venerdì 30 maggio 2014

Ukraine: US changing views on Poroshenko Banker-Oligarch

‘The disgraced oligarch’: WikiLeaks cables reveal changing US views on Poroshenko

Published time: May 30, 2014 01:17

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Ukrainian presidential candidate Petro Poroshenko (AFP Photo / Sergei Supinsky)

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How Anonymous Hackers Changed the World

domenica 25 maggio 2014

Elites And Psychopaths Are Useless To Society

Why Elites And Psychopaths Are Useless To Society

Thursday, 15 May 2014 04:25 Brandon Smith

http://www.alt-market.com/articles/2137-why-elites-and-psychopaths-are-useless-to-society

The ultimate and final goal of evil is to obscure and destroy our very conception of evil itself, to change the inherent moral fiber of all humanity until people can no longer recognize what is right and what is wrong. Evil is not a wisp of theological myth or a simplistic explanation for the aberrant behaviors of the criminal underbelly; rather, it is a tangible and ever present force in our world. It exists in each and every one of us. All men do battle with this force for the entirety of our lives in the hope that when we leave this Earth, we will leave it better and not worse.

When evil manifests among organized groups of people in the halls of power, power by itself is not always considered the greatest prize. The true prize is to mold society until it reflects the psychopathy that rots at the core of their being. That is to say, the elites, the oligarchy, the mad philosopher kings want to make us just like they are: proudly soulless. Only then can they rule, because only then will they be totally unopposed.

The problem is humanity is not only hardwired with a dark side; we are also hardwired with a conscience — at least, most of us are.

The vast studies of psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung prove an in-depth and intricate inborn set of principles common to every person, regardless of time or place of birth and regardless of environmental circumstances. In some circles we refer to this as “natural law.” All people are born with a shared moral compass that is often expressed in various religious works throughout the ages. It is a universal voice, or guide, that we can choose to listen to or to ignore. Organized psychopaths have struggled with the existence of this inborn compass for centuries.

They have tried using force and fear. They have tried abusing our natural inclinations toward family and tribalism. They have tried corrupting the very religious institutions that are supposed to reinforce our consciences and teach us nobility. They have tried psychotropic substances and medications to paralyze our emotional center and make us malleable. They have tried everything, and they have failed so far. How do I know they have failed? Because you are able to read this article today.

Two methods remain prominent in the arsenal of elites.

Convince Good People To Do Evil In The Name Of ‘Good’

This strategy is still effective, depending on the scenario encountered. Elitists are very fond of presenting mind games to the public (in TV, cinema, books, etc.), which I call “no-win scenarios.” These games are hypothetical dilemmas that require the participant or viewer to make a forced choice with only two options: The participant can strictly follow his conscience, which usually means assured destruction for himself and others; or he can bend or break the rules of conscience in order to save lives and achieve a “greater good.”

Watch the propaganda tsunami in the show “24,” for example, and tally how many times the hero is faced with a no-win scenario. Then tally how many times he ignores his moral imperative in order to succeed. The message being sent is clear: Solid morality is not logical. Morality is a luxury for those who do not have to concern themselves with immediate survival. In other words, the world needs bad men to fight other bad men.

Of course, real life is not television; and there has never been nor will there ever be a legitimate example of a no-win scenario. There are no dilemmas that require good people to knowingly sacrifice conscience or destroy innocent lives in order to succeed. There are no dilemmas with only two available solutions. All social dilemmas are fluid, which means that solutions are shifting, but infinite. Just because you cannot see the way out does not mean the way out does not exist. To fight monsters, we do not need to become monsters. Survival is meaningless unless we can prove ourselves worthy of life. This does not mean one should not fight back against evil. On the contrary, one should always fight back. But if we fight without a code of principles and honor, then we will have lost before the battle begins.

Convince Good People That There Is No Such Thing As ‘Evil’ People

Any action, no matter how horrifying, can be rationalized by the intellectual mind or the mathematical mind. This is why we are born with an emotional and empathic side to our natures. Those who embrace evil often seek to soften their image through the use of cold rationalization. They appeal to our desire to feel logically responsible and to boost our intelligent self-image.

Some people might argue that the machinations of evil are self-evident, and that philosophical examinations such as this are unnecessary. They would say that there is no need to reassert that the works of psychopathy and elitism are fundamentally destructive, but they would be wrong. I was recently sifting through some mainstream articles when I came across this jewel entitled “Why Psychopaths Are More Successful.”

