once upon a time in "bronzeville"...

"KINGS :the true story of chicago's policy kings and numbers racketeers" http://www.policykings.com


...it came out originally in 1994 , i bought the book recently and although i have not yet completed it , from what i've read thus far , i have to give the brother his props ...

this is an era that was declining and ending as i was being born , but socially , politically and of cource financially , STILL effects black people today. it covers a significant portion of our story that touched every aspect of black life and needs to be preserved , told and most importantly LEARNED FROM by present and future generations...

long before the hip hop generation made "gettin paid" a popular slogan , the black policy kings and queens of "bronzevilles" all across america , not only were "gettin paid" , they were THE philanthropists of the black communities and spread the wealth around ...

unfortunately , as seems usual in america for black innovators /entrepreneurs , their creativity and success sounded their own deathknell as greedy envious outsiders took note of the huge sums of dollars being continuously recirculated throughout black communities by the policy game . the policy kings were assaulted and eventually defeated by a triumvirate of white politicians ,irish , jewish and italian gangsters and police .

then as today, white politicians used get tough on "negro crime" campaigns to promote themselves to white voters as crimefighters . negro crime , of course meant the black policy games . white politicians basically ignored white gambling operations during these campaigns and concentrated on disrupting the black policy games despite the generous bribes that the policy kings had been paying police and politicians for years .

in new york , harlem policy queen , madame stephanie st. claire eventually testified publicly before police corruption commission hearings and complained bitterly that the police and political bosses were still taking her bribe money yet arresting her employees and ruining her operation anyway .

when the repeal of prohibition ended bootlegging as their primary source of income , envious italian , jewish and irish mobsters all declared war on the black policy kings , but when the kings organized their own "soldiers" to fight back , they had also the added burden of fighting these wars while facing arrest from the crooked police for being blackmen and carrying weapons ... despite the triple attack , the policy kings of chicago held out for around 20 years until the 1950s when the last of them , teddy roe, was assassinated by italian mobsters .

after that , the mafia ran all of the nation's black policy banks , took the lion's share of profits , and gave NOTHING back to the black community .

across the nation ,these massive sums of black money daily went gushing out of the black communities like river water until the mid 1970s when state after state in the Us formed their own daily games of chance , making legal what they had for decades , locked up blacks for doing . now these black community dollars help fill state coffers--states that in general do NOT fund public education in black school districts at the same levels as they do for the more affluent ...








http://policykings.com/

http://policykings.com/kings-hot-sentinel1.jpg

'KINGS'
The True Story of Chicago's Policy Kings
and Numbers Racketeers
An Informal History by
Nathan Thompson
Published by The BronzeVille Press®

Critically Acclaimed Bestseller!

The MOST SOUGHT AFTER BOOK of the YEAR!
KINGS chronicles the rise and fall of the Policy era, the obscured period in American history between Reconstruction and the modern Civil Rights era. It is the story of how Policy became the 'State Lottery'. Policy was the single biggest Black owned and operated business enterprise in the world, generating upwards of two hundred million dollars annually during the Depression, and controlled by a national brotherhood of African American men called Policy Kings. These men bankrolled the Negro Baseball League, banks, insurance companies, the career of boxing great Joe Louis, and untold medical and professional practices. They were also responsible for converting the Black vote from Republican to Democrat.


Critically Acclaimed!

"Required reading"
- Chicago Sun-Times
"...engulfs, engenders, enthralls!"
- Chicago Defender
"...A Uniquely Historical Book" - N'DIGO




*a review from chicago daily tribune by dawn turner trice (or scroll down and read excerpts from the book)

Gambling can be risky policy, no matter the name
Dawn Turner Trice


May 10, 2004

Before the lottery, before riverboat gambling and before casinos as we know them, there was a game called policy that ruled Chicago's South Side in the Bronzeville neighborhood.
What was policy? I'll put it this way: Thirty years ago when commercials began appearing on television publicizing the brand new Illinois Lottery game, some older African-Americans sitting around watching their screens sucked their teeth and said, "Child, that ain't nothing new, that's policy."
According to Chicago native Nathan Thompson, author of "Kings: The True Story of Chicago's Policy Kings and Numbers Racketeers," policy was conceived around the late 1880s and was owned and operated for decades by black men called policy kings.
Policy players, lured by the possibility of hitting it big on a small bet, would pick a number combination, say 3-1-2, called a gig. A nickel wager could win you $5.

In the early days, winning numbers were pulled from the derby of Sam Young, policy's creator, as he stood on the corner of State and Madison Streets. Soon, Young moved his hustle south along State Street to a saloon.
By 1915, players could learn the winning numbers by visiting the family grocery store of a couple of Italian brothers who hooked up with Young, said Thompson.
By then, Young was pulling numbers from a cardboard box, and policy regulars would gather around that box, watching the results as if they were peering into a crystal ball that held their future.
Indeed, policy was responsible for its share of crime and lawlessness as the racket grew and more policy kings were getting in on the game and battling for turf. Black ministers deeply opposed policy, preaching against it from their pulpits. Still, the city didn't make much of an effort to get rid of it in the beginning.
"The city's opinion was that it was a little hustle in the black community," said Thompson. "That made it grow because nobody was paying attention. It was generating a lot of revenue throughout the Depression in Bronzeville."
Policy, in its heyday from about the 1920s to the 1950s, did some good for the winners. It put food on the tables of struggling families. Children were sent to college on policy money. It also provided jobs.
Thompson says proceeds from policy at times helped bankroll the Negro Baseball League and even the boxing career of Joe Louis.
But the house is always set up so there are more losers than winners, and gangsters vied for their share of the cut.

"A faction of Al Capone's Mafia went after the black guys on the South Side making all this money," said Thompson. "And that led to the killing of one of the big policy kings."
The other black kings decided to pull together, but that couldn't sustain them. By 1952, policy had been put on trial, more policy kings had been murdered or jailed and the white mob had moved in, said Thompson.

"That was the end of policy [as a black establishment] and the beginning of white-controlled policy," he said. "To say the Mafia was controlling the money meant they were also controlling the vote and the neighborhood where the money was derived."
I've always been fascinated by the story of policy. I've overheard bits and pieces of the history from my mother and grandmother who grew up in Bronzeville.
Now, I'm enjoying Thompson's tale, which fills in many of the holes.
I think of policy every time I hear politicians touting gambling as an economic cure-all. Chicago wants a casino. Any number of suburbs want casinos. Last week, the Wisconsin-based Ho-Chunk Nation announced plans to build a casino and entertainment complex on 432 acres of land in south suburban Lynwood. The plan already is caught up in political wrangling.
In general, politicians want the revenue from legalized gambling. But nobody wants to deal with the organized crime that remains prevalent. In all the touting, they often are mum about the impact it has on the poor and people with addictions.
Politicians trumpet the notion that communities will benefit. But the house always is the biggest winner.
The gambling pie is a difficult one to slice. That's because it can't be sliced so carefully that you get only the good and none of the bad.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/printedition/chi-0405100160may10,1,5608468.co lumn?coll=chi-printmetro-hed
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune


review from chicago sun times by curtis lawrence

Bronzeville's policy kings were early venture capitalists

July 7, 2003 BY CURTIS LAWRENCE Staff Reporter

They were digit barons, the 1-2-3-4 guys, and "digitarians." But most people remember them as policy kings, the African-American men who proved this city could run a numbers racket long before the state's first legal lottery numbers were pulled in 1974. Starting in the late 1800s, policy kings such as John "Mushmouth" Johnson, "Policy" Sam Young and the Jones brothers became the black community's ubiquitous bankers, philanthropists, businessmen and criminals.

HOW A POLICY GAME WORKED

*Players--including doctors, priests and grandmothers--would give their numbers to a policy writer, who would jot them down in his book.
*A three-numbered bet--the most popular--was called a "gig." A two-numbered bet was a "saddle."
*Twenty-four numbered balls were drawn from a small cylinder drum--the "wheel," which held 78 numbered balls.
*Drawings were held as often as four times a day. But, if the heat from the police was on, there might only be one drawing.




"Policy kings were the biggest and about the only philanthropists in the community," said Nathan Thompson, author of the self-published book, Kings, The True Story of Chicago's Policy Kings and Numbers Racketeers. "They were the bank that aspiring African-American businessmen and women could go to when they couldn't go downtown," he said. "They were a ready source of venture capital." A Bronzeville preservation activist, Thompson, 43, traces his interest in the policy kings back to his youth on the South Side when he and his buddies would spend time talking about their favorite gangster movies. Once he asked a friend, "How is it that we know all this stuff about the Italian mob and we don't know anything about ourselves as African Americans?" The question resurfaced about 10 years ago when Thompson, in between jobs, was reading Nicholas Lemann's The Promised Land: The Great Migration and How it Changed America. "There was one line in the book about policy wheels, and that triggered all of these memories of things I had heard old-timers talk about in the neighborhood when I was growing up," said Thompson, who hopes his 512-page effort will spark a renewal in black history and preservation. When Thompson walked into the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature at Woodson Regional Library, he entered a world of wheelers and dealers who, early on, pulled numbers from hats at South Side night spots.

By the 1930s policy had grown more sophisticated and moved out of the smoke-filled clubs and into corner grocery stores and other neighborhood venues. Each policy king had his own wheel and several stations. Thompson estimates there were as many as 30 wheels operating between 1933 and 1941. A policy writer would make the rounds with his ticket book equipped with carbons to take bets from customers who would pick from 78 numbers. The odds of getting three winning numbers was 26 out of 1,000, according to Nicholas Barron, a math professor at Loyola University. Not the greatest odds, but not the worst if the game was played fairly, which wasn't assured. The Tia Juana wheel was run by the Kelley boys from 51st and Michigan. The Tia Juana may have raked in as much as $80,000 a day from four daily drawings, Thompson said. Protection payoffs to cops and politicians could range from $50 to $300. The kings lived the life of fine clothes and fancy cars. But with the white mob moving in on their action, they also lived on the edge. Policy king Walter Kelley was gunned down on Jan. 8, 1939, near 30th and Indiana at age 51.

During the good times, policy kings were the black community's bank and employer. "The economy of the black community of Chicago in the earlier part of the 20th century was so circumscribed by segregation and economic discrimination that the policy industry really generated a lot of the ready cash that flowed around in Bronzeville," said Michael Flug, senior archivist for the Harsh Collection at Woodson. In turn, the policy kings put a lot of their earnings into legitimate enterprises, such as funding writers, car dealerships and churches.

