The Empire 124

The Mountain Sentinel bericht:

'Energy Depletion & the US Descent into FascismbyDale Allen Pfeiffer
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For a free pdf of this article, suitable for printing, click here.

Contents
1. First Warnings
2. The Intervening Years
3. Documentaries of Note
4. The Withdrawal of Consent
5. Grassroots Rebellion
6. Further Reading & Viewing
First Warnings

In October of 2001, a little over a month after 9/11, I wrote an article titled The Background is Oil. The hypothesis laid out in this article was that the 2000 US presidential election resulted in a coup of neocons and oil interests who had taken control of the US in order to prepare for the coming peak and decline of world oil production. Furthermore, this coup engineered the 9/11 terrorist attacks to further their own interests.
Before 9/11, the coup was hampered by lack of support from both the public and Congress. The tragedies of September 11th washed all resistance away in a flood of rabid patriotism. As a result, the coup was able to hijack the US political process. Over the coming years, starting with the patriot act, the coup has been able to strip us of our constitutional rights, in preparation for the civil unrest which will come from the peak and decline of oil production and the resulting economic collapse.
The day after 9/11, the junta announced that the US would undertake a "War against Terror;" that is, a war without end, directed against whomever the junta should label as an enemy state. The war was actually a cover for the consolidation of military empire and a worldwide grab for control of energy production. Never mind that terrorism can never be ended through warfare, but only exacerbated (see Restating the Obvious).
After writing the article The Background is Oil, I shopped it around very eagerly. This message needed be heard by as many as possible. There were many people, both within the US and around the world, who did not believe the official story of 9/11 and the "War on Terror," but without this knowledge of the peak oil motive, it was very difficult to understand why the junta was proceeding with such a Machiavellian scheme, nor why the power brokers behind the junta would condone this madness.
For the next month, I sent this essay out to every alternative news service and periodical I could think of. None of them would touch it. I had just about given up on having the article published. As a final option, I would put the article out on the web myself, through email groups and my own website. As a last chance, I tried sending the article to From the Wilderness, a newsletter that I knew little about but which seemed to be putting out information about 9/11 that no one else would touch.
Whatever my subsequent thoughts and feelings about From the Wilderness, I owe Mike Ruppert a debt of thanks for publishing this article, and all of the material that followed it. Within the next few months, The Background is Oil traveled all over the web and was translated into many different languages.
In January of 2002, I followed up on this article with another entitled What Next for the Oil Coup? In this article, I proposed that if the US had suffered an oil coup that was using 9/11 to make a global energy grab, then we should be able to make some predictions based on this hypothesis. Looking at the top oil producing countries, I stated that the most likely targets of an oil coup would be Iraq, Iran, and Venezuela. Saudi Arabia would also be important, but its ties to the US could be shored up by the occupation of Iraq and the military bases established in the surrounding area. I also threw in a few other countries devoid of energy resources, but which the US considered to be enemy states — countries such as North Korea and Cuba. Within a week of the publication of this article in From the Wilderness, Bush gave his infamous "axis of evil" address. And in the years since, the countries listed in this article have been the almost exclusive focus of the "War on Terror."
The Intervening Years
Over the years since I first wrote about the oil coup, the Bush junta has fulfilled all of my worst expectations. The junta has invaded Iraq, though it is now clear that Iraq represented absolutely no terrorist threat to the US. US military bases now surround the Middle East and the Caspian region. And now the junta is very eager to invade Iran. Only in their attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuelan Presidente Hugo Chavez has the US junta been thwarted. And it is hoped that Presidente Chavez can continue to outmaneuver the junta.
The junta has also managed to mothball the Geneva Convention and the US Constitution. The US now has an official policy of sanctioning torture, concentration camps, and limitless detention without filing formal charges. The junta has instituted a policy of pre-emptive strike known as the "Bush Doctrine." The US can now attack any country that it perceives to be a threat, without provocation.
At home, the junta can conduct domestic spying without court approval. It can label US citizens as terrorists and then imprison them without charge. If you think this only applies to naturalized citizens, think again. In the last few years, the junta has made it very clear that it views environmental activists as terrorists. Environmental activists are now languishing in prison (and in some cases, even dying there) for destruction of property, while right wing militants are allowed to continue plotting murder. (See Sourcecode: Eco Dissent/Not Terrorism.) And the junta has announced that anti-war activists and others who vocally dissent will be monitored for possible terrorist activities.
The Bush junta has wracked up more high crimes than any previous administration. Yet Congress has granted them full immunity. Any attempt to impeach Bush and Cheney for lying about the reasons for invading Iraq is dead in the water. And the junta is now pursuing the very same tactics with regard to Iran.
In preparation for the economic havoc that will follow the decline of energy production, the junta has made sure that bankruptcy proceedings will not excuse the general public from their consumer debt. The stage is set for the working class within the US to become indentured servants (see Peak Oil & the Working Class). Yet, very few are aware of what is in store for them, and most would not believe if it were mentioned to them.
Internment camps have been prepared within the US, capable of housing many thousands of dissenters. And plans are now being formed to beef up border security, including building and maintaining fences along the southern border. The entire US is being transformed into a prison. Repressive immigration legislation is being pursued by Congress, supposedly on behalf of the US working class. Yet a "War on Immigrants" will be no more successful at halting illegal immigration than the "War on Terror" will stop terrorism. The premises of both wars are false, and the junta knows this. The "War on Immigrants" is ultimately about repressing the working class, both internationally and within the US (see Energy Depletion and Immigration).
Documentaries of Note
