The Wind, Real Wind or Hot Air?

Out of the Woodwork
T. Boone Pickens has come out of his shell (Shell Oil that is) and says he has the solution to the USA's dependence on gasoline and oil from the sleazebag Arabs, who T. Boone, a Panhandle Texan, says are running out of oil--they don't have anymore to produce, TBP says, therefore they can't produce anymore and that's why oil is zooming toward $200 a barrel and gasoline will soon be $5 a gallon. Why not stop driving gas-guzzling cars and using oil to manufacture our energy needs? That's what T Boone asks. I answer, TBP, it's because our greedy politicians have sold this country out to WAR and war needs megatons of holy oil to keep it on its killing roll--and our greedy politicians--a good gaggle of them richer than need be are heavily invested in oil companies and they are on the big take from oil lobbyists and oil PR people and oil negotiators and oil proposal writers--and these greedy politicians can't see beyond their nest-egg bank accounts and investments--and don't worry, tons of these "public servants" got filthy rich off their subprime-mortgage-lenders wins--none of them are having their houses (mansions) foreclosed on--right? Just like most of their sons and daughters have no fear of having to go fight in mother and daddy's war--though John McCain claims he has a son in Iraq--doesn't he?--it must be her son by her other marriage--come on, McCain's 72 years old--too old to have a son war age, isn't he? Unless his son's an officer over there!--and these greedy politicians are living very well these days--they don't mind sending We the People their limo bills--why should they worry about the price of gasoline?--like Bill and Hillary Clinton--they came from Arkansas without a pot to piss in and now they're big world players with personal accumulations at 30 million since their Washington, District of Corruption, fun and games, followed by their big move to the great Commonwealth of New York and after someone got them a special deal on a big mansion out in Republican Westchester County, New York, where a lot of Mafia types and big biz crooks reside (Sammy Israel, the hedgefund crook, lived next door to Hill and Bill ("Hell, he seemed like a nice guy to me," Bill commented)), so Hill could jump start her political career of taking contributions and setting up boondoggles for certain companies--Hill was the biggest boondoggle giver in Congress last year--running to become a senator against Rudi "Mussolini" Giuliani--an easy win for Hill against Fascist Rudi--and now we have to support Hillary for life--and Slick Willie got himself a high-rent office in Harlem provided by We the People--I mean, as an ex-President he's well covered--these birds don't want to remind you they get to keep their presidential salaries and the inherent benefits therein for life, plus Secret Service protection, and money for an office and staff--set for life, baby, in the good ole morbidly kind USA--and since moving to New York, Hillary has become a best-selling author and Slick Willie has become a glad-hander, a best-selling author, too, and a great speaker of golden words and illusions for which he charges big-buck fees. And Hillary, poor child, says she's broke from spending millions upon millions of dollars running for president--and then after she flushed all those millions of big-shot and big-corp contributions down the campaign toilet and a black man beats her--that had to have pissed Hill and Bill off. They are racists, folks; they hate Obama and the very black Mrs. Obama, but hey they made their personal nest-eggs kissing political butt cracks no matter the color--deep inside the cracks of our superiors's asses they all look alike; so, what the hey, now Hillary's trying to jump on the Obama bandwagon--she knows Obama will soon be in the millionaire class and he'll be softgloving all the billions of dollars We the People give these professional con artists year-in, year-out--do people ever ask themselves what this government does for them in return? Our army is supposed to protect our borders. Damn good job of that they did on September 11th, 2001, right? I mean a bunch of drunken Saudi-Arabian-mostly citizens using boxcutters and moxie to confiscate three of our domestic air carriers--and, folks, Slick Willie's Patriot Act was in place at the time--remember how that was necessary to keep the riffraff out of this country? And the Patriot Act is the act that started us having to be almost strip-searched at airports--certainly having to show two pieces of photo ID--"There, that'll stop any attack on the US using hijacked airliners." And now we know, but we've probably already forgotten, Bill Clinton knew that there was a plan afoot to attack us over in the mess the USA caused by first of all supporting Osama Bin Laden as long as he was working for the CIA against our sworn enemy at that time, the Soviet Union, and then when Bill came to POWER he turned on Osama when the Evil One started siding with the even-eviler Taliban, and Bill missiled Afghanistan saying he'd killed Osama and wiped out his Afghanistan training camp--but then, oops, we were told, Bill's missiles blasted a schoolhouse instead of Obama's training camp--and at the same time, the Soviets (now back to being Russians) were trying to purge their union of Muslim influence, trying to get rid of Muslims in Afghanistan and totally out of Chechnya--and the Russians are very good at ethnic cleansing--Uncle Joe Stalin the Georgian peasant taught them that--and to this day the Russkies have trouble in Georgia--and even a lot of that is about oil and power and ruling and "Doing unto others as you beg them to do unto you."

