Ignoble cause: Why Orwell’s ‘jihad’ was nothing like Al Qaeda’s ‘International Brigades’ in Syria

Fighters in the International Brigades

UK Guardian journalist George Monbiot recently made some pretty outrageous claims, equating the international civilian efforts to block the rising tide of fascism in the 1930s with today’s ridiculous Western intelligence-run ‘jihad’, a.k.a. the ‘War on Terror’, which plainly runs interference for imperial greed abroad and instituting police state measures at home.

George Orwell et al were making a last stand before the West plunged into the fascist darkness it’s still in today, and which ‘al Qaeda’ is a creature of. If you think fascism ended with Russia’s defeat of Germany in 1945, think again. The Dulles brothers were sizing up Nazis for relocation en masse to the Americas as early as 1943, in preparation for taking up positions in the new U.S. National Security State, aka the Military-Industrial Complex, the vehicle through which the Reich has gone on to near-total ‘full-spectrum dominance’.

The civilian International Brigades, with barely any support from Soviet Russia, and with obstacles thrown in their way by Winston ‘anti-Nazi’ Churchill and Franklin ‘anti-fascist’ Roosevelt, fought for a noble cause when they gathered in Spain to defend the democratically-elected Republican government against the fascist coup led by Franco, and subsequent civil war from 1936-1939. The Spanish fascists were explicitly supported Hitler and Mussolini, and implicitly supported by most other Western regimes.

‘Al Qaeda’ has no cause because it’s not a real organization with defined goals that have any hope of appealing to large numbers of people – ever. Sure, there are, now, as a consequence of U.S. wars, growing numbers of Muslim men driven mad with the injustice of it all, and who believe themselves to have just cause for doing whatever they must to satisfy their thirst for retribution. But this is inherently reactionary – there is nothing noble about what they want, nor is there anything noble in the way they go about trying to achieve whatever the hell their goals are supposed to be. I mean, seriously, cutting off the hands and feet of children in Syria, filming the slaughter, then passing it off as an attack by Syrian government forces? Raping young Syrian girls, then receiving the blessing of Saudi clerics to have been retroactively and temporarily ‘married’ to them for the duration of the rape; medieval, barbaric, sanctioned by the U.S., French and UK governments… but noble?

U.S. Army veteran Eric Harroun, of Phoenix, Arizona, who joined al Qaeda to ‘wage jihad’ in Syria. With a ‘manifesto’ that can be summed up as ‘guns, women-as-sex-slaves, and sharia law’, you can bet the farm that the only freedom ‘al Qaeda’ is fighting for in Syria is the freedom to exploit others.

If Orwell were choosing where to fight abroad today, he’d be going to Syria to fight FOR Assad’s efforts to make Syria secular, progressive and peaceful – and to maintain its current status as a bulwark against Western psychopatholgical inroads into the region.

Monbiot is also forgetting about the thousands of ‘jihadis’ going to Syria annually from the U.S., Canada, Sweden, UK, France, Australia, and elsewhere in ‘the West’, a trend which our dear leaders say they’re “worried” about. Worried, that’s it?! Radicalized teenagers just ‘happen’ to be turning up in Syria? We can’t for one moment escape Big Brother’s All-Seeing Eye in this dystopian age. We’ve had no-fly lists and Total Mass Surveillance since 9/11, and even earlier, for god’s sakes! Think about it. Yes, they’re officially ‘terrorists’, but they’re clearly sanctioned to do what they do because they’re ‘our terrorists’. They’re being flown in and out, supplied, financed and trained, thanks to billions of dollars channelled through Saudi Arabia and Qatar, logistics support via Israel, Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon, and Western Special Forces coordinating operations.

What does Monbiot think Mohammed Merah was doing meeting with senior members of French intelligence in the months before the Toulouse shootings? Hint: they weren’t just swapping holiday snaps of the part-time employed 22-year-old’s paid-for ‘vacations’ to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria and Israel! Someone is clearly going around recruiting, indoctrinating or otherwise brainwashing mentally-challenged kids in ‘the civilized West’ to go join this most ignoble of causes where the super-retarded in power are leading the retarded to execute bloody mayhem… just coz they can:

So, no, if Orwell were going to ‘wage jihad’ in Syria or anywhere else today, he would not be hailed as a hero – he’d be a an agent of empire, unwitting or otherwise, and he’d be as reviled as they are.

Psychopaths in power: The Parasite on the Human Super-organism

I was reading another devastating commentary by American author Chris Hedges on the overbearing tyranny of the State, and it got me to thinking about this popular notion of “rising up against” oppressors. Hedges’ analysis is on target, but I feel that his conclusion that we must “tear it down” in order to escape it is lacking something important.

