What a McCain Victory Would Mean
By Robert Parry
August 26, 2008
In judging the shape of a future John McCain presidency, there are already plenty of dots that are easy to connect. They reveal an image of a war-like Empire so full of hubris that it could take the world into a cascade of crises, while extinguishing what is left of the noble American Republic.
McCain has made clear he would continue and even escalate George W. Bush’s open-ended global war on Islamic radicals. McCain buys into the neoconservative vision of expending U.S. treasure and troops to kill as many Muslim militants as possible.
McCain’s tough talk – for instance, his joking about “bomb, bomb Iran” and his vow to pursue Osama bin Laden “to the gates of hell” – is indistinguishable from Bush’s “bring ‘em on,” “smoke ‘em out,” “dead or alive” rhetoric.
Beyond the words, McCain’s global war strategy is as hawkish, if not more so, than Bush’s. In late 2001 and early 2002, McCain took the lead in pushing the neocon plan of a rapid pivot from the invasion of Afghanistan toward the prospective invasion of Iraq.
Even before the Taliban had been thoroughly defeated – and as the Bush administration was failing to chase bin Laden to the gates of Tora Bora or to the gates of northwest Pakistan – McCain was advocating a diversion of U.S. intelligence and military assets toward Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with 9/11.
That premature pivot from Afghanistan to Iraq may go down as one of the worst national security blunders in the history of the United States. It has bogged the U.S. military down in two indefinite wars while fueling anti-Americanism around the world and especially among the billion-plus Muslims.
Yet, McCain and his neocon allies have never acknowledged this serious error of judgment, nor has the mainstream U.S. news media demanded that McCain accept responsibility for this catastrophic mistake.
McCain instead gets away with boasting about the supposed success of the recent U.S. troop “surge” in Iraq. (Meanwhile, Big Media stars – many of whom backed the Iraq invasion in 2003 – hammer Barack Obama for refusing to accept the conventional wisdom about the “successful surge,” as Obama tries to offer a more nuanced analysis.)
So, as the U.S. press corps again gives cover to the Iraq War, the larger failure of U.S. policy goes substantially unaddressed.
Not only did the McCain/Bush/neocon strategy allow bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders to survive and reestablish themselves along the Pakistani-Afghan border, the policy let the Taliban exploit instability in Afghanistan to rebuild its forces and begin going on the offensive against hard-pressed U.S. and NATO troops.
Potentially even worse, the Bush-McCain-neocon neglect of Aghanistan has contributed to worsening instability in nuclear-armed Pakistan, where the Taliban and al-Qaeda are expanding safe havens and increasing influence.
In other words, while Bush and McCain rushed off to war against Iraq over the distant possibility that Iraq might some day have the capacity to build a nuclear bomb, they allowed disorder to spread in Pakistan, a country that already possesses nuclear weapons.
Future Draft?
Another casualty of McCain’s endless Middle East wars, which soon could include Iran, would almost surely be America’s volunteer army. Though McCain officially opposes a restoration of the draft, it is nearly impossible to envision how his multiple wars could be waged without one.
And McCain also had made clear that he favors a neo-Cold War confrontation with Moscow over another part of the neocon agenda – the encircling of Russia with pro-U.S. regimes and the placement of strategic missile systems near Russia’s borders.
The fencing in of Russia fits with the goals of the neocon Project for the New American Century that envisions an endless era of U.S. military dominance that tolerates no potential rivals, whether an emerging China or a resurgent Russia. The recent Russian-Georgian conflict underscores the risks from this neocon concept.
Containing Russia in this way ultimately would require dangerous brinkmanship. And the McCain/neocon belligerence – like McCain’s melodramatic declaration “we are all Georgians” – would guarantee that one of these swaggering showdowns eventually would push the world to the brink of a nuclear confrontation.
From the perspective of U.S. taxpayers, the neocon strategy of permanent global dominance means funding the military-industrial complex at levels never before seen, especially when one factors in the simultaneous costs of the “war on terror,” the Iraq War, the Afghan War and a possible Iran War.
The combined price tag for McCain’s military adventures, at a time when the federal government is already running about half a trillion dollars in debt, would mean that virtually every other national priority would have to be short-changed or neglected.
