What You Need To Succeed Is Sincerity

And If You Can Fake Sincerity You’ve Got It Made…

“A few months ago I told the American people that I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that is true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.” — President Ronald Reagan, 1987.

On April 23, speaking at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, President Barack Obama told his assembled audience that as president “I’ve done my utmost … to prevent and end atrocities”.

Do the facts and evidence tell him that his words are not true?

Well, let’s see … There’s the multiple atrocities carried out in Iraq by American forces under President Obama. There’s the multiple atrocities carried out in Afghanistan by American forces under Obama. There’s the multiple atrocities carried out in Pakistan by American forces under Obama. There’s the multiple atrocities carried out in Libya by American/NATO forces under Obama. There are also the hundreds of American drone attacks against people and homes in Somalia and in Yemen (including against American citizens in the latter). Might the friends and families of these victims regard the murder of their loved ones and the loss of their homes as atrocities?

Ronald Reagan was pre-Alzheimer’s when he uttered the above. What excuse can be made for Barack Obama?

The president then continued in the same fashion by saying: “We possess many tools … and using these tools over the past three years, I believe — I know — that we have saved countless lives.” Obama pointed out that this includes Libya, where the United States, in conjunction with NATO, took part in seven months of almost daily bombing missions. We may never learn from the new pro-NATO Libyan government how many the bombs killed, or the extent of the damage to homes and infrastructure. But the President of the United States assured his Holocaust Museum audience that “today, the Libyan people are forging their own future, and the world can take pride in the innocent lives that we saved.” (As I described in last month’s report, Libya could now qualify as a failed state.)

Language is an invention that makes it possible for a person to deny what he is doing even as he does it.

Mr. Obama closed with these stirring words; “It can be tempting to throw up our hands and resign ourselves to man’s endless capacity for cruelty. It’s tempting sometimes to believe that there is nothing we can do.” But Barack Obama is not one of those doubters. He knows there is something he can do about man’s endless capacity for cruelty. He can add to it. Greatly. And yet, I am certain that, with exceedingly few exceptions, those in his Holocaust audience left with no doubt that this was a man wholly deserving of his Nobel Peace Prize.

And future American history books may well certify the president’s words as factual, his motivation sincere, for his talk indeed possessed the quality needed for schoolbooks.

The Israeli-American-Iranian-Holocaust-NobelPeacePrize Circus

It’s a textbook case of how the American media is at its worst when it comes to US foreign policy and particularly when an Officially Designated Enemy (ODE) is involved. I’ve discussed this case several times in this report in recent years. The ODE is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The accusation has been that he had threatened violence against Israel, based on his 2005 remark calling for “wiping Israel off the map”. Who can count the number of times this has been repeated in every kind of media, in every country of the world, without questioning the accuracy of what was reported? A Lexis-Nexis search of “All News (English)” for <Iran and Israel and “off the map”> for the past seven years produced the message: “This search has been interrupted because it will return more than 3000 results.”

As I’ve pointed out, Ahmadinejad’s “threat of violence” was a serious misinterpretation, one piece of evidence being that the following year he declared: “The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon, the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom.” 2 Obviously, he was not calling for any kind of violent attack upon Israel, for the dissolution of the Soviet Union took place remarkably peacefully. But the myth of course continued.

Now, finally, we have the following exchange from the radio-TV simulcast, Democracy Now!, of April 19:

A top Israeli official has acknowledged that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never said that Iran seeks to “wipe Israel off the face of the map.” The falsely translated statement has been widely attributed to Ahmadinejad and used repeatedly by U.S. and Israeli government officials to back military action and sanctions against Iran. But speaking to Teymoor Nabili of the network Al Jazeera, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor admitted Ahmadinejad had been misquoted.

Teymoor Nabili: “As we know, Ahmadinejad didn’t say that he plans to exterminate Israel, nor did he say that Iran policy is to exterminate Israel. Ahmadinejad’s position and Iran’s position always has been, and they’ve made this — they’ve said this as many times as Ahmadinejad has criticized Israel, he has said as many times that he has no plans to attack Israel. …”

Dan Meridor: “Well, I have to disagree, with all due respect. You speak of Ahmadinejad. I speak of Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, Rafsanjani, Shamkhani. I give the names of all these people. They all come, basically ideologically, religiously, with the statement that Israel is an unnatural creature, it will not survive. They didn’t say, ‘We’ll wipe it out,’ you’re right. But ‘It will not survive, it is a cancerous tumor that should be removed,’ was said just two weeks ago again.”

Teymoor Nabili: “Well, I’m glad you’ve acknowledged that they didn’t say they will wipe it out.”

So that’s that. Right? Of course not. Fox News, NPR, CNN, NBC, et al. will likely continue to claim that Ahmadinejad threatened violence against Israel, threatened to “wipe it off the map”.

And that’s only Ahmadinejad the Israeli Killer. There’s still Ahmadinejad the Holocaust Denier. So until a high Israeli official finally admits that that too is a lie, keep in mind that Ahmadinejad has never said simply, clearly, unambiguously, and unequivocally that he thinks that what we historically know as the Holocaust never happened. He has instead commented about the peculiarity and injustice of a Holocaust which took place in Europe resulting in a state for the Jews in the Middle East instead of in Europe. Why are the Palestinians paying a price for a German crime? he asks. And he has questioned the figure of six million Jews killed by Nazi Germany, as have many other people of various political stripes. In a speech at Columbia University on September 24, 2007, in reply to a question about the Holocaust, the Iranian president declared: “I’m not saying that it didn’t happen at all. This is not the judgment that I’m passing here.” 3

Let us now listen to Elie Wiesel, the simplistic, reactionary man who’s built a career around being a Holocaust survivor, introducing President Obama at the Holocaust Museum for the talk referred to above, some five days after the statement made by the Israeli Deputy Prime Minister:

“How is it that the Holocaust’s No. 1 denier, Ahmadinejad, is still a president? He who threatens to use nuclear weapons — to use nuclear weapons — to destroy the Jewish state. Have we not learned? We must. We must know that when evil has power, it is almost too late.”

“Nuclear weapons” is of course adding a new myth on the back of the old myth.

Wiesel, like Obama, is a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. As is Henry Kissinger and Menachim Begin. And several other such war-loving beauties. When will that monumental farce of a prize be put to sleep?

For the record, let it be noted that on March 4, speaking before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Obama said: “Let’s begin with a basic truth that you all understand: No Israeli government can tolerate a nuclear weapon in the hands of a regime that denies the Holocaust, threatens to wipe Israel off the map, and sponsors terrorist groups committed to Israel’s destruction.” 4

Postscript: Each time I strongly criticize Barack Obama a few of my readers ask to unsubscribe. I’m really sorry to lose them but it’s important that those on the left rid themselves of their attachment to the Democratic Party. I’m not certain how best to institute revolutionary change in the United States, but I do know that it will not happen through the Democratic Party, and the sooner those on the left cut their umbilical cord to the Democrats, the sooner we can start to get more serious about this thing called revolution.
Written on Earth Day, Sunday, April 22, 2012

Two simple suggestions as part of a plan to save the planet.

1. Population control: limit families to two children

All else being equal, a markedly reduced population count would have a markedly beneficial effect upon global warming, air pollution, and food and water availability; as well as finding a parking spot, getting a seat on the subway, getting on the flight you prefer, and much, much more. Some favor limiting families to one child. Still others, who spend a major part of each day digesting the awful news of the world, are calling for a limit of zero. (The Chinese government announced in 2008 that the country would have about 400 million more people if it wasn’t for its limit of one or two children per couple. 5

But, within the environmental movement, there is still significant opposition to this. Part of the reason is fear of ethnic criticism inasmuch as population programs have traditionally been aimed at — or seen to be aimed at — primarily the poor, the weak, and various “outsiders”. There is also the fear of the religious right and its medieval views on birth control.

2. Eliminate the greatest consumer of energy in the world: The United States military.

Here’s Michael Klare, professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College, Mass. in 2007:

Sixteen gallons of oil. That’s how much the average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis — either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks, and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes. Multiply this figure by 162,000 soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5 million gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab for U.S. combat operations in the Middle East war zone. Multiply that daily tab by 365 and you get 1.3 billion gallons: the estimated annual oil expenditure for U.S. combat operations in Southwest Asia. That’s greater than the total annual oil usage of Bangladesh, population 150 million — and yet it’s a gross underestimate of the Pentagon’s wartime consumption. 6

The United States military, for decades, with its legion of bases and its numerous wars has also produced and left behind a deadly toxic legacy. From the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam in the 1960s to the open-air burn pits on US bases in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 21st century, countless local people have been sickened and killed; and in between those two periods we could read things such as this from a lengthy article on the subject in the Los Angeles Times in 1990:

U.S. military installations have polluted the drinking water of the Pacific island of Guam, poured tons of toxic chemicals into Subic Bay in the Philippines, leaked carcinogens into the water source of a German spa, spewed tons of sulfurous coal smoke into the skies of Central Europe and pumped millions of gallons of raw sewage into the oceans. 7

The military has caused similar harm to the environment in the United States at a number of its installations. (Do a Google search for <”U.S. military bases” toxic>)

When I suggest eliminating the military I am usually rebuked for leaving “a defenseless America open to foreign military invasion”. And I usually reply:

“Tell me who would invade us? Which country?”

“What do you mean which country? It could be any country.”

“So then it should be easy to name one.”

“Okay, any of the 200 members of the United Nations!”

“No, I’d like you to name a specific country that you think would invade the United States. Name just one.”

“Okay, Paraguay. You happy now?”

“No, you have to tell me why Paraguay would invade the United States.”

“How would I know?”

Etc., etc., and if this charming dialogue continues, I ask the person to tell me how many troops the invading country would have to have to occupy a country of more than 300 million people.
Yankee karma

The questions concerning immigration into the United States from south of the border go on year after year, with the same issues argued back and forth: What’s the best way to block the flow into the country? How shall we punish those caught here illegally? Should we separate families, which happens when parents are deported but their American-born children remain? Should the police and various other institutions have the right to ask for proof of legal residence from anyone they suspect of being here illegally? Should we punish employers who hire illegal immigrants? Should we grant amnesty to at least some of the immigrants already here for years? … on and on, round and round it goes, for decades. Every once in a while someone opposed to immigration will make it a point to declare that the United States does not have any moral obligation to take in these Latino immigrants.

But the counter-argument to the last is almost never mentioned: Yes, the United States does have a moral obligation because so many of the immigrants are escaping situations in their homelands made hopeless by American interventions and policy. In Guatemala and Nicaragua Washington overthrew progressive governments which were sincerely committed to fighting poverty. In El Salvador the US played a major role in suppressing a movement striving to install such a government, and to a lesser extent played such a role in Honduras. And in Mexico, although Washington has not intervened militarily in Mexico since 1919, over the years the US has been providing training, arms, and surveillance technology to Mexico’s police and armed forces to better their ability to suppress their own people’s aspirations, as in Chiapas, and this has added to the influx of the impoverished to the United States. Moreover, Washington’s North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), has brought a flood of cheap, subsidized US agricultural products into Mexico and driven many Mexican farmers off the land.

The end result of all these policies has been an army of migrants heading north in search of a better life. It’s not that these people prefer to live in the United States. They’d much rather remain with their families and friends, be able to speak their native language at all times, and avoid the hardships imposed on them by American police and right-wingers.

Notes

1. Washington Post, March 5, 1987

2. Associated Press, December 12, 2006

3. President Ahmadinejad Delivers Remarks at Columbia University, Transcript, Washington Post, September 24, 2007

4. Remarks by the President at AIPAC Policy Conference, White House Office of the Press Secretary, March 4, 2012

5. Washington Post, March 3, 2008

6. The Pentagon v. Peak Oil, TomDispatch.com, June 14, 2007

7. Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1990

Gas Prices as an Indicator of Energy Costs

The consumer does not need more reminders about the pain experienced with every fill up at the pump. The drain on your pocketbook is growing. During economic dislocation and diminished vitality any prospects of a turnaround dim as gas approaches $4.00 a gallon and beyond. Been here before and the idea that this time the economy will be less effected is unreasonable. The cost for all energy is rising but the impact of gas prices has a personal burden on everyday budgets. The Price of Fuel provides a useful synopsis.

“While crude oil is traded in a global market, gasoline is part of a regional market . . . The price of crude oil may account for over half the price of a gallon of gasoline.

Transitions in supply can also affect the short-term availability of gasoline. Going into the peak summer driving season, refineries are adjusting their gasoline formulas . . . and many states are switching to ethanol-blended gasoline.

Many states require specific formulations of gasoline – there are currently 18 separate gasoline formulas for different regions of the country-and it is often difficult to import gasoline supplies from one region to another.

Each gallon of gasoline also is subject to numerous taxes and fees, which vary by state.

After the crude oil is processed through the refinery, the finished gasoline product is transported to a terminal, where it may be sold to a wholesaler for distribution to the wholesaler’s retail network or delivered to the retail location. There the retailer sets the “street price”.

Now these factors are the industry’s explanation that establishes the price. But, we all know that there are few commodities that are more manipulated than crude oil. The Business Insider adds this viewpoint in Here’s The REAL Reason Gasoline Prices Have Been Surging In The US

“You may have heard that the price of a barrel of oil is around $109, but actually that’s the US domestic West Texas Intermediate price of oil. A better international benchmark is probably Brent Crude, and that’s now well over $120/barrel, having surged all year.

The problem with judging the global pace of oil demand growth is that the epicentre of that growth has most definitely moved away from the US to Asia, and China in particular. Yet, due to the lack of prompt alternatives, the more readily available oil data from the US is still used as a global guide to the health of the oil markets.”

Another article in BI suggests the worse, Gas Could Easily Go To $5 And Crush The National Economy.

“The USA has evolved into a two-tier gas market. The supply of crude from Canada and the Bakken fields has created a lower cost of supply for the central portion of the country. This differential is most notable in the market spread between WTI (a futures contract that settles physical delivery in Oklahoma) and LLS (Louisiana Light Sweet Crude) – the pricing of crude for the big Gulf refineries.”

The conclusion from these factors suggests that the domestic retail price of gas varies for the reasons stated. The level of hurt is based upon needs to use individual transportation; however, the added cost for moving consumer goods is experienced by all in the added charged at the register. Published government inflation rates are skewed to tap down actual increases.

Anyone buying into replacing gasoline for personal vehicles as the most efficient cost form of energy denies the practical. Diesel as a fuel for over the road eighteen-wheelers may be the most promising for conversion to natural gas. Honda has a CNG version for automobiles. Gasoline will be around a lot longer than any hybrid or electric car. The reason is unmistakable, the lowest cost fuel that equates to identical vehicle performance, wins the battle in the marketplace.

In spite of this aspect of business, the government and their corporate partners are pushing to force a conversion away from gasoline. No better example of the “Yugo Syndrome” is the Government Motor’s Volt. The failure to sell consumers on a ridiculous car is clear.

Chevy Volt Fleet Sales Rise, Government GM Purchases Increase

“According to GM, 992 of the Volts sold were to retail customers while 537 went to fleet purchasers.

Government purchases of GM vehicles rose 32% from last year. This represents yet another conflict as the Obama Administration has a vested interest in GM’s success as it spends more taxpayer dollars to help support the company as 2012 elections near.”