To ‘rise up against our oppressors’, to ‘take back the country’, and to ‘overthrow the ruling class’ assumes that they are ‘up there’ to begin with. Yes, in many ways they are. Through their domination of industry, government, media, education and so on, they invariably influence – control even – just about everything material in our world; they possess most of the wealth, work in high-rise buildings, live in elevated suburbs and generally look down from their rarefied vantage point on the masses slumming it out below.

But when it comes to the important things – moral character, worldly experience, creative abilities, and basic intelligence – what do they really possess?  Few, if any of these things. In fact, I think we can make the case that, psychologically-speaking, they are actually pretty far ‘down there’ on the scale of haves and have-nots.

Ok, so they certainly set no moral example to follow. Well, what then do we need the State for? Standard political theory teaches that the State is the final arbiter of contracts between people, without which there would be lawless chaos. Left unto themselves, claimed schizoids like Thomas Hobbes, life for humans would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” I’m not so sure. In fact, I’m beginning to think it’s the other way round: life is brutish for most because of the State.

Although based on research that is some 80 years old, Political Ponerology by Andrew Lobaczewski is the classic text for understanding how psychopaths and other assorted character-disturbed people infect society from the ‘top’ down, not least through their crazed theories that reveal a barely disguised contempt for human nature. Studies have found that the ‘intelligentsia’ are actually much less intelligent than the average citizen they ‘lead’.

One study, cited in Robert Kirkconnell’s excellent American Heart of Darkness, a revision of U.S. history through the lens of Ponerology, found that 58% of Americans are more intelligent than the average U.S. president. And in terms of moral character, most presidents were found to have next to none, relative to the national average. No doubt there are variations and exceptions to the rule through time and space, but I think this supports the contention that we don’t actually need the State, and certainly not in its Leviathan form, which begins with the assumption that man is inherently evil and so must rely on the State to bestow objective morality on him from the outside.

[By the way, you can listen to our recent interview with Kirkconnell on SOTT Talk Radio here.]

I acknowledge that sweeping generalizations are generally too simplistic; the world and human psychology is complex, and so ‘simple’, ‘final’ solutions have been instrumental in getting us into this mess. Of course some individual PhDs really are experts in their chosen field; some individual bureaucrats really are good administrators; some individual military men are natural warriors; heck, some individual bankers are excellent accountants.

All of these roles can and do have a productive place within society. But I suspect that, in general, the ruling classes’ importance to any given society – and I’m including roughly the ‘top’ 10-20% here, though the percentage undoubtedly varies from place to place, and their negative impact probably diminishes the further you move down the power/wealth scale – is grossly inflated, in much the same way the casino stock market doesn’t add anything productive to the real economy of labor and capital – it just distorts everything and interferes with efficient distribution.

Check this video out:

Pretty astonishing, eh?

Note the part where the narrator says:

Everything looks like it has been designed by an architect: a single mind. This colossal and complex city was created by the collective will by the ant colony: the super-organism.

I submit that, in general, the ruling classes obstruct, retard and – in the worst cases – destroy society far more often than they actually contribute to its harmonious functioning, most of which appears to happen naturally according to ‘higher’, as yet unconscious, laws. Like that ant colony, humanity functions as one super-organism, and it does so independently of the corrupt elites’ decrees, their mad scientists’ ridiculous theories, their insane enforcers’ medieval habits, their greedy bankers’ usurious rates, and so on.

Society, the economy, civilization, etc. don’t work because of leaders and their underlings; they work in spite of them!

Part of the problem with “rising up against” the ruling classes is that there will be those whose actual underlying motivation was to replace the existing leaders and thus be in a position to take more for themselves. Psychopaths and other pathologicals will inevitably be carried along by the tide because, as history has repeatedly shown, in no time at all do they subvert a social or revolutionary movement into its opposite. But if we recognise that the masses have had – all along – the creativity, common sense, ingenuity, self-motivation and skills that they need to naturally and autonomously govern as a collective, we realize we don’t need ‘the State’ and we don’t need ‘leaders’.

Is all this really designed and led by certain people? Or does it form part of a single super-organism that is intelligently-informed despite being infected with a parasite?

As things stand, however, most people cling to the illusion that they need leaders, an illusion that the elites who think they rule the rest of us are only too happy to sustain. And so the parasite remains firmly attached to its more intelligent, productive, and vital host: the masses of ordinary man. As long as there’s a kind of equilibrium, the host remains sufficiently healthy while the parasite is kept in check, and as a species we get by without catastrophic ‘colony collapse disorder‘. There’s still war, slavery, oppression, injustice and so on, but it’s always competing with – or mitigated by – public education, the welfare state, creative expression, sharing, democratic improvements, unionization, human rights, demand for higher wages, etc.

