Deadly Chickens Return to Roost in The Caucases

With the outbreak of war in the Caucasuses Americans are experiencing a new onslaught of mis-information that will assure that no one has any sort of historically informed sense of what really is going on. A good example was the address to the American people by Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia that I happened to catch on CNN yesterday morning. There Saakashvili portrayed a small democratic nation being attacked with little regard for civilians, hospitals, small babies, and everything else that Americans hold dear, by Russians. And thus the Cold War is defrosted, warmed up, and served anew.
The American people may be forgiven for their usual state of historical amnesia but claims from the likes of Condeleeza Rice and George Bush of American impartiality and desire for peace should be viewed with suspicion to say the least.

F. William Engdahl provides an insightful look into the situation in an article written two weeks ago:

"The Caucasus Republic of Georgia as nations go does not appear to be a major global player. Yet Washington has invested huge sums and organized to put its own despot, Mikhail Saakashvili, in the Presidency in order to close a nuclear NATO iron ring around Russia. Now US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is in Tbilisi making sharp statements against Moscow for supporting the independent neighbor states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in essence blaming Moscow for an imminent war Washington has incited in order to bring Georgia into NATO by the December NATO Summit.

The Western media has either ignored the growing tensions in the strategic Caucasus region or has intimated, as suggested by Condoleeza Rice, that the entire conflict is being caused by Moscow’s silly support of "breakaway" republics Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In reality, a quite different chess game is being played in the region, one which has the potential to detonate a major escalation of tensions between Moscow and NATO.

Since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, one after another, former members as well as former states of the USSR have been coaxed and in many cases bribed with false promises by Washington into joining the counter organization, NATO.

Rather than initiate discussions after the 1991 dissolution of the Warsaw Pact about a systematic dissolution of NATO, Washington has systematically converted NATO into what can only be called the military vehicle of an American global imperial rule, linked by a network of military bases from Kosovo to Poland to Turkey to Iraq and Afghanistan. In 1999, former Warsaw Pact members Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic joined NATO. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia followed suit in March 2004. Now Washington is putting immense pressure on the EU members of NATO, especially Germany and France, that they vote in December to admit Georgia and Ukraine."

He further goes on to suggest that the U.S. has actively encouraged the Georgians in their nationalistic delusions and also connects the dots to Western policy in Kosovo:

"The Bush Administration is adding gasoline to the fire in the Caucasus. In Tbilisi on July 10 the US Secretary of State, Rice, told the press, "Russia needs to be a part of resolving the problem and solving the problem and not contributing to it. I have said it to the Russians publicly. I have said it privately."

The effect of her comments, blaming Moscow for the escalating tensions, is to signal US support for the Georgia side in their efforts to force Russian troops form South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

This past May Abkhaz President Sergei Bagapsh said he was willing to conclude a military treaty with Moscow similar to that between USA and Taiwan. "Abkhazia will propose to Russia the signing of a military treaty that would guarantee security to our republic," Bagapsh stated. "We are also prepared to host Russian military bases on our territory within the framework of this treaty. I would like to emphasize that this would not go against the precedents already existing in international practice. For instance, this treaty could be analogous to the treaty between the US and Taiwan."

Just as Moscow refuses to recognize the sovereignty of Kosovo, so Washington refuses to admit the sovereignty of Abkhazia. In May a senior US State Department delegation was in Abkhazia meeting with local Non Governmental Organizations there as well as the President. In the past, from Serbia to Georgia to Ukraine, Washington intelligence agencies have used various NGOs, the US Congress-financed National Endowment for Democracy, the CIA-linked Freedom House and Gene Sharp’s misleadingly-named Albert Einstein Institution to steer a wave of regime changes which became known as "Color Revolutions." In each case the new regime was pro-Washington and anti-Moscow as in the case of Saakashvili in Georgia and Viktor Yushchenko in Ukraine. Both countries begin seeking NATO entry after the success of the US-financed Color Revolutions.

In all this Washington is definitely playing with potential nuclear fire by escalating pressure to push Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. The Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic, Karl Schwarzenberg on July 8 signed an agreement allowing US deployment of special radar facilities on Czech soil as part of the top secret US "missile defense" it alleges is aimed at rogue missile threats from Iran. As even former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger recently pointed out, the Bush Administration’s categorical refusal to pursue the 2007 counter-offer of then-President Vladimir Putin to station US radar at the Russian leased reconnaissance facility in Azerbaijan instead, was a provocative mistake. It makes abundantly clear that Washington is aiming its military strategy at the dismantling of Russia as a potential adversary. That, as I have written previously, is a recipe for a possible nuclear war by mis-calculation. Rice’s latest Caucasus and Czech visit only added to that growing danger. "

Mark Almond at the Guardian describes some additional background to Saakashvili's calculations and likens him to General Galtieri of Argentina and the ill-fated Malvinas war:

"Unlike in eastern Europe, for instance, today in breakaway states such as South Ossetia or Abkhazia, Russian troops are popular. Vladimir Putin's picture is more widely displayed than that of the South Ossetian president, the former Soviet wrestling champion Eduard Kokoity. The Russians are seen as protectors against a repeat of ethnic cleansing by Georgians.

In 1992, the west backed Eduard Shevardnadze's attempts to reassert Georgia's control over these regions. The then Georgian president's war was a disaster for his nation. It left 300,000 or more refugees "cleansed" by the rebel regions, but for Ossetians and Abkhazians the brutal plundering of the Georgian troops is the most indelible memory.