Even the favorite Obama corporate collaborator, General Electric, uses its muscle to cover-up the botched venture. GE “Forcing” Employees Into Chevy Volts reports,

“A memo leaked to Green Car Reports lays out GE’s plans for their new fleet of Volts, and as expected, it has some people crying foul.

The memo, sent to employees of GE Healthcare Americas team explains that all sedan, crossover, and minivan purchases in 2012 will be replaced by the Chevy Volt. Only field engineers are exempt from having to drive a company Volt.

GE will offer estimates for installation Level 2 Charging Stations, though all-gas use will be allowed when there is no electric option. Any employees who opt out of the Volt program will not be compensated for their expenses.”

One cannot ignore the economic cost of failed and foolish “Green Energy” projects. The idea of forced buying expensive and government subsidized vehicles in the future borders on irrational paranoia. The environmental “true believers” in the global warming hoax would have you pay a price for gasoline that only the rich could afford.

Opposition to building the Keystone pipeline will only reduce addition oil supplies. This is lauded by the Peak Oil charlatans because they seek higher gas prices to compel the consumer to convert to their anti fossil fuel existence. Reduce energy costs by abolishing the Obama green energy tax. Lower gasoline prices foster dynamic economic growth. As long as the policy wonks are determined to bankrupt the public with high gas costs, you will experience a fallen standard of living.

Can America Survive The Cassandra Syndrome As To Population Growth?

America added 115 million people from 1965 to 2012.  Demographic experts showed 315 million people living in America in January 2012.  They expect an added 85 million by 2035 to reach 400 million.   The consequences grow irreversible and unsolvable.

As population rises, carrying capacity drops.  What is “carrying capacity?”  For a quick rendition, it means, “The amount resources on a given piece of land to allow long term sustainable human, plant and animal life.”

If animals or humans exceed ‘carrying capacity’ of any given land mass, they crash in numbers by various means, i.e., famine, war and disease.  Garrett Hardin, noted biologist called it, “The Tragedy of the Commons.”  (Source:www.GarrettHardinSociety.org)

For the 7.1 billion humans in the 21^st century and headed for 10.2 billion in 40 years, oil resources will define that capacity quotient.  Noted Geologist Walter Youngquist said, “This is going to be an interesting decade, for the perfect storm is brewing—energy, immigration and oil imports.  China grows in direct confrontation for remaining oil.  I think the USA is on a big, slippery downhill slope.  Will the thin veneer of civilization survive?” To see how fast we grow, visitwww.populationmedia.com

“Cassandra Syndrome”: The Cassandra Syndrome is a term applied to predictions of doom about the future that are not believed, but upon later reflection turn out to be correct. This denotes a psychological tendency among people to disbelieve inescapably bad news, often through denial. The person making the prediction is caught in the dilemma of knowing what is going to happen but not being able to resolve the problem.  The origin of the name is derived from Cassandra, who, using her prescience, foresaw the demise of Troy. No one believed her.

Youngquist continued, “Beyond oil, population is the number one problem of the 21^st century, for when oil is gone as we know and use it today—and it WILL be gone—population will still be here.”

The world uses 84 million barrels daily.  That’s 42 gallons to a drum.  By mid century, China, now placing 27,000 new cars on its highways every seven days, expects to burn 98 million barrels of oil daily—all by itself!  Oil will run out because of limited reserves in the ground. (Source: The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunsteler)

Dr. Albert Bartlett of the University of Colorado said, “Present population growth rate is putting our children at risk.  They will experience holes in the ozone causing serious biological effects on plants and humans.  World ocean fisheries are collapsing from endless plundering.  Two thirds of the world’s people will suffer from water shortages by 2025.  It is not possible to sustain population growth or growth in rates of consumption of resources.”

Where is the worst overpopulation problem on the planet according to Dr. Bartlett?  “It’s right here in the United States!”

Dr. Bartlett said, “Can you think of any problem, on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way, aided, assisted, or advanced, by having continued population growth—at the local level, the state level, the national level, or globally?”

How many people in the United States are enough?  How far down the gopher hole do we want to dig ourselves?  At what point is enough—too much?  If we shut down the borders today with zero immigration, while enjoying our sustainable 2.03 fertility level of American women on average, we would still grow via “population momentum” by an added 40 million.

In other words, we’re painting ourselves into a perilous corner. Once the numbers manifest, our society will suffer irreversible consequences with unsolvable problems.  One visit to Los Angeles will show you they suffer toxic air, dwindling safe drinking water, gridlock to the point of insanity, water shortages, endless highways and housing development.  Consider San Francisco, Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Detroit, Denver and all other large cities grow beyond the bounds of reason!

Sustainable growth, slow growth, managed growth, smart growth and all other kinds of growth are oxymoronic.  There is no such thing as sustainable growth.  Why? All growth exceeds carrying capacity at some point.  In other words, the bubble bursts, the dam breaks, the glass spills, the balloon pops and the red-lined engine blows up.

“Population growth is given as a cause of the problems identified, but eliminating the cause is not mentioned as a solution,” Bartlett said. “We are prescribing aspirin for cancer.”

At the current rate of growth driven by immigration, America will double its population just past mid century—from 300,000,000 to 600,000,000.  As long as the underlying cause of a problem is not dealt with, we, and our leaders, as a nation, perpetuate a falsehood which Mark Twain called ‘silent-assertion’:  “Almost all lies are acts,” he said.  “I am speaking of the lie of ‘silent-assertion’.  It would not be possible for a humane and intelligent person to invent a rational excuse for slavery; yet you will remember that in the early days of emancipation in the North, agitators got small help from anyone.  They could not break the universal stillness that reigned from the pulpit and press all the way down to the bottom of society–the clammy stillness created and maintained by the lie of silent-assertion that there wasn’t anything going on in which intelligent people were interested.

“The conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity (unlimited growth) or sham (unlimited immigration), never in the interest of the respectable (average citizens).  It is the most timid and shabby of all lies.  The silent-assertion is that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men and women are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop.”

Silent-assertion worked until it brought China, India and Bangladesh to their knees with sheer misery of numbers.  How do I know?  I’ve spent a lot of time in Asia and other overpopulated regions.  China, even with enforced one child per family, grows by 8 million annually. India, with 1.2 billion, adds 12 million yearly.  Bangladesh suffers 157 million people in a landmass the size of Iowa.  Do you see anyone racing to immigrate to those havens of human overload?

What I ask is, do we as a nation, want millions upon millions of added people from countries already exceeding their carrying capacity?  Legal immigration proves as dangerous as illegal.  To think otherwise will allow that silent-assertion to create another China or India in America.  Just imagine Iowa with 157 million people and all the rest of the United States with THAT kind of population density!

Albert Einstein said, “The problems in the world today are so enormous they cannot be solved with the level of thinking that created them.”

We are no longer living in the 20^th century America with only 75 million people riding horses or trains.  We’re in the 21^stcentury with cars and jets and 315 million people added to the 7.1 billion on the planet–creating horrific environmental consequences.  Again, we had to change our ‘silent-assertion’ about slavery and we MUST change our ‘silent-assertion’ about population growth and economic growth.  If we continue steaming full speed ahead like the captain of the Titanic, our children will be on board when we hit the peak oil, global warming, ozone holes, collapsing species, air pollution and other commensurate problems related to the overpopulation “iceberg.”  Most died on the Titanic because there weren’t enough life boats.

Maybe some of us choose to maintain our ‘silent-assertion’ in the face of growing consequences, but how can any parent or grandparent be that callous to their children?

Mother Nature Will Reveal Herself Rather Drastically

Mother Nature Reveals Her Energy Descent Action Plan…

Introduction: It seems that we are under the impression that Mother Nature will award us points for effort. If we do our best and try living less unsustainably, she will forgive us our sins and let us stay in the game because, well, surely she realizes that we are something special—and should get special treatment. But the truth is, this lady is not for turning. She is one ‘hard-ass’, a referee that cannot be swayed by our histrionics or our pleading. We have got to understand that she has her own schedule, and will not hold up the train for us.

http://candobetter.net/node/2662

We all love Mother Nature because of her beauty, flowers, animals and oceans. We revel in the wilderness. We love our outings in the mountains and by the seashore.

However, for the past 100 years, humans have bashed, cut, slashed, poisoned and destroyed the very ecological systems that gave this planet balance and equanimity.

My Canadian friend Tim Murray put it all into perspective from his cogent viewpoint:

“In the wake an announcement by Transition Towns College in Pennsylvania to hold a workshop about  an “Energy Descent Action Plan” that would outline a model for developing strong sustainable communities and strong local economies less reliant on fossil fuels, Mother Nature issued a press release today announcing her Energy Descent Action Plan, which was apparently formulated without public participation,” said Murray. “Despite her declaration that this plan is non-negotiable, she nevertheless invites all stakeholders to present their amendments and counter-proposals at the upcoming General Meeting on Earth day—if that is what makes people feel good about themselves. But she warned that  she will not be attending the meeting—- explaining that she is disinterested in our input, doesn’t give a damn about prospects for survival, and doesn’t accept our credentials as an exceptional species deserving of special consideration.

“As could be predicated, the announcement was met with incredulity and outrage. Eco-socialists complained that her plan was unnecessary, fascist and Malthusian. There was no need for energy descent because there is enough energy to go around, if only the rich were made to pay and share the wealth. Dump capitalism and this phony energy crisis would be unmasked for what it is, a capitalist plot. Monbiotists argued that the plan was scapegoating the poor for the sins of the rich, and if Canadians stopped hogging energy and learned to freeze in the dark for 5 months a year, then there would be no energy shortage.

“Feminists from Hampshire college joined in on the swarming, claiming that Mother Nature was blaming women for climate change and peak oil, and if only women were “empowered”, they wouldn’t demand so many natural non-renewable resources.  Finally, human rights advocates demanded that the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, gays, lesbians and transgendered ‘people of color’ be exempted from her austerity measures.  Apparently, however, these entreaties and demands fell on deaf ears.

“When she was told that we are trying our best to live more sustainably or rather, less unsustainably, and that we are determined to build resilient, self-sufficient communities, she appeared unmoved. Sounding like Vince Lombardi, she is reported to have said that “Either you make the cut, or you don’t. Living within your resource budget is not everything. It is the ONLY thing.”

“That statement did not go down well with identity groups. “We won’t accept these cuts!” they exclaimed. “Billions of innocent people will die…. our species may even go extinct.”

“It was at that point that, reportedly, Mother Nature shrugged her shoulders and replied, “What the hell do I care?”

“It is rumored that another wave of “Occupy” demonstrations will be planned, modeled on the one that took place on Easter Island in the 17th century, when protesters demanded an end to income disparity and debt slavery as a solution to restore old growth forests. (No mention was made of overpopulation however, because it was thought to be a red herring employed by the rich to blame the poor for their own excess, besides,  if women had been empowered, they would have chosen to give birth to fewer loggers.)

“It now appears that we are at an impasse. We have bargained in good faith. We have tried to meet Mother Nature half-way, and moderated our demands in the hope that our sacrifices would provoke reciprocal concessions. But Mother Nature doesn’t seem to understand that successful negotiations involve give-and-take. We have agreed to cut our consumption of natural capital in half and slow our use of natural resources that cannot be replenished.  But we are obviously dealing with an intractable opponent.

“Nonetheless, we must remain confident that by our resolute solidarity and determination to secure special treatment, we will convince her to give way. Either that, or thanks to human ingenuity, we will come up with alternatives. After all, we always have before, haven’t we?”

“Now repeat after me, “The People, United, Will Never be Defeated…The People, United, Will Never Be Defeated…..The People, United, Will Never Be Defeated…..etc. etc.”

As Tim Murray talks, we may want to listen to understand Mother Nature better.  If not, her wrath will be our reality.  As to Transition teams, we need to talk about overpopulation, because, in the end with 400 million people in the USA in the blink of an eye, it will be a human mob trying to find food in any way it can.  It won’t be pretty.

America’s Predicament – The 7th Billion Human

On October 31, 2011, demographic scientists expect the 7^th billion human to land on planet Earth.   Humanity adds another one billion of its species every 12 years on its way to reaching a projected high of 10.2 billion in this century.

What does that mean for the United States of America? How can we mitigate our carbon footprint that destabilizes our environment?  How can we halt our ecological footprint that causes mass species extinctions and ocean footprint that causes destructive extremes to our biosphere?  How can we sustain ourselves while America adds another 138 million people by 2050?   What consequences will our children inherit?

The biggest question:  as we face water shortages, Peak Oil energy exhaustion, resource depletion, accelerating air pollution and quality of life decaying in our cities—why aren’t Americans concerned and why aren’t American leaders taking any steps toward a stable and sustainable future for all citizens and fellow creatures?  Why do we think we enjoy immunity from the problems out there in Haiti, Egypt, India, Mexico and Bangladesh?

Today, the United States imports 7 out of 10 barrels of oil.  In other words, we exceed our carrying capacity for energy.   It’s not sustainable.  Every added American equates to 25.4 acres of wilderness being destroyed to support that person known as “ecological footprint.”  Take 100 million X’s 25.4 acres, which means 2.54 billion acres of land must be destroyed to support that massive addition of humans to America.

As we move into Peak Oil, it will become more costly to drill for it and even more expensive at the pump.  Thus, $20 per gallon will be our reality within two decades according to researcher Chris Steiner in his book $20 Per Gallon.  How will that affect our 312 million Americans as we head toward 400 million?

How will another 100 million people added to America affect our cities?  As Dr. Albert Bartlett said, ”Unlimited population growth cannot be sustained; you cannot sustain growth in the rates of consumption of resources. No species can overrun the carrying capacity of a finite land mass. This Law cannot be repealed and is not negotiable.”

In the past month, Americans sent $100 million in food aid to Somalia.  Yet, all of Africa expects to grow from its current 1.1 billion to 3.1 billion before the end of the century.  One UN expert said that environmental and food refugees will exceed 50 million within several decades.  Any food aid guarantees enormously unsustainable populations that will collapse in more horrific numbers down the road.

Having seen what’s coming in my worldwide bicycle travels, I am baffled that all Americans collectively aren’t screaming at the top of their lungs about stabilizing human population across our entire civilization.

We know what causes our runaway population growth and the line grows by 80 million desperate people cascading annually into western countries around the world.  “Most Western elites continue urging the wealthy West not to stem the migrant tide, but to absorb our global brothers and sisters until their horrid ordeal has been endured and shared by all—ten billion humans packed onto an ecologically devastated planet.” Dr. Otis Graham, Unguarded Gates

As our oceans degrade, oil depletes, soils decline and our quality of life degrades, isn’t it time for discussion, debate and action?

Lester Brown, author of Plan B 4.0 Saving Civilization said, “Humans have set in motion environmental trends that are threatening civilization itself.  We are crossing environmental thresholds and violating deadlines set by nature.”

I urge everyone reading this commentary, from the smartest Ph.D.s to mothers, fathers and students—engage National Public Radio, all TV Channels as well as your newspapers and radio stations to address our predicament.  We cannot avoid, evade or suppress this conversation any longer.  If we fail, we fail our children, and as they will find out, Mother Nature always bats last.