The definitive end of the kings' rule came on Aug. 4, 1952, when Theodore "Ted" Roe, who ran the Harlem Bronx with the Jones brothers, was gunned down. Aside from running a smooth operation, Roe was remembered for paying hospital bills for newborns and funerals for the dead. "We call men like Theodore Roe 'kings,'" Rev. Richard Keller eulogized. "He contributed greatly to the hopes and lives of a people."

http://www.suntimes.com/output/books/cst-nws-policy07.html Copyright © The Sun-Times Company


'KINGS' Excerpt 1

ABOUT BRONZEVILLE

To look at the neighborhood today you'd never know it, but if you were African American and living in the first half of last century, the place to be was on Chicago's Southside, a place known to ethnic Whites as the Black Belt for it's Negro population. But to those who lived there, and to their friends and family abroad, it was called Bronzeville. It was a thriving mecca of economic and political power, seated in the city's 2nd, 3rd and 4th wards, the promised land of socioeconomic opportunity and prosperity for the emancipated African American.
In a word, Bronzeville was great. What made it great were the people who lived, worked and played there: business and civic leaders with vision and clergymen who carried on the founding principles and traditions of our first Black churches. It's where the nation's first Black certified public accountants were working and supporting their families. There were great writers with a sense of the past, powerful political bosses with powerful allies, respected Pullman porters and longshoremen, doctors, lawyers, dentists, hotel owners and restaurateurs. Bronzeville was a place where great things were happening: Dr. Daniel Hale Williams performed the world's first successful open-heart surgery, Jesse Binga built America's first Black-owned and operated state bank, and Rube Foster founded the Negro Baseball League. It was a place where a Black kid could grow up to be anything he or she wanted to be-- even mayor.
There were the great "strolls" like South Parkway with its magnificent greystones and mansions occupied by the prosperous and the influential. There was 47th Street, the new downtown Black America with its world class cafés like the Palm Tavern, serving the business and civic elite by day and busloads of stage performers from the Regal Theater by night. Then there was State Street-- the original "stroll" where the dark of night was eclipsed by the bright lights of hot jazz spots like the Elite Club and the Dreamland Café, accented with finely dressed colored folks and late model cars. It was the northern reality to southern dreams.
But Bronzeville had its share of poverty too; in fact, Chicago's ghettos were among the worst in the nation with seriously over-crowded living conditions brought on by old "Restrictive Covenants", this during the ever- present Great Depression. The name Bronzeville has been around since the 1910s but came of age on Saturday night, September 22, 1934. On that night, behind the walls of the Eighth Regiment Armory on Giles and 35th Street, Tiny Parham's Orchestra was swinging the night away as the first ever "Mayor of Bronzeville" was elected, the event that hallmarked a new era in "race progress" and Chicago's Black Experience.
The idea was the brainchild of James J. "Gentle Jimmy" Gentry, a local African American promoter who for years had bankrolled the "Miss Bronze America" pageants. Gentry hooked up with Robert S. Abbott, founding publisher of the Chicago Defender newspaper, and Ed Jones, the "King of Policy Kings" who controlled an army of racketeers, and the new Bronzeville was born.
For all of the prosperity associated with the legacy of Bronzeville, the era had strong roots in what the world today knows as the "Lottery." But make no mistake about it, in the first half of last century the lottery was known by its true name, "Policy", and flourished, albeit illegally, in nearly every Black community in the United States. It is a significant chapter in African American history-- little known and less talked about.
Policy became the biggest Black-owned business in the world with combined annual sales sometimes reaching the $100 million mark and employing tens-of-thousands of people nationwide. In Bronzeville, Policy was a major catalyst by which the black economy was driven. In 1938 Time magazine reported that Bronzeville was the "Center of U.S. Negro Business", and more than a decade later, Our World magazine reported that "Windy City Negroes have more money, bigger cars and brighter clothes than any other city…. The city which has become famous for the biggest Policy wheels, the largest funerals, the flashiest cars and the prettiest women, has built that reputation on one thing, money". Those attributions, however, were largely due to Policy, a business conceived, owned, and operated by African American men known by many names including "Digit Barons", "Numbers Bankers", "Sportsmen", "Digitarians", and "the 1-2-3-4 Guys"; but more often than not they were called "Policy Kings".

From: 'KINGS'
The True Story of Chicago's Policy Kings
and Numbers Racketeers
An Informal History by Nathan Thompson
Published by The Bronzeville Press ISBN: 0972487506




'KINGS' Excerpt 2

In the 1930s and '40s, there was a National Brotherhood of Policy Kings that permeated practically every Black community in the country but especially Chicago, the "Policy Capital of the World," home of the 5th Police District, Wabash Station, and the 28th Municipal Circuit Courthouse, commonly known as Wabash Court.
In the world of Policy, its Kings were the original "Good Fellows", not because they were gangsters, which they were not, but because they fed the hungry and clothed the naked as virtual "Robin Hoods" and gave their people a sense of security. In the 1920s, when Robert Abbott founded the "Chicago Defender Good Fellows Club" to feed the needy, many of its members were Policy men. Policy also played an important role in the professional sector as well. Policy Kings underwrote the establishment of several private dental and medical practices for professionals facing lack of placement options due to racial discrimination.
Chicago was special in those days because it was a wide-open town where anything went, and everybody who wanted a piece of the action got it, so long as that person supported the right political agenda. That, however, wasn't a problem for the Policy Kings because they controlled the Black vote, a vote that was growing stronger every day since Robert Abbott launched the Great Northern Drive in 1917, known today as the Great Black Migration. It caused hundreds of thousands of sharecrop-era Blacks to leave the South bound for Chicago and other parts north, and every arrival represented another vote in a changing political climate. With the Kings in control of that vote, Policy became the biggest political football in town. Ruthless political-battles-of-the-parties were fought over the Black vote, resulting indirectly in one Chicago mayor's murder. It was the last days of the Prohibition era and the last days of the underworld's principle source of income, bootlegged liquor. To make up for part of that lost income, White underworld bosses across the country launched bloody gun battles against the Policy Kings for control of the lucrative gambling rackets in America's Black Belts.
In Harlem the enemy was Dutch Schultz, in Cleveland the Mayfield Road Gang, in St. Louis it was Egan's Rats and in Bronzeville it was renegade factions of the Al Capone mob. Harlem and Cleveland both knuckled under early, but in Bronzeville the Policy Kings organized, fought back, and kept their rackets. Word spread fast that "Bronzeville's Policy Kings didn't take shit from anybody," as many still recall, and thus earned this Black metropolis its reputation as the "safe haven." As such, Bronzeville grew strong and remained the only African American Policy stronghold until the 1950s when the Mafia took over. Years later the state government took it from the Mafia and the Illinois State Lottery was born. Until that time, it was the same old story that it had been since the Anti Policy Act of 1905: Police, Politics and Policy.

well , maybe it was a little earlier than 2002...

actually it was only two or three days after the world trade center attacks when my suspicions were first aroused concerning the relationship between oil and what was sure to be the expected massive american military retaliation for 9-11, now known as the global "war on terror".

the fact that 4 airliners full of passengers were almost simultaneously hijacked over american airspace on the same morning and the pentagon and NORAD's --north american continental air defense systems-- precautions and procedures set in place since the beginnings of the cold war , were basically stood down ,and left to sit on their thumbs as we all watched the horrors of the crash and burn show--well, that did make me a little suspicious .

but it wasn't until i voiced those suspicions on the internet that a former poster at the now defunct messageboard of a satirically comic and weirdly zany, carribean website left a message with some links to some old bbc articles from around 1997 or 1998 describing how a delegation from the taliban had spent time in then governor gw bush's state of texas negotiating a contract with american energy companies to build a pipeline across afghanistan to carry caspian sea region oil and gas to the indian ocean for transport to world markets .

at that time it was still believed that the caspian sea region oil reserves were greater that those under saudi arabia ,the new bonanza to the oil industry and the world's energy savior as saudi oil was believed ready to soon peak and begin to decline--now it is believed that there is a significant amount of natural gas in the caspian region, but its oil reserves are much less in amount than believed , spread out instead of concentrated and also with a high sulfur content making them costly to exploit.

western energy companies were scrambling to curry favor with the governments of the former soviet republics and afghanistan believing they had found in that area of the globe the world's last remaining huge pot of black gold .

when i had finished reading the bbc articles the woman had left me , my paranoia gland was in full twitch ...

the articles also described how the negotiations between taliban and the american oil companies had broken down, with americans complaining the taliban wanted too much bribe money to build the pipeline and "bridas" an argentine company , had apparently submitted a more attractive bid .


that was enough to arouse my doubts concerning the 9-11 attacks and the resulting war on terror .

when it came to light that before 9-11 , american and british special forces were already on the ground operating in afghanistan and in the surrounding countries and that more british and american troops , aircraft carriers , and battle groups were already on the way BEFORE the WTC attacks took place ...from there , it was just one 'revelation' after another convincing this blogger of the fact that the official version of the attacks did not add up


so actually , it was earlier than summer 2002 that we believed that 9-11 was being used to panic the american public into supporting the loss of civil liberties at home through the patroit act and the grab for oil abroad through the war on terror-- already we were experiencing the hoax of the new century.

when we read this 9-11 timeline from michael ruppert's website and the articles carried in both the washington post and new york times that the flight school instructors of the mysterious hijackers said that to a man ,the hijackers were "lousy pilots"...we have another kennedy assassination and phoney warren commission --another crime and official coverup of the highest order


http://fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/02_11_02_lucy.html

umm ...yeah , we thought so too...all the way back in summer 2002

.U.S. Using Anti-Terror War to Gain World Oil Reserves — Soviet Intelligence Chief

Created: 21.03.2005 14:05 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 14:05 MSK

MosNews

On the pretext of fighting international terrorism the United States is trying to establish control over the world’s richest oil reserves, Leonid Shebarshin, ex-chief of the Soviet Foreign Intelligence Service, who heads the Russian National Economic Security Service consulting company, said in an interview for the Vremya Novostei newspaper.

Using the anti-terrorist cause as a cover the United States has occupied Afghanistan, Iraq and will soon move to impose their “democratic order” on the Greater Middle East, Shebarshin said. “The U.S. has usurped the right to attack any part of the globe on the pretext of fighting the terrorist threat,” Shebarshin said.

Referring to his meeting with an unnamed al-Qaeda expert at the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization in the U.S., Shebarshin said: “We have agreed that [al-Qaeda] is not a group but a notion.”

“The fight against that all-mighty ubiquitous myth deliberately linked to Islam is of great advantage for the Americans as it targets the oil-rich Muslim regions,” Shebarshin emphasized.

With military bases in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, Shebarshin said, the United States has already established control over the Caspian region — one of the world’s largest oil reservoirs.

it's "plan b" for iraq's oil--- america has decided...but who voted ?

*apparently this blogger's recent claim that the bush administration was planning to auction off iraq's oil reserves is no longer correct .

according to bbc investigative journalist greg palast , in light of what happened in russia when oil privatization took place ,the neo-cons have been persuaded to scrap their first plan for iraq's oil and have switched to plan "b" --creation of a state oil corporation in iraq --but state owned or privatized , watch in which direction the oil profits flow -- "west" , i'd bet . the bushites didn't spend 300 billion taxpayer dollars on this iraq-war for nothing...

again i must ask why this question of whether to privatize the oil and sell off the reserves to "investors" , or keep control of the reserves under a central state corporation , or whether to pursue some other alternative course was not a proposition on the ballot in the recent "democratic elections" that took place in iraq ?

isn't listening to the voice of the people what DEMOCRACY is all about ? isn't this an issue that every iraqi would naturally hold a VITAL interest in ?

saddam was no doubt a pure sonuvabitch , but rotten bastard that he was , he DID invest considerable national oil revenues into building drinking water treatment and sewage treatment facilities that made clean drinking water accessible to most iraqis -- that is until the first gulf war when the Us and allies violated the geneva accords by targeting iraq's water treatment infrastructure .

the sanctions for 12 years after the war prevented chlorine and the materials needed to purify water or rebuild the water treatment plants from getting in and many of the 1,500,000 iraqis who died as a result of sanctions , were believed to have died from water borne diseases from drinking dirty water...most of the dying was done by children and the elderly ...

also under saddam basic education for iraqis and medical care was paid for with oil revenues .

as i understand it , iraqi and the palestinians have the highest literacy rate in the arab world , and iraq had a significantly better ratio of doctors per 100 citizens than the Us --all due to the oil revenues filtering down to benefit the people .

as rotten a rat bastard as saddam was and despite the fact that it seems that everything he built in the nation ,he named after himself, SOME of the oil money benefited average iraqis .

in many respects ,until the wars they were involved in , iraq was a very modern nation even by non-regional standards. we hope that even more of the oil money in the future goes to raise the standard of living of the ordinary iraqis ...the natural resource wealth of a nation should be used to serve and benefit its citizenry and not to fatten the pockets of already wealthy international big oil--but unfortunately we know how often HOPE misses the bull's eye ...






