The Oil Drum | DrumBeat: July 29, 2006

232 comments on DrumBeat: July 29, 2006

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Oilrig medic on July 29, 2006 - 9:42am

The picture being painted is an inkblot. What do you see?

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Twilight on July 29, 2006 - 10:29am

I see the opposite of whatever you see! :-) Where ya been?

I see the coming of war, as the US tries to assert hegemony and the world resists. I see nations with oil asserting new power, and the US and its allies fighting back.

I see the failing of an Empire, and the coming conflicts that this will involve.

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Oilrig medic on July 29, 2006 - 11:41am

I forget the name of the book but it was written by to chinese generals in the 90's about how to bring down the US through unconventional warfare (by encouraging third party small states to engage/challenge us) and a repeated cold war expressed through korea. At the same time they said to keep trade relations and destroy our economy through mercantilism. I'll post it later but need to llok on my shelf. I have been in the process of moving to brasil. After what happened to my fiance she won't live here.

I see the same thing but still see korea/iran as the problem.

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Nate Hagens on July 29, 2006 - 11:50am

id like to know the title of that book, thanks. what happened to your fiance? Are you Brazilian?

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Oilrig medic on July 29, 2006 - 12:04pm

No way I am a redneck (ask cherenkov) from tennessee, I work in GOMEX as a medic, but I get a paid flight to and from anywhere so I am moving to Brasil. My best friend from paramedic school introduced me to his sister a few years back and she is getting her phd in political science at Unicamp near Sao Paulo. So that is how I ended up there.

Last time I flew her up she was interrogated for four hours and they tore a page from her diary and had her strip searched and made her cry. Long story but she had all her documents and no contraband and was still treated that way. So she is a bit anti american. Odd couple if you know me.

Here is the book it is on amazon, hard to call it a conspiracy theory since it was written a few years back but a lot of things click when you read it. At the same time though we use similar methods to cajole foreign powers.
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30. Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America
by Qiao Liang, Wang Xiangsui

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Nate Hagens on July 29, 2006 - 12:14pm

you might be better off in Brazil. They make better ethanol than we do and also have crazy Carnivale parties that make New Orleans look like catholic school. good luck.

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Twilight on July 29, 2006 - 12:15pm

I have confidence she'll bring you around eventually!

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joule on July 29, 2006 - 3:23pm

Oilrig Medic -

It both saddens and angers me to learn of yet another example in which someone arriving in the US is bullied by police-state thugs that pose as airport screeners. The way your fiancee was treated makes me ashamed to be an American, something I never thought I would be saying as recently as only a few years ago.

The irony is that Brazil does not exactly enjoy a reputation for being a paragon of liberty and freedom, and if your finacee finds America repressive in comparison, then that speaks volumes about where this country is headed.

Good luck on your move to Brazil. (If I were younger, I'd seriously consider getting out of Dodge myself.)

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canbrit on July 29, 2006 - 4:09pm

The USA has always behaved like this...

In 1975... having spent 5 years increasingly growing to love American literature & music... I decided I would like to spend 3 months travelling to "all those places" I was reading/ hearing about... so I saved up, quit my job... and was refused a visa in London... "If you don't have a job how do we know you will return from our wonderful country?"

No matter that Mexicans were walking over the border in their thousands (even back then)

So I flew to Canada and ended up getting a US visa in Winnipeg in 5 minutes...crossed over at Vancouver on a Greyhound without even being checked and ended up hitchhiking the length & breadth of USA...

Five years later in 1980 visa restrictions were lifted... so I decided to repeat the exercise... this time I was interrogated at JFK... had my diary & address book scanned... Spent 6 wonderful weeks delivering cars with DriveAway...

But after two bad experiences with US bureaucracy ...I didn't return to the good ol'US of A for another 20 years

( Sorry...not really PO... just an opportunity to vent!!)