The article summarizes the theories behind a new “science self-help book” entitled The Good Psychopath’s Guide To Success. Co-author and Oxford psychology professor, Kevin Dutton, states that he “wanted to debunk the myth that all psychopaths are bad.” He wrote:

"I’d done research with the special forces, with surgeons, with top hedge fund managers and barristers. Almost all of them had psychopathic traits, but they’d harnessed them in ways to make them better at what they do."

Now, three important questions need to be asked of Dutton. First, what exactly is his definition of success? Second, if such people are “better” at what they do because of their psychopathic traits, who exactly are they “better” than? Is he suggesting that a non-psychopath could not be just as good a surgeon? Wouldn’t it be preferable to be good surgeon without psychopathy, one who still cares about the well-being of his patients rather than just his own success? And third, if a person can be accomplished in a field without abandoning his conscience as a psychopath does, what good is psychopathy to anyone?

You see, elitist academics like Dutton are not interested in answering such questions in an honest way because their goal is not necessarily to outline a legitimate argument for the usefulness of psychopaths. What they really want is to make psychopathy a morally acceptable ideal in the mainstream.

Dutton does this by asserting the false notion that there are such things as good psychopaths and bad psychopaths, thereby creating a superficial dichotomy he essentially pulled from thin air. Dutton cites several character traits he defines as being common to good psychopaths.

Psychopath Volume Control: Dutton argues that a good psychopath has the ability to turn up or turn down his level of perceived empathy in order to avoid burning bridges with those around him. What Dutton fails to mention (or just doesn’t understand) is that this “volume control” is very common to the average psychopath. In fact, psychopaths tend to be quite adept at reading the emotional states of others and adapting to their moods to appear more human. This is how psychopaths end up in marriages, with families and in positions of respect in a community. This is how psychopaths become leaders. Catastrophes arise, however, when the psychopath decides he is comfortable enough that he no longer needs to hide his inability to feel conscience or remorse. There is nothing special or good about a morally bankrupt person who happens to be good at disguise.

Fearlessness: Dutton’s claim that psychopaths are fearless is simply absurd and is not based in any practical psychology that I know of. Psychopaths are afraid all of the time. What they fear most is losing what they believe belongs to them. This could be money, power or even unlucky people caught in their web. This fear might drive them to take risks in order to accomplish certain goals. But let’s be clear: Only those who take risks because they love what they do have truly overcome fear. Psychopaths are incapable of true love.

Lack Of Empathy: This is the root of the movement toward rationalized moral relativism — the argument that empathy gets in the way of success and sometimes gets in the way of the “greater good.” Dutton claims that lack of empathy gives the psychopath focus, making him skilled in high-pressure situations. In a hostage situation, he says, he would much rather have a psychopath as his negotiator. Of course, he does not consider that his captors would likely be the same kinds of psychopaths he so praises in his book.

One would conclude by reading Dutton’s position that high-pressure jobs require a lack of empathy. And of course, the jobs with the highest pressure are those in political and military leadership. The philosophy of applying positive assumptions to psychopathic qualities is the highest dream of the elite. If you and I could be convinced to see their gruesome behavior as fully necessary to the greater good, then they will have ascended to a place beyond accountability. They become like the old gods of Olympus, dealing death and destruction above the judgment of mere mortals; and we will have handed them that godhood.

Self-Confidence: I think Dutton is confused over the difference between confidence and narcissism. The average psychopath is often self-obsessed, which means he is willing to do anything to get what he wants. This drive might be impressive, but it is not a product of the kind of self-awareness required to gain real self-confidence. A parasitic tick is not necessarily self-confident when he digs into the flesh of a dog; all he knows is that he desperately wants the blood underneath.

A Kingdom Of Psychopaths

In his collected writings entitled “The Undiscovered Self,” Jung theorized according to his work with hundreds of patients that some 10 percent of the human population at any given time has latent psychopathic characteristics, with a much smaller percentage living as full-fledged psychopaths. He surmised that this latent psychopathy will often stay hidden or unconscious for most people, unless their social environment becomes unstable enough to bring out their darker side.

