What The Fucks Going On Blog

No Priest Should be above The Law - "To live outside The Law, you must be honest."

EARL NASH

                                                      " NO EXCEPTIONS "

>>>>> "It's news to YOU !" <<<<<

Rome, New York — The longest-serving CEO of  United Motors, Inc.  resigned Friday after admitting to sexually abusing “a boy in my close entourage” many years ago, becoming the latest CEO to quit in a spreading abuse scandal.

If you read the above story in the newspaper today, you would expect that the next paragraph in the story would say he was arrested and awaiting trial for child molestation, since he publicly admitted his guilt.

But sine the REAL story from the NYT today read:

ROME — The longest-serving bishop in Belgium resigned Friday after admitting to sexually abusing “a boy in my close entourage” many years ago, becoming the latest cleric to quit in a spreading abuse scandal.

you did not see that second paragraph about his arrest and trial.

And, like me, you may wonder:  Do priests, ministers and rabbis and other members of the religious "priest" class get a free pass from the law against child molestation?

Do they simply admit it publicly, say "sorry about that" and remain at large on their own recognizance, at liberty to offend again?

"To many of you who read this article about this man Baker, as well as all the other Catholic Clergy who have perversely defiled Innocent Children, Young People and Vulnerable Adults of Our Church, this is just another Roman Catholic Priest who, "strayed". But you see, I KNOW Everything He Did To Those Children; And I DO Mean, EVERYTHING. If I tried to write about it here, then the LA Times would delete my Post, so horrific were the tortures he forced on those little innocent ones who trusted him.
And anyone who thinks the skirts of the Prince Archbishop of Los Angeles, (Roger Michael Cardinal Mahony) are free of the filth that permeates this nightmare are deluding themselves. All Priest Perpetrators and Every Single One of Their Bishop Enablers Are Graceless Traitors To The Faithful, To The Roman Catholic Church and, Most Especially, To Our Crucified Lord."--Victoria Martin | August 14, 2009

 "Mahoney is just another in a long line of corrupt officials protecting a big business. Take away the Catholic Church's tax-exempt status and molestation by priests and cover-ups would end immediately."

Posted by: thecanimalshusband | August 14, 2009 at 07:57 PM

To cover up what Pope John Paul II called "a grave sin", and to ignore his assertion that "there is no place in the priesthood or religious life for those who would harm the young", seems a serious dereliction of episcopal duty.

It also makes the church look more interested in its own reputation than in the welfare of its flock. And that, indeed, was what the Murphy commission, set up by the Irish government to investigate abuse in the Dublin archdiocese, concluded last year when it said that the church authorities had engaged in "the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the church, and the preservations of its assets".

RESPONSIBLE FOR MOLESTATION OVERSIGHT, 1981-2005___________

The children sent to Australia from British institutions with the promise of a new and better life suffered terribly there at the hands of Ireland's Christian Brothers. The 1998 report of a House of Commons select committee contains this unbearable passage: "Those of us who heard the account of a man who as a boy was a particular favourite of some Christian Brothers at Tardun [Western Australia] who competed as to who could rape him 100 times first, his account of being in terrible pain, bleeding and bewildered, trying to beat his own eyes so they would cease to be blue as the Brothers liked his blue eyes, or being forced to masturbate animals, or being held upside down over a well and threatened in case he ever told, will never forget it."

Enough! 

We have heard and seen enough of these horrific crimes perpetrated on defenseless children by priests, who are afforded a special status as trusted adults. 

Enough! 

No longer can we allow any priest to be exempt from sectarian laws.

Enough! 

No longer can we allow the Pope, or his minions, to judge these criminals.

It is past time for all countries to revoke any exemptions for priests, or any other person in the clergy, to the Laws of Man.  +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Rash Lamebore, the "BLOW-VIATOR" "BECAUSE IT'S US !- THAT'S WHY!"

Rash Lamebore

the "BLOW-VIATOR"

oooooooooooooooooooo

They are motivated by love. Not hate, not sedition. They love their country and want to save it from those who do not.

 

Not all leftists are violent, of course. But most are angry. It's in their DNA. They view the culture as corrupt and capitalism as unjust.

 

I reject the notion that America is in a well-deserved decline, that she and her citizens are unexceptional. I do not believe America is the problem in the world. I believe America is the solution to the world's problems.

 

 

 

 

World's Remaining Oil Supply: Let's Look at the Chart - OMG !!!

Look at this graph and be afraid.  It does not come from Earth First.  It does not come from the Sierra Club.  It was not drawn by Socialists or Nazis or Osama Bin Laden or anyone from Goldman-Sachs. If you are a Republican Tea-Partier, rest assured it does not come from a progressive Democrat.  And vice versa. It was drawn by the United States Department of Energy, and the United States military's Joint Forces Command concurs with the overall picture.

 

http://www.eia.doe.gov/conference/2009/session3/Sweetnam.pdf

 

What does it imply? The supply of the world's most essential energy source is going off a cliff.  Not in the distant future, but in a year and a half.  Production of all liquid fuels, including oil, will drop within 20 years to half what it is today.  And the difference needs to be made up with "unidentified projects," which one of the world's leading petroleum geologists says is just a "euphemism for rank shortage," and the world's foremost oil industry banker says is "faith based."

 

 

This graph was prepared for a DOE meeting in spring, 2009. Take a good look at what it says, assuming it to be correct:

 

    1`. Conventional oil will be almost all gone in 20 years, and there is nothing known to replace it.

 

    2.. Production of petroleum from existing conventional sources has been dropping at a rate slightly over 4% per year for at least a year and will continue to do so for the indefinite future. 

 

    3. The graph implies that we are past the peak of production and that there are750 billion barrels of conventional oil left (the areas under the "conventional" portion of the graph, extrapolated to the right as an exponent ional).  Assuming that the remaining reserves  were 900 billion or more at the halfway point, then we are at least 150 billion barrels, or 5 years, past the midpoint.

 

    4. Total petroleum production from all presently known sources, conventional and unconventional, will remain "flat" at approximately 83 mbpd for the next two years and then will proceed to drop for the foreseeable future, at first slowly but by 4% per year after 2015.

 

    5. Demand will begin to outstrip supply in 2012, and will already be 10 million barrels per day above supply in only five years.  The United States Joint Forces Command concurs with these specific findings. http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2010/JOE_2010_o.pdf , at 31.  10 million bpd is equivalent to half the United States' entire consumption. To make up the difference, the world would have to find another Saudi Arabia and get it into full production in five years, an impossibility. See The Oil Drum, http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5154

 

    5. The   production from presently existing conventional sources will plummet from its present 81 mbpd to 30 mbpd by 2030, a 63% drop in a 20-year period.

 

    6. Meeting demand requires discovering, developing, and bringing to full production 60mbpd (105-45) of "unidentified projects" in the 18-year period of 2012-2030 and approximately 25 mbpd of such projects by 2020, on the basis of a very conservative estimate of only 1% annual growth in demand.  The independent Oxford Institute of Energy Studies has estimated a possible development of 6.5mbpd of such projects, including the Canadian tar sands, implying a deficit of 18-19 mbpd as compared to demand, and an approximate 14 mbpd drop in total liquid fuels production relative to 2012, a 16% drop in 8 years.

 

    7. The curve is virtually identical to one produced by geologists Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere and published in "The End of Cheap Oil," in Scientific American, March, 1998, twelve years ago.  They projected that production of petroleum from conventional sources would drop from 74 mbpd in 2003 (as compared to 84 mbpd in 2008 in the DOE graph) and drop to 39 mbpd by 2030 (as compared to 39 mbpd by 2030 in the DOE graph!).http://www.jala.com/energy1.php . Campbell and Laherrere predicted a 2003 "peak," and the above graph implies a 'peak" (not necessarily the actual peak, but the midpointr of production of 2005 or before.

