach to improving the health of our citizens.

(Via Pharyngula.)

ei: Closure turns Gaza's streets into sewers

ei: Closure turns Gaza's streets into sewers: "GAZA CITY, 28 January (IPS) - A stream of dark and putrid sludge snakes through Gaza's streets. It is a noxious mix of human and animal waste. The stench is overwhelming. The occasional passer-by vomits.

Over recent days this has been a more common sight than the sale of food on the streets of Gaza, choked by a relentless Israeli siege."

For how long will this barbarism continue? The world looks on and does nothing. Seventy-six more Palestinians have died and 293 have been injured since the first of the year.

The future of the Palestinians is your future and my future. The pathocrats are using Palestine as the test case, a place to try out their weapons, their strategies. It will end up on your doorstep because for the pathocrats, we are as insignificant and subhuman as the Zionists consider the Palestinians.

The fundamentalist Chrsitians think Jesus is going to come and haul their butts out of the fire before it gets too rough. It is obvious that such an idea is wishful thinking to the extreme.

What is your excuse?

Probably a lot more subtle.

The Disappeared: SOTT.net and Google's conspicuous omissions

Google omitting SOTT.net from search results?

A few days ago one of our readers brought this curious detail to our attention. While searching for an article on Google, they discovered a problem with results from SOTT.net being consistently omitted from Google listings.

Our correspondent writes:

"I find just now that if you search any of the text in "quotes" from Henry See's 'Provoking Stupidity and Violence' piece on Hal Turner, Google brings back zero results from SOTT. The same text will be brought up from other sites carrying the story though.

So, say you grab the first few words from it: "Dave Neiwert at Orincus" and search it, according to Google it doesn't exist on SOTT!

But if you do the same with the title: "Provoking Stupidity and Violence", the article is there!

Other search engines do bring back the SOTT page though. Now how might that happen!?"

How indeed!

Well, our curiosity piqued, we thought it best to go have a look. Was it possible that original articles written by the SOTT team were being 'disappeared' by Google, the thread back to the author snipped? Well, lets see...

Agents, Witches and other omissions

First up is the article brought to our attention:

Provoking Stupidity and Violence: Hal Turner outed as Agent Provocateur

Click for larger view.

Sure enough, if you copy the first few words of the article - "Dave Neiwert at Orincus" - as a search term for Google, the above is what you get and no, no sign of SOTT in there. To find SOTT we had to click "repeat the search with the omitted results included" and dig for another five pages to find where the original article lay buried.

Now that might just be some quirk of the system, so to be fair we gave it another shot with this next article written around the same time:

Wars Pestilence and Witches

This time taking the key phrase "triggered by reading Victor Clube", something specific so as not to have results diluted by any possible returns from other articles. The result, one return!

So you're thinking, well that has to be SOTT right? Wrong! Click below to see the results, on the left is the solitary return from Google, on the right the "repeat the search with the omitted results included" results - where once again we find SOTT and the Laura-Knight-Jadczyk blog.

Well, maybe these articles are 'too new' and for some reason not yet picked up by Google as 'relevant' enough. Though how a copy of an article on a lone blog in the example above is more 'relevant' than the article's originating page would seem more than a little nonsensical.

So for good measure, here we have some 'not so new' examples, to see if time has made any difference (apparently not). As above, initial quoted text search results are on the left, Google's 'omitted' results to the right.

Ultra-terrestrials and 9-11

Transmarginal Inhibition

The Bushes and The Lost King

Seems SOTT.net is one site that Google does not want inquiring minds to visit!

Rice: U.S. has no permanent enemies_English_Xinhua

Rice: U.S. has no permanent enemies_English_Xinhua: ""I can assure you that America has no permanent enemies, because we harbor no permanent hatreds," Rice said in a speech to the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos."

Choke, gurggle, gurggle. No permanent hatreds? How about the Palestinians, the Iraqis, and anyone else that tries to resist US wishes?

"If Iran would suspend its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities ...we could begin negotiations, and we could work over time to build a new, more normal relationship," Rice told political and business leaders at the meeting.

Iran has stopped its nuclear weapons development according to US intelligence.

"We do not want Iran to become a nuclear weapons power, and we will continue to hold Iran to its international obligations," she said.