What we see happening all over the world today is the worst case scenario – the parasite destroying its host. It’s particularly pronounced in certain Western countries, but no corner of the planet is immune. People are ‘losing their minds’ in ever-greater numbers, just as the bees are abruptly disappearing. The ‘common sense’ of ordinary people, of a higher intelligence than that of their ruling classes, has been eroded as they become sicker. Their dis-ease manifests as climatic stress, which feeds back into more human stress until…

Well, until the slate is wiped clean and the parasitic symbiosis between host and parasite is re-established, I guess. As Lobaczewski wrote in Ponerology:

Germs are not aware that they will be burned alive or buried deep in the ground along with the human body whose death they are causing.

The whole thing is just really tragic. The elites believe they’re shepherding the flock toward Great Things. The flock is in fact dying because it’s not really a flock; it’s a super-organism that can no longer sustain the barrage of psychopathic inroads into its ‘collective will’.

So, I say we try something different than ‘rising up and taking back control of the governing institutions’. Forget new personnel to run those institutions: we don’t need those institutions at all. Rather than engaging in battle with the tyrant, whose very thought processes are so completely alien to us that we always emerge drained from direct encounters, I say we essentially just ignore it. Not by pretending that it isn’t there, but by inwardly distancing ourselves from it and outwardly seeking communion with others doing likewise.

I know that’s hard for people to even begin contemplating when they’re presently under financial or other duress, but the beauty of it is that the more you understand how the psychopaths rule our world, the more you free yourself from the illusion that they have any power over you; the more freedom – of the real inner kind – you’ll obtain; the more you’ll have to give to other humans and less to the parasites…

See your world, see yourself, see your world, see yourself…

As Joe Baegent put it, the way out is the way in.

Volcanic eruptions, rising CO2, boiling oceans, and why man-made global warming is not even wrong

The spectacular eruption of an undersea volcano off the coast of Tonga in the South Pacific in 2009

Perhaps in an effort to ward off yet another long cold winter, officially-sanctioned climate science has been pumping out hot air at exponentially-increasing rates of late. An IPCC report in September told us that global warming “paused” unexpectedly in 1998, and shows no sign of resuming. Actually, the work that went into that report found that warming had stopped altogether, but the wording was altered to describe it as a “pause”. You’d think that a pseudo-acknowledgement like this from on-high would dampen the Global Warmists’ enthusiasm, but you’d be wrong.

Their driven need to ‘fit the facts around the policy’ is illustrated by a couple of recent articles that caught our eye. Here USA Today reports on the findings of a study that claims:

“The middle depths of a part of the Pacific Ocean have warmed 15 times faster in the past 60 years than they did during the previous 10,000 years.”

Then this BBC article cites “the world’s leading experts on ocean acidification”, who claim that:

“The world’s oceans are becoming acidic at an unprecedented rate and may be souring more rapidly than at any time in the past 300 million years, […] causing a 30% loss of species in some ocean ecosystems.”

And, as you can probably guess, these experts are certain that it’s all your fault.

By now you know the drill:

You produce too much CO2 —> this contributes to the ‘greenhouse effect’ –> planet heats up –> ice caps melt –> sea levels rise, etc…

Take note that the Pacific Ocean data they used to come up with this “warming 15 times faster than ever” claim concerns the middle depths of the Pacific Ocean. Meanwhile, another study published back in August reported that the Pacific Ocean’s surface temperatures are cooling. The warming middle depths were attributed to man-made CO2 being “pumped into” the ocean, while the cooling surface layers were attributed to “a natural warm and cold cycle.”

What’s it gonna be guys? Man-made climate change or a natural cycle? You can’t have your cake and eat it!

But apparently they believe they can have it both ways, so the established sequence of cause-and-effect has been amended to the following: an increase in CO2, predominantly or solely caused by man, causes an increase in heat. That CO2 is absorbed by the oceans, which heats them up… except for the surface layers – that’s nature’s fault!

If we follow their reasoning to its logical conclusion, we would have to believe that the oceans are cooling by absorbing heat that is sinking down to lower layers!

When the lower-than-expected ocean surface temperatures were announced, climate scientists – as superbly economical with the truth as ever – suggested that the naturally-caused cooler surface ocean temperatures had “flattened out” the warmer ‘human-caused’ atmospheric temperatures and given us the appearance only of a “pause” in global warming!

