Saturday, December 13, 2008

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
********************************************************************************

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

18 comments:

Dana Jackson said...

Regarding the loathed (mythical?) NWO, is it not possible that the feds have enough oil reserved to maintain some manner of police state in localized, city areas? I see your point, Mike: it'll still run out and then it all grinds to a halt. I guess, if continuing society meant that a new world order really could come to pass, that peak oil is a good thing. As an English teacher who imagined the dystopias of "1984", "Brave New World", etc., coming real, I think violent anarchy is a better, if still unhappy, alternative. I'm all for handing out copies of "Ishmael" instead of the Bible and getting around to my spear sharpening...

Grimus said...

First and foremost, Bob Dylan wrote Everything Is Broken. So if you're like me and more apt take Dylan's worldview into account than Mr. Shepherd...well the song's the song, and a killer. R.L. Burnside also does a hell of a cover. Also worth noting the time period in which it was written: Regan era. Lots of blow, lots of dough and globalization staring to show.

Even pushing 70, Dylan has more valuable knowledge to pass on than every MSM reporter scurrying the earth. Nice to see MCR can listen.

Al Czervik said...

Is Europe going to be as bad as the U.S.?. Uh, check out Germany, which is normally the best case scenario.
http://tinyurl.com/6fzfbe

As a union attorney in the Motor City, it is pretty tough to accept this statement:
"Sure, the unions had to be broken. There was just no other way."
So long as it is coming from MCR and not Shelby, I can deal with it. I am no fan of the UAW or Gettlefinger, but they have no business accepting some nonsense "deal" where union guys make the same wage as non-union. UAW has cut to the bone. At some point they can no longer be the scapegoat.

I haven't yet listened to Simmons, but the boards are bumping over Simmons on Financial Sense and the IEA's latest
http://www.financialsense.com/fsn/main.html
http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic48992-0.html

businessman said...

Several weeks ago someone in here mentioned the potential for the Internet to be shutdown at sometime to shutoff all alternative communication like what we have in here. I think this needs to be taken seriously and I'd like us to be prepared before it could ever happen. It's even possible that this site by itself could be hacked into or rendered inoperable, while the Internet itself continues on.

Therefore I think an alternative form of communication planned in advance would be a good idea...a phone number given out that would have a recorded voicemail message on it if necessary discussing what the new form of communication will be for us...a prearranged day and time of the week to tune into a particular radio frequency if this Web site goes down...Whatever it is, I'd rather have it planned in advance than have all of this great communication that we've created be lost forever when ts really hits the fan.

Tim said...

As long as we're quoting Dylan this one's a gem:
"you must leave now take what you need you think will last, whatever you wish to keep you better grab it fast...and its all over now Baby Blue"

One more from Garcia/Hunter:
"Though I could not caution all, I still might warn a few,
don't lend your hand to wave no flag a top no Ship of Fools"

Unknown said...

"If it keep on rainin', the levee gonna break.
Some people still sleepin', some people are wide awake." -BD

Anonymous said...

Just found this very interesting blog about living on very little food that a couple of teachers decided to try:

onedollardietproject.com

So far it has gotten over a half million hits. They are projecting that 1 in 10 Americans already receive food assistance. Scads of folks have written in with their own experiences with extreme hunger and hints on how to stretch scarce resources even further. This is where we all may be very soon. Time to think hard about what we eat, where we get it and how to store it.

marinemammal said...

here's the lyrics to Everything Is Broken by Dylan.

http://music.yahoo.com/Kenny-Wayne-Shepherd/Everything-Is-Broken/lyrics/1331299

RanD said...

As we keep on keeping on: a tad more detail, a tad more emphasis, a tad more reciprocating affirmation, a touch more filling in of the answers to our questions:

What we are seeing and experiencing -- geo-eco-politico-economically -- during this extremely brief moment of Universal Time's road map into the future, are the consequences of humankind's having been too long worshipping (i.e., giving 'shape' to the 'worth' of) mammon rather than GOD -- as if GOD, despite being the singular and exclusive FOUNDATION OF EXISTENCE -- i.e., being LIFE, it-SELF -- can be acceptably subordinated to being lesser in value relative to mere physical matter. Nonetheless, that's exactly what we've been more or less mindlessly doing (all church-going and pleadings on bended knees notwithstanding) since our distant forebears began experimenting with and setting up complex societies as a direct consequence of having invented agriculture and animal husbandry and consequently soon enough thereafter finding themselves accumulating surplus material wealth.