Secret US Plans For Iraq's Oil
By Greg Palast
Reporting for BBC Newsnight
3-17-5

The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's oil before the 9/11 attacks sparking a policy battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight has revealed.

Two years ago today - when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad - protestors claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered.

In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and US State Department "pragmatists."

"Big Oil" appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned, drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants.

Insiders told Newsnight that planning began "within weeks" of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US.

An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant Falah Aljibury says he took part in the secret meetings in California, Washington and the Middle East. He described a State Department plan for a forced coup d'etat.

Mr Aljibury himself told Newsnight that he interviewed potential successors to Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Bush administration.

Secret Sell-Off Plan

The industry-favored plan was pushed aside by yet another secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, which called for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oil fields. The new plan, crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec quotas.

The sell-off was given the green light in a secret meeting in London headed by Ahmed Chalabi shortly after the US entered Baghdad, according to Robert Ebel. Mr. Ebel, a former Energy and CIA oil analyst, now a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, flew to the London meeting, he told Newsnight, at the request of the State Department.

Mr Aljibury, once Ronald Reagan's "back-channel" to Saddam, claims that plans to sell off Iraq's oil, pushed by the US-installed Governing Council in 2003, helped instigate the insurgency and attacks on US and British occupying forces.

"Insurgents used this, saying, 'Look, you're losing your country, your losing your resources to a bunch of wealthy billionaires who want to take you over and make your life miserable," said Mr Aljibury from his home near San Francisco.

"We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities, pipelines, built on the premise that privatization is coming."

Privatization Blocked By Industry

Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA who took control of Iraq's oil production for the US Government a month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme.

Mr Carroll told us he made it clear to Paul Bremer, the US occupation chief who arrived in Iraq in May 2003, that: "There was to be no privatization of Iraqi oil resources or facilities while I was involved."

The chosen successor to Mr Carroll, a Conoco Oil executive, ordered up a new plan for a state oil company preferred by the industry.

Ari Cohen, of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation, told Newsnight that an opportunity had been missed to privatize Iraq's oil fields. He advocated the plan as a means to help the US defeat Opec, and said America should have gone ahead with what he called a "no-brainer" decision.

Mr Carroll hit back, telling Newsnight, "I would agree with that statement. To privatize would be a no-brainer. It would only be thought about by someone with no brain."

New plans, obtained from the State Department by Newsnight and Harper's Magazine under the US Freedom of Information Act, called for creation of a state-owned oil company favored by the US oil industry. It was completed in January 2004, Harper's discovered, under the guidance of Amy Jaffe of the James Baker Institute in Texas. Former US Secretary of State Baker is now an attorney. His law firm, Baker Botts, is representing ExxonMobil and the Saudi Arabian government.

View segments of Iraq oil plans at
www.GregPalast.com/opeconthemarch.html

Questioned by Newsnight, Ms Jaffe said the oil industry prefers state control of Iraq's oil over a sell-off because it fears a repeat of Russia's energy privatization. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, US oil companies were barred from bidding for the reserves.

Jaffe said "There is no question that an American oil company ... would not be enthusiastic about a plan that would privatize all the assets with Iraq companies and they (US companies) might be left out of the transaction."

In addition, Ms. Jaffe says US oil companies are not warm to any plan that would undermine Opec, "They [oil companies] have to worry about the price of oil.

"I'm not sure that if I'm the chair of an American company, and you put me on a lie detector test, I would say high oil prices are bad for me or my company."

The former Shell oil boss agrees. In Houston, he told Newsnight, "Many neo-conservatives are people who have certain ideological beliefs about markets, about democracy, about this that and the other. International oil companies without exception are very pragmatic commercial organizations. They don't have a theology."

Greg Palast's film - the result of a joint investigation by BBC Newsnight and Harper's Magazine - will broadcast on Thursday, 17 March, 2005.

You can watch the program online - available Thursday, March 17 after 7pm EST for 24hrs - from the Newsnight website:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm

You can also read the story in greater detail in the latest issue of Harper's magazine - now available at your local newsstand.

this certainly , is reassuring news---Not!

*i'm sure there'll be a surge of new military enlistments after hearing this encouraging bit of info ...

172,000 tourniquets ? after two years of fighting the insurgency in iraq , why so many tourniquets now ? wonder what are they expecting ?

that news and the reported expanding of existing Us military bases in iraq are more indicators that america is digging in and will be there for a while ... 172,000 is a heap of tourniquets ...is the army ordering equal numbers of prosthetic arms and legs for the rehabilitation of those unfortunate soldiers ?

on the second anniversary of this shameful war to secure for the global "oil-garchs" , petroleum reserves that do not rightfully belong to them ,tens of thousands of demonstrators throughout the world mark the significance of this day with protest marches in ny , san fran , london , athens ,rome , ankara etc ...

the international anti-war movement looks to also be "digging in" for the long haul to oppose this shameful , illegal war of aggression and occupation fought against a people who clearly were no threat to america or europe...

Troops getting tourniquets for Iraq

Washington, DC, Mar. 18 (UPI) -- The U.S. Army has ordered 172,000 tourniquets for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Baltimore Sun reported Friday.

The modern tourniquets that staunch the flow of blood in the event of a major injury are often life-saving devices when troops are hit with roadside bombs. Improvised explosive devices are responsible for about half the 1,500 deaths of U.S. forces in Iraq.

The Army told the Sun it expects to begin distributing the tourniquets to every soldier and Marine in Iraq and Afghanistan in mid-April, with distribution complete by summer.

There are about 44,000 of the tourniquets on hand or on order, officials said, and a plant in South Carolina has hired additional workers to increase production.

"conservative vrs liberal"-- discussion at dar kush blog

*this post resulted from a discussion at dar kush web blog .http://darkush.blogspot.com/
my full and as usual , lengthy response , wouldn't fit the response format there... so i posted it here...


it may not seem so , but i really don't like labels , but in this country the radical right wing is on the offensive and has been so since at least the election of ronald reagan and also the nixon/ford years before that.

i use the term radical rightwing because a distinction need be made between the person living from paycheck to paycheck who has "conservative" values that the radical right wing has decided to mouth and pay lipservice to in order to get votes , and the wealthy defense contractors-pharmaceutical giants , oil-garchs, wallstreet bankers, former military generals and former senior intel officials and now also , born again and very war-like armageddon-bible-thumping ,wealthy right wing christians---the successors to the old "military-industrial complex" that president eisenhower--a republican btw --warned the nation about decades ago.

the element of the rightwing that is in power today can be traced back over a century ago to the social darwinist movement that began as a counter offensive to a then infant labor movement .

the social darwinists see the poor of the world as sucking up dwindling resources that they claim the "bluebloods" and elites of the world, are by superiority of birth, rightfully entitled to .

they are in general , racist and eugenicist, social and economic elitists who do not believe in democracy , but instead believe in plutocracy --and have no qualms in using the "unwealthy with conservative values" , as the footsoldiers in their quest to set and control the national agenda.

a decent free source on-line about the history of the radical right wing is "george bush --the unauthorized biography" by chaitkin and tarpley

http://www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm

the radical right wing's agenda is to turn back the clock and undo the reforms made as far back as the labor movement era and the new deal of franklin roosevelt .

reagan administration's goal was to "starve the beast"-- kill the government safety nets installed during the great depression in the 1930s-40s and the "great society" era of the 60s .

the strategy to carry this out was first through huge tax cuts --50% of which went to the wealthiest 1% of taxpayers .

the second part was to begin an arms race with the then "bete noir" of that era , the soviet union (now it's the boogeyman of "international terrorism" that will be used to keep us in a $tate of perpetual war)--an anti-soviet arms race was begun by reagan which of course amounted to more corporate welfare for big defense contractors --a key reagan voting constituency

the way it worked out was this :

1. with decreased government revenues due to tax cuts the rightwing could say "the nation can no longer afford the expensive government safety nets--we need fiscal responsibility"-- which meant slash the funding to these social programs.

reagan for example , wanted ketchup declared a vegetable so that federal funding for school lunches for school kids could be slashed-- the law passed by "liberals" back in the 60s stated that federally subsidized school lunches must include two vegetables daily.

if ketchup is a vegetable ,just give the kids some ketchup with french fries and "abra-cadabra" --you've met the federal daily requirements and at significantly reduced cost.

2.at the same time that you slash social spending --which was a small fraction compared to other much larger segments of the federal budget , you create huge deficits by borrowing trillions of dollars--basically for what was the largest peacetime arms buildup in history--to counteract the hyped up "threat" of that "bete noir" soviet union --a nation that Us army intelligence said at the end of world war 2 was NO THREAT to western europe or america after being physically exhausted from having borne the BRUNT of the fight in defeating nazi-germany (sorry hollywood , "private ryan" and steve speilburg but WW2 in europe was much more than the Us invasion of italy and and "d-day").

50 years of phoney cold war and 6 to 10 trillion of taxpayer dollars spent in defense of an "enemy" that we find was scared to death of being attacked first by us --what a windfall for weapons manufacturers !!!

