orthodox spirituality compared and contrasted with other religious traditions

Video - Cash Rules Everything Around Me CREAM Wu Tang Clan

The stronger and more powerful have always preyed on the weaker, from the earliest African tribes to the banksters of today. It's human nature and you cannot change that. It's a jungle out there, always has been, always will be. Nice guys finish last...Big Don

Strannik | To best understand why there are these vitally important differences and what they mean, let us follow the Fathers of the Church, according to whom, there are the following possible three states of human existence, of the soul, and all its faculties. These three states are:

1. the sub-natural or contra-natural state, also known as the “contrary to nature” state, and fallen subsistence,
2. the natural state, also known as the “according to nature” state, and life as created in the Image, and
3. the supra-natural state, also known as the “beyond nature” or “according to grace” state of ascending participation in the Uncreated Energies, and deified eternal life after the Likeness.

There are two things to point out about these states. First, originally, we were created in the natural state in the divine Image but were meant to grow in synergy with the Uncreated Energies into the deified Likeness of God.

Second, we are in the contra-natural state. So, of course, it is the better known state. The natural and supra-natural states are less well known, even to the Fathers of the Church. Accordingly, there is more agreement between all three traditions, not surprisingly, about the nature and problems of the contra-natural state than there is about the natural state or about our ultimate supra-natural destiny. As a result, while there is much agreement about the nature and problems of the beginning stages of the spiritual life from the contra-natural state to the natural state, this consensus rapidly disappears. Despite the alleged superficial and deceptive similarities of the peak of the spiritual life that has been created by those who engage in highly selective quoting and juxtapositioning of bits and pieces of texts from various mystical traditions in an effort to support the view that all religions are one at the top, what we actually find is that both the nature and purpose of the more advanced phases of the spiritual life are topics where there is an increasing divergence of opinion. But as we can see with the Fathers, particularly in how the Cappadocians treat and weigh what is true and of value in Greek philosophy, and following their lead, especially with the Syrian Fathers dealing with what was true and what was error in Buddhist practice (as represented inBactria), even the agreement about the nature of the contra-natural state is more limited than is apparent at first sight. This is because you can only fully agree about exactly how the contra-natural state is contra-natural only if there is shared knowledge of what the original design plan of purpose of human life intended us to be.

Differing conceptions of the ultimate nature and purpose of human life provide differing cures for the contra-natural disease we all suffer from. But as the meaning of the Greek word “phármakon” reveals in ancient Greek medicine, depending on the exact nature of the disease as diagnosed in terms of some exact conception of health, the very same substance or treatment can either serve as a medicine (phármakon) or poison (pharmákion). To be a medicine, a substance or treatment has to be given in the right amount, at the right time, and under the right conditions for a correctly diagnosed disease in order to have the right effect. The same holds true for spiritual treatments, techniques, and cures. We need to understand the vastly different purposes, serving different diagnoses of what is wrong, based upon different views of what human life is supposed to be, that similar, or even, exactly the same spiritual techniques are made to serve. It is not similar techniques that we need to look at but their purpose, their actual function within a larger operational context, and thus, their intended effect.

Distinctive Characteristics of Orthodox Christianity

It is to these purposes we will turn to examine in order to reveal the very real differences in function and outcome behind the apparent similarities of even the same spiritual techniques. But in order to do that, we first need to note two very distinctive characteristics about Orthodox Christianity that determine the fundamental purposes, functions, and outcomes of any spiritual techniques that may make the Hesychast tradition superficially appear similar to Buddhism or Yoga.

The first characteristic of Orthodoxy is the emphatically important truth for spirituality that God is Trinity. The spiritually relevant meaning and implication of this fact, for our purposes, is that reality is ultimately and inescapably interpersonal communion.

Intimately stemming from the fact that God is Trinity is the second distinctive characteristic of Orthodox Christianity. Christianity is not a religion; it is a Church - the Church, the Kingdom come, God’s people called out of the world unto Him, and the Communion of Saints. That is, Christianity is not my personal and private salvation through Jesus. As the Body of Christ, it is a deifying process of becoming a communion of persons mutually participating in the Uncreated Energies of the Life of the Trinity and increasingly after its Likeness.

Plato sought the ideal polis. Aristotle defined the human creature as intrinsically the social and political animal. In Judaism, a relationship to God is to be called and chosen, ex nihilo fashion, out of nothing, out of Ur of the Chaldeans, out of Egypt, out of the world, as a people covenanted to God. The people, the Church, the Body of Christ (through whom all things were made, in whom all things have their being, and will find their fulfillment) - that is, the covenant - is the inner purpose of creation. Creation is the outer staging. The Church is the fruit from which the tree that bore it was born first, as the Syrian Church is fond of reciting, for what shall be last is the very realization of what was first ordained. This is simultaneously a cosmological and inward truth. Those who inwardly shall be last spiritually participate in that fruit from which the tree that bore it was itself born.

Contrary to the (schismatic, Roman Catholic derived) Protestant sensibilities that are dominant in our culture and affect too many Orthodox, the spiritual life and our salvation have everything to do with Church membership. The Church is God’s ideal polis. To say, in contrast to the nature deities of paganism, that our God is the God of history who intervenes in human affairs is also to say he is the supreme politician. God’s economia of salvation is God’s career in politics in history. God’s politics is the outward missionary expansion of his Church and the inner building-up of his Church into a perfected Communion of Saints after the Likeness of the trinitarian communion of divine persons. Syneidesis or conscience is naturally the innate prefiguration of the Church as that which ought to be, but which is faded in our contra-natural condition. For Orthodox Christianity, conscience is our innate inward call to become part of the Body of Christ.

While these two distinctive characteristics of Orthodox Christianity may appear to be abstractions that are apparently remote from our daily lives or the life of the spirit, they immediately determine the differences in purpose, function, and outcome of similar or or even the same spiritual techniques that may be found in the Hesychast tradition, in Buddhism, and Hindu Yoga. The main difference between Hesychasm and the other two traditions is now before us waiting to be spelled out. We turn now to examine the status of ethics in these traditions.

sustainability excludes growth...,

ecoglobe | "Sustainability" is a state of societal organisation that can be maintained unchanged for a very long time, thousands of years.

This working definition differs from soft definitions of Sustainable Development, such as "forms of progress that meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs" in line with the Brundtland report of 1982.

