Is America Ready for Palin Place

President Palin

by James Keye / May 31st, 2011

Is America ready for a Palin presidency? Not, are you ready. Not, are the majority of the people ready. It is; are the American people sufficiently confused and misled so that a pure, pliable figurehead can be installed by the economic elite? I would like to answer no, but cannot.

Dispensing immediately with the obvious: G.W. Bush was a figurehead president, just not pure and completely pliable. His connection with his powerful dynastic family and his own pathologies limited his usefulness. Obama is a figurehead, though more on his own terms. He is acceptable as an antidote to the poison of the Bush presidency, but too willful and broadly hubristic to serve all the wishes of the elite with the desired alacrity.

Palin is perfect. A shallow person, with the unreflective, narrow pridefulness and arrogance needed to believe herself capable of discharging the office, but ultimately aware at some level that she has no ideas and that others will run things as they see fit… and she is naturally lazy; all hat and no cattle, and she just loooovvees showing off the hat.

I don’t think that the manufacturers of political wisdom and talent, the Roves and the Luntzs, will try her this time around, but the following is the fantasy:

A look inside the mind of a psychopathic political manipulator – you may picture Karl Rove if you like – “Black guy as president, economy in trouble, high unemployment, unpopular wars, social confusion and unrest… and we still have abortion, God and the homos to dick around with. Then there’s our candidate list; can’t really see how to get the lipstick on that pig: divorces with prejudice, flip-floppers, egomaniacs and just maniacs… maybe it’s time to just go for it. I’ll check with the C of C and the other boys, but this may be it.”

After checking with ‘the boys’ and working on the possibility of manufacturing the needed image from the available raw materials; “Sarah is going to be just right. We only need 20 sound bites and a simple stump speech, she can learn those; it’ll be just like the question period of a beauty contest. We’ll parade her around the country half the time to the rodeo and NASCAR crowd; the other half to American Idol, Fox news and talk radio; and the other half to the staged “intellectual” events, but only half as much as the others.

“Let’s see, positives: great looking and old enough to seem mature. She’s got the come-hither and watch-out-bud looks on command, cuts in half the need to know the international situation. Good physical presence, moves well; we can use that. Socially fearless – useful but dangerous unless managed; loves the spotlight and glows under adoration: This is contagious with the crowd.

“Never been divorced. The new baby thing seems to be neutralized and the Dems aren’t likely to go for blood on that stuff anyway – still, better have a spot or two prepared. The protective mother thing can be worked, but gotta get away from the mother bear angle, too… sort of smelly and individual. Mother loves you all, a national mother; something more like that; can work in the bear strength a little, but not so much the claws ripping hikers to pieces thing.

“The name is good: Sarah Palin. Little House On The Prairie. President Palin. She’d look great in a sunbonnet.

“Negatives, wow! No experience, no appropriate knowledge, not especially bright, family history like Peyton Place (I can see it now from the Dems– for the older folks – references to Palin Place), but might work the ‘everyman’ angle, long suffering mother thing. She’s lazy, ambitious yes, but not an 18 to 20 hour a day worker. High maintenance, will need a team of professional sycophants.

“She quit as governor of Alaska in the middle of her first term after having been the major of Tiny Town where she was fiscally irresponsible (please, give me the job of playing something like that up in my opposition)… get 30 guys working on that spin this minute.

“The bouncy, bubbly thing can only go so far especially when about all that’s left is Mean Girl. Got to get ‘sincere and caring’ going – maybe with actors and a little selected footage of Sarah looking wholesome – she always seems to smirk at just the wrong moment; and some Goddamned liberal media photographer will get it.

“But compared to the rest she’s pretty good and she’s perfect as a figurehead. The C of C and the boys will supply all the ranch hands needed to run the cattle and Sarah, uh, President Palin, will wear the hat with style.”

So I ask you, are the American people ready to be rolled, rolled finally and completely out of democracy and fully into an unrecoverable plutocracy? If Palin is run for president, then you can be sure that the US Chamber of Commerce and the boys believe we are.

James Keye is the nom de plume of a biologist and psychologist who after discovering a mismatch between academe and himself went into private business for many years. His whole post-pubescent life has been focused on understanding at both the intellectual and personal levels what it is to be of the human species; he claims some success. Email him at: jkeye1632@gmail.com. Read other articles by James, or visit James's website.

This article was posted on Tuesday, May 31st, 2011 at 8:00am and is filed under Democracy, Elections.

Soldier: Base Building in Afghanistan Addictive 'Like Crack'

Published on Tuesday, May 31, 2011 by The Washington Post

Cost of War in Afghanistan Will Be Major Factor in Troop-Reduction Talks

by Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Of all the statistics that President Obama’s national security team will consider when it debates the size of forthcoming troop reductions in Afghanistan, the most influential number probably will not be how many insurgents have been killed or the amount of territory wrested from the Taliban, according to aides to those who will participate.

It will be the cost of the war.

The U.S. military is on track to spend $113 billion on its operations in Afghanistan this fiscal year, and it is seeking $107 billion for the next. To many of the president’s civilian advisers, that price is too high, given a wide federal budget gap that will require further cuts to domestic programs and increased deficit spending. Growing doubts about the need for such a broad nation-building mission there in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death have only sharpened that view.

“Where we’re at right now is simply not sustainable,” said one senior administration official, who, like several others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal policy deliberations.

Civilian advisers, who do not want to be seen as unwilling to pay for the war, are expected to frame their cost concerns in questions about the breadth of U.S. operations — arguing that the troop surge Obama authorized in 2009 has achieved many of its goals — instead of directly tackling money matters. When the president’s war cabinet evaluates troop-withdrawal options in the next few weeks presented by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top coalition commander, “it’s not like each of them will have price tags next to them,” the official said. But “it’s certainly going to shape how most of the civilians look at this.”

The question of cost will have a far greater impact on the eventual decision than it did during the White House debate about the Afghan surge in late 2009. The heightened fiscal pressures, coupled with bin Laden’s killing four weeks ago, could shift the balance of power in the Situation Room toward Vice President Biden and other civilians who had been skeptical of the surge and favor a faster troop drawdown than top commanders would prefer.

“Money is the new 800-pound gorilla,” said another senior administration official involved in Afghanistan policy, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It shifts the debate from ‘Is the strategy working?’ to ‘Can we afford this?’ And when you view it that way, the scope of the mission that we have now is far, far less defensible.”

Military and civilian officials agree that the cost of the Afghan mission is staggering. The amount per deployed service member in Afghanistan, which the administration estimates at $1 million per year, is significantly higher than it was in Iraq because fuel and other supplies must be trucked into the landlocked nation, often through circuitous routes. Bases, meanwhile, have to be built from scratch.

The U.S.-led effort to create a new national army, which Afghanistan never had, already has consumed more than $28 billion. The Pentagon wants $12.8 billion for fiscal 2012 — the largest single line item in next year’s Defense Department budget request — to continue training and equipping Afghan soldiers.

To civilian administration officials, the budgetary drain of the Afghan war means fewer resources to put toward other pressing national security challenges.

Last year, the United States spent nearly $1.3 billion on military and civilian reconstruction operations in one district of Helmand province — home to 80,000 people who live mostly in mud-brick compounds — about as much as it provided to Egypt in military assistance.

Civilian officials expect top military commanders to resist calls for steep reductions. Military leaders maintain that the 30,000-troop surge and an increase in civilian reconstruction efforts have resulted in a dramatic turnaround of what had been a foundering war, creating the possibility of a reasonably stable nation.

They insist that a rapid withdrawal of forces would make that goal unachievable by rolling back territorial gains against the Taliban and jeopardizing efforts to develop Afghan security forces and build government institutions. U.S. military officers also contend that the aim of a negotiated settlement with the Taliban — an outcome espoused by the White House and the State Department, but not as vigorously embraced by top commanders — would be at risk if there were fewer troops to pressure the insurgents.

“We’re at a critical point in the war,” one senior military official said. “If we send the message that we’re letting up, what incentive does the Taliban have to make a deal with us?”

Civilian officials argue that recent gains against the Taliban and al-Qaeda have largely been the result of a counterterrorism strategy implemented by Special Operations forces, not the costly, large-footprint counterinsurgency mission that aims to secure the country district by district. Reducing conventional forces, some civilians assert, will not fundamentally alter the calculus that has led to interest among Taliban leaders in exploring peace talks with the Afghan government and U.S. representatives.

“Our mission is to disrupt and dismantle al-Qaeda, and what the bin Laden killing shows us is that you can do that with a small number of highly skilled guys,” the second senior official said. “You don’t need Army and Marine battalions in dozens of districts.”

Concern about war costs is putting new political pressure on Obama, much of it from fellow Democrats. On Thursday, the House narrowly defeated an amendment calling for an accelerated withdrawal from Afghanistan and a fixed timetable for turning over military operations to the Kabul government. The vote, 204 to 215, was far thinner than last year’s 162-to-260 tally on the same issue.

