Dear Sarah Chayes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Chayes
Are you trying (now) to tell us you didn't know back when Dubya was sitting in those photo ops with Hamad Karzai, that he was a warlord?
I don't have a Harvard degree in history, but this midwestern housewife knew.
Gee Whiz.
NPR = conduit for propaganda.

It might be fun wearing a turban in Afganistan but Flint, Michigan is a dangerous place with a depressed population and Flint needs a soap cooperative too. Come to Flint and work here and I won't believe you're another American mole meddling in the rest of the world.
Why do we need to go to the Mideast to do charity work?

remember when oil was 20 dollars a barrrel?

And Bush's war only cost We the People (the American taxpayers) a billion a week?
Good thing we have soma (24-7 television coverage of a rock concert for dead Diana, and Paris-and-Brittany's latest doin's) to paralyze our brain cells... otherwise... We'd be ticked.

Report: Wars Cost US $12 Billion a Month
By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The boost in troop levels in Iraq has increased the cost of war there and in Afghanistan to $12 billion a month, and the total for Iraq alone is nearing a half-trillion dollars, congressional analysts say.

All told, Congress has appropriated $610 billion in war-related money since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror assaults, roughly the same as the war in Vietnam. Iraq alone has cost $450 billion.

The figures come from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which provides research and analysis to lawmakers.

For the 2007 budget year, CRS says, the $166 billion appropriated to the Pentagon represents a 40 percent increase over 2006.

The Vietnam War, after accounting for inflation, cost taxpayers $650 billion, according to separate CRS estimates.

The $12 billion a month "burn rate" includes $10 billion for Iraq and almost $2 billion for Afghanistan, plus other minor costs. That's higher than Pentagon estimates earlier this year of $10 billion a month for both operations. Two years ago, the average monthly cost was about $8 billion.

Among the reasons for the higher costs is the cost of repairing and replacing equipment worn out in harsh conditions or destroyed in combat.

But the estimates call into question the Pentagon's estimate that the increase in troop strength and intensifying pace of operations in Baghdad and Anbar province would cost only $5.6 billion through the end of September.

If Congress approves President Bush's pending request for another $147 billion for the budget year starting Oct. 1, the total bill for the war on terror since Sept. 11 would reach more than three-fourths of a trillion dollars, with appropriations for Iraq reaching $567 billion.

Also, if the increase in war tempo continues beyond September, the Pentagon's request "would presumably be inadequate," CRS said.

The latest estimates come as support for the war in Iraq among Bush's GOP allies in Congress is beginning to erode. Senior Republicans such as Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Richard Lugar of Indiana have called for a shift in strategy in Iraq and a battle over funding the war will resume in September, when Democrats in Congress begin work on a funding bill for the war.

Congress approved $99 billion in war funding in May after a protracted battle and a Bush veto of an earlier measure over Democrats' attempt to set a timeline for withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq.

The report faults the Pentagon for using the Iraq war as a pretext for boosting the Pentagon's non-war budget by costs such as procurement, increasing the size of the military and procurement of replacement aircraft as war-related items.

The new estimate comes as the White House and Democrats are fighting over spending bills for next year. That battle is over about $22 billion _ almost the cost of two months' fighting in Iraq.

"Think about what $10 billion a month would mean to protecting Americans from terrorism, improving security at our ports and airports, and increasing border security," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.

the office pool...

... says the "missing family jewel" is the Kennedy assasination.

...or just maybe little Georgie W. was a Manchurian Candidate.

the cake under the sink, the rats in the kitchen

While I was reading Commondreams.org today I came across this story about then Defense Secretary, now head of World Bank- Paul Wolfowitz's girlfriend being sent by the World Bank to Iraq in 2003 (link).

What caught my eye was the appearance of SAIC in the scenario. Remember the SAIC - Defense Secretary Robert Gates connection I drew so long ago? and the SAIC - Black Box Voting connection? and the recent Antiwar.com Charles Goyette interview I wrote about concerning SAIC's contracts in the Iraq /Afgan/Mideast Wars?

Some real journalists should be pulling the threads of this story!!!
Thank Vanity Fair and the Government Accountability Project for following the story of how our democracy has been looted by a bunch of NeoCon pirates. You don't see this on television news, now do you.

I remember a famous Neocon once said in a fit of truthiness, "If you don't want rats in the kitchen you don't store a cake under the sink." It was either Krystol or Norquist, can't recall.
I think we stored the bloody cake under the sink and the rats are in the kitchen.

Paranoid or Prophet?

So... why DID the FBI have a file-full of his mail?
Project Artichoke?

And it all begs the big question of our day... if they can spy on American citizens, then why can't American citizens read their e-mails, read their mail, listen to their phone calls?

A "handful" of staff in Karl Rove's office destroyed 5,000 pieces of e-mail, thereby breaking the law (don't make me look it up, it's something like the Whitehouse Communications Act)and our representatives still have to wait around for subpenas?

Hey, Senator Pat Leahy, how about dashing off a National Security letter?

It's long, but worth every minute...

Dear Senator John McCain

A person has to ask themself, why would John McCain indulge in such fantastic absurdism.
'Walking safely in Baghdad', indeed.

Put two and two together. The guy is running for Presdient... and hence he covets MONEY, like the Anointed Mitt and the Predestined Hillary.

Well, coincidentally, this weekend I heard a great interview of Donald Bartlett and James Steele by Charles Goyette on Antiwar Radio (link & listen) all about their recent article in Vanity Fair about SAIC, the biggest military contractor in history. (Remember during the confirmation hearings I wrote about SAIC in reference to Robert Gates, our new Secretary of Defense.)
SAIC, Halliburton, Blackwater, B&R, CACI, Bechtel, are the biggest piggies on the American taxpayer's teat.
And they pay war candidates to run for president.

For further investigation, Bartlett and Steele should write another investigative article about SAIC's contracts with the elections commission and Diebold.

Dear Mr. Blair

Blair: Next 2 Days With Iran Are Crucial
By DAVID STRINGER, Associated Press Writer
Tue Apr 3, 2007
LONDON - The next two days are "fairly critical" to resolving the dispute over a seized British navy crew, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tuesday, after Iran's chief international negotiator offered a new approach to end the standoff with Tehran.

So the primo diplomats of the civilized world can't solve a map dispute.
Sounds like a set-up to me.

Tony Poodle Dog Blair has a choice here for his final act. Let the neo-cons he has always kneeled to take us to another war on ginned up pretext, or retire and go on a sweet vacation for the rest of his life.
What is it about these egomaniacs?

It's common knowlege, isn't it, Tony has a cushy job in line with Rupert Murdoch after his reign of error is over.