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fleam on July 29, 2006 - 4:09pm

I think this "welling up from below" stuff is what kills Empires. The "Working independently together" method was espoused by the various US militias in the 1990s and it worked - as awful as his act was, Timothy McVeigh pointed out that if the US internal police forces kept shooting kids, stomping cats to death, terrorizing old people, killing more kids, shooting babes in arms, etc then unpredictable independent operators such as him would make 'em hurt. And he did. His awful act did have the effect of causing the US's internal forces, use of which against the US population was ramping up to a frightening degree, to sit back and reconsider. Other than Waco, McVeigh, etc themselves, the biggest thing that percolated through the media to the proles was a lot of noise about the "militias", first making them out to be scary and then quickly changing to ridiculing them as a bunch of fat old men running around in the woods, since gov't/militia skirmishes were over (the point had been proven and the gov't didn't feel it would win an all-out war with the populace) and the idea was to make militias sound silly and hope they'd disband. Many have, the militia movement has reallly died down, but it's reasy to rise up in a second if needed - this is the lesson the US gov't learned.

Not too long after this, the attention was turned to foreigners, especially those handy ay-rabs, and of course 9-11 gave everyone some bad guys to pay attention to.

Someone posted in another thread, there was a comparison being made between how the collapse of Rome went and how it might go for the US, and they said before there's actual starvation, what really happens is you come to hate your country. By this I think they mean not only literally hating your country, easy to do if your country is the US, but that by hating your country you're willing to leave it, live low enough on the energy scale to be untaxable, etc. (Living low on the energy/income scale enough that you're not taxable is the method advocated by That Guy Who Wrote The Book "Radical Simplicity". I think it's a noble method and the only one available to most of us. Most of us would leave the US if we could.)

You are smart, and fortunate, to leave the US. Your wife is right - she's had one taste of the Evil Empire and No More.

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Oilrig medic on July 29, 2006 - 8:32pm

Luke Skywalker grew up wanting to be a pilot for the Imperial navy......

I am an american and I do not see us as an evil empire.

I want to fix things when they are broken.

I can only hope things go well...........

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fleam on July 30, 2006 - 12:02am

Luke Skywalker.... yes, good quote because movies are reality.

However, Geo. Washington did grow up wanting to be a British officer. I grew up wanting to be part of The System, working for HP or IBM, building fancier and shinier cogs for a bigger and better machine.

This is what happens when Empires go downhill, they get old and ugly and smelly and when they're not peeing on the carpet or eating the chickens, they're snarling and snapping at the 5 year old kid next door because he made eyes at the food bowl, and next thing you know anyone who gets in the way is getting bit and it's time to put the dangerous bugger down....

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step back on July 30, 2006 - 3:40am

I am an American and I do not see us as an evil empire.

Oilrig MD,

There is much that is good about America.
But which way are the weather-man vanes pointing?

Calling something a "Patriot Act" when on fact it is an Invasion of Rights play? That does not bode well. Talking about "No Child Left Behind" when you mean after the Rapture? That doesn't sound too kosher.

Something is wrong some place.

Did you see Alex Jones on C-SPAN?

Scary stuff if true. He claims the US Governement orchestrated 9/11 and not Bin Laden. Claims to have irrefutable proof.

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oaksmoke on July 30, 2006 - 8:02am

This is not a new claim. It is interesting that it appeared on CSPAN. I've believed the government was involved from the beginning. It was a very flawed plan. When you have the support of TPTB and the media you just ignore the obvious. The Bush administration has demonstrated their willingness to commit crimes over and over. They are guilty of war crimes and treason. Their energy policy is simply a means to make big oil rich. Our country is completely unprepared for peak oil. This scares me more than anything.

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step back on July 30, 2006 - 1:58pm

Our country is completely unprepared

Let's keep hoping Yergin is right, that we have 30 more years and that somewhere in this long era of "undulation" a light bulb goes off and the American populace wakes up and realizes the herd is a headin' for the cliff.

Git along. Go along lill' doggie. Yeeha. Rawhide.

(Right click on image & pick "View Image" for bigger view)

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ignorad on July 31, 2006 - 10:28pm

http://www.loosechange911.com/

now free on google video!

