Here's the strange thing: The embassy story was broken at the end of May by the superb journalists at McClatchy News (in this case, Warren P. Stroebel and Saeed Shah). As part of what Shah, in the Christian Science Monitor, estimates as a staggering "$2-billion-plus price tag on a revamped diplomatic presence for the United States in Afghanistan and Pakistan," they reported that an appropriation of $736 million for embassy construction had quietly made its way through both houses of Congress without a peep from anyone. This news, however, seemed to plunge off a steep cliff into a deep well of silence. Indicative as the Obama administration's decision to build such an imperial monstrosity may be of a longer-term commitment to a wider war in the Af-Pak (as in Afghanistan-Pakistan) theater of operations, it evidently proved of no interest to anyone here.

The story was not widely picked up or played up significantly. Despite the fact that major news operations have been bolstering their staffs in Pakistan, there has been no further reporting on the appropriation, the plans for the embassy, or what it all might mean. As far as I can tell, nowhere in the United States did a mainstream editorial page decry, challenge, or even discuss the development. Charlie Rose didn't gather experts to consider it, nor did the Newshour with Jim Lehrer seem to think it worth exploring. Letters of outrage at the thought of those desperately needed funds heading Islamabad-wards didn't pour into local newspapers (perhaps because few knew it was happening and those who did saw it as just another humdrum story about making the U.S. safer in a dangerous world). I've seen no obvious congressional attempts to oppose the passage of the money. The general attitude is evidently: Been there, done that (in Iraq, as a matter of fact, in the Bush years).

Maybe in a world where near-trillion-dollar bailouts are the norm, a mere three-quarters of a billion for a fortress of an embassy seems like so much chump change, the sort of news that only Democracy Now! would even consider significant. Fortunately, Chalmers Johnson, author of The Blowback Trilogy, and an expert on U.S. military bases abroad, did notice, understood its significance, and has now put it in his gun sights. (Catch my TomDispatch audio interview with Johnson about our Empire of Bases by clicking here). Tom

How to Deal with America's Empire of Bases A Modest Proposal for Garrisoned Lands
By Chalmers Johnson

The U.S. Empire of Bases -- at $102 billion a year already the world's costliest military enterprise -- just got a good deal more expensive. As a start, on May 27th, we learned that the State Department will build a new "embassy" in Islamabad, Pakistan, which at $736 million will be the second priciest ever constructed, only $4 million less, if cost overruns don't occur, than the Vatican-City-sized one the Bush administration put up in Baghdad. The State Department was also reportedly planning to buy the five-star Pearl Continental Hotel (complete with pool) in Peshawar, near the border with Afghanistan, to use as a consulate and living quarters for its staff there.

Unfortunately for such plans, on June 9th Pakistani militants rammed a truck filled with explosives into the hotel, killing 18 occupants, wounding at least 55, and collapsing one entire wing of the structure. There has been no news since about whether the State Department is still going ahead with the purchase.

]]> Tom Engelhardt 2009-07-02T10:22:02-04:00 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175091 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175090 The All-Volunteer Force (AVF) exists for a reason captured in a study by Colonel Robert D. Heinl, Jr., author of the "definitive history of the Marine Corps," published in Armed Forces Journal in 1971. The U.S. military in Vietnam was at that moment at the edge of chaos. As Colonel Heinl put it, it was experiencing "widespread conditions... that have only been exceeded in this century by the French Army's Nivelle mutinies of 1917 and the collapse of the Tsarist armies [of Russia] in 1916 and 1917."

In fact, statistics flowing back to Washington about the American war machine in Vietnam then pointed toward an unimaginable nightmare. Drug use was rampant; desertions stood at 70 per thousand, a modern high; small-scale mutinies or "combat refusals" were at critical, if untabulated, levels; incidents of racial conflict had soared; and strife between "lifers" and draftees was at unprecedented levels. Reported "fraggings" -- assassination attempts -- against unpopular officers or NCOs had risen from 126 in 1969 to 333 in 1971, despite declining troop strength in Vietnam. According to Colonel Heinl's figures, as many as 144 antiwar underground newspapers were being published by, or for, soldiers. And most threatening of all, active duty soldiers in relatively small numbers (as well as a swelling number of Vietnam veterans) were beginning to actively organize against the war.

