Tuesday, May 13, 2008

JPMorgan Chase CEO: Recession Just Beginning

Money News
May 13, 2008

NEW YORK — JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s chief executive said Monday that while the crisis in the credit markets appears to be three-quarters over, he believes a U.S. recession is just beginning.

“Even if the capital markets crisis resolves, it does not mean that this country will not go into a bad recession,” said CEO James Dimon, whose bank saw its first-quarter profit fall by half due to the recent collapse of the U.S. mortgage market. “The recession just started.”

“We don’t know if it’s going to be mild or severe,” he continued, speaking at a conference in New York hosted by Swiss bank UBS AG. “We’re thinking there’s a third of a chance that it’s going to be pretty bad … closer to the 1982 recession than the very mild recessions we had in 2001 and 1990.”

Also incomplete is JPMorgan’s acquisition of Bear Stearns Cos., the toppling investment bank that JPMorgan offered to buy in March.

Read entire article

Face Scanners To Catch Underage Drinkers

Daily Mail
May 13, 2008

Underage drinkers who attempt to buy alcohol may be thwarted by the technology that police use to identify suspected criminals.

A supermarket chain is introducing face recognition cameras to prevent staff mistakenly selling cigarettes and alcohol to under-18s.

The biometric technology is being piloted by Budgens at one of its London branches.

If successful, it could be rolled out across the country to create a database of youngsters who try to buy alcohol.

The system alerts a cashier if it ‘recognises’ someone who has previously been unable to prove they are 18.

It is believed to be the first time a British retailer has used the technology in this way.

The software takes measurements between key points on the face to make a template of a person’s features that is stored as a “token”.

Customers’ images are monitored and relayed to a control centre to be compared with under-18s already on record.

Future options include other retailers linking the scheme to their shops to create a giant database.

Read entire article

Chicago Suburb Hosts “Disaster” Drill

Daily Herald
May 13, 2008

Suburban firefighters, police officers and other emergency workers gathered today with hundreds of volunteers at the Sears Centre arena in Hoffman Estates to test how efficient the area’s emergency plan is when it comes to distributing antibiotics to combat threats such as anthrax.

More than 20 emergency departments were on hand for the drill, where volunteer victims were given scripted roles. Some of the volunteers were to get microchips like those attached to the shoes of marathon runners to time how long it takes them to go through the lines. Event sponsors were hoping for as many as 3,000 volunteers.

Emergency personnel, under the watch of the Cook County and Illinois departments of public health, were to hand out pill bottles.

Though the exercise will last only a few hours, the full-scale emergency plan’s goal is to be able to distribute medicines to a population of 50,000 to 100,000 within a 72-hour window. The thinking is that under real threat, a family member could go through the screening and bring pills home to relatives.

Read entire article

Endgame: Hundreds Arrested in Iowa Immigration Raid, Fairgrounds Used as Federal “Holding Facility”

Cryptogon
May 13, 2008

UPDATE #1: Largest Single Site Raid Ever:

Customs and law enforcement agents worked through the night processing the detainees, said Claude Arnold, the ICE special agent in charge of the operation. Detainees were “administratively arrested” but have not yet been criminally charged, he said.

Detainees who are charged with aggravated identity theft, unlawful use of a Social Security number or other offenses will be given lawyers and sent to appearances in one of three makeshift courtrooms at the detainee center in Waterloo, Arnold said.

The set-up includes three courtrooms – two in trailers and one in an existing room. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office said the court proceedings would be open within space constraints.

Video footage shot by federal agents showed a large “intake area” in McElroy Auditorium with folding chairs and tables. The footage, which did not show any detainees, included images of a kitchen, break room, restroom and shower facilities used by detainees.

Arnold would not disclose how many people were involved in Monday’s effort, citing security concerns.

— End Update —

This is almost certainly a Department of Homeland Security ENDGAME operation.

I hosted the document on Cryptogon:

U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement
ENDGAME
Office of Detention and
Removal Strategic Plan, 2003 - 2012
Detention and Removal Strategy for a Secure Homeland

Via: The Gazette:

More than 300 people here have already been arrested in what is being called the largest operation of its kind in Iowa, federal officials said this afternoon.

At 10 a.m., Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents entered Agriprocessors, Inc., as part of an ongoing investigation and to execute criminal search warrants for aggravated identify theft, fraudulent use of Social Security numbers and other crimes, as well as a civil search warrant to find people living illegally in the United States.

