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Sludge Report #126 – Truth, Peace & Love (Part 1)
In This Edition: Unpleasant Thoughts, Truth, Peace & Love - First Some Quotes - Immediate Threats To Peace And Security – Who Is The Enemy?
NOTE: Authors of this report will be anonymous and wide ranging, and occasionally finely balanced. Indeed you are invited to contribute: The format is as a reporters notebook. It will be published as and when material is available. C.D. Sludge can be contacted at sludge@scoop.co.nz. The Sludge Report is available as a free email service..Click HERE - http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/myscoop/ to subscribe...
Sludge Report #126
Unpleasant Thoughts, Truth, Peace & Love
This Sludge Report introduces what will become a five part series attempting to shed light on the State of the World, and why - for the sake of self preservation - we all need to do something about it urgently.
In upcoming parts this series will focus on asking questions about matters which you most probably have not thus far thought about, but which disclose a new map to the world in which you live. You are invited to challenge all that we write, for it is only by questioning what you are told that you can find the truth.
Sludge readers who find this process enlightening are invited to forward this and subsequent parts in the series to friends, acquaintances and even enemies who in turn might be in need of a little enlightenment.
First Some Quotes (For Inspiration And To Set The Tone)
“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.” - Herm Albright
(After noting that the U.S. is back bombing Afghanistan again ). “You know I can picture a world without war. But then I can picture the Americans bombing it…… Okay lets cheer someone up.” - Julian Byrne – Wellington ZMFM afternoon radio host Monday, 04 March 2002, 3.43pm before making a listener competition phone call. ZMFM is the top rating commercial music station in Wellington the capital city in New Zealand.
“Turn the enemy into a laughing matter” - Catherine Austin Fitts
“That the Gods will destroy they will first make ludicrous” - Greek Philosopher
“Truth is beauty, beauty truth. That's all you know of life, and all you need to know.” - Keats
Our Millennial Crisis
The world is now well into what might be best described as it’s second millennial crisis.
The financial, military and political firmament is rapidly becoming a quagmire. What was once predictable, isn’t. Anxiety rather than security has become the overarching tone of the zeitgeist.
Ask yourself honestly this question: Do you seriously believe George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are going to win their war against terrorism and restore order and sanity to planet earth?
If your answer is no then you are not alone. Even George, Donald and Dick themselves don’t seriously think there war is winnable any time soon. In launching his battle against evildoers George himself said he expected it would take years if not decades.
Meanwhile the U.S. Congress too is beginning to wonder just what it is that the Commander in Chief and his advisers have in mind for the rest of planet in general, and for Yemen, Somalia, the Phillipines and Iraq in particular.
Fortunately all crises - as Sludge has often observed before - are also opportunities for reversal of fortune, potential moments of catharsis.
That is, it is invariably at times of crisis that both the happiest and the most sorrowful things happen.
Back in 1999, just when it appeared East Timor would turn into a blood bath, contrary to all predictions the peace-keepers were let in. More recently, in Afghanistan, just when the idea of a unified Afghani administration (and an end to tribal infighting in Afghanistan) seemed a hopeless pipedream, a UN conference in Bonn produced exactly that.
Peace is far more resilient that it appears.
Less obviously the daily work of millions of well-intentioned and faithful people to make the world a better and safer place, and their small victories, serve ends which we might also applaud.
But unfortunately, “Crisis Averted”, makes a lousy headline and such so such victories tend to go unnoticed in the media.
Nevertheless this quiet, background work with the objective of well-being for all, and the good fortune that accompanies it does have a name, grace. And while the odds against peace sometimes seem overwhelming it is important to always remember that the peace-loving, kind and gentle have always hugely outnumbered the war-lovers, even if they have seldom held court in the corridors of power.
And so it is a function of the analytical side of the media, and the inquisitive among the public, to illuminate the grace around us, to look out for the disasters waiting to happen in order that they might be avoided.
Today (and tomorrow and the day after) we are facing a potential disaster, greater perhaps than ever experienced before in human history.
And it is our job, both as media and as questioning members of the public, to work to avert its consequences.
The world is set on a path towards a future in which Planet Earth will soon be in a state of perpetual war.
A world where every flight departure is accompanied by passenger thoughts of, “will we be hijacked today”. Where every shipping container arriving on the U.S. mainland potentially contains a nuclear bomb. And where the public are not entitled to be informed of what is going on in their own neighbourhoods in order to preserve their “security”. Security being something that is defined by faceless bureaucrats operating out of bunkers at undisclosed locations.