When, in January 1973, before the war was even over, President Richard Nixon announced that an American draft army was at an end and an all-volunteer force would be created, this was why. The U.S. military was in the wilderness without a compass, having discovered one crucial thing: you couldn't fight an endless, unpopular counterinsurgency war with the kind of conscript army a democracy had to offer. What resulted, of course, was the AVF, a moniker that, as Andrew Bacevich has written in his book The New American Militarism, was but "a euphemism for what is, in fact, a professional army... [that] does not even remotely 'look like' democratic America." Citizenship and the obligation to serve were now officially severed and, from the 1980s on, most Americans would ever more vigorously cheer on the AVF from the sidelines, while it would be a force theoretically purged of possible Vietnam-style dissent and refusal.

In that sense, it could be considered a success. We've now been at war seven and a half years in Afghanistan and more than five in Iraq, two catastrophic counterinsurgency struggles, and yet a Vietnam-style movement has neither arisen in the military, nor for that matter in the streets of what's now called "the homeland." But as TomDispatch regular Dahr Jamail indicates below and in his new book, The Will To Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, dissent has proved irrepressible. With the generous support of the Nation Institute's Investigative Fund, Jamail has produced a report on the seeds of refusal and dissent in the military that may -- in a quagmire future in Afghanistan and possibly Iraq -- grow into something far larger. Tom

Refusing to Comply The Tactics of Resistance in an All-Volunteer Military
By Dahr Jamail

[Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.]

On May 1st at Fort Hood in central Texas, Specialist Victor Agosto wrote on a counseling statement, which is actually a punitive U.S. Army memo:

]]> Tom Engelhardt 2009-06-30T18:45:01-04:00 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175090 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175089 The armed might of the state (and its auxiliary forces) remains in the hands of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei, and its "reelected" President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has, according to Neil MacFarquhar of the New York Times, solidified control over the Interior Ministry (which, in turn, controlled the count for the recent presidential election), as well as the Intelligence and Justice Ministries, and various other key security and propaganda outfits. It's not a pretty picture for unarmed demonstrators.

Whether what's happened in Iran is an attempt by the supreme leader to "abolish the people," a "fascist tendency," a "coup" by the Revolutionary Guards, "the final acts of a protracted war for the control of the Iranian economy," or something else entirely remain questions for the future. This is especially true as what New Yorker journalist Laura Secor has called a "burning silence," backed by the repression of reporting and reporters, has descended on Iran.

In the meantime, the discredited neocons from the salad days of George W. Bush's Global War on Terror are back thumping for stronger presidential denunciations and an American-led attempt to democratize Iran, as well as to strangle the country. (The last time they went at this, of course, they wanted to bomb Iran back to the stone age.) At the same time, some on the left still imagine that those millions in the streets are essentially a CIA plot to create a new "color-coded revolution." (Yes, American agents are undoubtedly in Iran. After all, a major project of the Bush administration was the covert undermining of the Iranian regime. Still, it's amazing, isn't it, the degree to which Americans regularly can't imagine that anything could happen in the world to which our actions or thoughts aren't central!)

In any case, it may be all over for now in Iran (all but the beatings, the arrests, the imprisonments, and possibly the dying). On the other hand, there are simply moments when you can feel the ground shifting, locally, regionally, globally. This, for Iran, seems to be one of those moments.

Last week, Iran's Islamic revolutionary regime, like so many rigidified revolutionary movements before it, has used brute force to postpone its date with destiny. Demonstrators can often be beaten and chased off the streets, but no one has yet discovered a baton that can beat a set of ideas about how life should be led out of the minds of large numbers of people. This is, in essence, the story that Dilip Hiro, TomDispatch regular and expert on Iran, has to tell -- with a look back at a history about which most of us know all too little. Tom

The Clash of Islam and Democracy in Iran The Islamic Revolution Faces the Classic Dilemma of All Revolutions
By Dilip Hiro

By marshalling the regime's coercive instruments, Iran's 70-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, has, for now, succeeded in curbing the popular, peaceful challenge to the authenticity of Iran's fateful June 12th presidential election. But he has paid a heavy political price.