3.reagan bush under the banner of deregulation allow a looting hog-run at the public trough --culminating in the savings and loan debacle costing the taxpayers 150 to 300 billion dollars in bailouts to banks---more corporate welfare at the taxpayer's expense --so much for "individual responsibility"

also under the watchful eyes of the right wing , Us factories and their high paying manufacturing jobs are encouraged to leave the country and scour the third world in search of the "good old days" of penny wages , child labor , no health or retirement benefits , no environmental safeguards , and of course , NO LABOR UNIONS...

under the right wing -- americans are working more hours and earning less because of the shift from manufacturing to a service economy, and facing sky-rocketing costs for fuel , housing and medical expenses .

just 30 years ago families were still debating whether the wife should work or be a stay at home mom . dads still made enough money to support the family in many cases--most families now NEED two incomes if they want a home and a decent standard of living ---the average working american has suffered a disasterous decline in living standards --working harder just to tread water--yet many of these same now harder-working americans who happen to have conservative values somehow actually believe they have more in common with the wealthy right wing millionaires and billionaires than they do with the also harder-working americans that have been demonized as "liberals".

we look at the election of 2000 and clearly see oilman bush jr gains the whitehouse by an illegal pattern of vote suppression by the right wing
orchestrated against african americans

after the "terrorist" attacks of 9-11 bush declares that it's like "hitting the trifecta " , and implements war plans prepared well before he took office .

he invades iraq on phoney charges despite no evidence of wmd or evidence of a working relationship between osama and saddam --saddam and sons lived lifestyles of western playboys-- non-religious secularists who enjoy the luxuries of the modern world especially western suits , whiskey ,pornography, beautiful women , cars and cigars --osama is a strict , pleasure shunning religious fundamentalist, a zealot who hates the worldly pleasures saddam and sons love --osama thinks that socially and religiously that time stopped 1400 years ago ---the two would gladly kill each other if locked in the same room .

it's like teaming up hugh hefner with john the baptist and expecting a working alliance.

but we are sold a bill of goods that iraq was a threat and 300 billion dollars later with a haliburton , bechtel , brown kellog and root--all fat and well fed from sweetheart deals gouging the taxpayers while overpaying themselves and their corporate friends in every way imaginable --- now with 1500 dead americans , about 10,000 wounded and permanently maimed american soldiers --those IEDs and RPG's are a bitch on the arms , legs and genitals that all the flak jackets in the world cannot protect-- add to the human tragedy 100,000 iraqi casualties and the threat lingering in the air from 4,000,000 pounds of depleted uranium dust , NOW we see what this war was all about .

by law apparently inspired by grover norquist and passed by paul bremmer's rubber stamp iraqi governing council , iraq's oil above the ground and below the ground can now be bought up by international big oil---odd that the recent "democratic" elections in iraq --didn't have THIS issue on the ballot for voters to decide on .

but hey our recent "democratic" elections over here have a similar taint ---deliberate suppression of the african american vote in ohio--not nearly enough machines to handle the EXPECTED record turnouts ---and electronic voting machines conveniently leaving no paper trails manufactured by companies owned or controlled by ---YUP you guessed it ! members of that same wealthy religious right wing determined to make their agenda the national agenda--in other words , companies owned by "bush-buddies"
dsekou | Homepage | 03.17.05 - 2:35 pm | #

and sometimes we even give relationship advice...look out dr phil !

to a woman at another website i frequent who was wondering where the spark of intimacy had gone , we offered the following advice...

Author: d sekou
Wednesday, March 16, 2005 - 12:31 pm

[No profile available]

if he sleeps in the same bed with you and you got any skin showing and he don't want to "hit it" , something might be wrong .

a womans bodyheat is a natural afrodesiac . he might be tired at first , but should be waking you up around three or four in the morning--"baby you sleep?"

only in fantasy movies - ala wesley snipes and angela basset in "waiting to exhale" -do men and women sleep in the same bed and SOMETHING don't get hit-- it's a force of nature --like magnetism or gravity or nuclear energy. --recall that in that same movie that sis dowsed with gasoline and then burned up her husband's brand new BMW-- i knew right then it was pure fantasy -- no black woman in her right mind would burn up a car worth that much money--she mighta sold it to cousin ray ray at the chop shop or something but she woulda got SOMETHING outta that car...

"gurrl", check to see if your man is tired , ill or just adjusting to what is a sudden change in climate , his lifestyle , diet and routine .

one minute he was probably thinking of himself as the master of his fate..the captain of his ship...the king of himself...the supreme commander..."joe the boss of my own damm self" , "the emperor of dude", the sultan of single , the uncrowned king of kitty ,world's most eligible bachelor-- free to have any woman he wants--free not to have to answer to anybody ,anywhere , anytime...the next minute he's got a wifey who is at the lifestage where her sex drive has kicked into high gear, an energetic ,curious 6 year old , a mother in law requiring major home care and a whole new world to adjust to ...

it might take time to adjust mentally and physically from all the change or even from the travel --- i had jet lag once and that night just didn't feel like "making the cathedral bells ring"--the next morning tho, after a good night's sleep and a decent meal, i felt like will smith in that Ali movie --felt like hollerin "The Champ is here!"

to "get something outta that car"--tell your man what you need ,ask him if something is wrong , does he feel alright and suggest that if he ain't feeling up to par maybe a diagnostic tuneup at the "autoclinic" is in order .

even without "provocation" ,a healthy rested male is normally gonna wanna hit something...if not, try holding hands , cuddling and making out to some beautiful ,inspirational new gospel music to help transform some of the spirit of love into also its physical expression...

free speech ? ...yeah right...whatever...

Author: d sekou
Monday, March 14, 2005 - 11:56 am

[No profile available]

wow ! i called in JUST NOW to the "radio times" show carried in syndication out here by npr .

the topic was freedom of the press --in particular they concentrated on the valerie plame case and a reporter's right to not have to reveal their sources . apparently the judith miller /matt cooper thing is an appendage to the valerie plame case --which was the core of the discussion...the guest's article in columbia journalism review was titled something like "the dangers in the valerie plame case"


"Radio Times for Monday, March 14th
Hour 1
Should reporters be required to reveal their sources when the information is useful in prosecuting a crime? That's the question at the core of the case against New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Matt Cooper of Time magazine. We'll explore the dilemma with DOUGLAS McCOLLAM, a lawyer/journalist whose article on the topic was published in the current issue of the Columbia Journalism Review."

they picked up on the second ring --indicating not an overflow of callers this morning

i gave my info-- name and where i was calling from ,explained what my question was and waited patiently on the phone for my turn . then i finally got on .

i brought up the jeff gannon /johnny gosch thing .{http://www.rense.com/general63/hey.htm} told them on -air that it's all over the internet ...the real issue is not "protect your sources/freedom of the press"-- the real issue was whether the bush administration used "freedom of the press/protect your sources" to hide the fact that they committed treason by DELIBERATELY releasing the CLASSIFIED "valerie plame is CIA" info to whitehouse phony 'reporter' jeff gannon as retaliation for plame's husband puncturing bush and blair's "saddam wanted yellow-cake uranium from niger to build a nuke" hoax .

the host-- marty moss-cowain-- asked me on-air where on the internet had i read this --i mentioned sherman skolnick's name --offered to give the web site address ---she IMMEDIATELY said "I'm NOT INTERESTED IN THE WEBSITE ADDRESS" --the guest immediately "pooh poohed" my statement by basically saying it a was a big exaggeration to call outting plame "treason" and went on to continue to his speil about "freedom of the press -quoting thomas jefferson-'i'd rather have A free press and no government than no free press and A government' blah blah blah...spin spin spin bulshit bullshit bullshit" ...

during this LONG speil, i politely kept trying to interject and clarify WHY it was treason, but i don't know if they had me on block and the listening audience could not hear me --i had my radio turned down very low and couldn't hear myself when i tried to speak the second time---BUT i believe they could hear me in the studio because the guy seemed to grow more and more irritated as i tried to respond AS he TALKED OVER ME AND NEVER LET ME GET ANOTHER WORD IN EDGEWISE.

when he finished his spin the host quickly said "we have another caller" and "free speech" was through with me...


interesting that the caller before me asked a question --remained on-air for the guest's reply and then was able to make another comment on the guest's reply...which happens often on these shows--i've heard the host at times ASK for a caller to respond to the guest's response to the caller's question --and appear SURPRISED that the caller did not hold on , and was not there anymore---so it's not unusual to be able to respond to the guest's response to your question --especially since time was not short -- BUT apparently NOT THIS TIME---or as the football player in that VISA commercial on tv says, "Not in OUR house buddy. Not today ! ...Not today... not tomorrow..."

so much for free speech...




*johnny gosch/jeff gannon

"Here are a few of the key points from Skolnick's must read, "The Gannon Cannon" series:

"Elite investigators" first revealed that Gannon is in all probability Johnny Gosch.

Gannon, a.k.a. Gosch, is involved in high-level espionage and he's also an expert on torture.

". an expert penetration agent, through sex, compiling negative data on U.S. and foreign governmental officials."

From allegedly eyewitness reports: ". Gannon, alias Gosch, ostensibly is an expert on porno snuff, a murderous form of sexuality"

Gannon, a.k.a. Gosch, was responsible for the Valerie Plame White House leak that allegedly caused 70 CIA undercover agents to be murdered."


"...Does the name, Lawrence E. King and the infamous Franklin Cover-Up scandal ring any bells? And let's not forget Craig Spence's late night tours of the White House with his stable of callboy escorts. The June 29, 1989 edition of the Washington Times salacious headline read, "Homosexual Prostitution Probe Ensnares Official of Bush, Reagan; Call Boys Took Midnight Tour of White House.'' Do you really think any of this high-level organized deviant, criminal behavior has ever really stopped?"

sherman skolnick Sherman H. Skolnick
www.cloakanddagger.ca
www.skolnicksreport.com
www.rense.com/Datapages/skolnickdatapage.html

and ted gunderson

sherman skolnick and ted gunderson have been all over this case-- like spandex on a "big" girl... while johnny gosch / jeff gannon has been reported by overseas papers as having negotiated a deal with russian publishers to write a tell-all book to sink the bush administration and others involved... WHERE'S CNN? ..."FAUX" News ?

stench of a much wider-war is in the air...

i've learned over the years that the faces in power , the talking heads of government rarely do things for no reason .

always in what they say and in the things they do are silent messages-- like ariel sharon while campaigning for the office of israeli prime minister , taking a televised walk across the disputed "temple of the mount", also known as "al aqsa" mosque --the third holiest site in islam .

general sharon , a zionist hardliner had previously, as defense minister , orchestrated the israeli invasion and occupation of lebanon --sharon , the man known as "the butcher of beirut" after he and israeli soldiers were indicted by world opinion as being responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians in lebanon --including the infamous massacres at shabra and chatilla --- sharon outraged palestinians and the muslim world when he walked across the highly disputed temple mount / al aqsa mosque site in east jerusalem with 1000 israeli soldiers as bodyguard-- a clear message to palestinians and zionists alike that under sharon , israel would use it's army to settle it's disputes over land .

silent and not so silent messages , like rising plumes of smoke and the smell of burnt and rotting flesh are again in the air...

earlier this week , we found an article where scott ritter , anti-iraqwar activist, bush critic , former Un weapons inspector, and Us marine claimed that bush had already signed the orders for Us air attacks on iran .


http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/2295/

Scott Ritter, appearing with journalist Dahr Jamail yesterday in Washington State, dropped two shocking bombshells in a talk delivered to a packed house in Olympia's Capitol Theater. The ex-Marine turned UNSCOM weapons inspector said that George W. Bush has "signed off" on plans to bomb Iran in June 2005, and claimed the U.S. manipulated the results of the recent Jan. 30 elections in Iraq.

to that , we add this article from on line journal contributing writer Wayne Madsen

http://www.rense.com/general63/aahi.htm

Hariri Reportedly Assassinated
To Make Way For Large
US Air Base In Lebanon
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
3-12-5


According to high-level Lebanese intelligence sources-Christian and Muslim-former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was reportedly assassinated in a sophisticated explosion-by-wire bombing authorized by the Bush administration and Ariel Sharon's Likud government in Israel.

There are also strong indications that the Hariri assassination was carried out by the same rogue Syrian intelligence agents used in the 2002 car bombing assassination of Lebanese Christian leader Elie Hobeika, who was prepared to testify against Sharon in a Brussels human rights court. That case involved the Israeli Prime Minister's role in the 1982 massacre by Israeli troops of Palestinian refugees at the Sabra and Chatilla camps in Beirut. The Hariri assasination used wire-bombing technology because Hariri's security personnel used electronic countermeasures to fend off a remote control bomb using wireless means. It has been revealed that the Bush administration has used Syrian intelligence agents to torture al Qaeda suspects through the program known as "extraordinary rendition."

