By Keith Johnson

“Some of the nation’s most important policies are implemented through regulation.  In domains as diverse as energy efficiency, environmental protection, health care, occupational safety, civil rights, communications, homeland security, and many more, the government attempts to protect its citizens through regulations.”   Cass Sunstein

On  February 16, 2010,  Cass Sunstein made his first public speech as Obama’s regulation and information “Czar” during a keynote address at the American University’s Washington College of Law.  From it, we learn firsthand how a scientific dictatorship is being structured.  Sunstein discusses techniques to manipulate human behavior in order to facilitate, or in his own words, “nudge” people into compliance with government policy.  What’s frightening about his plan is that it parallels the social engineering outlined in Lord Bertrand Russell’s “The Impact of Science on Society”.

I. “It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries.”– Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (1952)

Sunstein begins his lecture with a quote from a fellow Chicago Lawyer, Karl Llewellyn:

 “Technique without morals is a menace.  But morals without technique is a mess.”

It seems a little less than ironic that Sunstein would pick a quote from Llewellyn, who was the principal drafter of the Uniform Commercial Code.  The UCC essentially replaced our Constitutional courts and has been the basis of every code, law and statute since it was enacted in the early 1950’s.  Jordan Maxwell goes into a little more depth on the subject in a short 6 minute clip entitled “UCC=Slavery”, which can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oux3wMLdP2U

II.  “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”—Bertrand Russell

Sunstein attempts to make the case that human beings really don’t know what’s best for them.  He states that decades of scientific research have found that humans are “unrealistically optimistic” and that the resistance to “change” (inertia) dominates their behavior even if the change is in their own best interests.  He claims that evidence of this can be found in the average American’s voluntary participation in a 401K program.  Sunstein states “…people aren’t saving for retirement at the level one might expect, because to get into a 401K program they have to opt in.  And even though it is easy to opt in, the enrollment rate for opting in is surprisingly low.  If people are automatically enrolled, the rate shoots up even if they can opt out by checking a box.”   This was an obvious plug for the administration’s “Automatic Enrollment Program”.  Obama referred to this in September, 2009 when he said “We know that automatic enrollment has made a big difference in participation rates by making it simpler for workers to save – and that’s why we’re going to expand it to more people.”  Automatic enrollment is nothing new.  Everything we see on the stub of our paychecks came as a result of automatic enrollment.  Silence is compliance. And in time this so-called “voluntary” deduction will become mandatory, and opting out will be all but impossible.  The 401K program is a trap and ripe for looting, not only by the banks, but the government as well.

Another program Sunstein wants to implement is the “Direct Express Program” for Social Security recipients.  Instead of receiving a check, a plastic debit card will be issued.  He claims this will be more convenient and cost effective for both the government and the citizen.  But in reality, we all know that this is just another way to trace purchases and track individuals.

II.  “Under the influence of great fear, almost everybody becomes superstitious”– Bertrand Russell,  An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish (1943)

Sunstein next describes how crisis can be used to drive human behavior.   He states “people are greatly influenced by whether an incident of badness or goodness is cognitively available in the sense that it readily comes to mind….  We know that people believe that more people will die from homicides than suicides, though the opposite is true.  And the reason is that homicides are cognitively available in a way that suicides are not…  I bet each of us can think of our own lives of cases in which the recent occurrences of events for us personally, or for our government, has driven our behavior, or our fear or our complacency in a particular direction.”   Yeah, I can think of a few:  9-11, the Oklahoma City bombing, swine flu.  Here Sunstein is actually admitting how effective tragedy can be used to the government’s advantage to get people to recognize risk and coalesce with their solutions to the problem, which of course they created in the first place.

 III. “Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so.” –Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (1952)

Next, Sunstein speaks to the significance social networks play on human behavior.  He states “people are very much affected by the influence of others in the sense that the social network in which one finds oneself often dominates behavior.  Obesity is contagious.  If people find themselves in groups of people who are overweight, the likelihood that they themselves will be overweight jumps.  Flu shots, it turns out, are contagious.  The likelyhood that people will get flu shots depends very much if people in their community have gotten flu shots.

Sunstein goes on to address Michelle Obama’s recent announcement to take up the cause of childhood obesity.  He says “if you look at the proposals she has in mind, every single one of them has to do with social norms and trying to alter social norms which are damaging to health and encourage social norms which are desireable for health.”.

IV. “When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.”– Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (1952)

Sunstein goes on to outline ways that social stigmas, public disclosures of private information and “salience” can be used to drive human behavior.  It’s called “self-regulation”.

Jodi Short of the Georgetown University Law Center describes this emerging strategy in her February, 2009 paper entitled “Coercive State Discourse and the Rise of Self-Regulation” In it she writes…

“There is a widespread “coercion-aversion” among contemporary scholars and practitioners of regulation. Hierarchy and control are out, participation and collaboration are in. Conflict is out, cooperation is in. Punishment and deterrence are out, intrinsic motivations and“nudges” are in. This focus on regulatory partnership and cooperation has been one of the most significant trends in regulatory scholarship and design in the last two decades, and it has yielded a wide variety of “voluntary” or “self-regulation” programs and techniques that redistribute responsibility for core governmental functions like standard-setting, monitoring and enforcement from administrative agencies to regulated entities and citizens.”