Sustainability excludes growth. Any development that entails growth is not sustainable, cannot be carried on for a long time. Humanity has lived sustainably for some 200000 years till the invention of agriculture, i.e. for 8000 generations.

Modernity started with the invention of the steam engine, leading to modern technology, allowing population to grown tenfold in only 12 generations of 25 years each. Humanity has now overshot the planet's carrying capacity by far, one can arguably say some 400 times overshoot: population 10 times, GDP per capita 40 times, since 1712.

All development means physical growth and thus an increase in the use of renewable and non-renewable resources. Non-material growths are fictions only, including the acclaimed transition to a services society. Many services are very resource intensive. At the end of the day growth is counted in GDP figures, which represent material resources.

No argument can justify further expansion (GDP and population growth) on a planet that is already hugely overloaded by hyperactive people. Environmental scientists as well as the media are reporting year after year on the increasing depletion and destruction of our habitats, nature, and resources. There is no need to get into details. We all know.

The acclaimed need of the poor countries to develop must be put within the environmental boundaries of resource availabilities and damage done to the lands.

Given the undeniable facts that humanity's burden on the planet is far too high, any development in poorer areas (NOT countries!) must be offset by contraction and frugalisation in the overdeveloped areas.

It goes without saying that growth is a suicidal policy for humanity on a planet that is not flat and not limitless. No Hope, nor Optimism nor Technology can counter these facts. Technology will not be able to revive extinct species, restore deforested areas, replenish spent aquifers, repair a spoiled climate, clean chemically polluted environments, or replenish depleted resource stocks, and so on and so forth.

A World Trade Organisation that works to increase trade and to maintain economic growth, but without considering these environmental facts and trends, has no future at all. Its old buildings on Geneva's lakeside and the extension under construction in the same public park will become void and useless when resource scarcities start to bite in the overdeveloped world as well. This time is not far off.

We are at peak oil, since 2003, as the International Energy Agency finally admitted, in their 2010 World Energy Outlook.
(Cf. http://www.ecoglobe.ch/energy/e/outl0n09.htm ).

Since there is no equivalent replacement for fossil fuels, not in quantity and not in quality, the post peak oil era, probably starting within the next few years, will lead to a decline in agricultural and industrial production, as well as the rolling back of globalistation.

Renewable energies are mainly electricity, all subsidized by fossil fuel for the generation plant, equipment, infrastructure, and human labour. We cannot eat electricity, nor use it as raw material for a host of modern products and fertilisers.

Even IF we had alternative energies, this would only confirm the false believes that we could continue our exuberant lifestyles and depletion of the world. The UNEP's "Green Economy", the WBCSD's "Vision 2050", The Swiss "CleanTech" so-called "Master Plan", and many more projects are all based on the belief in HOT, especially Technology, to save our modern souls. This HOT world cannot survive, because of physical resource realities.

The post peak oil era will entail a decline of the usefulness of the WTO for Business As Usual, i.e. furthering growth, because the physical resources will be lacking. The trade functionaries will be repatriated on the last flights that are then still possible with some remaining kerosene. Mr Pascal Lamy will be forced to retire in France. Geneva will have to try and survive with locally grown potatoes and heat its homes - with what exactly?

Remember that HOT - Hope Optimism Technology - cannot change physical facts and that we can only work with the ideas and techniques to live, with the means that we do have now. Tomorrow can not feed us today.
So, rather than worry about DOHA, BAU, and our jobs in whatever organisation, we should think of the effect of our work on the immediate future of our family, our children who have their eyes scared of environmental destruction.
Compare the eyes painted by a child, taken from a UNEP brochure.

These eyes of our own children should help us sit back, think for a while, and to refocus on those things that matter most to us.

why are banks bulldozing foreclosures?

The Atlantic | If you can't sell 'em, demolish 'em. This appears to be a new strategy adopted by some big banks struggling with a glut of foreclosed homes on their books. A new report indicates that some houses are being leveled by bulldozers, rather than revitalized and sold. Is this really a smart strategy?

Lindsey Rupp from Bloomberg reports on the phenomenon. The idea is that a bank donates a foreclosed home and possibly even pays for its demolition. One recent example is Bank of America donating 100 foreclosed homes to a Cleveland-area agency that will revitalize the property for other uses. From the article:

"There is way too much supply," said Gus Frangos, president of the Cleveland-based Cuyahoga County Land Reutilization Corp., which works with lenders, government officials and homeowners to salvage vacant homes. "The best thing we can do to stabilize the market is to get the garbage off."

Bank of America had 40,000 foreclosures in the first quarter, saddling the Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender with taxes and maintenance costs. The bank announced the Cleveland program last month, has committed as many as 100 properties in Detroit and 150 in Chicago, and may add as many as nine cities by the end of the year, said Rick Simon, a company spokesman.

The lender will pay as much as $7,500 for demolition or $3,500 in areas eligible to receive funds through the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program. Uses for the land include development, open space and urban farming, according to the statement. Simon declined to say how many foreclosed properties Bank of America holds.

Other servicers involved in such initiatives include other big names like Wells Fargo, JPMorgan, Citigroup, and even Fannie Mae. That's right: the government is indirectly bulldozing foreclosures.

The motivation here is pretty straightforward. They get out of ongoing maintenance costs and taxes that they would have to pay as long as the property remains on the market. But the even better news is that the banks can often write-off these properties as a result. An accounting analyst the article refers to says that in some cases, banks can deduct as much as the homes' fair market value from their income taxes.

From the real estate market's standpoint this strategy is also positive. With less supply, prices will stabilize more quickly. Disposing of these foreclosures will make the market clear sooner.

And yet, the idea of bulldozing homes does seem rather unsavory, does it not? Perhaps some of these homes are condemned and/or beyond repair. In those cases, it might turn out to be more expensive to try to get them back up to code than it would be to knock them down and start over. But does this really describe all of the cases? This is reportedly happening to thousands of homes across the U.S.

My concern is that banks are using this as an easy out to minimize their loss with little concern about what's best for the U.S. economy. If some of these homes could be converted to perfectly adequate rental properties at minimal additional cost at some point in the future, for example, then this would make a lot more sense than knocking them down and building new homes from scratch.