What about Israel? Oh, yeah. Israel doesn't have any international obligations because it never signed the treaty.

Terrorist Blah Blah: U.S. says threat against airlines remains high

U.S. says threat against airlines remains high: "DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - The United States is likely to keep a high threat designation for the airline industry because militants still see air travel as a target, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said."

Give me a break! Keep the people humiliated and cowed is more like it.

(Via Reuters: Top News.)

Spain: Suing the victim's family to repair his Audi

Espagne: il poursuit la famille de sa victime pour réparer son Audi: ""

Tomas Delgado Bartolomé was going 160 km/h on a road where the limit was 90. He hit and killed a seventeen year old cyclist. The parents of the victim received 33,000 euros as compensation. Now, the driver is seeking compensation as well:

"I'm also a victim", he says. "We can't fix what happened to the boy, but mine we can". He is asking for 14,000 euros for damages to his car, an Audi A8 and another 6,000 euros to pay for the rental of a replacement car while his was being repaired.

(Via Rue 89.)

Let's Play "Connect the Dots": "Vast semi-religious, quasi-political associations..." (7)

From chapter 2 of The Hidden History of Zionism by Ralph Shoenman

The South African Connection

There is a particular dimension to this secret consort between Balfour and the Zionist leadership to betray the aspirations of the Palestinian people. It was Weizmann's close friend and future Prime Minister of South Africa, General Jan Smuts, who, as South African delegate to the British War Cabinet during World War I, helped push the British government to adopt the Balfour Declaration and to make a commitment to construct a Zionist colony under British direction.

The relationship between the Zionist movement and the South African settlers had evolved earlier, as had the friendship between General Smuts and Chaim Weizmann. By the turn of the century, a large Jewish population, primarily from Lithuania, had settled in South Africa. The Zionist movement regarded this population as particularly susceptible to Zionist ideas because of their already established settler status in South Africa. Zionist leaders travelled constantly to South Africa seeking political and financial support.

N. Kirschner, former chairperson of the South African Zionist Federation, provides a vivid account of the intimate interaction between Zionist and South African leaders, the identification of Zionists like Weizmann and Herzl with the South African conception of a racially distinct colonizing populace, and the importance of a virtual pact between the two movements. [22]

In identifying Zionism with South African settler ideology, Chaim Weizmann was following the early admiration expressed by Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, for the quintessential colonial ideologue, Sir Cecil Rhodes. Herzl attempted to model his own political future on the achievements of Rhodes:

Naturally, there are big differences between Cecil Rhodes and my humble self, the personal ones very much in my disfavor; the objective ones are greatly in favor of the Zionist movement. [23]

Herzl advocated achieving Zionist dispersal of the Palestinians by using the methods pioneered by Rhodes, and he urged the formation of a Jewish counterpart to a colonial chartered company, an amalgam of colonial and entrepreneurial exploitation:

The Jewish Company is partly modelled on the lines of a great acquisition company. It might be called a Jewish Chartered Company, though it cannot exercise sovereign power, and has no other than purely colonial tasks. [24]

The poorest will go first to cultivate the soil. In accordance with a preconceived plan they will construct roads, bridges, railways and telegraph installations, regulate rivers and build their own habitations; their labor will create trade, trade will create markets, and markets will attract new settlers. [25]

By 1934, a major group of South African investors and large capitalists had established Africa-Israel Investments to purchase land in Palestine. The company still exists after 54 years with South Africans as joint stockholders, the assets held by Israel's Bank Leumi. [26]

General Jan Smuts was an active member of the Milner Group and had also gotten on well with Rhodes.

Footnotes:

22. N. Kirschner, Zionism and the Union of South Africa: Fifty Years of Friendship and Understanding, Jewish Affairs, South Africa, May 1960.
23. Theodor Herzl, Diaries, Vol.II, p.793.
24. Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question, p.33. Cited in Uri Davis, Israel: An Apartheid State (London: Zed Books, Ltd., 1987), p.4.
25. Ibid., p.28.

Let's Play "Connect the Dots": "Vast semi-religious, quasi-political associations..." (6)

Concentric Circles

The Society of the Elect, the secret society founded and funded by Cecil Rhodes, was structured as follows:

1. General of the Society: Rhodes
2. Junta of the Three: Stead, Brett, Milner
3. Circle of Initiates: Cardinal Manning, General Booth, Bramwell Booth, "Little" Johnson, Albert Grey, Arthur Balfour
4. The Association of Helpers
5. A College, under Professor Seely, to be established "to train people in the English-speaking idea". [Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment,p. 39]

The structure was inspired by the structure of the Jesuits.

