[AnotherGuest]

This is a speech by Stan Goff. It is brilliant. It is wthout a doubt the closest thing to the truth that I have ever read anywhere. I get so tired of hearing about Red and Blue when the truth is they both SUCK and they are both full of lemmings willing to drive us all over the cliff with their foolish decisions. Don't get fooled by the idiots, the polyannas, the Reds or the Blues. The system, is finally beginning to crack for real and I only thank God I lived long enough to see it self-destruct.

The time is coming when we will all have to make a choice, whether to make a stand or die on your knees like the rest of the lemmings. What will you do? link

[Guest]

Today, I read the piece by Stan Goff at Counterpunch (see "The Scorpion" post in open discussion forum here), indeed, a brilliant piece.
In it, Goff elaborates on the international competition for petroleum resources that are driving politics worldwide.

Earlier this week, I read a piece that said that China had entered into a crude oil contract with Iran for $100 billion, the largest such contract to date. It seems to me that forces are beginning to align themselves over energy. Those with China and Iran on one side and the US and whatever coalition it can cobble together on the other. Does anyone else see this scenario shaping up?

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1105-05.htm

[rerere]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Anonymous', 'I')t seems to me that forces are beginning to align themselves over energy. .... Does anyone else see this scenario shaping up?

[tokyo_to_motueka]

I posted the Stan Goff article as a news item yesterday as "Iraq debate: Stan Goff vs Dr Patrick Clawson":

http://www.peakoil.com/article1641.html

In another forum I recently recommended (extremely highly!) Stan Goff's seminal article:

http://www.counterpunch.org/goff08132004.html

This article is long, but should be compulsory reading.
I first was alerted to the reality of peak oil in about May when I read an article in the Guardian by George Monbiot. After that I began looking around for more info, but the Stan Goff article really nailed it. I read Counterpunch every day and I have had a great respect for what Goff has to say for quite a while, which gave his views on peak oil even more impact for me.

[savethehumans]

I've read Goff before (on www.fromthewilderness.com), so I know he's no slouch. I just printed out this story. I'm looking forward to reading it. Thanks for posting it!

[Agren]

I've just read the Goff articles on FTW, very interesting! However, I'm a bit curious about who this Goff guy is, anyone has any info on him? Always a good idea to understand where people are coming from when they write.

[tokyo_to_motueka]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Agren', 'I')'m a bit curious about who this Goff guy is, anyone has any info on him?

[Agren]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')is most recent book is "Full Spectrum Disorder" which I have on order now from Amazon.

[Josephus]

Do either of you have a link right to one of his articles? I'm subverting the will of my employer by being on this site during work hours and try to do my research as efficiently as possible. Yes, I'm a lazy American. Just thought I'd ask. Gracias.

[Josephus]

Nevermind! I found the time and found the man too. Thanks for the lead, anyhow. Christ I'm a schmuck.

[EnviroEngr]

http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic1340-0-asc-0.html#14714

I'm Green
Stan is Blue

[Guest]

Goff says that his article "The So-Called Evidence is a Farce" (see below) was sent originally as a posting to a newsgroup and not intended for general internet consumption but it got out onto the wider internet at some point and was widely circulated. I think it was this piece that really made him known to a wider internet audience. I Hadn't heard of Stan Goff myself until I came across this article of his on the internet.


At Narco News, having reported on the corrupt and dishonest behavior of the U.S. government in all América with the "war on drugs," we, too, distrust the official agenda claimed by its "war on terrorism." We don't have to agree with every single conclusion reached by Goff to know that he is asking the right questions. He walks in the traditions of Thomas Paine and Simón Bolívar by stating his questions and conclusions clearly, boldly, and without equivocation. Averaging between 25,000 and 35,000 hits per day, we felt a moral duty to share his words with our readers, and hope his essay succeeds in widening the inquiry beyond the commercial media's currently limited discourse. The fate of all América, of all the peoples of the world, is at stake. His questions demand answers not just from Power, but from all of us.

The So-Called
Evidence Is a Farce
By Stan Goff

I'm a retired Special Forces Master Sergeant. That doesn't cut much for those who will only accept the opinions of former officers on military matters, since we enlisted swine are assumed to be incapable of grasping the nuances of doctrine. But I wasn't just in the army. I studied and taught military science and doctrine. I was a tactics instructor at the Jungle Operations Training Center in Panama, and I taught Military Science at West Point. And contrary to the popular image of what Special Forces does, SF's mission is to teach. We offer advice and assistance to foreign forces. That's everything from teaching marksmanship to a private to instructing a Battalion staff on how to coordinate effective air operations with a sister service.

Based on that experience, and operations in eight designated conflict areas from Vietnam to Haiti, I have to say that the story we hear on the news and read in the newspapers is simply not believable. The most cursory glance at the verifiable facts, before, during, and after September 11th, does not support the official line or conform to the current actions of the United States government.

