Talk about walkabout, TAO—when the rest of us materialistic, planet-devouring bipeds have done ourselves in fighting over the last drops of oil, the Aborigines here will pick up like nothing happened. They were on this continent for 40,000 years before the first white men dumped English criminals on these shores in 1788. The Aborigines have been much corrupted and degraded by our presence, but there are still bands who roam the land, living the old way. When the white man is gone after his brief, murderous interlude here, it will just seem like a nightmare in their eternal Dreamtime.

The “oil IS blood” observation has been around for awhile.  Among the Hopi People (pardon this bilingual redundancy), and others, it is understood that it was the surface “bitumen” exudations in Mesopotamia that first attracted our uninvited guests, and which resulted in them turning that place into the “cradle” of their gone-"global" civilization.  That it now looks to become the thing’s sarcophagus as well seems only natural.

Oswald Spengler has been pretty much “discredited” because of his ties to Hitlerian Nazism’s racist doctrine.  His “general theory” of civilization as a specific phenomenon, subject to certain “rules” and exhibiting a set of identifiable (and indentifying) characteristics, as set-out in “The Decine of The West,” however, makes for an interesting study.  In particular, his assessment of what he terms the defining “conceit” of Western Civilization is helpful in understanding the virtual world-o’-hurt its inmates are in today.

Spengler says The West claims to subsume and epitomize all that came before it, civilization-wise, and then to project itself into eternal infinity as the quintessential expression of its “kind.” If that is indeed the cluster-fucking “horse” anglo/american imperialism and judeo/christianity rode double in here on (and it sure looks like it to us surviving free wild Indians), the same “animal” lying dead in the ditch of its riders’ excesses, its fly-blown carcass being flogged incessantly (to a credulous “public") as being under assault rather from the tribal hordes of Arabia and others of the Mahomettan brotherhood, then Spengler seems to’ve been preternaturally accurate in his forecast of its “decline.”

A younger brother/friend, also a ‘Nam vet, living in BullHook Bottoms, Montana, once “linked” this old person to the Joe Bageant blog.  Revisiting it just now, it appears Joe has advanced to the “redneck anarchist” stage of the getting-the-hell-out-of-Dodge metamorphosis.  Can “going walkabout” be next?

HokaHey!

This way off topic, TAO, but have you ever read the blog of a fellow named Joe Bageant (at JoeBageant.com Fellow calls himself a “redneck socialist.” He has a lot of the same perspectives as you do on how Western civilisation is choking itself with greed and materialism. But unlike most people who make that point a whiny way, he does it with wicked humour and outrage at the way America has betrayed what it supposedly stood for. (But which he, you and I know was always a con.) He’s also another American who fled the country and is living with the Garifuna people, a half-black, half-Indian tribe in Belize. You might enjoy him.

On the topic of peak oil, that “Crude Awakening” movie on the topic calls oil something that an Indian could appreciate: “the blood of the Earth.” That’s what we’re doing in our petroleum-fired madness, burning the blood of the Earth..

Maybe Billy the kiD (#81643) thinks it’s HIS perceptions this old Indian should “....get carry away with....” Then there’s his own “assumed role” of wiseacre, that is sometimes but not always as entertaining as he himself plainly believes it is.

A good laugh is always welcome here or anywhere.  The best are generally on oneself, in the considerable experience of this “elder” Savage.  Those at others’ expense often conclude in a hard fall after a long leap from some easy but mistaken assumption. 

An appetite for cheap thrills is not the same as being able to see the humor in our dire but compelling predicament.  That’s enough “wisdom” for tonight.

HokaHey!

TAO, I wish to thank you for such a wonderful explanation of the Lakota “value system.” I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to read this post. 

At the rate we are going, you may well be right.  Perhaps it is a “good day to die,” or as you put it, HokaHey!

A week helping out at the SunDance sure does wonders for one’s spirit, especially after several months of studied “immersion” in one of the Left Coast’s premier citifications.  Ernest Canning and atheo, on the other hand, seem to’ve come together to that point-no-point (even exchanging virtual “blows") that is the final destination of “all creatures great and small” who reach the end of civilization’s eight-lane highway to hell-on-wheels-on-Earth.

Each of these frequent and consistently thought-provoking commenters posed some questions to this old Indian’s last here.  In #79043 atheo asked about “Native Americans” stepping-up to the challenges of Bolivian petro-politics, and this person’s “take” on Hugo Chavez.  There may be some Native Americans in Bolivia, and elsewhere on HummingBird Island, though none known personally to yours truly.  Their chances of “leading” anybody anywhere but deeper into wage/debt slavery seem slim-to-none, given The Record to-date.  Oil is “cursed,” and so far is proving to be good for nothing except to grease the skids beneath those living atop deposits of the stuff almost as fatally as those “enjoying” maybe a few more years of half-life under its spell, on their mutual one-way slide into the terminal degradation reluctantly conceded by Ernest Canning.