But remember, in any event, the September IPCC report established that there never were any warmer atmospheric temperatures to begin with, so there was nothing for these cooler surface ocean temperatures to “flatten out”!

It’s CO2 Jim, but not as we know it

What there is good evidence for, however, is increased CO2 levels, in both the oceans and the atmosphere.

As we’ve already noted, the experts are also telling us that ocean acidification, the ongoing decrease in the pH of the Earth’s oceans due to increased absorption of CO2, has reached unprecedented levels. Now, it is assumed that this extra CO2 is coming from human activity, via the atmosphere.

But from where, you might be wondering, did they find the hard data to support their “300 million years” claim?

From volcanic vents on the ocean floors:

Emissions of CO2 driving rapid oceans ‘acid trip’

BBC, 17 November 2013

Studies carried out at deep sea vents where the waters are naturally acidic thanks to CO2, indicate that around 30% of the ocean’s biodiversity may be lost by the end of this century.

These vents may be a “window on the future” according to the researchers. “You don’t find a mollusc at the pH level expected for 2100, this is really quite a stunning fact,” said Prof Gattuso. “It’s an imperfect window, only the ocean’s acidity is increasing at these sites, they don’t reflect the warming we will see this century.”

[…] The effect of acidity is currently being felt most profoundly in the Arctic and Antarctic oceans. These chilly waters hold more CO2 and increasing levels of the gas are turning them acidic more rapidly than the rest of the world.

The researchers conclude that human emissions of CO2 are clearly to blame.

[Emphases added]

Notice anything funky about this ‘scientist’s’ understanding of a ‘fact’?!

At most, human emissions of CO2 are in the 4-5% range of a gas that makes up 3% of the atmosphere. Humanity’s potential contribution to atmospheric CO2 levels is therefore statistically insignificant. Yes we have toxified the entire biosphere in every way imaginable, yes we treat our fellow Earthlings abominably, and yes, there is evidence that CO2 levels are higher than ever observed by modern man, but the notion that one tiny factor in a complex and interdependent system, one that transfers vast quantities of energy around the world, is responsible for the weather extremes and mass animal die-offs we’ve seen in recent years is utterly absurd.

There is not enough energy – in the form of either CO2 or heat, or both – above water to account for the changes happening underwater, so this energy must be coming from elsewhere. The IPCC’s own charts illustrate the problem:

The mental gymnastics Global Warmists undertake to convince themselves that man-made CO2 is responsible for this are breath-taking. Commenting on the above IPCC chart, one green pundit in the Guardian writes:

Can you make out the tiny purple segment at the bottom of the above figure? That’s the only part of the climate for which the warming has ‘paused’. As the IPCC figure indicates, over 90 percent of global warming goes into heating the oceans, and it continues at a rapid pace, equivalent to 4 Hiroshima atomic bomb detonations per second.

Ok… but in line with the September IPCC report, you need to explain to us how 90% of nothing (ie, the non-warming since 1998) translates into those large percentage increases in energy and CO2 in the oceans? Where does that energy and CO2 increase come from, if not from human activity, from land or from the atmosphere? They acknowledge that there is no atmospheric warming, so what then is boiling the oceans?

The answer is staring them in the face.

Rocking and rolling in the deep

A more rational explanation, and one that’s far more serious in its implications for everyone today, whatever about people in 2100, is that increased quantities of CO2 and heat are coming up from below, i.e. passing up through the oceans from within the planet, heating and acidifying the planet’s oceans.

Volcanism is the most likely culprit here.

The oceans’ chemistry and temperature is probably changing due to direct contact with known, observable vectors of CO2, namely increasingly active and newly formed volcanic vents and underwater volcanoes on the sea floor. Volcanic activity has been steadily brewing and increasing above ground for years. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the planet’s volcanoes are located underwater. With landslides, rifts and sinkholes opening up – swallowing cars, people and buildings along the way… can we even begin to imagine what is happening on the vast and relatively unexplored ocean floors?

Countless accidental discoveries of underwater vents, volcanoes, plumes and geysers have been made in recent years, many of which we’ve archived on SOTT. Here’s just one example:

Hydrothermal “Megaplume” Found in Indian Ocean

An enormous hydrothermal “megaplume” found in the Indian Ocean serves as a dramatic reminder that underwater volcanoes likely play an important role in shaping Earth’s ocean systems, scientists report.

The plume, which stretches some 43.5 miles (70 kilometers) long, appears to be active on a previously unseen scale.