Georgians have nursed their humiliation ever since. Although Mikheil Saakashvili has done little for the refugees since he came to power early in 2004 - apart from move them out of their hostels in central Tbilisi to make way for property development - he has spent 70% of the Georgian budget on his military. At the start of the week he decided to flex his muscles.

Devoted to achieving Nato entry for Georgia, Saakashvili has sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan - and so clearly felt he had American backing. The streets of the Georgian capital are plastered with posters of George W Bush alongside his Georgian protege. George W Bush avenue leads to Tbilisi airport. But he has ignored Kissinger's dictum: "Great powers don't commit suicide for their allies." Perhaps his neoconservative allies in Washington have forgotten it, too. Let's hope not.

Like Galtieri in 1982, Saakashvili faces a domestic economic crisis and public disillusionment. In the years since the so-called Rose revolution, the cronyism and poverty that characterised the Shevardnadze era have not gone away. Allegations of corruption and favouritism towards his mother's clan, together with claims of election fraud, led to mass demonstrations against Saakashvili last November. His ruthless security forces - trained, equipped and subsidised by the west - thrashed the protesters. Lashing out at the Georgians' common enemy in South Ossetia would certainly rally them around the president, at least in the short term."

He too illuminates American and European duplicity and the possible consequences:

"Western geopolitical commentators stick to cold war simplicities about Russia bullying plucky little Georgia. However, anyone familiar with the Caucasus knows that the state bleating about its victim status at the hands of a bigger neighbour can be just as nasty to its smaller subjects. Small nationalisms are rarely sweet-natured.

Worse still, western backing for "equip and train" programmes in Russia's backyard don't contribute to peace and stability if bombastic local leaders such as Saakashvili see them as a guarantee of support even in a crisis provoked by his own actions. He seems to have thought that the valuable oil pipeline passing through his territory, together with the Nato advisers intermingled with his troops, would prevent Russia reacting militarily to an incursion into South Ossetia. That calculation has proved disastrously wrong.

The question now is whether the conflict can be contained, or whether the west will be drawn in, raising the stakes to desperate levels. To date the west has operated radically different approaches to secession in the Balkans, where pro-western microstates get embassies, and the Caucasus, where the Caucasian boundaries drawn up by Stalin, are deemed sacrosanct.

In the Balkans, the west promoted the disintegration of multiethnic Yugoslavia, climaxing with their recognition of Kosovo's independence in February. If a mafia-dominated microstate like Montenegro can get western recognition, why shouldn't flawed, pro-Russian, unrecognised states aspire to independence, too?

Given its extraordinary ethnic complexity, Georgia is a post-Soviet Union in miniature. If westerners readily conceded non-Russian republics' right to secede from the USSR in 1991, what is the logic of insisting that non-Georgians must remain inside a microempire which happens to be pro-western?

Other people's nationalisms are like other people's love affairs, or, indeed, like dog fights. These are things wise people don't get involved in. A war in the Caucasus is never a straightforward moral crusade - but then, how many wars are?"

Journalistic Tragedy Shakes Russia

The Russian government has shut down one of the most thought provoking, at least in my small mind, and unconventional sites on the web, The Exile. As reported in it's new form at The Exiled the whole shoddy affair is covered in detail from their new hideout in Panama:

"One month ago, our newspaper The eXile got stomped into extinction by some ham-fisted Russian government officials, who decided that since there’s a new president in the Kremlin who’s talking up some nonsense about a new “liberal era,” what better way to show your boss that you understand what he means by “liberal”—with a big wink-wink—than to shut down the only good thing that Russia ever had going for it.

On June 5, four officials from the Ministry to Defend Russian Culture—one of whom was an FSB lawyer seconded out to ministry—arrived at our radon-poisoned basement office in Chisty Prudy to carry out an “unplanned [ie: ordered] audit” of The eXile’s articles. As the head of the Glasnost Defense Fund NGO told us, we were the first and still only Moscow newspaper to ever be subjected to an “unplanned audit” of our editorial content. What a fucking honor it was.

They came exactly on time, 11am—just like Stalin’s proverbial trains. There they were, all fitted out in their crusty retro-Soviet outfits, subjecting us to a three-hour interrogation about Edward Limonov and the Recession Penis and why did we write the things we write and why do we mock and insult Russia’s great culture and great traditions… The officials were surprisingly polite and by-the-books during the audit, but that didn’t matter, because they still scared the shit out of anyone with an understanding of Russia’s past and present. The Ministry to Defend Russian Culture (since renamed the “Federal Agency for Media and Communications”) is merely the least scary ministry in the extremely-scary Russian state apparatus—so saying that the RosOkhranKultury wasn’t all that scary is like saying that the eyeball-like pits on the sides of a Flecker’s Box Jellyfish’s bell aren’t all that scary compared to its 60 deadly tentacles—which pack the most toxic venom in planet earth’s seas. The slightest contact with one of the box jellyfish’s 10-foot-long tentacles, and you’d wish that you could trade places with one of Mengele’s victims: the box jellyfish’s venom literally sizzles through your flesh like Alien blood, eating its way into your blood vessels, racing through your circulation system like a burning gunpowder fuse, until finally the venom reaches your vital organs and napalms the entire fucking thing like it’s a Vietnamese village, turning your organs into a pot of boiling jelly, and transforming you—brave, chin-up little you—into a screaming, gargling, blood-puking freak—a one-note freak, to be precise—that note being: “PLEASE SOMEONE FUCKING KILL ME NOW! AGGGHHHH!!!!”