]]> Tom Engelhardt 2009-06-28T17:28:15-04:00 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175089 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175088 The American media in its 24/7 half-life tends to turn the surprises of history, large and small, into flood-tide events. They sweep over us, offering a kind of news satiation that leads quickly enough to forgetfulness -- as the media moves on. And then the subjects of the news are left to struggle, once again little attended to, with whatever everyday crisis may be at hand. Right now, Iran, of course, is that flood: both the news of a remarkable outpouring of dissatisfaction and dismay, youthful and otherwise, with the recent fraudulent election -- not the first time, by the way, that there have been fraud charges in an Iranian election, just not on such a grotesque scale -- as well as the bravery and determination of unarmed protestors in the face of angry, armed repression. And then, of course, there are all sorts of American fantasies about what's happening.

It's a wonderful, even a thrilling thing, when we're reminded that history surprises, that we human beings are less than predictable and sometimes act in concert and so much better, so much more movingly, than we have any right to expect. One can only hope for further surprises against the force of a well-armed state. While we're at it, however, we Americans should remind ourselves that we are not the good guys in this story, that it was American meddling that set in motion the whole grim train of events leading to this moment more than half a century ago.

In the meantime, in news terms, the rest of the world is largely obliterated. Israelis, Palestinians? Gone. That was another moment, another flood of news. Been there, done that. You know, Obama's speech in Cairo and all that (on which, by the way, David Bromwich has an interesting and optimistic take over at the New York Review of Books). And yet in that region, the everyday worst of things simply goes on being terrible. Gaza strangles. The West Bank settlements slowly expand. The Israeli government moves further to the right. And Hamas digs in.

On the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, I undoubtedly qualify as a pessimist. I see little in the direction Israel has taken -- and Israel is the strong one in the "peace process," the party with at least the theoretical capacity to give something -- that might lead somewhere close to something resembling peace. Yet, here, too, I'm ready for the surprises of history. I welcome them whether in Iran, Israel, or the Gaza Strip. And I like it when someone like that all-around canny guy and TomDispatch regular Ira Chernus sees glimmers of hope for something new in the otherwise horrific tangle of bitterness, retribution, and hopelessness that the Israelis and Palestinians now represent. Tom

Palestinian Violence Overstated, Jewish Violence Understated Time to Change the Story
By Ira Chernus

The Israel Project hired pollster Stanley Greenberg to test American opinion on the Middle East conflict -- and got a big surprise. In September 2008, 69% of Americans called themselves pro-Israel. Now, it's only 49%. In September, the same 69% wanted the U.S. to side with Israel; now, only 44%.

How to explain this dramatic shift? Greenberg himself suggested the answer years ago when he pointed out that, in politics, "a narrative is the key to everything." Last year the old narrative about the Middle East conflict was still dominant: Israel is an innocent victim, doing only what it must do to defend itself against the Palestinians. Today, that narrative is beginning to lose its grip on Americans.

]]> Tom Engelhardt 2009-06-25T10:28:54-04:00 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175088 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175086 In the 1920s, the sales slogan didn't kid around: "Ford, the universal car." In the 1940s, with an American golden age ahead, it was hopeful: "There's a Ford in your future." In the 1950s and 1960s, it was forward looking: "Ford has a better idea." In the 1970s, there was a slight pleading quality to it: "Ford wants to be your car company." In the 1980s, it had become a question: "Have you driven a Ford lately?" By 2004, it was simply a lie: "Ford, built for the road ahead." As we now know, it should have been something like, "Ford, built for the cliff ahead."

In retrospect, the rest of the Big Three once had that same imperial self-certainty about the product: Chevrolet, of course, was "the heartbeat of America." Cadillac was the "Standard of the World." Buick was "the spirit of American style." And Pontiac, "We are driving excitement." Well, no longer, pal.

