Sunday, April 19, 2009

Media outlets requesting a review .pdf file of the book should write to media@rubiconworks.com.


BOOK PUBLICATION AND MOTION PICTURE ANNOUNCEMENT

A Presidential Energy Policy: Twenty-five Points Addressing the Siamese Twins of Energy and Money

by

Michael C. Ruppert

ON SALE MAY 1, 2009 at http://www.rubiconworks.com/ and at Amazon.com.

"COLLAPSE" – A Feature Documentary by Bluemark Films. (Winner: Special Dramatic Jury Prize, 2007 Sundance Film Festival, for "The Pool", and Grand Jury Prize, 1999 Sundance Film Festival for "American Movie").

For a full press release on the book, film and important additional information including a complete list of off-the-chart reviews, please visit: http://www.rubiconworks.com/.


Mike Ruppert has been at the forefront of speaking and writing about the grim reality that the world's crude oil output is peaking or has already peaked and will soon begin what could be swift declines over the next decade or two.The world needs to pay careful attention to the multiple risks this event will usher in. Thanks to Ruppert's new book, readers around the world will have access to his well written work.

Matthew R, Simmons
Chairman
Simmons & Company
Author, Twilight in the Desert
----------

Mike Ruppert has an unblemished track record for saying things that are incendiary, outrageous, shocking—and true. Our new president needs desperately to hear the uncomfortable message of this book about energy and the economy, and so do the rest of us.

Richard Heinberg, Ph.D.Ecologist
Author, "The Party’s Over", "Peak Everything", "The Oil Depletion Protocol"
Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute
----------

All I can say about A Presidential Energy Policy is, "Yikes!" This is a book everyone should read.

Mike Ruppert is my friend. And, sometimes I remind him, in a way that only a friend can, that my perspective is colored by my own distinct experiences as an informed woman of color in the United States. And frankly, that means that some of what is between these covers makes me cringe; but it is exactly this substance, actively suppressed in proposed national and international gatherings, that we human beings must debate and resolve, or else, we will find Dr. King's admonition, once again, to be true: "We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."

We know Mike Ruppert because he became a whistleblower and told us some inconvenient truths. About crack cocaine, 9/11/01, and now this -- how to step back from the brink of human disaster.

It is clear that Mike and I are headed toward the same destination, despite our differences. "A Presidential Energy Policy" lands Mike exactly where I am -- outside of the box of political orthodoxy, but well within the space of policy advocacy that is representative of critical thinking, rational analysis, and authentic leadership. Mike Ruppert dares to go where our elected leaders seem afraid to take us. In the end, however, if we are to salvage our own human dignity, either our "leadership" must catch up with us or we must become and nurture a new generation of leaders.

Cynthia McKinney
6-term Member, U.S. House of Representatives
Green Party Presidential Candidate, 2008

This notice is going to stay front and center for a while. For blog updates please see below:
************************************************************************************
The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is the Fear Of Being Uncool

Jenna Orkin

From revelers at a rock concert in Colombia to European farmers to Indian engineering students; from the redundant 'unrest' at prisons to the oxymoronic 'patient riots' at a hospital in South Africa, the natives are restless. Some, like 1500 farmers in India, have turned that unrest on themselves by committing suicide.

Whether it's over the economic crisis, water, food, jobs, bonuses, Bernie Madoff, octuplets or weirdos keeping young girls - offspring or otherwise - in a dungeon for years on end, people are outraged.

We may all be Madoffs as Nouriel Roubini maintains, but some are a deeper shade than others. Even Madoff himself pales in comparison to the economic system in which most of us have colluded, with whatever degree of understanding or willful ignorance. And those who have not at least benefited, like some of my eager students from the most far-reaching corners of the earth, are Madoff wannabes, pursuing the American dream of sipping the Kool-Aid at the last banquet of civilization-as-we-have-known-it.

What makes Madoff so mesmerizing is the way in which he resembles us, like a grotesque reflection in a funhouse mirror. In his recent isolation he has even managed to twist his self-image into a heroic one. God help us if he's justified for that will mean he's taking the fall for some even worse monsters who remain at large.

The SEC, for instance. Like the idiot in the old saw which maintains that intelligent people talk about ideas; average folk, about events and idiots about people, the public fixates on Madoff because he's human. The SEC is a deliberately lowkey, boring institution. Not the stuff on which the tabloid mentality thrives.