In the Senate, influential members have said recently that the cost of the war merits a reexamination of the overall U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. “It is fundamentally unsustainable to continue spending $10 billion a month on a massive military operation with no end in sight,” Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said this month.

Some Republican presidential hopefuls also are beginning to have second thoughts about the scope of the war, which White House officials think could provide political cover to Obama as he pursues a drawdown. Among those who have questioned the cost is former Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr., who told ABC News that “we have to evaluate very carefully our presence in Afghanistan,” which he called “heavy and very expensive.”

An initial indication of the White House’s view on the costs occurred this month when the National Security Council rejected the military’s request to expand Afghanistan’s security forces by 73,000 personnel.

Concerned not just about the price of training but also the cost of maintaining the force — estimated at $6 billion to $8 billion a year, which far exceeds the resources of the Kabul government, whose annual budget is about $1.5 billion — the NSC authorized the addition of just 47,000 personnel. That would bring the total combined size of the Afghan army and national police force to 352,000.

“We’re building an army that they’ll never be able to pay for, which means we’re going to have to pay for it for years and years to come,” the first official said.

Military officials said reducing troop levels might not reduce costs proportionally because of the need to sustain bases and other infrastructure. Their intention is to “thin out” U.S. forces in many areas, not withdraw entirely, to facilitate an orderly transition to the Afghan government. “Pulling out more forces than prudent may not yield the cost savings everyone wants,” the senior military official said.

Although troop reductions will almost certainly begin in July — the month Obama promised to start a drawdown — military engineers and contractors continue to expand bases across southern Afghanistan.

At Camp Leatherneck, the main Marine outpost in Helmand province, workers recently finished building a second runway that can accommodate the Air Force’s largest cargo jet, even though some military officials deemed the existing runway sufficient. The base also has been outfitted with paved streets, complete with American-style signs.

Recent supplemental appropriations to fund the war, which have included billions of dollars for construction and equipment, “have been like crack” cocaine for the military, said one officer in southern Afghanistan.“We’ve become addicted to building.”

But moving too aggressively to control that spending could open the White House to criticism that it is depriving troops of necessary supplies and infrastructure. As a consequence, administration officials have concluded that the only practical way for them to bring down costs is by reducing troops.

“The head count is the only variable that we can control,” said a civilian official involved in war policy.

© 2011 The Washington Post Company

Welcome to Post-Legal America and the National Security Complex

TomDispatch.com

Posted by Tom Engelhardt at 9:05pm, May 30, 2011.

Dumb Question of the Twenty-first Century: Is It Legal?

Post-Legal America and the National Security Complex

By Tom Engelhardt

Is the Libyan war legal? Was Bin Laden’s killing legal? Is it legal for the president of the United States to target an American citizen for assassination? Were those “enhanced interrogation techniques” legal? These are all questions raised in recent weeks. Each seems to call out for debate, for answers. Or does it?

Now, you couldn’t call me a legal scholar. I’ve never set foot inside a law school, and in 66 years only made it onto a single jury (dismissed before trial when the civil suit was settled out of court). Still, I feel at least as capable as any constitutional law professor of answering such questions.

My answer is this: they are irrelevant. Think of them as twentieth-century questions that don't begin to come to grips with twenty-first century American realities. In fact, think of them, and the very idea of a nation based on the rule of law, as a reflection of nostalgia for, or sentimentality about, a long-lost republic. At least in terms of what used to be called “foreign policy,” and more recently “national security,” the United States is now a post-legal society. (And you could certainly include in this mix the too-big-to-jail financial and corporate elite.)

It’s easy enough to explain what I mean. If, in a country theoretically organized under the rule of law, wrongdoers are never brought to justice and nobody is held accountable for possibly serious crimes, then you don’t have to be a constitutional law professor to know that its citizens actually exist in a post-legal state. If so, “Is it legal?” is the wrong question to be asking, even if we have yet to discover the right one.

Pretzeled Definitions of Torture

Of course, when it came to a range of potential Bush-era crimes -- the use of torture, the running of offshore “black sites,” the extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects to lands where they would be tortured, illegal domestic spying and wiretapping, and the launching of wars of aggression -- it’s hardly news that no one of the slightest significance has ever been brought to justice. On taking office, President Obama offered a clear formula for dealing with this issue. He insisted that Americans should “look forward, not backward” and turn the page on the whole period, and then set his Justice Department to work on other matters. But honestly, did anyone anywhere ever doubt that no Bush-era official would be brought to trial here for such potential crimes?

Everyone knows that in the United States if you’re a robber caught breaking into someone’s house, you’ll be brought to trial, but if you’re caught breaking into someone else’s country, you’ll be free to take to the lecture circuit, write your memoirs, or become a university professor.

Of all the “debates” over legality in the Bush and Obama years, the torture debate has perhaps been the most interesting, and in some ways, the most realistic. After 9/11, the Bush administration quickly turned to a crew of hand-picked Justice Department lawyers to create the necessary rationale for what its officials most wanted to do -- in their quaint phrase, “take the gloves off.” And those lawyers responded with a set of pseudo-legalisms that put various methods of “information extraction” beyond the powers of the Geneva Conventions, the U.N.’s Convention Against Torture (signed by President Ronald Reagan and ratified by the Senate), and domestic anti-torture legislation, including the War Crimes Act of 1996 (passed by a Republican Congress).

In the process, they created infamously pretzled new definitions for acts previously accepted as torture. Among other things, they essentially left the definition of whether an act was torture or not to the torturer (that is, to what he believed he was doing at the time). In the process, acts that had historically been considered torture became “enhanced interrogation techniques.” An example would be waterboarding, which had once been bluntly known as “the water torture” or “the water cure” and whose perpetrators had, in the past, been successfully prosecuted in American military and civil courts. Such techniques were signed off on after first reportedly being “demonstrated” in the White House to an array of top officials, including the vice-president, the national security adviser, the attorney general, and the secretary of state.

In the U.S. (and here was the realism of the debate that followed), the very issue of legality fell away almost instantly. Newspapers rapidly replaced the word “torture” -- when applied to what American interrogators did -- with the term “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which was widely accepted as less controversial and more objective. At the same time, the issue of the legality of such techniques was superseded by a fierce national debate over their efficacy. It has lasted to this day and returned with a bang with the bin Laden killing.

Nothing better illustrates the nature of our post-legal society. Anti-torture laws were on the books in this country. If legality had truly mattered, it would have been beside the point whether torture was an effective way to produce “actionable intelligence” and so prepare the way for the killing of a bin Laden.

By analogy, it’s perfectly reasonable to argue that robbing banks can be a successful and profitable way to make a living, but who would agree that a successful bank robber hadn’t committed an act as worthy of prosecution as an unsuccessful one caught on the spot? Efficacy wouldn’t matter in a society whose central value was the rule of law. In a post-legal society in which the ultimate value espoused is the safety and protection a national security state can offer you, it means the world.

As if to make the point, the Supreme Court recently offered a post-legal ruling for our moment: it declined to review a lower court ruling that blocked a case in which five men, who had experienced extraordinary rendition (a fancy globalized version of kidnapping) and been turned over to torturing regimes elsewhere by the CIA, tried to get their day in court. No such luck. The Obama administration claimed (as had the Bush administration before it) that simply bringing such a case to court would imperil national security (that is, state secrets) -- and won. As Ben Wizner, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who argued the case, summed matters up, "To date, every victim of the Bush administration's torture regime has been denied his day in court."

To put it another way, every CIA torturer, all those involved in acts of rendition, and all the officials who okayed such acts, as well as the lawyers who put their stamp of approval on them, are free to continue their lives untouched. Recently, the Obama administration even went to court to “prevent a lawyer for a former CIA officer convicted in Italy in the kidnapping of a radical Muslim cleric from privately sharing classified information about the case with a Federal District Court judge.” (Yes, Virginia, elsewhere in the world a few Americans have been tried in absentia for Bush-era crimes.) In response, wrote Scott Shane of the New York Times, the judge “pronounced herself ‘literally speechless.’”

The realities of our moment are simple enough: other than abusers too low-level (see England, Lynndie and Graner, Charles) to matter to our national security state, no one in the CIA, and certainly no official of any sort, is going to be prosecuted for the possible crimes Americans committed in the Bush years in pursuit of the Global War on Terror.

On Not Blowing Whistles

It’s beyond symbolic, then, that only one figure from the national security world seems to remain in the “legal” crosshairs: the whistle-blower. If, as the president of the United States, you sign off on a system of warrantless surveillance of Americans -- the sort that not so long ago was against the law in this country -- or if you happen to run a giant telecom company and go along with that system by opening your facilities to government snoops, or if you run the National Security Agency or are an official in it overseeing the kind of data mining and intelligence gathering that goes with such a program, then -- as recent years have made clear -- you are above the law.

