In a Pig's Eye

Listening to the Trees Turning

WHO COULD KNOW that a high-ranking and deeply connected official with the last three presidents of this country would talk like “Larry” Wilkerson? This person is getting pretty serious about warning people about the crisis afoot in government. If you take the time to listen to the linked speech he made and compare it to the press coverage received; it stands out like a red leafed sumac tree in a forest of evergreens just before fall weather.

Be a “fly on the wall” and listen in on them talking before Limbaugh mangles it.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson addressed a New America Foundation “brown bag” lunch crowd October 19, 2005 and carpet bombed the federal government with “daisy cutters” shredding “the cabal” with embarrassing disclosures and discrepancies on who or what is running the Pentagon’s lunatic asylum. He slams neo – conservative Douglas Feith as one of the stupidest men he had ever met which will make Wilkerson real popular with the nervous White House crowd of lying warmongers some who will most likely be indicted this week.

Wilkerson, the former chief of staff for then Secretary of State Colin Powell before, during and after the Iraq War, described the advisers around George Bush as a “cabal” including Vice President Richard Cheney as determined to go to the war out of “business interests.” Pay special attention to his preliminary remarks commenting on American history. He also repeatedly recommended during his opening prepared remarks George Packer’s book The Assassins' Gate to the crowd assembled which included reporters and commentators from newspapers and beltway think tanks. Press accounts of the Wilkerson speech and the eye – opening answers to questions at the end was touched on, but still spotty on the quotes.


LEFT MEDIA IS SHINING around Scott Ritter's new book Iraq Confidential and Goodman’s recent interview with him on Democracy Now burns brightly with a revealing inside account of weapon inspections leading up to the Iraq War!

Did you know that during Wilkerson’s speech mentioned above that he referred to last week’s Frontline on PBS which made a good case that the abuse and torture of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan was not only common place, but easily tracked as a policy coming directly from above – throughout the Bush Administration. If you missed the program, good news, you can watch the complete program online at the link embedded above.

FAREED ZAKARIA who writes and produces the PBS news magazine, Foreign Exchange had two energy policy analysts from large companies discussing the price of oil and gasoline as it spirals upward. Investment banker Fadel Gheit from Oppenheimer & Co. stupidly described possible future international oil market prices as “higher highs and higher lows” which means Gheit had absolutely no care to communicate with the unwashed working people watching this show. He works for corporate pigs helping corporate pigs and icily sat in his chair with a zombie like trance throughout the interview.

Zakaria is a great editor and presents an important show for the consuming brains of the distracted and delusional American audiences, but more spice is needed – like Matthew Simmons who recently warned of $160 – 190 per barrel prices during this winter, and wrote the only book Twilight in the Desert to honestly describe the cooked projections of reserve oil books and geological data from the sea flooded oil wells in Saudi Arabia – where Peak Oil may later prove to have already started it’s worldwide decline. Of course, Simmons is a Texas based energy investment banker and an American, who might not fit in the format for the program, which endeavors to present international viewpoints for an American television herd that speaks gutturally of “foreigners” and belches hatred of the United Nations with every opportunity.

BEFORE HURRICANE KATRINA AND RITA Simmons squeezed in something from an August 24th, 2005 interview on CNN: Lou Dobbs Tonight take it or leave it:

DOBBS: Bottom line, is the United States, in your
judgment, prepared for the oil shock that you foresee so clearly?

SIMMONS: No. I don't think the U.S. is. I don't
think the world is.
I think we have blissfully just assumed the Middle East
had effectively boundless amount of oil, it could be produced at almost -- at
the lowest achievable cost as long as there was stability in the Middle
East.

DOBBS: What should we do?

SIMMONS: We need to start preparing for the fact
that in all likelihood oil supply is reaching sustainable peak supply on a
global basis and start radically preparing a different economy that is less oil
intensive in its use, because we're not going to have any more.

Note that Simmons did not mean that oil is running out, the Dobb’s interview lasted no more than five minutes, and Simmons was running out of time. He has numerous times pointed out that the consumer prices were going to be so high for products that most people will not be able to afford them.

Do you think that many international energy investors are going to tell the general audiences that the crisis is already taking place? Even a sidebar on the Foreign Exchange program cited that companies had made over $7 trillion dollars in the last 30 years and that profits have been booming for the last years for OPEC. “Little people” paying rollercoaster prices with “higher lows” means mass misery for everything from fertilizer, food transportation, plastic production and medicine – in short nearly everything consumed in today’s modern world. “Post – modern” is going to have a totally new meaning in a few years.

Zakaria established quite a reputation immediately prior to the 911 disaster with his writing and editing of the international editions of Newsweek magazine. His essay, The Politics of Rage: Why Do They Hate Us? Recommended by the Boston Globe as “the most important” short piece to be read by every American. He did get some things dead on in that from Wilkerson’s point of view in his essay:

“Now we get to Israel. It is obviously one of the central and most charged
problems in the region. But it is a problem to which we cannot offer the Arab
world support for its solution--the extinction of the state. We cannot in any
way weaken our commitment to the existence and health of Israel. Similarly, we
cannot abandon our policy of containing Saddam Hussein. He is building weapons
of mass destruction.

However, we should not pursue mistaken policies simply out of spite.
Our policy toward Saddam is broken. We have no inspectors in Iraq, the sanctions
are--for whatever reason--starving Iraqis and he continues to build chemical and
biological weapons. There is a way to reorient our policy to focus our pressure
on Saddam and not his people, contain him militarily but not harm common Iraqis
economically. Colin Powell has been trying to do this; he should be given leeway
to try again. In time we will have to address the broader question of what to do
about Saddam, a question that, unfortunately, does not have an easy answer.
(Occupying Iraq, even if we could do it, does not seem a good idea in this
climate.)”

Well Fareed, like most of us, have little influence when it comes to cowboy corporate cronyism. Perhaps he could have tried to present another side to the oil story, from the “little peoples’” point of view – like say another PBS show did lately. Like say, maybe FRONTLINE/WORLD . Colombia - The Pipeline War – it’s “foreign” too!

HOW FAR WE HAVE TRAVELED ON THIS FAMILIAR ROAD?

“THE HORROR, THE HORROR …”

“Killing one of the men with a rifle round fired into the back of his head, they
doused the other with petrol and set him alight. Barefoot children, yelping in
delight, piled straw on to the screaming man's body to stoke the flames.”

The under – covered and barely mentioned story of an ambush, the killing and burning alive of four private contractors in Iraq last month right under the eyes and guns of U. S. soldiers makes one wonder just how deep can the Pentagon bury other important news stories in Baghdad’s Green Zone? Last year a similar incident drove armed forces there to surround and lay siege to a place called Fallujah and air bomb with napalm, invade with armored tank columns and sniper shoot civilian ambulances carrying wounded.