Peak Oil was the primary motive of the Bush regime for allowing and assisting the attacks. Without 9/11, it would have been impossible for the US to invade Iraq and take over their oil fields, which gives the US a dominant military position in the middle of the world's main oil production region as we pass the point of Peak Oil.
The first cabinet meeting of the Bush administration (after they stole the White House) included discussion of how they were going to attack Iraq. In the spring of 2001, the Cheney energy task force included examination of maps of Iraqi and other Persian / Arabian Gulf oil fields and which companies had drilling rights. Vice President Cheney was on record as knowing about Peak Oil before entering the White House, and presumably the oil company connected officials in their administration were also aware of this basic fact. The energy task force happened around the same time that warnings that 9/11 was imminent were pouring into the White House from close US allies and even from within the FBI (which had agents tracking the flight schools that some of the perpetrators were supposedly training at).
Peak Oil and 9/11 complicity are inseparable issues, even if most who focus on one or the other chose to look at them in isolation from each other.
The best voices in the "truth" movement who understand the need for fact checking say that Peak Oil was the motive for allowing and assisting 9/11.
Some of the loudest voices in the 9/11 truth movement claim that Peak Oil is not real and merely a contrived justification for oil company profits and aggression against the Middle East. There is as much evidence (none) for large amounts of "abiotic oil" as there is for the claims that something other than Flight 77 hit the Pentagon.
The same misdirection and disinformation tactics used to sabotage the 9/11 truth movement are also being used against Peak Oil and Climate Change.
There are also a lot of people who understand Peak Oil who won't look at the well documented evidence (mostly from mainstream media sources) that there was enormous amount of foreknowledge that the attacks were about to happen, but these warnings were deliberately ignored to create the pretext to seize Middle East oil fields and create Homeland Security to clamp down domestically. There are lots of nonsense claims about 9/11 complicity, but sandwiched in between the nonsense claims and the incompetence theories are facts proven beyond reasonable doubt.
Michael Meacher, Member of the British Parliament, former member of Tony Blair's cabinet
Massive attention has now been given - and rightly so - to the reasons why Britain went to war against Iraq. But far too little attention has focused on why the US went to war, and that throws light on British motives too. The conventional explanation is that after the Twin Towers were hit, retaliation against al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan was a natural first step in launching a global war against terrorism. Then, because Saddam Hussein was alleged by the US and UK governments to retain weapons of mass destruction, the war could be extended to Iraq as well. However this theory does not fit all the facts. The truth may be a great deal murkier.
We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says "while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document attributed to Wolfowitz and Libby which said the US must "discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role". It refers to key allies such as the UK as "the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership". It describes peacekeeping missions as "demanding American political leadership rather than that of the UN". It says "even should Saddam pass from the scene", US bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently... as "Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has". It spotlights China for "regime change", saying "it is time to increase the presence of American forces in SE Asia".
The document also calls for the creation of "US space forces" to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent "enemies" using the internet against the US. It also hints that the US may consider developing biological weapons "that can target specific genotypes [and] may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool".
Finally - written a year before 9/11 - it pinpoints North Korea, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes, and says their existence justifies the creation of a "worldwide command and control system". This is a blueprint for US world domination. But before it is dismissed as an agenda for rightwing fantasists, it is clear it provides a much better explanation of what actually happened before, during and after 9/11 than the global war on terrorism thesis. This can be seen in several ways.
First, it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested.
It had been known as early as 1996 that there were plans to hit Washington targets with aeroplanes. Then in 1999 a US national intelligence council report noted that "al-Qaida suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House".
Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers obtained their visas in Saudi Arabia. Michael Springman, the former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah, has stated that since 1987 the CIA had been illicitly issuing visas to unqualified applicants from the Middle East and bringing them to the US for training in terrorism for the Afghan war in collaboration with Bin Laden (BBC, November 6 2001). It seems this operation continued after the Afghan war for other purposes. It is also reported that five of the hijackers received training at secure US military installations in the 1990s (Newsweek, September 15 2001).
Instructive leads prior to 9/11 were not followed up. French Moroccan flight student Zacarias Moussaoui (now thought to be the 20th hijacker) was arrested in August 2001 after an instructor reported he showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer large airliners. When US agents learned from French intelligence he had radical Islamist ties, they sought a warrant to search his computer, which contained clues to the September 11 mission (Times, November 3 2001). But they were turned down by the FBI. One agent wrote, a month before 9/11, that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers (Newsweek, May 20 2002).