 

    So here we are, if the graph is right, on the edge of a precipice, with no prior warning from either the industry, which knows what it possesses, or the collective governments, which ostensibly protect the public interest.  As Colin Campbell, a research geologist who has worked for many large oil companies and studied oil depletion extensively (http://www.peakoil.net/about-aspo/dr-colin-campbell) says, "The warning signals have been flying for a long time. They have been plain to see, but the world turned a blind eye, and failed to read the message." http://www.greatchange.org/ov-campbell,outlook.html    The world was completely transformed by oil for the duration of the twentieth century, but if the graph is right, within 20 years it will be virtually gone but our dependence upon it will not.  Instead, we have       

• zero time to plan how to replace cars in our lives
• zero time to plan how to manufacture and install millions of furnaces to replace home oil furnaces, and zero time toproduce the infrastructure necessary to carry out that task
• zero time to retool suburbia so it can function without gasoline
• zero time to plan for replacement of the largest military establishment in history, almost completely dependent upon oil
• zero time to plan to support nine billion peolple without the "green revolution," a creation of the age of oil
• zero time to plan to replace oil as an essential fuel in electricity production
• zero time to plan for preserving millions of miles of roads without asphalt.
• zero time to plan for the replacement of oil in its essential role in EVERY industry.
• zero time to plan for replacement of oil in its exclusive role of transporting people, agricultural produce, manufactured goods.  In a world without oil that appears only twenty years away, there will be no oil-burning ships transporting US grain to other countries, there will be no oil-burning airlines linking the world's major cities, there will be no oil-burning ships transporting Chinese manufactured goods to the billions now dependent on them.
• zero time to plan for the survival of the billions of new people expected by 2050 in the aftermath of ":peak everything."
• zero capital, because of failing banks ansd public and private debt, to address these issues.

        Why zero time? 

 

        Because if we at any time use more oil than allowed by the graph, we will have even less later..

 

        Because we are already committed to supporting 2.5 billion more people on what we have.

 

        Because every day we continue upward in our oil consmption, even though we continue to have more people who need it and billions who deserve to rise from abject poverty, we are making the future supply shortage worse.

 

        If you believe the graph, demand will outstrip supply starting at the end of 2011, and severely outstrip supply in five years.  What are we going to do, and how are we going to do it?  We have no time to decide.       

 

 IS THE GRAPH RIGHT?

 

        It is very unlikely that things can be better than the graph indicates.  Why?       

• The great majority of authorities believe there is little more than 1 trillion barrels of conventional oil left.  You can make a simple calculation from that: At the present rate of 30 billion barrels per year, 82 million barrels per day, it will all be gone in 33 years, and consumption has been rapidly increasing, not decreasing, so if anything it will all be gone sooner...
• A closer look at the graph reveals that it was drawn on the assumption that the world's existing conventional fields contain only 750,000 barrels at this time, enough to keep us going only 25 years.
• The graph assumes a decline rate of 4% per year.  As long as the estimates of remaining reserves are right, that can't be far off.  In fact, 4% is a relatively low decline rate compared to what has been observed in oil fields generally.  Hold on, it's going to be a fast ride down!
• The major oil companies, which presumably know better than we do how much oil is in their possession, "conspicuously fail to invest in new refining capacity, which would surely be needed if production were set to rise.'" Campbell, http://www.greatchange.org/ov-campbell,outlook.html  .  The excess of refining capacity over demand remained close to 10 million bpd during the nineties, but dropped to almost nothing in the last decade as a result of failure to build new capacity. http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2006/01/chp1pdf/fig1_21.pdf .  The United States Joint Forces Command has also reported the failure of the oil industry to invest in the refining capacity necessary to permit expanded production, and that "Even were a concerted effort begun today to repair that shortage, it would be ten years before production could catch up with expected demand." "Joint Operating Environment 2010," at 26. http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2010/JOE_2010_o.pdf 
• The most frequiently discussed significant source of unexploited petroleum is the tar sands of Alberta, Canada.  Because a high percentage of the energy value of the tar sands has to be expended in their extraction, the reported quantity of reserves is misleading, and two independent researchers have estimated respectively that production from the tar sands by 2020 may be expected of 3.3 million bpd and 4 million bpd.  Consequently, the likelihood of the tar sands making a significant contribution to the world's petroleum demand in the foreseeable future is low.Phil Hart and Chris Skrebowski,  "Peak oil: A detailed and transparent analysis," http://www.energybulletin.net/node/30537 

·         The shortfall, labelled "unidentified projects," that needs to be filled in 20 years is an unprecedented 60 million barrels per day, equivalent to 3/4 of today's total production.  We have never in history done anything comparable to that.  Although there are large deposits of "unconventional" oil such as the Canadian tar sands, most are making only slow progress at development and consume as much or more  energy in their production as they can generate. The independent Oxford Institute of Energy Studies has estimated a possibe development of 6.5mbpd of such projects, when we'll need more than  that every two years just to keep our place.  So the likelihood of anything at all making a significant dent in the shortfall is small.  Indeed, the "unidentified projects" can be perceived as just a "euphemism for rank shortage" (Campbell http://www.greatchange.org/ov-campbell,outlook.html) The United States Joint Forces Command has come to the similar conclusion: that of all potential future energy sources, "None of these provide much reason for optimism,"  http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2010/JOE_2010_o.pdf  Petroleum industry investment banker Matt Simmons calls them "faith-based." http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/Northern%20Trust%20Bank.pdf    at 4

• The "Hubbert Peak" theory of oil field depreciation, which predicted the peak and subsequent demise of the US oil inudtry 15 years in advance and within 2 years of its occurence http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/1956/1956.pdf , says that with normal production methods, a country reaches peak production in its oil fields when they are 50% depleted, with the production curve being bell-shaped.  The peak can be postponed with innovative extraction techniques, but this only causes subsequent more rapid decline of the deposits and total extraction if anything decreasing.   The world reached the midpoint of its reserves in the last decade, so the 2005 "peak" implied by the above graph is very close to what would be expected.
• Astonishingly, Dr. Hubbert in the same 1956 paper predicted, based upon records of only 90 billion barrels of oil having been recovered worldwide, that the peak of world petroleum production would be approximately the year 2000; this apparently quite accurate prediction by Hubbert has largely been forgotten. http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/1956/1956.pdf  .  One is tempted to ask why, if one man could predict the timing of the peak 44 years before it occurred, the United States Department of Energy is incapable of recognizing it after it occurred.
• There's a common feeling that just becase we don't know where the oil is, doesn't mean the Mother Lode isn't right around the corner. But if you've looked everywhere, the chances are a lot slimmer.  The lag time between discovery and bringing to full production of a field is 30-40 years, which means that even the virtually impossible discovery of another Saudi Arabia would barely change the graph above, of production between now and 2030. But no such discoveries are left to be made.  The rate of discovery of new conventional oil has been steadily dropping now for FORTY years despite ever-more searching with ever-more-sophisticated technology. There have been two pivotal events: the peak of discovery around 1968, and the day in 1981` when discovery of new oil deposits no longer kept up with  production.  There is nothing complicated about this.  As Campbell says, the warning sign there for anyone to see

"simply recognized two undeniable facts:

• You have to find oil before you can produce it
• Production has to mirror discovery after a time lag

"Discovery reached a peak in the 1960s - despite all the technology we hear so much about, and a worldwide search for the best prospects. It should surprise no one that the corresponding peak of production is now upon us." Indeed,  Campbell's second point means that the inevitable peaking of oil production in the early 21st century, should have been clear for all to see since the peaking of discovery in the late sixties. 