So when the four Russian government officials finally left our offices, and we realized we weren’t dead or in jail, at first we were kinda relieved, like, “Hey, we bumped into a Flecker’s Box Jellyfish and all we touched were its slit-eyes, and you know, there’s more to that creature than venom and tentacles.” But then a few hours later we came to our senses and realized, “Um, wait a minute—as a matter of fact, there isn’t much more to that creature than venom and tentacles.” And speaking of venomous tentacles, a Duma deputy (and former Nashi spokesman) Robert Schlegel went on Govorit Moskva radio a few days after the audit and announced, “I don’t have to read The eXile to understand that it is guilty of extremism.”

It was time to get out of the venomous-vermin-infested waters. We’d been spotted by the jellyfish’s eye-like pits. The Flecker’s Box Jellyfish doesn’t have a brain, but it does have four “nerve-nets” connecting the eye-pits to the tentacles. Only a fool would stick around to see how the Flecker’s Box Jellyfish, or its human variant “the Russian government,” will react after it takes a stack of eXile articles for “analysis,” articles which contain lines like “Russian Government is bloody beast eating human flesh” and we “fart in Russia’s face” and “urinate into the president’s mouth.” How does a jellyfish’s nerve-net read lines like that? Does it get angry and want to thrash its venomous tentacles around? Since we don’t want to be the subject of some future Werner Herzog documentary called “Flecker’s Box Jellyfish Man,” we decided to respect Mother Nature and leave the venomous jellyfish to their brainless floating-death world, while we’ll go back to ours. Flee: it’s what our investors did when they pulled a David Copperfield disappearing act on us a week before the auditors rolled into our office…and that’s what we did after the Russian government’s highly-unusual audit of our paper.

And that’s how The eXile died: just as it was born: in sin and in epic glory. We were never like the others: the fake-alternative, fake-angry papers. That’s why our spectacular death has pissed off so many people who never had the nerve to go where we went, and who always wanted to see us snuffed out—quietly, without a fuss. We lived out our name as we lived out everything else. We’re now in true eXile, just as we’d announced from the beginning 11 years ago—and that is why we’ve named the new online webzine that we’re launching today “The eXiled.” It’s now an accomplished fact."

Reality's Rude Intrusion

Matthew Simmons wrote one of the most influential books of recent times in"Twilight the Desert" which explains the phenomena of peak oil in terms of Saudi and Gulf oil supplies and why we should all be very worried. The above video gives additional insight as to why things are worse than they seem.The apparently dumb struck expressions of the other panelists is, as they say, priceless.

The Road to Ruin and Irrelevancy

After spending 536 billion dollars and loosing over 4,100 service members it appears that the writing is on the wall for the exit of American forces in Iraq. Reports now suggest the U.S. is considering accelerated withdrawal ostensibly for increased deployment in Afghanistan where the war also is not going well.

In Iraq the Shia supported government of Al-Maliki has made known its objections to the Bush administration's plans for long-term deployment and accompanying bases.The only people who seem not to recognize the implications of this nascent nationalism in what had previously been a relatively compliant Iraqi state are U.S. politicians and the ever-malinformed American public. While the Bush administration attempts to down play the differences the strain is quite obvious. This was vividly displayed during an interview on Aljazeera, with ambassador Ryan Crocker.

The interview is also significant for the intense scrutiny the has been absent in the U.S. press as well as from the supine Democratic opposition. Truth be told, it probably makes no difference what anyone in the U.S., including the marginalized anti-war movement, the presidential candidates of either party, or the present administration, thinks about the Iraq situation. The U.S. has succeeded in becoming irrelevant in it's own war.

Iraq symbolizes not only the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of George Bush but the literal financial bankruptcy of the country itself. Iraq has accelerated a process of slow-motion collapse of the financial and energy infra-structure that has been developing over the last 30 years or more. Massoud Hedeshi sums it up quite clearly and illustrates what most of the world already knows except the American public:

"The US economic power horse is running out of ideas and cash as it jostles with a massive national debt, housing and financial crises, rising inflation, and a depreciating currency.

This has all contributed to a growing tendency to live off credit amassed through petrodollars and foreign loans, leaving repayment for future generations.

Today, in much of America, communities and suburbs are dealing with a drastic increase in foreclosures and short sales. This has not been helped by the fact that gas is selling at over $1 a litre ($4 a gallon).

Standard monetary tools such as lowering or increasing interest rates can no longer provide quick fixes to the situation for both economic and political reasons.

Raising interest rates would compound the mortgage crisis while lowering it would drive the value of the US dollar abroad even lower.

But exercising control over the money supply could also damage the US economy: increasing the supply would lower the dollar's value even more, while decreasing supply would exacerbate the loans crisis.

In any case, control over the money supply would be anathema to US economic policy given the country's 'addiction' to deficit financing and run-away consumerism in recent decades.

So the US Federal Reserve is left virtually helpless........."

And so further devaluation of the dollar and American influence appears unavoidable as developing countries look for stability elsewhere.

"As America struggles to avoid recession, the world economic order appears to be heading for a drastic overhaul.