Some Russian rag has leaked that Good Friday is the date.
I heard somewhere else that the Eisenhower is going to be replaced by the Nimitz, thereby at overlap time it would be auspicious for Dubya and his wolfpack to go blood simple.
Come on, Tony, stand on yer hind legs and make peace.

http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/timeline/flash_index.htm

Still relevant, because the same bad actors are still pulling the strings:
Bringing on 'World War III'
by Bill Berkowitz
WorkingForChange
URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=21146
07.27.06

If you thought that a global conflagration on the order of a world war was more the stuff of Biblical prophecy, science fiction and apocalyptic end-of- times novels, think again.
For years, U.S. neoconservatives have been ratcheting up the rhetoric -- mostly in small gatherings and on partisan Web sites -- claiming that terrorist activities around the world constituted the initial stages of a new world war.
But during the past two weeks, with the Israeli/ Hezbollah conflict in full swing, Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, is using any media platform available to him to launch a campaign aimed at convincing the public that the United States is engaged in World War III.
Gingrich made national headlines when he claimed while discussing the situation in the Middle East during an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" on July 16 that the United States should be "helping the Lebanese government have the strength to eliminate Hezbollah as a military force."
A day earlier, the Seattle Times reported that during a fundraising trip to the state of Washington, Gingrich used the term World War III, while at the same time mixing in a little partisan politics, acknowledging that he was his concerned about the Republican Party's prospects in the fall elections.
"This is World War III," Gingrich said. "Israel wouldn't leave southern Lebanon as long as there was a single missile there. I would go in and clean them all out and I would announce that any Iranian airplane trying to bring missiles to re-supply them would be shot down. This idea that we have this one-sided war where the other team gets to plan how to kill us and we get to talk, is nuts."
Gingrich also maintained that the use of the term "World War III" could re-energise the base of the Republican Party. He pointed out that public opinion can change "the minute you use the language" of World War III. The message then, he said, is "okay, if we're in the third world war, which side do you think should win?"
Gingrich, a regular Fox News Channel contributor also appeared on the network's "Hannity & Colmes" program, and restated his World War III contention.
In a recent column, the Rev. Jerry Falwell echoed Gingrich's comments: "... I believe we are on the verge of a war without borders, one that could bring bouts of violence and bloodshed into our lives. Remember that Iran's Ahmadinejad has not only threatened to destroy Israel, but has also threatened to nuke the United States."
While Gingrich's media tour definitely thrust him back into the national political spotlight, it may have also given the public a sneak peek into the Republican Party's political/marketing strategy for the November congressional elections: If the war on terrorism doesn't create a fearful enough climate amongst voters, why not ratchet it up by mentioning the specter of a World War III?
Gingrich, who has also been testing the waters for a 2008 run at the presidency, was not the first conservative to use the phrase World War III. Media Matters for America, a Web site devoted to "monitoring, analysing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media," recently documented a number of World War III references by a gaggle of cable television's conservative talking heads.
On the July 13 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly said "World War III ... I think we're in it."
On the same day's edition of MSNBC's Tucker, a graphic read: "On the verge of World War III?"
"CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck began his program on July 12 with a discussion with former CIA officer Robert Baer by saying 'We've got World War III to fight,' while also warning of 'the impending apocalypse,'" Media Matters for America noted.
"Beck and Baer had a similar discussion on July 13, in which Beck said: 'I absolutely know that we need to prepare ourselves for World War III. It is here.'"
President Bush mentioned World War III in May, telling CNBC that the action taken by the passengers on the hijacked flight 93 on Sep. 11, 2001 was the "first counter-attack to World War III."
Bush said that he agreed with the description by David Beamer, whose son Todd died in the crash, in an April Wall Street Journal commentary that the act was "our first successful counter-attack in our homeland in this new global war -- World War III."
Hyping World War III isn't new to conservatives. Some have even argued that the real World War III was the Cold War against the Soviet Union, and that now the United States is engaged in World War IV.
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neoconservative think tank that in the late 1990s was advocating regime change in Iraq and has consistently promoted a muscular U.S. foreign policy, was one of the groups that used the term World War III to describe the Cold War.
In April 2003, at a teach-in at the University of California, Los Angeles sponsored by Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, R. James Woolsey, a former CIA director and founding member of PNAC, told the audience that "This fourth world war, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us; hopefully not the full four-plus decades of the Cold War."
Woolsey pointed out that the religious rulers of Iran, the "fascists" of Iraq and Syria, and terrorist groups like al Qaeda were the main targets of the new war. But PNAC and Woolsey's labeling of the Cold War as World War III and the current war against terrorism World War IV may have been more a case of premature elocution than a precise reading of the times. That construct "might sell well inside the Beltway, but out in the countryside where the younger generation can't recall the Cold War it doesn't do much," John Stauber, the founder and executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy and the author of the forthcoming book, "The Best War Ever," told me in an email.
"The Cold War was the best thing that ever happened to American capitalism, and the collapse of the Soviet Union was a disaster for the Eisenhower-named military-industrial complex," Stauber pointed out.
"The strategists among the pro-war right jumped all over 9/11; an endless, secret, war against a foreign enemy bent on terrorism and acquiring weapons of mass destruction is an even better scenario for American militarists than the Cold War."
"Calling it World War III is sound packaging," he said. "You've got to call it something and five years after 9/11 with Osama [bin Laden] still roaming free and Iraq an American quagmire, and the Republican Party in danger of losing control of Congress, this ploy makes marketing sense."
If the Republican Party brain-trust -- read, Karl Rove -- determines that labeling the Democrats "cut and runners," "weak on terrorism," or that they are incapable of understanding the reality of the dangerous world we live in, does not appear to be resonating with voters, the term World War III just might be put in play.

...Onward Christian Soldiers

Dear Journalists on NPR and AP

Sins of omission, sins of comission.
Sometimes it's what you don't tell.

So I'm hearing and reading this morning about this testimony by Kahlid Sheik Mohammed whose job it is to resurrect the images of 9-11.
He's a TALKER, isn't he?
Not in public of course.
And he might have been tortured in the past.
But that doesn't affect what he (reportedly) says today.
[cough]

And you lovingly to repeat his tales, his plans for other of our famous landmarks, certain words repeated, your (NPR) focus on child killing, images resurrected that recall the embedded horror in the back of the mind of every soccer mom as she drops her kids at the corner to catch the schoolbus.

But, just a snag in the back of my mind... why isn't it ever being said or printed:
what country does this guy come from?
Is he Yemeni? Is he Pakistani? Is he a Saudi? Is he a KUWAITI?
But but but those are our allies.

And we invaded Iraq, killing 600,000 people to fight the terrorists... where?
IRAQ!!! Someone buy the Pentagon a map!

AP, you mention the nationalities of his cohorts, but not his.
I'm just saying highly paid professionals should be better editors, or portray themselves more rightly, as editorialists.

And speaking of your editorializing, why did you chose the hypothetical targets you chose to reveal? The British newspapers have a much more complete and JUICY list.

Hey, did I say WE KILLED 600,000 recently in a country our President invaded by mistake (because it COULDn't have been by deceit)? And did you give a figure on KSM's body count?
WHO is the BIGGER TERRORIST?

Background music

Background on the past five years, that is. Dave Rovic's "Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL)" is a perfect accompaniment to this article by Christian Parenti in the new Nation Magazine, "Who Will Get the OIL?", or this article which reminds us of the secret Cheney Energy taskforce.

Poetry is the Antithesis of Fascist Terror

In my humble opinion, the extremist religions work together with government and the ruling class to repress and supress and enslave and rob "the people".
It all is a question of freedom versus control.
We know that between Madison Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue and K Street, that the values we hold dear have been manipulated and prostituted and garbaged.
All that remains is happy-shiny glossy lies for the willing sheep, and dark debilitating anger for the rest of us who really once cared.

Someone wise once said:
"No poetry after Auschwitz."
But he was wrong.
No poetry is what the militarist, dominionist, and terrorist want.
Because militarism, dominionism, and terrorism are all death dealers.

After September 11, 2001, poets contained the only light I saw in the world.
Sharon Olds refused an invitation from Pickles to tea at the White House.
The poets of America began a project to write and collect meaningful poetry.
It took years for Americans to begin questioning again, but the poets never lost their souls. Their brains still worked in tandem with their hearts.