That gentleman wants to know (#79089) if “millions” of tame two-leggeds will have to die, in the restoration of biological balance and general health here among the Children of Mother Earth.  Leaving aside the fact millions already are perishing of poverty and its attendant diseases, and even making no more than passing mention here that their “untimely” demise is part and parcel of the civilizing process itself, it might be well to at least “entertain” the possibility that the program calls, in the very near future, for billions of captive humans to “make the ultimate sacrifice” for the good of the establishmentarian “order” (called, perhaps ironically, “New World,” here in these latter days).

The Lakota “value system” doesn’t make artificial distinctions among the Children of Mother Earth.  We are all of us equally essential to the wholeness and health of her Living Arrangement.  Modern “biologists” appear finally to be figuring that out, too, in their own clumsy way.  Seeing such “qualitative” differences as Ernest Canning wonders about here is one of the more severe “handicaps” ruthlessly inflicted on their “livestock” by those cosmic fools trying to turn the world into their own “private” captive food-source.

Maybe Mr. Canning is perhaps offended by the suggestion made earlier that he is an “apologist” for what civilization “hath wrought” here.  He does seem to feel there is an acceptable “trade-off” between the depradations he concedes and the “benefits” he alleges.  This old Savage is saying as plainly as he knows how that civilization is intended to “benefit” only its perpetrators, and that your ordinary run of domesticated human is no more one of those “privileged few” than is whatever is contained in a bucket of “chicken parts” the actual driving force behind KFC.

HokaHey!

.

Pathetic.

Ernest my nuke loving friend,

My reply is as relvant as yours have been.Do you work for Siemens?

Atheo, you really are getting desparate.  If you return to comment #78679 you will find that I began our little colloquy with the following remark:  “proposals to build nuclear reactors as a supposed alternative energy source are the work of the criminally insane.”

Keep trying, though.  Sooner or later you might land on a point that has a modicum of validity.

My nuke loving friend,

Perhaps you should flesh out your theory as to how Exxon’s profits would be jeopardized.
BTW, how much is the nuke industry and the MIC paying you to make these posts?

Atheo, scientific recognition of the human link to global warming is not hysteria.  The financial interests of the irresponsible Exxon-Mobil in seeking to evade policies that would have the world turn away from reliance on fossil fuels, in part because of the devastating ecological impact it has on the atmosphere, are so blatantly obvious as to scarsely warrant discussion.  You’ll have to do better than that, my oil-loving friend.

Ernest,

I’m afraid that it is you that insists on erecting strawmen and evading the substance of the issue. Every post of yours is simply a new ad hominem attack. Yes, the dims are well paid by big oil as are the repugs. They haven’t left any bases uncovered. To suggest that the global warming hysteria will result in a hit on big oil’s profits is baseless. To accuse skeptics of “protecting” those profits is inane.

Atheo.  That’s $10 K per article, not a bad rate.  Overall, Exxon-Mobil invests millions in their effort to sew the seeds of confusion.  I sorry to see that you did not have the intellectual integrity to admit that your effort to change the subject by erecting straw men reflects the degree to which your posts lack substance.

Outside of Kucinich and a few others, there are not too many Dems who still represent the interests of the vast majority of Americans--the middle and working class.  Then, again, neither the oily oligarchs and their Republi-crook allies do either.

So keep pushing the “Oil-is-Great” mantra, keep denying the science of global warming, and apply for one of those Exxon-Mobil $10 K grants, but get it in “cold” cash, lest your dollar bills catch fire as a result of global warming you insist we are not causing.

Ernest,

I’m sorry, but your trust that the dims are any less corrupt than the repugs seems laughable. Redirecting profits from Iran and Venezuela to ADM and GE is more what they have in store.
I guess the “rubbish” label goes both directions. What a silly accusation that someone may have been offered $10,000 to counter a propaganda campaign that has had over $50 billion in one sided funding.

Atheo, I was not all that excited about the goal of raising efficiency standards by 2020, merely reporting the facts.  The issue I was more interested in, the one that, quite expectedly, you chose to ignore, was the Republican effort to block the redirecting of obscene oil cartel profits into alternative energy.  That, my oil-loving friend, was the point I was making.