"But how could this have happened?"

We the people cling to our fairytales, those black and white formulas in which a bad guy gets away with it for so long because, "Who could have expected...?"

"Anyone who looked," shoots back the retort.

That is, anyone who did more than go through the motions of looking. Real looking means asking the basic questions.

Like Bethany McClean who started the unravelling of Enron by asking, "What does Enron actually do to make money?" Like Richard Feinberg whose wife prodded him to join the team investigating the Challenger disaster by saying, "There will be lots of intelligent people asking intelligent questions. You will be the one to ask the stupid questions."

Rather than becoming more suspect over time, the scenario of bumbling, Keystone Cop-like agencies gets reinforced. If it could happen on 9/11, it could happen in the EPA afterwards and later, with foreclosures. If it could happen in those three cases, well that just proves how susceptible oversight agencies can be. So why should we be surprised it happened at the SEC? But rather than focus on the sorry past, let us learn from our mistakes and pass legislation to ensure that it Never Happens Again.

The one thing people seem unwilling to do is probe. To do so is to strike out on your own, estrange yourself from your fellow man. To question the status quo is by definition uncool. In the minds of your friends, you find yourself keeping company with that band of kootie-afflicted kids, the conspiracy theorists.

People who consider themselves cosmopolitan, open-minded liberals, accepting of every color, creed and sexual proclivity, get the heeby jeebies when it comes to questioning the major media whose genius is that it gives the illusion of choice, a smorgasbord of ideas. You can have the red candidate or the blue. They argue so they can't be two sides of the same coin.

Anyway, if it's all a big conspiracy, how come no one's blown the whistle?

I will answer from the issue of which I have the most detailed, first-hand experience as it is as good an example as any of how TPTB get away with it.

After 9/11, three scientific panels were held to investigate the extent of the contamination resulting from the disaster and to come up with solutions. The first two panels each took a couple of days. The last one, which was literally the panel to end all panels, met once a month for nearly two years.

The EPA were present at all three panels, to answer the questions of the visiting scientists. None of those scientists, I believe by the way, was paid for his or her services.

Also present were members of The Community whose function was to point out to those same scientists where the EPA were...uh, leaving out crucial pertinent facts.

"You underestimate the capacity of people to be stupid," I was told by friends concerning the government's actions leading up to and following 9/11.

Not one of these friends was at the panels; nor had they read From the Wilderness or other reputable 9/11 websites.

But having attended (and testified at) every meeting of every scientific panel, I can assure you that whistles were blown, loudly. And that not only the government agency being assailed but also some professors at august universities and some scientists whose hallmark is supposedly objectivity, persistently responded to the whistles by putting metaphorical cotton in their ears or by blowing an even louder, if equally metaphorical, tuba.

As with certain jokes, you had to be there. Every weapon in the arsenal of skullduggery was on view: Lies, damn lies and most of all, statistics.

They lied by testing for the wrong substance or, if the right one, doing the wrong test, using the wrong equipment, putting it in the wrong place, not turning it on or facing it in the wrong direction.

The message was: How can I screw you? Let me count the ways.

The vast majority of people roll over for this because, outraged though they be, they do not feel up to the task of educating themselves.

This, in the age of the internet when knowledge is more equitably available than ever before.
Rather, they opt for what E.M. Forster called the most satisfying of human emotions, moral indignation. And for that, you need 'friends.'

Here, too, the internet, that most adaptable and obliging of creatures, provides. You can confide every banal detail of your life to the universe and have a more concrete expectation than religion offers that a real person might hear you.

Life copies high school. The football hero and the prom queen are the Jungian archetypes of our time. (All right, my time. Amend accordingly.) People still haven't figured out that the football hero and the prom queen may not remain on top of the heap and that what seems geeky and goofy today is the ultracool of tomorrow.

To question Madoff two years ago was weird. Now it's cliche. To be truly cool, you can't be a member of the crowd; you have to lead it.