At a 2 p.m. news conference in Cedar Rapids, ICE spokesman Tim Counts said most of the arrests so far are for administrative immigration violations, although more information about the identities and jobs of those arrests are not being released at this time.

Those arrested are being held in Estel Hall at the National Cattle Congress grounds in Waterloo, until at least Wednesday night, he said. Estel Hall, also known as Cedar Valley Expo, serves as the grounds’ merchant showroom.

The Agriprocessors raid has already netted the largest number of arrests carried out at a single location, Counts said. He would not say whether other companies or locations will be involved in the raid.

“I can only talk about today,” Counts said. “We can’t comment on any future investigations or activities.”

Investigation into activity at Agriprocessors began in October 2007, said Matt Dummermuth, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa. Officials would not answer more in-depth questions on the background of the raid or how it is being carried out.

ICE agents are asking detainees “several times” if they have medical, child care or other humanitarian needs, said Claude Arnold, ICE Special Agent in Charge. The interviews will help determine if those arrested will be detained or conditionally released on humanitarian grounds.

So far, 44 people have been released under supervision, mostly because they are the primary caregivers of children who have no other responsible adult to care for them.

Counts said the Department of Human Services was contacted before the raid began to provide services to families. A 24-hour information hot line at 1-866-341-3858 was established for family members to check on the status of the detainees.

An official update on the raid is expected at 10 a.m. tomorrow. Counts said 63 pages of the search warrants used in the raid have been released to explain more about the basis of the investigation, and government video of the inside of the holding facility is expected to be distributed.

Related: U.S. Immigration Raids Are About to Get Ugly

Related: U.S. STRATEGIC PLAN TO DETAIN AND REMOVE ALL ILLEGAL ALIENS AND “POTENTIAL TERRORISTS”

Revisionist History: How Spin Works, with Dana Perino

Scott Creighton
American Everyman
May 13, 2008





In a recent video, found on 911Blogger, here, a young journalism student asks White House Spokesperson Dana Perino, some questions about the seriously flawed 9/11 Commission.

If you go watch the short film, you will see that the film-maker backs up the young man’s claims with clips of cited MSM news reports lifted from CNN and the New York Times, as well as others.

But that isn’t why I call your attention to this piece.

At around 1:20 in the video, Dana skillfully disregards this young man’s query by suggesting he is simply being taken in by “spin” and then at around 2:40, she definitively states that he should remember that the country hasn’t been attacked since 9/11 and the no-one has died since as a result of “terrorism”. Perino’s obvious lie is becoming common knowledge in America.

If you read “Violent Islamist Extremism, The Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat: a report by The U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs” (that’s right HR 1955 is alive and well and operating, quietly, as we speak (headed by none other than Joe Lieberman, no less)), you will see that they too seem to have misplaced a little information on the track record of this current administration when they list three (now discredited) “homegrown terrorist “plots and plans” as reasons that we must remain vigilant and even step up the efforts to thwart “the extremists”.

What was Perinos and the Committees obvious lie?

The 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States, also known as Amerithrax from its FBI case name, occurred over the course of several weeks beginning on September 18, 2001. Letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to several news media offices and two DemocraticU.S. Senators, killing five people and infecting 17 others. The crime remains unsolved.” From Wiki, here.

Now why is it that Perino wouldn’t consider this “an attack”, or that the Committee wouldn’t think to list it as a case of “homegrown terrorism”?

By definition terrorism is inflicting harm or the threat of harm onto a population to affect change either socially, politically, of economically through the use of fear. All the targets of these attacks were of one political party or media members that seemed, at the time, to support them. So, it would seem that the perpetrator of the attacks had a political goal in mind.

The Patriot Act was on the table and waiting to be voted on. It was shuffled in just days after 9/11 and had been written well before any planes hit their targets. Perhaps they don’t mention this terrorist attack because of this reason. It seems a little fishy, now doesn’t it?

or maybe they don’t mention it because of this:

‘The DNA sequence of the anthrax sent through the US mail in 2001 has been revealed and confirms suspicions that the bacteria originally came from a US military laboratory.

The new work also shows that substantial genetic differences can emerge in two samples of an anthrax culture separated for only three years. This means the attacker’s anthrax was not separated from its ancestors at USAMRIID for many generations. ” Wiki.