There will be little money left to address the energy crisis, global warming, retooling the auto industry, health care, Social Security, education, infrastructure repairs, etc., etc.
Plus, as the United States solidifies itself under President McCain as a militaristic Empire, the remnants of the old Republic would inevitably be swept away.
Already, McCain has vowed to appoint more U.S. Supreme Court justices in the style of Samuel Alito and John Roberts, open advocates of an imperial presidency.
Currently, the Supreme Court has a slim 5-4 majority in favor of maintaining some limits on the President’s power. But one more vacancy from the moderate majority – to be filled by President McCain – would mean that a right-wing Supreme Court would begin reinterpreting the U.S. Constitution to grant the President unlimited powers in wartime.
And since wartime would never end, the Founders’ vision of a Republic – with “checks and balances” and all people possessing “unalienable rights” – would be negated by an all-powerful President who could do whatever he wished to anyone who got in the way.
In many ways, a McCain presidency would represent the logical culmination of America’s failure to heed President Dwight Eisenhower’s parting warning about the growing power of “the military-industrial complex.”
The American people also would show that they had turned their back on another warning from another aging leader, Benjamin Franklin, who cautioned at the end of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 that the Founders had created a Republic, “if you can keep it.”
31 August, 2008
30 August, 2008
Playboy Club in Cyprus is a brothel!
I just saw on the France 2 French news of my local cable channel that this Playboy club on the island of Cyprus is in fact a brothel... I'd be curious to know if the folks at Playboy are fully aware of this, turning a blind eye... or if they're so afraid of the Russian mob running the island, that they are helpless at the poor use of their brand name.Last night I went to the movies, Babylon A.D. where French actor Gerard Depardieu plays a Russian mobster in the not so-distant future in a Russia riddled with nuclear power plant meltdowns. There's a massive beauty drain orchestrated from the old Soviet Union where sexy women start with nude photographs promised modeling jobs in the West, and end up in places like these.
The report described hundreds of brothels on Cyprus with tens of thousands of prostitutes drawn there from Eastern block nations under false pretenses. It seems Cyprus sanctifies this, awarding these young women working papers as performers.
The reason the French media might suddenly be paying attention, is because Russian mobsters are buying up all the prime real estate on the Riviera between Toulon and Nice. At the rate old French nuclear power plants are starting to blow gaskets, the whole region may soon look like a scene from Babylon A.D., as if French anti-nuclear organizations had not been trying to warn the world about this.
Wake up Playboy, restore the bunny's good name!!! Send the Bunny Police to Cyprus and rip their sign down! And Hef, print your mag on recycled stock for Pete sake, so they don't have to start clear cutting Siberia. Listen to the girls you put in your magazine, they're all like Pamela Anderson, bleeding hearts for Gaia!
The Nukuler "Resurgence" by Cathy Garger
(I'm posting this on behalf of Cathy Garger of the [no-new-nukes-yall] Yahoo Group, the best anti-nuclear list serv in the country, by invitation only. RemyC.)To anyone who cares to listen,
I had a good conversation about Obama's nuclear stance recently inside the Obama Political HQ in Annapolis, MD . Funny thing is, the campaign worker was a former Greenpeace worker who, I could tell by her body language, was not exactly thrilled with Obama's nuclear position.
She told me that while Obama does not like nuclear power, he WILL go for legislation that contains other alternative energy sources within it...
The things she said made it quite clear that he is, in actuality, not dedicated to a firm and unequivocal anti-nuke stance, which is how I have interpreted his position as well.
Obama and McCain - who wins matters not too much on this issue. Many are saying the same thing that many of us said with Kerry (Yes, he is not perfect - but he is better than the other guy).
In reality, however, both will keep perpetuating new nuke plants. Both are likely to perpetuate the radiological wars and the onslaught of radiation contaminating our nation... as well as around the rest of the world.
The Nukuler "Resurgence" begun in earnest at the very beginning of the current presidential administration, will be pushed further by both of the two candidates. Both parties are corrupt in this affair - and yes, we need to educate people the truth not only about this, but as many of these issues as we can.
