Pentagon Prepares for Economic Warfare | US Army War College: Constant Conflict: Information & Culture Warfare

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Bluntly: prepare your community for a world with no food distribution, no electricity, an economic depression and financial meltdown -- and lots of hungry people.
~ Farmers Weekly: It's All Downhill From Here, by Lara Johnstone ~

If you alone found out what the lie was, then you're probably right it would make no great difference. But if you all found out what the lie was, it might conceivably make a very great difference indeed... "And when you're on the brink of extinction and want to live for a while longer, the laws governing life might conceivably become relevant." - Ishmael, Ch.6-2

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. -- Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, USMC (Ret)
~ Critical Honorable Psychology 101 :: ‘Life’s a Yossarian Ishmael Guerrylla Jyewrney?’ :: JekyllMind MoonDuck Magic Island ~

If each human family were dependent only on its own resources; if the children of improvident parents starved to death; if thus, over breeding brought its own "punishment" to the germ line -- then there would be no public interest in controlling the breeding of families. But our society is deeply committed to the welfare state, and hence is confronted with another aspect of the tragedy of the commons.

In a welfare state, how shall we deal with the family, the religion, the race, or the class (or indeed any distinguishable and cohesive group) that adopts over breeding as a policy to secure its own aggrandizement? To couple the concept of freedom to breed with the belief that everyone born has an equal right to the commons is to lock the world into a tragic course of action.
~ Killing Times: The Killing Times are Here: Population Policy || Depopulation or Perish || Tragedy of the Commons ~

Pentagon Prepares for economic warfare

Politico | Eamon Javers; 4/9/09 4:18 AM EDT

The Pentagon sponsored a first-of-its-kind war game last month focused not on bullets and bombs — but on how hostile nations might seek to cripple the U.S. economy, a scenario made all the more real by the global financial crisis.

The two-day event near Ft. Meade, Maryland, had all the earmarks of a regular war game. Participants sat along a V-shaped set of desks beneath an enormous wall of video monitors displaying economic data, according to the accounts of three participants.

“It felt a little bit like Dr. Strangelove,” one person who was at the previously undisclosed exercise told POLITICO.

But instead of military brass plotting America’s defense, it was hedge-fund managers, professors and executives from at least one investment bank, UBS – all invited by the Pentagon to play out global scenarios that could shift the balance of power between the world’s leading economies.

Their efforts were carefully observed and recorded by uniformed military officers and members of the U.S. intelligence community.

In the end, there was sobering news for the United States – the savviest economic warrior proved to be China, a growing economic power that strengthened its position the most over the course of the war-game.

The United States remained the world’s largest economy but significantly degraded its standing in a series of financial skirmishes with Russia, participants said.

The war game demonstrated that in post-Sept. 11 world, the Pentagon is thinking about a wide range of threats to America’s position in the world, including some that could come far from the battlefield.

And it’s hardly science fiction. China recently shook the value of the dollar in global currency markets merely by questioning whether the recession put China’s $1 trillion in U.S. government bond holdings at risk – forcing President Barack Obama to issue a hasty defense of the dollar.

“This was an example of the changing nature of conflict,” said Paul Bracken, a professor and expert in private equity at the Yale School of Management who attended the sessions. “The purpose of the game is not really to predict the future, but to discover the issues you need to be thinking about.”

Several participants said the event had been in the planning stages well before the stock market crash of September, but the real-world market calamity was on the minds of many in the room. “It loomed large over what everybody was doing,” said Bracken.

“Why would the military care about global capital flows at all?” asked another person who was there. “Because as the global financial crisis plays out, there could be real world consequences, including failed states. We’ve already seen riots in the United Kingdom and the Balkans.”

The Office of the Secretary of Defense hosted the two-day event March 17 and 18 at the Warfare Analysis Laboratory in Laurel, MD. That facility, run by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, typically hosts military officials planning intricate combat scenarios.

A spokesperson for the Applied Physics Laboratory confirmed the event, and said it was the first purely economic war game the facility has hosted. All three participants said they had been told it was the first time the Pentagon hosted a purely economic war game. A Pentagon spokesman would say only that he was not aware of the exercise.

The event was unclassified but has not been made public before. It is regarded as so sensitive that several people who participated declined to discuss the details with POLITICO. Said Steven Halliwell, managing director of a hedge fund called River Capital Management, “I’m not prepared to talk about this. I’m sorry, but I can’t talk to you.”

Officials at UBS also declined to comment.

Participants described the event as a series of simulated global calamities, including the collapse of North Korea, Russian manipulation of natural gas prices, and increasing tension between China and Taiwan. “They wanted to see who makes loans to help out, what does each team do to get the other countries involved, and who decides to simply let the North Koreans collapse,” said a participant.

There were five teams: The United States, Russia, China, East Asia and “all others.” They were overseen by a “White Cell” group that functioned as referees, who decided the impact of the moves made by each team as they struggled for economic dominance.

At the end of the two days, the Chinese team emerged as the victors of the overall game – largely because the Russian and American teams had made so many moves against each other that they damaged their own standing to the benefit of the Chinese.

Bracken says he left the event with two important insights – first, that the United States needs an integrated approach to managing financial and what the Pentagon calls “kinetic” – or shooting – wars. For example he says, the U.S. Navy is involved in blockading Iran, and the U.S. is also conducting economic war against Iran in the form of sanctions. But he argues there isn’t enough coordination between the two efforts.

And second, Bracken says, the event left him questioning one prevailing assumption about economic warfare, that the Chinese would never dump dollars on the global market to attack the US economy because it would harm their own holdings at the same time. Bracken said the Chinese have a middle option between dumping and holding US dollars – they could sell dollars in increments, ratcheting up economic uncertainty in the United States without wiping out their own savings. “There’s a graduated spectrum of options here,” Bracken said.

For those who hadn’t been to a Pentagon event before, the sheer technological capacity of the Warfare Analysis Laboratory was impressive. “It was surprisingly realistic,” said a participant.

Still, the event conjures images of the ultimate Hollywood take on computer strategizing: the 1983 film “War Games” in which a young computer hacker nearly triggers a nuclear apocalypse.

The film and the reality had one similarity: The characters in the movie used a computer called WOPR, or War Operation Plan Response. The computer system used by the real life war-gamers? It was called WALRUS, or Warfare Analysis Laboratory Registration and User Website.

Source: Politico

Constant Conflict

Parameters, Summer 1997, pp. 4-14. | Ralph Peters

The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing.

Culture is fate. Countries, clans, military services, and individual soldiers are products of their respective cultures, and they are either empowered or imprisoned. The majority of the world's inhabitants are prisoners of their cultures, and they will rage against inadequacies they cannot admit, cannot bear, and cannot escape.

We have entered an age of constant conflict. Information is at once our core commodity and the most destabilizing factor of our time. Until now, history has been a quest to acquire information; today, the challenge lies in managing information. Those of us who can sort, digest, synthesize, and apply relevant knowledge soar--professionally, financially, politically, militarily, and socially. We, the winners, are a minority.

For the world masses, devastated by information they cannot manage or effectively interpret, life is "nasty, brutish . . . and short-circuited." The general pace of change is overwhelming, and information is both the motor and signifier of change. Those humans, in every country and region, who cannot understand the new world, or who cannot profit from its uncertainties, or who cannot reconcile themselves to its dynamics, will become the violent enemies of their inadequate governments, of their more fortunate neighbors, and ultimately of the United States. We are entering a new American century, in which we will become still wealthier, culturally more lethal, and increasingly powerful. We will excite hatreds without precedent.

We live in an age of multiple truths. He who warns of the "clash of civilizations" is incontestably right; simultaneously, we shall see higher levels of constructive trafficking between civilizations than ever before. The future is bright--and it is also very dark. More men and women will enjoy health and prosperity than ever before, yet more will live in poverty or tumult, if only because of the ferocity of demographics. There will be more democracy--that deft liberal form of imperialism--and greater popular refusal of democracy. One of the defining bifurcations of the future will be the conflict between information masters and information victims.

In the past, information empowerment was largely a matter of insider and outsider, as elementary as the division of society into the literate and illiterate. While superior information--often embodied in military technology--killed throughout history, its effects tended to be politically decisive but not personally intrusive (once the raping and pillaging were done). Technology was more apt to batter down the city gates than to change the nature of the city. The rise of the modern West broke the pattern. Whether speaking of the dispossessions and dislocations caused in Europe through the introduction of machine-driven production or elsewhere by the great age of European imperialism, an explosion of disorienting information intruded ever further into Braudel's "structures of everyday life." Historically, ignorance was bliss. Today, ignorance is no longer possible, only error.

The contemporary expansion of available information is immeasurable, uncontainable, and destructive to individuals and entire cultures unable to master it. The radical fundamentalists--the bomber in Jerusalem or Oklahoma City, the moral terrorist on the right or the dictatorial multiculturalist on the left--are all brothers and sisters, all threatened by change, terrified of the future, and alienated by information they cannot reconcile with their lives or ambitions. They ache to return to a golden age that never existed, or to create a paradise of their own restrictive design. They no longer understand the world, and their fear is volatile.

Information destroys traditional jobs and traditional cultures; it seduces, betrays, yet remains invulnerable. How can you counterattack the information others have turned upon you? There is no effective option other than competitive performance. For those individuals and cultures that cannot join or compete with our information empire, there is only inevitable failure (of note, the internet is to the techno-capable disaffected what the United Nations is to marginal states: it offers the illusion of empowerment and community). The attempt of the Iranian mullahs to secede from modernity has failed, although a turbaned corpse still stumbles about the neighborhood. Information, from the internet to rock videos, will not be contained, and fundamentalism cannot control its children. Our victims volunteer.

These noncompetitive cultures, such as that of Arabo-Persian Islam or the rejectionist segment of our own population, are enraged. Their cultures are under assault; their cherished values have proven dysfunctional, and the successful move on without them. The laid-off blue-collar worker in America and the Taliban militiaman in Afghanistan are brothers in suffering.

It is a truism that throughout much of the 20th century the income gap between top and bottom narrowed, whether we speak of individuals, countries, or in some cases continents. Further, individuals or countries could "make it" on sheer muscle power and the will to apply it. You could work harder than your neighbor and win in the marketplace. There was a rough justice in it, and it offered near-ecumenical hope. That model is dead. Today, there is a growing excess of muscle power in an age of labor-saving machines and methods. In our own country, we have seen blue-collar unions move from center stage to near-irrelevance. The trend will not reverse. At the same time, expectations have increased dramatically. There is a global sense of promises broken, of lies told. Individuals on much of the planet believe they have played by the rules laid down for them (in the breech, they often have not), only to find that some indefinite power has changed those rules overnight. The American who graduated from high school in the 1960s expected a good job that would allow his family security and reasonably increasing prosperity. For many such Americans, the world has collapsed, even as the media tease them with images of an ever-richer, brighter, fun world from which they are excluded. These discarded citizens sense that their government is no longer about them, but only about the privileged. Some seek the solace of explicit religion. Most remain law-abiding, hard-working citizens. Some do not.

The foreign twin is the Islamic, or sub-Saharan African, or Mexican university graduate who faces a teetering government, joblessness, exclusion from the profits of the corruption distorting his society, marriage in poverty or the impossibility of marriage, and a deluge of information telling him (exaggeratedly and dishonestly) how well the West lives. In this age of television-series franchising, videos, and satellite dishes, this young, embittered male gets his skewed view of us from reruns of Dynasty and Dallas, or from satellite links beaming down Baywatch, sources we dismiss too quickly as laughable and unworthy of serious consideration as factors influencing world affairs. But their effect is destructive beyond the power of words to describe. Hollywood goes where Harvard never penetrated, and the foreigner, unable to touch the reality of America, is touched by America's irresponsible fantasies of itself; he sees a devilishly enchanting, bluntly sexual, terrifying world from which he is excluded, a world of wealth he can judge only in terms of his own poverty.

Most citizens of the globe are not economists; they perceive wealth as inelastic, its possession a zero-sum game. If decadent America (as seen on the screen) is so fabulously rich, it can only be because America has looted one's own impoverished group or country or region. Adding to the cognitive dissonance, the discarded foreigner cannot square the perceived moral corruption of America, a travesty of all he has been told to value, with America's enduring punitive power. How could a nation whose women are "all harlots" stage Desert Storm? It is an offense to God, and there must be a demonic answer, a substance of conspiracies and oppression in which his own secular, disappointing elite is complicit. This discarded foreigner's desire may be to attack the "Great Satan America," but America is far away (for now), so he acts violently in his own neighborhood. He will accept no personal guilt for his failure, nor can he bear the possibility that his culture "doesn't work." The blame lies ever elsewhere. The cult of victimization is becoming a universal phenomenon, and it is a source of dynamic hatreds.

It is fashionable among world intellectual elites to decry "American culture," with our domestic critics among the loudest in complaint. But traditional intellectual elites are of shrinking relevance, replaced by cognitive-practical elites--figures such as Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, Madonna, or our most successful politicians--human beings who can recognize or create popular appetites, recreating themselves as necessary. Contemporary American culture is the most powerful in history, and the most destructive of competitor cultures. While some other cultures, such as those of East Asia, appear strong enough to survive the onslaught by adaptive behaviors, most are not. The genius, the secret weapon, of American culture is the essence that the elites despise: ours is the first genuine people's culture. It stresses comfort and convenience--ease--and it generates pleasure for the masses. We are Karl Marx's dream, and his nightmare.

Secular and religious revolutionaries in our century have made the identical mistake, imagining that the workers of the world or the faithful just can't wait to go home at night to study Marx or the Koran. Well, Joe Sixpack, Ivan Tipichni, and Ali Quat would rather "Baywatch." America has figured it out, and we are brilliant at operationalizing our knowledge, and our cultural power will hinder even those cultures we do not undermine. There is no "peer competitor" in the cultural (or military) department. Our cultural empire has the addicted--men and women everywhere--clamoring for more. And they pay for the privilege of their disillusionment.

American culture is criticized for its impermanence, its "disposable" products. But therein lies its strength. All previous cultures sought ideal achievement which, once reached, might endure in static perfection. American culture is not about the end, but the means, the dynamic process that creates, destroys, and creates anew. If our works are transient, then so are life's greatest gifts--passion, beauty, the quality of light on a winter afternoon, even life itself. American culture is alive.

This vividness, this vitality, is reflected in our military; we do not expect to achieve ultimate solutions, only constant improvement. All previous cultures, general and military, have sought to achieve an ideal form of life and then fix it in cement. Americans, in and out of uniform, have always embraced change (though many individuals have not, and their conservatism has acted as a healthy brake on our national excesses). American culture is the culture of the unafraid.

Ours is also the first culture that aims to include rather than exclude. The films most despised by the intellectual elite--those that feature extreme violence and to-the-victors-the-spoils sex--are our most popular cultural weapon, bought or bootlegged nearly everywhere. American action films, often in dreadful copies, are available from the Upper Amazon to Mandalay. They are even more popular than our music, because they are easier to understand. The action films of a Stallone or Schwarzenegger or Chuck Norris rely on visual narratives that do not require dialog for a basic understanding. They deal at the level of universal myth, of pre-text, celebrating the most fundamental impulses (although we have yet to produce a film as violent and cruel as the Iliad). They feature a hero, a villain, a woman to be defended or won--and violence and sex. Complain until doomsday; it sells. The enduring popularity abroad of the shopworn Rambo series tells us far more about humanity than does a library full of scholarly analysis.

When we speak of a global information revolution, the effect of video images is more immediate and intense than that of computers. Image trumps text in the mass psyche, and computers remain a textual outgrowth, demanding high-order skills: computers demarcate the domain of the privileged. We use technology to expand our wealth, power, and opportunities. The rest get high on pop culture. If religion is the opium of the people, video is their crack cocaine. When we and they collide, they shock us with violence, but, statistically, we win.

As more and more human beings are overwhelmed by information, or dispossessed by the effects of information-based technologies, there will be more violence. Information victims will often see no other resort. As work becomes more cerebral, those who fail to find a place will respond by rejecting reason. We will see countries and continents divide between rich and poor in a reversal of 20th-century economic trends. Developing countries will not be able to depend on physical production industries, because there will always be another country willing to work cheaper. The have-nots will hate and strive to attack the haves. And we in the United States will continue to be perceived as the ultimate haves. States will struggle for advantage or revenge as their societies boil. Beyond traditional crime, terrorism will be the most common form of violence, but transnational criminality, civil strife, secessions, border conflicts, and conventional wars will continue to plague the world, albeit with the "lesser" conflicts statistically dominant. In defense of its interests, its citizens, its allies, or its clients, the United States will be required to intervene in some of these contests. We will win militarily whenever we have the guts for it.

There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing.

We are building an information-based military to do that killing. There will still be plenty of muscle power required, but much of our military art will consist in knowing more about the enemy than he knows about himself, manipulating data for effectiveness and efficiency, and denying similar advantages to our opponents. This will involve a good bit of technology, but the relevant systems will not be the budget vampires, such as manned bombers and attack submarines, that we continue to buy through inertia, emotional attachment, and the lobbying power of the defense industry. Our most important technologies will be those that support soldiers and Marines on the ground, that facilitate command decisions, and that enable us to kill accurately and survive amid clutter (such as multidimensional urban battlefields). The only imaginable use for most of our submarine fleet will be to strip out the weapons, dock them tight, and turn the boats into low-income housing. There will be no justification for billion-dollar bombers at all.

For a generation, and probably much longer, we will face no military peer competitor. Our enemies will challenge us by other means. The violent actors we encounter often will be small, hostile parties possessed of unexpected, incisive capabilities or simply of a stunning will to violence (or both). Renegade elites, not foreign fleets, should worry us. The urbanization of the global landscape is a greater threat to our operations than any extant or foreseeable military system. We will not deal with wars of Realpolitik, but with conflicts spawned of collective emotions, sub-state interests, and systemic collapse. Hatred, jealousy, and greed--emotions rather than strategy--will set the terms of the struggles.

We will survive and win any conflict short of a cataclysmic use of weapons of mass destruction. But the constant conflicts in which we selectively intervene will be as miserable as any other form of warfare for the soldiers and Marines engaged. The bayonet will still be relevant; however, informational superiority incisively employed should both sharpen that bayonet and permit us to defeat some--but never all--of our enemies outside of bayonet range. Our informational advantage over every other country and culture will be so enormous that our greatest battlefield challenge will be harnessing its power. Our potential national weakness will be the failure to maintain the moral and raw physical strength to thrust that bayonet into an enemy's heart.

Pilots and skippers, as well as defense executives, demand threat models that portray country X or Y as overtaking the military capability of the United States in 10 to 20 years. Forget it. Our military power is culturally based. They cannot rival us without becoming us. Wise competitors will not even attempt to defeat us on our terms; rather, they will seek to shift the playing field away from military confrontations or turn to terrorism and nontraditional forms of assault on our national integrity. Only the foolish will fight fair.

The threat models stitched together from dead parts to convince Congress that the Russians are only taking a deep breath or that the Chinese are only a few miles off the coast of California uniformly assume that while foreign powers make all the right decisions, analyze every trend correctly, and continue to achieve higher and higher economic growth rates, the United States will take a nap. On the contrary. Beyond the Beltway, the United States is wide awake and leading a second "industrial" revolution that will make the original industrial revolution that climaxed the great age of imperialism look like a rehearsal by amateurs. Only the United States has the synthetic ability, the supportive laws, and the cultural agility to remain at the cutting edge of wealth creation.

Not long ago, the Russians were going to overtake us. Then it was oil-wealthy Arabs, then the Japanese. One prize-winning economist even calculated that fuddy-duddy Europe would dominate the next century (a sure prescription for boredom, were it true). Now the Chinese are our nemesis. No doubt our industrial-strength Cassandras will soon find a reason to fear the Galapagos. In the meantime, the average American can look forward to a longer life-span, a secure retirement, and free membership in the most triumphant culture in history. For the majority of our citizens, our vulgar, near-chaotic, marvelous culture is the greatest engine of positive change in history.

Freedom works.

In the military sphere, it will be impossible to rival or even approach the capabilities of our information-based force because it is so profoundly an outgrowth of our culture. Our information-based Army will employ many marvelous tools, but the core of the force will still be the soldier, not the machine, and our soldiers will have skills other cultures will be unable to replicate. Intelligence analysts, fleeing human complexity, like to project enemy capabilities based upon the systems a potential opponent might acquire. But buying or building stuff is not enough. It didn't work for Saddam Hussein, and it won't work for Beijing.

