Journal of a Futurist 30 September 2008
THE CREDIT CRISIS AND THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS
On September 11, 2008 I received an “Impending Event Alert” from the Arlington Institute, an NGO that specializes in contemplating global futures and trying to influence rapid, positive change. On the whole it’s pretty straight, like its founder John L. Petersen, though this might be a disguise. His bio includes stints at the National War College, the Institute for National Security Studies, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Council staff at the White House. Petersen has long had an interest in “wild cards”, or high impact surprises, and his three week old email seems uncannily prescient.
“Here at the Arlington Institute, we have worked with real pre-cognizant dreamers who have had experience with intelligence services and we have subsequently learned about the hundreds of case studies of individuals who had explicit dreams about the 9/11 affair (people jumping out of burning high rise buildings, etc.), beginning some six months before the event. We have been intrigued with the notion that the human collective unconscious somehow anticipates large impending perturbations. Well, in the last two days I have received four independent, explicit indications from far removed friends suggesting that something very substantial and disruptive is going to happen to the U.S. within the next 60 days or so. If these warnings manifest themselves in an event of the significance of something like 9/11 then people all over the world should begin to experience dreams and other intuitions, suggesting that something extraordinary is about to happen. So I’m asking you to participate in an experiment with us. If you, or someone you know, experiences any kind of significant suggestion (dream, intuition, etc.) that something big and disruptive is about to happen in the coming weeks, send us a note and tell us about it. We’ll compile them all and see if we can find patterns or pointers toward an actual future event.” Here’s his email. dreams2008@arlingtoninstitute.org
Has the meltdown been foreshadowed in a million dreams? Last night as I drifted to bed, the mass media kept banging away about the “inevitability” of the Wall Street bail out being accepted, and how it’s all that’s left between prosperity and annihilation. On the edgier blogs, it was the opposite spiel. A gang of crooks fleecing the taxpayer, martial law imminent, links to protests on Wall Street, which were ignored on the news. Hard to know what to believe. “It is a final irony that the most conservative Republicans have voted down what they call an ‘un-American socialist measure’, writes Renate Ogilve. What socialism never managed is now becoming a new and astonishing capitalist phenomenon: nationalisation by default. History is not dead, it is alive and has a sense of humour.
THE MENACE OF RAMPAGING THIRD WORLD TEENS
Now we have three perilous events unfolding at once; the neo-colonial homicidal invasions, financial meltdown and the acceleration of global warming. Plus an idiot in the White House and two risky aspirants, a rookie and a war criminal. Why does dropping bombs on the Vietnamese qualify a man to be President? The US military have published heir latest Modernization Strategy (by Lieut Gen Stephen Speakes), which hails a future of "perpetual warfare”, one driven by a fear of "population growth in less developed countries which will expose a 'youth bulge'. "This will present the US with further "resource competition" as rampaging Third World teens "will consume ever increasing amounts of food, water and energy". The army’s strategy? A new, networked 'Future Force Warrior’, who will deploy among the target population and operate simultaneously several remote, unmanned ground and air weapons systems, such as the ones currently murdering women and children in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is a failed future scenario of business as usual, including the business of killing.
This is not a time to be led by Generals. This is a time to listen to the boundary riders, the ravers, the eco warriors, the planetary citizens, the poets, the innovators, the bridge builders… no matter how crazy eyed, out of fashion or ahead of the pack. Wild ideas can open minds in times of lies and confusion and debt. Here are two videos – one old, one new – which resonate with America’s honourable, long nourished spirit of freedom, adventure and – dare we say it ? - an awakening
Fatal Attraction
The Lives and Loves and Crimes
of Charles Sobhraj
8 July 2008
“Sometimes love seems to even melt solid prison bars” is how the Asian media is viewing Katmandu’s wedding of the year – the marriage of 20-year-old Nepalese interpreter, Nihita Biswas to the 64-year-old serial killer Charles Sobhaj, yet again behind bars. After floating around in Paris a free man, after his 1995 release from an Indian jail, Sobhraj grew restless. He flew to the one country in the world that still had him in its sights. Arrested at a Kathmandu casino in September 2003, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1975 murders of two travellers, Connie Jo Bronzich of California and Laurent Carriere of Manitoba,Canada.