All of this makes it all the more astonishing - on the war on terrorism perspective - that there was such slow reaction on September 11 itself. The first hijacking was suspected at not later than 8.20am, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the US Andrews airforce base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 am. Why not? There were standard FAA intercept procedures for hijacked aircraft before 9/11. Between September 2000 and June 2001 the US military launched fighter aircraft on 67 occasions to chase suspicious aircraft (AP, August 13 2002). It is a US legal requirement that once an aircraft has moved significantly off its flight plan, fighter planes are sent up to investigate. Was this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant of, the evidence? Or could US air security operations have been deliberately stood down on September 11? If so, why, and on whose authority? The former US federal crimes prosecutor, John Loftus, has said: "The information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defence of incompetence." Nor is the US response after 9/11 any better. No serious attempt has ever been made to catch Bin Laden. In late September and early October 2001, leaders of Pakistan's two Islamist parties negotiated Bin Laden's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for 9/11. However, a US official said, significantly, that "casting our objectives too narrowly" risked "a premature collapse of the international effort if by some lucky chance Mr Bin Laden was captured". The US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Myers, went so far as to say that "the goal has never been to get Bin Laden" (AP, April 5 2002). The whistleblowing FBI agent Robert Wright told ABC News (December 19 2002) that FBI headquarters wanted no arrests. And in November 2001 the US airforce complained it had had al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in its sights as many as 10 times over the previous six weeks, but had been unable to attack because they did not receive permission quickly enough (Time Magazine, May 13 2002). None of this assembled evidence, all of which comes from sources already in the public domain, is compatible with the idea of a real, determined war on terrorism.
The catalogue of evidence does, however, fall into place when set against the PNAC blueprint. From this it seems that the so-called "war on terrorism" is being used largely as bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives. Indeed Tony Blair himself hinted at this when he said to the Commons liaison committee: "To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11" (Times, July 17 2002). Similarly Rumsfeld was so determined to obtain a rationale for an attack on Iraq that on 10 separate occasions he asked the CIA to find evidence linking Iraq to 9/11; the CIA repeatedly came back empty-handed (Time Magazine, May 13 2002). In fact, 9/11 offered an extremely convenient pretext to put the PNAC plan into action. The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 9/11. A report prepared for the US government from the Baker Institute of Public Policy stated in April 2001 that "the US remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a destabilising influence to... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East". Submitted to Vice-President Cheney's energy task group, the report recommended that because this was an unacceptable risk to the US, "military intervention" was necessary (Sunday Herald, October 6 2002).
Similar evidence exists in regard to Afghanistan. The BBC reported (September 18 2001) that Niaz Niak, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, was told by senior American officials at a meeting in Berlin in mid-July 2001 that "military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October". Until July 2001 the US government saw the Taliban regime as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of hydrocarbon pipelines from the oil and gas fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. But, confronted with the Taliban's refusal to accept US conditions, the US representatives told them "either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs" (Inter Press Service, November 15 2001).
Given this background, it is not surprising that some have seen the US failure to avert the 9/11 attacks as creating an invaluable pretext for attacking Afghanistan in a war that had clearly already been well planned in advance. There is a possible precedent for this. The US national archives reveal that President Roosevelt used exactly this approach in relation to Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941. Some advance warning of the attacks was received, but the information never reached the US fleet. The ensuing national outrage persuaded a reluctant US public to join the second world war. Similarly the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into "tomorrow's dominant force" is likely to be a long one in the absence of "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor". The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the "go" button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement. The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies. By 2010 the Muslim world will control as much as 60% of the world's oil production and, even more importantly, 95% of remaining global oil export capacity. As demand is increasing, so supply is decreasing, continually since the 1960s. This is leading to increasing dependence on foreign oil supplies for both the US and the UK. The US, which in 1990 produced domestically 57% of its total energy demand, is predicted to produce only 39% of its needs by 2010. A DTI minister has admitted that the UK could be facing "severe" gas shortages by 2005. The UK government has confirmed that 70% of our electricity will come from gas by 2020, and 90% of that will be imported. In that context it should be noted that Iraq has 110 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves in addition to its oil.
A report from the commission on America's national interests in July 2000 noted that the most promising new source of world supplies was the Caspian region, and this would relieve US dependence on Saudi Arabia. To diversify supply routes from the Caspian, one pipeline would run westward via Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Another would extend eastwards through Afghanistan and Pakistan and terminate near the Indian border. This would rescue Enron's beleaguered power plant at Dabhol on India's west coast, in which Enron had sunk $3bn investment and whose economic survival was dependent on access to cheap gas.