Northern Emirates to Tackle FNC Over Electricity Crisis
Baghdad Looking Over Prewar Contracts
Japan Looks to Manga Comics To Assist Ailing Economy
Superbailout man.
Libraries Step Into the Age of I-Pod
Recession Credited for Record Drop in Road Deaths
Current Power Crisis in West Africa Presents Lucrative Business Opportunity
In every crisis is opportunity.... for business.
Dow Theory Letters
Bailout Nation
Harvard Course: Dealing with an Angry Public (from Rice Farmer)
Is White the New Green?
Kiss of Death (ASPO paper)
Kids Give Up Wheels For Their Own Two Feet
Drollerdrome
Sustainability blog
Smuggled Seahorses (Chinese Viagra) Seized in Elizabeth
Knights Templar Hid Shroud of Turin
Or: Five Hundred Years Later, Chain of Custody Ceases to Be Issue

25 comments:

Sebastian Ernst Ronin said...

MCR, congratulations on the dual release of book and movie. As for the book’s contents, i.e. solutions, I shall hold off from jumping onto the bandwagon of praise for something I am not even conscious of yet.

With all due respect, my reservations stem from the simple reading of the book’s title, implying not only the continued legitimacy of the large industrial nation-state in a PPO world, but more importantly, that the institution is capable of firstly crafting solutions and, secondly, implementing them.

As a PPO secessionist, I have laid out my positions in this blog on numerous occasions and there is no need to repeat. However, it is necessary, IMO, to stress that if massive energy flow-through has been directly responsible for the creation of the large industrial nation-state, then that energy negation will result in like institutional consequences, the institution of the large industrial nation-state inclusive.

National identity is not a genetic pre-condition of life. We cannot be selective with what we would like to retain from the old paradigm. Transition to a new paradigm implies not only stepping out of the box, it directly implies taking a hammer to the box once one has stepped clear of it to eliminate the option of dashing back to the moist warmth of its security. We probe the outer perimeters of Death Ground carefully, conscientiously, awake.

Such is, of course, an extended concern of the latter. Within the context of global energy depletion and the imperialist, criminal appendages of such, if The Great Satan can be magically transferred into The Great Benefactor is misleading. (I refer here to the wording of the press release on the FTW site.) American exceptionalism should not be and, given the stakes, cannot be a continued thread of imperial philosophical privilege. The Empire either collapses/implodes or it does not. It is zero-sum; the safety of both/and hand-wringing is not an option.

I am left trudging upon the support offered by Cynthia McKinney: “It is clear that Mike and I are headed toward the same destination, despite our differences.” I look forward to reading the book. I look forward even more to discover if you have side-stepped the above philosophical and political liabilities, as I perceive these to be. Identifying fault lines on a map is one thing. Confronting the fault lines upon the territory is quite another.

A peon said...

It only took them a little over a year to follow up on that last AP story about this you guys posted here:

AP IMPACT:Tons of released drugs taint US waterOn a sunnier note,congradulations on the book Mr.Ruppert.I look forward to reading it,and seeing what I guess is somewhat of a auto/biography of the trials you faced throughout your life(CoLLapse).I see I can finally get your Cooper Union Speech DVD too!80) Can't wait to get it and play it for whoever I can get to watch it.
Peace+<3 to all,
Chris

matt said...

Very cool! Looking forward to the book.

Thought this may be a story for your to check out:
http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/04/and-so-it-begins-biggest-florida-bank.html#disqus_thread

Florida's largest bank has been given 20 days to sell itself before it is seized.

Why is this bank not being given a bailout though? That is what surprised me.

gamedog said...

Eloquent words Jenna, I can't compete, but I would sum up similar thoughts of mine by saying people don't really want to know the truth. People seem to want their idea of how things are to remain unshattered, even though their ideas are formed, nay manipulated by multiple media sources, they would still profess otherwise while making future “leaders” feel like the wierdest person in the room. (that would be readers of this blog in your analogy)

I gained an insight into “TPTB” today, reading the piece at the link below regarding the “Bank for International Settlements”, it wasn't the piece per se, call it the final chunk of the jigsaw, the full ramifications of which made me feel sick to the pit of my humanity.

I watch most “normal” people glaze over at the slightest mention of peak oil, how on earth would one breach the subject whereby TPTB enslave humanity using our own greed as the tool?

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13239

Congratulations on finishing the book Mike, I hope it, or the film, reaches more “normal” people. I can't wait to read it.

Jenna Orkin said...

businessman,

your comment's being withheld for a couple of days while i work on a response.

A peon said...