I still have my old Ford Taurus, but the other day, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece on Detroit pointing out that, while it may still be hanging onto the tagline, the Motor City, like the lines above, that moniker now seems to tell the sorriest of tales. "You have to leave town," the Journal's Andrew Grossman pointed out, just to buy a new Chrysler or a Jeep, now that the dealers in town have closed up shop. The same is true if you want to get a new book, since the Borders bookstore chain, founded only 40 miles away, closed its Detroit store this June. Ditto just about everything else. There's no longer even a national chain grocery store anywhere in the city. Talk about the hollowing out of America!

The other day I offered some summer reading recommendations. Here's one addition: consider it your American history lesson, totally bizarre, thoroughly captivating, for the hot months of the American automotive collapse. I'm talking about Greg Grandin's Fordlandia, The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City. As TomDispatch regular Grandin makes startlingly clear below, the story he tells couldn't be more relevant to our difficult moment of economic and automotive meltdown -- or stranger. Check out the imperial relevance of the disintegration of the Big Three below, then go read at greater length about Henry Ford's jungle "utopia" (and while you're at it, listen to a TomDispatch audio interview with Grandin about Fordlandia by clicking here). Tom

Touring Empire's Ruins From Detroit to the Amazon
By Greg Grandin

The empire ends with a pull out. Not, as many supposed a few years ago, from Iraq. There, as well as in Afghanistan, we are mulishly staying the course, come what may, trapped in the biggest of all the "too-big-to-fail" boondoggles. But from Detroit.

Of course, the real evacuation of the Motor City began decades ago, when Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler started to move more and more of their operations out of the downtown area to harder to unionize rural areas and suburbs, and, finally, overseas. Even as the economy boomed in the 1950s and 1960s, 50 Detroit residents were already packing up and leaving their city every day. By the time the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Detroit could count tens of thousands of empty lots and over 15,000 abandoned homes. Stunning Beaux Arts and modernist buildings were left deserted to return to nature, their floors and roofs covered by switchgrass. They now serve as little more than ornate bird houses.

]]> Tom Engelhardt 2009-06-23T10:39:38-04:00 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175086 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175085 Here's a tip for tough times. If anywhere in your genealogy you can find the name Bush or Obama, or anything close to either, no matter how distant the ancestor, start writing and, while you're at it, contact the nearest "literary" agent! A contract could be in the offing. As everyone knows, President Obama has written two wildly successful books, which have made millions, and since his run for president began, whole bookstore shelves have filled with what can only be called Obamiana, including Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs, Barack Obama: 44th President Collectors Vault, Barack Obama for Beginners, Michelle Obama: First Lady of Hope, The Faith of Barack Obama, Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country: Kids' Letters to President Obama, as well as a pile of Obama books for kids, and that barely scratches the surface.

Now comes the news that the president's Kenyan half-brother George, a community organizer, is writing a book for Simon & Schuster for a mere six-figure advance. So are a half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng (for Candlewick Press), and Michelle Obama's brother, Craig Robinson (for Gotham Books). TomDispatch hears that Bo Obama, too, may be searching for an agent and inking up that little paw to sign on the dotted line.

As for the Bushes: Daughter Jenna proved so naturally skilled with the pen (and the deal) that, at age 25, based on a nine-month UNICEF internship in Central America, she had already published her first book, Ana's Story: A Journey of Hope, signed up for a piddling $300,000 or so with HarperCollins (now, in more straitened publishing times, redubbed just plain Harper). Jenna's children's book, Read All About It, followed, selling 80,000 copies. Mom hit her stride this January with a deal for a memoir estimated to be in the range of $3.5-5 million ("I look forward to working with Scribner and the Simon & Schuster team as I tell the stories of the extraordinary events and people I've met in my life, particularly during my years in the White House.")

Now, Dad's made his deal, too, $7 million worth of it for a Nixonian-style volume of critical life moments as "the decider." According to an aide, "He's having a lot of fun doing it. He's reliving some great moments, and thinking about how he can bring the reader into his shoes or put them in his seat for a fascinating period in history." Here at TomDispatch, we're not so sure we'd care to be "in his seat" for years we remember by adjectives other than "fascinating." But we have no doubt that it's going to be a lot of fun for the former prexy, even if he did come up $8 million short of Bill Clinton's contract for My Life. That's what tough times are all about, after all. Maybe he'll call it War and Pieces (as in smashing the world into...).