Campbell does not stand alone.  As the US Joint Forces Command observes, "The discovery rate for new oil and gas fields over the last two decades (with the possible exception of Brazil) provides little reason for optimism that future efforts will find major new fields." "Joint Operating Environment 2010," at 31.

• Saudi Arabia's largest field, the Ghawar, is now in decline and it appears that the country has nothing to offset that decline.  That has led many to conclude that "Peak Oil is a Done Deal." (Dave Cohen, ASPO/USA Energy Bulletin, July 16, 2008. http://www.energybulletin.net/node/45940 )

 

IF IT'S A "DONE DEAL," WHY DID IT TAKE UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE TO GET HERE?

 

        "We can wish it, we can dream it, but it will never be, oil is not renewable, and therefore in time it must be realized that THERE WILL BE NO OIL."  ENO Petroleum Corporation, "Peak Oil - The Global Oil Crisis," http://www.enopetroleum.com/opecoilreservers.html.  It is hard to conceive of an act or omission causing more pain to more people and creatures than the failure of "those in charge" to announce with reasonable forewarning that the oil supply was going to crash.  But it is upon us with no forewarning to the general public at all.

 

        The government planning agencies charged with helping the public survive the end of oil could not have performed worse than by recognizing peak oil only after it has happened.  Like anthropogenic global warming ("AGW"), "peak oil" has been the subject of decades of denial.  Notwithstanding Hubbert's famous coup in pinpointing the peak of US oil production through the simple observation that production naturally peaks when the supply is half gone, few would listen that because the worldwide supply of conventional oil would reach the halfway point in the first decade of this century, trouble was right around the corner.  The fact is, coming to that point meant we were in trouble regardless, because the early stages of development of an oil field (like the early stages of growth of virtually anything else) follow  an exponential growth curve, and the world's growth addicts love exponential curves, but once you get beyond the halfway point, it is a mathematical certainty that the longer you attempt to conform the field to a pattern of exponential growth, the more the end is going to be precipitous.  If you don't decelerate rapidly, that is precisely what has to happen - the decline after the halfway point can only be more rapid than the rise beforehand.

 

        What Hubbert observed with respect to the US oil reserves has an intuitive sense to it - as the amount of oil in the field drops, its pressure drops, so the flow begins to slow down - the gusher goes down to a trickle.  But if the owner of the field doesn't make full disclosure of what's there, outsiders can only make educated guesses from general geological principles and what the owner is selling, as to what the future holds.  And as we all know, full disclosure is not the name of the game in the oil business.

 

        If the field is just allowed to release its liquid gold at its natural rate, that's not too bad, because observations like the Hubbert Peak can be applied.  But as technology improves and well pressure can be jacked up to compensate for declining reserves, (for instance by pumping water into the wells) the outside observer loses certainty.. There remains information about the company's reserves, but the accuracy of that information is seriously open to question.  Within OPEC, which allows its members to market in accordance with the amount of their reserves. Hart, "Introduction to Peak Oil," www.philhart.com/content/introduction-peak-oil , there are great temptations to fudge.  Outside observers can follow a country's reports on its reserves, but those reports are highly suspect.  They will remain constant for years while the country is pumping great amounts of oil without reporting any new discoveries, and indeed they can take sudden leaps upward also without reports of new discoveries.  Such "records" lead to the inevitable conclusion that many OPEC reserves reports are fictional.  If you would like to see charts of OPEC oil reserves mysteriously contorting themselves, you are invited to take a look at Hart's essay.  So if you thought the experts had it all in hand and would reliably warn us when trouble was a'brewin', think again.  Not only do OPEC members have internal business reasons to exaggerate their reserves, but companies on the public stock market want to satisfy their stockholders of their long-term viability, and all oil producers want to make their customers confident that they can rely on oil for the long haul.  By concealing their future from homeowners, oil companies have made trillions for the real estate business and the banks at the expense of those who chose urban sprawl over dense "near-in" housing, and the companies themselves will make trillions in the near future selling to consumers trapped into oil addiction, who might have sought alternatives more vigorously had they known how close the crash was.

 

        Matt Simmons, the banker who has spent his post-Harvard-Business School career advising oil companies and saving as peak oil advisor to the last Presidential administration and specifically to President Bush, ought to know.  And what he says is that Western oil companies like ExxonMobil would be strongly opposed to the idea of transparent data because it would reveal “how crappy and old their fields really are.” Energy TechStocks.com, "Meeting the Challenge Matt Simmons: Force All Oil Producers to Give Transparent Data,"  According to EnergyStocks.com, Simmons has warned that "the failure of Saudi Arabia and other major oil producers to provide transparent production data has left the world in a lurch, unable to know whether it can maintain an adequate supply of oil in the face of burgeoning demand Such uncertainty has led to indecision about whether the world should invest the huge sums of money necessary to develop alternative transportation fuel sources."

 

Just how bad the published reserve figures for the major oil-producing nations are, has long been understood.  We like to say that what goes up, must come down, but not OPEC member-nation oil reserves.  Their allowed production quotas depend upon their reserves, so there is a built-in temptation to overstate reserves and never reflect in reduiced reserve figures, what they have pumped out.  In 1988, the OPEC oil reserves "magically and miraculously increased twofold," without any corresponding discovery of new fields.  The officially reported reserves follow graphs that would be comical were it not for the fact that 6.8 billion people, and counting, depend upon the real numbers.  See http://www.enopetroleum.com/opecoilreservers.html

 

        Now we are facing the consequences of the major oil producers "leaving the world in a lurch": almost complete inability to cope with the severe difficulties we face in transporting, feeding, housing, and keeping warm the burgeoning billions of our numbers.  It is hard to conceive of how any private entity could impose so much pain on so many.  It didn't need to be that way. The US Government and its cohorts around the world could have imposed transparency on the oil companies as to their true reserves, and we would have had fair warning and the possibiity of coping.  Yes, and the moon could be made of green cheese.

 

        Of course, as noted, it is possible to produce a graph roughly like the one above with nothing more than production data and reserves data. The former are public, and the latter are known to a limited extent.  It has been the consensus of decisionmakers for many years that the world had a total (both produced and still in the ground) of approximately 2 trillion barrels of conventional oil, and as pointed out by Campbell, four decades of dwindling discoveries have left us with an absolute inability to increase available reserves in a timely manner to mitigate the looming shortfall.  The two trillion barrel figure was absolutely critical for doing what planning could be done, but at the beginning of the last decade, the US broke ranks with the consensus of the rest of the world, declared through the historically-reliable US Geological Survey (USGS) that world reserves of conventional oil (both consumed and yet-to-be-consumed) were in fact in the neighborhood of three trillion barrels rather than two, a claim which if true immediately provided the world by sleight of hand  with an extra thirty years' supply at present consumption rates.  To be sure, USGS former employees disputed its estimates as relying "heavily on guesses to calculate new oil discoveries," and on doubling the usual 30 percent recovery rate from reserves "with no technology in mind capable of doing that." Gordon, "Worries Swelling Over Oil Shortage," Energy Bulletin March 20-, 2005.  The concerns about overestimation of discoveries proved correct: they continued on their downward track.  This alone created a discrepancy between the USGS projections and reality of approximately 900 billion barrels. At the same time, the production data appeared to peak in 2005, prominent Princeton University petroleum geologist Kenneth Deffeyes predicted that 2005 was the year, and Simmons suggested similar concerns. http://www.energybulletin.net/node/4835  and http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/Northern%20Trust%20Bank.pdf  (p. 31).   Nonetheless, based upon the USGS wishful thinking, during the Bush Administration, the Department of Energy was forecasting a "production peak somewhere between 2021 and the start of the next century, with 2037 the most likely date."  http://www.energybulletin.net/node/4835  Not to worry.

