European Delegates Preparing for Sustainable Cities
Comment on Above from Oilempire.us
More Realistic Efforts on State/Local Level
Peak Oil Challenges for Local Governments
A How-To Book on Everything from Fly Traps to Water Filters
Khurais Oil Field Journal Brings Doubts on Saudi Reserves to Surface
"...It was impossible to know if the site had been prepared for the journalists’ tour.
...microscopic robots swimming through rock pores deep underground..."
What will that do to the EROEI?
Lieberman: US May Be Attacked on 2009
Military Exercise in Pacific Targets China
Russia Presses New York Bank Over Money Laundering
No Ice at the North Pole
The National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility: Issues for Congress
Using Cops, Paramedics and Civilians to Gather Intelligence
It moves the police officer away from his core function, to enforce the law, into being an intelligence officer gathering information about people," said Mike German, a 16-year FBI agent now advising the American Civil Liberties Union.
Mike's Letter in Salon

J.O.

Oil Price Drops

Michael C. Ruppert

I did some searching around the net today for explanations about oilprice drops and found a striking theme: Oil prices are dropping because all of the forecasters -- especially after the airlines Wachovia, Fannie and Freddie -- see the economy continuing a major downslide and they know that demand is going to continue to fall because more are unemployed or broke. Now we've known about demand destruction for years since we started pulling it from Goldman Sachs, Merril Lynch and others. We have been on the bumpy plateau for more than two years where spikes slow demand and oil prices easing after that encourages everyone to drive and spend more; the vicious short-lived cycle. So what seems clear from this is that no matter howfar oil prices drop (and I can't see it being more than another $10 for a few months), there isn't going to be any relief at the pump. That would only lead gullible Americans to drive more which would increase demand again. But I'll bet you the airlines and major industry will benefit from the price slack until the next big shock ina few weeks or months.

I don't think Joe Consumer is going to be too happy because he or shewill be expecting relief that isn't going to come.-- MCR

Blackouts Spread in 110 Countries
Right on cue.
Questions on Science/Technology/Energy for the 2008 Congressional candidates.
Nigeria and Venezuela to Meet on Oil Prices
Together, a force for the U.S. to reckon with.
Lester Brown on Ethanol Shock
"Consider the grain required to fill one SUV tank with ethanol would feed one person for a year."
Yergin Says Don't Blame the Speculators
Iraq's Oil Fields Open to Bidders
Effect of Wind Farms on Radar
Bill to Ban Nutritional Supplements in Canada
Ruff Times
Interesting insights into economics (including helpful links) coupled with retro views on women.
Govt Says FBI Agents Can't Testify About 9/11
"the government urged a judge to block aviation companies from interviewing five FBI employees who the companies say will help them prove the government withheld key information before the 2001 attacks."
Waxman Says U.S. Embassy in Albania Concealed Info on Arms Shipments
A Quarter of Adults to Face Anti-Pedophile Tests

J.O.

A Kinder, Gentler Holocaust

Peak Oil and the Rebuilding (Or Not) of Ground Zero

Jenna Orkin


"The consequences of Peak Oil - a cascade of bankruptcies including trucking companies which will cease delivering food to the supermarket; riots and looting; every man for himself - are unprecedented. 9/11 was unprecedented, too, until it happened. History repeats itself, but never verbatim.

The match has been struck for the burning of 'Rome' but this time Nero isn't playing the fiddle; he's talking about A-Rod and Madonna. Fascism is on its way only this time with more polish, at least so far; instead of goose-stepping in jackboots, it walks softly and wears a nicely cut suit. The gas chambers are subtler too: The fires that burned the toxic debris at Ground Zero for over three months; the formaldehyde-contaminated trailers that were provided for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, are doing the same job only over a more extended time. And we 'Jews' are swallowing the sweet pablum that the nice man on T.V. is offering (uptick in the stock market today!) Because this new kind of Holocaust 'could never happen.'"
*************************************************************************************


Battles to publicize unpopular issues such as the lethal air quality following 9/11 or the arrival of Peak Oil in 2006 have two phases. The first consists of sailing against the wind. The mainstream press ignore the issue or repeat the government's lies. This is unpleasant but after the arrival of Phase Two, one looks back at it with some nostalgia. For the second phase occurs when the problem has grown so big and ugly, it can no longer be ignored.