I am sure there are many reasons why Dana lies with impunity. That doesn’t surprise me. But what does surprise me is that if you read the letter written to Dana by one of the producers on the 9/11 Blogger site, you will see that he agrees with her (and thanks God) that there haven’t been any attacks since 9/11.

It is true, we have not been attacked since September 11th, 2001, and thank God for that.”

No, young man, that isn’t true.

This case, as yet unsolved, is being placed in the WTC7 file labeled “unmentionable”. And now, even the critics and those that question the events of that day, are starting to forget the course of events as they actually played out.

And that is exactly what Perino’s bosses want. No discussion of the more delicate facts of what happened to bring us to this totalitarian state.

And as you can plainly see, it’s working.

If you run a site, or blog regularly at one, please feel free to put this up, or just do your own article on the the anthrax attacks of 2001 and the suspicious collapse of building 7. We cannot let this dishonest administration continue to redefine history any longer.

Nothing good will come of it. Of that I am sure.

Survey: Americans Are Strongly Opposed to the North American Union

Barbara L. Minton
Natural News
May 13, 2008

Americans are catching on to the North American Union scheme and voicing their opposition. The right wing grassroots organization, American Policy Center (APC), has just concluded a survey of one million American households. The survey, titled "Do Americans Support a North American Union" asked a series of questions concerning the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) and the Trans Texas Corridor (TTC). Included with the survey was a four-page report prepared by APC entitled "NAU Fact Sheet", providing details about the SPP, the TTC, as well as an explanation of how these programs are being implemented without public scrutiny in meetings held behind closed doors, like the one just completed in New Orleans.

The chosen households represented no specific political ideological positions. They were from a wide variety of American households living in the direct path of the proposed Trans Texas/NAFTA Corridor, running from Mexico to Canada across the midsection of the U.S. — learn more at (http://www.naturalnews.com/023058.html) and (http://www.naturalnews.com/022974.html) .

The survey questions were:

1. Have you heard of the Security and Prosperity Partnership? 58 % of those responding said they did Not know about the SPP.

2. Do you think private corporations should have the power to enforce trade policy that may adversely affect our national sovereignty and independence? This question related directly to the establishment of public/private partnerships between private corporations and government, granting no-compete clauses and comprehensive development agreements which provide guarantees by government to the corporations as investment returns. The TTC is not a free enterprise, but is government sanctioned monopolies. As this question was explained by the APC, 95% of respondents Opposed such policy.

3. Chapter 11 of the NAFTA agreement states that disputes over NAFTA-related issues will be heard in NAFTA courts superseding U.S. local, state and federal courts, including the Supreme Court. Question three asked, Do you think this would be a threat to U.S. sovereignty? 91% of respondents said Yes.

4. The SPP calls for expanding the U.S. security perimeter to include the borders of Canada and Mexico. Question 4 asked, Do you think it would strengthen U.S. security to expand our borders to the outer borders of Canada and Mexico? 87% of respondents answered No.

5. Do you think it will strengthen U.S. Border security to allow trucks from Mexico and Canada to travel, free of inspection, up a corridor which has been built and is controlled by foreign corporations into the heartland of the United States? Texas Department of Transportation has already signed a 50-year agreement with a Spanish company named Cintra to build the TTC. In September of 2007, the Bush Administration started a pilot project to allow Mexican trucks to cross the U.S. border without inspections and be free to travel inside the United States. The Senate has also passed the omnibus spending bill that "was clearly written and designed to put the breaks on the current pilot program", according to Senator Byron Dorgan. Yet the Bush Administration, under the leadership of Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, continues the program, now in violation of federal law. 95% of respondents to this survey Opposed the Mexican truck project.

6. Would you support efforts to replace the U.S. dollar with a common North American currency some call the "Amero"? Though denied by the Bush Administration, there has been much discussion about the creation of a North American currency that would mimic the Euro. In an October, 2007 appearance on the Larry King Show on CNN, former Mexican President Fox answered in the affirmative when King asked about the creation of a united currency. 92% of respondents said they would Not support such a common North American currency.

7. Do you believe there should be public hearings and debate on this policy before it is allowed to move forward? So far, there has been no congressional legislation, hearings, or oversight concerning the establishment or operation of the SPP. No federal money has been officially allocated by Congress. No official authority has been provided for the creation of the SPP. 95% of respondents answered Yes, there should be debate and discussion with public participation. Americans believe it is wrong to make such significant national policy changes without debate and discussion.

