Chlorine Bombings, Ghouta, Atrocity Propaganda and False Narratives (by CP)

Chlorine and Iraq

Chlorine was first used as a chemical weapon by Germany on April 22, 1915 in the Second Battle of Ypres. It was pioneered by a German scientist later to be a Nobel laureate, Fritz Haber of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, in collaboration with the German chemical conglomerate IG Farben, who developed methods for discharging chlorine gas against an entrenched enemy.

Chlorine was quickly utilized by both sides as a chemical weapon, but was soon replaced by more deadly substances. It hasn't been used as a chemical weapon ever since because of its comparable ineffectiveness. Until recently, that is.

Recently there have been allegations that ISIS had used Chemical Weapons, that is, Chlorine, near Balad, north of Iraq. The article states that apparently ...

"... fighters for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, set off an explosive that unleashed a mass of yellow smoke that hung close to the ground, The Washington Post reported. The Post said that hospital officials who treated the men, as well as an unnamed Iraqi Defense Ministry official, confirmed the men’s suspicion that chlorine gas had been used against them. Eleven officers were made ill, though all survived."

The author cautiously continues:

Unconfirmed reports of improvised bombs made with chlorine gas and used by militants have arisen from time to time since the Islamic State began seizing territory in Iraq at the beginning of the year.

Mastery of the mighty Google would have allowed him to know that Islamists in Anbar Province actually have a record  of having used chlorine in bombings throughout the first half of 2007.

A tragic consequence of these bombings in Iraq at the time was that, because of the use of chlorine spiked bombs, Jordan halted export of chlorine to Iraq in 2007. Chlorine is in Iraq essential for water purification. Probably because of that Iraq experienced a cholera outbreak in 2007.

"A lack of clean drinking water in Iraq in 2007 led to an outbreak of cholera. A total of 181 people were infected, with 10 deaths reported.

According to Dr. Ryadh Abdul Ameer, the director of the Basra health ministry, basic water sterilization became impossible in some places due to restrictions on the availability of chlorine for water sterilization."

Ghouta - Chemical weapons in Syria

On Ghouta, UN inspectors reported there was "overwhelming and indisputable" evidence that surface-to-surface rockets carried toxic Sarin gas in the August bombardment of the Damascus suburb of Ghouta which led to the deaths of 1,400 people. They did not say who was responsible for the attack. In fact, their mandate explicitly forbade them to address that point.

The initial images, spread over youtube and social media, offered a terrible sight:

The argument as made by US and western governments was that because Sarin was used it must have been Assad, because only he has the capability. In the words of Samanta Power "The regime possesses Sarin, and we have no evidence that the opposition possesses Sarin". Ergo: Assad did it. Case closed?

Nope. As Seymour Hersh reported in his article The rat line and the red line (which is quite worth to be (re-)read in full):

... British intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal.
...
"We knew there were some in the Turkish government ... who believed they could get Assad’s nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria – and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat."
...

The joint chiefs also knew that the Obama administration’s public claims that only the Syrian army had access to sarin were wrong. The American and British intelligence communities had been aware since the spring of 2013 that some rebel units in Syria were developing chemical weapons. On 20 June analysts for the US Defense Intelligence Agency issued a highly classified five-page ‘talking points’ briefing for the DIA’s deputy director, David Shedd, which stated that al-Nusra maintained a sarin production cell: its programme, the paper said, was ‘the most advanced sarin plot since al-Qaida’s pre-9/11 effort’. (According to a Defense Department consultant, US intelligence has long known that al-Qaida experimented with chemical weapons, and has a video of one of its gas experiments with dogs.) The DIA paper went on: ‘Previous IC [intelligence community] focus had been almost entirely on Syrian CW [chemical weapons] stockpiles; now we see ANF attempting to make its own CW … Al-Nusrah Front’s relative freedom of operation within Syria leads us to assess the group’s CW aspirations will be difficult to disrupt in the future.’ The paper drew on classified intelligence from numerous agencies: ‘Turkey and Saudi-based chemical facilitators,’ it said, ‘were attempting to obtain sarin precursors in bulk, tens of kilograms, likely for the anticipated large scale production effort in Syria.’...