Unfortunately, if banks are better off bulldozing than attempting to sell these homes, then that's their prerogative. After all, they own the homes and can do as they like with them. It's just pretty incredible that the market has come to this.

new data shows sharp slowdown in growth rate

NYTimes | The economy slowed to a snail’s pace in the first half of 2011, underscoring a growing risk that the recovery itself may hang in the balance with budget and debt decisions in Washington.

The broadest measure of the economy, known as the gross domestic product, grew at an annual rate of less than 1 percent in the first half of 2011, the Commerce Department reported on Friday. The figures for the first quarter and the second quarter, 0.4 percent and 1.3 percent respectively, were well below what economists were expecting, and signified a sharp slowdown from the early months of the recovery.

The government also revised data going all the way back to 2003 that showed the recession was deeper, and the recovery weaker, than initially believed.

“There’s nothing that you can look at here that is signaling some revival in growth in the second half of the year, and in fact we may see another catastrophically weak quarter next quarter if things go wrong next week,” said Nigel Gault, chief United States economist at IHS Global Insight, referring to the debt ceiling talks.

With so little growth, the economy can hardly withstand further shocks from home or abroad, and worrisome signals continue to emanate from heavily indebted European countries.

If the domestic economy were to contract, any new recession would originate on President Obama’s watch — unlike the last one, which began a year before he was elected.

If Congress leaves existing budget plans intact, some of the government’s economic assistance, like the payroll tax cut, will phase out and thereby act as a drag on growth.

And by many economists’ thinking, whatever additional budget cuts Congress eventually agrees to (or does not) will weaken the economy even further.

overture to america's sea of silent peasants

Video - Sissi I belong to me.

Benjaminsmess | In “Sissi,” the richest .0001 percent of the people in the empire have no physical or social contact with the subjects they’re supposed to be in charge of, except for a handful of blank-faced servants who rush off-camera as quickly as their legs can carry them.

Were there poor people in Austro-Hungary in the19th century? Was there hunger? Was almost everyone illiterate? Was there injustice? Did as many as half of newborns die before reaching the age of three? Did the royal family of Franz-Joseph tax the poor, and squeeze tradesmen, to underwrite their masked balls, their boar hunts and their psychosomatic ailments? Was Austro-Hungary the corrupt relic of Europe’s parasitic feudal past? Was Austro-Hungary, in fact, the reactionary cesspool of incestuous aristocracy and lese majesté that triggered World War I, annihilating a generation of young men and spawning the bad seed that became Adolf Hitler?

Well, probably. But who knows? From this movie, you couldn’t get a clue that there was carbon-based life anywhere in Austro-Hungary outside the castle — where every room was pretty and everyone was happy. And why shouldn’t they be happy? These folks had so much money and power that they never had to think about money. They were so high up the mountain, in the upper rooms of the tallest building in the empire that, even if they looked out and saw ordinary people, those people seemed like ants.

As I watched director Ernst Marischka’s idyll of good-old-days Austro-Hungary, it occurred to me that my very own countrymen have been working tirelessly, over the past 30 years, to turn America into the same movie. Indeed, Republican progress toward re-creating the court of Franz-Joseph in the land of the free is outright awesome. Although the U.S. has never really been a model of financial equality, we are now the second least-equal democracy on earth, just behind Switzerland. We stand on the brink of creating our very own crowned and castled upper crust, suitable for filming.

In the last 30 years, tax policy and spending priorities have made America a little more Austro-Hungarian every day. Our median household wealth, for instance, has dropped 36 percent just since 2007. In other words, most of us have lost a third of what we had just four years ago! Sixty percent of American households earn less than they earned in 1979, the year before Ronald Reagan (the Franz-Joseph of the GOP) told us it was “morning in America.” Today, more than 24 percent of U.S. households have no marketable assets. In other words, a quarter of us own, literally, nothing. This is the highest percentage ever recorded. Three decades of upward wealth redistribution, promoted by Republicans and enabled by Democrats, is creating a sea of silent peasants. We wash up against but never disturb the sound stage where Romy Schneider floats from ballroom to throne-room in organdy and petticoats, and has babies who magically appear without requiring her to even drop her lace knickers or suffer through childbirth.

Of course, if the future consigns most of us to peasanthood, a few of us will have to be the Romy Schneiders. So far, this is working out real good, too. Between 2006 and 2007, average income for the 400 richest Americans soared 31 percent — in one year! — from $263 million to $345 million. This was before Congress extended the Bush tax cuts for the aristocracy and showered them with even more welfare.

mass socialist unrest in the garrison state?

972Mag | Huge protests in cities across Israel signal they are a growing political force

The housing and social protests tonight reached a huge crescendo, with throngs flooding streets in over 10 cities across the country Israel. Haaretz is reporting roughly 150,000 people around the country in Hebrew (most conservative estimate in the morning papers belongs to the pro-Netanyahu free paper, Israel Hayom: 100,000 protesters).

Compared to the estimated 20,000 to 30,000 who demonstrated last week, the number of protesters around the country may have more than quadrupled.

In Tel Aviv, the roar of frenzied euphoria mixed with anger preceded the crowd as the parade rounded a major intersection on its way to the Tel Aviv museum. Screams of “revolution” were echoed all over the country. Estimates speak of 10,000 in Jerusalem, similar numbers in Haifa and Beer Sheva, along with demonstrations in Kiryat Shmona, Nazareth, Ashdod several other locations.

Like last week, the Tel Aviv demonstration ended with a large and loud sit-in at a major traffic intersection (Dizengoff and Kaplan streets); police formed human chains to block streets, mounted police appeared, and eventually called to break up the protesters. Eight were arrested and released in the following morning.

At first glance, it appeared that the crowd’s demands were not significantly different from last week. The main rallying cry was still: “The people! Want! Social justice!” with a generous dose of “Bibi go home,” as well as anti-capitalism, pro-welfare state slogans, all laced with dripping sarcasm along the lines of: “The market is free, but we’re slaves.”

Over the last two weeks, the protests have been criticized as unfocused and lacking concrete demands. Tonight there were new signs of a plan taking shape. In the final speeches, after a lineup that included celebrity musicians, the organizers wrapped up with several quite specific demands. In what sounded very much like an ultimatum, they said that Netanyahu has until Wednesday, the day the Knesset goes on recess, to do two things: Withdraw the pending law for national housing committees – which they consider deeply damaging - and prevent the privatization of the Israel Lands Administration, which holds the vast majority of land in Israel.

