and ya tell me, over and over and over again my friend...

Well, the Eastern World, it is exploding…

The Financial Times leads today with the headline “Drive on biofuels risks oil price surge” “Opec chief warns costs could go ‘through roof’” The group warned that it would curtail investment in developing new sources of oil, creating scarcity levels like we’re seeing with uranium today. Parenthetically, Opec’s very existence belies arguments by freemarket types and the President that oil’s price is not one that can be controlled by anything other than market forces.

As I read the, I asked myself ‘which came first, the chicken or the egg?’ The chicken in this case being the Decider’s hand-in-hand stroll through the Crawford Ramble with his Saudi Prince, or his irrationally provocative State of the Union speech where he singled out “Middle Eastern oil” producers as a threat to our ‘energy security’, and said America must find ways to end its “addiction” to their junk.

Was the romantic interlude a make-up kiss? Or was it an advance warning to his friend that he would embark on damning rhetoric, but in his heart of hearts he didn’t mean it?

Besides a few lower-level diplomatic protests, there was no palpable fallout from his provocations – until now.

It’s important to realize that petroleum production has been essentially flat for a few years, as some major fields have dried up while new ones prove harder to harvest.  Peak oil theorists will tell you the planet has dried up and that our next phase will be bitumen extraction from oil sands and shale (as they do in Canada now). Others argue that “liberals” have stymied exploration and source development for so long that it was inevitable the producing areas would stop producing and we’d be where we are now.

We alienate our “allies” in the Middle East. Wahabists are a bomb blast away from owning Saudi Arabia and really causing disruption to the oil supply. Nigeria is an ethnic cleansing train wreck about to crash, and our other major oil supplier, Angola, fights its own humanitarian issues.

None of this really matters when you consider the big picture: we are screwed, and a stupid, short sighted energy policy has gotten us here.

Consider the condition called CCD that is wiping out our honeybee populations. While there is precedent for bee die-offs (and with luck they will bounce back as they have in the past), the real, here and now consequence is that a lot of food won’t grow in the US because fruits and nuts simply don’t get pollinated. Luckily though, fruits and nuts are garnishes for our main foods: wheat and corn. We consume more corn than anything else, and our livestock lives on it too/

Not so fast though. The prices of corn and soybeans have gone up dramatically since the ethanol craze hit. We decided a couple years ago that we’d prefer cheap driving to cheap eating, so the competition for corn has gotten intense between food producers and distillers. We may not have enough corn to eat when we need it, because it’s being converted into whisky for our cars.

So, in order to continue driving our SUVs, we will turn to friendly neighbor Canada’s oil sands for petrol. But… Canada is already under fire for missing carbon-emissions targets and is being urged to (and very well may) restrict expansion of the Alberta oil sands. The process of converting tar to gasoline is extremely energy intensive, and short of building a nuclear reactor (which is being evaluated at this point), will certainly be curtailed as the world wakes up from the stupor of slow suicide.

Today, China, India and a few Middle Eastern and  African countries have moved nuclear energy from the back burner to the front page. But we have the issue of uranium supply to deal with as well. The government flooded the uranium market with tons of scrapped warhead, drove half the mining industry out of business, and the price of the stuff up from $8 to $130 a pound. The miners are exploring and drilling at full tilt once again, but it will take time to ease the metal’s deficit, yet demand continues to rise every day. The US is the only major energy consumer that hasn’t already started construction of new reactors, and we will certainly pay the price for that as we spew garbage into the air and bury CO2 underground in mad schemes to “offset”.

Disposing of nuclear waste is the least of our problems at the moment. There are plenty of uninhabitable places we could dump it with little consequence, it’s only a matter of price.

But the President goes to the G8 summit with one goal: to provoke Russia. Reigniting the Cold War is an incredibly ham-handed, transparent political haymaker, done as though America needs a new boogeyman or mortal enemy to fear. Placing missiles in Europe is needlessly provocative when we have more than enough warhead capacity zipping around at 20,000 leagues under the sea. The only possible justification I can imagine for this kind of alienation of an erstwhile ally is pure politicking; a revival of a Red Menace. I hope Putin doesn’t fall for it.

Or maybe the Iraq conflict hasn’t been lucrative enough for the military-industrial complex. IEDs don’t do enough damage to men and materiel to make this war profitable enough. We need an enemy with the capacity to destroy ships and tanks so we can enjoy the windfall of a real war economy. The question is, of course, can we fight a war right now? Iraq has been like a wasps nest, wasps stinging everybody in uniform. Our military is exhausted and overextended, hobbled by little wounds. There is no enemy, there are no Battles of the Bulge, there is no “victory”. Iraq is a war of attrition as Vietnam was, and we’re losing because there is no way to win.

Congress declined to fund the FDA’s food-import inspection program (for a paltry 100 million dollars), so the food suppliers we would turn to (whose honeybees are still healthy), ship us toothpaste with ethylene glycol, foods spiked with melanine “protein” and other hideous poisons.

Another pill in our national slow suicide.