Hariri, a pan-Arabist and Lebanese nationalist, was known to adamantly oppose the construction of a major U.S. air base in the north of Lebanon. The United States wants Syrian troops completely out of Lebanon before construction of the base is initiated. Hariri's meetings with Hezbollah shortly before his death also angered Washington and Jerusalem, according to the Lebanese intelligence sources.

and the article finishes with this interesting bit of info...

A number of intelligence sources have reported that assassinations of foreign leaders like Hariri and Hobeika are ultimately authorized by two key White House officials, Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliot Abrams. In addition, Abrams is the key liaison between the White House and Sharon's office for such covert operations, including political assassinations.

"Abrams is the guy they [the Israelis] go to for a wink and a nod for such ops," reported one key source.

in response to the assassination of hariri , large demonstrations broke out in lebanon demanding that syria remove its 15,000 troops and intel apparatus from lebanon . there was an "overwhelming" outpouring of rage by lebanese opposition groups against syria, displayed in world media-- observers commented on the media savvy shown by many demonstrators who conveniently made their protest signs in english telling the syrians to get out ...a convenience that proved just enough of a curiosity to cause this blogger's suspicious nature to say to itself , "hmmmmmmm ?"


as bushites and sharon pointed at syria and screamed , meanwhile other observers took the time to ask the question still used in law and logic , "qui bono ?" who benefits ?

assad and syria didn't honestly come up as the beneficiaries regardless of how we looked at it-- excepting of course the possibility that the pragmatist regime in damascus deliberately intended to suicide itself -- a possibility this blogger quickly ruled out of consideration .




then bush hit the airwaves again ---despite 140,000 of his own troops occupying iraq, kicking down doors , locking up people, creating torture scandals and daily shooting iraqis -- here he was once more spinning the public minds with demands that syria immediately end its "occupation" of lebanon--as if one army division's worth of soldiers who aren't even shooting at anyone, could occupy an entire nation...

old george was on every channel--fox even interrupted the "judge mablean show" to let bush spin one-liners like "damascus must allow democracy to take root in the middle east" and gem zingers such as --"the winds of change blowing across the region"--and "syria's out of step with the direction the rest of the world is moving in " .

it all made one wonder why NOW --after all these years ---did george and then later the french have such a bug up their collective ass about syrian troops in lebanon irritating enough to force through a UN resolution demanding syrian withdrawl--especially since it was the Us who helped convince assad's father to send in troops to help stop the fighting between the various factions in lebanon during the long and bloody 1975 to 1990 civil war .

i speculated that the intent was to force syria to withdraw its forces-- leaving hezbollah militias isolated and out gunned --if and when israeli army decided to return to lebanon and resume the battle it had lost in 2000 to hezbollah when the militias drove the zionists out after a 22 year bloody and brutal israeli occupation that left thousands of lebanese civilians dead and the country's infrastructure devastated .

this suspicion was validated when an unusually compliant european parliament followed up Un resolution 1559 demanding syria leave lebanon with a declaration branding hezbollah a "terrorist" organization.

after 9-11 declaring any group a "terrorist" means they are subject to attack by the neo-cons and their allies. the move began with the brits and spread to the french...

Britain and EU move to outlaw Hizbollah
By: Donald Macintyre and Stephen Castle on: 05.03.2005 [07:44 ]


the independent on line



Israeli and American attempts to isolate Hizbollah are making headway after signs that Britain and the EU may impose new proscriptions on the Iranian-backed Lebanese guerrilla group.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean, a Foreign Office minister, has told Israel's Foreign Minister, Sylvan Shalom, that the UK is "actively considering" extending its current proscription of the organisation's military wing to cover its political wing.

Israel, and increasingly the Palestinian Authority under its President, Mahmoud Abbas, blames Hizbollah for funding and recruiting Palestinians who have carried out attacks on Israelis. Unlike Hamas, Hizbollah, which has also hitherto been supported by Syria, is not proscribed by the EU, while Britain has outlawed its military wing but not its political one.

However, a senior British official has said that there was "increasing evidence" for a growing UK view that Hizbollah had a single leadership responsible for both its military and political wings.

European diplomats said that French opposition to taking action against Hizbollah has softened

in response to events, members of an internationally oriented website i frequent posted :

The US/France /EU are all crooks

by cosmo on 12.03.2005 [04:24]

The US motives are so obvious that a mental retard would catch up with.
Unfortunately for Lebanon the so called opposition which is a minority in the Parliament wants to be treated as an equal thus becoming a majority,which is complete nonsense in a democratic system. These old feudal lords will achieve nothing but another civil war through the US encouragement if they carry on this way.!!!l
Yesterday the EU Parliament passe a non binding law making Hezbollah a terrorist organisation. I wonder how many Talmudist Zionists are sitting in that Parliament playing the role of the Peoples representatives in Europe.!!!!!!!!!!! This is not a way to try to mend fences its a way to serve Sharon and the Talmudist state.!!!

to which this blogger responded :

the Eu passed that resolution ? my god that means look for war

by dsekou on 12.03.2005 [15:53]

once syrian troops are gone look for israel to invade lebanon on the pretext of eliminating "terrorist" hezbollah . mossad in disguise will execute another 9-11/madrid terrorist attack and it will be used as justification for israel going after hezbollah and eventually bush and sharon going after syria or toppling assad through coup.

the ultimatum bush gave assad to leave lebanon by may of this year could mean bush/sharon war plans are already in motion ...if so then iran will be bombed also, as scott ritter recently said , by summer

It is a declaration of war

by hayate on 12.03.2005 [16:08]

by the ameroisraeli and a shameful colaboration/arsekiss by the EU. And it is all part of the Middle East/Central Asian war plans of the ameroisraeli 21st century nazis.

The last time the Europeans colaborated with nazis, look what happened. They are doing the exact same thing now.

Do Europeans want a replay of 1930's-40's Europe? Get rid of these shits.

and i knew the french government was bush scum...

by dsekou on 12.03.2005 [16:08]

...when they helped the us and canada put the economic squeeze on haiti's aristide before toppling him from power. aristide was elected twice and overthrown twice . first time by the Us , sceond time by Us , canada and france — so much for democracy.

cosmo's statement about a minority opposition party pretending to be a majority seemed justified by the massive pro-syrian demonstration sponsored by hezbollah in lebanon that produced significantly greater numbers than the anti-syrian ones played up in Us media .

of course , while no one wants foreign troops on their soil , considering the large turn out in favor of syria , it would be safe to conclude that with the danger of a hostile israel nearby-- an israel which openly supported, armed and trained phalangist militias and supported those same militias' political factions in the lebanese parliament during the civil war period --many lebanese see syrian troops in their country as the lesser evil...

2005-03-10
Lebanese Shiites suspicious of US motives





http://195.224.230.11/english/?id=12947
Shiite communitys draw strength from Lebanese-Syrian alliance that US now wants to see dissolved.

By Nadra Saouli - BEIRUT The Lebanese Shiite community, haunted by Israel's 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon and suspicious of US motives in the region, has drawn strength from the Lebanese-Syrian alliance that Washington now wants to see dissolved.

Lebanon's Shia Muslims, who make up slightly more than 30 percent of the population, hail efforts by Syria they say have brought social peace to Lebanon, restored the stature of the state and the army and enabled them to share political power after decades of exclusion.

Responding to a call by the Syrian-backed Shiite movement Hezbollah, hundreds of thousands of people rallied here on Tuesday to voice their gratitude to Damascus, which has had troops stationed in Lebanon since 1976.

The huge demonstration overshadowed recent gatherings by other Lebanese parties who have chafed under the Syrian presence and who - with the backing of the United States and France - are calling for the full withdrawal of Syrian military and political forces.

and :

Oum Mohammed Faour, a 50-year-old mother, said she had painful memories of the country's years of civil war - 1975-1990 - and occupation.

"Those who didn't live through the war know nothing. We suffered in the war and saw these people coming in on Israeli tanks," she recalled, referring to the actions of pro-Israeli militia groups during the occupation

and then the same UN that can't bring itself in 40 years to do ANYTHING to punish israel for refusing to relinquish lands it took by force -- the same israel that uses ethnic cleansing to depopulate those stolen lands of non zionist inhabitants--lands israel still illegally occupies to this day in defiance of numerous UN resolutions-- now conveniently the UN turns up the heat--on syria !

UN seeks Syrian pullout ultimatum

* UN envoy will tell Syria to leave Lebanon completely or face isolation
* Syrian troops pull out of most of north Lebanon


WASHINGTON: Special UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen will give Syrian President Bashar al-Assad an ultimatum when they both meet Saturday in Damascus, threatening him with political and economic isolation if he does not withdraw his troops quickly and completely from Lebanon, The Washington Post said Friday quoting UN and US officials.

“If he doesn’t deliver, there will be total political and economic isolation of his country. There is a steel-hard consensus in the international community,” a senior UN official said.

Appointed by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to ask Assad for a definite timetable in withdrawing Syria’s military presence from neighboring Lebanon, the envoy first met Thursday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and will visit Lebanon before traveling to Damascus.

A UN official said Roed-Larsen had found “remarkable” support for a tough showdown with Syria over its failure to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1559 calling for an end to Syria’s 15-year military intervention in Lebanon.

Assad has pledged to pull back the troops and an unknown number of intelligence forces in Lebanon towards the Bekaa, where the other Syrian soldiers are already based, by the end of March.

But he stopped short of announcing a full withdrawal as demanded by Resolution 1559.

Syria’s ambassador to the United States said Tuesday that Syrian troops would be out of Lebanon by May, when legislative elections are due to be held.

The UN envoy on Saturday will tell the Syrian president that he must take four steps if he wants to avoid sanctions, UN and US officials told The Washington Post.

Syrian troops: Almost all Syrian troops left north Lebanon on Friday, ending an unbroken 29-year presence and underlining Syria’s diminishing role in its small neighbour.

A security source said the Syrians had not yet vacated two major intelligence offices and two military positions in and around the town of Tripoli, but could do so within 24 hours. agencies

ultimatums and threats of political and economic "isolation" are warning preludes to force being applied after "diplomatic" means that are designed to "fail"...this looks again to be a classic case of good cop /bad cop ...with the europeans and the UN playing the good cop role while the us and israel are the bad cop --chaffing at the bit ...hardly able to endure the wait before they can kick the prisoner around .


and finally , this last scary piece of "coincidence" shows that the neo-clowns are not playing--not even a little bit.

with the election of 2004 safely stolen and most of the american people in a deeply spun media stupor , the bushites believe they have a lock on public opinion and this war-- is a certainty that is in the bag.

the horror of it all is that hundreds of thousands more of innocent people could be maimed and killed in this global war to secure the world's remaining oil fields-- people slaughtered basically for having the strategic misfortune to live atop the last reserves of steadily dwindling resources needed to feed the world's machines

Converging U.S. Navy aircraft carrier groups in Middle East send strong message to Iran and Syria
By: Indiadaily on: 12.03.2005 [14:22]



The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt is on the move in Atlantic Ocean and is possibly headed towards the Mediterranean Sea. The convergence of three carrier groups in the corridor of the Middle East will send very strong message to the Syrians and Iranians. There are indications that soon US is moving two more aircraft carrier battle groups to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf. This will spell a formidable strike force for Iran and Syria who are in defiance on issues of Lebanon and Nuclear weapons development.