I have thought long and hard about our obligation to educate everyone else about everything we know. In the course of my research and writing the past few years, I have spoken to many "insiders" who tell me things "off the record." Through them and by reading, I've learned that things are not at all as the Associated Press and other major news firms that are infiltrated with writers who are paid to defend the bottom line of the power-and-control holders.
Yet, if I were to try to educate everyone about everything that's going on? There are not enough hours in the day! Plus, in all candor, I just do not possess that degree of boundless, limitless energy! I admire the heck out of anyone like Elaine, however, who researches the depth and background of this vile, rampant corruption... and then selflessly, tirelessly works night and day in this educational work.
Indeed, the nation is in far more trouble than is ever being acknowledged and reported... And to many of us, however? The thought of trying to expose it all is absolutely, mind-boggling and utterly overwhelming. So... we effect whatever changes we possibly can.
I agree that being "politically correct" and trying so hard not to offend anyone is in no one's best interests - and that it is important that we share what we know with as many as we can.
Is nuclear power the only issue? Or is Uranium weapons use both inside the US and all around the globe the only issue? How 'bout the fact that our Dept. of [Nukuler] Energy Weapons Laboratories are permanently, irreparably contaminating our environment and harming our health - and the health of untold numbers of generations to come? Are manufactured radiological, biological, and chemical wars being fought in various places throughout the globe the only issue?
No No No No. These few issues are only one part of the problem! There are hundreds of issues! What about the nearly 400 deaths caused so far by Taser use? How 'bout the fact that undercover officers actually escalate gang violence and deal drugs to inner city youth, then incarcerate them... and prison corporations make a buck on the contracts and the inmates' free labor? What about corporate polluters who have ruined the Great Lakes and this is all silenced by the feds till some scientists of strong conscience blow the whistle on Uncle Sam?!
What about the toxic poison Aspartame that is now not just in our diet sodas, but in almost all of our kids' vitamins, medicines, candies and gum? How 'bout the aerial spraying of metallics in our air and experimental toxics all over the nation that ostensibly kill mosquitoes and the benign apple moth? What about forced vaccinations of our kids (some of the ingredients which are not disclosed to us *and* cause far, far greater problems than the actual diseases they purport to prevent)? What about the Veterans... and the fact that they are underhandedly recruiting our kids as cannon fodder while roughly two-thirds of them wind up disabled, many of them eventually dying slow, painful deaths of radiation poisoning?
The listing of the national problems our power-and-control holders are either ignoring or, even far worse, are actually perpetrating themselves(!) could fill entire books! There are so many issues caused by those in control who honestly do not care about the health and welfare of our citizens or our environment.
Yes, this nation is in a heap o' trouble and nuclear power plants are indeed one of our more serious problems. Yet power plants... along with the other ways that the Depts. of War and Nukuler Energy are radiologically "dosing" us all and ruining our air, water, and soil.... are, as far as I'm concerned, THE single most serious of all.. and not "just" due to nuclear accidents and leaks, etc., but also because the half-life of these radionuclides emitted into our air and water, leeching into our soils, is often into thousands, millions, and even billions of years.
In addition, the radioactive poisoning of the US is MOST critical because the effects of these radionuclides within our bodies are cumulative... and because they irreparably wreck the genetic material of not just our descendants, but for all life forms. All of this is on top of diseases caused by radiation, which cause so many of us to suffer needlessly, create painful grieving, permanent loss, and vacancies in our families with a void that can never be filled. If all that's not enough? We must consider that these environmental radionuclides create untold havoc on the ecosystem upon which all future generations of human, plant, and animal species will rely.
There is so much psychopathology (some just call it evil) to expose ... and sadly there is never enough time!
So, yes, your sentiment is right-on. We've got to do the very best we can to expose all we can to as many people as we can. We need to expose the totally compromised political system and all the groups (many of them benign non-profits that are set up by the feds themselves to "look like" do-gooders) that are actually, however, formed in order to protectively control the opposition and stage lame do-nothing events and actions and guard the foxes within the federal hen houses.