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Liz on August 1, 2006 - 1:36pm

The CSPAN broadcast of the Panel Discussion held on the second day of the conference which featured Webster Tarpley, Steven Jones, Bob Bowman, James Fetzer, & Alex Jones IS BEING RE-AIRED TUESDAY August 1st at 6:10pm EDT.

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Kevembuangga on July 30, 2006 - 12:37am

The way your fiancee was treated makes me ashamed to be an American,

DON'T!

Americans have other qualities and you better bear with the "negatives" because deeply ingrained cultural traits never go away.
Remember the early settlers were a mix of bigots and outlaws, from there you get :

- The righteousness of bigots.
- The ruthlessness of outlaws.
- The entrepreneurial mindset of migrants to a risky yet promising place.

You can't have it all good :-)

P.S. Just think what this kind of "stickyness" of behaviors (not only the ones above) mean with respect to the upcoming and quickly unfolding changes...

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sendoilplease on July 29, 2006 - 12:03pm

I too would like to know the title.

Back in March China threatened to sell US bonds if we didn't behave ourselves. And Baby Hugo is visiting Iran today... and he also made threats about cutting off oil imports to the US if we do not behave ourselves...

The West is losing Leverage everyday ... all because of Peak Energy and Matter. Fewer choices - harder rocks and hard places - claustrophobia is setting in for All Sides.

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fleam on July 29, 2006 - 4:15pm

The World was already pissed off at us enough before the Lebanon thing, now, if there's a pissed-offedness scale, we're probably doubled the reading.

I'm surprised Hugo and the rest haven't already dropped the hammer on us, but I think they know what they're doing - the idea is to kill the Beast without the Beast killing you in its death throes. They need to come up with an economic/resource/possible force of arms triple whammy that's very well thought out and well .... I have faith in 'em.

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oldhippie on July 29, 2006 - 9:24pm

Very astute.

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NeverLNG on July 29, 2006 - 3:04pm

the book "Unrestricted Warfare" -- reviewed in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrestricted_Warfare

It is hard to see how our government is combatting any of the modern threats in any but militaristic terms -- just as the book predicts.

Catastophic system failure seems almost guaranteed. Surely the smart folks in the defense and state departments can see this. Is all the warfare just a smokescreen and they are really working through secret back channels to defeat our enemies?

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TrueKaiser on July 29, 2006 - 3:51pm

i think the people in the defense department are blinded by their own arrogance.
they are so secure in the thinking that they are the top military in the world they cannot fathom anyone being able to do this.

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Bitteroldcoot on July 29, 2006 - 4:36pm

Don't stop by just saying "arrogance". Also add a huge serving of greed, superstition (My god is greater than your god), idiotic optimism and disdain for human life.

But you also have to remember that the DOD is like a giant chainsaw. It does exactly (and occasionally reluctantly) what the politicians tells it to do.

And I say this after 20 years as a DOD employee.

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Nate Hagens on July 29, 2006 - 4:57pm

no wonder youre a bitteroldcoot...:)

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Bitteroldcoot on July 29, 2006 - 5:06pm

yup!

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Prodigal Son on July 29, 2006 - 5:16pm

Have you read James' Carrol's new book House of War?

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Kevembuangga on July 30, 2006 - 1:19am

Catastophic system failure seems almost guaranteed.

Very likely.
The "smart folks in the defense and state department" are no match for ancient chinese strategies.
I did not read the book but the Wikipedia entry is explicit enough, this is very typical of the chinese approach.
The whole of China has been living thru more than 2 millenia of such struggles, since Warring States.
You may also consider that the publishing of this book IS part of the assault as a PsyOP and that it contains a calculated mix of truth and disinformation.
Aren't the authors colonels in the People's Liberation Army?
I doubt the military in China are allowed to go public as casually as in the US.
China has been done by westerners only with the help of technology which they underestimated, but now they are up to speed on technology.

Though, the various impending "Peaks" are throwing in a few aggravating factors for everyone, "interesting times" indeed.

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232 comments on DrumBeat: July 29, 2006

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