The bride is reportedly unfazed by Sobhraj's age, previous brides to be or his criminal background. "I don't know what he was," she says. "What he is now is important. He is a good man. She is confident that Nepal's Supreme Court will acquit him. "Charles is innocent," she says. "There's no evidence against him."
Out West of Sydney where the air is clear and at night you see a billion stars, a long neighbourly Sunday luncheon was underway. A dozen guests; the view over the pink cliffs to the city reveals its brown stripe of polluted air. Toddlers play with crayons, the fire crackles (oh no, carbon emissions!), there is a vase of pink tulips factory grown and imported from across the world. Relaxed and comfortable, and yet as the conversation turns to oil decline, then “peak everything” and then, too much wine for sure, the shadow of Armageddon.
The guests are well informed, the sort that listen to the Science Show and read the broadsheets. To them, having moved West, the range of eco perils hitting the headlines have not come as a surprise. There was a subliminal mood of …“Maybe it's already too late”, as well as gung ho optimism. Chatter focused on the ways and means of working with the local community to adapt to the “times ahead”: edible gardens, solar greenhouses, long term food storage, public bicycles, co-housing … To my city friends, such talk sounds loopy.
In the din of all this brave green planning, a psychologist suddenly intervened: “You Australians are just playing around with the results of climate change”, she said, “you haven't mentioned guns or fences…” As a child raised in war wrecked East Germany, she recalled how city dwellers thronged to her rural town and stole anything portable, including vegetables, petrol, oil and bags of coal. “I admire the spirit of this lunch, she snorted, “but you are babies”. She has a point. Creating the resilient, self-sufficient off-the-grid communities we would need to survive if the oil runs out, itself remains a fantasy. Let alone dealing with the rampaging hordes. “You'd have to go a lot further out West than here”, someone said, “if you really wanted to feel safe”. The mood darkened.
The esteemed and cuddly climatologist, Tim Flannery, says the Arctic ice melt is now so rapid that soaring sea levels are inevitable and the best option is to “pump sulphur into the stratosphere”. This would filter the sun's rays, slow global warming and turn the sky yellow. He agrees the project is risky, but time is scarce. If the world's toxic emissions ceased at midnight, there remains enough greenhouse gas in the sky to create havoc. As one blogger put it: “Either we're fucked, or Tim Flannery has gone crazy-ape bonkers”.
THE DEVIL'S PERFUME
This is a legitimate response to our times. Don't you sometimes feel overwhelmed by the litany of plausible disasters? No? Perhaps you're living in denial. And the time will come when denial gives way to panic. Today's “crazy apes” are Idiot Savants with science degrees, sounding a series of alarms. "Everything is going in the wrong direction”, warns Flannery, “faster than predicted”. It's possible his remedy is worse than the disease. After all, sulphur is the Devil's perfume. The image of Boeing squadrons pumping yellow pellets into the heavens is not reassuring.
Yellow Pellet Peril
Jim Anderson
There is barely time to digest the latest threat, before a new one is announced, as in the “deadly double threat to our oceans” created by wild weather and chemical changes. Monitoring the disruptions to corals, krill and shellfish, scientists are now warning of “ocean acidification”, which threatens the survival of vital sea creatures, and thus the world's food supply. It's happening faster than anticipated. Flannery's mantra applies to an ever-widening range of events. Whether under the sea, high in the sky or in front of our nose, Everything is going in the wrong direction. Well, almost everything.
