READ THIS STORY!!!! -- THE MAP FILLS IN

http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m49502&hd=&size=1&l=e

So many new pieces of the map!

This guy Chris Floyd is just brilliant and the writing is delicious. I started tracking piracy almost five years ago. Something smelled. I have been waiting for the Aha! moment and this story gave it to me. If the Bush Administration gets Somalia declared a "Global Free-Fire Zone" I'm fairly sure that we'll see some troops leaving Iraq for Somalia (directly or indirectly). Who the hell knows what happens next in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Empire strains and groans. Money and food evaporate at home. Industrial output collapses while military obligations expand. The warlords running the teeny-tiny, feeble central government in Mogadishu are CIA backed. The whole piracy thing is CIA and this is straight out of Ted Shackley's "Third Option". (I interviewed him once when writing a story that helped get former CIA officer Edwin Wilson out of prison. It was chilling.) Starting back in 2002 we made these detailed maps showing U.S. troop deployments post-9/11. (Those maps are still up at FTW.) The Gulf was surrounded. Well, almost. The Horn of Africa was the weak spot. But it won't be for long. Create problem. Solve problem. The desired end result: The entire Persian Gulf is a hostage of the United States Military Empire; a collapsing empire. We watched Africa closely at FTW for years and -- for good reason -- we watched West Africa especially. We watched the inevitable creation of the Africa Command (AFRICOM). But AFRICOM's first big deployment will likely be to Somalia to "protect international free trade". This will open another theater of war. Bush is going to try and sell it like he's riding in with the cavalry. I have absolutely no doubt that President Obama will follow through swiftly and committedly with this agenda.

Now, what will it signal if the Russians show up as partners? Ahhh... The Grand Chessboard. China's all over Africa... from Sudan to Zimbabwe... from Nigeria to Tanzania.

Will the United States be able to maintain hegemony in the Gulf? Not without Russian help it won't. Geography is exerting its irresistible force as we always said it would. If my supposition is correct, then India will ultimately fall into a Russian sphere of influence and way farther out of China's. History would suggest that. It's a long ways off, however.

Things are changing so fast now.

I'm still working on Mumbai but -- and this is just investigative speculation, following leads -- I'm sensing that both Russia and the US are benefiting as a result. I might smell something like the "great partnership" that Vladimir Putin recently lamented "might have been". Where was the one place where CIA, MI6, Russian DFS and every form of radical Muslim moved relatively freely? Chechnya. There's still not enough data to be convinced yet and the possibility of nuclear war still hangs heavy in all of our backgrounds. But, if the US and Russia are showing anything like cooperation it's a good thing. Anything else and it wouldn't be long before, instead of India and Pakistan in a nuclear confrontation it would be the United States and Russia. Together -- for the time being -- Russia and the US can prevent a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan. I don't want to offend anyone but I really do think that might be a good idea. Don't you?

ROD BLAGOJEVICH

Shit! Yes, he's crazy and he's cut from a mold at the same time. You know how I'm looking at this? Do this: go buy, find or steal a copy of a Kenny Wayne Sheppard's song called "Everything Is Broken". I just love the shit outta that song. Which brings me to my next point. The
biggest revelation of all...

CONSTITUENCIES UNWINDING

Any political or economic entity has a constituency. The Democratic party has the unions, etc. Wall Street titans have the ready access to "old money". Well the Auto Bailout failed today (as it should have), under minority Republican arguments and resistance (which were basically quite sound)... and now Bush wants to rescue them from what's left of an unrecognizable TARP. (Don't forget about the other $7 trillion.)... Today, the former head of NASDAQ was outed for having stolen $50 billion from "old money" in a Ponzi scheme that's going to result in a lot of vacant penthouses on the West side near the park and in the upper east 70s and 80s. The New York real estate market just collapsed... Dagnabit I've been screaming that this whole damn thing was a Ponzi scheme since 1998. Everything is falling apart as it must. The coalitions that have made up the parties are fragmenting and, in some cases, on their way to extinction. Every constituency is unwinding now and new ones will be emerging. We must be a strong and focused one. The entire political landscape is breaking up faster than I had even considered it might. This was a blind spot in my thinking. Good God this is our chance! Everything IS broken and we're the only ones who could possibly understand the implications of that. Society still functions and -- while it does -- we have to get every foot in every door possible. If we are truly about saving lives, this is our chance over the next maybe eighteen months. After that I can't guarantee how much society will be left or what it will look like. Sure, the unions had to be broken. There was just no other way. That's what this was all about, as a start. And the sad, sad truth is that there will never be an economic recovery that will enable the Big Three to recover. Everyone knows that. All day CNN and CNBC and many other mainstreams were saying that the public says "Don't bail out the automakers. Nobody's buying cars and we can see that. Nobody's going to be buying cars!" The oil companies have cut the car companies loose after a good, long run. But business is business...

