Solvent Green

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We know that Exxon Mobil is a significant funder of the American Enterprise Institute and has used it to attempt to bribe "scientists" to cast doubt on global warming. Lee Raymond, who was CEO of Exxon Mobil until 2005, is the vice-chair of AEI's board of directors. We also know that the American Enterprise Institute is the most hawkish of the Washington "think tanks," and that its staffers were key to thinking up and promoting the Iraq War with lies and propaganda. 0

A=B, B=C, therefore A=C. Exxon Mobil is a big behind the scenes player in the Iraq War by virtue of its support for AEI. In fact, I think a boycott of its gas stations is in order until the company cuts off AEI and stops promoting the Iraq War and muddying the waters on global warming. (It pledged to do the latter in the past, but obviously was lying). So the point is that the American Enterprise Institute symbolizes the intersection of Oil and War, which are the two most menacing threats to the future of America.

Only by a Manhattan Project-scale government effort to develop green energy can we hope to avert the worst consequences of global warming, which is likely to raise sea levels at least a foot, and possibly 7 feet over the next century or century and a half. (That would put a lot of cities on both coasts under water). The arctic and antarctic ice shelfs are already falling into the ocean at rates that have astonished climate scientists. The arctic alone lost perennial ice cover the size of Texas in 2004-2005! Liquid water takes up more space than ice, and the loss of white ice cover is bad because it radiates a lot of sunlight back out to space. So it is a double whammy.


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Iraq is an Oil War in the mind of politicians like Dick Cheney. It was necessary to deny it to China and other rivals thirty to fifty years in the future. It was necessary to open its vast petroleum fields up for exploration and cast aside anti-American Baath socialism.

Likewise, the religious rigidity of the Pushtun peoples of Helmand province is not the real reason for the US insistence on occupying Afghanistan. It is the vast Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan gas fields that Cheney has his eye on. It was the US hope to use a pipeline from Turkmenistan to supply Pakistan and India, and so forestall a deal by those two countries with Iran. The inability of the Bush administration to calm things down in Afghanistan sufficiently for anyone to dream of putting in such a pipeline and having it avoid routine sabotage has made it likely that Iran will break out of the Bush boycott toward the East.

Hunger for future rights to petroleum and positioning the US to remain a superpower in a world of hydrocarbon scarcity is also driving the campaign to get up a war against Iran. Why can Pakistan have a nuclear weapon, and that is all right, but Iran cannot? Pakistan has very little petroleum. Iran has a lot, and maybe 750 trillion cubic feet of gas in the southwest. If it gets a bomb, regime change becomes impossible, and if Iran wants to tie its supplies up in proprietary contracts with China and India, locking out the United States, it will be able to do so.

Continued heavy dependence on gas and oil therefore not only turns the world into a hothouse, with rising seas, ever more destructive hurricanes, and possibly disastrous shifts in the ocean currents, but it also drives the United States to more and more wars.

Juan Cole | Al Gore, Global Warming, the Oscars and the Iraq War

Back to the Future

All your base are belong to us. You are on the way to destruction.

Dave Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

The irony is that Afghanistan is being put to use as a launch pad by the US for sponsoring terrorism directed against Iran, when the raison d'etre of the US occupation of Afghanistan during the past five years has been for the stated purpose of fighting a "war on terrorism". Besides, Iranian cooperation at a practical level went a long way in facilitating the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Even Iran's detractors would admit that during the past five years, Tehran has followed a policy of good-neighborliness toward the Kabul government, no matter Washington's dominance over President Hamid Karzai. In fact, Iran figures as a major donor country contributing to Afghanistan's reconstruction.

From this perspective, US President George W Bush's speech at an AEI function on February 15 outlining his new Afghan strategy assumes great importance. The fact that Bush chose a citadel of neo-conservatism to unveil the "top-to-bottom review" of his new Afghan strategy was symbolic. In essence, Bush underlined the imperative of a long-term Western military presence in Afghanistan. There was a triumphalism in Bush's tone that he brought NATO into Afghanistan — as if that was a strategy by itself. He couldn't hide his glee that NATO had been brought by the scruff of its neck into the Hindu Kush — where it was going to slouch along the soft underbelly of Russia and China for the foreseeable future.