And for what. Primarily in order that the U.S. should continue to have a free hand to prop up despotic regimes, extract vital resources from third world nations at criminally low prices, pollute the planetary atmosphere and indiscriminately and encourage the cultivation of drugs by CIA backed bandits. Why are we allowing this?
Already in the wake of September 11th the prodigal resources of the most prosperous nation on the planet have been committed - not to the improvement of life for all - but rather almost exclusively towards the production and use of ever more sophisticated weapons and ever more intrusive security apparatus.
The clear intention would appear to be to provoke an arms race among both allies and foes alike - the EU, Russia, India and China - and then to win it by attrition. And God help anyone who tries to get in the way.
You may think this a depressing scenario, but it is far from unrealistic or fanciful.
Right now it just is.
And so, in the face of these prospects, it is our duty to search for an alternative path. And it is our duty to lobby our politicians to take the hard decisions to change their track to this new path.
It is only if we are prepared to face what we have become, and to change, that we can be delivered from this future that we have made for ourselves.
This is the clarion call of the Porte Allegro “Another World Is Possible” movement, and it is one that we must now all follow.
Imagine now a world in which war is a creature of the past.
Imagine a world in which the threat of terrorism is discussed in history classes.
A world in which individual privacy is respected both by neighbours and by the government.
A world in which the Government is a servant of the people, not an oligarchy of overlords whom we fear.
A world in which the police, FBI and CIA’s role is to catch the bad guy’s, not to help them deal drugs to our children.
But in order to find the way forward to this place, Sludge must first bring you back to the present/
We must know who we are and where we are. For without a map of our surroundings, how can we ever hope to find a way out.
Unfortunately thanks to our emasculated mainstream media the vast majority of us are presently living in a fools paradise.
And this is the purpose of this series of Sludge Reports. So prepare to wise up.
Immediate Threats To Peace And Security
On its face, the current global, peace, economic security, and general business confidence situation might only be very kindly described as forboding.
Even an extremely bullish market pundit would find it hard to go beyond “seriously challenging” when describing the current state of the markets, notwithstanding the remarkable rally on US markets over the past two days.
The truth is that the significance of the ENRON bankruptcy goes way beyond simply being the largest bankruptcy in U.S, financial history.
The financial system is falling apart as it stumbles over great reservoirs of “rediscovered” off balance sheet debt and sleaze in the US economy and its financial system.
Leaving aside the sleaze factor (for the moment - see Unpleasant Thoughts, Truth, Peace & Love Part II coming soon for more on this) it is notable that the ENRON collapse came during a period when the Federal Funds rate was taken to its lowest level in 40 years, i.e. bank clean-up operations have had the best possible conditions in which to operate technically, but have failed to mop up the mess.
ENRON was irredeemably screwed. Who else is?
Perhaps illustrative of the likelihood that more icebergs are lurking out there in the wilderness of the marketplace is the way the U.S. financial press were conned into believing a trading market existed through the construction of an fake trading room and the recruitment of actors employed to pretend to be traders.
This form of deception was made immortal in folklore by the Russian governor Potemkim who built a whole village to impress his Cszar.
We the media thought we were too smart for that sort of thing to happen nowadays, we thought that no one would have the gall to so deceitfully pull the wool over our (and the public’s) eyes. Well look who the monkeys are now.
One might have thought that in the circumstances they we would try harder now to redeem ourselves. Unfortunately there is little evidence of this happening yet.
And while there is some irony in the Russian (read in the U.S. as “economically backward”) analogy with ENRON, there is greater irony in the fact that the author of the Military-Industrial Complex’s script on understanding why the U.S. must bomb Afghanistan is also a Russian, Zbiegnew Brieznewski (See also PART III in this series.)
There can now be little doubt among anyone with their eyes open that ENRON is not the beginning of Savings and Loans Part II, only this time round it will be much, much worse. To add to the sense of Déjà Vu it is worth noting that the architects of Savings and Loans Part I are presently occupying the same offices they did first time round. Then the bad guys walked free. What will happen this time?
The flight to gold is now well underway among domestic consumers in the country with the biggest US. bond holdings, Japan. And the Japanese, remember, are particularly sensitive politically (and emotionally) when it comes to nuclear politics.
Which brings us to the second major threat to peace and security.
There is now arguably a higher level of nuclear threat condition against the US than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis. The Washington Post this week reported that radiation detection equipment is on the watch out for a nuclear bomb attack at all US ports.
While the horrifically unpleasant thought of a nuclear attack on a US City is bad enough, far more scary - when you think about it – is the question of who will be making the decision on whether to, and where to reply with a nuclear retaliatory strike if an attack does take place.
You can picture it easily enough if you try.
