Culture of Life Energy News

Bush Praises Nuclear Bomb Countries, Pakistan And India---Diplomat Blown Up In Pakistan

2006-03-02T09:31:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Both India and Pakistan secretly made nukes and now Bush is praising both countries and wants to help them develop their nuclear powers even more because we need to make money off of them and we want to sell them missiles and jets, too! An American ambassador is blown up in Pakistan and the place seethes with anti-americanism. India merely wants to pull a "Japan" on us and suck our economy dry.

From Al Jazeera:

The US president and the Indian prime minister have agreed on a civilian nuclear deal.

The deal, announced on Thursday in New Delhi where George Bush is on a visit, is expected to give India access to Western technology, as well as bilateral economic ties and co-operation in space travel, agriculture and health, officials on both sides said.

Under the deal, India has agreed to separate its civilian and military nuclear programmes and place the civilian plants under international inspections.

Hahaha. A fig leaf the size of a clover leaf! We get to watch their civilian program but not their military!

Bush openly proclaims he is doing this so India, a very poor country using oxen to pull stuff, is going to use only esoteric forms of power so America can continue to suck up the world's oil supply like a pig in slop. This is insane, of course. Just like asking Africa to go high tech so we can suck their oil, too!

From the Financial Times:

Once dependent in its foreign policy almost exclusively on the US, Riyadh has been diversifying its friendships in recent years, with Asia, where demand for Saudi oil is at its highest, emerging as an important strategic partner. Saudi Arabia supplies China with about 14 per cent of its oil needs, and it is the source of 25 per cent of Indian oil imports.

The king's tour to China, India, Pakistan and Malaysia - for which the royal entourage of cabinet ministers, businessmen and even a women's delegation filled five aircraft - marked the most-high profile move in the reassessment of Saudi ties with the outside world.

In India, the Saudis pledged greater co-operation on terrorism and discussed possible Saudi investments. Perhaps most important, the visit helped balance the kingdom's relations in the region, where Pakistan has been one of the Saudis' closest traditional allies. The trip to China, meanwhile, was the first by a Saudi king since diplomatic relations were restored in 1990, and included crucial discussion about the construction of an oil storage base.

Looks like the nuclearization of India and China won't help us, will it? The Saudis see Iran tightening bonds with both countries and realize they better do the same or all that money will flow to their ancient enemies, the Shi'a (Shiites).

It gets much funnier. From Financial Times:

The Opec oil cartel on Tuesday hit back at President George W. Bush, criticising the US and other consuming countries for pursuing energy policies that threatened energy security and the global economy.

Moving away from oil made it more difficult for producing countries to invest the billions of dollars needed to ensure enough output to meet future demand, the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the group that control’s 40 per cent of world oil supplies, argued in the commentary of its monthly Bulletin magazine.

The group’s comments came in direct response to Mr Bush’s repeated calls for the US to reduce by 75 per cent its “addiction” to oil from the Middle East by 2020. European countries have also looked to encourage alternative fuels to oil, but have been less hostile to Opec and the Middle East, arguing it was unrealistic to believe consumers would reduce their dependence on the region that controlled the vast majority of the world’s oil reserves.

This explains why Bush has to pretend to be working for energy independence while actively preventing it from actually happening. So he touts various companies or research and then cuts their funding behind everyone's back. When we bloggers exposed this scam, he had to scramble to restore funding but he will cut it the minute we turn our backs.

He has to kiss ass in the Middle East and seems to enjoy the tongue jobs he gives. Shudder.

This sort of menacing talk is exactly why we must change the way we live. Think these guys mean well? Think they are our friends?

Why America tolerates this sort of talk is exactly why our empire is dying rapidly and when dead, won't see the light of day for quite a while. We have become weak, feeble, we kow tow and beg, grovelling on the ground and then turning on third world peasants, snapping at them, biting them. Only they have decided, across the planet, to bite back, hard.

Meanwhile, Iran continues to rally the world against us, successfully. From Alert Net:

Iran may have no interest in fomenting full-scale civil war in Iraq, but could stir trouble for the United States and Britain there if it felt threatened by international action to curb its nuclear ambitions.

Washington and London have long accused Tehran of playing a destabilising role in Iraq by backing Shi'ite militants and sending infiltrators and sophisticated bombs across the border.

Tehran derides the charges, but has also hinted in the past that it has the potential to inflict pain on its Western foes locally if they tighten the screws over the nuclear issue.

"If these countries use all their means...to put pressure on Iran, Iran will use its capacity in the region," Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, has said.

They are so certain of themselves, they can threaten us. Like North Korea, they don't need the whole world on their side, just one or two key, nuclear powers like China.

Europe is already getting restive after American strong arming them to attack Hamas. Support of the American/Israeli attempts at killing off the Palestinians is causing a huge backlash. In desperation, the European governments are trying to put a lid on all this by going after Holocaust deniers but they won't go after deniers of the Palestinian ghettoization the Jews are imposing on the natives of that region.

All these threads are part of a huge tapestry. We have to look at the design carefully instead of induging in wishful thinking.

Which takes me back to the stupid switchgrass business. Right now, thanks to global warming, the grasslands in the midwest are on fire, have been, off and on, all winter. Winter! This is amazing and bodes ill for us. So much for the switchgrass harvest, not that it means anything, this is a stupid idea, very stupid.

But then, 90% of the ideas about how to deal with the downside of the Hubbert Oil Peak are dumb. If you want to see the future, look at pictures of India, China or Japan circa 1860. (Hint: think "Rickshaws")

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Bush Announces Magic Energy Source In Colorado

2006-02-20T17:55:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

We have noticed this for years, whenever Bush appears at any factory to announce a break through or success, it then closes, goes bankrupt or fires much of the staff. Once again, he did this at a lab which does energy research. 22 scientists fired the week he comes to boast about them.

From AP:

Saying the nation is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that would "startle" most Americans, President Bush on Monday outlined his energy proposals to help wean the country off foreign oil.

And who was "startled"? The people at this lab!

From Brad Delong:

The senior biochemical engineer had worked for the laboratory for 22 years, converting biomass, such as trees, into fuels and chemicals, such as ethanol. His computer was disabled and his phone turned off; a manager escorted him out of the building at 3 p.m. "How do you expect, after 22 years, to wrap everything up in a few hours?" Mohagheghi said, adding that he lost his job and some dignity that day. "I didn't deserve to be treated this way," he said.

The layoffs came after President Bush's State of the Union address Jan. 31 sparked optimism at NREL. The president said Americans were addicted to oil, and he vowed funding for renewable energy research. Bush plans to visit NREL on Tuesday to reinforce his dedication to renewable energy.

Just like NASA, Bush announces a huge new initiative and then cuts the budget and staff. Now the Mars merry-go-round is flatter than the Texas Panhandle and of course, Bush knows the energy research using biofuels is a waste of time and effort. But to keep the wolf from his political door, he has to pretend we will all grow a megamillion acres of "sawgrass" which will magically fuel our vehicles! Here is Bush, again:

"Our nation is on the threshold of new energy technology that I think will startle the American people," Bush said. "We're on the edge of some amazing breakthroughs — breakthroughs all aimed at enhancing our national security and our economic security and the quality of life of the folks who live here in the United States."

These pitiful programs are breakthroughs? Shows exactly how badly things will be going in the future.

If the only thing we grew was this weed, after growing, harvesting and processing the entire crop, we will be able to fuel less than 3% of our fleet of cars and trucks! Corn has lots of energy stored in it which is why I feed it to my horse, Sparky, in winter. Gives him a lot of pep. Neigggh.

But growing it uses lots of fossil fuels. This is why they concocted the fantasy of running America's giant fleet of giant vehicles on sawgrass which has very little caloric value and trust me, this means very few calories per lb to be turned into instant fossil fuel! The laws of conservation of energy can't be tipped over like the fantasy of tipping over cows (which is nearly impossible unless one is the Hulk and even then, a dicey matter!).

Trees have tremendous caloric values when you burn them because they store many years of sunlight and water within themselves and when burned or processed, all this energy is released. Sawgrass grows where the soil is poor and it is a poor grass, my cattle or horse would starve to death if all they ate were this poor sustitute.

The whole sawgrass mantra is to do the old bait and switch. Namely, we are supposed to take the bait and they switch us onto the track called "to be eliminated or enslaved". If we are serious about cutting back buying fossil fuels then we should be seeing severe building codes whereby only houses like mine are built in the Northeast, for example, namely facing the winter sun to catch the natural heat and to cope with the severe west winds which are the primary winds in winter, etc. But of course, there is no call for this nor for downsizing our gargantuan vehicles (and our gargantuan bodies!).

No one wants to hear that our way of living must and will end. America just went through one of its biggest building booms in our history and 99% of what was built is nearly useless in the future. This sad state of affairs will become all to obvious in the not too distant future.

But then, I say this all the time. Bush is lying to us, watch what he does, not what he says and obviously, he agrees with me about this biofuel garbage. He just doesn't want any of us to know this.

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Washington Pest

Africa's Poor Get No Benefits From Oil We Pump Out

2006-02-18T07:53:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Nigerian citizens attack another oil rig. Chad, another forgotten African oil country, can't seem to get any of that oil wealth to the people there, either, and also has insurrections and riots. Ditto Iraq, for that matter. Meanwhile, we scream about Venezuela sharing the oil wealth successfully with the lower classes there! Go figure.

From the BBC:

Nine foreign oil workers have been seized by armed militants from a barge in Nigeria's Niger Delta.
The group, including three Americans, two Thais, two Egyptians, a Briton and a Filipino, were on a pipelaying barge.

A Shell facility near the Forcados export terminal was also set on fire, although the blaze was extinguished.

The attacks come a day after a militant commander told the BBC his group was declaring "total war" on all foreign oil interests in the Delta.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta gave oil companies and their employees until midnight on Friday night to leave the region.

Geeze, you would think this would make headlines in America! Yup. Nope.

I have watched with fascination as this rebellion unfolds. The USA corporations work hand in hand with the despots ruling Nigeria. Between them, they have turned the country into a wasteland. This is their plan for America. Let everything rot, loot the people and steal as much of the resources as possible and leave it a total mess. This is why we have to shut down K Street and I am happy Cheney is taking a forwards approach to all this by shooting a lobbyist. Heh. Power to the people, Cheney!

From the NYT:

Such is reality under a World Bank-supported program that was supposed to harness this impoverished African nation's oil wealth for the benefit of its poorest citizens. A $4.2 billion oil pipeline has generated $399 million for Chad since mid-2004, but the spending of the money has been seriously marred by mismanagement, graft and, most recently, the government's decision that a hefty share can be used to fight a rebellion.

And now the approach, once envisioned as a model for the development of other African countries, seems to be on the verge of collapse. In recent weeks, Chad seriously weakened a law that dedicated most of its oil revenue to reducing poverty and reneged on its deal with the World Bank. In response, the bank suspended all its loans to the country.

What is happening in Chad, a Central African country twice the size of France, is an important test of the idea that international institutions like the World Bank can influence governments of poor countries to spend newly tapped riches on their people instead of using the money to further entrench themselves in power.

OK, the money goes only to the rich and politicians and tools of the corporate state, they cut back services to the poor and the middle class, they tax only the lowest levels of society, they drive the country very deeply into debt and then tell the poor people there, all the money from their resources have to pay off these stupid loans, and what country are we talking about, anyway?

The USA! Whoopee! Please, dear readers, attend carefully. WE ARE CHAD. The New York Times and all the other American corporate tool media are very careful to call the properly elected President of Venezuela "a regime" as if he took over the way all our tools take over: violently, using the CIA and American military! His election was much fairer than our own twisted elections! Do we call Bush's rule a "regime"?

Well, bloggers do! But the media, no! And why do they hate the freely elected President of Venezuela so much?

He is sharing the oil wealth and not driving his country into bankruptcy! Gads! Chavez, could you run for office here? Pretty please?

High-level talks in Paris to resolve the crisis with Chad ended inconclusively this month, though World Bank officials still hope for a settlement that preserves the government's promise to use its oil money to build schools, clinics and roads rather than to support an army that has recently experienced a rash of defections among rebellious officers.

As a rising tide of oil money flows to poor African countries in the coming years, the bank will have little choice but to grapple with its role.

"It's not clear at all how to get your hands around it," said Paul D. Wolfowitz, who became president of the bank last summer. "But I think to stand back and say the whole thing is a dirty business and we in the World Bank don't want to have anything to do with it is very shortsighted."

Isn't it just an odd coincidence that the World Bank is being run by an American war criminal who helped launch a dirty war for oil in Iraq? This pious fool is concerned about using oil money to build schools?

Maybe he could visit Texas and explain this to them! Hahaha. Texas schools=bottom of the barrel. Ditto oil exporting Louisiana! Third world conditions mirroring Africa's suffering! How about visiting Venezuela and seeing how real democracy works, Wolfie?

Or, for that matter, visit Iran. Of course, we hate both countries. We want them to be helpless and stupid, run by corrupt tools, traitors working for Shell Oil or Exxon.
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Washington Pest

China Quickly Closing Deal With Iran---Will Develop Oil Fields

2006-02-17T21:08:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

As expected, China takes the initiative and forges more deals with Iran. Europe, who buys a lot of Iranian oil, played hardball with the Iranians at the behest of the American imperial planners who think diplomacy with a nail studded club is the way to prepare for the downside of the Hubbert Oil Peak. A big problem: China has nukes and rockets. We keep forgetting this fact.

From the Washington Post:

China is hastening to complete a deal worth as much as $100 billion that would allow a Chinese state-owned energy firm to take a leading role in developing a vast oil field in Iran, complicating the Bush administration's efforts to isolate the Middle Eastern nation and roll back its nuclear development plans, according to published reports.

The completion of the agreement would advance China's global quest for new stocks of energy. It could also undermine U.S. and European initiatives to halt Tehran's nuclear plans, possibly generating friction in Beijing's relations with outside powers.

By "isolating" Iran, they made it ludicrously easy for the Chinese to fill the vacuum. No competition! Ideal conditions for making a deal.

Of course, we could break this deal the Hitlerian way: by attacking the Iranians. Hitler always complained about how everyone was hemming in Germany and interfering with Germany and all he wanted was some Lebensraum and security. This involved killing millions of people and putting the rest in chains but then, what can we say? We are the same.

Why Europe went along with this farce puzzles me. Are they that stupid? The entire reason why Iran turned hard edged was because the USA invaded Iraq and openly talked from day one of "the Axis of Evil" that was Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Iran and Iraq hated each other's guts so why they were lumped together, we would have to ask AIPAC, the Israeli lobbying group that owns much of our political system.

The arrest of the traitor, Franklin, who was feeding top secret military information to AIPAC, stopped some of this conspiracy. He handed over papers concerning Iran. Valarie Plame was working the Iranian angle, too. This is all so typically messy.

One other nation interested in knocking Iran down is Saudi Arabia. They are actively encouraging this and they are one of several key countries buying our mountain of debts. This is why Iran is playing a smart game, just like Putin. By defying Europe and America, they are triangulating, forcing Russia and China to finally move in the open and choose sides and of course, they have to side with Iran because to do otherwise would be suicidal.

An iron rule of history is, any empire that takes over the planet instantly causes all potential rivals to side with each other so they can remove the new rulers.

From Marketwatch:

Bears romped through energy stocks this month, trouncing share prices and raising questions about whether the outsized earnings that made Big Oil the star of the 2005 market have run their course.
But investors who bow out of the sector might just rue the day they did.

"The momentum investors are out of the stocks because of the drop in energy prices. But the fundamentals of the sector are still very robust," said Art Smith, an industry analyst at John S. Herold in Houston. "We've seen corrections before. This is just another one."
Crude oil futures for March delivery closed at $59.88 a barrel in New York on Friday -- a 12% downturn so far this month. A mild winter and bulging fuel stockpiles are the main culprits, spoiling big bets last fall that energy prices could only go up in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Isn't it pitiful, our oil prices are totally weather dependent? Right now, Wall Street is betting against a war with Iran. They know we can't afford it so they are ignoring Bush and the neo cons yelling for war.

And I think they are wrong. Bush, unlike Wall Street, sees the hard core figures. He and his oily friends in Saudi Arabia know the Ghawar fields are in trouble. He also knows the next hurricane season just might dwarf the last season. He is willing to force world oil prices back up if this means we take all the Middle East and make it our bitch to use as we will. For we have to have something to sell to China!

And China needs this oil so we need to be the agents pumping it and transporting it to China. And China is determined to not let this happen, no way they want us to have a grip on their necks. They aren't that dumb.

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Washington Pest

Sir Edmond Hillary of Everest Fame Files Lawsuit Against The USA For Refusing To Save Glaciers

2006-02-16T13:30:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

The first man (thanks to his Sherpa's guidance and wisdom) to conquer Mt. Everest is helping a consortium of ecology groups to sue the USA over global warming. Their latest petition to the UN is, American pollution is destroying many glacial parks in the USA as well as other lands.

From the BBC:

"The effects of climate change are well-documented and clearly visible in Glacier National Park," said the petition's lead author Erica Thorson from the International Environmental Law Project.

Globally, glaciers have lost an average 6m in height in 20 years
"Yet the US has not taken action to protect the world heritage of the park by reducing its greenhouse gas emissions pursuant to its obligations under the World Heritage Convention."

Straddling the US-Canada border where the province of Alberta meets the state of Montana, Waterton-Glacier was the first region in the world to be declared an International Peace Park.

Of course, the UN just asked us to close Gitmo, too, and we just refused.

When the UN asks Iran to not make nukes, we yell "You have to do this because the UN ordered you," but whenever the UN says bleep to us, we yell, "Shut up! Go away! Blue helicopters!" In other words, we cherry pick what we want to obey, sort of like Cheney and Bush with the law in general. Commit a crime then have the cops collude to cover it all up again.

The Sagarmatha petition is supported by Everest pioneer Sir Edmund Hillary, who said: "The warming of the Himalayas has increased noticeably over the last 50 years... this has caused several and severe floods from glacial lakes, and much disruption to the environment and local people."

Yay, Sir Hillary! A great guy. He, like myself, watches with horror as Nepal falls apart. Like my family, he knew the royals who were machinegunned down so brutally (the story the evil uncle who is now king is total hogwash!) and he mourns the destruction of Nepal and the many stresses ripping it apart these days.

If the glaciers melt once and for all, all the great rivers that were the birthplace of many great civilizations, will dry up and become mere seasonal rivers like the ones in the desert. I remember how various rivers in Arizona like the Santa Rita would run year round, the Palo Verde used to have huge cotton woods lining the banks, all are dry as a bone now except during monsoon season.

And so it will be with the Ganges. The Colorado River still gets snow melt from the Rockies but human use causes it to dwindle until it is nothing coming out into the Gulf of California. The snows are failing in the Rockies just as they are failing in all the glacial mountains even as excess snow blankets other parts of the planet. This oddity is another sign, global warming's changes of the atmosphere are altering the amount of solar energy heating high elevations. Anyone who has lived above 9,000 ft like I have in my own childhood, knows that when the sun is out, it gets very hot very fast even though it is very cold. So long as one is in the sun, it is hot. Wind blows or walk in the shade and brrr.

Global warming seems to have concentrated moisture so where it rains, it really rains and elsewhere, the sun blazes down. From Mongabay.com:

U.S. greenhouse gas emissions increased by 2.0 percent in 2004, from 6,983.2 million metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent in 2003 to 7,122.1 metric tons in 2004, according to Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2004, a report released today by the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The 2004 increase is well below the rate of economic growth of 4.2 percent but above the average annual growth rate of 1.1 percent in greenhouse gas emissions since 1990. Emissions of carbon dioxide and methane increased by 1.7 and 0.9 percent respectively, while emissions of nitrous oxide and engineered gases rose by 5.5 and 9.6 percent respectively. U.S. greenhouse gas emissions per unit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fell from 677 metric tons per million 2000 constant dollars of GDP in 2003 to 662 in 2004, a decline of 2.1 percent, meaning that American industry because more greenhouse gas efficient.

The release comes just over a week after a United Nations conference in Montreal where the United States refused to join any talks for imposing binding limits on emissions of greenhouse gases.

Many people are now suing the USA over our ridiculous overuse of fossil fuels. From Breitbart.com:

The people of the Arctic filed a landmark human rights complaint against the United States, blaming the world's No. 1 carbon polluter for stoking the global warming that is destroying their habitat.

The Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC), representing native people in the vast, sparsely-populated region girdling the Earth's far north, said they had petitioned an inter-American panel to seek relief for Canadian and US Inuit.

Islanders, people living in any lowland ouside of Florida, people suffering from increasingly frequent droughts, everyone is beginning to sue our country because our actions are destroying their homes and their livelyhoods. It is destroying ours, too, only we are all acting like Cheney, being sour pussed about it and thinking it is everyone else's fault for being the the way when all we want to do is kill things for fun.

The lawsuits the North East started to stop the Midwest and South from burning a zillion tons of coal for airconditioning because it is killing our trees, killing our lakes and rivers and killing everything, we had to drop it because the Supreme Court thinks killing everything via pollution wasn't thought of by George Washington so it is OK. Gads.

Arrest the Supreme Court. Rats.

I am still very angry that my poor oaks and maples will have to endure yet another ozone alert summer, vicious droughts and wild storms dropping 7" of rain in a few hours time.

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Bush Isn't Going To Replace Oil Pumped Out Of Strategic Petroleum Reserves

2006-02-15T21:21:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Bush decided it was pointless to replace the oil we ran down this winter. I always thought the SPR was a stupid concept, pumping oil out of the ground only to put it back into the ground again! If we are having "hard times," the plan should be rationed fuel, not pumping in and out, oil that shouldn't be pumped in the first place. A top scientist claims we hit the Hubbert Oil Peak mid December last year. I agree.

From Reuters:

Congress is requiring the Bush administration to add almost 300 million barrels to the U.S. emergency oil stockpile, but the White House on Monday did not seek money to buy the crude in its proposed budget for the 2007 spending year sent to Congress.

In sweeping energy legislation signed into law last year, Congress required the administration to boost capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to 1 billion barrels from its current 727 million barrels.

I got this from From the Wilderness.com.They keep up with all the updates concerning the Hubbert Oil Peak. From Princeton, Prof. Deffeyes:

In the January 2004 Current Events on this web site, I predicted that world oil production would peak on Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 2005. In hindsight, that prediction was in error by three weeks. An update using the 2005 data shows that we passed the peak on December 16, 2005.

He goes on to note that Saudi Arabia keeps claiming they will up their oil pumping again and again with great fan fare which is then echoed stupidly here in America on TV only the rate of pumping has gone DOWN the last two years there.

No you should know why prices are so high and not coming down! All it took was Saudi Arabia losing 2% of their capacity to change the world from an oil glut situation to an oil deficit situation. The North Sea oil wells are running out rapidly. Over 600 men have died over the years, providing this oil for the rigs have a tendency to collapse when under stressful storms, they blow up or the helicopters transporting people crash, etc. Like coal, the oil we consume often is mixed with blood, metaphorically speaking.

Actually, the oil flowing out of the Middle East swims in oceans of blood and pain!

So what are the policy implications? Numerous critics are claiming that the present world economic situation is a house of cards: built on trade deficits, housing price bubbles, and barely-adequate natural gas supplies. Pulling any one card out from the bottom of the pile might collapse the whole structure.

Of course. The Punch and Judy show we watched in DC today on nearly every front including the "I shot the Lawyer but not the trial judge" Cheney was whimsical and unedifying. No one talked about anything important. Everyone patted each other on the back and assured each other, all was well, there is nothing a little tweeking and of course, with solemn faces, promises to stay within some sort of budget, this is so sad.

I was in despair for the last 30 years as Americans raced after the will-o-whisp of easy money, easy living when we should have been ants, preparing for winter, working hard. Look around where you live. Are your winter windows facing south? Are the walls more than 8" thick with insulation (hint, the number of houses with that is slightly above zero)? Can you walk to work? Room for a veggie garden and some chickens? If the public wells stop pumping, do you have water?

So many things to consider.

America gambled. We hoped to reel in a big fish, Iraq, and claim all that oil for ourselves so we could sell it and make a lot of money from the Europeans. This is rapidly slipping through our fingers. And our naked attempt at repeating this with Iran has been firmly squelched as of today by the Chinese. Going into that country=World War Three and we won't win it, either.

Bush got away with killing New Orleans. Some people were yelling at Chertoff, Bush's foreigner executioner, the skull faced man who presided over the doom of so many innocent civilians. From Associated Press:

Acknowledging delayed aid and fumbled coordination, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Wednesday the federal response to Hurricane Katrina fell far short of providing immediate help to the Gulf Coast that could have saved lives.

Chertoff's Senate testimony came the same day a House panel released a scathing report concluding that deaths, damage and suffering could have been decreased if the White House and federal, state and local officials had responded more urgently to Katrina.

"There are many lapses that occurred, and I've certainly spent a lot of time personally, probably since last fall, thinking about things that might have been done differently," Chertoff told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee about the Aug. 29 storm.

Within about two days BEFORE the hurricane, I thought of a zillion things Chertoff could have done and I yelled about it all here on my own blog. This psychopath needed months of people yelling at him to think up some of the things he should have done spontaneously and instantly. So, Congress is yelling at him today but no one is firing him. He still is in charge of eliminating us. I cannot fathom why the vast majority of Americans aren't really scared by this! What if the New Madrid Fault blows again? This is going to happen, sooner or later! What if California finally releases all that pent up pressure from the Pacific plate? Will happen, the only question is , this year or in five years?

In the old days, Chertoff would have been long gone. Why the lassitude these days? One by one, "excess" cities will be removed and not replaced. The refugees will scurry about, seeking shelter, note how little interest there is in the fact that many were evicted from hotels today, survivors of the hurricanes this year? The news of the lack of interest in recharging the oil pumped out of the strategic reserves is proof our ruling class feels they must hide things from the masses. So they report it on the back pages and hope the readers or watchers only note the glitzy, loud, persistant commercials. Buy useless or hopeless junk! Buy now!

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Washington Pest

Mexico's Biggest Oil Field Hits Hubbert Oil Peak, Europe Demands Russia Give Them Control Of Russian Oil And Gas

2006-02-13T12:15:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Already, danger signs from Mexico as their greatest oil field, Cantarell, signal the possiblity that it is not only past peak but in danger of a sudden drop off in production. Nearly all the oil there is sold to the USA which continues to guzzle gargantuan amounts of oil. In Europe, at the G8 meetings hosted by Russia, the Europeans and Americans demand Putin let them run Russia's oil and gas fields for ourselves. Putin smiles and and says 'Don't call me, I'll call you."

From the Wilderness:

Mexico's huge state-owned oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, may be facing a steep decline in output that would further tighten global oil supply and add to global woes over high oil prices, the online edition of the Wall Street Journal reported.

The potential decline faced by Pemex, also could undermine US efforts to reduce dependence on Middle East oil, and complicate Mexican politics and financial stability.

An internal study reviewed by The Wall Street Journal shows water and gas are encroaching more quickly than expected in Cantarell, Mexico's biggest oil field, and might cause output to drop precipitously over the next few years.

Currently, Cantarell produces 2 mln barrels of oil a day, or six of every 10 barrels produced by Mexico, and is the world's second-biggest-producing field after Saudi Arabia's Ghawar.

When the Great Permian Extinction happened, and it was, like all following extinctions, very rapid, the earth was covered by a tremendous amount of rotting biomass both in the oceans and on land. Instead of merely slowly filtering down, slowly piling up, nature usually is very thrifty and various organisms eat or dissolve whatever organic matter dies leaving relatively speaking, not much behind. And it tends to be used again by plants, for example, which grow using the fallen debrie of previous plants after worms and bacterium digest them all.

In the great catastrophe of the Permian Extinction, 90% of all living things died very quickly, the earth became very hostile and tons of mud and sand and very briny seas covered over the sad remains of a once teeming earth. This pile of dirt/salt/sand has been, over the last several hundred million years, been compressed into oil and gas and we seek them out and squeeze it all out again, leaving empty gaps which we pump water into so the salt domes won't collapse and to pressurize the oil so it comes out to the last drop.

I just got a call from a friend who tells me his TV set pundits are all saying we are going to see a world oil glut! Whoo hoo. I roll my eyes. This is the sort of lies one expects from our rulers who need to deceive everyone so we won't change now and save our skins. The plan, I assure you, is to enslave the vast majority of humans and put them to work as serfs and slaves. They know all about what is going on and pray we don't figure it out.

Mexico, like Saudi Arabia, have just announced they are upping production. This is sheer insanity. Neither country benefits from doing this in the long run. Note how Russia, flush with oil money, isn't upping production despite the pleas of the other G8 (means "Gee, we ATE everything!").

Finance ministers of world's wealthiest nations sounded the alarm over the cost of energy on Saturday and urged greater international cooperation to ensure stable supplies.

Ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized countries said in a communique that global economic expansion was strong but at risk because of high and volatile energy prices.

"We need to develop a civilized strategy which will reliably secure the world with energy at reasonable prices and with minimal damage to the environment," Russian President Vladimir Putin told the ministers.

We are all so civilized, aren't we? This is why so many oil nations are either in flames, degraded or their people in chains!

The diplomatically worded G8 communique made no reference to the Russian gas supply spat but officials said they were keen to see the Kremlin allow more foreign investment in its energy sector and loosen the grip of the monopoly supplier Gazprom.

The standoff with oil-rich Iran over uranium enrichment has also served a reminder of how vulnerable supplies can be.

Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin appeared to cede some ground when he told a post-G8 news conference Russia might eventually end state-controlled Gazprom's gas export monopoly.

"In the future, access to the export pipeline will become equal. I am not ready to say when that will happen," he said.

Don't call me, I'll call you. I think this is funny. Russia will allow us to buy their oil resources, eh? But China can't buy any American oil companies? What is this about open borders and free trade and anyone can buy anything? I see some really funny contridictions here.

The Europeans want to surround Russia with NATO bases and sneer at Russia but also want to some into Russia and insure they run the joint so they can suction off all of Russia's oil as cheap as possible. What a grand scheme, a great plan! If they could only install someone as dumb as Bush! Alas for Europe, Putin's IQ is bigger than a fence post.

I see all over the news, breathless tall tales about using "biomatter" to make fuel for cars. We can make fuel out of any biomass, that is what oil is, after all! Rotting corpses of living things! Already, we are destroying our forests by logging them, this removes much of the biomass built up by trees so the soil never gets "richer". Right now, they lop off the tops and side branches and leave them on the ground so erosion and runoff won't destroy what pitiful mulch has built up but if we need biomatter to burn as fuel for cars, they wll harvest literally everything including the weeds.

This is how we fish the oceans now with vast nets that kill everything everywhere and the biology of the seas are now collapsing and we are not stopping, we are increasing the consumption and now everything is dying rapidly, it looks like the Permian there, now!

Just as the collapse happened.

Will we suck up all biomass and burn it so we can live in bubbles and drive our fat carcasses around inside of big bubbles? We know the ending of this sorry story!

The Permian extinction tells us very clearly.

Here is yet another story, Chevron telling us, we can't be energy independent: From Ireland News;

Bush in his State of the Union address earlier this month pledged to cut US dependence on Middle East oil by 75% by 2025.

“Quite frankly, I think these comments reflect some misunderstanding of global energy supply. I believe Middle Eastern oil can and must play a certain role in the system,” Robertson said. “Saudi Arabia’s massive resources will continue to promote international energy security and serve as a moderating force in balancing supply and demand.”

Robertson said singling out the Middle East for a reduction in US oil imports would be difficult, since oil was a commodity traded on the open market. What’s more, he said, that would require more expensive oil imports from elsewhere.

“All it would end up doing is raising prices,” Robertson said.

Chevron is also lobbying heavily against proposals floated in the US Congress to raise taxes on oil earnings, after oil companies made record profits as a result of skyrocketing oil prices.

Since American voters have little say with the sham elections we run these days, lobbying to shift taxes onto the backs of the voters is easy as making mud pies in a rainstorm.

“We’re working very hard to make sure these don’t come into law,” Robertson said. “I think we’ll be successful.”

The billionaire oil company reps and foreign governments like Saudi Arabia openly bribe our "elected" officials who heed them much more closely than they heed us.

So long as the oil overlords can whip the religious right wing nuts into line, they will be able to loot us at their leisure and then spit us out like so many dead seeds. Spitooie. And where is McCain? Shouldn't he be denouncing oil barons who are bribing Congress?

When pigs jet overhead.
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Schott Glass of Germany To Build Hyper-heat Solar Electrical Power Plants

2006-02-11T15:24:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Schott Glass Werk is launching a new super-heating solar energy system that produces electricity. This is one of many possible projects that will be started in the next ten years if there is any money for it which is why I am so concerned about America running up huge debts to buy junk.

From Reuters:

People will soon cool their homes with power from the searing desert sun, according to companies investing in a little-used solar technology.

Deserts are becoming hot spots for solar thermal power in which futuristic troughs concentrate the sun's rays and create steam to run power-producing turbines at power plants. It is a different technology than rooftop solar panels.

Tiny experimental plants built in the 1980s in California ran into problems when energy prices dropped.

But as oil, natural gas and electricity costs soar, companies are racing to build commercial solar thermal plants that are the size of conventional power plants.

"Now the industry starts again," said Burghard von Westerholt, head of thermal solar for private German specialty glass company SCHOTT.

The system is pretty simple, actually. Using tubing inside parabolic mirrors, the water heats to 400 degrees C and then is used as steam to run turbines. Schott's homepage for this technology:

To generate these high temperatures the solar radiation is focused linearly on the SCHOTT PTR70 Receiver by means of parabolic mirrors. Thermal oil flows through the receiver and is heated to about 400°C. A 50MW power plant requires a collector field of 60km receiver length and about 360,000 m² of mirror area. As a result of the maturing of the technology and the desire for safe energy supplies, the planning and construction of solar thermal power plants is increasing throughout the world. As of 2005, three new power plants will be constructed in Spain and the USA alone.

The history of parabolic solar heating systems is very entwined with my family since astronomers at Mt. Wilson observatory first played with it way back when my mom was a child there and my grandparents spent many days up at the observatory, working.

