Com_Bat_Rac_Coon

I first posted on this blog three years ago. And, now, I've decided to make my last posting. Some may wonder why - the reason, simply, is that I must live my life. I hope this blog has helped some of its readers to see through the matrix of the American System. We are rapidly approaching a time of reckoning.

This blog will remain available for anyone to peruse. I wish all of you peace in the future. A great fighter was once asked, "What is the essence of being a warrior?" His answer was, "Sitting on the porch and watching one's grandchildren play in the yard".

I leave one last link to a lengthy article, Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-American Century, by Dmitry Orlov which I highly recommend reading in its entirety:

An early victim of collapse is the sense of normalcy. People are initially shocked, but quickly forget that such a thing ever existed, except for the odd vague tinge of nostalgia. Normalcy is not exactly normal: in an industrial economy, the sense of normalcy is an artificial, manufactured item. We may be hurtling towards environmental doom, and thankfully never quite get there because of resource depletion, but, in the meantime, the lights are on, there is traffic on the streets, and, even if the lights go out for a while due to a blackout, they will be back on in due course, and the shops will reopen. Business as usual will resume.

The sumptuous buffet lunch will be served on time, so that the assembled luminaries can resume discussion of measured steps we all need to take to avert certain disaster. The lunch is not served; then the lights go off. At some point, somebody calls the whole thing a farce, and the luminaries adjourn, forever. In Russia, normalcy broke down in a series of steps. First, people stopped being afraid to speak their mind. Then, they stopped taking the authorities seriously. Lastly, the authorities stopped taking themselves seriously.

In the Soviet Union, as this thing called normalcy wore thin due to the stalemate in Afghanistan, the Chernobyl disaster, and general economic stagnation, it continued to be enforced through careful management of mass media. In the United States, as the economy fails to create enough jobs for several years in a row, and the entire economy leans towards bankruptcy, business as usual continues to be a top-selling product, or so we are led to believe. American normalcy circa 2005 seems as impregnable as Soviet normalcy circa 1985 once seemed.

If there is a difference between the Soviet and the American approach to maintaining a sense of normalcy, it is this: the Soviets tried to maintain it by force, while the Americans' superior approach is to maintain theirs through fear. You tend to feel more normal if you fear falling off your perch, and cling to it for dear life, than if somebody nails your feet to it.

More to the point: in a consumer society, anything that puts people off their shopping is dangerously disruptive, and all consumers sense this. Any expression of the truth about our lack of prospects for continued existence as a highly developed, prosperous industrial society is disruptive to the consumerist collective unconscious. There is a herd instinct to reject it, and therefore it fails, not through any overt action, but by failing to turn a profit, because it is unpopular.

In spite of this small difference in how normalcy is or was enforced, it was, and is being brought down, in the late Soviet Union as in contemporary United States, through almost identical means, though with different technology. In the Soviet Union, there was something called samizdat, or self-publishing: with the help of manual typewriters and carbon paper, Russian dissidents managed to circulate enough material to neutralize the effects of enforced normalcy. In contemporary United States, we have web sites and bloggers: different technology, same difference. These are writings for which enforced normalcy is no longer the norm; it is the truth - or at least someone's earnest approximation of it.

So what has become of these Soviet mavericks, some of whom foretold the coming collapse with some accuracy? To be brief, they faded from view. Both tragically and ironically, those who become experts in explaining the faults of the system and in predicting the course of its demise are very much part of the system. When the system disappears, so does their area of expertise, and their audience. People stop intellectualizing their predicament and start trying to escape it - through drink or drugs or creativity or cunning - but they have no time for pondering the larger context.

Imperial class Star Destroyers are approaching the desert planet of Tatooine.



oops, wrong galaxy...







Actually, US aircraft carriers are en-route to the Iranian theatre of operations.

Walter Simpson reviews Kevin Phillips new book, American Theocracy, in the article titled The Real Oil Story: The Oil in Iraq:

There’s no doubt that the $3 gas we put in our tanks runs red with the blood of our soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis who have died in this war. We need to open our eyes to this hard reality.

I like radio so I listen to NPR a lot - this morning I heard a report on Peak Oil. I believe it's the first time I've heard it mentioned on NPR (and I've been wondering what's taken them so long).

It was a good report - a few quotes from Matthew Simmons followed up by the major contrarian voice of Daniel Yergin. Simmons argument is summarised in the report:

Simmons believes we're nearing [an oil] shortage. In his book Twilight in the Desert, he argues that Saudi Arabia has overstated its ability to pump more oil. And once Saudi production peaks, he says, oil production around the world will enter a period of "irreversible decline."

Many who argue that Simmons' analyis is not accurate point out the fact (as Simmons willingly admits) that Saudi reserves are effectively a black-box. No one really knows what the Saudis have - so modeling future production capacity becomes nothing better than an educated guess.