8. Should the Bush Administration be allowed to move forward with its plans to create a "North American Community" without Congressional approval? Again, the American people have shown they understand that it is Congress which should decide such policy as this. They responded with a resounding 97% No to this question.

9. Do you believe the United States should be "harmonized" or merged into a union with Mexico and Canada? The words most often used by the Administration concerning the SPP are "harmonize" and "integrate". The U.S. is a representative Republic; Mexico is a socialist government; and Canada is part of the British Crown. There are no grounds for "harmonization" unless drastic changes are made to the U.S. judicial and financial systems. 88% said No to harmonization with Mexico and Canada.

10. Respondents were asked to provide comments and thoughts on the SPP. The word most often used was "treason". Another said, "I want no part of the social health care of Canada and I do not want to incorporate Mexico’s turmoil and poverty into our United States.". Many others said, "I want secure borders, not easy traffic between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. And another bluntly said, "Bush’s actions formulate a horrifying destruction of our proud nation". Many others used even stronger language. Once Americans learn about the SPP, they are clearly opposed.

In the face of this overwhelming opposition, on April 21-22, in yet another closed door meeting in New Orleans, President Bush and heads of state from Mexico and Canada continued to deny the SPP is anything more than a "dialogue" among the three nations.

Tom DeWeese, president of the American Policy Center, sees it differently. "As the Texas Department of Transportation signs an agreement with the Spanish company Cintra, containing no-compete clauses and guaranteed returns; as the Kansas City council loans $2.5 million to build the inland truck port called KC Smart Port; as the twenty SPP working groups continue to write policy; as the Mexican trucks roll over our borders; as high level meetings go on –- the Bush Administration dares to deny that Anything is happening. Why? The responses to APC’s survey show why. When Americans understand the truth, they say No in resounding numbers." Concludes De Weese, "Clearly the American people are overwhelmingly opposed to the harmonization of North America. We just want our country –- strong, independent and secure."

Complete Media Lockdown On Athens Bilderberg Meeting?

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday, May 13, 2008

A sole report from a small greek media outlet indicates that the annual Bilderberg meeting took place undetected over the weekend in Athens, Greece amidst a complete media lockdown.

However, veteran Bilderberg investigator Jim Tucker has suggested this report may be a ruse to deflect attention away from the group who could actually be meeting this coming weekend.

The alleged meeting could also have been a pre-conference steering session.

The articlefrom Patris.gr, (rough translation here) also carried a small picture (opposite) of some members of the elite group flanked by security. One of the men appears to be former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a long time Bilderberger.

The report states:

In Greece (in a Vouliagmeni hotel), is currently happening, according to information, the world Congress of secret Club "Bilderberg", which is brought proapofasj’zej for the chances of world, but also this is where Prime Ministers are nominated. It should be stressed, that according to the infamy that circulates round the club Bilderberg, they play for some reason, the role of an ‘informal world government’.

Jim Tucker has told Infowars that he has not yet received 100% confirmation from his sources regarding the situation with the 2008 Bilderberg Group meeting.

Though not unheard of, Bilderberg usually convene at the end of May into early June. The 2005 meeting in Germany was in early May but every other meeting in the last ten years has been later in the month of May or in early June.

Another Bilderberg investigator Tony Gosling of www.Bilderberg.org, explained how difficult it has been to pin down the elite power brokers this year:

This year was the most difficult ever to discover where and when Bilderberg is met. Intelligence gathered indicated the 2008 conference would take place in Greece on one of the first two weekends in May. We failed to positively identify the date and location before this year’s ‘private’ meeting of the Nazi-founded (Prince Bernhard) handful of people who control most of the money in the world.

Not since the early 1990s has the group’s meeting gone completely undetected in some form.

Speculation suggested that this years meeting would be held in Lisbon, Portugal to coincide with the impending ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, the new name for essentially the same EU Constitution that was previously rejected by European voters.

Others predicted that the meeting would be held somewhere within the US to coincide with a recent meeting of the Trilateral Commission, the private organization, established by David Rockefeller, of which many Bilderbergers are also members.

The alleged location of the past weekend’s meeting, if it indeed did take place, in Vouliagmeni near Athens, would mean a repeat of the 1993 meeting which took place in the same area.