My grandfather first worked there when transportation was via mules.

Dr. Abbot rigged up a parabolic solar hot water heater up on the mountain. As is typical of all astronomers, he loved to tinker with things and this was one of his pet projects. It was wound up every hour at the base which meant climbing up and down the steep stairs, everything on observatory mountains are steep, I spent my childhood hiking up and down zillions of stairs as well as steep mountainsides in the thin atmosphere, sucking for air. Anyway, he would trot up and down, merrily, winding up the counterweight timer. This was the sort of thing he could rig up since this is the same way older telescopes could be run so they could track with the stars they were focused on.

This set up is probably one of the first modern water heating devices of this nature, namely, that tracks the sun and uses a parabolic mirror. After Abbot retired, no one used it and the only curious people to view it in later years was my own father who asked why it wasn't used and the staff confessed, no one wanted to hike up and down the stairs to wind up the gears. Soon afterwards, the director of the observatory sold it for scrap, to my father's regret.

It is no surprise to me that Schott has worked at a similar system since the Schott business in Germany and my dad go way back, to WWII, when my father rescued the Director himself as he fled the fighting on a bicycle with his wife in tow.

My father stopped him and asked him his name and when he heard it, he said (auf deutsch)"Hop in, you are just the person I am looking for," and talked mirrors and lenses the rest of the way, ignoring the noise of battle just beyond the hills.

So when my father became enthusiastic about setting up a large parabolic mirror solar array, it was natural for Schott to find it interesting, too.

I am very happy conditons are such, a large system is now being set up! About time! It would be a horrible disaster for our great-grandchildren if we suck out all the oil and gas and waste it! So the time is now, not next century, to change. But we need more than just a series of such systems, we need an integrated hyper-structure to cope with comfortable living in the future!

This is why combining geo-thermal heating/cooling systems with Passive solar heating/cooling homes.

Whatever systems we end up using, all of them cost more than oil at $12 a barrel. The fact of life is this: the costs of this cheap oil were hidden from view, often deliberately. The downside has been terrible. Just like, in hot summer times, the ozone levels shoot up and we suffocate not to mention global warming from rising CO2 and asthma from particulate matter.
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Exxon Warns Us, We Will Always Need Oil From Other Nations, China Warns They Want 50% Car Ownership

2006-02-08T09:03:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Exxon mulitbillionaire executives tell us we will always have to import oil. Of course, if we all drive SUVs! Meanwhile, China sets a goal of 50% car ownership by 2050. This means, if the population stays relative to the USA, they will own many more cars than we since there are four times more Chinese than Americans. This process will accelate the effects of the Hubbert Oil Peak by many magnitudes.

From ABC News:

The United States will always rely on foreign imports of oil to feed its energy needs and should stop trying to become energy independent, a top Exxon Mobil Corp. executive said on Tuesday.

"Realistically, it is simply not feasible in any time period relevant to our discussion today," Exxon Mobil Senior Vice President Stuart McGill said, referring to what he called the "misperception" that the United States can achieve energy independence.

From Bush and his oil buddies on down, I see a peculiar form of fatalism. "We can't change our lifestyles or how we transport ourselves so we might as well relax and keep pumping that good ol' oil!" is sheer insanity. Instead of conserving the world's natural resources for important uses since it is needed to produce many medicines and paints, containers, materials, oil has many non-burning up uses and here we are, burning it up at a mad rate! This is also destroying the environment. Using oil for other purposes impacts the environment but burning it is destroying the eco-system in a number of deadly ways, the most important being the relentless rise of CO2 and ozone levels rising during summer.

Pretending we are helpless babies and can't change won't change the Hubbert Oil Peak. It will happen whether we bother to install saner transportation/heating systems. I heard yesterday that the TV pundits are telling the gullible that Saudi Arabia is going to increase oil production by 20%! Indeed. When the Golden Goose flies around the world in 80 days.

Already, just to maintain present production, Saudi Arabia has to pump tremendous amounts of seawater into the empty chambers where the oil sat for 200 million years. Ten years ago, the Saudis pumped 10 mil barrels a day, now it is 9 million. They upped it to 9.5 mil but that is still less than in 1989.

The Gwahair oil fields are the oldest "great discovery" oil fields on earth and this isn't some bottomless pit. It isn't tapping into the earth's mantle. Time to change is here. And now. And the Chinese are shoving us along with this news: From Xinhua net:

He Chuanqi, head of the research team who compiled the report, told Xinhua that to attain this goal, China should follow two stages of social transformation. It should first turn into a city-based industrialized society from the present agricultural one, and then step into a knowledge-oriented society with rural and urban areas developing at the same rate.

By 2050, 80 percent of the urbanization work in China will have been completed, the researcher said.

He added that the social transformation will also bring great changes to peoples' life-styles, as 80 percent of the population would have access to information industry services, 50 percent could afford overseas travel and 50 percent would own private cars.

We will have some serious competition for all that oil. I suspect the Chinese feel, why let the Americans suck up all the oil? We might as well party, too!

And so they shall. We set a very nasty example here, when world oil was cheap, we ran out and tried to consume as much as humanly possible. We decided, it was OK to pretend this very limited resource is unlimited. This brainless mindset set the scene for an epic destruction of the environment and a squandering of our grandchildren's patrimony.

Indeed, what we are bequeathing them is a badly designed, poorly set up society that needs very cheap energy to function and on top of this, a mountain of debts so they can't borrow money to retrofit this mess so it can be even slightly functional.

One last news tidbit: Japan just bought Westinghouse's nuclear plant division. The Chinese wanted it but failed to get it. And this all dovetails into the whole screamathon over Iran's nuclear power plants. America is losing control of everything, one itemm after another, thanks to our giant trade deficits with absolutely everyone.

And high-tech Germany has a big trade surplus with the world, too. It is socialist, isn't it, with strong unions? Heh. Unlike us, racing to end up like Bangledesh.
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IMF Demands Iraqi People Pay Them Full Price For Oil

2006-02-07T08:34:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

The IMF has seized the oil revenues of Iraq and are ordering huge price hikes for the oil in the ground. Unlike Venezuela, the Iraqis are now totally disowned. Eventually, the IMF plans to take over America, too. We will pay through the nose when this happens.

From Reuters:

Iraq will gradually increase state-controlled domestic fuel prices tenfold in 2006 to meet International Monetary Fund demands, an Iraq official said on Monday.

The move is likely to spark public protests. Iraq already increased prices by 200 percent in December, igniting protests and creating a rift between the oil ministry and the government over external political pressure.

"We have to meet demands from the IMF, they said the prices should be equal to the prices in neighboring countries," another source in the oil industry said.

The royals in Saudi Arabia nearly lost their heads but for the rise in world oil prices thanks to the Bush wars which we launched after Saudi citizens and one Egyptian attacked America. Isn't that a coincidence?

The plan for Iraq is to turn over the oil profits there to Americans. We will administer the oil in such a fashion so that Iraqis get none of the profits and none of the oil for themselves. They will be divorced from their own natural resources. Like making farmers serfs by taking all their crops except for enough to keep them barely alive. This overlord style of running countries is very unpopular with the victims, witness Nigeria which is spiralling down in to civil war over the depletion of oil only for Americans.

Iraq won a crucial loan accord with the IMF in late December and a $14 billion debt swap with private lenders.

The $685 million IMF standby credit arrangement was the fund's first ever with Iraq and is designed to support the economic program over the next 15 months.

The Quislings running Iraq aren't using this money to build anything. We already have seen story after story about the corruption and venality of all parties involved in this Iraq mess, American companies as well as Iraqi, they are all on a looting expedition, they funnel all this money to their own bank accounts in places like Switzerland.

This is why there are IMF riots all the time. When the bankers want their money they always end up conspiring with the corrupt rulers, often put in places of power via American military force or conspiracies, and to pay up always involves squeezing the peasants in a thousand, nasty ways.

Former oil minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum protested against the increase in December and was ordered to take one months leave by the prime minister. Uloum tendered his resignation, which was accepted in January.

He saw the writing on the wall. Under Saddam, the oil blackmarket was encouraged because it was the only way to do business while under the American sponsored boycott, it was one way to earn foreign credit.

Now it is out of control since everyone is in a scramble for themselves. There is no national unity nor a nation, for that matter.

Kind of reminds me of America.
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Bush Pushes For War With Venezuela

2006-02-05T08:11:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Thanks to our out of control trade deficit and total dependence on foreign oil reserves, we are now thrashing around, trying to start wars with anyone sitting on oil wells. Once again, the target is Venezuela. Nothing irritates our overlords more than the thought that any oil pumping country gets to keep the profits so the people can get services and build a better country. Look at how the oil overlords are systematically destroying America! Why would they want to allow any country to thrive?

From Reuters:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez warned on Saturday he could shut his government's U.S.-based refineries and sell oil to nations other than the United States if Washington decided to cut diplomatic ties, as relations between the two countries continue to worsen.

Chavez said he did not want to take such measures after he expelled a U.S. military attache earlier this week on spying charges and Washington responded by ordering out a Venezuelan diplomat in a tit-for-tat retaliation.

"If the U.S. government wants to break relations, then they have to take that decision over there, over there. I could easily order the refineries we have over there closed," Chavez told a large crowd of supporters.

You know, when Israel is caught again and again, spying on us, we don't demand they stop nor do we recall their ambassador or remove Israeli citizens who run Homeland Security. Nothing at all happens except for a parade of politians running to the Israeli lobby to apologize for catching them and promising we will ignore their syping in the future much more carefully.

Well, Venezuela doesn't have a powerful lobby here so they can't play that game. Instead, we spy on them and then use the uncovering of traitors betraying Venezuela, a crime. We demand Venezuela apologize to us for catching our spies! Of course, everything is backwards when it comes to the USA and those who sell us oil.

We are like bank robbers buying gas so we can make more heists. We itch to shoot the gas station owner and not pay. After all, we are well armed! We have nukes! We have the biggest gibbering military on earth, why can't we just hold up gas stations, too?

Venezuela sells most of their oil to the USA. Just this last week, Bush yapped about how we are going to cut purchases from Saudi Arabia by 75% which caused them to yank our leash very hard. All they have to do is call a Fatwa on us and we are history in the Middle East. This is why they can attack us with impunity when it serves them and Bush like when Bush family friend, bin Laden, worked with Bush to drive America into a vast war for oil.

In public, the US government has to pretend we don't lust for Venezuela's oil which is why we keep our little conspiracies hidden from view as we try every trick in the book to undermine and destroy Venezuela's government. The Pentagon already has trumped the CIA which is under legal controls to not assassinate world leaders, now we are using robots to assassinate people and don't be surprised if this is attempted against Venezuela's popular President.

Our refusal to change the way we use energy is at the root of all this. From Associated Press:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pushed Saturday for unity in the fight against terrorism, telling a meeting of the world's top security officials that "a war has been declared on all of our nations and on our people."

Rumsfeld pushed U.S. allies to increase military spending to defeat the threat of a "global extremist empire" he said terrorists hoped to create.

See how this is going to be a world war? We want everyone to be hyper-armed because of terrorism? Isn't that insane! Even as we openly encourage an arms race, we race to disarm potential victims of our quest for cheap oil or at least, we get the oil profits channeled exclusively to the very rich in America and Europe.

"The Cold War wasn't won through fate or good luck — freedom prevailed because our free nations showed resolve when retreat would have been easier, showed courage when concession seemed simpler and more attractive," Rumsfeld said.

The fake story that we won the Cold War because we were hypermilitary and military spending is what made us victorious is insanity.

Russia went bankrupt fighting Muslims. They ran out of money! And the USA can't boast on this front, we are way out of money now and the new Bush budget gives more and more money to the military while cutting services to Americans, a total repeat of the Soviet State. We have a military that eats over $500 billion a year and our budget deficit is ....over $500 billion a year! So guess what?

We are following the Soviet path, perfectly. Even to the point of spending futile dollars on Eastern European backwaters, trying to hold them down for our empire.

Which is pissing off Russia, an oil pumping nation! The alliance of several big oil countries are slowly forming around China. China, unlike the USA, pays cash for oil. The USA has to first get loans from China in order to purchase our oil which terrifies our leaders which is why we want to buy that oil from ourselves, and this means war.
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Tribe In Pakistan Blow Up Pipeline And Shoot Rockets At Troops

2006-02-04T09:20:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

So long as Pakistan is run by a Quisling overlord installed by the CIA, it is OK for them to have nukes but the country teeters on the edge of chaos. Today, mountain raiders blew up another gas line and when troops came in to fix it, they shot rockets at them, forcing them to flee. Meanwhile, the Pentagon plans more wars based on using Quislings to serve our empire stealthily.

From the BBC:

Tribesmen have blown up a gas pipeline in Pakistan's troubled southern province of Balochistan, officials say.

Armed militants also fired more than 200 rockets at a major base belonging to the Pakistani security forces in the area, they said.

Across the planet, tribal people who live where the energy is being sucked out of the ground are getting angrier and angrier, watching their patrimony dissappear while they get to be poor. As the price of energy skyrockets, the need to cheat the very poor who live where it is, grows. The chief offender is the American empire which uses more energy from poor tribal areas than any country on earth.

When Bolivia or Venezuela, for example, have real elections and a native from the lower classes is elected, they end up taking over the energy systems and use them to extend health care and education, for example and nothing, absolutely nothing enrages the imperialist more than the idea that some desert tribe has wealth.

When the Saudi Royals took over the oil wells there, we raged. But then Faisal was "unexpectedly" murdered and voila! The status quo returned except we had to share a percentage with the murderers of the previous king.

The American plan, now that we are definitely running out of easy credit from China, is to revert to the Cold War style of oppressing peasants, namely, to send in assassins, professional spies, buying the services of rulers, dirty tricks, swift palace coups like in Nepal, etc. From the Washington Post:

The Pentagon, readying for what it calls a "long war," yesterday laid out a new 20-year defense strategy that envisions U.S. troops deployed, often clandestinely, in dozens of countries at once to fight terrorism and other nontraditional threats.

Major initiatives include a 15 percent boost in the number of elite U.S. troops known as Special Operations Forces, a near-doubling of the capacity of unmanned aerial drones to gather intelligence, a $1.5 billion investment to counter a biological attack, and the creation of special teams to find, track and defuse nuclear bombs and other catastrophic weapons.

China is singled out as having "the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States," and the strategy in response calls for accelerating the fielding of a new Air Force long-range strike force, as well as for building undersea warfare capabilities.

China will chop our chicken head off using the sharp axe called "economic advantage". We already lost to China. True, their trade deficit with us isn't like Japan which has a huge deficit thanks to huge trade barriers they have erected, the Chinese trade deficit is due to them having cheaper labor because, as Marx assured us, labor is wealth. The Chinese plan is to never ever confront us directly, militarily. Unlike the comfortable American attitude towards world wars, namely, they are strictly fought far from our own homes, the Chinese have vivid memories of WWII which was fought the longest on their own lands, starting in 1932.

In the 2001 strategy, the U.S. military was to be capable of conducting operations in four regions abroad -- Europe, the Middle East, the "Asian littoral" and Northeast Asia. But the new plan states that the past four years demonstrated the need for U.S. forces to "operate around the globe, and not only in and from the four regions."

Namely, we need to reinvade many South American nations that are one by one, slipping the leash, thanks to China. Just yesterday, the Chinese successfully approached Morales of Bolivia to make a deal concerning the energy systems there. They slyly said they aren't going to provide military aid but we all know how this operates! The Pentagon is very alarmed about this but can't go to Beijing and ask for another $100 billion so they want this assassin/stealth team style palace coup force that can wiz in and murder people like Morales, hopefully paying one of his generals to seize control for us.

Like we did in Pakistan. Aren't we popular there? Our huge embassy there sits in an isolated desert, surrounded by miles of defences so they can't shoot rockets at us and the military scours the land, seeking anyone sneaking up to our embassy to nail us. Meanwhile, we can't walk the streets in that country without millions of people screaming at us and throwing things at us. Hearts and minds!

Yet, although the Pentagon's future course is ambitious in directing that U.S. forces become more versatile, agile and capable of tackling a far wider range of missions, it calls for no net increases in troop levels and seeks no dramatic cuts or additions to currently planned weapons systems.

Lovely. The plan is to use rockets and missles and spies to protect America from all the outraged tribal people who hate our guts because we send in teams of assassins and coup supporters who destroy democracy and steal natural resources! Only this doesn't work as Atta cheerfully showed us.

For example, the active-duty Army will revert by 2011 to its pre-2001 manpower of 482,400, with the additional Army Special Operations Forces incorporated in that number, defense officials said. The Air Force will reduce its strength by about 40,000 personnel.

Moreover, the review's key assumptions betray what Pentagon leaders acknowledge is a certain humility regarding the Defense Department's uncertainty about what the world will look like over the next five, 10 or 20 years, as well as its realization that the U.S. military cannot attain victory alone.

Alone. Nope, we conspire with the shredded remains of the huge British "sun never sets" empire, the parts that have overwhelmingly Anglo/Saxon settlers who have completely destroyed the natives, those places support the American Empire's struggle to steal from peasants who are darker skinned or speak other languages.

"Things get very fuzzy past the five-year point," Henry said of the review in a talk last month.

We can't peer five years into the future? What ails them? Blind as bats, they set us off in a direction that isn't going to end with America ruling the world. The Brits thought they could do this with the Expeditionary Forces using many natives, often moving them from Nepal to Africa and Africans to China, to hold onto power with minimum cost to the home islands. Then WWI broke out and the system had to be scrapped.

From the Olympian:

The Pentagon is seeking broad congressional authority to spend tens of millions of dollars on military assistance to unspecified foreign countries or "indigenous forces," authority that traditionally has rested with the State Department.

Here we go, off the cliff. No longer does the State Department, using the CIA, pull coups and do assassinations, now our military gets to decide if and when they do this sort of dirty stuff.

So why are we walking down the exact same path Britain strolled, straight into WWI and WWII? Isn't this a wilful blindness to history that can't be tolerated?
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Bush Talks Big On Biofuel And Windmills Then Cuts Their Funding

2006-02-02T14:08:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Republicans continue the "talk like liberals act like assholes" plan. Nearly every declaration in the latest Bush Speeccch was a blunt lie. Now, Bush is either backpedalling like crazy and falling on his rear end, or sticking his pink tongue out at us and laughing as he does the exact opposite. Like cutting staff and funds for wind and biofuel research the same day he claims this will be the wave of the future!

From the New York Times via Facti, one of our readers::

Congress and the administration have at times sent conflicting signals about their priorities, further complicating Mr. Bush's prospects of pushing through his proposals.

The Energy Department will begin laying off researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the next week or two because of cuts to its budget.

A veteran researcher said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol. Those are two of the technologies that Mr. Bush cited on Tuesday night as holding the promise to replace part of the nation's oil imports.

The budget for the laboratory, which is just west of Denver, was cut by nearly 15 percent, to $174 million from $202 million, requiring the layoff of about 40 staff members out of a total of 930, said a spokesman, George Douglas. The cut is for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1.

Last I looked, Congress is a bunch of craven idiots spending money like there is no tomorrow, money on war, and the are the same party and same mind and same modus operandi as Bush. So this is not an example of Congress not coordinating with our dictator, it is Congress quietly killing anything that interferes with the corporate wolves feasting on our carcasses!

Namely, they do not want us to be "free" or "self sufficient" or anything, they want us trapped and forced to work for nearly nothing and get as little back as possible while they live like emperors and kings and can laugh at us.

Bush and Rove knew perfectly well, they were lying last night. They knew this was a TV show, not serious politics. They knew they would get the support of all the media whores who would trumpet Bush as some dawning hero instead of the Yellow Dwarf (refering to an old fairy tale of a dwarf wizard who disguised himself).

Representative Joe L. Barton of Texas, the chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, even seemed to contradict the president's alarms about high energy prices. "America runs on energy that is both abundant and available at prices we can afford to pay," Mr. Barton said in a statement.

Um, Bush himself said that high energy prices were OK and he was happy with the market setting the rates and he was utterly indifferent as to how many people suffer from this. After all, what are they going to do? Go to their Diebold polling places and vote?

This all goes back to the idea that we have a democracy which is a lie. We don't.
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Mysterious Oil Producing Nations Force Bush To Apologize For State Of Union Address

2006-02-02T09:13:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

It didn't take even one day for the real rulers to reel in Bubble Boy! They ordered him to retract the bizarre statement that we will reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern oil by 75%. So the harem slave boy immediately obeyed. Yes, massster. Gads. Arrest Bush. He is a traitor to our great nation.

From Knight Ridder:

One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.

What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025.

But America still would import oil from the Middle East, because that's where the greatest oil supplies are.

Gads, all those Americans who think this wailing, weeping, drunken canaba boy, this "please stick it to me again" kissing, hand holding, prancing, mincing little autocratic baby is standing strong and protecting us...HAHAHA.

Please. Another proof who runs America! Bush's minions won't trumpet this news across the country so 90% of the people will be clueless just like they were when Bush had to kiss the Chinese and apologize, on his knees, not once but thrice! Over the spy plane incident which was never mentioned in the news after the kow towing was finished.

Here is an example, suggested by one of my readers, of another diplomatic disaster that was caused by blustering diplomats misjudging their relative power. From the BBC:

India has summoned the US ambassador to Delhi after comments he made over India's relations with Iran.
US Ambassador David Mulford had warned that a deal giving India US nuclear technology could collapse if India does not back a UN motion against Iran.

He was told his comments were "inappropriate and not conducive" to US-India relations, India's foreign ministry said on Thursday.

Mr Mulford earlier said his remarks were taken out of context.

The US State Department said Mr Mulford was voicing his "personal opinion".

After this blunderbussing, did Bush recall the ambassador? Heck, he can't recall what he did from 1972 to 1975! Why didn't the media scream, back in 1999, Bush was unqualified to be President when he asserted he was suffering from amnesia? Huh? Brain dead=America dead, guys!

Here is Mr. Amnesiac himself, squirming while his arms are being twisted by the oil giants: From Associated Press:

President Bush defended the huge profits of Exxon Mobil Corp. Wednesday, saying they are simply the result of the marketplace and that consumers socked with soaring energy costs should not expect price breaks.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Bush also addressed oil's future, offering a more ambitious hope than in his State of the Union speech for cutting imports from the volatile Mideast.

Yay! We get to suffer the full blown effects of high fuel costs and eat dirt! Way to go!

Americans want a magical solution to the Hubbert Oil Peak. This reminds me of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." We have Mickey Bush as the Foolish Apprentice trying to fix things only they get monumentally worse. Greenspan is the magician and he will wave his wand and all will dissappear. Poof.

All of our wealth, our country, everything. Way to go.
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Washington Pest

Bio Fuels: Yet Another Insane Idea, It Won't Work At All

2006-02-02T07:56:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Biofuels is a totally insane idea. Unless we are planning on never eating any meat and eliminating about 70% of the world's people through starvation or slavery, it won't fuel a zillion SUVs driving aimlessly around this planet and don't even think about the mess this will make, creating desertfication from overharvesting, soil depletion, salinization of the topsoil from irrigation and burning the stuff, creating more global warming!

From the BBC:

President Bush has said alternative fuels to compete with petrol could be produced within six years.
Speaking in Nashville, Mr Bush said that scientists were close to a breakthrough on making ethanol from materials such as grasses.

Technology, he hoped, would help the US "reduce if not end" reliance on Middle Eastern oil in his lifetime.

Time to talk reality here. I own pasturelands. I graze large mammals on my fields. The horse, the oxen, they are superbly efficient consumers of the frail amount of energy grass represents. Any other use of grass is increasingly inefficient. For example, my ox team, after grazing for much the night, could be yoked up and set to work all day, pulling logs of immense girth, pulling wagons with quite big loads, as big as any tractor could pull, only slower. My patient, loving boys, once set in motion, stolidly would march forwards, chewing their cuds since they store their energy supply in a fore-stomach. The horse, more nervous, much faster moving, pulled much less weight but speed is Sparky's forte. Descendant of the mighty warhorses of Austria, mountain bred, he can tool along in deep snow, happy as a lark, snow spraying up from his chest as he charges through tall snowbanks.

The energy stored in grass is miniscule. The energy stored in trees is tremendously higher per square inch because the trees soak up many years of solar energy and compact it into a tough fiber called "wood". And oil, coal, gas are all super-compressed solar energy with millions of years of solar energy in a very small, very efficient package.

The sun continues to pour energy upon our planet and various living things store it in various ways and in death, enrich the planet further but for one element: humans. On every level, we are consuming the solar resources 1,000,000 times faster than the ecosystem is replentishing it. The renewable systems that represent a true steady-state can sustain us but now within a giant bubble wherebe we can live like emperors. This is the fatal flaw to all the "solutions."

Chris, Danny and I lived without modern systems for many years. Our refrigerator turned on when the cold north wind blew and in summer, I stored everything that needed cooling in a deep hole in the ground, lined with steel. People used to laugh when I would kneel on the ground in the center of our tent complex and open a heavy lid and pull out of the ground our ingredients for dinner.

The energy used to pump water, once we got a well and didn't have to carry it in containers from much further away with Duke, our sled dog pulling them up the hill in winter or melting snow on the woodstove, the pump's name was "Danny" and using his muscles, he would patiently sit on an overturned bucket twice a week and pump 100 gallons into the big holding tank, using the Victorian handpump we installed. Baths were communal affairs, everyone taking it in turn, in between these, hand washing was done.

I burned many personal calories, doing chores. Like 80% of humanity, I had to do the labor if I wanted something. Things most Americans take for granted since energy does it for them, invisibly.

People imagining we will burn grass for oil don't bother to think things through. Grass growing regions are, nearly universally, located in places where the grass grows only 1/2 the year! Here, on the farm, any hay harvested goes into the barn to be doled out during the winter. With Chip and Dale, my huge ox team, they ate 250 bales a winter. This is a lot of hay, I assure you, as the person who moved the bales around for the boys.

The places that can grow hay year round don't get rain year round. They nearly universally have a rainy season then a dry season! Even if the grass grows, it is universally at a much slower rate per month than the winter/summer regions. Usually, in a good year, up here we get three hay harvests but this is getting harder to achieve since the average is two t in bad years, and with global warming, they are getting worse and worse, only one harvest of any note will end up being the norm.

Namely, we are seeing increasingly dire droughts up here in the north! For the last year, Illinois and Indiana, for example, had a terrible drought. Last summer, the rains failed us from end of July to hurricane Katrina in September. Then, just in time for harvesting the hay, it rained like crazy in October, one week, 10" of rain, in one day, 7" of rain that washed away our road in the mountains and did a lot of damage to many villages.

To harvest hay, you need sunshine because the hay has to lay out in the sun to dry before packaging or it rots. All the farmers harvest their hay in unison. This is universal. In old Europe, the hay harvests were festivals as extra hands traveled from village to village, assisting in the harvest. They walked, of course, with the hay rakes on the shoulder. So the hay harvest would start in the valley and move up the higher elevations. When done, the hay harvesters would walk back into the valleys and by then, the next wave of hay harvesting was beginning down by the riversides.

Reeds in the swamplands were harvested heavily for roofing material. None of these cultures burned hay for energy. It was much too precious to waste in this fashion. Ever burn hay? It generates very little heat. A pile of twigs are superior. My big pieces of ancient oak create tremendous energy. Grass barely qualifies as tinder!

Imagine great machines rolling across the plains, slicing off the slender leaves of grass, compressing it and then spitting it out as heavy bales to be moved by huge machines to places where it is compressed further, each stage using tremendous amounts of energy. When it finally is pumped into a tank to be burned, it has consumed more energy than it will produce when the SUV lurches forwards and turns its wheels.

Why aren't we doing this now?

Well, those rolling fields of grain or grass are already being consumed! By humans, horses, cows, sheep, you name it. We do produce excess corn which does store tremendous energy but this is because modern corn growing techniques hinge on using tremendous amounts of ancient energy--natural gas--in farming, especially in fertilizing the soil. Remove the natural gas being wasted on fertilization and corn can be grown only sporatically, once every four years, maximum, in between, one must grow nitrogen-fixing plants like alfalfa. Our medieval ancestors figured this out.

Chinese peasants fertilized their fields using ducks and chickens, released to finish off the crop, the birds would happily fertilize everything using their very effient vegetable burning tools called stomachs. My chicken's fertilizer is very potent, once I let it sit for two years! My duck's water tank, I would flush into the garden every few weeks and the vegetables were very prolific for it. In winter, the sheep were penned in the gardens and their piss would fertilize the soil so the cabbages the next summer would be gigantic.

In mediveal times, many lawsuits heard by the King's Court were over who got the right to pen the community sheep in winter! It was considered tremendously valuable and as an experiment, I tried it and discovered why!

I believe we can build a culture that is sustainable, comfortable and reasonable, but it won't look anything like our present system, not even slightly. I want precious energy reserved for processes like glass production, a very important thing indeed, for steel smelting, for example. I do hope we remain in the Iron Age! But all the other excesses will end up being curbed. We need modern medicine but we don't need cars. Cars are killing us. I used to bike in Manhattan and it was a daily battle with the belching behemoths. Subways are good, cars are evil. My son got asthma from car fumes in NYC.

Desertfication: overharvesting, and you know, this will inevitably happen, means the grass grows less and less and as we cut the trees and grasses, they can't provide us with that sponge/blanket of moisture and it gets drier and drier and they grow less and less, we see this very clearly in Brazil and Indonesia, just for example. I see pictures of Cambodia or Burma, for example, and am shocked at the increasing level of desert there where once jungles flourished.

The people who domesticated corn, for example, built up suddenly some tremendous societies that built huge, elaborate temples. But the cutting of the jungles increased year after year and the land got less and less fertile as the farming expanded and they made ritual human sacrifices hoping this would fix things but instead, desertfication set in, the rains failed, the harvest failed, the society failed. And over time, the jungle too over again.

This happened to Cambodia, to all jungle civilizations. None lasted more than 300 years thanks to this desertfication process.

Seemingly, we plan to try this out, yet again, on an epic scale.
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Fake Congress Wants Fake Hearings About Real Oil Crisis Only Oil Companies Don't Bother To Show Up

2006-01-30T21:53:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, then I am a Congress critter. The latest proof our Congress is dead came tonight, surprised? Not me. Hearings about obscene profits and oil price gouging: not one oil company is bothering to show up for this fake hearing. They say, why bother? It is all a farce, anyway. Here, have a campaign contribution.

From Reuters:

Officials from six major oil companies have refused to testify this week at a Senate hearing looking into whether oil industry mergers in recent years have made gasoline more expensive at the pump.

With oil companies reporting record profits from higher energy prices, consumer groups have complained that mergers in the industry have stifled competition.

Exxon Mobil said on Monday it earned $10.7 billion in the fourth quarter of last year and $36.1 billion for all of 2005 -- bigger than the economies of 125 countries.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, which is holding the hearing on Wednesday morning, said it asked representatives from Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Valero Energy and the U.S. units of BP and Royal Dutch Shell to tell their side of the story.

"All declined the invitation to testify," the committee said in a statement on Monday, without providing details.

And what will the American people say? Are we freeer than the Chinese? Or heck, the Palestinians? Of course, the people in such places are more motivated, I fear. Americans seem to believe that if we stop little Mary from having a baby seriously out of wedlock, especially in stables, we will be strong and rich. We think, if we do all sorts of useless, goofy things, we will get good jobs and not be up to our eyeballs in debt and of course, the oil companies who are lording over the entire planet are American!

Wave that flag and go die in Iraq! So why have there been no hearings about the utter lack of WMD in Iraq? And why the news that Bush has violated Congressional laws about spying on Americans has caused exactly nothing? And recess appointments go ahead without a peep? And an Israeli citizen is running homeland security so secretly, despite not one but two al Qaeda (al Qiada) tapes from number #1 and #2 (all the threes are dead or in prison) can't flush this right wing Zionist out to hold a press conference?

And we ran over the debt limit, leaving it deader than a New Orleans doornail and not so much as a peep from the press, the Democrats, anyone? I hear an echoing chamber. Helllllooooo.....helllooooo.

Are all our Congressional Pinnochios in the belly of the whale, wailing faintly? I don't hear you!

The lack of alarm, the sonombulence across America this winter, is it due to the amazing, warm winter? No snow on my mountain, it was nearly sixty today, sunny, like April weather, no winter this winter. I dread what will happen next for I know Mother Nature. She is, beyond doubt, the most dangerous Goddess/ruler of the universe. She wields the scythe of extinction.

From the BBC:

Rising concentrations of greenhouse gases may have more serious impacts than previously believed, a major scientific report has said.

The report, published by the UK government, says there is only a small chance of greenhouse gas emissions being kept below "dangerous" levels.

It fears the Greenland ice sheet is likely to melt, leading sea levels to rise by 7m (23ft) over 1,000 years.

The poorest countries will be most vulnerable to these effects, it adds.

Yup. And the amphibians are dying and one expert says, why bother trying to save them, just give up. Mother Nature might extend that "give up" part a little higher up the food chain.

Tuvalu is going underwater. From Grist News.com:

Some see things differently, though. The increasing intensity of tropical weather and the rise in ocean levels and temperatures -- all documented results of global warming -- are threatening to sink this island nation. Its citizens face the possibility of being among the first climate refugees. "Our whole culture will have to be transplanted," says former assistant environment minister Paani Laupepa, now assistant secretary for foreign affairs.

The islands are not going to go under immediately. But "even if we are not completely flooded," says Laupepa, "in 50 to 70 years we face increasing storms and cyclones, damage to our coral reefs, and flooding of our gardens." Crop damage and decreased fish catch would mean "importing more food ... and more health and diet problems," he says.

The photos at this site should be looked at. They are from a year ago. The ocean is popping up in the middle of the island as it submerges. It is worse today. The first big storm this coming hot typhoon season will pretty much wipe out everything, permamently.

This is America's responsibility, we are the #1 polluters of the planet, especially with fossil fuels, we are the planetary #1 consumer of fossil fuels and Congress just wants the oil companies to ease up a tad so voters won't revolt so we can toodle along the present, destructive, impossible path. La-la-la.

