Connected Dots

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."
-- John Muir
, "My First Summer in the Sierra" (1911)

(the "Money" and "JFK" dot connections are under construction)

Peak Oil and Climate Change

These crises resemble the parable of the blind men touching an elephant. Each observer is correctly describing what a part of the elephant is, but none have a holistic understanding. Peak Oil and Climate Change are two facets of the problem of overshoot, and neither can be mitigated in isolation from the other.

Peak Oil and Climate Change can only be addressed in combination, trying to tackle one without the other is a proven failure. Efforts to deal with Peak without Climate awareness leads to tar sands, coal to liquids and other eco-disasters. Efforts to deal with Climate without Peak fail to understand what is happening, and rarely consider how dependent our food system is on concentrated fossil fuels.

Focusing solely on oil depletion leads to destructive policies aimed at increasing liquid fuels production -- “alternative” fuels that can have worse environmental impacts than conventional petroleum, including accelerated climate change.

Concern about melting glaciers and extinction of charismatic megafauna is less likely to influence governmental energy policies than desperate scrambles to replace depleting fossil fuels.

Most projections of future carbon levels ignore the fact that fossil fuels are peaking in extraction rates. Focusing solely on climate change ignores the most important question facing humanity -- whether to "spend" the remaining oil on solar panels or battleships (a simplified version of the choice).

This is the way that carbon emissions are going to be reduced, not through voluntary simplicity nor offset campaigns. Efforts to “reduce carbon by 2050” are a subtle way to acknowledge Peak Oil. We will reduce our carbon footprint before 2050 whether we choose to or not, because we cannot burn fuel that does not exist.

If Peak Oil results in severe hardships -- massive unemployment, a financial crash, food shortages, transportation disruptions -- it will be difficult to convince many people that we need to leave the oil, natural gas and coal in the ground to keep planet Earth stable enough to support human civilization. Framing the energy crisis as a decision about how to use the remaining oil can shift the debate toward more productive discussions: solar panels or battleships, relocalizing production or globalization, high speed trains or NAFTA Superhighways, boosting local businesses or subsidizing Wal-Mart big boxes. Each of these decisions is a choice whether to address the end of cheap oil and the start of climate change through accelerated business as usual or whether we will shift toward more sustainable behaviors. Unfortunately, these decisions are made by small elites that became wealthy and powerful through the destructive practices, and shifting course would be an admission that they screwed up.

Peak Oil Wars:
Iraq
, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, former Soviet Georgia, Africa and others.

The US empire is playing a "Good cop / bad cop" strategy where the neo-cons wrecked Iraq but the neo-liberals are in agreement that Iraq should be partitioned (which would allow the US greater control over the oil). If the bulk of the remaining oil was in places that were predominantly Buddhist or Hindu, the US would be waging a war on Buddhism or Hinduism.

The national borders of the Middle East countries were mostly drawn by British and French imperialist bureaucrats around 1920, not by citizens of these nations. These lines separate the bulk of the Arab peoples from the bulk of the oil wealth, a quasi-Apartheid situation deeply resented by millions of poor Arabs. The Arab world is roughly divided into countries with large populations and little oil, and countries with little populations and large amounts of oil (an oversimplification, but the general point is valid). But these configurations still allow for nationalist control over tremendous oil resources - which the US empire still resents.

The neo-cons call the current Middle East conflict "World War IV," since they consider the many wars under the umbrella of the Cold War to have been World War III. If you add up the number of bodies in the wars between 1945 and 9/11, the casualties are comparable to World War II.

Some of the neo-cons have publicly proclaimed that their goal for the War on Iraq (and eventually, its neighbors) is to redraw the borders of the Middle East. The ostensible reason given for this arrogance is to separate feuding ethnic and religious groups from each other. However, if you combine maps of the "new Middle East" sought by these armchair warriors with maps of the oil fields, a more sinister motive becomes obvious. Dividing up Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia would allow the consolidation of most of the region's oil into a new country (which presumably would be allied to the United States). This would remove control over the oil from governments based in Baghdad, Tehran and Riyadh, allowing new arrangements of control to be established.

The supposed "failure" of the Bush Cheney invasion of Iraq allows for a new administration to supposedly fix the problems of their civil war by splitting Iraq into three new states - a Kurdish enclave in the north, a Shiite Arab state in the south, and a Sunni region in the center. Most of Iraq's oil would be concentrated in the Shiite region, with lesser amounts in the Kurdish part, and very little would remain for the Sunnis. This would allow the US to focus its occupation and manipulation on the parts of Iraq that have oil, and the parts without oil could be ignored.

Saudi Arabia has a similar confluence of ethnicity with petroleum geography. Saudi oil fields are in the east, along the Persian Gulf. The two holy cities of Mecca and Medina are in the west, along the Red Sea. Some neo-conservatives have floated the idea of partitioning Saudi Arabia into at least two countries - one with the holy cities but without oil, the other without holy cities but with oil fields. The US merely wants to control the oil and is not interested in occupying Mecca and Medina.

Iran's oil is mostly in the western provinces along the Persian / Arabian Gulf. One particularly oil rich region is Khuzestan, an Arab area of Iran. Most "Westerners" probably think that Iran is an Arab country, but while it is Islamic, it is not Arab. Most Iranians speak Farsi, not Arabic. Iranians are Persians, not Arabs. Iran is a multi-ethnic country, but it is a strange circumstance that the area with the most Arabs is also one of the areas with lots of oil. In 1980, when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein attacked Iran (with the covert help of the US), he was hoping to seize Khuzestan's oil fields to add them to his own oily empire (Khuzestan is on the border of southern Iraq).

The neo-con proposal for a new "Arab Shia State" along the northern Persian / Arabian Gulf would separate the bulk of the oil from Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Senator Joe Biden (D-DE), chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, ran for President in 2007 largely on the platform of promoting Iraqi partition as a "solution" to the Iraqi disaster that Bush's invasion created. While Biden's presidential ambitions went nowhere, it was his audition to be Vice President in the Obama administration.