Go back to FTW and read "Globalcorp"... again!

Someone or something is already making decisions in the dieoff. We (the Peak Oil/Sustainability movement) are influencing some of that. We must do everything possible to gain access.

Look, and for you guys who keep asking about some New World Order plan for a new gray world where machines still work and cars still move... SNAP THE FUCK OUT OF IT!

For the one new commenter from Europe who asked if Europe was going to have it as bad as the US...

Ma'am... In October industrial production fell in Japan. It also fell in China. China is preparing for civil unrest. So are we. Some parts of Europe are already suffering badly. We are all going down to the bottom... very quickly. Look to your neighbors and to your family. Prepare. Prepare. Prepare... I closed my 2005 lecture at the University of Washington with those words. It feels like I've been at this for a lifetime. Ma'am, we're all going to the bottom, pretty much together and very quickly. Please get your head on straight and get your shit together.

(I wish someone would tell the idiot who said that no one saw this coming about us, what we have done here, at FTW and all the other great sites... and what we are doing now.)

PAUL THOMPSON

When I posted about Kalid Sheikh Mohammad I egregiously neglected to mention the brilliant and enduring work done by Paul Thompson in his brilliant timeline.
http://www.historycommons.org/project.jsp?project=911_project. Paul should rightly be remembered in history as a lion of the real 9-11 investigation. Sorry Paul. -- We're still waiting for that confession...

I'd also like to extend a deep personal thank you to Hikkomori. A while ago you posted a comment about Claude Debussy and me. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart, because not only did it describe how I feel and act perfectly, it rendered me unalone. You gave me a part of my own map. As Jenna will confirm, "Claire de Lune" is my favoritest piece of music in the world.

Since there has been some very decent spiritual exchange here lately I thought I'd throw out a list of my favorite spiritual books, the ones that have influenced me most. (I'll strangulate the first clown who says, "Hey Mike, read this!") I don't need any more books. I've got it!

"Dance of a Fallen Monk" by George Fowler
"The Prophet" by Khalil Gibran
The AA Big Book
"Sermon on the Mount" by Emmett Fox
The "Tao Te Ching"
"Siddhartha"... I can pray. I can meditate... And I can wait

As what I have just written demonstrates, and as the Buddha and Christ taught us... everything is connected.

MCR
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You don't have to be overly cynical to observe that Obama has the trappings of a good ambassador for any sort of agenda in Africa. And indeed, he's been acting in that capacity since at least 2006 when he visited Kenya as well as Darfurian refugees in Chad.

Yet the paradigm is shifting. Not fast enough, of course, but with each collapse of a bank or an industry we gain - if you'll pardon the expression in this economic climate - leverage.

A few years ago I had a phone conversation with a woman I'd known in high school. At the time of the conversation, she'd had a major portion of her gut and liver removed because of cancer which doctors retroactively determined had started fifteen years earlier.

She was about to embark on a treatment of thalidomyde, a teratogenic drug that was taken off the market in England years ago.

It was a long shot but she focussed on the slim chance that it could cure her. It didn't.

The point is: People will grasp at straws before facing godawful realities.

That is all the more true in the case of Peak Oil and its fallout. People are at least theoretically aware of their own eventual death whereas the scenario facing us now is one undreamed of by almost everyone. At least consciously.

I'm not sure why the readers of this and related blogs take to it so readily. There seems to be an innate understanding that we've been living on borrowed time, borrowed earth and borrowed water; an understanding which only needed to be prodded awake by a few connected dots to elicit an, "Of course. I knew it all along."

But not everyone is willing to go there. Yet.

Perhaps the hardest part of activism about life and death issues is having to keep one's cool. If you jump up and down as the situation merits, you look like a nut.

The person shouting, "Fire!" looks like a nut too, until the people he's shouting to see or smell the smoke. Besides, the notion of 'fire' is not new to them.

But Peak Oil is orders of magnitude greater and more complex as well as being sui generis.

On top of that, CNN still shows that heart-warming series in which you get to vote for your favorite hero.

So unless you have a willing audience, which is nine tenths of the battle, you'd be advised to continue to hold some of that pent up, urgent energy in reserve. It will still be there when the time is right.

That's my two cents for dealing with friends and family. But our job will be made infinitely easier if we can get the media and the pols on board. In the chicken/egg conundrum of whether or not they shape opinion or simply react to it, let's face the fact that they have a lot more control than they admit.

And since they also have more information, at this point they may be willing to listen.

Quote of the day:

"I think you have to reckon with the fact that one of the Fed's assets is gold certificates, which are priced, as I remember, at $42 an ounce, and if we were to price them at market prices, the Fed's leverage would look a lot less than it is now."

Human Terrain Program Needs To Be Shut Down
Social scientists befriending locals are felled in the line of duty.

New Yorks Response to Peak Oil: Cut Subway Service
Somali Pirates Acquire U.S. Senate Seat

JO