If, however, you happen to be an NSA employee who feels that the agency has overstepped the bounds of legality in its dealings with Americans, that it is moving in Orwellian directions, and that it should be exposed, and if you offer even unclassified information to a newspaper reporter, as was the case with Thomas Drake, be afraid, be very afraid. You may be prosecuted by the Bush and then Obama Justice Departments, and threatened with 35 years in prison under the Espionage Act (not for “espionage,” but for having divulged the most minor of low-grade state secrets in a world in which, increasingly, everything having to do with the state is becoming a secret).

If you are a CIA employee who tortured no one but may have given information damaging to the reputation of the national security state -- in this case about a botched effort to undermine the Iranian nuclear program -- to a journalist, watch out. You are likely, as in the case of Jeffrey Sterling, to find yourself in a court of law. And if you happen to be a journalist like James Risen who may have received that information, you are likely to be hit by a Justice Department subpoena attempting to force you to reveal your source, under threat of imprisonment for contempt of court.

If you are a private in the U.S. military with access to a computer with low-level classified material from the Pentagon’s wars and the State Department’s activities on it, if you’ve seen something of the grim reality of what the national security state looks like when superimposed on Iraq, and if you decide to shine some light on that world, as Bradley Manning did, they’ll toss you into prison and throw away the key. You’ll be accused of having “blood on your hands” and tried, again under the Espionage Act, by those who actually have blood on their hands and are beyond all accountability.

When it comes to acts of state today, there is only one law: don’t pull up the curtain on the doings of any aspect of our spreading National Security Complex or the imperial executive that goes with it. As CIA Director Leon Panetta put it in addressing his employees over leaks about the operation to kill bin Laden, “Disclosure of classified information to anyone not cleared for it -- reporters, friends, colleagues in the private sector or other agencies, former Agency officers -- does tremendous damage to our work. At worst, leaks endanger lives... Unauthorized disclosure of those details not only violates the law, it seriously undermines our capability to do our job."

And when someone in Congress actually moves to preserve some aspect of older notions of American privacy (versus American secrecy), as Senator Rand Paul did recently in reference to the Patriot Act, he is promptly smeared as potentially “giving terrorists the opportunity to plot attacks against our country, undetected."

Enhanced Legal Techniques

Here is the reality of post-legal America: since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the National Security Complex has engorged itself on American fears and grown at a remarkable pace. According to Top Secret America, a Washington Post series written in mid-2010, 854,000 people have “top secret” security clearances, “33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001... 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks... [and] some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security, and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.”

Just stop a moment to take that in. And then let this sink in as well: whatever any one of those employees does inside that national security world, no matter how “illegal” the act, it’s a double-your-money bet that he or she will never be prosecuted for it (unless it happens to involve letting Americans know something about just how they are being “protected”).

Consider what it means to have a U.S. Intelligence Community (as it likes to call itself) made up of 17 different agencies and organizations, a total that doesn’t even include all the smaller intelligence offices in the National Security Complex, which for almost 10 years proved incapable of locating its global enemy number one. Yet, as everyone now agrees, that man was living in something like plain sight, exchanging messages with and seeing colleagues in a military and resort town near Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. And what does it mean that, when he was finally killed, it was celebrated as a vast intelligence victory?

The Intelligence Community with its $80 billion-plus budget, the National Security Complex, including the Pentagon and that post-9/11 creation, the Department of Homeland Security, with its $1.2 trillion-plus budget, and the imperial executive have thrived in these years. They have all expanded their powers and prerogatives based largely on the claim that they are protecting the American people from potential harm from terrorists out to destroy our world.

Above all, however, they seem to have honed a single skill: the ability to protect themselves, as well as the lobbyists and corporate entities that feed off them. They have increased their funds and powers, even as they enveloped their institutions in a penumbra of secrecy. The power of this complex of institutions is still on the rise, even as the power and wealth of the country it protects is visibly in decline.

Now, consider again the question “Is it legal?” When it comes to any act of the National Security Complex, it’s obviously inapplicable in a land where the rule of law no longer applies to everyone. If you are a ordinary citizen, of course, it applies to you, but not if you are part of the state apparatus that officially protects you. The institutional momentum behind this development is simple enough to demonstrate: it hardly mattered that, after George W. Bush took off those gloves, the next president elected was a former constitutional law professor.

Think of the National Security Complex as the King George of the present moment. In the areas that matter to that complex, Congress has ever less power and, as in the case of the war in Libya or the Patriot Act, is ever more ready to cede what power it has left.

So democracy? The people’s representatives? How quaint in a world in which our real rulers are unelected, shielded by secrecy, and supported by a carefully nurtured, almost religious attitude toward security and the U.S. military.

The National Security Complex has access to us, to our lives and communications, though we have next to no access to it. It has, in reserve, those enhanced interrogation techniques and when trouble looms, a set of what might be called enhanced legal techniques as well. It has the ability to make war at will (or whim). It has a growing post-9/11 secret army cocooned inside the military: 20,000 or more troops in special operations outfits like the SEAL team that took down bin Laden, also enveloped in secrecy. In addition, it has the CIA and a fleet of armed drone aircraft ready to conduct its wars and operations globally in semi-secrecy and without the permission or oversight of the American people or their representatives.

And war, of course, is the ultimate aphrodisiac for the powerful.

Theoretically, the National Security Complex exists only to protect you. Its every act is done in the name of making you safer, even if the idea of safety and protection doesn’t extend to your job, your foreclosed home, or aid in disastrous times.

Welcome to post-legal America. It's time to stop wondering whether its acts are illegal and start asking: Do you really want to be this “safe”?

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book is The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s (Haymarket Books).

Copyright 2011 Tom Engelhardt

Expert Cautions that 30 Million Spent Nuclear Fuel Rods Are Unsafely Stored in United States, Could Cause Fukushima-like Disaster

Expert Cautions that 30 Million Spent Nuclear Fuel Rods Are Unsafely Stored in United States, Could Cause Fukushima-like Disaster

May 24, 2011

The nation’s stockpile of radioactive spent fuel is stored in such unsafe conditions that the lives of millions of people who live near nuclear power reactors in this country are at risk, according to a new analysis released today by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), with support from the Project On Government Oversight (POGO).

The report by Robert Alvarez, IPS senior scholar for nuclear policy, indicates high risks of radioactive contamination or even nuclear chain reaction or explosion due to the unsafe storage of spent nuclear fuel.

An interactive map created by the Physicians for Social Responsibility, with new data from the IPS report, makes it easy to determine the threat of nuclear catastrophe for specific regions in the U.S., including sites in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, Atlanta, and nuclear storage facilities across the U.S.

“Unprotected spent nuclear fuel pools pose an enormous threat to the public,” Alvarez said. “Dry cask storage is a much safer alternative to pools. Some people say they are too expensive, but considering the extreme risks, the cost of doing nothing is incalculable.”

The report provides data for the first time on the amount of radioactivity in spent power reactor fuel at all individual sites in the United States. The report also details serious incidents that have occurred at U.S. reactor and storage sites containing these enormous amounts of radioactive materials, and examines dry cask storage as a means of reducing the risks of nuclear waste storage.

“The crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan should be a wake-up call for U.S. policymakers,” said POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian. “We hope the IPS report will shine a light on a serious safety risk at our nation’s nuclear power facilities, and spur action to secure spent fuel rods.”

To learn more about POGO’s investigations on nuclear security and safety, go to http://www.pogo.org/investigations/nuclear-security/.

Nuclear Security & Safety

Current and former presidents have agreed that the single greatest threat to global security is posed by nuclear materials. While POGO
does not take a position on the use of nuclear power or nuclear weapons, we believe it is essential to secure the facilities from terrorist attacks and to ensure the safety of both the facility employees and the residents who live in nearby communities. POGO’s investigations have revealed that many of the nation’s nuclear facilities are poorly maintained, pose a substantial threat to their surrounding neighborhoods, and are costing taxpayers billions of dollars each year to secure and maintain. POGO has made practical recommendations to the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission for addressing the glaring weaknesses of these facilities. Click on the program areas below to learn more.

DoD Nuclear Weapons
POGO’s investigations have uncovered a series of embarrassing and dangerous debacles involving Air Force nuclear security. In recent months, the Air Force has failed a critical nuclear security test, allowed a B-52 bomber to fly across the country armed with nuclear cruise missiles, and shipped sensitive nuclear weapons parts to Taiwan. POGO will continue working to ensure that the military’s nuclear arsenal is safe and secure.

Nuclear Power Plants
It has been widely reported that nuclear power plants were among the targets considered by the 9/11 attackers. Yet the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has done little to improve security at nuclear power plants since 9/11. POGO’s investigations revealed, for instance, that private contractors were working security officers to the point of exhaustion. POGO is also concerned that the NRC is planning for an unrealistic terrorist threat simply because industry is not willing to pay for better security.