The complex human-machine interface developing in the US military will be impossible to duplicate abroad because no other state will be able to come from behind to equal the informational dexterity of our officers and soldiers. For all the complaints--in many respects justified--about our public school systems, the holistic and synergistic nature of education in our society and culture is imparting to tomorrow's soldiers and Marines a second-nature grasp of technology and the ability to sort and assimilate vast amounts of competitive data that no other population will achieve. The informational dexterity of our average middle-class kid is terrifying to anyone born before 1970. Our computer kids function at a level foreign elites barely manage, and this has as much to do with television commercials, CD-ROMs, and grotesque video games as it does with the classroom. We are outgrowing our 19th-century model education system as surely as we have outgrown the manned bomber. In the meantime, our children are undergoing a process of Darwinian selection in coping with the information deluge that is drowning many of their parents. These kids are going to make mean techno-warriors. We just have to make sure they can do push-ups, too.

There is a useful German expression, "Die Lage war immer so ernst," that translates very freely as "The sky has always been falling." Despite our relish of fears and complaints, we live in the most powerful, robust culture on earth. Its discontinuities and contradictions are often its strengths. We are incapable of five-year plans, and it is a saving grace. Our fluidity, in consumption, technology, and on the battlefield, is a strength our nearest competitors cannot approach. We move very fast. At our military best, we become Nathan Bedford Forrest riding a microchip. But when we insist on buying into extended procurement contracts for unaffordable, neo-traditional weapon systems, we squander our brilliant flexibility. Today, we are locking-in already obsolescent defense purchases that will not begin to rise to the human capabilities of tomorrow's service members. In 2015 and beyond, we will be receiving systems into our inventory that will be no more relevant than Sherman tanks and prop-driven bombers would be today. We are not providing for tomorrow's military, we are paralyzing it. We will have the most humanly agile force on earth, and we are doing our best to shut it inside a technological straight-jacket.

There is no "big threat" out there. There's none on the horizon, either. Instead of preparing for the Battle of Midway, we need to focus on the constant conflicts of richly varying description that will challenge us--and kill us--at home and abroad. There are plenty of threats, but the beloved dinosaurs are dead.

We will outcreate, outproduce and, when need be, outfight the rest of the world. We can out-think them, too. But our military must not embark upon the 21st century clinging to 20th-century models. Our national appetite for information and our sophistication in handling it will enable us to outlast and outperform all hierarchical cultures, information-controlling societies, and rejectionist states. The skills necessary to this newest information age can be acquired only beginning in childhood and in complete immersion. Societies that fear or otherwise cannot manage the free flow of information simply will not be competitive. They might master the technological wherewithal to watch the videos, but we will be writing the scripts, producing them, and collecting the royalties. Our creativity is devastating. If we insist on a "proven" approach to military affairs, we will be throwing away our greatest national advantage.

We need to make sure our information-based military is based on the right information.

Facing this environment of constant conflict amid information proliferation, the military response has been to coin a new catchphrase--information warfare--and then duck. Although there has been plenty of chatter about information warfare, most of it has been as helpful and incisive as a discussion of sex among junior high school boys; everybody wants to pose, but nobody has a clue. We have hemorrhaged defense dollars to contractors perfectly willing to tell us what we already knew. Studies study other studies. For now, we have decided that information warfare is a matter of technology, which is akin to believing that your stereo system is more important to music than the musicians.

Fear not. We are already masters of information warfare, and we shall get around to defining it eventually. Let the scholars fuss. When it comes to our technology (and all technology is military technology) the Russians can't produce it, the Arabs can't afford it, and no one can steal it fast enough to make a difference. Our great bogeyman, China, is achieving remarkable growth rates because the Chinese belatedly entered the industrial revolution with a billion-plus population. Without a culture-shattering reappreciation of the role of free information in a society, China will peak well below our level of achievement.

Yes, foreign cultures are reasserting their threatened identities--usually with marginal, if any, success--and yes, they are attempting to escape our influence. But American culture is infectious, a plague of pleasure, and you don't have to die of it to be hindered or crippled in your integrity or competitiveness. The very struggle of other cultures to resist American cultural intrusion fatefully diverts their energies from the pursuit of the future. We should not fear the advent of fundamentalist or rejectionist regimes. They are simply guaranteeing their peoples' failure, while further increasing our relative strength.

It remains difficult, of course, for military leaders to conceive of warfare, informational or otherwise, in such broad terms. But Hollywood is "preparing the battlefield," and burgers precede bullets. The flag follows trade. Despite our declaration of defeat in the face of battlefield victory in Mogadishu, the image of US power and the US military around the world is not only a deterrent, but a psychological warfare tool that is constantly at work in the minds of real or potential opponents. Saddam swaggered, but the image of the US military crippled the Iraqi army in the field, doing more to soften them up for our ground assault than did tossing bombs into the sand. Everybody is afraid of us. They really believe we can do all the stuff in the movies. If the Trojans "saw" Athena guiding the Greeks in battle, then the Iraqis saw Luke Skywalker precede McCaffrey's tanks. Our unconscious alliance of culture with killing power is a combat multiplier no government, including our own, could design or afford. We are magic. And we're going to keep it that way.

Within our formal military, we have been moving into information warfare for decades. Our attitude toward data acquisition and, especially, data dissemination within the force has broken with global military tradition, in which empowering information was reserved for the upper echelons. While our military is vertically responsible, as it must be, it is informationally democratic. Our ability to decentralize information and appropriate decisionmaking authority is a revolutionary breakthrough (the over-praised pre-1945 Germans decentralized some tactical decisionmaking, but only within carefully regulated guidelines--and they could not enable the process with sufficient information dissemination).

No military establishment has ever placed such trust in lieutenants, sergeants, and privates, nor are our touted future competitors likely to do so. In fact, there has been an even greater diffusion of power within our military (in the Army and Marines) than most of us realize. Pragmatic behavior daily subverts antiquated structures, such as divisions and traditional staffs. We keep the old names, but the behaviors are changing. What, other than its flag, does the division of 1997 have in common with the division of World War II? Even as traditionalists resist the reformation of the force, the "anarchy" of lieutenants is shaping the Army of tomorrow. Battalion commanders do not understand what their lieutenants are up to, and generals would not be able to sleep at night if they knew what the battalion commanders know. While we argue about change, the Army is changing itself. The Marines are doing a brilliant job of reinventing themselves while retaining their essence, and their achievement should be a welcome challenge to the Army. The Air Force and Navy remain rigidly hierarchical.

Culture is fate. Countries, clans, military services, and individual soldiers are products of their respective cultures, and they are either empowered or imprisoned. The majority of the world's inhabitants are prisoners of their cultures, and they will rage against inadequacies they cannot admit, cannot bear, and cannot escape. The current chest-thumping of some Asian leaders about the degeneracy, weakness, and vulnerability of American culture is reminiscent of nothing so much as of the ranting of Japanese militarists on the eve of the Pacific War. I do not suggest that any of those Asian leaders intend to attack us, only that they are wrong. Liberty always looks like weakness to those who fear it.

In the wake of the Soviet collapse, some commentators declared that freedom had won and history was at an end. But freedom will always find enemies. The problem with freedom is that it's just too damned free for tyrants, whether they be dictators, racial or religious supremacists, or abusive husbands. Freedom challenges existing orders, exposes bigotry, opens opportunity, and demands personal responsibility. What could be more threatening to traditional cultures? The advent of this new information age has opened a fresh chapter in the human struggle for, and with, freedom. It will be a bloody chapter, with plenty of computer-smashing and head-bashing. The number one priority of non-Western governments in the coming decades will be to find acceptable terms for the flow of information within their societies. They will uniformly err on the side of conservatism--informational corruption--and will cripple their competitiveness in doing so. Their failure is programmed.

The next century will indeed be American, but it will also be troubled. We will find ourselves in constant conflict, much of it violent. The United States Army is going to add a lot of battle streamers to its flag. We will wage information warfare, but we will fight with infantry. And we will always surprise those critics, domestic and foreign, who predict our decline.

Major (P) Ralph Peters is assigned to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, where he is responsible for future warfare. Prior to becoming a Foreign Area Officer for Eurasia, he served exclusively at the tactical level. He is a graduate of the US Army Command and General Staff College and holds a master's degree in international relations. Over the past several years, his professional and personal research travels have taken Major Peters to Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Ossetia, Abkhazia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Pakistan, Turkey, Burma, Laos, Thailand, and Mexico, as well as the countries of the Andean Ridge. He has published widely on military and international concerns. His sixth novel, Twilight of Heroes, was recently released by Avon Books. This is his eighth article for Parameters. The author wishes to acknowledge the importance to this essay of discussions with Lieutenant Colonels Gordon Thompson and Lonnie Henley, both US Army officers.

Source: US Army War College: Parameters

ApacheTom 2 BuffaloBill DMW ::: SS DeerHunterMate SIGINT Race Theory & Mate Selection Strategy ::: RRRZhivagoHunter 2 CrazyHorse

.

What our ancestors, who were firmly rooted in the soil, instinctually recognized as right through the feeling of their kind, has through the course of history been partially erased and covered over by foreign intellectual and racial influence.

The knowledge of the laws of life and awakened consciousness of our kind are today a certain signpost for our entire action. So we want to look at the following described foundations of the laws of life of our world view from the perspective of the great community of the entire folk and make the resultant duties of the individual a principle of our entire life.
~ ApacheTom2BuffaloBill DMW ::: SS DeerHunterMate SIGINT Race Theory & Mate Selection Strategy ::: RRRZhivagoHunter2CrazyHorse ~

If each human family were dependent only on its own resources; if the children of improvident parents starved to death; if thus, over breeding brought its own "punishment" to the germ line -- then there would be no public interest in controlling the breeding of families. But our society is deeply committed to the welfare state, and hence is confronted with another aspect of the tragedy of the commons.

In a welfare state, how shall we deal with the family, the religion, the race, or the class that adopts over breeding as a policy to secure its own aggrandizement? To couple the concept of freedom to breed with the belief that everyone born has an equal right to the commons is to lock the world into a tragic course of action.

The most important aspect of necessity that we must now recognize, is the necessity of abandoning the commons in breeding. No technical solution can rescue us from the misery of overpopulation. Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all.
~ RRR Zhivago Hunter :: “Nuclear Freedom is the Recognition of Mutual Coercion, Mutually Agreed Upon Procreation Values Necessity” :: Buffalo Bill DMW ~

Karl Marx had it wrong. Class has, to be sure, been a major factor in history; but class itself is a derivative concept that is based on the ultimate causative power in history: sex. Marx’s famous formulation must be revised: The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of struggles based on the division of our species into two sexes, jealousies emanating from this division, exaggerations of the differences between the sexes, misunderstandings about sexual reproductive power, and metaphors derived from sex. Together, these closely related matters constitute the most important, but largely neglected, set of motive forces in human history. Control -- or the claim of control -- over the means of reproduction has been even more fundamental to history than has control of the means of production.
~ SeedArmigideon:: "The fact is one cannot begin to search for a solution to a 'Hell Hath No Fury....' problem that has yet to be accurately defined.." ~

SS DeerHunterMate SIGINT Race Theory & Mate Selection Strategy

ApacheTom2BuffaloBill DMW RRRZhivagoHunter2CrazyHorse

When you look at a map of the world, you are not looking at countries, but farms.

Farm Management & Licensing: State capitalism, socialism, communism, fascism, democracy – these are all livestock management approaches. The most productive livestock are the professionals, so the rulers fit them with an electronic dog collar called a “license,” which only allows them to practice their trade on their own farm.

Animal Farm Elections: To further create the illusion of freedom, the livestock are allowed to choose between a few farmers, who provide a few minor choices in how they are managed. They are never given the choice to shut down the farm, and be truly free.

Problem of modern human livestock ownership: challenge of “enthusiasm.” Liberties are granted to the human livestock not with the goal of setting them free, but to increase their productivity. Of course, intellectuals, teachers, artists and priests were – and are – well paid to conceal this reality. You do not have to be livestock. Take the red pill. Wake up.

~ From Admiral GAMBIT ::: Organic Nation Farming, like Gardening, is a skill that is best learned by doing it! ::: With Little ChickenShit ~

SS Race Theory and Mate Selection Guidelines

Translated from Original SS Publications by Libertarian National Socialist Green Party

SS Race Theory Mate Selection Guide LNSGP (Faith & Struggle): "The Fundamental Laws of Life of Our World View" by Libertarian National Socialist Green Party (PDF:2.781KB)

Introduction

SS Race Theory and Mate Selection Guidelines is translated directly from the original SS publication Glauben und Kampfen ("Faith and Struggle"), whose subtitle states that it was published for the SS-men from the ethnic German communities in southeastern Europe.

The original SS book contained four chapters. The first chapter was entitled "The Fundamental Laws of Life of Our World View" (Die lebensgesetzlichen Grundlagen unserer Weltanschauung"). The second chapter covered the life of Adolf Hitler and the history of the National Socialist movement, the third chapter German history, and the fourth chapter the history of the SS. The German word "Volk" is translated as "folk" instead of the more common, but less precise, term "people,"even when it does not refer to the Germans. After all, "folk" is indeed something special; it is an ethnic community extending across many generations; a modern equivalent might be the term "ethnoculture," as "folk" implies a community unified by common culture and ethnicity more than political boundaries.

"Reich" is used only for the German Reich and "empire" for non-German ones. The subraces are translated as follows: "Nordisch" as "Nordic," "Fillisch" as "Falish," "Dinarisch" as "Dinaric," "Westisch" as "Mediterranean," "Ostisch" as "Alpine" and "Ostbaltisch" as "East Baltic." All the illustrations come from the original SS publication.

The sole exception is the cover, Josef Thorak's "Two People" ("Zwei Menschen"). "Erbgut" and "Erbanlagen" have generally been translated here as "hereditary makeup" and "hereditary factors" respectively.

Publisher's note: There is a public view of the National Socialist view of race, and the truth as expressed by National Socialist writers themselves. In our view it was too valuable as information for National Socialist scholars and detractors alike for this to be anything but a public domain, freeware document. While this document was written for people of Germanic descent outside Germany, its principles apply to all races who wish to preserve themselves in an increasingly conformist, monochromatic globalist world.


You and the Question of Blood

In this period of struggle for the future of our folk you will become conscious – through the family and clan and beyond – of the bond that unites us all in an inseparable and sworn community of striving. Furthermore you know that your life, your essence, all abilities and characteristics stem from your ancestors, and that you must take over the same role for the generations which come after you. You cannot shake it off; rather, you have the obligation and duty to adjust your life and live it accordingly.

Consider for once what a tremendous revolutionary change has taken place in the thought and action of our folk in such a short time. After years of decline new life-courage, lifewill and confidence broke through in the German folk on a wide front.

National Socialism has pulled up our folk from threatened annihilation not only economically and politically, but also biologically. The answer to the question of how the Fuehrer and his following could achieve such accomplishments is very simple: Adolf Hitler has again made the laws of life of our kind – whose observance is the prerequisite for any further development – the foundation of our thought, action and feeling.

What our ancestors, who were firmly rooted in the soil, instinctually recognized as right through the feeling of their kind, has through the course of history been partially erased and covered over by foreign intellectual and racial influence.

The knowledge of the laws of life and awakened consciousness of our kind are today a certain signpost for our entire action. So we want to look at the following described foundations of the laws of life of our world view from the perspective of the great community of the entire folk and make the resultant duties of the individual a principle of our entire life.

What is Race?

What is not of good race in the world is chaff.
(Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf)

The great number of life forms shows groups which more or less resemble one another and show common physical characteristics. They have the same nature. We call such groups of life forms "species."

The mankind living today forms a "species," for humans are fertile among each other.

By the observation and comparison of a White, Negro or Mongolian it becomes immediately clear to us that it is not enough to only speak of the "human" species; rather, that for a more precise analysis a further subdivision must be made. This leads to the concept of human races.

The individual races can be distinguished by differences which they have in respect to the uniqueness of their hereditary, intellectual-psychological and physical features, tendencies and characteristics. Each race has certain characteristics and features which are unique to it. These RACIAL FEATURES are passed on to the offspring.

Race is hence a group of life forms which distinguishes itself by the common possession of certain hereditary features. It always produces only its own kind. Or shorter: race is a characterized community of hereditary factors (Stengel v. Rutkowski).

As long as a race remains pure its hereditary essence is passed on unadulterated from one generation to the next. It is hence necessary for the racial consciousness of humans of the same race to be raised and the dangers correctly recognized which lead to a mixing, alteration, degeneration and hence annihilation of the races affected. The predominant race determines the folkish character and continues its influence in it as a hereditary factor. As in the Germanic peoples, the predominant Nordic race gives the German folk, too, the predisposition of our kind.

What is a Folk?

Each folk represents a visible community to the outside world. The same blood, the same soil, the same language, customs, culture and history are an inseparable bond.

For a population to become a folk, race as well as history and culture are necessary. The generation alive at any one time is only one link in the chain which begins with the earliest ancestors and continues with the following generations into the future. All of them together form the folk community. The existence of the individual is only then purposeful if it is innerly bound with the entirety of the folk.

The presently living blood-carriers of this community bear the responsibility for the shaping of the coming generations.

Each folk has its own unique folkish character. The roots of this unique folkish character lie in the racial composition of the folk.

Folk is a community of descent and of fate. As a hereditary community it is large able to create and shape its own environment.

The Meaning of Race

The common heredity determines the physical and intellectual-psychological abilities of a race. "Race" as a practical concept relates not only to the specially formed and working life force within us, but beyond that also to the highest value, to the concept of value, to the world view.

There are races which can create high cultures and those which can never elevate themselves on their own strength. There are races with heroic bearing and those without the courage to fight. Cultural accomplishments are exclusively the creation of higher races. The elevation of mankind continues or ceases with the preservation of the purity and of the strength of the culture-bearing races.

The racial composition of a folk is unique. Its alteration always has a transformation of its nature and culture as a consequence. Each racial mixing always means a lowering of the worth of the higher race.

Related Race – Foreign Race –
Same Breed – Foreign Breed

Mankind displays strictly separated racial groups. Very roughly expressed, we distinguish between: White, Black and Yellow. Each of these groups in turn contains a number of subraces with certain common features. In this case one speaks of related races.

Opposed to these stand the foreign races. Folks which in regard to their racial composition show the same elements as the German folk are of "related race" ("artverwandt"). To these belong the majority of European folks.

Since the racial core of our racially related folks is often very diverse, one must look quantitatively at the racial elements for the foundation of a distinction. In the Germanic folks Nordic blood predominates in their racial composition. Their relationship to the German folk is hence referred to as being of the "same breed" ("stammesgleich"). Other folks which also show a small amount of Nordic blood, but which in their substance are not Nordic, are referred to as being of "foreign breed" ("stammesfremd").

The existign positive racial composition of the German folk rests on the fusion of related races and the large predominant portion of Nordic blood.

The Origin of the Nordic Race

The main territory of the Nordic race encompasses the area of southern Scandinavia, Jutland, the North and Baltic Seas and reaches into central Germany.

Already in the earliest period the Nordic man was a settled farmer. He invented the plow, which other folks later adopted, cultivated crops and breed pets. The explosive population growth of this Nordic mankind led to a new, necessary acquisition of space and caused wave after wave to stream down into bordering areas: into the European area and into the wide parts of Asia. The previous original inhabitants – even if often for only a short time – were imprinted with the mark of Nordic culture.

Not: "From the East came the light!", as was claimed by science earlier; rather, "From the North came the strength!"

The Meaning of the Nordic Race for Mankind

The Fuehrer says in Mein Kampf:

"Everything that we today marvel at in the world, science and art, technology and inventions, is the creative product of few folks and perhaps originally of ONE race."

The high cultures of the Indians, Persians, Greeks and Romans – created by the Ingo-Germanics – clearly show the Nordic (modern "Indo-Aryan") creative spirit. With the decline of the Nordic ruling class they, too, again disappeared. Even today we feel relationed to these cultures, which have a common racial origin.

We are not so presumptuous, however, to believe that all cultures, even in earlier times, can only be credited to the Nordic race. Folks with other racial composition have also created cultures. In us, however, other feelings are roused if we try to relate to the cultures of Old China, Babylon or the old Indian cultures of the Aztecs (in present-day Mexico) and the Incas (in present-day Peru). It cannot be denied: those were also high cultures; but towards them we feel undeniably foreign. They are not related to us, but rather, are of foreign race. A different spirit speaks from them. Never did these foreign cultures reach a commensurate peak with those based on Nordic spirit.

The technological development of today has also emerged under the leadership of the Nordic race. This is just as much true, for example, in modern Turkey, the progress of America and the rise in the Far East.

Wherever mixed with closely related races the influence of the Nordic race has always proven beneficial and developed abilities which produce the highest cultural achievements.