I copied this essay then, and run across it once in a while. Posting here as well as on my poetry pages, because I'm sure you wonder why I post my long pieces of boring poetry and then you click right past them.
Well, this piece is prose and easily read.
Say what you will, art makes us human, has a place, and we will need it again...maybe sooner than you think.
After all, our watchdogs in the CIA have predicted a big terrorist incident in the contiguous USA in the next few months.
And if we're fighting them over there to keep from fighting them here, maybe the big hinge of history incident could happen over there... to our idolized troops or maybe a ship in the gulf. Placed like pawns where they can be manipulated for the Great Game.

All Hat-No Cattle Dubya is all set to play his last apocalyptic hand in Iran/Syria. According to the White House astrologers during Mercury retrograde, and according to the Pentagon war-gamers February through April.
And the majority of the people are weary of war, balking.
America just Needs Another Pearl Harbor to turn us into solid flaming fascists.

And the rest of us will need poetry.

September 27, 2001
Disaster Calls Poetry to Action; Auden's Verses Are Back
at Workby Sven Bikerts

I teach two writing courses at Mt. Holyoke College, normally an orderly drill in which I try to supply useful strategies for a series of expressive tasks.

But of course "normally" vaporized this year as soon as the semester began, and I found myself, like every teacher in the country, faced with the question of how to proceed with my course, the premises of my subject, in the face of a collective sadness and unease unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.

Meeting my creative-writing class last week for the first time since the disaster, I brought in copies of W.H. Auden’s "September 1, 1939," a poem that’s been everywhere in the air these last days. I thought that if my students didn’t know it, they should. And as I was reading out the later lines of the opening stanza—

Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odor of death
Offends the September night.

I felt, I thought I felt, an attentiveness in the room that went beyond the usual open-eyed, if sometimes undiscriminating, receptivity. I had the sense that the words, to paraphrase a line from another Auden poem, were hurting and connecting.

We did not go on, as I’d thought we might, to talk about the poem. Instead, somehow, we got onto the question of the place of poetry—and, by extension, literature—in the face of the unspeakable. Why read or study it? What does it give us? Can words arranged on a page make a difference? Of course, I had to cite T.W. Adorno’s famous dictum: "No poetry after Auschwitz." What could that mean?

Expressions around the room were mostly baffled. I wanted to break the question down. Did Adorno mean "no poetry" because we should not write it? Because the writing of poems celebrated the human in ways that had become unconscionable? Or because the assertion of purpose and inner coherence that poetry necessarily represents was somehow wrong, no longer viable? Or did Adorno mean "no poetry" because we could not? Because an extreme of barbarism had revealed language to be inadequate, limited in what it could represent? Because barbarism had thus undermined the core assumption of the enterprise? But why single out poetry? Everything is ultimately limited. One might as well mark the enormity of moral devastation by insisting no anything.

Which becomes, of course, a paper argument, carried on in the face of human contrariness, the biological persistence that will rebuild the world no matter how many times it’s torn apart. The argument about the writing and reading of poetry is also finally academic. No poetry after Auschwitz. Except that there was and there is: Akhmatova, Milosz, Bishop, Brodsky, Heaney, Lowell, Walcott, Plath, Herbert and thousands of others. Poetry has flourished since the time of the death camps, and not because it has looked away. It hasn’t.

Problem solved. Except, alas, that it continued to vex, as it must now that the world has been torn apart again. Must, for asking the question is a way of addressing the pain, the very real sense of hopelessness that floods me over and over throughout the day. What is the place, the purpose, of poetry? I was asking it again that afternoon as I blazed my way east on the Mass Pike, lost in a thought fugue rare even for me, who am given to thought fugues on these long commutes. And by the time I reached the outskirts of Boston, I had a kind of answer.

It took a while to get there. My first thought, contra Adorno, was that disaster requires poetry precisely because of the implied perspective it—all literature—assumes: the seriousness and ongoing point of all things, however fragile the web of meaning may seem at times; and because poetry springs directly from our primal need and capacity for communication. As I’d just declaimed to my class from Auden:

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages

But then I had another, less expected idea. To understand the use of poetry, its particular importance in times like this, I realized, we need to understand the nature of trauma. This is a subject for deep study, of course, but a few generalizations are possible. To begin with, catastrophic trauma shatters norms; it upsets, in a way that feels permanent, the balance of things. It overwhelms our psychic system, melting down the usual response mechanisms whereby experiences are organized and stored as the stuff of memory. Further, this trauma creates for itself a kind of perpetual present. What is post-traumatic stress disorder but the psyche’s inability to banish hurt to the past? In the sufferer—and we are now all to some degree sufferers—the pain stays alive, there to be activated at any moment. The plane keeps slicing into the building, each time fresh; it doesn’t stop. We don’t even need to see the loop any more.

And this, I thought, is where poetry comes in. Poetry does not, with its meanings and messages, defeat trauma; it does not argue it away with its countervailing sense of purpose. Nothing so simple: Poetry works on a deeper level. Because it mobilizes such a concentration of devices, such an intensification of language via rhythm, syntax, image and metaphor, reading it—the best of it—can create another, very different kind of perpetual present, an awareness that can be as ongoing in the soul as the stop-time of trauma.

For poetry is the reverse of the terrorist act, its antithesis—just as the terrorist act is the complete negation of the spirit of poetry. We read poetry because we need something to hold against horror, something to place alongside it that is equally persistent. Not because poetry overturns or disarms horror, but because it helps restore the delicate inner balance we call sanity.

And when this balance, this instinctive sense of moral proportion, is threatened—as it is now—we need poetry in the worst way. Shakespeare asked: "How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, / Whose action is no stronger than a flower?" A rhetorical question. He knew. As did Auden, who in that most sustaining poem, with a modesty that seems to me just slightly disingenuous, wrote:

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Auden would not allow that poem to be reprinted in his Collected Poems, arguing that "We must love one another or die" was misleading, a false choice. I’ve always wondered where this sudden literalism came from, this misplaced sense of scruple. It’s his best line.

This column ran on page 1 in the 10/1/2001 edition of The New York Observer.

I just had a bad thought

Remember when we were in Washington DC at the September 2005 protest? There was a buzz going around that some rabbit virus was picked up by the sniffing sensors they have placed in the city?
If the neocons were looking for a New Pearl Harbor for their next preemptive war, what better victims than a bunch of anti-war voters? Self-selected collateral damage to field test some of their crowd control stuff on. They've done such things in the past, it's just a matter of scale.
Remember, the anthrax was only sent to Democrats.
I gotta think about happy stuff.
Here's somethin' good:
ziggy marley and chieftains Redemption song

The third monster MLK identified, militarism, is keeping us from our rightful future

There will be a day of protest against the war on January 27 in D.C.

From Dr. King, a Reminder on Iraq
By Colbert I. King
Saturday, January 13, 2007

Forty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whom the nation will honor on Monday, took to the pulpit of Riverside Church in New York City at a meeting organized by Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam. The date was April 4, 1967, one year before his assassination in Memphis.
King said he was in New York because his conscience had left him no choice. In his speech, "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," King declared: "That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam."

King acknowledged the reluctance of some people to speak out on Vietnam -- the same hesitation some Americans may have today over voicing their concerns about Iraq. People, he explained, "do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war."
But King concluded that too much was at stake. He and the other religious and lay leaders were moved by what the conflict in Vietnam was doing to the United States. Vietnam, King said, was consuming American troops and money like "some demonic, destructive suction tube" even as that war was laying waste to the Vietnamese people and to America's standing in the world.

And on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, in 2007?
More than 3,000 Americans have been killed in Iraq, while 22,000 others have been wounded. Billions of dollars that could have been invested here at home have been spent there, a lot of it wasted, some of it stolen, plenty of it unaccounted for. And Iraqis in Baghdad, who cowered for decades under a brutal dictator, have been living in the midst of violence almost continuously since Saddam Hussein was deposed.
"We are creating enemies faster than we can kill them" read a bumper sticker in Washington this week.

