"All the factors which make for crashes – excessive leveraging, rising interest rates, etc. – exist... Contradictions now wrack the world's financial system, and a growing consensus now exists between those who endorse it and those, like myself, who believe the status quo is both crisis-prone as well as immoral. If we are to believe the institutions and personalities who have been in the forefront of the defense of capitalism, and we should, it may very well be on the verge of serious crises."
The source also commented on the danger posed by rapid climate change. Although most conventional estimates suggest that global climate catastrophe is not due before another 30 odd years, he argued that the multiplication of several "tipping-points" suggested that a series of devastating climatic events could be "triggered within the next 10 to 15 years." Once again, this is consistent with the findings of other experts, most recently a joint task-force report by the Institute for Public Policy Research in the UK, the Center for American Progress in the US, and the Australia Institute, which said in January last year that if the average world temperature rises "two degrees centigrade above the average world temperature prevailing in 1750 before the industrial revolution", it would trigger an irreversible chain of climatic disasters. In its report, the task-force says:
"The possibilities include reaching climatic tipping points leading, for example, to the loss of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets (which, between them, could raise sea level more than 10 meters over the space of a few centuries), the shutdown of the thermohaline ocean circulation (and, with it, the Gulf Stream), and the transformation of the planet's forests and soils from a net sink of carbon to a net source of carbon."
The source also revealed that US generals had repeatedly war-gamed a prospective conflict with Iran, but consistently found that the simulations predicted "an absolute nuclear disaster", from which no clear winner would emerge. The scenarios gamed were so dismal, he said, that the generals briefed administration officials to avoid such a war at all costs. However, the source said that the Bush administration is ignoring the fears of the US military.
In this context, it would seem that the musings of Maj. Peters issue less from a concerted confidence in US power, than from a sense of growing desperation and unease as the political, financial and energy architecture of the global system is increasingly fragmenting under the weight of its own inherent instability. Despite the seeming gloominess of the situation, however, there is clearly fundamental dissent about the current trajectory of American and Western policy at the highest levels of power. The source remarked that "humanity is on the verge of a precipice, and either we'll all just drop off the edge, or we'll evolve. I'm not sure what that new human being might look like, but it will clearly have to involve a completely new set of ideas and values, a new way of looking at the world that respects life and nature."
The US Army's candor is disturbing but not surprising. People from Thomas Malthus to Jay Hansen have been warning us for quite some time, that sooner rather than later, our species would be running into the finite parameters defining our existence. Malthus has been excoriated by those ignorant of the fact that his predictions were made a century prior to the discovery of "rock oil", thus delaying but not usurping humanity's inevitable decline.
I would suggest that the US Army as well as the rest of the Megamachine has in fact been implementing this "redrawing" operation for quite some time. 9-11 was just the pretext contrived to catalyze the process. Unfortunately for the Megamachine, their desperation due to time constraints has led to some rather unprofessional results in the propaganda department. Exxon has just announced a multi million dollar ad campaign denouncing peak oil theory. This comes on the heels of their well known multi million dollar ad campaign denouncing global warming (sorry, climate change). What can they possibly hope to accomplish through such disinformaion? To buy time. The same thing we're all doing.
An MSNBC news poll tonight asked the question whether this war on "terror" is akin to fighting the Nazis in WW II. 52% out of over a quarter million respondents answered in the negative. What's going to happen when the critical mass of people overcome their own cognitive dissonance and see this regime for the awful muderers they are? A full fledged taxpayer revolt is not too far fetched, and might throw a wrench into the Army's plans.
by
RJCW (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Thursday, August 31, 2006 at 9:31:19 PM
Many thanks to Mr. Mosaddeq Ahmed for his thought-provoking article.
Many field and company grade officers, the middle management sector of the Officers' Corps, are expressing views similar to those expressed in this article. Their experience and observations in commanding operations there in the current environment give them a particularly relevant and authoritative perspective in their views.
For the sake of simplicity, I will confine these remarks to Iraq only. Even a cursory reading of Iraqi history must lead to the conclusion that the current State is a League of Nations mandate state without any sort of unifying or nationalizing factors. The current boundaries of Iraq are literally, lines drawn on a map by European diplomats.
The tribalism, the sectarianism and the extreme ethnic divergences that have created the 100 or so separate armed political groups that existed in Iraq BEFORE the invasion have been exacerbated by the delegitimazation of the national institutions under the occupation.
Despite the American rhetoric about free and fair elections, vast segments of the Iraqi population boycotted the elections as a political strategy. People and politicians will respond to power and the Occupation backed regime is the most powerful group currently in Iraq, but it only has power when it is backed by American firepower.
The Administration did not split Iraq because that would have sent the message of conquest too boldly to the neighboring countries and nations like Saudi Arabia may very well have been even more destabilized than they have been from our current inept and futile operations.
Kurdistan is not going to happen. The inauguration of a Kurdish state would entail taking territory from Iran and Turkey as well. If the Turkish and Iranian Kurdish territories were not granted in the first land grant, it would embroil those countries in a nasty war against the Kurds that would bring on Saddamesque atrocities and end in the absorption of the current Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq into Turkey and Iran.
The statement that ethnic cleansing works is odious beyond comment, and untrue. The current border difficulties we are experiencing domestically in this country show that ethnic cleansing doesn't work.
After a 200 year long ethnic cleansing campaign against the red race, we know find our borders swarming with millions of their descendants trying to make a living in the land of where their fathers died.
The good news is that reliable polls show that Iraqi nationalism has a strong hold on the imagination of Iraqi masses and that they are committed to the country within its current borders.
In an odd way the current sectarian violence may be the catalyst to more general Iraqi identity. It has been reliably reported that people are changing their names from overtly Shia of Sunni names to more general Arab names, thus submerging the raw edge of sectarianism. Perhaps, after the incendiary influence of the occupation has been removed and the Iraqis have had a period of reconciliation the seeds of nationalism that are now being sown from resistance to the foreign occupiers and merging of sectarian differences will flower in a resurgence of Iraqi identity and development.
The American foreign policy and military establishment need to understand the American aid and involvement are NOT ESSENTIAL in other peoples' development. Our role in the world should be to provide educational resources, research, commerce and perhaps investment funds for peaceful and productive enterprises.
Robert Chapman
Lansing, New York
by
Robert Chapman (28 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 557 comments)
on Friday, September 1, 2006 at 6:59:54 AM
