Energy News

China Says They Will Buy As Much Iranian Oil As They Wish

Elaine Meinel Supkis

It is now official: China is going to buy oil from Iran come hell or temper tantrums by the USA and its paymasters. Of course, China has a perfect right to do this since the USA is giving India more nuclear technology after India openly blew up a nuclear bomb. And the USA is the biggest ally of the dictator of Pakistan who has done the exact same thing. So much for the UN boycott.

Tehran Times:

Chinese Ambassador to Tehran Lio G. Tan has said that the oil and gas deal between Iran and China has been thoroughly studied by experts and is ready to be signed.

The Chinese ambassador was clearly referring to an energy agreement between Tehran and Beijing which is worth over 100 billion dollars.

“No country can prevent the deal,” the ambassador told the Mehr News Agency correspondent in Tehran last week. When asked whether China was under U.S. pressure not to sign the deal, Lio responded by asking, “Would the U.S. export oil to us if it didn’t let you (Iranians) give it to us?”

The ambassador said that even if there were no dispute over Iran’s nuclear program, the U.S. would have tried to halt the deal, but China will not be swayed. He noted, “For example, can you find a time since the victory of the Islamic Revolution that the U.S. has not interfered in your country’s affairs?”

He put China’s annual oil imports from Iran at over 10 million tons.

We couldn't wait five minutes before buying as much oil as possible from Saudi Arabia right after 9/11 when a bunch of Saudis attacked the USA. Along with people from the UAE. And an Egyptian. Again and again, the fact that we have not boycotted or punished or attacked any of the countries that spawned this great attack but kept strictly to an agenda to attack other states that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11, not even in a glancing fashion, nay, bin Laden and his gang absolutely hated Iraq and Iran's leadership!

So we are now compounding this bizarre behavior by being totally flipped out about Iran. On Saturday, there was a huge anti-war, anti-bombing Iran demonstration in Manhattan. Despite the fact that the NYT has headquarters in Manhattan and many thousands of demonstrators surrounded and passed by the NYT headquarters, they didn't sent even one reporter to see what was going on. They used the Associated Press as if this were happening in some distant land rather than on their own doorstep! Then they put it on the back pages but put the much smaller "invade Dafur" demonstration on the front page.

Dafur is code for "pay no attention to that dead Palestinian girl whose head was maliciously crushed by the IDF last week as she got caught in one of their gates that they slammed on her and then refused to call an ambulance and she bled to death." Of course, the big demonstration in NYC had pro-Palestinian signs so that made it invisible.

Back to the future and Iran: there is now zero, yes, NULL chance of the UN censoring Iran. No boycotts, no oil embargoes, nothing. Looks like Saudi Arabia will have to cut oil production to make up for the fact that oil will flow freely to China except Saudi Arabia wants to sell to China, too. So they are caught on a very sharp stick here. Of course, they can fix things by not selling oil to the USA. This will then clarify the New World Order: do business with China, cash on the barrel or do business with the USA and take a stupid IOU in return.

Right. A charming deal. Guess who gets picked? Wimpy who will pay you next Tuesday forever or Goldfinger?

Culture of Life News Main Page

Mega Oil Corporations Make Mega Profits On Oil and Natural Gas

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Price of oil can easily top $100 a barrel thanks to the plans to boycott Iran. But banging war drums isn't the only cause of high oil prices. In classic capitalist fashion, the remaking of the mega-monopoly energy giants coincides exactly with the sudden rise in world oil prices. We are back into the Robber Baron Days, only they are Sheikhs and Kings these days as well.

Guardian UK:

Oliver Morgan and Heather Stewart
Sunday April 30, 2006
The Observer

The growing international crisis over Iran's nuclear programme could trigger a catastrophic oil price spike, sending crude prices over $100 a barrel, senior Wall Street analysts are warning.
With prices already at around $72 a barrel, such an increase could mean drivers facing prices of 110p a litre on forecourts, according the the Petrol Retailers Association. Last week Lord Browne, chief executive of BP, warned that prices could rise to £1 as he unveiled bumper $5.27bn profits for the first quarter.

Shell is also expected to announce close to record numbers next week, with analysts expecting profits around $5.57bn, driven largely by the oil price.

A single political shock could be enough to send oil markets into panic, said Adam Sieminski, senior energy economist at Deutsche Bank in New York. 'If we have one more big problem we are going to have triple-digit oil prices.' Sieminski points to confrontation with Iran, a worsening of the situation in Iraq or a recurrence of devastating hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico as potential catalysts for a major rise.

Yes siree! A single political shock can make the mega-corporations which own world energy systems even richer! And since they own the President of the USA and are one and the same with many oil pumping nations, forget manipulating oil production to raise prices! All one has to do is insure sufficient political distress and voila! Plutonic plunder!

There can be infinite fun doing this. Of course, Bush and McCain and others can't openly say, "We are sabre rattling in order to make our sponsors filthy rich," so they solemnly swear they are doing this only because they are puppets for Israel. This means the rage and fury over high prices can be shoved off onto various side parties such as Jews or Shi'as.

But a quick glance at my crude chart showing the intersection between energy company mergers and price of energy and is very obvious that once the giant four formed, the last major event being the mega-Exxon/Mobil deal in Dec, 1998, the price has climbed steadily on all forms of energy. World Socialist Web:

By Joe Lopez
15 December 1998

The recently-announced merger between major oil companies Exxon and Mobil will create not only the world's biggest oil company but also the largest corporation in terms of revenue. Its combined income for the first nine months of 1998 would have been $119 billion compared to the $115 billion generated by the world's largest corporation, General Motors.

The deal, valued at over $75 billion by analysts, represents the biggest industrial merger in history. It is far larger than the previous record, which also took place in the petro-chemical industry. That union, between British Petroleum and the US-based Amoco, was worth $48.2 billion and created the world's third largest oil producer.

The coming together of Exxon and Mobil will forge a corporation of enormous size. Exxon-Mobil's crude oil production will outstrip that of Nigeria and several other members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Its revenue will be bigger than the gross domestic product of all but 23 countries. It will be the world's largest retailer of gasoline, with about 47,500 stations worldwide and an estimated annual profit of nearly $12 billion.

Our government allowed this to develop because the oil companies own our government. Like the military/industrial complex, they own much of the media or run significant revenues into the media so as to control content. This means they get to call all the shots in our "elections" by hounding their potential critics or misrepresenting the news or in the classic form of activity, ignoring totally anyone who is opposing them. When I was on ABC talking about how to fund solar energy units so home owners can control the production of energy that goes into the system, they were pretty unhappy and I was curtly told, no one would ever want to hear from me again so shut up, Elaine!

Bah. Thus this pitiful blog. It exists as my personal historical record, proof that I was right.