The purges in the early days of communist Russia and Stalinism, for example, brought out the very worst in many normally harmless citizens. Neighbor turned against neighbor, and betrayal for personal gain became the norm. The collectivist hive became an incubator for psychopaths. What Dutton’s psychopathic success theory does not take into account is the fact that America, and much of the world today, is becoming a breeding ground for morally bankrupt people. That is to say, our society is now designed by psychopaths for psychopaths, and only psychopaths could succeed in such an environment. We are all being encouraged to become more psychopathic, more evil, in order to survive and thrive.

The destruction unleashed by the psychopathy of elitism far outweighs any potential benefits that might arise from their uncompromising brand of ingenuity. Anything these freaks of the psyche might accomplish can be accomplished with far less physical and moral cost by those with self-discipline and a love of their fellow man. I would be willing to wager any power monger that if he and his miscreant organizations were to disappear, humanity would leap forward in strides never before seen. Ultimately, those who embrace evil and those who elevate psychopathy are not the key to the betterment of the world; they are obstacles to the betterment of the world.

venerdì 23 maggio 2014

BILDERBERG MEMBER ADMITS SECRETIVE CONFAB

BILDERBERG MEMBER ADMITS SECRETIVE CONFAB MORE POWERFUL THAN DAVOS

Real decisions made at Bilderberg, Davos "pure PR talk"

by PAUL JOSEPH WATSON | MAY 22, 2014

http://www.infowars.com/bilderberg-member-admits-secretive-confab-more-powerful-than-davos/

A Bilderberg member has told respected German magazine Cicero that the secretive annual confab, set to take place next week in Copenhagen, is more powerful than Davos, which is dismissed as “pure PR talk.”

An extract from an article in the June edition of Cicero, a Berlin-based monthly publication, quotes an unnamed Bilderberg member as stating (after translation), “Those sentences which really matter are being spoken out (at Bilderberg). You learn an incredible amount. Davos in comparison is pure PR talk.”

The admission is extremely noteworthy given how Bilderberg and Davos are treated by the media. Whereas hundreds of journalists travel to Davos every year, generating thousands of headlines, a relative handful barely even mention Bilderberg and if they do it’s usually only to denigrate its importance as little other than a bugbear for conspiracy theorists.

The former editor of Cicero, Michael Naumann, previously worked with Bilderberg member Josef Joffe, publisher of prominent German weekly Die Zeit.

The revelation correlates with previous admissions from other prominent Bilderberg attendees underscoring the fact that the organization wields influence and is not merely a “talking shop” as it is routinely portrayed by the mainstream media.

In a 2010 radio interview, former NATO Secretary General and Bilderberg member Willy Claes admitted that Bilderberg attendees are mandated to implement decisions that are formulated during the annual conference of power brokers in their respective spheres of influence.

Observer editor and Bilderberg attendee Will Hutton also wrote in 1998, “(Bilderberg) is one of the key meetings of the year…. the consensus established is the backdrop against which policy is made worldwide.”

In 2009, Bilderberg chairman Étienne Davignon bragged about how the euro was a brainchild of the Bilderberg Group, with the single currency having been a dream of Bilderberg since 1955, nearly 50 years before its introduction.

The secretive group was also positioning itself for the 2008 financial collapse two years beforehand, with leaks out of the 2006 conference in Ottawa confirming that members were discussing an imminent housing collapse and a subsequent economic crisis.

The 2014 Bilderberg Group meeting will take place at the 5 star Marriott Hotel in Copenhagen from May 29-June 1. Infowars reporters will be live on the scene throughout the week.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor at large of Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com.

Cracking The “Conspiracy Theories’” Psycholinguistic Code

Cracking The “Conspiracy Theories’” Psycholinguistic Code: The Witch Hunt against Independent Research and Analysis

By James F. Tracy

Global Research, May 21, 2014

http://www.globalresearch.ca/cracking-conspiracy-theorys-psycholinguistic-code-the-witch-hunt-against-independent-research-and-analysis/5383108

A new crusade appears to be underway to target independent research and analysis available via alternative news media. This March saw the release of “cognitive infiltration” advocate Cass Sunstein’s new book, Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas. In April, the confirmed federal intelligence-gathering arm, Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), released a new report, “Agenda 21: The UN, Sustainability, and Right Wing Conspiracy Theory.” Most recently, Newsweek magazine carried a cover story, titled, “The Plots to Destroy America: Conspiracy Theories Are a Clear and Present Danger.”

