http://educate-yourself.org/cn/davemcgowan74newsletter23oct05.shtml
October 23, 2005

Part I

http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr74.html

(Continued from Newsletter #73)

At least one fact seems indisputable: neither "incompetence" nor "lack of preparation" can even begin to explain the actions of national, state and local officials in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It is perfectly obvious that there was a planned response, and that plan was fully implemented. The confusion over this has apparently arisen due to the erroneous belief that that plan had something to do with rescuing and providing aid and comfort to survivors.

If the problem was just that FEMA had failed to adequately respond to the disaster, then maybe, just maybe, we could write it off as incompetence. Far more difficult to explain away is that FEMA, and/or the Department of Homeland Security, actively prevented any other individuals or groups from responding. And we're not talking here about a couple of anomalous incidents. No, we're talking about an undeniable pattern of criminal behavior.

Among numerous other crimes against the people of New Orleans, FEMA declined an offer from the city of Chicago to send "44 Chicago Fire Department rescue and medical personnel and their gear, more than 100 Chicago police officers, 140 Streets and Sanitation, 146 Public Health and 8 Human Services workers, and a fleet of vehicles including 29 trucks, two boats and a mobile clinic." Instead, FEMA asked Chicago to send just a single truck. ("Daley 'Shocked' at Federal Snub of Offers to Help," Chicago Tribune, September 2, 2005)

FEMA also refused to allow into New Orleans "up to 500 Florida airboat pilots [who had] volunteered to rescue Hurricane Katrina victims, transport relief workers and ferry supplies." Many of the pilots had "spent thousands of their own dollars stocking their boats and swamp buggies with food, water, medical supplies and fuel." (Nancy Imperiale "Airboaters Stalled by FEMA," Sun Sentinel, September 2, 2005) Meanwhile, "More than 50 civilian aircraft responding to separate requests for evacuations from hospitals and other agencies swarmed to the area a day after Katrina hit, but FEMA blocked their efforts" as well. ("After 9/11, a Master Plan for Disasters Was Drawn; It Didn't Weather the Storm," Los Angeles Times, September 11, 2005)

Not to be outdone, the Department of Homeland Security refused to allow the Red Cross to deliver food. Said Renita Hosler, spokeswoman for the organization, "The Homeland Security Department has requested and continues to request that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans." (Ann Rodgers "Homeland Security Won't Let Red Cross Deliver Food," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 3, 2005)

In other news, FEMA opted to all but ignore an offshore Naval ship, the USS Bataan, that was equipped with a 600-bed hospital, six operating rooms, a 1,200-man crew, helicopters, doctors, food, water, and the ability to desalinate up to 100,000 gallons of drinking water per day. According to a report in the Chicago Tribune, the "role in the relief effort of the sizable medical staff on board the Bataan was not up to the Navy, but to FEMA officials directing the overall effort." (Stephen J. Hedges "Navy Ship Nearby Underused," Chicago Tribune, September 4, 2005) In a similar vein, FEMA passed on an offer from the University of North Carolina to supply a state-of-the-art mobile hospital. (http://edition.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/09/04/katrina.sick.redtape.ap/)

On September 5, Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) blasted FEMA in a report carried by London's Financial Times: "Offers of medicine, communications equipment and other desperately needed items continue to flow in, only to be ignored by [FEMA]." Landrieu also criticized FEMA for "dragging its feet" (a rather charitable characterization of FEMA's actions) when Amtrak offered the use of its trains to evacuate victims. (http://news.ft.com/cms/s/84aa35cc-1da8-11da-b40b-00000e) On September 6, an Associated Press report carried the following quote from Ben Morris, mayor of Slidell, Louisiana: "We are still hampered by some of the most stupid, idiotic regulations by FEMA. They have turned away generators, we've heard that they've gone around seizing equipment from our contractors." (http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html)

More than a week after Katrina came ashore, the Associated Press reported that "hundreds of firefighters who volunteered to help rescue victims of Hurricane Katrina" had instead been whiling away their time "playing cards, taking classes on the Federal Emergency Management Agency's history and lounging at an Atlanta airport hotel." The FEMA official in charge of the firefighters explained that the agency "wanted to make certain they were sent where the need was greatest." And since FEMA apparently hadn't yet determined where the need was greatest, a week after the need arose, it was best to just let the skilled rescue workers sit idle. ("Eager to Help, Frustrated Firefighters Wait for Orders," Los Angeles Times, September 7, 2005, page A26)