Nor has the UK been disinterested in this scramble for the remaining world supplies of hydrocarbons, and this may partly explain British participation in US military actions. Lord Browne, chief executive of BP, warned Washington not to carve up Iraq for its own oil companies in the aftermath of war (Guardian, October 30 2002). And when a British foreign minister met Gadaffi in his desert tent in August 2002, it was said that "the UK does not want to lose out to other European nations already jostling for advantage when it comes to potentially lucrative oil contracts" with Libya (BBC Online, August 10 2002).
The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the "global war on terrorism" has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project. Is collusion in this myth and junior participation in this project really a proper aspiration for British foreign policy? If there was ever need to justify a more objective British stance, driven by our own independent goals, this whole depressing saga surely provides all the evidence needed for a radical change of course.
Michael Meacher MP was environment minister from May 1997 to June 2003
[emphases added]
From the Wilderness
9/11 research is a rabbit-hole of Byzantine complexity full of snares
and delusions and peopled with false friends, lunatics, earnest lost
souls and a few heroes. It's not necessary to understand all the nuances
of science and bureaucracy that allowed the government to get away
with mass murder, blame it on swarthy foreigners (of whom many are
eager accomplices)
and use the incident as (in the words of the Cheney, Jeb Bush et al
cabal, the Project for a New American Century) "a new Pearl Harbor." At
this critical juncture in human history, it's only necessary to understand
why they did it. The motive was Peak Oil, a disaster which will affect
everyone on the planet, about which all must enlighten themselves and
for which all must prepare.
-- Jenna Orkin, World Trade Center Environmental Organization http://mikeruppert.blogspot.com/2007/05/epa-whistleblower-alleges-more-fraud.html
Means - Dick Cheney and the Secret Service: Dick Cheney was running
a completely separate chain of Command & Control via the Secret
Service, assuring the paralysis of Air Force response on 9/11. The Secret
Service has the technology to see the same radar screens the FAA sees
in real time. They also have the legal authority and technological capability
to take supreme command in cases of national emergency. Dick Cheney
was the acting Commander in Chief on 9/11.
Motive - Peak Oil: At some point between 2000 and 2007, world oil
production reaches its peak; from that point on, every barrel of oil
is going to be harder to find, more expensive to recover, and more valuable
to those who recover and control it. Dick Cheney was well aware of the
coming Peak Oil crisis at least as early as 1999, and 9/11 provided
the pretext for the series of energy wars that Cheney stated, "will
not end in our lifetime."
Opportunity - 9/11 War Games: The Air Force was running multiple
war games on the morning of 9/11 simulating hijackings over the continental
United States that included (at least) one "live-fly" exercise
as well as simulations that placed "false blips" on FAA radar
screens. These war games eerily mirrored the real events of 9/11 to
the point of the Air Force running drills involving hijacked aircraft
as the 9/11 plot actually unfolded. The war games & terror drills
played a critical role in ensuring no Air Force fighter jocks - who
had trained their entire lives for this moment - would be able to prevent
the attacks from succeeding. These exercises were under Dick Cheney's
management.
Nafeez
Mossadeq Ahmed
bin Laden is merely a piece in a chess game. The stakes of the
game are the last of the world’s oil reserves and '…the Bush
administration's (consolidation of power) to pursue a drastic unlimited
militarization of foreign policy on a massive and unprecedented scale
required by long-standing elite planning, while crushing domestic dissent
and criminalizing legitimate protest."
-- Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed, "The War on Freedom"
.... Have no doubt that the race for the last of the easy
energy has begun. First out of the stalls was the US military-industrial
complex, which in year 2000 installed the loser in a presidential election.
Thus began operation "war on terror", launched under a smokescreen
- a fusillade of explosions provided by men of Middle-Eastern
appearance. While it is up to the Islamists
to provide some semblance of a threat, it is up to us Westerners to
imagine the terror. The coalition of the willing leaders have offered
their services as cheerleaders of the terrified and I understand that
the American incumbent has some prior experience in this regard.
In the rush to be fashionably terrified, it is hoped
that we will not notice how the last reserves of "sweet" oil
are being encircled and plundered. Of course it can be argued that the
US military-industrial complex has the greatest need of the greatest
share of oil. Their warfare would be utterly impossible without it ...
imagine that! Sometimes in my wildest waking dreams I imagine those
Pentagon brass-hats having to pedal a 65-ton Abrams tank to work. Oh
yes ...!
... but then, I am only a bit of a jester.
Richard
Heinberg,
"Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon
World" pp
67-73
In four short years, Bush, Cheney and company have managed to do the
following:
Steal an election ...