Legend has it that Joseph Kennedy knew the stock market was about to crash in 1929 when his shoeshine boy gave him a tip on what to buy. Kennedy sold. The story is no doubt apocryphal (Kennedy was surely planning to sell anyway; the shoeshine boy, if there was one, was just the last straw) but it makes the point: When everyone knows something, it's too late.

So it's with some ambivalence that we note the growing acceptance of earth-changing upheavals ahead. 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the "Shock and Awe" campaign that morphed into a living example of "the war that will not end in our lifetimes..." One disaster after another has ended not in abatement but in simply being supplanted by a new disaster. Obama's catchword is Change and many will vote for it but how many really expect it? When AOL, not normally considered a tinfoil hat website, publishes a story on people preparing for Apocalypse in 2012, you know The Powers That Be are psyching you for something even if the story, with its Nostradamus-like allusions to the Mayan calendar, has a New Agey tinge, (or should I say "aura?")

The fact that oil plays into our bleak zeitgeist is also accepted even as people sputter in protest, "But what about wind/geothermal/solar/Brazil/hybrids/algae/electricity/bikes/some-genius-coming-along-with-something?" Pick your 'solution' which may be a wonderful thing in itself but will not replace oil in our autophagous economy that depends on infinite growth in a finite world. Nor will it replace those oil and gas products, pesticides and fertilizers, which account for the astronomical spike in population since oil's discovery in 1859 to 6.5 billion.

However, the worst is yet to come. Despite Congress' clueless scolding of "speculators," those speculators are not the main source of the current oil dilemma. Unlike the Hunt brothers in the seventies, oil speculators do not take delivery of, much less horde, oil. Few speculators have tankers of the stuff in the back yard. But when did reality ever trump a populist, vote-gleaning stand?

The country's fast heading into what we'll euphemistically call a 'recession,' interrupted only by speed bumps like the "economic stimulus package" of a few hundred dollars that many of us received several months ago. The Bush administration's Energy Advisor Matthew Simmons maintains that oil could easily hit $300 p.b. On the financial front, we have the collapse of stalwart institutions like Bear Stearns Bank, sold off at a fire sale price to J.P. Morgan/Chase via a "non-recourse loan," aka "gift," of 30 billion dollars courtesy of the American public. And that was just for starters. Now Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac seem to be following suit.

Yet everyone's still going about their business, if they can afford the gas to get there. And here in New York City, the rebuilding of Ground Zero has been moving right along.

Up until a couple of weeks ago, that is, when the Port Authority's Christopher Ward took a deep breath, quoted the philosopher George Santayana (the thinking man's equivalent of saying a prayer) and announced that the goal of a grand opening by the tenth anniversary of the attacks was... fuggedaboudit.

Maybe all the squabbling parties downtown should just learn to play better together. Or maybe someone with his/her ear to the ground is getting, if we may mix metaphors, cold feet.

For ignore it or not, Peak Oil is here and about those gas prices, you ain't seen nuthin' yet.
Writing for The Energy Bulletin, Jerome a Paris informs us that the relentlessly upbeat International Energy Agency has sobering data it's anxious to release. But they have been told by the Bush administration to withhold the bitter truth until after the election.

The Powers That Be at Ground Zero may not know that precise fact. But they probably have a more acute sense than most of where things are heading. And while it's in their interest to keep up the front as long as possible, they must surely recognize that it's not in their interest to invest in a project whose future is iffy.

The consequences of Peak Oil - a cascade of bankruptcies including trucking companies which will cease delivering food to the supermarket; riots and looting; every man for himself - are unprecedented. 9/11 was unprecedented, too, until it happened. History repeats itself, but never verbatim.