"Oh my, what are we going to do with all this stuff in order to keep all those pestierous weevils and moulds and coyotes from taking it all away from us?!" (Well now, gosh, let me see.... Hey, I'll tell ya what...!) "Let's just start eatin' our way to breeding ourselves into ever greater numbers whereby we can propogate and spread this fundamentally expansionist organizing principle so that EVERYTHING and ANYTHING else that we can bring to mind that fits to this brilliant idea can be implemented so as to progressively make us so rich and big and powerful and famous that we'll one day be called the champions of the world!"

Well now, everyone just keep on contributing your own personally developed pertinent details to this map we're looking at and that should keep us collectively growing our equally manifold and singular way into the future.

*******

It is perfectly understandable how humankind's current situation has come about, given how reality's uniquely PHYSICAL component -- being both tangible, measurable, and thus most APPARENTLY useful --would -- during the generationally protracted and very convoluted process of growing its species' initially primitive collective mentality into a fully conscious general understanding of 'the whole enchilada', so to speak -- inevitably and even necessarily hold sway over humankind's at-the-beginning very primitive and sketchy body of knowledge regarding reality's other two entirely NON-PHYSICAL -- thus inherently vague and uncertain, although in fact actually pre-eminent -- components, which are the 'SPIRIT' and 'the-spirit's-awareness-of-itself', which is the spirit's 'MIND'.

No mere physiological organism with a mere potential for the sort of consciousness that the human species of organisms are capable of developing is born with instantly full-blown cosmic consciousness upon popping out of its mother's womb. As we all know, reality just doesn't routinely work that way. Moreover, the UNIVERSAL PROCESS which is intrinsic eternal motion from one state of being into a both directly correlated yet fully differentiated subsequent state of being is fundamental to LIFE's capacity to be what LIFE is. Consequently:

Viewing the self-evincing fact of humankind's process of overcoming his/her/our ignorance of existential matters eventually reveals that there's really no one nor anything to be 'blamed' for any of it. Fact is, everything that has ever been, is, and ever will be has inherently always been, is, and will forever be inevitable. Remember: that which has been, is, and will be (whatever it might be that comes to pass) IS reality. Nonetheless:

Anybody who's gray matter is worth a spoon of salt ought not any longer have a problem looking out the window and seeing that any form of economic system premised on the notion of profiting one's self by socio-systemically proffering and implementing the idea that numerically converting 'personally accrued and owned' (in iself an interesting concept to much more carefully consider) 'smaller numbers' into 'greater numbers' is a path to ever greater 'well-being' is...well...inherently...as we should by now begin generally recognizing...the progenitive archetype of ALL FUCKING PONZI SCHEMES!

Absolutely no wonderful so-called self-profitting/ever-grow-and-grow-your-money-forever economic system has ever, ultimately, actually been worth so much as any nice, fat, slightly splatted pile of GENUINELY valuable pure cowshit pancakes out in reality's much more dearly loved and naturally stewarded environmental setting. As for all the Kings, Queens, Presidents, Feds, and all those self-presuming others of us out of our human ranks that would eternally keep us ALL rooted to the money number game changers' methods...well...what good can be said of it/them other than it/they at least damn sure helped get us to where we're all at today.

Other than that, however -- in view of where we evidently find ourselves (yuck! and whoopee!) -- I suggest that we who can and will should do well to mentally give each other our smiles, hugs, and hands of warm applause, then get right back to moving beyond every damn bit of whatever no longer fits on our singularly special map into the future.

zeusij said...

"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."

That seems to be my greatest battle. It is hard trying to prepare to save those I care about when nobody will listen. I feel like all the responsibility to save them during the transition falls on me. Thank you Mike for all the information over the years. It has really helped me.

Jenna Orkin said...

zeusij

mike deserves all the thanks you can offer but for clarity's sake, the quote you give is from me.

jo

zeusij said...

Yeah, I had seen that. Thanks to you too Jenna. ;)

I'm glad that there is still this blog to check. After the FTW site stopped being updated I was worried for awhile about where to check in to. Thanks for all that you two do.

Dave Crossland said...

Mike,

http://www.financialsense.com/fsn/main.html

Hirch and Simmons interviewed for an hour. I need not say more :-)

Cheers,
Dave

fusion_is_fundamental said...

zeusij said
"It is hard trying to prepare to save those I care about when nobody will listen."

I don't believe in peak oil but that's besides the matter. About what you said, maybe that's the problem. You're trying to get them to listen instead of communicating. Try a mutual beneficial conversation instead of a warning. Try to examine the situation and logically see all the reasons they offer why they're not accepting your point of view on the matter.

