Clearly This Author Did Not Get the Memo......We Are Run By Psych-Ops or Should I Say "Opps"

The End of the World as You Know It
…and the Rise of the New Energy World Order

By Michael T. Klare

17/04/08 " Tomdispatch" -- -Oil at $110 a barrel. Gasoline at $3.35 (or more) per gallon. Diesel fuel at $4 per gallon. Independent truckers forced off the road. Home heating oil rising to unconscionable price levels. Jet fuel so expensive that three low-cost airlines stopped flying in the past few weeks. This is just a taste of the latest energy news, signaling a profound change in how all of us, in this country and around the world, are going to live -- trends that, so far as anyone can predict, will only become more pronounced as energy supplies dwindle and the global struggle over their allocation intensifies.

Energy of all sorts was once hugely abundant, making possible the worldwide economic expansion of the past six decades. This expansion benefited the United States above all -- along with its "First World" allies in Europe and the Pacific. Recently, however, a select group of former "Third World" countries -- China and India in particular -- have sought to participate in this energy bonanza by industrializing their economies and selling a wide range of goods to international markets. This, in turn, has led to an unprecedented spurt in global energy consumption -- a 47% rise in the past 20 years alone, according to the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE).

An increase of this sort would not be a matter of deep anxiety if the world's primary energy suppliers were capable of producing the needed additional fuels. Instead, we face a frightening reality: a marked slowdown in the expansion of global energy supplies just as demand rises precipitously. These supplies are not exactly disappearing -- though that will occur sooner or later -- but they are not growing fast enough to satisfy soaring global demand.

The combination of rising demand, the emergence of powerful new energy consumers, and the contraction of the global energy supply is demolishing the energy-abundant world we are familiar with and creating in its place a new world order. Think of it as: rising powers/shrinking planet.

This new world order will be characterized by fierce international competition for dwindling stocks of oil, natural gas, coal, and uranium, as well as by a tidal shift in power and wealth from energy-deficit states like China, Japan, and the United States to energy-surplus states like Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. In the process, the lives of everyone will be affected in one way or another -- with poor and middle-class consumers in the energy-deficit states experiencing the harshest effects. That's most of us and our children, in case you hadn't quite taken it in.

Here, in a nutshell, are five key forces in this new world order which will change our planet:

1. Intense competition between older and newer economic powers for available supplies of energy: Until very recently, the mature industrial powers of Europe, Asia, and North America consumed the lion's share of energy and left the dregs for the developing world. As recently as 1990, the members of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the club of the world's richest nations, consumed approximately 57% of world energy; the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact bloc, 14% percent; and only 29% was left to the developing world. But that ratio is changing: With strong economic growth in the developing countries, a greater proportion of the world's energy is being consumed by them. By 2010, the developing world's share of energy use is expected to reach 40% and, if current trends persist, 47% by 2030.

China plays a critical role in all this. The Chinese alone are projected to consume 17% of world energy by 2015, and 20% by 2025 -- by which time, if trend lines continue, it will have overtaken the United States as the world's leading energy consumer. India, which, in 2004, accounted for 3.4% of world energy use, is projected to reach 4.4% percent by 2025, while consumption in other rapidly industrializing nations like Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Turkey is expected to grow as well.

These rising economic dynamos will have to compete with the mature economic powers for access to remaining untapped reserves of exportable energy -- in many cases, bought up long ago by the private energy firms of the mature powers like Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, Total of France, and Royal Dutch Shell. Of necessity, the new contenders have developed a potent strategy for competing with the Western "majors": they've created state-owned companies of their own and fashioned strategic alliances with the national oil companies that now control oil and gas reserves in many of the major energy-producing nations.

China's Sinopec, for example, has established a strategic alliance with Saudi Aramco, the nationalized giant once owned by Chevron and Exxon Mobil, to explore for natural gas in Saudi Arabia and market Saudi crude oil in China. Likewise, the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) will collaborate with Gazprom, the massive state-controlled Russian natural gas monopoly, to build pipelines and deliver Russian gas to China. Several of these state-owned firms, including CNPC and India's Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, are now set to collaborate with Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. in developing the extra-heavy crude of the Orinoco belt once controlled by Chevron. In this new stage of energy competition, the advantages long enjoyed by Western energy majors has been eroded by vigorous, state-backed upstarts from the developing world.