To demonstrate the effectiveness of self-regulation, Sunstein asks “When is it you get compliance without enforcement?  With smoking, the apparent reason for widespread kind of miraculous compliance without enforcement is there are social norms.  So that if people in most relevant places lit up a cigarette in violation of law, there would be private enforcement or ostracism or at least complaints.”

Through public disclosure, Sunstein intends to use the fear of stigmatization as a way to hold private organizations accountable for what they deem to be hazardous.  One of these actions is in the area of greenhouse gas regulation.  Through the EPA, companies are now required to report their emissions.  Sunstein boasts of the success of the reporting requirement by claiming, “No one anticipated it but the toxic release inventory drove down toxic emissions because no one wanted to be one of the highest polluters.”

Yet another recent disclosure requirement concerns industrial fatalities being reported on the OSHA website.   According to Sunstein “If you go to OSHA.gov you will see for the first time fatality information.  If any American dies in the workplace where OSHA has access to the information (and OSHA has a lot of access that’s going to be up there in a matter of weeks) the company is identified.  It’s not a regulatory requirement, it’s a disinfectant.  The early anecdotes are that no company wants to be on OSHA.gov at the place where a worker died last week and as a result, that disclosure requirement has a significant effect on workplace safety.” 

V.  “Physiology and psychology afford fields for scientific technique which still await development. Two great men, Pavlov and Freud, have laid the foundation.”—Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (1952)

Sunstein also addresses the importance of “salience” in eliciting favorable compliance from individuals and private organizations.  Salience is defined as “a striking point or feature”.  In the context of energy efficiency, Sunstein states “We in the administration are greatly concerned about the environment, economy and national security problems created by excessive use of high polluting energy and we want to find out what to do about that.  A company in Southern California a number of years ago was also concerned about the same series of problems and attempted a range of interventions to try to get people to not use so much energy.  They used education; they used moral suasion…nothing worked.  Finally they gave people a little globe. An ambient orb, its called.  And the ambient orb would go green when energy use was low and it would glow red in their kitchen when their energy use was high.  That intervention reduced energy use by 40%.”

Sunstein also proposes stricter and more salient regulation with regards to labeling of tobacco products.  He wants them to be “more graphic, more novel, more attention grabbing than anything we’ve seen before.”  With regards to food, Sunstein states “There is proposed rule to label the nutritional content of beef and meat and for the first time ever, the FDA, the first lady announced this, is thinking about front of the package labeling which will give people clear and concise and salient information.”

VI. “I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology” –Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (1952)

Everything discussed by Sunstein fits appropriately under this heading.  In his society, social norms need to be standardized in order for people to be controlled more efficiently.  Sunstein’s approach is the soft and gentle road to slavery.  It is the very essence of a scientific dictatorship.  It requires your acquiescence and participation.  They need you to help them create consecutive generations of self-policing, obedient, mind-controlled slaves.  And this is very likely where mankind is headed if we allow this kind of indoctrination and government intrusion to continue.  If we stand idly by and let them proceed, it will be left to our children to fend for themselves.  But by then it may be too late.  By then they may have no fight left in them.  And then you will know that Bertrand Russell’s most dire prediction has come true and that “a revolt of the plebs will become as unthinkable as an organised insurrection of sheep against the practice of eating mutton.”

Deconstructing Cass Sunstein is a post from: Far Left Rx

That's the message the Obama administration is sending when it says that Fourth Amendment rights don't extend to cell phone use (but to women's bodily uses and concommitant abortions). AG Eric Holder and cronies among the elite who seek to bind us to the one ring of their wisdom and superiority are now arguing before the courts that your cell phone usage (and your GPS position) are theirs for the taking–they don't even need a court order.

Folks, you voted for these fiends, and you get what you vote for.

Read the horrible truth here.

Kill a Fetus, Liberals Love You; Use a Cell Phone, Liberals Track You is a post from: Far Left Rx

Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, Bolivian, French and Swiss rescue organizations accuse the US military of refusing landing rights to planes bearing necessary medicines and urgently needed potable water to the millions of Haitians stricken, injured and homeless.

Behind the smoke, rubble and unending drama of human tragedy in the hapless Caribbean country, a drama is in full play for control of what geophysicists believe may be one of the world s richest zones for hydrocarbons-oil and gas outside the Middle East, possibly orders of magnitude greater than that of nearby Venezuela.

Haiti, and the larger island of Hispaniola of which it is a part, has the geological fate that it straddles one of the world s most active geological zones, where the deepwater plates of three huge structures relentlessly rub against one another the intersection of the North American, South American and Caribbean tectonic plates. Below the ocean and the waters of the Caribbean, these plates consist of an oceanic crust some 3 to 6 miles thick, floating atop an adjacent mantle. Haiti also lies at the edge of the region known as the Bermuda Triangle, a vast area in the Caribbean subject to bizarre and unexplained disturbances.

This vast mass of underwater plates are in constant motion, rubbing against each other along lines analogous to cracks in a broken porcelain vase that has been reglued. The earth s tectonic plates typically move at a rate 50 to 100 mm annually in relation to one another, and are the origin of earthquakes and of volcanoes. The regions of convergence of such plates are also areas where vast volumes of oil and gas can be pushed upwards from the Earth s mantle. The geophysics surrounding the convergence of the three plates that run more or less directly beneath Port-au-Prince make the region prone to earthquakes such as the one that struck Haiti with devastating ferocity on January 12.