 

        With the peak imminent in reality, like the global warming "scientific skeptics," industry in 2006 came up with a "theory" published in a non-peer-reviewed report, that "peak oil" was in its totality a false concept, and that the true behavior of an oil field or conglomeration thereof was a peak followed by an "undulating plateau" and then a gentle decline by around 2% per year, years, perhaps decades later.  According to Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), "“It is likely that the situation will unfold in slow motion and that there are a number of decades to prepare for the start of the undulating plateau.  This means that there is time to consider the best way to develop viable energy alternatives that would eventually provide the bulk of our transport energy needs."  www.cera.com/aspx/cda/public1/about/about.aspx  Not to worry.

 

        CERA faulted the "peak oil" proponents with failure to take into acount the facts that reserve estimates evolve with time and that so does the technology used in extracting oil.  The criticism is  disingenuous given that the industry refuses to disclose either the technology it is using at any one time or its true reserves, and the reserve estimates evolve with time more for political reasons than geological one..  The facts the proponents of "peak oil" fail to take into account are facts that the industry will not disclose.  As Simmons has pointed out, "With solid global field-by-field production data, 'Peak Oil timing could be 'proved'."  And, or course, if the "undulating plateau" theory is correct, all the industry has to do is to disclose their true facts to prove it, but  they won't.  Regardless, average decline rates of an oil supply are dictated by only two numbers: how fast we are now using the oil, and how much is left.  Lower decline rates now mean higher decline rates later.  Those are immutable facts even if the "undulating plateau" is correct.  So to avoid a rapid decline in available oil, we must discover and bring to production staggeringly large new supplies, right now today.  Nonetheless, the CERA "theory"  has sufficiently intimidated the bureaucrats that DOE's official position at the moment, as expressed to Le Monde, notwithstanding the graph, is that we are "entering a plateau." petrole.blog.lemonde.fr:80/2010/03/25/washington-considers-a-decline-of-world-oil-production-as-of-2011/

 

        At the same time all of this was happening, the UN, the US Congress, the Obama Administration and the oil industry were negotiating over goals for global warming legislation.  Miraculously, although arguably coincidentally, the percentage-reduction goals agreed to fit quite precisely the percentage reductions in oil consumption that will be physically forced upon us all if you believe the above graph: an 18% drop from 2005 by 2020, and an 85% drop from 2005 by 2050.  (It is possible to extrapolate the graph, which assumes exponentially dropping levels of existing reserves at a 4% per year rate.) This compares to reductions of CO2 emissions 17% from 2005 in 2020 and 80% from 2005 in 2050 in the bill.   So it would appear that the legislative goals have been set, for whatever reason, so that the oil industry will have to do little if anything it won't have to do in any event because of dwindling reserves. http://ecoglobe.ch/energy/e/peak9423.htm  .  It is hard to see how the negotiators could have come up with such correspondence if they had not all  been aware of the impending crash of production and the expected decline rate..  Coincidence?  Maybe, but somehow it seems unlikely.  Whether or not by intent, the goals fit the needs of the oil companies rather than the needs calculated by the scientists.

 

        In short, with all the evidence available, it is hard to see how the industry and the Department of Energy could have failed to see this coming.  Their failure to warn the public, given the consequences, verges on the criminal.  And if somehow they can claim innocence, then we still have to ask why they did not heed the warning of Matt Simmons, advisor on peak oil to the Bush administration, as to the importance of transparency.  But they did not, and here we are.

 

CONCLUSIONS

 

        We are on our own.  We are rapidly going to have to deal with less and less oil, since there has been no forewarning and no planning.  It is a time for communities to prepare for community energy independence, because only that way will be safe.  This means relying on the sun and wind and water that have always been with us.  It means cooperation with each other to get through seriously difficult times.  It means finding alternatives to oil throughout our lives as quickly as possible - the oil that runs our cars, the oil that heats our houses, the oil that runs generators for our electricity, the oil from which chemical fertilizers and insecticides and plastics and polyester are made, the oil that brings countless manufactured goods to us from overseas, the oil on which farmers depend for irrigation pumps, for transporting produce to market, for working the soil to bring us food.  If you believe the graph, it will almost all be gone in 20 years. And the progressives and Tea-Partyers must remember that the people who brought this calamity to us are not our friends but are people we trusted and they trusted, so we must work together to cope with the mess that is upon us, and  "to throw the rascals out.".

 

        The author, Nicholas C. Arguimbau, is an appellate and environmental lawyer licensed in California and residing in Western Massachusetts.  He may be contacted at [email protected] .

By Nicholas C. Arguimbau

April 23, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- 

Israel's Open Secret: Nuclear Armed And Dangerous

By Stephen Lendman

23 April, 2010

For many years, Israel's open secret is that it's one of eight known nuclear powers, including America and Russia with about 97% of the world's arsenal according to Helen Caldicott in her book Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer. The others are Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel - North Korea a declared but unverified one.

In her January 20, 2009 Canadian Medical Association Journal article titled, "Obama and the opportunity to eliminate nuclear weapons" Caldicott wrote:

"The Cold War is over, but the threat of nuclear war is not. Little progress has been made since 1989 when the Berlin Wall collapsed. In fact, the threat of nuclear annihilation has escalated. In 1972, when 5 nuclear nations....signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, they agreed to rapidly disarm. They have done the opposite," resulting in a greater than ever threat, the Pentagon's new Nuclear Posture Review and US-Russia deal doing nothing to reverse it.

See http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/04/obamas-brave-nuke-world.html.

In his 1991 book, "The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and America Foreign Policy," Seymour Hersh discussed its strategy to launch a massive nuclear counterattack if it felt its existence threatened, the stark message being the next regional war may be nuclear.

In his 1997 book, "Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies," Israel Shahak said that, helped by the Israeli Lobby (and Christian Zionists), "Israel (is) clearly prepar(ing) itself to seek overtly a hegemony over the entire Middle East (with no) hesitati(on) to use for the purpose all means available, including nuclear ones."

Shahak also explained that Israel regards "the launching of missiles (onto its territory) as 'nonconventional' regardless of whether they are equipped with explosives or poison gas." In turn, Israel's nuclear doctrine dictates that a "nonconventional" attack requires one in response, meaning a nuclear one, the foundation of its grand strategy, according to Shahak.

According to Hebrew University's Professor of Military History Martin Van Creveld, "We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you (it) will happen before Israel goes under."

Israel maintains a double standard. It won't let another Middle East state acquire nuclear weapons, but will never give up its own or the right to use them preemptively.

Background on Israel's Nuclear Development

It began with its 1948 founding, David Ben-Gurion (Israel's first prime minister) having told Ehud Avriel, a European operative and later MK, to recruit East European Jewish scientists who could "either increase the capacity to kill masses or to cure masses; both are important."

One was Avraham Marcus Klingberg, later an Israeli chemical and biological weapons (CBW) expert and deputy director of the Israel Institute of Biological Research in Ness Ziona, south of Tel Aviv. More on Israel's CBW program below.

Another was Ernst David Bergmann, "father of the Israeli bomb" in charge of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC). Ben-Gurion was determined to have a "nuclear option" and other "non-conventional" weapons (WMDs) to counter the Arabs' numerical advantage. In his farewell address to the Israeli Armaments Development Authority (RAFAEL), Ben-Gurion defended the strategy saying:

"I am confident, based not only on what I heard today, that our science can provide us with the weapons that are needed to deter our enemies from waging war against us."