“Sir, we have reliable intelligence this attack was supported Iraqi intelligence,” says the National Security Advisor in the minutes after San Diego ceases to exist.
Do you trust in U.S. Intelligence? Does anyone?
But you can place your bets on who is likely to feel the wrath of US vengeance in the event the unthinkable does happen. No doubt that is what the military strategists will be out there doing today.
If you assume the Hollywood style script so slavishly followed thus will continue to dictate our history, then the smart money would have to pick a responsible baddy among the “Axis of Evil” nations named by George W. Bush in his State of the Nation address, Iraq, North Korea or Iran.
Q: “But you are you sure about this intelligence. ”
A: “Yes sir.”
And then an executive order is made. Bombers are dispatched. And by fiat we the people of the western world are dragged into an ever more dangerous conflict with who knows who.
So if you are living in the U.S. and you are worried about your security, you should be. Right now American’s are entitled to be anxious.
In fact with Israeli PM Ariel Sharon acting as a U.S. proxy and providing daily doses of motivation for the hatred to millions who already regard the U.S.A as an imperialist monster, it would be irrational not to be anxious.
And this is all assuming that the threat to the U.S. really is located in the minds of external extremists.
But what if San Diego were nuked, and the real enemy was really within?
As the subsequent parts of this story will show, strange as it may seem this is in fact by far the more likely scenario.
But the twin financial and security threats are not however all we have to worry about. These two matters are in fact set against an important, and perhaps in the long run, even more dangerous threat.
We - i.e. Planet Earth, All The People Of The World - are running out of known oil reserves at the same time as demand growth is huge, especially in Asia.
The U.S. in particular is getting short of oil with more than 80% of consumption forecast to be supplied from imports by 2002. So far the FARC don’t look like they are any keener to sell oil to the U.S.
In 1995, Petroconsultants published a report for oil industry insiders (price: $32,000 per copy) titled WORLD OIL SUPPLY 1930-2050 which concluded that world oil (extraction) could peak as soon as the year 2000 and decline to half that level by 2025. Large and permanent increases in oil prices were predicted after the year 2000.
Who Is The Enemy?
Before we go too much further with this analysis it is time to identify the bad guys.
These are the people the so-called “Third Way” Nation Leaders, the UN, the Commonwealth, OPEC and anyone else who purports to hold dear the health of our planet need to start thinking about.
Firstly let us agree that the principal threats to global peace and security are not the leaders of developing world nations, even the despotic ones such as Mugabe, Hun Sen, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic… the list is too long to be exhaustive.
These guys are bad, true, but they are not threatening to nuke the U.S.
Nor is the threat to collective security found among the present leaders of struggling, populous more settled developing nations (some of which have nuclear weapons), the Mbecki, Musharraf, Megawati, Zemin and Putin’s of this world.
And nor is the threat Osama Bin Laden or his ilk, though at least here we are getting closer to the truth. Even if the Myth of Osama is real (which for a range of reasons to be expanded upon later Sludge seriously doubts), then Osama is a creation of U.S. foreign policy.
The real enemy of peace and security at the dawn of the 21st Century is the leader of the free world, the Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush and his administration, his friends and backers. It is also the system that has enabled he and his family and associates to manipulate Global history for at least the last sixty years, and possibly far longer.
And finally, the enemy of peace and security is us, the citizens of Western nations who sit back and watch evil being committed in our name. The enemy is our wilful blindness. Our collective irresponsibility exhibited in such behaviours as purchasing SUVs rather than taking the bus. Something that we do, as our leaders simultaneously both bomb and buy oil from Iraq.
As a new friend of Sludge, Catherine Austin Fitts famously says, “If we can face it. God can fix it.”
And ultimately it will be Fitt’s people in the USA that will need to answer the questions that Sludge will be asking in this series.
But before the brain is illuminated the eyes need to sense the light. And out here in the Antipodes, in tomorrow land, we can perhaps claim to be a part of that sensory apparatus.
The best way to avert the pitfalls of a crisis, is always to understand the enemy, and the lay of the land. And so we need a map.
Central to the problem’s we are facing is George Herbert Walker Bush. And central to the interests of George and his family are four great areas of life in which he and his family have been integrally involved for generations, banking, spying, oil and drugs.
These matters will be the subject of the coming columns in this series.
(Continuing…)
Anti©opyright Sludge 2002
Alastair Thompson
Scoop Publisher
Alastair Thompson is the co-founder of Scoop. He is of Scottish and Irish extraction and from Wellington, New Zealand. Alastair has 24 years experience in the media, at the Dominion, National Business Review, North & South magazine, Straight Furrow newspaper and online since 1997. He is the winner of several journalism awards for business and investigative work.
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