How did this happen? Let me count the ways. Nah, it would take too long. In the 13th Century, Japanese Zen master Dogen penned this cryptic insight: Coming, going, the waterfowl leaves not a trace. Nor does it need a guide. For humans, leaving a trace is what we live for. Until the industrial revolution, these traces were minimal, compared to the totality of Earth's abundance. As the era unfolded, with its dark satanic mills, coal pits, trains, ships and colonial conquests, vast disparities of wealth emerged, sparking both reform and bloody revolutions. Largely unnoticed, however, was the hidden, implacable, kamikazi agenda of industrialization that underlay its feverish wealth creation, which was - and remains - the domination of nature. This is the “central, indisputable project, the issue that encompasses all other issues” noted Guy Debord, back in 1963. He regarded the cannibalisation of the ecosystem as the “real adventure we have embarked on”. So much so, that half a century later the adventure seems to be climaxing in a warped Hollywood Western, with the cowboys prepared to destroy their own homestead - Earth - so long as they profit from plundering nature's bounty. Five countries are vying to tap the huge deposits of oil and gas that lie under the Arctic seabed, despite the consequences. The extraction and use of such fuel will hasten global warming and the melting of ice sheets. Scientists say the Arctic Ocean could be ice free in summer by 2010. The situation is critical, but most of us are too overloaded to concentrate. We're trying to get rich, get laid, get famous and/or to sink into an opiated oblivion, with the help of the military industrial media entertainment matrix . As with climate, so in culture, everything is moving in the wrong direction. Well, almost everything.
It's wonderful that Barack Obama wrested the Democratic nomination from Hillary Clinton, but in your heart of hearts, can you possible believe that one politican can monkey wrench the direction of America? The CIA won't miss a beat. The Lobbyists will still hold sway. The Pentagon will continue its export of death, destruction, depleted uranium, cluster bombs and criminal atrocities. Mainstream media boards and members of Congress will continue to profit financially from their association with arms traders. Whether in the slums of Sadr city, the mud brick compounds of Afghanistan, or even in the towns of its allies, the US air force will continue to bomb innocent civilians, regardless of world opinion or the rules of war. (The Pakistanis are right to call the pilots cowards). Predator drones remotely operated from bases in the US, strike perceived enemies wherever they lurk. Last week's SBS TV showed a grinning Predator pilot lining up on his screen a lone motorbike rider in Afghanistan, then blasting him to bits. His crime not revealed, his name not known. Once considered the illegal act of a scoundrel, assassinations are now something to boast about. My partner says that this is judgmental ranting, and she's right. I apologise. Let's move on.
The military might of the West adds massively to global warming. Since March 2003, according to this report 'A Climate of War' (pdf) the war in Iraq has pumped over 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and its equivalents into the atmosphere. Emissions generated by the war to date are equivalent to putting 25 million more cars on the road. While Barack Obama has pledged to spend $150 billion over 10 years to advance green energy tech, the US blows that much on Iraq every 10 months. In 2006, the US spent more on the this war than the whole world spent on investing in renewable energy. You get the picture. The military is supremely indifferent to its impact on the eco-system, and yet scientists remain silent on the army's contribution to climate shock. Sorry, no judgment. I suppose these cautious professionals toil in their own little cubicles, lips sealed, waiting for Bushism to disappear, hopefully before the ice caps do.
Keeping the Coal Fires Burning
AN AGE OF MATERIALISM GONE MAD
Obscene riches at one end of the scale, poverty for the world's majority and the rest grinding away in the disappearing middle. The former head of Australia's Macquarie Bank, Allen Moss retired last month with a final payout of $80million, of which $24.8 million was his annual bonus. In Britain, despite the credit crisis, bankers and their ilk have extracted a record £13 billion in bonuses this year. The rare protest is treated with scorn. A wealth cap? “Utter madness”. Plato said there “should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty or excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil”. Instead of public debate, what we get today are photo ops of billionaires donating laptops to children in Cambodia, etc. This is like a feudal lord's annual visit to the hovels on his estate, where he presents a bag of potato peelings.
The unquenchable ostentations of the super rich may be good for Armani, Maserati and yacht designers, but it thwarts the global goal of carbon neutrality. (Disclosure: I am partial to an Armani sale). Boomers fiddle around with their worm farms, discuss their carbon footprint and worry about their food miles over lazy weekend lunches, unaware that the soaring sales of Lear jets obliterate their efforts. Most citizens wish to emulate the Forbes Five Hundred lifestyle, than to expose it, and who can blame them/us. Desire is daily drummed into our heads.