The fourth group, the Association of Helpers, were people who would be involved in promoting and implementing the policies of the group without being aware of the group's existence. For example, the Round Table groups organized in English-speaking countries around the globe were part of this Association of Helpers, but few of its members would have been aware of the secret group. The Round Table provided the official academic aura to the ideas, much the way the Israeli lobby groups like PNAC give legitimacy to the ideas of the neocons today. If public opinion needed to be turned for or against some idea, The Times could call in a member of the Round Table for the official justification of policy, just as the New York Times or the Washington Post, or Fox News or CNN can do the same today.

Back then, as today, the people who seel to influence the body politic know that if something is repeated often enough it will be believed by enough people that these policies can be justified, regardless of whether the arguments are nothing but a pack of lies. Just look at the repeated assertions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or that Saddam was linked to al Quaeda.

So it seems clear that a small group of people, with access to larger numbers of people, can influence events and can play what W.T. Stead called, in the quote cited in the first post of this series, "so large a part in the history of the world". Rhodes, Stead, and Milner obviously thought so, and Quigley's book looks at their influence as individuals and as a group over a period of more than 50 years.

It is also obvious that the very rich have more influence than those who are poor. Bill Gates or Warren Buffet or David Rockefellar are heard in places that even people who are very comfortable are not. We also know that there are many people who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. Why, then, do so many people have trouble accepting that much of what happens in the world may well be the result of the influence of small groups of people?

And if one group were able to have members in several or many others, all without the knowledge of the other members, why could it not be able to influence a wide selection of these groups?

Let's Play "Connect the Dots": "Vast semi-religious, quasi-political associations..." (5)

Now let's look a little more closely at the interval of three years that Quigley suggests "is of some significance". The description given by Quigley of the removal of Lord Northcliffe from The Times hardly does justice to the story. The fight between Steed and Northcliffe is described in great detail by Douglas Reed in his book The Controversy of Zion. After explaining that with the easing of the censors after WWI, the free press reporting the actual facts on the ground in Palestine were the worst enemies of the Zionists, Reed describes how the most prominent of those enemies in Great Britain was taken off the scene:

At that stage in the affair England was of paramount importance to. the conspirators (I have shown that Dr. Weizmann and Mr. House both used this word) and in England the energetic Lord Northcliffe was a powerful man. The former Alfred Harmsworth, bulky and wearing a dank Napoleonic forelock, owned the two most widely read daily newspapers, various other journals and periodicals, and in addition was majority proprietor of the most influential newspaper in the world, at that time, The Times of London. Thus he had direct access to millions of people each day and, despite his business acumen, he was by nature a great newspaper editor, courageous, combative and patriotic. He was sometimes right and sometimes wrong in the causes he launched or espoused, but he was independent and unpurchasable. He somewhat resembled Mr. Randolph Hearst and Colone1 Robert McCormick in America, which is to say that he would do many things to increase the circulation of his newspapers, but only within the limits of national interest; he would not peddle blasphemy, obscenity, libel or sedition. He could not be cowed and was a force in the land.

Lord Northcliffe made himself the adversary of the conspiracy from Russia in two ways. In May 1920 he caused to be printed in The Times the article, previously mentioned, on the Protocols. It was headed, "The Jewish Peril, A Disturbing Pamphlet, Call for Enquiry". It concluded, "An impartial investigation of these would-be documents and of their history is most desirable . . . are we to dismiss the whole matter without inquiry and to let the influence of such a book as this work unchecked?"

Then in 1922 Lord Northcliffe visited Palestine, accompanied by a journalist, Mr. J.M.N. Jeffries (whose subsequent book, Palestine: The Reality, remains the classic work of reference for that period). This was a combination of a different sort from that formed by the editors of The Times and Manchester Guardian, who wrote their leading articles about Palestine in England and in consultation with the Zionist chieftain, Dr. Weizmann. Lord Northcliffe, on the spot, reached the same conclusion as all other impartial investigators, and wrote, "In my opinion we, without sufficient thought, guaranteed Palestine as a home for the Jews despite the fact that 700,000 Arab Moslems live there and own it . . . The Jews seemed to be under the impression that all England was devoted to the one cause of Zionism, enthusiastic for it in fact; and I told them that this was not so and to be careful that they do not tire out our people by secret importation of arms to fight 700,000 Arabs. . . There will be trouble in Palestine. . . people dare not tell the Jews the truth here. They have had some from me".

