Good memory annie, I had forgotten about that…
Such a base, treacherous and sneaky bunch.
The following is a joe cannon’s review of John Dean’s new book, Conservatives without Conscience (CWC), and beyond. it really gets into the meat of the what we are dealing with. It’s a bit long, but so worth the read it makes clear and explains many things of which we here at the bar talk about…
sex, lies, and authoritarian conservatives
Here’s a snip to wet your whistle:

After considerable inquiry and investigation, Dean finally ran across a series of sociology studies inspired by the work of Adorno and associates in the late ’40s on the authoritarian personality, and the historical Milgram experiments of the early ’70s, which demand description here.
If you’re unaware of these experiments, don’t feel bad. They occurred decades ago, and they’ll never be exactly replicated (one hopes, Gitmo notwithstanding) because the methodology would never pass current restrictions on use of human subjects. The experiment went like this. A subject entered a laboratory room with a scientist in a lab coat, sat at a table on which was placed a button that they were told controlled voltage to an electrode device placed on another person in another room they could see through a one-way mirror. This other person was supposed to be learning word pairs, and the subject was to apply a jolt for each error. Occasionally the scientist would suggest that the subject increase the voltage, up to 450 volts, which is pretty dangerous.
What the subject did not know was that the button did not really deliver electrical voltage, and that the other person was not really learning word pairs but was acting out the pain each time the shock was applied. Still, to Milgram’s great dismay, more than 65% of the subjects increased the voltage to maximum levels without ever questioning the scientist’s orders, despite the painful cries of the person they were ostensibly zapping. Milgram concluded that for many human beings who are otherwise decent, caring, and reasonable, it is harder to disobey authority than it is to set aside conscience and their own good judgment. A conclusion not inconsistent with Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil.”
Dean felt he was on to something with this discovery, and looked further to find the more recent work of Bob Altemeyer, a sociologist who has defined various aspects of what he has come to call the Right Wing Authoritarian personality(RWA). Altemeyer’s work is world-renowned and has gained him acclaim, recognition, and several awards. Dean corresponded with him at length when writing CWC, and gave him drafts of many sections to make sure it accurately represented the research. Bear in mind what I share here is a synopsis of my scant memory of his early studies, augmented by Dean’s detailed descriptions.
Another scale was developed (not by Altemeyer, but inspired by his work) to capture the authoritarians who run things, who lead; the Social Dominance Orientation (SDOs). The key dimension focused on here is equality, and the SDO feels this is a “sucker word in which only fools believe.” The statements they endorse are variations on the Animal Farm theme: Some pigs are more equal than others. Their world is competitive, dangerous, and threatening, where the powerful survive anyway they can, to hell with everyone else, and the ends always justify the means. They evidently suffer virtually no moral restraint, and feel allowed to do whatever they can get away with. They dismiss the Golden Rule and champion prejudice. They are ruthless and hedonistic, and do not care about harming others. Consequently, they gravitate to status jobs where inequality is the norm, such as corporate hierarchies and law enforcement, and research finds they are over-represented in positions of political power. Their personalities are “intimidating, unsympathetic, untrusting and untrustworthy, vengeful, manipulative, and amoral….power hungry, domineering, mean, [and] Machiavellian.”
The RWA and SDO personalities would seem to be somewhat orthogonal, one being more inclined to follow and the other to lead, but there are those who score high on both scales; Altemeyer calls these individuals “particularly scary.” These “Double Highs” are not submissive, instead seeking those who will be submissive to them. They are exceedingly prejudiced, exhibiting stark hostility against rights for ethnic groups, homosexuals, and women. This group, unlike the SDOs but more akin to the RWAs are extremely religious, tending to be Christian fundamentalists, who are also profoundly parochial, wishing to mingle only with their own kind.
Double Highs appear willing to take the ruthlessness of the SDO and the self-righteousness of the RWA to perilous heights. In a game simulation of global policy and power, these individuals quickly provoked world crisis by risking everything to win, including billions of lives and destruction of the ozone layer, just to “win.” This type of individual leading the gullible and unthinking RWAs with a band of SDOs….well, we’ve seen it in action.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 9 2006 19:51 utc | 20

I’ve been away on vacation for a few days, Canadian Thanksgiving long weekend.
Went up into the mountains to breathe the fresh air and view the quiet hills and silent lakes.
Nice country, the BC Interior plateau between the Coast Mountains and the Rockies. Looks just like Cabo San Lucas (dry desert grasses, dwarf Ponderosa Pine) and photos I’ve seen of the mountains in Iran.
I return to check the temperature of the Internet-mediated world, and find a N. Korea nuclear test, a South Korean UN Secretary-General,

Ban Ki-moon, the foreign minister of South Korea, on Monday virtually assured his selection as the next secretary general of the United Nations, winning overwhelming support in a final informal poll of the Security Council.