Exxon/Mobil weren't the only ones to merge during that key year when world oil prices seemed unable to budge upwards. Wikipedia:

BP plc (LSE: BP, NYSE: BP, TYO: 5051 ), originally British Petroleum, is a British energy company with headquarters in London, one of the four vertically integrated private sector oil, natural gas, and petrol (gasoline) "Super Majors" in the world, along with Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, and Total.

In August 1998, British Petroleum merged with the American Oil Company (Amoco), forming "BP Amoco". This move was widely viewed as a takeover of Amoco by BP, and was only officially described as a merger for legal reasons (after a single year of joint operations, "Amoco" was dropped from the corporate name). The newly-renamed "bp" became an initialism no longer overtly standing for "British Petroleum". At the same time BP used the punning tagline "Beyond Petroleum" in some advertising campaigns. The step away from "British Petroleum" was in part a reflection of the fact that BP had become a global business and also that the direct identification of the company as British could be a disadvantage in some areas of operation.

This was part of a wave of mergers that were openly encouraged by interested parties who happened to have sufficient pull on political levers to make this happen. As always, when monopolies form, it is way easier to collude on prices since it takes only six or seven individuals working with four or five countries to pull off this sort of trick.

WP editorial:

Now, suddenly, fuel economy standards are all the rage. Speaking in Biloxi, Miss., on Thursday, President Bush said he would like Congress to "give me a capacity to raise CAFE standards on automobiles." Actually the president apparently does have the capacity to raise fuel economy standards, but only, according to the White House, in a manner that is economically inefficient and risks making cars more dangerous. The administration did, it is true, rewrite the fuel economy standards for light trucks (albeit by less than 3 miles per gallon between now and 2011) and did ask Congress back in 2002 for the authority to reform the current law. But Congress didn't respond, and the president didn't push. Put simply, the issue has been nobody's priority.

Bush has to pretend to want fuel standards. Of course, the marketplace is doing this already. Alas, it is doing it in a stupid way, of course. Namely, they are upping MPG of super-gas guzzlers so they get slightly better milage for the rich but there are no real gas misers out there at the lower end of the scale, I know because I have driven gas misers all my long life starting with my first VW back in the sixties.

Now the transportation secretary has written to congressional leaders, asking again for a legislative change, and a House committee has decided to hold hearings. In the context of other suggestions floating around the Hill, these are positive developments. Consider the alternatives: Republicans proposed this week to compensate for high prices with a $100 rebate for every taxpaying American, just about enough for two tanks of gas in an average sport-utility vehicle. Democrats and Republicans alike meanwhile spoke of suspending the 18.4-cent tax on gas for 60 days, which would cost at least $6 billion and have no impact on the underlying problem. Members of both parties supported various forms of penalties for oil companies that, while perhaps satisfying for consumers, don't exactly herald a long-term solution to what the president has called America's oil addiction.

Of course, cutting taxes is the all purpose solution except we are witnessing a $600+billion deficit this year if one includes the Social Security funds as "tax funds". What the GOP wants to do is hand over all tax revenues to the oil companies and replace them with IOUs to China which aggravates our situation no end in sight. Of course, with all the yelling about being over budget as well as the crusty desire to inflict the full pain of Darwinian capitalism on the masses is roiling the rancid ranks of the right wing. Mercury News:

Republicans also proposed several initiatives popular with their base of supporters, such as opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. But those ideas were overshadowed - at least for many conservatives - by the uncharacteristic zeal of many GOP leaders to turn the government against big oil.

"It just embarrasses me that Republicans are leading the effort, and it's just pure election-year politics," said Rush Limbaugh, the influential conservative talk-show host.

"Oil hit $75 a barrel recently and apparently transformed the Republicans into Democrats," commentator R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. said in The American Spectator, a conservative periodical.

Tyrrell warned that the GOP gas-price response could further depress conservatives who already were frustrated by such affronts from Washington as President Bush's nomination of the thinly qualified Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, soaring federal spending and the government's inability to stop illegal immigration.

"Republicans have continued to forsake their principles. Yet what do they expect to get for this abandonment," Tyrrell fumed. "Owing to their excessive spending, there already is fear that the Republican vote will stay at home this autumn. Now with the Republicans adopting the economic illiteracy of the Democrats, there is even more pressure for the Republicans to stay home."

This is delicious insanity. Every conservative Republican that I know is furious about the high oil prices except for those that own oil stocks or oil wells. Indeed, this is the crux of the matter. The Republicans who get DC's collective ears are all very, yes, totally insanely happy with high oil prices and want to keep this gravy train rolling or else. Of course, they are also killing the GOP and I would say, "MORE! MORE!" Keep up the pressure, dudes! It will be quite pleasant to see the GOP die a flaming death.

But they still control huge swaths of the media and a lot of other things and the oil kings and sheikhs are all pouring into the USA, buying key industries, putting us all in a stranglehold which we caused ourselves because we wanted to drive huge gas guzzlers and live in huge houses far from our jobs. And now, our doomsday is coming. And no one will save us but ourselves.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Thanks To High Energy Costs, GNP Shoots Up

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Thanks to high energy costs, I see lots of serious economic suffering around here abouts. But using statistics, one can say, the GNP is up and up! This is, alas, due nearly entirely to increased spending on energy and the related inflation this causes. Of course, the GOP claims they are working hard to fix high energy costs but as usual, it is all a Potemkin photo op show.

AP:

By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer 53 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Casting off an end-of-year lethargy, the U.S. economy bounded ahead in the opening quarter of this year at a 4.8 percent pace, the strongest growth spurt in 2 1/2 years.

The latest report on the economy, released by the Commerce Department on Friday, showed that consumers, businesses and government all did their part in terms of robust spending and investment to spur a healthy pace of growth in the January-to-March quarter.

The 4.8 percent increase in the gross domestic product marked a vast improvement from the feeble 1.7 percent annual rate registered in the final quarter of 2005, when fallout from the Gulf Coast hurricanes, including high energy prices, prompted people and companies to tighten their belts.

Of course, this doesn't reflect the recent huge price hikes in energy and other related items. And always, one way to raise a GNP is to inflate the currency. Voila! People spend more, faster! The economy isn't healthy at all or we wouldn't care about high energy costs. Why are so many American howling with rage over this? Obviously, according to the fake stats, we should all be overjoyed since everyone is spending every penny they have plus some!

Household debts continue to rise and often on the backs of high interest rate credit cards. I live well outside any metropolitan areas and there is a huge population exodus going on here as poor folk with fat, big, shiny gas guzzling behemoths are abandoning the area and moving into the nearby cities. We don't see much in the way of dropping house values since the well off property hunters are still buying fine properties with gorgeous views of one of the finest landscapes in the USA outside of ocean front property. But the lower working class is suffering significantly and more and more homes down in the village itself are increasingly standing empty. Even if they own their homes, they stop payment and jump ship.

The other thing selling like crazy are Japanese cars. This is bad on nearly every level if we want to consider ourselves an industrial nation! Even if the Japanese and Europeans open factories here, we are reduced to being mere employees of foreign companies. The Chinese are working hard to start their own businesses while we sell off the sad remains of our own industry! And this is healthy? How?