And no, we must not care about how popular this will make us ... nor how "PC" it is, nor how many people will not tune out and just not want to (or be able to bear to) listen. We also have to realize that those who oppose the efforts of those in power and control will be attacked all along the way by government "minders" - workers who are wolves in sheep's clothing, skilled, trained, and quite adept in waging clever psychological, verbal attacks... often subtly, artfully done... designed to get the rest of the group to go against anyone who tries to expose Uncle Sam's dirty deeds.
We've got to face it - this is all pretty depressing stuff! It is far, far easier for so many people I know to just turn the other way to it all, or to go into denial mode or distraction mode by saying they have such a busy, busy life (and secretly hope and pray that "someone else" will have the courage - and the stomach) to expose this all.
But yes, I agree that those of us with a strong conscience and love of humanity must - yes, simply must - boldly, tirelessly, speak the truth the best we can, as loudly as we can, and as often as we possibly can!
There is one more thing and I think it's important. I can not speak for anyone else, but I am still a "work in progress." We are all at various stages on this journey (or, rather, this applies to all those who are actually good-hearted activists not on the payroll of an organization which possesses a hidden agenda). Some know all of this already, and some know very little, if anything. We have to be mindful, I believe, of realizing where each person is in his/her journey of discovering these and other horrors.
If you will remember way back in circa 2004? I was an environmentalist merely wondering why our local river was so badly polluted and void of life? And then, when I told one friend I volunteered to be the Maryland chapter leader of Mothers Opposing Bush simply because this administration was not caring for our environment... she told me that I had not even scratched the surface and asked me to start to do deep research into the waging of these wars. From that came my intensive research into the entire horrifying circumstances of how 9/11 was actually carried out... and then further research into the Uranium poisoning of the US - and the rest of the world - starting in 1945.
It takes some of us years to be able to gather our voice, our confidence, and our sense of expertise and boldly expose the "evils" - and, admittedly, some never find the courage to do it at all, even though they know a great deal. So I keep thinking that we need to somehow find ways to build better support systems so we can continuously build up one another's knowledge, expertise, and confidence - and inspire and encourage one another to go always try to go one step farther still.
Cathy Garger
Chesapeake Safe Energy Coalition
www.safeenergymd.com
Saturday, August 30, 2008
29 August, 2008
The Osama Bin Laden Super Special
Nuclear Energy Pioneer Hyperion Power Generation to Participate in the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denverwww.hyperionpowergeneration.com/news.html
DENVER, COLORADO, AUGUST 20, 2008 — Hyperion Power Generation, the developer of the world's first small, transportable, commercial nuclear power reactor, will participate in the Democratic National Convention's "2008 Civic Celebration" on Sunday, August 24 at Area C. The event will be held from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in the Mile High City's Civic Center Park.
With over 50,000 people coming to Denver, the Sunday event is a unique and affordable way for Colorado to showcase its culture and diversity during the DNC. John R. "Grizz" Deal, CEO of Hyperion, agrees and believes it is an excellent opportunity to interact directly with the public concerning key public policy issues, and the global energy crisis in particular.
With over 50,000 people coming to Denver, the Sunday event is a unique and affordable way for Colorado to showcase its culture and diversity during the DNC. John R. "Grizz" Deal, CEO of Hyperion, agrees and believes it is an excellent opportunity to interact directly with the public concerning key public policy issues, and the global energy crisis in particular.
"Our view is certainly that nuclear energy must become a bigger part of the power mix in the United States, along with other renewable energy such as wind and solar" said Deal.
"The Hyperion Power Module (HPM) can make clean, affordable power a reality where it was never before thought possible."
We see the DNC's civic event in the park as an ideal venue for reaching savvy citizens concerned about energy and the future of the planet in general. We want to reach out to the public and have an open dialogue about nuclear power and its benefits."
Conceived at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Hyperion Power Module intellectual property portfolio has been licensed to Hyperion Power Generation for commercialization under the laboratory's technology transfer program. Inherently safe and proliferation-resistant, the HPM utilizes the energy of low-enriched uranium fuel in a technology unlike any other currently in development or use that builds on the decades of safe and secure use of academic and training reactors at universities and laboratories. Approximately 4,000 units of the same design will be produced, sealed and shipped from company manufacturing sites around the globe.