It is too bad we lost all control over ourselves and our government. It is turning rapidly into a machine run by very greedy and very angry individuals who have a bottomless pit of desire to own and control everything. And they hate us and want us dead.

Isn't that lovely? And they own our own politicians. So, what next?

I don't really need to say, we can change ourselves, one at a time, and stick together, and make a lot of noise like today, flooding the Senate, demanding they listen to us. But then, on Nov. 8th, 2001, when I went to the Senate to push for counting the stupid votes as they ought, I was the only one doing this. Totally alone. And on line, I begged people to join me. I drove all night to get there. Slept in the car at a rest stop. On my own dime.

Alone. And that, my friends, was a turning point for America and I was alone.

Remember: to fight, one has to go out and stake out a place and stand there and refuse to budge.
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Washington Pest

Deadly Cold Wave Grips Europe, Drawing Down Reserves

2006-01-26T15:33:00.000-05:00

Photo from AFP/Aris Messinis
By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Europe is now suffering from the intense cold that swept in from Siberia. Hundreds of people have frozen to death or died in snow or ice related accidents in this freakish coldwave. It is snowing in Greece and Italy while the canals are freezing over in Holland. Meanwhile, in America, it is super warm.

From Reuters:

The bitter cold has spread to the far south of Europe, regions which normally enjoy milder winters.

In Greece, more than 400 villages and towns were cut off after 36 hours of continuous snowfall and hundreds of snow-clearing vehicles struggled to keep main routes open.

Ports across the country stayed shut as icy gale-force winds swept across the Aegean, casting a carpet of snow over the islands.

A Cambodia-flagged cargo ship sank in the northern Aegean amid a snowstorm on Tuesday, the Merchant Marine Ministry said. All but two of the 16 mainly Turkish crew were rescued by the coastguard and rescuers were search for the missing.

A hyper-dynamic weather system is causing huge problems. Two years ago, we saw snow in parts of India and Bangladesh, for example, people froze to death in Calcutta, of all places. The earth is like any system which is set to move faster and faster, this is what happens when energy is increased, of course.

When the hurricanes hit us, Europe drew down their energy reserves to prop us up so we wouldn't flood the world with ever cheaper petrodollars. Every country trading with us, virtually all of them run surpluses which is why our trade deficit now yawn at nearly a trillion a year (shaking my head in disbelief) so Europe didn't want us to devalue the dollar any more than Japan or China, so they kept us afloat.

Now, they are paying the price in spades with little reserves left to use in this crisis. Meanwhile, at home, we ignore them all with studious indifference, checking our fingernails. Today, Bush held a brief press conference which he actually said he didn't want to talk about New Orleans, why ask questions, who cares?

Should be his motto.

Europe has chosen the road of free trade except when it hurts and doing this has enabled them to join Asia in destroying our industrial base but this business of subsidizing America until everything is sucked out of Europe and into our own maws has a bad drawback, namely, the Europeans could be left holding a big bag of worthless paper and have nothing to show for it all.

I suppose they could ask for all that gas and oil back but I doubt we will give it to them. We already ate it.
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Oil Companies Are Destroying Burma

2006-01-26T10:22:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Even as we screech at the Palestinian peasants, we exploit peasants brutally all over the globe. One place we never ever hear from, aside from Nigeria, is Burma. The military coup that runs the place are totally insane. They just moved their capital deep into the hinterlands to prevent revolutions. Oil companies kill peasants, stealing their lands, polluting their farms.

From the BBC:

Burma's decision to shift its seat of government has left many analysts at a loss to explain the move.

After all, why go to the huge trouble and expense of relocating thousands of officials to a remote mountainous region, when there is a well-established political infrastructure in the port city of Rangoon?

Information Minister Kyaw Hsan said the site of the new capital, near the town of Pyinmana, was a more strategic location for Burma's military rulers.

"It is centrally located, and has quick access to all parts of the country," he told reporters on Monday.

But analysts outside the country were unconvinced.

The BBC has pictures of the work going on that were sneaked out of that police state. Even as America pretends to want democracy to spread so long as no one really votes or has any influence outside of our chosen Quislings, we ignore our own, self-installed dictatorships. The oil companies fear, above all things, a nationalist government in any country they are draining dry. We will assassinate, create riots in the streets, attack openly, any and all possible challenges to oil company power. The need to keep a death grip on all oil across the planet is costing us half a trillion dollars and is endangering us here at home, as we saw on 9/11. But we consume 24% of the world's oil and so, we need to be utterly ruthless and brutal.

Here is another English Newspaper, the Independent:

One of America's most powerful oil conglomerates looks likely to get its comeuppance in court over its overseas business practices after spreading a trail of misery through a small rainforest village in the Tenasserim region of Burma in November 1994.

The prospect of an avalanche of suits against big corporations has so spooked the Bush administration - always a good friend to the oil industry - that last month the Justice Department filed a brief in the Unocal case denouncing the Alien Tort Act as "an obscure provision" and arguing its application posed a direct threat to, among other things, the war on terrorism.

When the Union Oil Company of California, or Unocal, started working on a gas pipeline project there, it contracted out security operations to the Burmese military regime; and that was when the horror began.

According to court documents, Burmese soldiers entered a house in the village, broke into the rice storeroom with an axe, kicked the woman of the house and pushed her down some stairs. After a brief hunt for her husband, the soldiers came back and kicked the woman again, knocking her unconscious and pushing her into a lighted fireplace. They kicked her infant daughter into the fire too.

When the Chinese tried to bid for Unocal, they were rebuffed by puffed up American legislators who feared the Chinese would take over our oil.

We obviously have tremendous influence on Burma. We could, say, boycott all that oil. Heh. Fat chance. Instead, we point to the budding democracy in Iran (which has tremendous problems, what with the winning team acting like they are Republicans and doing all that cheating stuff!) and scream, they should be boycotted and the neo cons put in zillions of editorials screaming that we need to free the people of Iran. Meanwhile, we silently stand by, watching our stooges in Burma torment the people there!

In 2003, humanist organizations tried to strike back using lawsuits designed to force American oil companies to stop oppressing people in oil pumping countries.

What is new is the legal approach to challenge the corporations. The Alien Tort Act was first revived about 20 years ago to chase down disgraced generals and deposed despots such as Ferdinand Marcos but it was adapted in the 1990s to pursue corporations.

Rick Herz, a lawyer with Earth Rights International, said: "The principle is the same, since corporations are persons under the law.

"Aiding and abetting - that's a direct liability. Companies like Unocal argue that they are not responsible for the actions of their subsidiaries and contractors, but notions of liability through joint venture or agency are basic tort theories, common throughout the United States and the rest of the world." Another suit, against ChevronTexaco over the deaths of villagers in Nigeria who had opposed its plans for a series of oil platforms, is also close to coming to trial.

The prospect of an avalanche of suits against big corporations has so spooked the Bush administration - always a good friend to the oil industry - that last month the Justice Department filed a brief in the Unocal case denouncing the Alien Tort Act as "an obscure provision" and arguing its application posed a direct threat to, among other things, the war on terrorism.

We all know, the Justice Dept thinks not only various acts and laws are obscure and even obscene, they think the Constitution is a dirty rag to wipe their feet with.

Well, nothing much has changed since this article appeared overseas three years ago except for things to get worse and worse. The resolution to take all the oil out of the planet's crust has only accelerated. China, rebuffed from buying Unocal, has simply gone over our heads and using the fistful of a trillion dollars, is outbidding us across the planet.

From Xinhua net:

The government is expected to relax controls over retail oil prices in its domestic market soon, bringing them more into line with international prices, a National Bureau of Statistics official said.

Li Deshui, head of the National Bureau of Statistics, told a media briefing in Beijing yesterday that he believes the government will allow retail oil prices to rise in response to market forces in the near future, despite the flow-on inflationary effect on the economy.

See? This is today's news in China. The ruling elites think this will work. We shall see if the Chinese people protest this. We know, Americans are getting very dicey about oil price hikes. Breathlessly, the media reports any drop in prices, no matter how minute. But the constantly escalating prices are devastating whole industries such as the auto makers here.

And here is Iran and China, drawing closer, thanks to American efforts to isolate the Iranians. From Xinhua net:

Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing held talks here Thursday with visiting Iranian chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani.

They had an exchange of views mainly on Iran's nuclear issue and other related issues concerning the growth of bilateral relations.

We can kiss our "we need to go to war with Iran" goodbye. The Israelis were really nice to the Chinese for a long time, funnelling information and weapon systems from America to China. Now, that pipeline is down and China is reconsidering their relationship with Israel, namely, they don't need them anymore, they have much nicer contacts and since Israel has no oil and the Chinese have no popular demand to support the annexation of Palestinian lands such as we see in America, they are free to join forces with the Iranians or the Palestinians who are anxious for a powerful friend and who are a potential portal for all sorts of things including mischief and tying down America in futile, dangerous wars over dust.

The consolidation of influence and power on the World Go Board continue. Relentlessly, China plunks down one stone after another, right alongside ours. And they don't have to kill anyone while doing this.
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As USA Bleeds To Death In Iraq, China Cleverly Moves In To Start Taking Over The Oil Fields

2006-01-25T09:51:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

The "shock and awe" method of doing business is proving to be a very expensive failure. The Chinese are using the more effective "a fist full of dollars" method. This means, as we retreat along a bloody trail in Iraq, the Chinese move into the vacated spaces and take over. If we try to compete, we have to borrow money from China, first.

From Azzaman via Buzzflash:

China is keen to train Iraqi personnel working in the oil sector and other fields, a foreign ministry statement said.

The statement, faxed to the newspaper, said the Chinese were willing to provide training in the spheres of telecommunications, power generation and diplomacy as well as oil.

The pledge to provide the training came following a meeting between Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zaibari and the Chinese envoy in Baghdad.

“The (Chinese) ambassador has expressed his government’s willingness to develop relations with Iraq … and provide the country with assistance in the training of Iraqi cadres,” the statement said.

It said initially China would provide training for 80 Iraqi oil personnel “and donate X-ray machines” to help the country control its borders and combat violence.

“China is keen to do whatever it takes to press ahead with the Iraqi reconstruction,” the statement quoted the envoy as saying.

The Chinese aren't crowing about this in Xinhua net news but then, it is probably not finished, they like to announce things after official visits but I expect that detail will be arranged soon enough.

On the giant World Go Board, this would be a very significant spot to put a Chinese stone. If you think of things with chess images, this is a Bishop parking itself catty corner to a castle. Since China has moved into Iran and occupies the entire grid, there, taking the heart of Iraq is a grand, aggressive move. No longer shy about their foreign dealings, the Chinese are no longer the inept diplomats but rather, very highly trained and quite focused.

It is amusing the Chinese will instruct Iraqis on "diplomacy". The head reels. We know what this means! Chinese diplomats will meet with and instruct Iraqi ones on the fine art of triangulation leading to strangulation. China knows that being too obvious and forwards means one becomes a target but if one trianulates, one can muffle any opponent's moves because one is playing with more than one chess piece or Go stone.

Russia is just relearning how to triangulate. Slowly, Putin has struggled to control the urge to simply dictate to others and many of his moves seem clumsy compared to the smooth Chinese operations.

But he is learning, quickly. Unlike Americans, who are led by right wing idiots working for a man who must be the stupidest world leader ever since since the Roman Empire and King George III of England. We think,bellowing like a mastadon in a tar pit and lashing out at everyone is great diplomatic skills and will make us all powerful.

This delusion is killing us, literally. Not one Chinese soldier has died in Iraq or Afghanistan. Yet the biggest winner in these wars has been China. And as I keep saying, China doesn't mind the sudden rise in world oil prices since the USA has to bleed much more red ink now due to this while China has a gigantic kitty of petrodollars to bid for oil and the only way we can bid for oil is to first go to China for loans, a win/win/WIN cycle for China and a giant loser for America.

Why our leaders want this doesn't baffle me.

They are criminals, traitors and psychopaths. All good reasons to remove them just like Hitler was removed. Ahem.
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Bush Sabre Rattling Over Iran Might Drive Oil Prices Beyond $100 A Barrel

2006-01-23T07:45:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Bush's sabre rattling has rattled world markets. America is trapped between a rock and a hard place of our own devising. Iran is calling our bluff and bluster making us look even more idiotic to a world which is astonished at our raging stupidity.
Meanwhile, China continues to make inroads in the Middle East, securing Chinese control of oil and refining facilities.

From Associated Press:

A surge in oil prices last week to almost $70 a barrel on concerns about the restart of Iran's nuclear program only hints at what may lie ahead.

Prices could soar past $100 a barrel, experts say, if the U.N. Security Council authorizes trade sanctions against the Middle Eastern nation, which the West accuses of trying to make nuclear bombs, and Iran curbs oil exports in retaliation. A sharp global economic slowdown could follow.

That's the dilemma the United States and European nations face as they decide whether to act. But Iran would also pay a hefty price if the petro-dollars that now represent 80 percent of export revenues are reduced, potentially stirring civil unrest in a nation with a 14 percent unemployment rate.

Never ever play chicken with a country that has a military graveyard that has a central fountain that pours out red colored water to look like blood. A country famous for suicide charges. Like North Korea.

These sorts of countries might be insane but that simply means one shouldn't poke at them to see if they will attack, right? Assuming the Iranians desire our sort of lackidasical, couch potato approach to reality is unreal. Namely, the Muslim world right now is very, very motivated and our society just wants to live inside a huge energy bubble and simply suck up all world resources in exchange for pieces of paper called "dollars".

As I have pointed out, the Chinese are intent on using their trillion dollar reserves to bid up the price of oil. They are willing to go all the way up. Here we are, deliberately driving up the world cost of oil and the only way we can buy it ourselves is to go further into debt to the Chinese. Isn't that a lovely thing? We won't nationalize our own oil companies so we can at least reap the profits for ourselves like "insane" Venezuela. Putin did this for Russia. But instead, we cut taxes on the oil companies who now enjoy massive, Midas level profits.

Japan has a trillion dollars to play with, too, and they are buying too, like the Chinese. From Associated Press:

Toshiba Corp. (6502.T) has won a bid for Westinghouse, the U.S. power plant arm of British Nuclear Fuels, for almost $5 billion, the Financial Times reported on Monday, a move that will expand its overseas operations but has raised concerns about the cost of the deal.

British Nuclear Fuels Chief Executive Mike Parker and Chairman Gordon Campbell decided to sell Westinghouse to Toshiba late on Saturday night, the FT said. Other suitors for Westinghouse included General Electric Co. (NYSE:GE - news) of the United States and Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (7011.T).

More and more, Americans no longer own American companies. We are losing our grip on our own nation. This is being encouraged by our rulers and our political leaders who suck up masses of bribes called "campaign contributions" which means they ignore or enable or reward the destruction of American industry and American control of industry.

Ever intent on their own private Go game, China plonks down yet another significant rock right in our backyard called "Saudi Arabia". From Xinhua net:

Three Saudi companies announced last week that they are about to complete forming a joint-stock petrochemical company with a Chinese partner, Arab News reported.

The Saudi group announced that part of the $1.76 billion company's capital will be offered in an initial public offering (IPO) and the rest will be distributed among the three companies and their Chinese partner, and the three Saudi companies are MIDROC, Sara Development Co. and House of Invention (HOI) Co.

The new company is set to establish an $6 billion petrochemical complex in the Jubail Industrial City, located in Eastern Province, and is expected to create 2,500 new jobs for Saudi nationals.

The production capacity of the new complex is expected to be two million tons of basic and secondary petrochemical products annually.

The Chinese influence in oil countries continues to shoot upwards. They use the profits from all this to extend alternative energy systems in China for they know they are in a race against time, the need to secure renewable systems is a high priority item in the long run. To do this, they need to tap into the profit flow from oil so as we coast over the Hubbert Oil Peak and then head down hill, the price of oil will shoot up and they want to be there with their basket to capture the profits for themselves. They need it for China. They won't translate it to America. The American fake trade with China, funded 100% by China, will be terminated at that point since we will be bankrupt and China won't need us as customers anymore.

Americans who dream that this Chinese free trade will continue forever are insane. And stupid.

From Associated Press:

Japan's benchmark stock index fell sharply Monday morning as the market's unease continued over a criminal probe into prominent Internet company Livedoor Co.

The Nikkei 225 lost 227.27 points, or 1.45 percent, to end morning trading at 15,469.42 points. During the session, the market fell as much as 2 percent.

One can disregard most of this article. The Japanese stockmarket is sliding down hill because of the sabre rattling in America. Namely, they fear that their fake free trade will collapse when America can't buy squat diddly due to oil prices sailing to over $100 a barrel. So they have the jitters. Unlike the Chinese, they really do depend on the American/Japanese trade of goods for debts system to keep afloat since much of what they sell are very expensive items, not cheap stuff like China who can find markets all over the earth. Not everyone can buy the Japanese stuff except for the reckless, debt addicts in America.

A cold chill is blowing down GOP necks. From Newsday:

A growing number of Republican voters are frustrated by congressional spending and scandal, according to GOP leaders from across the country who worry that an "enthusiasm deficit" could cost the party control of Congress in November.

Some rank-and-file Republicans wonder what happened to the party that promised to reform Washington after taking control of Congress in 1994 for the first time in 40 years.

The GOP stronghold is in exactly those places that celebrate NASCAR driving, energy guzzling, goofy, grasshoppers hating ants culture. They thought the whoopsie doodle dandy war in Iraq would deliver cheap gas so the party could rage on, to hell with the environment! The failure of this epic theft is leaving them feeling nasty and the back to back hurricanes which are brewing yet again already! Scare them a tad but not enough to stop their own madness and sign the Kyoto Accords. They sense something scary is about to happen and clinging to Bush won't make the monster go back under the bed.

Dispirited and dejected, they now want to moon about, hoping a miracle will happen, or worse, angrily go and start WWIII by bombing Iran in a fit of final madness.
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McCain Frets About Oil Imports But Is Way Behind On Getting Solar Energy To Arizona

2006-01-23T06:49:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

My parents used to lecture about solar energy while living in Arizona. They did solar energy research there. You would think Arizona would be number one on solar energy implementation but it is #45 on the national solar energy use list which is insanity and then along comes Senator McCain, baying that we need to wean ourselves off of foreign oil? Where's he been at this last 30 years?

From Associated Press:

A top Republican lawmaker said Sunday that America must explore alternate energy sources to avoid being held hostage by Iran or by "wackos" in Venezuela — an apparent reference to Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's populist president.

Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), a potential presidential contender in 2008, said recent action by "Mr. Chavez" and by Iran's leaders make it clear that the United States will be vulnerable as long as it remains dependent on foreign energy.

"We've got to get quickly on a track to energy independence from foreign oil, and that means, among other things, going back to nuclear power," McCain said on Fox News Sunday.

"We better understand the vulnerabilities that our economy, and our very lives, have when we're dependent on Iranian mullahs and wackos in Venezuela," said McCain, who challenged President George W. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000.

Yeah, the "wacko" in Venezuela who is giving cheaper oil to the Bronx and Mass and other interested states? The one who is spending money from oil on the infrastructure and not on mega yachts? Eh?

From the NYT:

At a time when energy prices and industry profits are soaring, the federal government collected little more money last year than it did five years ago from the companies that extracted more than $60 billion in oil and gas from publicly owned lands and coastal waters.

You know, Nigeria is melting down over this sort of thing, namely, thanks to Americans imposing a very corrupt government on them, the oil profits all flow to the USA, not to Nigerians.

McCain particularily steams me. My family has lectured until our faces were blue, about instituting a massive solar energy drive for Arizona which is blessed with more sunshine per year than anywhere in the USA. We got sun up the yin-yang in Arizona, nearly every day, every year. Endlessly. It is probably the most consistent thing going in Arizona!

Yet the state rates #45 on promoting solar energy use? Cloudy NY state beats Arizona? Huh?

Talk about insanity. The deep south is nearly united in refusing to invest or encourage solar energy. Instead, they burn coal, coal! This month, we see coal miners dying all over the place as they frantically dig coal, 60% of which is used to produce energy in the south for airconditioning! This is lunacy.

From Make Democracy Work:

In the United States the current energy bill has billions of dollars in subsidies, but for every dollar in tax breaks for renewable energy like solar and wind, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group calculates there is $3 for nuclear, $3 for coal, and $8 for oil and gas. None of it is paid for, so the subsidies add to our burgeoning debt that we’ll pass on to our children. In the House, Rep. Jeff Flake, calling it “corporate welfare,” was the only Arizona Republican to join Democrats Ed Pastor and Raul Grijalva opposing the bill. The libertarian CATO Institute has joined the Sierra Club in arguing we’d be better off with no subsidies than this bill.

Refering to the Energy Rip-off Bill recently passed. They gave tax credits to oil companies just as they were registering record profits and their profits are shooting to the stars this week thanks to their oil buddy boy, Bush, sabre rattling.

Great.

This summer my kids and I have been biking to summer activities, while I go on to ASU and then return to get them. Despite a few hairy moments crossing busy intersections and a couple tumbles, the kids are having fun, getting some great exercise and learning to be safer cyclists.

My disappointment is that we’re the only family biking to these activities, even though I’m sure other families travel less than the three miles we do.

In the sixties and seventies, there were legions of bikes on the streets in Arizona, I used my splendid 10 speed which was made specifically for my size, it fit like a glove, to careen about town. Last time I was in Arizona, I saw not one cyclist anywhere. Lots of SUVs belching around town. Phoenix is much worse, it is flat, for crying out loud, and there are no cyclists to be seen hardly anywhere and kids who rode everywhere when I was a child are missing in particular.

Unlike our competitors, the United States is far too fat in our energy use. Japan, which imports nearly all of its oil, produces more solar power than the United States and Germany combined. For each dollar of economic output, the United States consumes three times as much energy as Japan and twice as much as France and Germany. Much of their fuel efficiency and movement towards cleaner fuels are ingrained in the culture and encouraged by subsidies.

Yes, the Japanese are scared and are working hard to not only use solar power but to manufacture it. The USA seems to have forgotten what "industrial manufacturing" means. We just want things to magically appear for us.

Arizona, which is mostly a right wing, red state, thinks they might end up producing 5% of their energy use via solar panels by 2020. Gack. Talk about lax, lazy, slow poke, stupid. By then, if that sun-blessed state isn't producing at least 50% of their energy use via solar power, they might as well turn off the lights and evacuate because the place will be intolerably hot due to global warming and will have virtually no fossil fuels left except at very high prices. Try bicycling when it is 120+ outside.

I used to do that. Heh. Sweat city. But then, I didn't use airconditioners, either, so I was aclimated to the climate. No bubble for me, no sirree.

Meanwhile, I suggest to Senator McCain, wake up, dude, the cock is crowing and it ain't Clinton's.
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Another Gas Pipeline Blown Up Near Chechnya

2006-01-22T10:22:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

A Russian gas pipeline blew up today. Right on the border of Chechnya, a province Putin has laid to waste, torturing and murdering hundreds of thousands just like we are doing in Iraq. Just like the failing war in Afghanistan that is getting worse and worse and which destroyed the Soviet Union, the ongoing battle over energy and religion heats up more and more.

From the BBC:

Two explosions have ripped through Russia's main natural gas supply pipeline to Armenia and Georgia, halting supplies to the two countries.
The blasts occurred close to the border with Georgia early on Sunday morning.

A spokesman for Russia's emergency situations ministry said officials were examining the possibility of sabotage, although it was too early to say.

Georgian energy officials say there are 24 hours worth of gas in the pipeline, as cold weather grips the country.

The daytime temperature in Tbilisi on Sunday was -7C, well below the January average, and Georgia relies on Russian natural gas for most of its heating.

The rebels, hiding in their caves and crevasses, hiding in the open cold, know what they are doing. The perfect time to strike is now and they struck.

This doesn't require huge logistics or leadership, this is classic "hit when the opportunity shows itself" which is why wars with people are dangerous. Namely, if someone wants to fight, they will, and if they have no army, navy or airforce, they use other means to fight. And if one wants the fighting to stop, one must negotiate some sort of useful peace.

But the Christian religionists want one thing: total domination of all Muslim lands so we can remove all their wealth and make ourselves fat and happy. This long range looting expedition is a turning of the historic tables when Muslims swept across the planet, doing the same thing, for themselves, back when the stirrup was invented.

It was a close fight for a long time, even up until 1500, the Turks, for example, ran right up to Vienna and besieged it unsuccessfully. Alas, for them, they suddenly became a backwater when Europeans circumvented the Great Steppes and the Middle East to sail around Africa and the discovery of gold in the New World meant all the wealth now flowed directly to Europe instead of being intercepted by the Muslim empires which stretched across all the major trade routes with India, China and the spice islands.

So the relative power of the Muslim empires sank and they rotted internally, losing industry and financing, going into debt (Hey! Does this ring a bell, America?). As they weakened, Russia, Germany, France and England all began to chew the Ottoman and other Muslim empires apart, the contest over the corpse igniting WWI and WWII. Remember, the Archduke was shot visiting lands recently wrest away from Istanbul.

Then Allah bestowed a tremendous gift on the True Believers: oil and gas. Now, the desperation to steal from Muslims shot right through the roof only the Muslim nations, no longer empires, broken up by European/American fiat, had a weapon of great potency, if they could sell the oil on their own terms, they could retake their lands and reassert their powers if they could play the aliens off of each other.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, the American/Anglo empire eagle/lion sprang upon the Middle East and sank its fangs deep.

Afghanistan, though, showed the road to victory in this jihad. And bin Laden, whose family consorts with the invaders, knew the mind and spirit of the invaders all too well, actually, exactly well, and he is the voice of the revolution sweeping Islam, for unlike the appeasers to the Christians, he waves the flag of Islam and explains how to fight back, Mao-style.

And if you don't think this man read Mao, well. Power grows out of the barrel of a gun and revolutionaries swim in the sea of the peasants. OK? And the Red Sea stretches across half the globe now, the sea of anger and fury against foreign religion/foreign invaders is extremely high and note that not one person has turned in any Jihadists we are hunting despite all the bounties we offer!

The convergence of these forces see saw the planet. Russia dearly would love to entertain the desert tribes but they are fighting Muslims themselves so they can't. China, ditto. So both play the bribery game which is remarkably like 1900 when this identical situation sprang up starting with the Crimean war on to WWI and WWII. We are the British Empire in this replay of those two dangerous wars and of course, if we think this won't end with WWIII, we are nuts.

It can and it will. 100%. This is because it isn't the Suez Canal which the French built and the British immediately wanted nor the Orient Express which Germany built to circumvent the Suez Canal's influence, the confluence of energy/trade/population pressure is so very close to the conditions which will start WWIII it is fearsome to watch.

The wild commentary today in the NYT speculating about how we should somehow ooze into Iran and make it part of our empire coupled with our military screaming every time any oil nation or nations like China buy so much as a pop gun is another sign our empire is terrified of the forces we are unleashing and hoping to control all of the military junk we unleased on the planet and this includes nukes which we and only we used on civilians already, we want it to all go away via us crushing the weapons, the people, everything in our fat path.

The jihadists sense our fear, like hunting wolves, they can smell our sweat. They listen in on us, using the internet, they know our fearful leaders who cower in deep caves and hide in public behind masses of military goon squads, fearful of their own citizens, unable to poke so much as a finger out the front door for fear some outraged citizen might snap it off, these cowardly men cowering in fear are being pushed around by virtually unarmed peasants far away. The sense of power and glory this sheds on the jihadists can't be ignored.

They are, quite frankly, triumphant. Half a billion people watch them and cheer them on and pray they succeed! Isn't that lovely? And we think we will bomb them all into submission. Putin utterly laid to waste Chechnya and since then, the fighting has gotten worse and worse and the strikes closer and closer to the heart. Putin sweats in fear at night in his bed because these wolves are hunting him just as surely as they are hunting Bush.

Time to spy on fellow Americans. Like Quakers.
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The New York Times Wonders If It Is OK To Bomb Nations That Aren't Attacking Us

2006-01-22T09:53:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Aside from the total lack of rage over Americans spying for Israel, the NYT keeps pushing hard for disarming Iran, a country that has never invaded anyone, ever. Rioting Shi'ites at Mecca isn't an invasion or otherwise European nations could bomb London because of rioting soccer fans, no?

From the NYT:

DIPLOMATS around the world keep repeating the mantra: There is no military option when it comes to slowing, much less stopping, Iran's presumed ambitions to get the Bomb. The Europeans say so. The Chinese, who need Iran's oil, and the Russians, who make billions supplying Iran's civilian nuclear business, say so emphatically.

Even the hawks in the Bush administration make no threats. When Vice President Dick Cheney was asked Thursday, in a television interview, if the United States might ever resort to force to stop Iran, he handled the question as if it, too, were radioactive.

"No president should ever take the military option off the table," he said, carefully avoiding the kind of language he once used to warn Saddam Hussein. "Let's leave it there."

Wait! Wait! Cheney is not being coy or acting as if talking about using bombs is "ratioactive" (how fey of the Times to use that word!) but rather, just like before we attacked Iraq illegally over fake charges of WMD, he said the exact same thing: the military option is NOT off the table. Namely, we are going to attack if we want.

The Bush doctrine remains "shoot first, ask questions later", aka "the Hitler Doctrine".

The only thing left is to wrangle some allies in this second act of WWIII, make certain all of Europe is behind this, them being the same folks who brought us WWI and WWII. Dying empires are very stubborn, aren't they?

The problem is not that Washington lacks targets. Many of Iran's nuclear facilities, or at least those that American intelligence agencies know about, are in plain view or in underground sites whose construction was recorded by spy satellites. The problem is the global consequences of an attack to cripple them.

"The irony is that this is the opposite of Iraq," said John J. Hamre, a deputy defense secretary from 1997 to 1999. "We know a lot about what they have because the international inspectors have been there." Those inspection reports have helped Pentagon planners who, in imagining every contingency, have already mapped out Iran's most vulnerable facilities.

Arrgh. As I have pointed out in the past, even under Clinton, we used UN inspections as a Trojan horse in Iraq and now Iran to map out their facilities so we can attack them! This is why Saddam correctly kicked out the inspectors. They were spies, not inspectors! They allowed Americans to misuse the information. Once we guaranteed they were disarmed, we invaded Iraq! We knew exactly that they had nothing. When the cry began for us to find the WMD we pretended were there, we desultorily sent over some chumps to pretend to look and after unenthusiastically finding exactly nothing, we slunk away and pretended it was to bring democracy to Iraq, yup. That's why we went there. Like, invading Saudi Arabia would be evil, they might vote for bin Laden if there were an election!

All the big wigs in our imperial palaces, Democrat or Republican, are bent on sucking the world dry of all fossil fuels because this is extremely popular in the Western nations who are consuming the planet at a mad rate. This is why we are still buying and making gas guzzlers, why we are so fat, why we are unable to sign the Kyoto Accords and why we are now desperately pushing for the next stage of WWIII.

Several American officials, when promised anonymity, said they thought that in 5 or 10 years, Iran will most likely have a weapon.

"They have read us pretty well," Mr. Hamre said. "They have skated right at the edge of controlled pugnaciousness."

The debate among the West, Russia and China is whether, together, they are willing to skate to the same edge in hopes that, in a repeat of the cold war, the other side blinks first.

In other words, will they side with Iran and fight the USA in WWIII? Well, one way to find out is to stick our heads into that guillotine, right? We are the ones skating on thin ice, dragging Europe into this morass. We are the ones provoking things by constantly meddling in Iran's internal affairs. Imagine if some foreign country with resident agents went around America, corrupting politicians, stealing Pentagon secrets, removing American jobs to their home base overseas, wouldn't we want to eject them? Especially if they were getting multibillion dollar "aid" packages? And pushing us into a war we can't win?

Of course, the NYT won't talk about the Franklin affair. That would mean looking under some very ugly little rocks.
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Chinese Claim Success At Creating Super Conducting, Non-circular Nuclear Fusion

2006-01-19T11:34:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

The Faustian quest for eternal energy continues. The Chinese have, since the death of Mao, made it a number one priority to make China self sufficient with new energy technologies. This quest for the Holy Grail is also fraught with grave dangers.

From Xinhua net:

It was learned from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) that it will have completed the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) which aims to explore infinite and clean energy resources of nuclear fusion by this March or April.

By then, Hefei will become the first institute in the world to have built an all-superconducting non-circular section nuclear fusion experiment facility, which is generally known as an artificial sun.

The energy resource crisis has begun to threaten the world, as oil, coal and other types of non-renewable energy resources will be used up in a century. Scientists recommend the extraction of deuterium from sea water and the ignition of nuclear fusion of this element in temperatures as high as 100 million degrees Celsius. In nuclear fusion, deuterium abstracted from one kilogram of sea water will be able to produce as much energy as that of 300 liters of gasoline.

Invention of a facility that can withstand the temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius and control deuterium and atomic fusion to ensure steady and continuous energy output equals to invention of an artificial sun, which can provide infinite and clean energy like the sun, as sea water is virtually inexhaustible.

The ultimate energy source is the black hole which spins at a terrific speed and all matter is crushed unbelievably. Interrupt a black hole by crashing another one into it and you get spectacular explosions that rip apart whole galaxies and sends energy tornadoes across hundreds of trillions of miles, thousands of light years. Whew.

And we are sorely tempted by the Dark Arts, the lure of eternal energy flowing, alas, this is what the Universe is all about and our fates: for if energy is eternal, then this means all will be consumed in the fiery furnace of a new Big Bang.

Aside from all that, the work on fusion isn't all that innocent. The energy we attempt to harness is truly a dangerous genie. Any interruption can cause an eruption. Malicious humans, nuclear war, meteors from space, earthquakes, sheer neglect, and of course, the unknowns that multiply as the system is made ever more complex: these are why we can't access this energy on this planet.

If we built colonies on other objects, then maybe yes, for then it wouldn't matter if the system collapses and everyone dies, it won't mean the end of all living things, a serious matter we can't ignore.

Our desire of energy is, like all gross appetites, never ending and never assauged. As soon as we build a system providing energy, our lust for more exceeds the provisions. This iron clad rule of human nature won't change if we have endless energy and of course, this merely puts off for a short while, the end of humanity.