On Sunday, Netanyahu has announced that a team of ministers would meet the representatives of the protest movement. The director of Israel’s finance ministry has resigned in the morning following the protest, citing the protest among his reasons.

And if the demands are not met? In a not very subtle innuendo, the organizers asked people to take note of the symbols starting to appear – a triangle with the letter “bet” inside it, hinting their intention to form or to join a political party, or at least to the attempt to bring down the government .

sharia law zones in british cities?

DailyMail | Islamic extremists have launched a poster campaign across the UK proclaiming areas where Sharia law enforcement zones have been set up.

Communities have been bombarded with the posters, which read: ‘You are entering a Sharia-controlled zone – Islamic rules enforced.’

The bright yellow messages daubed on bus stops and street lamps have already been seen across certain boroughs in London and order that in the ‘zone’ there should be ‘no gambling’, ‘no music or concerts’, ‘no porn or prostitution’, ‘no drugs or smoking’ and ‘no alcohol’.

Hate preacher Anjem Choudary has claimed responsibility for the scheme, saying he plans to flood specific Muslim and non-Muslim communities around the UK and ‘put the seeds down for an Islamic Emirate in the long term’.

In the past week, dozens of streets in the London boroughs of Waltham Forest, Tower Hamlets and Newham have been targeted, raising fears that local residents may be intimidated or threatened for flouting ‘Islamic rules’.

Choudary, who runs the banned militant group Islam4UK, warned: ‘We now have hundreds if not thousands of people up and down the country willing to go out and patrol the streets for us and a print run of between 10,000 and 50,000 stickers ready for distribution.

‘There are 25 areas around the country which the Government has earmarked as areas where violent extremism is a problem.

why the old white dudes keep winning

Video - Bob Roberts trailer

Bucky-GandhiDesign | To replace the Old White Dudes we have to replace the vision of the world which they have been guardians of, in which a strong, mostly-white but not racistly so, liberal elite with nuclear weapons held down the world’s despotisms and communism. Cheney and the lads may well have slept well in their beds at night comparing themselves to Chairman Mao and his successors, and indeed when one looks at Putin and the mafiaization of Russian society, you might well want Cheney standing between you and that. Until we are ready to shoulder the burden of protecting Liberty globally, and with it Nature and the Poor, we are in no way, shape or form ready to overthrow the old guard and usher in a golden age.

Social policy is an easy problem compared to national security. But it is national security which has bankrupted America, perhaps through poorly chosen 21st century wars, but more likely through the decision not to half the Pentagon budget in the 1990s after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union. No amount of reinvestment can refloat an economy which spends half of its tax dollars on war, and spends more than the entire world combined on arms. Until we talk about a comprehensive demilitarization of American society, coalition-based global stabilization, and a true, deep reform of our attitudes and action relative to nuclear weapons, we are going to be broke, and stay broke, in all probability.

The Old White Dudes are the last bastions of the power structures built up in the age of the Cold War. Haque and Hine are a little too young to remember the cold fear which was so much a part of my generation’s consciousness – the experience, at the age of 8 or 9, of realizing that the adults are holding the entire future to ransom, and that Nobody Is Doing Anything About It. The men in power saw that system come into being, lived through it and under it, and remember it etched into their bones. They fathered children expecting them to die with the world in the final nuclear exchange, and they soldiered on anyway, towards a brighter future, red button in hand. You must respect the generation which maintained global stability through the latter part of the 20th century, monsters though they may appear to be in the peace which they have created.

Now they are old, and suffer the faults of old men. But I do not have big enough shoulders to replace them, and I do not blame them for hanging on to power, seeking for safe hands to cast off their burdens to. These Cold Warriors maintain the defense industry, which maintains the media (got a better link?) to a frightening degree, and thereby shapes much of what our culture regards as real. The people control the press by what they will buy and what they will watch, but none-the-less the editorial pencil is still in the hands of the military-industrial complex. They do not shape our taste, but they can still spike a story.

The reinvention must be a demilitarization, an end to the age of war, not simply gilding the lily of capitalism with a new tier of social values. A less evil capitalism will still be anchored in space and time by nuclear weapons policy, and shaped by the hands of those who must maintain a society in a certain shape to maintain nuclear weapons capability. The fatal mistake is to assign malign motives to the nuclear bureaucrats: they do what they do because they sincerely believe it to be the best thing they can do under the circumstances.

So I am content to work incrementally, trying to round off the worst parts of the hard end of human life over, perhaps, a 20 or 40 year project. I don’t know what to do next, and I don’t know how to unpick the Gordian knot of the world. And this is not to say that there is no room for young turks, but a little humility goes a long way. Haque does not cite sources for most of his thinking, and has little connection to what is old, solid and true. Blathery demagogues do sometimes get things done, but given the complexity of our situation, there is no time or space for easy answers. And Haque’s answers are easy answers: we can do more of the same but better, we don’t have to cut our environmental consumption by 75% to 90% within twenty or forty years, we don’t have to make space at the table for the poor or face their armed wrath. It’s not that radical to suggest making money while not being an asshole, Umair!

The truth is that it’s all coming down. A hard truth, but the real truth: between shifting global balances of economic power, the massive need to cut our over-consumption by at least 75%, and the enormous amounts of money we all owe the fundamental truth is it cannot go on like this. Haque’s failure of imagination, to conceive of a world which is on the other side of these massive shifts in economic, political and military power, and call it “the future” is dangerous enough on its own, but sold as The Great New Future, it joins Thomas Barnett‘s work as a dangerously misleading brand: to sell “more of the same” as radical innovation crowds out the space for radical innovation. Chiapas is radical innovation, not the next generation of leaders at Harvard Business School.

Lest you think this is simply a brutal takedown of Umair Haque, it is not. It is a call for renewed political awareness, not in the simple party-politics sense, not the dumb left-versus-right debates which have left us unable to govern ourselves without paralyzing clouds of rhetoric obscuring all sense, but a real sense of the hard problems of the world as the ones to which we should be addressing our power to create a better future for humanity. Let me frame five of those hard problems for you.

