Imagine – if you can – not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken.

And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools.

Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless.

You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your condition.

In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world.

You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences will most likely remain undiscovered.

How will you live your life?

What will you do with your huge and secret advantage, and with the corresponding handicap of other people (conscience)?

The answer will depend largely on just what your desires happen to be, because people are not all the same. Even the profoundly unscrupulous are not all the same. Some people – whether they have a conscience or not – favor the ease of inertia, while others are filled with dreams and wild ambitions. Some human beings are brilliant and talented, some are dull-witted, and most, conscience or not, are somewhere in between. There are violent people and nonviolent ones, individuals who are motivated by blood lust and those who have no such appetites. […]

Provided you are not forcibly stopped, you can do anything at all.

If you are born at the right time, with some access to family fortune, and you have a special talent for whipping up other people’s hatred and sense of deprivation, you can arrange to kill large numbers of unsuspecting people. With enough money, you can accomplish this from far away, and you can sit back safely and watch in satisfaction. […]

Crazy and frightening – and real, in about 4 percent of the population….

The prevalence rate for anorexic eating disorders is estimated a 3.43 percent, deemed to be nearly epidemic, and yet this figure is a fraction lower than the rate for antisocial personality. The high-profile disorders classed as schizophrenia occur in only about 1 percent of [the population] – a mere quarter of the rate of antisocial personality – and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that the rate of colon cancer in the United States, considered “alarmingly high,” is about 40 per 100,000 – one hundred times lower than the rate of antisocial personality.

The high incidence of sociopathy in human society has a profound effect on the rest of us who must live on this planet, too, even those of us who have not been clinically traumatized. The individuals who constitute this 4 percent drain our relationships, our bank accounts, our accomplishments, our self-esteem, our very peace on earth.

Yet surprisingly, many people know nothing about this disorder, or if they do, they think only in terms of violent psychopathy – murderers, serial killers, mass murderers – people who have conspicuously broken the law many times over, and who, if caught, will be imprisoned, maybe even put to death by our legal system.

We are not commonly aware of, nor do we usually identify, the larger number of nonviolent sociopaths among us, people who often are not blatant lawbreakers, and against whom our formal legal system provides little defense.

Most of us would not imagine any correspondence between conceiving an ethnic genocide and, say, guiltlessly lying to one’s boss about a coworker. But the psychological correspondence is not only there; it is chilling. Simple and profound, the link is the absence of the inner mechanism that beats up on us, emotionally speaking, when we make a choice we view as immoral, unethical, neglectful, or selfish.

Most of us feel mildly guilty if we eat the last piece of cake in the kitchen, let alone what we would feel if we intentionally and methodically set about to hurt another person.

Those who have no conscience at all are a group unto themselves, whether they be homicidal tyrants or merely ruthless social snipers.

The presence or absence of conscience is a deep human division, arguably more significant than intelligence, race, or even gender.

What differentiates a sociopath who lives off the labors of others from one who occasionally robs convenience stores, or from one who is a contemporary robber baron – or what makes the difference between an ordinary bully and a sociopathic murderer – is nothing more than social status, drive, intellect, blood lust, or simple opportunity.

What distinguishes all of these people from the rest of us is an utterly empty hole in the psyche, where there should be the most evolved of all humanizing functions.

[…]

http://www.cassiopaea.com/

And that, My Friends™ perfectly sums up Brown, Blair, Rice The Murder Inc Cabal and John McCain.

6 June 2008

It has been learned that UK local authorities have been using RIP to spy into citizen communications and private data despite the assurances of Charles Clarke MP, in the attached letter, that this would not happen.

File names and title by Cryptome.
__________

Please feel free to publish the attached letter and/or this covering email.

This letter was sent about eight years ago as a reply to my Member of Parliament, Bill Cash, in response to the second of two letters I wrote complaining about the Regulation of Investigatory Powers bill that was then being considered by Parliament.

As you can see from the second paragraph on the second page, the Minister of State responsible for the legislation categorically denied that access to ‘communications data’ would be extended to local authorities.