2. The insufficiency of primary energy supplies: The capacity of the global energy industry to satisfy demand is shrinking. By all accounts, the global supply of oil will expand for perhaps another half-decade before reaching a peak and beginning to decline, while supplies of natural gas, coal, and uranium will probably grow for another decade or two before peaking and commencing their own inevitable declines. In the meantime, global supplies of these existing fuels will prove incapable of reaching the elevated levels demanded.

Take oil. The U.S. Department of Energy claims that world oil demand, expected to reach 117.6 million barrels per day in 2030, will be matched by a supply that -- miracle of miracles -- will hit exactly 117.7 million barrels (including petroleum liquids derived from allied substances like natural gas and Canadian tar sands) at the same time. Most energy professionals, however, consider this estimate highly unrealistic. "One hundred million barrels is now in my view an optimistic case," the CEO of Total, Christophe de Margerie, typically told a London oil conference in October 2007. "It is not my view; it is the industry view, or the view of those who like to speak clearly, honestly, and [are] not just trying to please people."

Similarly, the authors of the Medium-Term Oil Market Report, published in July 2007 by the International Energy Agency, an affiliate of the OECD, concluded that world oil output might hit 96 million barrels per day by 2012, but was unlikely to go much beyond that as a dearth of new discoveries made future growth impossible.

Daily business-page headlines point to a vortex of clashing trends: worldwide demand will continue to grow as hundred of millions of newly-affluent Chinese and Indian consumers line up to purchase their first automobile (some selling for as little as $2,500); key older "elephant" oil fields like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia and Canterell in Mexico are already in decline or expected to be so soon; and the rate of new oil-field discoveries plunges year after year. So expect global energy shortages and high prices to be a constant source of hardship.

3. The painfully slow development of energy alternatives: It has long been evident to policymakers that new sources of energy are desperately needed to compensate for the eventual disappearance of existing fuels as well as to slow the buildup of climate-changing "greenhouse gases" in the atmosphere. In fact, wind and solar power have gained significant footholds in some parts of the world. A number of other innovative energy solutions have already been developed and even tested out in university and corporate laboratories. But these alternatives, which now contribute only a tiny percentage of the world's net fuel supply, are simply not being developed fast enough to avert the multifaceted global energy catastrophe that lies ahead.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, renewable fuels, including wind, solar, and hydropower (along with "traditional" fuels like firewood and dung), supplied but 7.4% of global energy in 2004; biofuels added another 0.3%. Meanwhile, fossil fuels -- oil, coal, and natural gas -- supplied 86% percent of world energy, nuclear power another 6%. Based on current rates of development and investment, the DoE offers the following dismal projection: In 2030, fossil fuels will still account for exactly the same share of world energy as in 2004. The expected increase in renewables and biofuels is so slight -- a mere 8.1% -- as to be virtually meaningless.

In global warming terms, the implications are nothing short of catastrophic: Rising reliance on coal (especially in China, India, and the United States) means that global emissions of carbon dioxide are projected to rise by 59% over the next quarter-century, from 26.9 billion metric tons to 42.9 billion tons. The meaning of this is simple. If these figures hold, there is no hope of averting the worst effects of climate change.

When it comes to global energy supplies, the implications are nearly as dire. To meet soaring energy demand, we would need a massive influx of alternative fuels, which would mean equally massive investment -- in the trillions of dollars -- to ensure that the newest possibilities move rapidly from laboratory to full-scale commercial production; but that, sad to say, is not in the cards. Instead, the major energy firms (backed by lavish U.S. government subsidies and tax breaks) are putting their mega-windfall profits from rising energy prices into vastly expensive (and environmentally questionable) schemes to extract oil and gas from Alaska and the Arctic, or to drill in the deep and difficult waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. The result? A few more barrels of oil or cubic feet of natural gas at exorbitant prices (with accompanying ecological damage), while non-petroleum alternatives limp along pitifully.