The German Folk and the Nordic Race

Despite the often heavy mixture and meshing of races in the various provinces of the Reich we find individual races more pronounced in the various parts of Germany:

There are areas in which a tall stature, narrow face and light colored hair, eyes and skin predominate (physical appearance of the NORDIC race). Closely related to Nordic man – perhaps only described as a variation of the same – but larger, wider and more stocky appearing is FALISH man.

In many parts of the Reich we find large people with a short head and a narrow face, large nose, brown eyes and black hair (physical appearance of the DINARIC race).

Or in individual areas are found small, slender and nimble people with dark eyes and hair color (appearance of the ALPINE race).

Finally, conspicuous in certain parts of the Reich are short, round-headed people with wide faces, brown eyes, brown to black hair and dark skin color (physical appearance of the EAST BALTIC race).

In all provinces of the Reich, whether North or South, West or East, the NORDIC RACE is more or less strongly represented. Many people in our folk cannot be absolutely assigned to one or another race. In each folk are found – next to examples who are in appearance racially pure – the individual races in more or less mixed form.

In the German folk the Nordic heritage predominates. The Nordic race is not only the PREDOMINANT RACE; it is also found in the BLOOD OF ALMOST ALL GERMANS. "Blood and soil" are not empty concepts, rather our destiny. Hence the breeding goal of the German folk is also given. It is completed in the fulfillment of the laws of life of its predominant race.

The portion of Nordic blood in the hereditary makeup of the German folk is about 50%.

Furthermore family trees teach us: EACH GERMAN HAS NORDIC BLOOD IN HIM.

So the German folk is, in the truest sense of the word, a blood community. History on a racial basis has long proven that the Nordic race has a much larger share of extraordinary men than other races. The Nordic race is above all the carrier of the high degree of ability of the German folk. Great deeds in all spheres have made it the leader race of mankind.

There is no other human race which has produced so many extraordinary leaders, commands and statesmen.

In darking exploit Nordic man conquered large areas, founded states and created cultures.

Already around the year 1000 Vikings had landed in America. The opening up of entire continents was led by the Nordic spirit.

One of the striking characteristics of the northern race is self-control. Nordic daring is the foundation of the martial accomplishments of Nordic races. Conscientiousness and strength of will, paired with reliability, greatly strengthen the drive for independence.

These characteristics, however, reduce his ability to sympathize, and the danger is great that the Nordic man loses himself and expends himself. Nordic man possesses a great love for sport and competition; he stands there where one must dare. Therefore he is also more frequently found than other men in those professions which are tied to danger. But here, too, is the knowledge: more important than skin color is the character of the man.

One belongs essentially to the race whose virtues he professes through deed.

If one examines the individual countries of Europe according to their racial composition, one initially notices that in almost all states the same races are represented. We find the Nordic race represented outside of Germany, in the Scandinavian lands, England and Holland and even in Russia, Italy, France, Spain and so on. We also find, however, East Baltic man in the various European countries. The overall racial evaluation of a folk does not come down to that. It is a matter of the STRENGTH OF THE PORTIONS OF THE INDIVIDUAL RACES in the respective folk. And there we determine: already just numerically the Reich marches far ahead of all other folks in respect to the Nordic portion.

With natural right Germany can claim the leadership of the predominantly Nordic-Germanic folks.

Law of Life – Heredity

"The strong must rule and not mix with the weak, and hence to sacrifice his own greatness."
(Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf)

What Does Heredity Mean?

Each look at the world around us shows that offspring resemble their ancestors.

From the sperm of a beech tree again grows a beech tree. Negroes breed negroes, Whites always Whites. Even in the case of very young children, the relatives notice for example that the nose was "inherited" from the father, the eyes from the mother.

Later other characteristics appear like industriousness, talent, susceptiveness to certain illnesses.

That an inheritance has taken place is ancient knowledge of men. Breeders have always tried to promote the passing on of certain features and characteristics and to prevent animals and plants with undesirable characteristics from breeding. That this was a matter of development according to natural laws, however, has only been recognized and proven during the last few decades.

Like every event in nature, heredity, too, is subject to unchangeable laws.

The laws of heredity – like all other laws of life – have the same validity for plant, animal and man. In the offspring either the characteristics of both parents are again recognizable or a characteristic of the father or mother predominates. Many times a characteristic can be traced through many generations or it skips entire generations to later suddenly again make an appearance.

Heredity is hence the passing on of features and characteristics from parents to offspring.

Not only physical characteristics are inherited, but also intellectual and psychological.

Man possesses TWO hereditary factors for each characteristic. The child receives the hereditary factors in EQUAL PARTS from the parents.

A mix-breed can resemble a purebred as a result of the possession of predominant hereditary factors in his appearance. The suppressed hereditary factors are not thus eliminated; they simply do not appear in that generation. What appears healthy on the outside can hide the covered over hereditary factors for sickness inside. One does not see on any many what hereditary factors lie in him. A purely external evaluation can hence never be conclusive.

Two different races distinguish themselves through a great number of hereditary factors.

By their mixture (crossing) these hereditary factors are randomly brought together, whereby in the descendants a great diversity resuls in regard to the hereditary makeup.

The result of such a mixture is disruption of the continuity of the hereditary structure.

The laws of heredity today form the basis of our knowledge of the formation and development of successive generations. Since normal and sick hereditary factors are passed on equally to the offspring, an enormous importance of the knowledge of hereditary factors and the duty to intervene and work – to restrict and to promote – for the formation of coming generations follows.

At conception, essence and worth of a person for his folk and his race are already determined.

Certainly education and environment can later develop and promote certain traits and restrain others (in that generation only), but the fundamental essence remains unchangeable. Hence the responsibility for the next generation lies with us.

The Significance of Mate Selection

The right choice of mate is not only the prerequisite for the preservation of the species, but also for the continuance of high selectivity. It is the foundation of any racial higher development.

The selection of a racially highly worthy wife in itself still does not necessarily mean an improvement of the race. That only comes when the right mate selection is followed by the breeding of an above-average number of children. For what would the elimination of bad hereditary factors from the folk help, if simultaneously a reproduction of the good hereditary factors was not preserved and expanded?

If, for example, mate selection was made by a man who did not want any children, then this would mean a deterioration of the race, because elimination of good hereditary factors from the future generation would result.

Appearance and Hereditary makeup

If there were only physical differences between the individual human races, the question of belonging to a race would be rather unimportant. Therefore the appearance of a man – which is given by the totality of visual features, characteristics and abilities – must be strictly kept apart.

The hereditary makeup of a person has a much greater meaning than his appearance.

Often it is extremely difficult to derive psychological disposition from the appearance of an individual. By heredity, chance may combine a preponderance of the physical traits of one race with the psychological traits of another race. In most cases, however, one will be able to figure the psychological disposition from the physical appearance or at least approximate it correctly.

Environment and Hereditary Factors

Every person carries a great treasure of hereditary factors in himself from birth.

In the course of his life only a portion of them are realized. Environment has a part in the formation of the individual. Climate, nutrition, living space, position, etc., can have a visible influence on the development of a person. If a life form lacks the environmental conditions needed for it to flourish, then it is stunted.

Its appearance is thus subject to many changes due to the environment, but not the hereditary makeup. Environmental influences are not able to fundamentally alter the hereditary makeup (the preservation of Germandom for centuries on foreign-folkish soil is a visible proof of the strength of the blood). Due to lack of possibilities for development the individual person often is sooner or later ruined.

For the preservation and further evolution of a race, the necessary foundations for life must be present or be created.

Hence are derived the following determinations:

1. Each person is formed by the cross-effects of hereditary factors and surroundings.
   
2. The environment and its influence remain without effect on the descendants.
   
3. Acquired abilities are not inherited. (Only through natural selection are traits passed between generation.)

The last fact is of especially fundamental importance. Through physical exercise the muscles of an individual can indeed be significantly strengthened. The son of an athlete, however, does not therefore get stronger muscles than any average child. Likewise, intellectual knowledge is in no way inherited. The son of a scholar has to start at the beginning with the alphabet just like every other child. The same is proven by the mother tongue, which has been practiced for many generations.

Marxists and democrats have – with much fantasy and one-sided over-estimation of the effect of environment – believed that a change of this environment could improve the destiny of entire folks. For them all people are the same. Hence, placed under the same conditions, Whites, Blacks and Yellows must also achieve the same accomplishments in all areas.

But we know:

Racially and ethnically alien people can never become equal even in the same living space and even over long periods of time. They always remain what they are: alien blood which must be kept away from our folk body if it is not to slowly but irretrievably fall to destruction.

The great folkish task hence consists of protecting the genetic mass of the folk from racemixing, to prevent the spread of genetic defects and to shape the environment so that the best genetic elements of the folk achieve the greatest procreation.

The Meaning of the Laws of Life for a Folk

The laws of nature run according to an unchangeable, un-influenceable will. They are valid for all life forms. It is therefore necessary to acknowledge these laws, and their observance must be viewed as the prerequisite for the preservation and further development of life. Failure to observe the laws of nature is followed by decay, deformity and finally, ruin.

National Socialism has made the re-establishment of a natural order of life a goal and has given the necessary government recognition to the validity of the laws of nature for man.

The Law of Fertility

Animals and plants produce more offspring than is necessary for their survival.

Here are a few examples:
A poppy produces about 4,000 seeds. If all the seeds grew and again reproduced, after five years there would be 256,000,000,000,000 poppy flowers. Already by the sixth year the entire surface of the earth would no longer suffice to hold all of these plants.

A single female cod contains three to four million eggs. After just a few generations of reproduction, the waters of the earth would be stuffed full of cod. Such examples can be expanded upon as much as desired.

The enormous fertility which we find in nature again and again receives the necessary curtailment through the destruction of large numbers of individual creatures. The prospects of survival are not equal for all life forms. The FERTILITY, however, is the prerequisite that a sufficient number of creatures remains preserved so that the species does not perish.

Without fertility there is no further development.

The birth rate will determine the future of our folk. The number of cribs must be much larger than the number of coffins. Only then can we offer successful resistance against all arising dangers and turn into deed our right, which is due us on the basis of our leading position in Europe.

The Law of Struggle and Selection

We have gained knowledge about the development of life on earth largery through sedimentation and fossils. The examinations show again and again: in the oldest layers of the crust of the earth, very simply designed, basic creatures appear; in later layers we find more highly developed life forms, and finally in the most recent layers the most most highly developed organisms. Development means change, growth, reproduction, expansion, etc. Each development requires huge spans of time and knows no standing still. The life of the individual disappears completely in the evolution of the species.

How does nature intervene in events and direct? If we go through the world with open eyes, we see that there is hard struggle everywhere. A struggle for existence or nonexistence.

Struggle is a fundamental law of nature.

The deeper meaning of this eternal, apparent battle of annihilation is this:

Everything weak and/or inferior is annihilated. Only the strong and powerful designs procreate.

The goal is hence a selection upward, the preservation of the best. We only have to correctly recognize the natural events and act accordignly. What our ancestors correctly understood instinctively, being much more strongly bound to nature, must again become our common knowledge. It is not a matter of the INDIVIDUAL, rather the promotion and preservation of the SPECIES.

In National Socialist terms that is phrased:

"Communal good goes before individual good" or "the individual is nothing, the folk is everything."

Each folk needs space to live. Again and again throughout history the struggle for living space occurs. The growing, healthy folk alone has the moral right to expand its living space and, if necessary, to conquer it.

In Nature, Selection Occurs through the Struggle for Survival

We must never carry over the concept of "struggle for existence" into economic life.

We understand it in a purely biological sense.

Artificial, often unnatural selection takes place on a large scale in every culture-folk (culture-folk appears to refer here to political states, as opposed to ethnic-cultural states, or folks). Intellectual inferiors, criminals and sickly people are frequently saved from destruction. Thus bad hereditary make up is not only preserved, but also passed on to future generations. Medical accomplishments especially prevent a selection that once also applied to man. With nature-bound people of a similar culture – as we must view our ancestors – the same selective forces were in effect as with animals. This selection developed man more highly. But the rise of culture and especially of civilization allowed the laws of nature to be forgotten. Man can perhaps postpone their effect, but never eliminate it. Just as many species of animals and plants have become extinct over the course of history, so have entire folks been destroyed because they violated the laws of nature.

Hereditary changes and environmental influences (natural selection) pushed evolution continuously onward. The formation and splintering off of new races was kept within bounds by nature through selection. In nature, those creatures unsuited for the preservation of each race were eliminated, while the carriers of favorable qualities remained.

Selection preserves the race at its peak.

The death of the individual creature has nothing to do with the essence of selection, but is only a means for it. Traits are gradually eliminated when they are no longer passed along to the same degree. Then in the next generation this trait is no longer strongly enough represented. The effect is the same whether this elimination is achieved through sterilization or abstinence, through death or otherwise.

The most important selection is fertility.

The person who has no children can have a long life, but he is forever purged from the life of the race. His genetic combination working together with certain environmental conditions represents something unique. The permanence of individual accomplishment, however, is only then secured if the creative person provides for the perpetuation of his work descendants of himself. FERTILITY alone determines the continuation of hereditary makeup.

Every selection which affects a folk is an enduring and irrevocable success or failure.

With this knowledge the main cause for the decline of ancient culture-folks becomes understandable. In them the carriers of industrious hereditary traits, the culture-bearers and creators, were eliminated. The inferior won the greatest victory over them: the victory of a greater birth rate.

During the Persian wars, approximately 500 BC, Sparta had 8000 combat-worthy men. In the year 244 BC, only 700 were produced.

The decline of Sparta and the collapse of Rome were nothing other than a failure of the fertility of the genetically able.

Reverse Selection and Deformity

It stands confirmed that all culture-folks, especially the basically Nordic-Germanic in character, are an example of reverse selection in regard to fertility. That means: The fertility of the capable is less than that of the less capable.

The ever unequal reproduction of the capable and less capable, however, leads to a lowering of the superior hereditary factors in a folk and invariably mean its racial and hence cultural decline.

Earlier the fundamentally false view was often taken that higher ability was confined to certain "classes" of the population.

"Talent is a monopoly of a social class." (H.W. Siemens)

In the National Socialist state therefore selection and state help are not based on rank or social classes, but solely and limited to ability and accomplishment, industriousness and bearing. The National Socialist Education institutes, the Adolf Hitler Schools, the Langemarck Study and the Order Castles ("Ordensburgen") are living proof of this. They produce the future leaders of the German folk in all areas.

The lower fertility of the Nordic-based folks is confronted with a high reproduction rate of especially those European folks which show Asiatic strains.

In 1933 Germany's natural population growth with 66 million inhabitants was 233,297.
In 1933 Poland's natural population growth with 32 million inhabitants was 402,465.

The danger of a racial transformation in Europe is great. It is upon us now to prevent it.

We know that the number of heads of a folk alone do not make up its strength or significance. But no one will deny that, next to qualitative level, size and natural growth of a folk are the most significant foundations for its influence and power.

War and Reverse Selection

Every war represents a reverse selection in pure form. It is followed by more or less severe folkish-biological damage for the participating peoples. Precisely the most industrious and most capable lose their lives on the battlefield. Germany lost two million of its best men in the First World War. Three-quarters of a million people fell victim to the enemy's hunger blockade.

About the war and overcoming it in regard to population politics, the Fuehrer said:

"The successful outcome of this war will give the German Reich tasks which it will only be able to fulfill through an increase in its population. It is therefore necessary that the gaps created in the folk body through war be filled by growth in births."

From the order of the Reichsfuehrer-SS of October 28, 1939:

"Many a victory of arms for a folk was simultaneously a devastating defeat for its life force and its blood. In this regard the unfortunately necessary death of the best men, as regrettable as it is, still is not the worst part of war. Much worse is the absence of the children that were not conceived by the living during the war and by the dead after the war."

The sacrifices which this war demands of our folk are very painful from a human and a population-political standpoint. But they are by no means senseless, because they have brought the life and future of our folk. They serve the security and defense of our natural right of life.

Dangers of Race-Mixing

The "irrational" animal only joins with members of the same race for procreation.

People close to nature like the Germanics – the farmer, who is rooted in the soil and close to the earth, who feels the call of blood and race – acted from the same instinct over many generations. Only the "overly rational" cultured person believes he can act against nature.

That is always to his detriment. If two different races mix, their hereditary traits never merge into a new genetic mass that will be passed on uniformly. We know from the study of heredity that, aside from the coupling of certain genetic factors, traits are inherited individually and independently of each other. At the propagation of such bastards these traits further separate and divide themselves up in various descendants.

Every racial mixing changes the harmonious balance of racial makeup. The farther apart in origin the mixing races are, the greater will be the disruption which such a bastardization has as consequence. Furthermore come all the disadvantages in the areas of health and especially psychology which result from race-mixing.

Mixed-breeds are physically and psychologically disharmonious.

Race-mixing means a slow decline of the higher race and hence the sure loss of the uniqueness of a folk. The consequences of a harmful racial mixture are taught clearly to us by history. From the moment a folk loses its racial consciousness a moral, intellectual and cultural decline set in. The popular opinion today that race-mixing is culturally expansive and even culturally creative is false. True, on the other hand, is that contact with foreign folks and races often first triggers in us the correct consciousness of our own essence. This knowledge, however, requires us to adhere precisely to strict separation of everything foreign to our kind in racial matters.

About race-mixing the Fuehrer says:

"Blood-mixing and through it the sinking of racial level is the sole cause of the dying off of old cultures."

A series of culture-folks shows the following common path of development, which, however, does not represent a law of life:

After a slow rise to a certain level there follows a short golden age and then a rapid decline. The decline of strength is almost always introduced through the replacement of simplicity, sobriety and health with pleasure-seeking, lack of principles and sickness.

Simultaneously bloody wars eradicate the best carriers and lack of children steadily reduces the number of the capable. The death blow, however, is dealt by mixture with foreign blood. It has the consequence that inner contradictions become even greater.

With such division it is then easy for a vigorous folk to triumph over the sickly one.

The Nordic race is the carrier and foundation of the German people.

Nature teaches us as the highest law:

The individual is not the purpose, rather the means of life.

The German folk is not the sum of 85 million people, but rather a great oneness, a community, in which the Nordic hereditary makeup predominates. This hereditary makeup shows itself not only in physical form and appearance, but also finds its expression above all in a COMMONLY DIRECTED RACIAL SOUL. Not decisive, even if desirable, are the physically Nordic features of the individual person alone.

Instead, his psychological-character traits are.

The Nordic race is the race of the German folk; it impresses its stamp on our essence; it determines our thought, action and feelings.

The Jewish Question

The destructive influence of race-mixing with the Jews proved especially harmful in our folk until the rise to power of National Socialism. These parasites of mankind have well understood to the present day how to prevent a complete merger with their host folks.

Representing this is the statement of the English Jew Disraeli: "Every race must perish which subjects its blood to mixing without care." If in the year 1928 for every 100 pure Jewish marriages in Germany there were already 53 mixed marriages, then this proves how deeply this slow but steadfastly working poison had crept into our folk. Furthermore there existed the special danger that Jewry BY MEANS OF SPIRITUAL DECAY HAD BEGUN TO SYSTEMATICALLY UNDERMINE THE RACIALLY CONSCIOUS ACTION AND THOUGHT OF OUR FOLK in order to raise itself politically and economically to predominance. Alongside this undermining, miscegenation spread primarily in the intellectually leading groups of our folk. Jews made sincere feeling despisable and their propaganda aimed intentionally at the inner undermining and fragmentation of the folk body. The aftereffects of this destructive, decades-long infection are even today detectable in our folk. It requires intensive effort to eradicate the last traces of this pestilence and lead our entire folk back to the natural and only correct path of life.

The solution to the Jewish question has today become a vital task beyond the borders of the Reich for the peoples of Europe.

The Population-Political Development of Germany and its Neighbors

After a short increase in the number of births in the decade after the 1870-71 war, the birth rate sank slowly until the turn of the century and then descended faster.

Causes of the Decline of Births

These are above all of a psychological nature. The declining birth rate started first among the wealthy, who because of comfort and pleasure-seeking were scared off from rearing the appropriate number of children. The broad masses then copied this example. Today it must become the opposite and in the wealthier circles the number of children must especially increase.

The Development of Births in Germany

After the 1870-71 war there were in Germany annually 40 births for every 1000 inhabitants.

At the turn of the century there were only 35 births for every 1000 inhabitants annually.

The birth rate reached its lowest point during World War I when it reached 14 births for every 1000 inhabitants annually.

Even more terrifying is the following picture of the decrease of births:
1870 with 42 million inhabitants there were about 2 million births.
1933 with 65 million inhabitants there were about 0.9 million births.

The renewed positivity of the changed psychological attitude with the rise to power of National Socialism brought a tremendous turnaround.