Well, that was true until a few weeks ago. Saudi Aramco is now on record that they are expecting 8% declines from their mature mega-fields:

Saudi Aramco's mature crude oil fields are expected to decline at a gross average rate of 8%/year without additional maintenance and drilling, a Saudi Aramco spokesman said Tuesday.

But Saudi Aramco has taken a number of measures to offset a decline in output from the country's aging oil fields, the spokesman added.

"A variety of remedial activities are always being taken in oil fields influencing their effective decline rates," the spokesman said. "The drilling of additional development wells in the producing fields is Saudi Aramco's standard practice to offset normal declines of older wells."

This is particularly important when oil fields are progressively depleted under a well thought out strategy of maximizing the sweep and displacement efficiencies, leading to high ultimate oil recovery, the spokesman said.

"This maintain potential drilling in mature fields combined with a multitude of remedial actions and the development of new fields, with long plateau lives, lowers the composite decline rate of producing fields to around 2%," the spokesman said.

An Iraq war veteran describes:

" . . . life through the eyes of a weapon of which the machine has no use for anymore."

Colonel McMaster speaks with the voice of humility borne of experience:

"It is so damn complex. If you ever think you have the solution to this, you’re wrong, and you’re dangerous."

It does not take much to imagine whom McMaster is referencing.

Seymour Hersh writes in The New Yorker magazine about American plans to bomb Iran.

And CNN's Wolf Blitzer interviews Seymour Hersh about his article which is rattling markets worldwide.

Al Jazeera interviews Riverbend.

Juan Cole recommends a NY Times article by Jeffrey Gettleman for it's realistic telling of just how violent Baghdad has become:

If this all sounds depressing, it is. That's how people here feel. I've been looking hard, but in two weeks I haven't found an Iraqi optimist. In the summer of 2004, I profiled a band of young artists who braved dangerous roads to get away from Baghdad and paint pretty pictures of the Tigris River. Now, they're homebound. There is a similar sense of newfound hopelessness in the faces of the Iraqis I work with.

"What is the style of death?" is the No. 1 question in our bureau, now that all these bodies have turned up.

Patrick Cockburn contends that Baghdad is fracturing into a sectarian war zone.

An article discusses the depth and scope of the megabases being built in Iraq and hints at the Balad "master plan":

BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq - The concrete goes on forever, vanishing into the noonday glare, 2 million cubic feet of it, a mile-long slab...

. . .

Are the Americans here to stay? Air Force mechanic Josh Remy is sure of it as he looks around Balad.

"I think we'll be here forever," the 19-year-old airman from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., told a visitor to his base.

The Iraqi people suspect the same. Strong majorities tell pollsters they'd like to see a timetable for U.S. troops to leave, but believe Washington plans to keep military bases in their country.

. . .

"The coalition forces are moving outside the cities while continuing to provide security support to the Iraqi security forces," English said.

The move away from cities, perhaps eventually accompanied by U.S. force reductions, will lower the profile of U.S. troops, frequent targets of roadside bombs on city streets.

. . .

In the counterinsurgency fight, Balad's central location enables strike aircraft to reach targets in minutes. And in the broader context of reinforcing the U.S. presence in the oil-rich Mideast, Iraq bases are preferable to aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, said a longtime defense analyst.

"Carriers don't have the punch," said Gordon Adams of Washington's George Washington University. "There's a huge advantage to land-based infrastructure. At the level of strategy it makes total sense to have Iraq bases."

. . .

Army and Air Force engineers, with little notice, have worked to give U.S. commanders solid installations in Iraq, and to give policymakers options. From the start, in 2003, the first Army engineers rolling into Balad took the long view, laying out a 10-year plan envisioning a move from tents to today's living quarters in air-conditioned trailers, to concrete-and-brick barracks by 2008.

In early 2006, no one's confirming such next steps, but a Balad "master plan," details undisclosed, is nearing completion, a possible model for al-Asad, Tallil and a fourth major base, al-Qayyarah in Iraq's north.

Almost every American knows the significance of April 15th - its the deadline for submitting tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service. This year, since April 15th falls on a Saturday, Americans are blessed with a one day reprieve - the deadline has been pushed to the following Monday, April 17th. With less than a month to go before the annual deadline, I thought it might be good to remind ourselves where our money goes and what we support with it:




We support the most powerful military in the history of our species. A veritable hyperpower, capable of force projection anywhere on the planet. But, as Chalmers Johnson points out:

The military budget is starting to bankrupt the country. It's got so much in it that's well beyond any rational military purpose. It equals just less than half of total global military spending. And yet here we are, stymied by two of the smallest, poorest countries on Earth. Iraq before we invaded had a GDP the size of the state of Louisiana and Afghanistan was certainly one of the poorest places on the planet. And yet these two places have stopped us.