We are still awaiting confirmation of the actual hotel involved, however it is likely that it would have been The Nafsika Astir Palace (pictured), which was used by the group in 1993.

From www.hotelsofgreece.com:

The Nafsika Astir Palace is hidden from view, except from the sea, being built along the pine-dotted cliffside. Thus the reception area is on ground level and the rooms, each with its own spacious and secluded veranda facing the bay, stretch down to the Olympic-size swimming pool and private beach at sea level. It has 163 rooms including the Presidential Suite, one Executive Suite and 8 Junior Suites and also houses the Business Center and the largest conference room of the resort. It is considered ideal for gala dinners and theme parties, which can be held by the pool or in one of the two restaurants.

In 2006 Alex Jones traveled to Ottawa, Canada after gaining intelligence that the Bilderberg meeting would take place there. Jones and his team were detained by Canadian immigration on orders of the Bilderberg Group for a 15 hour nightmare of interrogation, accusations and threats of arrests in anticipation of the conference.

However, Jones made it to the Brookestreet Hotel in Ottawa, met up with Jim Tucker and Daniel Estulin, author of The True Story of the Bilderberg Group, and captured footage that would later appear in his seminal film Endgame.

It was mainly due to the efforts of the three activists combined that elements of the Canadian media produced a rash of reports about the Ottawa meeting.

Media moguls who attend Bilderberg, such as Washington Post CEO and Chairman Donald E. Graham, swear an oath of secrecy and fulfil a promise each year to omit any coverage of Bilderberg from their news outlets.

2007 saw the elite confab head to Istanbul in Turkey under an increased media lockdown.

Insiders at Istanbul revealed that the Bilderberg agenda for 2007/2008 included a hiking of oil prices towards the $200 mark, something that seemed unbelievable at the time but is now predicted to happen by analysts and corporate heads before the end of the year.

The fact that the group has managed to evade detection this year indicates they have ratcheted up the secrecy level even more in response to recent exposure they have received at the hands of Jones, Tucker and Estulin.

The Ordinary Face of Everyday Evil

Pro Libertate
May 13, 2008


Ordinary evil


Havin’ a good time, guys? SWAT operators wearing Nazi-style bucket-head helmets enjoy a mirthful moment on the YZF Ranch as child "protection" workers prepare to kidnap the FLDS community’s children.

What stuck in the minds of these men who had become murderers was simply the notion of being involved in something historic, grandiose, unique ("a great task that occurs once in two thousand years"), which must therefore be difficult to bear. This was important, because the murderers were not sadists or killers by nature; on the contrary, a systematic effort was made to weed out all those who derived physical pleasure from what they did….



Ordinary evil




Hence the problem was how to overcome not so much their conscience as the animal pity by which all normal men are affected in the presence of physical suffering. The trick used by Himmler — who apparently was rather strongly afflicted by these instinctive reactions himself — was very simple and probably very effective; it consisted in turning these instincts around, as it were, in directing them toward the self. So that instead of saying: What horrible things I did to people!, the murderers would be able to say: What horrible things I had to watch in the pursuance of my duties, how heavily the task weighed upon my shoulders!

Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil


Ordinary evil


The unremarkable face of unspeakable evil: A Sheriff’s Deputy stands ready to use whatever force may be required to compel an FLDS mother to surrender her children to the State.

Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends… [I]n periods when millions are slaughtered, when torture is practiced, starvation enforced, oppression made a policy, as at present over a large part of the world, and as it has often been in the past, it must be at the behest of very many good people, and even by their direct action, for what they consider a worthy object.

Isabel Patterson, “The Humanitarian With the Guillotine,” from The God of the Machine, 1943

Terry Secrest, a 54-year-old social worker from Austin, Texas, is having a hard time sleeping at night. Many of her professional associates share that affliction, and for the same reason: Like Secrest, they have been assigned or have volunteered to work with mothers from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) whose children have been stolen from them at gunpoint.



Ordinary evil


Terry Secrest


Mrs. Secrest and her colleagues and, from all indications, essentially decent people. The same is probably true of the hundreds of people mobilized by the State of Texas to carry out this scheme of mass child abduction under the color of "compassionate" care.