The perspective presented several years ago in The Background is Oil has become the thesis for a new documentary, Oil, Smoke and Mirrors, which can be viewed freely online courtesy of Google videos, or which can be purchased on DVD directly from the producers (http://www.oilsmokeandmirrors.com/). I heartily recommend this documentary; it should be watched by every citizen of the US. There is little time left to prevent our descent into fascism, and far too many people are not even aware of it.
For those who require more convincing that 9/11 was an inside job, I recommend 9/11; Press for Truth. In this documentary, the 9/11 Family Steering Committee tell their own story, using Paul Thompson's 9/11 timeline to make it very clear that we have been lied to about the tragedy of September 11th. This documentary is only available for purchase as a DVD, but it is well worth $15.
Finally, the story of the attempted Venezuelan coup is told in The Revolution will not be Televised. This documentary can also be found on Google videos. Most US citizens do not even know that the US supported the attempted overthrow of duly elected Venezuelan Presidente Chavez. In the US, Chavez is portrayed as a madman, a terrorist, and a dictator. This documentary makes very clear that he is none of these things. Presidente Chavez, in fact, has a much better record than George W. Bush for supporting democracy and free speech.
Upon viewing this documentary, it becomes very clear that the reason the coup failed was because of the people. The people rose up against the coup, and it was their uprising which encouraged loyalists within the military to stage a counter-coup. Without a doubt, Chavez is an excellent tactician. But he is also sincerely a man of the people. And without popular support, his government would have succumbed long ago to US intervention.
The Withdrawal of Consent
The Venezuela documentary also explains that what is lacking in the US is an informed and active public. The oil junta has succeeded because the US public remains uninformed and indifferent, locked into a state of denial that is almost psychotic in its disconnection from reality. If the US public would rise up, the game would be over.
Certainly, the majority of US citizens are dissatisfied with Bush, but they are not truly aware of how close we have come to fascism. Those who are now waking up still place their faith in the electoral system. By the time they realize that democracy is dead in the US, it may very well be too late for them to rise up. The system does not serve us. It is high time that we took our founding fathers' advice and rebelled against this corrupt system and the plutocracy that controls this country.
It is quite likely that the Republicans will retain control of Congress in an election rife with irregularities. However, even if the Democrats manage to take control of Congress, we can expect no changes from them. Both parties are owned by the power brokers behind the oil junta. Whoever is in power, the US will continue its slide toward fascism and totalitarianism.
We do have a chance yet. It will take a few more years before the junta has completely transformed our society. We have to act now.
The age of consumer capitalism is at an end. It will most likely dissolve into some form of debt servitude or corporate feudalism. Yet, even this will be a dying system in the face of energy depletion, global warming and many other problems resulting from over a century of conspicuous consumption. If we continue to support this system, then the blood is on our hands.
We can, instead, turn to a system based on relocalization, democratic decentralization, community and quality of life. But we will have to break free of the plutocracy to do so. They would never tolerate any change that might strip them of even a portion of their power. They would rather live in a dying police state where they remain at the top.
We cannot continue to go along with the plutocracy. Whether we are indifferent, uninformed or in denial, the blood will be on our hands. Our only option is to withdraw our support from this system and actively seek to replace it.
In a past article (Peak Oil and the Working Class), I suggested that what was needed was a new working class movement. The working class, within the US and elsewhere, had to stop serving their masters. A true general strike would take back all power from the plutocracy and stop the junta dead in their tracks.
When I wrote that article, I was attacked on several fronts. Mike Ruppert and Jamey Hecht contended that because of outsourcing, the working class in the US could no longer carry off an effective general strike. They said that nobody would be bothered by a strike of hairdressers and salespeople. I still insist that a real general strike, encompassing the entire working class — blue and white collar, truckers and salespeople, farm workers and engineers — would shut down the system. It was because of this disagreement that I left From the Wilderness to put out the article on my own.
In that article, I suggested that the IWW might be the ideal union to organize such a movement. I was then very surprised to be attacked from within the IWW. Perhaps some members of the IWW are too misinformed to see what is happening, or perhaps they are blinded by denial. If the IWW does not want to foster a true worker's movement then it can no longer call itself a revolutionary union. In that case, it is little more than a worker controlled business union. Due to my great admiration of the IWW, such a failure saddens me.
Grassroots Rebellion
It is up to you and me to defeat the junta and the plutocracy. We must act, and we must act quickly. Failing, we will be lucky if we only fall into debt servitude. If the coup succeeds, then it is quite possible that many of us, myself included, will simply disappear.
The government and the media are both against us. And they are intent on reigning in the internet just as soon as possible. We have a very brief window of opportunity remaining — a few years at most. It is time to do what we can.
I urge you to read all the materials listed at the end of this article, and view the documentaries I have mentioned. Then I urge you to pass this article along to everyone you know.
This system is suicidal, nor can it be reformed from within the system. It is time to withdraw our consent. The bookstore at our website (www.mountainsentinel.com/store.php) offers a number of books that will help you to do this. I apologize that the bookstore is an Amazon affiliate, but many of these books are hard to come by otherwise.
Personal withdrawal from the system is a start, but it is not enough. We must organize and work toward a complete general strike. Only if the entire working class refuses to serve can we take back our own power and return this world to sanity.
So far as sabotage is concerned, right now it is probably too early for major acts of sabotage. At present, the government and the media would likely spin such acts against us. Only when we have gained the understanding and support of the public can we successfully engage in sabotage. Yet, it is the duty of the sane and conscientious person to do whatever he or she can — short of harming other people — to stop a system bent on the destruction of the planet and the increase of injustice and human suffering.
And, after all, sabotage will never be as effective as a successful general strike. We must take back our power and stop the madness. Anything less is suicide.