Raw Story:

The Associated Press has photographed Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL) ditching his brightly colored hydrogen automobile in favor of a gas-guzzling black SUV after exiting a news conference and photo opportunity at a Washington, DC gas station.

After the conference, which addressed high gas prices, Hastert and other Congressmen had been carted away in fuel saving and alternatively powered automobiles. Just blocks away from the scene, Hastert is reported to have ditched his in favor of his usual official car.

It is amusing that the Associated Press is now pulling back the curtain behind all the GOP Potemkin photoshoots. The GOP has been running this joke affairs for years and the press deliberately enabled this by not telling the truth such as when Bush supposedly built houses for Habitat for Humanity only he spent five minutes, pretending to hammer, hit his thumb and quit. Ridiculous. No mention of what happened in the press only photographic evidence online thanks to nasty bloggers.

The lone Democrat filibustering for an amendment to remove tax loops for oil companies has caused the GOP to flip out entirely. Raw Story:

Domenici had interrupted Wyden's introduction of an amendment under the pretense that he was attempting to ask a question. Rather, he blasted the Senator's plan, after doing so announcing, "I just violated the rules! I didn't ask a question, I gave a speech. I hope you listened."

Wyden had been on the Senate floor for nearly five hours. Under Senate rules, a lawmaker can push a vote on his or her amendment so long as they can stand on the floor.

The Wyden amendment would eliminate royalty relief subsidies for drilling on government land if oil prices exceed $55 per barrel. He has argued that the program was implemented when oil was priced at under $10 per barrel, and have since come to exceed $75 per barrel. President Bush has gone on record stating that these particular subsidies were no longer necessary.

Domenici argues that eliminating the subsidies won't save tax payers any money. Wyden claims independent audits say it could save taxpayers billions.

So, taxing the country's most profitable corporations won't yeild any revenues? This is exactly the insane thought processes that possess the GOP from top to bottom line. They can't cut anything except things helping the poor and they can't tax anyone but the middle class. Who votes for these clowns? Bush has been pushing for better car milage which means, we should all purchase Toyotas. Which is why money is flowing like crazy this month as all the well-off trade in their gas guzzlers for Toyotas. Once they are done sizing down, the poor will grind on, draining their pitiful purses, pursuing a dwindling oil supply, rising in price.

Meanwhile, Russia is laughing all the way to the bank. BBC:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused the West of whipping up fears over Russia's energy exports.

He said calls to restrict Russian energy to European markets made Moscow want to seek new markets for its oil and gas.

He said he constantly heard complaints in Europe that the continent was overly dependent on Russian energy.

The Russian leader made the comments after talks held in Siberia with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In a fierce defence of his country's reliability as a supplier of energy, Mr Putin said even during the Cold War, Moscow had always fulfilled its commercial energy contracts with European states.

When we hear comments like that, Mr Putin explained, we start to interpret them as threats to restrict Russian companies - it makes us seek new markets.

Translation: "China has the world's biggest FOREX. We sell our energy to them. Japan has the second biggest FOREX. Ditto, comrades. South Korea has a bigger FOREX than the USA. Another happy customer. Europe wants to fight Iran for oil? Be our guest! You will all crawl on your bellies to beg for oil from Mother Russia. Remember Napoleon? Hahaha!"

Culture of Life News Main Page

Oil Weh! Gas Guzzling America Wails

Elaine Meinel Supkis

A scared Bubble Boy Bush suddenly decides to stop buying oil from his buddies and repumping it into the ground again. He claims he will drop world oil prices but he is still nuke rattling deep in the Middle East which is blowing up all over the place. Shiites are now invading Kirkut to take oil wells from Kurds and oil pipelines blow up, etc. Meanwhile, American drivers blame the Chinese for the shortages.

CNN:

President Bush has decided to temporarily halt deposits to the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve to increase oil to consumers and to ease pressure on gasoline prices, a senior administration official said Tuesday.

The move comes as Bush faces pressure from looming midterm elections, sinking poll numbers and angry consumers.

The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve is a large stockpile of government-owned emergency crude oil that was established to provide the president with an oil supply in case of a disruption in commercial oil supplies.

In a speech at the Renewable Fuels Association in Washington, the president was outlining a four-point plan Tuesday morning aimed at fighting rising gasoline prices.

Bush has ordered a federal investigation into possible cheating or illegal manipulation in the gasoline markets, said White House press secretary Scott McClellan.

"I think you'll hear the president say very clearly that he will not tolerate price gouging," McClellan said.

America and ONLY America is responsible for the present situation. The gas companies are making a change-over from a dangerously polluting gas additive to one produced from corn squeezings (aka, hooch). The need to add hooch to the pooch is purely political. Since everyone in the fuel industry knew that the change over would cause huge disruptions they made absolutely no plans for this nor did their employees in Congress or the White House move a muscle to prepare for this and to organize this action so of course, there are shortages and ergo, price hikes, all of which are NOT accidental at all.

They want to throw their hands up and cry, this is unavoidable and then snicker all the way to an off-shore bank in the UAE. They will return to buy up more American businesses. All the oil pumpers are overjoyed at this series of actions. They are making money hand over fist. The other things pushing up the cost of oil are all caused by the USA and only the USA.

WP:

Hundreds of Shiite Muslim militiamen have deployed in recent weeks to this restive city -- widely considered the most likely flash point for an Iraqi civil war -- vowing to fight any attempt to shift control over Kirkuk to the Kurdish-governed north, according to U.S. commanders and diplomats, local police and politicians.

Until recently, the presence of the militias here was minimal. U.S. officials have called the Shiite armed groups the deadliest threat to security in much of the country. They have been blamed for hundreds of killings during mounting sectarian violence in central and southern Iraq since the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in February.

The Mahdi Army, led by firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, has sent at least two companies, each with about 120 fighters, according to Thomas Wise, political counselor for the U.S. Embassy's Kirkuk regional office, which has been tracking militia activity. The Badr Organization, the armed wing of Iraq's largest Shiite political party, has also boosted its presence and opened several offices across the region, military officers here said.

Sadr moves rapidly to consolidate power where it matters since power grows out of the barrel of oil, it is obvious he is smart to target Kirkut. Reuters:

Iraqi firefighters are battling a large blaze at a domestic crude oil gathering center in the north which erupted on Sunday, an Iraqi oil official said on Monday.

The fire is burning between the northern oil center of Kirkuk and Baiji, home to the country's biggest refinery.

"We need more resources and trucks to fight the fire but I believe it will come under control," the official told Reuters.

Sabotage bombs against oil pipelines have crippled the energy industry in northern Iraq, which is vital to Iraq's efforts to rebuild an economy shattered by insurgent violence.