Scurrilous Government

The Next Presidential Election…

The tragic mendacity that accompanies the charade called Democracy is again in full swing with presidential candidates spewing forth volumes of empty rhetoric.   Baseball and football are popular American competitions but politics is even more addictive.   Americans love to hate; they hate government designated enemies, they hate opposing political parties, they hate the opposing team at sporting events, they sometimes hate their neighbors and often even themselves.

Politics is an ancient game that is still as exhilarating as it was two centuries ago.  During the early Nineteenth Century Adams/Jackson campaign Jackson was referred to as “Jackass Jackson” and his wife was accused of bigamy.  The bigamy charge was apparently inadvertent but true. The Jackass became the symbol of the Democratic Party.  Political parties were not enshrined in the Constitution but their roots preceded it.

Unfortunately, in America, the game of politics is often taken more seriously than the objective.  Few citizens know what constitutes good government and even fewer understand why God never intended that “we the people” govern.  Ratification of the United States Constitution created an evil, capricious, unreliable sovereign (“We the people”) which the world’s elite power structure quickly found ways to control.

President Andrew Jackson was a quick tempered, amoral killer who was largely responsible for the American Indian genocide.  He was also a lethal dueler.  It is hard to believe that a nation of serious Christians could have elected a man of his character.  However, they did, and prominent in his mostly evil nature was an independence that properly evaluated the central bank and was successful in stopping it for several decades.  Following is a list of President Jackson’s objections to the Central Banking System:

It concentrated the nation’s financial strength in a single institution.

It exposed the government to control by foreign interests.

It served mainly to make the rich richer.

It exercised too much control over members of Congress.

It favored northeastern states over southern and western states.

Banks are controlled by a few select families.

Banks have a long history of instigating wars between nations, forcing them to borrow funding to pay for them.

Every one of these objections is as valid today as when President Jackson made it.  Sometimes good things come from bad people – but not often.

Expenses involved in waging war were key factors in banking decisions that have seriously hurt our nation.  Problems financing the Revolutionary War contributed to General Washington’s federalism and the inclusion of the right to tax in the new Constitution.  The War of 1812 sunk the nation in debt and was a key factor in gaining support for a central bank. Central banks provide governments with the unlimited source of funds necessary to wage war.  President Jackson abolished central banking and the nation had “Free Banking” until 1862 when a National Bank was chartered in the North to finance the Civil War.  Then in 1913 the Federal Reserve was put in place. (Read about central banking here.)   Four years later we had armies in Europe fighting in the First World War.  During the Twentieth Century wars were murderous, costly, frequent, and ineffective.   Interest paid to the central bankers for money they create from nothing makes war a business interest.

The perpetual War on Terror was a creation of the puppet administration of President George W. Bush.  Never in world history have central bankers enjoyed a bigger bonanza.   In between counting their endless profits they are gleefully rubbing their hands together as they poor-down the Western World, add the wealth to their already bulging coffers, and substantially increase their power.  When you have the power YOU ARE the Law and, for you, robbery is legal!

In an inordinately lucid article entitled “Rogue Trading is not the Problem” Anthony Wile

describes the process this way, “The system is controlled from top-to-bottom. It begins with the privilege of money printing, which is supervised and controlled by only a few impossibly wealthy, elite banking families. Around these families cluster controlled corporations, religious personages, media moguls and military and political leaders – the enablers. They are drawn to this power structure like bees to honey.”  He continues by describing the mechanisms being used: “In order to instigate world government, these families use dominant social themes – fear-based promotions – to induce the middle class to give up power and wealth to global institutions that supposedly have solutions to these non-existent problems: Global warming, peak oil, over-population, pollution, political tensions, wars, fake crimes, general resource depletion, food and water scarcity – anything that seems to affect basic survival is seized upon by the Tavistock Institute and other elite think tanks and configured for maximum fear. The promotions are rolled out one after the other in endless waves.”

The mysterious process of selecting the candidates for President seems to be about over and we are being exposed to the allowed choices.  Governor Perry of Texas has entered the race.  He, like George W. Bush, is a former college cheer leader and a Bilderberg attendee.  The tightly controlled American media determine which of the candidates receives enough promotion to gain popular support.  Our local New York Times owned newspaper pictured Perry and Romney on the front page as the “Two Leading Candidates”.  Congressman Ron Paul is the best of the lot but he has already been dismissed by the media moguls and his candidacy will never be allowed to gain traction.

Two party politics has never solved problems.  Instead, it placates citizens while allowing the elite cadre to pull the strings.  Just as our monetary system lacks a golden anchor our government lacks an overarching, immutable legal platform.

Tragically, our Constitutional Republic was created with an instrument that forbids absolute legal standards, instead, it encodes freedoms that are bound to end in serious conflict.  Religions are intrinsically exclusive.  Humanists contend for messianic control and are stridently resisted by those whose allegiance is to an overarching dominion.   This lack of a religious legal standard is painfully evident now as our government, with no restraint from our Constitution, passes laws that infringe on the moral values of the populace.  Abortion and the normalization of homosexuality are two examples.  Freedom of religion brings potential religious conflict and since the government’s attempt to be neutral is humanistic major strife is built into the system.

One can make an interesting analogy between our government and our Christian church; both are producing rotten fruit. Catholics love to chide Protestant disarray and there is no doubt that their central authority exerts better leverage.  However, bureaucracy and tradition have badly affected doctrine and righteousness causing them to support the United Nations and other international programs.  Nevertheless, they remain a major Christian force while Protestants have fallen into effete heresy and chaos.

All Christian Churches seem to have lost their way.  World government under the auspices of an evil, conspiratorial, elite cabal is not an objective of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  He is not pleased with human endeavors that place the creature between Him and control of His creation.  He did not endorse the insertion of a king into the dominion process.  He seeks unadulterated control over His people and His creation.  We were created to be obedient to His commands.  When we are obedient we enjoy peace and prosperity.  When we seek to be like God and usurp His dominion we quickly fall into tyranny.  Under the New Covenant our sins are forgiven but the consequences are not.

We cannot fix the current church or current government.  President Obama is not the culprit; neither are the Pope or Protestant leaders.  The culprit is our relationship with the God of All Creation.  The culprit is our own attitude, our own pride, our own bloated image of ourselves.  The answer to all of our problems is obedience.  We were not created to govern ourselves and until we freely accept His dominion and begin to obey His Laws we will continue to suffer deterioration.

We are blest with some wonderful Christians who sincerely seek to restore our nation but many of them ignore God’s Law and instead lift up our flawed Constitution.  They repeat the sin of God’s people when they displeased God by seeking a human king.  They do not really believe in the God they claim to worship.  A dangerous element of humanism has crept into their faith!

Good fruit is a product of obedience and until our churches and our government become obedient both will continue to produce rotten fruit!

The coming presidential election will feature a pre-selected President whose citizenship is questionable and whose vital records remain sealed; a man whose allegiance is to a minority and whose political acumen is alien.  He is hated by many members of the opposing political party who will be provided with a pre-selected opponent that will verbally cater to some of their concerns but who, if elected, will be obedient to the elite cabal that controls both parties and will ignore his campaign promises.  It will be an evil deceptive, humanistic endeavor that will do nothing to change the disastrous course we are following.

Voting in a dishonest, devilish political system is evil.   I will not cast a vote.

I mentioned my decision not to vote to a friend whose response was that someone like Hitler might come to power. Obviously, my friend did not know that in the German election conservative Christians voted overwhelmingly for Hitler! Double minded Christians are easily deceived.

Oil Reserve Depletion = Crash of Dollar

It’s amazing. In the wake of the 2008 derivatives and housing bubble collapse, created by the U.S. Treasury and the private Federal Reserve with engineered low interest rates and easy money designed to artificially pump up the economy after the effects of the dot-com bust, the faltering markets of 2000-2001, and the rapidly depreciating dollar, we have now seen these same entities pour Trillions, yes, TRILLIONS in fiat injections into every conceivable corner of the markets. They have spent incredible sums on toxic equities (worthless equities, and don’t let anyone tell you different) to “ease” the debt spiral, they have propped up almost every large international bank, they have propped up the Federal Government and the Dollar itself with sizable purchases of our own Treasury debt, and, they have even thrown money into the pockets of foreign institutions and corporate beggars. Keep in mind, that all the debt that these actions generate is eventually placed squarely in the lap of one group of people; the American Taxpayer!

They have manipulated unemployment figures. They have consistently released completely fraudulent CPI (inflation) figures based on calculations which neglect numerous factors that used to be counted only two decades ago. They have used coordinated naked short selling in precious metals markets to hold back the natural spikes in gold and silver values. They have blamed every negative development in the economy (that they could not hide) on extraneous circumstances and outside culprits rather than themselves. They have done all this, to conjure the illusion of recovery for an increasingly agitated general public.

So much tap dancing and snake oil selling, and all it took, was the pain of $4 a gallon gas to wipe everything away…

That’s right, when the cost of driving to work, driving to shop, or driving for vacation doubles, the naïve notion that everything is perfectly normal goes right out the window. Americans complain a lot, but they rarely accept a bad situation as inexorable and take measures to fix it themselves.There is always the “chance” that things will get better tomorrow, or so we tell ourselves. We just ride the wave, and expect the pack of sharks at our back will never quite catch up to our boogie-board of blind optimism. However, when something takes a Great White sized bite out our very wallets, we take notice, and search the horizon for a bigger boat.

I have commented in the past that after only a few months of high gas prices, the wind would easily be knocked right out of our puffed up bailout driven recovery, and so far, that is exactly what is happening. Retail sales are fumbling, vacation destinations are crippled, the housing market continues to dive, in part due to the relentlessly high price of energy. When people travel less, they spend less, they buy less, and they relocate less.

In response, the IEA (International Energy Agency), an organization of 28 countries, has made a very sudden and startling announcement; each member nation will begin dumping their strategic crude oil reserves onto the global marketplace to flood the supply side of the equation, and, in theory, drive down overall oil prices. The IEA will release over 60 million barrels over at least 30 days into the markets, half of which will come directly out of the strategic reserves of the U.S. This is only the third time in the 37 year history of the IEA that this kind of action has been taken. Surely, governments around the world have finally realized that inflation in energy is going to completely derail what’s left of our financial structure, and they are working to prevent this, right…?

Some economists and many in the public will cheer this decision as a fast and decisive solution to the growing oil crises. These people would be foolish. But, perhaps we should look at the debate points from their side of the field, or even the U.S. government and the IEA’s side of the field. Below, we will look at the arguments made in support of the IEA oil dump so far, and why they are utter nonsense…

Lie #1: Oil Prices Are High Because The War In Libya Has Diminished Supply

Better throw on some boots and grab a shovel! Digging through this crap might take all day…

I’ll tell you a little secret, something mainstream economic analysts would rather you didn’t hear: there is NO lack of supply in crude markets. Sorry, the facts are clear. I realize that there are also proponents of ‘peak oil’ out there that fervently want to believe that there is a current and substantial supply side crisis in crude. Whether they are correct or not about the eventuality of peak oil remains to be seen, however, we are certainly not seeing any semblance of an oil shortage today, despite events in Libya.

Libya’s crude production before the war accounted for only 2% of the world’s entire oil output.Oil prices were climbing back towards the high levels seen in 2008 long before the “Arab Spring” broke out in the region. In February, the IEA itself reported that the world oil supply rose to an all time high of 89 million barrels per day. After the Libyan conflict erupted, this production fell by a marginal 700,000 barrels per day:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/04/iea-reports-that-world-oil-supply-rose.html

The establishment’s assertion that Libya is somehow the direct cause of energy inflation is a distraction. Libya has little or nothing to do with anything.

Lie #2: The IEA Oil Dump Will Create A Supply Glut And Drive Down Prices

The position that a “lack of supply” is the culprit behind rising gas prices is an outright falsehood. In fact, markets are already awash in oil, and our government is fully aware of this.The U.S. Energy Department has shown a global trend of falling demand for gasoline, and, the IEA has even admitted that this trend is likely to continue through 2011:

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2011/05/17/IEA-sees-US-gasoline-demand-falling/UPI-99911305637281/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-23/-head-scratcher-petroleum-release-to-inflate-u-s-crude-glut.html

Anyone who follows the Baltic Dry Index also knows that freight shipping has collapsed back down to levels near those that appeared right before the 2008 debt bubble burst. This means around the world there is less demand for nearly ALL goods, and many commodities necessary for manufacturing, not just oil. Lower demand means greater available supply.Therefore, supply is in no way the issue when it comes to high oil prices. Again, the supply argument is a distraction away from the truth. Yet, this has been Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s primary rationale for supporting the IEA dump:

“We saw a very substantial sustained supply disruption. These reserves exist in part to offset those kind of disruptions,” Geithner told CNBC television.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/24/us-usa-economy-geithner-oil-idUSTRE75N5ZK20110624

So, to reiterate, there is ALREADY a glut in oil markets, and there has been since at least 2008.If there was actually a supply side crisis, trust me, you would know it. If you want to study a true crude supply crisis, then you only need glance back at the energy crisis of 1979 when Jimmy Carter ordered a cessation of Iranian oil imports and the Iran/Iraq war began. When you have to wait in long lines at the gas station just for a few gallons of unleaded, then you might be in the middle of a supply crisis.

After we accept the fact that supply is high and demand is low, we are then faced with an important question; why in the world would the IEA report high supply and low demand, and then expect to have any significant effect on oil markets by dumping our strategic reserves?!

Lie #3: The IEA Oil Dump Was Designed To Hit “Speculators”, Who Are The “Real” Cause Of Energy Inflation

Back in 2009 after the first major gasoline spike subsided, I spoke often about the mainstream financial media’s strange obsession with “speculators”, and the consistent use of talking points obviously designed to condition the American public into associating all oil price jumps with scheming investors in the shadows out to corner the market. My theory back then was that once oil began to skyrocket again due to the crumbling value of the dollar, establishment pundits and government officials would come back once again to point a finger at the speculator boogie man, and draw attention away from our inflating currency. Sure enough…

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/22/obama-form-task-force-tackle-rising-gas-prices/

As we have seen, supply is not an issue, and so speculation should not be either. However, if speculators have actually been hoarding stocks and supplies in order to artificially drive up the price of crude, then the IEA announcement should have sent them scrambling to phone their brokers to sell-sell-sell! The shock to oil markets should have been extraordinary. But what happened? Not much to write home about…

The Brent crude index saw a relatively moderate price drop from around $113-$115 a barrel down to $105 a barrel, and currently, the price is showing potential to climb back up!

Initiating the release of the strategic oil reserves of nations across the globe caused an overall price drop of a few bucks? I guess speculators weren’t having much of an effect on the market after all.

So, if speculators aren’t the cause, and neither is limited supply or high demand, then what IS the phantom driver of inflation in energy? There is only one other possible answer; devaluing currencies. The IEA can pour all the oil they want into the markets and it won’t change a damn thing, because higher supply does nothing to strengthen the foundation of the dollar, which is being swiftly eroded by the Federal Reserve. Have they accomplished a minor halt to rising prices and visible inflation? Yes. Will prices bounce back even higher in the near future as the Fed continue to inject fiat into the economy? Absolutely.