This seems to be a vicious example of the dialectic of creating a problem to force adoption of a solution.

Peak Oil and Media

Neither the mainstream (corporate funded) media nor the alternative (foundation funded) media chose to highlight Peak Oil before the peak. The media is slowly doing more stories about Peak Oil, although it took the War on Iraq, rising gasoline prices and grassroots awareness of Peak Oil to force this slow shift. The media also ignores that Peak Oil was the motive for the Bush / Cheney war crimes in the Middle East and for allowing 9/11 to happen.

The mass media, politicians and most environmental groups do not want to ask why our society largely ignored warnings about climate change. Few of them consider how Peak Oil and global warming are two ways of looking at the same problem of overconsumption.

The failure of the media to educate the public about the basic facts of oil depletion allows pandering politicians to blame others for rising gas prices and focus attention on the distraction of where we should (or should not) be drilling for oil instead of how is our fossil fuel dependent society going to cope with the end of cheap oil.

Peak Oil and Homeland Security

The best analyses of Peak Oil and of global warming each conclude that the problem would have to be addressed a decade or two before it manifests at full strength - yet both problems are here, now. Perhaps the truth is that the shadow government (corporations and the military industrial complex) did not want to deal with these problems because the solutions are inherently decentralized and would require relaxation of centralized power control systems. Since we missed the opportunity to solve these issues as gently as possible, governments are instituting a global surveillance police state to suppress dissent as the oil that runs the show becomes more scarce and expensive, and climate change reduces available food and water supplies.

Peak Oil and Fake Elections

President Carter made modest efforts to start shifting from total dependence on oil, but his administration was toppled in a virtual coup by the national security state.

The Clinton / Gore administration had nice rhetoric on the environment, but gave us energy deregulation, SUVs and NAFTA superhighways instead of renewable energy, hyper-efficient cars, and a European quality passenger train system.

Bush and Cheney are on record as aware of Peak Oil, but chose to direct the federal government toward policies that merely benefit the wealthiest, some of whom are looting what they can as their preparation for the end of cheap fossil fuels. In their view, renewable energy is for the rich and powerful, and is increasingly in use by the military - Guantanamo concentration camp has wind turbines to supply some of its electricity.

The 2008 Presidential contest featured two flavors of nonsense about energy from John McCain and Barack Obama - neither mentioned Peak Oil in their distracting sound bites about how much to drill in the US (a place that peaked nearly four decades ago). Even independent candidate Ralph Nader claims that more refineries need to be built to lower oil prices, although oil companies will not invest in facilities to process oil that does not exist. The only new refineries likely to be built in the US will be for "unconventional" oil from heavy "sour" oil, tar sands, coal to liquids and other gunk not otherwise usable in cars and trucks and planes (without special processing). The refusal of oil companies to build more refineries is like the timber companies on the West Coast lack of need for new lumber mills to slice up giant old growth logs, since existing facilities can handle the last remnants of ancient forest.

Former Representative Cynthia McKinney, the 2008 Green Party Presidential candidate, is closest to being the Peak Oil choice. She is the only contender who has prioritized cutting the military budget (in word and in deed - Nader shares her views but McKinney actually got to vote against "Defense" appropriations while in Congress), perhaps the most important prerequisite to coping with these crises. But even the McKinney campaign has not yet decided to prioritize energy, although their willingness to say constructive things about energy choices is eons ahead of the others.

9/11 and Peak Oil

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.

9/11 and World War IV

All wars require a pretext, usually one based on deception. While most conflicts between countries are struggles over resources, public perceptions require nationalistic, religious, ethnic or other jingoistic excuses to justify bloodletting.

If the Bush administration had asked for public support to invade Afghanistan and Iraq because they wanted to control Central Asian oil and gas pipeline routes, Afghan heroin production, and to place a strategic base in the heart of the Persian / Arabian Gulf oil production center, they would not have any chance of success. Naked aggression does not mix well with naive views of alleged democracy -- even Adolf Hitler claimed that Poland was attacking Germany when he invaded Poland in 1939 (thus triggering World War II).

In the 1990s, a group of "neo-conservatives" calling themselves the Project for a New American Century, issued a series of statements calling for the US to attack Iraq. PNAC's most notorious document was the September 2000 report "Rebuilding America's Defenses," which stated that a "new Pearl Harbor" would be needed to accomplish their goals of global domination.

The main difference between the 1941 Japanese military attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawai'i and 9/11 is that the Japanese Navy did not need technical assistance to perpetrate their attack -- Roosevelt's inner circle knew the attack was going to happen through cryptologic intercepts and they merely chose to keep local commanders in the dark. 9/11 was a more complicated operation, and while there were many efforts made to ensure that the attackers were allowed to attack, technical assistance was also required to ensure that the air defenses were confused just long enough to ensure the success of the attacks.

Perhaps the best historical analogy for 9/11 is the Reichstag Fire. In February 1933, shortly after Hitler took over in Germany, the Reichstag - the Parliament building - was burned down. The Nazis claimed a Dutch communist was found at the scene and they claimed it was a precursor to a communist revolutionary attack on the whole country. The Reichstag was coerced into passing an "Enabling Act" in the panic of the moment to temporarily suspend civil liberties for the duration of the terrorist threat - which lasted a dozen years until Germany was in ruins. The best evidence is that the lone arsonist was allowed to try to burn the building (he had been overheard desiring to do this) but the secret police actually did the bulk of the arson while the patsy was trying to accomplish his goal - that way the Nazis could sincerely claim that the criminal had been caught at the scene of the crime. Similarly, the 9/11 terrorists were allowed to get on the doomed planes, but they were not the ones who confused the air defenses with a plane into building exercise and other distractions that morning.