Wow.Had no idea Wayne Madsen had been arrested "while trying to protect a confidential source relative to the Stanford Financial Group scam." Mr.Madsen has been granted a continuance,and his court date originally scheduled for March 25,is now set for May 20.For those who can afford,and are willing,a Legal Defense Fund has been established.For those who can't afford,he could probably use your best wishes/prayers.http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/ And for those unaware Wayne Madsen was a frequent contributer to FTW.

Peter J. Nickitas said...

Jenna and Mike;

Please check this story for possible inclusion in the next group of linked stories:

http://www.russiatoday.com/Politics/2009-04-20/Crisis_as_a_way_to_build_a_world-wide_totalitarian_state.html

Peter J. of Minneapolis

pstajk said...

Mike: Big ups on the book and movie release!

___________________________________
God, Kunstler is the man sometimes.

Note: Hope = Truth

F.Kamilov said...

Attention Jenna and everybody:

Here are some rare articles from a mainstream Pakistani newspaper - that are very instructive of the processes of transformation now occurring in that crucially important part of the doomed US NWO’s global stage. I ask you all to read them, so as to acquaint yourselves with the broader picture of our "map" as it is right now, and where it is going.

Slipping Away
http://www.thenews.com.pk/arc_news.asp?id=8

Democracy under siege
http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=173260


Extremely extremists and other children's stories
http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=173258

Pakistan’s corrupt rulers have begged their Western masters for a “Marshall Plan” for their country which they themselves ravaged. Rather late in the day isn’t it, what with the West itself needing a “Marshall plan” (but unfortunately they have no benevolent overlord around to bestow on them this bounty, of which they are now direly in need).

Below is Richard Holbrooke’s take on this:

$5 bn not enough for Pakistan: Holbrooke
http://www.thenews.com.pk/print3.asp?id=21603

And below is a satire on the present Pakistani predicament, by a Pakistani columnist, in a slapstick style typical of most Pakistani writers; the guy is trying to imitate the style of the late Art Buchwald. Here goes:

Brave new world
http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=173261

And finally my own comment. The US is of course, supporting those criminals whose long stint of robbery and misrule is responsible for Pakistan’s present decaying situation – in the hope that they can extract some last mileage from them, as they have always done since 1947 when Pakistan was created. It is in the “interest” of general US “prosperity and well being” that it is doing this. The US supports pernicious pestilence abroad, in certain “strategic” places, so that it can “prosper”; and then they (seemingly) wonder why they are hated. Enough said. All this speaks for itself. Most of the readers on this blog are no fools and know what is going on. That is why we are all here together on this list, aren’t we?

F.Kamilov said...

And here is what Jan Lundberg has to say on the issue I brought to your notice in my preceding comment:

Struggle for Land to Spread from Pakistan to U.S.?

http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=397&Itemid=1

Scott said...

I don't get it. The shroud of Turin is kinda interesting, but what does it have to do with this blog?

agape wins said...

Survival, And beyond.

Nothing is cut & dried, or black & white, Life is more than complicated

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/columbine_s_survivors

"People have been able to have 10 years to reconcile what happened and see what fits in their life and who they are," said Kristi Mohrbacher of Littleton, who fled Columbine as the gunfire erupted. "It's kind of a part of who I am today. I think my priorities might be a little bit different if I hadn't had that experience."

What follows is my memory, remember I was not taking
notes!

I lived in the Columbine area when the school was built, in fact I did service work in the kitchen/library area during
construction, & for 2 yr.s after.
We lived in a overlapping school zone, 1.2 mi west & were part of
about 25% of parents who chose another school, the Irland's
lived 3 blocks away from us, & chose Columbine, Patrick was our
Paperboy. He was always positive, active, well mannered,
& dressed well; someone who had a future.
I was divorced in 91, moving out of state in 93, my 2 sons
remaining with their mother, by chance I was in Lakewood,
on business, about 4 mi. north of the School, on the 20th.
we were in the motel parking lot when most of the responding
helicopters, Police and Ambulances went south on Wadsworth Blvd. I called my ex., who works at a local grade school. She had just returned home, as the school was locked down, as we were talking the coverage started on the TV, which was her first knowledge of the cause of the commotion!
One of the later pictures, was of Patrick (he was not identified
until 2 day's later), dangling from the window. The report was he would never walk again!
Never underestimate the power of faith, willpower, and the will to SURVIVE!!