The Consequences Of Reserve Depletion

The IEA announcement comes directly after the last OPEC meeting ended in a bitter split between member countries over whether to raise crude production levels. The decision by every country except Saudi Arabia to keep production steady was the right one, of course.However, elements of the U.S. and the EU were downright unhappy with OPEC’s unwillingness to help hide the weakness of their respective currencies. An OPEC decision to increase production would have at least influenced market psychology, and allowed prices to soften for a short time. So, without OPEC support, the central banker controlled apparatus turned to the IEA to open the floodgates of petroleum. OPEC nations, as one might imagine, are not happy…

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/23/us-opec-iea-idUSTRE75M6J520110623

There are several threats associated with this development, and there is a distinct possibility that these have been deliberately provoked, if one considers that a weakened America ripe for centralization is the true goal.

First, OPEC countries could easily retaliate against the IEA by dropping their own production levels. Not only will the IEA action be meaningless (as we have shown above), it could also directly trigger a REAL supply crisis if OPEC decides to dam up the river. The U.S. is very unpopular in the Middle East, Africa, and Venezuela already. Now, the IEA has just given these regions a perfect excuse to dish out some economic vengeance.

Second, traditionally, if there is a real supply side crisis caused by OPEC, our most important stop-gap would be to tap into our strategic reserves. Unfortunately, we have just put those reserves on the market without batting an eye. So, in essence, we paid a very high price for a bullet that we will one day shoot ourselves in the foot with. That is to say, we have dumped our strategic reserves and set in motion a possible disaster which those reserves were supposed to save us from! Its mind boggling!

Third, there is very little stopping OPEC at this point from decoupling from the U.S. dollar completely, especially if crude prices continue to rise despite the IEA dump. The fact of currency inflation and dollar implosion will be so exposed that no one, not even “Tiny Tim” Geithner, will be able to deny it. Once the illusions of “limited supply” and “speculation” are cast aside, the global focus will end up squarely on the dollar, and the IEA dump will have sped up the process dramatically.

I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but this country has been thoroughly gutted over the past few decades. Our industrial base has been dismantled and shipped overseas to the benefit of foreign nations and corporate feudalists. Our grain reserves, once ample, have been depleted to an all time low. Our currency has been systematically debased. And now, our oil reserves, without rational cause, are being sold off only to feed the catastrophe our government is supposedly out to stop. Are the American people being prepped like a glazed ham for the fires of the globalist oven? Is this really all due to coincidence and stupidity as skeptics claim, or is there something else at work here? I find it hard to believe that the IEA and our government are not aware that their proposed strategies conflict with their own source data, or that they are completely oblivious to the destruction they are about to reap upon our economy. The latest IEA decision is just one more piece of evidence of an agenda of deliberate financial destabilization trending towards a disaster that serves the interests of a select few, to the detriment of all the rest.

Source: Alt-Market.com

With Higher Gas Prices, Food Prices Continue To Climb

Lester Brown, director of www.earth-policy.org and author of Plan B, Mobilizing to Save Civilization, talks about why food prices continue to climb around the world.

In the United States, because gas has jumped into the $4.00 a gallon realm, we can expect more and more of our income to pay into our transportation, but also into food prices and all other mercantile goods prices.

Will gas prices drop?  Unfortunately, they will continue to rise as Peak Oil diminishes oil reserves and energy becomes harder and harder to find, extract and process.

“The cheap oil age created an artificial bubble of plentitude for a period not much longer than a human lifetime….so I hazard to assert that as oil ceases to be cheap and the world reserves move toward depletion, we will be left with an enormous population…that the ecology of the earth will not support. The journey back toward non-oil population homeostasis will not be pretty.  We will discover the hard way that population hyper growth was simply a side-effect of the oil age.  It was a condition, not a problem with a solution. That is what happened and we are stuck with it.”  James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency

“In February, world food prices reached the highest level on record. Soaring food prices are already a source of spreading hunger and political unrest, and it appears likely that they will climb further in the months ahead,” said Brown. “As a result of an extraordinarily tight grain situation, this year’s harvest will be one of the most closely watched in years. Last year, the world produced 2,180 million tons of grain. It consumed 2,240 million tons, a consumption excess that was made possible by drawing down stocks by 60 million tons. (See data at www.earth-policy.org.) To avoid repeating last year’s shortfall and to cover this year’s estimated 40-million-ton growth in demand, this year’s world grain harvest needs to increase by at least 100 million tons. Yet that would only maintain the current precarious balance between supply and demand.

“To get prices back down to a more acceptable level, it would take perhaps another 50 million tons for a total increase of 150 million tons. Can the world boost this year’s grain harvest by 150 million tons or even 100 million tons? It is possible, because we have had annual harvest jumps of 150 million tons twice over the last two decades, but this year it does not appear likely.

“In assessing the world grain harvest prospect, we focus on the big three grains-rice, wheat, and corn-that together account for nearly 90 percent of the harvest. Barley, oats, sorghum, rye, and millet make up the remainder.

“We start by looking at rice because, as an irrigated crop, its production fluctuates little. The average annual gain in the world rice harvest, which totaled 452 million tons last year, has been 7 million tons. Let’s assume that we get a 10 million ton gain in rice this year.

“Wheat, now the world’s leading food grain, is much more difficult to assess because so much of the harvest is rain-fed, making yields as variable as the rainfall. But since most wheat is winter wheat, which is planted in the fall, is dormant in winter, and resumes growth in early spring, we know that this year the wheat area planted is up by 3 percent. We also have an early sense of the crop’s condition.

“We begin with the big four wheat producers-China, India, the United States, and Russia-which collectively produce half the world’s wheat. China, the leading wheat producer, was until very recently suffering the worst drought in its winter wheat-growing region in 60 years. Although rain and snow in late February and early March rains and snow have lessened the drought effect, we could easily see China’s wheat harvest drop from 115 million tons last year to 110 million tons this year. India officially expects an 82-million-ton harvest, up 1 million tons from last year.

“In the United States-the third ranking wheat producer-the southern Great Plains are suffering from drought. As of the end of February, the U.S. winter wheat crop condition was among the worst in the last 20 years. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates the harvest will drop from 60 million tons to 56 million, and this may be conservative.

“Russia’s wheat harvest should be up sharply from last year’s heat-devastated crop of 42 million tons. But last fall it was too dry to plant one fifth of its winter wheat, which means many more farmers will plant lower-yielding spring wheat-wheat that is planted in the spring and is harvested in the late summer or early fall. With a little luck, Russia should harvest roughly 58 million tons of wheat.

“Adding in the rest of the world’s expected wheat production, can we match last year’s world wheat harvest figure of 645 million tons? We should exceed it. The International Grains Council estimates this year’s harvest at 672 million tons, up by 27 million tons over 2010. This contrasts with the Canadian Wheat Board estimate of 653 million tons, a gain of only 8 million tons. For calculation purposes, let us assume that this year’s wheat harvest is up by 20 million tons for a total of 665 million tons.

“Now for corn. Two countries tell the story here: the United States and China, which produce 40 and 20 percent, respectively, of the 814-million-ton world corn harvest. Combining the expected 4 percent increase in U.S. planted area with a 10-ton-per-hectare yield, the U.S. corn harvest could increase by 25 million tons. China’s corn harvest, which has fluctuated around 165 million tons for the last three years, is not likely to increase given its tight water situation.  For the remaining 40 percent of the corn harvest, we will assume a gain of 15 million tons. All together this takes the world harvest up by 40 million tons.

“Let’s review the global numbers. It will take 100 million tons of additional grain just to maintain the current precarious situation and close to 150 million tons to restore some semblance of stability in the world grain market. We can count on a 10-million-ton increase in this year’s rice harvest. We are hoping for a 20-million-ton rise with wheat and a 40-million-ton jump in corn. Let us also assume that minor cereals increase by 10 million tons over last year. This would give us a total increase of 80 million tons, not enough to prevent further price rises.

“world grain production is becoming more complex and difficult. On the demand side of the equation, there are three sources of growth: the addition of 80 million people per year, some 3 billion people moving up the food chain consuming more grain-intensive livestock products, and the massive conversion of grain to fuel ethanol in the United States.

“On the supply side, there was a time when grain production was on the rise almost everywhere. That world is now history. In a number of countries, grain harvests are shrinking because of aquifer depletion and severe soil erosion. Rising temperatures are also taking a toll. And some agriculturally advanced countries have run out of new technology to raise land productivity.

“In 18 countries containing half the world’s people, overpumping for irrigation is depleting aquifers. Among the countries where harvests are falling as aquifers are depleted are Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iraq. World Bank data for India indicate that 175 million people are being fed with grain produced by overpumping, which by definition is a short-term phenomenon. The comparable number for China is 130 million people.

“In some countries such as Mongolia and Lesotho, grain production has fallen by half or more in recent decades as severe soil erosion has led to wholesale cropland abandonment. In North Korea and Haiti, soil erosion is undermining efforts to raise output.

“In several agriculturally advanced countries, the backlog of unused technology has largely disappeared. Japan’s rice yield per acre has not increased for 16 years. China’s rice yield, now approaching that in Japan, may also be about to level off.

“In France, Europe’s leading wheat producer, yields have been flat for a decade. Wheat yields have also plateaued in Germany and the United Kingdom. In Egypt, Africa’s leading wheat producer, wheat yields have been flat for six years.

“At this point, it seems unlikely that we will get the 100-million-ton grain harvest increase this year that would be needed just to maintain the current rather precarious situation. Instead, it looks more likely that we will reduce stocks further. It may be somehow possible to avoid a rise in world food prices in the months ahead, but at this point it seems unlikely.”

We must remember that the human race adds 80 million more of its species to the planet every year, net gain.  That equals 1.0 billion people added to the USA every 13 years.  That huge number of humans can only be fed by cheap oil, but the age of cheap oil and all cheap energy no longer exists.  We are left with our predicament of overwhelming population numbers that we must contend with—but are not.

What Happens When The Oil Runs Out

After church on Sunday, I purchased the lowest grade gasoline I could find in Denver for $3.36 per gallon for my four-cylinder car.  It ripped a hole in my wallet!   However, in Los Angeles, car owners pay a whopping $3.86 for a gallon of gas.  Diesel costs $4.17 per gallon in California.

In London, according to my British contact David Hepper, English citizens have paid an equivalent of $8.00 per gallon for the past several years.

While Americans burn 20 million barrels of oil daily, the human race burns a mind-numbing 84 million barrels of oil every single day of the year.

China, closing in on the American Dream of a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage, today adds 16 million automobiles to its roads annually. They suffered a 60 mile traffic jam last fall, commonplace in Los Angeles and Chicago!  (Source: Brian Williams at NBC New)  At China’s current rate by 2030, according to James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, they expect to burn 98 million barrels of oil daily!  That’s one country with 1.3 billion people and adding 8.0 million net gain annually. They will burn more gasoline per day in the next 19 years, than the entire human race burns daily in 2011.

To display the dynamic of burning 84 million barrels of oil daily in 2011, let’s take an oil “drum” that holds 42 gallons. It measures 20 inches at the base. If you take 84 million of them and stood them side by side, they would create a “belt” around the world at the equator of 25,000 miles.  We fill all 84 million of them with oil pumped from the ground and burn them down to nothing but “carbon footprint” every single day of the year.  (Source: Dr. John Tanton,www.thesocialcontract.com) Check the carbon footprint damage at www.350.org for the accelerating environmental damage to our biosphere created from such a horrendous and continuous burn of fossil fuels.

While you and I may complain that gasoline costs too much and it’s not back down to the .19 cents a gallon that I paid as a high school kid, what will happen when gasoline reaches $10.00 per gallon and higher? (Source: Chris Steiner’s book—$20 Per Gallon)   After that, what happens when it runs out?

Yes, you will hear that the planet makes unlimited amounts of oil because it’s busy under the surface creating black gold.  You will hear from others that we have enough oil for another 100 years.  You will hear all sorts of tales like the story about the preacher in Alaska where he heard from an oil man that the tundra holds billions of barrels.  You will hear that Montana holds more oil than Saudi Arabia.

What if none of that’s true?  Anybody ever thought about the prospect of running out of oil?  What if unlimited oil is all conjecture?  What if, in fact, at some point in the future, the human race cannot pump any more oil out of the ground?  After all, this is a finite planet!

How would we fill our tractors that plant the crops for the food we need?  How would we heat our homes—all 312 million of us?

As a side note: what if the conjectures of unlimited supply proved to be true?  What if it didn’t run out and we continued endless human expansion?  Would any other life on this planet survive the human onslaught?  Other creatures suffer extinction at a rate of 80 to 100 species per day in 2011 from human encroachment. (Source: Norman Meyers, Oxford, UK)

“The cheap oil age created an artificial bubble of plentitude for a period not much longer than a human lifetime….so I hazard to assert that as oil ceases to be cheap and the world reserves move toward depletion, we will be left with an enormous population…that the ecology of the earth will not support. The journey back toward non-oil population homeostasis will not be pretty.  We will discover the hard way that population hyper growth was simply a side-effect of the oil age.  It was a condition, not a problem with a solution. That is what happened and we are stuck with it.”  James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency

What if Kunstler is correct?  Isn’t it interesting that M. King Hubbert, the world renowned geologist, who predicted that the USA would drop from 9.0 million barrels pumped daily to 3.1 million barrels by 1970, proved correct?  This is known as the “Hubbert Curve.”  His calculations in the Middle East, South America and Mexico show oil fields draining emptier by the day!

In his ground breaking book Peak Everything: Waking up to a Century of Declines by Richard Heinberg, he addresses limited water, resources, minerals and metals as our greatest crisis along with Peak Oil.  Is he wrong?  Is his scientific research flawed?

What about the mathematical deductions of limited oil, water and resources by Chris Clugston in his work, “The real inconvenient truth—on American sustainability: Anatomy of a Societal Collapse.”

Do you think the preacher is correct?  Or, do you think research scientists provide greater gravity to the issue?

“As we go from this happy hydrocarbon bubble we have reached now to a renewable energy resource economy, which we do this century, will the “civil” part of civilization survive?  As we both know there is no way that alternative energy sources can supply the amount of per capita energy we enjoy now, much less for the 9 billion expected by 2050. And energy is what keeps this game going. We are involved in a Faustian bargain—selling our economic souls for the luxurious life of the moment, but sooner or later the price has to be paid.”  Walter Youngquist, energy

I’ve mentioned a few of the top world experts that tell us that we’re like a brakeless train heading toward a washed-out bridge. Dr. Albert Bartlett, physicist at the University of Colorado, said, “Humanity does not understand the exponential growth equation.  It cannot continue and I am not optimistic about the future.”  (Source: www.albartlett.org)

Fellow Americans, within the next 24 years, if our Congress, presidents and your silence continue unabated, your children will see 72 million immigrants added to the United States.  All totaled, we will add 100 million people to the USA by 2035—a scant two dozen years from now. They will all be fighting for gasoline, food, water and resources.  Along with your children!

Who is to blame for $4.00 a gallon gas? How about $10.00 a gallon?

“At this point, it’s almost certainly too late to manage a transition to sustainability on a global or national scale, even if the political will to attempt it existed, which it clearly does not. Our civilization is in the early stages of the same curve of decline and fall as so many others have followed before it.  What likely lies in wait for us is a long, uneven decline into a new Dark Age from which, centuries from now, the civilizations of the future will gradually emerge.”