4. A steady migration of power and wealth from energy-deficit to energy-surplus nations: There are few countries -- perhaps a dozen altogether -- with enough oil, gas, coal, and uranium (or some combination thereof) to meet their own energy needs and provide significant surpluses for export. Not surprisingly, such states will be able to extract increasingly beneficial terms from the much wider pool of energy-deficit nations dependent on them for vital supplies of energy. These terms, primarily of a financial nature, will result in growing mountains of petrodollars being accumulated by the leading oil producers, but will also include political and military concessions.

In the case of oil and natural gas, the major energy-surplus states can be counted on two hands. Ten oil-rich states possess 82.2% of the world's proven reserves. In order of importance, they are: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Russia, Libya, Kazakhstan, and Nigeria. The possession of natural gas is even more concentrated. Three countries -- Russia, Iran, and Qatar -- harbor an astonishing 55.8% of the world supply. All of these countries are in an enviable position to cash in on the dramatic rise in global energy prices and to extract from potential customers whatever political concessions they deem important.

The transfer of wealth alone is already mind-boggling. The oil-exporting countries collected an estimated $970 billion from the importing countries in 2006, and the take for 2007, when finally calculated, is expected to be far higher. A substantial fraction of these dollars, yen, and euros have been deposited in "sovereign-wealth funds" (SWFs), giant investment accounts owned by the oil states and deployed for the acquisition of valuable assets around the world. In recent months, the Persian Gulf SWFs have been taking advantage of the financial crisis in the United States to purchase large stakes in strategic sectors of its economy. In November 2007, for example, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) acquired a $7.5 billion stake in Citigroup, America's largest bank holding company; in January, Citigroup sold an even larger share, worth $12.5 billion, to the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) and several other Middle Eastern investors, including Prince Walid bin Talal of Saudi Arabia. The managers of ADIA and KIA insist that they do not intend to use their newly-acquired stakes in Citigroup and other U.S. banks and corporations to influence U.S. economic or foreign policy, but it is hard to imagine that a financial shift of this magnitude, which can only gain momentum in the decades ahead, will not translate into some form of political leverage.

In the case of Russia, which has risen from the ashes of the Soviet Union as the world's first energy superpower, it already has. Russia is now the world's leading supplier of natural gas, the second largest supplier of oil, and a major producer of coal and uranium. Though many of these assets were briefly privatized during the reign of Boris Yeltsin, President Vladimir Putin has brought most of them back under state control -- in some cases, by exceedingly questionable legal means. He then used these assets in campaigns to bribe or coerce former Soviet republics on Russia's periphery reliant on it for the bulk of their oil and gas supplies. European Union countries have sometimes expressed dismay at Putin's tactics, but they, too, are dependent on Russian energy supplies, and so have learned to mute their protests to accommodate growing Russian power in Eurasia. Consider Russia a model for the new energy world order.

5. A growing risk of conflict: Throughout history, major shifts in power have normally been accompanied by violence -- in some cases, protracted violent upheavals. Either states at the pinnacle of power have struggled to prevent the loss of their privileged status, or challengers have fought to topple those at the top of the heap. Will that happen now? Will energy-deficit states launch campaigns to wrest the oil and gas reserves of surplus states from their control -- the Bush administration's war in Iraq might already be thought of as one such attempt -- or to eliminate competitors among their deficit-state rivals?

The high costs and risks of modern warfare are well known and there is a widespread perception that energy problems can best be solved through economic means, not military ones. Nevertheless, the major powers are employing military means in their efforts to gain advantage in the global struggle for energy, and no one should be deluded on the subject. These endeavors could easily enough lead to unintended escalation and conflict.

One conspicuous use of military means in the pursuit of energy is obviously the regular transfer of arms and military-support services by the major energy-importing states to their principal suppliers. Both the United States and China, for example, have stepped up their deliveries of arms and equipment to oil-producing states like Angola, Nigeria, and Sudan in Africa and, in the Caspian Sea basin, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. The United States has placed particular emphasis on suppressing the armed insurgency in the vital Niger Delta region of Nigeria, where most of the country's oil is produced; Beijing has emphasized arms aid to Sudan, where Chinese-led oil operations are threatened by insurgencies in both the South and Darfur.