Outbound from Singapore, the USS Carl Vinson is currently crossing the Indian Ocean headed towards Middle-East. This will be the first time since February 2004 that US will have three major carrier groups stationed on and around Middle East.

Each of these carrier groups carry nearly 85 aircrafts and is capable of deliver precision-guided munitions. In addition there are anti-submarine aircrafts, airborne-early-warning and rotary-wing aircrafts. Because in the air refueling capabilities these aircrafts can operate from a long distance. The carrier groups are independent and can operate indefinitely.

U.S. military air bases in Turkey, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia and the three carrier groups will create a formidable force far superior to any military in the region.

In addition more than 100,000 battle hardened force in Iraq will be another major force in case US has to use force against Iran and Syria.

It seems American are preparing to deal with Syria and Iran in the next several months. The first priority right now is diplomacy in association with the Europeans and the rest of the world. But the leadership in Teheran and Damascus are taking notice of the power build up in the region.

There are seeds of democracy in Lebanon, Iran and Syria. The whole regions is getting a quick lesson on the benefits of democracy.

... to which posters vigorously responded :


another WAR

by BERNIE on 12.03.2005 [15:04]

The jerk who wrote this article sure sounds like he wants
a war, which he will stay home and watch it on the tv.


ANSWER TO THIS ARTICLE: ALLAH-O-AKBAR

by cecsj on 12.03.2005 [15:23]

ALLAH-O-AKBAR
ALLAH-O-AKBAR
ALLAH-O-AKBAR
DEATH OF FORCES ANTI-JESUS, ANTI-CIVILIZATION, TERRORISTS ARE NEAR. ALL FORCES OF TERRORISTS ARE COMING TO BURN OUT AND GO DOWN TO THE BED OF ARBAIAN SEA, PERSIAN GULF INSHA ALLAH.


Indian daily MY PALESTINIAN BROWN ASS

by Neyaz on 12.03.2005 [15:31]
Yea...I sure do know all about you India..is that the same Indian that wrote the SOFTWARE for 9-11 Planes, or is that same India that conducts secret Military deals with Sharon and the Zionists ?...let's see going back to the article>>>"There are seeds of democracy in Lebanon, Iran and Syria. The whole regions is getting a quick lesson on the benefits of democracy."

Democracy MY BROWN PALESTINIAN ASS>>>The Democray these Zionists sun sum bitches Talk about is WHOLE SALE STEALING of Arab lands and resources Yea...that thats Democracy the Zionists American Devils are preaching in the Middle east and beyond>>>Let me tell you another Lesson about Democracy my Arab brothers >>>If you allow Democracy to take Hold or Roots >>>You are Finished >>you will become a stranger and slave for the Zionists Americans and the brits in your OWN LAND, little by little they will take over and its happening through out the world !

End of message >>From alquds al3rabia almutellah,Phalesteen >>Ya 3rab Ya Jarab.





it's war--- if the troops are in motion , the war is already begun
by dsekou on 12.03.2005 [17:13]

if the money is spent to move this many troops into position you can bet the war is ON ...

this --the ship , troop, and aircraft movents — the UN co-signing bush's ultimatum for syria to get out of lebanon --the Eu agreeing to brand hezbollah a terrorist group --- it looks like the war is on for this spring--symptoms so much like the 2003 invasion of iraq ...100,000 civilians butchered by Us in iraq...sad news

bridges burning ? ruppert sounds warning...

GlobalCorp.

I AM NOT A POLITICIAN

THE FIRE IS NO LONGER ON ITS WAY
IT HAS BEGUN

An Important Announcement

by

Michael C. Ruppert

© Copyright 2005, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only.

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it. - Mark Twain
(special thanks to Bill Tamblyn for finding this quote.)

March 10, 2005, PST 0900 (FTW) -- I am not a politician. I will never be a politician.

With this article both I and the FTW family will never again think in terms of whom we might offend or what bridges we need to build, burn or fireproof. As Don Henley wrote in a song of profound spiritual gratitude, "Sometimes you get your best light from a burning bridge." I'm going to burn a few with this essay.

Peak Oil is no longer on the way. It is here. Forget for a moment whether or not global oil production has actually begun (see below) its hopelessly irreversible decline. We will not know that for certain until sometime after it happens. The political fact, however, is that global inertia in response to Peak has driven our species, all of it, past the point of no return. There is no changing course for us. We have committed to a path of bloody destruction that can no longer be postponed or evaded. Energy investment banker Matthew Simmons - long a smoke alarm for Peak Oil - has said repeatedly, "The problem is that the world has no Plan B." Simmons is right.

Seeing clearly that there is no Plan B, it is now also too late to come up with a Plan C or Plan D. What I had hoped to accomplish with Crossing the Rubicon is now a missed opportunity. Yet the map so many of us drew in Rubicon remains astonishingly accurate and unaltered. It may prove to be an indispensable survival tool in and of itself very shortly.

Politicians come in varieties. They are in business. They are sometimes activists. Many pose as journalists. Some are economists and academics. They work in think tanks and manage the editorial decisions of major press outlets. Many average citizens behave and think like politicians because they accept as their primary mantras: "Don't rock the boat," and "Don't offend anyone." Politicians are more deadly than any weapon. They see their primary mission as building consensus to improve outward appearances.

For a politician the questions are always: "How can I superficially address an immediate problem without going to its root causes? What is the least amount of work I have to do to make this go away while I'm on duty? How can I deal with this problem without burning bridges?" Lately, economists, business and religious leaders, and everyday people have been behaving more like politicians than politicians themselves. Much like the incestuous, sealed-off, fetid Bush administration, the politicians are going to other politicians to make policy - when they dare even to do that. Refusing to make policy is also a policy.

In fact, most people have become politicians and it may well be that political correctness (including the fear of speaking out) - to whatever degree it is observed - will be the sword on which we now (not tomorrow) impale ourselves.

Bridges are burning all around us; bridges to responses that might have mitigated the already brutal (and just beginning) ravages of Peak Oil; bridges to reduce the likelihood of war and famine; bridges to avoid our selectively chosen suicide; bridges to change at least a part of energy infrastructure and consumption; bridges to becoming something better than we are or have been; bridges to nonviolence. Those bridges are effectively gone.

Stan Goff was right when he warned activists that "the gun," in all its forms, would be brought out before this was over. It was inevitable. False flag terror attacks, a fake war on terrorism, routine political murders, stolen elections, and Republican traffic in pedophilia remain causes for outrage and defiance, but they can no longer be useful avenues to justice: the legal system is broken. It's broken for reasons far greater than what used to be called corruption. And it cannot be fixed when a world war and unprecedented economic and ecological collapse are smashing down every wall between humanity and the unthinkable.

Politicians are creatures of economics. Their success has always been measured first and only by what economic benefits they returned to constituents or themselves. The victim has been the future. We have all told the politicians what we really want them to do for us while speaking platitudes from the other side of our mouths. As I have said for so many years, we are all prisoners of the way money works. Until we change that, any solution is only temporal and illusory. No electoral change is possible now that elections all over the world have sworn their allegiance to privately owned software programs and obvious manipulation.

FOR THOSE WHO CAN READ THE MAP

As the evidence grows stronger that we are at Peak now (or very close to it), there is a distinct correlation between oil price hikes and military budget increases, weapons deployment, warfare and covert operations around the world. Economists don't consider such things so they don't report on them. Their orthodoxy scorns any integrated view of world developments outside their own discipline.

For long-time readers of FTW I need do little more than discuss a few recent developments to put this in perspective. For the rest I will provide you with some of a great many available dots you can connect if you care to. Most people find themselves unable to tolerate the sight of the pattern which the connected dots reveal. After this, FTW will no longer try to detail the dots of Peak Oil. What we have published over the last seven years is proof enough. We had it right. I refuse to go over it again. Those who get it now, get it. Those who do not may possibly be beyond saving, because their own choices have deprived them of critical months of preparation for the crisis - especially since most of this "preparation" is psychological in nature. It is very hard and very painful to get one's mind to accept this reality.

Nature does not grant time outs.

THE CIA

I recently had a conversation with someone who spent 17 years in the CIA's Directorate of Operations. Thinking of the purge and power shift that has - over the course of the last nine months - decimated the Central Intelligence Agency (long my Bête Noir) and shifted much of its power to the Pentagon, I asked the following question.

"Look, the agency does many things in many roles from raw intelligence gathering, to economic warfare, to satellite recon, to paramilitary operations requiring cover and deniability, to drug smuggling. But since its inception it was always focused in large part on medium and long-term intelligence gathering and covert operations through the costly, patient, expensive means of placing NOCs (non-official covers) or assets in missions where it might take five, ten or fifteen years to bear fruit. These programs were always centered on "what if" contingencies which inherently implied that multiple outcomes were possible; that there were alternative futures to be influenced and shaped.

"Battlefield intelligence is a different critter. It presupposes that there is nothing more important than the battle that has been joined at this moment. If the battle is not won, there are no future choices. Hence nothing matters other than the war that is being fought today. No Yaltas or Potsdams; no future deep cover moles will be needed.

"Every country in the world is betting everything it has on this one hand knowing that after 2007 or 2008 the game ends. The map of the future after that is unknowable and, to large extent, irrelevant. That's why Rumsfeld has won the battle to control American intelligence operations and why the new National Intelligence Director John Negroponte is getting the job.

"Is that right?"

Without the slightest hesitation the former CIA employee answered, "Yes."

It is the ultimate testimony to the madness of Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney that there are no more tomorrows left to fix anything. Since 9/11, and especially since a second presidential election was stolen four months ago, the setting for a real Armageddon has been locked in place. It may well have been for years before that.

GASOLINE PRICES

A recent USA TODAY story, giving us the new word "Petronoia," warned that gasoline prices could jump by 25 cents per gallon within the next few days. That increase, it said, would take $90 million per day out of a consumer economy that relies on profligate spending to sustain already bursting bubbles. How are we getting the money to sustain these bubbles? We are, according to Bill Fleckenstein of MSN, using our houses as ATMs just to keep up, even as the housing bubble has already begun to burst.1 Our paychecks certainly aren't increasing.

OIL PRICES

Oil has topped $54 a barrel. It's gone up more than 25% in less than three months and fifty per cent over the last year; 400% since 1999. This amid strong signs that global oil production may have already peaked, as declines around the world are not being offset by new production. New fields may come online but the respite will be very short-lived. There may be a few "mega" projects (about a six-day supply for the planet in each) which may produce momentary price declines but the trend is irreversible. Official bodies like the International Energy Administration (IEA) are openly wishing that demand growth might slow in 2005, when actual figures already prove this wish utterly fanciful. China's oil demand is expected to grow by 33% this year. Industrialized and developing nations are expanding their economies as fast as possible to generate cash and liquidity as a means of securing more oil.