Who can we blame for $4.00 a gallon?  Answer: every last one of us cotton pickin’ American gas guzzling 8-cylinder SUV drivers, trucks, trains, boats and planes!  We burn 20 million barrels a day in the United States.  The world’s humans burn 84 million barrels daily.   That’s 29.9 billion barrels of oil annually worldwide!  Whopping carbon footprint!  Hey!  Did you think a finite resource like ‘endless oil’ could go on forever?  That’s like sucking on an ‘endless milkshake’ straw at the local diner!  It eventually runs dry and you suck on air.

Are you upset? You gotta’ be kiddin’ me!  The “Hubbert Curve” told us that “Peak Oil” would hit the United States in 1970 when geologist M.King Hubbert predicted a drop from nine million barrels to three million barrels daily.  It came to pass!

Peak Everything: Facing a Century of Declines by Richard Heinberg tells us we face rapidly declining supplies of metals, water, oil, coal, minerals and most other resources we rape the Earth to acquire for our rapacious human activities.  Are we preparing with such simple plans like 10 cent deposit/return laws on all metals, plastics and glass.  Not a chance!

If you think $4.00 a gallon today hits your wallet, think again. Chris Steiner wrote $20 Per Gallon, which predicts with deadly accuracy a steady rise of prices from $5.00 to $10.00 to ultimately $20.00 per gallon before mid-century.   Why?  Answer: we may have only burned 50 percent of the Earth’s oil supplies, but it’s father down, harder to get at and more expensive to extract.  Thus, costs rise!

Experts knew it would happen, but since 1970, we just kept burning oil like there was no tomorrow.  Tomorrow happens to be today!  How’s that big Ram truck with eight powerful cylinders doing for you at $4.00 a gallon.  Peak Oil will prove a game-changer!

We failed to incorporate conservation in any form.  We failed to plan.  We failed ourselves and future generations.

“As we go from this happy hydrocarbon bubble we have reached now to a renewable energy resource economy, which we do this century, will the “civil” part of civilization survive?  As we both know there is no way that alternative energy sources can supply the amount of per capita energy we enjoy now, much less for the 9 billion expected by 2050. And energy is what keeps this game going. We are involved in a Faustian bargain—selling our economic souls for the luxurious life of the moment, but sooner or later the price has to be paid.”  Walter Youngquist, energy

“An immutable fact of expensive gasoline: Americans will find someone to blame,” said Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal.  “We can expect in the coming months to hear many sober analysts attempt to explain the complex reasons for rising oil prices: inflation, Middle East tremors, growing demand. Expect, too, for all those reasons to vanish behind what most Americans will see as the far more obvious cause: President Obama’s regulatory assault on domestic oil and gas production.”

Obama, Congress and the American people dance around the fact that we failed to plan.  We face an unsustainable “Peak Oil” consumption conundrum.  We created a “Faustian Bargain” with the inevitable “Hobson’s Choice” for the final answer.  That ‘answer’ forces us to take only two choices left to us: pick door number 1 and you get to walk over a cliff with no parachute; pick door number 2 and you fall into quicksand with no lifeguard.

In January 2008, candidate Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle that under his cap-and-trade plan, “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” Steven Chu, now Secretary of Energy, told this newspaper in the same year: “Somehow, we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”  Currently, $8.00 a gallon in UK!

In his book The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler, he predicted that China would burn 98 million barrels of oil daily by 2030.  They stick six million new cars on their highways every year—so they will reach that burn rate in 19 years.

However, the planet will be coughing up only empty ‘stuff’ like you do at the end of your ‘endless milkshake’ when you suck on ‘nothing left’.

What can we do?

• Massive change-over to two and four cylinder cars
• Massive push for electric and solar cars
• Massive push for wind and solar energy
• Massive push conservation on all fronts
• Massive push for walking centric cities
• Massive push for mass transit
• Massive push to ride bicycles!

As the USA adds 3.1 million people annually, net gain, to rise from 312 million to 400 million by 2035—more demand, less oil—higher prices and lucky to have any oil at all!  Finally, we need a massive push for population stability by the United States to lead the rest of the countries of the world.  We cannot keep adding human numbers if we expect to survive the 21^stcentury.

The next 20 years in America—sobering look

We are SO unprepared for our future!

Part 1

First of all, I am an optimist.  I love life!  I get a kick out of being alive.  I enjoy the American Dream more than most.  I play, dance with my wife twice a week and look forward to the summer.   Last year, I bicycled coast-to-coast across America for the 7^th time.  Last month, as I closed in on age 65, I skied to the top of a 13,209 foot peak at 31 below zero in Colorado.  At the top: a glorious view of 100 miles in all directions to see the majestic snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains!  Robert Redford’s got nothing on me in his movie — Jeremiah Johnson!

While the average American, according to NPR, sits in front of a TV for 15 years of his/her life—I’m out there living, playing and adventuring! You can bet that I laugh a lot, pray a lot, appreciate my wife and family—and expect more adventures.

However, I am also cognizant of what our civilization faces in the next 20 years.  To be downright realistic, I am not looking forward to it.  How do I know what I am writing about?  I’ve seen it up close and ugly in my 40 years of bicycle travel around the planet.

The next 20 years won’t be the cakewalk like the last 20 years!   Why?  While I cannot cover such a litany of challenges in three columns, you may be able to digest a few for starters.

First of all, gasoline will continue to rise in price from the current $3.19 cents here in Colorado and $3.46 in most of California, and topping out at $4.69 in West Covina, CA—to $5.00 a gallon this summer and higher beyond that.  It’s already $6.69 in Europe.  If you read Chris Steiner’s book, $20 Per Gallon, and I reviewed the book last year, ultimately gasoline will cost $10.00 a gallon and within 20 years or so, it will hit $20.00 per gallon.  Why? Because we continue devouring that finite resource at an astounding 84 million barrels of oil every day of the year.  That’s 400 million gallons per day in the USA alone! Poof! Up in carbon footprint as it pollutes our biosphere!

“The cheap oil age created an artificial bubble of plentitude for a period not much longer than a human lifetime….so I hazard to assert that as oil ceases to be cheap and the world reserves move toward depletion, we will be left with an enormous population…that the ecology of the earth will not support. The journey back toward non-oil population homeostasis will not be pretty.  We will discover the hard way that population hyper growth was simply a side-effect of the oil age.  It was a condition, not a problem with a solution. That is what happened and we are stuck with it.”  James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency

Oil’s decline will change everything!  We will not be driving personal cars because we will be forced to use mass transit. It will change the way we shop, eat and travel.  Bicycles, my favorite mode of transportation, will become more dominant in our cities.  Unfortunately, we do not and have not found a replacement for oil even close to its energy-density and ease of transport.

Peak Oil will change how we grow food and its cost.  It will change transport of food and materials.  It’s already happening!  With our humongous 312 million population, it will be interesting to see if we can afford to eat or if we can grow enough food TO eat.

As oil prices rise, we will see more starvation around the world—currently at 18 million humans annually.  We can expect 30 to 40 million human beings starving to death annually by mid century if not more.

We humans have gotten ourselves into a heck of a conundrum on many levels.

Within the next 20 years, Americans, if they continue accepting relentless immigration, will see an added 50 to 60 million immigrants on top of another 20 million their (our) own citizens.  That means another 60 to 75 million human beings will be competing for jobs, water, food and energy to keep warm and feed themselves.

Anybody scratching their noggins right about now?  Getting a little nervous for your kids? Concerned about their fate?  What about the rest of the planet?  Ever hear of the phrase, “I want to give my kids a better life than I had.”  Reality: ain’t gonna’ happen!

Since humans add 1.0 billion people net gain every 13 years, that means 1.5 billion more people added to the planet within 20 years.  Ever here of the song, “They’re coming to America….” by Neil Diamond?

As that ‘surge’ of humanity stampedes across the globe racing into “remaining” civilized and sustainable countries like the USA, Canada, Australia and all of Europe—it means your quality of life and standard of living drop like a brick in water.  It means massive unemployed, now at 15 million Americans, will grow to 20 million unemployed Americans. It means 43 million Americans subsisting on food stamps in March of 2011, will grow to over 50 million in a short time.  It means poverty and hopelessness will grow beyond imagination or solving.

Fellow Americans, I am only hitting the tip of the iceberg in this three part series.  If we continue on this current immigration path of adding 3.1 million desperate souls every year to our country from a line that grows by 80 million more annually—we and our children: screwed!  Plain and simple!  Immigrants, too!  The results will be unpleasant, even devastating for all of us.

How do I know?  I’ve already witnessed it firsthand in my world travels. Once those numbers manifest, everybody suffers equally.  We’ll cover more of what we face in part 2.  We can change the future, but, after writing about it for the past 30 years, I question whether we possess the wisdom, energy or guts to change our future for the better.  How could we save ourselves?

1.   Suspend all immigration today.

2.   Engage every scientist in the world to create workable alternative energy.

3.   Massive movement toward conservation of water, gasoline and resources. Two cylinder cars, electric cars, solar powered cars, etc.

4.   Massive recycling incentive-driven 10 cent return/deposit on all plastic, metal, aluminum and glass containers of every kind sold in stores.

5.   How about changing our $800 billion annual military expenses to half that and move toward peace and sanity by leaving Iraq and Afghanistan?

6.   Your ideas?

Don’t think I know what I’m talking about?  Just look at these two videos for 5 and 10 minutes:

In a five minute astoundingly simple yet brilliant video, “Immigration, Poverty, and Gum Balls”, Roy Beck, director of www.numbersusa.ORG, graphically illustrates the impact of overpopulation.  Take five minutes to see for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE&feature=player_embedded

“Immigration by the numbers—off the chart” by Roy Beck

This 10 minute demonstration shows Americans the results of unending mass immigration on the quality of life and sustainability for future generations: in a word “Mind boggling!” www.NumbersUSA.org

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muw22wTePqQ

The War – Did We Sacrifice a Million Lives and a $Trillion Cash Just to Hand Our Jobs to China? Part Four

While the Tea Partiers and the liberals squabble over important domestic issues, America’s corporate and military titans, at the expense of America’s workers and taxpayers and with the blessing of Congress and the President, are creating China’s economic miracle. The military, at a cost of over $1 trillion, has paved the way for China to acquire and the U.S. to lose access to vast mineral and petroleum resources. The oil industry, with U.S. government assistance, is building a safe haven in East Asia from the imminent crash of oil everywhere else. And foreign investment, largely American, is giving China on average nearly one million new jobs a month while American unemployment soars.

This is a four-part series. Part One discusses why and how the oil industry could create a safe haven from its own collapse, and why it might choose China for the project. Part Two discusses how East Asia became “the right market” for the world’s remaining oil reserves, endangering everyone else. Part Three discusses how the US military has turned Afghanistan and Iraq into China’s good buddies. Part Four takes a broader view of what has happened and what if anything can be done about it. Enjoy.

Part Four of Four. What’s Really Going on Here?

Several months before the 2009 auction in Iraq, Michael Economides, editor of the industry newspaper, Energy Tribune, had described the changing roles of the West and China in petroleum acquisition in a virtual script for the up-coming Iraqi auction:

“It is certain that large Chinese oil acquisitions will become commonplace . .. . .Almost overnight, the US and the EU will be reduced to mere bystanders while China moves into the geopolitical major leagues. Massive Chinese acquisition of energy assets will lead to a transfer of political and economic power that the modern world has rarely seen. Why the US would be willing to give up competing for what has arguably been the world’s most vital commodity and for which there is no credible alternative, is mystifying.”¹

Mystifying indeed. Economides attributed the Western lassitude to too much “philosophizing on the future of the planet.”² Hmmm. Is that what motivated the US oil companies in sitting out the 2009 auction? Somehow it seems even less likely than the idea that the war has been an aging imperialist nation’s gambit to “crush the growing ambitions of China.” We all allow our vision to be clouded on occasion by our determination to blame things on our favorite enemies. Were we “philosophizing on the future of the planet” when we killed one million Iraqis? Were we “crushing the growing ambitions of China” when we imposed “regime changes” in which the new rulers fell over backwards to give China their geological crown jewels? I don’t think so.  And yet the BEHAVIOR of both the US Government and the US oil companies is as if they do not want Americans to have oil in the future.  An environnmentally admirable position to take if the oil were not going to be used anyway, but the safe-haven-in-China motive and Maresca’s assurances that Asia is the “right market” ring more true to this observer at least, especially given that the Waxman and Kerry global warming bills were drafted apparently so that the oil industry would be saved from doing more than “peak oil” would require.  See www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau230410.htm (“Imminent Crash of the Oil Supply . . .”), .

Good cop, bad cop

So we go into Afghanistan, rough everyone up, put “our” man in charge and tell ‘em it’s time to have a democracy. Folks aren’t terribly impressed. Then right behind us comes China, which “hearts and minds ‘em,” and they lay out the red carpet. The scene repeats itself in Iraq, where there’s a literal red carpet at the 2009 petroleum auction.

It’s a classic “good cop bad cop” routine. For those unfamiliar with it, the routine originated in police interrogation techniques. The “good cop” ingratiates himself to the suspect, offers him food or drink, explains that he wants to get him the best possible deal and may be able to do so if the suspect cooperates. The “bad cop” is standing by, seething, seemingly willing to beat up the suspect at the least excuse if he fails to cooperate. When the routine works, the suspect ultimately does what the “good cop” wants out of gratitude for having an alternative to the “bad cop.”

In context, China, playing “good cop,” is in a strong position to negotiate favorable contracts for pipeline corridors, oil or other resources from a country that has been subjected to US military intervention. The countries holding natural resources or pipeline corridors coveted by China may choose between China’s ”carpet of gold” and America’s “carpet of bombs.”

³ To the casual observer, the “good cop” and “bad cop” have conflicting goals, but in fact they are one and the same.. As Chinese analyst Liu Xuecheng puts it as quoted at the opening of this article, the US wages war while China “tries to help.”

You have to admire China’s chutzpah. China avoids blame for engaging in imperialist war, China carries off the spoils, United States soldiers bear the casualties, United States taxpayers shoulder the bill, the United States takes the exclusive blame for yet another immoral war, AND China purchases bonds, about one trillion dollars, altogether, on which U.S. taxpayers will be paying interest for decades, to cover the cost.⁴ As writer William Schneider asks, “Isn’t there something worrisome about Communist China financing operations of the U.S. government?”⁵ But that’s a question for another day.

OK, what’s goin’ on here, if it isn’t clear already?