Anyway, where were we? Oh yes, I think we were talking about cashing in. At least that's what Nick Turse is certainly talking about in his nifty Class of '00 Bush memorabilia piece, a twist on the series he's been doing these last months for this site on Tough Times in America. Tom

Where Are They Now? Ex-Bush Loyalists Cash In
By Nick Turse

In May, the U.S. economy lost 345,000 nonfarm jobs, pushing the unemployment rate from 8.9% to 9.4%. According to official statistics, 14.5 million Americans are now looking for work and, as a recent headline at Time.com put it, "The jobs aren't coming back anytime soon." In fact, a team of economists at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank recently reported that "the level of labor market slack could be higher by the end of 2009 than at any other time in the post-World War Two period."

]]> Tom Engelhardt 2009-06-18T10:12:35-04:00 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175085 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175084 It's wonderful to welcome back TomDispatch's Jock Culture Correspondent Robert Lipsyte, who for the last year has been doing useful things -- like being gainfully employed making TV shows rather than frittering his time away at this website. Now, he's returned to examine the phenomenon of sportswriter 'roid rage and consider the full range of the summer's steroidal sports lit. (To catch Lipsyte discussing the media and the steroid scandal in a TomDispatch audio interview click here.)

I thought, under the circumstances, and with newspaper book review sections going the way of the stereoscope and the Nickelodeon, I might offer a few book recommendations of my own, starting with one of my favorite authors not just here on Earth but in the wider galaxy, Eduardo Galeano. (You undoubtedly noticed that Hugo Chavez recently transformed an old book of his into an instant bestseller by handing a copy of it to a certain president we know.) Galeano's books regularly turn the world upside down, which also happens to be the title of one of them. Back in the 1980s, he did a singularly fabulous, magisterial, and idiosyncratic three-volume history of the Americas, tiny chapter by tiny chapter. That trilogy's title was Memory of Fire. It was unbearably sad and beautiful. I used to read passages to my children when they were younger. Now, being nothing less than a big-picture sorta guy, he returns with his newest work, Mirrors, Stories of Almost Everyone. It's nothing less than a history of the world from our first myths to late last night as only he could write it -- and in a mere 365 pages. It's glorious. If you buy only one book this summer, make it this one. I give away nothing by offering a few of his last lines here:

"...The twenty-first century, which also arrived heralding peace and justice, is following in its predecessors footsteps. In my childhood, I was convinced that everything that went astray on earth ended up on the moon. But the astronauts found no sign of dangerous dreams or broken promises or hopes betrayed.

"If not on the moon, where might they be? Perhaps they were never misplaced. Perhaps they are in hiding here on earth. Waiting."

While I'm at it, it's never too soon to start preordering for your future reading list. Here are two upcoming fall gems (to which I'll return, come September): The splendid Rebecca Solnit, who gave me hope in the grimmest of times way back when and offers more whenever she writes for this site, has a new book coming in September, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster. It's a wonder. Who could have guessed that she could find such hope for humanity and for Americans in our most catastrophic moments -- from the San Francisco Earthquake to 9/11? About her book Bill McKibben says (and he's right): "This is the freshest, deepest, most optimistic account of human nature I've come across in many years. If you find yourself fearful in the face of our economic and ecological peril, then read this book; you will come away feeling like the future is possible, and in some fashion even exhilarating."

And then there's Beverly Gologorsky's The Things We Do to Make It Home, a novel that's gut-wrenchingly unsentimental (and all the more moving for that). It's about what happens when traumatized war vets come home, specifically the effects of the Vietnam War on the families of its vets and, by implication, on this society. I think of it every time I read another horror story about what our present counterinsurgency wars are doing to those who fight them and those who love, care for, and live with them. So, thank god Seven Stories Press had the good sense to decide to reissue it, also in September. It's unfortunately still as relevant as ever and gripping reading as well.