As its discourse suggests, this propaganda campaign is using the now familiar “conspiracy theory” label, as outlined in Central Intelligence Agency Document 1035-960, the 1967 memo laying out a strategy for CIA “media assets” to counter criticism of the Warren Commission and attack independent investigators of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. At that time the targets included attorney Mark Lane and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who were routinely defamed and lampooned in major US news outlets.

Declassified government documents have proven Lane and Garrison’s allegations of CIA-involvement in the assassination largely accurate. Nevertheless, the prospect of being subject to the conspiracy theorist smear remains a potent weapon for intimidating authors, journalists, and scholars from interrogating complex events, policies, and other potentially controversial subject matter.

As the title of Newsweek’s feature story indicates, a primary element of contemporary propaganda campaigns using the conspiracy theory/ist label is to suggest that citizens’ distrust of government imperatives and activities tends toward violent action. The “conspiracy theorist” term is intentionally conflated with “conspiracist,” thus linking the two in the mass mind. Images of Lee Harvey Oswald, Timothy McVeigh, and Osama bin Laden are subtly invoked when the magic terms are referenced. In reality, it is typically Western governments using their police or military who prove the foremost purveyors of violence and the threat of violence—both domestically and abroad.

In his Newsweek article, author and journalist Kurt Eichenwald selectively employs the assertions of the SPLC, Sunstein, and a handful of social scientists to postulate in Orwellian fashion that independent research and analysis of the United Nations’ Agenda 21, the anti-educational thrust of “Common Core,” the dangers of vaccine injury and water fluoridation, and September 11—all important policies and issues worthy of serious study and concern—are a “contagion” to the body politic.

In a functioning public, honest academics and journalists would uninhibitedly delve into these and similar problems–GMOs, state-sponsored terrorism, the dangers of non-ionizing radiation– particularly since such phenomena pose grave threats to both popular sovereignty and self determination. Such intellectuals would then provide important findings to foster vigorous public debate.

Absent this, segments of the populace still capable of critical thought are inclined to access and probe information that leads them to question bureaucratic edicts and, in some cases, suggest a potentially broader political agenda. In today’s world, however, such research projects carried out by the hoi polloi that are expressly reserved for government or foundation-funded technocrats “’distort the debate that is crucial to democracy,’” says Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan.

With the above in mind, a simple yet instructive exercise in illustrating the psycholinguistic feature of the conspiracy theory propaganda technique is to replace “conspiracy theories/ists” with the phrase, “independent research and analysis,” or “independent researchers.” Let us apply this to some passages from Eichenwald’s recent Newsweek piece.

For example, “Psychological research has shown that the only trait that consistently indicates the probability someone will believe in conspiracy theories independent research and analysis is if that person believes in other conspiracy theories independent research and analysis,” Eichenwald sagely concludes.

“One of the most common ways of introducing conspiracy theories independent research and analysis is to ‘just ask questions’ about an official account,’’’ says Karen Douglas, co-editor of the British Journal of Social Psychology and a senior academic … at Britain’s University of Kent.”

In fact, substituting the phrases accordingly throughout the article significantly neutralizes its overall propagandistic effect.

Researchers agree; independent research and analysis are espoused by people at every level of society seeking ways of calming the chaos of life, sometimes by simply reinforcing convictions.

While the growth in the number of news outlets has helped spread independent research and analysis, it doesn’t compare to the impact of social media and the Internet, experts say.

9/11 conspiracy theorists independent researchers protest outside the World Trade Center in 2011 [Photo caption]

“If you have social networks of people who are talking with one another, you can have independent research and analysis spread in a hurry,’’ says Cass Sunstein, a professor at Harvard Law School … “It literally is as if it was contagious.”

While some may dismiss independent researchers as ignorant or unstable, research has shown that to be false. “The idea that only dumb people believe this stuff is wrong,’’ says Dartmouth’s Nyhan.

People who more strongly believed in independent research and analysis were significantly less likely to use sunscreen or have an annual medical checkup.

According to a just-released report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the independent research and analysis flowed in April at a hearing before Alabama’s Senate Education Committee about legislation to allow school districts to reject Common Core.

It’s true. Since September 11, 2001 the internet has increasingly allowed for everyday people to retrieve, study, and share information on important events and phenomena as never before. And as a recent study published in the prominent journal Frontiers of Psychology suggests, tendering “alternative conspiracy theories” to the government-endorsed explanations of September 11, 2001 is a sign of “individuation,” or psychological well being and contentment.