Further Reading & Viewing
The Background is OilThis was the first published article stating the thesis that the US 2000 electoral coup and 9/11 were both about energy depletion. The arguments contained in this article are as valid today as they were in 2001.
What NextThis article helps explain what the "War on Terror" holds in store for us.
Eating Fossil FuelsThis article helps to explain just how important energy depletion will be to all of us. It has been expanded into a book from New Society Publishers. The book also contains many resources for those seeking solutions to this problem (CSA's, farmers markets, food banks, community agriculture organizations, etc.) The book is available in bookstores or directly from the publisher, New Society Publishers.
Imminent Peril, Part 1Imminent Peril, Part 2 This 2-part article explains just how drastic our situation is on this planet.
The Collapse of Complex SystemsPresentation to the New York Local Solutions Conference, April 2006These articles explain why there are no technofixes for energy depletion. And they explain that, at best, technofixes would only buy us a little time and likely make the situation worse in the long run.
Peak Oil and the Working ClassWhat is ahead for the working class, and what can we do about it?
Energy Depletion and ImmigrationWhy closing the borders would not work and would ultimately hurt US workers.
Restating the ObviousWhy the War on Terror will only lead to more terrorism.
Oil, Smoke and MirrorsAn excellent documentary expanding the thesis of The Background is Oil. This documentary should be viewed by everyone.
9/11; Press for TruthYou owe it to the victims of 9/11 to watch this video. And, as we are all victims of 9/11, you owe it to yourself. We have recently learned that this documentary can now be viewed on Google videos.
The Revolution will not be TelevisedRiveting. Watch this if for no other reason than to see an example of the sort of informed and active public which is the best insurance of continuing democracy.
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Zie: http://www.mountainsentinel.com/#energyfascism