Tra la la, along comes Hervé Kempf, the environmental editor of Le Monde, with his book, "How the Rich are Destroying the Planet." Kempf's believes that a “global stateless class composed of the hyper-rich is responsible for our species' headlong rush to environmental destruction, both indirectly, through the rest of society's attempts to imitate and emulate their wasteful habits, and directly, through their control of the levers of power, all presently set at "Catastrophe". You have to love the French. They make you think. Pass the Champagne. Let's have another revolution. Kempf argues that the ecological crisis and social crisis are two facets of the same disaster. And that this disaster is set in motion by a system of power that has no other end than the maintenance of the ruling classes' privileges”. No, he's an ecologist, not a Marxist. Don't expect the economic system to uplift the poor, he says, because it works in the opposite direction, by monopolising wealth and power at the expense of those who have the least. Think hedge funds, futures trading, merchant banks, arms trading; and think of over 4 million displaced Iraqis around the world, including some 2.2 million inside Iraq, many once middle class, now living in poverty or on miniscule handouts and/ or hideously wounded, scavenging in rubbish dumps. How can you not judge the Western politician perpetrators?
Kempf wants to "bring down the rich" rather than pull up the poor, in order to begin to “respect the thresholds of irreversible deterioration of the planet's resources”. An English language edition of the Kempf's book is due to be published in Britain, October 2008, but don't expect it to be serialised in Vanity Fair.
So having digested these warnings, have I become clinically depressed? Do I hit the streets with a sign,“The end is nigh”? Am I disheartened? Only sometimes.
In visits to University campuses, I've been enthralled by the zest and determination of the current crop of students, as they soak up the kind of knowledge that was never my text books, such The Environmental History of the World, or, even more intriguing, The Geography of Sustainability. Not everything is going in the wrong direction. Could these be the Planetary Heroes that Al Gore dreams of? See the pic below. Sure, they've probably been binge-drinking,(a birthday was being celebrated) but there's something in their chirpy smiling spirit that's reassuring. It's not going to be downhill all the way once this lot hit their stride.
Once considered a wasteland, the vast red desert in Central Australia is a global hub of spiritual tourism. Each day hordes of pilgrims arrive at Alice Springs, equip themselves with 4-wheel drives, swags, maps and emergency rations, then set off to seek renewal. On tracks to remote gorges, sometimes dotted with the detritus of failed cattle stations, tourists in hats with fly-nets file towards the sacred hot spots. During a trek on the rim of Kings Canyon in Watarrka National Park, our path descended beside a string of pools shaded by ancient Cycad palms to an astonishing oasis known as the Garden of Eden. Spinifex pigeons darted and chirped. Elsewhere, as the Toyota bounces across dry riverbeds, rocks up on the bank near the gorge reveal carvings predating the times of Moses, providing survival tips for future generations (likelihood of game, location of sacred waterholes). Such messages are humbling. They re-connect us with antiquity and remind us that the quality of information can make the difference between life and death. Information is also at the heart of modern warfare.
Messages from dreamtime. Missiles from Pine Gap
On the flight from Sydney to Alice Springs the desert unfolds for hours beneath the window. On descent it is possible to glimpse a space age compound on the sand backed by the MacDonnell Ranges and distinguished by a clump of enormous white pop art “golf balls”. This is Pine Gap, a US military base built on the traditional land of the indigenous Arrernte people, which started life in 1966. Australians were told the facility was to be a weather station. Later the official cover was a "Space Research Centre". Our citizens remained in the dark until 1975, when Prime Minister Whitlam revealed that Pine Gap’s boss, Richard Stallings, was an agent of the CIA. Up till then, according to former Minister Clyde Cameron, politicians had regarded the base as “a pretty harmless sort of operation”. Whitlam demanded a list of all CIA agents in the country. This infuriated US spy masters, who put pressure on the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) to shut him up. CIA fears over the leaking of Pine Gaps’ secret activities helped to trigger the murky events that toppled the Whitlam government.
Pine Gap’s first generation of satellites was designed to monitor Soviet missile developments and for espionage in South East Asia, especially Vietnam, and later to spy on China. Since then, both its mission and capabilities have expanded dramatically. The base is believed to have provided targeting information for Israel’s 2006 bombing of Lebanon.