Next came a report that a "German military plane carrying 15 tons of military rations for survivors of Hurricane Katrina was sent back by U.S. authorities . Since Hurricane Katrina struck the United States, many international donors have complained of frustration that bureaucratic entanglements have hindered shipments to the United States." (Claudia Kemmer "German Plane with 15 Tons of Aid Turned Back >From U.S.," Minneapolis Star Tribune, September 10, 2005) And then came one of the most appalling stories of all, courtesy of The Advocate: "In the midst of administering chest compressions to a dying woman several days after Hurricane Katrina struck, Dr. Mark N. Perlmutter was ordered to stop by a federal official because he wasn't registered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 'I begged him to let me continue,' said Perlmutter, who left his home and practice as an orthopedic surgeon in Pennsylvania to come to Louisiana and volunteer to care for hurricane victims. 'People were dying, and I was the only doctor on the tarmac (at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport) where scores of nonresponsive patients lay on stretchers. Two patients died in front of me.' . FEMA issued a formal response to Perlmutter's story, acknowledging that the agency does not use voluntary physicians." (Laurie Smith Anderson "Doctor Says FEMA Ordered Him to Stop Treating Hurricane Victims," The Advocate, September 16, 2005)

By September 11, Jefferson Parish officials had all but declared war on FEMA. As the Times-Picayune reported, "Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee said he has 'commandered' [sic] the Sam's and Wal-Mart stores in the parish and ordered them to open as soon as possible. Lee said he took the action after he learned that a Wal-Mart store wanted to open recently but was told by FEMA officials that it could not . Lee said anyone from FEMA who tries to close either store will be arrested by deputies." In making the announcement, Sheriff Lee noted that he had the backing of Aaron Broussard, the president of Jefferson Parish. Several days earlier, on "Meet the Press," Broussard had angrily revealed some ugly truths about FEMA: ". the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history . Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area, and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now . Let me give you just three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn't need them. This was a week ago. FEMA - we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my Parish. The Coast Guard said, 'Come get the fuel right away.' When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. 'FEMA says don't give you the fuel.' Yesterday - yesterday - FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, 'No one is getting near these lines.'" (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9179790/; see also Scott Shane "Storm and Crisis: The Fallout," New York Times, September 5, 2005)

The Loudoun Times-Mirror provided yet another example of the 'assistance' that FEMA provided to Jefferson Parish: "Loudoun Sheriff's deputies and emergency personnel were on their way to hurricane-stricken Louisiana Thursday night but had to turn around when the federal government failed to come up with the required paperwork. Sheriff Steve Simpson and his staff spent 12 hours trying to get the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the state of Louisiana Emergency Operations Center to act. They didn't, and the 20 deputies and six emergency medical technicians - all volunteers - turned around and came back to Loudoun . The deputies [had] packed up to head south after a request from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Department . The relief team had gathered enough supplies to be self-sufficient for up to 14 days." (Shannon Sollinger "Loudon Relief Crew Turned Away," Loudon Times-Mirror,
September 2, 2005)

Did I mention, by the way, that Jefferson Parish is (or at least was) populated primarily with African-Americans? Or had you already figured that out on your own? And did I also mention that what this country could really use is a whole lot more Aaron Broussards and Harry Lees?

To make sure that everyone got FEMA's message loud and clear, the agency issued a press release, available on their website, urging "First Responders" not to respond unless officially dispatched - which really meant, "don't call us, we'll call you . but not anytime soon."(http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18470) The truth of the matter is that many of the human and material resources needed to deal with the tragedy in New Orleans were readily available - trained rescue teams, skilled medical personnel, medical supplies, medical facilities, food, water, and all manner of transportation - and virtually all of it was offered free of charge. The American people, along with (though I hate to admit it) portions of corporate America, and with the backing of the international community, were poised to spontaneously mount an effective response to this disaster. If the government, particularly the federal government, had simply done nothing, then much of the death and suffering could have been avoided. Unfortunately, that is not what happened. Instead, FEMA worked to actively thwart all voluntary efforts to help the victims, thereby ensuring that not only would there be no federal response, there would be no response at all.