If we find America economically broken by this time next year, none of us should wonder why.

If you've been following the oil markets, you've probably noticed how stubborn prices have been. Although many have expected the price of crude to drop to the low fifties, it hasn't despite the underlying fundamentals.

Prices remain stubborn due to what is being commonly called the "fear premium". Simply put, things aren't going well in places where oil is produced - and with a tight balance between supply and demand, a small push could upset the entire apple cart.

An excellent article in Asia Times, points out the emerging divergence in perspectives between fixed asset investors and portfolio investors holding bonds and equities. Fixed asset investors invest in "real things" - like factories, buildings, and ships as well as commodities like minerals and petroleum. Portfolio investors invest in "paper" - like stocks and debt notes. The article's author asserts:

Portfolio investors appear oblivious to extreme global geopolitical and high global economic growth risks that the world's fixed investors have clearly become aware of. Much of this disparity can be attributed to the vast difference between the investment horizon of portfolio investors, which is short-term by nature, and that of fixed investors, which is long-term by definition. Risk perceptions evolve over time for fixed investors, while risk perceptions among portfolio investors usually change suddenly and dramatically.

Indeed, Boone Pickens, who had been expecting a pullback in the price of crude, recently reminded us that the "fear premium" is very real:

Pickens, the founder of Mesa Petroleum Co., said demand is so tight that if Iran pulled one million barrels of oil off the market "you'll have $75 (a barrel) oil in 24 hours."

Because of the tight supply and demand situation, countries like Iran have as much clout on prices as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries had a decade ago, he said.

He reeled off the names of several countries that could have such an impact, including politically turbulent Venezuela, the third biggest exporter of oil to the U.S. behind Canada and Mexico. Mideast countries account for about 25 percent of the nation's oil, he said.

"It'll happen. This is the truth. This is fact. I'm not talking fiction here," he said of the possibility of a dramatic spike in already high oil prices soon.

In December of 2003, I posted the following commentary on American military strategy:

It appears that the occupation of Iraq has led to a promotion of ends over means. In order to ensure the American installation of bases (without bearing the political cost of losing next year's presidential elections), the White House has forgone Weber's basic tenet of state formation. Instead of reserving a monopoly on the use of physical force, they are legitimizing Iraqi paramilitaries.

Of course, a monopoly on the use of physical force was what probably drove the initial blunder of disbanding the Iraqi Army.

Although I believe the White House would love to see a stable, functioning Iraqi state, at this point it will be satisfied with advancing its primary directive by removing American troops from the hostile population centers and into large military bases installed in the desert.

By the spring of 2004:

Last summer [US forces] were running about 2,400 patrols a day nationwide, according to official figures. In the latest reports, the number has fallen to 1,400. Most American troops live huddled in a few sprawling encampments that have grown into small cities. Of 105,000 U.S. military personnel now stationed in Iraq, more than half are housed in just four megabases. There used to be 60 U.S. bases in Baghdad, but the last of those posts is to close by the end of this month, and U.S. troops will have pulled back to eight big suburban enclaves.

Now that Iraqi population centers are embroiled in the hostility of civil war, Secretary Rumsfeld confirms:

"The plan is to prevent a civil war, and to the extent one were to occur, to have the – from a security standpoint – have the Iraqi security forces deal with it, to the extent they are able to," Rumsfeld told the committee.

In other words, America would love to see a peaceful and stable Iraq but if that doesn't work out, the troops will watch the country burn while remaining comfortably ensconced behind the walls of their permanent megabases:

I remember vividly meeting soldiers in Baghdad in 2003 who considered themselves lucky to get one round of hot T-rations -- prepared meals that are heated up and served on trays -- per day. The one thing they seemed to crave more than anything else was powdered flavoring that would strip away the monotony of their drinking water. Some even looked gaunt from their massive weight drops. Now, the average soldier on some bases has to watch that his or her weight doesn’t balloon. Forward Operating Base Warrior here has a fully stocked chow hall, alongside its Burger King, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut.

The amenities of garrison living don’t stop there, however. The base’s beauty shop, housed in a tin trailer much like the living quarters, offers deep tissue massages. For $17, soldiers are able to get a half-hour rub down that will pound away much of the physical stress that comes from wearing a military issued flak vest that can weigh as much as 50 pounds.

The concerts here aren’t bad, either.

CORRECTION: The New York Times has submitted a correction regarding Mr. Qaissi's claim to be the iconic hooded prisoner of Abu Ghraib.

Mr. Qaissi, 43, was prisoner 151716 of Cellblock 1A. The picture of him standing hooded atop a cardboard box, attached to electrical wires with his arms stretched wide in an eerily prophetic pose, became the indelible symbol of the torture at Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad.