More information on Hyperion can be found at:
Press contact:
Deborah Blackwell, APR:
DENVER LOCAL MEDIA CONTACT
Cody Pearson:
Mobile: +1 505-216-9130
28 August, 2008
Dishonor the Dead
“Feds: Fire took down building next to twin towers”
Time to put some pancake makeup on the pancake theory:
"The reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery," said Dr. Shyam Sunder, the lead investigator on the NIST team."
"… the demise of WTC 7 was actually the first time in the world a fire caused the total failure of a modern skyscraper."
REHASH:
"When this critical column buckled due to lack of floor supports, it was the first domino in the chain," said Sunder.
Dominoes. Shmominoes.
Pancakes. Shmancakes.
Support bras. Buckleeboos.
Why did it take so long to dress up this cadaver?
My friend Mark said, “It only takes that long if you're trying to cover something up.”
"Hopefully this thorough report puts to rest the various 9/11 conspiracy theories, which dishonor the men and women who lost their lives on that terrible day," said Silverstein spokesman Dara McQuillan.
This makes me wonder: Do conspiracy theories really “dishonor” the dead?
So to “honor the dead” we must maintain that they didn’t “die in vain”? What does it mean to “die in vain”? To die for no reason?
So we must glorify their deaths with propaganda to make them heroes? And must we then avenge their deaths so that they do not die “in vain” ?
To “honor” them we must go on the warpath and take two million lives in Iraq? Is this the right behavior of a supposed “Christian nation”?
Speaking of an eye for an eye - Best to keep an eye on this group:
http://www.crusaderclothing.com/home.html
CRUSADER CLOTHING IS A POWERFUL NEW CLOTHING LINE FOR CHRISTIANS THAT REFLECTS THE REALITY THAT LIBERTY MUST AGAIN BE DEFENDED. THE MESSAGE SENT BY CRUSADER CLOTHING IS CLEAR: WE ARE THE DEFENDERS OF LIBERTY, WE ARE JUST, WE ARE COMING, AND WE WILL NOT YIELD.
News:
Current Terror alert : HIGH
This is not the bad news. It’s the ONLY news.
You'll see them coming. They will only be wearing T-shirts.
http://www.crusaderclothing.com/ccshop/home.php
May as well start with a BANG!
Our host Devin LaRue has just invited me to post on this new blog... So I will make it my mission to try and explain to Paranoia readers, the link between the centralization of power, nuclear utilities, the shadow government, suppressed energy conversion technology, Idaho Transfer and the great changes we are about to face, Obama or McCain either way.Sure, Obama would be better, if you're a planet lover... while McCain may spell doom and disaster by hanging on to antiquated nationalist themes which don't play anymore on the other side of the globe. China may be a totalitarian regime, but the good ol'U.S.A. has ten times more prisoners.
In November, a green team is about to take over the White House, no matter who gets elected. Yes! magazine, maybe inspired by Congressman Chris Shays, this issue speaks of a purple constituency, blending Democrats and Republicans, into kind hearted populists...
What's that spell? I'm sorry, but what we need are MORE political parties, not less... because less means only one left, and one ultimately means fascism, no matter how friendly.
This green team about to kick their vegan storm trooper boots inside the oval office, is viewed in some conspiracty circles as the birth of green fascism in America. And they might be right, because it took so long for the so-called intelligent lifeforms of this planet to finally wake up to the damage they are causing the biosphere. Now the survival clock in those who have seen the light is rushing towards midnight, and they see no other alternative than to impose a green lifestyle on all humans.
Who will this green team be? Well, it's already here, they are the environmental elite, green Hollywood, all those who put money down on a Tesla Motor roadsters, and spends $4000 a year to attend the TED conference. Folks like the Governator, Bobby Kennedy Jr., the progenity of Cousteau, Hearst and Rothchild... the second, third generation Federal bank trust fund babies, who have always run the show, new boss, same as the old boss.