A relevant Texas geological project

Leaving aside the relevant question of how well in advance the Pentagon and US scientists knew the quake was about to occur, and what Pentagon plans were being laid before January 12, another issue emerges around the events in Haiti that might help explain the bizarre behavior to date of the major rescue players the United States, France and Canada. Aside from being prone to violent earthquakes, Haiti also happens to lie in a zone that, due to the unusual geographical intersection of its three tectonic plates, might well be straddling one of the world s largest unexplored zones of oil and gas, as well as of valuable rare strategic minerals.

The vast oil reserves of the Persian Gulf and of the region from the Red Sea into the Gulf of Aden are at a similar convergence zone of large tectonic plates, as are such oil-rich zones as Indonesia and the waters off the coast of California. In short, in terms of the physics of the earth, precisely such intersections of tectonic masses as run directly beneath Haiti have a remarkable tendency to be the sites of vast treasures of minerals, as well as oil and gas, throughout the world.

Notably, in 2005, a year after the Bush-Cheney Administration de facto deposed the democratically elected President of Haiti, Jean-Baptiste Aristide, a team of geologists from the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas began an ambitious and thorough two-phase mapping of all geological data of the Caribbean Basins. The project is due to be completed in 2011. Directed by Dr. Paul Mann, it is called Caribbean Basins, Tectonics and Hydrocarbons. It is all about determining as precisely as possible the relation between tectonic plates in the Caribbean and the potential for hydrocarbons oil and gas.

Notably, the sponsors of the multi-million dollar research project under Mann are the world s largest oil companies, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, the Anglo-Dutch Shell and BHP Billiton.[1] Curiously enough, the project is the first comprehensive geological mapping of a region that, one would have thought, would have been a priority decades ago for the US oil majors. Given the immense, existing oil production off Mexico, Louisiana, and the entire Caribbean, as well as its proximity to the United States not to mention the US focus on its own energy security it is surprising that the region had not been mapped earlier. Now it emerges that major oil companies were at least generally aware of the huge oil potential of the region long ago, but apparently decided to keep it quiet.

Cuba s Super-giant find

Evidence that the US Administration may well have more in mind for Haiti than the improvement of the lot of the devastated Haitian people can be found in nearby waters off Cuba, directly across from Port-au-Prince. In October 2008 a consortium of oil companies led by Spain s Repsol, together with Cuba's state oil company, Cubapetroleo, announced discovery of one of the world s largest oilfields in the deep water off Cuba. It is what oil geologists call a Super-giant field. Estimates are that the Cuban field contains as much as 20 billion barrels of oil, making it the twelfth Super-giant oilfield discovered since 1996. The discovery also likely makes Cuba a new high-priority target for Pentagon destabilization and other nasty operations.

No doubt to the dismay of Washington, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev flew to Havana one month after the Cuban giant oil find to sign an agreement with acting-President Raul Castro for Russian oil companies to explore and develop Cuban oil.[2]
Medvedev s Russia-Cuba oil agreements came only a week after the visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to meet the recuperating Fidel Castro and his brother Raul. The Chinese President signed an agreement to modernize Cuban ports and discussed Chinese purchase of Cuban raw materials. No doubt the mammoth new Cuban oil discovery was high on the Chinese agenda with Cuba.[3] On November 5, 2008, just prior to the Chinese President s trip to Cuba and other Latin American countries, the Chinese government issued their first ever policy paper on the future of China s relations with Latin America and Caribbean nations, elevating these bilateral relations to a new level of strategic importance. [4]

The Cuba Super-giant oil find also leaves the advocates of Peak Oil theory with more egg on the face. Shortly before the Bush-Blair decision to invade and occupy Iraq, a theory made the rounds of cyberspace, that sometime after 2010, the world would reach an absolute peak in world oil production, initiating a period of decline with drastic social and economic implications. Its prominent spokesmen, including retired oil geologist Colin Campbell and Texas oil banker Matt Simmons, claimed that there had not been a single new Super-giant oil discovery since 1976, or thereabouts, and that new fields found over the past two decades had been tiny compared with the earlier giant discoveries in Saudi Arabia, Prudhoe Bay, Daquing in China and elsewhere. [5]

It is critical to note that, more than half a century ago, a group of Russian and Ukrainian geophysicists, working in state secrecy, confirmed that hydrocarbons originated deep in the earth s mantle under conditions similar to a giant burning cauldron at extreme temperature and pressure. They demonstrated that, contrary to US and accepted Western mainstream geology, hydrocarbons were not the result of dead dinosaur detritus concentrated and compressed and somehow transformed into oil and gas millions of years ago, nor of algae or other biological material.[6]

The Russian and Ukrainian geophysicists then proved that the oil or gas produced in the earth s mantle was pushed upwards along faults or cracks in the earth as close to the surface as pressures permitted. The process was analogous to the production of molten lava in volcanoes. It means that the ability to find oil is limited, relatively speaking, only by the ability to identify deep fissures and complex geological activity conducive to bringing the oil out from deep in the earth. It seems that the waters of the Caribbean, especially those off Cuba and its neighbor Haiti, are just such a region of concentrated hydrocarbons (oil and gas) that have found their way upwards close to the surface, perhaps in a magnitude comparable to a new Saudi Arabia.[7]

Haiti, a new Saudi Arabia?

