The Downfall of
Optical America
The Downfall of
Optical America
YOWUSA.COM, September 18, 2000
An Editorial by Marshall Masters
Our world economies are reeling as oil prices continue to skyrocket as tensions in the Middle East, the primary source of the world's oil, continue to mount. Those who tell us that our world economy possesses the inherent strength to cope with another oil crisis and the resulting wars are playing an optical game designed to mask the real facts that lie just below the veneer. Should the current tensions between Iraq and Kuwait or those between the PLO and Israel spill over into war, our optical civilization will fall like a house of cards and if the unthinkable really does happen, what will happen to us - the little people?
The Not So Obvious Signs
When we go the filling station, the prices tell us that there is a new economic trend and something is happening. We've had problems like this in the past, and we later came to learn that they had usually resulted from a false crisis engineered for political and monetary gain. But this time is different, because the shortage of oil boils down to the pure economic equation of supply and demand. On a worldwide basis, the production of oil is higher than it has ever been for the last twenty years and yet this supply simply isn't enough to supply the energy demands of a world with more than 6 billion souls and counting.
During WWII, Hitler's war machine ground to halt because of fuel shortages. Had the Nazi's possessed sufficient fuel reserves during the Battle of The Bulge, they could have prolonged the war long enough to regain mastery of their airspace with their advanced jet fighters and to deploy weapons of mass destruction.
At the end of the war, the allies were amazed to find that war manufacturing machine had moved underground where it had continued build prodigious amounts of weaponry, despite the fact that Germany's cities had been bombed into heaps of rubble. In the end, the Nazi's lost the war and their 1000 year Reich fell, but for several other reasons beside a shortage of fuel and this is the point of this article. The collapse of a civilization results from an unbroken chain of seemingly unrelated events that cumulatively cause it to collapse like a house of cards.
We all know what our house of cards looks like from the outside, but what does it look like from the inside? When we look at it from that perspective, we can see the weakest points and surmise what will happen should a sufficient number of those of those weak points fail. These failure points are often subtle and so we must look at them with an unfiltered mind that is open to alternate realities besides those we've come to expect.
For example, if you live in a newer neighborhood walk around a bit, and take note of the many cul-de-sacs. If civil order breaks down, and the government needs to land helicopters in your neighborhood, the cul-de-sac is an ideal landing zone. This because the dimensions of cul-de-sac a helicopter landing pad make it a perfect landing zone for a UH-60 Black Hawk to touch down. The obvious reason is of course a humanitarian one, such as airlifting accident victims.
However, the very same cul-de-sacs could also be used air mobile Justice Department SWAT teams or U.N. Peacekeepers to collect law-abiding citizens who happen to fit an arbitrary "enemy of the state" profile for transport to a Federal interment camp. This couldn't happen -- right?
It has. Ask the surviving law-abiding Japanese American's who just happened to live on the West Coast of the USA at the outbreak of WWII. Anything is possible!
So if the unthinkable is to happen, what triggering event will set things off?
Global Catastrophic Triggers
Scientists are now finding evidence that severe climatic changes brought on the Dark Ages, and as a result of WWI, the 20th Century became known as the "American Century." In both cases, a great deal of suffering concluded with a substantial shift of power.
During "normal" times, most of the world's problems can either be contained or mediated through diplomatic channels. However, a global catastrophe is an event of such immense proportion and duration that it will cause a prolonged period of suffering and bring about a fundamental change in the balance of power throughout the world. Any number of triggers can set off a global catastrophe to include natural event such as an impact event or global warming, and man-made events such as war. Are we in imminent danger from one of these trigger events? Let's see what the experts tell us.
Near Earth Objects (NEO) Present Heightened Danger
In the last year, an unusually larger number of first time NEO sightings has been made, and this has the experts concerned.
BBC News, September 16, 2000
Asteroids 'threaten' Earth
Experts are to tell the UK Government that more must be done to defend the Earth from the threat of rocks crashing onto the planet from outer space.
A task-force established to assess the threat of the Earth being struck by so-called "Near Earth Objects" (Neo's) will say that the threat from space is not science fiction but something that should be taken seriously.
Our planet is mostly water, so assuming that a ½ mile wide asteroid impacted occurred in the Pacific Ocean what would happen. The resulting tidal waves would destroy the industrial might of many emerging Pacific Rim economies such as Taiwan.