(NY Times)
and conclude that it seems like things are approaching the boiling point. Perhaps it’s the coming US elections. Or the mediated mood is always Orange shading to Red.
Can anyone shed any light on last week’s discussion about Russia/China facing off against western forces in Lebanon … is this just an echo of both Condi Rice and the neocons’ leftover USSR obsession meant to tilt the mood toward the enemy of the East, or is this in fact how world power is lining up for the ongoing energy conflict.
Because the list of players in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon seems to include most of the first and second-world powers albeit with much smaller ground forces — some tens of thousands vs. hundreds of thousands/millions during Korean, Vietnam and Second World Wars.
I went into this last week in a MoA post but can’t find it now …
What’s going on? – live clip of Marvin Gaye recorded 1973.
By the way, this clip shows a US in decline, scenes we don’t see much of anymore. Maybe things are getting better. Really.

Posted by: jonku | Oct 10 2006 5:09 utc | 22

Hannah, I spoke recently with a young nephew. His friend (let’s call him Bill) had just returned from a 7 1/2 month tour as a Canadian soldier attached to a US Special Forces group in Aghanistan.
“His eyes were dead” when he returned home. He said something about a pregnant woman with children who pulled out “an AK” in a crowded market, then they were mowed down.
Bill has a solution to the opium problem: “Napalm the fields.”
I pointed out that that would deprive the Afghanistan population, all farmers, of their livelihood.
I hope the message got across to my nephew.
Are you saying that the opium production is no longer under control (if it was) of the “US drug mafia.” So who is gaining control?
Follow-up question, where is the refined product going … I have heard mostly Europe but there is a pretty big market in North America too … I guess anywhere there is money to buy it. Brazil? India? Which are the big drug-receiving countries.

Posted by: jonku | Oct 10 2006 7:42 utc | 24

thanks for the link hannah. those homes remind me of hopi land

Posted by: annie | Oct 10 2006 7:46 utc | 26

anna missed, i don’t think i will ever look at one of those choppers again w/out thinking of your art.
jonku, thanks for the marvin, i got a little sidetracked listening to some tracks….damn he’s good

Posted by: annie | Oct 10 2006 8:04 utc | 28

Monbiot on water: The freshwater boom is over. Our rivers are starting to run dry

Many parts of the world, for reasons that have little to do with climate change, are already beginning to lose their water. In When the Rivers Run Dry, Fred Pearce, who is New Scientist’s environment consultant, travels around the world trying to assess the state of our water resources. He finds that we survive today as a result of borrowing from the future.
The great famines predicted for the 1970s were averted by new varieties of rice, wheat and maize, whose development was known as the “green revolution”. They produce tremendous yields, but require plenty of water. This has been provided by irrigation, much of which uses underground reserves. Unfortunately, many of them are being exploited much faster than they are being replenished. In India, for example, some 250 cubic kilometres (a cubic kilometre is a billion cubic metres or a trillion litres) are extracted for irrigation every year, of which about 150 are replaced by the rain. “Two hundred million people [are] facing a waterless future. The groundwater boom is turning to bust and, for some, the green revolution is over.”
In China, 100 million people live on crops grown with underground water that is not being refilled: water tables are falling fast all over the north China plain. Many more rely on the Huang He (the Yellow river), which already appears to be drying up as a result of abstraction and, possibly, climate change. Around 90% of the crops in Pakistan are watered by irrigation from the Indus. Almost all the river’s water is already diverted into the fields – it often fails now to reach the sea. The Ogallala aquifer that lies under the western and south-western United States, and which has fed much of the world, has fallen by 30 metres in many places. It now produces half as much water as it did in the 1970s.
…
As these two effects of climate change – global drying and rising salt pollution – run up against the growing demand for water, and as irrigation systems run dry or become contaminated, the possibility arises of a permanent global food deficit. Even with a net food surplus, 800 million people are malnourished. Nothing I could write would begin to describe what a world in deficit – carrying 9 billion people – would look like.
There are four possible means of adapting to this crisis. One is to abandon regions that are drying up and shift production to the wettest parts of the world – the Amazon and Congo basins, for example. But as these are generally the most forested places, this will lead to a great acceleration of climate change, and of the global drying it’s likely to cause, as the carbon in the trees is turned to carbon dioxide. Another is to invest in desalination plants. But even the new desalination technologies produce expensive water, and they use a great deal of energy. Again this means more global warming.
…
But to stand a high chance of averting this catastrophe, we must ensure that the drying doesn’t happen. The predictions in the new paper refer to global warming in the middle or at the high end of the expected range. Beneath that point – 2C of warming or so – a great global drying is less likely to occur. As the figures I’ve published show, to keep the rise in temperature below this level requires a global cut in carbon emissions of 60% by 2030 – which means a 90% reduction in rich nations such as the United Kingdom. It sounds ridiculous . But then you consider the alternative.