FRUIT AND CARDBOARD SOAKED IN BLOOD
Pine Gap is one of largest and most sophisticated satellite ground stations in the world. Its 26 antennas suck information from the sky and distribute it to US commanders in the field, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, where it is used to co-ordinate air strikes. In the 2003 “shock and awe” invasion of Baghdad, Pine Gap’s space-based signal intercepts of phone calls made by Iraq’s Generals, led directly to the US Air Force strikes against the country’s leadership. According to defense expert Richard Tanter, “all decapitation strikes missed their nominal targets, but resulted in the deaths of large numbers of Iraqi civilians”.
There were over 50 Pine Gap directed strikes in the invasion phase. Of four investigated by Human Rights Watch, 42 civilians were killed and zero soldiers. This averages 13 casualties per strike, which, when multiplied by 50, totals 650 corpses. During this time the Australian media and star commentators were waxing lyrical about the Pentagon’s “precision bombing”.
Pine Gap
Baghdad
Australian anti war campaigner, Donna Mulhearn, was in Baghdad in March 2003 when a missile struck the Al Shuala markets, killing over 60 civilians. Donna took a bus to the site and found "complete devastation with pieces of iron and tin mangled into grotesque shapes. Mashed pieces of fruit and cardboard were soaked in the blood and mud, along with pieces of human flesh”. Hundreds were injured and the hospitals lacked anaesthetics.
THE MAN WHO MIGHT HAVE RULED IRAQ
The US military denied responsibility. British journalist Robert Fisk found a serial number on a fragment of the weapon’s metal in the rubble, which was traced back to the Raytheon corporation, a provider of space and airborne missile and surveillance systems. Raytheon has sole responsibility for maintenance at Pine Gap. In Al Shuala a grieving Shi-ite asked Mulhearn, “Do your people accept this, the killing of children? Do western people have no honour?”
When she found her way to a bus, her eyes stinging with tears, Donna noticed the bloodstains on her boots. “The sight was shocking and caused my body to shake, then go limp”, she recalled. Her first instinct was to “find a corner somewhere in the outskirts of the world and curl up to weep forever”, but that was not to be. She found another option - to stand up as a witness to war crimes. It was this decision that would later take Donna Mulhearn to Pine Gap.
Joint attack facility
Shortly after aerial massacre at Al Shuala, the Americans bombed the palatial dwelling of Mudher al-Kharbit, a construction magnate who had been secretly advising officials from the CIA on how to unite Iraq’s tribal leaders to rise up against Saddam Hussein. “If that effort had succeeded”, reported the New York Times in April this year, “Mr. Kharbit might have become the ruler of Iraq”. Instead, the bomb killed more than a dozen of Kharbit’s family. The intelligence that led to this air strike was almost certainly provided by Pine Gap, and it was not entirely baseless. For reasons related to tribal obligations, Saddam Hussein was hiding at the Kharbit compound that night, but in a separate villa, and emerged unscathed. As well as wiping out Kharbit’s family, the bombing killed 21 other people, including children.
Shock and Awe 2003. Today US missiles are still raining down on Baghdad
THE MEDIA ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL
According to the NY Times, “the fury it aroused has been widely believed to have helped kick-start the insurgency in western Iraq”. Another question arises. If the intelligence was accurate about the presence of Saddam Hussein, it is likely the US military was aware of the presence of innocent civilians, including women and children. But who wants to think about that? Probably not the people who work at Pine Gap. If Australia wishes to regain its reputation as a fair minded nation, the government will need to take a closer look at this secretive installation, an integral part of the US National Missile Defense scheme, or Star Wars.
It aims to put satellite based weapons in space to shoot down any incoming missiles. New radomes (radar + dome) to accommodate the system have already been installed.
The majority of Pine Gap’s 1000 staff are Americans drawn from branches of the US military, including the National Security Agency, Army and Navy Information Operations Command, US Navy and Combined Support Group, Air Intelligence Agency, US Air Force, 704th Military Intelligence Brigade, 743rd Military Intelligence Battalion, Marine Cryptologic Support Command, etc. The base is described as a “joint facility”, although key areas are out of bounds to Australians. While visiting US lawmakers are taken on tours of Pine Gap, Federal MP’s are denied entry. (Members of Congress have collectively invested up to $US196 million in companies with Defense Department contracts, earning millions since the onset of the Iraq invasion. Until May 2007, Hillary Clinton held holdings in Honeywell, Boeing and – yes - Raytheon).