Unknown said...

Gold Backwardation
http://www.futurefastforward.com/component/content/article/687 (page down a bit)

Peter J. Nickitas said...

Mike and Jenna:

The current condition in Somalia has a precedent in the Somalia at the end of Bush the Elder's term. The piracy did not manifest itself to the extent today, but the situation created the pretext for American military operations following the Gulf War. And even Robert Gates is back for a reprise in this new affair.

What lessons can we derive from the 1992 - 1993 Somalia crisis? I offer one -- that war provided lessons learned for the use of mercenary forces. I have not read all the comments, but I open up the thread for more responses.

Peter J. of Minneapolis

PS Emmett Fox wrote a companion to The Sermon on the Mount -- "The Ten Commandments".

Howlin_Dog said...

Mike, I do not have the intelligence sources you have, but after many hours of reading and listening I wonder if a completely different conclusion might be in order. First, Russia and China are both hurting under this economic crisis. Russia has had social unrest, and China is prepared for it. China has the manufacturing capability, Russia has oil. China is developing its military and Russia already has one. China is sitting on a pile of money and Russia needs some. It seems as if they are teaming up against a common enemy. For evidence, I point to articles describing the SCO and a trade agreement for an oil pipeline between the two countries.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/int/sco.htm

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2008-10/30/content_7156977.htm

I am not so sure the ISI is any longer in the CIA's back pocket. After the raids into Pakistan by US forces from Afganistan, the philosophy of “The enemy of my enemy” may be leading them toward Putin and the SCO. From the SCO article I see Afganistan is talking to the SCO and Iran wants to join.

I further support this theory with recent actions against NATO suppy routes.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hkiMxbHNH0BqgpWA2ZG6VD6wVTmAD951R0N80

In any case, the Pakistan government has no control (probably never did) over the ISI. The only question I have now is if the CIA or Russia is their ally.

A look at the map shows that if Pakistan can be made to fall away from US control and if Iran joins the SCO, the whole area from the Persian Gulf to the Pacific Ocean would be under the control of the SCO. The internal pipelines means that if necessary Iran can honor the threats of mining The Strait of Hormuz.

This also ties in with the Free Fire Zone in Somalia. If the Pursian Gulf route is plugged, the new oil pathway would be the Red Sea and past the horn of Africa. Libya is talking with Russia and will be creating a headache in the Meditterian.

The final idea I have is the attacks may have been a Russian false flag operation just to get Pakistan and India into a war. If Pakistan is not available to NATO, land locked Afganistan is unsupportable. There are two articles to support that theory.
One by the Russian Intellegence that may be misinformation. That says Georgia is using Chechen militants for sabotage.
http://www.agentura.ru/english/?id=1228146600
The second article is by Pakistan saying that the whole idea of a trawler making it 500 miles undetected makes about as much sense as the airplane flying into the pentagon.
http://www.daily.pk/politics/politicalnews/8425-is-pakistan-to-blame-mumbai-terror-attacks.html

Like others here, I figure it will not be long before my map reader, you, is no-longer accessible, so if I am completely missing something, please tell me I am an idiot and why.

P.S. J.O. thanks for the article about the Somali Pirates and the Senate Seat... as crazy as it is all getting to be, who knows it could be true. The world is staring to feel like trying to run with my pants around my ankles. Snakes are starting to show up even in the outhouse.

Therapeutic Messenger said...

Don't know so much about what peak oil is about. I work in the oil field hauling water from out of the wells to another hole where it is pumped back into the ground,after what oil is in it is extracted. Wells are routinely capped off to sit and replenish over time. I have read records on wells producing since the nineteen thirties and giving up more oil now than then. Pretty difficult to convince those doing this, of peak oil. Is it being formed as we use it only at a slower rate than the demand? Such being the case, moving away from oil to balance this natural replenishment with less use makes sense to me. www.knowledgepublications.com has some great information on alternative fuels that anyone of moderate mechanical aptitude can use today for replacing gas and diesel. Small community co-ops doing this could create viable local sustenance al-la the Solari model.Even unto local relatively unregulated internet which could interface with other small internet communities without the backbone of the current infrastructure. We have to relearn the dynamics of trust and exercise integrity from the ground up. To hell with the corruption and greed of those seeking to repeat the same mistakes while expecting a new outcome. I ain't gonna play anymore. To those doom and gloomers out there, Focus on what you can do as an individual for the highest and greatest good of all and you won't have to be attached to an outcome.