Less oil reaches refineries today in Iraq than during the blockade. We are the ones who created this and the whole world knows this and as if to jab the dagger deeper, we then attack Iran. The Age:

Iran said yesterday it would suspend ties with the U.N. nuclear watchdog and speed up its atomic program if it were hit by international sanctions.

"How are you going to prevent our activities by imposing sanctions? If you impose sanctions, Iran will suspend its relations with the agency (IAEA)," chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani told a conference on nuclear issues in Tehran. "Suspension means we will accelerate our activities."

Our Quixotic quest to stop Iran from arming itself is causing world oil prices to shoot up over $70 a barrel and asking Saudi Arabia to strain their already overworked system to the point of collapse isn't going to fix this mess and drop oil prices.

All over the media, there are stories about how the perfidous Chinese dare to use more and more oil. This presumption that only America can use oil is near universal in this country. Thanks to WWII, we seized the entire world oil system except for the sector controlled by Russia and many of our flash points with Russia were over the Middle East where the oil lay, in dispute. During our heyday, we would guzzle oil to our content and in the nineties when everyone who was smart knew that oil was a finite resource, we pretended the world was a ball of oil and upped our consumption tremendously on every level.

Not one politician in Congress or the White House of either party ever uttered the words, "Hubbert Oil Peak" during those years. This isn't because they never heard of it! They knew perfectly well what it means and the fact that preparing for it means making hay while the sun shines, not waiting until Hurricane Hubbert was howling on our shores! Yet no one did anything nor did the media talk about it, I got more coverage in the media in 1975 than I got from 1982 to 2002. ABC told me, "No one is interested so we aren't going to do any more stories about this," back a mere three years ago.

Now these same clowns are running in circles along with the mooing mass of Americans, wailing about high energy costs!

Bush wants the energy consortiums that are egging on these oil wars which are driving up oil prices to spend their illgotten gains on alternative energy. Well, DUH!!!! This is the fricking plan!!!!! They are merely waiting for Congress to vote more generous bills helping them tap into taxpayer money to start taking over all energy systems! They have no intention of stopping looting us.

I notice there is near zero talk about putting privately owned energy systems on private homes. My suggestion that all the trillions we are wasting on miltiary initiatives to rule all oil wells could be rechanneled into a floating fund to pay for installation of solar and wind units on every building in America has been totally ignored. Power to the people is important! Decentralizing power is important! Only we can take our own destinies in our own hands and this means preventing the sale and use of gas guzzlers which are built for high speeds instead of good milage, imposting special taxes on those creeps who insist on abusing oil. Building houses to face the sun in winter and be shaded in summer. A host of things can and must be done, swiftly.

The window of opportunity is closing. Making wars over oil won't open it again. Mother Nature is terminating this whole thing. 23% of the oil and gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico are still down and hurricane season is gathering strength and the series of catagory 5 storms in Australia bodes ill for us!

Culture of Life News Main Page

Russia And China Gain Power In G-8 And IMF

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Thanks to increasing financial power, Russia and China are forcing the G-8 and IMF to change their internal rules and give them more voting power. Meanwhile, we whine about Russia using energy as a diplomatic club. Even as we bomb Muslims, we demand everyone else disarm and obey us, the bankrupt empire.

BBC:

Finance leaders of the IMF's 184 member states endorsed proposals to give the organisation a bigger role in policing the exchange-rate polices of countries.

They also backed calls to give emerging economies such as China and India a bigger say in how the IMF is run.

China has the biggest FOREX on earth. So ergo, they should have a huge vote within the IMF. Russia, who went bankrupt under Yeltsin, is rising rapidly, too, and will eventually have more to say within the IMF, especially when the USA goes bankrupt, itself.

"We resolve to make the IMF more fit for purpose in a global economy and more able to address challenges that are quite different from those of 1945, when the IMF was created," Mr Brown said.

"Specifically, we agree the IMF must focus more on crisis prevention as well as crisis resolution."

Plans to give the IMF a broader role in monitoring the exchange rates of countries - and now the economic policies of one country can affect those of others - are particularly popular in the United States.

In 1945, the USA was one of the very few countries that was fiscally sound. We straddled half of the globe, we had the biggest industrial base and everyone owed us money. Britain tried to pretend they were still an empire and went tatty slowly, now they are a mere appendage to the USA and going down the same steep fiscal slope as us. The USA wants the IMF to monitor exchange rates? Well! The dollar is causing a currency collapse! Every metal, every major manufacturing raw material and especially oil, is shooting up simultaneously! This suggests the dollar isn't worth what it was years ago, right?

It is called "inflation." Inflation feeds the stockmarkets and real estate. Everyone is happy to get money from their passive properties only it flies out the door thanks to high prices of all necessities.

WP:

RUSSIAN FOREIGN policy seems to grow more aggressive with each week that President Vladimir Putin serves as chairman of the Group of Eight nations, which consists of seven rich industrial democracies and his own resource-exporting autocracy. Last week the chairman of the state-controlled gas exporter, Gazprom, which provides a quarter of the European Union's supply, crudely threatened E.U. governments that his company will sell its product in other markets unless they give way to its "international ambitions."

Oh, how dare Russia be ambitious! How dare they threaten other nations! How dare they help nations we are threatening to nuke! Talk about hussies!

The infantilization of America continues apace. This Post editorial is a prime example. America is happy to club any and all we wish to whack and we use economic as well as military tools to ram our way into other countries and if they resist, we murder hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians including real life babies. Meanwhile, we whine that we can't control our currency. I recall a certain Prof. Friedman of the Chicago School and his silly "monetarism" poo-poo. Clever manipulation of relative values of currenices will solve our financial problems caused by America hitting our own Hubbert Oil Peak and the Vietnam war debts. Greenspan and his happy band thought they could pull the wool over the world's eyes.

The Japanese copied us and did it one better, once they figured out the con game. Now they keep their currency ridiculously low while buying off politicians here so they don't whine. The Chinese copied the Japanese and here we are, in a disasterous situation that is ridiculously easy to fix but it means changing America.

Namely, all we have to do is cut our oil imports by 50% by tacking on a VAT on foreign energy systems, use that money to fund alternative energy systems here in a rapid build-up, have an internal gas guzzler tax on all vehicles getting less than 50 mpg (yes, it is possible!) and raise interest rates until it attracts money! Like, SAVINGS! I really deeply resent the stupid rate of return on my savings presently. What incentive is that???? None!

Whining about Americans not saving is stupid if our monetarist morons keep interest rates ridiculously low. It just isn't going to change anything. If Americans save instead of spending madly, they will stop buying Chinese tschatchkas and voila! Our problems with the yuan cease! Easy as pie!

Right? And raise taxes on the rich so we won't need money from the Chinese to run our government. Right? Yeah!

Back to Putin yanking Europe's chain:

Mr. Putin's attempts to strangle Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine and to consolidate control over Belarus haven't slackened even as he prepares to host President Bush and the other G-8 leaders at a St. Petersburg summit this summer. In fact he clearly hopes the summit will ratify Russia's return as a global power with the right to its own sphere of influence. President Bush has resisted suggestions that he short-circuit this by skipping the summit or proposing Russia's removal from the G-8.