Such a deliberate course of actions cannot credibly be explained away as mere 'incompetence.' Neither can the punishing of two Naval pilots (Lt. Matt Udkow and Lt. Michael Holdener) for committing the apparently unpardonable sin of rescuing more than 100 hurricane victims "before returning to base from a cargo delivery." Their actions, you see, allegedly compromised the delivery of relief supplies, even though the Navy admitted that "no supplies went undelivered as a result of the rescues." A senior official claimed that the pilots were merely 'counseled,' not punished, but it was acknowledged that one of the men "was temporarily assigned to a kennel." I guess those years of training as a pilot come in handy when it comes time to clean the shit out of the cages at the kennel. ("Navy Pilots Are 'Counseled' After Unauthorized Rescues," Los Angeles Times, September 8, 2005, Page A26)

As most of us probably recall, the blocking of relief efforts was largely justified with claims that conditions in the city were simply too dangerous due to the rampant criminality that was inexplicably sweeping over New Orleans. Heavily-armed gangs had taken control of the ravished streets and were openly attacking both residents and stranded tourists. Looters were shamelessly exploiting the tragedy to stock up on flat-screen TVs. Murderers and, worse yet, baby-rapists lurked around every corner. Snipers had taken up strategic positions throughout the city, taking pot-shots at anyone who dared attempt come to the aid of hurricane victims. The only thing missing, it seemed, were reports of roving bands of Islamic terrorists, possibly 'sleeper' Al Qaeda cells. I'm kind of surprised, to be honest, that Karl Rove didn't think of tossing that into the mix.

In a truly shocking development, nearly all of those stories have turned out to be works of fiction - works of fiction that were fed to a media machine that dutifully reported them as fact ... over and over and over again. Remarkably enough, various avenues of that media machine have now admitted, rather quietly, that the sensational stories of rampant criminality were fabrications. Even without the admission, however, most of the stories were fairly obvious fabrications. For the record, the facts appear to be as follows:

1) There is no evidence that there was any "looting" of any significance occurring in post-Katrina New Orleans. Doing what is necessary, in times of crisis, to minimally provide for the needs of yourself and your family, is not "looting." And there is little indication that many residents took time from their busy schedules to swim over to the local Circuit City to pick up a new plasma TV. What would they have done with this loot once it was acquired? Take it back to their submerged homes? Lug it to the Superdome? ... "Honey, it looks like we're going to have to leave one of the kids here on the roof or I won't be able to carry the new flatty."

A month after Katrina hit New Orleans, the Acting Supt. of the New Orleans Police Department, Warren Riley, acknowledged that procuring items needed for survival in a crisis situation was not "looting." According to Riley, "[people] did actually go in and get jeans, get food in some locations. [They] were without food for some days. Those things are acceptable; they're acceptable to me."

Oh . wait a minute . my bad. I seem to have misread Riley's statement. What he actually said was "our officers did actually go in and get jeans, get food in some locations. We were without food for some days. Those things are acceptable; they're acceptable to me." So is, I suppose, the fact that "officers also commandeered Cadillacs from a car dealership." Riley's position would appear to be somewhat at odds, however, with the official position at the time the alleged looting was taking place, when there was much talk of a "zero tolerance" policy that called for 'looters' to be "shot on sight." (Nicole Gaouette "New Orleans Police Investigate Possible Looting by Officers," Los Angeles Times, September 30, 2005)

2) It is extremely unlikely that there were violent gangs prowling the flooded streets of New Orleans. I know it's hard for some people to believe, but 'gang bangers' are human too. They have famlies and friends. And sometimes taking care of the needs of their loved ones actually takes precedence over gang rivalries and turf wars. If Indians and Pakistanis can temporarily put aside their differences in the wake of an earthquake, then I am reasonably certain that rival street gangs can do likewise in the wake of a hurricane. And if you think about it, it would be pretty hard to do a drive-by shooting in a makeshift rowboat.

3) There is no evidence indicating that there were civilian 'snipers' impeding the work of relief workers. Snipers have never, as far as I can determine, spontaneously appeared in the aftermath of a natural disaster. If there were any snipers at all, they were military/intelligence operatives sent in to provide a handy pretext for mounting a military response.