Place criminals and human-rights violators in prominent policy-making
positions. ...
Facilitate a terrorist attack on the US in order to consolidate
political power. In my previous book ["The Party's Over],
I resisted taking a clear public stand regarding government complicity
in the 9/11 attacks, but, after spending countless hours sitfting the
evidence, I find the conclusion inescapable: persons within the US government
had clear foreknowledge of the attacks, and efforts to prevent those
attacks were systematically thwarted on orders from higher levels. Many
warnings had been received by the US government that a terrorist attack
would occur in the week of September 9 -- some specifying that commercial
airliners would be hijacked and that the World Trade Center and Pentagon
would be targeted. Then, after the hijackings occurrred, no fighter
jets were dispatched to intercept the airliners, despite the fact that
there was plenty of time for this to have occurred, and that it is standard
procedure. There are many other holes in the official version of the
events, too numerous to discuss here. And finally, the administration
has engaged in public -- and largely successful -- efforts to prevent
or limit any serious inquiry into the 9-11 attacks. In short, lines
of evidence point to foreknowledge, complicity, and cover-up at the
top levels of government. These are extraordinary assertions, and they
require extraordinary evidence to support them. The detailed presentation
and discussion of that evidence is beyond the scope of this book; however,
I have appended print and outline resources. ...
Lie to the American people and the world in order to justify
the illegal invasion of a sovereign nation ...
Undermine the system of international law by proclaiming the
validity of pre-emptive attack...
Use weapons that kill indiscriminately -- ie., "weapons
of mass destruction" -- in the invasions of both Afghanistan and
Iraq...
Subvert the US Constitution
Colin
Campbell,
founder, Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO)
The Industrial Revolution was built on power from fossil fuels, and
it exploded during the 20th Century as more and more were tapped. Now
as the 21st Century dawns, we face the peak and decline of these essential
drivers. Logic proclaims that the entire economic, social and political
fabric of the modern world is at risk, especially since the pace of
change seems to have been accelerating.
It seems, further, that we are generally moving from the nation-state
to a form of global kleptocracy, in which corporate and political leaders
co-operate to their mutual advantage, although a few anachronistic ultra-nationalistic
states remain under increasing pressure and violence. A
remarkable website
touches on the kleptocracy. The
message will be too blunt for most tastes, but there is no smoke without
fire
[note: this website that ASPO links to is one
of the best about 9/11 complicity]
Governments have evidently long employed deceptions to achieve their
ends. But the age of mass media and the nature of modern democracy have
combined to bring the art of deception to new heights. Is Deception
too strong a word? It may well be, but it does come close to describing
the misleading imagery and choice of words by which governments seek
to secure support from an impressionable and often ill-informed electorate.
(see also : http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0302/S00061.htm )
They are not being quite straight. The American people, who are as generous
as any, do not naturally seek to dominate the world, or attack distant
people. But they are ready to loyally support their government if they
can be led to believe that they are threatened or at risk. Saddam Hussein
is said to be constructing, not a good old familiar Atomic Bomb, such
as the US dropped on Hiroshima, but Weapons of Mass Destruction: they
sound more sinister and threatening. Men in London are filmed running
around in white protective clothing to simulate their reaction to an
outbreak of unspecified germ warfare. No such attack is under way, but
the imagery conveys the sense of threat. Troops and tanks are sent to
London Airport at the end of a Muslim feast. Television has greatly
increased the scope for promulgating the imagery. “Freedom”
is a word frequently used by the US President, both in relation to his
own country and now for the Iraqi people after the invasion. It is a
euphemism for globalism and the principle of free access to resources
by the highest bidder, irrespective of the rights, traditions and wishes
of those who live in the territories where the resources occur. The
European settlers in the New World faced a similar issue in earlier
years but solved it by virtually exterminating the indigenous people.
That is now a better-forgotten, distant memory.
The US government must recognise that it depends on rising oil imports
to maintain the way of life its people like. It must realise that its
growing imports will cost much more when by 2010 as much as 40% of world
supply will be coming from just five key countries in the Middle East
which regard their oil as national assets. It may fear that its entire
economy and world status, along with the strength of the dollar, would
be undermined if inflows of foreign investment failed to match its towering
foreign debt. It may fear that the Euro
would replace the Dollar as the preferred currency for world trade.
Such fears may have prompted a radical new foreign policy to try to
restore confidence. Deploying military might has been a traditional
means of doing so. The pound sterling used to be a world currency, with
the Bank of England promising to back it in gold. People had faith in
it thanks in part to the British gunboat.