Other examples of aggressors allowing an initial attack - whether real or contrived - to provide the excuse for war include

  • the alleged attack on the USS Maine in Havana in 1898 (the excuse for the "Spanish American War"),
  • the 1962 "Operation Northwoods" plan (which envisioned staging a fake attack allegedly by Castro's Cuba in order to justify an invasion of that island). President Kennedy refused to approve this outrageous proposal, made shortly before the Cuban Missile Crisis (when he also refused to launch an attack on Cuba and later worked out a deal with Soviet leader Krushchev to scale back the Cold War - a primary reason why he was removed from office on November 22, 1963).
  • the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident (North Vietnam supposedly attacked US warships and the US Congress gave President Johnson permission to attack that country in response)
  • in 1990, the US told Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein that they didn't care about his border dispute with Kuwait even while Iraq had troops massed on the border. When Iraq seized Kuwait, the US military was engaged in a war game exercise simulating actual events.
  • in 1999, the Russian secret police bombed apartment buildings in Moscow (and other places) in attacks they blamed on Chechen separatists, thus providing the pretext for a bloody war on Chechnya.

These types of pretexts work when populations are "not see's" who do not want to see. When people summon the courage to understand these sorts of events are allowed to happen and / or staged by war mongers, then perhaps we will be able to move beyond wars.

9/11 and Media

The conspiracy to allow 9/11 to happen could not have succeeded without the direct complicity of the corporate funded mainstream media and the foundation funded alternative media. While a huge amount of evidence of official foreknowledge leaked through the media in the days after the attacks, almost no one in the media made any effort to "connect the dots" to show that 9/11 was not a surprise to the top echelons of the Bush / Cheney administration.

After some of the evidence became more public - especially the 2002 revelation that Bush was briefed a month before 9/11 that "Bin Laden was determined to strike in America," the media stuck to the incompetence theory that the administration supposedly did not know what it was doing. Evidence that the abundant warnings were deliberately ignored was also deliberately ignored by the media.

In the months after 9/11, virtually no one in the US media dared mention that anyone had the perspective that the Bush administration deliberately allowed the attacks to happen (or worse, actively helped to make sure that they happened). About the only mention of complicity in the months after 9/11 was hostility directed against "The Big Lie," a 2002 book by French author Thierry Meyssan, who claimed that 9/11 was an inside job and a plane did not hit the Pentagon (the rest of the book, apart from the "no plane" claim, was reasonably accurate). Shortly after his book came out, the military released altered photos of the plane crash that seemed deliberately altered to make difficult to determine exactly what happened if one ignored the abundant physical evidence and eyewitness testimonies. Meyssan put up his initial website the same week that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld supposedly goofed and said a "missile" hit the Pentagon - Meyssan's second book, Pentagate, even had plane parts in a photo on the cover of the book, showing that the whole thing was just a bad joke. But in the US media, his book, which became an instant best seller in France (lots of people intuitively sensed the official story was not true) was easily dismissed through invoking of prejudice against the French, especially as France was blocking approval by the United Nations of the pending US attack on Iraq.

As the 2004 Bush / Kerry election approached, the 9/11 truth movement began to have greater political traction, with growing minorities of people beginning to accept some degree of official complicity. As this awareness spread, the level of nonsensical claims supposedly supporting "9/11 truth" also escalated, and the media uncannily chose to focus on those who mixed together real and fake claims of complicity (whether through deliberate malice or merely the failure to fact check one's advocacy). In particular, most of the major media in the United States have run profiles of the Loose Change film (which has lots of false claims along with a few correct pieces of evidence) but none dare to mention Michael Ruppert's book Crossing the Rubicon, even though many ordered copies when it was published (Rubicon was actual investigative journalism that could not be easily discredited, so it was ignored).

It is amazing that the "alternative" media almost precisely echoed the official blind spots of the mainstream, corporate media -- both have used the same strategy to highlight hoaxes and ignore the best evidence of 9/11 complicity. This conscious covering up of conspiracy is also reflected in a similar confluence of the mainstream and alternative media regarding the coup d'etat against President Kennedy. Despite four and a half decades of massive public disbelief in the official story of what happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963, almost no media anywhere in the US dares to mention any of the substantive evidence that shows that Lee Harvey Oswald did not shoot anyone, that the assassination was a crime of state, and the motive was to stop President Kennedy from scaling back the Cold War (he had been deeply alarmed by the Cuban Missile Crisis and other confrontations, and was trying to change course when he was killed). The independent efforts to expose the truth of what was done to JFK were also damaged by false leads planted among the investigators and a nearly impervious wall of silence about the best evidence. Similar strategies were used to block public awareness of the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert F. Kennedy, among others. It is not a surprise that we now live in a society where most people, regardless of their political beliefs, do not trust the government.


www.votetruth08.com/index.php/truth/9-11/192-cynthia-mckinney-brings-911-back-to-congress
Cynthia McKinney Brings 9/11 Back to Congress
By Michael Kane
July, 2005 (FTW):

In 2002 at the National Press Club, Unansweredquestions.org held a press conference that C-Span taped but refused to air. Why did they refuse? Because at that time if the truth about 9/11 had gotten out, it may have actually made a real difference. That was well before the invasion of Iraq.

But now in 2005, almost four years later, C-Span not only showed up to record this congressional briefing for broadcast at a later date, they have also previously recorded, and aired, David Ray Griffin's lecture on 9/11.

Why? Because it can't make a difference now, that's why.


note: David Griffin's work on 9/11 needs careful fact checking, parts are accurate, and parts are ridiculous nonsense, so he gets more attention in the media than the work of Michael Ruppert, John Judge, Peter Dale Scott, Nafeez Ahmed or Paul Thompson, who did the best research on how 9/11 was allowed and assisted.