Russia is also using arms transfers as an instrument in its efforts to gain influence in the major oil- and gas-producing regions of the Caspian Sea basin and the Persian Gulf. Its urge is not to procure energy for its own use, but to dominate the flow of energy to others. In particular, Moscow seeks a monopoly on the transportation of Central Asian gas to Europe via Gazprom's vast pipeline network; it also wants to tap into Iran's mammoth gas fields, further cementing Russia's control over the trade in natural gas.

The danger, of course, is that such endeavors, multiplied over time, will provoke regional arms races, exacerbate regional tensions, and increase the danger of great-power involvement in any local conflicts that erupt. History has all too many examples of such miscalculations leading to wars that spiral out of control. Think of the years leading up to World War I. In fact, Central Asia and the Caspian today, with their multiple ethnic disorders and great-power rivalries, bear more than a glancing resemblance to the Balkans in the years leading up to 1914.

What this adds up to is simple and sobering: the end of the world as you've known it. In the new, energy-centric world we have all now entered, the price of oil will dominate our lives and power will reside in the hands of those who control its global distribution.

In this new world order, energy will govern our lives in new ways and on a daily basis. It will determine when, and for what purposes, we use our cars; how high (or low) we turn our thermostats; when, where, or even if, we travel; increasingly, what foods we eat (given that the price of producing and distributing many meats and vegetables is profoundly affected by the cost of oil or the allure of growing corn for ethanol); for some of us, where to live; for others, what businesses we engage in; for all of us, when and under what circumstances we go to war or avoid foreign entanglements that could end in war.

This leads to a final observation: The most pressing decision facing the next president and Congress may be how best to accelerate the transition from a fossil-fuel-based energy system to a system based on climate-friendly energy alternatives.

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author of Resource Wars and Blood and Oil. Consider this essay a preview of his newest book, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy, which has just been published by Metropolitan Books.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part III, In Fascist Dictatorships Telling the truth becomes a crime
Had we wanted a monarchy, we had one! It didn't work out! Moreover, the one we had —King George III —was better than the cretinous would-be King who now arrogates unto himself powers he doesn't have and doesn't deserve. King George III was wrong and mad, but George Jr, a shrub, a lesser Bush, is merely ludicrous and slow witted.

The truly intelligent are not threatened; in fact, they are found among Democracy's most staunch defenders. Rather, it is the dull of wit who are threatened by truth. Unable to win with reason, the Bush regime wages war on truth with lies and propaganda. Failing even that, Bush has made truth itself illegal. He need only 'deem' you a terrorist to shut you up for good.

For the record, it was on May 9, 2007 that Bush gave us a clue that upcoming elections may be canceled and that he has no intention of leaving the White House. It was on that date that Bush signed a National Security Declaration granting him the power to declare a national emergency in case of war, suspend Congress and dismiss the Supreme Court.


It was Margaret Atwood who called George W. Bush, the greatest threat to world peace. What Atwood didn't mention was that Bush derives his power from a deliberate and well-planned attack on truth by way of language. George Orwell predicted it and his works remain the textbook example of how governments manipulate people by first manipulating their language.

If all else fails, a totalitarian regime can merely make the telling of truth a crime. Traditionally, the names given those truths which threaten a corrupt or tyrannical state are treason or sedition. A young United States experimented with the Alien and Sedition Acts which gave President John Adams the power to imprison or deport aliens upon the mere suspicion that their activities posed a threat to the new national government.

To his credit, Adams made no use of them but neither did he rebuke the Congress for having passed them. George W. Bush has done worse. He has simply arrogated unto himself the power to 'define' one a terrorist upon any criteria. It need not be an overt act. It need not be treason as defined in the Constitution or some 400 years of common law. It is a criterion overly broad and on its face ludicrous: Bush need only 'deem' you a 'terrorist' and you are one.

Orwell's classic cautionary tale, 1984, describes a fascist, totalitarian government spying on its own citizens, denying reality, exploiting a fictional enemy in a perpetual war. Orwell's Big Brother tried and succeeded in re-writing History itself.

In 1935, Sinclair Lewis, in It Can't Happen Here described the dictatorship of Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip who resembles George Bush.

In both fascist states, all was done in order to maintain the regime in absolute power.