The match has been struck for the burning of "Rome" but this time Nero isn't playing the fiddle; he's talking about A-Rod and Madonna. Fascism is on its way only this time with more polish, at least so far; instead of goose-stepping in jackboots it walks softly and wears a nicely cut suit. The gas chambers are subtler too: The fires that burned the toxic debris at Ground Zero for over three months; the formaldehyde-contaminated trailers provided to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, are doing the same job, only over a more extended time. And we "Jews" are swallowing the sweet pablum that the nice man on T.V. is offering (uptick in the stock market today!) Because this new kind of Holocaust "could never happen."

Iran Ready to Discuss EU's Nuclear Offer
Note Iran's statement that it would never attack Israel.
Does Gold, Commodities Surge Signal Impending War?
How Iran Has Bush Over a Barrel

Russia Presses US Bank Over Money Laundering

FTW Milestones

Sept. 1999 – FTW breaks an exclusive story tying the Bank of New York(BoNY) to the laundering of up to $15 billion in stolen IMF funds and organized crime proceeds from Russia. This cash flow nearly quadrupled the Bank's share prices and resulted in three successive 2:1 stock splits. In a prelude to the Enron scandal FTW also shows how the compensation packages for BoNY execs increased by 600%.

Beginning in 1999 FTW began a series of what would be three stories detailing how the U.S. looted Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mike's reporting was so accurate that it got him invited to an economic conference in Moscow in March of 2001. Compare what Mike wrote nine years ago with these recent developments in U.S. courts.

Presidential Directive Orders Sharing of Biometric Data
Defense Intelligence Agency Reports Loss of Padilla Video
Southern Californian Residents Gear Up to Fight Secretive Expansion of Blackwater
Willard Report
On Unauthorized Disclosure of Classified Information
Fade to Black: Is This the End of Oil?
the last year has seen major oil companies begin to make more noises about potential problems ahead. Foremost among them has been head of the French oil company Total, Christophe de Margerie, who has declared that world production will never exceed 100 billion barrels a day, a level of demand expected in less than a decade. "The oil companies are changing their tune," says Campbell. "They can't quite say 'peak' in so many words. They don't want to rock the boat."

Mumia Abu Jamal Recognizes Peak Oil
Michael Kane's blog.
The Word "Rape" Banned at Rape Trial
BBC Uncovers Lost Iraq Billions

Internet Attacked as Tool of Terror
Bird Flu Archive
Open Source Center Views Animal Pox Research
Army Interest in Sleep Research
US Has No Remaining Grain/Dairy Reserves
Obama, Israel's New Best Friend
Microchip FAQ
By the authors of Spychips

New Sources Fraying Saudi/US Oil Ties
Saudi/France Military Links
Saudi/Spain Military Links
Saudi/China Military Links
Saudi Arabia must be worried about something.

JO

The Peak Oil Movement Is Unprepared For Its Two Biggest Challenges

PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY


by Michael C. Ruppert

It is now only a matter of weeks before the truth about Peak Oil comes crashing through the mass media, the public consciousness and the imagined realities of life. In July we will see that OPEC (especially Saudi Arabia) cannot increase production. The long unconnected dots will become clear lines depicting a now inevitable collapse and die-off. The once impenetrable edifice of the old paradigm which locked our warnings away and blocked them from real public discussion will rupture. Peak Oil is certain to become an issue in the U.S.general election this November.

Two events are about to take place, and indeed have already begun. The Peak Oil movement, those of us who labored and sacrificed for years,have our collective pants tied round our ankles and our heads inserted deeply into non-energy-producing regions. The first event is easy to address if we focus. The second, however, may literally render what"was" the real Peak Oil movement ineffective and condemn hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to death. Because what people hear and learn in the first months of true Peak Oil awareness will determine the course of discussion, planning and of history, from here to eternity.

Problem 1:

Within weeks or months the major media will become "aware" of Peak Oil. They will come to the Peak Oil movement and say, "OK, what do we do now? What should a President do? What should congress do? What should people do? I have seen no serious or focused attempt to prepare for this demand. I am tinkering with a proposed Presidential Platform on the subject by myself and when I think I have something serious Iwill release it. The addresees of this email ONLY are encouraged to offer suggestions. [Ed: By this, Mike is referring to the recipients of his original email. Blog readers are encouraged to send suggestions to the blog. But Mike is not recommending that everyone start calling the media on their own.] But all of the people who have labored so long and sacrificed so much should be prepared for microphones to be thrust at them nationally and locally. What are you going to say?