We are a successful organism which has to either leave this planet or destroy it. If we want to live in a bubble, we can build bubbles but not on this delicate, lovely and possibly singular entity. Until we find other earths, we have to assume this is the only one and act accordingly.

Except this collides with the greatest force on earth: greed.
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Bush And Europe Wants War With Iran But China Doesn't

2006-01-18T19:58:00.000-05:00

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Bush has dragooned Europe into supporting increasingly violent actions to stop Iran from protecting their own borders from imperialist invasions from Europe and America. His threats to bomb Iran collide with China's growing influence there and with China bidding up the world price of oil because they have a fist full of dollars, a trillion dollars, to bid with and they intend to make this a very expensive auction indeed.

From Associated Press:

European powers, supported by the United States, rejected Iran's request for more negotiations on the Islamic republic's nuclear program, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saying Wednesday "there's not much to talk about" after Iran resumed atomic activities.

As European countries pushed ahead with efforts to have Iran brought before the U.N. Security Council for its nuclear activities, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused them of trying to deprive Iran of peaceful technology.

"We are asking they step down from their ivory towers and act with a little logic," Ahmadinejad said. "Who are you to deprive us from fulfilling our goals?

"You think you are the lord of the world and everybody should follow you. But that idea is a wrong idea."

Relentlessly, Bush pushes Iran into the role of Evil Empire (tm) but he is missing quite a few necessary elements. One is, Israel got nukes, keeps them hidden, conspires with the USA to keep them hidden but still let the world know, they might have them, and they do this to stop invasions like the one that ran over halpless Iraq, destroying the entire country's ability to exist as a country. Pakistan not only got nukes, far from being punished for it, gets sophistocated weapon systems from the USA which enables them to spend like fiends on military stuff due to money lent by the nearly bankrupt USA, money we get from.....China

China has partial veto powers over us now. Our rulers think Japan can scrub our money problems by taking on infinite debts but we are seeing the limits of that for no system is infinite. China has very definite plans for the Middle East and one of them is to cage the oil there. From Xinhua net:

Arab countries have become the major source of China's oil imports, the Ministry of Commerce said on Wednesday.

In the first 11 months of 2005, China imported 50.52 million tons of crude oil from Arab countries, accounting for 44 percent of China's total oil imports, the ministry said.

The overall bilateral trade volume between China and Arab countries totaled 46.38 billion U.S. dollars, up 39 percent year on year. China's exports to Arab countries were 21.44 billion dollars, up 36 percent, and imports were 24.94 billion dollars, up46 percent.

Arab countries have become China's eighth largest trade partnerand the seventh largest market for China's exports and imports respectively. The ratio of high-tech products in bilateral trade has been increasing, the ministry said.

China's direct investment in Arab countries totaled 390 millionU.S. dollars, and Arab countries funded 1,067 projects in China, involving total contractual value of 1.52 billion dollars.

China and the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf are negotiating matters on building a free trade area. The two sides expect to sign an agreement by the end of 2006, the ministry said.

I am putting in the entire item, this is a message direct from Hu and Wen telling us where they intend to place their latest Go stones. Smack right where we want to put ours.

Unlike us, they are not using military force, they are too smart for that. They are placing them in friendly places, making friends with people we have utterly alienated or pushed around brutally for years and years. Not much good blood there for us, just lots of blood. Speaking of which, the Chinese decided today they should announce yet another important Go move. From Xinhua net:

Chinese top leader Hu Jintao and top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) KimJong Il held talks in Beijing, exchanging views on bilateral relations and international and regional issues of common concern,and reaching important and wide-ranging consensus.

Kim, general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) and chairman of the National Defense Commission of the DPRK, paid an unofficial visit to China from Jan. 10 to 18 as Hu's guest. During his stay in China, Kim visited Central China's Hubei Province, South China's Guangdong Province and China's capital Beijing.

In the American news, it is all about how the Chinese sponsored talks have failed, well, what about them cookies? We deep sixed the talks so China deep sixed us in the Korean sector. They, like me, understand the latest signpost in the plan to dominate America will be passed in the next few weeks: $1 trillion in American debts owned by them!

This is dreadful. And hilarious at the same time. In order to pretend we are prosperous, we were forced to ship out all our jobs to drop prices at home so we could buy more with less money since we are earning less money. This created a dual vicious circle of needing to send more jobs out as energy prices soared so we could pretend we were doing OK but this means more money for the Chinese foreign exchange kitty and imagine China, the hour we drop bombs on Teheran, dropping $1 trillion dollars on the foreign exchanges.

Think the panicky Japanese stock market today was a laugh riot, imagine Europe and America and Japan's shock when our entire currency collapses in one day? Mmmm?

Our attempts to get China to railroad Iran at the UN, to disarm them so we can invade just like we did to Iraq, oh, wouldn't Hitler have loved such a system! Forced international disarmament of any country he wanted to loot? Well, China was cut out of contracts in Iraq but they have much bigger ones in Iran and they won't let us cheat them twice. Already, our saber rattling has caused world oil prices to go up $10+ a barrel and rising and the Chinese have said nothing about that for I think they plan to let it rise until we scream "uncle" since we are the ones who are cleaning out inflation by shipping jobs to China so the Chinese can turn this screw forever.

As the earlier article points out, they are doing a great deal of mutual business with the oil pumping Middle East and intend to do more and intend to control our interference and they will pay whatever price the oil sheiks ask for and they know Russia wants expensive oil so it is OK with them since they have been planning to use alternative fuels since the year of Mao's death which is why my dad was one of the very first people asked to come to China back when Nixon opened China's borders.

Solar energy is one of their goals, nuclear power is another. And defeat of America is the top goal. Trust me on this.

UPDATE: From Reuters:

A disruption in Iran's crude oil exports because of a dispute over that country's nuclear program would further crimp the already tight global oil market and lead to higher petroleum prices, the head of the U.S. Energy Information Administration warned on Tuesday.

"The market is so tightly balanced, clearly, we can't afford to lose a large supply of crude to the market," EIA chief Guy Caruso told Reuters in an interview.

Yup. Trade sanctions. That is what we will impose on Iran...Hahahaha. Gads.

Economic sanctions, which could affect Iran's oil exports, are possible but thought to be unlikely.

Iran, the world's fourth biggest oil exporter, has warned that global crude prices would go higher if the United Nations imposes sanctions.

Hey, when are we going to impose trade sanctions on the country that did attack us on 9/11? Saudi Arabia?
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Nigerians Attack Oil Rigs, Closing Them Down

2006-01-13T08:10:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Once again, desperate Nigerians attack an offshore oil rig, shutting it down. It is increasingly dangerous in Nigeria. We just want to pump the place dry leaving destruction in our wake. The Nigerian people object to this plan.

From BBC News:

Shell has cut its Nigeria oil output by 20% after a pipeline explosion and the kidnapping of four foreign oil workers.
It is losing 226,000 barrels a day after shutting its EA platform in the southern Delta region and closing the pipeline feeding an export terminal.

Royal Dutch Shell shares fell by 0.9%, or 16p, to £18.35 in morning trading.

The disruption helped push oil prices to new three-month highs on Thursday, but prices have since fallen back, with Brent crude trading at $62.50 a barrel.

Since the sole reason Shell is in Nigeria is to remove as much oil as possible as cheaply as possible so the Shell Oil executives and investors can "capture" as much profit as possible, this means leaving the country degraded, debased and poor. The grinding poverty, the lack of simple infrastructure, the corruption and mendacity of the rulers put in power in Nigeria by the same oil executives, means insurrections and riots will happen.

More and more, the Nigerians are directly attacking the great oil platforms themselves.

Keith Myers, an expert in African oil and gas exploration at Chatham House, told the BBC that Shell is in a difficult position.

"At the end of the day Nigeria has 124 million people and only pumps so much oil and gas.

"The value of that oil is about 80 cents for every Nigerian, so the expectation is much higher than can ever be delivered."

Well, anyone looking at Venezuela can see what happens when a socialist takes over and uses the oil wealth to help the mass of people, building clinics and roads, extending schools and civilized infrastructure! It can be done and should be done but first, the people doing this have to defeat the imperialist oil companies operating under the umbrella of huge military operations like the USA.

We are having the warmest winter on record. It is like late spring outside today. Not normal at all on any level. Brush fires are breaking out again in Oklahoma, too. The pundits yelled that a warm winter means oil will drop in price, drop and drop so why is it at $62+ a barrel? Eh?

Russia's Putin realized making rich megabillionaires via oil profits was bad for Russia and he is rapidly changing that, a la Chavez. Meanwhile, China and India enter into join oil agreements. From Xinhua Net:

According to NDRC, the Indian delegation met with major China players Thursday, including China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), China Petrochemical Corporation (SINOPEC), and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).

Aiyar said China and India have agreed to strengthen the exchange of information when bidding for oil resources in a third country in order to realize mutual benefit.

China has been working hard on treaties and joint ventures with the big next door neighbors. Since China's energy use has shot up, this has all be initiated by China. One wonders if China will, like the USA, start trying to overthrow governments or place Chinese stooge dictators over oil pumping countries. Heh.

We got away with doing this for years and years. Now we are into naked invasions. And it isn't working well, is it?

Meanwhile, California is pushing solar energy, setting a great example to the rest of the sunny states: From Yahoo:

Hoping to make California a world leader in solar power, state energy regulators Thursday approved some $3 billion in customer rebates over the next decade to encourage people to install solar panels on their roofs.

The goal is to get Californians to install equipment capable of producing 3,000 megawatts of solar electricity on 1 million homes, businesses and public buildings over the next 10 years. That is enough energy to power about 800,000 homes.

"The California Solar Initiative is the largest solar program in the country, and I hope it will be a model for other states," said Dian Grueneich, a member of the state Public Utility Commission. "The program will be a major source of dependable and environmentally friendly electricity."

Better than a rebate program, how about requiring all homes to have this over the next 20 years with the cost of the program coming out of a utility tax? Then, even poor people will get it eventually.

Heck, we have to have a 100% solar panel on every roof program or else. Not some feeble one or three houses but every house in America. Some panels will produce more efficiently than others but overall, they will boost the energy on the grid significantly and will be there when the price of other fuels shoot up much faster. Better now than later, I say.
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The Japanese Military Is Training To Fight China Using American Forces For 99% of the Battles!

2006-01-06T13:46:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Japanese news today is all about how their troops are now training to work (behind) with American troops to repell the Chinese from disputed islands Japan wants for it's growing empire. Banzai, everyone!

From the Daily Times:

Japan’s military is stepping up its defence of islands also claimed by China and will propose talks with India on diplomatic and security issues as part of attempts to counter China’s growing military might in Asia, a report said Saturday.

The report came days after Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso said Beijing poses “a considerable military threat” because it has nuclear weapons and is boosting its military spending. China called the remarks irresponsible and groundless.

According to Japan’s largest business newspaper, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan’s Self-Defence Forces will conduct joint exercises with the US Marine Corps in January and develop short-range torpedoes tailored for combat in shallow waters to strengthen its ability to repulse a possible Chinese invasion of the disputed East China Sea islands.

Japan envisions a scenario in which China would invade the islets, called Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan, the newspaper said. About 125 Japanese troops will be sent to San Diego, California, in January for joint exercises with US Marines simulating a landing on an occupied island, the report said. Self-Defence Forces officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the report, but have earlier said the two countries plan joint training by the end of March. The Nihon Keizai also said Japan will propose bilateral talks with India on diplomatic and security issues - and on holding regular visits by their respective defence ministers - in part to discuss ways to curb China’s growing influence in Asia.

Curbing China by going to war is real nifty, no?

As I have warned again and again, the Japanese Imperial Forces are latched onto the American military. They will give us all the money we want so long as we spend it on making our military the enforcement arm of the Japanese Emperor. Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!

Isn't this lovely?

The 125 Japanese troops will come in after we do all the fighting and occupy the islands. Whoopee. Iwo Jima in reverse time! There was a fascinating Japanese show on Japanese TV this fall called "Zipang" whereby some Japanese trained by Americans suddenly fall into a time wormhole and end up in WWII and they persuade the Japanese forces to surrender because, "We are going to show you how we will take over America and rule the world!" Gleefully, they do this.

Guess what?

Arg. This will be the first shot of WWIII. Unlike the previews in the Middle East, this is nuclear power in a direct confrontation with two other nuclear powers, Russia and China. Of course, the clever Japanese will try to bribe Russia to stay out an thus, trump China. What will Russia do? Make America stronger? Make China more powerful?

The choices of Vladimir! Indeed, the judo expert chess playing KGB lawyer who admired the Prussian spirit will triangulate something out of all of this but just remember: all great wars start over trivial things and escalate suddenly if historic forces are at work.

And the forces at work here are truly tremendous. WWIII will start in some trivial way and suddenly explode into nuclear exchanges and the majority of the war will happen in less than 24 hrs. The survivors will finish it over the following 10,000 years using spears and arrows.
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Another Hubbert's Oil Peak Event: Kuwait's Biggest Oil Field Is Failing

2006-01-06T11:31:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Kuwait admits biggest oil field's output is dropping. This is yet another indication of the Hubbert Oil Peak. Now they lie about how rapidly it is falling. Remember, Gulf War I began because they slant drilled into Iraqi oil fields to mask the decline.

From the Kuwait Times courtesy of the Peak Oil.net people:

It was an incredible revelation last week that the second largest oil field in the world is exhausted and past its peak output. Yet that is what the Kuwait Oil Company revealed about its Burgan field. The peak output of the Burgan oil field will now be around 1.7 million barrels per day, and not the two million barrels per day forecast for the rest of the field's 30 to 40 years of life, Chairman Farouk Al-Zanki told Bloomberg. He said that engineers had tried to maintain 1.9 million barrels per day but that 1.7 million is the optimum rate. Kuwait will now spend some $3 million a year for the next year to boost output and exports from other fields.

However, it is surely a landmark moment when the world's second largest oil field begins to run dry. For Burgan has been pumping oil for almost 60 years and accounts for more than half of Kuwait's proven oil reserves. This is also not what forecasters are currently assuming.

Last week the International Energy Agency's report said output from the Greater Burgan area will be 1.64 million barrels a day in 2020 and 1.53 million barrels per day in 2030. Is this now a realistic scenario?

They always lie when they can but since they belong to OPEC, they have to show current pumping rates. We have tried to make an end-run around OPEC by invading OPEC countries and then using their votes to get what we want. Unfortunately, the people of Iraq have interfered with this scheme somewhat.

Nearly everyone's head spun when it was announced by American Quisling puppets that Chalibi, the neo-cons' favorite con man, has taken over the Oil Ministry. Obvioiusly, we intend to hang on to this valuable realestate in Iraq no matter how many American or Iraqi dead it takes. Stay the course and all that rot.

When Saddam first snarled about attacking Kuwait years ago, it was because the debts incurred with his crazy war with Iran had risen so high, he couldn't pay for them easily and his buddy in Russia was on the economic ropes thanks to the thankless Afghanistan invasion (ouch, historians will have a field day with the resonances from all this!) so they wanted money from Saddam, pronto.

And oil prices were dropping because OPEC nations were pumping way over their share, driving down prices, so they could have gold bathtubs and French mistresses, etc. Then Kuwait, seeing their oil drop in volume, began "slant drilling" on the border of Iraq, giving Saddam a causus bellus that was stronger than the American excuses for war this time around.

Well, the party is drawing to a close in the smaller OPEC nations! Even as they build bigger palaces and go skiing in the desert in summer, the whole edifice is collapsing just like the pilgrim hotel in Mecca. Russia isn't part of OPEC but is an "observer" who of course is playing the OPEC game better than the originals. They are the "swing state" vis a vis oil production since they do both oil and gas and do so directly with Europe, China and Japan, the three other industrial powerhouses.

Despite a short period of instability, they have reasserted control over the vast lands of the Russian Empire and are slowly re-evolving into a super power, thanks to their budding alliance with China. (We lost the Cold War)

I lost the link but I read yesterday that Iran's Prime Minister was attacked near the city of Zabol which is Sunni territory. Evidently, his driver and bodyguard was killed. This isn't a big news story so I can't vouch for it, just one of the many rumors running around in the Muslim media. We can't trust any media these days, all of them push and pull news to suit them just like the NYT showed yesterday with the toady article burnishing Bush's image followed immediately by the outraged reporter demanding the real story be published.

Getting real news is very tricky stuff. I can easily imagine Sunnis trying to kill the Shi'ite leader of Iran. The murderous forces being unleashed in the Middle East are just getting into gear. As the oil begins to be less and less (ahem, like, right now!) the violence over who gets control of an increasingly valuable resource will skyrocket.

Of course, with the USA in front of the wolf pack, leading the way.
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Putin Plays Judo With Europe: The Ukrainian/Gasprom Battle

2006-01-03T22:30:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Russia is led by a ruthless, brilliant man while America is run by a dithering idiot. This week, Russia was emboldened enough to play hardball with former Soviet states. All he had to do was squeeze the gas pipelines going to through the Ukraine. All of Europe shuddered.

From the New York Times:

Ukraine conceded today that it had withdrawn natural gas from its pipeline system that Russia said was intended for export to Europe, but it asserted that it had a contractual right to the fuel under an agreement with the Central Asian nation of Turkmenistan.

Both Russia and Turkmenistan export natural gas to Ukraine, but the flow of fuel from Central Asia passes through Russian pipelines before it reaches the Ukrainian border.

A dispute over pricing and transit fees between Russia and Ukraine, which led to a brief disruption in gas supplies, has set off alarm bells in Western Europe at the peak of the winter heating season. Europe imports about a quarter of its natural gas from Russia, most of it passing over pipelines on Ukraine's territory.

You ain't whistling Dixie! Gads.

Alarm? How about hysterical fear? Russia just purchased the former Prime Minister of Germany. No sooner than he left office, he ran off to Russia to offer his services. Makes one wonder. Hmmm. The New World Order gets to be organized by the most diligent, hard working people and this means the Chinese, of course.

It is amusing, watching this drama unfold.

Meanwhile, the political fallout from Russia's brief gas embargo on Ukraine escalated in Europe and the United States. Austria and other Central and Eastern European countries agreed to seek to diversify their supplies away from Russia. In Washington, the State Department spokesman criticized Russia's use of energy as a foreign policy tool. The shutoff in Ukraine came three months before a parliamentary election here.

Hahahaha! Hahahaha. What can one say? How on earth is Europe going to get other sources of gas? From Uzbekistan?

Enron?

And this is what the Hubbert Oil Peak is all about. Any country with a big military, nuclear bombs and intercontinental missiles which just allied itself with another, even bigger military, population, industrial giant with nuclear bombs and intercontinental missiles and if one of them has lots of gas and oil and the other a billion pissed off people, guess what?

Everyone else better duck. Down low.

I love reading the really boring Chinese diplomatic announcements. They are a goldmine of information and if one wishes to detect the various stones being set down on the International Go Board, this is where one looks, at the lovely work of the very intelligent, devious Chinese diplomatic hordes.

This week's little prize is this: From China.org:

China and Russia held talks in Beijing Thursday on issues related to holding large-scale cultural activities in the coming two years, a move to strengthen bilateral strategic partnership.

The Russia Year in China scheduled for 2006 and the China Year in Russia for 2007 were declared in a joint statement during Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to China last year.

The two goodwill programs will cover a wide spectrum of areas including culture, education, economy, political systems and traditional customs.

The China-Russia talks on the goodwill programs were co-chaired by Chinese state councilors Tang Jiaxuan and Chen Zhili and visiting Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, who is also president of the organizing committee of the Russia Year in China.

Europe wants to side with Ukraine in defying Russia, denying Russia access to the Black Sea ports? Want to station troops in all the former Soviet States?

Well, China will definitely love to get all that gas and oil. So if Europe doesn't want it, they can poke Russia in the eye and have the energy gluttons in all the earth give them gas. Wait, didn't Europe ship the USA gluttons gas this fall thanks to Mother Nature rapping us on the noggin?

Putin's punching Europe and America in the nose is quite popular just like Hu and Wen slugging it out with Japanese war criminal worshippers. From the BBC:

One sign of what Russians make of it comes from the BBC Russian Service website which is full of hostile comments about Ukraine.

This for example: "For Ukraine the price of $230 is payment for its 'democratic choice'. Why should Russia pay for that choice? You want to join the West? You want to join Nato? Go ahead!!!... If you change course, the price will change. That's normal. That's how all your Western friends behave. So stop crying and howling... At the end of the day the Ukrainian people always has a choice - the West, where no-one is waiting for you, or with us."

Or this with reference to Russian claims that Ukraine has diverted gas meant for Western Europe: "A thief should go to jail. If [Belarusian President Alexander] Lukashenko stole gas from Europe, then the EU would not remain silent about the fact that its gas was being stolen."

As energy supplies tighten, nationalism is on the rise. In Nigeria, attacks on the oil lines happen frequently now and instead of increasing nationalist attitudes, the rulers there are cleaving to the foreign powers sucking up all the natural resources and leaving a corpse behind.

But Russia has different plans. Now that they are no longer on the economic ropes, they are beginning to flex some muscle. No longer the sick man of Europe, they are holding the true future in their hands: controlling the supply of in ground resources.

Just like Schroeder of Germany, it seems Americans working on international trade are considering working for Putin, too. From MSNBC

Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered former Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, a close friend of President Bush, a top job at Russian state oil company OAO Rosneft.

A person familiar with the details of a recent trip Evans made to Russia said the offer came at a meeting Evans had with Putin last week at the Kremlin. This person spoke only on condition of anonymity because no public announcement has been made.

Bet it won't happen now that some shocked interpeter blew the whistle. I bet the White House will find out who this person is and well, spy on them, of course.

Putin is a huge judo fan. He said, "This is my basic life philosophy." I have done judo. It means taking the ki, the energy, of one's opponent and by curving the arc of attack, one can easily and without much strain, indeed, meditatively, toss the opposing party overhead and flat onto the ground. Bush doesn't need anyone to toss him to the ground, he falls down all the time all by his lonesome. It is amazing he can even walk at this point! Knowing this, why do the spooks and spies and agents and all the foolish idiots surrounding Bush, how can they stand it? They must have at least one person in all the CIA or NSA or State Department who knows what judo is and can see we are being thrown down on the mat, the more we throw punches, the more we belly flop.

We lost Russia.

We lost China.

We got Japan who is draining us dry of all factories and locking us in eternal debts we can't discharge. And Japan is itsy bitsy and can't fight a war since the people have stopped producing excess sons, and we lost half the planet, two of the few nations that can send humans into space, nuclear rivals we should never had let become best buddies, all because we have a drunken sot trying to wrestle with a KGB judo champion.

Even the movies couldn't make Bush into an Inspector Gadget, winning by being an oaf.
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Nuclear Power Waste Problem Gets More Financing

2005-12-28T10:24:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Once again, America turns to nuclear energy, seeking some way of having infinite energy. Just like in personal life, endless consumption of anything ends up destroying everything in its path. Even if there were no limits possible, we would have to have them in order to preserve our own lives, for no universe is infinite.

From the NYT:

last month, Congress voted $50 million for the Energy Department to explore a new kind of reprocessing, one that would reuse a much larger fraction of the waste.

The idea is extremely ambitious. It would require perfecting not only a new method of reprocessing, but also a new class of reactors to burn the salvaged material. Still, proponents said it would have two great advantages: It would mean that Yucca Mountain would be big enough to accommodate the waste that could not be recycled. And it would make Yucca easier to open, because the material still to be buried would generate less heat in the centuries to come.

"Reprocessing, or processing spent fuel before it's put in the repository, is a very good way to buy time," said Roger W. Gale, a former Energy Department official who is now an electricity consultant. "It's a fail-safe in case we continue to have problems with Yucca Mountain."

There are several things here. One is, if we try to have maximum nuclear energy, this means building a huge number of plants over and over again since they degrade in less than 50 years and once you build one, unbuilding it becomes horrifically expensive both in the wallet and in nature. The waste doesn't degrade safely for many thousands of years.

Any open-ended system that grinds out eon-spanning waste products isn't a good system on a singular planet. Namely, we have only one earth.

The heat is not a problem in the first few decades, when a repository could be left open for ventilation. The harder time is the next 1,500 years, when heat would be given off by longer-lived radioactive materials, mostly a category called actinides, and also the isotopes that are created as those actinides go through radioactive decay.

You just know we will dump everything in one spot, over and over. And this will build up and since this is an unstable system that grows hotter, not cooler, internally, if we add more and more we will make something that resides deep inside the nearest star to us: a star core.

These things are dangerous, you know. What if it works with the earth's mantle and heats up and causes a rupture in the earth's crust, it being much heavier than mere rocks and soil? Since we know our earth isn't stable, putting this stuff nearly anywhere is asking for trouble. There are so many variables to consider, it just isn't a good option. The main one is, people, being gluttons, will want maximum power no matter what the consequences, just like today. And the NIMBY mentality will be fully operational, too. So whereever this stuff gets stuck away and always, it will be on Indian reservations, you just know it will, will have to bear the entire load generated.

The salvaged materials include uranium 235, the isotope used in bombs, which splits easily, and uranium 238, which makes up more than 99 percent of uranium in nature but is harder to split.

One use of uranium 238 in a reactor is as a "fertile" material that can absorb stray neutrons and become plutonium 239, which can be used in reactors and bombs.

But existing reactors split the uranium using "thermal" neutrons. The new ones would use "fast" neutrons, which travel thousands of times as fast.

I don't think humans are psychologically or emotionally capable of handling something this dangerous. Our track record, frankly, stinks.

The sane thing to do is pretty much what the same thing dealing with our budget problems, our red ink, our trade deficit. Raise prices on the flood of goods pouring into this country. Use the tariff to fund a fast moving solar energy individual home array system for everyone. The solar panels will be manufactured here in America so there will be lots of jobs available, making and installing these systems.

We don't want huge solar arrays far away from homes for several reasons. One: as electricity is transmitted from place to place, it loses power. For example, you can't run a narrow gage wire a long distance. There will be little feed at the terminus. The wire running up my mountain to the house is a cable as big as the ones running down the streets. We loose energy all over the place with the present grid system. Also, disruptions can spread across half a continent when there is no localized energy.

Solar arrays on roofs won't blow up and render the surrounding county unihabitable. Nor is it a useful terrorist target. Being diffuse, it means attacks on one part of the system won't cascade the entire system into crashing. So this makes sense on many levels.

Except for the tendency to be an energy glutton.

There is no satiating this desire. Most of us are only two generations away from primative energy use. Us upperclass people who have had electricity since 1900 are, in my case, a whole THREE generations away from primative energy use! That isn't very many, is it? The present set-up is temporary. Figuring out how to fix it is urgent and it doesn't involve many deals with the devil. There are sane ways of doing things!
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Kennedy Wants No Wind Mills Off Shore Where He Lives

2005-12-27T11:02:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

As Asia and Europe extends renewable energy facilities the USA fiddles while the earth burns. The bubble around the rich is huge. They want to be energy pigs while exporting the mess creating this energy to poor folk who can live in foul air, foul water and industrial noise.

From the New York Times

AS an environmentalist, I support wind power, including wind power on the high seas. I am also involved in siting wind farms in appropriate landscapes, of which there are many. But I do believe that some places should be off limits to any sort of industrial development. I wouldn't build a wind farm in Yosemite National Park. Nor would I build one on Nantucket Sound, which is exactly what the company Energy Management is trying to do with its Cape Wind project.

Of course, Kennedy wants to burn tons of energy living his fabulous, upperclass lifestyle. He wants pristine nature in all Her glory. If this means crushing the lives of others, it is just Jim Dandy.

So he turns on his lights and my trees die from acid rain and the drought/flood cycle inflicting my mountain these days. Kennedy can sail about merrily, his eyes not disgraced by the vision of anything man-made while coal burning plants belch more toxins into the air, killing not only my trees but my very own son, aggravating his asthma.

I feel rather strongly about this. Kennedy basically wants me, my trees, my son, all of us to just shut up and drop dead so he can enjoy sailing unimpeded. Great.

Throughout America, we bellow we must change only one thing we are unable to change is our desire to live in the Garden of Eden while dooming the greater mass of humanity to live in the Pits of Hell. This is why we transported our dirty industries to China. China gets pollution and we get to pretend the degradation of the planet isn't caused by us even though we are the consumers of all that pollution producing stuff from Asia.

From Xinhuanet:

Energy experts predicted that the implementation of the Law on Renewable Resources on January 1, 2006 will open up a huge market in China for renewable solar energy.

The new law is expected to boost the development of the country's solar power industry, said the experts.

The Law on Renewable Energy, which was approved by the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee in February this year, will encourages all units and persons to use solar energy-based generation systems. It is regarded as an important law for the safety of China's environment and for the development of its energy resources.

When my father first came to China after Nixon's visit there, one of the many things the Chinese wanted to learn from him was all about solar energy.

They rationally understand there is no future in oil. It is a one time bonanza which we must use wisely so we can create a planet-wide energy net that is renewable. America has historically gone the other way, pretending this world is a ball of oil and can be pumped recklessly forever and ever. The ecosystem is now in greater and greater danger and we want to live in our bubble and eat it, too.

From the Manchester Journal:

Discussion of the proposed windmills on Glebe Mountain has so far focused on aesthetic and environmental issues. I should like to add some comment on the practical and financial aspects of this project. As a scientist I always find it disturbing that the public is often called upon to make important decisions in the absence of relevant data.

Due to the unpredictable nature of wind, the market value of electricity produced by windmills is quite low, at something less than 2.5 cents per KiloWatt-Hour. Given the high cost of construction and maintenance of windmills such as those proposed one can reasonably expect the actual cost of the power generated to greatly exceed its true market value, probably costing in the vicinity of 9-10 cents per KiloWatt-Hour. Clearly wind power is not a practical endeavor and cannot be expected to yield economic benefits to the public as a whole.

Being giganticus energeticus, we T-rex around the entire energy issue. Since we want to live in a total bubble, this requires unheard of and totally impractical energy needs.

I, for example, use no airconditioning. I use little heat, building my house to be energy efficient and solar energy use is very high thanks to the simple act of designing a sane house, not some energy dependent bubble zone.

I lived in a tent on this mountain for ten years. No running water and only one solar panel for electricity. We lived just fine. Far from merely surviving, we thrived. I love my much stronger bubble, a tent is not good in terrible storms! But the energy use isn't that much higher, in the house.

We are at the Hubbert Oil Peak. This means, all systems are going full blast and all possible sources of fossil fuels are being exploited to the maximum and the discovery of new fields is shrinking rapidly, they are smaller and smaller and harder and harder to find!

So we have a very limited time frame, less than twenty years, I will be in my seventies with another thirty years to go since I intend to live to see 2050, and we will be in the iron grip of the Real Energy Crisis, the Dawn of the Really Dark Ages if we don't do the right thing now!

The windmills off the coast are a feeble attempt at dealing with all this. It is 100% useless unless it is coupled with forcible changes to the building codes and redirection of Federal funds. We don't need to build more civilian housing in the path of hurricanes such as Martha's Island or Miami or New Orleans! We should be in the middle of a very massive retrofitting of all American homes in the north to take advantage of passive and active solar energy and on all southern houses, 100% of them should be already installing solar energy panels! 100% of them should be built with small windows facing the south and west whereby the most hot sunlight falls, they should have thick walls with masonary exteriors to take up the heat during the day and expell it at night like my parent's ranch did. Only the windows faced WEST and the house overheated until we built big verandahs with sun blocks!

It infuriates me, how childish adults are concerning all this. If they want natural purity, then they can join me and live on a mountain in a tent with no running water and kerosene lamps at night! Go to bed early, get up early. In winter, scream if you go into bed without first warming it with a brick! Heh. Brrr.

Makes one strong. Powerful, like I am today!
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Chavez of Venezuela and Our Coming Energy Crisis This Winter

2005-12-16T16:13:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

It is interesting watching Americans spending $200+billion to hang onto oil rich Iraq while being told to basically shiver to death this winter at home because Bush as no money to fund home heating costs, meanwhile, the man villified by the NYT and WP and all the mainstream media, Chavez of Venezuela, rides to the rescue on his white horse, unlike the Scrooges with Bush, he can spare Tiny Tim some oil for Christmas.

From the US News and World Report:

Falling gasoline prices make it easy to believe the nation has seen the last of the energy woes that swept in behind this year's Gulf Coast hurricanes. But they don't fool an unemployed woman on the Crow Indian Reservation, using the electric oven to warm her house on increasingly crisp Montana nights because her natural-gas heat has been cut off. For brickyard workers in Mill Hall, Pa., unemployment looms after the holidays, because it will be too expensive to fire the clay kilns this winter. And one retiree in a mobile home in Millinocket plans to take her asthma medication once daily instead of three times as prescribed, to save money to pay the kerosene bills that will soar in Maine's bitter cold.

This is the same trip that California had to take when Bush and his Lay buddy at Enron decided to loot California and soften them up for Schwarzenegger. It didn't matter if it tipped America into a recession. They backtracked and cut taxes and began the most ferocious public spending spree ever witnessed in our history running up almost $3 trillion in red ink. In the middle of this spending spree, they continue to cut taxes, making things worse and simultaneously piously telling the poor to go hang.

Into this breach stepped the understandibly popular President of Venezuela, shaming America by personally funding susidized oil for communities that ask for it. So far, Massachusetts and the Bronx have signed up. It will be interesting to see how many upstate NYers will die this year before NY's Repub govenor asks for help? Then the NYT will have to say something nice about Chavez which will tick them off since he isn't a tool of either America or Israel.