The remarkable geography of Haiti and Cuba and the discovery of world-class oil reserves in the waters off Cuba lend credence to anecdotal accounts of major oil discoveries in several parts of Haitian territory. It also could explain why two Bush Presidents and now special UN Haiti Envoy Bill Clinton have made Haiti such a priority. As well, it could explain why Washington and its NGOs moved so quickly to remove– twice– the democratically elected President Aristide, whose economic program for Haiti included, among other items, proposals for developing Haitian natural resources for the benefit of the Haitian people.

In March 2004, some months before the University of Texas and American Big Oil launched their ambitious mapping of the hydrocarbon potentials of the Caribbean, a Haitian writer, Dr. Georges Michel, published online an article titled Oil in Haiti. In it, Michel wrote:

"[I]t has been no secret that deep in the earthy bowels of the two states that share the island of Haiti and the surrounding waters that there are significant, still untapped deposits of oil. One knows not why they are still untapped. Since the early twentieth century, the physical and political map of the island of Haiti, erected in 1908 by Messrs. Alexander Poujol and Henry Thomasset, reported a major oil reservoir in Haiti near the source of the Rio Todo El Mondo, Tributary Right Artibonite River, better known today as the River Thomonde." [8]

According to a June 2008 article by Roberson Alphonse in the Haitian paper, Le Nouvelliste en Haiti: "The signs, (indicators), justifying the explorations of oil (black gold) in Haiti are encouraging. In the middle of the oil shock, some 4 companies want official licenses from the Haitian State to drill for oil."

At the time, oil prices were climbing above $140 a barrel — on manipulations by various Wall Street banks. Alphonse s article quoted Dieusuel Anglade, the Haitian State Director of the Office of Mining and Energy, telling the Haitian press: "We've received four requests for oil exploration permits We have had encouraging indicators to justify the pursuit of the exploration of black gold (oil), which had stopped in 1979."[9]

Alphonse reported the findings from a 1979 geological study in Haiti of 11 exploratory oil wells drilled at the Plaine du Cul-de-sac on the Plateau Central and at L'ile de La Gonaive: Surface (tentative) indicators for oil were found at the Southern peninsula and on the North coast, explained the engineer Anglade, who strongly believes in the immediate commercial viability of these explorations. [10]

Journalist Alphonse cites an August 16, 1979 memo by Haitian attorney Francois Lamothe, in which he noted that five big wells were drilled down to depths of 9000 feet and that a sample that underwent a physical-chemical analysis in Munich, Germany had revealed tracks of oil. [11]

Despite the promising 1979 results in Haiti, Dr. Georges Michel reported that, the big multinational oil companies operating in Haiti pushed for the discovered deposits not to be exploited. [12] Oil exploration in and offshore Haiti ground to a sudden halt as a result.

Similar if less precise reports claiming that Haitian oil reserves could be vastly larger than those of Venezuela have appeared in Haitian websites. [13] Then in 2010 the financial news site Bloomberg News carried the following:

The Jan. 12 earthquake was on a fault line that passes near potential gas reserves, said Stephen Pierce, a geologist who worked in the region for 30 years for companies that included the former Mobil Corp. The quake may have cracked rock formations along the fault, allowing gas or oil to temporarily seep toward the surface, he said Monday in a telephone interview. A geologist, callous as it may seem, tracing that fault zone from Port-au-Prince to the border looking for gas and oil seeps, may find a structure that hasn't been drilled, said Pierce, exploration manager at Zion Oil & Gas Inc., a Dallas-based company that's drilling in Israel. [14]
In an interview with a Santo Domingo online paper, Leopoldo Espaillat Nanita, former head of the Dominican Petroleum Refinery (REFIDOMSA) stated, there is a multinational conspiracy to illegally take the mineral resources of the Haitian people. [15] Haiti s minerals include gold, the valuable strategic metal iridium and oil, apparently lots of it.

Aristide's development plans

Marguerite Laurent ('Ezili Dantò'), president of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN) who served as attorney for the deposed Aristide, notes that when Aristide was President — up until his US-backed ouster during the Bush era in 2004 — he had developed and published in book form his national development plans. These plans included, for the first time, a detailed list of known sites where the resources of Haiti were located. The publication of the plan sparked a national debate over Haitian radio and in the media about the future of the country. Aristide s plan was to implement a public-private partnership to ensure that the development of Haiti s oil, gold and other valuable resources would benefit the national economy and the broader population, and not merely the five Haitian oligarchic families and their US backers, the so-called Chimeres or gangsters. [16]

Since the ouster of Aristide in 2004, Haiti has been an occupied country, with a dubiously-elected President, Rene Preval, a controversial follower of IMF privatization mandates and reportedly tied to the Chimeres or Haitian oligarchs who backed the removal of Aristide. Notably, the US State Department refuses to permit the return of Aristide from South African exile.

Now, in the wake of the devastating earthquake of January 12, the United States military has taken control of Haiti s four airports and presently has some 20,000 troops in the country. Journalists and international aid organizations have accused the US military of being more concerned with imposing military control, which it prefers to call security, than with bringing urgently needed water, food and medicine from the airport sites to the population.