By stating this truth, Lord Northcliffe offended twice; he had already entered the forbidden room by demanding "inquiry" into the origins of the Protocols. Moreover, he was able to publish this truth in the mass-circulation newspapers owned by him, so that he became, to the conspirators, a dangerous man. He encountered one obstacle in the shape of Mr. Wickham Steed, who was editor of The Times and whose championship of Zionism Dr. Weizmann records.

In this contest Lord Northcliffe had an Achilles heel. He particularly wanted to get the truth about Palestine into The Times, but he was not sole proprietor of that paper, only chief proprietor. Thus his own newspapers published his series of articles about Palestine but The Times, in fact, refused to do so. Mr. Wickham Steed" though he had made such large proposals about the future of Palestine, declined to go there, and denied publicity to the anti-Zionist case.

These facts, and all that now follows, are related (again, with surprising candour) in the Official History of The Times (1952). It records that Mr. Wickham Steed "evaded" visiting Palestine when Lord Northcliffe requested him to go there; it also records Mr, Wickham Steed's "inaction" following Lord Northcliffe's telegraphed wish "for a leading article attacking Balfour's attitude towards Zionism".

In what follows the reader' s attention is particularly directed to dates.

In May 1920 Lord Northcliffe had caused publication of the article about the Protocols in The Times. Early in 1922 he visited Palestine and produced the series of articles above mentioned. On February 26, 1922 he left Palestine, after his request, which was ignored, to the editor of The Times. He was incensed against the incompliant editor and had a message, strongly critical of his editorial policy, read to an editorial conference which met on March 2, 1922. Lord Northcliffe wished that Mr. Wickham Steed should resign and was astonished that he remained after this open rebuke. The editor, instead of resigning, decided "to secure a lawyer's opinion on the degree of provocation necessary to constitute unlawful dismissal". For this purpose he consulted Lord Northcliffe's own special legal adviser (March 7, 1922), who informed Mr. Wickham Steed that Lord Northcliffe was "abnormal", "incapable of business" and, judging from his appearance, "unlikely to live long" and advised the editor to continue in his post! The editor then went to Pau, in France, to see Lord Northcliffe, in his turn decided that Lord Northcliffe was "abnormal" (March 31, 1922), and informed a director of The Times that Lord Northcliffe was "going mad".

The suggestion of madness thus was put out by an editor whom Lord Northcliffe desired to remove and the impressions of others therefore are obviously relevant. On May 3, 1922 Lord Northcliffe attended a farewell luncheon in London for a retiring editor of one of his papers and "was in fine form". On May 11, 1922 he made "an excellent and effective speech" to the Empire Press Union and "most people who had thought him 'abnormal' believed they were mistaken". A few days later Lord Northcliffe telegraphed instructions to the Managing Director of The Times to arrange for the editor's resignation. This Managing Director saw nothing "abnormal" in such an instruction and was not "in the least anxious about Northcliffe's health". Another director, who then saw him, "considered him to have quite as good a life risk as his own"; he "noticed nothing unusual in Northcliffe's manner or appearance" (May 24, 1922).

On June 8,1922 Lord Northcliffe, from Boulogne, asked Mr. Wickham Steed to meet him in Paris; they met there on June 11, 1922, and Lord Northcliffe told his visitor that he, Lord Northcliffe, would assume the editorship of The Times. On June 12,1922 the whole party left for Evian-les-Bains, a doctor being secreted on the train, as far as the Swiss frontier, by Mr. Wickham Steed. Arrived in Switzerland "a brilliant French nerve specialist" (unnamed) was summoned and in the evening certified Lord Northcliffe insane. On the strength of this Mr. Wickham Steed cabled instructions to The Times to disregard and not to publish anything received from Lord Northcliffe, and on June 13, 1922 he left, never to see Lord Northcliffe again. On June 18, 1922 Lord Northcliffe returned to London and was in fact removed from all control of, and even communication with his undertakings (especially The Times; his telephone was cut). The manager had police posted at the door to prevent him entering the office of The Times if he were able to reach it. All this, according to the Official History, was on the strength of certification in a foreign country (Switzerland) by an unnamed (French) doctor. On August 14, 1922 Lord Northcliffe died; the cause of death stated was ulcerative endocarditis, and his age was fifty-seven. He was buried, after a service at Westminster Abbey, amid a great array of mourning editors.