9/11 and Homeland Security

The term "Homeland Security" seems to have been first developed in the waning years of the Clinton / Gore administration, it is not a concept created as a response to 9/11. Homeland Security is a conglomeration of numerous intelligence and technical support government agencies into a behemoth with tremendous police state surveillance powers unchecked by any civilian oversight.

Homeland Security is based on false pretenses. One chapter of the official story of 9/11 is that the FBI, CIA and other federal agencies were unable to "connect the dots" about clues that they had. "Crossing the Rubicon" by Michael Ruppert documents a 2001 Rand Corporation report that noted these agencies only had very minor communication difficulties regarding counter-terrorism intelligence. The "intelligence reform" bill passed after the 2004 pseudo-election strengthened the "USA PATRIOT Act" by starting a process toward a de facto national ID card and other provisions that eviscerate privacy and civil liberties.

While 9/11 was allowed to happen, this does not mean that there is not a tremendous amount of resentment toward US foreign policies, especially in the parts of the world that have most of the remaining oil supplies. A genuine approach to preventing terrorism would change US foreign policies that foment injustice and hatred, thus removing the incentive for many violent acts. Domestically, the US needs a herculean effort to make our use of energy as efficient as possible, with massive investment in renewable energy jobs and radical honesty about the scale of the energy crisis and the need to "power down" (reduce consumption) instead of futilely trying to keep our exponential growth and overshoot economy afloat as the oil runs down.

"In some ways she was far more acute than Winston, and far less susceptible to Party propaganda. Once when he happened in some connection to mention the war against Eurasia, she startled him by saying casually that in her opinion the war was not happening. The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the Government of Oceania itself, 'just to keep people frightened'. This was an idea that had literally never occurred to him."
-- George Orwell, 1984

The myth of 9/11 is that a larger police state system
would have been able to stop it from happening
however, the best evidence shows that
9/11 was allowed to happen and given technical assistance
with the goals of domestic fascism and global empire
as the world passes the point of Peak Oil

9/11 and Fake Elections

During the 9/11 attack, Congress began to be evacuated as reports of a fourth plane came in. While Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania, not DC (likely from being intercepted and shot down), it is possible that Congress was the target of this plane. If that is true, and Congress had been hit, then 9/11 could have resulted in even more power being transferred to "President" Bush and his national security team.

The following month, anthrax from Fort Detrick, the US Army's main biological warfare research center, was mailed to Senator Daschle (D-SD), the chief Democrat in Congress, and Senator Leahy (D-VT), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. This follow-up attack resulted in tremendous panic just as the USA PATRIOT Act was under consideration.

It is unknown what Members of Congress think about the evidence for 9/11 complicity, although almost none have expressed even the slightest expression of dissent. The most courageous was Rep. Cynthia McKinney, who dared to suggest in 2002 that Bush may have had foreknowledge and was relentlessly attacked by the media. McKinney lost her 2002 re-election, but in 2004 was re-elected back to Congress for an additional two years. In 2005, she held a forum that involved some of the "Jersey Girls" and other 9/11 victim relatives, plus investigators such as Michael Ruppert and Wayne Madsen. While several staff from other Congressional offices observed the event, no other Representatives (or a Senator) dared to participate. In 2006, McKinney managed to question Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at a public hearing about the war games during 9/11, among other scandals. McKinney lost her 2006 re-election due to a barrage of media abuse and Diebold voting machines, a lesson that was clearly received by her colleagues in Congress.

Several other Representatives and Senators had milder comments about problems with the official investigation, but most were far less focused than McKinney's probing. One Senator once privately admitted to this writer at a public forum (but not at the microphone) that he knew that Vice President Cheney ran the war games during 9/11 from the basement of the White House. It is likely that many members of the political elite have some familiarity with the paradigm that 9/11 was deliberately allowed to happen and given technical assistance, but they don't dare voice their opinions in public due to the ridicule they would attract and the potential safety risks from the perpetrators.

Vince Salandria, one of the earliest and best critics of the Warren Commission cover-up of the coup against President Kennedy, concluded that the assassination of JFK was supposed to be seen as such by the political elite. He called it a transparent conspiracy, one intended to communicate to society's leaders that the perpetrators did the crime and they should be deferential toward their agenda. Similarly, the official story of 9/11 quickly breaks down under modest examination, but the intimidation factor of realizing that people who got away with this mass murder are probably able to accomplish other crimes deters most in the political, media, financial and military elites from raising their voices about this problem. The perpetrators probably care less about what the masses think about 9/11, and don't care if millions realize it was an "inside job," especially if many who promote this view mix accurate analysis of the crime with false evidence that makes the paradigm easily discreditable. (Leaders inside the Beltway don't dare be associated with a movement that promotes the false claim that a plane did not hit the Pentagon, when hundreds, if not thousands, saw Flight 77, and these eyewitnesses told their families, friends, neighbors, etc. that they saw this historic and tragic crime happen in front of them.)

World War IV and Homeland Security

The Department of Homeland Security is the domestic part of the Peak Oil Wars. DHS is a conglomeration of federal agencies including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Coast Guard, border security, airport screeners, protection of "critical infrastructure," and the Secret Service.

The military analogue is the Northern Command, also created after 9/11. Northcom's first Commander was General Ralph Eberhardt, who was in charge of the NORAD air defenses on 9/11. The US military is partly structured along unified comands of the different services (Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines). These commands include Central Command (Middle East), Southern Command (Latin America), Pacific Command (ocean and east Asia), Strategic Command (in charge of strategic nuclear missiles, bombers and submartines). The newest unified command is Africa Command. If there is ever official martial law in the US, it would probably be run by NORTHCOM.

from the film Wag the Dog
a dialogue between the Presidential advisor creating a fake war to help get the President re-elected and a CIA official intercepting the spin master and his assistant.