"A frozen New Orleans." A winter failure (in NYC, for example) could prove catastrophic, because any extended loss of heat could cause water pipes to burst in residential and commercial buildings alike. Also, the thousands of "traps" where steam escapes (and billows from manhole covers) could freeze and fail, causing distribution pipes to crack or lose pressure. Former Central Intelligence Agency chief Jim Woolsey, now active on energy issues, argues that parts of the city "could resemble a frozen New Orleans." Also, repressurizing the system could prove laborious and hazardous, because of the power of steam escaping from cracks. "Nobody could simulate the kind of disaster that could happen," says Adam Victor, president of TransGas Energy, a company that has been trying to build a backup power plant in the city but has run into opposition from residents and city officials who prefer building parkland at the old industrial waterside location. Con Edison downplays concerns about the system. "You can't say never because something can always break," says Chris Olert, utility spokesman. "But we've upgraded the plant so it's in tip-top condition, and we've bought plenty of gas for the steam system." Power will be available for New Yorkers, he says, though at a cost up 30 to 35 percent over last year.

As a super in NYC in the past, when it went below zero and we didn't get an oil delivery in the middle of the oil crisis back in the seventies, I frantically tried to keep the pipes from freezing and failed. Once we got heat going again, we had to fix the entire building and it cost the landlord so dearly, he abandoned the property.

The cascade of problems when the heat fail are significant and very expensive. Not to mention, avoidable. Most buildings and most systems are designed to use energy to create the bubble of comfort rather than, like my house, exploit as much of nature as possible to run without energy. This refusal to be sensible is going to be our collective downfall. Houses that can't be converted like operate like mine will be abandoned over the years or turned into very low quality slums with no water since the pipes will burst. Copper thieves will tear them apart, seeking the metal in the pipes.

From Yahoo:

As oil and natural gas prices soar, public schools are having to make some tough decisions: turning down the thermostat, finding alternative sources of fuel, even cutting back on the school week.

At Menomonie High School in western Wisconsin, principal Tom Wiatr has dropped the temperature a few degrees. Students started wearing zip-up sweatshirts and fleeces to stay warm, raising questions about a school rule against wearing jackets indoors.

I remember the seventies and early eighties (imagine that!) I tried to get my daughter's school in NYC to let me cover the leaky windows with plastic so the kids wouldn't freeze in the classroom facing the Atlantic Ocean's winds. They refused.

The hike in taxes to keep schools running thanks to Bush and his windfall oil buddies reaping vast profits for themselves will wipe out what pitiful pennies remain of the famous Bush tax cuts. The President could demand his rich buddies start a "Leave No Child Frozen" fund and the oil companies could dedicate, say, 2% of their vast profits to fund it and heat for the elderly and poor but of course, this will never happen unless Americans notice the grim mirror image of Bush and Mr. Scrooge only Scrooge denied himself comforts unlike Bubble Boy who lives in a splendidly warm and pleasant enviroment.

From the BBC:

The leftist front-runner for Sunday's election in Bolivia, Evo Morales, has ended his campaign saying his movement is "a nightmare for the United States".
Mr Morales has vowed to end free-market policies and legalise the growing of coca, which has traditional uses but is also used in the production of cocaine.

Bush was nearly chased out of South America. His appearances in varioius countries had to be held far from the maddening crowds and forelorn and pathetic, not to mention stewed to the gills, he stumbled about, denouncing Chavez in quavering tones.

So what has he done for anyone? Got oil?

Chavez has oil and he is using it deftly as a tool to gain political power and he is determined to shoo us out of South America. Since popular sentiment is on his side, this isn't hard to do, is it? The "free trade" free booters who work for US corporations are desperately trying to keep control of various countries but one by one, the people are electing those that we don't want. Historically, the USA murders or corrupts those it doesn't want down in the south and Bush frets about this, desperate to unleash dictators upon the populations even as he bays about how America is for freedom and democracy.

Well, we will get democracy in spades, here at home, I pray, as well as abroad. The DeLay Texas mess whereby he gerrymandered and gerryrigged an electoral map that would keep right wing whites in power is now being torn up in court just as he and his ilk are now standing trial for rank corruption. And down there is all that oil. The oil the Texan elite refuse to share with fellow Americans.

This is going to be a very interesting winter.

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Washington Pest

Shell Oil and Others Sued For Wasting Gas In Nigeria

2005-12-09T11:01:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

The big oil companies simply burn off natural gas in Africa because they don't want to bother with sharing it with the African people. Most of the oil in Africa is removed and used by Europe and America. We have zero interest in bettering the lives of African people. Worse, we pollute their air and water and intend to squeeze them dry and leave them in poverty. Meanwhile, it is cold here in the north. Give us more energy, world!

From Common Dreams:

Multinational oil companies were ordered by Nigeria's highest court this week to stop engaging in a decades-old process that indigenous and environmental rights groups say has been poisoning the oil-rich area where Africa's Niger River meets the Atlantic Ocean.

Gas flaring dominates the skyline in the Niger Delta
"This victory marks a new dawn in the struggle of the communities of the Niger Delta," said Reverend Nnimmo Bassey, executive director of the Nigerian group Environmental Rights Action, soon after the Federal High Court announced its judgment Monday against the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria. The decision is expected to have far-reaching implications for the local activities of ChevronTexaco, ExxonMobil, and other multinational oil giants as well.

"We expect this judgment to be respected and that for once the oil corporations will accept the truth and bring their sinful flaring activities to a halt," Bassey added.

The case was brought by the indigenous Iwerekan community in Delta State, with support from the Environmental Rights Action group affiliated with Friends of the Earth (FoE) International, a federation of environmental campaigners that claims 1.5 million members and supporters in 70 countries.

If you look at satellite photos of Africa at night, it is truly "the Dark Continent" which only Antarctica and Greenland can compete with innermost Africa for "most dark."

To see the actual photos, visit APOD.

Nigeria is a prime example of how oil companies can pervert and abuse natives if they latch onto the government. The CIA as well as our military has worked long and hard to prevent any Caesar Chavezes from taking power in Nigeria. The few times non-military men ran the place, they used the oil company's bribes to buy gold bathtubs and live in palaces. Then the people there rise up in fury and the goverment supresses rebellions using brutal force and the game goes on, civic life nearly nonexistent in that country as the wealth hemmorages out.

The Iraqis see this and know they are next. Ditto, Iran. Any oil pumping country that dares to share the wealth or make the lives of their people better by expanding education and building a serious infrastructure to make them independent of oil is crushed brutally. This is why Shell Oil, for example, burns off precious gas rather than pipe it to people there. To build the infrastructure to service these people costs money and frankly, the rich oil consuming nations have decided they don't want to be bothered!

Meanwhile, here in America, we writhe in pain due to high energy costs caused by weather and war. From the Albany Times Union:

Prices of wood pellets have gone through the roof over the past few months because of a number of factors, including the demand of more people turning to wood to avoid oil and natural gas costs, which have risen by double digit percentages the past two years.

Even at the high prices, many retailers can't get enough of the pellets. Local big box stores don't even have them. Small mom-and-pops might. Specialty energy supply houses could. Yet, wherever and whenever available, the price has risen by $100-$150 a ton in just a few months, and it is not necessarily a first-come, first-serve sale anymore.

"They won't even sell them to you if you haven't bought your stove from them," Denmark says about supply outlets he's tried. "They say, 'We're taking care of our customers first.' "

I got my kids a pellet stove and now we can't run the darn thing. This is annoying for us all but not near the ill will of seeing massive amounts of gas being burned off (which incidentally, increases global hydrocarbon pollution!) for no good reason.

The factories producing stove pellets will catch up, eventually, with demand. Of course, it won't be a cheap fuel anymore, all BTUs end up costing the same due to people switching over. But at least for now, we can switch! What troubles me is how Shell Oil and the other oil companies can get away with literally burning up the wealth of Nigeria and think no one can stop them.

Personally, I avoid Shell oil. Citco is part of Venezuela's system so I support them by buying their products. I suggest we all do this.

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Washington Pest

Very Cold, Now Snow Coming, Price of Energy Jumps

2005-12-08T18:41:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

In Iraq, in China, lowly peasants, people of the land, lowly workers, people without power directly engage in battles with people who want to steal their pitiful belongings, steal their land, steal their resources, steal their culture. This hamfisted violence is causing more and more retaliatory fighting which is threatening the power and control of the planet by the world's biggest empires. And lurking in the background is more potential uprisings, anger about the Hubbert Oil Peak effects.

From Yahoo:

Despite President Bush's optimism on Iraq's reconstruction, the country appears set to pump less crude in 2005 than last year's disappointing showing and far less than under Saddam Hussein.

The only bright spot for Iraq's oil sector, hampered by unrelenting insurgent attacks on its infrastructure, is that near-record oil prices have softened the blow by boosting export earnings.

"The general integrity of Iraqi oil infrastructure appears to us to be heading backwards rather than forwards," London-based Barclay's Capital said in a report issued Thursday.

Great. Because of the stupid war, Iraq pumps less oil but this it OK because the lack of oil means prices can go through the roof so the ever important profit magins of the oil giants is doing just fantastic! The money is literally pouring into their laps! Hoozah!

Of course, world oil prices shot up this week because a big nasty blizzard is coming to my house. Hoozah again. I watched the jet stream make a deep detour over California and said, "By Friday, we will be dumped." And sure enough, this southern route storm is going to mess things up just great here. More reason for all those oil buddies of Bush to have a very merry xmas/holiday. They can close their mega churches because Jesus loves them and not us Northeasterners.

From Organic Consumers:

Published on Tuesday, November 22, 2005 by the New York Daily News
Oil For Bronx Poor is a Foreign Gift
Santa Claus, make way for Santa Chavez
by Juan Gonzalez

Poor residents and nonprofit groups in the South Bronx are about to receive a huge Christmas gift from Venezuela's firebrand President Hugo Chavez: Eight-million gallons of heating oil at bargain-basement prices.
Two months ago, in an interview with the Daily News during his visit to the United Nations, Chavez first made the startling offer of cheap fuel for this winter from his oil-rich country to a handful of poor communities in the United States.

At the time, critics of the radical populist Chavez, the Bush administration's biggest nemesis in South America, scoffed at his proposal. But the Venezuelan leader is about to deliver.

"The first shipments of low-cost fuel from CITGO will begin arriving in mydistrict by late next week," U.S. Rep. Jose Serrano (D-South Bronx) said yesterday.

I am hoping Santa Cheney will leave me coal for xmas. I will be very naughty and nasty. Braaack. F-you, Cheney, now where is that coal?

Of course, the energy crisis as we drive up and up the Hubbert Oil Peak, grows greater and greater. In China on a daily basis, the poor men who plunge into those black death-traps die hideous deaths, 100 at a time, even today, more died, they drown, they suffocate, they burn in explosions. Meanwhile, in Iraq, many die too, in explosions and suffocation, torture. As the energy bubble people who desire endless energy murder and stomp on helpless people, we want more, we need more! And the bodies pile up.

From Mehr News:

The Chairman of the Majlis Energy Commission, Kamal Daneshyar said here, on Friday, that preparatory measures have been taken to sell oil in euros instead of dollar, adding that such a measure is quite positive and should be taken as soon as possible.
Speaking to the Persian service of Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), he went on to say that Iran should at the first phase sell its oil in both Dollar and Euro, and then gradually move toward Euro as the mere source.

As for the probable consequences of such a decision, Daneshyar said that when such a measure is taken, the United States would soon realize that it is not the one who can always inflict economic damages on the Islamic Republic and that Iran can also get even with it.

The Europeans don't want their currency tied to oil any more than the Japanese want the yen tied to the yuan as it rises. Everyone uses currency to play games, not to sustain fair trade! Of all people, America needs everyone to remove the dollars we print and store them either overseas, in bonds that won't be sold ever on the open market or in gold which is shooting up in price as we shovel our inflation overseas.

The price of BTUs continues relentlessly climbing. All BTU forms go up and up. Firewood, coal, pellets, electricity, you name it. The price of killing peasants is going through the roof. The Pentagon made noises today that staying the course will cost us another $100 billion this year. Already, Congress must vote for another $50 billion for this damn war. They cut $50 billion from American welfare/education/health programs and to celebrate this, gave themselves a pay raise which the press barely mentioned and of course this: From the NYT:

The House of Representatives today passed the last and biggest piece of a total of $95 billion in tax cuts, a move that reflects both the ambition of House Republicans leaders and their willingness to let the budget deficit widen in years to come.

The bill passed by a vote of 234 to 197. It extends a long list of tax cuts at a cost of $56 billion over five years. The biggest provision would extend President Bush's 2001 tax cut for stock dividends and capital gains for two years at a cost of $20 billion.

We are going bankrupt. I see no sanity anywhere in Congress or our other rulers who seem bent on destroying us just as they recklessly cause the deaths of thousands of peasants all over the earth. Speaking of which, unlike the American peasantry who are all in a fog about gays kissing and what to call that pagan wonder, the Tannenbaum, are fighting back in true hand to hand combat. From the Washington Post:

Paramilitary police and anti-riot units here have opened fire with pistols and automatic rifles for the past two nights on rioting farmers and fishermen who have attacked them with gasoline bombs and explosive charges, according to residents of this small coastal village.

The sustained volleys of gunfire, unprecedented in a wave of peasant uprisings over the past two years in China, have killed between 10 and 20 villagers and injured more, residents said. The count was uncertain, they said, because a number of villagers have disappeared and it is not known for sure whether they were killed, wounded or driven into hiding.

The tough response by black-clad riot troops and People's Armed Police in camouflage fatigues deviated sharply from previous government tactics against the spreading unrest in Chinese villages and industrial suburbs.

Peasant unrest, as I keep pointing out, is a healthy sign. Unlike here, when the government seizes property or pollutes or in general, runs riot, people bellyache but they bow to the superior power and quietly retreat. The good people of New Orleans, scattered hither and yon, have driven out FEMA from the destroyed remains of their neighborhoods but this doesn't do a bit of good as FEMA frankly is looking to leave, anyway, and blame them. The rest of America shrugs their shoulders. Tough luck.

Pure capitalism is raising hell in the Chinese countryside as well as underground. Classically, when these forces team up with the teeming workers in the cities, we get revolutions. Every time. Trust me on this. This is a sign of energetic populations. Meanwhile, Ford and GM announced they are closing many American factories. Merk was made the same announcement today. All over, all I see are announcements of workers with good jobs being kicked to the curb. Yet the media and the lunatics in DC all scream the economy is doing just great, all we have to do is cut more taxes and go shopping more!

Insane. No one can buy a revolution. They just happen. Like a mine explosion. Boom.

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Washington Pest

Winter Cold Brings Financial Misery To North

2005-11-29T08:42:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Winter has only just begun and already many in the middle class are struggling with record high fuel bills. Congress cut fuel aid even as they cut taxes paid by the energy giants. I see a political blizzard in the future here.

From the NYT:

The cost of natural gas heat, already high, has risen 50 percent since last year. Home heating oil prices are up 30 percent. What that means for the larger economy will be divined by economists.

A hint of what it portends for the average person, though, is apparent in early indications from offices like Suffolk's.

"We have more people applying for help, and more of them are in a higher income group than we've seen before," said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, a group of 50 state directors in charge of administering a federal home energy assistance program that offers one-time-per-winter cash benefits of $100 to $500.

Those paltry benefits were set ten years ago under Clinton and record cheap energy. Few people needed it and it covered 100% of energy costs for the very poor.

It hasn't been raised since and of course now $500 pays less than a quarter of the costs. The buying frenzy, fueled nearly entirely by cheap loans running for less than the rate of inflation, is dying because credit card companies are nearly all across the board raising rates to 20-30%. This is not cheap money, it is usurous. I suspect last weekend's shopping frenzy was the last gasp, people counting pennies to buy ridiculously cheap luxury items. Now we will all hunker downa and desperately figure out how to survive this winter.

All were applying for help through the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or Liheap, though no one was exactly low income. All, as it happened, would be turned away for having incomes that exceeded the strict federal limits - $41,616 for a family of four, or $28,296 for a family of two.

These Federal standards are silly since living in high-cost communities means someone on these incomes is really very poor, for example, if rents or taxes on properties are high like in the Northeast.

Elected officials from cold weather states have pushed hard for substantial increases in financing for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provided about five million people with benefits last winter.

Those efforts, however, have so far failed to bring an increase from last year's allocation, which was about $2.2 billion. Governors and lawmakers say about $5 billion would be necessary to meet the needs of the six million eligible people expected to apply for aid this year.

A parallel drive to impose a windfall-profits tax on energy companies, which have reported record profits, has also stalled.

Lieberman, a man whose first country of choice is Israel, recently toured Iraq and said our hideously expensive mess there is going just fine. All the Democrats are of divided loyalty, wanting money from various religious or business special interests like the military/industrial complex clowns, and so they support this ruinous war while pretending they are agast we can't muster the money to spend a measly additional $3 billion to keep Americans alive!

The GOP is totally toxic. They make no bones about who they really serve: the Pope in Italy, the Japanese government, and big big business. So they love this ruinous war. I would suggest we levy a 100% profit tax on money above the profit levels of two years ago on the big oil companies! Then we can easily afford to heat Americans this winter.

Like Chavez in Venezuala is offering us. From NPR:

So, record profits for oil companies, on record high oil prices. The Senate defeated a proposed windfall tax on those profits -- a bill that President Bush had threatened to veto such a bill. Time for Mr. Bush's nemesis -- Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez -- to get into the act. Chavez has renewed his offer to send discounted heating oil to America's poor. Venezuela's CITGO Petroleum says it will distribute the cheap oil next week, through community groups in Boston and the Bronx.

Can we switch Presidents? We get Chavez and they get Bush? Well, that would be terribly cruel.

How about we ship Bush to Iraq? He can run that place. I remember the right wingers here in America celebrating the attack on oil rich Iraq. "Oil will be cheap," they crowed.

"Never ever, when there is a war, is oil cheap," I cautioned. Well!

America tried to overthrow populist Chavez and replace him with oil toadies owned by our oil companies. This failed spectacularily and we are still reaping the crop from that mess. This is why Bush was viewed as a comedy character in South America. His trade initiatives were thrown back into his face.

Well, we need to rethink our energy systems and our way of living. I live in a solid house with an elegant passive solar energy system that requires little heat thanks to pushing air around from warm parts of the house to the colder parts. Most homes have been built with no regard to the sun, the rain or any elements. We build huge towers that need to gobble up tons of energy to maintain habitability. We ignore nature and think we can burn our way to happiness.

Our gas guzzling has brought this crisis upon our own heads. Now our auto industry is dying, our weather system is raging, note the high winds and violent storms, this month, a record number of tornadoes, heck, just this most recent storm which is about to hit me, the winds are howling already, has killed people with tornadoes and raging fires that run ahead of it, very violent, the isobars at 988 yet again like the previous three tornado laced storms! This is hurricane levels! There is no ocean push so the damage isn't as great as hurricanes, but only barely. Many travelers are trapped by blizzards in the Midwest and it is still only November. I fear this will be a violent winter just like we had a violent summer.

The sun was very active this summer and fall and we are still dealing with the energy it spat at us back then. This is what greenhousing does: it contains solar energy and winds it down via violent storms!

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Washington Pest

Abiotic Oil Is Idiotic as Intelligent Design

2005-11-04T20:42:00.000-05:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Like the Easter Bunny or Santy Claus, bizarre wishful thinking keeps on trucking. The most recent example of this is the whole "Abiotic Oil" idiocy.

From the WorldNetDaily:

In a dynamic debate regarding the origins of oil, best-selling author of "Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil," Craig Smith, told CNBC's "Squawk Box" yesterday: "We can get all the oil we need for dozens, if not hundreds of years to come."

Debating peak oil vs. deep oil perspectives, Smith went head-to-head with Matthew Simmons, author of "Twilight in the Desert" on the cable news outlet's program. Smith, CEO of Swiss America Trading Company, contends that oil is not a fossil fuel. Rather, he believes it is being producing deep within the earth and is brought to attainable depths by centrifugal forces of the earth's rotation. In contrast, Simmons argues that oil is a finite resource and that Saudi Arabian oil supplies are dwindling, putting the world in a possible economic and political crisis.

One can pretend fossil fuels are really magical ooze that just happens to appear and unlike any other form of wet stuff, it burns! Magma burns when volcanoes erupt so the wishful thinking of these people is, why not have oil come the same way? Just bubbling out of the earth, just ignore the carbon chains that is what makes oil burn. These same clowns are the people who ignore 99% of all scientific data about how all us living things are interrelated and evolved over immense time frames. Nope, according to these chidlish minds, we magically appeared suddenly 6,000 years ago and all living things were capriciously created out of nothingness by a busybody god that had fits of irritation.

One can see why people fall for such schemes. Being a responsible resident on planet earth means interacting with nature in a sensible way, not devouring all planetary resources like some giant out of control squid! These fantasies are dangerous for they signal to these people that it is OK to behave irresponsibly. And we are seeing already the beginnings of the Great Die Off, namely, many species including our remaining nearest relatives, the Great Apes, are on the ropes and many just might not make it and become extinct.

"Black Gold Stranglehold" advances the argument that technology and education are needed to increase production and exploration efforts.

"The problem is," according to Smith, "if you believe that we are getting oil from decaying dinosaurs and debris from the forests then obviously there's only a finite supply. We don't embrace that. We believe that the earth is creating oil as we speak and that with technological advances and the ability to put human resources together with natural resources, and the wonderful capital markets we have here in America, we can get all the oil we need for dozens, if not hundreds of years to come."

The real oil that really exists will last for dozens of years if we don't keep abusing it by wasting it, a very unlikely prospect. If we keep sucking it up in greater and greater amounts, no, this won't go on for hundreds of years. Nor dozens, for that matter.

Earth no longer creates the vast amount of undigested organic matter which it made millions of years ago. There are several reasons for this. One is, a younger earth was a much warmer earth and the atmosphere was quite different from today's. There was no grass, for example. Grass evolved after the dinosaurs died off, for the most part. The mammalian era is all about eating or exploiting grass and the biggest feature of this era is the great plains and savannahs which are long stretches of grass that gets eaten! It doesn't form vast mats of organic matter to be crushed by rocks and turned into oil. It is eaten very efficiently by horses and cows and other grazers. Goats and sheep graze to the roots, the larger mammals eat the longer shoots, humans kill forests like mad in order to extend this grass culture for the basis of many diets we eat is from the grass family: sugar, corn, wheat, barely, rice and oats, for example. Even in the jungles,the multilayered community of living things strips all fallen organic matter down to near zero as swiftly as possible. There are areas of peat which are artifacts of glacial melt, namely, when permafrost melts, the locked layers of organic matter heat up and even catch fire. But the peat areas are small in relation to desertifcation, for example. Certainly, it can produce only tiny amounts of oil over millions of years. Certainly nothing to crow about.

Smith and co-author Jerome Corsi's interview last week on "Coast to Coast AM with George Noory," sent "Black Gold Stranglehold" racing up the charts to land at the No. 10 position on Amazon's non-fiction best-seller list. With enormous oil conglomerate profits making headlines, "Black Gold Stranglehold" has opened the dialogue regarding the United States and its need for independence from foreign oil producers.

There seems to be a lot of people who want to believe the world is a ball of oil and we don't have to change a thing, all we need to do is wait for all that abiotic oil to erupt to the surface and surprize us. Or perhaps they imagine that all you have to do is poke holes everywhere and gushers will just shoot into the air.

From the Independent:

Britain could be left paralysed by energy shortages, a health crisis and gridlock on the roads if the predicted Arctic winter strikes with severity.

Prolonged sub-zero temperatures after nearly a decade of mild winters could result in the death of tens of thousands of people, with fears that the National Health Service faces the prospect of a full-blown winter bed shortage for the first time since Labour came to power in 1997.

The gist of this article is that the North Atlantic Oscillation which is a form of La Nina, is going to happen this winter and thus, it will be cold...which, by the way, hits home here in NY, too. Grrr. The North Sea Oil rigs are running out of oil very rapidly because the Britsh government and the oil companies decided to pump like crazy this year because of high oil prices. Now that patrimony is gone and there is no abiotic oil coming up these holes, is there? So now they are discussing how to deal with the inevitable deaths that will now occur.

An extra 8,000 deaths per degree Celsius below normal is the prediction. Quadruple this for US people. Congress, far from passing bills extending heat aid, are cutting everything as much as possible. They are in a fury of cutting programs to the poor for they didn't kill enough of them during the hurricane season, I am guessing. Funny, that.

I still wonder why, when we drilled our well for water, no oil showed up. Not that it would have been good. I need the water. But heck, according to these abiotic people, there is black gold in them thar holes.

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Companies Post Multibillion Dollar Profits Thanks To Hurricanes

2005-10-28T10:41:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Thanks to the hurricanes and oil company-sponsored wars, the price of fuels has shot up to the stratosphere and the oil giants posted record-breaking profits. This isn't top headline news in the media. Congress slashes aid to the poor.

From the New York Times:

Big Rise in Profit Puts Oil Giants on Defensive

Not exactly a gripping headline. "Big rise" is an understatement here. How about "Gigantic Windfall"?

A sudden interruption in oil supplies sent prices and profits skyrocketing, prompting Exxon's chief executive to call a news conference right after his company announced that it had chalked up record earnings.

"I am not embarrassed," he said. "This is no windfall."

ExxonMobil spends lots of money advertising in the NYT. So when these robber barons say this money isn't due to the violent winds befalling the Gulf then the Times has to nod yes.

Exxon Mobil, the world's largest oil company, said yesterday that its third-quarter net income jumped 75 percent, to $9.92 billion. Its profit in the first nine months of this year - $25.42 billion - already equals its full-year earnings for 2004. This year's sales, which topped $100 billion in the last quarter, are expected to exceed those of Wal-Mart.

Another oil giant, Royal Dutch Shell, reported a 68 percent jump in profits yesterday, to $9.03 billion. Chevron is expected to post a profit of more than $4 billion today.

This year is shaping up as an exceptionally lucrative one for the oil industry, thanks to strong global demand, tight supplies and high prices for oil and natural gas. While the idea that the Bush administration was considering imposing a windfall profits tax was knocked down yesterday by officials, longstanding resentments against Big Oil are resurfacing and could end up imposing some additional burdens on the industry.

The Roosevelt family saved the robber barons by preventing them from going all the way, just most of the way. Right now, our rulers are going all the way so we are seeing dead Americans all over the place and will see many more before this train wreck is done. They frankly want this, killing off "excess" population is one of their dreams going way back to the 19th Century. To unlock the mineral, vegetable and animal wealth of America, the vast native population was nearly exterminated. Think they won't do this for gain today? Eh?

The vast profits will be used to buy more political power so they can get Congress to cut heating aid, food stamps, housing for the poor, medicine for the disabled, etc, while granting tax cuts and benefits to the world's richest corporations. The ridiculous "Energy Bill" crafted by crafty Cheney was a total give away for the energy giants.

Further, America doesn't need more refineries, we need to control the urge to consume vast quantities of fuel. As a person who uses a car that gets great milage, I resent all those one passenger behemoths hogging the roads and eating up natural resources. CAFE standards left out these classes of vehicles and we knew for years that this was a total disaster and now we are all paying for it.

But this is no reason to not tax the windfall profits of the oil giants! This loot has to be recaptured by the people via taxes. This is what happens when windfalls happen! We could stop running up huge deficits if we tax this profit at 50%. Or better, 80%!

There is no reason oil companies should siphon off all this public wealth and pocket it or be tempted to use it to buy political power. This is unacceptable in a democracy. But then, these same powers own the media, own the transmission of information, they are secure in the knowledge that they can deflect blame to others. Like Saddam, for example.

Time to attack Iran, right?

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Research Student Discovers New Low Energy Lightbulb

2005-10-22T16:12:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

A student at Vanderbuilt University accidently discovered a novel way to light surfaces. Using nano-quantum dots, he found that exciting them with a small LED light caused them to light up brightly.

From Livescience.com

Michael Bowers, a graduate student at Vanderbilt University, was just trying to make really small quantum dots, which are crystals generally only a few nanometers big. That's less than 1/1000th the width of a human hair.

Quantum dots contain anywhere from 100 to 1,000 electrons. They're easily excited bundles of energy, and the smaller they are, the more excited they get. Each dot in Bower's particular batch was exceptionally small, containing only 33 or 34 pairs of atoms.

When you shine a light on quantum dots or apply electricity to them, they react by producing their own light, normally a bright, vibrant color. But when Bowers shined a laser on his batch of dots, something unexpected happened.

"I was surprised when a white glow covered the table," Bowers said. "The quantum dots were supposed to emit blue light, but instead they were giving off a beautiful white glow."

Then Bowers and another student got the idea to stir the dots into polyurethane and coat a blue LED light bulb with the mix. The lumpy bulb wasn't pretty, but it produced white light similar to a regular light bulb.

They experimented with using these nano-dots with polyurethan and this caused an entire surface to light up. There are many applications one could think of for this, lighting hallways, for example, by painting the floor or ceiling or both with these and then "turning them on" by electrifying them.

Indirect light is useful for defining large spaces. I use strings of christmas white lights to light up various areas of the house that needs to be seen but not brightly lit. I run them along the treads of my spiral staircases so the steps are very defined. I don't bother to turn on hall or staircase lights because the smaller lightbulbs outlining the steps or hallways are better because they don't cast shadows all over the place. After all, I don't read books in the stairs!

Already, since my days in the tent complex when we had only one solar panel, I used only the most efficient of bulbs. I have no old fashion lightbulbs. This new potential technology sounds great. I can't wait to paint the entire basement ceilings with this! Wow. Fun.

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Some Creep Stole the Arctic Refuge Map Belonging to Congress

2005-10-22T15:27:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

In 1978, when a Democratic Congress passed the Alaskan Wildlife Act and Jimmy Carter signed it, they also had a detailed map created to delineate the boundries of this natural refuge. The map for this was stolen and the GOP doesn't want to know who stole it or even if it was stolen.

From the New York Times:

Maps matter. They chronicle the struggles of empires and zoning boards. They chart political compromise. So it was natural for Republican Congressional aides, doing due diligence for what may be the last battle in the fight over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to ask for the legally binding 1978 map of the refuge and its coastal plain.

It was gone. No map, no copies, no digitized version.

Evidently, it was kept behind a filing cabinet inside a foam board sandwich. When staff seeking this map found it, the original map was missing. But what turns this into a theft is the fact that a NEW foam board sandwich was put in place of the old one, only it was empty!

The GOP likes to laugh this off as "the cleaning lady threw it away," only this doesn't explain the new foam board left there in place of the old map. And as always, the GOP dudes love to blame lower staff for any problems. It is always the cleaning lady's fault.

To go on, the map is important because it is legal. All other maps are not legal so the GOP has rushed into the breach and declared their new map outlines to be the original and of course, all that oil is outside the domain of the park, not inside. What a shock.

The implications of the contours on the new map, at least for the native lands, are in dispute. Some people argue that the native owners, the Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation, which controls much of the surface rights to the land, and the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, which controls the mineral rights, would be able to offer energy leases no matter where the lines are drawn, as soon as Congress opens the plain.

The legislative counsel of the Interior Department, Jane M. Lyder, did not go quite that far, but did say the new map might make the question moot.

"It's a very circular kind of thing," Ms. Lyder said. "Changing the line on the map makes it a lot easier."

In addition, she said, the inclusion of the native lands within the coastal plain ensures that they will be covered by the bill's requirement that no more than 2,000 acres of the plain be used for drilling platforms, airstrips, roads and other surface disturbances. By including the native lands in the plain, any work there would count to the 2,000-acre limit, she said.

In history, redrawing lines on maps causes millions of people to die hideous deaths. This is called "wars".

Then there are map redrawings like the border between India and Pakistan back in 1948. Millions died when those lines were inked in. To be realistic, one should draw all map lines in blood. Keep our mind on what they really mean.

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NATIONALIZE GAS/OIL PROFITS!

2005-10-13T07:38:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

I remember several previous energy disasters. All start rather slowly, as reality takes grip, the first thing people do is change fuels to whatever is cheaper. Then that goes up, too. Then the rush to conserve happens. People insulate or buy new windows and doors or fix things. Then the price still climbs and the poor who can't reduce, can't insulate, can't buy anything, start to suffer.

People literally freeze to death. Landlords, unable to collect rent or unable to maintain heat in buildings, abandon them. They are then set on fire. During the oil crisis of the seventies, I watched, literally, huge swaths of NYC go up in smoke. You could sit on a roof top with binoculars and count the many fires that sprang up. I used to remove wood from abandoned, burned building to feed my fireplace because I had no heat, too.

Well, we are well into the same train wreck and with the GOP now running the ship of state, we are sinking rapidly. They sit idle while energy companies rake in the dough and winter looms and what is the GOP doing?

Cutting funds for heating homes of the poor! From Yahoo:

With fuel bills expected to rise sharply this winter, states are setting aside extra money for the poor, dispensing energy-conservation tips and pleading for federal aid to help Americans keep the heat on when the weather turns cold.

Ohio freed up an additional $75 million for heating assistance for the needy, and Wisconsin added $16 million. Iowa officials set up a Web site to give people advice on how to save energy and get aid, but they acknowledged that may not be enough.

People "can only turn the thermostat so low before it affects your health and well-being," said Jerry McKim, chief of Iowa's Bureau of Energy Assistance, which helps poor families pay their utility bills. "This is a life-or-death matter. I have serious anxiety about what folks will face this winter."

States will go deep into the red, northern states. Of course, the Feds won't help because we are spending an obscene $5.4 billion a month securing oil in Iraq to resell to Japan and Europe! This extravagant expense is even greater since we are spending another $1billion a month to secure bases in all the surrounding countries, too! So what do we spend a year on heating help?

This winter could see many more applicants for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program with not enough money to go around. Congress provided $2.2 billion for the program last year, but this year President Bush has proposed cutting it to about $2 billion.

Two and a half fucking billion bucks a YEAR! Good fucking grief!

Condi Rice just came back from a triumphal tour of the region eating up our incomes. She made a deal with one of the despots there who threatened to close our post Soviet military base and now he is keeping it open for us...since we increased the amount of money we pay as rent! So obviously, the public purse knows no limit in this regard.

Congress just eked by yet another pro-energy company bill. They have showered tax cuts and grants upon these very wealthy companies that are reporting record profits.

So, how do we fix things?

I suggest we have an "Energy Profit Reclaimation Project." Namely, a percentage of the energy companies' profits be recycled as energy aid! I would say, if it were 20%, this will raise several billion dollars and therefore, fund all the poverty programs that provide fuel, generously.