The events surrounding September 11th have been widely questioned by
those who find the account full of curious elements. For example, John
Fulton, a government official at a homeland security meeting in Chicago,
reportedly responded to an accusation that the authorities were ill-prepared,
by saying that in fact they were that very day running
a simulated attack by a hijacked airliner on the NRO Office in Virginia. Could that explain why the normal defences were
shut down? and was the timing a coincidence? They sound like legitimate
questions, but others dismiss such doubts as being the crazed expressions
of paranoiac merchants of Conspiracy. Whether or not the US government,
or elements within it, contrived or connived at the events of September
11th, the incident did provide the practical justification for opening
a new “War on Terror”. Those who did not support the United
States were declared enemies. It aimed first at Afghanistan,
which borders the Caspian and was supposed to be harbouring those responsible
for the events of September 11th, before it turned on Iraq for apparently
unrelated reasons. An already vilified Saddam Hussein presented
a ready-made pretext for a threatened attack on the country, which has
about 60 billion barrels left in known fields. That is a much bigger
prize than the Caspian, where exploration is giving disappointing results.
Some may imagine that Iraqi oil is there for the taking by
simply opening the valve, but in fact an immense amount of work, investment
and, above all, time would be needed to rehabilitate the ageing fields
and bring the undeveloped smaller ones into production. Under optimal
conditions, production might double the current 2 Mb/d by 2010, but
that would still meet much less than half US needs. In reality, conditions
are most unlikely to be optimal: the fields may be fired during the
invasion, and patriots may continue the struggle, as did the Resistance
fighters in France during the last world war. So it is more likely that
production would fall after a successful invasion. ...
But a military occupation of Iraq would place US forces in a strong
strategic position from which to control oil supply from the entire
region, quelling local insurrections and propping up puppet regimes.
That seems a much more logical explanation for the move than a grab
for Iraq’s oil itself. In the event that Saddam Hussein does or
may pose a military threat: the only significant targets in range would
be the oilfields of other Middle East countries.
An interesting new twist is provided by Turkey, which talks of reclaiming
its rights to what is now Iraq, deriving from its centuries of ownership
prior to the First World War when the victorious allies broke up the
Ottoman Empire, dividing its oil between themselves. Its government
offered a bridgehead for the US invasion in return for substantial payments,
but the move was defeated in the Turkish parliament, as massive anti-war
demonstrations erupted. Germany, Belgium and France have broken ranks
with NATO by declining to go to the “defence” of Turkey,
preferring to join with Russia in opposition to the threatened attack.
Europe has as great a need to access Middle East oil as does the United
States, now that North Sea production plummets from depletion.
On February 14th, Dr Blix, the lucid UN inspector, gave convincing evidence
to the UN Security Council that Iraq posed no immediate threat to anyone,
and that any future threat could be readily controlled by increased
surveillance. Television viewers have also seen Tariq Aziz, the Deputy
Prime Minister of Iraq, who is a Christian, on his knees praying at
the tomb of St Francis of Assisi, following cordial meetings with the
Pope. Massive anti-war demonstrations throughout the world from Stavanger
to Skibbereen, not to mention London where over a million marched, show
that people are far from convinced by the explanations offered to them
as reason for going to war. They were not encouraged when the British
government released an intelligence document justifying its support
for the war that turns out to have been lifted from a student’s
thesis, written long ago. The Times of London carried an admirably measured
response in a leading article on February 11th, entitled “There
is no virtue or safety in a war like this”, summing up the views
of the great majority of people in the country. It remains to be seen
if the government will finally represent the views of the people who
elected it to do so, facing a courageous revolt in its own party in
Parliament.
It seems obvious that if the United States and Britain do invade Iraq,
they must have some motive other than the declared one. Oil has to be
at the head of the list of suspects.
In terms of depletion, what would control of the Middle East mean? If
the people there can somehow be subjugated, then western companies would
presumably move in to ramp up the production of oil as fast as they
could, which could lead to a fall in oil price, encouraging demand.
The consequence would be that global peak would be higher and sooner,
giving a steeper subsequent decline. It would make a bad situation worse.
A better policy for dealing with growing oil shortage would
be for the consuming countries to agree to match their oil demand with
the depletion rate imposed by Nature.