Now enter George W. Bush -- the president who got America into this debacle through a series of misjudgments that would make Alfred E. Neuman look brilliant. This week Bush announced plans to plop down thousands of additional troops in the middle of a sectarian war and to shell out billions of additional dollars to pacify a war-weary Iraqi population that, truth be told, wants America gone.

Why trust this administration?
Contrary to what Bush and his allies said:

· There were no weapons of mass destruction poised to strike America and her allies.

· A quick defeat of Hussein did not lead to chocolates and flowers in the streets of Baghdad.

· An American invasion did not produce a unified, nonsectarian and Western-oriented Iraq or spark a desire for U.S.-style governance throughout the Arab world.

· De-Baathification and the imposition of a market economy at gunpoint did not usher in a period of tranquility or the flowering of capitalism.

The Bush administration struck first because it had the power to strike and the arrogance to think, foolishly, that it could win and dominate the conquered on the cheap.

King spoke in '67 about "the Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them." Witness the Bush team in Iraq.
Today they have a bloodbath on their hands to show for their labors, and Iran is on the verge of getting an Iraqi neighbor beyond its wildest dreams.

Yet even now, neoconservatives inside and outside of government are counseling Bush to remain in Iraq for years to prevent the Shiite-dominated regime from collapsing. They also are encouraging him to prepare for battle with Iran and Syria if those countries start meddling in Iraq -- as if they aren't now.

With what exactly and for how long we are supposed to do battle with Tehran and Damascus, the militaristic neocon noncombatants in Washington don't say. But then again, they have a tolerance for risk and cost that exceeds that of those who actually do the fighting and dying.

Forty years ago at Riverside Church, people of conscience declared that "a time comes when silence is betrayal." They went beyond using their voices and votes when they agreed to break their silence. They responded, as King had urged, by matching their words with actions. "We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest," King preached that day.

Yes, this is a different time and a different world. Global terrorism is a sobering reality. And America is on the right side in that war. To not fight back is tantamount to indulging a death wish.
But the first blow in Iraq, which was not a battleground for terrorism, was struck by Bush. He now, stubbornly and in the face of legitimate opposition, proposes to make matters worse.
Remember King and the words: "A time comes when silence is betrayal."

this is my fear

We have a hundred thousand troops and our Navy sitting there waiting to be held hostage to whichever side of the religious civil war of the Muslim world decides they've had it with our meddling.
All they have to do is cut off the supply lines to our sitting duck soldiers, just by cutting our fuel lines.
I understand Iran has a new TESTED surface missile that works on sitting duck ships.
Our proxy warrior Israel has nukes, and that slimy two faced Pakistan has nukes.

Since May our leadership has been threatening mostly-Shiite Persian Iran and Syria.
I understand the perfect time to start a war in that area is in the February-March window.
Time to load the propaganda catapult, Mr. President.

The mostly-Sunni Saudi Arabs are making plenty of oil profit since 9-11, but our good friends the UAE (Dubai) took steps to threaten our security by switching their currency to petro-euros. When the rest of the world loses interest in carrying our debt, what happens?
And Meanwhile, the strategically invested global corporate Neo-cons in charge are making plenty of privatized contract profit.
The average American is over the barrel.
I hope you read the copy of the article I posted by Dmitry Orlov that outlined how the Soviet Union left its average citizens so much better prepared for collapse than our capitalist system has left us.

We will finally defeat the Blackhawk Down syndrome.

Invading Somalia on the eve of a presidential address.
Curious timing.
The Decider has decided.
Immediately after the first Bush invasion of Iraq, GHWBush said: "we have finally defeated the Vietnam Syndrome".
Then we experienced Blackhawk Down in Somalia.
Will Dubya finally be able to say "we have finally defeated the Blackhawk Down Syndrome"?
It must have stuck in his craw all these years.

The reputation of the Bush dynasty is at stake.
We will win even if we have to kill a million 'collateral damages'.
They're only brown people with inferior religions sitting on our oil.
We'll Nuke 'em back to the stone age like the right wing press says.
(I hope you recognize irony there.)

Monday, (my blogger was down):
The official leak has been made. The public has been sufficiently acclimated to the news and is now in place to listen to the bastard's unplan without blowing their tops.
A surge of a billion tax dollar in aid for a works program for Iraq.
Surging right out of our middle-class losing-jobs losing-pensions losing-medical-care pockets.
The evening that Shock and Awe was launched, we went out to dinner... giving ourselves no chance of being near a video screen. I did not believe in the carnage of the rockets red glare as a spectator sport. We stood on the corner of Franklin and Davison, Flint, Michigan, in front of Angelo's Coney Island and saw, looking in all four directions, the destruction caused by years of globalization and ruling class manipulation.
Potholes, plywooded windows, dark empty streets, abandoned homes, abandoned vehicles, abandoned businesses, dying churches, closing schools, closing shops. The sense of danger, the knowlege that unseen bad people could do a drive by, or jump us in the park or on the street, that people die by violence in that hood so plagued by gang graffiti, and neglected rental property, and poverty.
If we needed to bring a 'freedom agenda' and a billion dollar jobs program and hope to somewhere, why not to Flint, Michigan?
Because we have no oil under our homes?
Because we aren't close to Israel so we have no strategic importance?
Because we are only average Americans in trouble?
Kinda recalls my mind to Hurricane Katrina as well.
Where is the loyal opposition?

A NOTE to those who have been media-farmed to think the first battle of Mogadishu was all the fault of the right side of the coin's favorite whipping boy Clinton...
Wars don't just happen. They are planned many moves in advance just like chess. DUH!

The Bush Administration covertly started setting up Somalia for a regime change and nation building (actions which, during the 2000 presidential campaign, Dubya deplored. However once he was selected in the Supreme Court coup of 2000, spreading a Freedom Agenda became his mantra too. Funny how all that power and influence change a guy.)
Such meglomaniacs, such meddlers, such blood soaked hypocrites.

I copy and paste from Wikipedia:
In September 1991 severe fighting broke out in Mogadishu, which continued in the following months and spread throughout the country, with over 20,000 people killed or injured by the end of the year. These wars led to the destruction of the economy of Somalia which in turn led to starvation in large parts of Somalia. The international community began to send food supplies to halt the starvation, but vast amounts of food were hijacked and brought to local clan leaders, who routinely exchanged it with other countries for weapons. An estimated 80 percent of the food was stolen. These factors led to even more starvation, from which an estimated 300,000 people died, and another 1.5 million people suffered, between 1991 and 1992. In July 1992, after a ceasefire between the opposing clan factions, the United Nations sent 50 military observers to watch the distribution of the food.
Operation Provide Relief began in August 1992, when the George H. W. Bush White House announced that U.S. military transports would support the multinational UN relief effort in Somalia. Ten C-130s and 400 people were deployed to Mombasa, Kenya during Operation Provide Relief, airlifting aid to remote areas in Somalia and reducing reliance on truck convoys. [...] When this proved inadequate to stop the massive death and displacement of the Somali people (500,000 dead and 1.5 million refugees or displaced), the U.S., in December 1992, launched a major coalition operation to assist and protect humanitarian activities, Operation Restore Hope under which the United States would assume the unified command of the new operation, in accordance with Resolution 794 (1992).