Despite a trend by some economists and politicians to blame the current food and energy commodity price hikes on Opec or overpopulation, there is a clear picture emerging of deep structural problems in the world economy.

In particular, the main currency used for global trade in commodities, the US dollar, has been in steady decline not just against the Euro, but also against most other convertible currencies.

According to the US Federal Reserve, the dollar has dropped by around 65 per cent against the Euro, 31 per cent against the British Sterling, 45 per cent against the Canadian Dollar, and by 59 per cent against the Australian Dollar over the eight-year period since June 2000.

While the causes for this slide are debatable (and largely attributed to poor fundamentals in the US economy), the global impact of such a major drop in the value of the dollar is undeniable for two important reasons.

First, most global commodities traders utilise - and favour - the greenback over other currencies, despite a severe decline in its purchasing power.

Secondly, most countries - mainly in east Asia and among the major oil and gas exporters of the Arab Middle East - use the dollar as their reserve currency.

But they are paying the price. Despite their booming economies and elevated public spending, they are experiencing depreciating terms of trade and rising inflation.

More importantly, they have seen the value of their strategic currency reserves drop with the dollar's waning global strength."

Meanwhile the U.S. and it's allies shift their efforts for a "last stand " of sorts in the wilds of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Canada Reconsiders American War Resisters

A Canadian appeal court will re-examine the case of American war resisters in a set back to the Bush administration and the Steven Harper neo-conservative regieme in Ottawa. As per the BBC:

"A Canadian court has ordered the country's refugee board to re-examine an American deserter's rejected attempt for asylum in Canada.

The court ruled that the board made mistakes when it turned down Joshua Key's claim for asylum.

Mr Key served in Iraq in 2003 before deserting to Canada with his family while on leave in the US.

The ruling could affect scores of other US soldiers sheltering in Canada who have refused to fight in Iraq.

Possible deportations

Joshua Key served in Iraq as a US combat engineer in Iraq in 2003.

He claims that he witnessed several cases of abusive acts against civilians and the killing of innocent people.

While on leave at home in Oklahoma, he decided that he would not return to duty and took his family to Canada where he applied for asylum.

Although the Canadian refugee board found Mr Key credible, it rejected his application, saying that unless his claims of abuse constituted a war crime, they did not justify his desertion from the US army.

In its ruling, the federal court has disagreed with that analysis, saying that being forced to participate in military misconduct, even if it stops short of a war crime, may support a claim to protection in Canada.

There are at least 200 American war deserters in Canada and many face deportation after their asylum cases were also rejected.

Joshua Key's lawyer said that the ruling may help their cases.

The Canadian government is reviewing the court's decision and has not said whether it will appeal."

Big Melt 2008

The National Ice and Snow Data Center gives the most recent view of Arctic Sea Ice melting suggesting this year will be worse than last year's record setting fiasco. Many interesting graphs, satellite photos, and other data.

Art and the Enema

Sometimes one needs a break from the plummeting dollar, sky rocketing oil prices, potential and real food shortages, as well as haywire weather and do as the good citizens of Zheleznovodsk have done and celebrate in statuary the....enema, as reported in Russia Today:

"While enemas undoubtedly have a place in medical practice, their role in art is open to debate. But that hasn’t stopped a health spa in the resort of Zheleznovodsk in Russia's Stavropol region from erecting a giant monument to enemas.

The 350-kilo bronze monument features three baby angels holding up a pear-shaped enema bulb and nozzle.

The idea for the sculpture belongs to spa director Aleksandr Kharchenko, who says that a monument to the enema should have been set up a long time ago.

“Someone has to know about it! We have the most enemas in the world done here!” he said."

Probably the largest and perhaps only commeration of this subject no doubt.

Permafrost Not So Permanent

While we are waiting to see the extent of this years Arctic Ocean ice melt the the National Snow and Ice Data Center has disturbing news regarding the so-called permafrost of the Arctic: it's melting also:

"The rate of climate warming over northern Alaska, Canada, and Russia could more than triple during extended episodes of rapid sea ice loss, according to a new study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). The findings raise concerns about the thawing of permafrost, or permanently frozen soil, and the potential consequences for sensitive ecosystems, human infrastructure, and the release of additional greenhouse gases.

“The rapid loss of sea ice can trigger widespread changes that would be felt across the region,” said Andrew Slater, NSIDC research scientist and a co-author on the study, which was led by David Lawrence of NCAR. The findings will be published Friday in Geophysical Research Letters.

Last summer, Arctic sea ice extent shrank to a record low. From August to October last year, air temperatures over land in the western Arctic were also unusually warm, reaching more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above the 1978-2006 average. This led the researchers to question whether the unusually low sea ice extent and warm land temperatures were related.

Lawrence, Slater, and colleagues used a climate model to explore the relationship between low sea ice extent, increased air temperatures, and permafrost thawing. Previous climate change simulations identified periods of rapid sea ice loss that last 5 to 10 years. The new study shows that during such episodes, Arctic land would warm 3.5 times faster than average rates of warming predicted by global climate models for the 21st century.

The findings point to a link between rapid sea ice loss and enhanced rate of climate warming, which could penetrate as far as 900 miles inland. In areas where permafrost is already at risk, such as central Alaska, the study suggests that periods of abrupt sea ice loss can lead to rapid soil thaw.