As for further summer reading, here are two relatively recent favorites of mine, though I'm late to the game with both of them. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir, but this spring I stumbled upon Edwidge Danticat's The Dew Breaker, a heartbreaking tale centering on a Haitian torturer in exile in the U.S. and his daughter. Hard to believe perhaps but the novel couldn't be more moving, as well as gorgeously written. And if this summer turns out to be a swelterer and the power blacks out, why not grab that flashlight and head for the icy far north with Andrea Barrett in Voyage of the Narwhal, a chillingly engaging historical novel. (Remember, by the way, that any time you click on a book link at TomDispatch and buy that book or anything else from CDs to air conditioners at Amazon, this site gets a microscopic cut of the proceeds!) Now, on to the games of summer. Tom

]]> Tom Engelhardt 2009-06-16T14:59:40-04:00 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175084 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175083 Obama Looses the Manhunters Charisma and the Imperial Presidency
By Tom Engelhardt

Let's face it, even Bo is photogenic, charismatic. He's a camera hound. And as for Barack, Michelle, Sasha, and Malia -- keep in mind that we're now in a first name culture -- they all glow on screen.

Before a camera they can do no wrong. And the president himself, well, if you didn't watch his speech in Cairo, you should have. The guy's impressive. Truly. He can speak to multiple audiences -- Arabs, Jews, Muslims, Christians, as well as a staggering range of Americans -- and somehow just about everyone comes away hearing something they like, feeling he's somehow on their side. And it doesn't even feel like pandering. It feels like thoughtfulness. It feels like intelligence.

For all I know -- and the test of this is still a long, treacherous way off -- Barack Obama may turn out to be the best pure politician we've seen since at least Ronald Reagan, if not Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He seems to have Roosevelt's same unreadable ability to listen and make you believe he's with you (no matter what he's actually going to do), which is a skill not to be whistled at.

Right now, he and his people are picking off the last Republican moderates via a little party-switching and some well-crafted appointments, and so driving that party and its conservative base absolutely nuts, if not into extreme southern isolation. In this sense, his first Supreme Court pick was little short of a political stroke of brilliance, whatever she turns out to do on the bench. Whether the opposition "wins" (which they won't) or loses in any attempt to block her nomination, they stand to further alienate a key voting bloc, Hispanics. Now 9% of voters, Hispanics went for Obama in the last election by a staggering 35-point margin. Next time their heft might even bring solidly red-state Texas closer to in-play status in the two-party system. In other words, the president has left his opponents in a situation where they can't win for losing.

Mix Roosevelt, Kennedy, and Reagan...

All this is little short of amazing, particularly if put into even the most modest historical context.

]]> Tom Engelhardt 2009-06-14T17:27:08-04:00 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175083 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175082 Buckle your seatbelt, you may be going nowhere -- and it could be a very bumpy ride. Oil futures have just passed $71 for a barrel of "light, sweet crude oil" (sweet for energy stocks, anyway) on its way to... well, we don't know exactly where, but it won't feel good, not at the pump and not in the economy either. In the Midwest and scattered other locations, gas prices are already at the edge of $3.00 a gallon and the height of summer isn't even upon us.

Much of this sudden rise has been fueled by OPEC production cuts, investor dreams of a global economic recovery (and so a heightened desire for energy), and the enthusiasm of market speculators. Explain it as you will, the price of crude, which hit a low of about $32 a barrel in December, as the planet seemed to meltdown economically, has doubled in recent months.

Oil is like the undead. Just when you think it's gone down for the count, it rises from the grave ravenous. As Clifford Krauss of the New York Times reported recently, gas prices have risen 41 days in a row, and yet the price at the pump is still "lagging behind the increase in the price of oil." According to Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service, consumers are now shelling out one billion dollars a day to keep their tanks full. (It was $1.5 billion last summer when the price of a barrel of oil hit an astronomical $147.)