To give you a small idea of how this event impacted the US, when Taiwan suffered its huge earthquakes its RAM Memory production facilities (the memory used by our PC's and laptops) were shut down thereby removing less than 5% of the world's total RAM Memory from the marketplace. Yet, the retail price of RAM Memory for PCs in the US almost tripled in matter of day.
Consequently, memory manufacturers, distributors and retailers were able to gouge American consumers during what proved to be a short-term windfall. In time, Taiwan's RAM Memory production lines went back online and prices settled down to their pre-quake lows. Had Taiwan been leveled by the quake, the impact would have been far reaching and would have lasted much longer. But this is just one isolated instance.
An Impact Event Crashes The Stock Market
Recently, a newly discovered asteroid, 2000 RD53, passed the Earth at a distance of just 12 times further away than the Moon. Estimated to be 980 - 1300 ft across, an asteroid the size of 2000 RD53 would cause immense devastation if it were to hit our planet.
If a NEO ¼ mile in diameter such as 2000 RD53 hit in the Western Pacific, the tsunamis resulting from the impact would devastate the computer production capabilities of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore the immediate effect on the US would be chilling.
America's service-based economy is driven by our new information age emphasis on computer automation. Yet, we are highly dependent on Pacific Rim countries for the inexpensive PC hardware that is fueling our expansion because we've methodically exported much of our PC manufacturing offshore.
But there is more to this disaster.
The impact event would send a huge tidal wave into the San Francisco bay area. After crushing Hawii under a wall of water, it would violently push its way past the Golden Gate Bridge, and smash into the Oakland docks and refineries first and carry oil and chemical wastes down through bay into the heart of Silicon Valley.
While the Silicon Valley is no longer a major manufacturing center for commodity PCs, it is the Mecca of the computer industry for software development and custom manufacturing.
Even if the valley survived the wave, it would become an uninhabitable chemical cesspool, as the highly toxic chemicals used to produce silicon chips co-mingled with the chemicals washed down into the southern end of the San Francisco bay from the refineries and chemical plants in the greater Oakland area.
The information age that has driven our prosperity would collapse overnight, and the government would have to step in and halt trading. Still the same, tech stocks will plummet like a sinking ship, leading us into another market crash similar to the one that happened in 1929. But this would only be the beginning.
Northern California boasts the highest property values in the US, and the typical three-bedroom house in the Silicon Valley area is selling for $500,000 (if you can find one.) The shear volume of property damage from a catastrophe such as this would bankrupt many leading insurance companies worldwide. But they will not be alone.
Lending institutions across the US and the world have invested heavily in this area, and the amount of mortgage debt is staggering. With the Silicon Valley in ruins, surviving technocrats will go from the relief lines to the bankruptcy court in staggering numbers. The result will be a devastating loss for mortgage holders and many reputable lending firms will themselves be forced into bankruptcy. If the US government steps in to bail them out like it did during the S&L scandal, the American taxpayers will have to absorb a huge loss, but not with a budget surplus because there will be no budget surplus.
With its tax base severely impacted, the US will have to go into the money markets for capital which in turn will cause a double digit inflation that will stymie the ability of small American companies (the bulk of our economy) to borrow working capital at less than usurious rates. The result will be mass layoffs and rampant unemployment.
As the old saying goes, "all roads lead to Rome." In terms of the global economy, all roads lead to the US and with the US in a deep economic depression, other industrial nations states will watch their hard earned gains melt away like tears in the rain as fascists and tyrants move to seize the opportunities presented by an economically wounded world economy.
Crop Failures Trigger Famine and Unrest
For decades, scientists debated whether global warming really existed. Now, they have finally agreed that it is happening with two exceptions: Who is responsible, and how quickly it is happening.
Some scientists put the blame entirely at the feet of mankind. Others see a broader picture where mankind is responsible in part, but that the real engine of global warming is the Sun. Given the increased activity of the Sun with unprecedented numbers of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) in recent times, the evidence weighs in favor of the latter and not the former. While we may be able to alleviate the effects of global warming the fact is that we are at the mercy of our Sun, which is unusually violent now.