Such a condition is a clear danger to those who wish to wield uncontested political authority. Indeed, the capacity to freely disseminate and discuss knowledge of government malfeasance is the foremost counterbalance to tyranny. Since this ability cannot be readily confiscated or suppressed, it must be ridiculed, marginalized, even diagnosed as a psychiatric condition.

The recent abandonment of network neutrality may eventually further subdue the nuisance of independent research, thought, and analysis. Until then, the corporate media’s attempts to bamboozle and terrify the American public with the well-worn conspiracy theory meme will be a prevalent feature of what passes for news and commentary today.

giovedì 15 maggio 2014

NSA Spying Is Meant to Crush Citizens

Spying Is Meant to Crush Citizens’ Dissent, Not Catch Terrorists

Washington’s Blog
May 15, 2014

While many Americans understand why the NSA is conducting mass surveillance of U.S. citizens, some are still confused about what’s really going on.

In his new book, No Place to Hide, Glenn Greenwald writes:

Image: NSA HQ (Wiki Commons).

The perception that invasive surveillance is confined only to a marginalised and deserving group of those “doing wrong” – the bad people – ensures that the majority acquiesces to the abuse of power or even cheers it on. But that view radically misunderstands what goals drive all institutions of authority. “Doing something wrong” in the eyes of such institutions encompasses far more than illegal acts, violent behaviour and terrorist plots. It typically extends to meaningful dissent and any genuine challenge. It is the nature of authority to equate dissent with wrongdoing, or at least with a threat.

The record is suffused with examples of groups and individuals being placed under government surveillance by virtue of their dissenting views and activism – Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement, anti-war activists, environmentalists. In the eyes of the government and J Edgar Hoover’s FBI, they were all “doing something wrong”: political activity that threatened the prevailing order.

The FBI’s domestic counterintelligence programme, Cointelpro, was first exposed by a group of anti-war activists who had become convinced that the anti-war movement had been infiltrated, placed under surveillance and targeted with all sorts of dirty tricks. Lacking documentary evidence to prove it and unsuccessful in convincing journalists to write about their suspicions, they broke into an FBI branch office in Pennsylvania in 1971 and carted off thousands of documents.

Files related to Cointelpro showed how the FBI had targeted political groups and individuals it deemed subversive and dangerous, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, black nationalist movements, socialist and communist organizations, anti-war protesters and various rightwing groups. The bureau had infiltrated them with agents who, among other things, attempted to manipulate members into agreeing to commit criminal acts so that the FBI could arrest and prosecute them.

Those revelations led to the creation of the Senate Church Committee, which concluded: “[Over the course of 15 years] the bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilate operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of first amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.”

These incidents were not aberrations of the era. During the Bush years, for example, documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) revealed, as the group put it in 2006, “new details of Pentagon surveillance of Americans opposed to the Iraq war, including Quakers and student groups“. The Pentagon was “keeping tabs on non-violent protesters by collecting information and storing it in a military anti-terrorism database”. The evidence shows that assurances that surveillance is only targeted at those who “have done something wrong” should provide little comfort, since a state will reflexively view any challenge to its power as wrongdoing.

The opportunity those in power have to characterise political opponents as “national security threats” or even “terrorists” has repeatedly proven irresistible. In the past decade, the government, in an echo of Hoover’s FBI, has formally so designatedenvironmental activists, broad swaths of anti-government rightwing groups, anti-war activists, and associations organised around Palestinian rights. Some individuals within those broad categories may deserve the designation, but undoubtedly most do not, guilty only of holding opposing political views. Yet such groups are routinely targeted for surveillance by the NSA and its partners.

One document from the Snowden files, dated 3 October 2012, chillingly underscores the point. It revealed that the agency has been monitoring the online activities of individuals it believes express “radical” ideas and who have a “radicalising” influence on others.

***

The NSA explicitly states that none of the targeted individuals is a member of a terrorist organisation or involved in any terror plots. Instead, their crime is the views they express, which are deemed “radical“, a term that warrants pervasive surveillance and destructive campaigns to “exploit vulnerabilities”.

Among the information collected about the individuals, at least one of whom is a “US person”, are details of their online sex activities and “online promiscuity” – the porn sites they visit and surreptitious sex chats with women who are not their wives. The agency discusses ways to exploit this information to destroy their reputations and credibility.

