Indeed, how many ISIS sympathizers lurk within Saudi Arabia, quite possibly among the ruling elites?

The rolling drone link is broken

4GW (4th Generation Warfare) posits the growth of such organizations as governments hollow out and can't effectively do what they used to. "Drug money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations’ drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer." http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/dec/13/drug-money-banks-saved-un-cfief-claims All that money has to get in the system somehow. That means dirty banks, dirty hedge funds, etc. There's lots of folks with a vested interest in the status quo. Of course, most of them don't live near the AZ / Mexico border. My view: legalize marijuana. That's where the vast bulk of drug lord profits comes from. (Your view may differ.)

I see populist on the rise. And that crosses traditional political boundaries. Have been reading about the 1890's populists. They railed against banksters too. For a while, they had major political power. Kunstler's most recent column posits the very real possibility of serious violence against Goldman and hopes Obama acts against the banks before it happens.

He's neither insane or delusional. He deliberately twists the facts so as to blame the rest of us for our anger, even piously saying he's afraid it'll hurt us. How touching. As the class war and populism continue to build, there will be many more such deliberate distortions from the apologists for the banksters. Y'know what's completely bizarre? The far left, the Marxists who have dreamed of a crisis of capitalism for decades, have been almost completely absent. No organizing, no protests. Apparently they're all snoozing. Instead, it's been libertarian blogs like Zero Hedge and Naked Capitalism that have broken major stories, like High Frequency Trading, that have gone mainstream and forced Congress to act. Also, quite a few more mainstream financial blogs, like The Big Picture, Mish, Calculated Risk have been doing great stuff too. In both cases, we're talking about financial insiders who are getting seriously pissed about what's happening. While the far left sleeps during the organizing opportunity of a lifetime. I have no explanation.

Re Plutonomy "A capitalist will sell you rope on Monday for a revolution on Tuesday in which he gets hung on Wednesday." -- old socialist saying

The Patriot Act made it much harder to launder money in the States. So that money went someplace else. Supposedly. But with Allen Stanfords and the like allegedly laundering drug money, maybe much of it tried to come back here anyway.

Not sure what you mean by alt energy is centralized. Most plans and current installations are decentralized and that seems to be the trend. A smart grid would help here. Solar thermal looks hugely promising, as it can sort the energy in the form of heat, usually in molten salt and is thus available upon demand.