The Empire 123

De New York Times:

'Another Thousand Lives.

How long can this go on?

Saddam is dead. The weapons of mass destruction were a
mirage. More than 3,000 American G.I.s and scores of
thousands of Iraqis have been killed. Voters in the
United States have made it clear that they no longer
support American involvement in this exercise in
sustained barbarism. Incredibly, the U.S. military
itself is turning against the war.

And yet the president, against the counsel of his
commanders on the ground, apparently is ready to
escalate - to send more American lives into the fire he
set in Iraq.

In a devastating critique of the war, the newsweekly
Army Times led its current edition with the headline: 'About-Face on the War - After 3 years of support, troops sour on Iraq.' The article detailed a Military Times Poll that found, for the first time, that 'more troops disapprove of the president's handling of the war than approve of it.'

Only a third of the service members surveyed approved
of the president's conduct of the war, while 42 percent disapproved. Perhaps worse was the finding that only half of the troops believed that success in Iraq was likely.

The service members made it clear that they were not
attacking their commander in chief personally. His
overall approval rating remained high. What has turned
them off has been the wretched reality of the war. In
the article, David Segal, director of the Center for
Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland, said, 'They're seeing more casualties and fatalities and less progress.'

In other words, they're seeing the same thing everybody
else is seeing - except, perhaps, Mr. Bush.

On New Year's Day, readers of The New York Times could
see the excruciating photo layout of the latest 1,000
American service members to die in Iraq. As in all
wars, most of them were young. Many of them were
smiling in the photos. All of them died unnecessarily.

The war has been an exercise in futility and mind-
boggling incompetence, and yet our involvement
continues - with no end in sight, no plans for
withdrawal, no idea of where we might be headed - as if
the U.S. had fallen into some kind of bizarrely
destructive trance from which it is unable to awaken.'

Lees verder: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0104-27.htm

Ook de Nederlandse regering steunt deze - in de woorden van de New York Times - 'exercise in sustained barbarism.' Misschien kan ook de Nederlandse parlementaire pers wakker worden en deze regering en de op handen zijnde coalitie enkele kritische vragen hierover stellen. Voordat het straks te laat is. Ik begrijp steeds meer hoe die lafheid van de Europese politiek en massamedia in de jaren dertig een rol van belang speelde bij de opkomst van het terroristische naziregime.

Robert Fisk 23

Robert Fisk:

'The whole bloody thing was obscene Butchery was supposed to have been presented as a solemn execution.