Thawing permafrost may have a range of impacts, including buckled highways and destabilized houses, as well as changes to the delicate balance of life in the Arctic. In addition, scientists estimate that Arctic soils hold at least 30 percent of all the carbon stored in soils worldwide. While scientists are uncertain what will happen if this permafrost thaws, it has the potential to contribute substantial amounts of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

Funding for the research came from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.

To read the full NCAR press release, visit the NCAR News Center at http://www.ucar.edu/news/."

In addition to the obvious other implications of permafrost melt include accelerated release of greenhouse gases especially methane which is far more potent than CO2. As per Kuuvik River:

"The trends for methane emissions from “not-so-perma” permafrost terrain in the Northern Hemisphere are ominous. In Siberia, a region with colossal stores of partially decomposed organic matter sealed below frozen substrate, methane flux to the atmosphere was recently documented to be occurring five times faster than estimated before. Accordingly, Russian and American scientists have calculated that methane emissions for the region have increased at least 58% since 1974. Moreover, radiocarbon dating of methane emitted from the Siberian research sites indicates that at least 40% of the methane emitted at those locations is from vegetatation that lived and froze 35,260–42,900 years ago; thus vegetation frozen since the Pleistocene epoch is now decomposing and emitting methane.

During the Pleistocene epoch most of the northern Siberian plains were unglaciated and accumulated vast volumes of organic carbon in sediments. Hence in just one part of Siberia, for instance, an area known as the Yedoma Ice Complex, the Siberian landscape is currently storing about 500Gt of near-surface carbon. This high-latitude carbon sink is vulnerable and could greatly intensify global warming via greenhouse gas emissions if northeast Siberia continues to warm in the future, as computer climate models suggest it will. Not counting future greenhouse gas emissions from everywhere else in the world, the Yedoma Ice Complex alone has the potential to release an amount of methane that is about ten times the amount now in Earth’s atmosphere. According to the Earth System scientists who have verified the accelerating Siberian emissions “the large pool of still-frozen Pleistocene-age C in Siberia is a methane time bomb” -- a time bomb ticking to emit about 100 times the amount of carbon that humans currently pollute each year via burning fossil fuels.

Permafrost is a temperature sensitive indicator of millennial climatic variability -- that fact is increasingly obvious to more and more people. With Arctic temperatures now warming and snow and ice decreasing, permafrost is melting. Which raises the logical question: how much permafrost will melt worldwide, and how soon will it happen? An American climate model run answered this question in 2005, and calculated that up to 90% of all Northern Hemisphere permafrost will melt before the year 2100. The very serious implications of this model result, incidentally, would only be further accentuated if such a climate model were to factor-in the since discovered accelerating methane flux emanating from the Yedoma Ice Complex. Simple lesson then -- we humans, via our naive meddling with the chemistry of the atmosphere that keeps us alive, have sparked unusual biogeochemical fluxes in our Earth System that are serious and seemingly irreversible."

Mexican Oil Decline Cont.

As noted here before Mexican oil production, which was the 3rd largest producer for the U.S. is in significant decline. Here is more info from Peak Opportunities as to why the downward slope gets slipperier:

"Update on Mexican Production, Exports
The May 5, 2008 issue of the Oil & Gas Journal included the following articles:

Mexico imports more gasoline as oil production drops

* Gasoline imports rose to 367,000 bbls per day in March 2008 (6.5 % increase from February).
* Oil production declined in the first quarter of 2008 to 2.91 MMBO/D.
* And this shocker: "Mexico's premier Cantarell field produced 1.15 MMBO/D in March 2008 ..." Note that this is below the year end rate we projected in our last post, shown below.

Mexico to reduce oil exports to US in 2008

(Didn't take long for our March "prophecy" to be manifest.)

* "Mexico will reduce its crude exports to the US by an average of 184,000 BO/D throughout 2008, a situation that could continue for 2 years longer ..." The latter, quite an understatement!
* "... original plan for exports in 2008 envisioned some 1.678 MMBO/D ..."
* "... US EIA earlier this month predicted a 13.2 % shortfall of imports from Mexico during the current fiscal year. According to EIA figures, Mexico exported 1.533 MMBO/D to the US in 2007."
* "Based on its December 2007 Short-Term Energy Outlook, EIA forecast Mexico would produce 3.52 MMBO/D in 2007 and 3.32 MMBO/D in 2008." It looks like the EIA's forecast for 2008, done in December 2007, is off by some 410,000 BO/D - for the first quarter of 2008! You'd think they could get a little closer than that!

To refresh your memory, Mexico nationalized oil in 1938. A Constitutional provision was created that prohibited ownership of oil and gas reserves by anyone other than the Mexican government. Mexico and Mexicans take great pride in their nationalism regarding their oil resources. Pemex is the national oil company which are operates Mexico's oil and gas projects.

Unfortunately, some of Mexico's largest remaining reserves likely exist in a "deepwater" (water depths greater than 1300') area in the Gulf of Mexico. And despite the fact that Pemex employs some very intelligent folks, they don't have the years of experience in research, development, engineering and construction of deepwater drilling and production projects.

Previously, it was believed that Pemex could rely on the world's largest, most capable service companies - Schlumberger and Halliburton - in order to provide everything needed for deepwater exploration and production. However, Schlumberger and Halliburton cannot even do this. Deepwater exploration and production is the realm of Shell Offshore, ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, BP and just a few others. To give one an idea of what is required, a deepwater project can cost several billion dollars, and each well can cost $20 - $50 million. And ExxonMobil invests $200 million dollars per year in just researching deepwater technologies.