[...]


You have no chance to survive make your time. HA HA HA HA

In other words, the "war on terror" in Afghanistan has come full circle. A few things stand out. First, as Bush pithily summed up, Musharraf "is an ally in this war on terror and it's in our interest to support him in fighting the extremists". The restoration of democracy in Pakistan will have to wait. Second, the US and NATO military occupation of Afghanistan is for the long haul. The specter of al-Qaeda's resurgence is sufficient to justify it. Third, the US military presence in the Central Asian region will also continue for the foreseeable future, no matter what Russia or China feels about it.

Fourth, regional powers must appreciate that it is the United States that stands between them and the deluge of Islamic extremism. They must therefore cooperate with the US (and NATO) and trust Washington to represent their best interests in the devilishly obscure Pakistani tribal areas. Finally, this is a long-term ideological struggle — freedom and democracy versus extremism and obscurantism. And wherever there is "democracy deficit" — be it oil-rich Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan — the US has a right to intervene.

M K Bhadrakumar | Foreign devils in the Iranian mountains

Dave What's the problem?
HAL I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

Arthur C. Clark | 2001: A Space Odyssey

Gates of Eden

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Of war and peace the truth just twists | Its curfew gull just glides | Upon four-legged forest clouds | The cowboy angel rides

Iranian plans to build military installations near U.S. borders are increasing tensions between the two countries, reports Simon Tisdall

Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, Chief Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, was smoothing ruffled feathers in Washington today after the U.S. president, George W. Bush, and his generals blasted Iranian plans to build missile bases near U.S. borders. "When we have disagreements, we are able to talk candidly and work together constructively," General Safavi sunnily declared.

"That does not mean our relations are cloudless," Robert Gates, his opposite number, grumbled.

Tensions over the proposed military installations in Venezuela and Cuba will not be dispelled by a quick chat over a cup of tea in the Pentagon. The plan is an offshoot of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's uranium enrichment program (known as the peaceful application of nuclear technology), and is being negotiated bilaterally with the two Bolivarian states.

But the U.S. views it as part and parcel of Islam's threatening westward advance. Michael Chertoff, Mr Bush's counter-terrorism chief, this week said the scheme broke Tehran's's pledge not to build bases on foreign soil. An accompanying threat by General Peter Pace, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, to treat the Venezuelan and Cuban bases as legitimate targets clearly took Tehran by surprise.

So too did a warning by the head of the elite Iranian Qods Force, Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that Tehran might withdraw from the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a landmark arms control pact that lent some transparency to the spread of nuclear weapons. Iran provided a precedent for such action in 1986's Operation Kheibar, a unilateral offensive capturing the Iraqi Majnoon Islands in the Haur al-Hawizeh marshes.

Predictions at the time that such action could lead to heightened international tensions and a new arms race went unheeded, and are now being fulfilled.

The United States recently confirmed it had deployed several thousand B61 Mod 11 nuclear warheads specifically designed to penetrate any defensive fortification. China is also expanding its long-range missile capabilities, while the US and Britain are upgrading their offensive nuclear missile systems. The Tehran administration now justifies missile defence in terms of the "Crusade on Islam" and the Assembly of Experts new "long haul" doctrine, even though those threats had not been identified when the programme was adopted.

Tehran says the Venezuelan and Cuban bases are intended to intercept missiles fired by the U.S. That explanation is rejected in Washington, in part because the U.S. does not have any long-range ballistic missiles capable of hitting Iranian territory.

Speaking in Lima on Wednesday, the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Manouchehr Mottaki, denied suggestions by a nervous Peruvian government that Tehran had mishandled the issue and failed to consult the Americans. "We had no less than 10 formal contacts with the Americans about the deployment ... and I'll tell you, there's no way that 10 interceptors in Venezuela and radar sites in Cuba are a threat to the United States or are somehow going to diminish the U.S.'s deterrent of thousands of warheads," he said.