His administration did, however, take a little-noticed but important step last week toward pricking Mr. Putin's inflated ambitions. At a G-8 meeting in Moscow, U.S. and European diplomats insisted that Belarus, Georgia and Moldova be added to the agenda for discussions at preparatory meetings leading up to the summit. That should make it hard for Mr. Putin to exclude a review of his bullying at the summit itself. If St. Petersburg can become the forum at which Western leaders make clear they will not accept Russia's use of economic blackmail or military force to dominate its neighbors, or its backing of a dictatorship in Belarus, then the summit might be worth having after all.

How dare Russia bully other countries! Why, we don't do this! Heh. What will "leaders" do at St. Petersburg? "You better obey us or we are going to buy our energy from Iran!" HAHAHA. I am certain to die of laughteritus at this rate. Putin is ambitious because the West is stupid. We put our collective heads into the energy/cheap labor noose and it will now quietly strangle us. Acting like little boo-boo babies isn't going to change history or suspend the Darwinian laws of Survival of the Richest.

AP:

Rising Oil Prices Worry Finance Ministers

By JEANNINE AVERSA
AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Skyrocketing oil prices and massive trade imbalances between the United States and other countries represent serious threats to global growth and most be addressed, world finance leaders say. But they concede there are not any quick solutions to either problem.

Finance ministers and central bank presidents from the world's seven major industrial countries pledged in a joint statement late Friday to work cooperatively to address these issues after a day of discussions led by U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

The talks among the G-7 nations - the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada - were a prelude to broader talks on Saturday and Sunday at the 184-nation International Monetary Fund and its sister lending institution, the World Bank.

The G-7 are upset about #8 who is China. China also gets oil from Russia and soon, gas. Do I hear China whining? I hear crickets singing. Did the Chinese whine in Saudi Arabia yesterday? Hahaha. Guess what! They have the world's biggest FOREX and therefore, can outbid everyone for energy if they so wish. They also have nukes and Russia does, too! Russia had to give up on their expensive navy but not China and in alliance, they can be formidable. In American press, their is a constant baby whine about how China is driving up world oil prices, being the #2 buyer at this point but we keep forgetting about ourselves, in actuality, per capita as well as in aggragate, we are the violators of world oil usage! Therefore, shouldn't we be seeing meeting about getting America to curb their oil usage to bring down world prices?

Hahaha. Laughing to death still. I can't keep this up anymore.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Silent Mini Windmills From Scotland

Elaine Meinel Supkis

A Scottish company has developed silent, safe energy-producing windmills that can be installed on rooftops! They are expensive right now but will come down in price. Someday, I hope to have some on my own mountain.

MSNBC:

By Benjamin Sutherland
Newsweek International
April 24, 2006 issue - As projects to build "wind farms" of massive, electricity-generating wind turbines continue to multiply, so do the ranks of "not in my backyard" protesters. The turbines, some with blades that sweep as high as a 20-story building, are increasingly seen as unsightly and dangerous manifestations of the industrialization of the countryside. "The volume is going up higher on opposition to wind farms," says Kathy Belyeu, spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based American Wind Energy Association. Although protests have generally failed to nix many farms, they frequently translate into costly delays or relocation to sites with less favorable winds.

One thing I have is wind! The government of Massachusetts wanted to put up a windfarm down the road from me on Greenhollow only the natives shot it down (everyone has guns) because it was on NY land. Heh. Well, I want wind energy. In summer, solar energy is great since we have many hours of sunshine but in winter the wind doth howl and there is precious little sun.

Here is the homepage of Renewal Devices. They are virtually hippies, heh! I love them already. Their company is small, only 20 employees and the owners and it is run as a cooperative and the staff has a variety of techie backgrounds including designing race bicycles and various sorts of boats! And it shows for they have developed the neatest device! I want it!

Here are pictures of their windmills. I detect someone with bicycle esthetics. Lovely machine. I do hope they expand and have sales here on my own continent.

They also made the news in another way this last year. Sunday Herald:

By Matthew Magee

When the e-mail dropped into Charlie Silverton’s inbox he must have known instantly that it was the kind of message entrepreneurs dream of, the kind that can change lives.
A follow-up phone call confirmed it: Silverton could be rich. Very rich. The company, which builds drone spy planes for Nasa and the US military, wanted to buy Silverton’s young business.

“One thing I do know is that once you start painting things green and selling them to the army you are talking in millions," he says. But Silverton rebuffed the offer, from a company whose name has been withheld, without even knowing how much was on the table after discussing the deal with his 20 staff. He is the man who turned Nasa down.

Silverton is, along with David Anderson, the founder of Renewable Devices, an Edinburgh-based manufacturer of micro wind turbines designed to fit on a roof and power individual houses. The American army has little interest in the turbines; what they wanted was a little plastic ring around the outside of the turbine blades. Silverton and Anderson had solved one of the biggest problems in turbine manufacture, and the world’s biggest army wanted their solution.

“The problem with wind turbines is that they make a lot of noise. If you want to put one on your house that is a problem,” says Silverton. “The blades are rotating at up to 1000 times a minute. We tried some mini turbines and it makes as much noise as an outboard engine or a lawnmower. You couldn’t work in the room below it.”

Far bigger companies than Renewable Devices have tried and failed to solve the problem, but a plastic ring around the edge of the blades configured to guide the air in a particular way rendered the turbine almost silent.

It is that silence that interested the drone builder. Drones, which are light unmanned propeller- driven aircraft, are most often used for surveillance. The attractions of a propeller silencing device are clear.

The headline said NASA was interested in this company. But it wasn't. It was the miltiary arm of NASA which has been peverting NASA for years now. Like the recent failed rocket/robot in space attempt that can't explain what happened because it is a military secret, the dark side of NASA continues to have money poured into it while the science/civilian sector dies on the vine. The military flies all sorts of craft large and small all over our mountains here, many at tremendously low altitudes, sometimes skimming so close to my house, I can literally see who is flying them. I am nervous about them doing this with robots. Flying silently, that would be unnerving since I am outside a lot and I love to watch my birds in flight so I notice the aircraft more than most people down in the valley.

The owners refused to sell because they didn't want to be rich, they want to save the planet earth. One can be a patriot to the planet, indeed, that is the noblest form of patriotism! They love this planet and want to save it and this is their contribution to this cause and the fact that they would rather continue to toil to bring this about, unlike today's news that we can turn coal into diesel which will use up the 500 years of coal in a mere 50 years and make global warming much much worse...this is good news, the windmill solution that is clever, clean and quiet.

Thank you, Charlie Silverton and David Anderson!