Will you say, "It's time to go to Plan B"?...

Problem 2:

This is the most serious threat of all. Already, people who we have never heard of, and who have never sacrificed or contributed an iota, are starting to emerge saying that they have "disovered" Peak Oil. They are presenting themselves as experts. Their first approaches will be to local and regional media outlets who don't know their derrieres from a dry hole in the ground. The local and regional medias will be the ones funneling discussions and questions upward to the Larry Kings of this world. This is just the beginning of a deluge. More than half of those who will wind up on CNN, Fox, ABC and on the pages of our newspapers will be either one of two things: rank opportunists and snake oil salesmen who will distort and peddle bad ideas and self-promotion; or they will be out-and-out disinformation artists funded either by Wall Street or the US government. They will be intent on lining their own pockets, protecting the old paradigm and blunting a truth which has begun its demand for payment before foreclosure. These people will be murderers of the worst sort. Yet they will be flooding media switchboards, email inboxes and fax machines at media outlets around the country. And because they will be making noise they will get the air time that the real activists who have spoken truth will not.

How do I know this?

POWs, Iran-Contra, CIA drug trafficking, the 1992 presidential campaign and 9-11. It happened in every one of those "earth shattering" crises or events. I was there. I watched and felt it happen in every one of those sagas as it unfolded.

People who we have never heard of will be getting the spotlight and the Peak Oil movement will not -- because it gave up at just the wrong moment. The struggle to define Peak and what it means for mankind is just beginning. Are you willing to sit back and watch the snake oil salesmen, dilettantes, and wolves in sheeps clothing dictate the discussion and set the agenda, just when the window and demand for real education opens wide and beckons?


Michael C. Ruppert
Author: "Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire atthe End of the Age of Oil"

Chevron Halts Nigerian Production After Pipeline Blowup
Plus Cantarell in Mexico Fell 33% last year. As declines go, that's precipitous.
Hyperinflation Could Lead to Emergence of Third Party
Valid Site on FEMA Camps
When in doubt, go to http://www.oilempire.us/
US Army: Media is the Battlefield
Adults Should Have to Carry Carbon Ration Cards, Say MP's
French Threat to North Sea Oil Reserves
Lawsuit Against OPEC
Shouting at Opec to turn on the taps is an expensive diversion that will merely delay our recognition of reality.
Is Our Accounting System Flawed
Exposition by the intriguing and original Antal E. Fekete
Bush Plans Invasion of Saudi Arabia: Spoof Ha ha (?)
Saudi Arabia Starts Artificial Rain Project, Gulf News Says
NYC Taps WTC Fund for Expenses in Fighting 9/11 Health Claims
The $15.5 million went to the Law Department, which is fighting 10,800 claims by cops, firefighters, construction workers and other Ground Zero responders.

JO

The Moses of a Post-Peak Oil World

Jenna Orkin


"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." Bertrand Russell


Peak Oil is here or close enough, thank you. Those of us who've been dreading this moment for years are now waiting for the other shoe to drop, ie: the shit to hit the fan. When that happens, who will be the leaders who will carry us kicking and screaming towards the sustainable way of life that we should have been leading all along?

Will he be a Clint Eastwood type, far-seeing (you can tell from his squint), a man of few words? Or will he be possessed of that elusive quality, charisma, an Obama-type to whom people naturally turn because of his easy, loose-limbed command of the facts combined with that facility that Joe Biden kicked himself around the block for noting, 'articulateness?' Will he be tall? Will he be a woman?

What is 'leadership' anyway?

As Justice Potter might have said, you know it when you see it (or hear it.) As in the old E.F. Hutton commercial, when The Leader speaks, the rest of the room falls silent. Sometimes this is because he's making sense. Sometimes it's because he's wearing a suit. Sometimes it's because he's the loudest.