Quote;

Patrick Ireland, the boy in the window, endured grueling therapy to regain the use of his legs, and he had to relearn how to read, write and talk.

With a control-your-destiny determination, he graduated as valedictorian from Columbine and magna cum laude from Colorado State University. Today, he is a field director for Northwestern Mutual Finance Network in the Denver area and has been married to Kacie for nearly four years. Unquote! My paperboy!!

Quote;

And how does he want to be remembered?

"A triumphant recovery and success story." Unquote.

Now for those who doubt faith can have a positive
outcome, even through failure, God bless Rachel!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Scott

wxdude714 said...

Following up on Obama's GW plan of dumping massive amounts of dust in the troposphere to cool the earth from GW. I said it would accelerate the melting of the Arctic Ice Cap. Turns out I was right.

Aerosols May Drive A Significant Portion Of Arctic Warming
"There's a tendency to think of aerosols as small players, but they're not," said Shindell. "Right now, in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere and in the Arctic, the impact of aerosols is just as strong as that of the greenhouse gases."http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Aerosols_May_Drive_A_Significant_Portion_Of_Arctic_Warming_999.html

agape wins said...

To Scott, & others who are in a fog, Although F.Kamilov, is definitely not in a fog, his lack of response to questions speaks volumes.
YOU/We have to read this Blog as the Work of mystery it is, a true Who done it!
Where are we going, what is around the corner, on the next post, who
is now the suspect?
Question everything,anything you hold as trustworthy, it soon becomes clear we are truly in the
land of Liar's, & never have been
in the land of truth tellers!
You have to read carefully, & also
what is not verbalized, that is a clue also!!
I am impatient for Mike's Thriller!

agape wins said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Kamilov sent us to Holbrooke on Pakistan aid:

“Five billion dollars is not enough,” said Holbrooke, US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. “We should — after congratulating the result yesterday — be very mindful of the fact that the problem is far from over,” he said.

He declined to give a figure on how much money was required to stabilise Pakistan, but noted that some economists say the number “is as high as 50 billion dollars”.

But is this not the main reason to be there? Is this not the main reason to piss off the locals with flying robots and hellfire missiles? Destroy and rebuild, destroy and rebuild. It's good for The Economy, and keeps Americans focussed abroad. Like the Crusades, it also bleeds off the gang violence at home, to be thrust at strangers far away. (How many out of a thousand realize that this was the main strategy behind the First Crusade?)

The U.S. rode Marcos until he was useless, then allowed a "people revolution" and closed its base, then brought Arroyo the economist into the world scheme and now the Philippines is no more free or prosperous or independent of foreign capital than it was before. What is happening to Mexico? Chaos is the perfect excuse for order, and since the U.S. can represent itself as the law and order champion of the world, it's only fair that Uncle Sam should carry his big club over to Pakistan and reformat the country... once sufficient anarchy has been achieved to wear down the state apparatus.

I am surprised by none of this. But it must be emphasized that this is not the heyday of American might. We could not afford Vietnam, but we could survive it. These are very different times.

Freek said...

Congratulations on the new book all the way from Amsterdam (The Netherlands)! As a student of philosophy and politics Michael Ruppert has done me a great service in showing how to cut through the bullshit in news and political discourse, and instead to focus on issues that we can't afford to ignore.
And despite all the setbacks he has shown courage and tenacity for decades as a whistleblower and activist. I'm very glad to see Crossing the Rubicon is not MCR's last book after all!

trobador said...

GREAT!! THANK YOU MIKE FOR YOUR EFFORT, IT IS INSPIRING EVEN FOR US IN CANADA.

OK FOLKS, KEEP YOUR EYES OPENED, THE TRAIN IS COMING IN...

According to the GovTrack.US website that tracks all new laws being implemented in the United States, The US House of Representatives approved a law named ‘Melanie Blocker Stokes Mom’s Opportunity to
Access Health, Education, Research, and Support for Postpartum
Depression Act`
’ with little notice, and as we can read:

"This bill passed in the House of Representatives by roll call vote. The vote was held under a suspension of the rules to cut debate short and pass the bill, needing a two-thirds majority. The totals were 391 Ayes,
8 Nays, 32 Present/Not Voting."