The Dems in Congress roll over for the President, offering him their bellies to rub, quietly chanting “four more years”. Their contenders for the crown go to absurd lengths to prove they can out-Jesus the competition and not one of their perfectly coiffed heads allows a single global solution message to pass their perfectly capped and whitened teeth.

The Republicans are a joke. They take flip-flopping to a whole new level of absurdity as they seek to appeal to their “base”.

I’m still endorsing Kucinich for the Dems and Ron Paul for the Republicans. They are both nuts, but principled nuts who offer vision and solutions, not utterly empty base-secuding rhetoric.

A small band of home-grown jihadists plans to blow up a little-known jet fuel pipeline, level half of Queens and cost us hundreds of billions of dollars.

Osama Bin Laden said from the beginning that his goal was to bankrupt America. So far he’s doing a Heckuva Job.

Comments

[roy edroso]

Well, there's a nice little foreign-policy nutshell. Good to be reminded that the name of the game is still geopolitics, where only resources matter, and that there are three ways to win: maximizing the resources, maximizing their delivery, or fucking up other countries' ability to do same.

From our current perspective, maybe I should say three ways to lose.

I haven't been here in a while, but it's good to see you've gone to Typepad and got your shit shit-tight. Maybe I'll do the same someday.

Funny you should kick off with that tune we played in Berlin all those years back.

[b tween]

hey roy!
Good to hear from you, it's been too long.

I decided one day that the only way to learn the "truth" when confronted with any question was to follow the money. I've become absolutely convinced that *nothing* else matters to the "people in charge" of the mega-oligarchy the world has become. So if you want to guess which way the wind of change will blow, see which direction offers streets paved with gold.
sad state of affairs, ain't it?

I forgot about the improv Eve of Destruction we played in Berlin. My most potent memory is the East German border guard calling me a swein!

[ren]

I'm not advocating it, of course, but the only way a nation can cohere is via xenophobia.

In this post-national overassimilated era, you can't have nations. The choice is clear. Dumb down (as in Islam) and have a society, or smart-up, and have a caustic smash-pot of no rest, no gain, no peace, and schuyster take all.

Choose one. You can't have both.

So nasty brutish governments will now give way, worldwide, to a thousand different mafias, all buried in someone's neighborhood.

Where you feared Gatica-style ID imprinting, it'll just turn out that you'll be forced to self-ID, with a Bloods, Crips, Jihad, or Greener tattoo, which you have to pay for (or apply) yourself.

The nastiness in bred in, Bren. The most human quality. Scheming, intimidation, exploitation, and hate. The basic foundation stones of the human race.

And Governments? Hah.
The greatest personal lifetrack ever invented (unless there's a revolution). Yeah, its just a job.

I think of the entire government, at all levels, as one of those huge Borg Collective cube-shaped space ships. Individuals "assimilated" retain very little of their pre-Borg selves, everybody is replaceable, and when the old ones are discarded (in some election turnover) , ...all that happens is that their feeding tubes are switched over to the new guys, who immediately go into "regeneration trance" sucking down that white Borg liquid. Just because Picard and Seven of Nine woke up, does not mean escape is possible. The several billion other Borgs are all still hooked up, forever. They view Picard & Seven as defectives, kinda like offshore Chinese. Us, you and me, are nothing more than Soylent Green briquets to them.

[Mark Vane]

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[Tory]

I think we should organize the World's biggest pow wow at the world's biggest teepee in Medicine Hat, Alberta.
Maybe we should support the First Nations people in Serpeant River and Trout Lake. They have a chance to set a precedent under Crown Land. Since the Govt has sold the mineral rights for uranium across the Canadian shield, we should have a say. The EA's have been pushed thru..hidden in the Ontario budget as is the nuclear and uranium infrastructure and exploratory.
Cameco is about the mine the shit out of Canada's north from west to east. I can pretty much bet there won't be a scrap of uranium left in 30 years. There won't be a drop of water either that isn't contaminated.
I think it's time for a little rebel rousin with the First Nations. Check out John Cutfeet-Trout Lake.
Also on www.miningwatch.com
I think there is some merit to this org but also mind there are some camping in the enemies back yard. Good place to stay connected to vito any positive forward movement against these assholes.
I live 30 minutes from Bruce Power...billions alloted in the Ontario Budget..which I've noted I haven't found anyone that's even read the damn thing. Needless to say most have missed the EA deadlines for any protest.
I would think if we vote in leaders to protect our best interest and they don't DIDN'T...we should have some recourse. Mind you if we wait until mining companies cash the uranium stocks and extract it will be too late...
anyway I'm done talking about it...I'm going up to see what's happening on the N.Ontario uranium front and band with the Indians...they're the only ones making any sense these days. Not all but for the most part they are trying to convert the ones we've converted to white ways.

[comment993]

"The Eve of Destruction" was penned by one Phil Bleich, under the pseudonym P.F. Sloan.

He also wrote Johnny Rivers' "Secret Agent Man", and the Cowsills' "Gotta Get to Know You".