Such is the story as I have taken it from the official publication. None of this was known outside a small circle at the time; it only emerged in the Official History after three decades, and if it had all been published in 1922 would presumably have called forth many questions. I doubt if any comparable displacement of a powerful and wealthy man can be adduced, at any rate in such mysterious circumstances.

For the first time, I now appear in this narrative as a personal witness of events. In the 1914-1918 war I was one participant among uncomprehending millions, and only began to see its true shape long afterwards. In 1922 I was for an instant in, though not of the inner circle; looking back, I see myself closeted with Lord Northc1iffe (about to die) and quite ignorant of Zionism, Palestine, Protocols or any other matter in which he had raised his voice. My testimony may be of some interest; I cannot myself judge of its value.

I was in 1922, a young man fresh from the war who struggled to find a place in the world and had become a c1erk in the office of The Times. I was summoned thence, in that first week of June when Lord Northc1iffe was preparing to remove Mr. Wickham Steed and himself assume the editorship of The Times, to go as secretary to Lord Northc1iffe who was at Boulogne. I was warned beforehand that he was an unusual man whose every bidding must be quickly done. Possibly for that reason, everything he did seemed to me to be simply the expression of his unusual nature. No suspicion of anything more ever came to me, a week before he was "certified" and, in effect, put in captivity.

I was completely ignorant of "abnormal" Conditions, so that the expert might discount my testimony. Anyway, the behaviour I observed was just what I had been told to expect by those who had worked with him for many years. There was one exception to this. Lord Northcliffe was convinced that his life was in danger and several time said this; specifically, he said he had been poisoned. If this is in itself madness, then he was mad, but in that case many victims of poisoning have died of madness, not of what was fed to them. If by any chance it was true, he was not mad. I remember that I thought it feasible that such a man should have dangerous enemies, though at that time I had no inkling at all of any particular hostility he might have incurred. His belief certainly charged him with suspicion of those around him, but if by chance he had reason for it, then again it was not madness; if all this had transpired in the light of day such things could have been thrashed out.

I cannot judge, and can only record what I saw and thought at the time, as a young man who had no more idea of what went on around him than a babe knows the shape of the world. When I returned to London I was questioned about Lord Northcliffe by his brother, Lord Rothermere, and one of his chief associates, Sir George Sutton. The thought of madness must by that time have been in their minds (the "certification" had ensued) and therefore have underlain their questions, but not even then did any such suspicion occur to me, although I had been one of the last people to see him before he was certified and removed from control of his newspapers. I did not know of that when I saw them or for long afterwards. In such secrecy was all this done that, although I continued in the service of The Times for sixteen years, I only learned of the "madness" and "certification" thirty years late , from the Official History. By that time I was able to see what great consequences had flowed from an affair in which I was an uninitiated onlooker at the age of twenty-seven.

Lord Northcliffe therefore was out of circulation, and of the control of his newspapers, during the decisive period preceding the ratification of "the mandate" by the League of Nations, which c1inched the Palestinean transaction and bequeathed the effects of it to our present generation: The opposition of a widely-read chain of journals at that period might have changed the whole course of events. After Lord Northcliffe died the possibility of editorials in The Times "attacking Balfour's attitude towards Zionism" faded. From that time the submission of the press, in the manner described by the Protocols, grew ever more apparent and in time reached the condition which prevails today, when faithful reporting and impartial comment on this question has long been, in suspense.

Lord Northcliffe was removed from control of his newspapers and put under constraint on June 18, 1922; on July 24, 1922 the Council of the League of Nations met in London, secure from any possibility of loud public protest by Lord Northcliffe, to bestow on Britain a "mandate" to remain in Palestine and by arms to instal the Zionists there (I describe what events have shown to be the fact; the matter was not so depicted to the public, of course).