A US military occupation of Haiti under the guise of earthquake disaster relief would give Washington and private business interests tied to it a geopolitical prize of the first order. Prior to the January 12 quake, the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince was the fifth largest US embassy in the world, comparable to its embassies in such geopolitically strategic places as Berlin and Beijing.[17] With huge new oil finds off Cuba being exploited by Russian companies, with clear indications that Haiti contains similar vast untapped oil as well as gold, copper, uranium and iridium, with Hugo Chavez Venezuela as a neighbor to the south of Haiti, a return of Aristide or any popular leader committed to developing the resources for the people of Haiti, — the poorest nation in the Americas — would constitute a devastating blow to the world s sole Superpower. The fact that in the aftermath of the earthquake, UN Haiti Special Envoy Bill Clinton joined forces with Aristide foe George W. Bush to create something called the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund ought to give everyone pause.

According to Marguerite Laurent ('Ezili Dantò') of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, under the guise of emergency relief work, the US, France and Canada are engaged in a balkanization of the island for future mineral control. She reports rumors that Canada wants the North of Haiti where Canadian mining interests are already present. The US wants Port-au-Prince and the island of La Gonaive just offshore an area identified in Aristide s development book as having vast oil resources, and which is bitterly contested by France. She further states that China, with UN veto power over the de facto UN-occupied country, may have something to say against such a US-France-Canada carve up of the vast wealth of the nation. [18]

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17287

Notes:
1 Paul Mann, Caribbean Basins, Tectonic Plates & Hydrocarbons, Institute for Geophysics, The University of Texas at Austin, accessed in
www.ig.utexas.edu/research/projects/cbth/…/ProposalCaribbean.pdf .
2 Rory Carroll, Medvedev and Castro meet to rebuild Russia-Cuba relations, London Guardian, November 28, 2008 accessed in http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/28/cuba-russia.
3 Julian Gavaghan, Comrades in arms: When China s President Hu met a frail Fidel Castro, London Daily Mail, November 19, 2008, accessed in http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1087485/Comrades-arms-When-Chinas-President-Hu-met-frail-Fidel-Castro.html.
4 Peoples Daily Online, China issues first policy paper on Latin America, Caribbean region, November 5, 2008, accessed in http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90883/6527888.html .
5 Matthew R. Simmons, The World s Giant Oilfields, Simmons & Co. International, Houston, accessed in http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/giantoilfields.pdf .
6 Anton Kolesnikov, et al, Methane-derived hydrocarbons produced under upper-mantle conditions, Nature Geoscience, July 26, 2009.
7 F. William Engdahl, War and Peak Oil Confessions of an ex Peak Oil believer, Global Research, September 26, 2007, accessed in http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6880 .
8 Dr. Georges Michel, Oil in Haiti, English translation from French, Pétrole en Haiti, March 27, 2004, accessed in http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/oil_sites.html#oil_GeorgesMichelEnglish .
9 Roberson Alphonse, Drill, and then pump the oil of Haiti! 4 oil companies request oil drilling permits, translated from the original French, June 27, 2008, accessed in
http://www.bnvillage.co.uk/caribbean-news-village-beta/99691-drill-then-pump-oil-haiti-4-oil-companies-request-oil-drilling-permits.html
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid. The full text indicated that, five big wells were drilled at Porto Suel (Maissade) of a depth of 9000 feet, at Bebernal, 9000 feet, at Bois-Carradeux (Ouest), at Dumornay, on the road Route Frare and close to the Chemin de Fer of Saint-Marc. A sample, a carrot (oil reservoir) drilled up from the well of Saint-Marc in the Artibonite underwent a physical-chemical analysis in Munich, Germany, at the request of Mr. Broth. The result of the analysis was returned on October 11, 1979 and revealed tracks of oil, confided the engineer, Willy Clemens, who had gone to Germany.
12 Dr. Georges Michel, op. cit.
13 Marguerite Laurent, Haiti is full of oil, say Ginette and Daniel Mathurin, Radio Metropole, Jan 28, 2008, accessed in
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/oil_sites.html#full_of_oil.  
14 Jim Polson, Haiti earthquake may have exposed gas, aiding economy, Bloomberg News, January 26, 2010.
15 Espaillat Nanita revela en Haiti existen grandes recursos de oro y otros minerals, Espacinsular.org, 17 November, 2009, accessed in
http://www.espacinsular.org/spip.php?article8942 .
16 The Aristide development plan was contained in the book published in Haiti in 2000, Investir dans l Human. Livre Blanc de Fanmi Lavalas sous la Direction de Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Port-au-Prince, Imprimerie Henri Deschamps, 2000. It contained detailed maps, tables, graphics, and a national development plan for 2004 covering agriculture, environment, commerce and industry, the financial sector, infrastructure, education, culture, health, women's issues, and issues in the public sector. In 2004, using NGOs and the UN and a vicious propaganda campaign to vilify Aristide, the Bush administration got rid of the elected President.
17 Cynthia McKinney, Haiti: An Unwelcome Katrina Redux, Global Research, January 19, 2010, accessed in
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17063. 
18 Marguerite Laurent (Ezili Danto), Did mining and oil drilling trigger the Haiti earthquake?, OpEd News.com, January 23, 2010, accessed in
http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/Did-mining-and-oil-drillin-by-Ezili-Danto-100123-329.html. 

