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GAIA Host Collective
http://www.energybulletin.net/docs/EnergyTrendsAndTheirImplicationsForUSArmyInstallations.pdf
I work for a major defense contractor, with both Army and Air Force contracts, and knew the writing was on the wall for me when this was posted. Of course, to listen to the management and, sadly enough, most of the people I work with, "the future's so bright, we have to wear shades"...
However, existing programs are just now starting to be "restructured" (can you say cut?) and a certain amount of uneasiness is becoming evident. This causes me to feel both anger and sadness-- I have been followng Peak Oil for maybe 18 months or so, and only because I like to pay attention to what's going on in the world. Why aren't more of the bright, well-educated people I work with ready for this? Then I look at the most oblivious ones, and it seems like they're the nicest ones I know-- young engineers just starting families and previously savvy "old-timers" looking forward to a guaranteed retirement involving spoiling their grandkids. However monstrous the organization is, the military-industrial complex employs a lot of bright, kind and good-hearted people that are going to suffer along with the rest of us.
But if true - and it sure looks legit - I cannot understand why it's not on the front page of every paper and the subject of the most heated discussion. Instead, we hear nothing in the MSM. It seems like we must be living in some sort of Alice in Wonderland time period.
But whether the mainstream in the military really act on it is something else. Despite that global warming report, we aren't doing much about it.
No direct quarrterly numbers to meet will do that for ya.
And a broad mandate of 'protection' lets 'em.
They are worried about the reacation of other huamn beings to the changes that are a-comming.
Note that it is not the generals who screwed up the Vietnam war, it was their civilian superiors. President Eisenhower was smart enough not to touch Vietnam with a ten-foot pole (and seriously pissed off the French by not coming to their rescue at Dien Bien Phu in 1954), but "smart Harvard lawyer" JFK and his McNamara/bean-counter Sec. of Defense and the Dean Rusk brain trust of lawyers got us into what was a disaster and quagmire ten times worse than Iraq.
Before invading Iraq, the highest-ranking Army guy
says, "Hey it is going to take 400,000 American troops to do the job," and so the politocoes force him out because that is not the Gospel accoding to the straight-shooting;-) Cheney and Co., guys who truly are ignorant of military history. I cannot figure out Rumsfeld, who actually served in the military, how he can have said and done the stupid things he has. It is a big puzzle to me. And how could he not have had the honor to resign after the revalations of mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners? This is a BNG, Big National Disgrace. Also, why did not Bush have the guts to fire Rummy? Misplaced loyalty? The conventional wisdom is that Bush is dumber than spit and merely a puppet dancing on strings pulled by the Big Money Boys, but I do not think this is the whole story, and I think it will probably take historians fifty or a hundred years to figure out an accurate account of what is actually happening now.
Some days, I'd love to resign and spend more time with my family. Can't afford it.
Bush is not stupid, but IMO he is willingly being handled by some really sharp, calculating characters that are in every way a lot smarter and better informed than him. It saddens me, but a lot of people I know, members of my family, see nothing wrong with what the US has done at Gitmo or Abu Ghuraib. I think their sense of immunity is sort-sighted.
Kennedy's knifefighter instincts were perfectly suitable to running a PT boat, and he no doubt would have made a wonderfull privateer captain, but if you want to fight a land war in Asia you have to understand farmers.
1. Do not become involved in a land war on the Asian land mass.
2. Do not become involved in a land war on the Asian land mass.
3. Do not become involved in a land war on the Asian land mass.
IMO JFK was an ignorant and arrogant a-hole who tried (egged on by little brother Bobby) to kill Castro at least six times, enthusistically did the dumbest things imaginable, damn near got us into World War III through really stupid mistakes, bungled the Bay of Pigs Invasion bigtime, was the only U.S. president ever to use full-time the services of a high-class pimp, and was so addicted to drugs that he had a hard time reading his speeches.
His image and the whole Camelot thing was a total fantasy created by spin doctors and fawning journalists. IMO he bears most of the problem for us getting inot the Vietnam fiasco.
God rot his soul in hell.
And by the time we got out, we could brush our teeth, swim, read , and feel good about being able to do at least something.
My father, who saw heavy action in both big wars, told me the first thing to do in a real fight was to shoot all the peacetime parade ground tyrants because they were the ones that would get you dead. Too bad that hasn't been done in DC.