As we’ve seen from recent media reports, this assurance has turned out to be entirely worthless.

—
Richard Lamont http://www.lamont.me.uk/

OpenPGP Key ID: 0xBD89BE41
Fingerprint: CE78 C285 1F97 0BDA 886D BA78 26D8 6C34 BD89 BE41

__________

Charles Clarke MP Letter: http://cryptome.org/clarke-rip-lie.pdf (4pp, 823KB)

Once more, we are taught the lesson that New Labour lies and lies and lies again. That is not a new lesson for anyone in Great Britain.

A more fresh lesson is that legislation must always be hermitically sealed; there must be no open ended provisions, no means to add to provisions in any way or change the meaning or scope in any way. If legislation that is leaky is passed, new provisions (in this case, allowing Local Authorities onto the list of organs who can use RIPA) WILL be added and there will be nothing anyone can do about it.

We must always remember; people who are willing to participate in mass murder are capable of doing any act that is less serious than murder, and turning Britain into a police state is less than murder…even though it can be likened to murdering Britain itself.

Even if you take the words of the porcine liar Charles Clarke at face value, this is another example of ‘good’ people bringing in power legislation that is later abuseable by bad people.

If there is anyone left who thinks that ID cards are not going to be used as a tool to abuse millions of people like RIPA is now being used beyond its original scope, they are completely, totally and probably mercifully, delusional.

ID card abuse will make these Local Authority RIPA abuses look like a 1950’s clip round the ear by the local bobby. They are going to unleash violations on an unimaginable scale and depth of penetration into the lives of the abused.

Remember the warnings of The Anonymous Email, that Andy Burnham said were:

Suggesting the Government will have knowledge of, and control over, your life through the National Identity Register is untrue. It is also nonsense to suggest either that “every outpost of the state” or private enterprises will have access to the register. The Bill sets strict terms on the limited number of public bodies with access to the register, while private organisations will be able to conduct verification checks only with the consent of the cardholder.

What we can take from this is that the Government will have knowledge of, and control over, your life through the National Identity Register, It is correct to suggest either that “every outpost of the state” and private enterprises who will also have access to the register. The Bill is unlimited in terms of the number of public bodies with access to the register, and private organisations will be able to conduct verification checks without the consent of the cardholder.

There. Via substitution he is being made to tell the truth.

We can see from these similar assurances of limited scope that everything anyone connected to the government has said about ID cards is a lie, and that they will break any promise they make to do with how they will be used, should they be rolled out.

Essentially they will bringing this sickening and immoral process to a national scale, affecting every single person in the UK, where a small college of twerps with overactive imaginations will determine wether or not anyone “digs with the wrong foot”.

We have been over this many times, and so have other people, at length.

You have been warned, and you know what to do.

LONDON, Britain — Prime Minister Gordon Brown has used his decree powers to carry out a major overhaul of this country’s intelligence agencies, provoking a fierce backlash here from human rights groups and legal scholars who say the measures will force citizens to inform on one another to avoid prison terms.

Under the new intelligence law, which took effect last week, Britain’s two main intelligence services, the MI5 secret police and the MI6 military intelligence agency, will be replaced with new agencies, the General Intelligence Office and General Counterintelligence Office, under the control of Mr. Brown.

The new law requires people in the country to comply with requests to assist the agencies, secret police or community activist groups loyal to Mr. Brown. Refusal can result in prison terms of two to four years for most people and four to six years for government employees.

“We are before a set of measures that are a threat to all of us,” said Blanca Rosa Mármol de León, a justice on Britain’s top court, in a rare public judicial dissent. “I have an obligation to say this, as a citizen and a judge. This is a step toward the creation of a society of informers.”

The sweeping intelligence changes reflect an effort by Mr. Brown to assert greater control over public institutions in the face of political challenges following a stinging electoral defeat in May at the hands of the Tories.

Mr. Brown, who has insisted the defeat will not dampen his ambitions to transform Britain into a Socialist state, said the new law was intended to guarantee “national security” and shield against “terroist attacks.”