The lesson of 1984 is less about the state itself than it is about the individual. When state's are absolutely powerful, the individual ceases to exist as an autonomous entity. Philosophically, individuals robbed of the ability to exercise free will are denied person hood; theologically, those individuals are thus robbed of their very souls.
In order to acknowledge the collapse of Soviet Communism and the failure of fascism to reemerge as a potent political force, I ditched Orwell's oppressive totalitarian state in favor of an entertainment-fueled nihilism in which dimwitted citizens frittered away their lives watching web TV and working at slightly overpaid jobs to buy worthless junk ... on web TV, natch. Where Orwell envisioned endless rows of soldiers marching in perfect unison to the strains of the Two-Minute Hate, I saw a world where nations had been replaced by trading blocs and the objects of hatred were the immigrants in our midst.
--Ted Rall, Why Bush Is Addicted To Perpetual War

The images from 1984 are seared into our memories --big brother, the telescreen, the grotty bedroom, the cubicle, the memory hole, the drab gray existence, the rat cage. But 1984 is as much about language. It is more than a mere sub-text. Language, in 1984, is the means by which Big Brother creates an alternate reality. It is only in the 'alternate reality' that Big Brother has power. Big Brother is really the Wizard of Oz, an illusion, an image on smoke. If millions suddenly deny the illusion, the lies, the bullshit, Big Bro is finished. The bad news is that, like the cowardly lion, we dare not challenge the great and powerful Oz.


The "official language" is Newspeak, remembered for its slogans: war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is Strength. A classic newspeak word is "doublespeak" which describes how both the Bush administration and the sycophantic news media have empowered Bush by perverting language. Homeland Security for the unlawful and omnipresence of Big Brother itself, operation Iraqi freedom (originally called Operation Iraqi Liberation, or OIL) for a war of naked aggression, war on terrorism for a perpetual war which, on its face and by definition, cannot be won. Wars are fought between armies representing nations. There is, therefore, NO war terrorism. Nor was there a war on drugs, a war on crime, a war on porn, a war on annoying gum chewers, a war on drunks, a war on sin, bestiality, queers, or any number of annoying things against which a military, an army is completely and utterly useless. The War on Terrorism is GOP code for global police state or police action. Like Reagan's War on Drugs or the war on porn, the war will take just as long as the GOP finds it necessary to maintain themselves in power.

The most glaring use of Newspeak is the invention of what I have chosen to call "focus group phrases" because they are invented, full cloth, in a focus group. "Al Qaeda in Iraq" is just such a phrase. "911 Deniers" is another. "Al Qaeda in Iraq" is designed make a lazy populace forget that the war was begun upon blackhearted lies about WMD. "911 Denier" is designed to shift the burden of proof from Bush to prove his own stupid 911 theory for which there is not a shred of evidence or proof. The Bush administration has used up several ex post facto war rationales --none of them true! "Al Qaeda in Iraq" is merely the latest in a string of such nonsense. They use it because it tests well and saves the news media the trouble of describing the real situation which defies summation simple or simple-minded words.

Indeed, Orwell understood as few have the power of language and in, 1984 the "tool of power" is language. Language empowers the all-powerful party which dictates the nature and use of language. The institutions of state maintain their power by exploiting the power of language to shape the nature of thought itself. That is, in fact, the protagonist, Winston Smith's, job.

Examples abound in the Bush administration. The Bush regime's use of the phrase "Total Information Awareness" very nearly gave the game away. In response to criticism, the regime stopped using the name "Total Information Awareness" to denote their program of widespread domestic surveillance. But that does not mean Bush stopped spying on you, invading your privacy, violating your Constitutional right to be safe and secure in your own home. "Total Information Awareness" is no doubt called something else, a name designed not to attract the attention of the media, a less scary name to lull the "folk".

Orwell is, of course, most famous for 1984 but his great essay on politics should also be required reading. [See: Orwell: Politics and the English Language.] Orwell explores how politicians explore language to accrue absolute power.
As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier -- even quicker, once you have the habit -- to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don't have to hunt about for the words; you also don't have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious.
--George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

All who have read Orwell's essay on how easily politicians debase the language for nefarious purposes have recognized in the Bush administration the very techniques that Orwell warned us about.
The White House saw September 11 as a golden opportunity. The first catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil sparked an unprecedented case of leadership projection: desperate for protection and answers (why do they hate us? can we kill them before they kill us?), Americans wishfully compared Bush to FDR and Churchill. Approval ratings hit 92 percent. But Bush's political advisors knew that peaking early wouldn't guarantee reelection in 2004. Bush's father had been turned out of office just 20 months after the Gulf War ratcheted his score up to 91.