[emphases added - note: the NRO "911" simulation apparently
was an emergency exercise about an accidental crash into their headquarters,
near Dulles Airport in Virginia - not a terrorism scenario. However, it
seems likely that the exercise did serve to confuse the Air Defense response
for a critical period of time, allowing the attacks to succeed]
Barrie Zwicker, The Great Deception
from the 2002 documentary The Great Deception, the first film to sensibly explore the case for complicity. Note that Zwicker's 2005 book Towers of Deception ignored the 9/11 Peak Oil connection, despite his narration of the 2004 film The End of Suburbia, an excellent presentation of the Peak Oil issues. It is possible that the later reluctance to "connect the dots" between 9/11 and Peak Oil is due to the rise in prominence in the 9/11 Truth Movement of advocates for denying Peak Oil (one of the loudest deniers of the connection is given a respectful promotion in the "Towers" book). It can be a challenge to hold one's ground for integrity when there is much peer pressure to conform to beliefs and paradigms that are not actually true.
"The Great Deception"
Part 4 of a multi-part series
Transcript of Mon.,Feb 11, 2002 Broadcast
“What Really Happened on Sept. 11th? "Part
4 (the Oiligarchy)"
Even among those who believe that the war on Afghanistan was part
of the so-called war on terrorism, there’s a fairly wide recognition
that the outcome – the occupation of Afghanistan -- might have
something to do with the ambitions of U.S. oil corporations.
Which brings us to the connection between September 11th and the Oiligarchy.
Let me start with a crash course in globe-oil reality. A framework little
mentioned by the mainstream media.
First, the size and power of Big Oil. “Together, oil and coal
constitute the biggest single industry in history,” writes Ross
Gelbspan in his book, The Heat is On. “Big oil alone does well
over a trillion dollars a year in business.”
Second, we’re at the end of the petroleum era. Total world oil
extraction is peaking. These charts, from Scientific American and other
equally reliable sources, tell the story. And the supply does not drop
off gently. If you think this industry is rich and powerful now, wait ‘til
the supply is clearly on the wane. At the website www.dieoff.com,
you can learn that “in 1995, Petroconsultants published a report
for oil industry insiders ($32,000 per copy) titled WORLD OIL SUPPLY
1930-2050 which concludes that world oil (extraction) could peak as
soon as the year 2000 and decline to half that level by 2025. Large
and permanent increases in oil prices were predicted after the year
2000.” Black gold is going to go platinum.
Hey wait, we’ll just switch to other energy sources, right? Wind,
solar, biomass, tidal. Wrong. “All the alternatives in the world,”
writes former U.S. army officer and political analyst Stan Goff, “cannot
begin to provide more than a tiny fraction of the energy base now provided
by oil. This makes it more than a resource, and the drive to control
what's left more than an economic competition.”
“Most experts agree,” writes Larry Chin in Online Journal,
“that the Caspian Basin and Central Asia are the keys to energy
in the 21st century. …energy expert James Dorian in the Oil &
Gas Journal… “Those who control the oil routes out of Central
Asia will impact all future direction and quantities of flow and the
distribution of revenues from new (extraction).”
In other words a pipeline through, of all places, Afghanistan. Needed
to carry an estimated 5-trillion dollars’ worth of Caspian oil
and gas reserves to markets. A significant detail that surely is not
lost on those in power in the United States. So just who are these people?
Let’s start with the occupant of the Oval Office himself.
George W. Bush was CEO of Harken Energy.
George Herbert Walker Bush, his dad and the former president, was an
oil man. Now he’s on the board of the Carlyle Group, which is
heavily invested in oil and armaments.
Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense during Desert Storm. He stepped
down to become CEO of Halliburton Oil. Cashed in 34 million dollars
in Halliburton stock options before taking office as vice president.
Donald Evans, Bush’s Commerce Secretary, was with Colorado Oil.
Zalmay Khalilzad is the Bush-appointed special envoy to Afghanistan.
Khalilzad previously was an aide to the American oil company Unocal.
He drew up Unocal’s risk analysis on its proposed trans-Afghan
gas pipeline.
Khalilzad reports to Condoleeza Rice, Bush’s national security
adviser. When she was a board director of Chevron Corporation, she served
as its principal expert on Kazakhstan, where Chevron holds the largest
concession of any of the international oil companies.
Khalilzad will liaise with the new Afghani leader Hamed Karzai. A former
consultant to Unocal.
You get the idea.
A General Motors president once said: “Structure is strategy in
slow motion.” The structure of this cabinet shows, in my opinion,
the primacy of oil interests.
How does this connect with the events of 9/11? Well, it’s hard
to just invade a country out of the blue, I believe. The perfect pretext
is a so-called war on terrorism – founded firmly, so far, upon
the official narrative of what happened on September 11th. The psychological trick at the heart of September 11th, by the
way, is that people confuse their compassion for the victims with their
certainty about who the perpetrators are. The public was presented
with instant perpetrators. The trick will most likely continue working
for all future planned invasions – looks as if Iraq is next –
so long as the public remains blindfolded by the media.