"I never wanted to be famous, especially not in this way," he said, as he sat in a squalid office rented by his friends here in Amman. That said, he is now a prisoner advocate who clearly understands the power of the image: it appears on his business card.

A British special forces soldier has quit the army due to illegal tactics employed in the American counterinsurgency campaign:

An SAS soldier has refused to fight in Iraq and has left the Army over the "illegal" tactics of United States troops and the policies of coalition forces.

After three months in Baghdad, Ben Griffin told his commander that he was no longer prepared to fight alongside American forces.

He said he had witnessed "dozens of illegal acts" by US troops, claiming they viewed all Iraqis as "untermenschen" - the Nazi term for races regarded as sub-human.

The decision marks the first time an SAS soldier has refused to go into combat and quit the Army on moral grounds.

. . .

Mr Griffin, 28, who spent two years with the SAS, said the American military's "gung-ho and trigger happy mentality" and tactics had completely undermined any chance of winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi population. He added that many innocent civilians were arrested in night-time raids and interrogated by American soldiers, imprisoned in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, or handed over to the Iraqi authorities and "most probably" tortured.

The US Army War College has published an article Toward a Long-Range Energy Security Policy in its quarterly journal:

Where US energy policy is concerned, the debate generally has been limited to arguments that the United States must preserve its access to the oil reserves of the Middle East and Central Asia, and a vague sense that domestic energy supplies would be highly desirable. Cornucopian optimists continue to insist that oil will remain abundant and cheap for the foreseeable future, and indeed more concern is expressed over the unsavory character of governments in major oil-producing states than over the finite nature of the resources themselves.

The vagaries of oil politics (and the ecological problems raised by carbon emissions) are indeed serious problems, and they are not entirely separable from the questions this article means to raise, but the focus here will be on the problem of fossil fuel scarcity at the global level. This article seeks to provide an overview of the situation, including the prospects for an economy based on renewable energy, the security problems likely to result from tightening oil supplies, and a possible basis for making the transition to alternatives widely acknowledged as inevitable in the long run.

Where are the good Americans? One of them is Ray McGovern, who has returned his Intelligence Commendation Award as a matter of conscience:

The obeisance of CIA directors George Tenet and Porter Goss in heeding illegal White House directives has done irreparable harm to the CIA and the country - not to mention those tortured and killed. That you, as Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, show more deference to the White House than dedication to your oversight responsibilities under the Constitution is another profound disappointment. How can you and your counterpart, Sen. Pat Roberts, turn a blind eye to torture - letting some people get away, literally, with murder - and square that with your conscience?

If German officials who were ordered to do such things in the 1930s had spoken out early and loudly enough, the German people might have been alerted to the atrocities being perpetrated in their name and tried harder to stop them. When my grandchildren ask, "What did you do, Grandpa, to stop the torture," I want to be able to tell them that I tried to honor my oath, taken both as an Army officer and an intelligence officer, to defend the Constitution of the United States - and that I not only spoke out strongly against the torture, but also sought a symbolic way to dissociate myself from it.

We Americans have become accustomed to letting our institutions do our sinning for us.

An article in The Nation asks a very good question:

Where Are the Good Americans?

Anyone who sees the photographs of the victims of the Nazi concentration camps must wonder how human beings could ever have allowed such things to happen. They must wonder how people of good will could have stood by while their government committed atrocities in their name. In the wake of that nightmarish era, people often asked, "Where were the good Germans?"

After the publication of the long-suppressed pictures of Abu Ghraib victims and the United Nations finding that torture and abuse are still taking place at the US prison in Guantánamo Bay, America has fashioned its own nightmare. We now must ask ourselves, "Where are the good Americans?"

The big news this morning is the foiled terrorist attack on a critical Saudi oil refinery. I'm honestly surprised that this comes more than a year and a half after the Khobar killings - I expected a refinery attack much sooner. An attack certainly has been planned for some time now.

The oil markets responded by pushing crude futures up over $1.20 USD because, unfortunately, it is not news to anyone how the petroleum infrastructure makes for systemic fragility in the world economy.

Blowback can refer to the combination of gasses, dirt, and debris (unburnt powder, metal shavings) that most firearms produce upon firing.

More generally, the term blowback is used for any negative effect one suffers from one's own weapons, such as the possibility that one's own weapons used in a nuclear war could create fallout that could be blown onto one's own troops or nation.

Radiation detectors in Britain recorded a fourfold increase in uranium levels in the atmosphere after the “shock and awe” bombing campaign against Iraq, according to a report.

Environmental scientists who uncovered the figures through freedom of information laws say it is evidence that depleted uranium from the shells was carried by wind currents to Britain.