The NSA’s treatment of Anonymous, as well as the vague category of people known as “hacktivists”, is especially troubling and extreme. That’s because Anonymous is not actually a structured group but a loosely organised affiliation of people around an idea: someone becomes affiliated with Anonymous by virtue of the positions they hold. Worse still, the category “hacktivists” has no fixed meaning: it can mean the use of programming skills to undermine the security and functioning of the internetbut can also refer to anyone who uses online tools to promote political ideals. That the NSA targets such broad categories of people is tantamount to allowing it to spy on anyone anywhere, including in the US, whose ideas the government finds threatening.

Greenwald told Democracy Now yesterday:

People are aware of J. Edgar Hoover’s abuses. The nature of that series of events is that the United States government looks at people who oppose what they do as being, quote-unquote, “threats.” That’sthe nature of power, is to regard anybody who’s a threat to your power as a broad national security threat.

***

There has already been reporting that shows that—the document, for example, in the book that shows the NSA plotting about how to use information that it collected against people it considers, quote, “radicalizers.” These are people the NSA itself says are not terrorists, do not belong to terrorist organizations, do not plan terrorist attacks. They simply express ideas the NSA considers radical. The NSA has collected their online sexual activity, chats of a sexual nature that they’ve had, pornographic websites that they visit, and plans, in the document, on how to use this information publicly to destroy the reputations or credibility of those people to render them ineffective as advocates. There are other documents showing the monitoring of who visits the WikiLeaks website and the collection of data that can identify who they are. There’s information about how to use deception to undermine people who are affiliated with the online activism group Anonymous.

Recent stories show that Greenwald is right:

• In 1972, the CIA Director Relabeled “Dissidents” As “Terrorists” So He Could Continue Spying On Them … And Nothing Has Changed

• 500 Years of History Shows that Mass Spying Is ALWAYS Aimed at Crushing Dissent

• “These Programs Were Never About Terrorism: They’re About Economic Spying, Social Control, and Diplomatic Manipulation. They’re About Power”

And it’s not just spying …

The government may treat anyone who challenges its policies as terrorists. For example:

• The former head of the NSA and CIA compared privacy advocates to terrorists

• Peaceful protest may be treated as terrorism by the FBI

• Questioning war may be considered terrorism

The indefinite detention law may be used against American dissenters. Specifically, the trial judge in the lawsuit challenging the law had asked the government attorneys 5 times whether journalists like Pulitzer prize-winning reporter Chris Hedges could be indefinitely detained simply for interviewing and thenwriting about bad guys. The government refused to promise that journalists like Hedges won’t be thrown in a dungeon for the rest of their lives without any right to talk to a judge.

Constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead writes:

No matter what the Obama administration may say to the contrary, actions speak louder than words, and history shows that the U.S. government is not averse to locking up its own citizens for its own purposes. What the NDAA does is open the door for the government to detain as a threat to national security anyone viewed as a troublemaker. According to government guidelines for identifying domestic extremists—a word used interchangeably with terrorists, that technically applies to anyone exercising their First Amendment rights in order to criticize the government.

Daniel Ellsberg notes that Obama’s claim of power to indefinitely detain people without charges or access to a lawyer or the courts is a power that even King George – the guy we fought the Revolutionary War against – didn’t claim. (And former judge and adjunct professor of constitutional law Andrew Napolitano points out that Obama’s claim that he can indefinitely detain prisoners even after they are acquitted of their crimes is a power that even Hitler and Stalin didn’t claim.)

And the former top NSA official who created NSA’s mass surveillance system says, “We are now in a police state“.

Sweden's Elite Go To War

Sweden's Elites More Loyal to NATO than to Their People

By Jan Oberg*

LUND, Sweden, May 2014 (Columnist Service) - Over the last 25-30 years Sweden’s military, security and foreign policy elites have changed Sweden’s policy 180 degrees.

These fundamental changes were initiated by the Social Democratic government under Prime Minister Goran Persson (1996–2006) and have been carried out with virtually no public debate.

The rapprochement with interventionism, militarism and the U.S./NATO in all fields has been planned, incremental, furtive and dishonest; in short, unworthy of a democracy.

These elites are more loyal to Brussels and Washington than to the Swedes.

If your image of Sweden is that of a progressive, innovative and peace-promoting country with a global mindset, an advocate of international law, it is – sad to say – outdated.

Sweden is no longer neutral and it is only formally non-aligned; there is no closer ally than the U.S./NATO, although it is not a NATO member. It has stopped developing policies of its own and basically positions itself in the European Union and NATO framework. It no longer produces important new thinking – the last was Olof Palme’s Commission on Common Security (1982).