Now, none of the the companies listed above desire to risk billions of dollars if they don't get a share of the oil and gas that might be found. Their shareholders insist on this! But the current Mexican Constitution won't allow it. Talks have been held, followed by intense protests, led by the former mayor of Mexico City and defeated Presidential candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. It doesn't look good for the development of Mexican deepwater areas - but anything could happen.

On the other hand, to give you an idea of the scope of the problem with the dwindling giant oilfields like Cantarell, take a look at Shell's Perdido project, which was in the news in early June. Perdido will be anchored not far from Mexican deepwater areas, in 8000' of water. It is costing billions, has taken years to construct and when in place, it will produce 100,000 barrels of oil per day.

That is about one-third of what Cantarell LOST in only 3 months, from December 2007 through March 2008! Getting the picture about Peak Oil?"

Many do not get the picture but suffice it to say there is a major piece missing which I and others refer to as the "Ever Receding Horizon", in other words as the price of energy continues to go up the associated costs do as well. What this translates into is ever increasing prices for development that are never figured into costs that will inevitably occur.

Loose Nukes American Style

More disconcerting news regarding the day to day security of American nuclear weapons, this one from that hotbed of disarmament the Stars and Stripes :

" KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — An internal Air Force investigation has found that most military bases in Europe that store nuclear bombs do not meet the most basic Defense Department security regulations.

The report reveals some startling deficiencies in nuclear security in Europe in the wake of nuclear safety concerns and a historic Air Force leadership shake-up.

The report stated that each site had "unique security challenges."

"Inconsistencies in personnel, facilities, and equipment provided to the security mission by the host nation were evident as the team traveled from site to site," the study reads. "Examples of areas noted in need of repair at several of the sites include support buildings, fencing, lighting, and security systems."

At some places, the duty of protecting nuclear weapons fell upon foreign conscripts with as little as nine months of military experience, the report said.

The Pentagon released a summary of the report, titled "The Blue Ribbon Review of Nuclear Weapons Policies and Procedures," in February. The study found that the Air Force needed to improve how it safeguards its most lethal weapons and that numerous factors led to a B-52 mistakenly carrying six live nuclear warheads from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., last year.

Problems with nuclear safety at bases in Europe was unknown until Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists obtained a declassified version of the full report and posted it on his blog earlier this week.

"A consistently noted theme throughout the visits," the report states, "was that most sites require significant additional resources to meet DOD security requirements."

Investigators also found that periodic and routine inspections might not have been as effective as they could be because Air Force inspectors had to give prior notice to host nations and NATOs before visiting the sites....
The U.S. military does not reveal the number of nuclear weapons it has at European bases due to security reasons, but the Federation of American Scientists estimates there are between 200 and 350 warheads at bases in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, United Kingdom and Turkey.

Kristensen wrote in his blog that the report shows that nuclear weapons in Europe have been "a security risk" for the past decade.

"But why it took an investigation triggered by the embarrassing Minot incident to discover the security problems in Europe is a puzzle," he wrote.

Air Force leaders launched the internal investigation after the Minot incident involving the B-52 and the live nuclear warhead. Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired the Air Force’s top uniformed and civilian leaders for allowing nuclear safety to slip."

I beleive this is the same country that was going to "show" the Russians how to secure their nuclear weapons.

Bakken-Oil Boom or Boondogle

Lately I've been hearing from normally sane people about the "undeveloped" oil riches of North America in particular the Bakken Oil fields of the northern prairies. While I would like to think my Brother Blue Eyed Arabs of the North have finally stumbled on the mother lode, the reality is likely to be less than optimal as per the "Oil Drum":

"What's next for the Bakken?

Bakken production is trending upward and should continue for some time. The October 2007 production of 75,000 BOPD equates to 27 million barrels per year, a substantial amount by most measures for the US onshore sector. This only amounts to about 0.4% of US consumption (using a base of 20,700 BOBP, based on EIA data), or 0.6% of US imports.

Drilling activity in the Bakken continues at a frenetic pace. It's difficult to predict how long the upward trend in production will continue. Over the long term, economics will play a significant role in determining how much production will be expanded.

Conclusions

1. The Bakken shale has produced about 111 million barrels of oil during the last 50+ years in Montana and North Dakota.

2. Total Bakken production is still rising, and producing at the rate of 75,000 BOPD in October 2007.

3. Because of the highly variable nature of shale reservoirs, the characteristics of the historical Bakken production, and the fact that per-well rates seem to have peaked, it seems unlikely that total Bakken production will exceed 2x to 3x current rate of 75,000 BOPD.

4. The latest boom in Bakken production is driven by the application of horizontal wells and hydraulic fracturing technology, which has added about 70 million barrels of production in 7 years. Ultimate recovery of the already-drilled wells should be at least double this volume.

5. The USGS estimates the mean volume of technically recoverable hydrocarbons to be 3,649 million barrels of oil. This is roughly 7 to 12 times the size of already known resources.

6. Based on current production and areas likely to be drilled, the USGS estimate of technically recovery resources seems optimistic.