Last May, more than ten members of the al-Nusra Front were arrested in southern Turkey with what local police told the press were two kilograms of sarin. In a 130-page indictment the group was accused of attempting to purchase fuses, piping for the construction of mortars, and chemical precursors for sarin.

That the 'down with Assad at any cost' crowd was so happy to immediately pin the Ghouta chemical incident on Assad so early and so eagerly, only underlines their complete indifference to actual facts and their singular emphasis of 'interpreting events to suit their narrative'.

The immediate finger pointing at Russia over MH17 indicates a similar pattern of behaviour. There is a name for what Kerry & Cie do here:

Atrocity Propaganda

Incidents like the one in Ghouta or the shootdown of MH17, as atrocity propaganda are contemporary equivalents of the vile Boches impaling innocent if fictitious Belgian babies on their bayonets for fun, or while we're at it, Iraqis throwing babies out of incubators to leave them on the cold floor to die. The swine.

Turms out poor Nayirah was the daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, and had been coached by US PR firm Hill & Knowlton. The incident she described was wholly fictitious. The Wiki article on the episode quotes Frans H. van Eemeren stating that:

"visual messages which accompany verbal argumentation can be so drastic that rational argumentation becomes almost impossible"

That is essential. He sums up the very point of atrocity propaganda. Nowadays, flooding with tweets and facebook posts appears to be the tool of choice to generate the emotional response that atrocity propaganda aims on.

I doubt that Ghouta had been comitted by Assad forces and have come to the view that it has indeed probably been a 'false flag op' against the Syrian government. I think that the very point of Ghouta was indeed to make any rational argument over an intervention in Syria impossible. In light of such terror Obama had to intervene.

The practitioners of the craft in particular in the US, but also western governments, give a poop about truthfulness, because lying is to them a part of the trade of 'information operations' and 'perception management', or in plainspeak, propaganda. The remarkable Western lack of curiosity on Ghouta or MH17 speaks for itself.

There appears to be zero interest in investigating the guilty party, because propaganda  has already created a fictitious reality as to who is to blame. No point in undermining the result of all that hard obfuscating and lying. In this line of works, atrocity narratives are brands that have to be preserved by atrociously staying on message.

Atrocity Propaganda and the Maidan Sniping

And if one looks at recent history, pretty much every US/NGO sponsored 'revolution' had its brand - usually a motive or a colour - thus 'colour coded revolutions'. One other common item beside the brand was that they all had a galvanising event, usually a police overreaction of some sort, that propelled the protesters into taking more drastic action.

In Ukraine, this galvanising event probably was the Maidan Sniping, with some indications that it was the hard right Right Sector protesters themselves to committed the act, pinning it on the Berkut riot police (in marketing terms one would probably call that 'rainmaking'). As put quite explicitly in the leaked Ashton call:

"There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind snipers it was not Yanukovich but it was somebody from the new coalition"

In Reuter's cautious words: Flaws found in Ukraine's probe of Maidan massacre

"In April, prosecutors arrested three suspects, members of an elite unit within the “Berkut” riot police. Senior among them was Dmytro Sadovnyk, 38, a decorated commander, who was accused of ordering his men to fire on the crowds on the morning of Feb. 20. The three stand accused of massacring 39 unarmed protesters.
...

But in a country where justice often isn’t blind, there’s another possibility: Sadovnyk was being framed, and saw flight as his best option. In court last month, he called the case against him “a political lynching.” In the days before he vanished, his wife and his lawyer say, Sadovnyk and his family received death threats.

A Reuters examination of Ukraine's probes into the Maidan shootings - based on interviews with prosecutors, defence attorneys, protesters, police officers and legal experts – has uncovered serious flaws in the case against Sadovnyk and the other two Berkut officers.

Among the evidence presented against Sadovnyk was a photograph. Prosecutors say it shows him near Kiev’s Independence Square on Feb. 20, wearing a mask and holding a rifle with two hands, his fingers clearly visible.

The problem: Sadovnyk doesn’t have two hands. His right hand, his wife told Reuters, was blown off by a grenade in a training accident six years ago.