Stipulating that all of us are fallen, flawed, sinful people, it’s still true that, as Isabel Patterson pointed out decades ago, there just aren’t that many genuinely wretched and vicious people in the world (in proportionate terms, of course).

It’s likely that nearly every individual involved in the seizure of the FLDS children — from those who passed along what was, in all likelihood, known to be a bogus phone call from a "victim" of domestic abuse at the FYZ ranch, to the overgrown adolescents in SWAT regalia a who participated in the paramilitary assault on the religious community, to the CPS workers who used threats, lies, manipulation, and finally brute force to steal more than 400 children from mothers who loved them — believed himself or herself to be animated by the purest motives on behalf of a worthy object.

And yet, at least some of them are now suffering long-deferred misgivings about their actions.


Ordinary evil

"Experts" — ah, yes, those emissaries from some transcendent realm — "say many of those professionals [working with FLDS mothers and children] may be suffering from secondary traumatic stress, a condition that affects people working with victims of trauma," reports the Austin American-Statesman. "Symptoms include anxiety, sleeplessness, nightmares and intrusive thoughts."

One source of this unexpected emotional turmoil is found in the fact that while social workers generally can offer at least a plausible explanation for the seizure of children from their homes, in this case "they didn’t know the details of the investigation or what led up to the mass removals," explains Vicki Hansen, executive director of the Texas chapter for the National Association of Social Workers.

"These workers are used to going into homes where things are really bad and feeling good about moving children from risk and danger," Hansen continues. "This situation is completely different. To look at the mothers and children, you would see love and affection and bonds, plus children who appear to be in good physical condition. It was wrenching to pull children away from their mothers."

Not surprisingly, at least some of the FLDS mothers are "showing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, such as having flashbacks of the raid on their ranch," as well as increasing anxiety over the prospect of never seeing their children again.

For the suffering of the mothers — entirely understandable, given the criminal violence inflicted on their families — there is little official sympathy. Most of it has been directed, Himmler-style, at those who committed that criminal violence, or who have been required to clean up the mess once the deed was done.

This spectacle of inverted sympathy is both familiar and disgusting. It must be said, however, that beneath the emotional contrivances there is an elemental truth — the irrepressible human conscience. At least some of those involved in this massive crime are suffering because the capacity to identify good and evil has yet to be seared from their souls.



Ordinary evil


Handiwork of the "rescuers": A ruined safe, its contents seized by the armed "law enforcement" officers who raided the FLDS religious community, lies discarded on the floor. Elsewhere kids’ rooms were ransacked and their private possessions rifled by the raiders. Odd, isn’t it, how often "law enforcement" actions resemble acts of routine criminal thuggery?


Once this is understood, the key question becomes: Why didn’t anybody do something to stop this crime, before it was consummated?

Of the hundreds, or thousands, of people implicated in this crime, there must be at least a few dozen as decent as Mrs. Secrest appears to be. Why were they silent?

What might have happened if only one of the many people called upon to executive the raid on YFZ ranch have said, "I’m sorry — but this just isn’t right"? Granted, there were probably many others willing to take the place of anybody who suffered a sudden attack of conscience. Still, under the right circumstances, the refusal to carry out patently illegal orders can become contagious. Unfortunately, although Mrs. Secrest and some other social workers display all the symptoms of coming down with a painful case of decent shame, the people who ordered and carried out the raid and abduction seem to have developed an immunity.

There is at least one other group of people who tried to do something to stop the criminal assault on the FLDS mothers and children while it was in progress — and the treatment they received reveals a great deal about the mechanisms of organized evil that carried out this abominable act.

After the FLDS children were seized at gunpoint from their eccentric but loving mothers, they were confined — imprisoned, really — in temporary shelters under the control of the Texas Department of Child Protective Services. Employees of the Hill Country Community Mental Health-Mental Retardation Center (MHMR) were assigned to help the CPS see to the needs of the abducted children and their mothers.

As medical professionals bound by an exacting ethical code, the MHMR personnel understood their task to be to look out for the best interests of the children as individuals. The CPS officials, by way of contrast, work for the State, which meant that their prime directive was to uphold the interests of that monstrosity. If in doing so their actions were to the benefit of the children and mothers of YFZ ranch, so much the better; if not, those under CPS control would simply have to suffer in the interests of the "greater good" — as defined by the State, naturally.