1. Environment – US is at 8+ times footprint, Europe at 4+ times. We have no sane development path for 5 billion poor people trying to get a foot on the ladder.
2. Poverty – one billion are regularly hungry, 9 million children a year die of preventable disease.
3. Freedom – can free societies make tough decisions, or will authoritarian states like China endure hardship more effectively? What about creeping fascism and legalized torture in our democracies?
4. Democracy – has failed, to a substantial degree, when combined with Imperial Power. Can the world be governed by democracies?
5. Technological Risk – we have essentially no mechanism to regulate global risks from nuclear, biotechnology and nanotechnology. All three are spreading like a plague. Now what?

Working on these problems is radicalism. Working on how to keep Americans rich is not. We need to get real global perspective, and I’m singling out Umair Haque for a beat down because he’s telling people what they want to hear and dressing it up as radical truth.

outlaw conservatism in black run america

Video - Leadbelly Midnight Special

Occidental Dissent | National Review - The key to understanding Anders Breivik is that he measured himself as a man against the Knights Templar and the Teutonic Knights.

What would a Templar Knight do in this situation? I’m quite sure that Breivik wrestled with the question and followed it to the logical conclusion.

Do you know who Breivik didn’t measure himself against? The gelded little eunuchs in BRA’s media like Roger Cohen, these disgusting little cultural termites, who really are eunuchs and traitors and worms who are only fit to be thrown off the digital equivalent of the Tarpeian Rock.

Killing them is a complete waste of time. No one believes their bullshit anymore. Ridiculing them, labeling them for what they really are, and mocking them relentlessly will suffice as a solution to destroy their legitimacy – if conservatives would only do that, then men like Anders Breivik wouldn’t be forced to resort to more desperate measures. Let’s take a page out of Breivik’s book and measure ourselves against the great men of the past. Why not start with the greatest man in Western history, Caesar Augustus:

Video - Film glorifying the first Roman emperor Augustus Caesar

The Breivik Action: The First Archeofuturist Victory

Video - Odetta Midnight Special

Majorityrights | In a war there are many moments for compassion and tender action. There are many moments for ruthless action, what is often called ruthless, but may in many circumstances only be clarity, seeing clearly what there is to be done and doing it, directly, quickly, awake, looking at it. – Kurtz

As of this date, July 27, 2011, the military action carried out by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway has altered and shifted drastically the socio-political and cultural struggle of Occidental White Europids (WE™) to retake their ancestral territories, heritage and future history from Globalist-sponsored incursion, colonization and possible genocide. There will be serious setbacks. There will be serious blowback. There will also be considerable and, what was unimaginable opportunity prior to July 22, 2011, to exploit, at a sophisticated and dangerous level, for those White Ethno Nationalists with the political imagination, courage and resolve to do so.
As of this date, the initial burst of media coverage and all related conspiracy theories, second-guessing, conjecture, projection, etc. circulating in cyberspace are superfluous and, all things considered, useless. WE™ are left with an event that is now part of the political and historical fabric and discourse. The event exists only because of the action which birthed the event. Nationalists are left with fielding and dealing with the action itself, a host of both negative and positive consequences, and a flock of political Black Swans that are busy hatching as this is being read.

As was brought into public discourse by Rahm Emanuel when he was the White House Chief of Staff, the political maxim of “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” cuts both ways. For the cut to benefit the struggle of WE™ activists, this will require a certain degree of political sophistication and a clear perception of what can be done…and what cannot be done, and should not be done. The political leadership of global nationalist organizations and parties will be challenged to blunt an onslaught of institutional, media and political demonization, while at the same time probing for and implementing the opportunities that simply did not exist prior to July 22, 2011.

Much of the global nationalist political leadership, especially in NAmerika, will be severely challenged to make the shift to this next plateau. Some will not be challenged. This essay is addressed to the latter, those prepared to take the struggle of White liberation to the next level as forced by the Breivik action while simultaneously putting the goose-stepping and reactionary imposters out to pasture once and for all.

One of the first positive consequences (as opposed to the many negative consequences) that Breivik’s action will generate is that it will flush out the neo-con and Bible-thumping political illiterates and light-weights in the NAmerikan Nationalist community. This is already happening; it is to be welcomed. As pointed out by my Russian colleague, Alexander Mezentsev, “The Oslo ‘massacre’ is a harsh blow against all these malicious Trojan Horses, all these Geert Wilders.” Via their own statements to distance themselves from Breivik, this self-induced purge is already underway.

Much as with the stunted NAmerikan interpretation of European National Socialism, the NAmerikan interpretation of European New Right is a philosophical abortion. The Breivik action opens the door for all Occidental Whites to fully explore and begin to implement the political map as has been laid out by Guillaume Faye with his identification of Archeofuturism.

Anders Breivik as a Nordicist

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Occidental Observer | It’s been noted, particularly on the racialist, paleoconservative right, that Anders Breivik’s ideas closely resemble the ideas usually associated with the neoconservatives: Strong support for Israel and opposition to Islam. For example, in his book, Breivik cites Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, and he includes several excellent articles from the Gates of Vienna site. My article, based on his web comments, may have contributed to this perception.

However, unlike the great majority of neoconservatives who are focused mainly on supporting Israel and for whom any other conservative attitude is a position of convenience, Breivik comes across as someone who is mainly motivated to preserve Europeans and their culture. (For example, neocons are typically very soft on immigration (see here, p. 26 and passim, including Muslim immigration; Breivik includes an article by “Fjordman” that questions neocon Daniel Pipes‘ idea of promoting moderate Islam.)

And, despite condemning cultural Marxism as the main villain, in the end Breivik realizes that it’s a biological battle. In his book, Breivik comments several times on the eventual extinction of the Nordics if something isn’t done. Breivik’s view is that a poisonous, maladaptive culture may result in evolutionary death just as surely as a genocidal military invasion. His ideas imply what I take to be correct, that evolutionary conflict is now mainly taking place in the arena of culture—the view of The Culture of Critique. Because cultural Marxism has resulted in natural selection against the Nordics, Breivik views it as a racist ideology of hatred toward Nordics: “Multiculturalism IS as evil and racist as Nazism and as brutal as Stalinism.” This strongly suggests that his web comments where he condemns ethnocentrism are strategic and don’t go to the heart of his thinking.

Breivik: sending a message to the elites

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Occidental Observer | Is this the very first time that a gathering of leftists in a Western Nation, post 1960, has been made to pay the ultimate price for their anti democratic multicultural impositions?

If so, then I suspect that the pictures of dead young adults will have a rather powerful deterrent effect on parents who might otherwise encourage their kids to be leftists.