And you know what, I'm going to shock you, I'm all for it! I'm one of them, I'm part of it... I'm a green ring leader who's never been invited to Davos, Bohemian Grove or Skull & Bones... But I did influence Chris Carter just a little one fair day at Wetlands in 1989 by giving him a copy of Fringes of Reason! Because we've waited long enough to do something. Since the 60's we've been warning the world about an end to oil, about vanishing free energy inventions, about an armada of nuclear powered secret aircraft, which the Shadow government was build around. And Kucinich knows it, which is why he's so nutty.
I told a friend the other day, sometimes you have to fight fire with fire, sometimes you need a meaner motherf***** to annilihate a tired old tyrant, a little like Beowolf. So I'm accepting this invitation to blog for Paranoia, while I'm reading an amazing book, Pronoia hoping that we can change our thought patterns in time to avoid head rushing into a self-fulfilling prophecy of Apocalypse.
The generation prior to ours generated the reality we're witnessing now... Short of running away with the Burning Man circus or lavish in hedonism on a beach in the Greek islands, we can either build a green empire, pull ourselves by our boostraps, and bring ecotopia on Earth, or spiral into an oblivion of collapsed ecosystems and nuclear waste, holding our breath, gasping for air, praying we'll have enough money to afford the air conditioned Night of the Living Dead at Wal-Mart. Our choice. Won't do any harm to pull up our shirt sleeves and clean up our room, before the Galactic Federation can accept our graduation into a whole new set of cosmic mindf***s.
In RAW I trusted... Playboy bunnies first, or this day and age... all the IMG, NEXT and Storm models! Point me to the hangar with the next shuttle to the Moon base. I did the best I could here, now it's every man for himself, women and children first, if there's room left.
RemyC.
Paranoia & the Tyranny of the One
Paranoia & the Tyranny of the One
High on Suspicion
By Iona Miller, CHT, September, 2008
"Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power." (Lao-Tzu)
“The conflict between the opposites can strain our psyche to the breaking point, if we take them seriously, or if they take us seriously.”
(Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections).
“To struggle against paranoia is to defend multiplicity and differences as founding conditions for the exercise of the cultivation of the Soul, the love for images. It is an ethical imperative in the name of the image’s freedom of speech and the free exercise of thought and ideas. This is the battle. This is the combat.”
(Marcus Quintues, Jungian)
High on Suspicion
By Iona Miller, CHT, September, 2008
"Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power." (Lao-Tzu)
“The conflict between the opposites can strain our psyche to the breaking point, if we take them seriously, or if they take us seriously.”
(Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections).
“To struggle against paranoia is to defend multiplicity and differences as founding conditions for the exercise of the cultivation of the Soul, the love for images. It is an ethical imperative in the name of the image’s freedom of speech and the free exercise of thought and ideas. This is the battle. This is the combat.”
(Marcus Quintues, Jungian)
Guerilla Info War
All that is paranoid is not delusional, just as all that is delusional is not paranoid. What we are really talking about is a field of relative points of view (POV). The tyranny of the One is that of the official, spin-doctored version of past and current events, and future potentials – the fabricated consensus. Society expects the church to bring soul back into everyday life, something it should rightly do for itself. But we love to be prime time victims and play the persecutor/persecuted game (kick the dog).
Collectively, the dynamic field of paranoia is the unconscious shadow condition of mass institutions. Cognitive dissonance dwells somewhere between the ideal and the actual. Paranoia has become the background of our experience – the experiential ground. Is there any greater monomania than globalization at any human cost?
Our government is paranoid, trapped in its own greedy delusions; thus it is caught in the first trick of the collective conscious: The Shadow, the cryptocracy. The light and the dark meet in the Twilight Zone of liminality, which has its own Uncertainty Principle. Truth always hides just around the corner. Nothing is real in the imaginal world, or everything real is illusory. Things are not what they seem.
The idea of an unconscious brings opponents to see the other's unconscious as a screen for their own concealed intentions. We project our machinations onto others. Statements about the other become self-reflexive.
As a paranoiac you don’t trust; you watch. Our nation has extended its obsessive surveillance to its own citizenry. We have institutionalized Watchers, watchers of watchers, and watchers of watchers of watchers. And watchdogs to keep them all in check. Inexplicably, they call it intelligence but isn’t it paid paranoia?