There were....
1933: 14.7 births per 1000 inhabitants
1935: 19.9 births per 1000 inhabitants
1939: 20.8 births per 1000 inhabitants

This turn is certainly very encouraging in itself, but the increasing birth rate should not be overestimated. The numbers above still do not ensure the necessary increase of our people.

This war is a great biological test of strength. The birth development in the last decade, however, clearly shows the new life will and life confidence which determined the turnaround in this sector.

History proves through many examples that a folk can only harvest the fruits of its industriousness and its strength of accomplishment when it has sufficient people at its disposal. The greater the space, the greater the need for people to protect this space (soldiers), to ensure nourishment (farmers), and to produce industrial products (workers).

All folks which for whatever inner reasons were no longer able to achieve an increase in population strength simultaneously with the strengthening of their power fell victim to annihilation.

Let us look at the fertility of the European peoples:
1936-37 Germany had per 1000 inhabitants 19.4 births
Sweden had per 1000 inhabitants 14.2 births
Norway had per 1000 inhabitants 15.1 births
England had per 1000 inhabitants 15.5 births

In comparison...
Poland had per 1000 inhabitants 26.2 births
Rumania had per 1000 inhabitants 31.5 births
Ukraine had per 1000 inhabitants 34.0 births

The quantitative development of the Germanics, Latins and East Baltic speakers of Slavic language:
Germanics Latins East Baltic
1810 59 million 63 million 65 million
1930 149 million 121 million 226 million
1960 160 million 133 million 303 million

The peoples of the Soviet Union are increasing annually by about three million. In the Asian area Japan has doubled its population in the last 70 years. It has an annual growth of about one million people. Likewise China and India are constantly increasing their populations despite famine and pestilence.

If we do not ourselves provide for the appropriate quantity of offspring and produce an increase of the Nordic hereditary makeup, then Nordic blood will become more and more displaced by Eastern and East-Baltic blood.

The Nordic race or, we can safely say, the Germanic folks march at the end when it comes to fertility.

The number of births, however, decides the fate of folks.

The German victory of arms is thus only a complete one if it is followed by the victory of the child.

"Two weapons are at the disposal of each folk in the struggle for survival: Its ability to fight and its fertility. Never forget that the ability to fight of a folk alone can never make it possible for a folk to survive into the far future, rather that the inexhaustible fountain of its fertility is also necessary." (The Reichsfuehrer-SS)

Racial Hygiene and Population-Politics of the National Socialist State

The Fuehrer says in "Mein Kampf":

"Whoever is not physically and mentally healthy and worthy must not perpetuate his suffering in the body of his child."

Above our action stands the folk community.

It is an indefensible condition if the relationship in a state between the productive and the non-earning levels takes on unhealthy forms. The active, working portion of the populace must support the lives of those unable to work. There are lunatics who previously cost the state tens of thousands of marks. In the (Weimar) period the number of criminals was shockingly high, and criminals often heavily reproduced themselves. By eliminating these carriers of lazy heredity millions can be saved and used for other purposes.

The actions of any responsible state leadership must serve the systematic care and increase of those of good breeding. It is the duty of the state to undertake all things so that the people who uselessly claim the strength of others and for whom life itself means misery ARE NOT BORN. Every natural folk soon eradicates the inferior when it correctly recognizes this fact. In the so-called "culture-folks," however, a false charity – carried into the broad masses especially by clerical circles – downright promotes a reverse selection.

From the point of view of the church any reasonable intervention is labeled a violation of the godly world order. It is plain nonsense to claim that God wants what we call inferior.

Otherwise we also would not have the right to temporarily or permanently remove a murderer or a criminal from the community.

The laws of nature show us exactly that the life of our folk and maintenace of its good breeding stand above the well-being of a congenitally severely deformed person.

Action must not lie with the personal "I," but with the entirety of the folk.

Furthermore experience shows that most of the congenitally ill possess no sense of responsibility toward their descendants.

In 1877, some 40,375 persons were cared for in German lunatic asylums; in the year 1926 it was 252, 793 (!) persons. In the USA the percentage of the mentally ill has more than doubled from 1904 to 1929.

National Socialism has intervened here appropriately.

The position of the Fuehrer toward this problem is clear and unambiguous:

"The demand that it be made impossible for defective people to produce other just as defective people is a demand of clearest reason and in its systematic execution is the most humane act of mankind. It will save millions of unfortunates undeserved suffering and in its consequence lead to increasing recovery."

The German government created the "Law for Prevention of Congenitally Malformed Offspring" on July 14, 1933. The law decrees:

Whoever is congenitally ill can be sterilized through a surgical operation if according to the experiences of medical science there is great probability that his descendants would suffer from severe physical or mental congenital defects.

The law lists presently known congenital illnesses, including a series of mental illnesses and severe hereditary defects such as congenital blindness, congenital deafness, etc.

Furthermore those who suffer from severe alcoholism can be made infertile.

The Congenital Health Board decides about sterilization.

With this legislation the necessary beginning is made for the purification process of the folk body. The effect of this law will already be felt in the next generation. It was a decision of not to be underestimated significance if the National Socialist state put an end to the untenable condition with iron vigor.

That moral offenders possess congenitally greatly damaged offspring is taken into account by a second law. The "Law Against Dangerous Moral Offenders and for the Measures of Security and Improvement" was created on November 24, 1933. Through this law certain anti-social elements are removed from the folk body.

On September 15, 1933 the "Nuremburg Laws" were announced at the Party Day of Freedom. They encompass the following laws:
1. The "Reich Flag Law"
2. The "Reich Citizen Law"
3. The "Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour"

The "Reich Citizen Law" determines who is a subject and who is a citizen. Subjects are those who belong to the Protection Union of the German Reich and who are especially obligated toward it. Reich citizen is the category of someone of GERMAN or RELATED BLOOD who has demonstrated through his actions that he is willing and able to loyally serve the German folk and Reich.

The "Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour" forbids among other things marriage between Jews and subjects of German or related blood.

According to the regulations of the "Reich Citizen Law" and of the "Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour," people of one quarter Jewish heritage are to be integrated through their offspring into the German folk. Therefore marriages between Jews and quarter Jews are forbidden as well as between quarter Jews. Marriages between half Jews and Germans or quarter Jews require the permission of the Reich Minister of the Interior. The law also provides that marriages between people of German blood with offspring of the miscegenated French from the period of the Rhineland occupation as well as with gypsies is prevented.

The meaning of this legislation was summarized by the Reich Marshal:

"It is an affirmation of the strengths and blessings of the Germanic-Nordic spirit. We know that the blood sin is the original sin of the folk. We ourselves, the German folk, have had to suffer greatly from this original sin. We must therefore again try to make a connection with the line of generations from dark prehistory. It has truly been the salvation in the final hour, and if God and Providence had not given us the Fuehrer, Germany would have never again arisen from this original sin, from decay."

A further measure is the "Law for the Protection of the Congenital Health of the German Folk" (Marriage Health Law) of October 18, 1935. It forbids the marriage between people with heritable illness and hence prevents the passing on of defective hereditary factors to descendants.

National Socialist Germany has naturally been sharply attacked by hostile, Jewish-led foreign countries, even though the Reich does not stand alone in the world with these measures. Many states in the USA had already passed legal measures decades ago in order to prevent the increase of inferior hereditary factors. First in 1926 such legal moorings were established in some American states and in 1929 in Denmark and parts of Switzerland. In California 9,000 people have been made infertile during the last 20 years.

Racial Consciousness and Racial Pride of the SS-Man

In the Reichsfuehrer-SS order of December 31, 1931 it says in point one that the SS is an association of Nordic-determined people selected according to special standards.

The principal point of our worldview is the idea of race. We have the unshakeable belief that the blood, our hereditary makeup alone, is decisive for lasting and peak accomplishment. Hence, we place the idea of selection at the forefront of our ideals.

Our ideal of selection is the physically and mentally-psychologically hereditarily fit person of Nordic-Germanic character.

We do not want to be only an association of the physically best, but also the most loyal and most valuable in character.

The Clan Community – Family Hygiene – The Question of Offspring

The preservation of the racially worthy for all future includes the family and clan as a natural prerequisite.

The life of the individual links him to ancestors and descendants. From the family and clan the union extends to the folk community.

The individual person dies, subject to the laws of nature. Through the passing on of his hereditary makeup he first becomes a living member of his folk community. We believe in the immortality of our folk.

The Fuehrer says about the family:

"The destruction of the family would mean the end of all higher humanity...It is the smallest, but most valuable unit in the construction of the entire state structure."

The family is the life foundation of the Reich.

It produces future generations. Each folk can only be renewed out of the family. From Germanic-German feeling we empathize with the idea of clan. In close connection with the laws of life, by way of the German family, we have allowed for upward breeding.

The family is a member of the sensible community of the clan; it is the acknowledged order for the propagation of the coming generation.

Special Duties of Mate Selection

We know:

The selection of a wife gives us the ONLY POSSIBILITY in life to improve the hereditary makeup of the coming generation.

Health or sickness, talent or inability of the descendants is determined by the mate selection of its ancestors.

At this important step in the life of a man, position and wealth must not decide, but only mental and physical soundness. It is also clear that whoever is certain that he is the carrier of unhealthy hereditary factors must abstain.

The Fuehrer says in "Mein Kampf":

"There is no freedom to sin against posterity and hence against the race. What is being neglected in this area on all sides must be remedied by the folkish state. It must put race in the middle of life in general. It must care for the holding pure. It must declare the child the most treasured possession of a folk. It must take care that ONLY THOSE WHO ARE HEALTHY PRODUCE CHILDREN; that there is only one shame: despite one's own sickness and deficiencies to nonetheless put children into the world..."

It is just as much a lack of feeling of responsibility not to pass along good hereditary makeup by voluntary refusal, and hence narrow or even dry up the river of life.

Accomplishment in profession alone is by no means the only one that the community needs. Just as important is fulfillment of the BIOLOGICAL DUTY. Both together produce the German life accomplishment.

The SS-man should marry as young as possible. The mother of his children must be the carrier of worthy blood. Then his family is in every regard an enrichment of the clan and of the folk.

In correct recognition of the future formation of our folk – toward which we must accomplish the largest part – the Reichsfuehrer-SS had already on December 31, 1931 issued the BETROTHAL AND MARRIAGE ORDER. It states:

1. The SS is an association of German, Nordic-determined men selected according to special standards.
   
2. In accordance with the National Socialist world view and in recognition that the future of our folk lies in the selection and preservation of the racially and congenitally healthy good blood, I am introducing marriage permission for all unmarried members of the SS effective January 1, 1932.
   
3. The desired goal is the congenitally worthy clan of German, Nordic-determined kind.
   
4. Marriage permission will be given or denied solely and only according to racial and congenital health standards.
   
5. Each SS-man who plans to marry must receive marriage permission from the Reichsfuehrer-SS.
   
6. SS-members who despite refusal of marriage permission nonetheless marry will be stricken from the SS; they will be given the option of resignation.
   
7. The appropriate processing of marriage requests is the task of the Race Office of the SS.
   
8. The Race Office of the SS will keep the "Clan Book of the SS" into which the families of SS-members will be entered following the granting of marriage permission or approval of an entry request.
   
9. The Reichsfuehrer-SS, the head of the Race Office and the expert advisors of this office are obligated by their word of honor to silence.
   
10. The SS is aware that it is taking a step of great importance with this order.

Scorn, mockery and misunderstanding do not bother us; the future belongs to us!

The Reichsfuehrer-SS
H. Himmler

Furthermore SS-men standing before a commitment must again and again be reminded of the fact that an engagement, too, can only come after permission from the Reichsfuehrer-SS.

From a 1935 speech by the Reichsfuehrer-SS:

"So we are assembled and march according to irrevocable laws as a National Socalist, martial order of Nordic-determined men and as a sworn community of its clans along the path into the far future, and we wish and believe that we will not only be the grandchildren who fought it out better, but beyond that the ancestors of later generations necessary for the eternal life of the German/Germanic folk."

Hence the guidelines for mate selection of the SS-man are set down and the foundations created so that the SS directly does the main part in the formation of the leading clans of coming generations.

The SS in the Struggle for the Future of Nordic-Germanic Space

History shows us how often the rise and fall of flourishing empires and cultures has occurred in the course of millennia.

Mankind owes its greatest accomplishments to the creative strength of the Nordic race.

As soon as the carriers of this culture disappeared, decay was unavoidable. In recent centuries the process of de-Nordicization took on ever-greater forms.

We have learned the roots of the de-Nordicization and shown the dangers which today surround us. The National Socialist state has correctly recognized these dangers.

Laws have already been created to prevent further decay, and measures are also underway to enlighten our entire folk in this sense. Furthemore from us must come – if we really want to possess leadership in the Germanic space – an appropriate direction of all Germanic determined folks.

In place of the de-Nordicization must come a conscious re-Nordicization. Biological insight demands a clear separation of the races. The disadvantages of race-mixing are known to us.

The great colonial activity through settlement of Nordic-Germanic farmers in the East will form a wall against the advance of East Baltic people of Slavic language.

The SS has here, too, stepped into the front line for the solution of these life-critical questions and will, obeying its laws, fulfill the tasks placed before it.

Insight and will for the promotion and strengthening of the Northern Race – coming from our direction – will then become the common possession of all Nordic-Germanic people. We know the path that leads to ascent. We men of the SS carry along with the feeling of responsibility toward our own persons above all the feeling of responsibility toward the folk and coming generations. The idea of race is the principal item of our worldview. Adolf Hitler will triumph in this struggle, too, not because he rebels against the laws of nature, but because he has again given them their due and is willing to be unconditionally true to them.

We want to be counted among the best of the Fuehrer. To him and to our folk belong our entire devotion and loyalty. Our strength and our spirit will help determine and order the new racial reconstruction of the Germanic-determined folks of Europe.

Summary of our Demands

1. Guard your health and – as long as you are still at a developing age – practice restraint above all in regard to recreational poisons (alcohol, nicotine) and sexual activity. (It must be remembered that the Nordic person generally achieves full maturity especially late in development.)
   
2. Marry as early as possible. Only then will you completely enjoy family life with your wife.
   
3. Do not marry a woman of FOREIGN BREED. You are responsible to your folk and to your offspring for the HOLDING PURE OF THE BLOOD.
   
4. Do not marry a congenitally ill woman. Otherwise you carry the guilt for the suffering of your own children and grandchildren.
   
5. Choose only a completely healthy wife for yourself. The true picture of the state of health and characteristics of your future wife are shown to you by her clan.
   
6. Your wife should be AT LEAST as racially worthy as yourself.
   
7. Endeavor to get yourself and your children back into the country.
   
8. Avoid marriage with a relative, because undesirable traits are almost always concealed from you and then emerge TWICE as strong in your children.
   
9. You must preserve your hereditary makeup for your folk in the LARGEST POSSIBLE NUMBER OF CHILDREN. In your children you live on.

Source: Libertarian National Socialist Green Party (PDF:2.781KB)

From Admiral GAMBIT :: CENTCOM's Global Hegemony 'Nuclear-Eschaton-Master' Plan : What To Do With Third World Tyrants? :: With Little ChickenShit!

.

Eurasia, the "World Island" to Mackinder, is still central to American foreign policy and will likely to continue to be so for some time. Conventional wisdom holds that only a power dominating the resources of Eurasia would have the potential to threaten the interests of the United States. Yet that conventional wisdom, as well as many of the other assumptions that traditionally inform our policy, has not been subjected to enough scrutiny in light of the changed international realities. Many geopolitical "truths" that have passed into the canon of security intellectuals rarely get a proper reexamination to determine their relevance to the constantly evolving nature of the system. Were the world system static, no further theorizing would be necessary. Since it is not, we must constantly reevaluate our fundamental assumptions to see whether or not any "eternal" rules of the game, geopolitical and otherwise, truly exist.
~ Reevaluating MI?: Lebensraum Al'Qaeda & Bin Laden Resource Terrorism Geopolitics of Eurasian Heartland : SufiVilnius CoCreators? ~

Karl Marx had it wrong. Class has, to be sure, been a major factor in history; but class itself is a derivative concept that is based on the ultimate causative power in history: sex. Marx’s famous formulation must be revised: The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of struggles based on the division of our species into two sexes, jealousies emanating from this division, exaggerations of the differences between the sexes, misunderstandings about sexual reproductive power, and metaphors derived from sex. Together, these closely related matters constitute the most important, but largely neglected, set of motive forces in human history. Control -- or the claim of control -- over the means of reproduction has been even more fundamental to history than has control of the means of production.
~ SeedArmigideon:: "The fact is one cannot begin to search for a solution to a 'Hell Hath No Fury....' problem that has yet to be accurately defined.." ~

"It is important to understand the distinction between information and intelligence. Information is an assimilation of data that has been gathered, but not fully correlated, analyzed, or interpreted. Intelligence, on the other hand, is the transformation of information into knowledge and insight." -- Admiral Jeremy Boorda, Joint Military Intelligence College
~ Santa Clausiwitz NSA PsyOps :: How Will World War IV (We Need to 'Cull' the Surplus Population) be fought? :: Slamdunk Tzu CIA PsyOps ~

CENTCOM's Global Hegemony 'Nuclear-Eschaton-Master' Plan

What To Do With Third World Tyrants?

by From Admiral GAMBIT; With Little ChickenShit!

FROM: From Admiral GAMBIT :: CENTCOM's Global Hegemony 'Nuclear-Eschaton-Master' Plan : What To Do With Third World Tyrants? :: With Little ChickenShit!; WITH 14th Tiger Army: Wild Lavinder Wolf, The Fourth Panther: 13th Directorate

"Empowering credible experts to expose the flaws and internal contradictions of the enemy's ideology; provide viable, competing alternative worldviews; and contest the intellectual 'safe harbors' where extremist ideas incubate..

One of my perpetual critics assured me that he is certain there will be no Iran War after I had informed him that the odds against it had changed dramatically from 9-1 to 3-1 on Fallon's resignation. I sent him a one-word message: Bet.

But, as Lee Strasberg said, that's small potatoes. Today, the odds jumped to 1-1, which is the level of last November. The effect of the NIE Report is entirely gone....
~ 50-50 chance of Iran War! ~

“The real truth about Liberty. This book takes a wrecking ball to the political establishment. Senator Goldwater would have loved it—it’s The Conscience of a Conservative for the 21st century.” —Barry M. Goldwater, Jr., former member of Congress.

Ron Paul, the New York Post, once wrote, is a politician who “cannot be bought by special interests.”

“There are few people in public life who, through thick and thin, rain or shine, stick to their principles,” added a congressional colleague. “Ron Paul is one of those few.”
Ron Paul's New Manifesto for Revolution

CENTCOM's Master Plan and U.S. Global Hegemony,

by Robert Higgs, LewRockwell

July 22, 2008

Many people deny that the U.S. government presides over a global empire. If you speak of U.S. imperialism, they will fancy that you must be a decrepit Marxist-Leninist who has recently awakened after spending decades in a coma. Yet the facts cannot be denied, however much people's ideology may predispose them to distort or obfuscate those facts.

How can a government that maintains more than 800 military facilities in more than 140 different foreign countries be anything other than an imperial power? The hundreds of thousands of troops who operate those bases and conduct operations from them, not to mention the approximately 125,000 sailors and Marines aboard the U.S. warships that cruise the oceans, are not going door to door selling Girl Scout cookies. United States of America is the name; intimidation is the game.

Of course, the kingpins who control this massive machinery of coercion never describe it in such terms. In their lexis, American motives and actions are invariably noble. Listening to these bigwigs describe what the U.S. forces abroad are doing, you would never suspect that they seek anything but "regional stability," "security," "deterrence of potential regional aggressors," and "economic development and cooperation among nations." Inasmuch as hardly anybody favors instability, insecurity, international aggression, economic retrogression, and mutual strife among nations, the U.S. objectives, and hence the actions taken in their furtherance, would appear to be indisputably laudable.

Yet, from time to time, a U.S. leader lets slip an expression so revealing that it warrants a thousand times greater weight than the vague, mealy-mouthed banalities they routinely dispense. I came across such a statement recently. In seeking funds in 2007 for construction of a $62 million ammunition storage facility at Bagram Air Base, Admiral William J. Fallon, then the commander of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), referred to Bagram as "the centerpiece for the CENTCOM Master Plan for future access to and operations in Central Asia."

Pause to savor this phrase for a moment; let it roll around in your mind: CENTCOM Master Plan for future access to and operations in Central Asia. What an intriguing expression! What dramatic images of future U.S. military actions it evokes! But can those actions be anything other than the very sort that empires undertake? Ask yourself: why does the U.S. military anticipate conducting operations in Central Asia, a region that lies thousands of miles from the United States and comprises countries that lack either the capacity or the intention to seriously harm Americans who mind their own business in their own national territory? Indeed, what is the U.S. military doing in Central Asia in the first place? Have you ever heard of "the Great Game"?