The Bushies have lifted their reelection strategy straight out of "1984," and not just by creating ominous-sounding agencies like the Office of Homeland Security, the supposedly-closed Office of Strategic Information, and a "Shadow Government." As in "1984," the Bush regime tolerates zero dissent --a two-party system in name only has been distilled to one in which only Republicans express acceptable opinions. And an absence of follow-up attacks has been met by endless alerts, advisors and empty hysterics in the name of security, most recently culminating with Tom Ridge's much-mocked color-code warning system.
--Ted Rall, Why Bush Is Addicted To Perpetual War

To be fair, it is not only politicians but bullshit artists who have made us vulnerable to tyranny. This has been done by dumbing down the language and, thus, our ability to think critically. Until Bush, even Republican "Presidents" paid lip service to the Constitution.
“"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."”
—Sinclair Lewis, author of "It Can't Happen here!

Sinclair Lewis wrote It Can't Happen Here and, in it proceded to show just how it might and, perhaps, has and in pretty much the way both Lewis and Orwell predicted. The characteristics of the fascist state so vividly described by both authors are to be found in abundance in Bush's fascist regime. That millions are in denial is merely evidence of the truth that is denied.

A quote from Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here":
"Senator Windrip has got an excellent chance to be elected President, next November, and if he is, probably his gang of buzzards will get us into some war, just to grease their insane vanity and show the world that we’re the huskiest nation going." – page 20, It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis

Clearly —Orwell and Lewis not only warned us, they predicted very precisely how it would be done. As Shakespeare would have said: "All is true!"

So --why didn't we listen? Because this nation has a fierce anti-intellectual streak which at its best make us independent but at its worst makes us stupid!

The President of the United States has openly, proudly admitted that he approved the use of interrogation methods that are by every measure -- including the measure of United States law -- criminal acts of torture. It is one of the most brazen and scandalous confessions of wrongdoing ever uttered by an American leader -- and it has had no impact whatsoever. No scandal, no outcry, no protest, no prosecution.

This pattern has recurred over and over throughout the Bush Administration. Bush and his minions commit crimes and atrocities in secret; they move heaven and earth to conceal their filthy deeds; they squirm and squeal like panicked rats when their some small portion of their evil comes to light; they belch forth a relentless series of self-contradictory lies to cover up, obfuscate or explain away the crimes; and when at last their malefactions can no longer be denied, they trot out the president himself to say: "Yeah, we did it; so what?" And then....nothing happens.

And now nothing is happening again. It is an astounding phenomenon. Bush is the most widely despised president in modern times. The war he launched on false pretenses against Iraq is deeply unpopular, and is plainly bankrupting the country. His economic policies have plunged millions into ruin, want and insecurity. The opposition political party controls the Congress -- a bastion they could have used as a bully pulpit to rally the public and as a battering ram to bring down an openly criminal, shamelessly unconstitutional, dangerous, illegitimate regime. And yet....nothing happens.

There has never been a condition of such deep, virtually catatonic civic paralysis in American history -- and few such instances in world history. There will be no good issue from all of this. No saving grace in the last act, no life-enhancing "lessons learned," no character growth in the story arc, no deus ex machina, no redemption. There will only be -- at best, in the very best-case scenario imaginable -- a long, slow agonizing slog through the ruins, a hard, interminable labor of waste disposal and reclamation, in a much-diminished world.

And yet the sleepwalking goes on. For not only is Bush never chastened or hobbled by revelations that ordinarily would topple even the strongest government in any nation with even a tincture of democracy -- he and his cronies simply move on from each exposed outrage to even greater crimes. And that is what is happening today. Even as Bush was telling ABC News about his approval of the White House torture meetings -- where the nation's most august figures of state watched CIA men act out torture techniques for them -- he and his minions were also bolting the last rivets onto their latest war machine: the engine of murder and destruction they have prepared for Iran.