Culture of Life News Main Page

Oil Shoots Up In Price And Bernanke Thinks Inflation Is Gone

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Hu can relax. Bernanke let everyone know he is handing out cheap loans like there is no tomorrow. The Fed has been assured by the Chinese that they want the present status quo to continue. World oil prices shoot through the roof but there is "no inflation" because any inflationary excess is cleaned out by shipping jobs to China and India. Whoopee. Not.

AP:

By ADAM GELLER, AP Business Writer 22 minutes ago
NEW YORK - Stocks soared Tuesday on news that Federal Reserve policymakers believed their run of interest rate hikes is likely nearing an end, propelling the Dow Jones industrials up nearly 200 points. The report helped offset the effects of oil prices that passed $71 a barrel.

Wall Street was already climbing in mid-afternoon when the Fed released minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee's March 27-28 meeting that showed most of the panel's members "thought that the end of the tightening process was likely to be near, and some expressed concerns about the dangers of tightening too much, given the lags in the effects of policy."

Like a drunk finding a dime in the gutter, "we are rich!" we yell. Every penny debt we ring up inflating real estate or stocks is celebrated. Stocks: we buy stocks in companies that are bending themselves into pretzels to ship as many jobs as possible to cheap labor countries. This is why we have no inflation in "core products" if one excludes food and energy, taxes (MY REAL ESTATE TAXES SHOT UP!!!!) or health insurance. Stuff I buy once in a blue moon are up only a smallish amount which is what happens when energy goes up.

The mad rush for the exits is now a torrent. Hu, the clever ruler of China, has made a point of courting all the big money boys in America. He recently awarded Spielberg the contract to put on a nifty show along side a Chinese film director, of course, so Spielberg will be super-nice to him, he then paid a courtesy call on Bill Gates and is meeting with all sorts of powerful men who will, in return, ship him more industry and more jobs!

CNN:

By Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com staff writer
April 18, 2006: 12:17 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - As gasoline prices spiral upward ahead of the high-demand summer season, some traders and consumer advocates are laying at least part of the blame squarely on the doorstep of the federal government.

While near-record crude prices account for nearly 60 percent of the cost of making gasoline, and unabated demand from U.S. drivers has done nothing to ease prices, part of the run-up has to do with problems with switching from one type of gasoline additive to another.

The switch is happening because lawmakers didn't include liability protections for makers of MTBE, a suspected cancer-causing additive easily soluble in groundwater that has been the subject of several lawsuits, when they enacted an energy bill last August.

This goofy article mentions in passing the fact that our sabre rattling has rattled oil futures so the price has shot up. And unrest in various dictatorships has cut the oil flow and of course, the raging war in Iraq isn't helping things, either.

No mention in the article that Bush and Cheney have worked in the oil industry much of their lives and made their money, well, Bush's gramps and dad, in oil. Isn't it innnnteresting that the minute Bush entered the White House, world oil prices shot up and up and up and every time they begin to glide down, he sabre rattles and it shoots up again! Gee whizzikers!

National Geographic:

Sean Markey
for National Geographic News
April 18, 2006
With the price of oil topping a wallet-busting U.S. $70 a barrel yesterday, the search for alternative fuels keeps heating up.

Last week, scientists announced what may be a new end-run around the oil problem: producing diesel fuel from coal, natural gas, and organic material.

Reporting in the current issue of the Journal Science, researchers say they have developed a way to shuffle the carbon atoms derived from cheap fuel sources like coal to form more desirable combinations, such as ethane gas and diesel fuel.

In their study, scientists scrambled the makeup of hydrocarbons—organic compounds found in fossil fuels—using two chemical processes, one of which earned last year's Nobel Prize in chemistry.

The reaction produced ethane gas and diesel fuel.

The synthetic diesel "is much cleaner burning than conventional diesel, even cleaner burning than gasoline," said Rutgers University chemist Alan Goldman.

According to the experts, we can take coal and process it into gas! Whoopee. If we do this while also burning coal to make electricity, we can live in our super bubble happily except if we do this, we run out of coal in around 50 years. Then what?

The long slide into the Dark Ages that will happen rather quickly since we will burn off all the compressed fuel in a mad rush to the Bitter End! This will also produce lots and lots and lots of greenhouse gasses.

NBC:

Record heat prompted power outages Monday afternoon across North Texas.

About 15 percent of Texas' power supply was already offline Monday for seasonal maintenance, NBC 5 News reported. The heat triggered unseasonable energy demands and by late afternoon, Texans were using more energy than utility companies were prepared to produce.

The Texas Electric Regulatory Board ordered electric utility providers across the state to reduce their loads, prompting rolling brownouts across the area.

"This is a prescribed action that we do to support the electric grid," TXU representative Carol Peters said. "Certain areas will be experiencing rolling blackouts every 15 minutes, but we we'll be taking power off of the system and returning it to different areas."

Over 100 degrees Farenheit in early April? What? This is madness. All winter long, Texas and parts of the Midwest burned. We had no winter down there and now summer is already raging and everyone is retreating into artificial bubbles that are inflated by burning coal which feeds back into the system and voila: deadly early spring heat waves.

Hurricane season is going to be a blast.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Chinese Warn USA Iran Boycott Will Destroy World Economy

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The Chinese, irritated with our suicidal gestures in the Middle East (wonder why we are doing it, eh?), joins with Nobel Economist, Stiglitz, in warning us to not start sanctions or a war over Iran. Everything is coming to a head now.

Xinhua Net:

Sanctions on Iran and its oil exports would cause "an enormous disruption" to the world economy, an American Nobel prize winner in economics said on Wednesday.

If the UN Security Council voted for sanctions against Iran, "it would mean an enormous disruption as oil prices might rise to over 100 U.S. dollars (per barrel)," said Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in 2001.

He made the remarks in an interview with the German news magazine Der Spiegel.

"You can increase the price from 25 to 40 dollars, and people can absorb it. If the price rises above 60 dollars, they become unhappy. They start to adjust, they move to smaller cars, drive a little bit less," Stiglitz told the magazine.

"At 100 or 120 dollars, there are major changes in lifestyle. The sales of cars will plummet. Poor people will be facing real problems of heat versus food," he added.

Talking about the war in Iraq, the economist said the war was "much more difficult than President Bush and his government expected" and was costing much more.

We have to stop the freight train to hell. The American media mostly supports this insane war. One can give a lot of reasons why, the military/industrial complex, politicians, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, they all want to stop the Shiites.

Many mosques blowing up today in Iraq, the war is now in total flames, the Sunni/Shi'ite rift that is half a millennium old is now a Great Earthquake/Tsunami and the flames of this war, fed by oil, are going to engulf us, the major consumers of oil in the world. We are not going to become billionaires thanks to this, the only way the very rich who own our media, our government and our courts can make billions of dollars is to rip them out of yours and my wallets! Period.

Or they can steal from the Chinese who are hard to steal from since they have nukes. Russia surrendered to America in 1992. We turned around and tried to loot them, now they figured out the game and are playing as an individual power again and they, too, have a hand in all this, they love high world oil prices!