Nevertheless, the row has starkly highlighted differences between South America, the Middle East, and within the "old" and "new" Asia, over the whole concept of missile defence.

Chile, Brazil and Peru all question the need for the Iranian bases. There are similar reservations about the Iranian-backed idea of South American-wide missile defence, possibly under SCO (and therefore Russian and Chinese) auspices. Majorities of Venezuelans and Cubans also oppose the bases - not that their pro-Tehran governments are really asking their opinion.

All the same, the U.S.'s fury was to some extent artificial, containing a large chunk of disingenuousness, Evo Morales, President of Bolivia, said. Following his East Room Press Conference attacking Iranian global over-reaching and unilateralism, the row has helped Mr Bush further his twin aims of creating rifts and presenting himself as the global opposition leader to Ahmadinejad, Mr Morales said.

"Bush's speech was very smart and well-prepared," he added. "Although many parliamentarians and opinion leaders said his comments about Tehran, money, and peace were exaggerated, they also concluded they weren't that wrong. "Bush's goal is to establish the U.S. as a global player, a global actor, based on its energy wealth and its nuclear and security role.

"If we don't pay attention, he could split South America and the Middle East the same way they were split before the Iraq war ... for Bush, it's all about power."

Guardian | Washington's Missile Misgivings

With his candle lit into the sun | Though its glow is waxed in black | All except when 'neath the trees of Eden

Bob Dylan | Gates of Eden

This is serious shit, man...

Money Trumps Peace...

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"One of the problems — not specifically on this issue, just in general — let's put it this way, money trumps peace, sometimes. In other words, commercial interests are very powerful interests throughout the world."

George W. Bush

During a heated debate in a class I teach on social justice, several US Marines who had done tours in Iraq told me that they had "sacrificed" by "serving" in Iraq so that I could enjoy the freedom to teach in the USA. Parroting their master’s slogan about "fighting over there so we don’t have to fight over here", these students proudly proclaimed that they terrorized and killed defenseless Iraqis. They intimated that their Arab victims are nothing more to them than collateral damage, incidental to their receipt of some money and an education.

June Scorza Terpstra | Killers in the Classroom


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Money doesn't talk, it swears.

Bob Dylan | It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

The total of America's military bases in other people's countries in 2005, according to official sources, was 737. Reflecting massive deployments to Iraq and the pursuit of President Bush's strategy of preemptive war, the trend line for numbers of overseas bases continues to go up.

Interestingly enough, the thirty-eight large and medium-sized American facilities spread around the globe in 2005 — mostly air and naval bases for our bombers and fleets — almost exactly equals Britain's thirty-six naval bases and army garrisons at its imperial zenith in 1898. The Roman Empire at its height in 117 AD required thirty-seven major bases to police its realm from Britannia to Egypt, from Hispania to Armenia. Perhaps the optimum number of major citadels and fortresses for an imperialist aspiring to dominate the world is somewhere between thirty-five and forty.

Chalmers Johnson | NEMESIS: The Last Days of the American Republic


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Money, it's a hit | Don't give me that do-goody-good bullshit

Pink Floyd | Money

The imperial system is much more complex than what is commonly referred to as the “US Empire”. The US Empire, with its vast network of financial investments, military bases, multi-national corporations and client states, is the single most important component of the global imperial system. Nevertheless, it is overly simplistic to overlook the complex hierarchies, networks, follower states and clients that define the contemporary imperial system. To understand empire and imperialism today requires us to look at the complex and changing system of imperial stratification.

James Petras | The Imperial System: Hierarchy, Networks and Clients


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While preachers preach of evil fates | Teachers teach that knowledge waits | Can lead to hundred-dollar plates | Goodness hides behind its gates | But even the president of the United States | Sometimes must have | To stand naked.