So what IS going on here? Let’s make a list:

1. In 1992, there began a massive foreign investment in China. Annual foreign investment multipled by more than 10 in five years to around $70 billion per year by 1997, an influx of “stimulus money” every year greater relative to the size of the GDP, than the US stimulus package of 2009. China, which had been stagnating in the years just prior to that influx, boomed. And for the last decade, investment has been by far the largest contributor to China’s GDP growth, eclipsing its phenomenal export volume,.⁶ And for the last five yearshas contributed an average of 750,000 jobs per month to the Chinese economy.One might surmise that the oil industry had something to do with that, given its abundance of cash, but this writer lacks the data.
2. John Maresca made his famous 1998 speech on invitation of Congress and DOE explaining why the Taliban needed to be booted from power in Afghanistan to make way for a pipeline that could get oil to .”the right markets” – namely East Asia rather than the western markets.
3. The Clinton and Bush administrations negotiated with the Taliban over the pipeline corridor up until August, 2001. The US negotiator made the famous “carpet of gold or carpet of bombs”warning shortly before the negotiations collapsed.
4. 9/11 happened, apparently as the brainchild of Osama Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda, and in response the “War Against Terrorism” began. At the time, these folks were in fact in Afghanistan
5. The US delegated capture of Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda to local fighters, the “Northern Alliance,” who allowed Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda to escape into Pakistan, where we let them be. The US forces themselves went after the Taliban and ousted its government, replacing it with Hamid Karzai.
6. These events led the left and much of the European press to conclude that a major and perhaps exclusive purpose of the US in ousting the Taliban was that the war was “for oil,” when the logical inference to be drawn was that it was for “oil companies” who wanted the oil itself to go to East Asia.
7. China particularly, plus other East Asian nations,, have profited magnificently from the war the United States has fought at tremendous cost in Afghanistan and Iraq., and could not otherwise have profited unless they had gone to war themselves.
8. The Energy Tribune concluded prior to the Iraqi auctions that neither the United States nor its oil companies are any longer seeking to secure oil rights for Americans, and are abandoning the field to China.
9. The US oil companies were “no shows” at the major 2009 Iraqi auctions, and China and Malaysia secured the great majority of he contracts.
10. (10) Everyone agrees that China’s ability to do business in Afghanistan and Iraq has been helped, and America’s ability has been hurt, by America rather than China having had the military presence.
11. (11) Despite enormous expenditures of money and loss of lives, the United States has made negligible progress for itself, but has made enormous progress getting oil to the “right markets,” where its use in a declining oil industry will automatically mean that the Western markets will have substantially less.

There have been a multitude of analyses why the Afghan/Iraq war cannot be considered to be exclusively or even primarily a “war against terror,” a war against “weapons of mass destruction,” or, since we have had an opportunity to see the “changed regimes” in action, a war for US energy security. This writer submits, however, that the simplest explanation that fits all the facts,⁷ is that it has been from the start a war to ensure that as much oil and other natural resources will get to the “right markets” – namely, East Asia, as possible. Because oil production is no longer growing, every new barrel of oil for East Asia is a barrel less for the remainder of the world.

What about our hypothetical plan’s objective of depriving the “nonwnners” of as much oil as possible as quickly as possible? That is where things get scary. As noted above, the current trend has China increasing its share of oil consumption exponentially at 1%^/yr, meaning that its share, if the trend could continue, would reach 100% of the then-available total, with no one else having anything China didn’t want to give them, by 2025. With the support of the US military in the form of security, and the support of the oil industry in the form of subsidies and “no-shows,”   there is no obvious insurmountable hurdle. And as long as China and the US can continue playing “good cop bad cop” to a gullible world, China has nothing to lose and everything to gain. Could the hypothetical conspirators be so demonic? Well, there’s nothing new about this. Psychopathy is not-unheard-of even among supposedly sane U.S. geopolitical planners.⁸

If something like this weren’t happening, we would have no viable explanation for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we would have no viable explanation for what is happening to the oil industry’s probably enormous postpeak profits. And with China and the US Government working in harmony, there is no obvious reason why China will not acquire the whole remaining oil supply in short order. Is that at least part of the reason

• Microsoft is making major investments in China,⁹
• GM, raised from the dead by United States taxpayers, has put most of it hopes for the future in China, where its sales already exceed its sales in the US,¹⁰
• business invested in only 39,000 new jobs in the US in November as compared to the 750,000 jobs per month, 45 million total over the last five years that foreign investors have created in China¹¹ and
• American oil companies were “noticeably absent” from the Iraq auction, the editor of Energy Tribune says Europe and the United States are no longer trying to compete with China for oil, and private oil companies are building refineries and gas stations in China?

Do they all know something we don’t know about where the remaining oil is going to go?

But Hold On, Oil’s Chinese Safe Haven Isn’t Quite Built Yet

There’s always a possible glitch. China has a legitimate ability to sap the American economy: the extreme disparity between wages here and there, which is ultimately unsustainable. But China does not have a legitimate expectation that the United States will provide military assistance at our taxpayers’ expense to forward Chinese imperialist designs. Nor does China have legitimate expectation that the United States will assist in creating a Chinese safe haven from the end of oil, allowing American companies to pick up their marbles and take them away with impunity, taking our jobs with them. In fact there should be no safe havens from the end of oil, because they are inconsistent with climate stabilization,. Nor does China have a legitimate expectation that it can take charge of companies built by and for Americans, leaving behind lifeless skeletons like Detroit.

The fundamental reason that this was able to occur, was that we allowed oil and banking interests to corrupt or at least control our government so completely that we cannot even call the military our own. So we must all work to end that, starting by making sure we all agree we will not allow anyone to be elected who has accepted contaminated money in their public lives. No more voting for “lesser evils” who support our particular concerns but continue to accept oil money, Wall Street money, etc. We need to end the ability of corporate “persons” to spend billions influencing elections. We need to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan NOW, and restore the constitutional principle that our presidents cannot engage in war without a declaration of war setting its boundaries. The books need to be opened as to major investments by Americans and American businesses in foreign countries, and in particular as to the use of any “bailout” funds for investment in China. Steps must be taken to preserve or replace at the cost of the investors, jobs jeopardized through foreign investment. These things are unlikely to occur while we have a Congress and President so removed from those they ostensibly represent that they will engage in war at our expense with the intent or effect to take our jobs away.

We must also remember that the pay disparity between developing countries and the US is a legitimate threat to the US economy wherever and whenever it exists. Consequently, it is in our interest to work for healthy labor conditions and fair compensation EVERYWHERE.

And we, individually and collectively, need to go all out to minimize our petroleum use because (a) it is necessary for saving the earth, (b) it is necessary for dispelling our ugly public image, and (c) if China and industry succeed with the “safe haven,” we;d better get used to it FAST.

Finally, we must remember what we did when Sputnik crossed our skies. We didn’t just whine. We started a crash program in technical education to assure that our workers would continue to offer unique talents to the world. The time has come again for that. The United States has the best educational institutions in the world (although China is rapidly outstripping us) but by no means the best educations. Over the long haul, we have to expect our paychecks to correlate better with our talents than they do today, which means doing what it takes to improve American education.

So we have our work cut out for us. We don’t have much time, because with the active support of our government and businesses and no significant opposition, China may be able to achieve 100% control of the oil reserves by 2025.  We need a government that will not “give away the store,” as both parties have become accustomed to doing with impunity.

NOTES

1. Economides, “China’s Oil Power Play,” Energy Tribune, August 27, 2009, http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm/2199/Chinas-Oil-Power-Play

2. Economides, “China’s Oil Power Play,” Energy Tribune, August 27, 2009, http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm/2199/Chinas-Oil-Power-Play

3. Cf. threat made by US negotiators with Taliban shortly before 9/11 concerning an oil pipeline corridor to the Indian Ocean, as quoted in the French book by two reputable investigative reporters, published November 15, 2001, “Bin Laden, la verité interdite” (”Bin Laden, the forbidden truth”):”Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.”http://archive.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=5166. The threat has never subsequently been denied by the US.

4. “Who Owns the US National Debt?” Business Insider, January 14, 2011.http://www.businessinsider.com/who-owns-the-us-national-debt-2011-1

5. William Schneider, “Re-evaluating U.S. Debt,” Atlantic Monthly, 10/ 2005, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/10/re-evaluating-usdebt/4396/

6. “An old Chinese myth. Contrary to popular wisdom, China’s rapid growth is not hugely dependent on exports.” The Economist, Jan 3rd 2008, http://www.economist.com/node/10429271?story_id=10429271

7. Occam’s Razor, or as Einstein put it, “Everything should be kept as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Wikipedia, “Occam’s Razor,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam’s_razor

8. Daniel Ellsberg’s Website, September 13, 2009, “U.S. Nuclear War Planning for a Hundred Holocausts,” describing the approved US plan for eliminating one billion civilians in a nuclear first strike against the Sino-Soviet bloc, http://www.ellsberg.net/archive/us-nuclear-war-planning-for-a-hundred-holocaust s

9. See for example, CIIP.con, “Microsoft steps up its expansion in second-tier cities,” January 4, 2011, www.ciipp.com/en/index/view-285257.html ; Agence France-Presse, “Microsoft Plans $1 Billion Investment in China R&D,” November 13, 2008,” http://www.industryweek.com/articles/microsoft_plans_1_billion_investment_in_ china_rd_17808.aspx

10. Bloomberg News, “GM’s First-Half China Sales Surge Past the U.S.,” 7/2/10, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-02/general-motors-first-half-china-sale s-rise-48-5-pass-u-s-for-first-time.html

11. China News November 8, 2010, “China’s FDI to hit 420 bln U.S. dollars in ‘11th Five-Year Plan’ period . http://news.xinhuanet.com/eng

The War – Did We Sacrifice a Million Lives and a $Trillion Cash Just to Hand Our Jobs to China? Part Two

While the Tea Partiers and the liberals squabble over important domestic issues, America’s corporate and military titans, at the expense of America’s workers and taxpayers and with the blessing of Congress and the President, are creating China’s economic miracle. The military, at a cost of over $1 trillion, has paved the way for China to acquire and the U.S. to lose access to vast mineral and petroleum resources. The oil industry, with U.S. government assistance, is building a safe haven in East Asia from the imminent crash of oil everywhere else, by cornering the whole supply. And foreign investment, largely American, is giving China on average nearly one million new jobs a month while American unemployment soars.

This is a four-part series. Part One discusses why and how the oil industry could create a safe haven from its own collapse, and why it might choose China for the project. Part Two discusses how East Asia became “the right market” for the world’s remaining oil reserves, endangering everyone else. Part Three discusses how the US military has turned Afghanistan and Iraq into China’s good buddies. Part Four takes a broader view of what has happened and what if anything can be done about it. Enjoy.

Part Two of Four. The US and Europe Aren’t “the Right Markets.”

Does “Big Oil” have the resources to carry out your plan?

For starters, is it right to assume that the oil industry has an enormous amount of money to invest somewhere else at this time and in the short-term future? Apparently, yes. As oil becomes depleted, exploratory drilling drops because it is futile, additional tankers are largely unnecessary if there isn’t additional oil, and as the industry approaches peak production there is less reason to expand refinery capacity. The industry isn’t about to announce its investment strategy, but to the extent available, statistics bear this out. When oil was a growth industry, it was necessary steadily to increase refinery capacity. But it is uneconomical to build refineries that will be unnecessary long before their useful life is over. Global refinery capacity has hardly grown at all since the early eighties, and the excess of refinery capacity over production/demand dropped from 15 mbpd (close to enough to meet the entire US demand) to zero between 1980 and the peak in production of conventional oil,¹ increasingly recognized as having occurred in or around 2005. (Refineries are again being built, but overall, e.g. with several being built in China while five of Britain’s eight have “for sale” signs, “the world needs fewer oil refineries.”)² Additionally, exploratory drilling for conventional oil dropped from 11,000 wells to 3000 wells in the same period.³ . Similarly, oil tanker construction (92% of which takes place in South Korea, China and Japan) is slowing.⁴ These changes began three decades ago, which suggests, notwithstanding a stance of public denial that continued until this year, the industry has been aware for that long of the coming peak.⁵

And then, of course, is the industry’s coming “free ride” from price escalation. It has been calculated that a 4% drop in supply could result in a 177% increase in gasoline prices(i.e. from $3/gal to $8.31/gal) and that a 15% drop in supply could result in a 550% increase in prices, (i.e. from $3/gal to $19.50/gal.),⁶ that peak oil could “soon”, according to Robert Hirsch,⁷ result in $12-15/gal gasoline, and according to the former Shell President that gas will rise to $5/gal in 2012.^.8 None of this should be too surprising, because the prices will have to cut consumption of oil generally by perhaps 20% by 2020. ⁹

While oil is sitting pretty relative to the rest of us, such figures might present almost as scary a prospect to the industry as they do to you and me. How can the oil industry get away from the oil shortages to which everyone else is about to fall victim? Well, China is increasing its demand by 10%/yr, doubling its consumption in 7 years, and (if it can keep up the frenetic pace) quadrupling consumption in 14 years. That would run the rest of the world down to zero. ZERO petroleum by 2025. Of course doubling your consumption twice in fourteen years is a pretty good trick, but then you might get fire sale prices because the oil industry is rooting for you, and buying the oil and leaving it in the ground where no one else could touch it would work as well to take the oil away from everyone else. As we shall see, China is well on its way with the potential to increase its consumption by 50% just from its overwhelming success at the 2009 Iraq oil auction. In fifteen years, all the world could be destitute except for China and its chosen few neighbors, with a population arguably not too many for a permanent global steady state, and with half a trillion barrels of oil left all to itself to tide it over to sustainability, assuming it does not pollute the world to death..

China sitting by itself with its population is far from sustainable, notably because of a massive groundwater deficit for agriculture on the North China Plain.¹⁰ The country has long prided itself as being self-supportive for food, but has more recently been considering importation of grain as an alternative to extremely expensive water importation to the North China Plain, but neither alternative should be out of reach of a nation holding most all the oil. China, after all, performs a trick that looks inconceivable: being the world’s greatest grain producer with farms averaging under an acre in size.¹¹ And were China to corner the world oil supply with enough to keep it going for a century or so, the rest of the world would be virtually defenseless to any attempts it makes to pick the plums of the remaining world’s resources. It will be said by anyone who survives,

“The sun never sets on the Chinese empire.”¹²

Is “Big Oil”moving into China as if it’s planning to stay?

Is the oil industry in fact putting down roots in the Chinese economy? Glad you asked. Yes. International oil companies have been “pumping money into China,” with BP, Shell and Exxon-Mobil “leading the surge.” They are making the sort of investment that suggests they intend to stay awhile and think their industry will, too. They’ve been building 100 gas stations per month for years, the Kuwaiti Oil Company is building one refinery in China,¹³ and Shell is building another.¹⁴ And China itself is building refineries in Nigeria and Brazil.¹⁵ This isn’t how they’d behave it they thought China was going to run out of oil in a hurry. It’s more as if they think China is cornering the market. And they should know.

Of course, there are the five billion or so people who would rather not see ALL the remaining oil going to China and its neighbors, and if it appears that’s what’s happening, may wish to intervene. Fifteen years is not much time, and while the scenario, like China’s “astonishing” January 2009 to January, 2010 28% demand increase, seems improbable on its face, there is surprisingly little to stop it. A partnership between the oil industry and China is a pretty formidable one.

What we might expect is that the United States, with the most to lose, the most military might, and endless lip service to the importance of “energy independence,” would step in to create some balance.. But consistent with Congress’ long-established subservience to oil (the industry, not the commodity), the reverse is in fact happening.