It was Phil who suggested to John Philips that he trash the 3 chords of Phillips' original bright "California Dreamin", and recast it in darker colors "As sort of a walk don't run copy"

Good Notion, that.

Dunhill records (where he worked) coveted Bliech's songsmithing, and so sabotaged several attempts by him to become an artist.

So he influenced your 1965-1968 reality, but was sabotaged from joining it, by a hardass record company.

Bitch.
I definitely sympathize.

As it is, he is now about 65, in recovery from substance abuse and mental illness, and watching the Dylans of this world safely from the sidelines--- where we all ought to be.

[email protected]

[B Tween]

howdy stranger - long time. I've been meaning to write some incendiary comment about IP just so Mr. Clegg can stay mad at me. It has been very difficult to not write about Paul Newman, the Japanese earthquake, Cuomo and whatever "siren failure" that'll be next!?!?!
I've had no time for anything, not even half day weekend rides up into the mountains on my bike. I feel remiss, and the need for speed.

Nonetheless, you've been as bad as me. How you were able to resist cartooning AG Cuomo is beyond my comprehension. I was almost tempted to do one and send it to you to put up. I mean, that's like a gift from some Aztec fire god. Really, ren!

PF Sloan recently gigged around here somewhere. I remember seeing an ad for it and thinking it'd be a hell of a gig to see. Those sidemen were usually a lot better than the main act, especially after years of hard work at substance abuse.

Incidentally, uranium finally peaked and has been pulling back from its dizzying heights. Maybe we won't watch our lights go out after all.

[Ren]

The Japanese have demonstrated a viable seawater harvesting scheme which hangs specially constructed attractant cables offshore from buoys. Collected and processed after 3 months, the hanging cables yield usable amounts of U233/U235/U238 for a cost only marginally higher than current projected costs for terrestrial (mined) uranium. World oceans are estimated to contain several billion times the amount of mineable terrestrial uranium, resulting in a near-eternal supply source.

It looks like we've been floating in a "Uranium Ocean" for millennia, only totally ignorant of it.

My latest philosophical conceit is the amusing (but extremely defendable) assertion that atomic phenomena are the quintessential Fifth Element posited by Pythagoras 2500 years ago, and sought by alchemists ever since. Go ahead, disprove it. ( no one can ).

On the political side, (since Jason Gooljar has moved to Wash DC), and the US has Mr. Obama to prove that the constitution really works, I will salt my message for all here, if you don't mind.

Here goes:

I've lived in the Hud valley all my life, ( except for band tours to California, Washington state, Alaska, Bermuda, Greenland, Texas, Oklahoma, & Florida and several years of Army service) , so I carry no water for Neo-Confederates trying to make Jim Crow mindlessness seem palatable.... But.... after spending some time reading about John Brown, and the pre-Civil War era, ...I find the links at :

Link #1

Link #2

to be a "must read".

Any assumption of godlike infallibility by the Democratic party ( or those to the left of it ) is a dangerous delusion, and here's why: The business of our Fed government has changed, and has turned into a corrupt race for earmarks, sinecures, and personal advancement, at the expense of the people. This is not a Republican disease. It is a disease embedded now in the Federal machine, and will therefore completely infect the mainly Democratic incumbents, just as it infected the Republicans, in their 8 years of being "above reproach".

I hereby declare to all my principled progressive neighbors.... that what is called for now (post-Bush)... is incessant harsh criticism of the new Democratic government, morally separating your former political support (now no longer needed) from your still-active civic responsibility to restrain the personal hubris of those you have just helped elect.

Good luck on your new mission

[brendog]

I completely agree that, the fourth estate (vs the fifth element?) has failed in its mission as watchdog and the evolution of digital pamphleteers are today's echo of a populist agitprop anti-establishmentarian past.
And, naturally, I love anything that refers to the Civil War as the war of Northern Aggression.
But reading the Revolution Through Revelation, I'm struck by the persistence of a the principle of Principles of Convenience.
By this I mean when Benson writes "For some reason those that took a constitutional states rights position seemed almost reluctant to reply to the Yankee radicals.", as though that condition hasn't changed, I think of the southern conservatives' endless calls for Constitutional amendments banning flag burning, abortion, and gay marriage.
So much for dogmatic devotion to states' rights. They only apply when the right is one they want government meddling stopped - as in the "right" of states to decide to keep slaves.

Aborting babies is bad, but keeping African slaves are ok. Aborting white babies is bad, but killing slave babies is ok, because the state has the right to define them as chattel?

We're neither a pure republic nor a pure democracy, and the push and pull of federal exertion is a key part of freeing slaves and protecting frothing college students' right to burn a flag.

I have read the copperhead chronicle. I have a relative who subscribes and passes it along to me with a few other conservative publications; I always enjoy reading them.
On to Hubris Restraint!

[Nursing tops]

Their contenders for the crown go to absurd lengths to prove they can out-Jesus the competition and not one of their perfectly coiffed heads allows a single global solution message to pass their perfectly capped and whitened teeth.