Then, to fix the budget going billions into the red: close all American military bases across the planet, close the School of the Americas (or whatever they call that monstrosity now) and tax the rich.

Revolutionary, right? You bet. Wresting power from the very powerful isn't going to be easy. Petitioning Congress when it is owned by these people will be neigh impossible. Of course, elections are coming. Will the middle class see the poverty pit at their own feet?

After all, they are all just one paycheck away from disaster. One job loss away from no health insurance. One corporate bankrupcy from 50% pay cuts. Will they wake up? Will everyone understand, the party is over now?

I will cover this as it unfolds. And I guarantee, it will unfold as certainly as a butterfly unfolds its wings.

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MAKING CONSERVATION COOL

2005-10-02T10:13:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

When the subject of the coming energy collapse as we finally careen over the top of the Hubbert Oil Peak and begin the relentless slide down the other side, we will probably sacrifice everything we built up over the last several thousand years in a desperate push to steal the last of the oil and control the downside so we can continue living the reckless, foolish lives we are living today, protected by a huge energy/technology bubble.

The downside of this bubble is obvious. We are fat and ugly, for the most part. Legions of people visit gyms to exercise to keep from turning into a ball of blubber but still, the technology/energy bubble takes its toll. Worse, it is killing our ecosystem and the side effects of this are obvious, too. The destructive powers of ecosystem change for the worse will of course annihilate our cities and kill us.

But we just might do it ourselves in bitter desperation, kill off our cities in a massive nuclear war!

So what is the analysis in the mainstream press about all this? How about this insanity: From the NYT:

WHEN President Bush told his staff last week to carpool or take the bus, because conservation could help alleviate the pain of hurricane-caused oil shortages, some cynics wondered: Would the country accept the challenge?

Eh? Bubble Boy's bubble is the most energy intensive on this planet. An entire Praetorian guard has to surround him for even tiny side trips. They have to move snipers on roofs, clear out all the former citizens of this stupid police state, remove all people from looking out of windows, they have a platoon of armored vehicles that race along getting about 2 mpg...and he tells us to conserve.

I happen to remember Jimmy Carter, the man who flew on regular planes quite often, the guy who walked to many places in DC and elsewhere. He actually believed in conserving and put solar energy panels on the WH which the GOP tore off again.

Still, the inspirational value of a sudden policy swivel, however grand, goes only so far. According to advertising executives, environmentalists and cultural critics, conservation can become a movement large enough to influence world energy markets only if it becomes hip, fashionable, something that teenagers, chief executives and celebrities from New York to Dallas to Los Angeles can't help but do.

Look, morons, LA is an ecological/social disaster area. One massive earthquake away from Armaggeddon and a top nuclear target, to boot. Mother Nature doesn't give a fig about "hip" or whatever, She does what She has to do and we have to please Her, not the other way around.

There is nothing at all hip in being sane and careful. It ain't "sexy" or "rad" or whatever, it is life and death. And although many worship the Devil that is Death and think this is just too cool, the Death Devil works for Mother Nature, not us. It would dearly love to scythe away 90% of humanity because we have unbalanced nature. If we want to populate this and other planets, we have to learn how to do this without destroying the very same ecosystem that sustains us. This is "duh" time.

Thanks to cheap energy and the technological bubble we live in, we can ignore, say, air pollution. Just turn on that airconditioner and ride in a sealed car and dash into a sealed commercial building and viola! You never notice the destructive, foul air. So what if the trees are dying? You are in a bubble and safe and happy.

"It has to be grass-roots driven," said Sharon Lee, a founder of Look-Look Inc., a market research firm in Los Angeles that focuses on youth culture, "and you have to allow people to participate in fun, creative ways. Maybe one day, if you bring your own cup to a coffee shop, you get 10 percent off because you saved the Styrofoam. And the next day they can do something else."

Businesses, political leaders and conservationists must spawn a wide range of options, she said. The oilman in Texas may not want to give up his S.U.V., so perhaps he could earn free baseball tickets by composting instead. For the urban hipster who already drives a hybrid vehicle, there could be a Web site with advice on how to lead a project attaching solar panels to office buildings.
"You have to fit their interests and how they participate," Ms. Lee said. "The worst thing you can do is take an open person and say they're not part of this community if they don't do this one act."

In other words, environmentalists need to be less preachy. Mark Katz, a humorist and former speech writer for President Bill Clinton, said Americans might be more willing to take up conservation if they could first laugh at their own consumption. His suggestion is a bumper sticker for S.U.V.'s that reads, "My third car is a Prius," a reference to Toyota's popular electric hybrid vehicle.

Note how the people in this story assume we have choices! Indeed, this is the highest level of insanity. Note how the hyper-consuming American "conserves" by boasting about how cool he is to have THREE cars! Billions, yes, billions of humans have no cars at all. In another 50 years, we will be part of those billions. There is no future for the gas car. Nor will they be replaced with faster, hotter, fancier cars. They will be replaced with RICKSHAWS drawn by humans!

The environmental movement has always been whipsawed by this urge to cutsiefy the coming crisis, pretending that if we do tiny, usless moves, the coming ecological/energy disaster won't happen. This nickle and dime-ing of the environmental movement has pretty much killed it. Many people think, all they have to do is not do one tiny thing when that isn't even scratching the surface.

We are collectively not only dying from living in the bubble we made, the bubble is collapsing. Look at it! People can't live in the deep south without this bubble, nor can they live in the north or anywhere. Anyone here ever live cheek and jowl with Nature in the raw?

I have. For years. Without electricity, without running water, without nearly all modern technology. I am tough, I know a great deal of information like how to train and raise and use an ox team. Or horses. Or handshear sheep. Or make bread from scratch including hand grinding the wheat. Yes, I have a hand grinder. I have all sorts of old tools which I know how to use, my husband knows how to use. Two man handsaws, axes, adzes, hand drills, all sorts of stuff.

And guess what? These skills will be needed in the future. Know how to raise bees? It will reassert itself as an important survival skill, trust me. Know how to raise a garden? Most people don't know squat now, they know what is on TV and what everyone is talking about which is usually garbage that is meaningless.

A million Americans have lost their homes and most of the country is concerned with only one thing: keeping this wild, cool, sexy party going no matter what. Well, guess what? Your home just might be next. Whole communities will be rendered unliveable and unuseable in the not too distant future.

"You have to be self-deprecating," said Mr. Favat, who created an advertising campaign for Timberland featuring a magazine insert that could be planted, sprouting wildflowers. "Use irony or humor or satire to capture peoples' imagination. Nothing will be cool if you take yourself too seriously."

Hell's bells, I am not cool, I am burning hot. Flaming like the sun. A consumer magazine handing out flower seeds isn't going to do squat diddley.

My whole mountain writhed with pain this summer because of the excessive heat/lack of rain. It made me totally frantic, I live in what is supposed to be the temperate zone! Not Arizona! The seeds, if I sowed them, would have withered and died! Ecology isn't about grandiose, useless gestures. It is about understanding nature and working hand in hand with Her so we don't all die!

And preachy?

Noah was preachy, too, according to the Bible.

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RATION FUEL NOW!!!!!

2005-09-30T06:30:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

The real news is real grim. Despite media/ruling class attempts to sugar coat this mess, we are all about to be reamed out thoroughly by the Texas Mafia and Bush. Namely, due to the hurricanes, there are limited supplies of fuel and they intend to make us bid each other for it as it rises just like in the terrible old days pre-modern times when a crop failure would mean the price of wheat shoots up and millions starve to death.

When a government allows the dealers to make a fortune when weather causes misfortune, we have things called "revolutions".

Yes, revolutions. They explode rapidly, I assure you. France was on top of the world. Diplomatic language was the only language diplomats used. Not English. To run a huge military while goofing around in the court, they ran up huge debts on the public purse while the gap between the rich and poor grew, the upperclasses ruthlessly cut their own taxes and obligations to near zero.

Then the crops failed when a volcano in Iceland blew up and the toxins from it fell on Europe, killing the sheep and causing the wheat crop to turn yellow and give a small yield.

"Let them eat cake," trilled the Queen when she was told there were starving poor at her gate.

The rich didn't starve. Nor did the middle class, who grumbled over the inflation in food prices. But the poor went right off the cliff and they suddenly exploded in anger, taking over cities, emptying jails, organizing themselves very suddenly into a formidable source. The King turned to the middle class to save him and they imposed a new government upon him...way too late.

For the fires of revolution were now raging out of control.

From the NYT:

Natural gas prices set a record yesterday, pointing to sharply higher heating bills for a majority of Americans this winter and soaring costs for makers of plastics and chemicals, which use natural gas as their main fuel and raw material.

According to recent estimates by the Energy Department, Americans are likely to pay roughly $400 more for their natural gas this winter than last year, with average bills jumping to $1,130. Many analysts, however, warn that these figures may prove too low and are likely to be updated when the government issues its winter price outlook next month.

While commercial stockpiles of natural gas are currently above a five-year average, prices are now being driven by the uncertainties surrounding the impact of Hurricane Rita on energy installations in the Gulf of Mexico.

Prices are doubling. No sane government, and this one is definitely insane, would allow this for such a fundamental commodity. Prices will go up over the years but this year, the restraint is entirely temporary. Forcing people to pay all they earn for something that is temporarily tight is insanity.

It requires storming the White House. If the rich oil companies have zero interest in keeping America intact, then time to arrest them and charge them with treason for they are part of hostile OPEC and not Americans!

Consumers are scared. Last month, I warned everyone that the soaring price of fuel which was allowed to raise prices across the planet as desperate, sane governments released oil like crazy to re-bouy supplies, that NG would be a problem and the government should temporarily take over that industry, declare an emergency and then RATION IT. Rationing means each customer, based on their bills previously, gets "x" amount of fuel. First in line has to be homes. Why?

Jobs don't matter if you freeze to death and freezing the elderly who have no jobs to death is pure evil.

So we share the pain. Companies will have to restrict use or buy on the open market which could be "x" amount, say, 20% of the available gas.

From the Washington Post

Gasoline and natural gas prices soared on the futures markets yesterday as traders grew concerned that energy operations damaged by hurricanes Rita and Katrina could be hobbled longer than expected.

Analysts said that if futures prices remain at elevated levels, national pump prices for a gallon of regular could move above $3 a gallon, as they did following Hurricane Katrina. They added that a run-up in natural gas prices likely will mean increases for winter heating bills.

See? This is going to be very bad. If the Bush/OPEC cabal can't see the obvious down side of their "Freeze a Yank, let the North rebuild from tornadoes alone" policy is bad, well, I can only hope the North can see that this policy is dangerous indeed. If we sit here, drooling, and let this happen, well.

Death's scythe doesn't give a hoot.

Giving all our money to the very rich oil barons is pure insanity! And they will kill our economy, even then.

&spades There is a housing stock emergency, too. From AP:

Stocks rallied strongly Thursday as investors grew more confident about the prospects for the economy despite the impact of hurricanes Rita and Katrina.

While many of the hurricanes' long-term effects have yet to be determined, stocks rebounded after two weeks of losses on bullish comments from analysts and the government. However, the markets remain relatively unchanged for the month, and trading was very light.

In addition, the market's gains may be short-term, as investors wait for new economic data that will give Wall Street a better feel for the storms' effects on employment, consumer demand and inustrial production. Next month's third-quarter earnings will also be an important barometer of the economy's health.

Everyone in business is all excited because they imgaine that China and Japan will bankroll us for another economic joy ride. Since our "prosperity" is mostly connected with home building and services surrounding this, they imagine the destruction of so many homes will mean a boost to the building boom. But alas and alack, interest rates are rising. The homeowners who need to rebuild are barely or not insured at all. The government is about to slide into bankruptcy, we are now $8 trillion in debt and rising rapidly. The homeowners don't have jobs, a quarter million hurricane related unemployment applications have been processed with another half a million to go! Amazing.

This is not good economic news. And as a builder, I assure you, it isn't easy work nor is it what secretaries or computer staff or realtors do. The price of building materials will soar, hitting the building market hard, the price of labor in specialized fields will go up (ahem, to my benefit) but most of the grunt jobs in building which is dangerous (ROOF WORK!) or heavy lifting, will go to illegal or legal aliens who will suffer terribly just to get into the door. The average American won't want to do this stuff, they are not crazy like me (I have fallen off of roofs. It hurts a lot).

Aux Barricades!

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BIG RIGS IN BIG TROUBLE

2005-09-28T10:49:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Right smack in the middle of Hurricane Rita, the mass media and the Bush machine and everyone connected with all the conspiracies and horrors that have overwhelmed America this last five years went into high gear, lying. Unlike Katrina that caught them with their panties around their ankles, this time they had all their levees and defenses up and ready to go. "No damage, no casualties!" they all crowed in a loud chorus even as Rita's bulldozer was flattening huge swaths of buildings and facilities and killing people.

I said during the hurricane, they are lying. And those bastards did lie and why does anyone go to them for information?

I got censored by NOAA over some of my hurricane postings, you know. Big Brother is a big bother! They don't want you to know squat diddly, especially how drought/hurricanes interact and why they are twin indicators of global warming!

So...here is the news, we already know that Houston was spared terrible annihilation by the quirk of the hurricane going to the east but all the talk on TV and radio about how it spared the oil fields was pure lies. I saw myself how they showed Houston's far fewer wells untouched and shouted, "See, no damage!" but there are ten times more wells and rigs where the eye of the hurricane actually passed and guess what?

From the Financial Times

Hurricane Rita has caused more damage to oil rigs than any other storm in history and will force companies to delay drilling for oil in the US and as far away as the Middle East, initial damage assessments show.

Oil prices eased on Wednesday over concerns that demand for crude would be hit by the continued shutdown of refineries. US crude fell 27 cents to $64.80 a barrel by 06:444 GMT after losing 75 cents on Tuesday.

ODS-Petrodata, which provides market intelligence to the offshore oil and natural gas industry, said it expected a shortage of rigs in the US Gulf this year.

“Based on what we have right now, it appears that drilling contractors and rig owners took a big hit from Rita,” said Tom Marsh of ODS-Petrodata. “The path Katrina took was through the mature areas of the US Gulf where there are mainly oil [production] platforms. Rita came to the west where there is a lot of [exploratory] rig activity.”

Ken Sill of Credit Suisse First Boston said: “Early reports indicate numerous rigs are missing, destroyed or have suffered serious damage and several companies have yet to report. Rita may set an all-time record.”

The US Coast Guard said nine semisubmersible rigs had broken free from their moorings and were adrift."

This is from the European news! It wasn't headlines in America. Robin, one of our readers, emailed this story to me. Thanks a great deal! I really appreciate it.

Earlier in the day, Ali Naimi, Saudi Arabia's oil minister, said the market had not taken up the 2m barrels a day of spare capacity the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries offered last week. Speaking in Johannesburg, he blamed high oil prices on a lack of industry infrastructure, including rigs and refineries, rather than oil reserves. Rigs, which are movable and are used for exploration and development, were in short supply before hurricanes Katrina and Rita blew through the US Gulf in late August and September.

High oil prices and the desperate search for new oil supplies needed to meet rampant demand from the US and China have made rigs difficult to find and expensive to hire. Rigs cost $90m-$550m to construct, depending on how sophisticated the structure and how deep the water in which it will drill. A rig ordered today is unlikely to be ready before 2008 or 2009, analysts said.

Of course, with oit prices soaring, everyone is treasure hunting. Of course, this is merely one more very strong indicator of being at the Hubbert Oil Peak. A peak is when everyone is pumping oil like mad, the existing wells go down much faster than in cheap oil times because everyone ones to make as much money as fast as possible and so, instead of hanging steady and conserving and being careful, a free for all ensues as everyone tries to get or use as much as possible as fast as possible.

This is why car mileage is so terrible now. Fifteen years ago, the cheapest cars were also very efficient. 50mpg! Now the cheapest cars are all gas guzzlers, even the small ones don't get the milage small cars got fifteen years ago. Expensive cars get the same milage my cheap-o Geo Metros got but whoopee doo. They cost an extra $12,000! So lower income people have to buy the gas guzzlers so they get hit coming and going.

Around 50 rigs now have disappeared or are so damaged they are useless. The backlog for rigs is enormous so few will be restored for years. Indeed, some had their blow out pipes destroyed so they are leaking oil or gas. The pollution from all this is ferocious. Sea life won't recover for at least three generations.

Unlike tankers that sink, oil wells leaking can do this for years and years unless capped and capping them is done only be a small cadre of very hard working, brave professionals. It is a dangerous trade just like building sky scrapers is very dangerous or tunnelling and coal mining. Ergo, it won't be finished for several years. And this is only if there are no more huge hurricanes which flies in the face of predictions of many more such in the next ten years, minimum.

Bush and his cadre have asked us to conserve fuel but has put forwards exactly nothing to deal with this. How will we conserve? Evidently, it is by being priced out of the market and a whole bunch of Americans will soon find themselves locked out of the energy market due to lack of income.

This is a fancy way of saying they will freeze or burn or starve to death in the coming years.

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GULPING GULF OIL

2005-09-24T19:54:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

They overshot their goals. The oil men. They wanted to put Bush in power so they could double or even triple their profits but Bush's bad luck and clumsy handling of the ship of state has brought unbelievable wealth into the hands of the oil sellers. All of them, the traders, the pumpers, the lease holders, the refiners and movers, all are unbelievably rich.

And they got dispensations and tax cuts, why, just two weeks ago, they got a big present from Bush's energy bill which shovels even more money into their maws.

From 40mpg Org:

Fed up with price gouging and federal inaction on energy, four out of five Americans - including 76 percent of Republicans -would support "a tax on the windfall profits of oil companies" if the resulting revenues were devoted to alternative energy research, according to a new Opinion Research Corporation (ORC) national opinion poll conducted for 40mpg.org (http://www.40mpg.org) and the nonprofit and nonpartisan Civil Society Institute.

Other key survey findings include: nine out of 10 Americans (87 percent) think that oil companies are gouging gasoline consumers today; four out of five adults (81 percent, including 74 percent of Republicans) say the federal government is not doing enough about high energy prices and America's over-reliance on Middle Eastern oil; almost three out of four Americans (73 percent) believe that recent gasoline price hikes now make it more important that the federal government impose higher fuel-efficiency standards; and four out of five adults say that U.S. automakers should follow the same path as Toyota, which intends that "all of its new cars going forward will use fuel-saving hybrid technology."

Japan has no oil so this is not good, letting oil run up in price so fast. Russia sells oil abroad so they love the high prices. It is giving them a great boost. Ditto Iran.

But all is not well.From TV New Zealand:

More than 100 armed militants on Thursday stormed a US-operated oil platform in Nigeria, the world's eighth largest exporter, in response to the arrest of a militia leader.

Armed with assault rifles, fighters in speed boats invaded the Idama platform operated by Chevron in the southern Niger Delta, while in the capital a judge ordered Mujahid Dokubo-Asari to be held in jail for two weeks pending treason charges.

"Eight boats, each carrying 15 armed people, occupied the Idama flow station. Six government security forces had their weapons taken from them," a source close to Chevron said.

"Apparently the militants are now heading for more stations. The situation can only get worse."

Only 8,400 barrels per day were shut down at Idama, Chevron said, but industry officials said the impact could rise dramatically if the attacks spread.

Commanders of Asari's Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force (NDPVF) threatened to blow up oil facilities across the delta, which accounts for almost all of Nigeria's 2.4 million barrels per day production, unless their leader was released.

"We are going to blow up all flow stations and pipelines from Warri to Calabar if Asari is not back in 48 hours," said Dakuro Princewill, a NDPVF commander, in reference to the eastern and western extremities of the vast wetlands region.

Last month, in Equador, this same sort of thing was happening. It isn't happening in Venezuela because the oil there was captured by the populace so the oil companies can't pump at will and give them nothing like we are doing in Iraq, of all places.

More oil pipelines were blown up this week. This is never, ever, ever reported in the USA which is also why Robert Fiske isn't allowed to visit "the Land of the Free and the home of the brave." Now for really bad news, everyone. I will make this as clear as possible. From Le Monde, France:

"Le pétrole, c'est comme une petite amie, vous savez depuis le début de votre relation qu'elle vous quittera un jour, résume M. Birol. Pour qu'elle ne vous brise pas le coeur, mieux vaut la quitter avant qu'elle ne vous quitte." Aussi adresse-t-il un double message aux pays consommateurs, beaucoup plus ferme que dans le rapport annuel publié à l'automne 2004 : "Economisez l'énergie, économisez le pétrole ! Et diversifiez-vous, s'il vous plaît. Sortez du pétrole !"

Pour Claude Mandil, directeur exécutif de l'AIE, "il y a bien un problème si on se limite au pétrole conventionnel" . Il rappelle cependant que le brut non conventionnel (offshore profond, sables bitumineux du Canada, huiles lourdes du Venezuela...) offre des perspectives prometteuses. "Je ne suis pas alarmiste sur les ressources globales, poursuit-il, même si nous serons de plus en plus dépendants d'un nombre de pays de plus en plus réduit" , comme l'Arabie saoudite, l'Iran, l'Irak, le Koweït et les Emirats arabes unis. Le patron de l'AIE se dit en revanche "alarmiste sur le changement climatique" qui se profile.

OK, got the message? Pleeeease diversify energy systems! Use petrol more economically!

For non Frenchies, here is the English version: From Truthout:

"Oil is like a girlfriend - you know from the outset of your relationship that she'll leave you one day," Mr. Birol sums up. "So that she doesn't break your heart, it's better that you leave her before she leaves you." Thus he addresses a double message to consuming countries, one much firmer than that in the annual report published in the fall of 2004: "Economize on energy; economize on oil! And please diversify! Get out of oil!"

For Claude Mandil, Executive Director of the IEA, "there's certainly a problem if you limit yourself to conventional oil." He reminds us, however, that non-conventional oil (deep offshore, bituminous sands in Canada, heavy oils in Venezuela ...) offers promising perspectives. "I'm not alarmist about global resources," he continues, "even if we are more and more dependent on an ever more reduced number of countries," like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. On the other hand, the IEA boss characterizes himself as "alarmist about the climate change" that is shaping up."

I like it better in French. Of course, viewing oil as one's lover is better than viewing it like a pig looking at swill.

Now, our dear rulers, in between fucking with Girl Friend Olive Oyl, want us to not be restive natives so they watch and gage carefully just how much they can squeeze from us without us reacting unfavorably. This is a delicate operation. From the BBC:

Finance ministers from the Group of Seven leading industrialised nations are meeting in Washington to discuss the economic impact of high oil prices.
At about $66 a barrel, crude prices have risen more than 50% this year.

At Friday's meeting, they are also due to consider enlarging the group to take in major emerging economies such as China, Russia and India.

I would suggest the actual meetings will be very different. According to my Chinese news, China is going to be a "guest" at the meetings and will discuss the delicate relationship between Hu and his fickle mistress, Bush. Bush wants more money. Being a careless whore, he blew through all the money his sugar daddy gave him and now he needs much more.

He has oil. Lots of oil. China wants this oil to be cheap but not Russia. But China is willing to pay Russia more if Russia sells them military stuff but it is even better to get America to sell this military stuff. So many choices! Eeny meany miney moe.

From CNN:

About half that production still hasn't been restored since Katrina hit, and further damage is possible from high seas. So while oil futures were showing some relief, analysts said prices would stay volatile.

As was seen after Katrina, that energy shock could be felt across the full range of businesses and consumers.

Two major airlines, No. 3 Delta Air Lines and No. 4 Northwest Airlines, were forced to file for bankruptcy after Katrina sent jet fuel prices soaring.

And while analysts said they don't necessarily expect other major airlines to file bankruptcy they couldn't rule it out, especially if jet fuel prices stay high longer they did after Katrina.

But it's not just transport companies that will see problems from higher energy costs.

No. 1 aluminum maker Alcoa (Research) warned third-quarter earnings would be as much as 39 percent below Wall Street estimates on lower aluminum prices and higher energy and raw-material costs -- news that sent its stock skidding Friday.

The hit to earnings
And further earnings warnings are likely in coming weeks as companies start to close their books for the third quarter and look ahead to fourth quarter costs and revenue.

"All these companies are getting hit by (natural) gas," analyst Charles Bradford of Bradford Research/Soleil Securities told Reuters, speaking about the metals industry. "The problem is we know what they are getting hit by but it's impossible to put a number on because you don't know (about long-term fuel contracts)."

The snake has swallowed a goat and it will take a long time to pass through the digestive system.

Is this the beginning of the Hubbert Oil Peak?

I would say, not quite.

But we are rushing towards it! The snarly mess in Texas, the evacuation of a city using SUVs and pick up trucks, was a total farce. I saw Sen. Cronlyn crowing about how great it was, only a few dozen needless deaths...but this wasn't due to cleverness but to the fact that we don't know what is going on yet in many places because it is still a violent storm there, and the simple fact that the storm missed the city unlike Katrina! Duh.

Lady Luck rolls her dice and calls the shots yet again. The gas guzzlers made evacuation nearly impossible because they take up too much room per capita, they use up way too much gas, I can drive 40 miles per gallon while 90% of the vehicles I saw on the news were 15 mpg or less clunkers! And you can't use airconditioning when stuck in traffic or when trying to conserve gas to get somewhere.

This need to live inside a perfect bubble is creating the monster that is tearing out our shells from the outside! We can weave and dodge only so long before She delivers the knock out punches. As our cars became bigger and bigger bubbles, we expanded to fill them, growing very fat and inert. The more we move around with cars, the more we look like the bubble we live in.

When it is very hot, the act of turning on airconditioners makes the air fouler and fouler and it raises the outdoor temperature, go feel the air coming out of the exchanger that cools the air inside. Ouch.

We are in a race against time and in the end, we are doomed to lose unless we renounce living in a bubble. Maybe we should all live in tents..heh. I did, for years and years.

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LET THERE BE LIGHT....NOT

2005-09-18T21:09:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

It never seems to end, the inhumanity, the incompetence. Already, I have posted here stories about how Bush travels in a bubble that turns on the lights where ever he or Cheney goes and then they flicker out again after they pass through. The tragedy of this Potemkin light show is obvious and sickening.

But it always gets worse, doesn't it?

From the Hattiesburg American:

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina roared through South Mississippi knocking out electricity and communication systems, the White House ordered power restored to a pipeline that sends fuel to the Northeast.

That order - to restart two power substations in Collins that serve Colonial Pipeline Co. - delayed efforts by at least 24 hours to restore power to two rural hospitals and a number of water systems in the Pine Belt.

At the time, gasoline was in short supply across the country because of Katrina. Prices increased dramatically and lines formed at pumps across the South.

"I considered it a presidential directive to get those pipelines operating," said Jim Compton, general manager of the South Mississippi Electric Power Association - which distributes power that rural electric cooperatives sell to consumers and businesses.

"I reluctantly agreed to pull half our transmission line crews off other projects and made getting the transmission lines to the Collins substations a priority," Compton said. "Our people were told to work until it was done. "They did it in 16 hours, and I consider the effort unprecedented."

So, getting water to the hurricane victims was a low priority item, getting electricity to two hospitals whose patients were dying was low priority.

Keeping people from standing in line with their gas guzzlers and stopping price gouging by restoring the gas feed line...top priority!

Gah. This, dear readers, in a nutshell, is what the "Great Die-off" is all about. Servicing the ever smaller pool of energy users while killing off the weak and powerless is what it is all about. Already, the gas we pump in our cars ought to be stained bright red to represent the dead bodies of those unfortunate people living on oil rich lands or fighting to steal this oil.

Indeed, in Iraq, due to the hurricane and the troops being very near muntiny now, the troops are in near "lock down" mode, hoping to limp along which is why the death toll within Iraq has shot through the roof, hundreds being blown up each day now, the attackers operating more and more in the open.

&spades From WLTV:

Frustration is growing among more than 100 sidetracked truck drivers who set out with water and ice for Hurricane Katrina victims but were diverted to a Federal Emergency Management Agency staging area in western Maryland.
FEMA spokeswoman Deborah Wing told the Cumberland Times-News on Thursday that the trucks were moved to Cumberland for possible response to Hurricane Ophelia after water deliveries to the Gulf Coast outpaced demand.

"We are accommodating them as much as we can," Wing said in response to complaints from some drivers and their federally contracted employer that they didn't know why they were in Cumberland or how long they would be there.

Driver Bill Lutz said he and the other drivers felt lost.

"I asked this morning, 'Are we going to follow the hurricanes until the end of the season?'" Lutz said. "I sound angry, and I am, but I hate inefficiency."

Speaking to a reporter Thursday at the Rocky Gap Lodge & Golf Resort, where drivers were taken aboard local school buses for showers, Lutz said his odyssey began Sept. 6 when he left Wisconsin with a load of water and ice for Meridian, Miss.
He said he arrived on time but was told not to unload; instead, the drivers were sent to Columbia, S.C. Barred from unloading their freight there, they were directed to Cumberland, arriving Wednesday evening, Lutz said.

Angie Breckenridge, logistics coordinator for North Carolina-based Vondrak Farms Logistical Services, has been managing the deliveries for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers through FEMA. She told the Times-News that other drivers were dispatched to Allentown, Pa., and another 30 were sent to Missouri.

"I can't get anyone to answer my phone calls," she said.

Time to either deport Chertoff to his home country or arrest him. This lunacy is ridiculous. No one was calling for help from hurricane Ophelia but many thousands were begging for help NOW from Katrina. You service those who are in line first, dudes! Indeed, one can see that Bush and his crew are more frightened of red staters getting riled. New Orleans voted Democratic so they don't count, obviously.

&spades From Business Week:

SEP. 18 5:19 A.M. ET Qatar's Oil Minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah warned Sunday that OPEC shouldn't raise production just for "increase's sake," saying there were indications that oil prices were decreasing because of low demand.

Ministers from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries meet Monday in Vienna to discuss ways of stabilizing the market after Hurricane Katrina drove prices to new highs -- including possibly raising the group's production ceiling by 2 percent.

The group is widely expected to increase the production ceiling by 500,000 barrels a day.
But previous OPEC moves have done little to ease market fears over supply, however, and any increase is widely regarded as meaningless because it merely sanctions existing production.
Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister Ali Naimi has said he supports a ceiling hike, but that he also did not see demand for more crude. He did not specify the size of the increase.

"We'll listen to the Saudi proposal but we shouldn't increase just for increase's sake," al-Attiyah said Sunday in Doha, Qatar.

Al-Attiyah said the problems with U.S. refineries being offline since Katrina hit were temporary, but the capacity "will take a few months to get back to full production."

"If there's no demand, how will that affect prices?" he said.

With oil prices about 50 percent higher than a year ago and motorists feeling the increase at the gas pump, the ministers have repeatedly said that OPEC is concerned and are doing all they can to keep the market well-supplied and prices stable.

But concern that high prices have weakened oil demand has dampened prices, which had soared above $70 a barrel on concern about production outages caused by Hurricane Katrina, instability in Iraq and the upcoming winter season.

It is most amusing seeing article after article in the regular press including yesterday's rash of articles, all screaming that OPEC will pump more oil so we don't have to wait in lines to fill the bellies of our beasties, those monstrous SUV/trucks that we love so dearly (more than we love our fellow Americans, that is certain!)

This is typical of the sort of hysteria one expects to see at the Hubbert Oil Peak. Namely, the price soars, the poor fall out of the bottom of the market, people will probably freeze to death in the coming years, the poor will be increasingly without either food or transportation to poor paying jobs and the price will fluctuate wildly depending on any set of factors, mostly upwards.

It will be like starting a car in a very cold winter, the starter making the engine cough and die, cough and run then sputtering out.

&spades Now, lastly, about the mosquito spraying. Some idiot had this bright idea that to save the nonexistent population of New Orleans that has been scattered to the four winds, they should spray the city to kill mosquitoes because of all the stagnant water.

The water, of course, is covered with a pretty thick coating of oil and gasoline! In the old days, they used to put a layer of oil on water, I even remember this!--to prevent mosquitoes from using it to hatch larvae. So I seriously doubt there is any need to spray anything. And lo and behold, here is an article about that!

From Rense.com

From Promed Email
Report On Mosquitos - Post Hurricane For New Orleans

US Military Actions On Mosquitoes After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans

By Dean L. Winslow

I served as the US military coordinator for public health and force protection for the combined National Guard task force performing rescue and relief operations in the 13 most heavily affected parishes from 5-15 Sep 2005. Our major logistics hub was being built up at NAS New Orleans, across the river in Belle Chasse, Plaquemines Parish. All 14 000-plus Guardsmen being tasked to go out into the parishes to provide SAR, security, and infrastructure rebuilding passed through Belle Chasse on their way to the Area of Operations (AO). The base also became home to over 4000 military personnel involved with the logistics, command and control and support functions.

Early on, one was struck by the eerie silence and absence of birds as well as seemingly few adult mosquitoes. Since the parish-based vector control systems were not functioning yet, and the civilian contractor responsible for vector control on base had evacuated, we needed to rapidly assess and control the situation.

US Navy SeaBees came in to remove debris and eliminate as much standing water as possible. In addition, Navy and Air National Guard military public health technicians examined undrainable collections of standing water for mosquito larvae and pupae and found none. Light-traps placed around the base early on showed relatively low numbers of adult mosquitoes, but as many as 9 different species were present in one trap.

Louisiana DHH working with an entomology consultant from CDC coordinated with us and prioritized aerial spraying of the most heavily affected parishes, which began last weekend and is continuing.

Dean L. Winslow, Col, MC, CFS
Delaware Air National Guard
deanf015@yahoo.com

Indeed, New Orleans will be lucky if anything can live or grow, besides slime, in the flooded areas for quite a while. Want to kill a tree or lawn?

Pour oil on the ground. Works like magic.

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THE ETERNAL EMERGENCY

2005-09-09T07:28:00.000-04:00

Art by Elaine Meinel Supkis

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

For some time, we arrogantly thought no one had to pay attention to Mother Nature. When the environmental movement was born, and I was part of it from day one, we used to say, "No one fucks with Mother Nature and lives." Well, many people thought they could fuck with Her and now She is moving literally Heaven and Earth. For She IS Heaven and Earth!