POWER. So important to the phony-testicle-carrying men and women who become our noses-in-the-air politicians.

Speaking of how scared of the American people Congress is, here's some scary reading on the Antifascist Calling Website:
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Will "outsourced" torture chickens finally come home to roost in American courts?

On June 30, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Burke O'Neil LLC, of Philadelphia and Akeel & Valentine, PLC, of Troy, Michigan filed a series of lawsuits in federal district courts in Maryland, Ohio, Michigan and Washington state against über-contractors CACI International, Inc., CACI Premier Technology and L-3 Services Inc., a division of L-3 Communications Corporation.

Monday's announcement by CCR follow close on the heels of a similar suit filed in May in federal district court in Los Angeles by Iraqi torture victim Emad al-Janabi, also against CACI International, Inc. and L-3 Communications. Named as a codefendant in the al-Janabi case is CACI interrogator, Steven Stefanowicz aka "Big Steve." Al-Janabi's attorneys claim that Stefanowicz directed some of the torture tactics deployed against their client, according to the Associated Press.

Al-Janabi told investigators that his "outsourced" interrogators punched him, slammed him into walls, hung him from a bed frame and kept him naked and handcuffed in "stress positions" in a filthy cell beginning in September 2003. Interviewed by The Associated Press in Istanbul, al-Janabi said:

"They (U.S. troops) did not tell me what was the reason behind my arrest ... during the interrogation, the American soldier told me I was a terrorist ... and I was preparing for an attack against the U.S. forces." (Greg Risling, "Iraqi Alleges Abu Ghraib Torture, Sues U.S. Contractor," The Associated Press, May 5, 2008)

Al-Janabi denied the allegations and told the Associated Press he was forced to give a false confession after "savage" intimidation by interrogators.

The latest suits, filed on behalf of four Iraqi civilians "wrongly imprisoned, tortured and later released without charge" from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison and torture center according to CCR, were filed in four separate jurisdictions in which the individual contractor defendants reside. Alleged torture practitioners named in the suit include "Adel Nakhla, of Montgomery Village, Md., Timothy Dugan, of Pataskala, Ohio, and Daniel E. Johnson, of Seattle, Wash." The plaintiffs are:

Mohammed Abdwaihed Towfek Al-Taee, a 39-year-old taxi driver who was detained and horrifically abused for nine months before his May 2004 release. He later learned that he likely was the victim of a customer who presumably turned him over in exchange for American money for intelligence "tips."

Wissam Abdullateef Sa’eed Al-Quraishi, a 37-year-old married father of three, who was hung on a pole for seven days at the infamous Abu Ghraib "hard site" and subjected to beatings, forced nudity, electrical shocks, humiliating treatment, mock executions and other forms of torture during his incarceration at the prison.

Sa'adoon Ali Hameed Al-Ogaidi, a 36-year-old Arabic teacher and shopkeeper and father of four, who was held for a year, caged, brutally abused at the prison "hard site," stripped and kept naked, and was a "ghost" detainee hidden for a time from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Suhail Najim Abdullah Al-Shimari, a farmer who was held for more than four years, including at the prison "hard site," was caged, threatened with dogs, and subjected to beatings and electrical shocks, and threatened with death and being sent to a "far away" place. ("CCR Files Four New Abu Ghraib Torture Lawsuits Targeting Military Contractors in U.S. Courts," Center for Constitutional Rights, Press Release, June 30, 2008)

According to Washington Technology, the complaints also allege that the defendants