Haiti the New Saudi Arabia? is a post from: Far Left Rx

Brown did his part by becoming the 41st U.S. Senate vote to block cap and trade, and New Scientist did it by pointing out serious errors in a 2007 UN climate body report, which predicted the glaciers in the Himalayas were melting so fast that all of India and China would be under water by 2035. However, it was all made up and not based on any scientific observation or experiment.

Concocted like An Inconvenient Truth. Nonsense. A Lie. A Big Fat Fraud.

If you want the details, please read "Glacial Meltdown: Another Scientific Scandal."

Oops, Maybe Those Glaciers Aren’t Melting So Fast, But Don’t Admit It is a post from: Far Left Rx

We were just weeks away from what Lenin described as "the linchpin of collectivization," national health care, when Scott Brown and the people of Massachusetts rode to our rescue.

Even Politburo Chief Pelosi now admits there are not enough votes in the House to pass health care, and there certainly aren't enough Demofiend robber barons in the Senate to overcome a Republican filibuster. RIP, Obamacare and everything it intended to do to us American, i.e., enslave us.

Meanwhile, Barack Hussein Obama still doesn't get it. He was out on the hustings yesterday sounding like Hugo Chavez or any other two-bit dictator, trying to camouflage his own failings by blaming everything on the nation's largest banks. He had the gall to say these banks have gotten too big.

Hussein, if you want to see something too big, I suggest you look at two items–the federal deficit and the federal government.

Those two are the 800-pound gorilla ruining the economy, not the banks. Shrink them, and you might win back some votes from the Scott Browns of the world. Might, but unlikely because you have no intention of reducing either government or the deficit. After all, you can't enslave a nation unless you bankrupt them and then rule over them with a soviet-style government.

RIP, Cradle-to-Grave Sovietism is a post from: Far Left Rx

Even though the U.S. military budget is almost ten times that of China's (with a population more than four times as large) and Washington plans a record $708 billion defense budget for next year compared to Russia spending less than $40 billion last year for the same, China and Russia are portrayed as threats to the U.S. and its allies.

China has no troops outside its borders; Russia has a small handful in its former territories in Abkhazia, Armenia, South Ossetia and Transdniester. The U.S. has hundreds of thousands of troops stationed in six continents.

While Gates was in charge of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and responsible for almost half of international military spending he was offended that the world's most populous nation might desire to "deny others countries the ability to threaten it."

On December 23 of last year Raytheon Company announced that it had received a $1.1 billion contract with Taiwan for the purchase of 200 Patriot anti-ballistic missiles. In early January the U.S. Defense Department cleared the transaction "despite opposition from rival China, where a military official proposed sanctioning U.S. firms that sell arms to the island." [1]

The sale completes a $6.5 billion weapons package approved by the previous George W. Bush administration at the end of 2008. In the words of the Asia bureau chief of Defense News, "This is the last piece that Taiwan has been waiting on." [2]

Defense News first reported on the agreement and reminded its readers that "Raytheon already won smaller contracts for Taiwan in January 2009 and in 2008 for upgrades to the Patriot systems the country already had. Those contracts were to upgrade the systems to Configuration 3, the same upgrade the company is completing for the U.S. Army."

The source also described what the enhanced Patriot capacity consisted of: "Configuration 3 is Raytheon's most advanced Patriot system and allows the use of Lockheed Martin's Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles [and] Raytheon's Guidance Enhanced Missile-Tactical [Patriot-2 upgrade] missiles…." [3]

The PAC-3 is the latest, most advanced Patriot missile design and the first capable of shooting down tactical ballistic missiles. It is the initial tier of a layered missile shield system which also includes Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), Ground Based Interceptor (GBI), Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD), Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), ship-based Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense equipped with Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) interceptors, Forward Based X-Band Radar (FBXB) and Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) components. An integrated network that ranges from the battlefield to the heavens.

The system is modular and highly mobile and its batteries are thus more easily able to evade detection and attack. It also extends the range of previous Patriot versions several fold.

"[T]he PAC-3 interceptors, enhanced by [an] advanced radar and command center, are capable of protecting an area approximately seven times greater than the original Patriot system." [4]

If like the rest of the world Chinese authorities anticipated a reduction if not halt in the pace of American global military expansion with the advent of a new administration in Washington a year ago, like everyone they else have been rudely disabused of the notion.

Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei urged the United States to reconsider the Taiwan arms package in the sixth official Chinese warning in a week earlier this month, telling his nation's Xinhua News Agency that "China had strongly protested the U.S. government's recent decision to allow Raytheon Company and Lockheed Martin Corp. to sell weapons to Taiwan" and "The U.S. arms sales to Taiwan undermine China's national security." [5]

Later information added to the inventory and to China's ire when it was revealed that "the Obama Administration would soon announce the sale to Taiwan of a package worth billions of U.S. dollars including Black Hawk helicopters, anti-missile systems and plans for diesel-powered submarines in a move likely to anger China." [6]

In addition, the China Times reported that Taiwan was to obtain eight second-hand Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates from the U.S. in addition to the 200 Patriot missiles. The warships were designed in the 1970s as comparatively inexpensive alternatives to World War II-era destroyers. The new deal will double the amount of U.S. Perry-class frigates that Taiwan already possesses to 16.