00:39:11:Can l help you?
00:39:13:What's the problem?
00:39:15:We're in a rush.
00:39:17:Do you know who we are?
00:39:19:l'm afraid that's the trouble, Miss Ames.
00:39:21:ClA.
00:39:30:l have this to say...
00:39:41:...every American man, woman, and child...
00:39:44:What am l gonna do?
00:39:46:l have a three-year-old daughter...
00:39:47:eventually headed for orthodonture.
00:39:49:Now that the ClA knows, l'm gonna lose everything--
00:39:52:my career, my reputation. What am l gonna do?
00:39:54:Brazen it through.
00:39:56:Took you long enough.
00:39:58:We found them as soon as we could.
00:40:00:All right.
00:40:02:After l'm done with them, what do they want me to do?
00:40:05:Lug them back to the district or dump them in the country...
00:40:07:let the FBl trip over them?
00:40:09:Legal department says you pick.
00:40:11:Depends on what we want to do with them.
00:40:12:This is a special report on the war in Albania.
00:40:15:We've just received more details...
00:40:17:on the Albanian girl running for her life.
00:40:19:The young girl was trying to escape...
00:40:21:after hearing her family was killed.
00:40:23:Apparently, there was a family connection in Canada.
00:40:29:Two things l know to be true...
00:40:32:there's no difference between good flan and bad flan...
00:40:35:and there is no war.
00:40:37:Guess who l am.
00:40:38:l would like to point out that l am under medical care...
00:40:41:and taking medication, side effects of which have--
00:40:44:Quite touching.
00:40:45:l also take this opportunity...
00:40:47:to suggest that, equally, l admit to nothing...
00:40:50:and l would like my lawyer present.
00:40:51:We show, and NSA confirms...
00:40:53:there are no nuclear devices on the Canadian border.
00:40:56:There are no nuclear devices in Albania.
00:40:58:Albania has no nuclear capacity.
00:41:00:Our spy satellites...
00:41:02:show no secret terrorist training camps...
00:41:04:in the Albanian hinterland.
00:41:06:The border patrol, the FBl the RCMP report...
00:41:09:no--repeat-- no untoward activity...
00:41:13:along our picturesque Canadian border.
00:41:15:The Albanian government is screaming its defense.
00:41:18:The world is listening.
00:41:20:There is no war.
00:41:21:There's a war. l'm watching it on television.
00:41:24:Who might you be?
00:41:26:-Conrad Brean. -Who do you work for?
00:41:28:Nobody whose name you want me to say.
00:41:32:lt's all well, but when the fit hits the shan...
00:41:35:somebody has to stay after school.
00:41:37:Who might that be?
00:41:38:l don't know what you're talking about.
00:41:40:The spy satellites show it.
00:41:43:They show no war.
00:41:44:Then what good are they?
00:41:46:Why spend a quarter trillion dollars a year on defense?
00:41:49:What good are they?
00:41:51:Are they useless or just broken?
00:41:52:l would like to point out further...
00:41:54:that these medications taken in conjunction--
00:41:56:lf there's no threat, then where are you?
00:41:59:lf there's no threat, what good are you?
00:42:00:You are the threat.
00:42:03:l'm the threat?
00:42:04:What have l been doing the last 30 years...
00:42:06:that you haven't been doing?
00:42:08:The last 30 years...
00:42:09:l have been working to ensure the security of my country.
00:42:11:l'm sure that speaks well of you and your parents...
00:42:14:but if forced to choose between the security of your country...
00:42:17:and the security of your job, which would you pick?
00:42:19:While you hesitate, permit me to suggest...
00:42:22:that they are one in the same.
00:42:24:l'm doing my job. That's what you see me doing.
00:42:27:l'm doing my job, too.
00:42:28:The constant stress l am under...
00:42:30:Let me ask you a simple question.
00:42:33:Why do people go to war?
00:42:35:l'll play your silly game.
00:42:37:To ensure their way of life.
00:42:39:-Would you fight to do that? -l have.
00:42:41:lf you went to war again, who would it be against?
00:42:44:Your ability to fight a two-ocean war against who?
00:42:46:Sweden and Togo?
00:42:47:That time has passed. lt's over.
00:42:49:The war of the future is nuclear terrorism.
00:42:52:lt'll be against a small group of dissidents...
00:42:54:who, unbeknownst perhaps to their own governments, have...
00:42:57:To go to that war, you have to be prepared.
00:42:59:You gotta be alert. The public has gotta be alert...
00:43:02:because that is the war of the future...
00:43:04:and if you're not gearing up to fight that war...
00:43:07:then the ax will fall. You'll be out in the street.
00:43:09:You can call this a drill, call this job security...
00:43:12:call it anything you like, but l got one for you.
00:43:15:Go to war to preserve your way of life?
00:43:16:Chuck, this is your way of life.
00:43:20:lf your spy satellites don't see nothing...
00:43:22:if there ain't no war...
00:43:23:then you can go home and take up golf...
00:43:26:'cause there ain't no war but ours.
00:43:33:Thank you.
00:43:35:Drive carefully.
00:43:46:Nice enough people.
00:43:47:They just hadn't thought it through.
00:43:49:You talked us out of there.
00:43:51:We got delayed. We're going to Nashville.
00:43:53:What?
00:43:54:You could talk a dog off a meat truck.
00:43:56:Thank you.
00:43:58:We just got stuck.
00:43:59:All systems five-by-five. See you in Nashville.
00:44:02:You saved our bacon.
00:44:04:lt was just a...
00:44:06:a phenomenal performance.
00:44:08:You turned them around.
00:44:12:They hadn't thought it through.

World War IV and Media

In 2002, most of the mainstream media acted as cheerleaders for the Bush administration's relentless drive for their attack on Iraq. Despite the transparent lies used to sell the war, few in the media dared to suggest that the "evidence" as justification were lies.