Whatever the reason, people accord him authority. He's the closest thing around to Daddy. While everyone else is scared clueless about what to do, The Leader seems sure of himself so they figure his confidence must be based on something.

Maybe he'll be an actor who played a leader in a movie. Knowing how to act the part, he will bark instructions.

"Finally we're getting somewhere," the others will think, regardless of where Somewhere is.

************************************************************************************

A few years ago a band of New York City Peak Oil activists were discussing suitable crops to plant when they finally moved to their respective sustainable communities. Since New York City is in the Dark Ages when it comes to Peak Oil, these activists were, by default, leaders in the field.

But - and the activists were acutely aware of this - they were not farmers. They were novices, trying to scrape together what knowledge they could from the internet and the occasional bank-breaking weekend at an intensive Permaculture course.

So the conversation, while earnest and, by New York City standards, enlightened, fell short of providing useful information.

Until a young woman called Debbie spoke.

"Potatoes."

Her voice lacked the high-pitched excitement (the charisma factor) of the others, leaders all. And they seemed not to hear her.

But then a man who was sitting next to her said, "Potatoes! We forgot about potatoes!"

"Yeah, potatoes!" said another.

And so, by subliminal suggestion, Debbie's idea took over the conversation.

(A by-product of that evening is that I planted two potatoes on my windowsill in the hope of later writing an article called, "A Potato Grows in Brooklyn." One turned into a slimy mess; the other disappeared which must mean it morphed into soil. But that's another story.)

However, Debbie is not considered a leader either by the meet-up or by herself. She just happens, time and again, to have the information everyone's looking for.

The others know this. Sometimes they ask her for advice and she provides it, as when an adolescent ventures out on his own, only to turn back to ask Mom for money. The Peak Oil Leaders boldly go forth proclaiming Debbie's information, having incorporated it into their rhetoric and made it their own.

************************************************************************************

"We must change the paradigm!" goes the cry of the few brave souls who have for a long time seen what's coming and tried to warn those bits of the world to which they had access.

They're talking about infrastructure and the economy and other vital issues. But so far no one's addressed the assumptions on which we base our decisions, the notion that for the sake of simplicity and streamlined organization, there must be one person to whom we all look for instruction.

So it seems that when the world goes belly-up and the meek, if they know how to farm, shall inherit the earth, one thing shall emerge unscathed: that citadel, the grand social pyramid with drones at the base, some knowledgable folk in the middle and on top, the One, True Sun to whom all others turn for enlightenment; He or She who in Ancient Greece was a god, in 20th century America was a movie star and in the 21st century will be a Peak Oil activist - the Leader.

Letter to The Independent

The following letter was written to the editor of the British newspaper, The Independent, about their article, Fade to Black: Is This The End of Oil? Mike is asking blog readers to write to the paper in support of his letter.


Michael C. Ruppert


As one who has labored with Colin Campbell, Matt Simmons, and Chris Skrebowski to educate about Peak Oil, I have to say that your article has brought me to tears; tears of gratitude. There you have it. The words and truths we have fought so hard to get into the mainstream for so many years have appeared with an eloquence, judgment, and intelligence I had never expected to witness. We cannot get this kind of truth told in the States yet, but your story will crack a rapidly melting North American glacier even further. CNN embarrasses itself on a daily basis now. What's happening in the North Sea is happening in Dubai, Mexico, Indonesia, the U.S., and yes, even Saudi Arabia.

My own book is in the Harvard Business School Library. It committed the cardinal sin of linking Peak Oil to 9/11 yet it has never been refuted (acknowledged) by the U.S. government or major American media. It is in its fifth printing and ranks at Amazon in the top 5 for Political Reference and Public Affairs/Administration four years after its publication. In it, I predicted the exact economic and energy picture that now confronts us as a species.

I am circulating the link for your story throughout the North American Peak Oil movement. It will give American Peak Oilists a big shot in the arm. We have been kicked around pretty thoroughly for a long time,waiting for moments of sane coverage. It is my fervent prayer that Michael Savage's skills remain focused on the issue and that both his editors' courage and pocketbook will allow that to happen.

Michael C. Ruppert