They will also factor into missile defense and at a higher level, as "The island hopes to arm them with a version of the advanced Aegis Combat System (see above), which uses computers and radar to take out multiple targets, as well as sophisticated missile launch technology…." [7]

While both Washington and Taipei will present the weapons transactions as strictly defensive in nature, it is worth recalling that last autumn Taiwan conducted its "largest-ever missile test…launched from a secretive and tightly guarded base in southern Taiwan" with missiles "capable of reaching major Chinese cities." [8]

President Ma Ying-jeou observed the missile launches which "included the test-firing of a top secret, newly developed medium-range surface-to-surface missile with a range of 3,000 kilometres, capable of striking major cities in central, northern and southern China." [9]

The Patriot Advanced Capability and SM-3 interceptor missiles the U.S. is providing Taiwan could well be employed to counter a mainland Chinese counterattack or at the least protect the launch sites of Taiwanese medium range missiles which, as noted above, are capable of hitting most of China's major cities.

Beijing responded on January 11 by conducting a ground-based midcourse interceptor missile test over its territory.

Professor Tan Kaijia of the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) National Defense University told Xinhua "If the ballistic missile is regarded as a spear, now we have succeeded in building a shield for self-defense." [10]

Time Magazine characterized the significance of the test in writing: "There's no chance China's gambit will deter the U.S. from backing Taiwan….But the test does signal a ratcheting up of tensions between Beijing and Washington…." [11]

Both China and the U.S., the first in 2007 and the second the following year, with a Standard Missile-3 fired from an Aegis-class frigate in the Pacific Ocean in the American case, destroyed satellites in orbit. The dawn of space war had begun.

A January 15 feature on a Russian website titled "Possible space wars in the near future" provided background information. "It is hard to overestimate the role played by military satellite systems. Since the 1970s, an increasingly greater number of troop-control, telecommunications, target-acquisition, navigation and other processes depend on spacecraft which are therefore becoming more important…The space echelon's role is directly proportional to the development level of any given nation and its armed forces." [12]

China and Russia for years have been advocating a ban on the use of space for military purposes, annually raising the issue in the United Nations. The U.S. has just as persistently opposed the initiatives.

To comprehend the context in which recent developments have occurred, Washington has for three years increasingly and tenaciously included China and Russia with Iran and North Korea as belligerents in prospective future conflicts.

The campaign began in earnest in February of 2007 when then and still Pentagon chief Robert Gates testified before the U.S. House Armed Services Committee on the Defense Department Fiscal Year 2008 Budget Request and said among other matters:

"In addition to fighting the global war on terror, we also face the danger posed by Iran and North Korea's nuclear ambitions and the threat they pose not only to their neighbors, but globally because of their record of proliferation; the uncertain paths of China and Russia, which are both pursuing sophisticated military modernization programs; and a range of other flashpoints and challenges….We need both the ability for regular force-on-force conflicts because we don't know what's going to develop in places like Russia and China, in North Korea, in Iran and elsewhere." [13]
 
If it be objected that Gates was only alluding to general contingency plans, ones that could apply to any major nation, neither his comments nor any by U.S. defense officials since have mentioned fellow nuclear powers Britain, France, India and Israel in a similar vein, but have reiterated concerns about Russia and China with an alarming consistency. In fact China and Russia have been substituted for Iraq in the former axis of evil category.

Russia and China both reacted harshly to Gates' statements in February of 2007 and only three days afterward, with Gates in the audience, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a speech at the annual Munich Security Conference in which he warned:

"[W]hat is a unipolar world? However one might embellish this term, at the end of the day it refers to one type of situation, namely one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making.

"It is world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within."

"Unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any problems. Moreover, they have caused new human tragedies and created new centres of tension. Judge for yourselves: wars as well as local and regional conflicts have not diminished….And no less people perish in these conflicts – even more are dying than before. Significantly more, significantly more!

"Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force – military force – in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts."

"One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations…." [14]

The warning was not heeded in Washington.

Three months later the Pentagon chief resumed his earlier accusations. In May of 2007 the Defense Department issued its annual report on China's military capability, citing "continuing efforts to project Chinese power beyond its immediate region and to develop high-technology systems that can challenge the best in the world."

"U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says some of China's efforts cause him concern."

The report said "China is pursuing long-term, comprehensive transformation of its military forces” to "enable it to project power and deny other countries the ability to threaten it." [15]  While Gates was in charge of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and responsible for almost half of international military spending he was offended that the world's most populous nation might desire to "deny others countries the ability to threaten it."

A year after Gates linked China and Russia with surviving "axis of evil" suspects Iran and North Korea, National Director of Intelligence Michael McConnell singled out China, Russia and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) as the main threats to the United States, even more than al-Qaeda.

The Voice of Russia responded to McDonnell's accusations in a commentary that included these excerpts:

"Russia has demanded an explanation from America over a report by the Director of American national intelligence in which Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, North Korea and al-Qaida are described as sources of strategic threats to the U.S….Quite possibly, the report by the U.S intelligence community amounts to accounting for the staggering sums of money that is allocated yearly for its upkeep. There could be other reasons to explain why Russia has been included among states posing a threat to America." [16]

Gates has remained as defense secretary for the new American administration and so has the anti-Chinese and anti-Russian rhetoric.

On May 1 of last year Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that "The Obama administration is working to improve deteriorating U.S. relations with a number of Latin American nations to counter growing Iranian, Chinese and Russian influence in the Western Hemisphere…." [17] The month after she spoke those words a military coup was staged in Honduras and two weeks after that the U.S. secured the use of seven military bases in Colombia.