It is hard to imagine a more powerful and socially compelling deterrent than to inject the sort of horrific risk that these pictures implant into the minds of multiculturally inclined parents .

Viewed without emotion, this incident implies a multi-layered level of calculation that I find quite remarkable - an example not to be emulated to be sure – but remarkable nonetheless.

Thus far, Islamic terrorism has been confined to subway commuters in Spain, Street car commuters in Britain, and primarily, office workers in Manhattan – all nobodies that the elites could, quite frankly, care less about losing.

imposing costs on the multicultural elites...,

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Occidental Observer | The following is from an article in Al-Jazeera by Robert L. Lambert, the co-director of the European Muslim Research Centre (EMRC) at the University of Exeter (“Nationalists pose a bigger threat than Al-Qaeda“). Judging by his editorials in The Guardian, Lambert is pro-Muslim.

The fact is that Breivik very carefully chose his target. The victory of the left has meant that there is nothing but personal upside for Whites who administer the slow death of their own people. These are the Whites who are the public face of the entire mainstream political spectrum, from far left to neoconservative right. They have wonderful careers as university presidents, politicians, government bureaucrats, heads of major corporations, talking heads in the media.

Anders Behring Breivik: A Modern Hero?

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BadEagle | I feel a strange and profound admiration for Anders Behring Breivik. His actions speak louder than any words. Does he not appear to be a conscious and passionate patriot, not only for Norway, but for Europe? White Europe, consider your son.

There was a day when such men were called knights. National heroes. They drove the Muslims and their infernal religion out of Europe. Because of men like Vlad Ţepeş (Dracula), Europe remained Christian, and white.

Is that day no longer? Is it perished forever? Is there no resistance, in the name of God, or any other name, to the satanic course of Islam?

from neurons to nirvana

techno-shamanism and the democracy of bliss...,

Video - Inner City Big Fun

sarmoung | The neuroscientific breakthroughs of the last decade have established beyond doubt that given the proper type of stimulation, the ordinary human brain has extraordinary or exceptional powers, that what we call “normal” consciousness is in fact a sort of sleep from which we “awaken” when we enter peak or heightened states. And, as the neuroscientific research has made clear, these nonordinary or “metanormal” powers are not mysterious, but the result of clear and quantifiable changes in the patterns of neurological activity of the brain.

We’ve all had the experience of shifting into a heightened or metanormal state – call it lucidity, insight, mastery, wisdom, enlightenment, grace, bliss, satori, creativity, learning, waking up -a state in which we know beyond doubt that our ordinary state is a deep sleep compared to this rich awakening. And we know too, this is how we should be all the time. After all, sleep is a fine and restful state, but who among us would choose to spend our entire lives in even the most comfortable bed? Most of us would like to be in this high gear, high-efficiency state as often as possible.

In fact, it has become clear that humans are genetically programmed to seek out these altered, awakened states. I believe, and recent evidence supports my belief, that a key to human evolution, to our species’ rapid growth in brain size, and to our unique creative capacities, has been our instinctive drive to experience these metanormal or exceptional realms of consciousness and performance. From kids who spin themselves into dizzy altered states and euphorically roll down hills, to performers, surgeons, rock climbers, chess players or creative artists who find that the most vital and rewarding parts of their lives occur when they’re in a state of “flow,” humans naturally crave the experience of being awake.

Psychiatrist Stanislav Grof, M.D., who has spent his career studying the effects of nonordinary states of consciousness, observes that “the transcendental impulse is the most vital and powerful force in human beings.” This human impulse to connect with the spiritual domain, Grof has found, is so powerful that “It resembles, in its nature, sexuality, but is much more fundamental and compelling.”

Michael Murphy, founder of Esalen Institute, and author of The Future of the Body, a massive compilation of examples of exceptional human performance, has classified exceptional or peak performance into a dozen different realms, among which are:

* Extraordinary perceptions of things outside ourselves, such as transcendent beauty in ordinary things;
* Exceptional somatic or body awareness, such as voluntary control of blood pressure or heart rate;
* Nonordinary communication abilities, such as the communication of thoughts and mental states;
* Phenomenal vitality, as when we perform “superhuman” feats;
* Extraordinary movement abilities, such as uncanny athletic agility;
* Inexplicable abilities to influence events at a distance, such as spiritual healing;
* Exceptional abilities to alter pain and pleasure, such as delight that persists despite sickness or adversity;
* Extraordinary cognitions, such as creative insights, mystical experiences, and the works of genius; and
* Love that transcends personal wants and needs and manifests a fundamental unity with others.

All of us exhibit each of these attributes in an ordinary way. But we can also manifest these attributes in an extraordinary or metanormal way. In the right place, at the right time (when your child is trapped under a car, when you’re under extreme pressure, when you suddenly fall in love, when you take a certain psychedelic substance) and soon.

We all perceive external events, for example, to take the first attribute on Murphy’s list we perceive the doorbell ringing, we perceive the voice of a friend talking to us. But we’ve all had the experience of perceiving external events in an entirely different way – with a sudden cleansing of “the doors of perception,” a seeing of “ordinary” reality with extraordinary new sense of clarity, significance and illumination.

We all have movement abilities, but many of us have experienced times – often in sports – when we are suddenly playing “in the zone,” when the baseball speeding at you seems so big and slow you can count the stitches and see which way they’re spinning, when you effortlessly drive the golf ball 50 yards farther than you ever have before, when you suddenly execute with ease a perfect and seemingly impossible backhand.

In virtually every aspect of our lives, humans are capable of performing exceptionally in a peak state.

There is now strong evidence that these experiences are essential. Without our moments of being awake, in the zone, we become sick. As Stanislav Grof observes, “human beings have a profound need for transpersonal experiences and for states in which they transcend their individual identities to feel their place in a larger whole that is timeless. This spiritual craving seems to be more basic and compelling than the sexual drive, and if it is not satisfied it can result in serious psycho logical disturbances.”

debt tantrum on a sinking ship...,

postcarbon | President Obama and House Speaker Boehner are both right, but they’re both tragically wrong. And unless they can somehow wake up and see why they’re wrong, we all lose—big time.

Let me explain. But to do so will require setting three levels of context.

The immediate context is of course the fact that Republicans have created a political crisis by refusing to raise the nation’s debt ceiling unless they achieve their priorities of dramatically reducing government spending—primarily on social programs.