Ben-Gurion and later prime minister Shimon Peres became the leading forces behind Israel's nuclear and CBWs programs.

In the late 1940s, Israel and France began collaborating, at the time the IDF Science Corps searched the Negev desert for recoverable uranium. In 1952, the IAEC was established. The Dimona Nuclear Research Center/reactor was secretly completed in 1964 near Bersheeba in the Negev - a heavy water moderated, natural uranium reactor/plutonium reprocessing plant to make nuclear weapons. Designed as a 24 megawatt facility, its cooling system had far more capacity than needed, none for electrical generation, and its plutonium reprocessing capability signified an intent to produce nuclear weapons.

After the 1967 Six Day War, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan ordered full-scale production, averaging 4 - 12 bombs per year. US presidents since Lyndon Johnson supported the program. At the same time, it's believed testing took place in the Negev, jointly with France in Algeria, later in the Indian Ocean, and perhaps elsewhere.

By the early 1970s, Israel had advanced nuclear technology, world class scientists, and several dozen bombs ready to launch. Today it's believed it has hundreds and a delivery system able to hit distant targets accurately.

Earlier, with inadequate uranium supplies, it acquired some clandestinely, and by the late 1960s through close collaboration with South Africa - supplying technological expertise in return for the needed material, the arrangement lasting until apartheid ended in the early 1990s.

France and South Africa were Israel's main collaborators, but also America by going along, staying silent to this day, and initially providing a 5 megawatt highly enriched uranium research reactor as part of Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" program. According to journalist Mark Gaffney, Israel's program "was possible only because of (its) calculated deception....and willing complicity on the part of the US."

Israeli scientists were trained at US universities and had access to domestic weapons labs. Since the early 1970s, advanced technology transfers were made, including supercomputers able to design sophisticated nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Mordechai Vanunu's mid-1980s documented revelations provided proof.

Mordechai Vanunu - Heroic Whistleblower/Victim of Israeli Retaliatory Viciousness

A Dimona nuclear technician, he smuggled out dozens of photos and scientific documents, published by the London Sunday Times on October 5, 1986, headlined:

"Revealed - the secrets of Israel's nuclear arsenal/Atomic technician Mordechai Vanunu reveals secret weapons production," saying:

"THE SECRETS of a subterranean factory engaged in the manufacture of Israeli nuclear weapons have been uncovered by the Sunday Times Insight team.

Hidden beneath the Negev desert, the factory has been producing nuclear atomic warheads for the last 20 years. Now it has almost certainly begun manufacturing thermo-nuclear weapons, with yields big enough to destroy entire cities."

The Times named Vanunu as its source, having worked at Dimona for nearly 10 years in "Machon 2 - a top secret, underground bunker built to provide the vital components necessary for weapons production...."

Nuclear experts examined Vanunu's documents, called them genuine, and concluded that Israel's sophisticated technology enabled it "to build up a formidable nuclear arsenal."

According to Theodore Taylor, a world expert at the time:

"There should no longer be any doubt that Israel is, and for at least a decade has been, a fully-fledged nuclear weapons state....considerably more advanced than (earlier) indicated...."

Other top nuclear scientists agreed - Israel was, and today is, a world nuclear power, possessing sophisticated technology and weapons. Vanunu's revelations cost him dearly. On October 12, 1986, The Times headlined his September 30 disappearance, five days before his story broke.

Mossad lured him to Rome, then beat, drugged, and kidnapped him. He was secretly tried in 1986-87, and sentenced to 18 years in prison for espionage and treason - in harsh isolated confinement in a six square meter cell.

Released in 2004, his behavior and movements were restricted. As a result, harassing arrests followed after giving foreign journalists interviews and trying to leave Israel. He said he suffered "cruel and barbaric treatment" in prison, no surprise since torture is official Israeli policy, usually for Palestinians, but for anyone security services target.

On July 2, 2007, Vanunu was again imprisoned for six month for speaking to foreign journalists, later reduced to three months by the Jerusalem District Court "In light of (his) ailing health and the absence of claims that his actions put the country's security in jeopardy."

Daniel Ellsberg called him "the preeminent hero of the nuclear era." He says "I am neither a traitor nor a spy, I only wanted the world to know what was happening." On December 28, 2009, he was arrested again following his alleged meeting with his girlfriend, a Norwegian national, then transferred to house arrest.

On April 14, 2010, Vanunu said "The restrictions, not to leave the country for one more year (were) renewed. Now 7 years since my release AFTER 18 years in Israel PRISON."

He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize each year from 1988 - 2004. In March 2009, he asked the Nobel Committee to remove his name from consideration, and in February 2010 again declined the honor, most often given war criminals.

In 1979, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, the alternative Nobel Prize, "for outstanding vision and work on behalf of our planet and its people," and in 2001, Norway's University of Tromsoe honored him as a Doctor Honoris Causa (History).

John Steinbach on Israel's Nuclear Program

In 2009, The Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR- nuclearfiles.org) published Steinbach's paper titled, "The Israeli Nuclear Weapons Program," saying:

"With several hundred weapons and a robust delivery system, Israel has quietly supplanted Britain as the world's fifth largest nuclear power, and now rivals France and China in terms of the size of its nuclear arsenal," despite an official ambiguity about an advanced sophisticated program. As a result, a combination of expert analysis and whistleblower revelations provided what's known. Also occasional slips, like in December 2006 when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Germany's Sat. 1 channel:

"Iran, openly, explicitly and publicly, threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say that this is the same level, when they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel and Russia?" Backtracking after a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel, he said:

"Israel has said many times - and I also said this to German television in an interview - that we will not be the first country that introduces nuclear weapons to the Middle East....That was our position (earlier). That is our position (now) - nothing has changed."

Since the 1970s, Israel's official position is that it chose "an option to produce electricity using nuclear reactors. (This) requires promoting nuclear knowledge and research, preparing sites suitable for building nuclear power plants," and weighing the economic benefits.

According to Steinbach:

"Despite this claim, an exhaustive search of publicly available sources indicates the existence of no meaningful Israeli civilian nuclear energy program, past or present....From its inception, the Israeli nuclear program has centered on developing a nuclear weapons program, with any other nuclear program being incidental."

Steinbach also cites estimates of Israel's arsenal at "from 100 to over 400 bombs," there being "little doubt that (its) weapons are among the world's most sophisticated, and largely designed for war fighting." They include:

-- "boosted fission weapons and small neutron bombs, designed to maximize deadly gamma radiation while minimizing blast effects and long-term radiation - in essence designed to kill people while leaving property intact;"

-- long range ballistic missiles;

-- sophisticated aircraft able to deliver a nuclear strike;

-- cruise missiles, artillery shells, and land mines with the same capability;

-- "In June 2000, an Israeli submarine launched a cruise missile that hit a target 950 miles away, making Israel only the third nation (besides) the US and Russia with that capability;"

-- Israel maintains triad strength, including strategic bombers, ballistic missiles, and submarines, able to strike well beyond the Middle East; and

-- overall, Israel's capability "is much greater than any conceivable need for defensive deterrence;" like America, it's for preemptive offense, and given both nation's belligerence, some day they may launch them aggressively without cause, claiming, of course, it's defensive.

According to Jane's Intelligence Review, Dimona's reactor "is suffering severe damage from 35 years of operation," worrisome enough for Israeli nuclear scientists to call for its shutdown to avert a potential catastrophe. Also at issue are internal radiological hazards, revealed on a March 2003 BBC program with five Dimona workers discussing the effects on their health.