It has no disarmament ambassador and does not consider the United Nations important; there is not a single Swede among the U.N. Blue Helmets.

Nuclear abolition is far down on the agenda, problematic as a NATO-aspiring country. But one thing has not changed: Sweden remains the world’s largest arms exporter per capita.

Sweden no longer contributes to the protection of smaller states through a commitment to international law. Its elite wholeheartedly supported the bombing of Serbia/Kosovo. It thought – also under Social Democratic leadership – that the mass-killing sanctions on Iraq and the occupation were appropriate.

Sweden supported the destruction of Libya – participating with its planes there, although it only carried out reconnaissance, not bombing, missions.

Sweden did not support the planned war on Syria but also did not voice any audible criticism of the West’s support of only the militant opposition, including Al-Qaeda affiliates.

Sweden’s foreign minister Carl Bildt operates mainly as an eminently well-informed international affairs traveler and blogger who doesn’t seem to want to waste too much of his precious time on being a minister. And when he does, he isn’t known for consulting many people around him.

Here follow a few recent events/news which further emphasise the deplorable path Sweden – the elites rather than the people – have decided to follow.

1. Sweden’s security political elite has lately been considering broader alliances with NATO and the EU. How enigmatic! After having been neutral and non-aligned during tough confrontations and tension in the Cold War years, Sweden now needs to join NATO when there is no single analysis anywhere indicating that it is likely that Sweden will be faced with a threat in the foreseeable future.

While the intelligent security and defence discourse is now about human security, the environment and high-tech challenges, Sweden’s elites talk about defence as weapons only.

This is dangerous ”group think” steered by bureaucratic vested interests and paid for by taxpayers who are de facto threatened more by these interests than by Russian President Vladimir Putin. A reality check would lead to a reality shock.

2. Swedish planes shall now, in the light of a conveniently hysterical interpretation of the crisis in Ukraine, equip its planes with cruise missiles.

The security priesthood of the country consists of a handful of researchers on military affairs at huge, well-financed state institutes in close contact with politicians and the military with whom military-loyal journalists have close bonds.

The country that once did something for a better world has joined the militarist world. At a time when both NATO and the U.S. are getting weaker, Sweden’s elites plan to put all Sweden’s eggs in that basket.

It has no policy vis–à–vis, say, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries or any vision of the world in 20 years to navigate towards. It has no ideals, values or commitments, only a ”follow-the-U.S./NATO and EU” flock mentality.

3. The U.S. ambassador to Sweden, Mark Brzezinski, recently told Sweden to join NATO, otherwise it won’t get any help in the event of an attack – in short, blackmailing disguised as deep concern and generous offer to bring (conditional) help. This was revealed by the conservative Swedish daily, Svenska Dagbladet.

The message is based on “fearology2 – because everybody knows that should Russia attack anyone, Sweden would not be the first target and it would be in the interest of NATO to control Swedish territory before any spreading of Russian forces from somewhere else to the Nordic area.

In short, NATO’s interest in Sweden is much greater than Sweden’s in NATO. Whatever one may think of these fantasies, they are just that: No one has thought up a credible scenario for how Sweden would be invaded by Russia and remain defenceless.

But this is the military-fundamentalist propaganda the Swedes are the target of these years: We must join NATO because we have such a weak defence that we can’t defend ourselves!

The liberal party’s defence policy spokesman, Allan Widman, recently stated this in a manner indicative of the low intellectual level of defence discussions here: ”I can only state the fact that Russia has about 140 million people and Sweden nine million. We won’t be able to manage serious challenges from outside on our own…”

Now, if the Swedish military can’t provide any protection for the nine million Swedes with a budget of eight billion dollars (among the 10 percent highest per capita in the world) at its disposal, it’s time to ask how inefficient and cost-maximising it can be without its leadership being fired.

4. Just this week it was decided that AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System), planes can pass through Swedish airspace in connection with NATO’s Ukraine crisis missions.

5. Sweden (like Finland) is discussing how to receive military aid, including troops, from NATO. This goes beyond what NATO members Denmark, Norway and Iceland have ever accepted. And Sweden is not a NATO member!

This must not be Sweden’s future. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

*Jan Oberg, director and co-founder of the Transnational Foundation (TFF) in Lund, Sweden.

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