When the Army sought the funds for the new ammunition storage facility at Bagram again this year, its request echoed Admiral Fallon's sentiments by stating: "As a forward operating site, Bagram must be able to provide for a long term, steady state presence which is able to surge to meet theater contingency requirements." The statement's reference to "a long term, steady state presence" would seem to be especially revealing because it takes for granted that U.S. forces will not be leaving this part of the world any time soon. Giving even more weight to this interpretation, Congress approved not only the $62 million for the ammunition storage facility, but also $41 billion for a 30-megawatt electrical power plant at Bagram, a plant large enough to serve more than 20,000 American homes.

Along the same lines, Lt. Colonel John Sotham, commander of the 455 Expeditionary Force Support Squadron, which is now stationed at Bagram Air Base, recently described a number of improvements his squadron is making at the base, looking toward giving it "a more permanent footprint." He added: "It's pretty clear that the U.S. Air Force will be at Camp Cunningham [a living area at Bagram] and involved in the fight against terrorism for a very long time." He relished the opportunity to "help drive Bagram from expeditionary to enduring!"

The United States government divides the world into six military regions called Unified Combatant Commands. (A separate Africa Command has been created only recently. Once it is fully operational, it will include all of the African countries except Egypt. A few other northeastern African countries were previously included in the Central Command's area of responsibility.) The Central Command, abbreviated as CENTCOM, stretches from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen in the West to Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan in the East. The easternmost reaches of this combatant area butt up against India, China, and Russia.

Looking carefully at the map, one discovers that Israel is not included in the CENTCOM area, but in the European Command area. In a sense, however, we may describe the twenty-one countries in CENTCOM's newly defined "area of responsibility" as a sort of logical complement of Israel: the people of every one of these countries devoutly wish (and here I have chosen my adverb carefully) that Israel had never come into existence and that it will go out of existence as soon as possible. Thus, CENTCOM's area, inhabited predominantly by Muslims, comprises a predominant subset of Israel's avowed enemies.

It comes as no surprise, then, that of all the unified commands, CENTCOM is the one in which, in today's world, the U.S. empire's rubber meets the road most abrasively. The command's area of responsibility includes a great part of the world's known petroleum and natural gas deposits, a preponderance of Israel's enemies, and the places in which the George W. Bush administration has chosen to focus its so-called Global War on Terror. Of course, the region also includes Iraq and Afghanistan, where U.S. forces have been fighting for years, and, sandwiched between these two battlefields, Iran, where Dick Cheney and the rest of the neocons ardently desire to extend the fighting at the earliest opportunity.

The high imperial authorities are not embarrassed by the U.S. empire; on the contrary, they are immensely proud of it. They simply do not describe their activities as the maintenance and exploitation of an empire. If you care to read an extended example, I invite you to peruse Admiral Fallon's testimony of May 3, 2007, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, regarding CENTCOM'S "posture." This carefully prepared statement, written in impeccable military bureaucratese, illustrates well how imperial commanders wish to represent their forces' actions and, equally important, how members of Congress wish to have those actions represented to them. Of course, it's all a solemn farce, a polished and meaningless charade staged purely for public-relations purposes―a ceremonial hors d'oeuvres served in public before the diners consume the entrée, which consists of a massive amount of the taxpayers' money ladled out to the armed forces and their civilian contractors.

"Our top priority," Fallon declares, "is achieving stability and security in Iraq." Everyone knows, of course, that Iraq was more stable and secure before the U.S. invasion, which suggests that perhaps the quickest way to reestablish those conditions is for the U.S. forces to leave the country. Certainly many Iraqis resolutely oppose a permanent U.S. presence there, and some of them will continue their violent resistance to U.S. forces as long as the Americans remain. Intelligent adults also know that when Fallon or any other U.S. official speaks of achieving stability and security, he has in mind the achievement of those blessed conditions only on terms acceptable to the U.S. government, and most likely in accordance with its prescription. That the U.S. forces will ever pull out of Iraq and leave the Iraqis to do as they please is virtually impossible to conceive at this point. Indeed, a mere pullout is nearly inconceivable, despite the great amount of talk that goes on about it on both sides. On the Iraqi side, this talk is sincere; on the U.S. side, it is all for show.

Fallon testified that in Afghanistan, "the foundation of security and governance is in place." He must have known how ludicrous that statement was. Outside of Kabul, the U.S. forces, their allies, and the puppet regime control hardly anything, and U.S. and allied forces that move about the country are at constant risk of attack. The Taliban has not been vanquished, and in fact it has been rebuilding its ranks and its operational capabilities recently. The likelihood that outside forces will ever impose their designs on Afghanistan's backward but fiercely resilient tribesmen verges on nil. Even Fallon has the temerity to observe that "parts of the country have never known centralized governance." Great powers have sought to conquer Afghanistan and bend it to their imperial will for centuries, never with more than short-lived success. Eventually the imperialists leave, and the Afghans remain.

In an earlier day, Rudyard Kipling advised "The Young British Soldier" who served in Britain's imperial army:

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

It's probably still good advice. Alternatively, you can get yourself killed by your own comrades and instantly become a Great American Hero, thanks to the Great American Military Bullshit Information Team (GAMBIT).

Continuing his parade of politicking platitudes, Fallon declares that "Iran's most destabilizing activity has been the pursuit of nuclear weapons technology in defiance of the international community." Of course, if the Iranians have undertaken any such pursuit at all, which remains in doubt, it has been not in defiance of the mythical "international community," but in defiance of the United States and Israel, as everybody who reads the newspapers knows. It is nothing short of astonishing that U.S. officials speak in almost hysterical tones of the threat posed by nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapons, yet never breathe a word about the hundreds of such weapons already in the Israeli arsenal, not to mention the thousands that remain at the disposal of U.S. forces. Of course, members of Congress, who live in mortal fear of the American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC), want to be seen listening to this phony-baloney message, so military politicians such as Admiral Fallon dare not disappoint them.

Fallon arranged the bulk of his testimony around a description of how CENTCOM's "initiatives are organized into five focus areas: setting conditions for stability in Iraq; expanding governance and security in Afghanistan; degrading violent extremist networks and operations; strengthening relationships and influencing states to contribute to regional stability; and posturing the force to build and sustain joint and combined war fighting capabilities and readiness." Notice that except possibly for the third item listed ("degrading violent extremist networks and operations"), none of this has more than a very remote connection with defending the people of the United States against foreign enemies.

Instead, it has everything to do with maintenance of the U.S. empire in the Middle East and Central Asia. The U.S. government maintains a lavishly financed Department of Defense, ostensibly to protect Americans in their own country from foreign attackers. In reality, however, this department acts as an overfed foreign legion, operating around the world as an offensive or potentially offensive force to bully other countries into submission to the U.S. government's wishes.

To read Fallon's testimony is to take a refresher course in U.S. nation building. He speaks about "infrastructure development," "provision of basic services to Iraq's citizens," and improving "local government performance and capacity." In Afghanistan, he perceives that the "priorities are roads and electricity, followed by agricultural development, microcredit, job skills, and education." The occupation force, he testified, "is actively pursuing initiatives in these areas, from building schools and providing them with supplies to encouraging and stimulating the growth of small businesses." Should we laugh or cry?

Someone needs to remind the admiral and his audience that the military is trained and equipped to dispense death and destruction. Military leaders know nothing about nation building, and their efforts along these lines result only in gigantic waste of time, money, and lives. (Of course, we must never forget, especially when discussing the U.S. empire, that one man's waste is another man's fabulously enriching government contract.)

To make matters even worse, "CENTCOM supports US government and United Kingdom lead nation counter-narcotics activities." No U.S. war is complete, it seems, without dragging the disastrous drug war along with it.

The imperial authorities constantly emphasize their efforts to promote our security by suppressing "violent extremism" abroad. Repeat after me: extremism always bad; moderation always good. If Barry Goldwater were alive today and still telling us that "extremism in defense of liberty is no vice," he might well be placed on the Air Force's target list for the Predator drone. While decrying the violent extremists in the Middle East, Admiral Fallon notes: "Unfortunately, their tactics and radical ideology remain almost unchallenged by voices of moderation." It takes a heap of chutzpah to impose sanctions on a country, killing hundreds of thousands of children and others with weakened immune systems, then invade the country, killing hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children by bombing, shooting, shelling, beating, stabbing, suffocating, and immolating them, then create such chaos and violence among the populace that millions are forced to abandon their residence and rendered homeless, then announce your regret that so few speak in favor of moderation. Next thing you know, the Devil will express regret that so few denizens of Hell speak in favor of fraternal kindness and Christian charity.

Fallon aims at "de-legitimizing the underlying social and political movements that support" the extremist groups. He fails to recognize that such delegitimization is utterly impossible as long as the U.S. forces continue to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan and to brutalize their people. The admiral proposes "building capacity in governance and security that helps at-risk societies address problems that foster internal and local grievances." The overwhelming grievance in the Middle East, however, is the presence of U.S. forces and Washington's support for local dictators and their legions of thugs. Fallon, however, looks to "empowering credible experts to expose the flaws and internal contradictions of the enemy's ideology; provide viable, competing alternative worldviews; and contest the intellectual 'safe harbors' where extremist ideas incubate." U.S. military leaders seem to have made a little progress since the days when they lived by the motto, "If you've got 'em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow." Yet the idea that in the midst of everything the U.S. forces are doing in the Middle East they can employ "credible experts" to transform the dominant ideology is sheer lunacy. Al-Qaida requires no wily recruiting agents in Afghanistan and Iraq; its supporters need only invite people to look out their windows.

Fallon speaks glowingly of the various Middle Eastern dictatorships with whom the U.S. government maintains cordial relationships. (It's amazing how many "friends" you can win with a combination of generous bribes and credible threats.) The United States' "close, reliable partner nations" include such paragons of social and political modernity as "Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Pakistan." Moreover, "Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates are important partners in maintaining stability in the Gulf." An honest observer feels compelled to recognize, however, that every one of the filthy-rich sheiks in these desert despotisms would gladly cut Fallon's throat if they weren't raking in such fabulous amounts of money from the current arrangements.

The admiral does recognize a few problems. "Our present inventory of language and intelligence specialists (especially human intelligence) and counterintelligence agents does not support current requirements." Translation: because we don't speak or understand Arabic, Pashto, Persian, or any other local language in this part of the world, we haven't a clue as to what's going on in the politics and social life of these countries, and therefore we are constantly at the mercy of English-speaking collaborators who will take the risk of feeding us lies and fabricated "intelligence" long enough to get rich and then flee the country before their infuriated countrymen kill them.

Notwithstanding the many troubles that plague the imperial crusaders in CENTCOM's area of responsibility, Fallon bravely concludes, "we fight tirelessly against those who would do us harm." He fails to mention, however, that the people of southwest Asia would harbor no grievances whatsoever against Americans if the U.S. government had only possessed the intelligence and the decency to stay out of their affairs.

Source: LewRockwell [Armigideon Recce: Timothy Truthseeker]

The Aviary Aquarian Conspiracy Problem:

What To Do About Tyrants in the Third World:

"...(7) Rockefeller, Nazis and Eugenics: Creating More AIDS-like viruses; (8) OTRAG (German Intelligence) and Gallo; (9) The Shadow Government: MJ-12/PI-40 and Aviary; (10) The Disclosure Project; (11) The Aviary/UFO Disclosure Problem: What to do about tyrants in the Third World;....

- Excerpt: Letter to the Editor: RE: Article titled, ‘Bombdreiger loop op dun ys’ [Bomb threat (person) walking on thin ice], published on Thursday, 20 June 2002, Page 2.; Court Record Document: Ref: T.23, P.4 of JAG 07-146

Eschatology, Third World Tyrants and Christianity

‘There is not a truth existing that I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world.’

“I do not agree with a word you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”
+
“Admiral Fallon told General Petraeus that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit" and added, "I hate people like that"”
=
“You can’t handle the truth. We live in a world that has walls guarded by men with guns. You gonna do it? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You curse the Marines. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. Our existence while grotesque & incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You need us on that wall. We use words like honour, code, loyalty, as the backbone of a life spent defending something called a goddamn fucking Constitution. I have neither the time nor inclination to explain myself to any ‘bureaucrat’ too gutless to look me in the face, or to answer my telephone calls, who wishes to benefit from the freedom I provide; while questioning the manner in which I provide it. If so, pick up a weapon and stand a post.”

~ "We use words like honour, code, loyalty, as the backbone of a life spent defending something called a goddamn fucking Constitution." ~

The Aviary, the Aquarium, and Eschatology

by Vince Johnson (Excerpts)

Eschatology:

1: The branch of theology concerned with the final events in the
history of the world or of mankind.

2: A belief concerning death, the end of the world, or the ultimate destiny of mankind; specifically any of the various Christian doctrines concerning the Second Coming, the resurrection of the dead, or the Last Judgment.

The "Aquarium Conspiracy" by Dan Smith and Rosemary Ellen Guiley

In the beginning there was eschatology--the branch of theology dealing with the end times. Dan, having spent many years first studying physics and then metaphysics, came to the conclusion that the scientists have been looking at the world upside down.

Mind, not matter, is the foundation for all realities. Moreover, the materialist paradigm was in danger of imminent collapse, being subverted on the inside by its own contradictions, and on the outside by the growing body of evidence for the paranormal. Creating and maintaining a reality is no easy game. It requires a lot of magic, and a lot of conscious critters like ourselves who are pretty good at collective self-deception.

Fortunately-- or perhaps unfortunately--our particular reality game has about reached its natural conclusion, and we are waking up to the fact that mind and matter are not separate. We are undergoing an exciting but stressful revolution in our collective consciousness. This revolution, or global spiritual emergency, will bring upheavals and overloads in our global consciousness that will impact the material Earth for better or worse, and may quickly get out of control.

We also will be opening up to other realities that will be impacting us as well. Our present very tidy sense of reality and its boundaries is due to become much more fluid and permeable. Every spiritual tradition takes very seriously its prophesies about the end of the world, but for the first time we are seeing these prophesies turning into believable predictions of earth and reality changes.

That is how Dan fell from physics into eschatology. After experiencing numerous slammed doors among his former scientific colleagues, he decided that the most logical place to find fellow eschatologists would be in various intelligence agencies and among investigators of the paranormal. Dan next addressed how to communicate about the eschaton.

Even a small hint that the government is worried about the end of the world might start a chain reaction of panic, which could possibly serve as a trigger for the eschaton. On the other hand, people inside the government might be wanting to set up a kind of civil defense network vis a vis the eschaton, and so they would be looking for people on the outside who could much more freely network among the general public. An important link in the communication chain is what has become known as the Aviary.

This is the final link next to the public network, and so it must be heavily disguised by its own surrealistic smoke screen. The Aviary functions best by amplifying people's own misconceptions about the paranormal. It does this by helping to over inflate individual pieces of the puzzle so that particular investigators get pushed further into their own blind alleys. People are encouraged to be so distracted by the trees that they fail to see the forest.

This cacophony by people looking for truth in all the strangest places provides an excellent cover for the deadly serious business of clearing the decks and battening down the hatches for the eschaton event.

It is like a Manhattan Project going on behind the scenes of alien grays and praying mantises having sex with humans. However, this eschaton conspiracy is being orchestrated by higher powers, and we don't mean the Committee of 300. Very few of the people even near the center of the orchestration have a clear picture of what is coming down, but they do know that something is coming and that they will have front row seats.

The Manhattan Project relative to the eschaton is a global civilian network of people who will serve as a lightning rod for the cosmic energies coming in during the consciousness revolution. They will be looking to channel these energies into expanded realities. Thus, they will provide a degree of protection for those people who can find their places alongside the network. Outside of the network there will be greater levels of trauma and confusion.

The pieces of the network are already in place, the remaining task is to properly activate and link the pieces into a critical mass of awareness. This last step is now underway. This is how an Aviary helps to spawn an Aquarium, and how birds learn to swim. The Aquarium is our business, and we are working to reach people who are ready to be activated in the consciousness revolution.

Excerpt: Think About It.. [Armigideon Recce: HUMINT Think About It]



Eschatology:

Eschatology (from the Greek ἔσχατος, Eschatos meaning "last" + -logy) is a part of theology and philosophy concerned with the final events in the history of the world or the ultimate destiny of humanity, commonly phrased as the end of the world. In many religions, the end of the world is a future event prophesied in sacred texts or folklore. More broadly, eschatology may encompass related concepts such as the Messiah or Messianic Age, the afterlife, and the soul.

The Greek word αἰών (aeon), meaning "age", may be translated as "end of the age (or historical period[1])" instead of "end of the world". The distinction also has theological significance, for the "end times" in many religions may involve the destruction of the planet (or of all living things), but with the human race surviving in some new form, ending the current "age" of existence and beginning a new one.

Most Western monotheistic religions have doctrines claiming that "chosen" or "worthy" members of the one true faith will be "spared" or "delivered" from the coming judgment and wrath of God. They will be ushered into paradise either before, during, or afterwards depending upon the end-time scenario to which they hold.

The following is a list of reported members of The Aviary.

• BLUEJAY: Dr. Christopher "Kit" Green, MD, Ph.D., Chief, Biomedical Sciences Department, General Motors; former custodian of the CIA's UFO files at the "Weird Desk"; received the National Intelligence Medal for his work on a classified project during the period of 1979-1983; recently reported to be White House UFO liason.
  
  
• PELICAN: Ron Pandolfi, CIA Deputy Director for the Division of Science and Technology, and current custodian of UFO files at the "Weird Desk"; involved in the White House Initiative, as UFO liaison, to expedite (at Laurence Rockefeller's behest) the release of UFO information to the public; and has been quietly leaking UFO information the past few years.
  
  
• OWL: Hal Puthoff, physicist with the Institute for Advanced research in Austin, TX who specializes in Zero-Point Energy, a quantum/resonance physics phenomenon with reported potential for above- unity ("free") energy; formerly an Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and reported DIA researcher, (along with psi guru and fellow Scientologist Ingo Swann,) into parapsychological, psychotronic, remote-viewing, and mind-control projects, and reportedly involved in classified ET-technology studies.
  
  
• RAVEN: (Identity not yet determined.) RAVEN appears to be a kingpin in The Aviary, and a Washington insiders' guessing game has sprung up, as devotees of UFO intelligence data argue for the probable identity of their favorite "candidate". [Possible candidates: Henry Kissinger, Ph.D., Edward Teller, Ph.D.; General Brent Scowcroft.]
  
  
• PENGUIN: John Alexander, Ph.D. in Death Sciences [Thanatology], Col., ("Ret."), U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), which is undoubtedly his military cover for the National Security Agency (NSA). Colonel Alexander is director of the Non-Lethal (sic) Weapons Department, Los Alamos National Laboratory [LANL], and has been reportedly involved in counter-intelligence remote-viewing, psychic-warfare, psychotronic and mind-control projects with military/security applications, while maintaining the cover of nonlethal military/crowd control physical-countermeasures research. Dr. Alexander has been serving as a Board Member, (along with INSCOM General Al Stubblebine and INSCOM Major Ed Dames), of PSI-Tech Corporation, involved in proprietary remote-viewing projects for hire.
  
  2003 Update Note: Colonel John "Penguin" Alexander was spotted last year by this author at a "retired" intelligence officers dinner function at Sixth Army Headquarters, The Presidio, San Francisco. Alexander has gained considerable girth. The Death-Sciences Ph.D. was accompanied by his life-partner, Victoria Lacas, dressed as always in faux-Goth all-black, (which does nothing to dispel rumors circulating in the ufological community about reported interest in sorcery.) This author has been informed that Alexander is head of the Aviary, and that the Aviary is headquartered at Los Alamos.]
  
  This author has heard from a source that one or more members of the Aviary are believed to have been a party to MILABS operations, (rogue military-intelligence units' kidnapping, interrogation, terrorizing, gang-raping, drugging, and hypnotic mind-control programming of innocent civilians, and then implanting a false post-hypnotic "memory" that the episode was an "alien abduction".)
  
  
• HAWK: Ernie Kellerstraus, security-cleared for UFO information, worked at Wright-Patterson AFB in the 1970's, and is reported to have lived with a Star Visitor for a while; reported to have worked with Dale Graff (*HARRIER*?) and Captain Bob Collins (CONDOR), Air Force Intelligence, to supply UFO information to widely-suspected disinformation operative and self-styled ufologist William Moore.
  