The lynching of Saddam Hussein - for that is what we are talking about - will turn out to be one of the determining moments in the whole shameful crusade upon which the West embarked in March of 2003. Only the president-governor George Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara could have devised a militia administration in Iraq so murderous and so immoral that the most ruthless mass murderer in the Middle East could end his days on the gallows as a figure of nobility, scalding his hooded killers for their lack of manhood and - in his last seconds - reminding the thug who told him to "go to hell" that the hell was now Iraq. "Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it," Malcolm reported of the execution of the treacherous Thane of Cawdor in Macbeth. Or, as a good friend of mine in Ballymena said to me on the phone a few hours later, "The whole bloody thing was obscene." Quite so. On this occasion, I'll go along with the voice of Protestant Ulster.Of course, Saddam gave his victims no trial; his enemies had no opportunity to hear the evidence against them; they were mown down into mass graves, not handed a black scarf to prevent the hangman's noose from burning their neck as it broke their spine. Justice was "done", even if a trifle cruelly. But this is not the point. Regime change was done in our name and Saddam's execution was a direct result of our crusade for a "new" Middle East. To watch a uniformed American general - despite the indiscipline of more and more US troops in Iraq - wheedling and whining at a press conference that his men were very courteous to Saddam until the very moment of handover to Muqtada al-Sadr's killers could only be appreciated with the blackest of humour.Note how the best "our" Iraqi government's officials could do by way of reply was to order an "enquiry" to find out how mobile phones were taken into the execution room - not to identify the creatures who bawled abuse at Saddam Hussein in his last moments. How very Blairite of the al-Maliki government to search for the snitches rather than the criminals who abused their power. And somehow, they got away with it; acres of agency copy from the Green Zone reporters were expended on the Iraqi government's consternation, as if al- Maliki did not know what had transpired in the execution chamber. His own officials were present - and did nothing.That's why the "official" videotape of the hanging was silent - and discreetly faded out - before Saddam was abused. It was cut at this point, not for reasons of good taste but because that democratically elected Iraqi government - whose election was such "great news for the people of Iraq" in the words of Lord Blair - knew all too well what the world would make of the terrible seconds that followed. Like the lies of Bush and Blair - that everything in Iraq was getting better when in fact it was getting worse - butchery was supposed to have been presented as a solemn judicial execution.Worst of all, perhaps, is that the hanging of Saddam mimicked, in ghostly, miniature form, the manner of his own regime's bestial executions. Saddam's own hangman at Abu Ghraib, a certain Abu Widad, would also taunt his victims before pulling the trap door lever, a last cruelty before extinction. Is this where Saddam's hangmen learned their job? And just who exactly were those leather-jacketed hangmen last week, by the way? No one, it seemed, bothered to ask this salient question. Who chose them? Al-Maliki's militia chums? Or the Americans who managed the whole roadshow from the start, who so organised Saddam's trial that he was never allowed to reveal details of his friendly relations with three US administrations - and thus took the secrets of the murderous, decade-long Baghdad-Washington military alliance to his grave?I would not ask this question were it not for the sense of profound shock I experienced when touring the Abu Ghraib prison after "Iraq's liberation" and meeting the US-appointed senior Iraqi medical officer at the jail. When his minders were distracted, he admitted to me he had also been the senior "medical officer" at Abu Ghraib when Saddam's prisoners were tortured to death there. No wonder our enemies-become-friends are turning into our enemies again.'

Lees verder: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2129966.ece Of:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16086.htm

The Empire 122

De Nederlandse commerciele massamedia beseffen het niet, maar in de VS zelf wordt in alle lagen van de bevolking hard nagedacht over het economische en morele failliet van hun land en de ineenstorting van de voorheen alom geprezen American Dream.

'For America's Sake.
by Bill Moyers.

