Neocons, Petrocons and the continued framing of the Jews.
Okay, first a confession. I think in patterns and connections. That’s step one. Then, I write a blog post. That’s step two. Then, if I’m feeling up to it, I go and try to find some links for documentation. But by step three, I’m usually hungry. As such, it’s often much after I post my paranoid rantings that I find someone else has already ranted them. And there’s nothing worse than stale ranting. In this case, here are two rants of interest that are in the same ballpark as what I’ve been going on about. I will just give a little summary of each and you can follow the links yourselves.
The first link is an article by investigative reporter, Greg Palast. He writes a good article about the neocons though I question his overall take. Basically, this article, which I’m actually linking from the site of my second person of interest, Dave Emory, discusses the neocon role in the Iraq war. In his view, the neocons really were acting independently for a particular plan which had little to do with democracy and a lot to do with oil. But according to Palast, and some documentation he got “leaked” to him, they wanted to privatize the oil fields and flood the market with oil to diminish the power of the Saudis. The real powers that be, in this case the petroleum sector, would have none of that and hence the moves via the Baker commission and the ousting of prominent neocons. It’s a great article and please read it. Here’s an interesting snip:
After two mad years of hunting, I discovered the real plan for Iraq’s oil, the one that keeps our troops in Fallujah. Some 323 pages long and deeply confidential, it was drafted at the James A. Baker III Institute in Houston, Texas, under the strict guidance of Big Oil’s minions. It was the culmination of a series of planning groups that began in December 2000 (that’s not a typo…that’s well before 9/11) with key players from the Baker Institute and Council on Foreign Relations (including one Ken Lay of Enron). This was followed by a State Department invasion-planning session in Walnut Creek, California, in February 2001, only weeks after Bush and Cheney took office. Its concepts received official blessing after a March 2001 gathering of oil chiefs (and Lay) with Dick Cheney where the group reviewed with the Vice-President the map of Iraq’s oil fields.
Once I discovered the Big Oil plan, several of the players agreed to speak with me (not, to the chagrin of some, realizing that I rarely hold such conversions without secretly recording them). Most forthright was Philip Carroll, former CEO of Shell Oil USA, who was flown into Baghdad on a C-17 to make sure there would be no neo-con monkey business in America’s newest oil fields.
It had been a very good war for Big Oil, with tripled oil prices meaning tripled profits.
What Coups May Come
That I am paranoid is not in question. What is in question is why there are those out there who insist on confirming my paranoia. Commenter “Wonderer in the Wilderness” found this delightful article about what could be the “feel-good” novel of the year. The topic: a brave group of military types who oust a President whom we’ll just call “Bush” in a military coup in order to save America.
Truth or Fiction? It’s Hard to Tell
Here’s the scene: A conservative president, say President Bush, is getting ready to be replaced by a liberal, say Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, after a crisis like something worse than 9/11. The nation’s national security team is worried that the nation is going to pot. So much so that the heads of a 400-person “supermilitia” created to overthrow governments on behalf of Washington move in to dump Bush, stop Clinton’s ascension, and rebuild the nation. Crazy? No, it’s just the premise of America’s Last Days, a new political thriller out next month and already being looked at by Hollywood. Author Douglas MacKinnon, a former Pentagon, Reagan, and Bush aide, says it rings true. His scenarios were so real—”many of the people are at least partially based on real D.C. individuals who we all know”—he felt compelled to show intelligence officials, and they nixed some as too lifelike. And the part about getting rid of a president? MacKinnon recalls boozy talk during his Pentagon days about sidelining President Clinton. Despite his pedigree, the book takes on both political camps, which may explain the bipartisan lineup of those crowing about it, like former Sen. Bob Dole and James Carville.
A belated post, in which we learn that the enemy of my enemy is probably just another enemy…
Sorry so long between posts. I was so busy putting up my Barak Obama posters and my Kucinich action figures that I simply haven’t gotten around to it. Those Dems, they will save us. Just look at how they bravely stood up against the nomination of Robert Gates. See, this shows how sloppy my thinking has been. My view was that this Dem victory was the most likely way to stage a sort of CIA “counter-coup” or “palace coup” that would consist, depending on how you look at it, of a return to power of the older guard establishment or simply a public relations stunt to indicate a shift in power when no shift of importance actually took place. (In other words, the enemy of my enemy might not even be an enemy of my enemy. Or something like that.)
But the Dems have proven me wrong, here. Gates was career CIA, so it makes sense that, if my speculation was correct, the CIA faction would want him to take over for Rumsfeld. But since the Dems were so vocal in their opposition to the Gates nomination and so united in voting against his appointment as Secretary of Defense, this shows my thinking must have been completely wrong. See, I had viewed the Dem establishment as part of this counter-coup, in which political parties simply don’t matter. In any event, it’s clear that….
….sorry….
….wait just a moment, I’m getting a transmission….
….what the hell?