  
• Bird name unknown, [PARTRIDGE?]): Jacques Vallee, Ph.D., formerly an astrophysicist with GEPAN, the French Goverrnment's UFO investigative agency, later moved to U.S. as principal investigator with Defense Department computer network projects; worked with famed astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek who left and denounced the military's Project Blue Book as a disinformational smokescreen; prolific author on UFO subject, lately turning to metaphysical explanations for the phenomenon.
  
  
• SEAGULL: Bruce Maccabee, Ph.D., research scientist in optical physics and laser weapons applications at the U.S. Naval Surface Weapons Lab, MD; MUFON physics/photo-interpretive consultant, and prolific author and consultant expert on selected "leaked" or disinformational UFO cases/topics, such as the Gulf Breeze-Ed Walters alleged UFO photos, the Canadian "Carp UFO" hoaxed "incident", and the documented repeat UFO landings at the hyper-secure Manzano Canyon Facility at Kirtland AFB/Sandia National Laboratories-Military Reservation.
  
  
• CHICKADEE: Cmdr. C.B. Scott Jones, Ph.D., USN (Ret.), former officer with the Office of Naval Intelligence and other Agencies; with 30 years service in U.S. Intelligence overseas; involved in government research and development projects for the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) and other organizations; former Senate aide to Sen. Claiborne Pell, who has had a long-standing interest in UFOs and the paranormal, *and has tried to get Congressional Hearings held on UFOs; President, Human Potential Foundation; and "point-man" for Laurence Rockefeller on UFO matters, currently tasked to contact world leaders concerning upcoming public announcements of UFO/ET reality; recently convened the May, 1995 Washington, D.C. "When Cosmic Cultures Meet International Conference".
  
  
• CONDOR: Capt. Bob Collins, USAF (Ret.), Special Agent, Air Force Office of Special Investigations, engaged in UFO-related intelligence operations; reportedly appeared clandestinely on 1988 Kodak-produced network television (dis-)information program "UFO Cover-Up Live", where Collins, *reportedly* along with "former" CIA contract employee and current UFO-conferences disinformation lecturer, John Lear, presented accounts of alien autopsies, UFO retrievals, and the government's awareness about UFOs and ET presence.
  
  
• FALCON: Sgt. Richard "Dick" Doty, USAF (Ret.), Special Agent, Air Force Office of Special Investigations, reported to have engaged in UFO disinformation projects, including reportedly hoaxing TV producer Linda Moulton Howe concerning availability of a tape showing a UFO landing at Holloman Air Force Base, NM; and of allegedly waging psychological warfare on Albuquerque defense electronics contractor Paul Bennewitz, concerning Bennewitz's electronic monitoring of UFO activity around Kirtland AFB/Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, reportedly causing/exacerbating a mental breakdown in Mr. Bennewitz. Reportedly, FALCON claims to have seen the Roswell Alien Autopsy film (shown worldwide August 28, 1995) some time ago at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
  
  
• (bird-name unknown [SPARROW(?)]: William Moore, USAF (Ret.), Special Agent, Air Force Office of Special Investigations; prolific UFO "author"; reportedly publicly admitted at a MUFON Conference to being an Air Force Intelligence operative involved in UFO-related disinformation projects.
  
  
• (Bird name unknown [HERON?]) Dale Graff, UFO-related technology specialist reported by Dan Smith (cf. infra) to be head of the "military" UFO Working Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory; rumored to be involved in psychotronic and ESP programs at Los Alamos; formerly was contracts overseer for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base; then was chief of the DIA's Defense Technology/Special Programs department, before reportedly being fired by the DIA. Currently Graff is reported to be in contact with the human designate who communicates with an extraterrestrial residing near Washington, DC in a subterranean facility (Andrews AFB/Naval Reservation?).
  
  
• (bird-name unknown [NIGHTINGALE(?)]): Jack Verona, shadowy liaison between Capitol Hill and Los Alamos National Laboratory, before having recently "disappeared"; reportedly Dale Graff's supervisor: formerly involved in Project Sleeping Beauty, which researched ways to disable enemy "target" personnel using directed precise-frequency radiated electromagnetic-energy fields. (According to Dan Smith, NIGHTINGALE is not Jack Verona, but rather may be George Wingfield, a British UFO researcher, who has established a reputation as a careful reporter of crop circle formations and UFO information.
  

  NIGHTINGALE is not British UFOlogist Anthony Dodd, who has revealed the disappearance in 1993 of a U.S. carrier destroyer during NATO sea exercises, during which a number of member countries' ships patrolled to find reported huge carrier-sized Unidentified Submerged Objects (USOs), which raced underwater at astounding speeds. Arguing against Mr. Dodd being NIGHTINGALE is the fact that after Dodd disclosed the U.S. destroyer's disappearance at a Nevada UFO Congress in December, 1994, he was beat up outside the conference hall by two enforcer goons and told to shut his mouth up.)
  
  

• Bird name unknown, [BUZZARD?]): Gordon Novell, reportedly a free-lance enforcer involved in Zero Point Energy programs, and tied to Bob Bigelow, a shadowy Las Vegas casinos operator, who reportedly is investigating alleged ET energy technology and titanium aluminide mettalurgy for their investment potential. Bigelow has created a "National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) to direct a group of UFO technology-insider scientists. He has also reportedly acquired land south of Fort Duschene, Utah to operate a cattle ranch and study alleged cattle mutilations clustered there.
  
  
• (Bird name unknown, [WOODPECKER?]: Jaime Shandera, a small-time Hollywood film producer, who reportedly is associated with William Moore. Shandera alleged that he had mysteriously received film containing the "MJ-12 documents" at his door one day from source(s)unknown. (Moore is considered by some to be the author of the MJ-12 disinformation papers.) Shandera was featured on the 1989 Kodak Television UFO documentary, "UFO Cover-Up Live". Shandera is reported to be, along with Scott Jones and Dan Smith, one of the theologically-oriented and pro-UFO-disclosure "progressives" among the Aviary.
  
  
• CHICKEN LITTLE: Dan Smith, civilian UFO researcher/volunteer interlocutor between source(s) within the Central Intelligence Agency, the Congressional Intelligence Committees and the civilian UFO researchers. Smith continually exchanges information with and networks the key UFO researchers, serves as their interlocutor, and shares their and his own findings with his source(s) at CIA and Capitol Hill.

Excerpt: Dan Smith Reference & Definitions Guide



The Aviary

by Think About It (excerpts)

The Aviary are quite concerned that fundamentalist Christians will experience spiritual, if not ontological, shock at the revelation of ET visitation, and over the reported contents of the Red and Yellow Books, which contain information that suggests that Jesus had some connection with the extraterrestrials. Adding more fuel to Aviary concerns, BT reports that a European television station reported that vatican experts on the Fatima Prophecies held a reported briefing for government representatives from the UK, France, Germany and the U.S., concerning the third remaining publicly-unannounced Prophecy. This Prophecy is rumored to deal with ET Visitation. A spokesman for the Vatican reportedly confirmed that such a briefing took place. Some within the Aviary are concerned that the theological and religious social implications may be the most serious ones resulting from open extraterrestrial contact.

BT, a religious Christian, personally takes a Trinitarian perspective on these times. He sees history as the Father having manifested at the beginning of time; the Son (Jesus) having manifested two millenia ago; and now, at these End Times events, BT believes that the Holy Ghost will manifest, possibly through some human intermediary [the odd irony here is that "BT" considers himself both "The Eschaton" and "The Holy Ghost." Although we do not necessarily agree with these beliefs espoused by our Dear Quantum Physicist Brother, we certainly defend his right to believe whatever he wants. -B:.B:.].

It is reported that the predicted extraterrestrial landing on Thursday, April 24, 1997 is a precursor to a 1998 series of cataclysms. Furthermore, the 1997 Landing is the last chance for The Powers That Be (human governments) to allow their populations to know about extraterrestrial visitation; otherwise, the ETs will not be able to assist humankind in mitigating and surviving the 1998 cataclysm series. BT says that the U.S. Power Structure is aware of the warnings about the 1998 cataclysm series. Massive human and planetary destruction is the default course of events; unless we (our governments) invite the ETs to appear openly on Earth, the ETs will not be able to prevent/mitigate the 1998 cataclysm series. The ETs want to be invited in a peaceful way. They are not going to impose themselves on us forcibly.

BT said that Dr. Jones passed on the rumor that Christ was an ET, and that the returning ETs might present the Christ Consciousness figure to the Christian world. Christians in turn might become so taken with the Returning Christ event, that they ignore taking direction from their governmental leaders, thus leading to social chaos.

Dr. Jones's opinion is reportedly that the resistance to admitting extraterrestrial visitation is significant in the Developed Countries, but that many in the Aviary worry about tyrants in the third World countries, who would violently resist the threat to the status quo (theirs) presented by open acknowledgment of extraterrestrial presence.

Source: Dr. Richard Boylan




Nothing in This Interview is True, But It's Exactly How Things Are

The Aviary and The Eschaton

An Interview with Dan T. Smith by Joan d'Arc

The Aviary is an "ad hoc" UFO working group which has served as an information channel between military/intelligence self-appointed 'keepers of the facts' (so-called "MJ-12") and the civilian UFO community. This group was discussed in detail by Richard Boylan in Paranoia, Issue 23. In that interview, Boylan explained that the Aviary, which was formed in the 1970s, was comprised of individuals with national security clearance. These individuals came together to share information from their "highly compartmentalized" assignments, in order to arrive at a bigger picture of the UFO reality than was possible working alone. Some of its members were pro UFO disclosure and others were not. This loose network of individuals gave themselves bird names to obscure their membership. However, one self-appointed "auxiliary" member of the Aviary who has never maintained such cover is Dan T. Smith. As a volunteer civilian member calling himself "Chicken Little," Dan has openly shared information "leaks" from the Aviary to the UFO community, some of it turning out to be true and some of it turning out to be false.

In this remarkable interview, Dan tells how the Aviary has "managed to keep the UFO pot stirred for the two decades or more that it has been in business." He explains how the Aviary has contributed to UFO rumors in the public at large, including the Hale-Bopp "companion" story which led to the Heaven's Gate group suicide pact. In this interview, Dan wonders whether the Aviary has been used in a high-level attempt to penetrate MJ-12. As a physicist and an eschatologist, Dan describes his "end times" cosmology. He discusses how the "Second Coming" is related to UFOs and ET Visitors, how the New World Order is related to God's Millennial Kingdom, and how the Aviary's agenda is presumably related to all of this. Dan also presents himself as a candidate for the role of Messiah.

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Joan d'Arc: Dan, as a civilian UFO researcher and attach¹ to an "ad hoc"UFO working group called the Aviary, which included intelligence-affiliated individuals, your "bird name" was Chicken Little. How did you come to be involved with this group?

Dan Smith: I became acquainted with one of the members, 'Tom' (not his real name). 'Chicken Little' was just my own concoction. My father was involved with the military in WWII and was later in the government as an economist. He had no interest in UFOs, but was in contact with some influential people who I discovered later had unusual interests. After doing some graduate work in physics I turned to metaphysics. An extended psychic experience led me to contact MUFON and through them I came in contact with Tom at the CIA in '91. He was known as the 'keeper of the weird.'

JD: Can you tell me a little more about the "extended psychic experience" that started all this back when you were in grad school?

DS: I earned two masters degrees in physics: '67 Princeton, '77 Univ. of Maryland. In '77 there was a single occurrence of a singsong 'voice' one night. A brief perusal of a bible that had just been left by some Jehovah's Witnesses gave me the impression that I might become involved with the advent of the 'spirit of truth.' This lent a spiritual color to what had been a secular inquiry.

The other experience lasted for about five days in June of '91. It seemed that I was in a state of heightened awareness in which mundane events could take on cosmic or mythic significance. Some events were actually experienced as a superposition of these two levels. I was in telephone contact with my younger sister who was having similar experiences at the same time. She was hospitalized for about a week as a result. I contacted a MUFON representative who was disappointed that there was no overt alien presence. Nonetheless, I was put in touch with Bob Oechsler who gave me Tom's number at the CIA.

JD: What do you feel is the significance of this event?

DS: As I said, the first event steered me in a more spiritual direction. The second event had the effect of putting me into a more activist frame of mind, i.e. contacting people about UFOs and crop circles.

JD: Can you extrapolate on what you've learned about crop circles? Do you think they are a cosmic message to humans? Did MJ-12, in your opinion, send in the hoaxers and the media to cloud the message?

DS: Those circles have made a very significant impression on many people. The ambiguity of their provenance need not detract from that significance. I am thankful for that ambiguity. Isn't this all part of the 'Prime Directive?' Did MJ-12 influence Time's coverage of Doug and Dave? Are they thereby being paternalistic with the Truth? Yes, there is concealment before there is revelation. If not, there could be no creation, certainly not on this scale.

JD: What was your main impetus for wanting to be an information dissemination specialist between the intelligence community and the UFO community, using the Aviary as a go-between?

DS: I had no prior intent in that direction. I was well into my study of eschatology before meeting Tom. I wanted to find out what take the CIA might have on eschatology and possibly provide some input. Discussing the Aviary and the UFO community was a good excuse for a continuing contact with an intelligence officer who had relevant responsibilities.

JD: How would you describe your position as a "networker" between this group and the UFO community?

DS: From the beginning I was very open about my government contact. I began to network with some folks in the UFO community who were interested in sharing information. Through Tom I was put in contact with some other members of the Aviary and this all became grist for the mill. There was a lot of comparing notes and checking of information on both sides. At one point some of my UFO colleagues persuaded the CIA/IG (Inspector General) to conduct an internal investigation of Tom relative to his unusual methods of collecting information.

JD: Can you elaborate on these "unusual methods" and the implications of this generally in the field of civilian Ufology?

DS: Well, there was the fact that he was involved in domestic collections. He was making provocative statements to me about the possible presence of ET's. He spoke freely of his involvement with other members of the Aviary. On several occasions we met at 'nightclubs.' He had 'indelicate' conversations with a female researcher. It was far from clear what was in the line of duty. He was interviewed by an IG officer. He reported answering all the questions directly, but told the officer that he could not answer any questions about ETs.

JD: What did you hope to achieve through these contacts and do you think you achieved it?

DS: That remains up in the air. I have certainly managed to enlighten one officer on the subject of metaphysics and eschatology. And because of that contact some of my ideas have circulated more widely in the UFO community than they would have otherwise.

JD: Your excellent web site, called The Eschaton, describes your end times beliefs as well as other fascinating matters. What is the background of your end times beliefs?

DS: After leaving school I struggled with mind/matter dualism for several years before reluctantly adopting an idealist or immaterialist metaphysic. It took a couple more years for me to see that some form of eschatology is inevitable for a mind-based cosmology. It also became clear that such a cosmology was compatible with some of the original beliefs and heresies stemming from the prophetic tradition of monotheism.

JD: How would you quickly describe what you feel is going to occur in this "end of the world as we know it" scenario?

DS: If history is to have any meaning, it must have a beginning, middle and ending, as does any story. Linear time will come to an end. Life will go on in some form, but not this one. The rigidities of space and time will dissolve. The boundaries between our different states of consciousness will become more fluid. The so-called Millennium will be our time for wrapping our mundane affairs and preparing for our transition to a less physical existence.

JD: Your Eschaton revelation comes to you via science as well as religion. How would you succinctly explain this to people who aren't familiar with "new" physics concepts (realizing that people can go to your web site for more information)?

DS: As Physics has evolved, the world it describes is becoming increasingly more abstract, much more "thought-like" than "thing-like." What is not abstract are just the ephemeral qualities with which our minds imbue those abstractions. As we awaken to the fact that reality is a projection of the cosmic mind of which we all partake, we will begin to exercise more control over the nature of that projection. This will be an extension of psychosomatics to sensorium that is our world.

JD: Do you know anything about a group called the Advanced Theoretical Physics Working Group, a group which was formed to integrate theories in "new" physics and remote viewing as these came to describe the nature of reality? In your opinion, how has quantum physics changed the modern view of reality, and what was the UFO's role in this?

DS: I don't know any group of just this name, but there are many folks doing this. I was once a 'quantum dualist' (i.e. the mind influences matter through the agency of quantum phase correlations). But once you have postulated a robust realm of the mind, it becomes increasingly difficult to view the world of physics as other than an abstract construction of the mind. The quantum may be weird, but UFOs are a lot more weird. With UFOs we are no longer talking physics. This is metaphysics with a vengeance. This is dream-time, not space-time. The UFOs are pulling the rug right out from under what we used to think of as our 'reality.' In the case of 'MJ-12,' with the best brains in the world it was like the cartoon of the fire alarm box. Behind the glass panel is a Bible. 'In case of emergency, break glass.' Now we know how MJ-12 felt. Imagine how much worse they felt when they opened the Bible to John 16:12 as I did one eventful morning about twenty years ago.

JD: This is interesting. I'm ashamed to say, I don't have a Bible in the house. Can you explain John 16:12 and the relevance it had for you on this morning?

DS: John 16:12-13: 12. I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. 13. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. (KJV) This was the passage that came to my attention on the morning after I experienced the sing-song 'voice' of Sophia(?). For the last two millennia people have interpreted this passage in many different ways. I interpreted it as a help-wanted notice directed at me. The folks of 'MJ-12' concluding that an advent of this sort was being prognosticated by the Visitors have probably been anticipating this moment of truth with some trepidation.

JD: So, which came first, Chicken Little or the Eschaton?

DS: The Eschaton by about ten years.

JD: How would you characterize the relationship between your Eschaton and the Intelligence community? Are there parallel beliefs, motives or modus operandi?

DS: Along with the rest of the UFO community, I believe that we have been visited. I believe that this visitation was in preparation for a messianic event which is imminent. That event will inaugurate our Millennium of preparation leading up to the Eschaton. The Aviary is the part of the intelligence community most closely and publicly associated with the 'MJ12/Visitor' complex. The messianic event itself, however, must be as spontaneous and independent of 'MJ12' and the Visitors as is possible. Thus the intelligence community will have very little direct input in this matter. National and global security will be largely redefined under the Millennial Aeon.

JD: OK, can we clarify this a little? What do the Visitors and UFOs have to do with the "messianic event"? What is the relationship between the Visitor phenomenon and the Second Coming of the Messiah?

DS: I am suggesting that the Visitors could be playing several roles that would be relevant to a messianic event. They would be an off-world advance team helping in the preparation. This would involve alerting the powers-that-be to the inevitable advent of the Messiah, Millennium and Eschaton. They would convince those powers that it would not be in their interest to interfere in the cosmic plan. The Visitors might then negotiate with these powers in selecting a mutually acceptable individual for the role of Messiah. The Visitors might also be overseeing the 'abduction' phenomenon in as much as it could be part of the preparation for the Millennium.>

JD: Am I missing something here? Isn't there already a Messiah assigned to this role?

DS: This is a heterodox scenario. This is divine minimalism. Christians will be mightily disappointed, those who were expecting a figure in white robes to descend from the clouds. The idea is that we do not need theatrics this time around. There is a package deal. Whoever can convince the world of its immateriality and of the rationale for the Millennium and Eschaton, that person will be the Second Coming. Anyone who aspires to being this paradigm shifter should expect to play that role. I feel no need to apologize for personally wanting to put an end to the hegemony of materialism.

JD: You suggest that this messianic event must be separate from the Visitor phenomenon, meaning perceptually independent?

DS: Let's back up a bit. I am saying that we humans constitute a very significant aspect of the cosmic mind. The First and Second Coming, in particular, are designed to awaken humanity to their central role in the cosmic plan. We don't need to be told this, only reminded, so easily do we forget. Our memory only needs to be jogged a very little bit. Minimalism is the word when it comes to divine intervention, in keeping with the 'prime directive.' The perception of coercion is the very worst thing that could happen. If it appears that the cosmic plan is being imposed upon us, we would naturally react negatively. In reality this plan is of us, by us and for us. The messianic event is critical.

It may appear that I have just contradicted myself. From the previous response one might imagine a smoke filled room underground in Area 51 where the Visitors and MJ12 haggle over the identity of the Messiah to be 'imposed' on humanity. This hardly seems spontaneous. However, if these negotiations can be kept secret, then the intervention remains minimal. There can only ever be informed speculation as to what might have actually transpired. The 'designated' individual would have to convince her fellow humans as to the reasonableness of the hypothetical selection process.

JD: In your estimation, is it going to be possible to keep these events separate?

DS: The best I can do here is to give you a 'for instance.' Let's suppose that I was the selected one. My unusual interactions with Tom, and some other events, might lead me to suspect this to be the case. It would then be up to me, however, to make this case to the public, where it could be accepted or rejected. Even if some others could be convinced of this possibility, there would be no implied coercion in their acceptance of the outcome. If I were right, however, others would eventually come around to seeing and agreeing with the reasonableness of the choice, even if this occurred posthumously.