Your latest attack on Al Gore is typical.  Gore’s work, and that of the myriad of reputable scientists who have been the subject of your attacks, never said that climate is a constant or that there are no variables in hurricane activity.  Indeed, in the book “The Assault on Reason” Gore states:  “No single hurricane can be blamed on global warming.  Hurricanes have come for a long time and will continue to come in the future...The science does not definitively tell us that global warming increases the frequency of hurricanes--because...there is a multidecadal cycle, a cycle of twenty to forty years, that profoundly affects the number of hurricanes that come in any single...season.  But it is also true that the science is extremely clear now, that warmer oceans make the average hurricane stronger:  not only make the winds stronger, but dramatically increase the moisture evaperating from the oceans into the storm--thus magnifying its destructive power--and make the intensity of the hurricane stronger.”

Thus, in both citing the Woods Hole Oceanographic study on the fluctuation of hurricane activity, and in limiting your response to the portion of my comment dealing with targeted fuel efficiency standards, you have proceeded to erect straw men that you then seek to demolish.

You come into Truthdig, linking to articles seeking to debunk such reputable organizations as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Union of Concerned Scientists.  As noted by Mr. Gore, in 2007, just as the IPCC report was being released, a front group financed by Exxon Mobil “offered $10,000 for any pseudostudy or paper disputing the findings of the scientific community.” As Alden Meyer, the director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists observed, “Exxon Mobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as the tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer.”

Given that one of the world’s most reputable scientific journals, “Scientific American” has informed us that the “debate on global warming is over,” before you come in here linking to anyone disputing the CO2 connection, you best be able to prove that your source is not linked to Exxon-Mobil funds.  Otherwise, I and all other Truthdiggers are justified in considering your tireless posts on this issue as rubbish.

Gloom and Doom in A Sunny Day

By Emily Yoffe

Washington Post

Monday, June 25

...a recent New York Times profile of Gore tells that we are to be flooded with “An Inconvenient Truth.” It is going to be shown in schools; book versions for children and young adults and a children’s television show are planned. The global Live Earth concerts scheduled for July 7 are expected to raise millions, going to a three-year public relations effort, headed by Gore, to deluge us with bad news.

All this is not to say that it’s not getting warmer and that curbing our profligate environmental ways is not a commendable and necessary goal. But perhaps this movement is sowing the seeds of its own destruction—even as it believes the human species has sown its own. There must be a limit to how many calamitous films, books and television shows we, and our children, can absorb.

It doesn’t seem sustainable to expect people to remain terrified by such a disinterested, often benign and even unpredictable enemy. Recall that the experts told us last year would be a record-setting hurricane season, but the series of Katrinas never materialized.

Since I hate the heat, even I was alarmed by the recent headline: “NASA Warns of 110-Degrees for Atlanta, Chicago, DC in Summer.” But I regained my cool when I realized the forecast was for close to the end of the century. Thanks to all the heat-mongering, it’s supposed to be a sign I’m in denial because I refuse to trust a weather prediction for August 2080, when no one can offer me one for August 2008 (or 2007 for that matter).

There is so much hubris in the certainty about the models of the future that I’m oddly reassured. We’ve seen how hubristic predictions about complicated, unpredictable events have a way of bringing the predictors low.

It’s also hard to believe assertions that the science on the future of our climate is settled when climate scientists can’t agree about the present—or the past (there is contention about the dates, causes and even the existence of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age that followed). Now, Gore and others say that Katrina was a product of global warming and that we can expect more and bigger storms. But there is actually brisk scientific debate over the role global warming plays—if any—in the creation of hurricanes.

A study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution last month, looking at 5,000 years of Atlantic hurricanes, found “large and dramatic fluctuations in hurricane activity, with long stretches of frequent strikes punctuated by lulls that lasted many centuries”—with the stormier periods occurring during cooler ocean temperatures. But talking about Earth’s constant, and still inexplicable, climate changes and cycles is not useful if you’re trying to shock.

In his new book, “The Assault on Reason,” Gore denounces what he sees as today’s politics of fear. Yet his own campaign of mass persuasion is not amenable to contradiction and uncertainty. It’s about fright and absolutes. But just because something can be plotted on an X and Y axis does not make it the whole truth.

Ernest,

While I have not researched this yet, it seems to me that your faith in the dims that supported this is misplaced. 2020? Come on, what’s going to happen when this “mandate” isn’t met? Amy has her listeners all excited about? nothing. Typical. Politics as usual, perhaps they will throw something in about abortion to keep everybody worked up, or maybe gays.

Why do you bother with this rather than address the issue under debate?

From Democracy Now! June 25, 2007.

