Hands Off
1 hour ago
"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now." Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [192kbps VBR 12:30 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Twitter This Commentary |
Withdrawal in name only... Part 1: 35 - 50,000 US troops and *132,610* mercenaries staying in-theater
Part 2, and apropos to the story: US says it's not barred from using mine-resistant armored vehicles during daytime in Iraqi cities after Wednesday, July 1 2009... The so-called 'withdrawal' deadline"
Unfortunately, the reality is more amorphous, if not deliberately confusing, like much of Obama’s foreign policy and war strategy these days."
It's easy to see we're staying (In Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East/Central Asia... until EVERY drop of oil is sucked from Iraq's soil.
If everyone expects to be able to drive to work in a society that is utterly car (individualized transport for fearful-of-the-'other' people) dependent, there IS no other current option.
A fellow named Dimitry Orlov (of the blog Club Orlov) did a presentation a while back, comparing the social fallout from economic collapse of the Soviet economy and what might portend for the US under similar circumstances.
We earned our livelihoods through the use of... EAT because of, OIL.
Excerpt:
"The food distribution system makes heavy use of refrigerated diesel trucks, transforming food over hundreds of miles to resupply supermarkets. The food pipeline is long and thin, and it takes only a couple of days of interruptions for supermarket shelves to be stripped bare. Many people live in places that are not within walking distance of stores, not served by public transportation, and will be cut off from food sources once they are no longer able to drive.
Besides the supermarket chains, much of the nation’s nutrition needs are being met by an assortment of fast food joints and convenience stores. In fact, in many of the less fashionable parts of cities and towns, fast food and convenience store food is all that is available. In the near future, this trend is likely to extend to the more prosperous parts of town and the suburbs.
Fast food outfits such as McDonalds have more ways to cut costs, and so may prove a bit more resilient in the face of economic collapse than supermarket chains, but they are no substitute for food security, because they too depend industrial agribusiness. Their food inputs, such as high-fructose corn syrup, genetically modified potatoes, various soy-based fillers, factory-farmed beef, pork and chicken, and so forth, are derived from oil,"
It's called "Social Collapse Best Practices", and it's quite good... covering the implications of how the US and the Soviets had chosen to develop their cities, housing, transportation systems, and agriculture... ALL intensively petroleum based in the US, leaving America quite economically vulnerable... from within, AND without.
The answer we've come up with?
Our best solution?
Victimize... the countries that have the oil, if they won't offer it to us in deals that are the best for us, and often, as in the case of the Niger Delta, impoverishes and poisons the inhabitants of the countries we get the oil from.
"...funding military programs at alarming levels and continuing the Bush administration’s military and intelligence invasion of what used to be civilian life.
The latest manifestation of this continuity came last week when Dennis C. Blair, Director of National Intelligence, announced plans to transform the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program (PRISP) from a pilot project into a permanent budget item. Blair also announced plans to establish a “Reserve Officers’ Training Corps” to train unidentified future intelligence officers in US college classrooms. Like students receiving PRISP funds, the identities of students participating in these programs would not be known to professors, university administrators or fellow students — in effect, these future intelligence analysts and agents would conduct their first covert missions in our university classrooms. Clickthrough to Alternet @ Gates Of Hell
A military coup has taken place in Honduras this morning (Sunday, June 28), led by SOA graduate Romeo Vasquez. In the early hours of the day, members of the Honduran military surrounded the presidential palace and forced the democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya, into custody. He was immediately flown to Costa Rica. More from VenezuelaAnalysis
"No Government Arising from this Unconstitutional Interruption Will Be Recognized" - OAS Demands "the Immediate, Safe and Unconditional Return of President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales to His Constitutional Functions" in Honduras. More.From Stan Goff, Ex-S.O.G., Ex-Marxist, at Feral Scholar:
"Outside of the direct actors, we don’t know exactly what just happened in Honduras. But the spinning will start soon; and neither President Obama nor Secretary of State Clinton have called for the return of President Zelaya to his rightful office. They have made tepid statements of opposition to military takeovers and a return to “democracy” and “constitutionality.”
While we wait, I will share an older piece about the US-directed coup in Haiti (which Obama and Clinton apparently support) and the attempted coup — with US support — against the democratically elected government of Venezuela.
In 1994, when my last Special Forces team, Operational Detachment Alpha 354, entered the Haitian city of Gonaives, I along with three members of that detachment waded through a huge and agitated crowd to encounter four soldiers and two plainclothes death squad members about to fire into that crowd with M-1 Garands. They were surprised to see us, and we took advantage of that surprise to compel them to lay their weapons down and submit to arrest. One of the plainclothes gents hesitated to relinquish his weapon, and I came very near shooting him. I’m only being honest - knowing this will put some people off - when I say that I now wish I had gone ahead and pulled the trigger. In Full, with linkage
I B Bad. I'm The 897,186,093 Richest Person On Earth! Discover how rich you are Here! |
No comments:
Post a Comment