JD: What will be the difficulties in keeping these events independent of each other?

DS: This choreography has not been easy. It may well be that WWII and the Cold War were necessary antecedents. Without these antecedents, MJ12 and the Visitors could not have been kept even partially secret. Incidentally, I suspect also that John Kennedy may have gotten wind of the plan and that his Camelot initiative may have been his attempt to go public with this plan prematurely. This preemption was not considered sufficiently spontaneous and so it was itself preempted.

JD: You are under the impression that the military will have to back off for the Eschaton. In what way then will "national and global security" be redefined under the Millennial Aeon?

DS: The de-emphasizing and downsizing of all militaries will necessarily gain momentum into the Millennium. Once we can agree upon our common purpose and destiny, our energies will be turned from competition to cooperation. The implication is that capitalism will also be de-emphasized.

JD: But with the push toward the militarization of space by the military-industrial complex, this doesn't seem to be happening. The Space Command's "future vision" is that of "protecting" capitalist interests in space. Do you foresee an "about face" in this dangerous military co-opting of outer space?

DS: Tom has allowed me to believe that there is continuing monitoring and possibly the occasional interdiction of UFOs. Whether this might extend to 'Star Wars' I have no idea. He is involved with conventional space technology for military applications. Will the military continue to involve itself in self-serving, possibly risky adventures on various fronts? I have no doubt. Experience shows that the military is more averse to risk than the elected politicians who exploit it.

JD: Is this the reason for the recent empowering of the U.N.? Are you talking here about the inevitability of the "New World Order" paradigm?

DS: I am talking about the advent of God's Kingdom and about a New Heaven and a New Earth. As to who will play what roles, that is ultimately up to all of us to agree on. Anything that is shoved down our throats will likely come right back up.

JD: So then, can the chaos which characterizes the biblical Second Coming be partly described as a law and order breakdown?

DS: Let's hope and pray that we have seen the worst of the chaos/tribulation in this post-Cold War decade.

JD: In your web writings, you have stated the following: "If our world is a creation, it is a creation that has put us in a special isolation chamber: isolated from other intelligent creatures and from the creator. It would have to be a very special creation that does not give us the appearance of a special creation." You write: "Our isolation and the possibility of our uniqueness seem on the verge of gaining us a very hard-won solidarity." You ask, "Would the creator jeopardize that vital solidarity with an eleventh hour revelation of our expendability?" Do you believe that Earth humans will survive the Eschaton as a matter of our natural evolutionary progress, or is there some belief system we must adhere to in order to survive? Can you extrapolate on this a little bit?

DS: My cosmology is anthropocentric, in agreement with the prophetic tradition. I give very little credence to anything beyond the mere appearance of Darwinian evolution. I do not believe that the ETs are more advanced than we are. They are simply less material, more interdimensional. It is we who inherit the oversight of the cosmos. A Millennium is vouchsafed to us before the Eschaton. The Eschaton will mark the end of our linear space-time manifold. The final barriers to our consciousness will dissolve in that process. We become one with God, whatever that may entail. 'Sub specie aeternitas,' the human historical drama is seen as the central pillar of eternity. Time is the final illusion.

JD: Let's get back to your role in the Aviary. As a civilian networker for the Aviary, what types of information did you learn that most blew your mind? And how did this information affect your end-times beliefs?

DS: There has been a gradual realization that 'MJ12' and the Visitors are no longer playing a proactive role, and may no longer even exist here. This is the scariest piece of information that I can impart. Tom has been responsible for closing down the phenomenology and psychic warfare programs. He is also active in planning for the scaling back of the Navy and Air Force. It is reasonable to infer that he has similar duties relative to 'MJ12'. That may mean that I am a significant part of an effort to transfer the residual MJ12 responsibilities to the civilian sector. That is a sobering thought for myself and for any others who are inclined to participate.

JD: What do you mean by "the Visitors are no longer playing a proactive role, and may no longer even exist here"?

DS: The Visitors got their message across to those who needed to be informed. That was the point of their Earth mission. There may exist now a sequestered 'star gate' that can be activated for special purposes.

JD: Can you elaborate on your statement: "Tom has been responsible for closing down the phenomenology and psychic warfare programs." Are these two separate programs?

DS: Yes, they were. There continues to exist an informal, unofficial phenomenology network for monitoring uncorrelated phenomena. Some 'civilians' are involved. Psychic surveillance may now be a part of this network. I am probably still involved in some fashion, but I have no specifics.

JD: By "psychic surveillance" I presume you mean remote viewing. So then there is an information network which relies solely on psychic means of gathering info on UFOs? Is this work performed by remote viewing organizations such as Courtney Brown's Farsight Institute and others?

DS: It was not uncommon for remote viewers to be given UFO type targets. There is ample evidence that the remote viewing program that was closed down in the mid-90s was not the only government-sponsored effort. It stands to reason that the government continues to use psychic means to monitor UFO activity. However, I do not know that the 'phenomenology network' is directly involved in any such effort.

JD: What do you mean by "programs"? Who was responsible for instituting them?

DS: The official remote viewing program has been extensively researched and reported on. The inter-agency Phenomenology Group was taken over by Tom and converted into an informal network.

JD: In your estimation, what is the reason for the scaling back of the armed forces?

DS: I am under the impression that the Cold War served as a cover and as an entr¹ for the Visitors to co-opt the powers-that-be in the fulfillment of the cosmic plan. The reality of the cosmic plan is now used in persuading other leaders to curtail their military ambitions; however, I have no idea what means of verification might be involved.

JD: Why does there appear to be a "backing off" of the "proactive" stance which has been part of Ufology for so long?

DS: I am referring mainly to the Visitors proper. The unofficial story is that three Visitors participated in sequential ten-year stints as guests of the U.S. government. That episode is now over, their mission having been accomplished.

JD: So then do you propose that the government has been advised that we have no choice but to allow preordained "events" take their course?

DS: Yes.

JD: What do you see foresee will be your "duties" with regard to a transfer of what you call "residual MJ12" responsibilities to the civilian sector?

DS: This transfer will occur in the context of a 'Second Coming.' I consider myself a candidate for that role. Tom has partially abetted that illusion on my part.

JD: Has this transfer been requested by the Visitors?

DS: Presumably, yes.

JD: It concerns me that Tom, CIA "keeper of the weird," with his "unusual methods," might be pulling your leg. Does this not concern you?

DS: If there were proof that this was not a joke, that proof might easily trigger a financial panic, for instance. One has to proceed with great caution and virtual deniability. It is fair to say that we are pushing that envelope.

JD: I see. Can you elaborate on this statement specifically with regard to your perceived role as a candidate for the Messiah? As you stated earlier, "my unusual interactions with Tom, and some other events, might lead me to suspect this to be the case." In what way has Tom 'abetted this illusion'?

DS: The ultimate answer to this question will depend on whether one is assessing credit or blame. Further down I cite the 'Sunfish' remark. Perhaps one day a Congressional committee will want to hear Tom's explanation of that remark and of our interactions relative to it. Tom and I subsequently had lunch with the chief psychologist at the agency. I mentioned to him that I had recently met a woman who believed that she was the true heir to the British throne. I believe that I said that I might harbor similar illusions and that Tom might not be entirely innocent in that matter. He did not respond directly to this ploy. He did describe in some detail a case of bestiality that involved another agency and the Internet. Tom said that this gentleman might be helpful in the future and seemed to be solicitous of my opinion. If this was not the most ironic moment in my life, I can't tell you what was.

JD: I have no idea what you are talking about. You seem to have slipped into cryptic mode. I suddenly feel like I'm at a s¹ance. Is this message meant for 'Tom'?

DS: It just struck me as amusing that the upshot of this lunch meeting with the psychologist was allegedly for Tom to get my evaluation of him. One might have assumed it would be the other way around!

JD: Your take on Eschatology is unique to say the least. I'm sure you have examined why you have been compelled to be personally involved in this. What are your thoughts on that? Is this a "calling" of some sort? Is it related to your early psychic experience?

DS: Yes to each of these. Our world is a central aspect of the cosmos. This is the best possible cosmos. This necessity is logically deducible. I just follow the logic, which finally is indistinguishable from spirit. One barely has to lift a finger, once one stops denying the obvious.

JD: Dan, I know this is a personal question, but would you mind stating your religious denomination? Do you consider yourself a Christian? And can you describe the role that Jesus Christ will play in the Eschaton?

DS: I was raised as a Unitarian. I used to refer to myself as a 'transcendental pantheist.' Since that experience in '77 I have considered myself an unorthodox, 'born again' Christian. I do not demand that the 'Second Coming' be an exact continuation or replica of the first coming. It need only be seen as the logical fulfillment of that truncated event.

JD: Your second project, the Aquarium, is described on your web site as an informal association of individuals who share a common realization and goal, and who recognize that society is rapidly approaching a "critical junction." I presume that this junction is the Eschaton? Do you believe the Eschaton will occur during your own natural lifespan?

DS: I hope that the 'Second Coming' may occur during my lifetime. According to premillennialism, we would then have our allotted Millennium to prepare for the Eschaton.

JD: The Aquarium's goal is to minimize the confusion and disharmony that will occur during the unfolding of this "cosmic plan" and to "maximize" the benevolent aspects of these coming changes. You also specifically state that the Aquarium has no political affiliations and no adherence to any one belief system. Are there members who are presently in government intelligence positions?

DS: The 'Aquarium' name derives from the 'Aviary.' It is an informal designation for those people who believe that mere humans are now in position to fulfill God's plan of salvation for the world. There is no formal membership.

JD: How would interested parties go about joining this group? What type of members would you be looking for? What types of concerns would these individuals share?

DS: There is nothing to join. It is just those of us who wish to get on with the cosmic plan.

JD: Dan, what exactly do you mean by 'get on with' the cosmic plan? Are you saying that there is a group of people who want 'Armageddon' ASAP? Will the Eschaton be precluded by an Armageddon-like scenario? In your perception, is there some way to rush this along and, if so, what would be your impetus for wishing to do so?

DS: Yes, please hold the Armageddon. Enough of that, already. We still have another thousand years of recognizable, linear history. If that ever gets too boring, then hurry, Lord. The gross non-linearity of inter-dimensional space-time, dreamtime will take some getting used to, even for those who fancy themselves spiritual virtuosos.

JD: You state that the strategy for individuals in this group would be: "Networking in every way possible. No rules." What do you mean by "no rules"?

DS: There is only the rule of love. All of us have a lot to learn about that.

JD: You also state regarding membership: "everyone who wants to participate and a few select individuals who don't want to participate but are deemed useful by Dan T. Smith." Can you elaborate on this statement? What type of individuals would be deemed useful?

DS: Did I say that? I guess I was thinking of cosmic co-optation. No one can escape God's love.

JD: Would alternative publications like Paranoia be deemed useful?

DS: Of course!

JD: You point out that this critical junction will be "the point of convergence for a number of powerful trends and may severely challenge the ability of our organized institutions to effectively govern." Can you elaborate on how this group might go about maintaining a relatively peaceful transformation of the world? How is the so-called 'New World Order' related to this? Can you discuss the role that the New World Order has played and will continue to play in this context?

DS: The 'NWO' is going to be God's Millennial Kingdom, as has been prophesied all along. People have not been paying attention. Getting over our materialistic understanding of the world will be the major step in this direction. The Kingdom is already within each of us. With the proper understanding of the nature of reality, the Kingdom will naturally expand outward from each of us. It might be another hundred years before even the skeptics can no longer deny the results. The imminent paradigm shift is the straw that will break the back of our intransigence.

JD: So then would it be safe to assume that persons aligning themselves with the Aquarium would be in positions of power in the "next world" or would in some way be rewarded by their work?

DS: Virtue has always been its own best reward. Ask anyone so endowed.

JD: I see. Can we get back to the subject of remote viewing, and talk about the Heaven's Gate cult suicide, which occurred after the remote viewing of several UFOs reportedly following the comet Hale-Bopp in 1996-97. You have addressed this event in your web site as it concerns the Aviary. In this essay ("Pecking Away at Heaven's Gate") you write the following: "The Aviary is not responsible for the deaths of 39 innocents. It just looks that way. The Aviary always just manages to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, minding someone else's business. And I should know...." Can you elaborate on how the Aviary manages to stir up this kind of trouble?

DS: The Aviary has certainly managed to keep the UFO pot stirred for the two decades or more that it has been in business. Rick Doty has probably contributed more to the UFO-government conspiracy rumors than everyone else combined. He has done so while in the government employ, and maintaining high level contacts in the intelligence community. Tom weighs in on this scale as a not so distant second. It might be that the Aviary was being used in this manner in a high-level attempt to penetrate MJ-12. If this were the case, it seems probable that they experienced success, with Tom being the most likely beneficiary.<

JD: With regard to Heaven's Gate, you have also written: "There is a larger agenda and those 39 got caught at the short end of that agenda. The Aviary knows something of that agenda, and it shakes a lot of trees trying to find out more, and some of the apples will hit the ground pretty hard." Can you elaborate on that agenda? Whose agenda is it that the Aviary is trying to shake down?

DS: The larger agenda is eschatology. We presume that this is God's agenda, but it doesn't hurt to kick the tires once in awhile, just to make sure.

JD: In this essay, you admit that "the remote viewing of the alleged Hale-Bopp companion was pretty much an Aviary spin-off." Can you elaborate on this? What did the Aviary hope to achieve with this story?

DS: Remember that this was part of the run-up to Y2K. If this were deliberate, it was like the setting of the fires in the Bandolier Forest near Los Alamos. You take your chances. It might still be considered a success, compared to what else might have happened.

JD: I'm not following you. Are you saying you took chances with the story, and the outcome was accidental? What did Hale-Bopp have to do with Y2K, and in what way might this outcome be considered a "success"?

DS: I did not feel like I was taking chances. I was just following the protocol that I had already established vis-a-vis the Aviary from the very beginning. Does 'MJ-12', the Visitors, and/or God take chances? I explain on the website why I think this is going to turn out to be the best possible world. It is rather simple logic.

JD: Were you personally expecting the Y2K computer 'bug' to usher in the Eschaton?

DS: No. But I did watch the ceremonies with a mild trepidation. The ceremonies would have been boring otherwise. And, as you can tell, I am definitely looking forward to Y3K.

JD: Was it trying in some way to measure the public's gullibility?

DS: Gullibility? Perhaps it was more like measuring how dry is the powder in the keg. Another way to kick those tires.

JD: The Hale-Bopp "companion" story was mainly peddled by Courtney Brown's Farsight Institute in Atlanta. Brown is alleged to be associated with the Pentagon. Is he also associated with the Aviary?

DS: His mentor was Ed Dames. Ed is at least an honorary Avian.>

JD: In this essay, you admit that the alleged April UFO landing was definitely an Aviary story and you admit that you were the one who passed it on to the public where it "quickly took a life of its own...." You also state that you knew this UFO landing story was likely to be disinformation, but you put it out to the UFO community anyway. Dan, what were you thinking?

DS: As I recall, I mainly put this story to Richard Boylan, and I did not have to be a brain surgeon to know that Rich would run with it. If Rick Doty had invited me to be on the 'landing' team I might have taken him up on it. I am willing to believe Rick's claim to have been in communication with Wm. Colby and that his canoe 'accident' before this anticipated 'landing' had some impact on whatever did or did not transpire. The Aviary was stirring the pot well before Y2K. If something was going to blow up, it was better to have it happen sooner rather than later. The fact that only 39 people lost their lives that April perhaps should make us feel fortunate. And who knows, we might have thwarted a real landing or a hoax landing that might have made matters much worse.

Let us note that in this same time frame I had established an independent contact with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence as another verification of Tom's benefides. I was told that I was part of something called 'unconventional collections' and that I could rest assured that I was involved with some very competent people. This was from a senior staff member who happened to be Jesuit trained and knowledgeable of eschatology. It was Tom who facilitated my contact with the other members of the Aviary in which Rick was a central figure. This is not to say that Rick was competent, but only that there was a much larger context.

JD: You stated you weren't surprised to see the Hale-Bopp companion story gain "considerable currency" in the UFO arena. What was your impetus for doing that?

DS: I could have chosen to have had no contact with the Aviary or to have kept quiet about it. I chose to have contact and to not keep quiet about it. I was shining my light on the Aviary and perhaps on 'MJ-12.' I still am. I don't think this story is over by a long shot.

JD: Looking back, what had you hoped would come of this "networking" enterprise? Have you any idea as to how Art Bell was used in this scenario?

DS: I believe that an eschatological preparation is the most rational explanation for the observed behavior of the Aviary, especially of Tom, and for the inferred behavior of 'MJ-12.' How well that end is being served remains to be seen. Art Bell was certainly influenced by the Aviary. I don't know that he was 'used' any more than you or I are being 'used' right now.

JD: You state in your essay that "... the Heaven's Gate affair is the Bennewitz affair written large...." This is a most interesting statement. For readers who aren't familiar, Paul Bennewitz was a UFO researcher who was fed false information by the CIA operatives, and was basically driven crazy. What are the important similarities between the Heaven's Gate/Hale-Bopp affair and the Bennewitz affair?

DS: Perhaps Paul was being used as a guinea pig for Dan. Perhaps Dan is being used as a guinea pig for the next guy. Maybe the next guy will be the Second Coming. I am volunteering with that in mind. Maybe Paul did not have the opportunity to consider all the options. No one ever does. The actual messiah will have to explain the holocaust. Explaining Heaven's Gate is hardly in that ball-field.

JD: In this essay you state that if you had it to do over again, you would do it over again. You write: "... When one sheep goes astray, I am very reluctant to leave the other 99 in the lurch, or the ends do sometimes justify the means." This Messiah analogy is disturbing. How long have you held this self-perception? Was it before or after you met "Tom," CIA "keeper of the weird that this perception began to unfold?"

DS: When I met Tom I was already 'entertaining' the folks on CompuServe with the possibility that I was the Spirit of Truth, i.e. third member of the trinity. Later on Tom said, "Everyone knows that I'm Catfish and you are Sunfish," (this being apropos of the Aquarium). I chose to read that as 'Sonfish' and to take it as something other than a joke. I was not at all surprised when the folks on CompuServe decided that it was not funny and kicked me off. Who's to blame? Why blame? The world is but a stage.

JD: You also comment, "in the field of eschatology, one gets paid mainly to keep track of the ends...." This statement is a little confusing. So then, in the field of eschatology, one gets paid? As I understand it, you are a civilian. Can you tell me, do you work for a civilian business enterprise or are you self-employed?

DS: I have some independent income. As a piper I am piping a certain tune. I may just be entertaining myself and a few of your readers. We could do worse than that.

JD: In this essay, you have also written that, "I believe that we are all in good hands, and if two of those hands turn out to be mine, please forgive me for not being quite as surprised as you." What exactly do you mean by this puzzling statement?

DS: I'm just saying that I don't think my state of mind is completely my fault or Tom's fault. We all march to different drummers, some of which may be cosmic. We all hope for the best and don't spend as much time preparing for the worst as pure reason might otherwise dictate.

JD: Steven Greer has written that the eschatological belief system has pervaded the civilian UFO community. He describes, "very strange bed-fellows: war mongers and militarists in cahoots with industrialists who share a bizarre eschatological bent." He has warned that some of these people want Armageddon ASAP. Can you comment on these statements?

DS: This sounds reasonable to me. And if you want my opinion, I am against any more Armageddon. We have had enough of that already. No?

JD: In your estimation, is there a large group of persons in the intelligence community who believe as you do? Also, can you give me an idea of how many people are part of your "loose knit" Aquarium group?

DS: I don't know anyone in the world who believes quite like I do. But heck, let's do an experiment. Run this article and see what happens with Tom. In the meantime we can all be thankful that we are not Tom.

JD: And why is that? Is Tom is some hot water right now?

DS: Tom has said that his continuing association with me is the greatest deliberate risk that he has taken with his career. Whatever may be the internal struggles relative to MJ-12 and the Visitors, Tom is riding shotgun for the Aquarium.

Source: Paranoia: The Conspiracy and Paranormal Reader

Critical Thinking ::: Dark Side of Optimism :: Are You-Yes, You- Deluding Yourself? :: Bright Side of Bias ::: Thinking Critically

.

Today, 6.5 billion humans depend entirely on oil for food, energy, plastics & chemicals. Population growth is on a collision course with the inevitable decline in oil production.

To think that we can advocate for human rights, peace, and social justice while ignoring their necessary ecological basis—is both intellectually dishonest and ultimately self-defeating.