Nuclear Weapons Complex
While it has been almost two decades since the end of the Cold War, the federal government continues to sustain a myriad of obsolete nuclear weapons facilities across the nation, many of them located next to (or even within) highly populated urban areas. POGO’s investigations have revealed that the Department of Energy (DOE) is failing to adequately protect the American public from the possibility of a terrorist attack on one of these facilities. Guards at the facilities are poorly equipped, spread thin, and lack the training needed to defend against a terrorist attack. POGO recommends disposing of excess nuclear materials and consolidating the remaining materials to fewer and more-easily defended locations, which could save the government billions of dollars while protecting the public from a serious terrorist threat.

Livermore National Laboratory
Of all the sites in the nuclear weapons complex, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory poses perhaps the greatest risk to public safety due to its proximity to millions of people living in the San Francisco Bay Area. POGO’s investigations have revealed that terrorists could use special nuclear materials stored at Livermore Lab to create a deadly nuclear device. In addition, Livermore was granted a waiver so that it did not have to meet the government’s current security requirements devised by the intelligence community. POGO recommends moving the dangerous nuclear material stored at Livermore Lab to a more secure location, which would save taxpayers $160 million and eliminate a dangerous threat to public safety.

Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
POGO has witnessed countless security and safety incidents at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) over the years, including missing computers and disks, workplace contamination, construction mishaps, and unauthorized shipments of anthrax. There have also been charges of retaliation against whistleblowers who try to expose corruption at the lab.

Nevada Test Site
Like other sites in the nuclear weapons complex, the Nevada Test Site suffers from a lack of oversight and accountability. In 2003, it was revealed that the Department of Energy had sold government property from the Nevada Test Site for pennies on the dollar, yet another example of lab mismanagement.

Pantex
POGO has worked to expose serious safety problems at the Pantex Plant, which is responsible for assembling and disassembling nuclear weapons. In 2006, POGO received an anonymous letter from plant workers who raised concerns about being forced to work up to 80 hours a week under Pantex operator BWXT. There have also been a number of safety incidents at Pantex, including a "near-miss" episode involving a W56 nuclear warhead. POGO’s investigations are aimed at improving safety and workplace conditions at Pantex.

Sandia National Laboratory
In 2005, POGO obtained an internal report which uncovered inadequate safety protections at the Sandia National Laboratory, operated by Lockheed Martin. As the report noted, a nuclear accident at Sandia would be disastrous for workers and the surrounding public. The lab has also been affected by sleeping security guards and stolen computer parts, all of which calls into question the model of "self-governance" at nuclear laboratories and facilities.

Y-12 / Oak Ridge Laboratory (ORNL)
POGO’s investigations have revealed that Y-12 and Oak Ridge Lab in Eastern Tennessee are at high risk, and cannot meet the government’s security standards. These results are alarming given the large quantities of highly enriched uranium stored at the facilities. POGO recommends moving and down-blending the dangerous nuclear materials at both sites to reduce the possibility of a terrorist attack.

DailyFinance

Property Crimes Rise In Places You Wouldn't Expect

By Catherine New Posted 12:30PM 05/27/11

Overall property crime was down in 2010, according to the latest statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation -- a piece of good, if puzzling, news for economists and crime watchers, who typically expect crime to rise when the economy is bad. The FBI reported that all categories of property crime, including burglary, larceny theft and motor-vehicle theft, declined 2.8% overall from 2009, with the biggest drop of 7.2% for stolen cars.

Yet for some smaller American towns, local statistics tell a different story. Larceny and burglary increased slightly in non-metropolitan areas, according to the report, and burglary in the northeast region is up 3.5%. Other mid-sized cities like Erie, Pa., Fresno, Calif., and Evanston, Ill., also reported increases in property crime.

Factors like high unemployment, drug-related burglaries and perhaps a sense that "crime only happens in the big city" can contribute to property crime in non-metropolitan areas, says Robert Siciliano, a home security expert and consultant with ADT Security Services. Foot traffic is a factor too: Homes in less-populated areas simply don't have the same surveillance as urban areas.

If you don't know what the property crime rate in your area is, you can map local crimes. (Also see 15 Most Dangerous Neighborhoods for Property Crime.)



Siciliano also adds that convenience stores, gas stations and other suburban and rural targets are increasingly using security systems, which can leave unsecured homes as more tempting targets. City dwellers tend to be more vigilant, have home-security systems and keep doors locked, he says. All these factors can funnel crime to the points of least resistance.

Gary Kleck, a criminology professor at Florida State University, says that security measures, including home alarms, can have the effect of shifting crime from one area to another.

"If it's like most situation-specific measures, it's effect is to displace crime from protected premises to unprotected ones, without necessarily reducing the aggregate number of crimes," says Kleck.

On Track to Lose Our Public Lands

by Bill Willers / May 27th, 2011

The political right and its economists now recommend selling federal assets to pay down the nation’s debt. Recall that a federal government “of, by and for the people”, means “us”, so what is being planned in the seemingly endless array of right wing think tanks is for “us” to sell “our” assets. To the rich, of course.

What assets? Forget for the moment things like buildings and highways, and consider the most cherished assets – our public lands in the form of national forests, BLM lands, national parks and wildlife refuges. A third of the nation, ours in common, is a gift beyond price to pass to our descendants. It is a public treasure we may lose, for it is firmly in the crosshairs of moneyed interests intent on “privatizing”. Who is capable of buying such public assets? Think of corporate “persons” in petroleum, insurance, industrial recreation, pharmaceuticals, defense, agribusiness, banking and the like. And don’t forget their 37,000 K Street lobbyists who lavish unlimited cash on lawmakers, or of the billionaire faction of “Haves and Have Mores” George W. Bush called his “base”.

On May 18, when asked what he thinks about the idea of selling Utah land to help pay down the federal deficit, Utah Governor Gary Herbert responded, “It’s an idea that’s not new. It’s been talked about for the last generation. If we want to reduce the deficit and balance the budget at the federal level, why don’t we sell some of the federal assets, and of course we have a lot of federal land that they can liquidate and help balance the budget. I think it’s certainly worth exploring.”

The Governor is correct in that the idea isn’t new. The anti-government “Sagebrush Rebellion” of the 1970s and “Wise Use Movement” of the 1980s that fought against federal authority in public domain has transitioned into so-called “free-market environmentalism”, a web of corporations and right wing think tanks and foundations promoting property rights and the cold-hearted pricing of the so-called “free market” as the best way to manage nature and the environment. Free marketeers want Federal Government, with its annoying regulations, out of the picture. Major players in this movement include PERC, FREE, and the Cato Institute. It was thirty years ago that James Beckwith, writing for the Cato Institute, and with reference to public parks, crystallized a plan for “ascending radicalism from reform through volunteerism and privatization of services to the outright abolition of private ownership and the transfer of parks to private parties.”

We the people, now “owners”, would be transformed into “customers” paying market demand. And now a multi-trillion dollar debt is providing the needed argument for selling our national treasure. Generated and ballooned by the Bush Administration’s “off the books” war expenditures, and kicked down the road for the next Administration, debt was suddenly “discovered” as a problem by the political right.

For anyone who has followed the issue for years, it appears carefully planned. In 2003, a report by the Treasury Department showed the U.S. facing a future of debts amounting to $44 trillion, and that preventing it would require massive tax increases. Increases! Bush did not release the report. Paul Krugman of the New York Times reported at the time that “the people now running America aren’t conservatives: they’re radicals who want to do away with the social and economic system we have, and the fiscal crisis they are concocting (emphasis added) may give them the excuse they need.”

Scott Silver wrote in 2006: “The private sector will snatch up all the assets it wants when the price is right. If the economy tanks, the price for even the finest public jewels will be pennies on the dollar. Let’s not forget that the US Forest Service is already handing over operational control of most of their developed recreational facilities to anyone willing to maintain them.”

It is understood that the privatization of public domain has to be done by degrees to avoid unwanted reaction. Beckwith made this clear with his reference to “the contracting out of support services to private firms operating for profit” to be accomplished in “tentative steps”. Such contracting is increasingly common in the form of “public-private partnerships” and “competitive outsourcing”. And as those standing to benefit from privatization use their considerable political and economic might to achieve their goals, it is passing “under the radar” of the larger public mind.

Bill Willers is an emeritus professor of biology, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, now living in Madison, Wisconsin. He is editor of Learning to Listen to the Land and Unmanaged Landscapes, both from Island Press. He can be reached at willers@charter.net. Read other articles by Bill.

This article was posted on Friday, May 27th, 2011 at 8:37am and is filed under Neoliberalism.

Official Culture in America: A Natural State of Psychopathy

Official Culture in America: A Natural State of Psychopathy?