These conflicting visions resulted in predictable tensions between the humanitarians of the MHMR, and the collectivists from the CPS, and those tensions were resolved in predictable fashion: The State officials first forced the mental health workers to sign non-disclosure agreements, and then threatened to have the state’s hired thugs arrest any medical professionals accused of "interfering" with the CPS officials.

Oh my stars and garters! Who would ever want to "interfere" with the CPS — that cadre of self-sacrificing public servants, pure of motive and overflowing with supernal compassion?

At least nine of the MHMR employees assigned to help CPS care for the FLDS children, that’s who.

They described the needless and illegal seizure of the FLDS children as an atrocity, and the treatment of the children in CPS custody as an exercise in gratuitous cruelty.

Notes the Houston Chronicle: "All nine reports [from MHMR staffers] expressed varying degrees of anger toward the state’s child welfare agency for removing the children from their communit, separating them from their mothers or for the way CPS workers conducted themselves at the shelter."

"I have worked in Domestic Violence/Sexual Abuse programming for over 20 years and have never seen women and children treated this poorly, not to mention their civil rights being disregarded in this manner," wrote one MHMR worker. Others described how CPS employees routinely and deliberately lied to the mothers in order to make it easier to consummate the plan to kidnap the children. Several of the mental health professionals reported that CPS denied the mothers access to legal counsel.

Anybody familiar with conditions in a day-care center knows how they quickly become incubators for sickness. So it’s not surprising that cramming several hundred children (even exceptionally clean and healthy children) into a makeshift shelter in a sports stadium resulted in an outbreak of chicken pox and upper respiratory infections.

It’s tempting to think that this demonstrates the "good enough for government work" ineptitude of Texas CPS — but some MHMR workers believe that the CPS deliberately created these conditions as a form of low-intensity biological warfare: "The more uncomfortable [the children were]," one mental health professional wrote in disgust, "the more CPS thought they would talk" about the abuse they had supposedly suffered.

Had a parent deliberately exposed his children to highly communicable childhood diseases as a psychological manipulation tactic, the children would be seized from him and he would probably wind up in prison. But the Texas CPS saw nothing amiss in torturing other people’s children — having just recently nursed three of my children through severe bouts of the chicken pox, I think the word "torture" applies here — and they wouldn’t countenance any criticism of their methods. One report pointed out that "The entire MH support staff was `fired’ the second week; we were sent home due to being `too compassionate.’"

Referring to the reports from MHMR staff, submitted anonymously because of the non-disclosure agreement, hospital board chairman John Kite remarked: "We were literally astounded at what they told us. They are trampling all over human decency and those people’s civil rights…. We should not just sit here and watch it happen."

To the considerable credit of the MHMR staffers, they were more than merely passive witnesses to acts of surpassing viciousness. But unless something is done, very soon, to return these children to their mothers and punish those responsible for conceiving and carrying out this crime, the outrage expressed by Mr. Kite and the anonymous whistle-blowers will quickly dissipate without leaving so much as a stain on the drab, gray edifice of the official child "protection" bureaucracy.

When one thinks of it, the official color of collectivist evil is not Marxist red or fascist black; it is bureaucratic gray. Evil makes plentiful use of banners drenched in red or saturated in black, of course. But its real work is carried out within the warrens of official bureaucracy, with the eager help of normal, upstanding people who crave the safe anonymity of cooperation, and don’t have the courage to make themselves conspicuous by naming officially approved evil for what it is.


Ordinary evil


A symbol of obvious evil — But it was the phlegmatic evil of Senator Palpatine, not the flamboyant evil of Darth Maul, that was the real Menace.

Our conditioned expectations of evil lead us to look for the lurid and obvious, rather than the mundane and unexceptional. We are taught to expect evil to come in the guise of the Bizarre Outsider — a visibly deranged dictator with an odd haircut, or people from a socially isolated sect who wear funny clothes and eschew popular culture.

But wrapping our expectations about evil in such convenient packaging can be deadly. Yes, there are times when Evil gives us due notice by following the accepted blueprint, and incarnating itself in the frothing tyrant or the dead-eyed cult leader.

But a figure of that sort is a mere catalyst for the evil that coalesces out of the collective efforts of common people — many of whom are otherwise decent people who believe in the principle of absolution through mass conformity. It’s because we expect that Evil will always materialize as a leering apparition that we become blind to the ordinary face of everyday evil.

Photos courtesy of captivefldschildren.org