Posted by: b | Oct 10 2006 8:20 utc | 30

Bring water.

Posted by: jonku | Oct 10 2006 9:30 utc | 32

@jonku – Bring water.
The solution is actually to plant trees and give it some time. Then the water will come back. Much of Afghanistan was deforestated through wars.

Posted by: b | Oct 10 2006 10:30 utc | 34

The forgotten S-word.
” .. and force Israel into peace talks despite strong American opposition.”
“capable” (MY QUOTES) ” .. of carrying warheads filled with nerve gas, such as Sarin and VX”
The BS never ends.

Posted by: DM | Oct 10 2006 11:02 utc | 36

Let’s talk about sex:
Wargasms and Orgasms
Alexander Cockburn

Sex scandals, at least in societies dominated by guilt-sodden Protestants, fulfill the therapeutic function usually attributed to pleasant or exciting sex: exploration of intimate areas of political life, surfacing “issues” normally repressed. America can’t talk about Iraq, where Americans boys are raping 14-year-old girls and shooting families at close range, can’t talk about torture, so instead we focus on what former Republican Representative Mark Foley wrote to a page about boxer shorts and their contents. What’s the other option? Pack a tube of sex lubricant, holster up, grab a box of ammo and head for the Amish schoolhouse….

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 10 2006 13:27 utc | 38

Two Big Steps for Transparency in Government
How the US Federal Government spends our money.
How the US Representatives spend their money.(pdf)
Right, Dick Cheney’s net worth is 85K. My ass. I would have loved to see a graph plotting how much richer (or poorer, hah!) they get while in office – and shortly afterwards. Or for that matter pre-Iraq war vs post Iraq war.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 11 2006 4:26 utc | 40

US free speech row grows as author says Jewish complaints stopped launch party

A party in honour of Bad Faith, Callil’s account of Louis Darquier, the Vichy official who arranged the deportation of thousands of Jews, was to have taken place at the French embassy in New York last night but was cancelled after the embassy became aware of a paragraph in the postscript of the book. In the postscript Callil says she grew anxious while researching the “helpless terror of the Jews of France” to see “what the Jews of Israel were passing on to the Palestinian people. Like the rest of humanity, the Jews of Israel ‘forget’ the Palestinians. Everyone forgets.”
…
The row over Callil’s book is the latest element in a dispute about restrictions on freedom of speech in the US in relation to comments on Israel.
A British-born academic based at New York University has had two speaking engagements called off after criticism of his views. Tony Judt, an American Jew who was brought up in Britain, was due to speak on the subject of the influence of the pro-Israeli lobby on US foreign policy and at a separate location under the title War and Genocide in European Memory Today. The first lecture was cancelled by the Polish consulate in New York, which owned the venue, while Mr Judt pulled out of the second after he was asked by the organisers to refrain from direct references to Israel. In both cases pro-Israeli organisations and individuals had raised objections to Mr Judt’s views on Israel.
…
Mr Judt said his views had been misrepresented. “The only thing I have ever said is that Israel as it is currently constituted, as a Jewish state with different rights for different groups, is an anachronism in the modern age of democracies.”

Posted by: b | Oct 11 2006 5:37 utc | 42

Kill the Messenger The tragic death of one of America’s most important investigative journalists: Gary Webb.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 11 2006 6:47 utc | 44

b#42. the london review of books debate w/mr Judt is available here. i watched it the other night and recommend.

Posted by: annie | Oct 11 2006 7:36 utc | 46

republican values
unbelievably sad and appalling.

Posted by: annie | Oct 11 2006 10:18 utc | 48

spelling, heavens

Posted by: annie | Oct 11 2006 10:25 utc | 50

Oh crap, a small airplane crashed into a tall building in New York
it is on CNN now

Posted by: dan of steele | Oct 11 2006 19:04 utc | 52

i thought you were joking dan odf steel
apparently not
The building has been identified as a 50-story tall residential apartment complex, known as the Belaire Condominiums, located at 524 East 72nd street and York Street.
Flames can currently be seen coming out of two floors, and four apartments are said to be heavily engulfed in flames.
The FAA indicates that it was a two-engine plane flying under “visual rules”–not in contact with any tower.
Officials are indicating that, at this point, there is no reason to assume terrorist activity.
Admiral Tim Keating, commander of US Northern Command, told CNN that fighter aircraft were scrambled by NORAD to fly over several cities, after the crash, but wouldn’t divulge how many or what cities.
you’ld think norad would keep some backup jets around next time they do tests?