Israel's Chemical and Biological Weapons (CBW)

Israel signed the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) but didn't ratify it. It refused to sign the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), and maintains a policy of CBW ambiguity. It's not known but believed that its Nes Tziyona Biological Institute produces sophistical chemical and biological weapons and state-of-the-art delivery systems.

However, in 1993, the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment WMD proliferation assessment included Israel as a nation having undeclared offensive chemical warfare capabilities. In 1998, former Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Bill Richardson said:

"I have no doubt that Israel has worked on both chemical and biological offensive things for a long time. There's no doubt they've had stuff for years."

It's also believed it has a sophisticated BW capability, and is likely producing, maintaining, and updating its stockpile.

On August 7, 2006, Paola Manduca's Global Research article headlined, "New and unknown deadly weapons used by Israeli forces: 'direct energy weapons, chemical and/or biological agents, in a macabre experiment of future warfare."

It referred to the summer Lebanon/Gaza offensives, citing reports of "New and strange symptoms....reported amongst the wounded and the dead.

Bodies with dead tissue and no apparent wounds; 'shrunken' corpses; civilians with heavy damage to lower limbs that require amputation, which is nevertheless followed by unstoppable necrosis (dying cells and living tissue) and death; descriptions of extensive internal wounds with no trace of shrapnel, corpses blackened but not burnt, and others heavily wounded that did not bleed."

On July 11, 2006, Ma'an News Service cited the Palestinian health ministry saying Israel used a new type explosive in Gaza, containing "toxins and radioactive materials which burn and tear the victim's body from the inside and leave long term deformations."

On July 11, 2006, Gulf News said a Palestinian doctor "accused Israel of using a type of chemical ammunition which causes burns and injuries in soft tissue and cannot be traced by X-ray." Severe internal wounds were reported.

Since the second Intifada's inception, reports cite "unknown gas" attacks, possibly a nerve agent, anyone breathing it losing consciousness immediately for about 24 hours with high fevers and rigid muscles. Some needed urgent blood transfusions. Asked but not known is whether this is chemical/and or biological warfare.

International law bans these weapons. Israel tests new ones in conflict zones - in 2006 in Lebanon and Gaza and against Gazans during Operation Cast Lead.

Treating the victims, Norwegian Dr. Mads Gilbert cited white phosphorous that burns flesh to the bone. Also depleted uranium and a new close-range explosive causing severe injuries, including battlefield amputations. Children, he said, had their legs cut off, abdomens sliced open, or simply killed outright.

Final Thoughts

On September 9, 2004, Haaretz (by DPA) headlined, "ElBaradei: Israel's nuclear arms blocking Mideast peace," quoting him from the Sydney Morning Herald saying:

Addressing Israel's nuclear arsenal must be part of a peace process settlement. "This is not really sustainable that you have Israel sitting with nuclear weapons capability there while everyone else is part of the non-proliferation regime....It is a very emotional issue in the Middle East."

While Israel maintains ambiguity and world leaders keep mum, Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, not shy about confronting Israel, said this before attending Obama's nuclear summit:

"We have yet to see an international community, which is so sensitive about Iran's nuclear program, taking a firm stance against Israel," a notorious nuclear outlaw. "We do not want to see nuclear armament in our region. Our policy on this issue is very clear no matter which country has it. That could be Israel or Iran or any other country."

On April 14 in Paris, Erdogan called Israel the biggest threat to Middle East peace, not just because of its nuclear arsenal, but for its disproportionate force against Palestinians. His comments came a day after Israel compared him to Libya's Gaddafi and Venezuela's Chavez, a sign of continued frayed relations between the two nations, including an angry exchange with Israeli President Shimon Peres at the January World Economic Forum.

He's now confronting Israel's nuclear threat, a real one under its first strike doctrine to destroy the entire region if threatened. With its history of open belligerence, the possibility is too great to ignore, and too important not to confront given the consequences if initiated.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected]. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/

 

“Move Your Money” campaign, from Big Banksters to community banks, credit unions

In the midst of a global financial crisis, calls to re-localize finance are gaining ground. One recent example is the “Move Your Money” campaign, which is aimed at encouraging those banking at those too-big-to-fail Wall Street banks to move their accounts to community banks and credit unions.

According to its website (www.moveyourmoney.info), “Community banks are typically more conservative about how they manage their money, they’re more closely connected to the people and businesses who live near them, and they’re more inclined to make loans they know will get paid back.”

So instead of investing in the global economic growth system which is undermining its own ability to continue by devastating the natural environment on which we depend, we could be investing locally in the people, businesses and technologies that directly sustain us and will sustain generations to come through import-substituting businesses.

Re-localization has another benefit as well. Instead of a restricted and hapless low-consumption future, we can have a happier healthier existence as we fill our lives with valued relationships instead of valued possessions.

In fact, the last few decades focus on wealth accumulation has come at the expense of close, fulfilling relationships. Today we have less intimacy with our friends in addition to having fewer friends. A study done in the U.S. and published in the American Sociological Review showed that from 1980 to 2004 the number of “close confidants” people had had dropped from three to two and the number of people without any close confidants has more than doubled.

Re-localization is about finding a more sustainable way to provide for our needs as a global industrial system based upon diminishing finite fossil fuels crumbles in the 21st Century. It’s about building community so that “when things get hard,” as deep ecologist Joanna Macy has said, “we won’t, in fear, turn on each other.”

Apocalyptic scenarios of either a devastated planet or an authoritarian world government both disintegrate in the face of neighbors growing food for one another.

Megan Quinn Bachman, a freelance environmental writer, speaker and consultant, writes from Yellow Springs, Ohio. She can be reached at [email protected]

FULL TEXT: http://www.countercurrents.org/bachman230410.htm

 

Pentagon to Realize Nazi Bomb Dream: Silent Killer from Outer Space

The Pentagon will try to fulfill a dream of the Nazi's:  to create a bomb that can be launched into outer space, linger in orbit, and then be fired at hypersonic speed back to a target on Earth. 

During WW II the civilians in Britain were able to hear the sound of the German V-2 rockets just a few seconds before they hit; this new bomb will not make a sound; there will be no warning, just instant death.

These weapons could be launched from mobile land vehicles, ships, or submarines and would blanket the planet with "ArcLight" coverage able to deliver an unstoppable 100-lb hypersonic warhead in less than half an hour from the order to launch.

"DARPA's project "ArcLight" seems fairly likely to be possible: Mark 41 tubes are used to launch SM-3 ballistic missile interceptors, which are well-known to be capable of sending small "kill vehicles" into space at hypersonic-equivalent velocities. Presumably it would be feasible to replace the kill vehicle on an SM-3 with a BGRV style hypersonic mini-smartbomb style affair, finally - in a small way - bringing to fruition the German dream of the 1940s.

DARPA aren't talking about flight in the atmosphere at all. Instead, a less ambitious BGRV type of effort is requested, with a smallish naval launch tube type rocket firing the pocket, unmanned Silbervogel/X-20 into space followed by hypersonic re-entry no more than 2,000 miles away. The US Navy's 8,500 Mark 41 tubes, would be distributed around the world aboard its cruisers, destroyers and submarines.

On the face of it the idea seems fairly likely to be possible: Mark 41 tubes are used to launch SM-3 ballistic missile interceptors, which are well-known to be capable of sending small "kill vehicles" into space at hypersonic-equivalent velocities. Presumably it would be feasible to replace the kill vehicle on an SM-3 with a BGRV style hypersonic mini-smart bomb style affair, finally - in a small way - bringing to fruition the German dream of the 1940s."