The following is an adaptation of remarks made by Bill Moyers to a December 12 gathering in New York sponsored by The Nation, Demos, the Brennan Center for Justice and the New Democracy Project. --The Editors
You could not have chosen a better time to gather. Voters have provided a respite from a right-wing radicalism predicated on the philosophy that extremism in the pursuit of virtue is no vice. It seems only yesterday that the Trojan horse of conservatism was hauled into Washington to disgorge Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist and their hearty band of ravenous predators masquerading as a political party of small government, fiscal restraint and moral piety and promising "to restore accountability to Congress...[and] make us all proud again of the way free people govern themselves."
Well, the long night of the junta is over, and Democrats are ebullient as they prepare to take charge of the multitrillion-dollar influence racket that we used to call the US Congress. Let them rejoice while they can, as long as they remember that while they ran some good campaigns, they have arrived at this moment mainly because George W. Bush lost a war most people have come to believe should never have been fought in the first place. Let them remember, too, in this interim of sweet anticipation, that although they are reveling in the ruins of a Republican reign brought down by stupendous scandals, their own closet is stocked with skeletons from an era when they were routed from office following Abscam bribes and savings and loan swindles that plucked the pockets and purses of hard-working, tax-paying Americans.
As they rejoice, Democrats would be wise to be mindful of Shakespeare's counsel, "'Tis more by fortune...than by merit." For they were delivered from the wilderness not by their own goodness and purity but by the grace of K Street corruption, DeLay Inc.'s duplicity, the pitiless exploitation of Terri Schiavo, the disgrace of Mark Foley and a shameful partisan cover-up, the shamelessness of Jack Abramoff and a partisan conspiracy, and neocon arrogance and amorality (yes, amoral: Apparently there is no end to the number of bodies Bill Kristol and Richard Perle are prepared to watch pile up on behalf of illusions that can't stand the test of reality even one Beltway block from the think tanks where they are hatched). The Democrats couldn't have been more favored by the gods if they had actually believed in one!
But whatever one might say about the election, the real story is one that our political and media elites are loath to acknowledge or address. I am not speaking of the lengthy list of priorities that progressives and liberals of every stripe are eager to put on the table now that Democrats hold the cards in Congress. Just the other day a message popped up on my computer from a progressive advocate whose work I greatly admire. Committed to movement-building from the ground up, he has results to show for his labors. His request was simple: "With changes in Congress and at our state capitol, we want your input on what top issues our lawmakers should tackle. Click here to submit your top priority."
I clicked. Sure enough, up came a list of thirty-four issues--an impressive list that began with "African-American" and ran alphabetically through "energy" and "higher education" to "guns," "transportation," "women's issues" and "workers' rights." It wasn't a list to be dismissed, by any means, for it came from an unrequited thirst for action after a long season of malignant opposition to every item on the agenda. I understand the mindset. Here's a fellow who values allies and appreciates what it takes to build coalitions; who knows that although our interests as citizens vary, each one is an artery to the heart that pumps life through the body politic, and each is important to the health of democracy. This is an activist who knows political success is the sum of many parts.
But America needs something more right now than a "must-do" list from liberals and progressives. America needs a different story. The very morning I read the message from the progressive activist, the New York Times reported on Carol Ann Reyes. Carol Ann Reyes is 63. She lives in Los Angeles, suffers from dementia and is homeless. Somehow she made her way to a hospital with serious, untreated needs. No details were provided as to what happened to her there, except that the hospital--which is part of Kaiser Permanente, the largest HMO in the country--called a cab and sent her back to skid row. True, they phoned ahead to workers at a rescue shelter to let them know she was coming. But some hours later a surveillance camera picked her up "wandering around the streets in a hospital gown and slippers." Dumped in America.'

Lees verder: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0105-26.htm

The Empire 121

Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, DC.