Either way, that brings us to the question of how much and how soon? In this regards, scientists from both sides of the debate are equally baffled because Earth Changes are happening far more quickly than expected. The Earth, it its on inimitable way, is doing something the scientist's computers can neither accurately model nor forecast.
YOWUSA.COM, September 5, 2000
Cries of Nature, The Signs of Global Warming
The Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit environmental and consumer watchdog organization that released a report in October 1999 titled, "Flirting With Disaster: Global Warming and the Rising Costs of Extreme Weather". This report provides some exemplary facts in recent history on the damage caused by severe weather. The PIRG report found that Americans suffered 455 deaths and nearly $25 billion in economic loss due to extreme weather across the country in 1998.
Among the other findings within the report were:
·Extreme weather in the United States caused more than $10 billion in insured loss and required more than $9.3 billion in federal disaster aid.
·The average number of weather-related disaster declarations has more than doubled in the past two decades. There were 63 weather-related disaster declarations in 1998 and 47 in 1999 at the time of publishing. This exceeded the average of 21.7 declarations per year during the 1980s.
·There were nearly 44,000 deaths and $90 billion in economic losses worldwide in 1998 due to extreme weather.
While approximately 2,000 storms rage across our planet at any given time, extreme weather events are escalating in both frequency and severity. The balance of all biological species including us depends upon the climatic system being relatively stable. Many species survive and depend upon the temperature at each end of the scale. Therefore, given the dramatic climatic oscillations we are currently witnessing, the behavior and survival rates of the upper and lower boundaries of species will alter. Most predictions of these alternations are not favorable to the affected species or other species dependent upon them.
As weather patterns change the number of reports we see on the evening news about crop failures is on the increase. What many scientists are not addressing is the consequence of negative feedback loops, because they typically study narrow aspect at a time. However, negative feedback loops cut across fields of study.
Simply put, a negative feedback loop is a catastrophe that feeds on itself with ever-increasing rapidity. For example, the bare rock of mountain ranges in Antarctica are now seeing the light of day for the first time in tens of thousands of years. Without the snow cover to reflect the sunlight, the barren rocks turn into heat sinks that hold in heat, which in turn serves to intensify the snowmelt.
The point to consider here is that global warming is not a linear event where things slowly and surely turn for the worse. Rather, global warming is destroying arable farmlands and fresh water reservoirs at a geometric rate, which will compress the time line towards global disaster for the 6 billion people on this planet who, many of whom are already dying of famine and thirst.
If present trends continue, people will leave their barren homelands and overrun neighboring countries in their search for food, water, medical treatment and opportunity. This will drain resources from the industrial nations of the world who will expend tremendous amounts of money to stave off the destabilizing effects of mass migrations on friendly third-world nations.
Even as the world's growing hunger drains the wealth of industrial nations, the specter of war will raise its ugly head because hungry people are desperate people, and desperate people do desperate things. We will become the "have's" and they will be the desperate "have nots." Or as the old truism tells us, "war is about bread and potatoes."
The most likely result of this trend will be the resumption of the draft as the US Government will no longer be able to meet the payroll of all-volunteer services, and will instead fill the ranks with low paid draftees. As was the case in Vietnam conflict, many of these draftees will be from economically disadvantaged minorities, while affluent draft eligible young men sidestep their responsibility in much the same way President Clinton once did.
Meanwhile life for the folks at home will not be pleasant either. The cost of food will skyrocket and as supplies of mainstays such as beef and butter become more difficult to produce, the government will implement food rationing similar to that used during WWII.
For organized crime rationing and the food shortage will become an economic windfall and the nightly news reports will tell us about shootouts between black marketers and Federal agents, and the hijacking of trucks loaded with food stuffs and produce will become commonplace. As things become worse, armed security guards will protect working farms instructed to shoot first and ask questions later.
During our economic boom, many American's have lost the knowledge of gardening and farming but they will relearn their skills the hard way and do what they can with whatever water is available to them. A common sight will be rain barrels set against the house to catch the run off from occasional rains and power saving solar water heaters bolted to the rooftops. Another common sight will be grandpa sitting under a tree next to the garden with a shotgun in his hands, as a warning to those bold enough to believe they can poach what they need rather than to grow it themselves.