The vicious cycle is in full swing. And yet, according to economist Andrew McKillop…

We then move on to actual declines in production. For the majority of non-OPEC producers - (in fact nearly all except Russia and some Central Asian producers) rates of decline are stubbornly high, despite vaunted technology improvements…

One of the biggest problems facing the IEA [a UN sponsored agency], the EIA [a US government agency] and a host of analysts and 'experts' who claim that 'high prices cut demand', either directly or through damping oil economic growth, is that this does not happen in the real world. Since early 1999 oil prices have risen about 400%. Oil demand growth in 2004 at nearly 4% was the highest in 25 years. In each year since 1999 world oil demand growth has been higher than the previous year - as prices rise.2

McKillop's analysis, which essentially says that rising oil prices are either good or of no consequence, falls way short for two reasons. Energy investment banker Matt Simmons a year ago in Berlin stated that he saw the actual point at which price would curb demand at around $180 per barrel. The consumers are bearing most of the costs of these increases. Is this the consumers' choice, or is it simply the point beyond which "the American way of life" will become impossible, regardless of how many incremental cuts people accept?

Go ahead; try to choose to use less oil of your own volition. What reductions are available to you are minimal because the world in which you must make your house payments, feed your family, drive to work and pay your bills is leaving you little choice but to consume more and get less for your money. Only at around $180 a barrel will the consumer no longer be able to subsidize the corporate and economic superstructure on his/her shoulders. This is essentially what Simmons was saying.

The poor will be the first to suffer and they will suffer the most. They will be the first to die.

Secondly, McKillop assumes a "trickle down" benefit to consumers from high prices. International capital flows and your own checkbook should be enough to dispel this belief. Need I say more? Didn't we hear enough about trickle-down from Ronald Reagan?

PRODUCTION

Oil industry guru Jan Lundberg - who seems to be getting a lot less air time than he used to - recently wrote the following brilliant assessment for (ironically of all places) Electric Vehicle (EV) Magazine. Lundberg got it right.

The end of abundant, affordable oil is in sight, and the implications are colossal. About now in our hydrocarbon phase of human history, we have pulled out of the Earth approximately half of the available petroleum (crude oil and natural gas). The other half still in the ground is harder to extract and may not - as assumed - fuel the global economy or even provide a transition to another phase…

This means that the next tough oil shortage, even if it is not acknowledged as a post-peak oil extraction phenomenon of diminishing supply, will cripple the globalized economy. Understanding of both the economics and social dynamics of collapse is rare, and even when it is present there is an absence of taking into account the "market factor" in ushering in collapse…

Despite the need to be prepared for imminent, final energy shortage - which could happen now or in several years at the latest - people persist in focusing too much on the likely date of the passing of the peak. It is already clear that the oil industry and OPEC numbers on oil reserves are suspect.

The scenario I foresee is that market-based panic will, within a few days, drive prices up skyward. And as supplies can no longer slake daily world demand of over 80 million barrels a day, the market will become paralyzed at prices too high for the wheels of commerce and even daily living in "advanced" societies. There may be an event that appears to trigger this final energy crash, but the overall cause will be the huge consumption on a finite planet.

The trucks will no longer pull into Wal-Mart. Or Safeway or other food stores. The freighters bringing packaged techno-toys and whatnot from China will have no fuel. There will be fuel in many places, but hoarding and uncertainty will trigger outages, violence and chaos. For only a short time will the police and military be able to maintain order, if at all. The damage that several days' oil shortage and outage will do will soon wreak permanent damage that starts with companies and consumers not paying their bills and not going to work.

After an almost instant depression seizes the modern industrialized world, and nation-states break down, the frantic attempts of people to feed themselves, stay warm and obtain fresh water (pumped presently via petroleum to a great extent), there will be no rescue. Die-off begins. The least petroleum-dependent communities will survive best. These "backward" nations will be emulated by the scrounging survivors of the U.S. and the rest of the "developed" world, as far as local food production will be tried - in a paved-over, toxic landscape by people who have lost touch with the land...

The prospects of mitigating peak oil or avoiding collapse are almost nil. U.S. petroleum demand in 2004 grew at its strongest rate in five years. In December the daily consumption of refined oil was 21 million barrels in the U.S, a quarter of world use. The U.S. leads the industrialized world in population growth, part of a domestic policy to assure more car and oil sales…

… The Earth cannot, as of the world oil peak in extraction, give up ever greater quantities of black gold. Most of the world exporting companies are now reducing extraction rates due to fewer discoveries and depleted fields. Oil production in 18 producer countries has passed its peak and is declining faster than previously thought: at about 1.14 million barrels a day.

"International Energy Agency figures put the total spare capacity of all 11 countries in OPEC at just 330,000 bpd (down from 6 million bpd in 2002). Conventional Saudi spare capacity is zero... An IEA report from August 2004 indicates Saudi Arabia needs up to 800,000 bpd of newly discovered oil each year just to offset declining fields and maintain its current production level." [Al-jazeera] - This can't happen, so watch for the ensuing energy crisis.

The world needs to produce another 2,723,530.2 barrels per day by the end of 2005 just in order to stand still…

Petroleum is the Great Leveler, in the sense of "leveling" or flattening oil civilization. But petroleum will also be the Great Leveler in terms of equalizing everyone: People will go through a final, grasping petroleum grab with whatever funds and connections they have, before the attempt fails for good. Then all people will have no choice but to work together or perish. Until then, we have skewed values: for example, when a kindly old lady drives to a shop and has her charitable concerns, the use of oil makes her a killer of the planet and she is not pursuing a sustainable form of transportation. Meanwhile, a mean old man who scowls at little children who walks to the shop might be a much more valuable citizen in a practical fashion that matters to the world.3

THE MOST EVIL STATEMENT I HAVE EVER HEARD

Detroit News columnist Thomas Bray recently described an interview with two "experts"; authors who come from the corporate/industrial/Neocon camp. The aberration of his thinking is symptomatic of the guilt we all share and the consequences we all seem to be begging for.

"We will never stop craving more," say Huber and Mills, "nor should we ever wish to. Energy is what brings light out of dark, civilization out of disorder, prosperity out of poverty."4

What was the title of the book that Bray was so jazzed about? The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy.

Contrast all of the above with the following February 28 quotation from China's Xinhuanet news agency:

Global demand may average 84 million barrels a day in 2005, while daily production in January was only 83.6 million barrels, according to the International Energy Agency. Oil prices have risen 11 per cent in the past three weeks in New York on growing concern that OPEC and other exporters will fail to keep up with demand this year.5

That all of these factors are forming a perfect storm is now clear.

Marshall Auerback, a brilliant economist (www.prudentbear.com) who dares to see the world whole, notes:

"At the time of the 1929 stock market crash, total US credit was 176 percent of Gross Domestic Product. In 1933 with GDP imploding and the real value of debt rising even faster, total credit rose to 287 percent of what was left of GDP…In 2000 at the top of the late bull market, total credit was 269 of GDP. An extraordinary statistic to be sure but dwarfed by today's figure, in which total credit stands at a whopping 304 percent of GDP, according to a recent study by fund manager Trey Reik of Clapboard Hill Partners.

The title of Auerback's essay was, "Last Orders for the US Dollar."6

Auerback opened his treatise with a recent quote from former Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker that should have sent politicians (all of us) feverishly to work on a survival plan.

Below the favorable surface [of the economy], there are as dangerous and intractable circumstances as I can remember…. Nothing in our experience is comparable… But no one is willing to understand this and do anything about it… We are consuming… about six per cent more than we are producing. What holds the world together is a massive flow of capital from abroad… it's what feeds our consumption binge… the United States economy is growing on the savings of the poor… A big adjustment will inevitably become necessary, long before the social security surpluses disappear and the deficit explodes… We are skating on increasingly thin ice."7

SOME DOTS

ENERGY

*
The world's network of crude oil pipelines also is now operating at virtually 100% capacity. For almost all of 2004, the world's tanker system operated at full capacity too. This sparked an unprecedented rise in taker rates, which added up to $5 to $6 per barrel to the wellhead price of oil in some key long-haul export routes. - Matthew Simmons. Why are no more tankers being built? Because soon there won't be enough oil to ship to cover what it would cost to build them.

*
Also from Simmons: [In the oil industry] A lack of qualified manpower is looming high on the list of capacity problems. In addition, the many layoffs and downsizing events that our industry has endured… As a consequence, we now have an aging workforce at a time when the technical intensity of the industry is increasing each year. - Why? Because the industry knows it is going to collapse and no replacements are being trained to fill short-term, dead-end careers.

*
Officials of Mexico's state-owned oil company PEMEX have announced that Mexico's largest oil field, Cantarell, will enter permanent decline this year. - Bloomberg, March 1, 2005.

*
ExxonMobil is selling its 19 percent stake in China's Petroleum and Chemical Corporation - Forbes, March 2, 2005. This is a likely move to cut losses in the event of war.

*
Ukraine and Georgia have agreed to reverse the flow of oil in a strategic pipeline from the Black Sea thus effectively reducing Russia's control over some Caspian basin exports. - BusinessWeek, Feb. 28, 2005. A Ukrainian alliance with NATO would deprive the Russian Navy of access to its Black Sea ports.

*
In a move to bypass US-led efforts to reduce her influence in the world's oil supply chain and access to markets, Russia approved the rush construction of three new oil terminals on the Gulf of Finland to supply Europe. - Moscow News, March 1, 2005. (Three days after the above pipeline decision? Surely these power blocks had been making contingency plans for these events for years).

*
Saudi Arabia may have already peaked in production as a result of over-producing its fields. Overproduction by water (and gas) injection destroys a reservoir's geologic structure. It is an undisputed certainty that if Saudi Arabia has peaked, the world has peaked. - Al Jazeera, February 20, 2005.

*
Oil has been rising steadily in terms of dollars, but now it has begun to increase in price relative to the Euro - James Turk, GATA.

*
Petro Canada has decided to invest $3 billion in the development of Alberta's tar sands in spite of high costs, enormous environmental destruction and dwindling supplies of natural gas needed to make steam to wash the sands. - The Globe and Mail, March 2, 2005.

*
Royal Dutch Shell, which has downgraded its reserves four times in the last two years (as a result of fraudulent bookkeeping), has announced it may experience a 5% production decline this year. - Forbes, March 2, 2005. The truth comes out.

*
Iran and Mexico have signed an MOU for mutual assistance in developing oil and gas projects. - Tehran Times, Feb. 20, 2005.

MILITARY AND POLITICAL

*
Spain's foreign minister has voiced concerns held in Britain and elsewhere in Europe that the era of the nation-state is coming to an end as regional powers replace national identity. - The Sun, March 2, 2005. Energy-starved Britain will ultimately be forced to join the EU.

*
After Canada recently refused to participate in the US Strategic Missile Shield, the US government accused Canada of relinquishing sovereignty over its airspace and prompted a statement from US Ambassador Paul Cellucci that the US would shoot down missiles over Canada whether Canada gave permission or not. - CP, Feb. 24, 2005. [Two years ago I clipped a story from the National Post stating that Canada should not be surprised when US troops occupied the country to protect the US. From Canada?!]

*
US forces in Iraq have apparently attempted to murder an Italian journalist who was freed after negotiations with her captors. They succeeded in killing an Italian Secret Service agent and US stories of the account are falling under widespread criticism and rebuttal. Anti-American sentiment in Italy is bubbling over. - Multiple sources.

*
China is experiencing massive shortages of coal to power its electrical generation. - Multiple sources.