The same process of deception and fearmongering that led to the Iraq invasion is being played out again. And once again, the Establishment press is playing an indispensible role in formenting a new act of mass murder. Once again, the media mandarins are shoveling horseshit directly from the White House down the gullets of the American people.

Last week, the Bush Regime used the Establishment house organs, the Washington Post and the New York Times, to announce that Iran is now the main U.S. enemy in Iraq. Both reports were laden with the usual unchallenged, unfiltered, unquestioned spin from the usual unnamed "senior U.S. officials" about Iran's "malign influence" in arming, training and directing deadly Shiite militia attacks against U.S. forces.

For two years now, Bush and his accomplicies have been methodically laying the groundwork for another specious casus belli ("Iran killing American troops!); manipulating the ever-eager-to-be-manipulated corporate media and Congress into swallowing every shift in the propaganda line; conducting their training for bomb runs on Iran (including scenarios for "tactical" nuclear attacks); moving attack fleets into the Persian Gulf and elsewhere within easy striking distance of Iran, building outposts on the Iranian border; running covert ops inside Iran (with the assistance of a terrorist cult once used as enforcers by Saddam Hussein). Now, with the aid of stories like those above, they are "rolling out the product," getting the "Iran is the Enemy" story front and center, no longer building it from the edges but making it the propaganda focus for the final act of Bush's bloodsoaked Grand Guignol.

One could write yards of exegesis on these articles, unpacking the outright lies, the skewed, misinformed -- and misinforming -- "analysis," the innumerable false assumptions built on old lies swallowed long before: "lies that no longer know they are lies, because they are the children and grandchildren of lies." This kind of exercise has great value, of course -- if only to demontrate, to ourselves and to future generations, that not everyone was willing to gobble down horseshit at the order of killers and torturers, and their simpering courtiers. [For an excellent example, see Juan Cole's takedown of the lies of the scribes and courtiers here: Iran Supported al-Maliki Against Militias.]

But ultimately, on the ground, it will not change a thing. The sharpest truth, shouted like a trumpet blast, will not wake the sleepwalkers now. Nothing has pierced the shadows and fog so far, nothing has roused their moral sense, their legal sense, their political sense; nothing has stirred them to take action against the torture, the secret prisons, the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, the ludicrous farce and deadly tyranny of the "Unitary Executive" cult -- and the never-ending act of mass murder and rape that is the war in Iraq. Will they stir now to stop another war crime in Iran?

No, it's obvious now that we must drink this bitter cup to the dregs. The sleepwalkers have encompassed us all in their nightmare. And how terrible, how terrible will be the awakening.

Smoking Mirrors Spot ON!

Wednesday, April 2
The Good Guys Dance While the Beat Goes On.

While the general public sits, in a drugged stupor, as hallucinating television sets bring them Donald Duck reporting the news, or Porky Pig from the runway at Milan, other things are being said and done which might have escaped the notice of the wider world. Japanese lawmaker and former Chief Cabinet Secretary under Koizumi has had a lot to say about 9/11 and then there is the former President of Italy as well as the one time head of their secret service who has said 911 was done by the CIA and Mossad and then there is the former German Minister Andreas Von Buelow who has something to say and all those professional airline pilots who have something to say as well as all those scholars and scientists who have something to say and then, there’s me. I’ve got something to say too and we’ll get to that.

I want everyone reading this essay who is in denial about 9/11 to ask themselves what they base that denial on. Ask yourself, “Why do I believe that Bin Laden attacked the WTC and points south?” Go stand in front of the mirror people and ask yourself what your credentials are for determining the scientific aspects of the 9/11 attacks. Ask yourself if you are or were at a high level in your government and privy to classified information. Ask yourself if you are trained in the sciences represented by those doubting the official version of the event or a commercial pilot like those linked here. Ask yourself if that really is Porky Pig talking to you from the runway in Milan.

The answer to the first question has to be, “Donald Duck told me so.” He may have been dressed like whatever wax figure reads you your news but it was Donald Duck who actually said it. You believe it because it is what you were told and nobody is going to tell you different because the people in charge are the good guys or they wouldn’t be in charge, right?