7. The Bakken potential resource, while large by US onshore field standards, will have only a minor effect on US production or imports. Using 2006 US imports and consumption for comparison, the Bakken undiscovered resource of 3,649 million barrels of oil, if subsequently discovered and fully developed, would provide us with the equivalent of six months of oil consumption or 10 months of imports, spread over 20 or more years. In reality, the reserves developed are likely to be many times smaller than this value.

8. The October 2007 production rate of 75,000 BOPD amounts only 0.4% of US oil consumption, or 0.6% of imports.

9. Per-well Bakken production peaked in August 2005 at 116 barrels a day, and was down to 79 barrels a day in October 2007. If the Bakken production history in the 1990s can be used as a guide, the peaking of per-well production may portend a peak in total Bakken production."

I think point #7 is especially well taken, for in the long run world demand will overshadow American demand and production by a long shot. We can only wonder when U.S. politicians on the Right and Left will start dealing with reality or in other words Peak Oil.

Gazprom in Alaska?

Last week Gazprom the Russian state Oil and Gas monopoly announced interest in "helping" develop an Alaska to Canada to U.S. pipeline. According to the International Herald Tribune:

"Gazprom has made a proposal to BP PLC and ConocoPhillips, which in April submitted a bid to build a multibillion-dollar pipeline that would carry natural gas from Alaska's North Slope to the lower 48 U.S. states, Gazprom director Alexei Miller said.

"Gazprom has unique experience, knowledge and modern technology and is the most advanced company in the world in the realm of gas transport in trunk pipelines," Miller told an international business forum in St. Petersburg, Russia. "So participation in such a large-scale project as the construction of a pipeline from Alaska is interesting for us."

He did not say whether there had been a response from BP and ConocoPhillips. The BP-ConocoPhillips proposal, dubbed Denali, competes with a similar pipeline plan put forward by TransCanada Corp., which was given the nod by Alaska's state government in January.

State-controlled Gazprom has been aggressively increasing its presence in Europe, drawing concerns of over-reliance on Russia for natural gas."

This is even more interesting given Russia's recent decline in petroleum production as reported by the International Energy Agency, a previously rather conservative group when it came to the subject of Peak Oil, as reported in the Globe and Mail:

"But even as Mr. Miller waxed lyrical on Tuesday about the scramble for resources, equally alarming data about oil supplies was tumbling out of the offices of the International Energy Agency in Paris.

The IEA has been trimming its forecast of non-OPEC oil supply growth and it now reckons that the great might of the world's multinational companies, including Russia and China, will barely produce any extra oil this year - just 770,000 more barrels per day.

This is even less than the IEA's prediction for growth in demand, which has fallen below 1 per cent thanks to shrinking demand for oil in the United States and Europe. The weak supply figures make a mockery of the aggressive output ambitions of the West's leading oil companies - ambitions that are always frustrated by hurricanes, war, despots and technical delays.

But the key to Gazprom's warning is Russia, and its failure to continue raising its oil output. The steady rise in Russian oil output over the last decade has almost single-handedly fed the ravenous growth in demand for crude in China. Without Russia, China's economic boom would probably have stuttered to a halt several years ago. But the output growth rate is now fading fast and voices have been raised within the Russian oil fraternity that 10 million barrels per day may be as far as it can go. Russian oil production has declined for five months in a row to less than 9.5 million b/d. The IEA is still reckoning 10 million b/d for the year, an optimistic forecast given the turmoil at one of the country's biggest producers, TNK-BP, where a power struggle is being waged between BP, several oligarchs and, again, Gazprom.

Western investors are making ever more frantic warnings about Russia. Rex Tillerson, Exxon's chief, said recently that there was little confidence in the rule of law in Russia, and Tony Hayward, BP's chief, gave warning that the world's energy problems are political, not geological.

He is partly right and he speaks from recent experience. The oligarchs with whom BP shares ownership of its Russian affiliate have suborned Russia's regulatory and judicial system to gain the upper hand in a dirty battle for control of TNK-BP. Gazprom is waiting in the wings to see which side emerges triumphant. Either way, the state will take a large slug of the asset and in the meantime TNK-BP's oil output languishes.

Still, BP's plight would not be so great if it had many more irons in the fire. Oil output is not growing anywhere much. Three quarters of OPEC's meagre spare capacity of two million b/d is in the hands of Saudi Arabia. If Russia were found to be pumping at the limit of its potential - whether for geological, technical or political reasons - where should we turn?

That is scary stuff. Back in Deauville Mr. Miller beats his drums, but the bravado about $250 per barrel conceals a great deal of nervousness. It's great to be a player on a winning streak with a big pile of chips. But when the casino manager breaks out in a sweat as he watches the game over your shoulder, you might get a bit scared too."

Airforce Purge What's Up?

As noted here earlier the recent concerns regarding the security of nuclear weapons controlled by the U.S. Airforce have attracted a fair amount of attention. As a result Defense Secretary Robert Gates sacked the Airforce Secretary,Michael Wynne and Chief of Staff, General Michael "Buzz" Moseley ostensibly for the failures associated with the "temporarily misplaced" nuclear cruise missiles in 2007,the "accidental" shipment of nuclear nosecone fuses to Taiwan in 2006, and the most recent failure of the nuclear surety inspection of the 5th Bomber Wing at Minot AFB in North Dakota.