Well fuck me with a rusty spatula….Gates was approved 95-2? The only dissenting votes were from Republicans?
Dems Win! Neocons flee for their lives! War Ends! Poverty Ceases!
Sorry to have been so long between posts. I’ve been quite busy, for good reasons but not reasons interesting enough to go into here. Oh, I could make something up and say that I’ve been on the run after having been poisoned for my tireless efforts to expose the truth, but then that wouldn’t give Mike Ruppert anything to say, now would it? Ruppert, if you recall, is one of the primary popularizers of the “Peak Oil” idea, the idea that world events and even oil prices are best explained by the closely guarded secret that we are running out of oil and not that oil companies are run by manipulative and greedy buggers who seem to have a lot of access into places like the White House. This post isn’t about Ruppert, though I do find it weird that he never explained why he fled to Venezuela, of all places, which is surely due for another US sponsored coup attempt sometime soon. I mean, isn’t that a little odd? Ruppert preaches the end of oil and then heads to a country which continually offers free and low priced oil to poorer countries due to an abundance of supply? Anyone else find that odd? By the way, I know you’ll find this stunning, but it turns out that oil companies such as Shell are deliberately taking refineries off line in order to artificially crimp supply. Because you remember your economics, don’t you? Decreased supply (or even the perception of decreased suppply) leads to what? Anyone? Anyone? Increased prices. And increased prices leads to what? Anyone? Anyone? Obscene and immoral profits by the oil companies.
Enough about Ruppert. If any of his rabidly loyal fans find their way here, don’t waste your time arguing with me about the man. Just take out your check book and keep sending him more money so he can get his cloudy urine cleared up. If you want to ask what he was up to in Venezuela, that’s up to you. But you won’t. And even if you did, he won’t tell you.
Last time I wrote, I was rambling in my paranoid style about the upcoming elections, and suggested I would go vote for a local Dem for Senate for a couple of prosaic reasons. Well, if you go read my last post, you can just stop right there. I didn’t even get THAT part right. See, I was unable to vote. I went twice to my local polling station, but both times the line was so long and so immobile that I knew I wouldn’t be able to get in and out in less than an hour, which was all the time I had both times. The woman at the Starbucks across the street told me that people were saying there weren’t enough voting machines there and that calls to have more sent were not returned. Now I haven’t confirmed that, because frankly I don’t care why it happened. Or more accurately, I don’t care what the particular method of disenfranchisement actually was. People got screwed out of voting, though somehow that didn’t really become much of a news story around here.
But the most amazing thing happened. Despite the local Dem losing here in Tennessee, the Dems managed to gain a majority in both houses. This is great news, because if you read much of the alleged political analysis coming from the alleged left, you’ll note that the reason we are fighting this war in Iraq is because of “neocons” who somehow managed to take over the country. Well, howdya like THAT, neocons? You got your asses kicked and now just sit back and watch. The Dems are gonna withdraw those troops from Iraq post haste. They are gonna clean up corruption and fraud and waste and a new era of democracy, justice and economic liberation is at hand!
There are two elements in this little political drama that are worth following. One is the idea that people actually believe the last paragraph and that somehow the Dems are free from the corporate control that is so obvious on the Republican side. Frankly, I don’t have the stomach even to get into that argument. But more in keeping with the theme of my posts thus far on this blog, I’m tracking another phenomenon…and it won’t surprise you what it is.
Rubicon Tuesday?
Elections tomorrow. I’ll be voting primarily to see if electoral procedures have gotten even worse and also to vote against one of those “Don’t let the queers marry” propositions here in Tennessee. I’ll also probably vote for Harold Ford, despite his attempts to sound more Republican than the Republicans, primarily out of respect for the network of African-American activists who support him.
But this post isn’t about how I’m going to vote…it’s about the military telling us how to vote. The military…all four branches evidently…have decided to call publicly for Rumsfeld to be fired. Now, I know, I know…it’s hard for many people to get past the “but I don’t like Rumsfeld EITHER…” thing.
Maybe I should remind you of something. I know it seems like a cheap shot…but it’s true: it’s the military, not Rumsfeld, who runs Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay…not Rumsfeld. Should we not be at least a LITTLE skeptical about their overt attempts to shape civilian government? I’ll repost a couple of articles. The first is an article previewing a joint military statement forthcoming in Army Times regarding Rumsfeld and the second is a post from a writer at Daily Kos suggesting that not only is this statement about, well…making a statement, but it implies that the military are quite willing to back it up. Which is pretty much what I’ve been saying since I started this blog. The difference, of course, is that once again, we have a writer telling us that military intervention in our civilian government is a good thing.
I’d also remind you that even AFTER Caesar crossed the Rubicon River and had himself declared dictator, the formal institutions of the Republic continued to operate. The Senate still met and still voted on matters of state. However, the precedent was set and it was clear where the power really lay. Might be worth dragging out your old history books and refreshing your memories.