There was this commercial for margarine in the seventies where Mother Nature is sitting on a rock, reading to her woodland friends, the advertiser fools her into thinking margarine is butter and suddenly the sky darkens and there is thunder and she growls, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature." This is one commercial I really enjoyed only because of the ending.

The new is very bad today, all over the place so let's start with Mother Nature's business: the earth itself. From IRIS, earthquake maps

Yesterday, the entire planet gave a slight but significant shudder. Virtually every faultline creaked and groaned. Perhaps this is part and parcel with the churning of the somewhat irregular dense material in the center, it is moving faster than the next layer, the Mantle, so there is churning going on.The magnetic poles are near reversing and this will be an interesting experience for us, to say the least. We depend very much on which way the poles are set, you know.

Today, there was another heave of the Australian plate. 7.9-8.1 on the Richter scale. A significant earthquake. It occured in the zone where several similar quakes shoot just before Boxing Day. Already, a 6+ earthquake in the last fifteen minutes shook Chile. The Pacific Plate is being forcibly shoved by Australia. We all know what is going to happen eventually in the not far but really close future: California will have a blow out earthquake(s). It is not probable but inevitable. Everyone is sitting there, studiously trying to ignore this but yesterday, an alarmed scientist yelled about this, really to little avail. California will strengthen their building codes yet again, they announced.

Quite a number of victims of the hurricane are being located in California. Frying pan/fire.

From Yahoo:

Hurricane Katrina may serve as a wake-up call on climate change for developing nations, many of which are vulnerable to devastation from global warming, the World Bank's top environmental official said on Thursday.

Ian Johnson, the World Bank's vice president for environmentally and socially sustainable development, told Reuters the storm's heavy damage in the southern United States would have important implications for poorer countries.

"Just think of the catastrophic impact it's had in a country that's pretty well organized, pretty rich. Transfer that to a country that isn't and may not have the same level of capacity to deal with these sorts of things," Johnson said in an interview.

"Katrina is a terrible tragedy, but maybe it is a wake-up call to all of us to begin understanding what catastrophic events, what damage can occur," he added.

In addition to fostering talks on emissions and promoting clean energy products, Johnson said the World Bank is working with private industry to find ways to protect poor nations from the expected environmental shifts linked to global warming.

"There is a real sense that the train has left the station, and that there is going to be a pretty significant impact of climate change," Johnson said, adding the devastation in New Orleans had increased public sensitivity to these risks.

"Certainly in the press, it seems to have raised questions of the extent to which this is part of a global warming world," he said. "I do think that public opinion is thinking a lot about these issues."

The oceans are dying. The Gulf in particular, is dying rapidly. This summer has been a catastrophe for it. The cleansing hurricanes are helping but not enough for paradoxically, the flood waters, ripe with human waste and chemicals, are flooding into that basin where it will fester since the waters go in a counter-clockwise flow, the Gulf is a cul-de-sac. Even where powerful ocean floods flow like the mighty Gulf Stream, are deteriorating due to human pollution and waste and global warming.

From Xinhuanet:

Typhoon Khanun, the No. 15 strong tropical storm of this year, is expected to hit the central-northern parts of Fujian Province Sunday afternoon, according to weather forecasts.

Typhoon Khanun is approaching the province at a speed of 15 km per hour from the eastern sea region off Taiwan, and the provincial flood control and drought relief headquarters has urgedall-out efforts to make preparations.

Typhoon Khanun has so far reached force 12 which is likely to further strengthen and will bring along heavy precipitation to the province, said the provincial weather station.

Liang Qiping, deputy governor of the province, urged officials in the province to work hard to mobilize the local people in making preparations to fight the upcoming typhoon.

The provincial flood control and drought relief headquarters has asked all the ships and vessels operating on the sea nearby toreturn or take shelters in ports before 18:00 Saturday and all the personnel working at the offshore breading fields to get onshore.

The headquarters also urged the people in mountainous areas to prepare against possible mountain torrents, mud-rock flows and geological disasters. Enditem

You won't see a thing about this in any American news format. At all. I have noted that this year, Asia has been positively ravaged by typhoons. We want sympathy and aid from the world and we are supposedly the richest, most powerful country.

We are not anymore.

Today, Beijing firmly announced the North Korean talks they sponsored that we recklessly walked out on, are resuming with the American team firmly in hand to sign the documents the Chinese have prepared for us. They desperately want to fix things with North Korea so they can secure this border. Now they can do it to their specifications because Americans can't drag their feet anymore. We are over the barrel, beggars at their gates.

Like me, they know that all Americans have to do to fix this is to tax themselves. But Bush won't and half the country won't and so we are being sold down the Yangtze River and toodle-loo, Uncle Sam.

From the BBC:

Humans were influencing the climate long before the Industrial Revolution, new research suggests.

Levels of methane rose steadily in the atmosphere in the first millennium, according to an analysis of gases trapped in ice beneath Antarctica.

Much of the greenhouse gas came from huge fires lit by humans as they cleared land for settlements and farming, researchers report in Science.

But natural climate change would have contributed to the emissions, they say.

Greenhouse gas emissions have risen to record levels over recent centuries but little is known about the atmosphere in pre-industrial times.

As the grazing herds of ice age beasts ran from raging fires set by humans, these fires literally drove them into extinction and humans had to scavange the last of the big creatures and domesticate them and fight to protect them from other humans, thus the herding societies were born. The dog, pig, sheep, cows and horses all were protected so they could remultiply. But in North America, there was domestication of only the dog and many animals were wiped out. The bison were able to survive and multiply only because humans deserted the open plains when the earlier herds were killed off and only reentered them around 5,000 years ago or less.

From the BBC:

Higher UK temperatures are causing soils to "exhale" large quantities of carbon dioxide, probably accelerating global warming, scientists report.

They base their assessment on a huge analysis of soil samples gathered from across England and Wales over 25 years.

The team says its findings, if extended to the whole of the UK, suggest some 13 million tonnes of carbon are being lost from British soils each year.

The Cranfield University group reports its work in the journal Nature.

The scientists say computer models used to forecast future climate trends will now have to be revised because the calculations on which they are based will be wide of the mark.

"Our findings suggest the soil part of the equation is scarier than we had thought," Professor Guy Kirk, of Cranfield University, told journalists at the British Association's Festival of Science in Dublin, Ireland.

"The consequence is that there is more urgency about doing something - global warming will accelerate."

You know, in the Carboniferous Age, a lot of carbon was manipulated by the earth. The oxygen levels soared as plants took over and insects finally evolved to eat them, huge insects, dragon flies 1000 times bigger than today, for example. The oxygen was so rich, so much carbon was "breathing" through the dense understory/soil which wasn't broken down by insects because they were still evolving to fill this new niche...A vast swampland. This is where our coal and oil comes from! This time.

From the BBC:

Scientists are only now starting to recognise the astonishing size reached by pterosaurs, the flying reptiles that lived at the time of the dinosaurs.

New discoveries in the Americas suggest some had wingspans of 18m (60ft).

But there was nothing ugly about the way they moved through the air, according to expert Dr David Martill, of the University of Portsmouth.

Their ability to utilise air currents, thermals and ground effects would astonish aeroplane designers, he said.

"Pterosaurs were beautifully engineered," he told BBC News.

"Their skeletons were exceedingly light: their bones were very thin and hollow, and those hollows were filled with an air-sack system. They'd also got rid of their reptilian scales and their wing membrane was very, very thin.

From another period of hyper-global warming/high oxygen/high carbon era. Gigantisim coupled with flying=rich atmosphere.

We know very little about the climate in the far past. We are only just beginning to understand from ice core samples what it was like only 100,000 years ago! Studies! We need more information. Alas, guess what Bush keeps cutting! Recently in the news was this story about how the born again boobies who worship Bush are now asserting dinosaurs existed with humans. They fight science tooth and nail, not understanding that understanding nature is a life and death issue. They imagine if they imagine a universe fit for a nursery school, it will magically do what they desire.

Money for atmospheric/planetary research! Ha. The Space Shuttle is being set back even further in time, the hurricanes ruining all sorts of things down there in Florida. Duh. We can't build space ports where Mother Nature plans to scour clean. And with global warming, all of Florida and the Gulf lowlands are history. Uninhabitable. People will live there, of course, but they are living on borrowed time, the lease on the land held by Mother Nature, running out rapidly.

In this war with Mother Nature, there will be only one winner. And She always wins. This is inevitable. This is why working with Her beats fighting Her.

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KATRINA BLOWS RIGHT PAST US

2005-08-31T14:29:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

The rain started two days ago for Hurricane Katrina had quite a reach, pulling moisture from the Atlantic, the Gulf and the Pacific Oceans all at once. Over an inch fell here. We have been in this drought so the rain was a blessing. But this morning, as the remains of that hurricane swirled up the center of America, we could feel the oppression for the isobars were still pretty low.

From Intellicast.com.
You see, the hurricane broke in three. Like that comet that hit Jupiter, one fragment after another, piling in, this hurricane is taking two days to pass us by.

This morning at dawn, the oppression of the depression passing to the west of us woke me up. My family gets migrane headaches with big storms and my head felt funny and my eyes were hypersensitive. The wind blew hard and then died down and the sun broke out and it looked all so beautiful. I posted the picture at 8am.

Then it got more depressive and my head began to really hurt around lunch. But I still not only blogged on, I worked outside because it wasn't raining. But that low passed by with violent gusts of wind that sent the trees bending and after the worst gusts, we took pictures outside. So far, no problems. The wind is this powerful so far away from the hurricane, it is pretty awesome.

My son called from work to complain about his own headaches. He needed to know how long this was going to happen. I told him the last low had passed us by. I was wrong. (Heh! Wrong! Missed a prediction!!!)

The winds then died down a second time and we ran around doing things but then my head began to pound again. I went inside to check it out. The two lows earlier now had three! And the third one is pushing rain this way.

So we will get some of the actual rain from the main low of Katrina after all!

It is hot and muggy. Quite different from even three hours ago, the temperature is going up even as the sun is more and more scarce.

The rain is beginning to pelt the windows. I had to move my plants around on the deck because the bigger ones were being toppled over by the gusts. But that is pretty much all. I am glad Her fury was spent by the time She came up here. My heart goes out to everyone else who wasn't so lucky.

&spades And on the energy front, this news:From MSN.com:

In the markets, by mid-morning in London on Wednesday, Nymex West Texas Intermediate was again creeping back towards the nominal record high of $70.85 a barrel hit on Tuesday as speculators expected US oil inventories to be squeezed. WTI for October delivery stood at $70.50 a barrel, up 69 cents from Tuesday's close. Gasoline futures moved up more than 3 per cent to $2.57 a gallon, also a new record.

The damage from Hurricane Katrina has been worse than expected, initial assessments showed on Tuesday, prompting a new rise in oil prices to record levels and raising concerns about the cost of insurance in the Gulf of Mexico.

Industry sources said that one big underwriter had already stopped providing business-interruption insurance in the Gulf and others warned that rising storm losses would lead to premiums so high that insuring platforms could become uneconomic.

Damage assessments on Tuesday suggested that it could take a week to restart refineries hit by the hurricane at a time when supplies already are tight.

One group of people very interested in global warming issues and sea rise issues are the insurers. They have been pushing for changes for a while. Which is why Bush chose this week, oh, such timing!--to have the EPA (Energy Pollutes America) allow old coal burning generators to continue polluting the air and killing my forest.

Yes, my forest has been dying for quite a while. The grandest, oldest trees are suffering greatly. All my maples older than 60 years are rotting away, they just up and die on me! I took down several 300 year old maples this last 10 years and although I have many saplings, the middle aged ones are now dying! Not to mention the other bad stuff from acid rain which affects all the trees including the swift growing, swift dying pines.

In 1600, the natives made long houses here using the loose bark from huge white birch trees. They peeled off the bark which peels off naturally. In huge sheets. The average full sized one had trunks about 2-3'+ in diameter. Now, they die when only 1' in diameter. They just sigh, lose their leaves and then topple over. As babies.

Bah.

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A HOLE IN THE BUCKET

2005-08-30T18:19:00.000-04:00

Photos in this essay from Yahoo.

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

The picture above is just one of several dikes that were breeched. The city won't stop filling up with water until the water levels equalize. The breech is wide, the entire bank has collapsed so no simple sandbagging is possible. The breech has been too long, too, and the water cuts deeper and deeper.

So the city will be underwater and will remain so until the water pressure of water draining into the lake ceases as well as the water out ceases for then, it slows down. After it slows down, one can fill the breeches only to do so requires getting to them all!

The damage is very significant. Here are some important views, nationally speaking: Yet another oil rig, washed ashore as if it were a boat. We have no idea how many sank entirely. Very big object. We will be paying for this baby starting about....now.

Oil storage under water. This means it can't be tapped until the waters recede. Already, right now, buildings are burning in New Orleans, ships have burned. This could burn too. Let's hope it doesn't short out, for example. The water around it is very flamable, you know.

Victim swimming in very toxic waters. Note the gasoline on the surface. Drop a match or cigarette on this and voosh.
New photo:
Severe pollution that is going to kill even more things in the Gulf! Already, this has been one deadly summer there. Another fire hazard in a residential neighborhood. The houses being coated with this stuff cannot be simply cleaned out. Trust me on this, this is what I do for a living: saving damaged houses.

Another reason why the city has to be utterly evacuated.

Reason #233 why we need the National Guard in America, not Iraq. We have over 100,000 people stuck in New Orleans and many of the roads are a wreck.
Irony hour is here. This casino's name is "Presidential Casino"--I kid you not. Apt name, sort of our Titanic moment, no? Fortunately, the people fled who lived in these beachfront homes. Casinos are a cancer on our nation and they crush many lives silently but in this case, literally crushing people's homes. They are a menace on every level.

I am off to dinner now. What a mess.

LATEST NEWS: From the NYT:

Gas fires were erupting throughout the city, looters were raiding abandoned businesses downtown, hospitals were making plans to airlift critically ill patients to other cities, numerous roadways were buckled, and residents who had tried to ride out the storm were frantically waving for rescue from their rooftops. A spokesman for the Coast Guard said that more than 1,200 people had been taken to safety by boat and helicopter on Monday and "thousands today."

Well, reason #350 for not sending the entire National Guard to Iraq! How many blocks does New Orleans have? 20,000? With a pitiful 1.500 NG this means...one per square mile? Huh?

No wonder looting is now rampant. When you see danger, thousands of NG should come in and clear the place out and then heavily patrol it.

They aren't able to do this because they are overwhelmed. Rescue on the cheap just like war on the cheap=defeat. As the poor people trying to rescue those poor people, did you know, all the schools in New Orleans are now losing their buses to the floods?

Insane. Those buses should have been filled with people and driven to high ground pronto before the storm hit! Simple: drive into the neighborhoods with a bull horn and two NG people per bus and start rousting people out! And then drive off. There are at least 5,000 such buses that are not lost causes. This would require 10,000 NG people which we don't have, do we?

Gack.

People are going to die in riots and insurrections as the government shoots to kill. Elderly are already dying in droves, drowning or of lack of care. This is all so escapable. But we let things slide, played games as if these disasters won't happen. From the San Francisco Museum:

This reminds me of 9/11 when everyone protecting America was snoring away. Lives will be lost due to lack of foresight and care.

We need people who want to be functional running our government but then look at yesterday's "Golden Scapegoat" winner.

Last and not least, Atrios comes this from Pandragon:

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars. (Much of the research here is from Nexis, which is why some articles aren't linked.)

In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to this Feb. 16, 2004, article, in New Orleans CityBusiness:

The $750 million Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection project is another major Corps project, which remains about 20% incomplete due to lack of funds, said Al Naomi, project manager. That project consists of building up levees and protection for pumping stations on the east bank of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Charles and Jefferson parishes.

The Lake Pontchartrain project is slated to receive $3.9 million in the president's 2005 budget. Naomi said about $20 million is needed.

"The longer we wait without funding, the more we sink," he said. "I've got at least six levee construction contracts that need to be done to raise the levee protection back to where it should be (because of settling). Right now I owe my contractors about $5 million. And we're going to have to pay them interest."

That June, with the 2004 hurricane seasion starting, the Corps' Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don’t get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can’t stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn’t that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can’t raise them."

As per usual for the monkey at the wheel, to "save" money so it looks like the irresponsible twats ruining our country are trying to fix things, they cut out funds needed to keep us all alive. Naturally. Just wait when we really have to cut the budget and raise taxes.

Riots and insurrections, here we come.

MORE NEWS:From Yahoo news:

The United States can expect major economic disruption which will ripple worldwide after Hurricane Katrina's furious winds and rain shut down ports and hammered oil production, analysts said.

ADVERTISEMENT

With towns flattened, Mississippi ports blocked, coastal refineries starved of crude and oil production in the Gulf of Mexico virtually at a standstill, Katrina has had a devastating effect.

Total economic losses from one of the most powerful hurricanes in US history could go as high as 35 billion dollars, said Peter Zeihan, senior analyst at Stratfor, a global economic and political consultancy in Austin, Texas.

"The big question is how much the rivers and ports have been silted up. It could be fixed in two days, it could be two months," he told AFP.

"If it's the longer end, we're going right into the grain harvest. The US is the biggest grain exporter in the world, and most of those exports go down the Mississippi. So food and feed prices could soar worldwide," he said.

"And imports of oil and all sorts of other goods will be blocked going upstream. Domestic prices will jump as a result."

The Great Mississippi Flood was the push that sent countless workers, farmers and banks spiralling down the rabbit hole. When economies are as unbalanced as ours is...and remember, the Mississippi Flood would have been tolerable if Germany didn't suddenly announce they were suspending paying for WWI and basically declared bankrupcy, thus forcing the dying British Empire that was running deep in the red to lurch off the cliff...along with poor France who bore the brunt of the WWI mess...when the scales are unbalanced, any mishap to the "core" destroys the world's economic balance. And we are witnessing just such an event. Just like the rape of California by Enron pushed us into a recession that we used $2 trillion in deficit spending to "grow out of" which failed, by the way. We shall see exactly how badly this failed in the next year.

Damn.

MORE NEWS: 9 oil rigs shoved ashore and 3 missing entirely. They are not done assessing the damage. This is considerable damage. On a lot of levels. If we had a President that wasn't buddy buddy with the oil companies, he would pull a Chavez and take over the oil companies until the crisis is over to prevent hysteria and PRICE GOUGING. The price gouging will be ferocious and Bush will ask for aid and tax cuts for the price gougers themselves! I know he will. It is what that lunatic does: his worst.

Riots and insurrections...definitely, if Bush lets the oil companies ream us all out, he will at best get to flee like Nixon did, to happy retirement where he can complain about how he didn't deserve impeachment. (Nixon was booted out thanks to wage/price controls and oil problems!)

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THE BIG BLOW

2005-08-30T12:13:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Unlike the previous hurricane where the media studiously ignored spectacular pictures of oil drilling rig failures, this time they couldn't stop the photo showing this huge rig wedged under a high bridge.

All the oil dealers saw it and went crazy and now the price of oil is way way up and it is going to climb and climb because transportation of all sorts is dead in the water in the Mississippi lowlands and this means no oil or gas production, PERIOD.

The reverberations from this will be immense this winter. We will be short of winter oil and possibly even natural gas!

More: we don't know the status of the oil rigs in the Gulf but this picture shows clearly, we will be lucky if half are useable. The multilevel mess here is hard to minimize. This hurricane struck in the heart of our fuel systems. We have systems in New Jersey and in Texas and in California but guess what?

What if, as I fully expect in the next two years, California has its big blow? You know, the blow out of the earth's crust. Already, our economy is teetering on the edge of disaster and unlike the Florida hurricanes which messed with some vegetable harvests and tourism, this one hit a major industrial city complex that sustains our entire economy! The connection between New Orleans and Chicago has been intimate and huge since La Salle. The entire Civil War was over this river for the northern states could do just fine if they controlled the Mississippi river! So they had to fight the states that left the union simply because this was literally life and death for Chicago and its surrounding region.

And guess where Lincoln hailed from?

The headwaters of the Mississippi river.

This is also why the economy of the entire Mississippi basin went into a severe tail spin during the Great Flood and the bankruptcies from that flood took down one bank after another. This was like a small hole in a very big ship. It takes a while for the Titanic to sink!

Last election (sic) we were promised oil would halve in price. Many voters in red areas which are mostly rural or exurban, believed this utter lie and trooped to the polls to support their executioner. Then they waited happily for the oil to drop in price now that Bush controlled all levels of the government. Their bitter dissappointment is showing up in the polls now. After this hurricane, Bush is toast. He is at a vacation resort, talking about crap while New Orleans drowns!

But then, I am not President. Even though my ability to predict the future is very high, people don't want to take the measures we must all take to prevent this sort of mess.

New Orleans isn't habitable. A million people have to be cared for, a long time. Not one week. The flooding will continue until it ends and the last Great Flood went for months. There are more hurricanes waiting down the line in the Atlantic....Mother Nature isn't through with us, not at all.

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OIL WOES WEIGH LIKE A FEATHER

2005-08-26T06:53:00.000-04:00

Picture on left courtesy of Earl Bockenfeld

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

As oil prices climbed to nearly seventy dollars this week, unrest grows. At one gas station, a self-centered man decided to become a criminal so he tried to steal the gas, his feeling of entitlement, I suppose. When the station owner ran out to stop him, he ran him over, killing him. This story is a metaphor for America.

For we are running over a lot of people in our quest to secure oil.

This week's other story about Robertson suggesting we murder the duly elected leader of Venezuela simply because he interfers with the oil company's dominance of that country, is another sign of how mental illness is destroying American minds thanks to the Hubbert Oil Peak. The other photo here is about an anti-oil company, anti-Bush demonstration in LA hosted by a hip hop star. Of course, he wants cheap energy. And the right to be very fat. And drive all over the place, mindlessly.

This lust is a problem.

A million spoiled enfants, Americans are taking their rage out on the employees working at low wages for the oil companies. This rage will be directed towards the GOP which is why various articles in the news fret about this. Unfortunately, the realistic solution, to retrofit our country so it can survive the really deadly downslope of the Hubbert Oil Peak, isn't popular. Nor will it ever be popular. Even as everyone complains about the high cost of fuel, very few are changing anything at all. So the true weight of all this is like a feather balanced on the scales of desire. Obviously, despite the pain, we want to gain.

Just yesterday there was this news story about a very obese woman who was angry with her doctor because he told her very forcefully that her gluttony was going to kill her. Her feelings were so hurt, she filed a complaint about him and he was disciplined by the board that controls doctor's licenses. She didn't want to be told bad news, she wanted to be catered to.

This childish attitude about reality is where things can go off the rails hugely.

King Henry VIII was part of a new movement in politics in his time: the absolute monarch who could defy even the Church and create anything he wanted and he wanted to slough off an undesirable wife and so he started his own religion. He killed more than one wife in his quest for the perfect spouse and he ate like a pig, feeling that there should be no limit to anything he desired.

As his body deteriorated, he suffered from dietary diseases and was increasingly enraged and murderous as reality closed in on him. When his bloated, monstrous remains collapsed, his country was on the verge of collapse. After many struggles, his daughter, Elizabeth I, took over. She was a strict eater because of her loathing of what happened before but she was very vain and her vanities put England into serious trouble repeatedly (refusing to marry was at the top of the list). Her reign was glorious but vain. Everything fell apart upon her death.

The world isn't limitless and the price we pay for our appetites can be severe or even fatal. The recent energy bill passed by the lunatics running this nation was one big fat, vain, ugly exercise in childish denial. It made things significantly worse. One of the things Americans could do to recapture all our money that is flowing out of our pockets now is to tax oil companies heavily.

Instead, we cut their taxes even more!

So all our wealth will slither into the oil companies' hands and they will use it to drive us all into madcap wars as they use American lusts and vain delusions to whip us into neo-fascist wars of conquest to give them control of all the world's remaining oil. They will do this as cheaply as possible, note how they still won't bother with giving our troops armor! This isn't accidental, it is deliberate.

They want us dead, in the end. This is why Cindy Sheehan's quest in Texas, the heart of the oil/ruler conspiracies, troubles them so greatly. They need to direct American anger to the targets they choose and the Antiholy Wars that are raging are a side issue because they also want to kill Christians in Venezuela (and Mexico and Canada!) if this is needed in order to control world oil.

In other words, we took over OPEC or rather, the Saudis and Bush have conspired to change America into the OPEC strong arm enforcer. The entire world is mad at us for this. This is why we are increasingly unpopular. We parade our gluttony and vanity by the mere fact that we are growing huge, massive, our massive cars aren't disappearing, we cling to them just like we cling to our lust to eat nonstop. We don't want any limits.

This week, Chuck Hagel, a Republican Senator who wants to be President, talked about changing our approach to oil by conserving and using alternative energy systems. Unlike me, when I talk about this, I am bracing and full of confidence, and I tell everyone, change isn't bad for us! It will probably save us from ourselves!--he looked scared. Like he was giving us medicine without the sugar.

Well, we don't need sugar. We need the bracing effects of a dash of bitter medicine. It won't hurt!

Hagel won't go far with this. He can't ask for belt tightening when the very rich want to lord it over us. Like Queen Elizabeth's successor who wanted to ape his family's bad habits, the reaction can be severe. This is what the Puritan ethos was all about! The commoners chopped off the head of the king! The English went on to create an empire and was able to go back to wild spending, unfettered appetites which still run strong today in the royal family. Despite the death of the empire, they live as if they rule the earth, which they do, via the American oil companies. Like the Saudi royals.

Limits are coming! The earth isn't a ball of oil!

When the limits come, it won't be pretty. I expect American lust and gluttony to drive us to use nuclear weapons to reduce competition and gain power over resources. The desire to pull that trigger to get what we want, the outlaw ethos, is very strong and will grow stronger.

The greatest temptation is always the powerful abusing the weak. Ask any child molestor.

Ask any ruler.

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EATING THE SEED CORN

2005-08-19T08:41:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

There has always been a direct connection between high oil prices and war in the Middle East. No matter who or why the war is for or about, this always causes oil prices to climb for obvious reasons. When Bush and the Texas oilmen conspired with Blair to start a totally uncalled for and obviously illegal war so they could steal oil and control OPEC, one of the unspoken in public but touted loudly by extention in the media before the war was that oil would become very cheap again as it was when Russia entered the international oil markets and blew out the price supports of OPEC.

The gamble was a swift victory and happy Iraqis handing over the oil without question. This premise turned out to be wishful thinking. A rule of war is, once launched, it stops when it wants to stop not when one wishes it could stop.

So, as the price of fuels skyrocket, first the rulers lied to us and said, there is no inflation. Then as inflation began to set in selectively, they claimed that it was only a few sectors, in food and fuel and transport. No worry. Then the fire of inflation destroyed the value of manufactured goods and the rulers yelled that this is great! No one gets to make a profit and everything sold at fire sale prices means no inflation! Whoopee.

As the destruction continues apace, they said each month, the price of oil would drop. And besides, if you play tricky fiscal manipulation games, the price of oil during the last two major wars in the Middle East were higher, adjusted etc. The horrible fact that the price rises in the past affected only oil unlike today with all the privatization of all energy systems, any time now that the price of oil goes up, all other energy sources rise instantly the same degree amplifying the effects, is not mentioned for some odd and obviously infuriating reason.

And the price isn't going down. From the BBC, of course:

Ecuador's state oil company says it is suspending crude oil exports following five days of protests in two provinces that have slashed production.
Hundreds of demonstrators in Sucumbios and Orellana have occupied oil installations and airports.

They want more of the country's oil money to be spent on infrastructure and new jobs. Ecuador is the fifth biggest oil producer in South America.

The government has declared a state of emergency in the region.

Iron clad rule in American media: thou shalt not ever talk about South or Central American news except if the spooks in Washington want to run fake stories---holds steady as all the American media ignores this news that directly impacts on all of us!

From the Washington Post:

President Bush and members of Congress are facing an uncomfortable political reality this summer: They have little to offer Americans to ease their pain at the pump.

With gasoline prices nearing or topping $3 per gallon in some cities, Bush and lawmakers would be thrilled to call for steps big and small to quickly take the pressure off motorists financially -- and themselves politically. The president's advisers cite high gasoline prices as one reason for Bush's sagging approval ratings, while lawmakers home for the August break are feeling the heat from anxious constituents.

But the prices are an economic and political problem for which Washington has few, if any, policy remedies that would be effective or practical in the near term, according to many energy experts and elected officials.

Time to replace these helpless, stupid numskulls! Of course, the media can't teach people anything since they refuse to cover the real news in America so voters vote for idiots because everyone has been dumbed down. Here is my Senator, Schumer:

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) is one of several Democrats who support releasing oil from the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve. He warned this week that the soaring prices are "taking money out of the hands of working families." The idea is to pour U.S. oil into the world market to push down prices. But energy analysts warn that this move would draw down reserves whose stated purpose is to protect national security, not to manipulate prices. In any event, they note, the price drop would be uncertain and would perhaps amount to as little as a few cents per gallon.

"Gas prices are clearly reaching a level where it's a political problem for people," said Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, but "unless you empty [the reserve], it is a very temporary expedient. It does not affect the basic supply-and-demand problem."

Tapping the oil reserve might help but I remember my Senators voting for the damn war and this is the root cause of the price hikes. And the war is spreading not contracting.

From the BBC:

At least one missile has been fired at a US Navy ship docked in the Jordanian port of Aqaba, officials said.
The rocket missed the USS Ashland, but hit a nearby warehouse killing one Jordanian soldier and injuring another.

In a second attack minutes later another missile, also launched from Jordanian soil, was fired at an airport in Eilat, in neighbouring Israel.Israeli and Jordanian authorities are working together to track down the unknown assailants.

The puppet governments in all the Middle East do our bidding and the more they work with Israel the worse it gets with their own very angry population. Saudi Arabia, a very harsh, right wing police state, a totalitarian state, claims they killed the head of al Qaeda two days ago. Well, this Hydra simply grows new heads as the unhappy population struggles with their despotic rulers.

Of course, this struggle is despot vs despot. No happy ending in sight. But it is part of the great fire that is consuming this most explosive region on earth, literally and metaphorically explosive.

From a Wisconsin TV station:

Three Republican lawmakers say Wisconsinites deserve a gas tax holiday for the rest of the year.
It would cut pump prices by 15 cents a gallon and take $170 million out of the state budget.
The legislators want to cut the 30 cent-a-gallon tax in half from Sept. 1 and Dec. 31. They figure it will save about $100 on average for a family with two cars.
Regular unleaded prices hit an average $2.64 a gallon in Wisconsin on Wednesday, up from $1.94 a year ago.
Rep. Robin Vos, Pat Strachota and Don Pridemore want the governor to call the Legislature into special session to approve their plan.
The lawmakers said funding shortfall would be covered by $181 million that would accumulate in the transportation fund over the next two years.

Smart move. Destroy the highway funds so you can't fix roads and bridges! That will be great. Lots of gas and no roads. Other desperate measures will be suggested, that I know. Like extending gambling even more so gamblers can pay for everything. Great.

Back to the WP article:

Lawmakers also cannot easily suspend or reduce the 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal tax on gasoline. That money goes straight into a trust fund for covering highway and mass-transit upgrades. When gas prices climbed in the 1990s, some Republicans were quick to call for lowering the tax. This time, however, Congress has boxed itself in by passing the largest-ever transportation bill just before leaving for the August recess.

Yup. As I and many others pointed out, the highway robbery bill is a big, fat porker of a pig, just what we don't need now. The dessication of Amtrak continues while throwing all our money and efforts into extending the inefficient highway systems is just another sign of the raging insanity that possesses us today.

Five years ago, higher CAFE standards for vehicles was suggested in Congress and both parties screamed like banshees. As well as deluded Americans who thought the world was a big bag of oil we could tap forever (bad analogy, empty bags collapse!). We cut support for alternative energy systems, we cut everything. As I noted just two days ago, the hysteria over a 4.7 cent tax hike in gas taxes to pay for future systems was screamed down by a chorus of hysterical ninnies claiming it would kill commerce and the economy back when gas was retailing for just 95 cents a gallon.

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and others say Bush should take a harder line with Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing nations, and demand that they release more oil and help push down the price of oil, which hit a record $66 per barrel this week. But skeptics say that approach has not worked in the past. "We have to realize they have the oil, and it's a seller's market," Beauprez said.

Heh. Taking hard lines with our owners is stupid. The Chinese, Japanese and Saudis own our asses. They are our new bosses. We can squirm and scream but note that it is all fake since they own our politicians! Look at the yuan garbage. Everyone, everyone was screaming about it then the Chinese manipulated it by 2.1% and now all the professional screamers shut up and the news media went on to new topics, equally stupid.

I noted here that there was little sane analysis of the currency manipulations because our rulers don't want us to have a clue about this subject. This is how they make the most money with the least effort and they control the currency values so they can make 100% profitable bets on a daily basis without blushing with shame. They don't want us to know how they milk the currencies of the world to make them rich and us, slaves.

Bush, who signed into law a new energy policy earlier this year, has told audiences that the measure will not pull down prices now, but will set the stage for the United States to rely less on foreign oil in the future and more on domestically produced alternative fuels and on hybrid vehicles.

The energy bill does none of that. The support for alternative fuels is crap. The hybrid vehicle stuff, useless in the long run. The energy bill is stuffed with junk subsidizing extending exurbia which votes for Bush...now. It makes us more fossil fuel dependent, extending gas lines, for example, even though gas is reaching its Hubbert Oil Peak right now in America and is already in decline in Canada.

Soon enough, the Canadians will panic and decide to cut us off to preserve some fossil fuel for themselves in the future.

Meanwhile, we plan to drill in the last resorts for oil, we will eat up the very last of our seed corn for the future. We plan to leave not one drop of oil for our great grandchildren.

The Real Dark Ages will be very unpleasant for them. This ticks me off.