"Some experts in Russia believe that the foundation of this law is the following: for all babies born in the United States to become the ‘legal property’ of the government, not the mothers
who gave them birth, that requires all pregnant women to undergo
mandatory mental health testing and requires all American mothers who have given birth to take a test determining their mental fitness before being allowed to have custody of their newborns."

Is it true or this one is a scam?

esteb

Instinkt said...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/you-are-being-lied-to-abo_b_155147.html

European ships dumping nuclear waste in Somali waters.

Scott said...

Agape Wins: with due respect, what are you babbling about? I cannot parse your non-sequiturs.

agape wins said...

Scott,

Please reread what Jenna wrote, Think, what is the context, 4 people can read something &
have 4 different conclusions, none of which has to be wrong!
How do the links relate, remember, She is a Conductor, You are a poet, does what you write
have a flow, leading to a finish? Do you throw something in out of left field?
I am an old time Conservative, which means I get as much information as I can, from all sides before making a decision/Choice, not the perverted, Right wing Party line Conservative.

Woody Guthrie, I read Bound for Glory twice, a lot to read between the lines, sometimes fiction is truer than a fact. Do you know who the Knights Templar were, not the storybook Catholic fiction, but the radical Enforcers Woody sings about?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bound_for_Glory_(book)

http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Woody-Guthrie-Biography/2CD9CB5FEE8E0AFD4825708B0007EF69

Next read what Jenna wrote on Tue, remember she had been thinking about Businessman's Link, sometimes
pieces fit together later, as in a murder mystery, or the game Clue.
Sometimes one sentence will ring a bell, if you know the background.

I can not do the thinking for you, no one else can, you have to find Your own Answer, yours could be more correct than mine.

F.Kamilov said...

No need to worry Agape, I am here with an answer - to my latest post! I always hold The Simple Telling of The Truth as supreme, religiously supreme if you will. The fogginess and slipperiness of which you speak is because of the reams of lies lubruicated with political correctness - so much of which has been spun and exuded that the umpteen hordes of spin doctors in and around us know not even where they themselves stand with respect to this unholy tangle of their creation; instead they make do with "slashing of the Gordian Knot" style solutions when desperately needed. I think that if the old fashioned, boring maxim of upholding the truth - void also of the tinsel of fancy mumbo-jumboistic jargon - is observed, then 75% of the world's problems will be put to rest and things will be refreshingly simpler. But this is exactly how those running this cutthroat world of competing interests and extreme agendas don't want it to be, and therefore they glamourise this slimy and sorry situation as being "sophisticated". But such disorder can't continue for ever. The laws of entropy aren't at work here. In fact the opposite holds, where we see situations becoming unnecessarily and unbearbly complicated till they finally seize up like a car engine with a punctured mobil oil sump (the "green" folks must forgive my car analogy). All this complexity is mainly to intimidate and control.

I think Eyeballs' reasoning above is well on target here, in the last paragraph of his or her post - to which I will add that, indeed a watershed has been arrived at in world history, like the ones reached in 1945 and 1991: this time around, it is plain and simple that any developed nation which continues to perpetrate the criminal support of ruling "kleptocratic" robber classes in another poorer and wretchedly "challenged" country to serve its own "interests and prosperity" will eventually be destroyed - by those aggrieved. The US doesn't need any existing threat from the neolithic al-Qaeda and Taliban style mountain shepherd-cavemen Islamic terrorists to destroy it (besides, there is no such thing as a "modern" or "sophisticated" Muslim; I know this opinion of mine will be contested - but that is a topic with its own lengthy scope and justifications). The Global Islamic Jihad was the CIA's own (anti-Soviet) creation gone malignant. It is also beside the point that the US's internal economic crisis is now threatening it additionally. The time has come when the US won't even be able to enjoy the luxury of being a rather mediocre, inward looking global entity peacefully tucked away in its own self-sufficient space as it once was - because it refuses to relinquish its massive global stranglehold and because there are heaps of other "bad karma" it has piled up for which it has to be made answerable. The present internal capitalist crisis will only serve to weaken the US and its NATO bloc and Middle Eastern flunky elites - then watch who will deliver the coup de grace to this global nuisance and monstrosity - and how. That time isn't far off at all, maybe just a decade down the line.

Unknown said...

Yo! Kamilov!

Please remember that "America" is not just Henry Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld and Jay Rockefeller. We are over 300 million folks, imperfect but far from intrinsically evil, in general. It's true that American habits, shared by nearly all the population, have had a deleterious effect on the biosphere. Yet all over the world, people of other nations have leapt and screamed to consume like Americans, so it's not a national sin so much as a historical accident.