...not only participated in physical and mental abuse of the detainees, but also destroyed documents, videos and photographs; prevented the reporting of the torture and abuse to the International Committee of the Red Cross; hid detainees and other prisoners from the Red Cross; and misled military and government officials about conditions at Iraqi prisons. (David Hubler, "CACI Calls Abu Ghraib Lawsuits Baseless," Washington Technology, July 2, 2008)

While an L-3 spokesperson had "no comment," CACI corporate communications executive vice president Jodi Brown told Washington Technology "CACI refuses to take these false accusations in these vexatious lawsuits lying down. We intend to set the record straight and will continue to fight the misguided and politically driven Center for Constitutional Rights to get the truth told and defend our good name."
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Read some more at antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/
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Here's a List of 100 Congress (We the People really)-Supported Corporations Who Are Draining Our Coffers and Economy Dry With Impunity--You Might Look Into Putting Some of These Mostly Military Industrial Complex Corporations Left Over From WWII in Your Stock Portfolio--Either That or Move to China and Start an Internet Cafe:

www.washingtontechnology.com/top-100/2008/

One of the sleaze-bag corps on this list, up near the top, is Northrop-Grumman (a merging of WWII aviation companies Northrop Aviation and Grumman Aviation (Grumman made pontoon planes for the US Navy in the 1930s, then Navy fighters in WWII--started by good ole Leroy Grumman in 1930), and Northrop-Grumman has a tagline I find interesting: "Defining the future." Wow, that's a scary tagline. A military industrial giant defining our future! We're doomed, people.
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So T Boone Pickens's solution to our energy crisis? WIND. T Boone says we have more wind than any other place on earth--is that scientifically true? We have a tendency in this country to respect every word out of the mouths of our filthy rich. I mean they are successful in our eyes; therefore they have the secret to success somewhere in their genes so we listen to every idiotic statement they make. If they are rich, then by golly they must know something. T Boone Pickens got rich off oil, people. He was a slant-drilling, lease-robbing, natural-gas-leasing good old boy from Amarillo, Texas, and north of Amarillo around the cities of Pampa and Borger, Texas, used to be some of the wildest producing natural gas wells in the world. The Pampa baseball team was called the Oilers; the Borger baseball team was called the Gassers. This is the world that made T Boone Pickens, just a plain old dumb hick Panhandle Texan, with absolutely no superintelligence, filthy rich and now an expert on Global Warming and earth-saving energies (where were you a decade ago, T. Boone?). Most rich guys are dumb as the plain side of a barn. Look at Wimpy Pappy Bush the first and his wimpy-wimpy sons! How dumb can you get? The Bush's live off inherited wealth, wealth their great-grandpappies and grandpappies amassed and passed on to them, their worthless children. It's the same story all over the USA--like Uncle Teddy Kennedy--look how he's getting the best of pampered treatment in the world--inherited money keeps Uncle Teddy going--and money he's stolen from We the People through boondoggles for Massachusetts companies which give him back payoffs--one of which is run by ex-Gov of Mass Mitt Romney or from millions-a-year the lobbyists give him and his worthless-as-individuals relatives--like all the Kennedy youth who've become politicians and are living off the government dole. Yet, these fat-cat bastards are contemplating cutting Medicare to our elderly. Shouldn't the elderly in this country live better than living sad-sack in a filthy one-room dump snacking on Kibbles 'n Bits and drooling over a main course of canned dog food or cat food? "What'll I have tonight--oooh, that Gourmet cat food looks good on the label there--wow, fish guts, chicken guts, and other animal parts--sounds good for me, too."

So, hey, let's raise a glass of Hemlock to our faux president while he's yucking it up over in Japan--once the new Capitalist heaven--now in bad debt--even it's supposedly strong auto industry heavily subsidized by Japan's US-modeled government and the many tariff-free benefits of free trade agreements it gets first of all by setting up assembly plants in this country--and then where the big bucks come in is from the Japanese auto parts industry, an especially profitable business when shipping parts tariff-free to the USA, where then the expensive overpriced auto parts are assembled into the Japanese car shells that are made here in this country--it's complicated, but it's a successful Japanese trickbag.