Whether this is the energy version of irrational exuberance and a mini-bubble to be burst as further economic bad times hit or the reality of our near future, sooner or later, far worse is in store on the energy front, as Michael Klare, author of Rising Powers, Shrinking World: The New Geopolitics of Energy, makes clear. But don't listen to him. Instead, check out his latest energy scoop -- the real news he found buried in the most recent report from the U.S. Department of Energy, whose seers have put irrational exuberance in mothballs and brought out the sackcloth and ashes. Tom

It's Official -- The Era of Cheap Oil Is Over Energy Department Changes Tune on Peak Oil
By Michael T. Klare

Every summer, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy issues its International Energy Outlook (IEO) -- a jam-packed compendium of data and analysis on the evolving world energy equation. For those with the background to interpret its key statistical findings, the release of the IEO can provide a unique opportunity to gauge important shifts in global energy trends, much as reports of routine Communist Party functions in the party journal Pravda once provided America's Kremlin watchers with insights into changes in the Soviet Union's top leadership circle.

As it happens, the recent release of the 2009 IEO has provided energy watchers with a feast of significant revelations. By far the most significant disclosure: the IEO predicts a sharp drop in projected future world oil output (compared to previous expectations) and a corresponding increase in reliance on what are called "unconventional fuels" -- oil sands, ultra-deep oil, shale oil, and biofuels.

]]> Tom Engelhardt 2009-06-11T10:52:47-04:00 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175082 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175081 [Note for TomDispatch Readers: I appeared on Democracy Now! yesterday to discuss General Stanley McChrystal, the new war commander for Afghanistan, and my piece "Going for Broke." You can catch the show by clicking here.

Again, thanks to all of you who, in response to recent TomDispatch pleas, urged others to sign up for the email notice that goes out every time this site posts a piece, or turned people on to TD, or sent in a contribution. (If you meant to do any of the above, but haven't yet, now's a perfect moment.) What a difference support from you makes! Tom]

It helps to have spent a childhood reading sci-fi. It means nothing bizarre really surprises you. In June 2008, TomDispatch regular William Astore wrote a post about how the Air Force had jumped big time into cyberspace. That service had even bigger dreams for a "$30 billion cyberspace boondoggle" that would theoretically have provided it "with the ability to fry any computer on Earth." Based on the information Astore mustered, this site offered a prediction: "Expect cyberwar in the Pentagon before this is all over."

Make it so! One year later, all three military services (and, it seems, half the other agencies in Washington) are fully uploaded and stalking each other in a funding cyberwar. As a result, the virtual sun is shining for military-industrial corporations, as Frida Berrigan tells us in her latest post: actual money is starting to flow, and a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed new cybermilitary-industrial complex is in formation. Not surprisingly, it has all the trappings of the older version of the same, right down to the corporate names on the logos and the military-industrial fun in the sun that goes with it.

Take the Air Force's "Collaboration in Cyberspace" symposium due to open a week from now in Shreveport, Louisiana. Northrop Grumman has sponsored one of its coffee breaks; SAIC has taken care of the "attendee registration bags"; Lockheed Martin has ponied up for "the invitations that are in each attendee's conference bag inviting them to a special AFCS [Air Force Cyberspace] event"; and you (if you happen to be a reasonably humongous military-industrial style corporation) can still get your tagline and logo plastered on the symposium's "ever popular" Cyber Café (for a measly $5,000 fee!) -- and for nothing extra, your logo will be a screensaver on every computer in that café. You'd better do it while you can. After all, you've already just about missed your chance for a corporate sponsorship slot at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association 4th Cyber Cup Invitational golf tournament that same week. Most of those have already been taken. But don't get teed off: there'll be plenty more! Tom

Cyberscares About Cyberwars Equal Cybermoney Watching the Cybermilitary-Industrial Complex Form
By Frida Berrigan

As though we don't have enough to be afraid of already, what with armed lunatics mowing down military recruiters and doctors, the H1N1 flu virus, the collapse of bee populations, rising sea levels, failed and flailing states, North Korea being North Korea, al-Qaeda wannabes in New York State with terrorist aspirations, and who knows what else -- now cyberjihadis are evidently poised to steal our online identities, hack into our banks, take over our Flickr and Facebook accounts, and create havoc on the World Wide Web.

]]> Tom Engelhardt 2009-06-09T15:37:28-04:00 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175081