Mission shift to nation-building
A key moment in the operation was when the mission shifted from delivering food supplies to nation-building.On March 3, 1993 the U.N. Secretary-General submitted to the U.N. Security Council his recommendations for effecting the transition from UNITAF to UNOSOM II. He indicated that since the adoption of Council resolution 794 (1992) in December 1992, the presence and operations of UNITAF had a positive impact on the security situation in Somalia and on the effective delivery of humanitarian assistance (UNITAF deployed some 37,000 personnel over forty percent of southern and central Somalia). However, there was still no effective government, police, or national army with the result of serious security threats to UN personnel. To that end, the U.N. Security Council authorized UNOSOM II to establish a secure environment throughout Somalia, to achieve national reconciliation so as to create a democratic state.
Affairs went downward from there...

This is Vietraq, and folks, it was planned like a chess match.

Tin Hat Time

In case you can't get all the way thru the speech and lecture I post today, just go to slides 21 and 24. I've been thinking along the lines of the lecture since I woke up and started paying attention to politics.

Onward and upward, to the speech:
Did he believe what he spoke in this address?
Or was he a lie-spinner and self-admitted "propaganda" "catapult" like our current president?
If JFK believed this, as I think he did, then he was in the middle of having the epiphany that would trigger his own death.
For a president can't speak truth to power for long. A president can't speak for peace and the rule of law, and against the Federal military-industrial-media establishment, the "New World Order", without literally sacrificing himself.
Google John Judge and especially listen to his two lectures (mp3) about the assasinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK on TUC radio.
Presidents simply can't speak against the war machine and expect to live.
Politicians can't even get a foot in the door without the blessing of the war machine.
No wonder we are where we are.
This republic can't last long, if it ever was.

1963 Commencement
President John F. Kennedy
American University
(June 10, 1963, I was 12 years old)
http://www.american.edu/media/speeches/Kennedy.htm
hear and read transcript at http://www.americanrhetoric.com/
speeches/jfkamericanuniversityaddress.html

President Kennedy spoke at American University's Spring Commencement on June 10, 1963. In this speech Kennedy called on the Soviet Union to work with the United States to achieve a nuclear test ban treaty and help reduce the considerable international tensions and the specter of nuclear war at that time.

President Anderson, members of the faculty, Board of Trustees, distinguished guests, my old colleague, Senator Bob Byrd, who has earned his degree through many years of attending night law school, while I am earning mine in the next 30 minutes, ladies and gentlemen:

It is with great pride that I participate in this ceremony of the American University, sponsored by the Methodist Church, founded by Bishop John Fletcher Hurst, and first opened by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914. This is a young and growing university, but it has already fulfilled Bishop Hurst's enlightened hope for the study of history and public affairs in a city devoted to the making of history and to the conduct of the public's business. By sponsoring this institution of higher learning for all who wish to learn whatever their color or their creed, the Methodists of this area and the nation deserve the nation's thanks, and I commend all those who are today graduating.

Professor Woodrow Wilson once said that every man sent out from a university should be a man of his nation as well as a man of his time, and I am confident that the men and women who carry the honor of graduating from this institution will continue to give from their lives, from their talents, a high measure of public service and public support.

"There are few earthly things more beautiful than a University," wrote John Masefield, in his tribute to the English Universities - - and his words are equally true here. He did not refer to spires and towers, to campus greens and ivied walls. He admired the splendid beauty of the University, he said, because it was " a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see."

I have, therefore, chose this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is to rarely perceived - - yet it is the most important topic on earth : world peace.

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace - - the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living -- the kind that enables man and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children - - not merely peace for Americans by peace for all men and women - - not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all of the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by the wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations unborn.

Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them is essential to keeping the peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles - - which can only destroy and never create - - is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace.

I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war - - and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.

Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or world law or world disarmament - - and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must re-examine our own attitude - as individuals and as a Nation - - for our attitude is as essential as theirs.

And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward - - by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the Cold War and toward freedom and peace here at home.

First: Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many of us think it is unreal. But that is dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable - - that mankind is doomed - - that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.

We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade - - therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable - - and we believe they can do it again.

I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of universal peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the values of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.

Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace - - based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions - -on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned.

There is no single, simple key to this peace - - no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process - - a way of solving problems.

With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor - - it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement.
And history teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors.

So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable - - and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly - - by making it seem more manageable and less remote - - we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.

Second: Let us re-examine our attitude toward the Soviet Union. It is discouraging to think that their leaders may actually believe what their propagandists write. It is discouraging to read a recent authoritative Soviet text on Military Strategy and find, on page after page, wholly baseless and incredible claims - - such as the allegation that " American imperialist circles are preparing to unleash different types of wars…that there is a very real threat of a preventive war being unleashed by American imperialists against the Soviet Union…(and that) the political aims of the American imperialists are to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist countries…(and) to achieve world domination [by means of agressive war.]

Truly, as it was written long ago: "The wicked flee when no man pursueth." Yet it is sad to read these Soviet statements - - to realize the extent of the gulf between us. But it is also a warning - - a warning to the American people not to fall into the same trap as the Soviets, not to see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side, not to see conflict as inevitable, accommodations as impossible and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats. No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue.
As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements - - in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage.

Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique, among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation's territory, including nearly two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland - - a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.

Today, should total war ever break out again - - no matter how - - our two countries would become the primary targets. It is an ironical but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours.

And even in the Cold War, which brings burdens and dangers to so many countries, including this Nation's closest allies - - our two countries bear the heaviest burdens. For we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counter-weapons.

In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours -- and even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest.

So, let us not be blind to our differences - - but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.

For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this [small] planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

Third: Let us re-examine our attitude toward the Cold War, remembering that we are not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had the history of the last eighteen years been different.

We must, therefore, (persevere) in the search for peace in the hope that constructive changes within the Communist bloc might bring within reach solutions which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a way that it becomes in the Communists' interest to agree on a genuine peace.

Above all, while defending our vital interest, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy - - or of a collective death-wish for the world.

To secure these ends, America's weapons are non-provocative, carefully controlled, designed to deter and capable of selective use. Our military forces are committed to peace and (disciplined) in self-restraint. Our diplomats are instructed to avoid unnecessary irritants and purely rhetorical hostility.

For we can seek a relaxation of tensions without relaxing our guard. And, for our part, we do not need to use threats to prove that we are resolute. We do not need to jam foreign broadcasts out of fear our faith will be eroded. We are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people - - but we are willing and able to engage in peaceful competition with any people on earth.

Meanwhile, we seek to strengthen the United Nations, to help solve its financial problems, to make it a more effective instrument (for) peace, to develop it into a genuine world security system - - a system capable of resolving disputes on the basis of law, of insuring the security of the large and the small, and of creating conditions under which arms can finally be abolished.

At the same time we seek to keep peace inside the non-communist world, where many nations, all of them our friends, are divided over issues which weaken western unity, which invite communist intervention or which threaten to erupt into war. Our efforts in West New Guinea, in the Congo, in the Middle East and in the Indian subcontinent, have been persistent and patient despite criticism from both sides. We have also tried to set an example for others - - by seeking to adjust small but significant differences with our own closest neighbors in Mexico and in Canada.

Speaking of other nations, I wish to make one point clear. We are bound to many nations by alliances. These alliances exist because our concern and theirs substantially overlap. Our commitment to defend Western Europe and West Berlin for example, stands undiminished because of the identity of our vital interests. The United States will make no deal with the Soviet Union at the expense of other nations and other peoples, not merely because they are our partners, but also because their interests and ours converge.