Laura Knight-Jadczyk

The subject of the extremely narrow point of view of most Americans as opposed to the majority of other peoples in the world came up in a conversation the other day.� The people having the conversation were, as it happens, mostly American.� One of them commented that Americans had been "programmed" to their point of view by mass media propaganda for a very long time and that it was simply a very normal part of American life and basically, always had been.� She concluded, "Whoever denies it is either ignorant or has an agenda."

That may be so.� It may be true that the "pied pipers" of denial have an agenda.� But what, then, does one say or do about the ignorance of the vast majority of Americans?� Why and how is it that the trap of Fascism is closing on them before their very eyes and no matter how many voices - the number is increasing every day - are raised to point out this danger, they simply do not seem to get it?

The conversation continued with a comment from another individual suggesting that one must take into account how effective the "official culture" actually is in the US.� It isn't just a question of ignorance, but a question of the long-term thoroughness of the propagandizing that began in the early days of the last century.� It was proposed that this propaganda is so complete that not only are most people in the US ignorant of what is taking place on the US political scene, and in the world as a direct result of US policy, they are ignorant of the fact that they are ignorant.� They have been inculcated with the view that their view is the only "right" one" and, consequently, they really "don't know any better".� In short:� "What do you do if you don't know that you don't know something?"

Well, the thing is, at some point in time, no matter how thorough the programming has been, most people will eventually end up coming across some bit or piece of information that isn't going to quite "jibe" with the "official culture;" it isn't going to "fit" in with their view of reality, with what they have been taught, and it is usually just a little bit uncomfortable when this happens. Or it ought to be.

My question is, why is complete denial, even aggressive behavior in some instances, the reaction of some when the objective facts of reality are pointed out to them, while there are others who react with an increased sense of curiosity, an increased desire for additional information?

Why do some shun knowledge and others crave it?

Why do some resist the programming, and others welcome it?

It is as though with some people - those who most avidly embrace the "we are right" view - have minds that are closed from the very get-go, and they are entirely incapable of opening them, even just a crack.� There is no curiosity in them.� There are no questions in their minds.� There are no "what ifs?" or "maybes".

It seems to me that the propaganda of the Official Culture then, while quite effective, may not be the sole reason why so many Americans are apathetic when it comes to what their government is doing, both in the US and abroad. It seems as though there may be some distinct differences in human beings at a very basic level that needs to be considered here.

In my opinion, (KAH), all of us who were raised in the US have been duped via this Official Culture mind control imposed through the educational system and the mass media.� But there are some of us who seem to have the ability to question, to wonder, to open our minds to other possibilities - even if they seem far-fetched.� And invariably, this opening of the mind to other views has been enriching and rewarding on many levels, not the least of which is a humanitarian view of all peoples and cultures.

Is being able to open your mind and ask questions just a matter of "courage?"� Is a closed mind simply evidence of being a coward?� Is resistance to the "official culture" a consequence of a fundamental "rebellious nature" and are those who "go along with the crowd" better "team players," even if the team is on the moral low-road?

Is the difference one that exists between people who are willing to face the "terror of the situation" and those who simply cannot live in the state of tension produced by having to make moral decisions themselves?

Or, is there something deeper here?� If so, what is it?� And whatever it is, why is it so "active" in the present day and time?� What is the "fog" that surrounds America and the minds of its people?

In the past, I have encountered many people who I considered to be open-minded, but ultimately discovered that they are not so when they absolutely refuse to even admit the possibility of what is so obvious to so many intelligent and compassionate people.� For example, the obvious psychopathy of Bush and other world leaders, certainly reveals to us that the "terror of the situation" is manifesting on quite a grander scale than any of us might have dreamed possible a few years ago.� There it is.� Clues and signs everywhere. It's as plain as the nose on your face. But most Americans would rather cut off that nose with the result that they spite the face.

It is terrifying enough when one realizes that the Bush Reich and other elite groups around the globe are wreaking havoc on the planet without regard for life in any form, apart from their own, but when we also have to face the fact that there are so many people out there, that - even when faced with the certain facts of this global tinder- box - either cannot see it or WILL not see it, well, that makes this situation just a little bit more terrifying.

Again, we return to the problem: what is WRONG with Americans?�

We already know that the "Land of the Free" is gone, but what about the "Home of the Brave?"� It never takes courage to support a bully - but it takes a LOT of courage to stand up against one.� Has America lost that courage that gave them the intestinal fortitude to stand up to the most mighty military power in the world of the time - England - to declare their independence from bullies and to stand for what was right?� What happened to "Give me liberty or give me death?"� Because surely America has chosen death in giving up their liberty!

When I was growing up in the West, my brothers and I were subjected to very intense "racist attitudes" from our step-parents.� We lived in a small farming-ranching community where that sort of belief system� is generally passed on from one generation to the next and nobody ever really questions it.

However, at a very early age, I instinctively rebelled against this view of the world.� It seems that I had a sort of natural, intrinsic love, respect and a fascination for other cultures and peoples.� Of course, it drove my step-parents CRAZY.� There was a lot of tension between us because of this.�

My love for and curiosity about other cultures led me to travel extensively as I grew up.� I was curious; I wanted to explore;� I wanted to KNOW.� When I eventually married outside my own culture, well, I had crossed the line and all contact with my family had to be terminated.� The price they were willing to pay for their racist beliefs was high - in my opinion - moreso for them than for me, though certainly this rejection was painful.

My point is, I resisted this racist program intensely.� It was all around me, in the town, the schools, the church we attended.� But I wanted no part of it.� It seems that it went against my very nature.� But for others, it seemed very "natural" to "fall for" this cultural programming - to be "comfortable" within a milieu that excluded nearly everyone else as human beings.

Is it just "ignorance?"� Are Americans just ignorant and ignorant of their own ignorance? Is this ignorance strictly due to "official culture programming" - programming that seems to be designed to encourage ignorance?

Again� it seems as though there may be two different types of people and two different ways to deal with the question of one's own ignorance.�

Some individuals, when faced with certain facts about their own ignorance, deny vehemently that they ARE ignorant and resort to platitudes and cliches even including that old saw about the difference between "book learning" and "common sense."� Others, when confronted with their own ignorance, immediately set about rectifying it no matter how painful it might be.

When I first moved abroad at the age of 21, I quickly realized that I was, like most Americans, abysmally ignorant with regard to politics.� I discovered - to my great dismay - that in my host country, most of the average people around me - shopkeepers, hairdressers, taxi-drivers - knew more about what was going on in the USA and the rest of the world than I did; a LOT more!� I had no IDEA of the things that were going on that were common knowledge to other peoples in the world.� And here, it wasn't simply a matter of having a different opinion than others.� It was a matter of an almost complete lack of INFORMATION within the very country that promotes democracy as the rule of an "informed citizenry." � I realized with striking clarity exactly how ignorant I was at that point, and I admitted it to myself.� Further, I was embarrassed for myself and other Americans who were seen (rightly so) as equally ignorant and "in the dark" politically and culturally speaking.� BUT, due to this embarrassment and realization of the extraordinary extent of my ignorance, I determined to do something about it.

But there are so many Americans who - when faced with similar situations, faced with their own ignorance - deny it aggressively.� And generally, the "last word" for them is: "Oh, he/she doesn't know what the hell they are talking about!� They're 'foreigners'."� And that's the key: "foreigners."�

"Foreigners" can't possibly know anything because they aren't American.� And Americans, by default of having the most bombs on the planet, always "know" what's up.� Or, at the very least, their leaders do and we just don't have to think about such things.� That's what we elect our leaders for, isn't it?� So they will handle all that boring and tedious political stuff and leave us alone to watch "Survivor" and the Super Bowl and wash our new SUV so that the Joneses can be green with envy!

And they leave it at that.� It's the preferred way to handle all such questions. Forget the entire issue of an "informed citizenry" and any possible outrage that citizens of the US are not only NOT informed, they are being deliberately DIS-informed!

They don't even realize that "Survivor" is programming them to the very attitudes that are being displayed by their leaders - normalizing it, so to say - and at the present moment these attitude are being manifested in their own lives in a direct and terrifying way.� For many in the US, their future is that there won't be any more Super Bowls, and the SUV certainly doesn't get enough gas mileage to get them far enough away from the terror that will confront them when they are "voted off the island" in the global game of "Survivor."

Why does this condition exist?� Why are so many people so susceptible to the "official culture" and the mass media propaganda?� Why are so many people willing slaves to it?� And why do some� others - once the questions have been raised - begin to seek the knowledge that reveals the man behind the curtain?

Perhaps it is more than simply a matter of very clever and intense programming.� Perhaps it is also a matter of the nature of a person?

LKJ: In recent times, I have considered many ideas in an attempt to answer this question.� The members of the Quantum Future School have been engaged in studying psychopathy and pseudo-psychopathy for about two years now.� This has certainly prepared most of us to be able to see the man behind the curtain, or, in this case, behind the "mask of sanity."� But it still doesn't answer the question as to why psychopathic behavior seems to be so widespread in the US. (That is not to say that it doesn't exist everywhere - that's a given.)