In September Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair issued the U.S.'s quadrennial National Intelligence Strategy report which said "Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea pose the greatest challenges to the United States' national interests. [18]

Agence France-Presse said that "The United States on [September 15] put emerging superpower China and former Cold War foe Russia alongside Iran and North Korea on a list of the four main nations challenging American interests" and quoted from Blair's report:

China was fingered for its "increasing natural resource-focused diplomacy and military modernization."

"Russia is a US partner in important initiatives such as securing fissile material and combating nuclear terrorism, but it may continue to seek avenues for reasserting power and influence in ways that complicate US interests." [19]

China is not allowed to deny other nations the ability to threaten it and Russia is not permitted to complicate U.S. interests.

The trend, ominous in its relentlessness, continues into this year.

The vice president of Lockheed Martin's Missile Defense Systems, John Holly, touted his company's role in the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System – components of which are being delivered to Taiwan – as "the shining star" of Lockheed's interceptor missile portfolio, and according to a newspaper in the city which hosts the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency "Pointing to missile programs in North Korea, Iran, Russia and China, Holly said, 'the world is not a very safe world … and it is incumbent upon us in industry to provide [the Pentagon] with the best capabilities.'" [20]

Three days afterward the Pentagon's Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs Wallace Gregson "voiced doubts about China's insistence that its use of space is for peaceful means" and stated "The Chinese have stated that they oppose the militarization of space. Their actions seem to indicate the contrary intention." [21]

The next day Admiral Robert Willard, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, stated in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee that China's "powerful economic engine is also funding a military modernization program that has raised concerns in the region — a concern also shared by the U.S. Pacific Command." [22]

The U.S. Navy has six fleets and eleven aircraft carrier strike groups in or available for deployment to all parts of the world, but China with only a "brown water" navy off its own coast is a cause for concern to the U.S.

As Alan Mackinnon, the chairman of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, wrote last September:

"The world of war is today dominated by a single superpower. In military terms the United States sits astride the world like a giant Colossus. As a country with only five per cent of the world's population it accounts for almost 50 per cent of global arms spending.

"Its 11 naval carrier fleets patrol every ocean and its 909 military bases are scattered strategically across every continent. No other country has reciprocal bases on US territory – it would be unthinkable and unconstitutional. It is 20 years since the end of the Cold War and the United States and its allies face no significant military threat today. Why then have we not had the hoped-for peace dividend?

Why does the world's most powerful nation continue to increase its military budget, now over $1.2 trillion a year in real terms?

What threat is all this supposed to counter?

"The US response has been largely military – the expansion of NATO and the encirclement of Russia and China in a ring of hostile bases and alliances. And continuing pressure to isolate and weaken Iran." [23]

Observations to be kept in the forefront of people's minds as China is increasingly presented as a security challenge – and a strategic threat – to the world's sole military superpower.

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17092

Related articles:

U.S. Expands Asian NATO Against China, Russia
Stop NATO, October 16, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/u-s-expands-asian-nato-against-china-russia

Broader Strategy: West's Afghan War Targets Russia, China, Iran
Stop NATO, September 8, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/broader-strategy-wests-afghan-war-targets-russia-china-iran

U.S. Accelerates First Strike Global Missile Shield System
Stop NATO, August 19, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/u-s-accelerates-first-strike-global-missile-shield-system

Australian Military Buildup And The Rise Of Asian NATO
Stop NATO, May 6, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/australian-military-buildup-and-the-rise-of-asian-nato

Notes

1) Reuters, January 7, 2010
2) Ibid
3) Defense News, December 23, 2009
4) http://www.missilethreat.com/missiledefensesystems/id.41/system_detail.asp
5) Russian Information Agency Novosti, January 9, 2010
6) Taiwan News, January 4, 2010
7) Agence France-Presse, January 11, 2010
Radio Taiwan International, October 14, 2009
9) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, October 14, 2009
10) Asian Times, January 20, 2010
11) Time, January 13, 2010
12) Russian Information Agency Novosti, January 15, 2010
13) http://www.sras.org/news2.phtml?m=908
14) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/12/AR2007021200555.html
15) Voice of America News, May 26, 2007
16) Voice of Russia, February 8, 2008
17) Associated Press, May 1, 2009
18) Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, September 16, 2009
19) Agence France-Presse, September 15, 2009
20) Huntsville Times, January 10, 2010
21) Agence France-Presse, January 13, 2010
22) Washington Post, January 14, 2010
23) Scottish Left Review, November 17, 2009

Coming Soon: Space Wars is a post from: Far Left Rx

Now, I can honestly say that I've lived to see a miracle happen. Ted Kennedy managed to turn a Democratic state Republican. But he had lots of help in the persons of Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi. Still, the election of Scott Brown last night as Massachusetts' replacement senator for Kennedy was the thrill of a lifetime, especially as it now puts the kibosh on any left-leaning crusades in Congress, such as cap and trade.

Health care reform, unfortunately, Brown may be too late to stop, but the future looks bright. As Senator-elect Brown himself noted, "When there's trouble in Massachusetts, rest assured there's trouble everywhere."

I love that kind of trouble.

The Lasting Legacy of Ted Kennedy is a post from: Far Left Rx