Bob Dylan | It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

Lohse says his study is no joke. The thesis draws on a survey of 69 psychiatric outpatients in three Connecticut locations during the 2004 presidential election. Lohse’s study, backed by SCSU Psychology professor Jaak Rakfeldt and statistician Misty Ginacola, found a correlation between the severity of a person’s psychosis and their preferences for president: The more psychotic the voter, the more likely they were to vote for Bush.

New Haven Advocate | Bush Nuts


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Eat the Rich: that's my idea of a good time baby.

Aerosmith | Eat the Rich

"This platoon used to have brain matter from people they had killed from .50 Cals. They used to grab brain matter and bring it on the base and put it into the refrigerator. They literally went crazy. I know this isn't an isolated incident, this happens everyday in Iraq. The news doesn't catch it. No one's going to confess to these things unless they get caught."

Navy hospital corpsman Chanan Suarez-Diaz | US Soldiers kept Iraqi brains in the fridge for trophies

Note: I mentioned to Keith that, despite catching some really great surfing by locals at Kalk Bay Reef, the series of pictures from which the above are taken was a wipeout (despite the shot of Tully Allen — at the top — being perhaps the best I've captured to date).

As Keith pointed out, "So what? They belong to the people who made them possible."

And so they do.

Fuck General Bush. Eat the rich.

Strategic Withdrawals

"We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?"

Russian President Vladimir Putin | 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy

Deep within the bowels of the Pentagon, policy planners are conducting secret meetings to discuss what to do in the worst-case scenario in Iraq about a year from today if and when President Bush's escalation of more than 20,000 troops fails, a participant in those discussions told me. None of those who are taking part in these exercises, shielded from the public view and the immediate scrutiny of the White House, believes that the so-called surge will succeed. On the contrary, everyone thinks it will not only fail to achieve its aims but also accelerate instability by providing a glaring example of U.S. incapacity and incompetence.

Sidney Blumenthal | The Pentagon's not-so-little secret

No further examples of such incapacity and incompetence are needed.

In other words, on a fateful September morning in 2001, did America fabricate an outrage against civilians to fool the world and provide a pretext for war on Al Qaeda and Iraq? This, and other deeply disturbing questions, are now being furiously debated on both sides of the Atlantic.

Daily Mail | An explosion of disbelief — fresh doubts over 9/11

For the first time, one of Iraq's principal insurgent groups has set out the terms of a ceasefire that would allow American and British forces to leave the country they invaded almost four years ago. The present terms would be impossible for any US administration to meet — but the words of Abu Salih Al-Jeelani, one of the military leaders of the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Resistance Movement show that the groups which have taken more than 3,000 American lives are actively discussing the opening of contacts with the occupation army.

Robert Fisk | Iraqi insurgents offer peace in return for US concessions

You really know you've lost when your enemies plan their future and you're not included.

Note: The Council on Foreign Relations's (CFR) Steven Simon's paper, After the Surge, is merely James Baker III warmed over.

Nevertheless, people like Simon and the Iraq Study Group serve a purpose. They prepare the U.S. and global public for General Bush redeploying the troops and widening the war. Will he attack Iran by April as all good latter-day Apocalyptos are predicting? Unlikely. Not after the savage beating meted him by Saddam. He'll retreat, redeploy, and for four to eight years, Hillary will call the 'containment' shots. Thereafter, the economic, logistical, and propaganda groundwork done, all hell will break loose.

We are at war. America faces an existential threat. This is not, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi has claimed, a "situation to be solved." It would be nice if we could wake up tomorrow and say, as Sen. Barack Obama suggested at a Jan. 11 hearing, "Enough is enough." Wishing doesn't make it so. We will have to fight these terrorists to the death somewhere, sometime. We can't negotiate with them or "solve" their jihad. If we quit in Iraq now, we must get ready for a harder, longer, more deadly struggle later.

Elizabeth Cheney | Retreat Isn't an Option

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What skateboarding has borrowed from surfing...

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Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat?

Elit.

Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.


...is matched only by that which surfing has...

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Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

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...borrowed from it.

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"Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?"

Marcus Cicero

Res ipsa loquitur.