This is making them rich and powerful! And they control the spigot to Europe, the gas lines, everything, Europe is at their feet. The Europeans think, if they join America in tormenting the Palestinians and defeat the Shi'ites, they won't need Russia's oil anymore but they are in a fracas at home, fighting Muslims there, and this is all heading towards a denoument the Chinese don't want: WWIII.

China is doing just great with the present system. America, going bankrupt, trying to patrol the planet, is weakening rapidly and China won't have to lift a finger to push us over in due time, they simply hand us the bill and take our pound of flesh in return. And we will go down in history as yet another bankrupt empire.

The Chinese want the oil, they have a quarter of the world's population and want a quarter of the oil and we have less than 10% and we consume over 24% of the world's oil so guess who will be pulling in their belts and not driving cars in the not too distant future?

We asked for this because we didn't want to be clever and change things. For example, China is hooking into high tech systems for running trains of all things, we are stuck with our antiquated system, here.

National Geographic:

Greg Yurek, chairman and chief executive officer of private firm American Superconductor, is often one of the first people to create industrial potential for HTS developments at government labs like ORNL.

In 1995 his company worked with Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico on a technique to coat wires with superconducting material.

Eleven years later that technology is making its way into commercial and industrial applications.

"It's finally coming to fruition," Yurek said. "I remember in 1988 a reporter called me up and said, Where are the magnetically levitated trains?"

His answer could have been, In Japan but about 20 years from now.

In the fall of 2005 an experimental magnetic-levitated train, developed by Central Japan Railway, ran down a track in Japan at more than 310 miles an hour (500 kilometers an hour).

American Superconductor's HTS wires were used in one of the superconductive electromagnets that provided the lift necessary make the entire train hover four inches (ten centimeters) above the concrete guideway.

But it's not just futuristic trains that would rely upon these superwires. Power grids can be revamped with the technology so larger amounts of electricity can be provided to energy-hungry cities.

"In December of 2006 we will be installing our first commercial superconductor product into a power grid," Yurek said.

Because HTS wires can carry more current at a smaller size than other wires, "a superconductive power cable can carry a lot more power through the duct work under the streets of cities and relieve grid congestion."

One of the keys to making the HTS wires viable in the marketplace is keeping manufacturing costs low.

"By the end of the decade, the price performance ratio will be roughly equivalent to copper [wires]," Yurek predicts.

PHX Corporation news:

American Superconductor and China's Institute of Electrical Engineering Announce Demonstration of First Superconductor Power Transformer in Chinese Energy Distribution Grid

HTS transformers expected to provide oil-free, high energy efficiency replacement for oil containing, copper-based power transformers for electrical grids

Mar 08, 2006 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX News Network/ -- American Superconductor Corporation (Nasdaq: AMSC), a leading energy technologies company, and China's Institute of Electrical Engineering (IEE) today announced that IEE has successfully demonstrated a prototype superconductor-based power transformer for the first time in a power grid in China. The transformer was fabricated by IEE in collaboration with TBEA Industrial Transformer Group, the largest transformer manufacturer in China, utilizing high temperature superconductor (HTS) wire manufactured by AMSC. The HTS transformer has operated since November 21, 2005 in a power grid in the city of Changji, Xinjiang Province serving a TBEA manufacturing plant.

Power transformers are utilized in power grids to increase voltage (electrical "pressure") in power lines at generating plants so that electricity may be delivered through power lines to customers with lower energy losses. Transformers are then used again to decrease voltage to more user-friendly levels near customers. Replacing copper wire currently employed in conventional transformers with high efficiency HTS wire reduces the waste of energy inside the transformer due to copper wire's electrical resistance. Another major advantage is the substitution of cheap, environmentally-friendly liquid nitrogen (air is 79% nitrogen) in HTS transformers to provide cooling and electrical insulation for the more expensive electrical insulating oils utilized in conventional transformers. This reduces oil consumption and the risk of transformer fires associated with oil leaks.

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that the worldwide market for transformers with power ratings over 10MVA exceeds US$1 billion annually, with the fastest growth in sales of transformers occurring outside the U.S. In China, the rate of power consumption increased by 9% in 2001 and continued to increase year-over-year reaching a rate of 14.8% in 2004, according to the China Electric Power Research Institute. The rate of increase of power consumption in the U.S. during the same period was approximately 2% to 3% per year.

According to Dr. Liye Xiao, Deputy Director of the IEE and Director of the Applied Superconductivity Laboratory at the Chinese Academy of Science, this project is an important step in demonstrating the value of superconductor transformers to improve the energy efficiency and reliability of power grids while reducing the amount of oil needed for use as the electrical insulation medium in large, conventional transformers. "Demand for electric power in China continues to grow dramatically year-over-year," said Dr. Xiao. "We need to utilize innovative technologies such as superconductor transformers, fault current limiters and other devices, to guarantee the reliability and stability of our power grids because electricity is an essential ingredient in achieving sustainable economic growth."

This company is right near my mountain. Not too far from both my mountain and them are the ancient Amtrak tracks that were supposed to have high speed trains to NYC. This is dead. Congress killed it. And we have pokey, badly run trains rattling along the tracks as if this were England or India. Indeed, the former British Empire is rail road wasteland. Every country they ran is running its trains badly. All decaying together, in concert, the USA and England led the revolution in steam! What is happening to us!

The future won't wait for us or for England to stagger into it, it is a fast moving train and even as we still pioneer the technology, we can't APPLY it here at home! We are behind on telephone technological applications, computerizing things, robotics, you name it.

Weapons. We do that. So far.

Culture of Life News Main Page

Saudi Arabia Can No Longer Expand Oil Pumping To Meet Demand

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Saudi Arabia is openly complaining that world demand for oil is causing strains within their own system because it is harder and harder to pump and process the oil. This is yet another sign that the world has rushed towards the Hubbert Oil Peak pretty rapidly and we are possibly now there.

Associated Press:

By JIM KRANE, Associated Press Writer Mon Apr 3, 2:14 PM ET
DAMMAM, Saudi Arabia - The world's only oil superpower boosted output last month, launching a pair of projects that are part of a massive $55 billion endeavor to keep pace with the world's ever-intensifying thirst for oil.

But demand for the world's premiere source of energy is rising so fast — by around 2 million barrels per day each year — that even Saudi Arabia's vast resources will be unable to cope without drastic help, oil executives and analysts say.

Remarkably, even Saudis, who control over a quarter of the world's known oil, are calling for relief from relentless consumption.

"The current out-of-control demand is not good for us," Ghazi Al-Rawi, head of private equity at Gulf One Investment Bank, said in a recent interview. "When you have this kind of demand, you're forced to supply beyond the optimal rate. That's not a positive thing."