On September 27, the Los Angeles Times (along with several other newspapers) quietly admitted that the lurid stories of rampant criminality were entirely unsupported by any actual evidence: "newspapers and television exaggerated criminal behavior in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, particularly at the overcrowded Superdome and Convention Center ... unverified 'rapes,' and unconfirmed sniper attacks [were] among examples of scores of myths about the dome and Convention Center treated as fact ... Follow-up reporting has discredited reports of a 7-year-old being raped and murdered at the Superdome [and] roving bands of armed gang members attacking the helpless." (Susannah Rosenblatt and James Rainey "Katrina Takes a Toll on Truth, News Accuracy," Los Angeles Times, September 27, 2005)

Since the L.A. Times has long been tasked with pretending to be a 'liberal' publication, the Rosenblatt and Rainey report took aim at the 'Fair and Balanced' reporting of Fox News: "Fox News, a day before the major evacuation of the Superdome began, issued an 'alert' as talk show host Alan Colmes reiterated reports of 'robberies, rapes, carjackings, riots and murder. Violent gangs are roaming the streets at night, hidden by the cover of darkness.'"

Colmes' little rant was pure bullshit, of course, but in all fairness to Fox News, so was just about everything that was being reported by every other avenue of the media, including the Los Angeles Times, which splashed lurid lies across it's front page for days. The feeble attempt to correct those lies, on the other hand, was buried in a single story that went largely unread -- which is why the majority of Americans still believe, and will always believe, that the only people to ride out the storm in New Orleans were looters, murderers, rapists, snipers, robbers, carjackers and rioters.

It was not by accident, by the way, that Alan Colmes - the token 'liberal' hired by Fox News after an exhaustive, nationwide search for the least credible fake-liberal in the country - was among those leading the charge to spread such viscous lies about people who would, in any civilized society, have been recognized as victims, not criminals. The goal of this propaganda campaign, you see, was to justify a massive military response - to justify placing a swath of the Gulf Coast under martial law. And when you're trying to sell an authoritarian, ultra-right-wing agenda, the favored strategy is to use salesman who appear to be from the political left. And when the agenda includes a little ethnic cleansing, it helps if the salesmen are from the targeted ethnic group, hence the prominent involvement of purported 'liberals' like Oprah Winfrey and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.

The L.A. Times report placed blame for the "inaccurate reporting in large measure on the breakdown of telephone service, which prevented dissemination of accurate reports to those most in need of the information." I have to assume here that the Times' stellar "follow-up reporting" failed to uncover the fact that there probably would have been substantially better telephone service if FEMA hadn't been running around deliberately cutting communication lines. The cutting of those lines no doubt greatly facilitated the control of information, ensuring that the stories coming out of New Orleans were largely the stories that the government wanted told. Like, for instance, the fictional stories of snipers and armed gangs running amok in the city.

Curiously missing from the L.A. Times report was any questioning of the overtly military federal response to the tragedy. After openly, though rather shyly, acknowledging that the pretext for turning New Orleans into a war zone was wholly fabricated, the Times offered not one word of criticism of the Bush administration's decision to send heavily armed troops into an American city on what was explicitly described as a "combat mission" to pacify "insurgents." Such an omission, from one of the alleged pillars of the 'liberal' media, would be shocking were it not for the fact that the very same L.A. Times long ago tacitly acknowledged that all of the justifications for turning the nation of Iraq into a war zone were lies, and yet still steadfastly cheerleads the war.

Also missing was any criticism of the widely-publicized decision to pull all NOPD officers off rescue and relief operations so that the department could focus all its resources on addressing the largely mythical crime wave sweeping the city. If any organization was in a position to judge the veracity of the lurid stories circulating in the press, it was the New Orleans Police Department, which had hundreds of pairs of eyes and ears on the streets of the city. Why then was the decision made to reallocate police resources? Was this yet another action taken by FEMA officials, working behind the scenes, to insure that no relief was available to hurricane survivors, and that the only responses to the tragedy would be armed responses?