*
China is already buying and hoarding 60% of the world's commodities: (Oil, Cement, Aluminum, Copper, Zinc, Manganese, Steel, Coal, Gold, Silver, etc.). It has bought so much cement that it has caused a slowdown in US construction. Last year it bought 90% of the world's steel output and shipped it to China - Multiple sources. Why? Because soon there won't be enough fuel for the globalized transport of such heavy things, nor, presumably, for their industrial exploitation. The world may also be at war shortly, further endangering international trade and transport.

*
China has announced a 12.6% increase in its defense budget for next year, pushing it into an overt arms race with the US. - Reuters, March 4, 2005. This has put the enduring China-Taiwan flash point back on the front burner as China has warned Taiwan against secession and the US, Japan and Taiwan have countered with equally risky rhetoric against China. Taiwan is crucial because of its location the South China Sea and proximity to smaller but accessible oil deposits in the Spratly Islands. Even more, should China incorporate Taiwan into its borders, its claims to territorial waters as far as the continental shelf would effectively deny Japan any future exploration off its western coast. - Multiple sources. Japan, which has no energy resources, is in deep trouble.

*
Chinese energy shortages have resulted in what may be selective blackouts of Japanese auto and other firms manufacturing in China. - Asia Times, December 9, 2004.

*
As frictions intensify between Japan and China [Knight-Ridder, Feb. 15, 2005], Japan - America's strongest ally in the Pacific - has been forced to sign an oil agreement with Iran [New York Times, Feb. 16, 2005]. This agreement came as a slap in the face to the US which had opposed it.

*
Japan has announced a $1.1 billion emergency plan to build liquefied natural gas terminals. - Bloomberg, February 14, 2005. Twelve days later it was announced that Japanese destroyers had driven away Chinese exploration vessels in international waters that were too close to a possible natural gas field (claimed by Japan) in the East China Sea. - The Herald Sun, January 26, 2005.

*
China has begun placing nuclear-capable ballistic missiles on some of its submarines for the first time. - The Washington Times, December 3, 2004.

*
Last November a Chinese nuclear submarine intruded deep into Japanese territorial waters and was escorted (chased) by Japanese Navy ships back into international waters. - The Asia Times, Jan. 16, 2005

*
China and India have agreed to hold first-ever joint naval exercises in the Indian Ocean. - San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 13, 2004.

*
China is beginning a push to control the strategic Straights of Malacca through which 80% of its imported oil passes. This strategic waterway - only 1.5 miles wide at its narrowest point - lies between the countries of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. - Asia Times, March 2, 2005. Yes, and 40% of the world's piracy occurs there.

*
Indonesia has sent warships in an escalating dispute with Malaysia to an island off its west coast. The subject of the dispute: Malaysian oil exploration. - www.news.com.au, March 6, 2005.

*
The following day Indonesia dispatched F16 fighters to the Malaysian border, escalating the oil conflict. - The Standard, Match 7, 2005.

*
A number of stories have reported that Japan is secretly considering the abandonment of its pacifist constitution and - if it so chose - could have nuclear weapons in months, if not weeks. - Multiple sources.

*
Britain's parliament is in revolt over a proposed "terrifying" house arrest plan which would enable the government to order residents locked up in their own homes without trial. - The Independent, March 2, 2005.

*
Venezuela intends to purchase advanced MiG 29s from Russia, capable of downing F16s [and having no software systems that can be compromised by US technology]. - Reuters, Feb. 12, 2005.

*
Venezuela (the world's fifth largest oil exporter) has purged its state-owned oil company PdVSA of pro-American managers and is implementing a 17% tax increase on the revenues of foreign oil companies doing business there. - Multiple sources.

*
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has traveled to New Delhi, India where he chose to make a public statement that he would cut off Venezuelan oil supplies to the US in the event of any intervention or a US-directed attempt on his life. The Indian government has thus tacitly endorsed the threat. Meanwhile, the US ambassador to Venezuela has imponderably replied that if that happened the US would just go somewhere else to get its oil. [Where? Iran? Canada (which is signing contracts with China)? West Africa? There is no elasticity anywhere.] - Multiple sources.

*
Venezuela has sold its (already in decline) San Cristobal oil field to India. - Times of India, March 6, 2005

*
President Bush has given Syria a non-negotiable deadline of May 1 to withdraw its forces from Lebanon. One million Lebanese (almost a quarter of the population) have marched in the streets in protest. - Multiple sources.

ECONOMICS

*
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress the record U.S. budget deficit is "unsustainable'' and that spending cuts are needed before costs balloon for Social Security and other benefit programs. - Bloomberg, March 2, 2005.

*
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has stated that high oil prices are threatening the global economy and that those prices will be one of the most important items on the agenda of the coming G-8 summit. - The Daily Star, March 1, 2005.

*
The Bank of International Settlements has made it official: the dollar dump is underway. Since 2001 the number of dollars held by Asian central banks has fallen by 13% and the rate of sell-off is increasing. - Reuters, March 6, 2005.

*
OPEC has announced that oil prices could reach $80 per barrel within two years. - Agence France Presse, March 3, 2005.

*
A research foundation in Dubai has affirmed that western banks have rigged and suppressed gold prices. - Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, http://www.lemetropolecafe.com/.

THE NEW WORLD ORDER

The New World Order is not a monolith; no single group of rich folks sits together in one room debating our planetary future. It is, quite literally, a new order in which world power aggregates along geographic/geologic lines, forcing regions to become players against each other and running roughshod over the nationalist sentiments of their subject populations. The regions are Europe (including Britain), Asia, South America and North America. Woe to those nations who are stuck in between. In spite of Sino-Japanese tension, Japan, China and South Korea have urged the creation of a Free Trade agreement to cover the Western Pacific. Geography and money will prove to be the ultimate trump cards because geography is governing economic decision-making. There may be a war between China and Japan but ultimately Japan (like the UK vis-a-vis Europe) will find itself swallowed into regional hegemony, either as a winner or as a loser.

Take a look at Orwell's 1984 again. It is a wonder how he saw so much. Yet behind all of this realignment, enormous streams of wealth or capital are being expended and - most importantly - transferred behind the scenes. The people controlling that money are not seeing their control dissipate as the nation-states vanish. Money makes its own rules.

Profits were made during the cold war by continuing the controlled escalation of tensions between the superpowers while secretly preventing those tensions from reaching critically dangerous levels. The major players included Armand Hammer, the Rothschilds, the Bushes, Averill Harriman, inter alia.

These people always find ways to eke profits from a system that is in meltdown. They make money on the way up. They make money on the way down. Their appalling justification, their pact with the devil that makes this all possible, is that "As long as we're making money then everything must be OK." This is what the real PTB (Powers That Be) believe. This is the final distilled definition of "the bottom line".

The problem lies in the definition of "The Powers That Be." Most people still think in terms of nation states. I always think in terms of money, even to the point of looking at money (the way it functions now) as the PTB without attachment to a human or national identity.

Not too long ago I had a dialogue with Catherine Austin Fitts after which an epiphany struck. As the human race blows itself into extinction, or destroys the climate, or starves itself to death, the last corporate merger and acquisition will take place. And at the same moment as mankind dies, the CFO of "GlobalCorp" will be shouting, "Hooray! We did it!"

Those who win in a rigged game get stupid. We have all played this game (to one degree or another). And compared to the rational, far-sighted humanitarians that Jefferson and Whitman hoped for and expected, we are all frightfully stupid.

In spite of all the warning signs that demand and energy use must be curbed immediately, the only commercial effect of Peak Oil has been to increase consumption as much as possible - so as to get as much "money" as possible, as quickly as possible. This before the instant, possibly only months away, when money - because of a lack of energy - becomes valueless. Solutions that should enable a reduction in oil consumption are only functioning as an insane rationale for using more. The pity of this utterly unnecessary disaster is matched only by the arrogance that created it.

With unmistakable desperation, China, the US, Russia, Europe and the Middle East are fiercely jockeying for a measly 40 billion barrels of Caspian heavy-sour oil instead of the 350 billion we were promised by the major oil companies a decade ago. Caspian oil has some of the highest sulfur content on the planet. It is expensive and environmentally destructive to refine. The mountains of sulfur around the Caspian are now so large as to be visible from space. Do you not see the desperation here?

The only way to curb demand is to pull the plug on global economies, starting first with the already partially cannibalized US economy. Our manufacturing has been stolen or given away for "spare parts." So have our savings, our Constitution, our resources, our credit, our credibility, our confidence, our manufacturing base, our jobs; and soon our houses, our personal bank accounts and ultimately our hope. The United States is being liquidated after a fait accompli merger and acquisition.

The bottom line turns out to be the suicide of the human race as mergers and acquisitions lead to the final moment of malignant capitalism: "the last corporation standing."

GlobalCorp becomes Global corpse.

Hurray, we did it!

To look on the brighter side of this, my brother in arms Matt Savinar helped me to see the good in Peak Oil. He wrote, "When people ask me what is 'positive' about Peak Oil, I tell them (only half-jokingly) that: "well, if there is no collapse, we're all going to be chipped, tagged, drugged with FOX news being beamed into our brains while living in slums patrolled by robotic soldiers with strangely familiar Austrian accents."

The fire has begun.

FOR THE RECORD - FTW REORGANIZATION PENDING

I wake up now on a daily basis knowing that at any moment the story might break signaling that the collapse has been triggered. It is my mandate to scan the horizon for signs of this, to help discern where the blows will fall, how hard, how quickly and where they will have the most impact. Effective immediately (and taking into account stories FTW has already committed to publish), it is imperative that FTW transform itself into an informational / intelligence lifeboat for those who are listening.

I will not be writing for FTW for a period of approximately two months while I complete a corporate reorganization that is necessary to adapt to the world as it is, not as we might wish it or pray for it to be.

FTW now has tens of thousands of daily readers who understand what is happening and who are urging me to stop trying to convince the rest of the world. They want us instead, try to and help those who are already convinced. We cannot save everyone. We can only help those who are asking for it. That is our constituency - our contract. The doors will always be open for latecomers.

What you will see in two months or less is a new FTW; focused, precise, and more useful on a day to day basis. If I lose support from progressives or activists for this, so be it. If FTW falls from grace with some for failing to be politically correct, then all I can say is "Good luck to you."

We must all do what we must do and do it now. My conscience is clear that I have done all that is possible to warn. When a tsunami is coming there is a point at which one must stop trying to warn the indifferent and just get out of the way and help others who are also trying to get out of the way. For those who now see this, FTW hopes to become at least a partial bridge to your safety. In order to do that, other bridges must be abandoned.

ENDNOTES

1. Fleckenstein, Bill; Prerequisite to current events: Bubble 101; MSN, Feb. 28, 2005.

2. McKillop, Andrew; Fundamentals in the oil-pricing game; http://www.vheadline.com; March 2, 2005.

3. Lundberg, Jan; The Global Nutcracker Called Peak Oil; EV World, Feb. 20 2005.

4. Detroit News editorial by Thomas Bray, February 27, 2005 quoting authors (and Neocon / Bush allies) Peter W. Huber and Mark P. Mills.

5. Crude oil prices may rise as output trails demand; Xinhuanet, February 28, 2005; www.chinaview.cn.

6. Auerback, Marshall; Last Orders for the US Dollar; www.prudentbear.com, March 1, 2005.

7. Ibid.