I love the old teenage taunt about traveling down a river in Egypt (da nile) and it would be funny in this context except, well, its just not. Peak Oil is a real deal when it comes to TEOTWAKI. And finally we've got a decent whistleblower:

At last we know...sort of. An article in the UK newspaper The Guardian for November 9, titled “Key Oil Figures Were Distorted by US Pressure, Says Whistleblower,” reveals what hundreds of analysts have been trying to convey to world leaders for years: The global oil supply situation is critical and getting worse, and vested interests are playing key roles in covering up this devastatingly inconvenient truth.

That post was from a blog on the Post Carbon Institute's website. They are a fantastic organization tirelessly working to promote alternatives to a carbon based civilization. Mainly it boils down to local, local, local. Very worth checking out if you need some ideas about how to rebuild society once the cheap oil runs out.

This is one of those essays that just hits the nail on the head. Its written from an English perspective but its reasoning applies to all western democracies. Trillions are being wasted on imaginary threats while the most profoundly terrifying one is being virtually ignored:

"What does it give us? Our wars make us less safe. We would be better protected from terrorism and global instability if the UK's armed forces stopped going abroad to make trouble. No one in office can produce a coherent account of why this money is needed: the ministry's budget is sustained by the greed of contractors and nostalgia for imperium long passed. We could cut defence spending by 90% and suffer no loss to our national security. Instead, the MoD has just dropped its spending on climate change research."

Here's to your search for a bunker. Hope its on high enough ground. Read the essay. 

    Washington - This is one Christmas gift U.S. taxpayers don't need. Construction of a $30 million dining facility at a U.S. base in Iraq is scheduled to be completed Dec. 25. But the decision to build it was based on bad planning and botched paperwork.

    The project is too far along to stop, making the mess hall a future monument to the waste and inefficiency plaguing the war effort, according to an independent panel investigating contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    In its first report to Congress, the Wartime Contracting Commission presents a bleak assessment of how tens of billions of dollars have been spent since 2001. The 111-page report, obtained by The Associated Press, documents poor management, weak oversight, and a failure to learn from past mistakes as recurring themes in wartime contracting.

What bothers me about articles like this is not just the idea of the flagrant waste, but that how clueless the journalists are, or at least feckless -- bloated spending is the WHOLE POINT of war. Its why we went, its why wars get fought. When are people going to get it through their thick heads the 90% of all wars are made to be fought because of the extreme profits to be made?

Whether it was JP Morgan selling broken guns to the North during the Civil War (hoping it would continue as long as possible), American corporations profiting from both sides during WW2 or our recent debacle in Iraqistan, the central theme of the history of way is the money to be made.

I could list countless other examples. As the old line goes "follow the money" -- one just need read Zinn, Chomsky or VIdal Gore to understand... every tear shed by a life torn apart by war is a dollar in the pocket of someone who got paid.