But the official line only works if they can get everyone to accept its underlying premises. I'm not at all surprised about the Republican and Democratic Parties repeating these premises. They are simply two factions within a single dominant political class, and both are financed by the same economic powerhouses. My biggest disappointment, as someone who identifies himself with the left, has been the tacit acceptance of those premises by others on the left, sometimes naively, and sometimes to score some morality points. Those premises are twofold. One, there is the premise that what this de facto administration is doing now is a "response" to September 11th. Two, there is the premise that this attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was done by people based in Afghanistan. In my opinion, neither of these is sound. To put this in perspective we have to go back not to September 11th, but to last year or further.

A man of limited intelligence, George W. Bush, with nothing more than his name and the behind-the-scenes pressure of his powerful father-a former President, ex-director of Central Intelligence, and an oil man-is systematically constructed as a candidate, at tremendous cost. Across the country, subtle and not-so-subtle mechanisms are put into place to disfranchise a significant fraction of the Democrat's African-American voter base. This doesn't come out until Florida becomes a battleground for Electoral College votes, and the magnitude of the story has been suppressed by the corporate media to this day. In a decision so lacking in legitimacy, the Supreme Court will neither by-line the author of the decision nor allow the decision to ever be used as a precedent, Bush v. Gore awards the presidency of the United States to a man who loses the popular vote in Florida and loses the national popular vote by over 600,000.

This de facto regime then organizes a very interesting cabinet. The Vice President is an oil executive and the former Secretary of Defense. The National Security Advisor is a director on the board of a transnational oil corporation and a Russia scholar. The Secretary of State is a man with no diplomatic experience whatsoever, and the former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The other interesting appointment is Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. Rumsfeld is the former CEO of Searle Pharmaceuticals. He and Cheney were featured as speakers at the May, 2000, Russian-American Business Leaders Forum. So the consistent currents in this cabinet are petroleum, the former Soviet Union, and the military.

Based on the record of Daddy Bush, in all his guises, and the general trajectory of US foreign policy as far back as the Carter Administration, I feel I can reasonably conclude that Middle Eastern and South Asian fossil fuels are one of their major preoccupations. Not just because this klavern has some very direct financial interests in fossil fuel, but because they surely know that worldwide oil production is peaking as we speak, and will soon begin a permanent and precipitous decline that will completely change the character of civilization as we know it within 20 years. Even the left seems to be in deep denial about this, but the math is available. And, no, alternative energies and energy technologies will not save us. All the alternatives in the world can not begin to provide more than a tiny fraction of the energy base now provided by oil. This makes it more than a resource, and the drive to control what's left more than an economic competition.

Rest of article on the Narco News web site at: The So--Called Evidence Is a Farce

Transcript of a radio interview with Stan Goff posted on Narco News:McCormick Interview with Stan Goff

[tokyo_to_motueka]

This is the Stan Goff article everyone should read:

http://counterpunch.org/goff08132004.html

I think he must have written the original version a couple of years ago(?) but this updated version for the election circulated on various web sites in August.

[JLK]

I read Full Spectrum Disorder. It is raw and profoundly disturbing in some ways, but worth reading if you are a thinking person who likes to be exposed to divergent views. The man has clearly seen some nasty things in his day, and you could say that it both educated him and fuels his cynicism.

[Agren]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')his is the Stan Goff article everyone should read: http://counterpunch.org/goff08132004.html

[AlCzervik]

I haven't read this yet, but it looks pretty good. Judging from the table of contents, I think a majority of the book is a compendium of FTW articles. Anyway, here is the description.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Energy War - Exterminism for the 21st Century BY Stan Goff

From the introduction: Politically determined patterns of energy production and consumption are bringing the increasingly destabilized trends of international political economy into collision with the inherent limitations of the planet’s energy substrates in extremely significant yet unpredictable and dangerous ways.

That relation between social power and the biosphere is not a one-way determination. The escalating disunion between the demands of world capitalist accumulation and the material availability of industrial energy is a recursive relation. Diminishing availability is factored directly and consciously into the decision-making processes of the world’s most influential political actors. So there is a powerful dialectical dynamic at work between social power and the material environment. That dynamic can metaphorically be described as a runaway train. Where that train might be headed is one of the speculations of this book. The other contention of this book is that this train has an engine, and that to stop the train, we will have to stop the engine and the people who are protecting and operating it.

The Energy War – which I argue has already started – will take many forms, strategically, but also many forms culturally and ideologically. It was the patron saint of of dying British imperial rule, Winston Churchill, who said that “In war every truth has to have an escort of lies.” That escort appears as the production of knowledge and culture — certain kind of knowledge, and a certain kind of culture, that together constitute an ideology. And I use the term perjoratively.

The book is now exclusively available in pdf format. To buy it, take two steps.
(1) Click the Paypal link and deposit $20.
(2) Send an email to stan@stangoff.com, with the subject line ENERGY WAR.
Please do not reproduce the book after it is printed out.
Thanks.