The big question for the U.S. economy now is whether we will make it through 2007 without a recession. Most of the top economic forecasters are predicting a "soft landing," which means the economy slows but not so sharply as to cause a recession. But almost all of these same experts failed to forecast the last recession, and they missed the stock market bubble (the largest financial asset bubble in history). And most of them also missed the housing bubble until it began to burst. So it would not be prudent to rely solely on their forecasts at this time.
The timing of any downturn is not easy to predict. But a recession is likely, because of the enormity of the housing bubble and the impact of its collapse. Recall that our last recession (in 2001) was caused by the bursting of a stock market bubble of about $7 trillion. The housing bubble is comparable in size (about $5 trillion at peak) and the bubble wealth is much more widely distributed: most Americans still have most of their assets in housing and little or nothing in stocks.
As this housing wealth disappears, people cut spending. We have already seen an enormous drop in the amount that people borrow on their homes, from $600 billion last year to about $350 billion for 2006. It was this borrowing, enabled by soaring house prices that allowed people to borrow more against the value of their homes, that fueled the U.S. economic recovery since 2001.
Housing construction and sales are also a big sector of the economy, currently about 6 percent of GDP. If that falls 30-40 percent, as it has in previous downturns, that's a drop of about 2 percent of GDP.
The recession caused by the stock market bubble bursting, which lasted only from March to November of 2001, would have been a lot worse if not for the enormous demand created by the housing bubble. So what will rescue the U.S. economy from the collapse of the housing bubble?
It's not easy to imagine what that would be. Personal savings rates are already negative, a phenomenon not seen since the Great Depression. How much can consumers borrow on their credit cards? A sustained surge of business investment is unlikely in the face of an economy that is already slowing: GDP growth was just 2.0 percent in the third quarter, down from 2.6 and 5.6 percent in the previous two quarters.
And there are downside risks from the global economy: foreign central banks are keeping our long-term interest rates extremely low -- below short-term rates -- by accumulating 10-year U.S. treasury bonds. They could lose just some of their appetite for this debt at any time and send U.S. long-term rates upward. A decline in the dollar, which is inevitable given that we are borrowing more than 6 percent of GDP from other countries, poses similar risks - although it will eventually help the U.S. economy by narrowing our trade deficit.
We could possibly get through the international imbalances for another year but the housing bubble collapse is already upon us, with November's housing starts down 25 percent over the last year, home sales plummeting, and home prices falling. This is something that our political leaders and policy-makers should have warned people about, rather than encouraging the same kind of speculative excess that dominated our economy during the late 1990s stock market bubble.'

Lees verder: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0105-20.htm

The Empire 120

'Can We Let Intelligence Officials Lie With Impunity?”

By Ray McGovern and W. Patrick Lang.

Lies have consequences . All those who helped President George W. Bush launch a war of aggression—termed by Nuremberg “the supreme international crime”—have blood on their hands and must be held accountable. This includes corrupt intelligence officials. Otherwise, look for them to perform the same service in facilitating war on Iran.
“They should have been shot,” said former State Department intelligence director, Carl Ford, referring to ex-CIA director George Tenet and his deputy John McLaughlin, for their “fundamentally dishonest” cooking of intelligence to please the White House. Ford was alluding to “intelligence” on the menacing but non-existent mobile biological weapons laboratories in Iraq.
Ford was angry that Tenet and McLaughlin persisted in portraying the labs as real several months after they had been duly warned that they existed only in the imagination of intelligence analysts who, in their own eagerness to please, had glommed onto second-hand tales told by a con-man appropriately dubbed “Curveball.” In fact, Tenet and McLaughlin had been warned about Curveball long before they let then-Secretary of State Colin Powell shame himself, and the rest of us, by peddling Curveball’s wares at the U.N. Security Council on February 5, 2003.
After the war began, those same analysts, still “leaning forward,” misrepresented a tractor-trailer found in Iraq outfitted with industrial equipment as one of the mobile bio-labs. Former U.N. weapons inspector David Kay, then working for NBC News, obliged by pointing out the equipment “where the biological process took place... Literally, there is nothing else for which it could be used.”
George Tenet knows a good man when he sees him. A few weeks later he hired Kay to lead the Pentagon-created Iraq Survey Group in the famous search to find other (equally non-existent, it turned out) “weapons of mass destruction.” (Eventually Kay, a scientist given to empirical evidence more than faith-based intelligence, became the skunk at the picnic when, in January 2004, he insisted on telling senators the truth: “We were almost all wrong—and I certainly include myself here.” But that came later.)
On May 28, 2003, CIA’s intrepid analysts cooked up a fraudulent six-page report claiming that the trailer discovered earlier in May was proof they had been right about Iraq’s “bio-weapons labs.” They then performed what could be called a “night-time requisition,” getting the only Defense Intelligence Agency analyst sympathetic to their position to provide DIA “coordination,” (which was subsequently withdrawn by DIA). On May 29, President George W. Bush, visiting Poland, proudly announced on Polish TV, “We have found the weapons of mass destruction.”
When the State Department's Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts realized that this was not some kind of Polish joke, they “went ballistic,” according to Ford, who immediately warned Colin Powell that there was a problem. Tenet must have learned of this quickly, for he called Ford on the carpet, literally, the following day. No shrinking violet, Ford held his ground. He told Tenet and McLaughlin, “That report is one of the worst intelligence assessments I’ve ever read.”'