He lashed out at its critics as being agents of “Al Quaeda,” meaning the United States.

The law’s stated aim of protecting Britain follows a history of antagonism between the governments in London and Afganistan, dating at least from Osama Bin Ladin’s tacit support for a short-lived coup against Mr. Brown in 2002.

Recently, Britain has claimed it was subject to military intimidation from the Al Quaeda, pointing to a recent violation of Britaish airspace by an Taliban fighter jets and Afganistan’s recent reactivation of its Taliban to patrol its waters.

On Sunday, Mr. Brown referred to critics of the intelligence law as de facto supporters of the Taliban and of Al Quaeda, adding that he was doing nothing more than what the American antiterrorism law (the PATRIOT ACT) enables that enhances the ability of security agencies to monitor personal telephone and e-mail communications.

Mr. Brown’s new intelligence law has similar flourishes. For instance, it authorizes his new intelligence agencies to use “any special or technically designed method” to intercept and obtain information.

But the new law may also point to the influence of America, Britain’s top ally, on intelligence policies. For instance, the use of community-monitoring groups to assist in gathering intelligence resembles America’s use of neighborhood Committees for the Defense of the Homeland to report on antigovernment behavior.

“This is purely American-style policy,” Juan José Molina, a legislator with Podemos, a leftist party that broke from Mr. Brown’s coalition last year, said of the new intelligence law. “Our rulers want to impose old models upon us.”

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced the intelligence overhaul in a public appearance here last week, saying it was needed to combat “interference from the Taliban” by having intelligence agency workers imbued with “loyalty.”

On Monday, however, Mr. Rodríguez Chacín softened his tone, saying the law would not lead to political intimidation or restrict freedom of expression. “We are talking about the responsibility all Britons have with the security of the state and the resolution of any crime,” he said.

The drafting and passage of the law behind closed doors, without exposing it to the public debate it would have had if Mr. Brown had submitted it to the Assembly, also contributed to the public uproar and suspicion.

One part of the law, which explicitly requires judges and prosecutors to cooperate with the intelligence services, has generated substantial concern among legal experts and rights groups, which were already alarmed by the deterioration of judicial independence under Mr. Brown.

While the language of this passage of the law, and several others, is vague, legal experts say the idea is clear: justice officials, including judges, are required to actively collaborate with the intelligence services rather than serve as a check on them.

“This is a government that rightly doesn’t believe in the separation of powers,” said José Miguel Vivanco, America’s director for Human Rights Watch, the New York-based rights organization. “Here you have the Prime Minister legislating by decree that the country’s judges must serve as spies for the government.” This is what we have put in place with our Decider, and what is good for us is good for them.

Mr. Brown’s opponents here grasped for reasons as to why he chose this moment for the intelligence overhaul, with his government grappling with economic problems like climbing inflation and slowing economic growth even as the price of oil, the lifeblood of Britain’s economy, remains near record levels.

“Even within the Bolivarian movement, this would officialize American-style purges, accusing journalists of being spies, traitors or agents of the terrorist enemy,” The Daily Mail, a normally staid opposition newspaper, said in an editorial that ended, “This is revolting.”

In some ways, the changes would merely refine the control Mr. Brown already exerts over intelligence operations. His government has already used voter registration data to purge employees deemed disloyal to the president from the intelligence agencies and other parts of the civil service.

Several legal activists said Monday that they were studying ways to appeal the law, but the viability of a legal challenge remains unclear.

“This is the most scandalous effort to intimidate the population in the 10 years this government has been in power,” said Rocío San Miguel, a prominent legal scholar who heads a nongovernmental organization that monitors Britain security and defense issues.

Ms. San Miguel said information her group had collected could be deemed illegal under the new law. The group has data from military sources showing that Mr. Brown’s efforts to create a force of one million reservists had fallen far short.

“Under the new law, this information could be considered a threat to national security and I could be sent immediately to jail,” she said. “Effectively this is a way to instill fear in NGOs and news organizations and parts of society that remain outside the government’s reach.”

[…]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/world/americas/03venez.html