These are the good guys that told you the proven lies that have led to the mass murders in Iraq. These are the people who orchestrated and are covering up THIS! Go ahead… read it. You see Halliburton, the former playground of the vice president, reaping obscene profits from the war and poisoning American soldiers with bad water and you say, “These are the good guys.” You see Dick Cheney go to Saudi Arabia and right afterwards you see that the Saudis are now preparing for nuclear war and you say “These are the good guys.” You see the sub prime mess and the food and energy shortages and the bees dying from genetically modified seeds and all of it because your government takes their orders from the money men who run the corporations and banks (and which is the clinical definition of fascism) and you say, “These are the good guys.”

April is here and strange doings are afoot. Al Sadr has shown the world that the U.S. and Israel along with ‘The City’ in London have lost control of the Iraq War, as if they ever had control outside of an insulated bunker on a small piece of real estate. What’s a fascist to do? Next stop Iran. The good guys are working out the details of the next false flag that will justify their long term plans.

Zionist controlled AOL is shutting down websites that question 9/11 while newscasters call for 9/11 truthers to be put in camps.

Twenty eight million Americans are on foodstamps. Isn’t that about one in ten people? Repossessed houses are being stripped of their copper and other fittings. And the beat goes on. And the beat goes on.

A person still in possession of a mind would ask themselves… why? You can’t say that the people responsible for these things are just stupid and incompetent. You have to know that there is a point to all of this. Ask yourself what this point must be. Why does the big freight train of life seem to be heading for a collective disaster of monumental proportion while your news sources are chattering away like Ritalin infused chipmunks searching for Jodie Foster and D.B. Cooper's parachute?

I’m not Nostradamus but you don’t have to be a seer to see. Most of you know that the official 9/11 story is garbage. By a wide margin you have been polled and found to have said so and yet… and yet… the beat goes on. High ranking figures in governments around the world are coming out and flat out saying that the CIA and Mossad engineered this event. Scientists and scholars are rebutting every aspect of the lies and still the beat goes on and these are still the good guys; over a million dead, people tortured and children raped and… these are the good guys.

It is a dark and dreadful thing, given that 9/11 was done by the intelligence services of certain governments that elements of those same governments can imprison and torture men for information they could not possibly have since the events they are being questioned about are being carried out by the forces that are torturing them. This is beyond Kafka folks and it is happening in real life.

Mark my words people… the day will come when all of these things will be widely known and you will remember that you did and said nothing.

As the arrogant, rogue nation of Israel carries out it’s genocide on the original inhabitants of the land they occupy, your voice is not heard. Hundreds of thousands of people who have committed no crime live under the iron boot of a merciless regime which has abandoned all pretense of humanity and it is not only the Palestinians who suffer. And you say nothing because you are ignorant or afraid. You are afraid that you will be tagged with bankrupt terminology for daring to question the methods and motives of mass murdering demons dressed in human form. Because you cannot stand up, one day you too will kneel and receive the same tender ministrations that others have before you.

It is not a question of maybe this or maybe that any more. The stark truth is there before you in black and white and Technicolor and the beat goes on. It is within yourself that you must finally deal with your silence, your indifference and fear. All of the convenient lies that you tell your conscious mind percolate in the depths beneath your awareness and one day… one day they will rise to the surface and convict you as the beat goes on.

There is no hiding place from the truth of your complicity in the tragic events of your time. While you feed in your dreams in the land of plenty, the land of plenty is no more. While you imagine any one of your candidates will address the real issues that surround you, they mouth platitudes and bend their knee to the forces that cause all of the horrors of the time. You will have to answer for why you did and said nothing as the beat went on.

I gain no pleasure from having to tell you these things. I do not fabricate these things in my imagination. They are there for you to see for yourselves but something within you has failed. Something that should have been there went missing. Some quality that made you human has traveled on to more willing locations and you remain as something indefinable… not human… not yet a beast. But when the thin veneer of civilization is at last stripped away we shall see what you become.

For the moment the music is still playing. You travel to your jobs and you go about your activities and entertainments. Despite all of the evidence of these uncertain times you do believe it’s just a rough patch in the road and that mysterious elves will come out in the night while you are sleeping and fix your world. We shall see what ‘the good guys’ have to say about that. We shall see how you dance in time as the beat goes on.

We Shall all be Underground