Though not commented on by the media, the unjustifiable decision by the NOPD to suspend all rescue operations was rather remarkable, for it revealed, if only for a brief moment, the true nature of the beast. One of the Golden Rules of the Western corporate capitalist system stood naked for all to see, but few paid any attention. If they had, and if they had listened closely enough, this is what they would have heard: "Property has value; human life does not."

The other justification that was bandied about for preventing relief workers and supplies from getting to the victims was that the water covering the city had immediately transformed itself into a toxic stew so vile that it posed a grave threat to life as we know it. Not so toxic, of course, as to negatively impact the legions of hungry alligators (or crocodiles; I don't remember, or care, which it was) prowling the city, or the schools of ravenous piranha, or, in at least one neighborhood, the Loch Ness Monster, but dangerously toxic nonetheless. Unfortunately, it appears as though those stories might have been over-hyped just a bit as well. Returning again to page A26 of the Los Angeles Times (where they hide all the good Katrina stories, just to see if anyone is paying attention), we find this from October 2:

Fish from Lake Pontchartrain, the source of much of New Orleans' famous seafood, is safe to eat again after Hurricane Katrina . Fetid floodwaters that filled 80% of New Orleans after Katrina struck on Aug. 29 were pumped into Lake Pontchartrain, but they turned out to be less polluted than had been feared. ("Pontchartrain Fish Are Declared Safe to Eat," Los Angeles Times, October 2, 2005, Page A26)

According to Chris Piehler of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, "There is no toxic soup." Wow! That's weird, isn't it? Just the other day, when the water was in the streets of New Orleans, it was highly toxic, but now that it is back in the lake, it seems to be okay. What a difference a few weeks makes! It seems like only yesterday that New Orleans was, by all reports, both a literal and metaphorical cesspool. But now we know that that was all just a, uhmm, misunderstanding. Certainly no one is suggesting any malice here. We are all adults and we all know that the price we have to pay for having a 'free press' is that sometimes every single media outlet in the country - in print, on television and on the radio - mistakenly spend several days loudly and repeatedly broadcasting the same made-up stories.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument - and because you wouldn't be visiting this website if you weren't seeking out 'conspiracy theories' - that everything that happened in post-Katrina New Orleans happened because powerful actors wanted it to happen: the breaching of the levees, the flooding of selected portions of the city, the suppression of any and all relief efforts, the establishment of a pretext for a military response through the introduction of fraudulent 'news' stories, and the relocation by force of the residents of New Orleans. What then would be the motivation for these actions? I can think of at least three motives:

1. To acclimate the American people to the presence of armed troops on American soil, which will soon be a familiar sight not just in southern Louisiana, but throughout the country. Even as you read this, the White House and Congress are hard at work drafting legislation and executive orders that will normalize the use of combat personnel to deal with any contrived situation.

2. To allow the city of New Orleans to be rebuilt and refashioned into what our fearless leaders no doubt see as a city of the future - a city that is much richer, and much whiter, than the city that stood before.

3. To solidify control over the Gulf Coast oil and gas industry, since a key goal of the perpetrators of the 'Peak Oil' charade, as I've noted before, is to achieve total control over all the world's major oil and gas taps.

Speaking of 'Peak Oil,' my mailbox runneth over with inquiries concerning the scam. I suppose that is because the issue is getting a little hard to ignore, what with it popping up all over the mainstream media these days. I know this because I subscribe to only a handful of mainstream publications and every one of them have now promoted the 'Peak' lies. The cover of the August edition of National Geographic, for instance, reads: "After Oil; Powering the Future." The cover of October's Esquire reads, charmingly enough: "The End of Oil (& Life As We Know It); A Handy Guide."

Yes, friends, thanks to the tireless efforts of Mike Ruppert and company, the mainstream media have now been forced to acknowledge the 'reality' of 'Peak Oil.' That is, after all, the way that things generally work -- the truth first emerges in the fringes of the 'alternative' media, and then, within a few short years, through the hard and thankless work of dedicated researchers, some of whom might not even come from CIA families, their ideas gain mainstream acceptance. That is precisely why mainstream commentators and publications are now okay with, for example, spilling the beans on 9-11. And the sham election of 2000. And 2002. And 2004. And the war crimes being committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the rampant criminality of the Bush regime, on both the domestic and international fronts. And Paul Wellstone's plane 'crash.' And (insert the scandal of your choice here; I'm bored with it already).