“On Capitol Hill, the Senate has voted to force automakers to raise fuel efficiency standards for the first time in more than 20 years.  The bill calls for all new cars, trucks and SUVs to get an average of 35 mpg by the year 2020.  Meanwhile Republican Senators stripped sections of the bill that would have required oil and gas companies to spend some of their profits to help research renewable energy sources.  Republicans also blocked a proposal to require utility companies to produce 15% of their electricity with renewable fuels by 2020.”

Doesn’t it make you feel all warm and fuzzy all over knowing that there is someone out there besides Atheo who is looking out for the interests of the poor deprived oil companies; insuring that there will be no alternatives so that the oil cartel can keep us all over a barrel.

Bucko,

No doubt MSM is “REgressive”, why have faith that foundation funded “alternatives” are anything but? You fail to address my question, why would the manipulators not choose to cover all the bases?

As for global warming, I have not presented anything that denies global warming. This is just silly propaganda. I can’t think of a single skeptic that denies global warming. It’s the carbon relationship to global warming that is questioned and from the science Iv’e seen, rightly so. The climate has always been changing and always will.

@ Bucko,
I can’t oblige, I’m not a follower of anyone. By the way, are you an Israel lobby denier? Do you not acknowledge the major foundations? Who did you think finances the Heritage foundation or the American Enterprise Institute? Is this all something you would rather not consider?

Atheo, by any chance are you a follower of Lyndon LaRouche? “Zionist funding” and “servants of the Rockefeller foundation” are LaRouche catchphrases, and the LaRouchians I’ve talked to have been high-tech heavy industry proponents. As I recall, they’re also anti-imperialist and fascinated with Russia, although it’s been a while since I matched wits with any.

So please tell us, what’s your opinion on the Queen of England’s drug-dealing…

rf,

gee wiz golly

World’s first coal-to-oil mass converter due to start operation this year

[Note that the stated cost of production is under $35/barrel, half the current market price of oil. Also note that China and the US have VAST coal reserves which could provide many times the energy that oil has.]

“The project is in its final stage of construction and will start production late in the year,” said Wang Yulong, deputy manager in charge of the coal liquefying arm of the Liquefied Coal Oil Company of Shenhua Group Corporation Limited, the country’s top coal producer.

Coal liquefaction is a process that converts coal from a solid state into liquid fuels, usually to provide substitutes for petroleum products. Coal liquefaction processes were first developed in the early years of the 20th century but progress was hindered by the relatively low price and wide availability of crude oil and natural gas.

The facility in Erdos will produce mostly diesel oil, plus liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), naphtha (a volatile, flammable liquid hydrocarbon mixture), and hydroxybenzene.

On completion, it will be the largest facility in the world producing liquids from coal using a technology known as direct gasification.

“Unlike South Africa’s Sasol which produces transport fuel from coal in several stages, our project in Erdos will produce liquids from coal directly,” said Wang, who remained tight-lipped about the technology his company is using.

Indirect liquefaction, the technology used by Sasol, calls for gasification of the coal in the first place, purification of the gaseous raw material before reaction takes place, and a series of adjustments to the proportion of hydrogen and oxygen monoxide before liquids can be produced…

Before starting the project, Shenhua successfully trialled technology at a specially built converter in Shanghai, according to Wang.

“The project in Erdos is about 1,000 times the size of the Shanghai model,” said Wang, claiming it would be both environmentally friendly and lucrative.

Preliminary estimates show 3.4 to 3.5 tons of coal could produce a ton of oil, and if the price of a barrel of crude remains above 35 U.S. dollars, the facility will be profitable, said Wang.

The coal liquefaction project is big on recycling. Workers have constructed two 100,000-kw power plants for generating electricity from burning grease stain, and a sewage treatment plant that will go into service in October.

Industry observers say the Erdos project is significant to China’s food and energy security.

“The efficiency of conventional coal use is very low, but the profits from coal-oils can be much higher,” said an expert surnamed Wu. “This takes away the need to process grain such as maize into ethanol.”

Shenhua Group Corporation Limited is a 100 percent state owned venture that came into being in 1995. Its scope of business ranges from coal, power, heat, coal-liquefied oils, coal-based chemical industries and railways to ports.

It produced 203 million tons of coal last year and was the first enterprise whose coal output exceeded 200 million tons in China.

Coal accounts for more than 84 percent of China’s energy reserves.Statistics provided by the Land and Resources Bureau of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region show that proven coal reserves in the region exceed 500 billion tons, double that of Shanxi Province and elevating Inner Mongolia to the top rank in China in terms of coal reserves.

