Scientific studies show that psychopaths' brains work in very different ways to the brains of normal human beings. According to Robert Hare, the psychopath seems to interpret, process and use emotional information as if it was neutral information. The psychopath cannot extract emotional information from words as normal people do. Words like "murder, rape and death", provoke NO reaction in the mind/brain of a psychopath. They respond 'in a very superficial manner' to concepts that cause an emotional and distressing reaction in normal people.
On Thanksgiving Eve, the English language China Daily and People's Daily Online reported that Russia and China have concluded an agreement to abandon the use of the US dollar in their bilateral trade and to use their own currencies in its place. The Russians and Chinese said that they had taken this step in order to insulate their economies from the risks that have undermined their confidence in the US dollar as world reserve currency.
This is big news, especially for the news dead Thanksgiving holiday period, but I did not see it reported on Bloomberg, CNN, New York Times or anywhere in the US media. The ostrich's head remains in the sand.
Previously, China concluded the same agreement with Brazil.
The dollar's role as world reserve currency is one of the main instruments of American financial hegemony. We haven't been told how much damage Wall Street fraud has inflicted on EU financial institutions, but the EU countries no longer need the US dollar for trade between themselves as they share a common currency. Once the OPEC countries cease to hold the dollars that they are paid for oil, dollar hegemony will have faded away.
After the American-caused financial crisis, the IMF's role as a tool of US imperialism is less and less acceptable. The point could come when governments can no longer sell out their people for the sake of the American banks.
There are other signs that some countries are tiring of America's irresponsible use of power.
America's elderly are finding that fewer and fewer doctors will accept them as patients as a 23% cut looms in the already low Medicare payments to doctors. The American government only has resources for wars of aggression and bailouts of rich banksters. The American citizen has become a mere subject to be bled for the ruling oligarchies.
The police state attitude of the TSA toward airline travelers is a clear indication that Americans are no longer citizens with rights but subjects without rights.
How stupid it is to assemble huge crowds at the Transportation Security Administration’s airport checkpoints, as if hundreds of people on planes were the only hundreds of people who make plausible targets for terrorists. What is not in doubt is an old rule: Give a bureaucrat a big stick and a big budget, allow said bureaucrat to trade in the limitless currency of human anxiety, and the masses will soon be intimidated by the Department of Fear.
What form of group madness is it that forsakes judgment and discernment for process run amok?
The unfettered growth of the Department of Homeland Security and the T.S.A. represent a greater long-term threat to the prosperity, character and wellbeing of the United States than a few madmen in the valleys of Waziristan or the voids of Yemen.
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
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