Pentagon looks to revive Nazi space-bomber plan

·                                 Alert

·                                 Print

·                                 Post comment

Pocket 'Antipodes raid' hyper-smartmissiles sought

By Lewis Page • Get more from this author

Posted in Physics, 22nd April 2010 15:27 GMT

 

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/22/boost_glide_arclight/page2.html

 

In general, though, the mission of global strategic strike is already well covered by more conventional ICBMs, as global surveillance is by spy satellites. But a nuclear-armed ICBM is a rather unsubtle tool, and even one fitted with a smaller conventional warhead would tend to cause global panic as it lifted off and streaked around the world to its destination - not to mention being rather expensive for routine use against modern Wars-on-Stuff type targets such as suddenly-emerging terrorist bigwigs or similar.

But more reasonable existing kit like submarine- or warship-launched cruise missiles or jets loaded with smart bombs is no good either. These things can take hours to arrive at the spot marked X, by which time the elusive terrorist, stolen WMD or whatever may have melted away again.

What's wanted, according to DARPA, is something which would fit into a US naval Mark 41 vertical launch tube of the sort used to pop off existing slowpoke Tomahawk cruise missiles. But it would have to carry a much smaller and more surgical 100-lb warhead, which would travel enormously faster - a minimum of 9,200 miles per hour, the equivalent of Mach 12 if we were talking about travel at sea level.

Mach 12 is far, far into the regime of hypersonics, faster than even the most exotic hydrogen-fuelled scramjets have yet flown. Such a missile could never be put into a Mark 41 launcher even if it could one day be built. DARPA's previous plan for a Mach 6 aeroplane running on normal fuel was cancelled on grounds that nobody really thought it was possible, and the ongoing X-51 WaveRider scramjet test vehicles - now delayed into this year - aren't expected to go faster.

 

Rash Lamebore, the "BLOW-VIATOR"

Rash Lamebore

the "BLOW-VIATOR"

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 "Obama doesn't like that there are winners. That's his problem. No leftist likes winners"

 Public-sector union employees are "freeloaders" and "leftist, socialist, neo-communist"

 Obama is increasing spending so that "taxes would have to be raised tremendously"

 Obama "has only resentment for capitalism" 

 

 

 

 

Growing Reliance on "Contractors" for U. S. Wars - Israeli Company Hired?

By Jeremy Scahill

The US has “created in ourselves a dependency on contractors that is greater than it ought to be...I think it doesn’t save money. I actually think it would be better to reduce the number of contractors involved, increase the number of military if necessary.”  [General Stanley McChrystal]

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

I encountered ISI operatives, all former Israeli soldiers, manning an armed check-point in New Orleans in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. At the time, in 2005, its website described ISI’s personnel as “veterans of the Israeli special task forces from the following Israeli government bodies: Israel Defense Force (IDF), Israel National Police Counter Terrorism units, Instructors of Israel National Police Counter Terrorism units, General Security Service (GSS or ‘Shin Beit’), Other restricted intelligence agencies.”

Today the website has changed dramatically. Its main graphic is of US soldiers wearing American flag patches, wielding automatic weapons in what appears to be Iraq. “After 9/11, ISI was able to bring to bear all of its resources, expertise and experience to work with U.S. military and government agencies in gaining a deeper understanding of radical Islam and provide proven tactical techniques to improve counter-terror operations,” according to the website. This would hardly be ISI’s first US government contract. It has received many training and security contracts since its founding in 1993. According to the company, it is currently under a five-year contract with the US Army that began in November 2009.

Obama administration has continued the Bush-era reliance on private contractors to sustain the US occupation of Iraq and the US operations in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, Obama has surpassed Bush’s reliance on contractors with current contractor levels surpassing 100,000 Defense Department contractors deployed. In Iraq, Obama has maintained the long-standing ratio of one contractor to every US soldier.

General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan/Pakistan, said recently that he believes the US has “created in ourselves a dependency on contractors that is greater than it ought to be.” He added: “I think it doesn’t save money. I actually think it would be better to reduce the number of contractors involved, increase the number of military if necessary.”

Despite such proclamations, the pattern of dependence on contractors is continuing unabated—and not just within the Department of Defense.

This week the US State Department posted a solicitation for armed private security contractors to deploy in “critical or higher than critical threat areas” globally under its Worldwide Protective Services program. Among the firms that have held these contracts are Blackwater, DynCorp, Triple Canopy and Armor Group. ArmorGroup was exposed last year by whistleblowers for a range of misconduct at the US embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. Among the actions revealed by the Project on Government Oversight were hazing rituals involving nudity and heavy drinking that at times included personnel urinating on each other. The whistleblowers alleged that ArmorGroup personnel created a general atmosphere of fear and intimidation. Last December, following POGO’s revelations, the State Department said it was phasing out ArmorGroup.

In its solicitation for contract bids this week, the State Department says it will hire as many as six “qualified US firms” for “anticipated and unanticipated personal protective, static guard, and emergency response” functions. The contracts are slated to last one year with the potential for four, year-long options.

To qualify for the contracts, security companies must have a total annual value of at least $15 million in security contracts and must possess a valid “Final Secret Facility Security Clearance.” After the contracts are awarded, the State Department says that it will then sponsor the contractor for “Top Secret Facility Clearance.” In addition, bidding companies must have at least two years of experience operating in “austere and hostile environments overseas” such as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq and experience in “operating long term personal protective security details for executive level dignitaries.” The solicitation indicates that the work will include “a static guard and emergency response team requirement in Baghdad, Iraq, a static guard and emergency response team requirement in Kabul, Afghanistan, and a personal protective security service requirement in Jerusalem.”

Among the companies listed as “interested vendors” to bid on the contracts are the predictable list of industry giants: L-3 Services, SAIC, USIS, Northrop Grumman, and DynCorp. Two lesser-known firms in particular that have expressed interest in the contracts jump out: Instinctive Shooting International and Evergreen International Aviation.

Hiring Instinctive Shooting International for any type of armed contract in a Muslim country, particularly to operate in Jerusalem with a stamp of US government legitimacy, should be cause for serious concern and Congressional inquiry. Instinctive Shooting International (ISI) was founded by Hanan Yadin, a former member of the Israel National Counter-Terrorism Agency and a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces. According to his bio [PDF], Hanan “received advanced training at the Israeli Anti-Terror Academy and served as an instructor at the Israeli Military Intelligence Academy. As part of a Special Ops unit he executed high-risk missions against terrorist’s cells. Hanan is an expert marksman and has completed advanced training in crisis response, Krav Maga (the Israeli unarmed fighting system), urban warfare and tactical operations.”

Evergreen has had long-standing ties to the CIA. “In 1980 an Evergreen plane flew the recently deposed Shah of Iran from Panama to Egypt, hours before the Panamanian government was due to receive an extradition request from the new government in Tehran,” according to SourceWatch. “Giving rides to dictators is something of a specialty for the company - it also allowed El Salvador’s President Duarte to use its helicopter, which was officially in the country to help repair power lines. And according to a series of articles in The Oregonian in 1988, Evergreen’s owner and founder Delford M. Smith ‘…acknowledged one agreement under which his companies provide occasional jobs and cover to foreign nationals the CIA wants taken out of other countries or brought into the United States.’”