Confusion of Understanding
Anyone not complacent or apathetic should be interested with natural curiosity in all aspects of the world around them. Politicians and history have taught us to be mistrustful and suspicious of the official “truth,” which means lies in Newspeak. What used to be called fringe conspiracy theory is now just common knowledge of the middle class about clandestine operations by shadow government, operating for its own interests and agenda.
In Washington D.C., paranoia may be essential. Maybe the “paranoids” are just not content with political delusion. Personal investigation is the means of forming one’s own critical point of view. The ability to do so is inherent in our Constitutional rights and arguably is the antithesis of self-absorbed narcissism – the hallmark of paranoia in the clinical sense.
Disordered Spirit
Paranoia is invasive – it intrudes and worms its way through the psyche like a computer virus. Alienation in extreme cases disturbs relationships and ability to function in daily life. Authority feeds on fear. Yet, paranoia could be the basis of our collective shadow, including our unlived potential for the good.
There is no final correct reading of Reality – a final, definitive, unequivocal one. Not even tyrannical unification. Reality is too wiggly, too mercurial for that. The tyranny of the one, that single-minded thought, demands struggle on behalf of the ethical imperative to find ways to love together in our differences.
The highlight of an great drama is "the reveal." When we speak poetically, we hint gently at the proposed nature of reality, neither hidden nor revealed. Freedom from desire's materialism and denial's formalism is to be found in the middle earth of the poetic, the fantastic, the numinous, where things are not “one way or the other.” Things are not meant to be taken literally. Facts have nothing to do with it.
Paranoia is a defense through mobilization, against suppressed anger and depression, the malaise of our age. Giving in to external domination and giving in to internal pressure are threatening. More than delusions of persecution, who doesn’t fear being tricked into surrendering some element of self-determination?
Unseen Order
Can we out-trick the Trickster? Can we use our imaginations to cure the imagination? Can we elude our own delusions? Maybe the veils themselves are delusional. Does meaning hinge on our individual view? It may depend on our worldview, our reality filter: do we serve the gods (religion), or become one (New Age), or eschew that in the name of science? Is there a clear distinction between delusion and revelation?
The fervor of “conspiracy freaks” can take on quasi-religious dimensions: it is revelatory, salvific. Spreading the word takes on a missionary quality. And at the core is the eternal mythic “quest for the Holy Grail”: “What do these things mean and whom do they serve? When life is perceived in the context of tyranny, meaning and freedom are lost, and rebellion is aroused. We may feel we are personally targeted, but aren’t we all the target in the psychophysical (psyops) war that is 21st Century life?
Spirit at the Edge of the Abyss
Paranoia might be seen as a disorder of the spirit. In his masterwork, ON PARANOIA, James Hillman presents paranoia in the context of the liminal edge where "psychology cannot be fully separated from religion--religion as relation with divinity and as relation with community ... where psychology is drawn to consider theology and politics." “Conspiracy theory” is inherently revelatory, potentially salvific – but what constitutes “correct” and “incorrect” revelation? And who is the arbiter of that consensus?
Hillman defines paranoia as a true disorder of interpreting the meaning of things: the presence of "incorrigible delusions." Hillman draws upon the analogy between the soul of the state and the state of the soul in Plato's Republic to find the remedy for the paranoia of the state in the remedies proposed by individual paranoid souls for their own recovery, the return of the poetic and Jung's idea of the unconscious. He then proceeds to demonstrate how paranoia has engaged and intrigued philosophical inquiries as well as medical psychology.
Hillman defines paranoia as a disorder of meaning. Hillman lays the blame for our collective misanthropy and social irresponsibility at the feet of the anomic archetype of individualism, one that wears a Protestant face. That worship of individualism in its most narrow sense underlies many of the new religious movements whose adherents hold that they can dissolve the thin boundary between the God within and the "wholly other" God without -- if they're only self-actualizing enough, only a little more enlightened, a little more ethical, a little more good-hearted. Just tear away one more veil, peel one more layer of the onion. (Nostrand)
Systematic Paranoia
Hillman identifies characteristics of paranoia that include:
- an "incorrigibility" in the delusions that attests to an impersonal, noetic factor that intimates that the disorder of mind rests in a prior disorder of spirit,
- "literalization" of ideas. Succumbing to a seductive search for meaning, and
- "concretization" of words into events.