So T Boone Pickens says our only hope is blowin' in the wind--T Boone says OPEC is running out of oil; that's why they have suddenly capped production and are letting crude oil prices go sky-high. He says they can't up production because they have nothing to produce. T Boone says we have plenty of natural gas in this country--I think he's right--and he says he's currently building the biggest wind farm in the US in Pampa, Texas. Go ahead, T Boone--save our asses, though given past performances, don't hold your breath until you're saved by T Boone.

At one time the El Paso Natural Gas Co. was building the largest sun-collecting structure in the world out on the flats of New Mexico. Solar energy was the energy of the future and since the sun shines in El Paso almost 365 days a year, then, hey, why not make El Paso the solar energy capital of the world? Suddenly, that project was trashed. That was decades ago.

Oilmen are crooks. They have been since oil was discovered in Oil City, PA, back at the turning of the 19th century into the 20th century. Most of our current big oil companies (most of them working as an oligarchy under the Standard Oil banner back then) were the results of their original culprit owners stealing oil right out from under US citizens who were dumb about the oil bubbling in huge lakes just under their properties. Standard Oil geologist goons combed the country looking for oil--and when they found it, they sent the lease-dealer-goons in to bilk the stupid farmers and Native Americans sitting on those huge piles of black gold out of their mineral rights! Oh, yeah, sure, it made thousands of once poor-ass dirt farmers (Dust Bowl survivors) filthy rich--it created the first batch of nouveau riche Americans--what these jerks didn't know was that the oil companies whose black piston pumps were singing their 24/7 pumping songs out in their fields even up next to their houses and chicken coops--squeaks and squeals as the pump piston arm pistoned itself up and then came that iron-clanging sound as it hammered some pressure back down into the well to suck up another hundred barrels of West Texas crude--these big oil leasers were making a 100 times more filthy lucre than the measly lease fees they were paying these hicks--and these sharp Standard Oil goons owned the mineral rights under these hicks's lands for the full production of the sites.

Oil ruled early 20th-century Texas. The Texas Railroad Commission was the keeper of Texas oil production, prices, and the revenues, both land drilling and offshore drilling revenues--to the point the Texas Railroad Commission got so powerful it ran Texas--and it looks like they're still in control of Texas--the University of Texas at Austin, by the way, thanks to Texas oil benefits going into its coffers, became the second most well-heeled endowed university in the USA, second only to Harvard, the most heavily subsidized university maybe in the world. You know two of the most influential colleges in the US, maybe in the world, are in Boston--Harvard and MIT--just think of the power these schools have in "defining the future" of We the People!

So Bush is yucking it up in Japan. John "the Failed Warrior" McCain is yucking it up down in Colombia and Mexico--hey, John, how's the rock coke down there in Colombia? And then did you hear that that big CIA-Colombian-Army rescue was a staged affair?--that the US and Colombia gave 22 million to FARC for the release of these CIA stooges and the woman presidential candidate via a staged rescue--did you see the helicopter they used in the rescue--it had CIA written all over it--and did you notice, the woman presidential candidate got the hell out of Colombia muy pronto and headed straight for Paris!

Everything, like Shakespeare said, is staged. Nothing is real except what you see when you look in the mirror every morning or afternoon or night and then what you see is a lie you make up as you look at yourself--and who the hell knows how real any of us looking at those faces in those mirrors are in the first place?

Obama's got to go to Iraq and find out about things for himself. Says he's going to talk to our military leaders over there. Oh, yeah, sure, they are the experts on Iraq, aren't they! Hey, Greg Pallast says with a name like Barack Hussein Obama, Obama can end all the conflicts in the Middle East if he'd just take advantage of how that part of the world will welcome him simply because he has that name and he is a black man--Pallast says Middle Easterners will turn out in the streets by the millions, even in Iran, if Obama decides to go diplomatically to these places--Pallast says Barack Obama could overthrow the current Iranian government by just showing up in Tehran and praising the people of Iran over their current religious nutjob regime. One Brit philosopher said yesterday that all the problems all over the world are based on racism! We hate each other! We love to kill each other, something we've been doing progressively more and more since this country was founded off us revolting--on a revolt against the pompous and asshole monarchy of Great Britain and the overtaxing British Empire! Constant wars and massacres--carried out by all peoples against each other, against neighbors, against those who don't resemble themselves, against those who threaten the throne!