As the weather becomes more hostile to human life, less resilient species will begin to die off and the nightly news reports will show ocean beaches chocked with the decaying bodies of dead and dying fish as coastal fisheries begin to collapse thereby pushing the food crisis to even higher proportions.
Pressed by high taxes on one side and high food and water costs on the other, American families will begin to do without the little luxuries that make modern life comfortable and many manufacturing firms and retail stores will fail as customers face an ever-tightening money crunch. The result will be a deep and prolonged recession for a country and its credit-driven consumer society.
As the climate continues to warm, the demand for energy will soar as everyone seeks the cool relief of air conditioning, which in turn will cause widespread power brownouts and blackouts. And this is not a far off trend. Recent high temperatures have caught the recently deregulated California power industry off-guard.
This summer, residents of San Diego began paying twice as much for their electricity and residents of the Silicon Valley area in Northern California have been warned of planned power outages because the state's power generating plants are operating at 95% of their capacity.
With the promise of high paying jobs, California is presently seeing a huge influx of new residents as people from across the world flock to California's lucrative job market. Yet, the construction of new power plants to meet these new demands is torpid at best and the prospect of rolling power blackouts (used to reduce overall peak demands) will most likely begin with the summer of 2001. Some experts predict that similar shortages and expenses will begin to affect other parts of the country as well.
In other nations where the price of energy and rising temperatures leave people will little if any relief from the heat, tempers will flare and civil unrest will become commonplace as potable water becomes the most expensive component of family budgets. In time, governments will be forced to go to war with each other for water rights and access to fresh water sources, or loose control to the thirsty mobs rioting in front of their government buildings. But other countries will not wait for the doors of their offices to be pounded down by angry citizens. Seeing the future as clearly as this article, they may choose to head off civil unrest with preemptory military strikes.
The Specter of War
Relations between Russia and America are tenuous at best. With the issue of the Kursk disaster hanging over his heat, the Russians asked to be allowed to inspect the hulls of the two US subs on station in the near vicinity of the Kursk at the time of its sinking. The request was flatly denied.
The Times of India, September 18, 2000
US sub may have caused Kursk tragedy: Experts
MOSCOW: The Russian defence ministry said on Saturday that the theory of a US submarine clashing with the fated Kursk was strengthened by Washington's refusal to allow a Russian inspection of two US submarines.
US defense secretary William Cohen's rejection of the request from his Russian counterpart Igor Sergeyev "only strengthened the case that the Kursk clashed with another underwater vessel," the defense ministry told Interfax.
Cohen refused the inspection request explaining that "he did not think it was important or appropriate for the inspection to take place," a Pentagon official told ITAR-Tass on condition of anonymity.
While the Russians are using the American refusal to inspect U.S. Navy submarines for possible hull damage from a collision with the doomed Kursk to cast suspicions on America, they simultaneously violate U.N. sanctions regarding air travel to Iraq, (an old nemesis of America) for a second time.
Associated Press, September 17, 2000
Russian Oil Experts in Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Russian oil experts landed Sunday in Baghdad aboard a flight apparently meant to test a U.N. Security Council that is divided on just what sorts of flights into Iraq are acceptable under sanctions imposed on Iraq since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Eleven oil experts; seven crewmembers and some medicines were aboard the YAK-42 that arrived at Saddam International Airport directly from Moscow, according to Iraqi and Russian media reports.
U.N. approval can be secured for humanitarian flights into Iraq, but the U.N. sanctions committee maintains flights of commercial benefit to Iraq violate a U.N. trade embargo.
Neither the Iraqis nor the Russians said whether Sunday's flight had U.N. approval.
With the price of crude oil is now $33 a barrel, and OPEC members are raking in a huge windfall of oil dollars. But can we really protect these vital oil fields from another invasion?
Our Optical Military
At present readiness levels, America simply does not posses the ability wage war as it did during Desert Storm. Without the advantage of overwhelming force, American forces would sustain heavy losses and Saddam knows this.
The current administration is giving America the optical illusion that our armed forces are well trained, highly motivated and properly equipped. But what do the committed line commanders of the Army think. Noted military expert, David H. Hackworth, has published this letter from Captain Wilcox last month as to why he has chosen to resign from Clinton's optical Army. It gives us a much clearer picture of the actual state of our military.
© 2000 David H. Hackworth
Distributed by King Features Syndicate Inc.
