Top 10 conspiracies at the NYSun
Top 10 Arab and Iranian Conspiracies, but, if you want the condensed version, everything "is all the fault of the Americans and the Joos".

Just yesterday Sigmund, Carl and Alfred discussed Democracy, Freedom, Events, and Experiences:

Contrast these ideas with totalitarian regimes in the Middle East and elsewhere. They are bogged down by the past, reminding us and themselves of former glories while they waste away their present and future, going nowhere. A recent UN report on the state of education in the world placed the Arab countries at the bottom of the list, only above sub Saharan Africa in terms of quality of education. Given that there aren't that many schools in sub Saharan Africa to begin with, the distinction of not being at the bottom of the list is moot. Did that result in any outrage in Arab society? Hardly. It was ignored.

In totalitarian regimes, life is an orchestrated event, scripted by a government- lived until the death of the leader and new script is handed down.


One pundit wrote something to the effect that Arabs feel humiliated. Not because they can't read, have real no real economies and have to send their kids to the west to get educated-- that was no cause for shame, mind you-- but because they see themselves as victims of a conspiracy by the west to hold them back.

The response? A few months ago, Syria came out with it's new Five Year Plan. Remember those?

Plus ca change, plus ca reste la meme. These regimes are incapable of dealing with reality.

These regimes never accept blame or accountability. Abu Ghraib was met with outrage at the same time far greater horrors occur everyday at home. It is lost on much of the Arab world that we deal with our problems-- and they don't.

Why is it so? Well, these regimes and societies, in their hubris, see the world in an 'us vs them' framework, as was mentioned earlier. They never make mistakes and thus are never responsible or accountable. We, who live in democracies and commit to and demand, an always better society, are looked down upon-- after all, it is only we who make and correct our mistakes.

Dr. Sanity looks at Delaying Tactics

When belief in any idea become a matter of faith--and one's own identity is defined by that faith--then the psyche will do anything necessary to distort or deny any truth that contradicts that belief.

On a related subject, don't miss Sigmund, Carl and Alfred's What it all means, Parenting and what it all means:

Survival in such a culture necessitates some numbing. But this psychological component might be insignificant relative to the neurobiological effects of being beaten and tortured in childhood. It was Harvard researchers who first revealed that stress hormones released when children experience physical and sexual abuse actually impede development of that part of the brain responsible for empathy and conscience.

Brain scans of those who suffered through events common in the childhood of Palestinian children reveal an underdeveloped hippocampus and vermis. Among the behaviors associated with this sort of brain damage: impulsivity, sadism, and suicide. It is almost too frightening to consider that Israel today faces a population many of whom are hardwired for the sort of violence we have been witnessing.

More terrifying is the long-term prognosis for Palestinian society. Martin Teicher, a lead researcher in the Harvard study, reports that sadistic parents neurobiologically infect their children with the same trait: Society reaps what it sows in the way it nurtures its children.

Read it all.