As for what is done in our name around the world, you should see what they do to us at home. Industrial Capitalism has for a century relied on idiotic consumerism, the deliberate addiction of human beings to stuff they do not need, stuff that will poison them, make them obese, infantalize them and curtail their natural tendencies to relate to the biosphere. American "life" has been highly artificial, thoroughly supervised and deprived of subjective meaning as consumers were hitched to required patterns of behavior defining success, normality and sanity in terms of consumer behavior.

It's true that the world sees America as The Great Satan far too much, and is likely to target the country as a whole, in the same way people mistake Islam for the enemy when it is a small minority doing most of the troublemaking.

America is simmering under the lid, and it won't just be exasperated foreigners anxious to reformat America's behavior. I personally hope we can stop the approaching debacle in "AfPak" so that the national institutions are yet supple enough to peacefully assist in the morph to a new stasis. Otherwise, a lot of good people are gonna suffer for many years, who might otherwise do good work in these difficult times.

Please, give us your good vibes! We need 'em and will send back your way, too.

F.Kamilov said...

Eyeballs:

I am certainly not blaming the ordinary people of the US. I have many friends among them, and have visited North America (Canada). I wear jeans, white t-shirts and eat burgers and listen to rock-n-roll too. And Mark Twain's sayings are just as pertinent as those of any wise man. It is just that in major conflicts involving the Kissingers and Brzezinskis and Carnegies, etc. etc., the ordinary people tend to get caught up too, in many ways, whether or not they like it. Then again, the vision of ordinary Americans tends to be extraordinarily myopic: they think the whole world acts and behaves as they do, has the same "celebrities" as they do, plays the same games, same music, etc. That is surprising, given the resources an average American has at his fingertips. In the old USSR or Yugoslavia for instance, an ordinary student could readily pinpoint many Pakistani, Arabian, or other Asian cities on the map, whereas most Americans don't even have - or care to have - a vague clue about where such places are. That is all the more exasperating, when one sees how righteously insistent the US is, and also its flag waving "sheeple", about their global involvements. And then in your much vaunted and promoted system of democracy, it is the people supposedly - or their majority portion - that determines who and what government will take office. So the people can't say they have nothing to do with what the government does. I find a lot of your notions of "freedom" from the government (like over taxation) unusual. Such attitudes are not found anywhere else the "normal" world. And neither do I know of any other place in the world where some guy walks into a shopping mall or school and starts shooting people down at ramdom without rhyme or reason, before he is either shot down himself, or turns his gun on himself. (Of course, such incidents have happened once or twice elsewhere like in a Scottish school and on an Australian beach -with both these places like the USA having an Anglo-Saxon connotation).
Lastly, American involvement in foreign places tends to destabilise them. It is true that democracy, burgers and fries may be enjoyable things, but each place in the world is at its own idiosyncratic position with regard to its social and economic development, which needs studying and working out before you can impose or even proffer your solutions to it. Americans tend to barge through, thinking their instant remedies, consumer goods and and cocky individualist attitudes will have an instant "hey presto" effect and be apprecciated there. There are places in the world, near to where I live, where a father can "legally" bury his daughter alive if he suspects she is seeing a male on her own. What will you do there? Ask such people to partake of strawberry milkshake accompanied by peanut butter and jam sandwiches, and be a good "dude"? Dont make me laugh!
There are many decent Americans I know, and whose ordinary European values I share. But my objective here is to tell you that we are all on the verge of a disaster that has its multiple roots not only in the decadence of US capitalism, but also in a very much external way,and that ordinary Americans should open their eyes to the fact that it is not only the collapse of their "postmodern" civilisation they will face and get away with it - but sadly they are likely to face much, much more. Equally as sad, the time to be able to make amends and save the day has passed too.

Anonymous said...

Oops! I just looked at your book/film announcement at http://www.rubiconworks.com/announcement.html. The links to collapsemovie.com and bluemark films are wrong. (You just need to take off everything before the actual web addresses. No big deal.)

Welcome back, Mike! It's nice seeing you posting here again. I missed you. I also can't wait to scrape up enough dinero to buy the book and DVD and inflict them on as many of my friends as I possibly can.