Oopsie. Certainly, such trifles won't stand in the way of swift and severe justice. Alas, the Egyptians have already outdone the Right Sector zealots in this regard: They have actually accused a blind man of being a sniper.

The use of the Maidan sniping also qualifies as atrocity propaganda. We have a brutal crime, pictures, hectic tweets and facebook posts and a clear, designated villain. What actually happened is a secondary matter. Move along!

False narratives breed dysfunctional policies

In all these cases - be it Ghouta, MH17 or the Maidan snipings - it is highly questionable whether the events were indeed as they were portrayed by those first on message in the State Department. In all likelihood that was not the case. But these misrepresentations are being used as a justification and - far worse - factual foundation for policy.

Such policies by merit of being built on fictitious narratives of events end up addressing virtual, constructed realities. With policies tailored to address fiction, failure in light actually quite stubbornly different realities, is never far away. In fact, the US has been experiencing a lot of that lately.

The problem is that when people start to believe their own fictitious narratives, they defeat themselves and their purposes. Probably 'idealists' of the sort found in the Obama administration are rather more prone to that sort of defect.

by confusedponderer

Comments

[blowback]

At least the Bush regime was open about this:
"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Translation: "We lie. While you attempt to correct our lie, we lie again and every one forgets the first lie".

With the vast majority of MSM being propaganda tools of the current Washington regime (in that I include both Democrats and Republicans), it works every time.

[Piotr, Poland]

Sorry Colonel for disapointing you about MH17:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/german-intelligence-blames-pro-russian-separatists-for-mh17-downing-a-997972.html

[rjj]

And will continue to do so as long as people willingly pay good money to feed at their smorgasbord of bullshit.

[confusedponderer]

Piotr, Poland,
I wrote that, not the Col.

The point I make is that it was not ***Russia*** that did this, as for instance the US cheerfully, if in deliberately ambiguous language, claimed at the time, flatly conflating separatists with the Russian government, and making the latter responsible for all actions of the former.

By that standard the US are responsible for all actions by the Ukrainian government, and given the Ukies conduct, I doubt DC wants that.

The liklihood is that the BND is right. It also means that the separatists shot the airliner down in error. Which means it was a bloody mistake.

If you are interested ... the most likely reason why separatists must have felt the need to operate air defence systems in the first place is because they were being bombed by the Kiev government.

http://theaviationist.com/2014/05/27/ukrainian-offensive-donetsk/

The implication, trivial as it is on the face of it, is that 'the Kiev government bombed their own people', which is one of the boilerplate justifications for regime change, usually triggering US spokespersons uttering the phrase 'that they lost their legitimacy to govern'. Oddly, not so in the case of Ukraine.

[makosog]

So this might be a case of a Big Lie that was committed:

A great example of the Big Lie, which the Nazi tried to master as a propaganda technique.

See below:

Tell an outrageous lie so that a majority of people will be shocked and wonder how the left could tell such outrageous lies and then repeat them over and over again until those same people will not be shocked anymore and thus perceive the lie to be the truth.

[Seamus Padraig]

Sorry for disappointing you on MH17, Piotr, but just like John Kerry, the BND furnished NO EVIDENCE to back up their claim. And even if it was a BUK system, that doesn't prove it was the rebels that did it--the Ukrainian Army has admitted having BUK systems.

[Aka]

Piotr,
well I hope they did a better job than the US intelligence before the 2003 iraq invasion :) .

And spiegel, surely that is not the news publication that got a reprimand from the Council for German Press for using the pictures of MH 17 victims to promote a political agenda.

spiegel cover in question: http://www.greanvillepost.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/derSpiegel-stopPutin.jpg

[FB Ali]

A revealing book by a former Frankfurter Allgemeine editor describes graphically how the Western media is corrupted into becoming propaganda vehicles for these intelligence operations. An interview with him is at:

http://tinyurl.com/nnsjvdh

[David Habakkuk]

Piotr, Poland:

You really must not jump to the conclusion that the Kiev authorities are lying without better evidence.

Following the 'Spiegel' story, the Kyiv Post reported that the Ukrainian Defence Ministry 'has denied media reports claiming, with reference to the German magazine Spiegel, that the Malaysian airliner flying over Donetsk region on July 17, 2014, could have been shot down with a Buk missile system which the militia had reportedly captured from a Ukrainian military unit.'