Evergreen is perhaps best known more recently for offering—unsolicited—its security services to Oregon county clerks ahead of the 2008 elections. “During this crucial election Evergreen Defense and Security Services has recognized the potential conflict that could occur on November 4,” an email from company president Evergreen president Tom Wiggins to election officials stated. “Never has there been a more heated battle in the race for president and voters seem more involved and determined to achieve their respective goals. EDSS proposes to post sentries at each voting center on November 4 to assure that disputes among citizens do not get out of control. All guards will be unarmed but capable of stopping any violence that may occur, and detaining troublemakers until law enforcement help arrives.” The offer was suspect on several fronts, not the least of which being that Oregon has no polling places and votes by mail.

According to State Department documents, among the projects up for bidding are:

—Private security teams in Jerusalem. The solicitation calls for 46 personnel, including 36 “security specialists” and team/shift leaders for armed details.

—Embassy guards and an Emergency Response Team in Kabul. The solicitation calls for  219 personnel, including a 142-member embassy guard force and 49 “emergency response” personnel.

—Embassy guards and an Emergency Response Team in Baghdad, Iraq.  The solicitation calls for 551 personnel, including 357 “armed guards” and an Emergency Response Team consisting of 30 protective security specialists and four “designated defense marksmen.”

The US embassy in Iraq, according to the documents, requires the greatest number of contractors. This is likely because the embassy there is the largest of any embassy of any nation in history.The State Department has a conference for prospective bidders scheduled for April 27-28 in Arlington, Virginia. Attendance is mandatory for interested companies.

 http://readersupportednews.com/off-site-news-section/157-civilian-security/1551-cia-connected-firm-bids-for-us-security-contracts

 

How Printing More Greenbacks makes the cost of things go up and UP...

EARL NASH

Money  Matters

>>>>>>>>>>>  “ It’s news to YOU ! "

It is a fundamental principle in the value of things:  the less there are, the more they are worth; conversely, the more there are, the less they are worth.  Or, as Father Guido Sarducci summarized: "Supply and a' demand."

With baseball cards, the card sets from 1950's, 1960's and 1970's are worth much more than ones produced today; this is because (1) fewer cards were printed in those decades and (2) the number of cards was further diminished by kids who attached them with a clothes pins to their bikes, so they would be struck by the wheel spokes and "make a really cool noise."  "Supply and a' demand."                               www.retroclipart.com/catalog/product_info.php..

The story goes that Winston Churchill was an avid stamp collector; when he discovered that he had ONE of TWO very valuable stamps, he bought the other one and, after lighting his cigar, he put the lit match to the stamp he just purchased; thus, he created a ONE OF A KIND value for his stamp. "Supply and a' demand."

The same principal applies to those greenbacks in your wallet. The more $1 bills that are in circulation the less the value of each bill.  Say, there are a MILLION $100 bills in circulation and then Ben Bernanke at the Fed creates another MILLION; by doubling the NUMBER of $100 bills, the Fed chair would reduce the value of each bill by 50%, or reduce the value of what a $100 bill will actually buy by half.

The goods and services you could buy for >$1.00 <

                                       in 1913 now cost > $21.00...<

BTW, do you still believe that you could redeem your paper money for anything real from the government?  At one time, before Nixon, you could bring your paper to Fort Knox and ask to swap it for bars of gold.  But, Nixon, by legal fiat, unlinked the gold from the paper.  So, your paper was no longer redeemable for gold, but only what the society agreed it would buy in goods or services.

At some point, if the Fed were to double or triple the number of $1 bills, it might become more cost effective to use them for toilet paper.

Here is how the Big Money Boyz explain it:

"The dollar has now reached its ‘Havenstein moment’.  Will policymakers follow the prudent advice of Murray Rothbard and ‘tighten its belt’?  Or like Herr Havenstein, will Mr. Bernanke continue to ‘print’?

No need to ponder these two alternatives.  The Federal Reserve must ‘print’, for one reason.  Despite the noble goals assigned to it in textbooks and offered in Congressional hearings, the Federal Reserve exists for only one reason – to make sure the federal government gets all the dollars it wants to spend, which consequently has put the dollar on a hyperinflationary course."

http://www.fgmr.com/hyperinflation-looms-dollar-arrives-at-its-havenstein-moment.html

DEAR EARL: How much can I get for a WW TWO machine gun?

 

EARL NASH,  WTFG  "  Dear Earl"   Editor      

>>>>>  “It’s news to YOU…”  <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Dear Earl,

 

We hear on FOX news that Obama is gonna take away weapons from us hunters.  Is he really gonna take away our guns, even our shotguns, machine guns, mortars, howitzers and, even our grenade launchers?

 



How we gonna go hunting without these weapons?

 

Sincerely,

Patriot Hunter

 

EARL:

 

Don't believe anything you hear on FOX news, they are a bunch of liars and clowns and they will get you in trouble. 

The facts are:  Obama just signed a law that allows you to bring your weapons into Federal National parks.  And, under federal law, machine guns, suppressors, short-barreled shotguns ("sawed-off" shotguns, or abbreviated here, SBS), short-barreled rifles (abbreviated SBR) and destructive devices (e.g. mortars, howitzers, grenade launchers, etc) have NEVER been illegal for Americans to own.

 

But, these weapons are heavily regulated and taxed and some State laws do not allow certain NFA firearms that are legal under Federal. Regulation of NFA firearms are under the jurisdiction of BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives).

You and your fellow hunters may find this surprising, but machine guns, suppressors, SBR and SBS not in the possession of the United States government must be registered.  Go figure!

The two ways to go about owning NFA firearms are via individual registration or registration to an incorporated entity. In the case of the applicant (buyer) being an individual, he/she submits a federal registration form including fingerprints, photographs and a signature from their chief law-enforcement officer to the BATFE along with the $200.00 excise tax, and after a criminal background check and final approval, then and only then can the firearm be transferred from the seller to the buyer.

 

Dear Earl,

 

My little little girl (9) was runnin' around playin' with the hogs with a machine gun.  And, at first, I thought it was just a toy gun, but, when she poked it in my stomach and said:  "Get on your knees!" I noticed it was real.

A fella down at the militia shooting grounds, just behind the sand pit, says I can get a lotta money for the machine gun.  Little Nel told me she found it in the attic in a duffle bag; her grand daddy musta' brung it back from WW II. 

 

It is in mint condition and the fella offered me a side of beef for it.

                                   

Would you take that deal?

 

(Name withheld)

 

EARL:

 

A lotta guys would hold out for the entire steer and half a dozen chickens.

 

The reasons date back to May 19th, 1986.

For decades machine guns were manufactured and bought and sold to individuals, the U.S. military, government and law enforcement agencies. Once again, if the firearms were LEGALLY produced and transferred to civilians they were registered, until May 19th, 1986.

 

This was done on the watch of President Ronnie Raygun and his VP, George Bush (he was the one who coined the term "New World Order.")

 

On May 19,1986 a new federal law became effective that mandated a machine gun, in order to be able to be transferred between civilians, must have been BUILT and REGISTERED by that date, so, no machine gun built on May 19th or after could  be owned by a non-government entity. So, you get the picture. Since, by federal mandate, no additional machine guns could be added to the BATFE registry, the number on the market shrank dramatically.

 

Before Reagan signed that law, you could get a machine gun for a couple of chickens, but, after that date, the value increased and increased.  With all the hysteria over Obama taking machine guns away from hunters, the price has been driven way up.

 

Now, if the machine gun that Little Nel found is an unfired, mint condition machine gun brought back from Germany by her grandfather was not REGISTERED by May 19th, 1986, you are in illegal possession of a machine gun!

 

You might want to consider that the guy down at the militia firing range might be an undercover agent of the BATFE.

For information on registration and transfers to an entity such as a corporation, L.L.C., P.A., trust, etc, please contact us.

http://www.nfafirearms.com/

 

http://www.nfafirearms.com/