9/11 serves the ends of the Oiligarchy. That does not, in itself, prove
a connection between Big Oil and what happened on September 11th. But
the fact that it does serve those ends must be taken together with other
evidence. Just part of which is the illegal importation, training and
protection of terrorists on U.S. soil by the CIA. The much-publicized
failure of U.S. intelligence. The failure of the U.S. Air Force on the
day. The inexplicable trades of United and American Airlines stocks
in the days prior. The big economic difficulties the Bush administration
was facing. And the looming Enron scandal.
Carolyn Baker
[note: the "Kaminski" writer criticized in this article has
written a number of articles about 9/11 conspiracy theories that have
promoted a number of hoaxes, including the bizarre
"webfairy" claim that no plane hit the World Trade Center (instead,
a missile masked by a King Kong sized hologram was used) and has praised
Holocaust Denial advocate Ernst Zundel
(a websearch on "Kaminski Zundel" will find numerous references
to this). It is not surprising that a writer pushing disinformation about
9/11 complicity would seek to decouple the issues of 9/11 complicity and
the motivation of Peak Oil while blatantly misrepresenting Mike Ruppert's
views on the subject.]
The 9-11 truth movement and the realities
of peak oil are inextricably connected. Emphasizing one over the other
or criticizing individuals engaged in the cause of either keeps us thinking
inside the box and paralyzes us in a fragmented perspective that prevents
us from viewing the larger picture. For those seeking the full truth of
9-11, follow the oil.
-- Carolyn Baker
August 25, 2004—In a recent article by John Kaminski on the flaws
of the 9-11 Commission Report, he implies that those individuals of
the 9-11 truth movement who deal with the issue of peak oil alongside
the unanswered questions of 9-11 are somehow abandoning their quest
for answers to those questions.
In a July article, Kaminski criticizes 9-11 truth seeker Mike
Ruppert for his more recent focus on peak oil. Kaminski writes:
" . . . he has effectively hijacked a large segment of the
9/11 truth movement into a discussion of peak oil concerns, and his
message, often indistinguishable from oil company propaganda, sounds
more like an excuse for war than it does an indictment of those waging
these unjustifiable wars against innocent countries."
Kaminski is not the only individual who fails to connect the dots
between 9-11 and peak oil, nor is Ruppert the only person being chastised
for dealing with peak oil alongside the 9-11 hoax, and after hearing
from a variety of sources that the two events are somehow mutually exclusive,
I feel compelled to explain the obvious relationship.
I urge everyone to view the documentary "The
End of Suburbia." It confronts us with the scientific and economic
realities of living at the end of the age of cheap oil--realities so
gargantuan that some have labeled them "the mother of all downsizing."
Let me clarify that "peak oil" is not about the planet running
out of oil, but rather that the population and consumeristic lifestyle
of its inhabitants has caused and will continue to cause the costs of
the production of oil and natural gas to become increasingly astronomical.
Moreover, due to the fact that when some three decades ago human beings
had the opportunity and resources to convert to alternative forms of
energy and refused to do so, the consequence of that failure was a tragic
loss of time needed to make the necessary changes from fossil fuels
to alternative energies. Lost time cannot be regained.
Oil production has probably already peaked, and the human race now
requires alternative forms within the next decade in order to avert
a massive global energy crisis. However, the frightening reality
is that even if nations had the political will to make the changes tomorrow,
there is not enough time to do so. Therefore, the cavalier
attitude that we need only convert to hydrogen, solar, wind or some
other alternative energy at the last second before global catastrophe
is a lifeboat full of holes that will not sustain us in the face of
the realities of peak oil.
Peak oil necessarily means the end of economic growth and the end
of the affluent, unsustainable, waste-based lifestyle of America. It
means that human beings in developed countries will be required to downsize
every aspect of their lives beyond anything we can presently imagine.
For those individuals who refuse to accept the reality of peak oil
because they believe the planet will be rescued by aliens arriving from
the far reaches of the cosmos or that somehow the evidence for peak
oil is distorted or exaggerated, I encourage them to pick up a basic
psychology textbook and look up the word "denial." I hasten
to add that my position on this is not totally based on empirical evidence.
I concur with ancient indigenous traditions that have foretold of cataclysmic
events necessarily taking place on planet earth in order to transform
human consciousness. Whether or not peak oil is part of such a cataclysm
remains to be seen. What I do argue is that peak oil is a reality which,
on a plethora of levels, we dismiss or ignore at our own peril.