Posted by: annie | Oct 11 2006 19:58 utc | 54

or just maybe a small airplane simply flew into a building in an accidental way.
I was able to stand about 20 minutes of the bubbling hysteria on CNN before switching to an old Bond movie.
I was taken aback by the picture of what looked like a soldier carrying his assault rifle like they do these days in kind of a gangsta style. What ever happened to regular policemen in blue suits?

Posted by: dan of steele | Oct 11 2006 20:01 utc | 56

The pilot of the aircraft is being reported as being New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle, just days after their playoff defeat. There’s some kind of extended metaphor or something here, somewhere.

Posted by: Rowan | Oct 11 2006 23:21 utc | 58

rowan & beq – sounds like something more than a metaphor

Lidle’s passport was reportedly found on the street below the crash

Posted by: b real | Oct 12 2006 2:44 utc | 60

@annie
I thought the videos seemed a little homophobic and circumstantial, so I didn’t comment.
Incidentally, we’ve upped the ante in a war that is still waiting on a congressional declaration. The first official charge of treason in the GWOT has now been filed. Nice precedent for the tolerance and goodwill of the American Way. The GWOT era has, in many ways, been even uglier and deadlier than the McCarthy era… but until now, we have had no Rosenbergs. There but for the grace of a photoshopper go any any of us…
Bets are off. Too many zetas in my sky.

Posted by: Monolycus | Oct 12 2006 5:37 utc | 62

There are about 141,000 American soldiers in Iraq, more than at any time since January.
The Army is planning for the possibility that it may have to keep that number of troops in Iraq for four more years, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, said Wednesday at a roundtable session with reporters.

Top U.S. Officer in Iraq Sees Spike in Violence

Posted by: b | Oct 12 2006 7:44 utc | 64

grr…#63 was mine..
Also, we have often debated over the orchestrated vs the happenstance, incompetence vs genius here at moon. Rove is this, rove is that etc.
I have maintained that these jackels are complicit. Many do not want to believe that cabals within cabals perpetrate some of the most abominable and heinous crimes imaginable, drugs, blackmail, mind control, sexual abuse, sex slaves, you name it, all behind closed doors, in high secret places unseen by and to the vast majority. And that conspiracies of that nature could never be hidden. One example, Political consultant sentenced for imprisoning students, or who would have ever belived this time last year that something as orchestrated as this could have been part of the lock step scenario of methodical power: Olbermann Exclusive: Dissecting new Book: Tempting Faith. Or this:
More confirmation that the spawn of MKULTRA is still alive and flourishing in the New World Order police state:
Al Qaeda Suspect: U.S. Government Gave Me LSD
BY JOSH GERSTEIN – Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 11, 2006

An alleged operative for Al Qaeda imprisoned for 3 1/2 years as an enemy combatant is saying he was tortured and forcibly medicated with “a sort of truth serum” while in a Navy brig.
Jose Padilla, 35, was arrested in 2002 on suspicions that he was plotting a radioactive explosion, also known as a dirty bomb. He spent several years in a military jail in Charleston, S.C., without facing criminal charges. As legal wrangling over his fate continued, prosecutors in Miami charged him late last year with providing material support to a terrorist group and conspiring to murder, maim, and kidnap Americans abroad.
Lawyers for Padilla, who was born in Brooklyn and converted to Islam while in prison for gang-related crimes, made the claims of torture in a motion filed last week with a federal court in Florida.
“He was threatened with being cut with a knife and having alcohol poured on the wounds. He was also threatened with imminent execution,” the chief federal defender in Miami, Michael Caruso, wrote. “Additionally, Padilla was given drugs against his will, believed to be some form of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or phencyclidine (PCP), to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations.”
Padilla’s attorneys argued that the alleged torture constitutes “outrageous government conduct” that requires that the criminal case against Padilla be dismissed. Judge Marcia Cooke has already dropped one of the charges against Padilla, but he could still be sentenced to life in prison on the other charges. The trial has been delayed until next January, at the earliest.
A top Al Qaeda leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, reportedly admitted during interrogations that he tasked Padilla with locating radioactive materials and scouting out locations for a dirty bomb. However, the pending indictment against Padilla makes no mention of such a plot.
A spokesman for the Navy referred questions about Padilla’s treatment to the Justice Department. Prosecutors handling the case did not respond to calls seeking comment for this article.