After the brief invasion became a protracted, bloody occupation, some in the mainstream media gradually began to state that the war on Iraq was based on deceptions, such as the claims of Weapons of Mass Destruction were false. However, even those media institutions that dared to make this accusation did not then suggest what the real motivations were for the war and occupation -- to control the region's oil fields as the world reached (and passed) the point of Peak Oil. The media declined to suggest that Bush and Cheney should be impeached, the penalty mandated in the US Constitution for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Even the alternative media which was generally hostile to the Bush administration and openly opposing the war did not make the connection to Peak Oil.

In most military coups in the so-called "third world," taking over the television or radio stations is a primary goal of any insurgent force, since controlling access to information is a prerequisite for controlling a population. In the United States, the media's refusal to explain the underlying reasons for the Iraq War helps ensure that the occupation will be able to continue, even if the Bush administration becomes the "fall guys." It is likely that the "bad cop" of the Republicans will be replaced by the "good cop" of the Democrats, who will administer the occupation supposedly in a more enlightened manner, using more local forces from the new Iraqi military and secret police. This outcome would allow for a troop draw down in Iraq and their redeployment for the pipeline wars in central Asia.

World War IV and Fake Elections

"It is my belief that since the JFK assassination the secret government, the CIA and the [Military Industrial Complex], have been running the show. They have not allowed anyone to become president, from either party, that was not under their control."
-- Bruce Gagnon, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space http://space4peace.blogspot.com/2008/07/jfks-conversion-from-war.html

Kennedy was the only President who made a serious effort to reduce the power of the military complex. He changed his mind about the Cold War after being humiliated by the Bay of Pigs debacle and worse, the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy called for an end to the Cold War in his June 1963 speech at American University. JFK vowed to scatter the CIA into a thousand pieces and the CIA scattered JFK into a thousand pieces.

Media and Fake Elections

US elections are rigged with tampered tabulators, faith-based touch screen voting machines, voter role manipulations and other efforts to keep mostly Democratic voting constituencies from having their ballots counted.

But the most important manipulation of the political process is by the corporations that control the media - television, newspapers, magazines, books, music, entertainment and parts of the internet. Media shapes the permissible terms of debate, screens out dissenting views, and whether pack journalism regards a candidate as a breath of fresh air to fix problems or an inexperienced newcomer not to be trusted with critical decisions will determine the 2008 President Election.

Less common election altering includes the coup against President Kennedy, the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the 1980 October Surprise (which toppled Carter) and the "plane crashes" of Senator Paul Wellstone (2002) and Governor Mel Carnahan (2000 -- he ran against then Senator Ashcroft).

The Democratic Party died in Dallas on November 22, 1963 -- their refusal to demand a real investigation and prosecution of the conspirators led toward their permanent minority status.

Why elections are allowed to be stolen is more important than the details of phony voting machines.

Homeland Security and the Media

The media has shied away from covering the military industrial complex's secret government structures.

Part of the reason for this is financial interconnections: military contractors own many media institutions.

Perhaps a deeper reason is that the truth is psychologically troubling - the US is not the democracy that it proclaims itself to be.

Self censorship is a bigger problem than centrally directed censorship.

The alternative media covers some deeper issues, but not the core issues that motivate the empire. they will say the war on iraq is terrible, discuss civilian casualties. Few discuss the role of Peak Oil in the strategic calculus of the Empire, admit that 9/11 was allowed to happen to create the pretext to grab the oil, or highlight how Obama's running mate Senator Biden wants to dismember Iraq so the US can control the oil rich provinces much easier.

After 9/11, the first anthrax letter sent from Fort Detrick (the US Army's biological warfare research center in Maryland) was sent to the photo editor for the National Enquirer, with follow up letters sent to more respectable media groups. It is rumored, but unprovable, that the National Enquirer may have had photos of George W. Bush in his youthful indiscretion days. Whether this is true or not, the anthrax attack on their photo lab gave the opportunity for government agents to search this archive without anyone else watching. The messages of these attacks on the media and the Senate Democrats was that they were not to interfere with the unfolding agenda, and these terrorist outrages were successful.

Homeland Security and Fake Elections

In 1967 Jim Garrison concluded that "In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society." Garrison led the sole prosecution of one of the perpetrators of the JFK assassination - his book "On the Trail of the Assassins" was depicted in the Oliver Stone film "JFK."

The National Security State, the real core of the United States federal government, is not under meaningful civilian oversight by the Congress, the Judiciary or even the Office of the President. While the "intelligence" agencies and the military are supposed to act on the policies decided by the resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, in practice, these agencies often act without regard to their supposed Commander in Chief. Some Presidents have been tolerant of these secret government departments, and some have tried to rein them in - but the bureaucracy does not change just because an election happens.

The Presidents who have tried the hardest to change the way the covert intelligence agencies operate have had the largest push-back from these entities - Kennedy, Nixon, Carter and Bush the Second. Kennedy vowed, after the Bay of Pigs attack on Cuba and the Cuban Missile Crisis, that he would scatter the CIA into a thousand pieces. Instead, the CIA scattered Kennedy into a thousand pieces. Nixon was more militaristic, but he tried to change the way the secret government operated, and he was pushed out in a right wing virtual coup - the exposure of the Watergate scandal was not really the triumph of investigative reporting over corrupt politicians. Carter tried to clean house at the CIA, firing about a thousand of the worst covert operatives - and they retaliated through massive right wing pressure, culminating in the manipulation of the Iranian hostage crisis and the October Surprise deal to delay the release of the hostages until after Reagan became president. Bush the Second gave unprecedented powers to the secret government, but he also helped facilitate unprecedented military control over the nominally civilian CIA. It would be a mistake to see the covert, actual government as a monolithic entity - it has factions and infighting as much as any other giant series of bureaucracies, and not all of them are happy with the neo-cons. Plus, it seems likely that the "failures" of the Bush the Lesser administration will then be used to implement the real policies that have been desired, whether by Obama or McCain. Bush II "broke" Iraq, which allows the successor to supposedly fix the problem through partitioning that country - a long term strategy of using ethnic conflict to redraw the boundaries to control the oil. It is a "good cop, bad cop" strategy.