I am baffled by those well-meaning individuals who do not see the
connection between the events of 9-11 and peak oil. The ruling elite
have known for over a decade that peak oil was a fact of life. As many
readers already know, Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote about oil shortages
extensively in his book The Grand Chessboard, published in 1997. In
it, he argues that the United States must gain hegemony of Eurasia and
the last remaining oil reserves on earth. While Brzezinksi was not part
of the Project For A New American Century (PNAC) or an author of Rebuilding
America's Defenses, the neocon blueprint for world domination now being
carried out by the Bush administration, he has served the ruling elite
all his adult life as a member of both Democratic and Republican regimes.
We now have overwhelming evidence that the 9-11 attacks were orchestrated
by the Bush administration in concert with its chief intelligence asset,
Al Qaeda. For the past three years, the 9-11
truth movement has speculated regarding possible motives. Certainly
the neocons were motivated by power and, to use Brezezinski's words,
"geostrategic hegemony" which would eventually cause nation-states
to fold into a one-world government run by corporations. Unquestionably,
they sought, as they have achieved in Iraq, endless government contracts
for the corporations they float in and out of on their way to and from
their beltway positions. But with exquisite foreknowledge of
the time-crunch of peak oil, the ruling elite of both political parties
needed a grand rationale for expansion into Eurasia and the Middle East.
Realizing our frenzied competition with China's 1.3 billion people for
the last remaining oil reserves, a contest which may inevitably deteriorate
into all-out war with China, the Democrats, as well as neocons, now
champion militarism and shamelessly speak of "progressive internationalism"
(translation: imperialism) with their Bush-clone candidate
recently proclaiming that he would have invaded Iraq even if it had
been clear that no weapons of mass destruction existed.
Given that the ruling elite believes it dare not address the
crux of the issue, namely the downsizing of consumption and lifestyle
that have created peak oil, it must necessarily become increasingly
expansionist over the next decades through both political parties. Can
we not anticipate the virtual extinction of the current pretense of
a two-party system entirely within the next decade? Will not the American
people in a time of a massive global energy crisis hysterically elect
maniacs or just simply roll over and submit to martial law and the lockdown
of the country?
While Kaminski accuses the discussion of peak oil as "often indistinguishable
from oil company propaganda," he seems to have ignored the evidence
of the world's foremost petroleum geologists who do not work for or
with oil companies. Consequently, he has dismissed what oil companies
are telling us about shortages and the end of the age of cheap oil as
drivel, when, in fact, some grain of truth lies in their assertions.
Their motive, obviously, is profit which I abhor and do not defend.
On the other hand, the concern of petroleum geologists such
as Dale Allen Pfieffer, author of The
End of the Age of Oil, (and author Richard Heinberg (The Party's
Over), is not about oil company profits but about the severe consequences
of peak oil for ourselves and future generations in the areas of food
production and costs, housing, health care, education, and employment,
all of which would induce an economic train wreck.
An inevitable consequence of a global energy crisis of these proportions
is indeed, chaos. Can we not assume that as the ruling elite
designers of 9-11 crafted their scheme over the years it took to do
so, realizing the chaos inherent in the consequences of peak oil, they
hastened to railroad the USA PATRIOT Act through Congress--that infamous
piece of legislation that had been lying around for years before 9-11?
Is it not obvious that the quashing of free speech and protest at the
Democratic Convention and at the upcoming Republican Convention are
but mini-rehearsals for massive militarization of police forces in America
accompanied by technology for crowd control and domestic terror that
we cannot yet imagine?
In the face of countries, including our own, being unable
to feed, clothe, heat, and provide services for masses of human beings,
is it unreasonable to conjecture that laboratory-manufactured virulent
infections and other forms of biological warfare will be necessary to
reduce population? Do I have an overly active imagination based
on science fiction? Perhaps, but as a friend of mine once said, we must
stay current with science fiction in order to have some idea of what
the Pentagon and the intelligence community are up to. Undoubtedly,
two decades ago, the idea of planes crashing into New York skyscrapers
and the Pentagon would also have been written off as science fiction.
The 9-11 truth movement and the realities
of peak oil are inextricably connected. Emphasizing one over the other
or criticizing individuals engaged in the cause of either keeps us thinking
inside the box and paralyzes us in a fragmented perspective that prevents
us from viewing the larger picture. For those seeking the full truth
of 9-11, follow the oil.
Carolyn Baker is a professor of U.S. history living in New Mexico.