Maybe we don't even need an 'alternative' media. We can just wait a couple of years for the real stories to seep into the mainstream. True, we'll always be lagging a little behind, but I'm the kind of guy who always waits for movies to come out on DVD before seeing them, so I'm kind of used to lagging a little behind. And to be perfectly honest, I usually feel ripped-off even at the DVD rental price, although that really has nothing to do with the current discussion.

By the way, since the Peakers in the 'alternative' media insist on taking credit for every 'Peak' story that appears in the mainstream, then I suppose that I will have to take full credit for an article by Sonia Shaw entitled "The Strange Heresies of Thomas Gold," appearing in the November issue of Playboy. Shaw's piece makes for interesting reading, particularly the discussion of how research that has supported Gold's theories on oil has never been published. But here I digress yet again.

What I really wanted to talk about was when I offended the 'Peak Oil' crowd by reporting that their real agenda was selling the necessity of a massive 'population reduction.' Remember that? Remember how all the Peakers got their panties in a wad and accused me of putting words in the mouth of their great and fearless cult leader, The Honorable Michael Ruppert? And remember how they nearly went into convulsions when I described their 'solution' to the alleged problem as a eugenics program, because, of course, no one in the 'Peak' movement advocated any such thing?

Well . it appears that it is time to revisit that issue, even at the considerable risk of further offending the delicate sensibilities of the craven 'Peak Oil' proponents. This time, however, I won't be putting words in anyone's mouth. No, this time I will be quoting directly from a newsletter penned by the great Colin Campbell, founding father of ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil) and guiding light of folks like Ruppert, Heinberg and Pfeiffer. Without further ado then, let's hear what Dr. Campbell had to say this past July (with my own comments added in red, and with a shout-out to Ty Brown for directing my attention to this post):

Recent articles in the ASPO Newsletter have agreed that the explosion of world population from about 0.6 billion in 1750 to 6.4 billion today was initiated and sustained by the shift from renewable energy to fossil fuel (sic) energy in the Industrial Revolution. There is agreement that the progressive exhaustion of fossil fuel reserves will reverse the process, though there is uncertainty as to what a sustainable global population would be.

... a global population reduction of some 6 billion people is likely to take place during the 21st Century (For the mathematically impaired, Campbell is talking about no less than a 94% reduction in the world's population. If you feel that you and all of your loved ones are among the lucky 6% who will be spared, then I suppose there is no cause for alarm and you can feel free to stop reading now.)

... probably before 2010 ... uncontrollable inflation and recession will spread round the world ... (Probably so, but this will be, of course, a deliberately induced condition.)

In Third World nations ... a Darwinian struggle for shrinking resources of all kinds will be in full swing ... the imperative to survive will be driving strong groups to take what they want from weak ones. The concept of human rights will be irrelevant ...

It may well be that, in the West, the same argument will affect the thinking of militarily powerful nations ... Instantaneous nuclear elimination of population centres might even be considered merciful, compared to starvation and massacres prolonged over decades. (You have to applaud Campbell's effort here; I doubt that even Orwell could have conceived of the concept of a humanitarian nuclear holocaust.) Eventually, probably before 2150, world population will have fallen to a level that renewable energy, mainly biomass, can sustain ...

Probably the greatest obstacle to the scenario with the best chance of success (in my opinion) is the Western world's unintelligent devotion to political correctness, human rights and the sanctity of human life. In the Darwinian world that preceded and will follow the fossil fuel era, these concepts were and will be meaningless. Survival in a Darwinian resource-poor world depends on the ruthless elimination of rivals, not the acquisition of moral kudos by cherishing them when they are weak. (Hmmm ... overt calls for the destruction of the weak by the strong? ... now, where have I heard that before? ... Adolf Hitler? Aleister Crowley? I can't quite place it .)

So the population reduction scenario with the best chance of success has to be Darwinian in all its aspects, with none of the sentimentality that shrouded the second half of the 20th Century in a dense fog of political correctness ...