Many countries that have secret government structures more powerful than elected representatives engage in what's been nicknamed "demonstration elections" - holding ostensible contests that are really rigged by elites that merely present the illusion of democracy. While this concept is usually focused on so-called Third World countries such as Mexico, it is just as valid for examining Presidential contests in the United States. There are many to rig elections - phony ballot counters and dirty tricks with voter registration are among the popular options - the real issues of manipulation are more systemic. Author Peter Dale Scott refers to the hidden structure of how these types of decisions are made as "deep politics," not necessarily a conspiracy in the usual sense of that word, but rather just the way things work in practice. Many recent Presidential contests have featured candidates who seemed to exude a sense that they understood their opponent had already been selected (before the ballots were cast) and merely were going through the motions to present the illusion that it was really a race. Among the most hapless candidates were Michael Dukakis (1988) and Bob Dole (1996) - it is hard for anyone to argue that either had the illusion that they had any chance of "winning."

To be speculative - it is likely that the "winner" is picked long before the election (just like in Mexico), and the "election contest" is merely an elaborate theatrical act. One clue that this may be the reality is hinted by the correlation of the Washington Redskins football team and the election outcomes. Between 1936 and 2000, whenever the team won the game just before the election, the President or his successor won the election, and when the team lost the game, the President or his successor also lost their contest. While this seems like an absurd comparison, the odds of this being a coincidence are the same as flipping a coin 17 times and having it turn up heads each time - a one in 131 thousand chance. Perhaps this is just an inside joke for the elite, since it seems clear that some of them have a very sarcastic sense of humor. This correlation broke down with the 2004 election, where the Green Bay team beat the Redskins but Kerry "lost." However, 2004 was an unusual election in that the elite were more divided over the contest that usual, and there was severe amount of election fraud to ensure that Kerry "lost" (even though he actually won).

Whatever the outcome in 2008, it seems clear that the contest is shaped as a fierce fight in a society split nearly 50/50 -- even though this characterization is mostly false. There is a lot more unity among the public than the largely contrived issues highlighted for the election contest would indicate. The points of unity that are widespread through the country could resonate with more people than the miserable efforts by the Gore and Kerry campaigns, but that new found mobilization would not benefit the ossified old guard running most of the Democratic Party, either. If the Democrats waged a better effort, the election rigging tactics to flip the results by a few percent in a few states would not have been enough to change the outcome. In 2008, the Obama campaign tapped into a lot of this simmering resentment and desire for change, but the difference between the marketing of Obama's campaign and the reality of his advisors and his policies risk a backlash when millions of voters get buyer's remorse after the Inauguration. Worse, since any sane response to Peak Oil and other severe crises would require challenging entrenched economic interests, the failure to deliver "more" goodies to the voters as the economy contracts may result in profound dissatisfaction with government. While this writer certainly does not encourage trust in any government, that sort of bitterness can easily be manipulated into quasi-fascist mass movements -- a real danger for social cohesion that would make a compassionate response to the "Triple Crisis" even less likely.

The Democratic Party's elected officials seem split between those who support the Empire and those who are afraid of the Empire. Those who support the Empire work in collusion with the majority of Republicans (only a few of them don't want Empire). Those afraid of it are mostly unwilling to engage in any direct challenges, knowing that they will earn well funded election opponents, media smear campaigns, and perhaps even physical threats to themselves or their families. Even those who are willing to challenge the military industrial complex, its Homeland Security police state system and the countless shadow government entities know that few of their Congressional colleagues dare support their Quixotic quests. Politicians come and go, but the national security state remains.

George W. Bush was not joking when he stated, immediately after the Supreme Court sElection in 2000,
"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."

Perhaps the real questions for undoing decades of militaristic damage to Constitutional government are how to deal with the questions of impunity for these crimes, to scale back the empire voluntarily (if that is still possible at this late date), to encourage most US citizens to understand what has been done in the name of "freedom and democracy," and to get the billionaires and other elites to realize that there is no wealth on a dead planet. None of these are easy questions, and wishful thinking is unlikely to answer them, but being honest about our collective predicament is more likely to accomplish a positive result than remaining in denial as a society.

JFK & Peak

- Hubbert

- Rickover

- JFK briefed on Peak Oil

- World Peak Discovery around his term

- redirecting resources for global peace instead of arms race - would have made proactively preparing for Peak possible

JFK and Climate

Modern Ecology movement had not quite become mainstream

1962 - Silent Spring

increasing public concern about increasing pollution

Earth Day, EPA / environmental laws - 1970

Voluntary simplicity - change in societal approach about ecology - more like if JFK had managed to turn off Cold War

JFK and steel companies - showed ability to challenge entrenched corporate power, that would have been needed to heed the warnings about Climate Chaos from burning fossil fuels and altering habitat.

JFK and 9/11

JFK and War

Had been in World War II - almost died.

Missile Gap - yet had challenged US policy in Viet Nam (had been there) long before election.

Bay of Pigs - JFK realized he was set up by military and CIA which knew their guerrillas had no chance of success. He refused to send in an invasion force, publicly took responsibility for the humiliation, and fired the leadership of the CIA.

Northwoods

Cuban Missile Crisis

Changing the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Viet Nam - refused to bomb

Viet Nam - a mistake: putting Lodge in as Ambassador, Diem Coup (same time as aborted hit in Chicago on JFK)

Laos

Lumumba / Congo

Indonesia

Soviet Union - Krushchev: back channel dealing during Missile Crisis, communication around the State Department, June 10, 1963, Nuclear Test Ban, September 20, 1963, Krushchev accepted Moon Race conversion to cooperation.