Our interests converge, however not only in defending the frontiers of freedom, but in pursuing the paths of peace. It is our hope - - and the purpose of Allied policies - - to convince the Soviet Union that she, too, should let each nation choose its own future, so long as that choice does not interfere with the choices of others. The communist drive to impose their political and economic system on others is the primary cause of world tension today. For there can be no doubt that if all nations could refrain from interfering in the self-determination of others, then peace would be much more assured.

This will require a new effort to achieve world law - - a new context for world discussions. It will require increased understanding between the Soviets and ourselves. And increased understanding will require increased contact and communications. One step in this direction is the proposed arrangement for a direct line between Moscow and Washington, to avoid on each side the dangerous delays, misunderstandings, and misreadings of the other's actions which might occur at a time of crisis.

We have also been talking in Geneva about other first-step measures of arms control, designed to limit the intensity of the arms race and to reduce the risks of accidental war. Our primary long-range interest in Geneva, however, is general and complete disarmament - - designed to take place by stages, permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms. The pursuit of disarmament has been an effort of this Government since the 1920's. It has been urgently sought by the past three Administrations. And however dim the prospects (are) today, we intend to continue this effort - - to continue it in order that all countries, including our own, can better grasp what the problems and possibilities of disarmament are.

The (only) major area of these negotiations where the end is in sight- - yet where a fresh start is badly needed - - is in a treaty to outlaw nuclear tests. The conclusion of such a treaty - - so near and yet so far - - would check the spiraling arms race in one of its most dangerous areas. It would place the nuclear powers in a position to deal more effectively with one of the greatest hazards which man faces in 1963, the further spread of nuclear arms. It would increase our security - - it would decrease the prospects of war. Surely this goal is sufficiently important to require our steady pursuit, yielding neither to the temptation to give up the whole effort nor the temptation to give up our insistence on vital and responsible safeguards.

I am taking this opportunity, therefore, to announce two important decisions in this regard.

First: Chairman Khrushchev, Prime Minister Macmillan and I have agreed that high-level discussions will shortly begin in Moscow looking toward early agreement on a comprehensive test ban treaty. Our hopes must be tempered (applause) with the caution of history - - but with our hopes go the hopes of all mankind.

Second: To make clear our good faith and solemn convictions on the matter, I now declare that the United States does not propose to conduct nuclear tests in the atmosphere so long as other states do not do so. (applause) We will not be the first to resume. Such a declaration is no substitute for a formal binding treaty - - but I hope it will help us achieve one. Nor would such a treaty be a substitute for disarmament - - but I hope it will help us achieve it.

Finally, my fellow Americans, let us examine our attitude toward peace and freedom here at home. The quality and spirit of our own society must justify and support our efforts abroad. We must show it in the dedication of our own lives - - as many of you who are graduating today will have an opportunity to do, by serving without pay in the Peace Corps abroad or in the proposed National Service Corps here at home.

But wherever we are, we must all, in our daily lives, live up to the age-old faith that peace and freedom walk together. In too many of our (cities) today, the peace is not secure because freedom is incomplete.

It is the responsibility of the Executive Branch at all levels of government - - local, state and national - - to provide and protect that freedom for all of our citizens by all means within their authority. It is the responsibility of the Legislative Branch at all levels, wherever that authority is not now adequate, to make it adequate.

And it is the responsibility of all citizens in all sections of this country to respect the rights of others and to respect the law of the land. (applause)
All this is not unrelated to world peace.
"When a man's ways please the Lord," the Scriptures tell us, "he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him."
And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter human rights - - the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation - - the right to breathe air as nature provided it - - the right of future generations to a healthy existence?

While we proceed to safeguard our national interests, let us also safeguard human interests.
And the elimination of war and arms is clearly in the interest of both. No treaty, however much it may be to the advantage of all, however tightly it may be worded, can provide absolute security against the risks of deception and evasion. But it can - - if it is sufficiently effective in its enforcement and if it is sufficiently in the interests of its signers - - offer far more security and far fewer risks than an unabated, uncontrolled, unpredictable arms race.

The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war.
We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough - - more than enough - - of war and hate and oppression. (applause) We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we (must) labor on - - not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace.
====================================
Digested that? Now, on to the lecture...
Mining along the same vein ... thinking how times have changed since 1963, and how much closer we are to the same edge of doom. We were standing on the cliff then, but now we are hanging on by our fingernails, with jack-booted NeoCons stepping on our fingers. JFK gave us the feeling we were facing a world crisis together, but this time, the President doesn't give a shit about saving you and me, just his own.
To view the accompanying slides go to the original. The slides will add to your understanding.

Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for peak oil than the US
By Dmitry Orlov
Published on Monday, December 4, 2006 by Energy Bulletin (link)