To those sentimentalists who ... are outraged at the proposed replacement of human rights by cold logic, I would say "You have had your day, in which your woolly thinking has messed up not just the Western world but the whole planet, which could, if Homo sapiens had been truly intelligent, have supported a small population enjoying a wonderful quality of life almost for ever. You have thrown away that opportunity."

... The scenario is: Immigration is banned. Unauthorised arrives are treated as criminals. Every woman is entitled to raise one healthy child. No religious or cultural exceptions can be made, but entitlements can be traded. Abortion or infanticide is compulsory if the fetus or baby proves to be handicapped (Darwinian selection weeds out the unfit). When, through old age, accident or disease, an individual becomes more of a burden than a benefit to society, his or her life is humanely ended. Voluntary euthanasia is legal and made easy. Imprisonment is rare, replaced by corporal punishment for lesser offences and painless capital punishment for greater.

... The punishment regime would improve social cohesiveness by weeding out criminal elements.

... military forces should be maintained strong and alert ... Collaboration with other nations practising the same population reduction scenario would be of great mutual advantage. (http://www.peakoil.ie/newsletters/588)

I have to admit that Campbell did not once, throughout his entire rant, use the word "eugenics." But what he has described here - the destruction of the "weak," the "unfit," the sick and the elderly, the "handicapped," the "burdens" to society, and, of course, the "criminal elements" - is nothing short of a eugenicist's wet dream. The frequent references to Darwin, I have to say, are a nice touch as well.

I would hope that I don't have to point out here that it will be the all-powerful state that will decide who is a "burden" and who is a "benefit" to society, and who is "unfit," and what is and what isn't a "handicap," and who is too old, injured or diseased to go on, and what crimes are punishable by death. The good news, of course, is that the wealthy will be able to produce as many children as they desire, since the rest of us will likely be forced to barter away the only thing we will have left that will be of any value: our child "entitlement."

Some of you are no doubt wondering what sort of complex formulas will be used to determine who stays and who goes when the Great Die-Off rolls through town. It's not really as mysterious as it seems. Basically, it will work something like this: you know how in virtually every country on the planet there is a very small percentage of the people - usually around five or six percent - who seem to control the overwhelming majority of that country's wealth? Those will be the 'keepers.' And everyone else? Well, maybe you better sit down, because I have some bad news for you .

I should probably point out here that when Campbell speaks of "weeding out criminal elements," he is really rather coyly referring to people that happen to have more pigment in their skin than he does. We know this because former Education Secretary and 'Drug Czar' William Bennett, who apparently gets his 'talking points' from the same folks as Colin Campbell, spelled it out pretty clearly on his radio show recently:

I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could - if that were your sole purpose - you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossibly ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down.

It's hard to say what is more remarkable about that statement - that someone with a relatively prominent voice in the media can casually discuss genocide without stirring up a firestorm of protest, or that someone from the religious right who is not averse to equating abortion with murder could nevertheless tacitly endorse forced abortion on a grand scale, so long as the program is targeting a 'criminal race.'The bleating of Campbell and Bennett, and the actions taken in New Orleans, are not unrelated events. To conclude otherwise would be rather foolish. What we saw in New Orleans was a glimpse into the near future. And it was likely a relatively tame glimpse at that. An overtly military form of rule, ethnic cleansing, population reduction, the restructuring and rebuilding of major population centers, total control of vital resources, and the craven exploitation of disasters, both natural and unnatural - all of this and more is just around the corner.

Perhaps you are thinking that this type of future is not for you. You'd really prefer something a little different. That's unfortunate, because the future holds very few options. Here's Campbell again, concluding his mini version of Mein Kampf:

Another problem is likely to be the residual opposition to population reduction from sentimentalists and/or religious extremists unable to understand that the days of plenty, when criminals and the weak could be cherished at public expense, are over. Acts of violent protest, such as are carried out today by animal rights activists and anti-abortionists, would, in the Darwinian world, attract capital punishment. Population reduction must be single-minded to succeed.

So it appears as though those who fight back against the agenda will likely be summarily executed, while those who passively go with the flow stand about a 95% chance of being killed off anyway. With odds like that, I would think that fighting back might be a good idea. By any means available. And sooner rather than later.

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(Permission is hereby granted for this material to be widely distributed and reposted, in whole or in part, provided that the content is not altered.)