The longer we put off choosing the nicer methods of achieving demographic stability, the more likely the nasty ones become, whether imposed by nature or by some fascistic regime. Urine Good Company might represent a mild version of what could actually be in store if we let the marketplace, corporations, and secretive, militaristic governments come up with eugenic solutions to our population dilemma.
~ Population, Resources, and Human Idealism, Energy Bulletin | Population Growth: Most Powerful Force on Earth, Money&Markets ~

What the CIA means by the term 'slides': A ‘slide’ is a prefabricated, ‘politically correct’ blanket ‘pop’ ‘opinion’, ‘view’ or ‘take’ upon a particular issue of general interest which is designed to preclude further consideration, analysis or investigation of the issue in question. In other words, it is a ‘collectivised’ mental position which is never to be questioned.
~ Wall $treet $lavery Exchanges are Helium Accounting Ponzi Schemes (Defining $lavery Exchange Ponzi Eugenics for the Feebleminded: The End of Wall St.) ~

'Political incorrectness' is a Soviet revolutionary control mechanism, elaborated by mind-control operatives from the Leninist literature, including The Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism.
~ From Admiral GAMBIT :: CENTCOM's Global Hegemony 'Nuclear-Eschaton-Master' Plan : What To Do With Third World Tyrants? :: With Little ChickenShit! ~

The Dark Side of Optimism

Why Looking on the Bright Side Keeps us from Thinking Critically

by Susan Webber | Conference Board Review

Has positive thinking gone too far in corporate America? That may sound like a bizarre question: Optimism is widely seen as a virtue of American culture and key to success in business. Cultural norms and beliefs about good business practice increasingly stress looking at the sunny side and de-emphasizing the problematic.

But such overly positive thinking is difficult to reconcile with the need to make realistic, objective assessments. Finding the right balance between healthy optimism and delusion is harder than one might imagine, for both individuals and institutions.

And despite years—decades—of sobering examples, we don’t seem to be any closer to that balance. The recent recklessness of residential and commercial real-estate lending was in plain view, and a vocal minority wrote about it. But the financial and business communities dismissed all the warnings, insisting that any damage—should it ever arrive—would be contained to the subprime sector. The folly was obvious: Even if decision-makers had deemed the grim forecasts to be of low probability, the potential outcomes were so dire that they demanded contingency plans. On other fronts, experts are issuing warnings about the dollar’s continuing slide, which could worsen international financial stability, and about oil prices, and the hiring slowdown, and any number of potential crises looming in the near future.

We acknowledge these problems and their seriousness—and then put them out of mind. Instead of treating worrisome developments as new information and looking dispassionately at the risks, we tend to avoid working through downside scenarios because they are upsetting. It’s simply easier to put on blinkers and believe everything will work out than to confront the complexities of modern life.

“Negativity,” an awkward coinage, has widely come to be used pejoratively. Magical thinking, too, has become increasingly popular as a way to gain the illusion of control in an uncertain world. Rhonda Byrne’s motivational best-seller The Secret, for example, basically says that you get what you wish for. If you don’t have the things you want, it means you don’t have enough faith. In this construct, neither insufficient effort nor bad luck plays a role.

In the business world, we’ve moved from hardheaded to feel-good management. As Financial Times columnist Lucy Kellaway observed recently: “For people in any position of authority the ability to say no is the most important skill there is. . . . No, you can’t have a pay rise. No, you can’t be promoted. No, you can’t travel club class. . . . An illogical love of Yes is the basis for all modern management thought. The ideal modern manager is meant to be enabling, empowering, encouraging and nurturing, which means that his default position must be Yes. By contrast, No is considered demotivating, uncreative and a thoroughly bad thing.”

To illustrate, Tom Peters’ Leadership offers an impossible, irreconcilable list of exhortations: Be a great salesman, great storyteller, great performer, networking fiend, talent fanatic, relationship maven, visionary, profit-obsessive, and (of course) an optimist. Push your organization; know when to wait; love mess, politics, and new technology; lead by winning people over; foster open communication; show respect; embrace the whole individual. Granted, Peters does give a couple of breaks—leaders get to be angry and make mistakes. But his list is all sizzle, no steak. Not only are his executives reluctant to say no—they don’t develop any of the guts of what managing is really about: making decisions under uncertainty, creating routines, developing (not merely exhorting) direct reports, responding to crises, building in enough slack to deal with low-probability but high-consequence opportunities and risks.

The religion of management has instead shifted from hard skills to soft, interpersonal ones. While the human touch is important, making it the gold standard of good management practice is dangerous. It reinforces, rather than counters, the role of emotion in our decision processes.

The end result is a bias against critical thinking. It’s hard enough, in the delicate social web of most organizations, to question the merits of any given proposal offered in good faith. But now decision-makers stagger under the weight of larger social trends and management fads that favor belief and force of personality over dispassionate analysis. Detached, rigorous thinking simply doesn’t fit any of our cultural models. In his 1949 classic The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell showed that the hero’s journey is a story found in every culture—just as management literature about leadership, whether knowingly or not, casts corporate corporate chieftains as prototypical heroes. But what archetypes do we have for the anodyne analyst? In mythology, Hermes and Loki were clever but also troublemakers and tricksters.

Science fiction, too, has long depicted alien beings as detached, logic-driven Cassandras whose warnings are invariably brushed off by upbeat, forward-thinking Earthlings (whose impetuosity, more often than not, saves the day). But that’s just it—it’s science fiction.

The “Bright Side” of Bias

In the real world, it’s troubling enough that most of us overrate ourselves and, by extension, our enterprises (see “Are You—Yes, You—Deluding Yourself?” on page 34). But our social orientation makes us more suggestible than we realize in other ways. Out of his own frustration with how easily a smooth salesman could manipulate him, social psychologist Robert Cialdini studied how “influence professionals” exploit our reflexes. His findings, along with those of other psychologists, explain the ways in which optimism can trump logic:

Liking. Cialdini pointed out that we are more apt to comply with those we like—that is, people who are similar to us and people whom we find attractive. We are therefore more likely to shun someone who pours cold water on our pet ideas. Thus, people who want social influence will reinforce— or, at least, not dispute—optimistic assessments. To smooth their dealings with others, people resort to white lies—large and small—with startling frequency: A study by social psychologist Robert Feldman found that 60 percent of his subjects told lies, at an average frequency of two to three lies per ten-minute period. No surprise that our co-workers and colleagues reinforce and amplify our rose-colored views more often than they dispute our assessments.

Consistency and commitment. Most of us feel the need to be consistent, not only because society highly values such reliability but because doing so makes it much easier to function in life. As Cialdini suggested, it’s simpler to adhere to successive actions and decisions and hope that everything will somehow work out well than to return to initial principles each time you must make a decision. But in an organization, this attachment to commitment can lead to inflexibility, particularly when an initiative or investment that looked good in the planning stages falters in the field. In game theory and economics, the practice of taking unsound actions to justify measures taken earlier is called “irrational escalation.”

Confirmation bias. People tend to look for information that proves, rather than disproves, their theories. In 1960, British researcher Peter Watson gave subjects the number sequence 2-4-6 and asked them to identify a rule. The participants could then ask the experimenter if other threenumber series fit the rule: For instance, those who believed the numbers had to be even asked about numerous even sequences, whereas people who thought numerals had to increase by two offered several such orders. Some 80 percent of participants overthought the simple problem and got the wrong answer: The numbers simply had to be in ascending order. Watson’s study is called a “cold” form of confirmation bias; it merely demonstrates the propensity of humans to look for supporting rather than falsifying data points.

“Hot” confirmation bias refers to cases in which the belief is emotionally charged. Not surprisingly, researchers have found individuals with a hot confirmation bias to be even less amenable to information.

Conjunction fallacy. This is one of many cognitive biases that result from our propensity to rely on stories to organize reality. Studies of juries have found that they typically base their decisions on whichever story seems most plausible to them, rather than weighing the evidence. Likewise, people will form their own stories when presented with facts.

Consider this example: Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.

Rank the following statements from most probable to least probable:
1. Linda is a teacher in an elementary school.
2. Linda works in a bookstore and takes yoga classes.
3. Linda is active in the feminist movement.
4. Linda is a psychiatric social worker.
5. Linda is a member of the League of Women Voters.
6. Linda is a bank teller.
7. Linda is an insurance salesperson.
8. Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.

A majority of participants in many repetitions of this exercise rate No. 8 as more probable than No. 6, even though, obviously, it is more likely that Linda is a bank teller than both a bank teller and an active feminist. Adding more detail makes something seem more vivid and plausible, and we make the leap to seeing it as more likely.

How does this bias reinforce optimism? It means that we overestimate the likelihood of conjunctive probabilities—that is, the likelihood that A and B will occur together. For instance, estimating the success of a project or investment is a conjunctive probability. Certain elements must all go well for the project to succeed: Customers must place orders, production must meet demand, production then must reach certain efficiencies for the profit margins to be adequate, and so on.

The fact that we overestimate conjunctive probabilities means that we tend to overestimate the likelihood of project success.


Getting Real

We’re always told to look on the bright side of things, to stay positive. After all, individuals and companies need a positive outlook to succeed, right? Isn’t positive thinking essen-tial for progress? Not necessarily. No one is encouraging pessimism; rather, evidence from top-performing companies suggests that success lies in a realistic outlook.

Organizations with a point of view based in realism have a keen eye for problems, and when they find them, they attack them with a doggedness that verges on the compulsive. Yet we fail to recognize this realism because it’s at odds with the romanticized ideas we have about leadership. It’s much more compelling for a CEO to see himself—and the public to see him—as a modern protagonist in a hero’s journey than as an executive performing the mundane and often thankless task of making a large enterprise more effective.

In addition, corporations often hide their worries. During its rise to industry leadership, Goldman Sachs had a culture that could best be described as intolerant of error and obsessed with containing risks. Yet the firm’s spokespeople and sales staff always presented a confident, professional demeanor. Similarly, the press wrote about the firm’s aggressiveness, emphasis on recruiting top talent, and cohesiveness, not its sharp eye for trouble.

Jim Collins, in Good to Great, found that his top-performing companies confronted the brutal facts. To illustrate, he quotes Pitney Bowes CEO Fred Purdue: “When you turn over rocks and look at all the squiggly things underneath, you can either put the rock down, or you can say, ‘My job is to turn over rocks and look at the squiggly things,’ even if what you see can scare the hell out of you.”

Collins cites retail food chain Kroger as another exemplar of tough-minded realism. As consumers became more affluent, their grocery-store preferences shifted away from utilitarian outposts toward more attractive stores with a range of offerings, in particular higher-quality perishables such as bread, meat, and vegetables. The industry was aware of these changes, yet Kroger was alone among the incumbents to upend its business system: “By 1970,” Collins writes, “the Kroger executive team had come to an inescapable conclusion: The old-model grocery store (which accounted for nearly 100 percent of Kroger’s business) was going to become extinct.” Collins goes on to quote then-CEO Lyle Everingham: “‘Sure, there was some skepticism at first. But once we looked at the facts, there was really no question about what we had to do. So we just did it.’”

Toyota, another reality-driven top performer, has patiently gone from making cars that American consumers ignored to being the world’s second-largest automaker. One of the keys to Toyota’s success is its drive to seek rather than avoid impediments. As a New York Times Magazine article noted, “It is human nature to cover up a problem rather than call attention to it. At a Toyota plant, the identification of a problem became imperative and exciting. Because then it could be addressed.” Put simply, shortcomings are seen as potential opportunities. If Toyota can come up with a solution, it puts the company ahead of competitors.

Likewise, Andy Grove created a culture at Intel that was deeply insecure, and rightly so. Leadership in the computer-chip business is tenuous, since manufacturers are only as good as their newest design and product life cycles are short. Recall that the United States appeared doomed to lose its technology leadership to Japan in the 1980s, and Taiwan has been steadily improving the sophistication of its chips over the last decade. Grove’s famed paranoia included an obsessive focus on competitors and evolving customer needs. As he described it: “Think of the change in your environment, technological or otherwise, as a blip on your radar screen. You can’t tell what that blip represents at first but you keep watching radar scan after radar scan, looking to see if the object is approaching, what its speed is and what shape it takes as it comes closer. Even if it lingers on your periphery, you still keep an eye on it because its course and speed may change.”

Grove uses a military analogy completely different than those of most business leaders, who see themselves as generals out to subjugate enemy territory. He puts himself in the shoes of a lowly radar operator, underscoring the importance of relentless attention and accurate reporting by the rank and file.


Building Realism

For companies that believe that all news must be good, senior management must take deliberate, concerted measures to signal that it is less interested in boosting morale than in the cold, hard truth. New messages must be consistent, firm, and frequent. Cultural change does not happen overnight and requires considerable attention and constant reinforcement. The leadership group needs to be certain it is prepared to go this route, since pretending to be interested in candor but persisting with old habits of denial will simply increase cynicism. Some measures to consider:

Never shoot the messenger. Some managers may seem to be hopeless worrywarts, but remember Grove’s warning: Better to be aware of a potential problem than not. Over time, you can calibrate whether some managers or units are indeed canaries in the mineshaft and, conversely, whether managers who dismiss possible dangers do so for valid reasons—or do so out of inertia.

Show interest in the downside and the upside. Grill executives on the risks inherent in their forecasts. Display interest in bad or problematic news, and express interest in having more early-warning systems for adverse developments.

If your company has deeply ingrained prohibitions against bringing up bad news—particularly if it is considered to be a sign of professional weakness—have brief one-on-one reviews individually with key business managers to discuss their operations and build a spirit of greater openness. Later, in a larger group setting, use the information gathered, starting with challenges common to several units so as not to put any one executive on the spot.

Shake up habits and procedures. It’s hard to get people to think and act in a new way if they continue to go through the same old rituals. It may be worthwhile to look at your management-information systems and decision processes to see if they provide adequate mechanisms to obtain and air unbiased information.

Another way to rattle hidebound thinking is to engage in scenario planning. Most companies have a well-understood official version of the future, which is codified in their business plans, and the organization may also have one or two other major scenarios in mind. However, businesses tend to ignore low-probability but potentially devastating events, just as they ignore fundamental challenges even when they look increasingly likely. (Consider how Detroit resisted the production of smaller, lighter cars and, now, how many corporations aren’t taking the implications of global warming seriously.) Don’t let your company be caught off-guard.

Establish a house skeptic. It can help to have a designated critic. Sometimes that role falls naturally to a staff department, such as corporate development. The trick, then, is to ensure that its questions and concerns are treated seriously (i.e., to make sure representatives have some power) and that it focuses on substantive issues, rather than process or minor details. If you lack a logical internal party to play this role, use an outside adviser, such as a retired executive, a consultant, or a business-savvy lawyer. Generally, it is best to involve the person in major strategic decisions and acquisitions first, and at as early a stage as possible.

Regardless of what steps you take, your goal is not to squash optimism but, rather, to build a sense of realism into your company’s culture. And keep in mind that what works for an individual isn’t always successful on the level of a larger enterprise. While the elixir of optimism may help us get through the day, it is toxic to corporations when taken in excess.

PDF Source: Conference Board Review: The Dark Side of Optimism

It Pays to Be Negative

By Derek Gatehouse

Most owners and executives focus on all the positive motivators: a strong commission plan, bonuses, perks, and incentives.

This is certainly not wrong, but it is incomplete. It turns out that a full half of the world’s best salespeople are actually more motivated by negative motivators—by the ramifications of what will happen if they do accomplish something—than they are by all the rewards of the positive motivators.

In spite of the nasty connotation of the word “negative,” negative motivators do just that—they motivate.

I realize many of you forward-thinking executives will recoil at the phrase negative motivator. We have all become so conditioned to the importance of treating our employees well that we walk on eggshells in the face of anything that might seem negative.

While this is understandable, and while I am probably the world’s number-one advocate for treating your people like kings and queens, I must tell you that a negative motivator is not negative at all. As a matter of fact, you are doing your valued employees a disservice if your program lacks negative motivators.

The explanation is certainly a primal one.

You must realize that there is positive motivation and negative motivation in every task we undertake in our lives. We don’t eat just for pleasure or to become full—we eat to avoid the very negative feeling of being hungry. We seek companionship not only for the positive feelings of love, trust, fun, and so on, but also to avoid the negative feelings that come from being alone. We so often hear of rich people whose primary reason behind their tremendous drive to make a lot of money does not come from the loss of obvious positives—it is fear of poverty, a negative motivator if I ever heard one.

Negative motivators are not a negative thing. They are a positive thing with a negative-sounding name.

DEREK GATEHOUSE is CEO of Vendis Inc., a New Yorkbased consulting firm. From The Perfect Salesforce: The 6 Best Practices of the World’s Best Sales Teams (Portfolio). ©2007

PDF Source: Conference Board Review: The Dark Side of Optimism

Are You—Yes, You—Deluding Yourself?

In the Indian epic Mahabharata, Yudhisthira goes looking for his missing brothers, who went searching for water. He finds them all dead next to a pond. In despair, but still parched, he is about to drink, but a crane tells him he must answer some questions first.

The last and most difficult: “What is the greatest wonder of the world?” Yudhisthira answers, “Day after day, hour after hour, countless people die, yet the living believe they will live forever.”

The crane reveals himself to be the Lord of Death and, after some further discussion, revives the brothers.

Human existence, to paraphrase the Samuel Johnson adage, is the victory of hope over experience.

Indeed, psychologists have found that most people systematically overestimate their odds of success, and it may be rooted in our denial of our mortality. Yet a major tenet of psychology is that healthy individuals are well-grounded in reality.

Perhaps not, say Shelley Taylor and Jonathon Brown. In a seminal 1988 journal article, “Illusion and Well-Being: A Social Psychological Perspective on Mental Health,” the two researchers explored the possibility that healthy self-regard may be founded on delusion, asking: “How can positive misperceptions of one’s self and the environment be adaptive when accurate information processing seems to be essential for learning and successful functioning in the world?”

You’ve doubtless seen numerous survey results regarding this phenomenon.

Eighty percent of drivers rate themselves as above average. One English engineering firm ascertained that 43 percent of its engineers rated themselves in the top 5 percent.

Further, according to Taylor and Brown, “[P]eople give others less credit for success and more blame for failure than they ascribe to themselves.”

No wonder performance reviews are so fraught. From a managerial perspective, Taylor and Brown write, it is troubling that people also overrate their degree of control and likelihood of success: “Over a wide variety of tasks, subjects’ predictions of what will occur correspond closely to what they would like to see happen or to
what is socially desirable rather than to what is objectively likely.”

Conversely, people who are slightly depressed or have poor self-esteem actually see themselves and their prospects far more accurately, leading the researchers to wonder whether the price of self-honesty is too high.

In the end, Taylor and Brown make their case for optimism: “The individual who responds to negative, ambiguous, or unsupportive feedback with a positive sense of self, a belief in personal efficacy, and an optimistic sense of the future will... be happier, more caring, and more productive than the individual who perceives this same information accurately and integrates it into his or her view of the self, the world, and the future.” —S.W.

PDF Source: Conference Board Review: The Dark Side of Optimism

Optimism Through the Years

There’s nothing new about overdoing optimism.

In his 1835 Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville saw it as one of the young nation’s defining characteristics. Early in the following century, Dale Carnegie showed millions how to win friends and influence people using positive thinking and presentation. And from Benjamin Franklin to Steve Jobs, successful entrepreneurs have always preached the gospel of believing in your dreams.

It’s a message that extends into politics, too.

Every four years, presidential candidates compete to be the sunniest; this election cycle, Massachusetts ex-governor and Bain & Co. co-founder Mitt Romney is far out in front in that element of the race, proclaiming that “the future’s going to be even brighter than our past” and that “America has to be optimistic and recognize that there’s nothing we can’t overcome.”

And for centuries—at least since the Greeks coined the word hubris—critics have warned of the dangers of overweening optimism. Take Croesus, who thrust into Persia on the Delphic oracle’s vague prediction that if he crossed the Halys River, “a great empire would be destroyed.” That empire turned out to be his own.

Executives, of course, often look to warfare for models, and military history is rife with other examples of leaders who overestimated their odds of success, with disastrous results: Hitler attacked Russia, ignoring his generals and the cautionary examples of Napoleon’s and Charles XII of Sweden’s failed invasions.

Robert E. Lee came to believe in his troops’ invincibility and chose to storm well-positioned Union forces at Gettysburg against the advice of Gen. James Longstreet.

The World War I battle of Gallipoli was the product of so much misguided Allied thinking that one wonders how it could possibly have gone ahead.

And in the Iraq misadventure, the United States ignored postwar planning out of a belief that Iraqis would welcome American forces—even though it is well-nigh impossible to come up with an example of an occupying army ever being well-received. —S.W.

PDF Source: Conference Board Review: The Dark Side of Optimism