A larger context is the fact that the U.S. is still reeling from an epic credit crunch. During the past decade, home prices were bid up to unrealistic levels and the financial industry magically and dramatically expanded the resulting bubble with the helium of securitization and derivatives. When the bubble popped, government bailouts and stimulus packages were deployed to prevent bank failures and help stanch the exploding levels of unemployment.

The even bigger, and most important, context is that we are entering a new historic era. Oil prices are high due to the ongoing depletion of giant, easy-to-produce oilfields discovered back in the 1950s and ’60s, and the substitution of expensive oil from deepwater drilling and tar sands. Other non-renewable resources are also becoming scarcer. On top of that, the climate is changing and weird weather is helping drive up food prices. Oh, and let’s not forget, the oceans are dying. Altogether, it seems reasonable to conclude that economic growth—fueled during past decades by cheap energy and raw materials, but also made possible by a stable climate—is coming to an end.

So here we are, facing an enormous, unavoidable long-term problem (the need to transition the economy to a sustainable post-growth mode while minimizing the human suffering that is likely to ensue in the interim); a medium-term need to deal with a recession that could at any moment relapse to 1930s levels; plus an optional short-term crisis (the fight over raising the nation’s debt limit).

Okay, that’s enough context. Let’s view the arguments of both sides from this expanded perspective.

the history of the debt limit

no one advocates for the commons

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oftwominds | Does slavishly pursuing narrow self-interest benefit the nation? Clearly, the answer is no; a nation of self-interested pygmies leaves no one to advocate for the national interest.

The great cold lie at the heart of present-day America is that the nation will magically benefit if we each single-mindedly pursue our self-interest to the exclusion of all else. The idea has a sleek quasi-free-market sheen, as it borrows the market's "invisible hand" and applies it to social, fiscal and environmental policies.

That is a magical-thinking fantasy. If I pursued only my own self-interest, I would dump the toxic effluent from my factory right into the river ( a la China's very laissez faire economy) while I lived far away in an exclusive community far from the stench and poisons. Why pay for costly remediation when the "free" river beckons? After all, it all works out wonderfully if we each pursue our own self-interest with methodical, nay maniacal, single-mindedness. (Recall that rivers in America caught fire in the 1960s, before environmental regulations limited corporate self-interest.)

"The good of the nation" is now a code-phrase for "good for me, and to heck with the country at large." Every self-serving fiefdom, every self-serving cartel and every self-serving constituency (a.k.a. special interest) claims that its pathetically obvious self-serving lobbying "serves the national interest." It's all lies, blatant emotional manipulation of the vilest, crassest sort. Yet we as a nation have sunk so low that the entire notion of a national interest which doesn't benefit a powerful lobby or constituency has been lost.

We are now a nation of self-interested pygmies, blind to any national interest that isn't devoted to enriching us personally. If we ask cui bono-- to whose benefit? (the first question in the Survival+ critique), then the answer is always self-evident: some lobby, cartel, corporation, special interest or class of citizens who hope to stripmine the assets of the less-protected citizenry to line their own pockets with swag.

We are a nation slavishly devoted to feeding our herd of fattened sacred cows by any means necessary. The National Security State, a profit machine of Federal contractors stretching all the way back to LBJ contributors Brown & Root, who built bases in Vietnam for hefty profits? Untouchable: "we're fighting the global war on Terror." I guess that's why it's always an average citizen onboard who actually stops the bad guy.

The military industrial complex, which takes ten years to start building anything, by which time it's so costly we can't afford it? Untouchable: "we're keeping our military strong." More like weakening it to the breaking point by stripmining all the resources in bloated weapons programs.

Social Security, a.k.a. generational wealth transfer? Untouchable: "I paid in, there's this lockbox with my money in it...." It was always "pay as you go," not a "lockbox." Demographically, it's broken. It worked when there were 10 workers for every retiree, and even with 5 workers for every retiree; now with millions drawing disability benefits from the SSA (and hiring specialists to help them qualify for it--good ole self-interest at its best) and only 2.5 workers for every retiree--soon to be 2-to-1--the system is unsustainable.

Medicare, the Savior State arm of the sickcare cartel complex? Untouchable: "we have the best healthcare in the world." Yeah, if you're one of the select few who have gold-plated coverage. How is it in the national interest that we devote 17% of our vast GDP to sickcare and yet 40 million people aren't even covered, millions more have simulacra coverage (nothing is covered except 80% of catastrophic care, and the remaining 20% will bankrupt all but the wealthy), and other developed nations provide better care for all their citizens for half the cost per capita?

And of course there's the "too big to fail" banks and Wall Street: Untouchable: "if you mess with us we'll bring the country to its knees!" What a nice bunch of pygmies. They have nothing but self-interest, so they must be serving the national interest.

The core problem with President Obama and the political class in Washington is that they think governance boils down to placating the most powerful self-interested pygmies. To the Demopublicans, politics is not about the national interest-- whatever that is, since the concept has lost all meaning--it's about carving up the swag so all the powerful self-interests don't upset the Status Quo apple cart.

the counter-jihad

Foreign Policy | We hope, and perhaps need, a man who would gun down teenagers in cold blood to be mad. How could a man who is not insane carry out such heinous acts? What possible justification could make anyone act so barbarously? And yet all around the world when others have carried out atrocities of similar horror -- from the genocidaires of Rwanda to the al Qaeda butchers of Baghdad -- those of us lucky enough to live in the safe and comfortable global north have asked -- what made them do it? Their political ideology? Their interpretation of their religion? Calling them mad is not enough.To do so requires an appreciation of a transatlantic movement that often calls itself "the counter-jihad." As his writings indicate, Breivik is clearly a product of this predominantly web-based community of anti-Muslim, anti-government, and anti-immigration bloggers, writers, and activists -- no matter how much the movement's leading lights may deny this and denounce his actions.

So when Anders Behring Breivik says that his killing spree on Friday, July 22, was "gruesome but necessary" -- as he reportedly told his lawyer -- we must not just dismiss him as mad, but ask why he thinks so. Having left a 1,500-page manifesto and a YouTube video -- all conveniently in serviceable English for the international audience -- he clearly wants to be understood.