Many believe coal-to-liquid projects are the most practical way for China to achieve self reliance in oil supply…

Source: Xinhua

http://english.people.com.cn/200706/22/eng20070622_386 664.html

Paul,

I see “peak oil” and man caused global warming as memes designed to control people through fear. Much the same as the phony “war on terror”. It is as mistaken to attack the messenger who challenges the first two as to impugn the motives of one who questions the latter. Truth seeking is not furthered by continual dirrision of the person presenting another view, that is just a desperate measure to distract from the actual factors being argued.

The reason that I do not blindly accept the recieved wisdom as presented in the liberal “progressive” media is that I see it as just another flavor of thought control prepared by servants of the Rockefeller foundation and zionist funding. It may not rub some of us the wrong way as much as fox does but that simply makes it all the more effective. Let’s face it, why would those who seek to control the parameters of debate only dominate part of the media? I use the term “full spectrum dominance of media” in this regard. Coming at things from this perspective allows me to reject alot of dogma that partisans cling to. Perhaps a reread of this thread would be of value.

Bucko says:
“ why don’t you push the notion of “green petroleum,” hydrocarbons excreted by genetically engineered bacteria? Oil IS at its heart an organic chemical, and with the right science, bacteria could be bred that would poo lakes of the stuff.”

In fact we don’t need to engineer the things, read The Deep Hot Biosphere by Gold. Even the concept of “fossil fuels” is unproven and antiquated. The reason that Russia is now the world’s biggest producer of petroleum is because they understand the replenishment process of reserves. Kropotkin has written on this, but his work is avoided in the west.

Atheo,
Perhaps I am naive on a number of subjects in a number of areas, but I am making a concerted effort to become better informed. Since information seems to grow exponentially, rather linear, it becomes more difficult with every day, especially with a segment of the population intent on disseminating dis-information, misinformation, and propaganda to advance warped idealogy & political philosophy. I will not apologize, however, for viewing with the eyes of a skeptic, as this has now become a vital approach for the concerned citizen.

I would like to say I am appreciating some of your alternate viewpoints & postings on various sites, because they make me think logically, and make me approach issues with an open mind. The article you posted on Truthout was interesting (A War Crime or an Act of War?).

While we have been in disagreement on subjects like nuclear power, peak oil, global climate change, & others, and I, too, have at times thought you possibly get funding, or have interests in thwarting progress in these areas, you are obviously a complex educated person who keeps me perplexed as to whose side you are on. This is not necessarily a bad thing for these threads because, as I have previously stated, preaching to the choir is not as productive as swaying opinions of someone from the opposition.

I think by now you have a good idea of where I stand on these issues, and certainly about my feelings regarding extant corruption in our government & elsewhere. When I see wrong I tell my true feelings about the matter, and as clearly & non-obfuscatorily as possible. I would hope you would ‘lay your cards on the table’ and do the same. Thanks for keeping us on our toes, even if a bit confused about your motivations.

Atheo, you’re waging an impassioned defence against the notions of global warming AND peak oil. By any chance, is your name Dr. Pangloss in real life? What motivates you? Do you make a living with something petroleum related?

Since you bring up Murdoch, and I hear a lot of Murdoch-related news here (he’s now a U.S. citizen, BTW) let me testify that he hasn’t been on the “global warming is real” bandwagon for long. One of his sons from his first marriage (not the one who got sick of Murdoch’s meddling and jumped ship) is convinced, and that persuaded Rupert.

He’s a right bastard, Murdoch is, and I refuse to buy his tabloid newspaper here or subscribe to cable telly, because he has a piece of that. However, he knows that climate change will affect his family’s profits in the long run. So he’s acknowledged reality. Just as the insurance industry has for its underwriting in coastal areas.

Down here, I can attest anecdotally about warming’s effects. This country is known for its droughts, but the current one has been going on for a decade. After a point, it stops being an exception and becomes the new normal. The Age newspaper (the left-of-centre broadsheet) has a box on the masthead each morning listing the percentage that the water catchments are filled. Saturday, it was 28.7%, and that’s AFTER the winter rainy season has started. The ski resorts near here have a bit of natural snow, but only for for the first time in three years. Last spring’s bush fires were the worst in almost a century. We get a lot of iceberg news, being on the Southern Ocean, and there were bergs floating off the coast of New Zealand last summer—unprecedented since the 1930s. Vermont-sized bits of the ice shelf off Antarctica are breaking away.

All this could be written off as coincidence, if it didn’t dovetail perfectly with what is forecast by Al Gore and nearly every serious scientist. And to get back to peak oil, the wars that Dick Cheney is waging to get a stranglehold on the throat of the world petroleum supply fit perfectly with what a vicious, amoral dictator would do if he knew a peak was coming.