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am not an expert or a scholar or an activist. I am more of an eye-witness. I watched the Soviet Union collapse, and I have tried to put my observations into a concise message. I will leave it up to you to decide just how urgent a message it is.
My talk tonight is about the lack of collapse-preparedness here in the United States. I will compare it with the situation in the Soviet Union, prior to its collapse. The rhetorical device I am going to use is the "Collapse Gap" – to go along with the Nuclear Gap, and the Space Gap, and various other superpower gaps that were fashionable during the Cold War.
Slide [2]
The subject of economic collapse is generally a sad one. But I am an optimistic, cheerful sort of person, and I believe that, with a bit of preparation, such events can be taken in stride. As you can probably surmise, I am actually rather keen on observing economic collapses. Perhaps when I am really old, all collapses will start looking the same to me, but I am not at that point yet. And this next one certainly has me intrigued. From what I've seen and read, it seems that there is a fair chance that the U.S. economy will collapse sometime within the foreseeable future. It also would seem that we won't be particularly well-prepared for it. As things stand, the U.S. economy is poised to perform something like a disappearing act. And so I am eager to put my observations of the Soviet collapse to good use.
Slide [3]
I anticipate that some people will react rather badly to having their country compared to the USSR. I would like to assure you that the Soviet people would have reacted similarly, had the United States collapsed first. Feelings aside, here are two 20th century superpowers, who wanted more or less the same things – things like technological progress, economic growth, full employment, and world domination – but they disagreed about the methods. And they obtained similar results – each had a good run, intimidated the whole planet, and kept the other scared. Each eventually went bankrupt.
Slide [4]
The USA and the USSR were evenly matched in many categories, but let me just mention four.
The Soviet manned space program is alive and well under Russian management, and now offers first-ever space charters. The Americans have been hitching rides on the Soyuz while their remaining spaceships sit in the shop.
The arms race has not produced a clear winner, and that is excellent news, because Mutual Assured Destruction remains in effect. Russia still has more nuclear warheads than the US, and has supersonic cruise missile technology that can penetrate any missile shield, especially a nonexistent one.
The Jails Race once showed the Soviets with a decisive lead, thanks to their innovative GULAG program. But they gradually fell behind, and in the end the Jails Race has been won by the Americans, with the highest percentage of people in jail ever.
The Hated Evil Empire Race is also finally being won by the Americans. It's easy now that they don't have anyone to compete against.
Slide [5]
Continuing with our list of superpower similarities, many of the problems that sunk the Soviet Union are now endangering the United States as well.
Such as a huge, well-equipped, very expensive military, with no clear mission, bogged down in fighting Muslim insurgents.
Such as energy shortfalls linked to peaking oil production.
Such as a persistently unfavorable trade balance, resulting in runaway foreign debt. Add to that a delusional self-image, an inflexible ideology, and an unresponsive political system.
Slide [6]
An economic collapse is amazing to observe, and very interesting if described accurately and in detail. A general description tends to fall short of the mark, but let me try. An economic arrangement can continue for quite some time after it becomes untenable, through sheer inertia. But at some point a tide of broken promises and invalidated assumptions sweeps it all out to sea. One such untenable arrangement rests on the notion that it is possible to perpetually borrow more and more money from abroad, to pay for more and more energy imports, while the price of these imports continues to double every few years. Free money with which to buy energy equals free energy, and free energy does not occur in nature. This must therefore be a transient condition. When the flow of energy snaps back toward equilibrium, much of the US economy will be forced to shut down.
Slide [7]
I've described what happened to Russia in some detail in one of my articles, which is available on SurvivingPeakOil.com. I don't see why what happens to the United States should be entirely dissimilar, at least in general terms. The specifics will be different, and we will get to them in a moment.
We should certainly expect shortages of fuel, food, medicine, and countless consumer items, outages of electricity, gas, and water, breakdowns in transportation systems and other infrastructure, hyperinflation, widespread shutdowns and mass layoffs, along with a lot of despair, confusion, violence, and lawlessness. We definitely should not expect any grand rescue plans, innovative technology programs, or miracles of social cohesion.
Slide [8]
When faced with such developments, some people are quick to realize what it is they have to do to survive, and start doing these things, generally without anyone's permission.
A sort of economy emerges, completely informal, and often semi-criminal. It revolves around liquidating, and recycling, the remains of the old economy. It is based on direct access to resources, and the threat of force, rather than ownership or legal authority. People who have a problem with this way of doing things, quickly find themselves out of the game. These are the generalities. Now let's look at some specifics.
Slide [9]
One important element of collapse-preparedness is making sure that you don't need a functioning economy to keep a roof over your head. In the Soviet Union, all housing belonged to the government, which made it available directly to the people. Since all housing was also built by the government, it was only built in places that the government could service using public transportation. After the collapse, almost everyone managed to keep their place.
In the United States, very few people own their place of residence free and clear, and even they need an income to pay real estate taxes. People without an income face homelessness. When the economy collapses, very few people will continue to have an income, so homelessness will become rampant. Add to that the car-dependent nature of most suburbs, and what you will get is mass migrations of homeless people toward city centers.
Slide [10]
Soviet public transportation was more or less all there was, but there was plenty of it. There were also a few private cars, but so few that gasoline rationing and shortages were mostly inconsequential. All of this public infrastructure was designed to be almost infinitely maintainable, and continued to run even as the rest of the economy collapsed.
The population of the United States is almost entirely car-dependent, and relies on markets that control oil import, refining, and distribution. They also rely on continuous public investment in road construction and repair. The cars themselves require a steady stream of imported parts, and are not designed to last very long. When these intricately interconnected systems stop functioning, much of the population will find itself stranded.
Slide [11]
Economic collapse affects public sector employment almost as much as private sector employment, eventually. Because government bureaucracies tend to be slow to act, they collapse more slowly. Also, because state-owned enterprises tend to be inefficient, and stockpile inventory, there is plenty of it left over, for the employees to take home, and use in barter.
Most Soviet employment was in the public sector, and this gave people some time to think of what to do next. Private enterprises tend to be much more efficient at many things. Such laying off their people, shutting their doors, and liquidating their assets. Since most employment in the United States is in the private sector, we should expect the transition to permanent unemployment to be quite abrupt for most people.
Slide [12]
When confronting hardship, people usually fall back on their families for support. The Soviet Union experienced chronic housing shortages, which often resulted in three generations living together under one roof. This didn't make them happy, but at least they were used to each other. The usual expectation was that they would stick it out together, come what may.
In the United States, families tend to be atomized, spread out over several states. They sometimes have trouble tolerating each other when they come together for Thanksgiving, or Christmas, even during the best of times. They might find it difficult to get along, in bad times. There is already too much loneliness in this country, and I doubt that economic collapse will cure it.
Slide [13]
To keep evil at bay, Americans require money. In an economic collapse, there is usually hyperinflation, which wipes out savings. There is also rampant unemployment, which wipes out incomes. The result is a population that is largely penniless.
In the Soviet Union, very little could be obtained for money. It was treated as tokens rather than as wealth, and was shared among friends. Many things – housing and transportation among them – were either free or almost free.
Slide [14]
Soviet consumer products were always an object of derision – refrigerators that kept the house warm – and the food, and so on. You'd be lucky if you got one at all, and it would be up to you to make it work once you got it home. But once you got it to work, it would become a priceless family heirloom, handed down from generation to generation, sturdy, and almost infinitely maintainable.
In the United States, you often hear that something "is not worth fixing." This is enough to make a Russian see red. I once heard of an elderly Russian who became irate when a hardware store in Boston wouldn't sell him replacement bedsprings: "People are throwing away perfectly good mattresses, how am I supposed to fix them?"
Economic collapse tends to shut down both local production and imports, and so it is vitally important that anything you own wears out slowly, and that you can fix it yourself if it breaks. Soviet-made stuff generally wore incredibly hard. The Chinese-made stuff you can get around here – much less so.
Slide [15]
The Soviet agricultural sector was notoriously inefficient. Many people grew and gathered their own food even in relatively prosperous times. There were food warehouses in every city, stocked according to a government allocation scheme. There were very few restaurants, and most families cooked and ate at home. Shopping was rather labor-intensive, and involved carrying heavy loads. Sometimes it resembled hunting – stalking that elusive piece of meat lurking behind some store counter. So the people were well-prepared for what came next.
In the United States, most people get their food from a supermarket, which is supplied from far away using refrigerated diesel trucks. Many people don't even bother to shop and just eat fast food. When people do cook, they rarely cook from scratch. This is all very unhealthy, and the effect on the nation's girth, is visible, clear across the parking lot. A lot of the people, who just waddle to and from their cars, seem unprepared for what comes next. If they suddenly had to start living like the Russians, they would blow out their knees.
Slide [16]
The Soviet government threw resources at immunization programs, infectious disease control, and basic care. It directly operated a system of state-owned clinics, hospitals, and sanatoriums. People with fatal ailments or chronic conditions often had reason to complain, and had to pay for private care – if they had the money.
In the United States, medicine is for profit. People seems to think nothing of this fact. There are really very few fields of endeavor to which Americans would deny the profit motive. The problem is, once the economy is removed, so is the profit, along with the services it once helped to motivate.