LSD and Biscuits
Many of the revelations in the New Yorker article (“The Experiment,” by Jane Mayer, July 11 & 18, 2005 — not yet available online, but here’s an interview with the author) are familiar, but there are hints of techniques that mirror the most horrific (and mostly ignored) abuses at Abu Ghraib and the historical accounts of government-sponsored mind control. Baher Azmy, a professor at Seton Hall Law School who is representing one detainee, states in the article, “The whole place appears to be one giant human experiment.” (p. 62)
The people behind these psychological abuses and experiments are known as Behavioral Science Consultation Teams, or BSCTs (commonly called “biscuits”). Originally, BSCTs served as therapists and dispensed psychotropic drugs to soldiers, and evaluated their combat readiness. Post 9/11, however, their mission was altered — instead of helping soldiers, their talents were turned to interrogation and psychological torture under the umbrella of military intelligence.
Sex, Drugs, Mind Control, and Gitmo

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 12 2006 9:16 utc | 66

Michael Meacher & Andreas von Bulow (Part 2)
Two prominent European politicians, Michael Meacher and Andreas von Bulow, have gone on the record saying that 9/11 was an inside job which was planned and carried out by the Bush Administration. This is a Dutch TV program called “TweeVandaag” that aired on September 9, 2005. (Part 2 of 2)

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 12 2006 9:51 utc | 68

Sephardi children
Every Sephardi child was to be given 35000 times the maximum dose of x-rays through his head. For doing so, the American government paid the Israeli government 300 million Israeli liras a year.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 12 2006 10:24 utc | 70

something from ron kovik
“For the past three and a half years I have watched in horror the mirror image of another Vietnam unfolding in Iraq. As of this writing over 2,700 Americans have died and nearly 20,000 have been wounded while tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, many of them women and children, have been killed. Refusing to learn from the lessons of Vietnam, our government continues to pursue a policy of deception, distortion, manipulation and denial, doing everything it can to hide from the American people its true intentions in Iraq. Sadly, the “War on Terror” has become a war of terror. Never before has this government through its outrageous provocations and violent aggressions placed the citizens of this country in such grave danger. Never have the people of this country been so threatened, never before has life and liberty been in such great peril; not in the two hundred and thirty years since our revolution have we as a people and a nation been at such a crucial turning point. These are dangerous times. A century of arrogance, brutality and aggression has come back to haunt us all. September 11th has happened. The mask has been ripped away. The lie has been exposed and this criminal government now stands naked before the world! These are provocative words, and the truth may be deeply unsettling but when will we speak the truth? When will we end this silence? How much longer will we wait before we are ready to finally admit that the murderer lives in our own house, that this government that we entrusted long ago with the sacred task of protecting life and liberty now, by it’s every reckless, unjust and immoral action threatens the lives and liberty of us all?
Have we become so complacent, so coward and intimidated by this government that we have forgotten our own revolutionary birthright of rebellion and dissent? Have we become so paralyzed by the eleventh of September that we would give up our liberty and freedom for the promise of a security that does not exist by a government that now threatens our very lives? What will it take before we finally realize the true reality of this crisis? How many more terrorist attacks, senseless wars, flag draped caskets, grieving mothers, paraplegics, amputees, stressed out sons and daughters before we finally begin to break the silence of this shameful night? Let us open up our hearts and speak in a way we have never spoken before knowing that lives now depend on it, and the very survival of our nation is now at stake. Let not our silence in this crucial moment betray us from our destiny.”
Disabled Vietnam War veteran and antiwar activist Ron Kovic, subject of the film “Born on the Fourth Of July,” reaches out to touch fingers with an admirer during a massive protest against U.S. involvement in Iraq. The demonstration occurred in downtown Los Angeles in September 2005.

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Oct 12 2006 14:01 utc | 72

She’d be be better off, and taken more seriously, if she would stick to describing the culture without drawing the conspirical infrences
obviously. what she says is so steeped in her own prejudice and bias one is left w/discriminating between fact and fiction. none the less i don’t think she is in total fantasy mode. i think she has credibility in so far as she is describing what her perceptions are, embellishment most likely unintentional. the story about kissinger for example, obviously hearsay, yet why would she make up something like this. i believe she heard it from the source as she claims. it could have happened in my view.
i wonder if she is still alive now 8 years later.

Posted by: annie | Oct 12 2006 16:44 utc | 74