One more thing about your rose-coloured picture of energy from oil shale, tar sands and coal gasification. You don’t mention the pollution and resource waste from this. It takes huge amounts of water to process the oil shale in Colorado into anything useful. That’s one of the reasons the scheme went bust in the early 1980s.

Canadian tar sands burn up almost as much energy as they produce to dig out and refine. Heavy oil and coal gasification leave behind massive amounts of toxic material—all the crap that makes them heavy and coaly, basically. The town where I live has a toxic site (with a children’s park built atop it!) where the coal gas plant used to be until the 1950s. I remember many small U.S. cities with similar monstrosities.

You seem well-informed, so I suspect you know about these drawbacks. Like most deniers, you don’t tell the whole story. I wonder what your interest is…

And if you’re really just a disinterested boffin, why don’t you push the notion of “green petroleum,” hydrocarbons excreted by genetically engineered bacteria? Oil IS at its heart an organic chemical, and with the right science, bacteria could be bred that would poo lakes of the stuff. I inject patients all the time with insulin that comes from modified e. coli. If scientists can make something THAT complex, oil should be a snap. Except for the sad fact that it will smother our planet in the end.

rf ghig says:

“The bell shaped curve is real. Everything is governed by it”

Well my bible tells me otherwise! Gee whiz!

As for global warming, I could never fall for something that Ruppert Murdoch pushes! Gosh!

I’m not too familiar with Glenn Beck. Does he have a minor appearance in the video? I mostly focus on the scientists not mini-snippets of news clips. Any MSM production is going to have an objectionable personality involved. If all you can come up with is ad hominem attacks, it shows that you are reaching for excuses to close your mind.

Atheo, I never said you were connected to the oil industry.  I posed a question:  “What are your personal connections to the oil industry?”

From the content of your latest post, I have to assume that your answer is “none.” I am certainly prepared to accept that response as factual.

PaulMagillSmith:  Glenn Beck is worse than a corporatist schill.  At times he has set out to prove that he is not one to be outdone by America’s Eva Braun, aka Ann Coulter.  During the May 17, 2005 broadcast of Clear Channel’s “The Glenn Beck Program,” Mr. Beck stated:  “Hang on; let me tell you what I’m thinking.  I’m thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I’m wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it.  No, I think I could.  I think he could be looking me in the eye, and I could just be choking the life out--is this wrong?” During a May 11, 2006 broadcast, Beck stated:  “I say we nuke the bastards.  In fact, it doesn’t have to be Iran.  It can be everywhere, any place that disagrees with me.”

And now Atheo wonders why I don’t find this would-be Nazi a credible source on the issue of global warming?????

Fuel Crisis Sparks Mass Protests

Pain at the Pump in Haiti
By JEB SPRAGUE

Port-au-Prince.

On Jun. 12 and 13, transport workers shut off their engines, leaving residents of Port-au-Prince and other urban centres largely without the services of taxis or the colourful buses and pick-up trucks known as tap-taps.

...the price of gasoline has become unaffordable for most drivers, rising by 34 gourdes to 207 gourdes per gallon this month. Many workers, with a salary that hovers around 70 gourdes a day, must spend 20 to 40 gourdes on transportation (35.4 gourdes equal one U.S. dollar).

The striking workers drive cars and buses, which the working poor depend on for transportation.

http://www.counterpunch.org/sprague06212007.html

===============

General Strike Over Rising Fuel Price

By SARAH SIMPSON

General Strike Over Rising Fuel Price Takes Hold in Nigerian Cities

Shop shutters stayed bolted and young men played soccer on roads that were usually choked with traffic as the first day of an indefinite general strike and fuel shortages brought cities across Nigeria to a hush on Wednesday.

The strike by powerful labor unions is President Umaru Yar’Adua’s first major challenge since taking office three weeks ago.

Unions want a complete reversal on tax and fuel-price increases and on the sale of two state-owned oil refineries, moves that were pushed through in President Olusegun Obasanjo’s final days in office.

The government has agreed to withdraw a five-point increase in the value-added-tax rate, to halve the rise in fuel prices and to review privatization policies, but those moves failed to avert the strike.

“The strike has been quite successful,” said Owei Lakemfa, spokesman for the strike organizers, the Nigeria Labor Congress. “The shops are closed, the schools are closed, the banks are closed, the factories and industry are closed down — so we made quite an impact.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/world/africa/21niger ia.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
====================

I’ll be seeing you guys from the other side of the barricades.