Linda Mealey of the Department of Psychology at the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota, has recently proposed certain ideas in her paper: The Sociobiology of Sociopathy: An Integrated Evolutionary Model.� These ideas address the increase in psychopathy in American culture by suggesting that in a competitive society - capitalism, for example - psychopathy is adaptive and likely to increase.� She writes:

I have thus far argued that some individuals seem to have a genotype that disposes them to [psychopathy].

[Psychopathy describes] frequency-dependent, genetically based, individual differences in employment of life strategies.� [Psychopaths] always appear in every culture, no matter what the socio-cultural conditions. [...]

Competition increases the use of antisocial and Machiavellian strategies and can counteract pro-social behavior�

Some cultures encourage competitiveness more than others and these differences in social values vary both temporally and cross-culturally.�[...] Across both dimensions, high levels of competitiveness are associated with high crime rates and Machiavellianism.

High populaton density, an indirect form of competition, is also associated with reduced pro-social behavior and increased anti-social behavior.� [...] [Mealey, op. cit.]

The conclusion is that the American way of life has optimized the survival of psychopaths with the consequence that it is an adaptive "life strategy" that is extremely successful in American society, and thus has increased in the population in strictly genetic terms. What is more, as a consequence of a society that is adaptive for psychopathy, many individuals who are NOT genetic psychopaths have similarly adapted, becoming "effective" psychopaths, or "secondary sociopaths."

(Many experts differentiate between primary and secondary sociopaths. The first is a sociopath because they have the "genes" and the second is more or less "created" by their environment of victimization. Other experts refer to these two categories as "psychopaths" for the genetic variety and "sociopaths" for the reactive variety. We prefer this latter distinction.)

Of course, because they are not intellectually handicapped, these individuals [psychopaths] will progress normally in terms of cognitive development and will acquire a theory of mind.� Their theories, however, will be formulated purely in instrumental terms [what can claiming this or that GET for me?], without access to the empathic understanding that most of us rely on so much of the time.�

They may become excellent predictors of others' behavior, unhandicapped by the "intrusiveness" of emotion, acting, as do professional gamblers, solely on nomothetic laws and actuarial data rather than on hunches and feelings.�

In determining how to "play" in the social encounters of everyday life, they will use a pure cost-benefit approach based on immediate personal outcomes, with no "accounting" for the emotional reactions of the others with whom they are dealing.�

Without any real love to "commit" them to cooperation, without any anxiety to prevent fear of "defection," without guilt to inspire repentance, they are free to continually play for the short-term benefit.

At the same time, because changes in gene frequencies in the population would not be able to keep pace with the fast-changing parameters of social interactions, an additional fluctuating proportion of sociopathy should result because, in a society of [psychopathy], the environmental circumstances make an antisocial strategy of life more profitable than a pro-social one. [Mealey]

In other words, in a world of psychopaths, those who are not genetic psychopaths, are induced to behave like psychopaths simply to survive.� When the rules are set up to make a society "adaptive" to psychopathy, it makes psychopaths of everyone.

Now, do not be fooled by the word "psychopath." Many individuals equate this term with mass murderers or "foaming at the mouth" madmen. By any name, this dangerous personality disorder presents three unsettling realities: Its prevalence seems to be increasing, it is far more common than previously thought, and there is no cure.

What makes the psychopath so frightening and dangerous is that he or she wears a completely convincing "Mask of Sanity". This may at first make such a person utterly persuasive and compellingly healthy, according to psychiatrist Harvey Cleckley. Dr. Cleckey was first to describe the key symptoms of the disorder.

Psychopaths can be very sociable, even though they are antisocial behind their "mask" in the sense that their "emotions" are completely fake. They are masters at manipulating others for their personal gain. Their charm, in fact, is legendary. "As a therapist, you run across this all of the time, where a man is mysteriously controlled by a sociopath," explains psychologist Melvin Sinder, co-author of Smart Men Bad Choices.

Psychopaths are experts at using people. They can ask anything of anyone without embarassment and because of their outgoing seducing friendliness, their use of "poor innocent me! I am such a GOOD person and I have been treated so BADLY!" the victim invariably gets sucked into giving the psychopath what they ask for - no matter how outrageous.

Psychopaths are masters at faking emotions in order to manipulate others. One psychologist reported that if you actually catch them in the act of committing a crime, or telling a lie, "they will immediately justify their actions by self pity and blaming another, by creating a heart-rending scene of faked emotional feelings." These fake emotions are only for effect, as the careful observer will note. The Psychopath considers getting their way or getting out of trouble using faked emotions as a victory over another person.

Psychopaths are incapable of feeling concern or remorse for the consequences of their actions. They can calmly rationalize their insensitive and bizarre behavior all the while attributing malice to everyone but themselves. When caught in a lie, they will manipulate others or stories to their own advantage without any fear of being found out - even if it is obvious to everyone around them that they WILL be found out.

Psychopaths cannot feel fear for themselves, much less empathy for others. Most normal people, when they are about to do something dangerous, illegal, or immoral, feel a rush of worry, nervousness, or fear. Guilt may overwhelm them and prevent them from even committing the deed.

The psychopath feels little or nothing.

As a result, the threat of punishment, even painful punishment is a laughing matter for the psychopath. They can repeat the same destructive acts without skipping a heartbeat, as well as seek thrills and dangers without regard for possible risks. This is called "hypoarousal." That is, very little - if anything - really arouses them; they are more machine-like than human-like.

The psychopath seems to be full of something akin to deep greed. They manifest this inner state in many ways. One of the most common ways is to steal something of value to their victim (valuables), or to hurt/slander the victim or something or someone the victim loves. In the psychopath's mind, this is justified because the victim crossed him, did not give him what he wanted, or rejected him (or her).

Psychopaths lie for the sake of lying. They can convey the deepest hear- felt message without meaning a word of it. They can also tell the most outrageous stories simply in order to be at the center of attention and to get what they want.

An example is told by a researcher in psychopathy: Melissa was a girl that was very attractive and very outgoing. She met with an attorney regarding getting a divorce from her husband and convinced the attorney that her husband was ruining her life.

The attorney felt sorry for her as she carried on about the abuse she had suffered. She was so convincing, that the attorney wanted to help her personally. With her seductive charisma, he became hopelessly infatuated and began to date Melissa. At a certain point, the attorney refused to take illegal and immoral actions against her estranged husband that Melissa requested.

At this point, she filed sexual harassment charges against the attorney to try to force him to do what she wanted. She didn't realize that, by doing this, she had exposed herself for what she was and there was no possibility that the attorney was going to bow to her blackmail pressures. After much pain and heart break all around, Melissa dropped the law suit and moved to another state. The attorney commented that he had never been so emotionally overwhelmed in his entire life.

Indeed, using their "emotional performances," these individuals can be truly overwhelming. Their charisma can be so inspiring - their emotion so deep and sincere-seeming - that people just want to be around them, want to help them, want to give all and support such a noble, suffering being. What is generally not seen by the victim is that they are feeding an endless internal hunger for control, excitement and ego-recognition.

The psychopath is obsessed with control even if they give the impression of being helpless. Their pretense to emotional sensitivity is really part of their control function: The higher the level of belief in the psychopath that can be induced in their victim through their dramas, the more "control" the psychopath believes they have. And in fact, this is true. They DO have control when others believe their lies. Sadly, the degree of belief, the degree of "submission" to this control via false representation, generally produces so much pain when the truth is glimpsed that the victim would prefer to continue in the lie than face the fact that they have been duped. The psychopath counts on this. It is part of their "actuarial calculations." It gives them a feeling of power.

It is all too easy to fall under the spell of the charismatic psychopath. There are many who do the psychopath's bidding without realizing that they have been subtly and cleverly controlled. They can even be manipulated to perform criminal acts, or acts of sabotage against another - innocent - person on behalf of the psychopath. Very often, when this is realized by the victim, that they have caused suffering in innocent people at the behest of a liar, again they prefer to deny this than to face up to the truth of their own perfidy and gullibility.

Psychopathic behavior seems to be on the rise because of the very nature of American capitalistic society. The great hustlers, charmers, and self-promoters in the sales fields are perfect examples of where the psychopath can thrive. The entertainment industry, the sports industry, the corporate world in a Capitalistic system, are all areas where psychopaths naturally rise to the top. Some observers believe that there is a psychological continuum between psychopaths (who tend to be professionally unsuccessful) and narcissistic entrepreneurs (who are successful), because these two groups share the highly developed skill of manipulating others for their own gain. It is now being thought that they are actually the "same" but that the "unsuccessful" psychopath is merely flawed in their calculating abilities. They are unable to recalculate based on new actuarial data. Successful Narcissists might seem to be perfectly able to add to their actuarial database and "recalculate" and shift course and develop new subroutines based on ongoing input.