(See http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/ukraine-military-denies-claims-malaysian-boeing-was-shot-down-with-captured-ukrainian-missile-system-368712.html .)

Unfortunately, the body of the report is behind a subscription wall, and the only version I can find of the Defence Ministry statement is on that notorious Russian propaganda station RT.

(See http://rt.com/news/197592-german-report-mh17-ukraine/ .)

However, it appears that RT's suggestion that the Kiev authorities continue to deny, as they have all along, that any of their Buks were captured by insurgents is likely to be accurate, given that the Kyiv Post also features, and links to, an interesting report on the www.mashable.com site.

This site describes itself as 'the leading media company for the connected generation and the voice of digital culture.' Its Chief Strategy Officer is Adam Ostrow, and its Chief Operating Officer Michael Kriak.

While the official Kiev position certainly remains that all Ukrainian Buks were accounted for, mashable claim to have been told unofficially by 'two top officials in Ukraine's security structures' that the separatists had obtained four Ukrainian Buk systems.

However, according to mashable, 'both officials said the systems were rendered inoperable before they were captured and insisted that it was a Russian-supplied system that took the plane down.'

(For the Kyiv Post report, which links to the mashable account, see http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine-abroad/mashable-germany-says-pro-russian-rebels-in-ukraine-downed-mh17-with-captured-missiles-368680.html .)

[David Habakkuk]

CP,

A fine piece which I need to think about.

One thing that strikes me is that palpable disintegration in the West of concern for objective truth is in part a manifestation of the absence of any vivid sense that policies based on fictions can blow up in one's face.

It is the collapse of the ability realistically to define danger – to avoid either a hysterical hyping of dangers which may have some substance but are not apocalyptic, and a neglect of dangers which are real and serious but not susceptible of being presented in hysterical slogans – which I find both intensely alarming and profoundly puzzling.

One quibble, to which I will return, relates to your use of the term 'idealists', without inverted commas, in your conclusion. It is obviously too cynical simply to dismiss professions of 'idealism'. But not infrequently, they can serve to veil other less lovely motives.

I would not trust the benevolence of Ambassador Power one inch.

[mike]

CP -

I share your conviction that the American press has contributed to agitprop on both the MH17 and the Maidan sniping. Thus breeding fear and bad policy.

OTOH, Ghouta, not so much. Seymour Hersch certainly deserves the Pulitzer he won for reporting My Lai. But even that story was handed to him. The Army, the press, and some in Congress had been investigating it for a year when Hersch stumbled onto it. Warrant Officer Thompson and his crew chief and door-gunner, Specialists Andreotta and Colburn, were the ones who broke the story not Hersch. And since Hersch's reporting has constantly gone down hill. Even long prior to Ghouta Hersch has often been alleged to have used feeble research and suspicious and unreliable sources. Many assertions he has made have been proven false. What kind of investigative reporter relies on hearsay information?

I for one will stick with the opinions of Chuck Hagel and the American, Brit, German, & French intel services rather than the RT and Mr Hersch and Rush Limbaugh.

[bwilli123]

Kolomoysky: Sorry about the MH17 – but it is a trifle – ENG SUBS
http://youtu.be/NrfKZUttEwE

[ex-PFC Chuck]

David,
Speaking of policies blowing up in one's face, Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism has a post up today channeling Michael Hudson on the unintended consequences of the sanctions on Russia:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/11/michael-hudson-europe-to-pay-for-the-whole-mess-in-ukraine.html

[curtis]

All media are such, deal with it.

[curtis]

It is like the old joke about Chinese food. Wonderful to eat but not very filling so one wants more right away.

Slinging bullshit is part of being in power, ALL administrations do it, U.S. and otherwise. You can't remain in power ANYWHERE for any length of time w/o doing so. The sooner people admit this to themselves the better off we shall all be.

[curtis]

"...What kind of investigative reporter relies on hearsay information?..."

ALL of them at one time or another. Never forget that.

[David Habakkuk]

mike,

Certainly Hersh's analysis begs some questions.

However, you may note that Porton Down at no point issued any kind of denial of the claims he made.