He examines and rejects the following as criteria in determining "incorrect revelation":
- content,
- mission,
- societal acceptance,
- context,
- harmfulness,
- in-character.
Weighing the Evidence
Suspiciousness based in experience is not paranoia. Paranoia is only unfounded or exaggerated distrust. In today’s volatile world, hell-bent on globalization, paranoia may simply be prudence – care, caution and good judgment. It is foresight, sagacity, insight, and informs us what appropriate actions are in any time and place. It is a survival mechanism – sound judgment in practical affairs. Prudence also implies caution (risk-mitigation), an understanding of first-principles and open-mindedness.
This is the paradox of our time – those accused of being paranoid are the only ones who are fit to judge certain issues, having bothered to acquaint themselves with all sides of each issue (circumspection). The problem with burdensome knowledge is, what are you going to do about it? That answer determines how radical you are, from depression to militancy.
Whether or not “they” are out to get YOU is only one of those issues. The sense of betrayal is real enough, unfortunately. From many perspectives, you have already been “gotten” – from the cradle to the grave through vaccination, dumbed-down education and social conditioning, media manipulation, poor nutrition and contaminated water, spectacular distractions, drugs and electronic dope, disinformation and spiritual programming.
Any kind of declared “war” is suspect for not being what it seems and a cover for covert operations – war on drugs, war on cancer, war on terror.
Pointless Paranoia -- Presuming Delusion
Paranoid personality disorder is a non-psychotic compulsion – a generalized projection of fears and anxieties onto the external world. It includes hypersensitivity, hypervigilance and ideas of being followed, monitored, poisoned, infected, externally controlled or chosen by God for a special mission.
The term pure paranoia describes a condition where a delusion is present, but without any apparent deterioration in intellectual abilities. Clinical use of the term has been used to describe delusions where the affected person believes he is being persecuted and contains two central elements:
1. The individual thinks that harm is occurring, or is going to occur, to him or her.
2. The individual thinks that the persecutor has the intention to cause harm.
Today’s ‘paranoia’ is neither irrational nor delusional. Political paranoia is not phob ic. It’s a fact of life.
What's New with My Subject?
Defense Contractors Get Away with Rape and Murder in Iraq
In October 2005, The Chicago Tribune reported that Halliburton subsidiary KBR (formerly Kellogg Brown and Root) was supplying U.S. military bases and private contractors with "cheap labor" in Iraq. The laborers were mainly impoverished Asians who had been promised jobs in luxury hotels in Jordan, and who had paid large "broker fees" up front. Their passports were then confiscated and they ended up working in Iraq. The Tribune reported that 12 of the laborers from Nepal had been kidnapped on the road by Iraqi insurgents and were later killed while traveling in unprotected vehicles. (Chicago Tribune, October 9, 2005)
On August 27, 2008 a lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court by relatives of the deceased, alleging that the Asian laborers were captured and killed in 2004 while on their way to work on the Al Asad Air Base, a U.S. military base in Iraq. They had been promised work in a posh hotel. A survivor of the attack, Buddi Prasad Gurung, was forced to work 15 months in a warehouse on the U.S. military base. There were a number of recruiters and contractors, "but they all seem to end at KBR's doorstep."
Defense contractors seem to like putting people in boxes and making them their slaves. In 2007 it was reported that KBR covered up (at least one) gang rape of a U.S. civilian in Iraq. Jamie Leigh Jones was kept in a shipping container in the "Green Zone" for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, with armed guards outside her door. She was drugged and gang raped by defense contractor employees. Jamie was finally able to borrow a cell phone to call her father, who called the State Department to urge them to rescue his daughter from her own employer: Halliburton/KBR. The rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers. Halliburton says KBR is no longer their company.
Her attorney believes these men operate with the idea that they are without laws. Not only are defense contractors immune to prosecution in Iraq, but they are apparently immune to paying taxes. KBR has avoided paying something like $500 million in taxes. What do you think of KBR getting away with rape and murder?
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