Getting the oil to the “right market”

The oil industry has long had the ability to use the US Government to steer oil resources away from the US itself. Maybe you remember the fight over construction of the pipeline from Alaska’s North Slope. This was just after peak US oil, and concerns about American oil “security,” and American “oil independence” were as strong as they are today. There were two alternative pipeline routes: up the Mackenzie River Valley in Canada, ending in the US Midwest (the environmentally preferred alternative), and down through the completely undeveloped Alaskan interior to Valdez, the oil-industry preferred alternative. To be fair, “completely undeveloped” is hardly an accurate phrase. There were native Alaskan villages in the way, the rights of which Congress swept away in favor of the oil industry with the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971.¹⁶ The oil industry maintained that it was important for the sake of “security” and “oil independence” that the route be entirely “on American soil.” All of that made sense until Charles Cicchetti, then an economist at John Hopkins, pointed out that from an economic point of view it made no sense to build the pipeline to Valdez rather than to the Midwest if the oil were to remain in the US, because there was a surplus of low-priced oil on the West Coast but a short supply of high-priced oil in the Midwest. . The only way the oil industry would prefer the Alaskan route, he said, was if it intended to sell to Japan rather than to the US.¹⁷ So much for American oil “independence.” The Alaskan route was chosen by Congress anyway. A restriction was placed in the bill that said the oil could not be shipped directly from Valdez to Japan, but that did not change Cicchetti’s calculus – that we needed the oil in the Midwest, and didn’t need it on the West coast. Thus the US Government was willing as long ago as 1972 to assist oil companies in reducing the supply of American oil to American citizens, all in the name of oil independence.

Since at least 1998, there has been an odd dichotomy between the perceived strategic aims of the US in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the actual beneficiaries of our intevention.. Almost immediately after 9/11, there arose a cottage industry of “It’s about oil” writing,¹⁸ and it probably is. This writer recalls being part of the fan club and an occasional contributor .That is not the focus of this article. What is odd is the dichotomy – a confusion between a war for oil and a war for oil companies.

Columnist George Monbiot said it all on October 23, 2001, in a column titled “America’s pipe dream. A pro-western regime in Kabul should give the US an Afghan route for Caspian oil.” He argued,

If the US succeeds in overthrowing the Taliban and replacing them with a stable and grateful pro-western government and if the US then binds the economies of central Asia to that of its ally Pakistan, it will have crushed not only terrorism, but also the growing ambitions of both Russia and China. Afghanistan, as ever, is the key to the western domination of Asia.¹⁹

But what was the “Afghan route for Caspian oil” that a “pro-western regime in Kabul should give the US”? John Maresca. Unocal Vice President and former US diplomat,²⁰ described it in testimony on invitation from Congress in February, 1998,²¹ in which he discussed the need to remove the Taliban so as to make way for pipelines to carry Caspian crude and natural gas across Afghanistan to the coast of Pakistan, where it could be shipped to India and China. Maresca’s testimony is a fount of information for conspiracy buffs, but it stands on its own as an indicator of US policy with regard to energy for China. Maresca said that the Caspian oil was likely “enough to service Europe’s oil needs for 11 years” if exported through a pipeline to the Mediterranean, and that the Caspian could be producing 4.5 mbpd by 2010. In 1998 China, by comparison, consumed 4.1 mbpd.²² Nonetheless, Maresca recommended against reliance on the pipeline to the Mediterranean and in favor of a pipeline across Afghanistan that would service India and China. Unocal presumably was aware that peak oil would occur in the interim, so giving oil to China was taking it from the rest of the world.

While Maresca’s testimony later proved optimistic and the oil pipeline across Afghanistan for Caspian crude, specifically endorsed by Robert W. Gee, Assistant Secretary for Policy, U.S. Department of Energy at the time of Maresca’s testimony,²³ is apparently no longer on the table, it is nonetheless indicative of what Congress was willing to give away to China. Why was this Maresca”s recommendation?

He explained that a western route, out through the Mediterranean, would not have the capability to move it to the “right markets.” The Mediterranean route was designed for export of Caspian oil to the United States and Europe,²⁴ implicitly the “wrong markets.” Predictably, he mentioned Europe but not the United States in this testimony invited by the US Department of Energy. East Asia, he predicted, was “a different story altogether” and could be expected to more than double its demand before 2010. That in fact happened.

Such predictions, of course, always have an element of self-fulfilling prophecy. As discussed below, investment rather than exports is the primary driver of GDP growth in China, and foreign investments in China multiplied by ten in the six years prior to Maresca’s testimony, to a level that has been approximately 10% of the GDP ever since.²⁵ So in modern China, if one must ask “Which came first, the chicken (foreign investment) or the egg (economic growth)?” the answer appears to be, “The chicken.” Promoting oil for China, promoted foreign investment.

Next, Maresca told his listeners, twice for emphasis, that

“The territory across which the pipeline would extend is controlled by the Taliban, an Islamic movement that is not recognized as a government by most other nations. From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of our proposed pipeline cannot begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders and our company..”

Maresca was asking Congress to intervene in Afghanistan in a manner that would shift oil, and ultimately jobs, to China.

NOTES

1. http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2006/01/chp1pdf/fig1_21.pdf ; “Conventional” oil means that which is pumped from fields on the land or under shallow water, is not under deep sea and does not come from “tar sands,” shales, etc. See Campbell, below.The “unconventional” oils exist in staggeringly high amounts, but are often useless as energy sources because the energy recovered over the energy in (“EROEI”) is numerically less than one. Even to the extent practically recoverable, none of these sources can be developed quickly enough to eliminate shortfalls in the near future.

2. Martin Quinlan,”Refining: short-term improvement, long-term problems.” Petroleum Economist June 2010, http://www.petroleum-economist.com/default.asp?page=14&PubID=46&ISS=25678&SID=726819

3. Colin Campbell, “Peak Oil: an Outlook on Crude Oil Depletion,” http://www.greatchange.org/ov-campbell,outlook.html .

4. MIC, “World Ship-Building forecast shows weak-but-steady growth in oil and as tanker fleet over next five years,” (2009)

5. 1980 was when Ronald Reagan was elected President. His environmental policies demonstrated a strong allegiance to the oil industry, and his support for massive public and private debt and large-scale development of unsustainable oil-guzzling suburbia, set the stage for much of America’s present predicament. Did his policies reflect what the oil industry knew would come three decades later? That’s a question for historians, if history survives the next few decades.

6. Stanton, “Is the UK ready for an oil shortage?” http://www.roadtransport.com/Articles/2008/01/30/129667/Is-the-UK-ready-for-an-oil-shortage.htm

7. speaking on CNBC, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWGsnW_NnxE

8. Cleanmpg.com http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/index.php

9. See graph in Nicholas C. Arguimbau, “Imminent Crash of the Oil Supply. . .” www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau230410.htm

10. “Water Policy Briefing: Choosing Appropriate Responses to Groundwater Depletion,” International Water Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka Email: waterpolicybriefing@cgiar.org, http://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/waterpolicybriefing/index.asp. This report is exclusively on the North China Plain problem. IWMI in Sri Lanka is an excellent source of materials on global water problems.

11. UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), Agricultural Outlook 2010-2019 (2010)

12. Credits to John Wilson, who is said to be the originator of “The sun never sets on the British Empire,” Answers.com, http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_said_’The_sun_never_sets_on_the_British_Empire‘

13. China: Foreign Oil Companies Boosting Investments ,” Energy Tribune January 27, 2007, http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=365&idli=1

14. “Shell, CNOOC Parent in Talks on Refinery Deal, China Daily Says,” Bloomberg News, Jan 10, 2011, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-11/shell-cnooc-parent-in-talks-on-refinery-deal-china-daily-says.html

15. www.glennbeck.com/2011/01/14/footnotes-research-for-t...

16. (43 USC 1601-1624) — Public Law 92-203, approved December 18, 1971 (85 Stat. 688)

17. Cicchetti, C.J. 1972. Alaskan Oil: Alternative Routes and Markets. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Congress placed a provision in the bill limiting direct shipment from Valdz to Japan; whether it alleviated thesituation, this writer does not know. But it could not change the fact that from an American standpoint, the oil was needed in the Midwest but not on the West Coast..

18. Cvf. Ted Rall, It’s About Oil. The San Francisco Chronicle: November 2, 2001: http://articles.sfgate.com/2001-11-02/opinion/17625946_1_kazak-caspian-sea-black-sea

19. George Monbiot The Guardian, Tuesday 23 October 2001

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/23/afghanistan.terrorism

20. http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa48119.000/hfa48119_0.HTM

21. Mr. Maresca’s testimony, made on invitation of the House Committee on International Relations Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, may be read at http://www.serendipity.li/wot/wsap212982.htm

22. US Energy Information Administration. Independent Statistics and Analysis, International Petroleum (Oil) Consumption http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/RecentPetroleumConsumptionBarrelsperDay.xls Researchers will find the EIA data bank invaluable

23. House Committee transcript at 17, http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa48119.000/hfa48119_0.HTM

24. Leyla Tabasaranskaya (Senior Supply Chain Officer, Supply Chain Management Department, BP Azerbaijan Business Unit) “Baku – Tbilisi-Yhan Pipeline Project Underway,” UK Trade and Investment, http://www.touchoilandgas.com/baku-tbilisi-yhan-pipeline-a102-1.html

25. FDI inflows into China 1984-2009,The rise of foreign direct investment (FDI) , Chinability, http://www.chinability.com/FDI.htm

The War – Did We Sacrifice a Million Lives and a $Trillion Cash Just to Hand Our Jobs to China? Part One

While the Tea Partiers and the liberals squabble over important domestic issues, America’s corporate and military titans, at the expense of America’s workers and taxpayers and with the blessing of Congress and the President, are creating China’s economic miracle. The military, at a cost of over $1 trillion, has paved the way for China to acquire and the U.S. to lose access to vast mineral and petroleum resources. The oil industry, with U.S. government assistance, is building a safe haven in East Asia from the imminent crash of oil everywhere else, by cornering the entire supply. And foreign investment, largely American, is giving China on average nearly one million new jobs a month while American unemployment soars.

This is a four-part series. Part One discusses why and how the oil industry could create a safe haven from its own collapse, and why it might choose China for the project. Part Two discusses how East Asia became “the right market” for the world’s remaining oil reserves, endangering everyone else. Part Three discusses how the US military has turned Afghanistan and Iraq into China’s good buddies. Part Four takes a broader view of what has happened and what if anything can be done about it. Enjoy.

Part One of Four. Thinking About the War

“The war is not China’s war, but economically and socially, we can try to help.” Liu Xuecheng,

China Institute of International Studies, Chinese Foreign Ministry, Beijing¹

“Are you a prisoner?” Hugo Chavez, speaking to Barack Obama, April 2009²

Introduction

The War in Iraq and Afghanistan has had many victims – one million dead Iraqis, thousands of U.S. and Taliban casualties, countless U.S. soldiers with PTSD bringing the war home to their families, two U.S. Commanders-in-Chief and as we shall see, it has had one victor – the growing Chinese empire.

There are two current explanations for the war – the official “fighting terrorism” explanation, and the popular explanation on the left and in Europe that the US is a dying imperialist nation attempting to save its bloated economy by taking control of the world’s remaining oil by force. If either explanation is correct, then “the world’s only superpower,” as we were perceived and perceived ourselves a decade ago, has nothing whatsoever other than remarkably fast collapse of that status to show for its efforts – an outrageously expensive and demoralizing result. And as the “fighting terrorism” explanation has come to appear “thinner” every passing year, the world has come to perceive us, I think, as a nation of petulant children willing to kill to keep our SUVs running. That is a very sad end for the nation of Jefferson and Lincoln, the nation that pronounced:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.³

We weren’t all bad, you know, but the “dying imperialist” view leaves us no friends at all..

What if neither explanation is correct? I think you’ll agree if you read on that there has been one hands-down winner in this war: a winner of almost every battle, and that is China.. We shall see that China is working very hard at cornering the world oil market, and that the United States military, with some encouragement from the oil industry, has assisted China along its way immensely. I think the evidence shows that was probably not merely the effect but the intent of our trillion-dollar adventure in Afghanistan and Iraq, that the United States Government has accomplished EXACTLY what it set out to accomplish: a great victory for China but the final blow to American prosperity. Has our Government truly gone that low? That’s what the facts suggest.

But keep in mind the caveat of a great and good friend who read this essay in draft:

“I have learned over the years not to attribute to malfeasance that which can more easily be described as stupidity. Sometimes folks just do stupid things. So, is your article linking a bunch of stupid actions, or reflecting a larger truth? Damned if I know.”

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe we need a “regime change” to root out the majority of both parties who put Wall Street and the oil industry before the people but divert us into issues that divide us so we will vote perennially for the “lesser of two evils” until we are rendered penniless and powerless. Regardless, I hope you will enjoy a little saunter through Googlespace, and I think you will find a wealth of information through the links if you wish to pursue it.

Let’s try to take a look at the last decade with open minds. One thing is clear: that if the war of the last decade hasn’t been to some extent “about oil,” that would be pretty surprising, because everything else has been to some extent “about oil.”

Look around you. Unless you are in an exceptional place, the scene is dominated by petroleum. You see (under lights more likely than not poweed by fossil fuels), walls coated in petroleum-based paint, “organic chemicals ((aka petroleum derivatives) in your food, asphalt on your roof and under your car, which runs on “petrol,” and is largely made of plastic; in the summer you wear polyester, a petroleum product, or cotton, which arguably uses more petroleum than polyester does;⁴ and in winter you warm yourself with oil or natural gas.  And so on, ad nauseum. No wonder the world uses thirty billion barrels of the stuff per year, 200 gallons per capita.

The industry associated with this has under its control something under a trillion barrels of the “conventional” (easy to access) portion of this black goop, worth maybe eighty trillion dollars, and generating about 2.5 trillion dollars per year in gross income (but it might be $8 trillion next year). No one outside the industry really knows, because the industry doesn’t like to open its books, especially on the total supply figures (which it openly exaggerates) and no one has forced the issue.⁵ It’s important to keep in mind, though, that 90% of the oil is “owned” by countries rather than companies.⁶

Who else has that sort of wealth and income to command? The United States Government, about comparable to the oil industry in gross income. Who else? Maybe the U.S. banking industry So to understand what’s going on in the world, we’d better understand something about the behavior of these three entities. Let’s start with oil.

So your boss controls all the oil. What’s your plan for the great crash?

Imagine that you are a planner for the private oil industry. You know, and your client knows, whether or not you admit it publicly, that oil is running out fast. Conventional oil,⁷ with reserves you know to be under 1 trillion barrels, has to run out completely in about 30 years if the present rate of consumption continues, and if instead consumption drops in the frequently-observed approximate “exponential decay” form, then the quantities will have to drop by 3-4% per year. Without the discovery and rapid development of several Saudi Arabias, which is pretty much impossible just in terms of time, production has to go down at the same time as demand is increasing everywhere and particularly rapidly in China.⁸ The latest report on China says its demand for oil is rising at an “astonishing 28% per year,”⁹ although its more typical rate of increase is 10%/yr, which means doubling its already enormous demand every seven years. Your client has likely known the general situation since 1990 or before, but has done the best it can to keep the public unaware of the quantity of remaining oil and when production would peak.¹⁰ You know and your client knows that the myth of a long-lasting supply is what it is, and you also know that the post-oil human carrying capacity is widely seen to be and is likely actually to be AT MOST 2 billion, comparable to the preoil actual population.¹¹ Anyhow, with one billion people (and rising) going hungry now, no one says we can feed and clothe and house 9.5 billion people on zero oil (how things will be about 2050), so things are looking a bit bleak.