In general, the successful psychopath "computes" how much they can get away with in a cost-benefit ratio of the alternatives.� Among the factors that they consider as most important are money, power, and gratification of negative desires.� They are not motivated by such social reinforcment as praise or future benefits.� Studies have been done that show locking up a psychopath has absolutely no effect on them in terms of modifying their life strategies.� In fact, in is shown to make them worse.� Effectively, when locked up, psychopaths just simply learn how to be better psychopaths.

Since the psychopath bases their activities designed to get what they want on their particular "theory of mind," it is instructive to have a look at this issue. Having a "theory of mind" allows an individual to impute mental states (thoughts, perceptions, and feelings) not only to oneself, but also to other individuals. It is, in effect, a tool that helps us predict the behavior of others. The most successful individuals are those who most accurately predict what another person will do given a certain set of circumstances. In the present day, we have Game Theory which is being used to model many social problems including psychopathy.

When two individuals interact with each other, each must decide what to do without knowledge of what the other is doing.� Imagine that the two players are the government and the public.� In the following model, each of the players faces only a binary choice: to behave ethically either in making laws or in obeying them.

The assumption is that both players are informed about everything except the level of ethical behavior of the other.� They know what it means to act ethically, and they know the consequences of being exposed as unethical.

There are three elements to the game.� 1) The players, 2) the strategies available to either of them, and 3) the payoff each player receives for each possible combination of strategies.

In a legal regime, one party is obliged to compensate the other for damages under certain conditions but not under others.� We are going to imagine a regime wherein the government is never liable for losses suffered by the public because of its unethical behavior - instead, the public has to pay for the damages inflicted by the government due to unethical behavior.

The way the payoffs are represented is generally in terms of money.� That is, how much investment does each player have to make in ethical behavior and how much payoff does each player receive for his investment.

In this model, behaving ethically, according to standards of social values that are considered the "norm," costs each player $10.00.� When law detrimental to the public is passed, it costs the public $100.00.� We take it as a given that such laws will be passed unless both players behave ethically.

Next, we assume that the likelihood of a detrimental law being passed in the event that both the public and the government are behaving ethically is a one-in-ten chance.

In a legal regime in which the government is never held responsible for its unethical behavior, and if neither the government nor the public behave ethically, the government enjoys a payoff of $0. and the public is out $100 when a law detrimental to the public is passed.

If both "invest" in ethical behavior, the government has a payoff of minus $10. (the cost of behaving ethically) and the public is out minus $20. which is the $10. invested in being ethical PLUS the $10. of the one-in-ten chance of a $100. loss incurred if a detrimental law is passed.

If the government behaves ethically and the public does not, resulting in the passing of a law detrimental to the populace, the government is out the $10. invested in being ethical and the public is out $100.

If the government does not behave ethically, and the public does, the government has a payoff of $0. and the public is out $110 which is the "cost of being ethical" added to the losses suffered when the government passes detrimental laws. Modeled in a Game Theory Bi-matrix, it looks like this, with the two numbers representing the "payoff" to the people - the left number in each pair - and government - the right number in each pair.

				Government
				No Ethics		Ethical
		No Ethics		-100, 0		-100, -10
Society/People
		Ethical		-110, 0		-20, -10

In short, in this game, the government always does better by not being ethical and we can predict the government's choice of strategy because there is a single strategy - no ethics - that is better for the government no matter what choice the public makes.� This is a "strictly dominant strategy," or a strategy that is the best choice for the player no matter what choices are made by the other player.

What is even worse is the fact that the public is PENALIZED for behaving ethically.� Since we know that the government, in the above regime, will never behave ethically because it is the dominant strategy, we find that ethical behavior on the part of the public actually costs MORE than unethical behavior.

In short, psychopathic behavior is actually a POSITIVE ADAPTATION in such a regime.

The public, as you see, cannot even minimize their losses by behaving ethically.� It costs them $110. to be ethical, and only $100. to not be ethical.

Now, just substitute "psychopath" in the place of the government and non-psychopath in the place of the public, and you begin to understand why the psychopath will always be a psychopath.� If the "payoff" is emotional pain of being hurt, or shame for being exposed, in the world of the psychopath, that consequence simply does not exist just as in the legal regime created above, the government is never responsible for unethical behavior.� The psychopath lives in a world in which it is like a government that is never held responsible for behavior that is detrimental to others.� It's that simple.� And the form game above will tell you why psychopaths in the population, as well as in government, are able to induce the public to accept laws that are detrimental.� It simply isn't worth it to be ethical. If you go along with the psychopath, you lose. If you resist the psychopath, you lose even more.

The [psychopath] is unfamiliar with the primary facts or data of what might be called personal values and is altogether incapable of understanding such matters. It is impossible for him to take even a slight interest in the tragedy or joy or the striving of humanity as presented in serious literature or art. He is also indifferent to all these matters in life itself. Beauty and ugliness, except in a very superficial sense, goodness, evil, love, horror, and humour have no actual meaning, no power to move him. He is, furthermore, lacking in the ability to see that others are moved. It is as though he were colour-blind, despite his sharp intelligence, to this aspect of human existence. It cannot be explained to him because there is nothing in his orbit of awareness that can bridge the gap with comparison. He can repeat the words and say glibly that he understands, and there is no way for him to realize that he does not understand. [Cleckley, H.M. (1941). The mask of sanity: An attempt to reinterpret the so-called psychopathic personality. St. Louis: The C. V. Mosby Company]

It also means that such a person is free to choose to do things that are potentially self-destructive without giving a single indication to another "player" that his or her choice is based entirely on a delusion. Very often, they "win" because of the sheer boldness of their actions which is unrestricted by conscience which is a construct of emotions.

It's like a poker player who has absolutely nothing in his hand, but because he is so intent on winning, and is so unmoved by the possibility of losing because lying produces absolutely no internal, emotional reaction of fear of being discovered or the potential shame or disaster inherent in such an event, is able to bluff so convincingly that the other players - any of whom might have a winning hand, fold and walk away because they are convinced by the psychopath's confidence that he must have the winning hand of all time.�

Only he doesn't.�

And this means that the psychopath's strength is also his Achilles heel.� Once he has been spotted, identified, understood, he no longer has the power to bluff.� Once knowledge enters the game, the psychopath is exposed, and has no more ability to "con" the other players.� The sad part is: he also has no ability to learn from this experience anything other than how to make his bluff better and more convincing next time.� The psychopath never gets mad because he is caught in a lie; he is only concerned with "damage control" in terms of his ability to continue to con others.

Societies can be considered as "players" in the psychopath's game model.�

The past behavior of a society will be used by the psychopath to predict the future behavior of that society.� Like an individual player, a society will have a certain probability of detecting deception and a more or less accurate memory of who has cheated on them in the past, as well as a developed or not developed proclivity to retaliate against a liar and cheater.� Since the psychopath is using an actuarial approach to assess the costs and benefits of different behaviors (just how much can he get away with), it is the actual past behavior of the society which will go into his calculations rather than any risk assessments based on any "fears or anxieties" of being caught and punished that empathic people would feel in anticipation of doing something illegal.

Thus, in order to reduce psychopathic behavior in society and in government, a society MUST establish and enforce a reputation for high rates of detection of deception and identification of liars, and a willingness to retaliate.� In other words, it must establish a successful strategy of deterrence.

Since the psychopath is particularly unable to make decisions based on future consequences, and is able only to focus attention on immediate gratification - short term goals - it is possible that such individuals can be dealt with by establishing a history of dealing out swift social retaliation.� That is, identifying and punishing liars and cheaters must be both immediate and predictable that it will be immediate.

And here we come to the issue: concerning the real-world, human social interactions on a large scale, reducing psychopathy in our leaders depends upon expanding society's collective memory of individual players' past behavior.

Any reasonable scan of the news will reveal that lies and cheating are not "covered up" as thoroughly as American apologists would like to think.

Even the less well-informed Americans have some idea that there was certainly something fishy about the investigation into the assassination of JFK.� In recent years, the man in charge of the Warren Commission, Gerald Ford, also a former president, admitted to "cheating" on the report.

Then, there was Watergate followed by the Iran-Contra affair, not to mention "Monica-gate."� And here we are just hitting some highlights familiar to all Americans.

What consequences did the cheaters of society suffer?

None to speak of.� In fact, in nearly every case, they were rewarded handsomely with those things of value to the psychopath: money and material goods.� If anyone thinks they were shamed by public exposure, think again!

But what is of CRUCIAL interest here is the fact that the American people have simply NOT responded to the revelations of lies in government with any outrage that could be considered more than token.� At the present time, there isn't even "token outrage."

Don't you find that odd?

But we have already noted the reason: the American way of life has optimized the survival of psychopathy and in a world of psychopaths, those who are not genetic psychopaths, are induced to behave like psychopaths simply to survive.� When the rules are set up to make a society "adaptive" to psychopathy, it makes psychopaths of everyone.� As a consequence, a very large number of Americans are effective sociopaths.� (Here we use "sociopath" as a designation of those individuals who are not genetic psychopaths.)