Slide [17]
The Soviet education system was generally quite excellent. It produced an overwhelmingly literate population and many great specialists. The education was free at all levels, but higher education sometimes paid a stipend, and often provided room and board. The educational system held together quite well after the economy collapsed. The problem was that the graduates had no jobs to look forward to upon graduation. Many of them lost their way.
The higher education system in the United States is good at many things – government and industrial research, team sports, vocational training... Primary and secondary education fails to achieve in 12 years what Soviet schools generally achieved in 8. The massive scale and expense of maintaining these institutions is likely to prove too much for the post-collapse environment. Illiteracy is already a problem in the United States, and we should expect it to get a lot worse.
Slide [18]
The Soviet Union did not need to import energy. The production and distribution system faltered, but never collapsed. Price controls kept the lights on even as hyperinflation raged.
The term "market failure" seems to fit the energy situation in the United States. Free markets develop some pernicious characteristics when there are shortages of key commodities. During World War II, the United States government understood this, and successfully rationed many things, from gasoline to bicycle parts. But that was a long time ago. Since then, the inviolability of free markets has become an article of faith.
Slide [19]
My conclusion is that the Soviet Union was much better-prepared for economic collapse than the United States is.
I have left out two important superpower asymmetries, because they don't have anything to do with collapse-preparedness. Some countries are simply luckier than others. But I will mention them, for the sake of completeness.
In terms of racial and ethnic composition, the United States resembles Yugoslavia more than it resembles Russia, so we shouldn't expect it to be as peaceful as Russia was, following the collapse. Ethnically mixed societies are fragile and have a tendency to explode.
In terms of religion, the Soviet Union was relatively free of apocalyptic doomsday cults. Very few people there wished for a planet-sized atomic fireball to herald the second coming of their savior. This was indeed a blessing.
Slide [20]
One area in which I cannot discern any Collapse Gap is national politics. The ideologies may be different, but the blind adherence to them couldn't be more similar.
It is certainly more fun to watch two Capitalist parties go at each other than just having the one Communist party to vote for. The things they fight over in public are generally symbolic little tokens of social policy, chosen for ease of public posturing. The Communist party offered just one bitter pill. The two Capitalist parties offer a choice of two placebos. The latest innovation is the photo finish election, where each party buys 50% of the vote, and the result is pulled out of statistical noise, like a rabbit out of a hat.
The American way of dealing with dissent and with protest is certainly more advanced: why imprison dissidents when you can just let them shout into the wind to their heart's content?
The American approach to bookkeeping is more subtle and nuanced than the Soviet. Why make a state secret of some statistic, when you can just distort it, in obscure ways? Here's a simple example: inflation is "controlled" by substituting hamburger for steak, in order to minimize increases to Social Security payments.
Slide [21]
Many people expend a lot of energy protesting against their irresponsible, unresponsive government. It seems like a terrible waste of time, considering how ineffectual their protests are. Is it enough of a consolation for them to be able to read about their efforts in the foreign press? I think that they would feel better if they tuned out the politicians, the way the politicians tune them out. It's as easy as turning off the television set. If they try it, they will probably observe that nothing about their lives has changed, nothing at all, except maybe their mood has improved. They might also find that they have more time and energy to devote to more important things.
Slide [22]
I will now sketch out some approaches, realistic and otherwise, to closing the Collapse Gap. My little list of approaches might seem a bit glib, but keep in mind that this is a very difficult problem. In fact, it's important to keep in mind that not all problems have solutions. I can promise you that we will not solve this problem tonight. What I will try to do is to shed some light on it from several angles.
Slide [23]
Many people rail against the unresponsiveness and irresponsibility of the government. They often say things like "What is needed is..." plus the name of some big, successful government project from the glorious past – the Marshall Plan, the Manhattan Project, the Apollo program. But there is nothing in the history books about a government preparing for collapse. Gorbachev's "Perestroika" is an example of a government trying to avert or delay collapse. It probably helped speed it along.
Slide [24]
There are some things that I would like the government to take care of in preparation for collapse. I am particularly concerned about all the radioactive and toxic installations, stockpiles, and dumps. Future generations are unlikely to able to control them, especially if global warming puts them underwater. There is enough of this muck sitting around to kill off most of us.
I am also worried about soldiers getting stranded overseas – abandoning one's soldiers is among the most shameful things a country can do. Overseas military bases should be dismantled, and the troops repatriated.
I'd like to see the huge prison population whittled away in a controlled manner, ahead of time, instead of in a chaotic general amnesty.
Lastly, I think that this farce with debts that will never be repaid, has gone on long enough. Wiping the slate clean will give society time to readjust. So, you see, I am not asking for any miracles. Although, if any of these things do get done, I would consider it a miracle.
Slide [25]
A private sector solution is not impossible; just very, very unlikely. Certain Soviet state enterprises were basically states within states. They controlled what amounted to an entire economic system, and could go on even without the larger economy. They kept to this arrangement even after they were privatized. They drove Western management consultants mad, with their endless kindergartens, retirement homes, laundries, and free clinics. These weren't part of their core competency, you see. They needed to divest and to streamline their operations. The Western management gurus overlooked the most important thing: the core competency of these enterprises lay in their ability to survive economic collapse. Maybe the young geniuses at Google can wrap their heads around this one, but I doubt that their stockholders will.
Slide [26]
It's important to understand that the Soviet Union achieved collapse-preparedness inadvertently, and not because of the success of some crash program. Economic collapse has a way of turning economic negatives into positives. The last thing we want is a perfectly functioning, growing, prosperous economy that suddenly collapses one day, and leaves everybody in the lurch.
It is not necessary for us to embrace the tenets of command economy and central planning to match the Soviet lackluster performance in this area. We have our own methods, that are working almost as well. I call them "boondoggles." They are solutions to problems that cause more problems than they solve.
Just look around you, and you will see boondoggles sprouting up everywhere, in every field of endeavor: we have military boondoggles like Iraq, financial boondoggles like the doomed retirement system, medical boondoggles like private health insurance, legal boondoggles like the intellectual property system. The combined weight of all these boondoggles is slowly but surely pushing us all down. If it pushes us down far enough, then economic collapse, when it arrives, will be like falling out of a ground floor window. We just have to help this process along, or at least not interfere with it. So if somebody comes to you and says "I want to make a boondoggle that runs on hydrogen" – by all means encourage him! It's not as good as a boondoggle that burns money directly, but it's a step in the right direction.
Slide [27]
Certain types of mainstream economic behavior are not prudent on a personal level, and are also counterproductive to bridging the Collapse Gap. Any behavior that might result in continued economic growth and prosperity is counterproductive: the higher you jump, the harder you land. It is traumatic to go from having a big retirement fund to having no retirement fund because of a market crash. It is also traumatic to go from a high income to little or no income. If, on top of that, you have kept yourself incredibly busy, and suddenly have nothing to do, then you will really be in rough shape.
Economic collapse is about the worst possible time for someone to suffer a nervous breakdown, yet this is what often happens. The people who are most at risk psychologically are successful middle-aged men. When their career is suddenly over, their savings are gone, and their property worthless, much of their sense of self-worth is gone as well. They tend to drink themselves to death and commit suicide in disproportionate numbers. Since they tend to be the most experienced and capable people, this is a staggering loss to society.
If the economy, and your place within it, is really important to you, you will be really hurt when it goes away. You can cultivate an attitude of studied indifference, but it has to be more than just a conceit. You have to develop the lifestyle and the habits and the physical stamina to back it up. It takes a lot of creativity and effort to put together a fulfilling existence on the margins of society. After the collapse, these margins may turn out to be some of the best places to live.
Slide [28]
I hope that I didn't make it sound as if the Soviet collapse was a walk in the park, because it was really quite awful in many ways. The point that I do want to stress is that when this economy collapses, it is bound to be much worse. Another point I would like to stress is that collapse here is likely to be permanent. The factors that allowed Russia and the other former Soviet republics to recover are not present here.
In spite of all this, I believe that in every age and circumstance, people can sometimes find not just a means and a reason to survive, but enlightenment, fulfillment, and freedom. If we can find them even after the economy collapses, then why not start looking for them now?
Thank you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Notes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Energy Bulletin published an excerpt from this talk yesterday (Dec 3), and Dmitry reported that his small webserver was overwhelmed with requests. Although it's good news that his writing has such a following, PLEASE don't access the document on his web server (Club Orlov). The same content is on Energy Bulletin's heavier duty webserver.---Orlov has many penetrating insights, couched in his dark humor. Particularly striking is the strong case he makes that the peoples of the USSR were actually better prepared for a collapse because they had learned to be more self-reliant. Many crucial functions (like housing and transportation) were taken care of by the state sector which was more stable than a private sector would have been. Orlov's cynicism about the possibility of intelligent government action was probably justified in the case of the Soviet Union, but I think it would be a tragic mistake to abandon efforts to change the direction of the U.S. The Soviets had little chance to make democratic institutions work. We do have that chance. -BA