Soviet Union - RFK emissary privately told Kremlin a domestic conspiracy removed JFK from office. "One Hell of a Gamble" revealed this but didn't understand. Cite "Unspeakable" - Krushchev removed the following year by his hard liners, but he was allowed to live unmolested in his country "dacha."

Cuba - starting process to normalize relations, Jean Daniel and Castro, November 22. "Everything is going to change." No subsequent President has tried to normalize relations. We have diplomatic relations with countries aiming nuclear weapons at our cities - Russia and China (and probably others). What we need even more than embassies and ambassadors and intelligence agents posing as diplomats is direct people to people cultural exchanges, international communication and cooperation. The energy we spend on warfare is the energy that would be needed to mitigate Peak Resources and ecological overshoot. That shift would be a key part of our maturing as a species into global consciousness, it is possibly a prerequisite for the human race continuing to survive, it certainly will be required for our civilization to continue without blowing ourselves up or making the Earth uninhabitable.

After JFK - Brazil, Viet Nam, Dominican Republic, Cambodia, Chile, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Operation Condor, Gladio / the strategy of tension, the rise of international terrorism, Israel / Palestine (1967, Liberty, Dimona, West Bank / Gaza, endless occupation), Middle East, fueling radical Islam, Afghanistan, apartheid South Africa (RFK's trip in 1966), Central America wars 1970s 1980s, Desert Storm, War on Iraq, World War IV / Peak Oil Wars / New Middle East Map

JFK - Homeland

National Security State / Military Industrial Complex

JFK - Media

Media complicity in the assassination coverup

even "alternative" media part of it - The Nation, Chomsky, Cockburn, "The Left and the Death of JFK," others ignore it - Democracy Now probably the most notable example. Pushing confusion - Mafia did it, JFK was a bad guy: rich militarist.

JFK - Elections

1960 election fraud in Illinois - both sides doing it

JFK was probably going to win re-election, increasingly confident and effective, turned around sentiment on Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (80 ... votes in Senate), RFK in charge of ensuring "March on Washington" went well.

Assassination is a form of election fraud.

Peak Money

exponential growth - energy growth - monetary growth - population growth

are we smarter than yeast

finite earth - steady state economics / renewable energy - growth based economics breaking down

a reason you hear about climate and not peak - technofix illusions easier with carbon credits than depletion

Climate Money

big money manipulating both sides

climate deniers - oil and coal and the rest

carbon credits - profiteering without consumption reduction

fossil fuels and eroei - a reason for power down, not technofix - involuntary simplicity

economic contraction - the real way for carbon reduction - US reduction of oil

9/11 Money

attack on financial symbol

rush to get wall street reopened - suppressed evidence of toxic air - hard to ignore THAT conspiracy

resulted in trillions of dollars being shifted - military spending, homeland defense, budgetary priorities

increased US occupation of Middle East oil fields - control of the last of the oil equals control over the global economy - Europe mostly imports, japan and korea import, india and china need fuel to "grow"

quote Lone Gunmen - "the arms market's flat"

War Money

Merchants of Death - not exactly a new story, the scale is unprecedented

biggest boost possible for war spending, in US but elsewhere, too

cost of war on iraq - stiglitz claims $3 trillion

cost of long term occupation?

afghanistan - costly - heroin money

pakistan escalation - potentially even more

iran - threat to global economy if straits closed or saudi oil installations attacked (or us troops in Iraq attacked)

not just to profiteer from war and oil, but control the whole global economy - elite preparation for post peak scenarios

Media Money

media is not in cahoots with big business - media IS big business

who owns media - weapons, other conglomerates, interlocking directorships with key corporations, banking, other manufacturing

media invited to be part of Bilderberg (but not to report on it)

media paid off by campaign contributions - no public airtime, money for ads instead (Nader suggestion for airtime on public airwaves)

media companies moving to control content on the internet as television viewership declines

media can't print accurate materisal about peak / end of growth - part of the endless growth financial system, their stock values would decline.

media instrumental in JFK coverup.

watergate

deep politics not allowable discussion in media, not even alternative media

alternative media still part of the financial paradigm - foundation grants - non profits usually need someone else's profits.

9/11 media strategy - bits of data in mainstream but they don't dare connect the dots

active disruption: highlight hoaxes ignore best evidence

Homeland Money

new security complex to bilk the government

use financial system as tool of population wide surveillance - tracking purchases, digital money (credit / debit cards, bank statements, online shopping, etc)

parallel with political deal in China - after Tienanmen Square 1989 - quid pro quo - public stays out of politics in exchange for increased standards of living - more energy consumption, unprecedented shift from rural to urbanized living, more meat, modern apartment buildings, the start of car culture. In US, we have "lifestyles" that in some ways would be the envy of Medieval monarchs - flying as a middle class, mainstream entitlement, fresh food from all over the world regardless of the season, cheap gasoline for easy motoring, endless entertainment diversions. Brave New World more than 1984.

Brazil - parallel.

Homeland Security apparatus - designed for controlling public anger about:

economy unravels past peak, as debt bubbles go bust, as the exponential growth paradigm collides with a shrinking resource base

Election money

campaign finance reform

more money to advertise for the job than it has in salary - ability to direct far larger sums to one's constituents, allies, business partners, relatives, etc.

control of US government the biggest prize in history - worth spending a few billion every election cycle

supreme court - money is speech, corporations are people - supreme decline with warren commission, bush v. gore

elections not only tampered with by donations, deep politics selection of candidates, lone gunmen and airplane crashes, other dirty tricks

financial world vets candidates before they can "win" - obama and hillary both went to bilderberg, so did Edwards, Clinton (1991). have to have served the empire to be given the job.