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KEEP ON TRUCKING...NOT

2005-08-11T08:21:00.000-04:00

From NBC news

by Elaine Meinel Supkis

From Atrios:

Truckers in Florida protest high prices

More than 600 truckers gathered in their big rigs Wednesday to protest the rising gas prices in South Florida, NBC 6's Hank Tester reported.The trucks, which included tractor-trailers, dump trucks and box trucks, gathered at the intersection of Okeechobee Road and the Florida Turnpike in Miami-Dade County.

snip

The drivers told NBC 6 that the shipping companies that contract them to haul to the Port of Miami pay around 85 cents per mile. With the high cost of gas, operating per mile could cost 60 cents.
"A lot of people are making money on this business -- the shipping line, the owner of the company, the marine terminal. They make a lot of money but we are poor," driver Luis Rivera said.

Looks like the natives are getting restive. I wondered how long this would take. Let's look at the past and see how propaganda, the media and the GOP cross conspire to work people into a lather when they want things done but then go lax and sleepy when a Republican is running the place.

During the Clinton years, fuel was very cheap. Few people wondered why and the pundits lied so everyone thought this was the new status quo and not a very temporary condition. So we began to guzzle energy again. Recklessly and willfully, we launched ourselves into increasingly bigger and bigger houses and vehicles. To slow down the obvious pollution and other negative effects (try parking these days!), Clinton proposed several measures. To balance the budget that the GOP whacked into red ink territory, Clinton proposed a four cent surtax on gasoline.

The screeches of horror were deafening. A typical example: From NPRI:

Nevadans constantly complain—and rightfully so—about the high price of gasoline in the Silver State. Although prices have declined in recent months, gas in Nevada costs significantly higher than in other states, including nearby California. Many critics, such as the editors of the Las Vegas Sun, allege the state is being "gouged by an industry that allows only token competition." Such claims remain to be proven, but one fact in the discussion regarding gas prices cannot be disputed: the majority of Nevada’s drivers pay a whopping 52.05 cents per gallon in federal, state, and county taxes. Herewith, an examination of Nevada’s gas tax structure.

The Federal Bite

The federal government’s gas tax is 18.3 cents per gallon. The most recent tax increase of 4.3 cents came in 1993, with the passage of President Clinton’s first budget. As the following chart indicates, the federal gas tax bite has risen precipitously in recent years:

1980 4 cents
1982 9 cents
1989 14 cents
1993 18.3 cents

The article from 1998 goes on and on about this terrible 18.3% tax and how this is ruination for us all. Since 1998, the price of fuel has shot up 100%+ and the same yappers screaming about federal taxes are silent. Worse, we are now running deficits of heroic proportions.

Here is a reminder of the debate in 1996: From CNN, back when it was still owned by Ted Turner:

It may be a patriotic duty to fume over the spike in gas prices, but like it or not, there's a paradox in our pique: America's love affair with cheap energy is precisely the reason that gas taxes should be higher. Bob Dole and Bill Clinton won't say so, of course. They're busy sparring over a repeal of the 4.3 cents-per-gallon gas tax the President included in his 1993 deficit-reduction plan. But pandering isn't inevitable: four years ago, Ross Perot and Paul Tsongas were calling for a new 50 cents-per-gallon tax to be phased in over a number of years. The Big Three automakers and oil giants Chevron and Conoco were onboard with the basic concept. Why? They had come around to the view held by every other advanced nation: cheap oil is costly to the environment, the economy and national security, and raising taxes to reduce consumption is a smart way to fund government.

To the rest of the world, our price complaint must look a little silly. Even at an average $1.30 per gallon, gas prices are as low today in real terms as they were in 1950-and nearly 40% lower than after the last embargo's price peak in 1981. Thanks to these bargains, Americans slurp as much oil as ever. In France, Germany and Japan, meanwhile, a gallon of gas costs more than $4. Taxes there account for 50% to 80% of the pump price. Here, by contrast, federal and state taxes together average 38 cents per gallon, less than 30% of the price. Thanks in part to their policy of high-priced gas, our industrial competitors have made stunning strides in energy efficiency and independence. In Japan the high cost of oil imports--5.5% of GDP in 1980--forced industry to restructure. By 1990 oil imports were 1% of GDP. Put another way, Japan produces about three times its 1975 output with, in effect, the same tank of gas.

An intelligent article from a network that was once my very favorite news source. Sigh.

Irresponsible behavior is all the rage in the Republican capitols. The latest salvos in the war to bankrupt America are the Energy Bill which is a bill, all right, a bill our children will have to pay since it does nearly nothing to prepare us for the eons of no cheap oil that will follow in the wake of the Hubbert Oil Peak, and the Highway Bill which is really highway robbery since it isn't using money raised by gasoline taxes but is loading on even more debt!

From Associated Press:

President Bush on Wednesday signed a whopping $286.4 billion transportation bill, touting it as bringing the nation’s transportation network "into the 21st century."
With fanfare, Bush signed the more than 1,000-page highway bill into law even though it was more costly than he preferred. It includes cash to bankroll some 6,000 pet projects for lawmakers in their home districts.

The setting for Bush’s bill-signing ceremony and speech was a plant operated by Caterpillar Inc., which makes road-building equipment. For the president, it was his second trip away from his Texas ranch this week to highlight recently passed legislation.

This bill is ridiculous on so many levels! Building bridges to nowhere. Extending suburbia across our precious farmlands. Like the energy bill, it rewards and protects those very people who are doing the exact opposite of what we should be doing.

The poor truckers don't understand their plight here for they are caught up in the same net they wove themselves. They are cogs in a machine that is going to begin grinding gears for lack of lubricating oil. They will be ground up with their rigs. The free spending ways of America will be ending, too. When it does, we will have lots of fine highways to bicycle on only no one will want to since these roads will be literally roads to nowhere.

Building roads and stadiums and other things don't really "grow" our economy. The problem of us importing nearly everything that is manufactured is growing worse, not better. Caterpillar's American factory was the site of the signing as the unions and the corporate bosses stood around with straight faces as Bush talked about creating American jobs.

Of course, this is all welfare queen stuff. After all, every one of these jobs are due to federal taxes and federal debt. You and i are paying for all this. This doesn't make us richer or better. It does give parasites more chances to make money at our expense. Note how this government boondoggle isn't being attacked by the minions in the media.

Dead silence. Worse, crowing about how great it is, we can do this stupid stuff.

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PARADISE LOST

2005-08-08T21:04:00.000-04:00

Photo:Max Becherer/Polaris, for The New York Times/Metropolitan Museum, the Cloisters Unicorn tapestry

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

The Unicorn dips its einhorn into the water spilling out of the Well at the center of Paradise, cleansing the water. The Child and the Mother walk in the wastelands, holding hands, the stream of life, an open sewer running down the middle of the street in Baghdad, Iraq.

Our hell on earth.

Sometimes a very brief story grabs me. The reports that the writing of the Constituion of Iraq has been suspended because of dust storms caused a pang of sorrow. Aside from the fact that this document will reenslave women, there is the matter of Paradise: it is gone.

This has consequences. Our concept of law, history, culture and astronomy all spring out of the Euprates/Tigris valley via the Bible as well as other means. It is the bedrock of our entire culture. Millions of Americans worship the Bible blindly not knowing the truth: Paradise was on earth, once. In the city of Ur.

On February 10th, 1258, the Mongols took down Baghdad and slaughtered the populace and laid the rich lands and gold plated mosques into ruin, they destroyed the complex irrigation systems and wrecked the farmlands. They spared nearly no one. The Christians hailed this as the Apocalypse and the Muslim world agreed, it was the End of Times.

But it wasn't at all. Life springs ever eternal but Paradise never came back. The Greeks, 1,000 years earlier, called Babylon, an earlier incarnation of Baghdad, "One of the Wonders of the World" and it was the delight of Alexander the Great and his doom, that Heaven on Earth.

For nearly 1,000 years after the Mongols destroyed it, the place festered and waited, increasingly isolated and degraded, the Oldest Lady, she was. Then, oil was discovered.

Soon enough, gold and power poured into Baghdad only instead of bringing peace and plenty it brought only death and war. Like the dragon that sits upon the hoard, fighting and killing all who come only to fall to Siegfried's sword, cursing him to an eternity of betrayal and death in his own turn, so sits Baghdad. And we waved our Depleted Uranium sword and laughed as we slew them, we thought, this was all too easy. We now sit in Baghdad, upon the golden hoard, and it is killing us. It is killing us very relentlessly, as our rulers clutch this prize, many die.

Today, aside from the usual violent deaths, they are dying of disease from the polluted waters, they are dying from the dust that is rasing hell as it blows mournfully through, choking young and old, leaving death all over the great, ancient city.

For it is no longer one of the Seven Wonders, it is one of the warnings to humanity as to our fate!

From the Washington Post:

Before the Pentagon begins reducing troop levels in Iraq next year it probably will increase them this fall to provide extra security for a planned October referendum and a December election, a Pentagon official said Monday.

Lawrence Di Rita, spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, noted that troop levels were raised last January during Iraq's first elections, and then returned to the current level of about 138,000 several weeks later.

"It's perfectly plausible to assume we'll do the same thing for this election," he said, while stressing that no decisions have been made.

Di Rita said he did not know how many extra troops might be needed during the referendum and election period.

The tormentors in the Pentagon, the crazy man in the White House, every day, they whipsaw us all. After spending many hours lying about how the troops will come home and not at night, in small boxes, they blurt out the truth because they know, if they don't, there will be a riot.

Well, they might get their riots soon enough. All the frightened wives and mothers and fathers and children of the people stationed in the circle of Hell in Iraq want to know that they will come home. Now, utter despair.

There is no victory, no end, no exit. No light except for the final glow as the soul passes forever through the Gates of Death.

Di Rita said the number of extra U.S. troops needed for the fall voting would depend in part on the readiness of newly trained Iraqi security forces.

News elsewhere, notes that many of the attacks in Iraq come from the troops we are training for they hate us. Why we think more training will make things better for us is a particular insanity that is held dear by those who never served in Nam, made fun of Kerry for serving in Nam and who think we didn't win in Vietnam because volunteers like Kerry were responsible for everything.

And us hippie chicks. We messed it all up, too.

Cindy Sheehan has been demonstrating in the hot Texas sun, demanding Bush explain his stupid war. He sent out some aides to explain nothing and of course, they didn't tell her they want more dupes to die there. They pretend all is well.

From CNN:

"....I told them Iraq was not a threat to the United States and that now people are dead for nothing. I told them I wouldn't leave until I talked to George Bush."

She said Hagin told her, "I want to assure you that he (Bush) really does care."

"And I said if he does care, why doesn't he come out and talk to me."

Bush only talks to toadies, his Asian bosses, his OPEC co-conspiritors and maybe, Jenna. He doesn't talk to the rest of us. 61% of Americans in today's polls think the war in Iraq is a catastrophe. His approval ratings continue their plunge below the 9/11/01 levels which came just one year after a fake election victory which echoes the present fake election victory.

From the Independent:

The price of oil rose to its highest level for more than 22 years after warnings of imminent terror attacks against Westerners in Saudi Arabia.

There was also evidence that the surge in the price of crude oil driven in part by the invasion of Iraq and more general concerns about the security of the commodity's supply is poised to have a significant impact on the spending power of British consumers. In some areas the cost of a litre of unleaded petrol is over £1. Gas prices, which are also dependent on it, will increase by 11.9 per cent this month, according to Powergen, the supply company. And rising fuel bills faced by the airlines are likely to be passed on to passengers.

According to figures released yesterday, the cost of raw materials rose at their fastest annual rate for more than 20 years in July, with higher oil prices largely to blame. Economists warned that the prospects of lower interest rates, desperately needed to boost the sluggish retail sector and a stagnant property market, had shrunk dramatically.

High prices may affect homeowners this winter? Geeze. Duh. How about "ouch"?

Inflation rages where ever it can and it does. Auto sales are up only because the auto companies are unloading excess stock and they are doing so with poor profitability. Meanwhile, American oil barons rejoice. Bush is cautious. Will Americans wise up? Will they figure out that the King of Saudi Arabia and he are not only in cahoots but are close buddies? And neither really care if we freeze to death? Well.

I will keep saying this, our nightmare won't end quietly. If everyone waits too long, the change will be explosive, literally. We are in a race against time. Who will blow up first? Or shall I say, what terrors will we have to endure before we figure out that we are the sheep the wolves are hunting and the men blowing the horns summoning them in this Hunt of the Unicorn are
our own American leaders?

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BLACK DEATH

2005-08-07T20:22:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

When large number of people die in the two Chinas as well as India, it makes barely a ripple over here. Not one but two typhoons have slammed directly into Taiwan and then China. Tremendous rain fall in India killed many, too.

But this isn't the only deaths we ignore. Every week, there is some coal mining disaster or another that gets dutifully reported in Xinhuanet, for example. The need for coal is intense and just like 100 years ago in America, the death toll mining this precious fossil fuel mounts ever higher.

From Xinhuanet:

Top Chinese leaders have showed enormous concern over the coal mine flood which trapped 102 miners at the Daxing Coal Mine in southern China's Guangdong Province on Sunday afternoon, according to official sources.

Shortly after the accident occurred, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao gave important instructions to urge the local government and departments concerned to "take substantial steps and spare no efforts" to save the trapped miners.

Zhang Dejiang, secretary of Guangdong provincial committee of the Communist Party of China and Hua Jianmin State Councilor and Secretary-General of the State Council, also ordered rescuers to try every means to minimize the number of casualties.

The accident occurred at 1:30 p.m. Sunday in a private coal mine named of Daxing, which is located at the Wanghuai Town of Meizhou City.

There is rising anxiety and rage over these privately owned mines and the lack of safety. This matter has finally come to the collective attention of the Ruling Party High Rank Officers, even Hu and Wen are pausing in their games with the American capitalists and their bag men, the Republican Party. This is serious enough to stir sentiment at the highest levels, for worry over what the restive workers might do such as organize, causes real fear.

From US Department of Labor:

Fatalities and Injuries for All Mining (Coal & Noncoal)

Year Average Annual
Deaths Average Annual
Injuries
1936-1940 1,546 81,342
1941-1945 1,592 82,825
1946-1950 1,054 63,367
1951-1955 690 38,510
1956-1960 550 28,805
1961-1965 449 23,204
1966-1970 426 22,435
1971-1975 322 33,963
1976-1980 254 41,220
1981-1985 174 24,290
1986-1990 122 27,524
1991-1999 93 21,351

Thanks to Joe Hill" and a host of miners defying the powers that be and the political structure to build real unions that changed mining so that it is now much safer. But this change also comes with a high price tag.

For example, now that miners are "expensive," they are being dropped rapidly. The methods used to mine for coal in America now mirror copper mining, namely, removal of the hills and valleys and extracting the coal from the mass of earth which is vastly redesigning the mountain ranges were most of the coal is found in folds in the earth.

Coal mining has been dropping in developed lands and rising in places like China where conditions are very similar to here at the turn of the 19th century.

From Coal Mining in Perryopolis

The history of Perryopolis wouldn't be complete without a reference to coal mining. Although Perryopolis itself is not a “company town” -- a town built and owned by a coal company to house miners and their families close to the mines -- there were coal mines in and around town, and Perryopolis is surrounded by coal mining towns and patches. Star Junction, Victoria, Sweetcake, Panicktown, Whitsett, and Wickhaven were all coal mining towns or patches.

The coal companies owned the stores in which miners shopped, and these stores sold just about everything the miners needed, from food to clothing to coal itself to heat the miner’s houses. The miners also liked to shop elsewhere when they could, and Perryopolis businesses benefited considerably from the local coal industry from the middle of the 19th century until the 1950’s.

Many Perryopolis residents are retired miners, and many more are the sons and daughters of coal miners. All of the photographs on this page were made at Southwestern Pennsylvania mines. Although it is not known at which mines most of the photographs were made, the first photo shows Colonial 3 mine at Rowes Run, near Gridstone, in 1937. The enormous slate dump from this mine still stands alongside the Grindstone-Brownsville road. Your webmaster’s father, Louis Earl Illig, and many other Perry-area men worked in this mine. Colonial 3 closed in the late 1950’s.

The dramatically successful rescue of nine miners who were trapped underground by a flood in Somerset County in July, 2002, serves as a reminder that coal mining is still very much a part of life in Southwestern Pennsylvania, and that the men who go into the mines to bring out the coal are still brave men, though they would never say so.

I remember that mine accident. The men managed to stay alive until rescued. Their lives have been very difficult since then because this sort of thing plus the media attention can be very difficult to handle (one committed suicide, I believe).

What does all this have to do with us?

Take a good look at many things we now buy so cheaply. Just consider things made out of steel. The wrench in my photograph is a 24" adjustable made in China. The steel had to be either smelted or reshaped after being heated and the chances of this process being accomplished by burning coal is extremely high. The reason why, up until recently, our steel mills were mostly in places like Pittsburgh, for example, was due entirely to the proximity of coal. I believe that virtually no other fuel is used to smelt ores or melt steel. Aluminum is made using electricity which is why it is close to hydrolic dams, for example.

When we buy our cheap steel products, we are playing a time warp game. Spending modern money for Victorian era goods, namely, the working conditions of the labor is way out of whack with our own conditions. We benefit from the oppression and suffering of the Chinese people as they toil in dangerous, dark conditions while we gobble up energy creating comfort zones of vast proportions. We buy airconditioners made in China as well as many tools and other necessities. We rejoice in the cheap cost of that microwave but the steel case was made at a dear price, literally, in blood.

The fiction that America has nothing to do with the dire working conditions of all the Dickensinian Free Trade Flat Earth New World Order is something we created because we really don't want to change anything at all since this would cut into the profits of many people who want to live in a comfort zone. The Victorians, perforce, had to live cheek to jowl with their workers because of transportation difficulties and primative communication systems. So the Steel Lords of Pittburgh lived within a spitting distance of the steel mills that belched pollution and kiled workers. They couldn't hide so they created other means of hiding like thick curtains, literally, shutting out the mess outside.

The heavy hangings over the windows of the rich during this era is rather amusing. Today, they can park their asses where ever they want and breathe clean air and be bissfully ignorant of the mess they stand upon for it is banished, far, far away.

It doesn't even rate a small headline in the New York Times which prefers, just like the Victorians, to fulimate about tribal warfare in Africa and egg on imperial troops invading far lands. Some day, troops of workers might invade. This happens, you know.

The Maoist victory in China wasn't spearheaded by workers.

The next wave just might be that.

UPDATE: Looks like this is the straw breaking the Chinese laborer's back. Not only is the entire government taking measures now, the news is big news in China and for the first time, they are allowing pictures of the disaster to appear in public. This seems to me to be a signal from the ruling committee that it is time to fix the problems.

Pictures here

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CHIMERA

2005-08-07T08:05:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

The human mind is a wonderful thing. It can imagine anything. Chimerae of the mind populate the historic record. Even as humans drew the first portraits and views of living things, they began to create imaginary symbols. There is a strong element of wishful thinking which humans indulge in and it is a good thing for this is how we cope with life.

But it has dangers. Believing in Santa Claus as an adult means one will be the victim of many schemes and plots. Believing in the Easter Bunny is foolish if one seriously thinks a member of the rodent family will fetch candy and eggs for you.

When comtemplating the reality of energy use, one encounters downright insanity.

From Yahoo:

A U.S. chemist is trying to determine how the world will produce enough energy to supply 9 billion people by mid-century — and whether that can be done without pumping off-the-charts amounts of carbon dioxide into the air.

Daniel Nocera, 48, is working to achieve an old, elusive dream: using the bountiful energy in sunlight to split water into its basic components, hydrogen and oxygen. The elements could then be used to supply clean-running fuel cells or new kinds of machinery. Or the energy created from the reaction itself, as atomic bonds are severed and re-formed, might be harnessed and stored.

There is a beautiful model for this: photosynthesis. Sunlight kickstarts a reaction in which leaves break down water and carbon dioxide and turn them into oxygen and sugar, which plants use for fuel.

But plants developed this process over billions of years, and even so, it's technically not that efficient. Nocera and other scientists are trying to replicate that — and perhaps improve on it — in decades.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but it's generally locked up in compounds with other elements. Currently, it is chiefly harvested from fossil fuels, whose use is the main cause of carbon dioxide emissions blamed for global warming.

And so while hydrogen fuel cells — in which hydrogen and oxygen combine to produce electricity and water — have a green reputation, their long-term promise could be limited unless the hydrogen they consume comes from clean sources.

That's where Nocera's method comes in. If it works, it would be free of carbon and the epitome of renewable, since it would be powered by the sun. Enough energy from sunlight hits the earth every hour to supply the world for months. The challenge is harnessing it and storing it efficiently, which existing solar technologies do not do.

"This is nirvana in energy. This will make the problem go away," Nocera said one morning in his office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where the Grateful Dead devotee has a "Mean People Suck" sticker on his window. "If it doesn't, we will cease to exist as humanity."

The perpetual motion machine is also an alluring dream. The problem with solving our lust for power using simple methods is that if it worked, it would have worked already. Even though, compared to 50 years from now, energy is really cheap, a source of energy that is easy and even cheaper would have swept the world long ago.

The other thing that terrifies me is the contention about ceasing to be human if we can't consume vast quantities of energy. Humans lived as humanity with only stone tools and simple fires. Millions live today, lives that have near zero levels of energy. They may appear poor to us but they still have families, culture and a life. Not being able to live in an artificial environment isn't the end of the world.

My family lived with me in a tent complex on the side of a mountain in the northeast where it snows half the time and we did this with minimal electricity from our single solar panel and a generator and our woodstoves for heating.

Far from dying or being miserable, it was a blast. We lived like this for ten years. I am still human, last time I looked.

"Dan is even-money (odds) to solve this problem," says Harry Gray, a renowned California Institute of Technology chemist who was Nocera's graduate adviser.

But there's a catch. In fact, there's a few, and they illustrate how hard it can be to move alternative energy beyond the proof-of-concept phase.

Nocera has performed the reaction with acidic solutions, but not water yet.

The catalyst he used was a compound that included the expensive metal rhodium. To be a practical energy solution, it will have to be made from inexpensive elements like iron, nickel or cobalt.

Nocera's reaction got the photons in light to free up hydrogen atoms, but that's only half the equation. The harder part will be to also capture the oxygen that emerges when water molecules are split. That way, both elements can be fed into a fuel cell, making the process as efficient as possible.

There is always more hitches than at a Boy Scout Jamboree. Once, when there was no life on earth, the oceans were rather acidic. Why do all our energy lusts lead to a planet hostile to living things? This is the real problem.

The sun has tons of energy but this doesn't mean we should turn our planet into a sun like some want to do by building a zillion nuclear power plants, just for example.

Nocera cites a calculation by Caltech chemist Nathan Lewis that power demands in 2050 will be so great that just to keep carbon dioxide emissions at twice preindustrial levels, a nuclear plant would have to be built every two days. There's not enough room on the planet's surface for other widely touted solutions such as wind and biomass to have much impact.

Unlimited lust meets limited planet! There is plenty of surface available for solar energy, for example. Our roofs. They are everywhere and on every building! Of course, most are oriented in such a way as to be nearly useless but they exist and future homes will be built like mine, with a compass and a roof pitched to accomodate solar panels. The real problem is our joy at living in a literal bubble. This massive bubble requires incredible amounts of energy to sustain. I used very little energy living in my tent, the refrigerator turned on in late October and turned off in April, for example (a joke). In summer, I grew veggies and ate them as I harvested them.

The cycles of nature even in harsh climates are quite livable. But we would love to live in a hyper-nice padded bubble and this is, due to population growth and desire to make the bubble bigger and bigger, on a collision course with harsh reality. The quest for everlasting life is part of this whole human quest for the Holy Grail, a perfect world that allows us to be absolutely out of control, to live forever while consuming everything.

Alas, only one person can end up doing all this and that person will end up becoming the god of a dead planet.

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E=Mc2

2005-08-06T09:14:00.000-04:00

By Elaine Meinel Supkis

Today is the 60th anniversary of the greatest demonstration of power ever: a nuclear bomb was dropped on a city. From that day forwards, we knew we had the power of the Gods and unfortunately, as the Bible likes to show, Gods have a tic for annihilation.

Wipe outs.

On that gloomy note, I must address a rather gloomy problem: the Hubbert Oil Peak. From the New York Times:

President Bush might not have turned up personally in Riyadh yesterday but he certainly sent a high-powered delegation to pay his respects to the new leader of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah.

I guess old Abdullah's kissing and hand holding cooing session with Bush at Crawford was suffient.

The American turnout, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, former President George H. W. Bush, and former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, was the latest signal that relations between the two countries have thawed since the strains of 9/11. But it was also an acknowledgment of a simple fact: like it or not, the United States is more dependent than ever on Saudi Arabia.

"The Saudis are in a great position today," said Jean-François Seznec, a professor at Columbia University's Middle East Institute. "We cannot be enemies with everybody. We need their oil desperately."

The usual lies. Right after the WTC collapsed, Bush and Cheney moved swiftly...to protect the Saudis, even those directly involved in funding and covering up the hijacker's activities. The Saudi information the 9/11 white wash commission wrote was redacted and so was another 9/11 government report. At no point did we punish the Saudis in any fashion at all. Throughout the "War on Terror" we have literally kissed and bowed and scraped in front of the Saudis.

Just one month before 9/11, I wrote about a news article that described a visit to one of the Saudi princes by Bush Sr. In it, the reporter described how the Saudi ignored Bush Sr and watched TV while he made the former President sit on a cushion while he reclined on a couch. He was nonchalant while Bush Sr leaned forward and betrayed his anxiety to please.

Sort of like how the Bush team meets with the top Chinese communists.

"As the world's largest producer and as the world's largest consumer, our two countries have a special relationship," Samuel W. Bodman, the secretary of energy, said earlier this year after meeting in Washington with his Saudi counterpart, Ali al-Naimi. "We are, at least in certain respects, partners."

This is why curbing our consumption is so important and the failure to do this is going to haunt us later if not sooner. At no point have the Bush/oil rulers team tried to avert the coming crisis. Indeed, they encourage it such as the bill that Congress passed giving huge tax cuts for people buying Hummers.

Then came the Iraq war. Among the fringe benefits of removing Saddam Hussein from power, went the thinking in the United States at the time, would be a rapid recovery of that country's oil production. In some hawkish circles in Washington, it was thought that a free Iraq would eventually undercut OPEC's power and marginalize Saudi Arabia.

This paragraph is pure propaganda. It is all lies.

Texas and the other former Confederate states that pump oil and gas are all part of OPEC. They love OPEC. They do everything in their power to extend OPEC's power and to enhance OPEC. When Russia suddenly joined the energy market with the fall of communism there, fuel prices collapsed. This was terrible for the American branch of OPEC but now everything is coming up roses for them. They are reaming out their fellow Americans and laughing all the way to the bank. They know, if the natives get restive, they can point to Venezuela and demand we invade.

The Iraq war was a conspiracy between OPEC members to take down someone who was troubling them. It wasn't to make oil cheap, either. It was to extend the powers of the Saudi/Texas ruling alliance. The support of the Israeli/American Jewish community was a bonus for them, they know they can crush the Jewish alliance in an eyeblink whenever it suits them, right now, keeping Israel locked in the futile battle over nearly useless land keeps them in power.

Back on the homefront, all sorts of schemes keep popping up in a vain struggle to try to keep the oil based culture running. From Yahoo:

A University of Idaho graduate student believes the answer to the world's crude oil crisis grows on trees. Juan Andres Soria says he has developed a process that turns wood into bio-oil, a substance similar to crude oil.

The process — in which sawdust and methanol are heated to 900 degrees Fahrenheit to create the bio-oil — is already drawing some interest from energy and wood product companies, Soria said.

"But because it's quite novel, there's a bit of reserve," he said.

Soria is testing his theory with the help of Armando McDonald, associate professor of wood chemistry and composites in the University of Idaho's College of Natural Resources.

Though the idea may sound far-fetched, Soria and McDonald say the theory has precedent in nature — coal is the result of trees being subjected to high amounts of heat and pressure.

"We're trying to speed up the process," McDonald said. "Rather than doing it in millions of years, can we do it in minutes?"

So far, Soria's research has focused on sawdust from Ponderosa pine trees, although he said any variety of tree could be used, including fast-growing varieties like those being cultivated for wood pulp. Only about 2 percent of the mass is lost in the heating process, he said. After the bio-oil is produced, he separates it by boiling points, or grades. So far, he said, he's identified oil grades that could someday replace gasoline, tar, glues and resins that make things like lawn furniture.

Ponderosa pine sawdust is only the beginning, Soria and McDonald claim. Next, they will begin testing to see if they can get bio-oil from pine needles and bark.

The two are doing the research without grant money. Soria plans to use the research in his dissertation for his doctorate. If the private sector likes the idea enough to back it financially, Soria said he could put together an industrial-size bio refinery in five years.

Still, he said, the bio-oil isn't likely to be an immediate competitor to crude oil. Crude oil currently costs about $60 a barrel, and bio-oil will only be competitive when the cost of crude oil reaches $80 a barrel, Soria said.

The reason why oil changed civilization and rapidly became the basis of modern life is that it is the compressed energy of the sun, millions of years of energy, trapped in rock that is relatively, until recently, easy to extract. Just put in a well and a pump and let her rip! Transporting it raises the overhead, processing it into gasoline takes energy, too, but the stored value of all these years of capturing sun power, due to geological compression from the very weight of the rocks overlaying the organic matter, the positive energy flow is tremendous.

Nothing comes near it.

I heat my house with wood. The trees in my forest collect solar energy over the years, hundreds of years in the case of some of my oak trees. To use this energy my husband and I have to expend energy. We have to use either the tractor, the horse or drag the wood on the ground by hand or by sled in winter. We have to saw it up and then chop it, a lot of energy expended there! Then carry the chopped wood and stack it. Then unstack it and take it inside. And then throw it in the fire, all this requires a lot of calories expended.

To harvest wood takes lots of energy. If, say, we take up all the pine needles, for example, over 100 years, the forest will be a desert because the trees will take energy out of the soil as they grow and not replentish it by dropping leaves and needles. All forests are rich environments only because of trees rotting or dropping organic matter. This is why, when jungles are clear cut, the soil degrades nearly immediately. Indeed, the history of agriculture is the history of desertifcation.

The nexus of the agrarian revolution was in the Nile valley and the Tigris/Euphretes valley. Other great centers were in similar valleys all of which had one thing in common: they flooded a lot.

The floods regenerate the soil.

Turning wood in gasoline is a tremendous waste of energy and it will destroy the enviroment even more hideously than the present rate of destruction.

Others are just as alarmed as I am about this frekless disregard of all the levels of interaction. From the San Diego Union Tribune:

It sounds like a perfect, win-win solution for both the nation's farm economy and its energy needs. According to the National Corn Growers Association, ethanol production could make 1.4 billion bushels of corn "disappear" in 2004 ... enough to replace more than 2 billion gallons of gasoline and provide a much-needed market for farmers stricken with chronically low corn prices.

There's just one catch: According to scientists in New York and California, it takes more energy to make ethanol than you get back in fuel savings. More precisely, says David Pimentel of Cornell University, it takes the equivalent of 1.29 gallons of gasoline to produce enough ethanol to replace one gallon of gasoline at the pump. Instead of making the nation more energy self-sufficient, ethanol production actually increases our need for oil and gas imports, Pimentel says.

Like when the Norse were dying in Greenland, they refused to change their culture and adapt to deteriorating conditions and ended up eating their sheep and milk cows and then starved to death, we, too, don't want to change anything and would rather starve part of humanity so we can burn corn rather than change even slightly.

The cheap price of corn is due only to the cheap price of fuel. Farmers can grow and harvest corn easily and thanks to fertilizers, they can do this without regard to the balance of nature, but this is a temporary situation. The fields have to be ploughed, then sown, then maintained, all requiring fuel expenditures, then harvested, processed, transported and then in order to turn it into fuel, energy has to be applied yet again!

This is why the economy of horses and oxen made sense for eons. My ox team produced tons of manure which they then hauled around the farm for me and I used it to enrich the soil. The sheep pen in winter was the vegetable garden. Their piss enriched the soil which is why, in medieval times, people fought in courts over who gets to pen the sheep in winter.

From Xinhuanet:

Big oil companies are driving advertising campaigns warning that the world is running out of oil and calling on the public to help the industry.

ExxonMobil, the world's largest energy group, said in a recent advertisement: "The world faces enormous energy challenges. There are no easy answers," according to a story of Financial Times published on Friday.

And ExxonMobil's statistics back up the sentiment. In The Outlook for Energy: A 2030 View, the Irving, Texas-based company forecasts that oil production outside the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, the cartel that controls three-quarters of the world's oil reserves, will reach its peak injust five years.

Chevron, the second-largest energy group in the United States, sends a similar message, but goes two steps further. "One thing isclear: The era of easy oil is over. We call upon scientists and educators, politicians and policy-makers, environmentalists, leaders of industry and each one of you to be part of reshaping the next era of energy. Inaction is not an option," was the message in a recent advertising campaign.

This is infuriating, to say the least. When we campaigned about the Hubbert Oil Peak, they were lobbying Congress and corrupting our political system via campaign money funneled to the GOP to get them into power so they could make our situation much worse, now they are warning us?

Insane.

Meanwhile, a recent simulation exercise showed that terrorists struck oil facilities in the US and Saudi Arabia, pushing oil prices to a record 120 dollars. It goes further to "project" that oil price might rocket to 160 dollars a barrel, after a "simulated" violence in Saudi Arabia which causes evacuation of foreign nationals with oil expertise, ending the country's ability to increase oil production.

However, a senior executive at an oil company not involved in the advertising campaigns speculated that his counterparts were attempting to buy themselves some slack to go after the messier, more expensive, dirty oil. Another executive said it may buy some sympathy for the difficulty many companies are having in increasing their production and reserves.

The pessimist in me often says, in the bitter end, in an attempt to cling to the dying Oil Era Civilization, humans will start WWIII and will rush to kill off each other so the survivors can consume oil to their heart's content because all the competitors for it will be dead.

Saving the environment makes sense but as Jarrad notes in his best seller book about failed cultures: people would rather turn cannibal than stop doing destructive things that are driving them into annihilation.

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