The Cornucopia of oil is now gushing as hard as it can. Of course, the oil in Iraq could gush harder but that isn't enough to satiate world oil appetites which will now always outstrip supplies. I watch the headlines about energy costs fairly closely and it is rather funny how, each time the price dips a little, there is a huge celebration in the news in America and the hope that the Starry Goat's horn will spill a flood of oil into our tanks rises. Then cold reality sets in and the base price rises higher.

Last August, there were happy predictions that the price of oil would collapse thanks to Saudi Arabia pumping like mad. Predictions of oil being less than $30 a barrel caused monster truck owners in America to salivate with anticipation. When the hurricanes trashed a significant portion of our own oil industry, prices soared worldwide. Consumers in America who suck up a quarter of the world's oil were told that the price hikes were a temporary nuisance and by February or March, the price of oil would drop so badly, OPEC would have to reduce pumping to keep up prices.

Here we are, finished with March and the price is above $66 a barrel. Whenever it drops a dollar, the American stockmarket shoots up in value. This see-saw effect has caused the markets to rise, overall, but not by much and it constantly threatens to fall, badly. This is because the propaganda about how oil will be really cheap soon is beginning to flag. It is obviously way out of tune with reality that it can't excite people here anymore.

Energy Bulletin:

Kevin G. Hall, Knight Ridder Newspapers Detroit Free Press
WASHINGTON -- Oil prices are near last summer's record high, amid concerns about supply disruptions, and energy forecasters think volatile geopolitics and declining oil production will keep prices up for years.

Oil closed at $66.63 per barrel Friday on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices have soared amid concerns about disruptions in Nigerian oil production and a possible political showdown over the nuclear ambitions of Iran, the second-biggest exporter in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries oil cartel.

Oil prices are approaching last year's all-time high of $70.85 a barrel, the price that came the day after Hurricane Katrina's landfall on the gulf coast, and U.S. consumers are feeling the shock at the gas pump again. In Michigan, a gallon of regular gasoline averages $2.635.

Bush and Cheney's popularity is directly attached to the price people pay for gasoline at the pump. Both men are increasingly profoundly unpopular. Their inability to pump oil cheaply from Iraq is troubling Americans. We spend over $2 billion a week, trying to impose our will upon that fractitious country, desperately trying to pump oil literally over their dead bodies. The high price isn't even appearing in American pocketbooks yet except in the form of inflation and rising interest rates. The loans America has to solicit from China and Japan to keep our economy running also aren't felt much yet but will be, increasingly, so that even the most sheltered American will suffer the direct effects of paying for all this via much higher taxes and much lower economic prospects.

BBC News:

A survey has named singer Michael Jackson as the "most foolish person" in the US for the fourth successive year.
Of 1,000 people polled, 69% said Jackson had "done something foolish" in the past 12 months.

US Vice President Dick Cheney, who shot a man while hunting, tied for second place with socialite Paris Hilton.

President George W Bush came next, followed by actor Tom Cruise, in the random phone survey by New York-based public relations consultants.

Whew. Talk about disgust and anger with Bush and Cheney! Ranked right up there with Paris Hilton and Michael Jackson. Men can't parade around the world, sneering, when they lead a nation that hates their guts. This is a diplomatic as well as military disaster. It was one thing for people who were not German to make fun of Hitler's bizarre looks but if the Germans did, he would not have been able to inspire them into launching WWII.

And Bush and Cheney want WWIII! Middle East Economic Survey:

By A F Alhajji

By historical standards, commercial stocks forward cover of demand and imports in OECD or in the US is low. This is not the case when the strategic petroleum reserves are added to the picture. For example, the US crude stocks forward cover of imports, including the SPRs, is significantly higher now than that between 1978 and 1980, as shown in Figure 3. Current US total crude oil stocks cover 50% more days than they did in the late 1970s. The US SPR was only 91mn barrels in 1979 – now it is about 680mn barrels. However, that is not the case for commercial crude oil stocks. Current commercial stocks forward cover of imports is similar to that at the beginning of 1979, during the Iranian revolution. Therefore, only a prompt commitment by the US government and IEA members to use the SPR can mitigate the effect of a decline in Iranian exports. It is worth noting that the above facts regarding the SPR and commercial stocks indicate that there is some sort of substitution between the SPR and commercial stocks, which limits the role of the SPR in enhancing energy security.

The opposite scenario would not include a production cut, but would see calls by Iranian leaders to cut off oil supplies or impose embargoes. It also would include demonstrations in the streets of Iranian cities demanding that the government use the oil weapon. As mentioned earlier, oil prices would increase on panic buying and stockpiling that followed the news of UN sanctions or an air strike, even if Iran did not cut production.

Several Possibilities
Between these two scenarios lie several possibilities. These include a selective embargo on exports to some European countries or revocation of the licenses of European oil companies operating in Iran. Oil embargoes, in general, would not have an effect on the market unless they were associated with a production cut. Selective embargoes do not work. At the same time, if a selective embargo was associated with a production cut, it would punish friends and foes alike. The impact of a selective embargo without a production cut would be limited to panic buying and stockpiling.

Of course, Iran just might take the selective boycott route and sell only to, say, China. They can also collaborate with Venezuela in raising world oil prices by jointly reducing oil flow. Both countries know that Saudi Arabia is on the ropes and can't increase output significantly anymore. Both countries are also being menaced by the USA which has been flaunting its nuclear powers in order to intimidate oil countries. The Republicans in America know their fortunes depend on keeping their base quiet with cheap energy and their base is getting restive. They cynically figure that fear of American nuclear missiles and subs will strong arm oil pumping nations into colluding with the ruling party in America but alas, the cornucopia of oil is at a critical stage, it just can't gush out cheap energy anymore no matter how many nukes rain down.

Action by the UN or the US and its allies against Iran would increase oil prices by a few dollars on the fear that this might reduce or halt Iranian oil exports. Prices would go even higher if Iran retaliated and reduced its oil exports. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that Iran would do so. It is not in its interest, under any scenario, to decrease exports, let alone to halt them. However, domestic pressure, a sense of nationalism, and the need to improve its bargaining power with Western countries might force the Iranian government to retaliate. Given the high economic and political costs of using the oil weapon, Iranian operatives in Iraq might cripple Iraqi oil exports from Basra, rather than reducing Iranian oil exports. This option, reducing world oil supplies by about 1.1mn b/d, would hurt US and UK plans for Iraq, while boosting Iran’s oil revenues.

This analyst grossly underestimates the ability of people to endure discomfort during time of war. The USA has invaded Iraq and is vainly trying to impose a government there while pretending it is self-ruled. The Iraqis hate this so much, they are in fierce, destructive battle with the USA and each other. The peculiar nature of war is that it can rapidly escalate into total destruction. Germany was a very sophisticated, "civilized" nation when it tried to destroy first the world, then itself. Even as the ruins were all in flames, they continued this orgy of destruction, even celebrated it! Even as the Russian army was bombarding Berlin, the Berlin Philharmonic played the End of the World theme from the final act of Wagner's Götterdämmerung.

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