As to the scientific arguments, you might care to look at the detailed investigation carried out on the 'Who Attacked Ghouta?' blog which was run by 'sasa wawa'.

I have not – yet – had time to study it with the care it deserves, but it presents a mass of detailed scientific evidence supporting Hersh's scepticism about the notion that the Assad regime was responsible for the Ghouta atrocity.

(See http://whoghouta.blogspot.co.uk/ .)

[jld]

Another "oopsie"...
https://twitter.com/snarwani/status/528139898281144320

[Babak Makkinejad]

In the English language, there are alternative sources of news and analysis that are available through the Internet.

Some of these sources are based in US - the US Think-Thanks publish the thinking of their staff all the time - and some are based in Japan, or Russia or China.

I fear that Europeans are far worse off than Americans or the Englishmen in having access to alternative news and analysis in French, German, Spanish, or Italian.

I am willing to venture that the typical European is probably far too ill-informed than a typical American.

[Babak Makkinejad]

An "Empire"; the project of the Universal Empire that the Great King started but ended in failure 200 years later keeps on getting resurrected.

The mantle of the Great King is assumed on and on and the project is revived, to disintegrate again and again and again.

This much is clear:

Men Never Learn Anything From History.

[Misanthrope]

David H,

"One thing that strikes me is that palpable disintegration in the West of concern for objective truth is in part a manifestation of the absence of any vivid sense that policies based on fictions can blow up in one's face."

That's because, while the policies frequently blow up in someone's face, it's never in the faces of those who advocated and pursued those policies. It's always in the faces of 'people who don't matter', whether that be citizens of whichever country is being torn apart or western citizens caught up in kidnappings or terrorist attacks in retribution.

In fact we can take this further and suggest that the reason we have so many thoroughly despicable individuals in positions of power is that there are never any bad consequences to those people for their behaviour. There is no 'accountability'. We are always told that, "they are held accountable at the ballot box", but on the one hand they frequently aren't and on the other hand the activities they partake in would be more suitably punished by a firing squad than being able to walk away into the sunset retaining all their ill gotten gains and future earnings from speeches/public appearances.

[Piotr, Poland]

@ Confuseponderer, Seamus Padraig & all

Once again - I'm very sorry to make you sad, but you idealise (very strong idealise!!) separatists. They are somehow guilty about MH17.
I don't have exact evidences, only presumptive ones, but strong. Strong enough to me

1 In July I followed Strelkov.info on Twitter, just for being well informed. And I've read it LIVE on my own eyes (remember I can speak and read Russian, probably better than English, as you see it here :-) ), before it disappeared but somebody copied and saved it, and this is what you can see there:

https://twitter.com/chastime/status/489797003246051328

My own translation of it:
"17th of Jul, 17.50 moscow time
Near Thorez area we've just downed An-26 airplane, remains wallow somewhere near the "Progress" mine.
We've forewarned - Don't fly on "our skies"!
And this is a video showing the "falling of the bird" as an evidence.
The bird has fallen somewhere behind mine's piles, far from any living area, so peacefull people didn't suffer at all.
And there is another information about second downed airplane, probably similar to SU jet type"

OK. I'm wise enough to understand, somebody other than Strelkov (for example UKR intelligence) could prepare this, but seing it LIVE a few minutes before it disappeared from official Strelkov info site gives rather small probability to it.

So time for the next presumptive evidence:

2.
Rusvesna.su site (rusvesna - abbreviation from Ruskaya Vyesna - The Russian Spring, and "su" domain is based on sentiment some Russians have to Soviet Union) -it's the site informing from Russian point of view on what happened in Novorossiya in Russian, English, German and French languages. They work to this moment, so you can read fresh news there too.