Globalists Love Global Warming

by Paul Joseph Watson

A common charge leveled against those who question the official orthodoxy of the global warming religion is that they are acting as stooges for the western establishment and big business interests. If this is the case, then why do the high priests of the elite and kingpin oil men continue to fan the flames of global warming hysteria?

The Trilateral Commission, one of the three pillars of the New World Order in alliance with Bilderberg and the CFR, met in near secrecy to formulate policy on how best they could exploit global warming fearmongering to ratchet up taxes.

At the confab, European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission, Bilderberger and chairman of British Petroleum Peter Sutherland gave a speech in which he issued a “Universal battle cry arose for the world to address “global warming” with a single voice.”

Echoing this sentiment was General Lord Guthrie, director of N.M. Rothschild & Sons, member of the House of Lords and former chief of the Defense Staff in London, who urged the Trilateral power-brokers to “Address the global climate crisis with a single voice, and impose rules that apply worldwide.”

Allegations that skeptics of the man-made explanation behind global warming are somehow doing the bidding of the elite are laughable in the face of the fact that Rothschild operatives and the very chairman of British Petroleum are the ones orchestrating an plan to push global warming fears in order to achieve political objectives.

We have a similar situation to the Peak Oil scam, which was created by the oil industry as a profit boon to promote artificial scarcity, and yet is parroted by environmentalists who grandstand as if they are in opposition to the oil companies.

In his excellent article, Global warming hysteria serves as excuse for world government, Daniel Taylor outlines how the exploitation of the natural phenomenon of “global warming” was a pet project of the Club of Rome and the CFR.

“In a report titled “The First Global Revolution” (1991) published by the Club of Rome, a globalist think tank, we find the following statement: “In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human intervention… The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”
“Richard Haass, the current president of the Council on Foreign Relations, stated in his article “State sovereignty must be altered in globalized era,” that a system of world government must be created and sovereignty eliminated in order to fight global warming, as well as terrorism. “Moreover, states must be prepared to cede some sovereignty to world bodies if the international system is to function,” says Haass. “Globalization thus implies that sovereignty is not only becoming weaker in reality, but that it needs to become weaker. States would be wise to weaken sovereignty in order to protect themselves...”

Taylor also points out future British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s admonishment that only a “new world order” can help fight global warming.

Other attendees at the recent Trilateral meeting raised the specter of climate change as a tool to force through tax hikes…

Tucker writes that an essential means of achieving global government by consent over conquest, as has long been the ultimate goal of the elite, is by “fanning public hysteria” over climate change, encouraging further integration by forcing countries to adhere to international law on global warming…
to castigate individuals for merely questioning the motives behind climate change fearmongering by accusing them of being mouthpieces for the establishment is a complete reversal of the truth.

Ernest,
Your suggestion that I favor privacy for policy formation is completely unfounded and a slur with no basis. An apology is in order also for your erroneous, juvenile suggestion that I have any connection with the oil industry. These personal attacks indicate that your are avoiding arguing on the merits of your weak position.

Paul,
I guess the clock hits midnight once per day, the other half dozen countries pricing oil in other currencies have yet to be attacked. The fact that they invest in London and New York may have something to do with it. It just goes to show that if your analysis is shallow enough you can make a case for anything. The fact that Hussein sold oil in euros also begs the chicken or egg question. All in all you need to come up with a more logical explanation.

BTW, your acceptance that Bush begrudgingly flipped on global warming is naive. Maybe it was set up to look like something he was reluctant to embrace, a smart approach to massive tax increases on the lower classes.

Ernest,
I believe you are exactly correct when you state Glenn Beck is an un-reliable source of information. That he schills for the establishment becomes evident after only a short viewing. About a month or so ago he made great fun of a device my brothers invented (see nukalert.com), despite the fact the keychain radiation detector will likely save countless thousands of lives when (notice I didn’t say if) a nuclear device is detonated somewhere in the US. After numerous heavyweights (including congress people) called him to task for his ill-informed comments the following night he retracted all his comments from the previous night’s stupid rant. He is too much in the pocket of the right to have any credibility.

Atheo,
The Cheney energy task force is/was criminal. Don’t you think the American people have a right to know what transpired in their ‘private’ (read secretive here) meeting (and who attended) on a matter of such import to national security? Record oil prices, and the Iraq invasion, are the direct result of Cheney’s ‘secret’ meeting.
And it does matter what currency oil is valued in, from a financial & psychological point of view. Why do you think Bush is so intent on Chavez & Hussein (and Iran) going down? All three suggested valuing oil in Euros instead of dollars. Our military is a tool used to enforce US oil policy around the world. I’m not saying dictatorial intent isn’t/wasn’t there with Chavez or Hussein, but how are they any different from the Bush/Cheney mobsters?