“In a nutshell, this thing is at least 10 times – or possibly 20 times – bigger than anything of its kind that’s been seen before,” said Bramley Murton of the British National Oceanography Centre. […]

“A normal hydrothermal vent might produce something like 500 megawatts, while this is producing 100,000 megawatts. It’s like an atom bomb down there.”

Remember what the September IPCC report said about all of the allegedly man-made global warming constituting the energy equivalent to “4 atom bombs”? Well here’s just one underwater volcano approaching that level of energy all by itself! The volcanoes above water are erupting all over the place, so it’s probably safe to assume that, combined with underwater volcanoes, the total energy involved here dwarfs even the IPCC’s highest energy estimates for man-made warming.

As we write, the Ring of Fire is super-active, with dozens of new and ‘dormant’ volcanoes erupting on a weekly basis. New islands formed off Japan and Pakistan in recent months, while new underwater volcanoes are being discovered all the time:

Underwater Antarctic Volcanoes Discovered in the Southern Ocean

Scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have discovered previously unknown volcanoes in the ocean waters around the remote South Sandwich Islands.

Using ship-borne sea-floor mapping technology during research cruises onboard the RRS James Clark Ross, the scientists found 12 volcanoes beneath the sea surface — some up to 3km high. They found 5km diameter craters left by collapsing volcanoes and 7 active volcanoes visible above the sea as a chain of islands.

Methane is an even more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 and both are stored in vast deposits in the form of clathrates under the ocean floors, particularly at the poles. These deposits are being ruptured by the increased volcanic activity (and accompanying seismic activity), then dissolving into the ocean depths, and are currently outgassing at levels that have observers seriously concerned because they know from the geological record that this happens during real climate change, which, like a phase transition, builds up to an abrupt and invariably catastrophic climate shift:

Climate change crisis intensifies: ‘Methane levels are going through the roof’

Methane, a powerful greenhouse gas which can lead to unchecked and rapid climate change, has been referred to as “the canary in the coal mine” and its release has been theorized to have caused past mass extinctions, known as the the “clathrate gun hypothesis.”

Many scientists believe that a sudden release of methane clathrates in the past from the seabed and permafrost led to a sudden rise in global temperatures, also known as “abrupt climate change.” Large amounts of methane being released can lead to a runaway process that is irreversible, much like “firing a gun.” Abrupt climate change can cause global temperatures to change within a matter of years.

We can discount the part about “runaway temperatures” because while the deep layers of oceans may be warming, the upper layers are not, and neither is the atmosphere, and… Newsflash: it is the upper layers of the oceans that carry warmth to land masses! If the upper layers are cooling, what effect do we think that might have on our climate, in the Northern Hemisphere for example? Has no one noticed the severe winters over North America, Northern Europe and Asia over the past few years? In addition, the ice core data tells us that methane spikes are signatures marking the boundaries between glacial and interglacial periods.

No discussion about the real causes of ‘climate change’ would be complete without mentioning Earth’s celestial visitors. With Comet ISON currently approaching perihelion, and at least four other comets in close proximity, their connection to the dramatic increase in volcanic eruptions and seismic activity in the past couple of days is completely overlooked by the authorities’ myopic reassurances that none of them pose a threat to us because we’re not directly in their line of sight and ignores the potential for celestial objects to exert influence on our environment indirectly, at-a-distance.

But really, should we expect any different given that NASA et al were caught completely by surprise when the largest comet fragment since Tunguska exploded over southern Russia just 9 months ago?

Comet dust is electrically-charged so it in turn may also be causing the Earth’s rotation to slow down slightly, as observed on Venus and Saturn. Such slowing of the rotation could be responsible for reducing the strength of the planet’s magnetic field, exposing the planet to more dangerous cosmic radiation and stimulating even more volcanism.

More volcanic activity means more moisture is evaporated, and more dust and CO2 is released into the atmosphere. Combined with a lower, cooler upper atmosphere that is loading with comet dust (a.k.a. ‘meteor smoke‘) from the significant increase in comets reaching the inner solar system in recent years, expect to see even greater weather extremes than we’ve already had to face in recent years. Eventually a threshold may be reached, at which point heavy rainfall becomes heavy snowfall and ice age conditions set in for the long term.

We say “eventually”, but bewarned, a sudden-onset global Ice Age happened very fast the last time around.

In the meantime, disregard the Warmists’ tepid scenario of gradual inundation of coastlines over the next hundred years due to non-existent man-made global warming, prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

The climate is changing alright, but it’s not warming, and it certainly isn’t your fault.

 

Co-written with SOTT.net editor Doug DiPasquale, this article was first published on SOTT.net, 27 November 2013