It's time we got off our thrones and saw what a huge pile of shit sits under all our asses in the Global toilet bowl. You can't flush it down either--flushing that toilet will cause a shit-flood!

T Boone Pickens is probably full of shit--he is certainly full of hot air--but, hey, maybe he is right about the Wind. Maybe the answers to our energy problems are blowin' in the wind.

waltercrackpipe
for The Daily Growler

thegrowlingwolf's Daily Journeys (Cont'd):
photo by TGB "Making an Ugly Building Epic Via Photography" 2008

DAILY JOURNEY #20—Paul Bowles Tribute

Reading the amazing Paul Bowles as I came out of the coma of sleep this February morning of my 26^th year of living between Broadway and Fifth Avenue in New York City—it gives me a satisfying thrill to write that this is my 39^th year living in this once truly great American “chance” city, right in the belly middle of it, a convenient neighborhood—though that is sadly changing—NYC is being Europeanized. Yesterday I wrote on my blog satirically that soon NYC landlords were going to refuse to take US dollars and demand Euros instead and son of a gun this morning on the blabbering news when the two goony glamheads started wide-eyebrowed reporting they perkily with dumb smiles said some businesses in NYC were now accepting Euro dollars instead of dollars. Plus, these turkeyheads went on gobbling away without any idea how absolutely insane what they were reporting was from a national point of view—but then, people who have gotten rich in New York City whether they’re from New York City or not, like billionaire mayor Bloomingidiotberg, think they own it lock, stock, and barrel. That perked me up. I mean, I’m hitting what’s going on dead on the head every day these days... but I stray...

The amazing Paul Bowles is the beginning and ending of this journey—reading a couple of chapters from Paul’s novel The Spider’s House—chapters 23 and 24, chapter 23 from the eyes and thinking of an American man and woman who are trapped in an Arab cafe on a square in Fez when a crowd of Moroccan Nationalists start pouring into that plaza, shouting nationalist slogans and curses and prayers against the bloody French, who have a large military presence in this square. The American man begins talking loud and in as an American way as he can to which the woman he’s with starts telling him he’s acting like a fool and he rationalizes by saying he doesn’t want the Moslem men in this cafe thinking he’s a Frenchman. The crowd of Arab men in the main part of the cafe bothers the American man—they are looking at him with enmity and not any kind of brotherly love—so he takes the woman and hustles her all the way into the back of the cafe, in a very back room, which is empty except for one Moroccan boy sitting at a table drinking tea.

From this point on Bowles relates the story from the point of view of the American man—the way this guy is telling the woman to act cool, telling her that he knows “these people” and he knows what they’re up to and how to handle them, blah, blah, blah, and then she comments on Arabs and he goes over her attitude, calling it “missionary,” her feeling responsible for the souls of other cultures, etc. Then this American goes on bragging about how well he knows these people and then he begins to observe this Arab boy who goes out to a pool of water and rescues a trapped insect, sets it free, and the man concludes from that that the boy can’t be Moroccan or Muslim because a Muslim just didn’t do things like that—the concern of the trapped insect was of no concern to a Muslim one way or another and taking the time away from the worship of Allah to rescue it just wouldn’t have happened, sobeit, therefore the boy must be Sicilian or Greek.

When the boy returns, the man tests him by asking him a question in French, to which the boy acts dumb—then the man asks him a question in Arabic and the boy answers the man and then the man realizes the boy is Moroccan after all.

This part of the story continues. I continued with it, continuing on with it by continuing on with Chapter 24, which to my surprise, and that is Bowles way of writing, was from the viewpoint of the Arab boy! Brilliant. That’s all I could think of as I read the boy’s viewpoint. I mean Bowles totally caught me off guard, even to the point I was agreeing with the American man’s observance of the woman’s seeing herself as a missionary to save people like Muslims from their savagery. The boy’s viewpoint was so true to the Muslim way of thinking it amazed me how Bowles wrote me into such a trap. Brilliant. The way to write; your own way; through your own wit.

Bowles is a great inspiration to me, my next Henry Miller-type influence. I haven’t read Henry in a year or more.

thegrowlingwolf
2007