Lees verder: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16069.htm

The Empire 119

'The Peak Oil Crisis: 2006 in Review.
By Tom Whipple
Falls Church News-Press

As the year draws to a close, it is a good time to look back at what has happened and what clues we can discern about 2007.
The most notable event affecting the advent of peak oil during 2006 was, most likely, the great summer price spike. Oil started the year around $62 a barrel, steadily increased to just below $80 and then fell to close out the year about where it started. Now there are a number of observations that can be made about this spike.
First it drove average US gasoline prices from $2.21 in late December 2005 to a high of over $3.00 per gallon during the summer. This was significant in that it caught a lot of people's attention for the first time that there just might be a problem out there. At the height of the spike, Congressmen were running around like rabbits proposing new laws and making pious speeches about how they were doing something about gasoline prices. Although the US economy as a whole seems to have held up pretty well under $3 gasoline, Detroit took a hard hit. Sales of low-mileage vehicles that had been the bread and butter of the US auto industry plunged, tens of thousands of auto workers lost their jobs, and dozens of factories closed. By year's end Toyota was poised to become the world's largest automotive manufacturer.
From the public's point of view and unfortunately most of the media's, peak oil seems to be only about gasoline prices. Above $3 a gallon there is concern. Let gasoline sink back towards $2 and we are back in Camelot.
The 2006 price spike is widely perceived as being caused by an excess of speculation. Hedge fund managers read forecasts of a bang-up hurricane season in the offing and that, coupled with greater-than-normal turmoil in the Middle East, led them to speculate wildly in oil futures. When the Middle East turmoil subsided a bit and the hurricanes failed to appear as advertised, oil prices collapsed. All this of course is perfectly true, but is only part of the story.
Largely unnoticed was the underlying supply and demand situation, and a new factor: oil affordability. The final returns won't be in for several months, but it is beginning to look as if world oil production stayed about the same or increased insignificantly during 2006. Consumption in China, Russia, and the Gulf oil states increased while staying about the same in the industrialized states of North America, Europe and Asia.
With flat production and steady or increasing consumption in those countries that publish detailed reports, something had to give or else we would be seeing considerably higher oil prices. The give came in the underdeveloped world where $20 or $30 oil was affordable for generating electricity, running pumps, and for cooking, but $60 or $70 per barrel oil was not. Again, the returns are not in yet, but anecdotal evidence is accumulating that many parts of Africa, Central America, and Asia are starting to shut down. For these peoples, the oil age, such as it was, is already over. There is little to look forward to for a long, long time.
Nearly every aspect of the various Middle Eastern political conflicts deteriorated further during 2006. From the peak oil perspective 1.5 million barrels a day of Iraqi oil exports appear to be the most precarious, but what ever falls out of Iran's nuclear ambitions are a close second. A general conflagration occasioned by the collapse of the Iraqi government or renewed Arab-Israeli fighting are well with in the realm of possibility for the near future. The insurgency in Nigeria is picking up steam and there will be either a presidential election or civil war there next year. The prospects for a large percentage of the world's petroleum exports sure did not get any better in 2006.'

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http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/010507EB.shtml