In contrast, the counter-jihad movement defines itself in part in opposition to neo-Nazis, indeed taking great pains to attempt to show that the Nazis were "socialists." This is taken to rather silly lengths where modern European social democrats (and even U.S. President Barack Obama and American Democrats) are called "socialists" alongside other "socialists" like Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Marx, and -- of course -- Hitler. Breivik's manifesto reproduces in full an essay by a well-known Norwegian counter-jihad writer called only "Fjordman" that argues that socialists and Nazis are one. This may seem ridiculous to anyone with a grasp of modern world history, but clearly was very important in leading Breivik to target a youth camp of the Norwegian Labour Party.

The opposition to neo-Nazism is most visible in the counter-jihad's overt philo-Semitism. This takes the form of a strong defense of Israel and the policies of Israeli right-wing parties, including the denial of there being "occupied territories" -- only Judea and Samaria, the biblical names for the West Bank. This has led to the inclusion in the counter-jihad movement of various hawkish American voices, both Jewish -- for example, Daniel Pipes -- and some Christian evangelicals. And whereas anti-Semitism is banished, it has been replaced with a rabid fear of Islam and of Muslims. Nevertheless, by focusing on the religion and culture of European Muslims being a threat, along with its proud philo-Semitism, the movement deems itself to be non-racist.

multiculturalism and abortion to blame for massacre

Salon | Opposition to Islam was the killer's stated motivation. He targeted other white Scandinavians because he considered them race traitors. He wrote all of this down, too, so we don't even have to make guesses about it! He blamed liberals for enabling jihad by supporting "multiculturalism." (Funnily enough, that is also exactly what Mark Steyn thinks.)

If Steyn's intentionally obtuse response is the dumbest I've read, the Jerusalem Post's editorial is the most shocking. Because it basically says Breivik is right

Perhaps Brievik’s inexcusable act of vicious terror should serve not only as a warning that there may be more elements on the extreme Right willing to use violence to further their goals, but also as an opportunity to seriously reevaluate policies for immigrant integration in Norway and elsewhere. While there is absolutely no justification for the sort of heinous act perpetrated this weekend in Norway, discontent with multiculturalism’s failure must not be delegitimatized or mistakenly portrayed as an opinion held by only the most extremist elements of the Right.

They want this act of politically motivated violence to ... work.

If there's any humor in this miserable news, it is to be found at Pamela Geller's place, where she compares herself to the Beatles and Jodie Foster. The comparison isn't quite apt, though, as Charles Manson and John Hinkley were notorious for misinterpreting harmless pop cultural artifacts. The Beatles song was about a fair ride, it was not actually titled "There Is a Race War Coming." Breivik seems to have interpreted Ms. Geller's writing correctly -- he just decided to address the "problem" through horrible, violent means.

But right-wingers generally agree that no one should blame right-wing beliefs for Breivik's horrible crime. Instead, as one RedState contributor argues, we should blame the pro-choice movement. And euthanasia.And `... Al Gore. Is it any wonder that people kill people in a world where Al Gore something something overpopulation? No, no it isn't. Ye gods.

To sum up: This tragedy can obviously be blamed solely on one truly evil, insane person, and nothing else. Besides multiculturalism. And abortion. It is disgusting to pin responsibility for this massacre on anything besides one crazy person and multiculturalism and abortion. And Al Gore.

I can understand how the self-preservation instinct would make sober reflection among the professional hate-mongering Islamophobia crowd unlikely, but I didn't really expect everyone to be blaming the liberals for getting shot by a fucking Norwegian Freeper.

hmm.., lemme see..., uh, phukkem!!!

NYTimes | The Murdoch drama is now entering its fifth act, the part when the bodies start to pile up. At the hearing before a parliamentary committee, Mr. Murdoch interrupted his son near the beginning of the proceedings to say: “This is the most humble day of my life.”

His native Australian optimism may be misleading him, however. The mood in Britain seems to desire nothing less than his complete destruction. Everything he cherishes must be sacrificed. The paper. The BSkyB deal. Rebekah Brooks. Possibly his son’s takeover of the company.

We go to tragedy to watch a man be destroyed. Macbeth must be destroyed for his lust for power, Othello for his jealousy, Antony for his passion, Lear for the incompleteness of his renunciation.

They are tragic precisely because their flaws are all too human. We do not yet know how far Mr. Murdoch is implicated in the crimes of his company, so we do not know which of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes he resembles most. If he didn’t know the extent of the phone hacking, then he’s most like the bungling Richard II, who fails to spot the decay within his kingdom. If he did know, then he’s more like the conniving Richard III, whose love of the machinations of power eventually grinds him into the machinery he’s created.

Regardless, Mr. Murdoch’s distinguishing flaw is common ambition — an outsider’s desire to force his way into the establishment. He has been singled out because his flaw is so ordinary, so widespread. Putting aside for a moment the complicity of every single reader of The News of the World, nearly all journalists and politicians played the same game, only Mr. Murdoch played it better.

One of the most profound feelings that follows watching a Shakespearean tragedy, once we have witnessed the destruction we crave, is how empty the world seems. The tension of tragedy lays bare a part of our hypocrisy that we should at least recognize in the case of Rupert Murdoch: Maybe he is a monster. Maybe he needs to be punished. But he is being destroyed because we cannot stand seeing ourselves, whether on stage or before Parliament.

murdoch backed hacking behind climategate

WhatsNew | Called "Screws of the World" for its focus on celebrity sex scandals, the British tabloid was the top selling English-language newspaper in the world when owner Rupert Murdoch permanently closed the paper two weeks ago, citing its role in the British phone-hacking scandals. Why do I not believe the worlds best selling newspaper was closed because it used improper methods to get a story? It was a tabloid for God's sake! Something much bigger had to be going on here. On 20 Nov 09, just two weeks before the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change, a server was breached at the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in the UK. Hackers posted thousands of private e-mails and computer files on the web for the world to see. Climate skeptics claimed the hacked emails showed climate scientists manipulating data. They showed nothing of the sort. Nevertheless, the Copenhagen Summit was held in the shadow of an ongoing investigation into groundless charges. The media focused on the victim: the Climate Unit at the U. of East Anglia. "Who did the hacking," WN asked?. The only crime was breaking into private files, but the media made scant effort to find out who did it. For the next eight months neither the media nor Scotland Yard made any attempt to identify the hackers. WN never let up asking. Now we find it was Rupert Murdoch who was behind the climate gate hacking, having added Scotland Yard to his empire.