In 2000, the Howard Government rejected calls by Parliament's Joint Committee on Treaties for a classified briefing on its operations. There is no public debate on the role of Pine Gap, despite its unbending support of all US military actions, regardless of legality or morality. As for the media, they’re asleep at the wheel.
CRIMINALS ROAMING THE OUTBACK?
Pine Gap hosts the largest CIA facility outside America, so it is reasonable to assume that crimes against humanity, such the kidnap of suspects and their transport to torture zones, have been aided by the capacities of Pine Gap. Day after day, its intelligence kills people. If you regard this is an exaggeration, visit the US Airforce website and click the link marked “airpower summary”, which reveals the number of daily missions conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of these involve air strikes, around a 100 a day, or 36,500 a year, which explains why Pine Gap operates around the clock.
Raytheon means the 'Light of the Gods' - the dark Gods
On a December midnight in 2005, after seeking the permission of a traditional custodian of the Arrernte land, four resolute Christians trudged across the central desert with bolt cutters. One of the party was Donna Mulhearn, whose visit to Baghdad led her to bone up on the activities of Pine Gap. The group cut through two fences, scrambled on a rooftop and unfurled their banner: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? YOUR BROTHER’S BLOOD CRIES OUT TO ME. Security guards surrounded them. One shouted, “Get on your knees”.
“That’s a good idea”, said one of the group, and prayed to God that the guard would one day cease his co-operation with the violence of Pine Gap. The Christians explained they had entered the base to carry out a Citizen’s Inspection. (A few days before, the facility had been inspected by John Negroponte, the former US Ambassador to Iraq and Director of National Intelligence, who is now Deputy Secretary of State. Renowned for his “dirty work in Honduras” in the 1980’s, Negroponte has long been accused of complicity with human rights abuses, torture and assassinations.
Adele Goldie inspecting the facilities
The four pacifists were arrested, charged with entering a prohibited area and put on trial. One of the defendants, Jim Dowling, told the jury that after Nuremberg, citizens had the right and a duty to take action against a government guilty of war crimes. “When an Apache gunship approaches a target in Iraq”, noted defendant Bryan Law, “it will be receiving data transferred from Pine Gap. When a missile is directed at that target, the information will also have come from Pine Gap”. (The helicopters are still at it. In March this year, six Sunni fighters from the "Awakening" movement allied to the US, were killed in strikes by an AH-64 Apache helicopter in Samarra, Iraq, their bodies loaded onto a pickup.)
In March 2003, Donna Mulhearn had witnessed the results of missile strikes on civilians and she asked the jury to “honour the humanity of the unknown person whose blood is on my boots”.
STRIKING AT THE HEART OF NATIONAL SECURITY
Expert witnesses called by the defense to illuminate the operations of Pine Gap were ruled inadmissible by the Alice Springs court, as such testimony was deemed contrary to the national interest. The “Pine Gap Four” were convicted and fined. The government appealed. The prosecutor demanded a jail term, stating the actions of the Christians “struck at the heart of national security”. The case dragged on until March this year, when the defendants were unexpectedly acquitted because their witnesses had been prevented from giving evidence.
The trial received scant attention. The courthouse was not ringed with demonstrators. The Australian community remains uninformed about the case and its implications.
One of the defendants was interviewed on ABC radio’s Law Report to discuss the legal niceties of the proceedings - not the nasty side of Pine Gap. Dream on Australia! The much-hailed withdrawal of our troops from Iraq is an irrelevant shadow play, because the cut and thrust of the terror war is orchestrated from a military base in Central Australia, impervious to investigation.
What if Pine Gap had stuck to its originally claimed role of monitoring weather? The world might have received an early warning on global warming; and the Central Desert, the soul of Australia, would not now be disfigured by an American controlled intelligence weapon of mass destruction.
Outside Alice Springs courthouse: Jim Dowling, Bryan Law, Adele Goldie, Donna Mulhearn
Our latest Iraq video attracted over 47,000 hits on YouTube and tons of amusing and nasty comments about the presenter. It was in the top 10 Australian News and Politics features in the week it was launched.