BTW, it is only through sustained & increasing public pressure Bush finally & very begrudgingly admitted climate change is fact, despite the ‘spin’ his oil/coal buddies have spent countless millions on in attempts to propagandize people for the benefit & massive profits of these fossil fuel fossils.

Wrong, Atheo, although Cheney has worked tirelessly to hide the potato, much of what took place within the Cheney task force has become public since, including the map which listed the various oil sites in Iraq.  Indeed, this is one of the little facts cited by many academics to prove that the Bush administration had its sights set on regime change long before 9/11. 

As to Exxon funding, it is documented at length by the Union of Concerned Scientist’s report.  I suppose next you are going to tell us that the UCS was bought off by Ted Turner.

By the way, I can well understand what Exxon Mobil has to gain by its campaign to deny global warming.  What does Ted Turner have to gain?  With all that wealth available from the oil cartel, why would government agencies advance this great “fraud” as you call it when there is so much more in corruption and graft to be collected from the oil cartel?  Hell, if you’re gonna be a corrupt government official, wouldn’t you do what Cheney does and line up at the oil industry feeding trough?  After all, over the past two years our pals at Exxon Mobil have turned the highest profits of any corporation in human history.

What are your personal connections to the oil industry?

Ernest,
You decry funding by Exxon of the video without any substantiation whatsoever, yet it is a known fact that Ted Turner financed the IPCC report with $1 billion. Your use of this allegation falls flat when compared to the $50 billion unsuccessfully spent by NWO government entities attempting to “prove” man caused global warming. Go back and review the exchange on this subject already included in this thread.

Equally weak is your attempt to ascribe your interpretation to what transpired at an admittedly private 2001 energy meeting. Admit it, we have no idea what happened at that meeting. It is disengenuous to assert as fact the “strategies” that you suggest. Perhaps they were getting together to get a big laugh about the success in using their full spectrum dominance of media to create the illusion of anthropomorphic global warming as being an “environmentalist” pushed paradigm. In fact it is just as “establishment” as big pharma, commercial ag, nuclear power, or any other profit center for the corporate/academic nexus. Again, just who do you think is going to collect the carbon tax? The very same Bush/Cheney regime that you accuse me of supporting. In fact it is you who are working toward that end and I who is resisting it.

Atheo, I am not impressed with a video put out by the right-wing screed like Glenn Beck--a video we should all suspect as having been financed by Exxon Mobil.  Time and again you come onto this site, citing anyone and everyone you can to deny the existence of global warming while ignoring such reputable scientific organizations as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Union of Concerned Scientists, the latter of which prepared a lengthy 2006 report showing that “Exxon Mobil has funneled nearly $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of 43 advocacy organizations that seek to confuse the public on global warming science.”

You talk about a “global warming swindle” while defending the greatest swindlers ever to inhabit our planet, the oil cartel, which, at every turn, has sought to prevent the development of truly effective alternative energy, has paid for the pseudo-science you now dish out as supposed gospel, and which has everything to gain by continuing to sow the seeds of doubt about global warming.  This is a cartel that met privately with Dick Cheney in 2001, mapping out an “energy strategy” that included details on how they would slice up the fields in Iraq, whose profits have more than trippled since the invasion, yet who received over $7 billion in taxpayer funded subsidies in 2005 alone.

Great Global Warming Swindle


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1009035127227 286104&q=Global+Warming+swindle&total=176&start =0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

Though the guy who wrote this has written a lot of bullcrap about GM food, this is a master peice.

Bear in mind that while the “establishment consensus” may back anthropomorphic global warming, they also back food irradiation, nuclear power, GMOs, etc…

Paul Smith,

How exactly will chewing on those facts help resolve our questions? Does that prove global warming? The fact that Bush and Blair are pushing global warming as a way to empower government while at the same time increasing military fuel consumption should give you pause. In fact the whole meme is just as phony as the “global war on terror” they both serve only to empower governments.

When I get the discs back I’ll find that article, Atheo, but in the meantime chew on these easily Googled facts:

From the DoD: “The Army calculated that it would burn 40 million gallons of fuel in three weeks of combat in Iraq, an amount equivalent to the gasoline consumed by all Allied armies combined during the four years of World War I.

70 % of US military fuel consumption is for jet fuel

Paul Smith,

Your contention that renewables will replace carbon fuels overlooks the fact that outside of hydro, which is for the most part maxed out, renewables do not provide “baseload” power, they are intermittent:

Switkowski told a lecture on climate change and nuclear power..."For baseload generation, there are probably only four options [now in question]: coal, gas, hydro and nuclear.”

http://www