This is an interview with Strelkov in Russian language only, you can't find it in other languages, looks like this interview was for domestical purposes (for Russians) only.
Use Google or Bing Translator,please to read it in English for checking me if I'm saying the truth, hope automatic translator can do it good enough.
Interview was done "18.07.2014 - 13:38" (18th of Jul, a day after MH17 disaster, so it was still very fresh theme:

http://rusvesna.su/news/1405676334

My own translation of few quotes:

The Title :"Igor Strelkov: part of the people from Boeing [i.e. MH17 - Piotr]died a few hours BEFORE the disaster"

First Strelkov told interviewer he has information about SU-27 airplane downed passenger airplane.
And now the most interested:

"По данным людей, которые собирали трупы, значительная часть трупов — „несвежая“ — люди умерли до нескольких суток тому назад. "

According to the people, who collected dead bodies, most of the bodies were "stale" or "not fresh" - people died a few hours before

Во-вторых, в самолете было обнаружено большое количество медикаментов, сыворотки крови и прочего, что нехарактерно для обычного лайнера. Похоже, что имел место медицинский спец-груз.

Second - there were big number of medications and serums etc in airplane, not typical for passenger liner. Looks like airplane had special medicine cargo.

В-третьих, ни на чем не настаиваю (пока). Просто буквально сейчас беседовал с двумя людьми [...]Они подчеркнули, что множество трупов оказались „совсем бескровные“ — как будто кровь свернулась задолго до катастрофы. Также отмечали и сильнейший трупный запах

Third, and this is I'm not sure (to this moment). I've just conversed with 2 people[...] They maintained, many of the bodies were "bloodless", looks like blood flew away from the bodies long before the disaster. The bodies had strong smell of longterm decay also"

You've written about propaganda here, Confuse Ponderer. This is wonderfull piece of old Soviet-style propaganda addressed to Russians, isn't it?
Looks like it was preparation to selling to Russian people story: MH17 was special intelligence USA/UKR operation, isn't it?

Could Strelkov say this knowing speratists were innocent?
Sorry - hard to believe to me...

And now connect the dots: Twitter, Rusvesna interview and German Intelligence...do you see it?

[curtis]

Don't forget that

"...we deceive ourselves the better to deceive others..." - Robert Trivers

[Anonymous]

To the extent that Foreign policy eventually reflects the internal employment of "fictitious narratives of events" that "end up addressing virtual, constructed realities," there's a need to understand how heavily the american society is afflicted by this practice.

I that light I wish to address an internal instance from the past where it was applied the other, more subtle, insidious way in which a narrative can be adjusted, namely, by subtracting facts from the underlying reality.

In this illustrative case a forceful denunciation of citizen's apathy was built in order to take the focus away from certain "structural problems" of the society which the makers of the narrative were interested in hiding for political gain.

These days some expressions of the fear of apathy in the american mind can be noticed in the hysteria found in those who want to use american foreign policy as an R2P instrument, or in Michelle's antics against Boko Haram or in the pressure upon Clinton from Amanpour for intervention in Bosnia, and so forth.

In that particular old case, the accusations of apathy were a way to inflict guilty on the common person before they could notice what was happening around them and so block clear perception, clear reflection and clear reaction. Guilty which eventually becomes a habbit of the mind. One that usurps the place of a healthy conscience. That being the aim of the particular form of neuroparasitism that now takes hold of the american mind. A mind once known for its objectivity, clarity, power and most of all, common sense.

A link to the article is given below, along with one to the wikipedia page on the subject. The keen observer will notice the name of the NYT editor behind the narrative and ponder how the shaming of apathy in the face of a dying girl could become a prelude for the shaming of nonintervention in the face of ominous alluminium tubes, once the method was established.

http://www.unz.com/isteve/the-kitty-genovese-murder-after-50-years/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese

[ISL]

CP,

nice exposition, I think you are describing the creeping Italian disease in the US - where it is not what you know and how well you do it that matters, but who you know and as such, there are minimal to no ramifications for poor performance.

The differences between the S&L crisis versus the recent meltdown are stark - no perp walks for anyone today!

Once upon a time, the US used plausible deniability, now we redefine torture as enhanced interrogation, and nothing. Scandal after scandal breaks in the media and nothing. Congressional investigations, and nothing. I contend that in such an environment, there is no need for a reality-basis in mass-media communication.

Compounding is the disdain of those in the DC bubble for those outside - they communicate to the American public with a presumption of stupidity.

American capitalism worked because success was rewarded and failure did not result in get out of jail free cards because I have connections in high places - the Italian disease. Perhaps it is the natural evolution of empires.