After reading the above account, I think you will agree that it throws an interesting light on the web we have been untangling that begins with Rhodes' 'vast semi-religious, quasi-political association'.

I note, as well, that the World Zionist Congress was also begun in the same decade as Rhodes' Society of the Elect. Coincidence?

Acknowledging Reality

Some days it is really difficult to post articles to SOTT. I tend to generally go for the ones about Palestine or the plight of the Iraqis because this is what makes me angry and motivated. but some of the time recently I've been kind of avoiding those subjects (or at least diluting the impact, with some nice safe stuff about economic meltdown or cometary armageddon!) because the shock of some of these stories, about the rampant infliction of unimaginable suffering, is really... shocking. it hurts.

and it is cumulative. it is not just one mad senseless decapitation of a child somewhere in Sierra Leone. Instead it is layer upon layer of countless terror and misery and greed and pain and violence and wanton destruction that spans the globe whichever way I look. and every day there is more. It is crushingly horrific to contemplate.

Yet contemplate it, I must. Some stubborn part of me refuses to turn a blind eye, because to turn away in denial and to ignore the suffering of others, is somehow worse, denying a part of myself and making me complicit in perpetuating the world of pain.

It seems that facing up to and acknowledging this reality without flinching is a most important and most difficult task.

All I can do is take inspiration from others who work tirelessly on this day after day, and hope that my small contribution is of some value to the universe.

Let's Play "Connect the Dots": "Vast semi-religious, quasi-political associations..." (4)

The Milner group, according to Quigley, controlled The Times of London from 1912 on, although "[e]ven before this last date, members of the innermost circle of the Milner Group were swarming about the great newspaper." Quigley suggests that The Times had been controlled by what he calls the Cecil Bloc, a network of power and influence built up around the Cecil family, since 1884, and which had a great deal of overlapping with the later Milner Group. Quigley then remarks:

"When it became clear in 1911 that [Times editor] Buckle must soon retire [Geoffrey] Dawson was brought into the office in a rather vague capacity and, a year later, was made editor. The appointment was suggested and urged by Buckle. Dawson held the position from 1912 to 1941, except for the three years 1919-1922. This interval is of some significance, for it revealed to the Milner Group that they could not continue to control The Times without ownership. The Cecil Bloc had controlled The Times from 1884 to 1912 without ownership, and the Milner Group had done the same in the period 1912-1919, but, in this last year, Dawson quarreled with Lord Northcliffe (who was chief proprietor from 1908-1922) and left the editor's chair. As soon as the Milner Group, through the Astors, acquired the chief proprietorship of the paper in 1922, Dawson was restored to his post and held it for the next twenty-two years. Undoubtedly the skillful stroke which acquired the ownership of The Times from the Harmsworth estate in 1922 was engineered by Brand. During the interval of three years during which Dawson was no editor, Northcliffe entrusted the position to one of The Times' famous foreign correspondents, H.W. Steed." [Quigley, p. 102]

Northcliffe would come to regret his choice of Steed as editor and worked ardently to have him replaced in 1922, as we shall in another installment. We will also see what the "skillful stroke" really was.

The "Brand" mentioned is Lord Robert H. Brand who was one of the pillars of the Milner Group from the 1920s through the 1940s, after having served under Milner in South Africa in a group that came to be known as Milner's Kindergarten. He was the economist of the Round Table Group, an international organization set up by Milner to promote the ideas of his group. He was active at the Paris Peace Conference following WWI. Lord Brand was a partner and managing director of Lazard Brothers and Company.

Dawson was, according again to Wikipedia, "also a life-long friend and dining companion of Edward Wood, later Lord Halifax" who was instrumental in Britain's appeasement policy towards Hitler. Dawson was also a member of Milner's Kindergarten in South Africa.

Let's Play "Connect the Dots": "Vast semi-religious, quasi-political associations..." (3)

Lord Milner

Rhodes' Society of the Elect was formed in 1891 according to Quigley.

Among the first members of this "semi-religious, quasi-political association" were the aforementioned W.T. Stead, along with Baron Rothschild, Arthur Balfour, R.B. Brett, and Alfred Milner, who took over the direction of Rhodes' society upon the death of the latter in 1902. It then became known informally as the Milner Group.