And so, we have George Bush and the Third Reich calculating how much they can get away with by looking at the history of the reactions of the American People to cheating.�

There aren't any because the system is adaptive to psychopathy.� In other words, Americans support Bush and his agenda because most of them are LIKE him.

But that is not because they are ALL born that way. It is because psychopathy is almost required to survive in Competitive, Capitalistic America.

As a society gets larger and more competitive, individuals become more anonymous and more Machiavellian.� Social stratification and segregation leads to feelings of inferiority, pessimism and depression among the have-nots, and this promotes the use of "cheating strategies" in life which then makes the environment more adaptive for psychopathy in general.

Psychopathic behavior among non-genetic psychopaths could be viewed as a functional method of obtaining desirable resources, increasing an individual's status in a local group, and even a means of providing stimulation that socially and financially successful people find in acceptable physical and intellectual challenges.� In other words, the psychopath is a bored and frustrated sensation-seeker who "does not have the intellectual capacitiy to amuse and occupy himself" internally. Such individuals may begin their lives in the lower socio-economic levels, but they often rise to the top.

In America, a great many households are affected by the fact that work, divorce, or both, have removed one or both parents from interaction with their children for much of the day.� This is a consequence of Capitalistic economics.�

When the parents are absent, or even when one is present but not in possession of sufficient knowledge or information, children are left to the mercies of their peers, a culture shaped by the media.� Armed with joysticks and TV remotes, children are guided from South Park and Jerry Springer to Mortal Kombat on Nintendo.� Normal kids become desensitized to violence.� More-susceptible kids - children with a genetic inheritance of psychopathy - are pushed toward a dangerous mental precipice. Meanwhile, the government is regularly passing laws, on the demand of parents and the psychological community, designed to avoid imposing consequences on junior's violent behavior.

As for media violence, few researchers continue to try to dispute that bloodshed on TV and in the movies has an effect on the kids who witness it.� Added to the mix now are video games structured around models of hunting and killing.� Engaged by graphics, children learn to associate spurts of "blood" with the primal gratification of scoring a "win."

Again, economics controls the reality.

While everyone will readily admit that there is probably too much violence on television and that the ads are probably pure balderdash, very few people have a real conception of the precise nature and extent of the hypnotic influence of the media. Still fewer have any idea of the purposes behind this inducement. Wallace and Wallechinsky write in The People's Almanac:

"After World War II, television flourished... Psychologists and sociologists were brought in to study human nature in relation to selling; in other words, to figure out how to manipulate people without their feeling manipulated. Dr. Ernest Dichter, President of the Institute for Motivational Research made a statement in 1941... 'the successful ad agency manipulates human motivations and desires and develops a need for goods with which the public has at one time been unfamiliar -- perhaps even undesirous of purchasing.

"Discussing the influence of television, Daniel Boorstin wrote:

'Here at last is a supermarket of surrogate experience. Successful programming offers entertainment -- under the guise of instruction; instruction -- under the guise of entertainment; political persuasion -- with the appeal of advertising; and advertising -- with the appeal of drama.'

"Programed television serves not only to spread acquiescence and conformity, but it represents a deliberate industry approach." [quoted by Wallace, Wallechinsky]

Aside from the fact that television has been conjectured to be extremely detrimental to children and that it is now thought that most of the deteriorating aspects of society can be attributed to the decaying values portrayed on television, there is a deeper and more insidious effect upon the human psyche. As quoted, it is a planned and deliberate manipulation to spread acquiescence and conformity and to hypnotize the masses to submit to the authority of the masters of economics through their false prophet, the television.

Allen Funt, host of a popular show, Candid Camera, was once asked what was the most disturbing thing he had learned about people in his years of dealing with them through the media. His response was chilling in its ramifications:

"The worst thing, and I see it over and over, is how easily people can be led by any kind of authority figure, or even the most minimal kinds of authority. A well dressed man walks up the down escalator and most people will turn around and try desperately to go up also... We put up a sign on the road, 'Delaware Closed Today'. Motorists didn't even question it. Instead they asked: 'Is Jersey open?'" [quoted by Wallace, Wallechinsky]

A picture is forming of a deliberately contrived society of televised conformity, literate and creative inadequacy, and social unrest and decadence. It is apparent that the media is in charge of propagating these conditions, and the media is controlled by what?

Capitalistic, competitive Economics.

It would seem that the motivation masters would, in the interests of their industrial clients, plan programming to bring about beneficial societal conditions - which they could, in fact, do. It is apparent that the final authority on televised programming is in the hands of the advertisers, backed by the industries whose products are being sold. With all the psychological input to which they have access, it would seem that they utilize programming to correct societal conditions which cost them money. Over 25 billion dollars a year is spent to teach workers to read and write, after graduating from the combined effects of a public school system and the television. It is accepted that the burgeoning crime rate, which also costs these industrial giants vast sums of money, is mostly attributable to the frustrations and dissatisfactions engendered by the false view of reality presented over the television.

Why don't they use their financial resources to back the motivation masters to figure out how to present programming which could effect positive changes?

Can it be that the conditions of society, including the programed response to "minimal signs of authority" are planned? Would anyone care to suggest that the figures and studies relating to the detrimental influence of programming is not available to them and that they don't realize that it is costing them money? If that is the case, then they are too stupid to be arbiters of our values and we should disregard them entirely in any event. If it is not the case, then we must assume that there is an object to this manipulation.

There is much evidence to support the idea that this purpose, or the object of this manipulation, is to create psychological and social disunity - social psychopathy - sufficient to permit the instituting of a totalitarian government at the behest of the people. It is further theorized that the "wealthy elite" seek to control the entire world from behind the scenes and it is to this end that they mastermind and fund the various actions which appear to the masses as political and international "accidents".

FDR. said:

"Nothing in politics ever happens by accident; if it happens, you can bet it was planned!"

And he was in a position to know.

There is much evidence to support the notion that wars are fomented and fought to redistribute these balances of financial power behind the scenes and that, though our fathers, brother, grandfathers, uncles, cousins and sons die in these actions, they are merely games of "International Relations" played by those whose money and position give them absolute power to shape our reality to some nefarious end.

The psychic stresses of our world are right in the home.� There they can easily act on any kid who believes that "the world has wronged me" - a sentiment spoken from the reality of existence - a reality created by economic pressures instituted via Game Theory.

Is there a solution?

The obvious solution would be a world in which, at the very least, the psychopath - in government or in society - would be forced to be responsible for unethical behavior.� But game-theory modeling demonstrates that selfishness is always the most profitable strategy possible for replicating units.�

Could it ever be an evolutionarily stable strategy for people to be innately unselfish?

On the whole, a capacity to cheat, to compete and to lie has proven to be a stupendously successful adaptation.� Thus the idea that selection pressure could ever cause saintliness to spread in a society looks implausible in practice.� It doesn't seem feasible to outcompete genes which promote competitiveness.� "Nice guys" get eaten or outbred.� Happy people who are unaware get eaten or outbred.� Happiness and niceness today is vanishingly rare, and the misery and suffering of those who are able to truly feel, who are empathic toward other human beings, who have a conscience, is all too common. And the psychopathic manipulations are designed to make psychopaths of us all.

Nevertheless, a predisposition to, conscience, ethics, can prevail if and when it is also able to implement the deepest level of altruism: making the object of its empathy the higher ideal of enhancing free will in the abstract sense, for the sake of others, including our descendants.�

In short, our "self-interest" ought to be vested in collectively ensuring that all others are happy and well-disposed too; and in ensuring that children we bring into the world have the option of being constitutionally happy and benevolent toward one another.�

This means that if psychopathy threatens the well-being of the group future, then it can be only be dealt with by refusing to allow the self to be dominated by it on an individual, personal basis.� Preserving free will for the self in the practical sense, ultimately preserves free will for others.� Protection of our own rights AS the rights of others, underwrites the free will position and potential for happiness of all.� If mutant psychopaths pose a potential danger then true empathy, true ethics, true conscience, dictates using prophylactic therapy against psychopaths.

And so it is that identifying the psychopath, ceasing our interaction with them, cutting them off from our society, making ourselves unavailable to them as "food" or objects to be conned and used, is the single most effective strategy that we can play.�

It seems certain from the evidence that a positive transformation of human nature isn't going to come about through a great spiritual awakening, socio-economic reforms, or a spontaneous desire among the peoples of the world to be nice to each other.� But it's quite possible that, in the long run, the psychopathic program of suffering will lose out because misery is not a stable strategy.� In a state of increasing misery, victims will seek to escape it; and this seeking will ultimately lead them to inquire into the true state of their misery, and that may lead to a society of intelligent people who will have the collective capacity to do so.