Your client, however, is coming upon an extraordinary one-time opportunity. Although if things go as generally anticipated there will in a generation be no more oil and therefore no more oil industry, the industry has the greatest potential for investment the world has ever known. It comes from two sources: (1) oil prices are about to burst through the ceiling,¹² giving the industry a greatly increased income from a gradually decreasing oil supply, (2) the formerly ever-rising costs devoted to oil exploration, drilling, pipeline construction, and refinery construction are likely to drop off long before the income stream ceases. So the industry is coming upon a time when it can invest trillions per year in a world in which the contraction of oil is causing contraction of economies and industries, virtually across the board, and shortly will be causing contraction of populations as well.

So what to do? Logically, the answer appears to be to concentrate all oil supplies in an area of population around 2 billion and proceed to concentrate investments in non-oil industries in that place, which will be shielded from collapse to the extent possible because (1) it will be assured dependable oil longer than any other part of the world, (2) its non-oil industries will have their foreign competition decimated or impoverished by the lack of oil elsewhere, and (3) the oil industry will be supporting an economy for as long as possible that is small enough in fact to do without oil once oil is gone. This may be the ONLY advice you can rationally give your client, because it is the only advice that would result in your client having the optimal conditions for investing its riches as its oil disappears, and for leaving the largest technically feasible human economy in the post-oil era.

But where? Given your client’s interests, the following criteria seem logical

(1) The place should be densely populated to minimize needs for oil as transportation fuel.

(2) The place should be self-sustaining for food to the extent possible without oil, a criterion seemingly at war with the first.

(3) As a general proposition, the place should have been in the past as little dependent upon oil as possible, so that there will be the fewest preconceptions about necessary or efficient or desirable allocation of the resource.

(4) To make your client happy, labor costs should be low and controllable.

(5) Environmental and health regulation of both the oil industry and other manufacturing industries should be minimal.

(6) Ideally, the place will have a government willing and able to make probusiness decisions smoothly, and to “manage” any opposition “efficiently.”

(7) There should be a solid educational system allowing the population to be “brought up to speed” quickly.

(8) The place should be physically defensible from invasion by angry or hungry hordes.

(9) Should it prove necessary, the government should be capable and willing to take population-control measures.

This combination might likely assure that the maximum percentage of the oil with which the country is supplied can be used for expansion of a manufacturing economy and therefore assure maximum income to investors.

Looks like China, doesn’t it? China and some of its neighbors as appropriate. No one else comes close.

And China’s extraordinarily rapid economic expansion strongly suggests the assistance of outside investment from some source or sources with immense economic resources at a time that most economic entities everywhere are stressed. Looks like oil, doesn’t it?

But how? The private industry can take its own steps to the extent it is free to do so, to shift oil resources to China, but in fact those steps are fairly limited because at this time, 90% of the world’s oil reserves are publicly owned.¹³ So control of the nations owning oil and control of transportation corridors for oil is essential. It should be obtained by economic and political means where possible, but by military means where necessary.

What military means? The oil industry lacks direct military might. China lacks the ability to place ground forces in large numbers in oil-producing nations. Besides, to carry out a plan in which China obtains oil supplies at the expense of the rest of the world by overt military hostilities to the extent of “drying up” everyone else is hardly the way to win friends and therefore might undermine the whole project. This needs to be a militarily mighty nation other than China, with potential “cover” for its designs, which can be controlled in its actions by the oil industry, and which will not suffer so much from the gambit that it will refuse to cooperate. Sounds like the US, doesn’t it? Probably no one else.

And finally, you’ve got to be decisive – the people short-counted on the oil are going to have to fight, for their at least temporary survival. Once you have control of the oil fields, you have to provide them security and maintain control of the shipping lanes, a task more difficult if the potential competitors have any oil of their own. So the trick, logically, is to be quick and complete and decisive.

OK, that’s a plan. Corner all the oil, using your political control over the US as necessary, send it to China (and possibly adjacent Asian nations), starve everyone else of oil, stop investing in marginal oil and oil infrastructure, and put your excess cash from “peak oil” where you’re sending the oil. EVERYONE seeking to find a safe haven for living and investing in the era of collapsing oil might logically seek out the place where the oil is going to last longest, and go there. But the oil industry has a unique advantage -the ability to pick the spot itself. Once we look at it, it is hard to see how the oil industry could avoid having this or a very similar plan.

Of course your client doesn’t understand, and maybe neither do you (so it’s a story for another day), that this plan won’t work unless corporate sociopathy and the growth imperative are abandoned, because otherwise the oil reserve cushion will disappear overnight.

All of this is almost pure , unadulterated speculation. Is there any real evidence?

NOTES

1. Tini Tran, AP News Service, “As U.S. fights, China spends to gain Afghan foothold ,” US Independence Day, July 4, 2010,http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38076136/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/

2. Quoted in Lewis Seiler and Dan Hamburg, “Still the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave?” Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center, November 21, 2009. http://www.ucimc.org/content/still-land-free-and-home-brave.

3. Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus,” http://www.libertystatepark.com/emma.htm

4. http://www.buzzle.com/articles/sustainable-fashion-polyester-vs-cotton.html.

5. Nicholas C. Arguimbau, “Imminent Crash of the Oil Supply. . .” www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau230410.htm

6. Council on Foreign Relations -”National Security Consequences of Oil Dependency,” Oil Drum December 5, 2006,http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/12/4/121714/354

7. See definition discussed in Nicholas C. Arguimbau, “Imminent Crash of the Oil Supply. . .” www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau230410.htm .

8. Nicholas C. Arguimbau, “Imminent Crash of the Oil Supply. . .” www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau230410.htm

9. Live Oil Prices, March 12, 2010, IEA says China oil demand increase is astonishing, http://www.liveoilprices.co.uk/oil/iea_oil_report/03/2010/iea-says-china-oil-dema nd-increase-is-astonishing.html

10. The OPEC nations traditionally inflate their reserves to justify increased sales and the governments traditionally use the OPEC figures for planning purposes Arguimbau, “Imminent Crash of the Oil Supply . . .,” www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau230410.htm; only in 2010 an Oxford University study uncovered that as a result, planners had been knowingly assuming reserves implying a full decade of supply in excess of reality. Rowena Mason, “Oil reserves ‘exaggerated by one third’,” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7500669/Oilreserves-exaggerated-by-one-third.html; and no one has ever followed through on the warnings of global petroleum investment banker Matt Simmons, recently deceased, that OPEC had to open its books. EnergyTechStocks.com, “Meeting the Challenge Matt Simmons: Force All Oil Producers to Give Transparent Data,” (September, 2007)http://energytechstocks.com/wp/?p=245

11. See Pimentel et al, “WILL LIMITS OF THE EARTH’S RESOURCES CONTROL HUMAN NUMBERS,” dieoff.org/page174.htm. See also Hayes, “REINDEER, CARS & MALTHUS: POPULATION, CONSUMPTION AND CARRYING CAPACITY.” Population Press 1995,http://www.populationpress.org/essays/essay-hayes.html, Population, Carrying Capacity, http://www.umac.org/ocp/CarryingCapacity/info.html. Please note that these numbers are based upon “steady state” assumptions, but humanity has not shown itself capable of maintaining a steady state population for a reasonable time since prior to the agricultural revolution; additionally, humanity has done substantial damage to the planet in the last century, which will likely further reduce its carrying capacity for anywhere from centuries to millions of years, so this writer suspects that the true carrying capacity is substantially lower time. Nonetheless, a widely accepted estimate of carrying capacity, not the actual number, is the logically relevant figure when, as here, we are trying to ascertain what people are likely to do rather than what they ought to do.

12.See, for example, Deutsche Bank’s projection that crude oil prices will double in five years, http://climateprogress.org/2009/10/07/deutsche-bank-oil-to-hit-175-a-barrel-by-20 16-which-will-drive-a-final-stake-into-long-term-oil-demand-spurred-by-a-disrupt ive-technology-the-hybrid-and-electric-car-that-will-very/

13. Council on Foreign Relations -”National Security Consequences of Oil Dependency,” Oil Drum December 5, 2006,http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/12/4/121714/354

Canada cannot afford unending population growth: environment, energy, quality of life

Overpopulation in Canada will prove THE single greatest issue facing Canadians in the 21^st century.  Continued population overloading degrades your environment, standard of living and quality of life.  It shreds natural animal habitat creating mass extinctions, degrades water systems and accelerates global climate destabilization.

Nothing good can come from endless Canadian population growth!  Scientists and environmentalist warn of our approaching predicaments as to “Peak Oil” ; “Peak Water” ; “Peak resources” ; “Peak Animal Extinctions” ; and “Peak Climate destabilization” –SO evident in areas like Australia, Brazil, China and many other places now being swept by uncommon storms.

“We must alert and organize the world’s people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises – exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Over-consumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today.”   Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Oceanographer

Several Canadian writers that promote endless population growth engage the fallacy of, “The real challenge is in improved management and sharing of dwindling resources and the skilful maintenance of a stressed environment. “  Fat chance to skillfully ‘guide’ storms like Katrina or what hit Brazil last week!

Harvard scholar and biologist Dr. E.O. Wilson reputes that naïve statement with:

“The raging monster upon the land is population growth. In its presence, sustainability is but a fragile theoretical construct.  To say, as many do, that the difficulties of nations are not due to people, but to poor ideology and land-use management is sophistic.”

Canadian leaders and citizens may ignore such environmental problems, but those accelerating predicaments will not ignore anyone in Canada—plant, animal or humans.  I find it irresponsible at the highest levels when journalists promote endless population growth, or that they think things will be ‘all right’ when the human race levels off at 9.2 billion in 40 years.  We currently add 1.0 billion humans every 13 years.

They neglect to talk about massive destruction of Earth’s climate systems along the way.  They refuse to address in excess of 80 to 100 species suffering extinction DAILY around the planet.  (Source: Oxford University professor Norman Meyer, UK)  They fail to understand water shortages and water contamination by human abuse of the environment via population growth.   They lack understanding of such disastrous phenomena as the three million tons of floating plastic in the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” west of Vancouver from humans tossing 2.5 million pieces of plastic every hour around the globe into the oceans.  Marine life deaths and contamination run into the millions.

They ignore that such civilizations as China, India, Mexico and Bangladesh suffer enormous problems ‘because’ they failed to stabilize their populations 50 years ago.  Once manifested, all their citizens suffer the misery of human population overload.

Why?  Why would Canadians run themselves into a Faustian Bargain that leads to Hobson’s Choice?    Why sell your souls for immediate gain but long term loss for your children.  Why race toward Hobson’s Choice where you enjoy only two choices. Door number “1” allows you to walk through it and over a cliff.  Door number “2” allows you to walk through and into quick sand.   What’s the point of  committing Canada to such a horrific future already manifested by two to three billion people around this overcrowded planet?

Canadians must ask themselves whether or not they can keep immigrating themselves into Hobson’s Choice and why.

“Most Western elites continue urging the wealthy West not to stem the migrant tide [that adds 80 million net gain annually to the planet], but to absorb our global brothers and sisters until their horrid ordeal has been endured and shared by all—ten billion humans packed onto an ecologically devastated planet.” Dr. Otis Graham, Unguarded Gates

Every Canadian reading this column will be nodding his or her head right about now.  I write about reality and common sense.  I write about what I have seen around the world in my bicycle travels.  I can state unequivocally, Canada does not want to repeat what China, India, Mexico and Bangladesh did to themselves, not now, not ever.   Canadian citizens warrant a sustainable and environmentally balanced future.

At some point, we need to consider our fellow creatures on this planet:

“Upwards of two hundred species.. mostly of the large, slow-breeding variety.. are becoming extinct here every day because more and more of the earth’s carrying capacity is systematically being converted into human carrying capacity. These species are being burnt out, starved out, and squeezed out of existence.. thanks to technologies that most people, I’m afraid, think of as technologies of peace. I hope it will not be too long before the technologies that support our population explosion begin to be perceived as no less hazardous to the future of life on this planet than the endless production of radioactive wastes.” Daniel Quinn

Canadian citizens need to speak up for Canada’s future, for its children, for it wilderness, for its animals and for its viability.  It needs to lead by example, not by promoting endless population growth that leads to endless consequences on multiple levels.  Canadians either make choices today or severe and harsher choices will be made for you in the future.

Canadian and American immigration: globalist divide and conqueror objective

In this continuing series with Canadian immigration expert Tim Murray, you will appreciate the globalists’ agenda for swamping America, Canada and Europe with endless immigration. That provides capitalism with endless cheap labor, more consumption and ultimately, environmental

and societal collapse.

“What are globalists?” you ask. Answer: they may be described as the ‘money/power’ class that directs the banks, the economies and the wars of the world. They control through money and a thirst for more of it and the power it allows. They live above it all in mansions beyond our imaginations. Globalists seek to grow populations to enhance unending production, consumption and waste. That allows them endless wealth and power on a scale never known in the history of the world.

“This is a globalist agenda we are fighting,” said Murray. “The aim is to displace indigenous labor with cheap labor and to fuel economic growth by increasing the pool of consumers. Multiculturalism is just a divide-and-conquer strategy to build walls between people to prevent them from uniting to challenge this demographic Ponzi scheme.

“Their strategy is apparent. Trash the culture, fragment it and dumb it down. Kidnap our youth with digital technology so that immersed in iPods, MP3s, Facebook, twitters and cell phones they remain disconnected from our guidance and alienated from experience with nature. Illiteracy ensures that they cannot access the cumulative wisdom and cultural values imbedded in national literature or history. Even those that make it to college arrive half-educated, without a knowledge of civics or geography, and sponges for politically correct indoctrination.

“A whole new generation has been taught to despise western values and Western Civilization. The will to protect our own nation has given in to xenophilia and cultural relativism, that is, to a perverse love of the stranger at the expense of our own people and what they once stood for. This is the corporate vision. A world without borders, without strong national cultures, one big cosmopolitan shopping mall where people are no longer citizens with a sense of civic responsibility but mindless consumers without any attachment to the land their parents and grandparents loved.

“Those who oppose this dystopian nightmare are labeled ‘nativists’, racists and xenophobes, while those who promote it regard themselves as enlightened liberals and progressives, who nonetheless exhibit an appalling ignorance of ecological and resource limits and no understanding of fundamental sustainability laws.

“They think “social justice” is something that can be guaranteed by the passage of laws or enshrined in a constitution, as if real wealth can be conjured up by a progressive tax code. The impending collapse will give these folks the kind of education that open-borders advocates haven’t had. Peak oil,

peak water, peak soil and peak everything are going to give them a crash course in reality.

“They will suddenly learn that wealth is not produced but extracted from the land, and that the land is not infinitely endowed with the resources needed to support an industrial economy. No fiscal stimulus or printing press or “quantitative easing” will bring it back. And with the collapse, the whole superstructure of this junk culture will come falling down. Suddenly folks will be left to think for themselves, but without the tools to think. Innumerate, illiterate sheep dumbfounded and helpless, wondering what happened and looking for scapegoats. Clawing, fighting and scrambling for the basic

necessities. It ain’t going to be pretty.”

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