Milner was an important figure in British politics from then until his death in the 1920s, but considering his role as heir to Rhodes, his importance is probably even greater than is appreciated. The most powerful member of the War Cabinet during the final years of the Great War, Milner made the remark that, "if the Arabs think that Palestine will become an Arab country they are much mistaken."

We should not be surprised, then, to learn that it was Lord Milner who drafted the 1917 letter declaring British support for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, the letter that came to be known as the Balfour Declaration. IT might also be noted that the letter was addressed to Lord Rothschild, the son of the Baron Rothschild who looked after the Rhodes fortune.

Let's Play "Connect the Dots": "Vast semi-religious, quasi-political associations..." (2)

R.B. Brett, Lord Esher

R.B. Brett, later to become Lord Esher, was another of the charter members of the Society of the Elect. His journal contains the following remarks after talking with Rhodes at Lord Rothschild's country house in February 1890:

"Came here last night. Cecil Rhodes, Arthur Balfour, Harcourts, Albert Grey, Alfred Lyttleton. A long talk with Rhodes today. He has vast ideas. Imperial notions. He seems disinterested. But he is very ruse and, I suspect, quite unscrupulous as to the means he employs." [Quigley, C., The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 38]

Let's Play "Connect the Dots": "Vast semi-religious, quasi-political associations..." (1)

Cecil John Rhodes

"Mr. Rhodes was more than the founder of a dynasty. He aspired to be the creator of one of those vast semi-religious, quasi-political associations which, like the Society of Jesus, have played so large a part in the history of the world. To be more strictly accurate, he wished to found an Order as the instrument of the will of the Dynasty, and while he lived, he dreamed of being both its Caesar and its Loyola. It was this far-reaching, world-wide aspiration of the man which rendered, to those who knew him, so absurdly inane the speculations of his critics as to his real motives." [W.T. Stead, writing about Rhodes and cited in Quigley, C., The Anglo-American Establishment, p. 36]

William Thomas Stead was a journalist in late 19th century Great Britain. He was a close friend and confident of Cecil Rhodes, the man who funded the Rhodes Scholarships and gave his name, as they say, to Rhodesia. However, before founding the Rhodes Scholarships, Rhodes had drawn up four wills that mentioned a secret society called the Society of the Elect to be funded by his great fortune. Stead was a charter member and its chief representative in Britain.

Rhodes' fortune had come from his "business interests" in Africa that began in the diamond market. According to Wikipedia: "Financed by N.B. Rothschild & Sons, Rhodes achieved a virtual monopoly in the diamond mining industry. Rothschild also profiting on the yield from the future exploitation."

Emperor Sarkozy sparks storm

Emperor Sarko spoke yesterday. Sarkozy sparks storm with wish to end 35-hour week this year - Expatica:

[Fillon] said Sarkozy had set the course for 2008, "planning to press

ahead with getting our country into line with changes in the world, changes

which we have for so long refused to recognise"...

Sarkozy defeated Socialist candidate Segolene Royale to win the presidency last year with a pledge to reform and modernise a France that many felt had lagged economic progress elsewhere, largely due to the burden of its generous social welfare system.

The neo-liberal discourse down to a T.

However, it is clear that the changes that the rest of the world are undergoing haven't been for the benefit of ordinary people. In country after country, their hard-won rights are being stripped away. Look at the current economic situation in the US, a country entering a new recession. The unions in the US have been effectively killed, first by buying them off, then by breaking them. Most workers get two weeks or less of vacation time a year compared to four, five, or six weeks for their co-workers in other countries, that is if they have any vacation time at all.

Is this the model the French want? It is certainly the model Sarko would like to impose. Of course, it isn't going to cut into his vacation time.

Look at the effects of neo-liberalism on Latin America. Look at the policies of globalization on agriculture, on small business, on the mom and pop corner stores, which mean the health of small communities as their downtowns die off at the hands of the chains like Wal-Mart or Leclerc.

The French have been wise to avoid it. Now Sarko is dragging them into it.

Just look at the reasoing hidden in the final paragraph. France's economic progress is hindered by its generous social programs! That translates as: the rich can't make as much money as they would like because the state is redirecting too much of it to the less fortunate.

Of course, in the neo-liberal economic discourse, that's OK. There should be no state aid for individuals, only for corporations.