The World Socialist Web Site now reports on other aspects of this story which have seemingly not registered. Among other things:

"Given the context of the incident, which transpired amid reports of planning within the Bush administration for an attack on Iran, including possible use of nuclear weapons, the perfunctory statement from the Air Force that the transfer was an “error” and that “the munitions were safe, secure and under military control at all times” hardly allayed concerns.

Taken together, the claims of innocent errors as the explanation for sensitive nuclear devices being sent to one of the tensest areas of the globe and a nuclear armed flight in the midst of mounting war threats strain credulity. Both incidents strongly suggest that much more is taking place behind the scenes in the US military and state apparatus than the American people are being told......

"While no doubt the incidents raised grave questions, the manner in which the two officials were forced to resign evinces a level of urgency that suggests that far more was involved than the release of an investigator’s report.

Both Wynne and Moseley were attending an Air Force leadership summit at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Moseley was hastily summoned to Washington Thursday for a meeting with Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and asked to resign. Later that same day, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England was sent to Wright-Patterson to find Wynne and demand his resignation as well...."

The article goes on to point out intriguing economic and political aspects of the whole affair which can only make one wonder what was really going on:

"Resignations hit Lockheed Martin

Perhaps not coincidentally, the resigning air force secretary, Wynne, was recruited to the Pentagon by the Bush administration in 2001 after a 30-year career in the aerospace industry, where he had headed the space divisions of both General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin, maker of the F-22 and America’s number one military contractor.

The purge at the top of the Air Force was clearly seen as having substantial financial implications. “This can’t be good for any of us,” a Lockheed Martin official close to the F-22 program told Aviation Weekly. “I was completely surprised and nobody I know knew anything about it beforehand,” the official is quoted as saying.

It is now nearly half a century since the Republican President Dwight Eisenhower urged the American people to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” The ever-closer relations between America’s expanding military and a financially powerful arms industry, he warned had the “potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power.”

The threat indicated by Eisenhower in his farewell speech of 1961 has mushroomed into something far beyond anything the World War II general could ever have imagined.

The Air Force alone now disposes of a budget of close to $130 billion, while military spending as a whole - including the successive “emergency” funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the nuclear weapons appropriations for the Energy Department - is fast approaching one trillion dollars a year.

US generals and admirals who serve as regional commanders now act as American pro-consuls, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in many other parts of the world, where they wield far greater power than any ambassador or other civilian representative of the US government.

Meanwhile, an officer corps that in a previous period generally avoided partisan politics has become highly politicized, influenced not only by the Republican Party, but increasingly by the Christian right.

Finally, in pursuit of its strategy of global militarism, the Bush administration has sought to portray the military as entitled to virtual veto power over the elected government, insisting that it is the commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan-hand-picked supporters of the administration’s policies—who must decide the course of the wars.

Under such a government, a sudden shakeup within the top ranks of the military like this week’s unprecedented simultaneous removal of a service’s civilian secretary and uniformed chief—or for that matter the forced resignation of Central Command head Admiral William Fallon in March—raises a number of disturbing possibilities.

Was there more to the unauthorized flight of a nuclear-armed bomber last August than the government dares reveal to the American people?

Are the Air Force chiefs being sacked in preparation for using America’s airpower in another criminal war of aggression, potentially against Iran, under conditions in which the Pentagon’s uniformed command is already deeply dissatisfied with the over-extension of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Had the near mutiny over military procurements, which apparently enjoyed the backing of powerful financial interests, gone further than has been revealed? Were they forced out to avoid a more open challenge to the civilian control of the military?

The answers to these and other crucial questions remained hidden behind a veil of “national security.” Clearly, however, under conditions of a protracted decay of basic institutions of bourgeois democracy in America, the ever-increasing power of the military poses the most fundamental threat to the basic democratic rights of American working people."

Did You Know?

This video via energybulletin.net by wagthedog does such a great job of summarising why the present problems of the U.S. are not just a blip in the hitherto inexorable march of progress or more of the conventional "business cycle".Mandatory viewing for soon-to-be Collapse participants.

Bent Spears and Collapsing Empires

With the collapse of the Soviet Union much attention was directed to the security of Russian nuclear weapons and the fear of loose nukes falling into the wrong hands due to deteriorating infrastructure and resources. This past August an incident of loss of control of six nuclear armed cruise missiles from Minot AFB came to light raising further fears that even the U.S. military may be incapable of securing it's own nuclear weapons.

In a report just released and reported in the AirForce Times the same Minot 5th Bomb Wing flunked its defense nuclear surety inspection.

According to the report incredible lapses in security were noted including the following:

"The DRTA report highlighted an incredible number of gaffes:

* An internal security response team didn’t respond to its “pre-designated defensive fighting position” during an attack on the weapon storage area, leaving an entire side of the maintenance facility vulnerable to enemy fire.

* Security forces didn’t clear a building upon entering it, which allowed inspectors to “kill” three of those four airmen.

* Security forces failed to use the correct entry codes, issued that week, to allow certain personnel into restricted areas.

* Security forces airmen failed to properly check an emergency vehicle for unauthorized personnel when it arrived at a weapons storage area, or search it correctly once it left.

* While wing airmen simulated loading an aircraft with nuclear weapons, security forces airmen failed to investigate vulnerabilities on the route from the storage area to the flight line, and didn’t arm three SF airmen posted at traffic control points along that route.

* While on the aircraft, one flight of security forces airmen didn’t understand key nuclear surety terminology, including the “two-person concept” — the security mechanism that requires two people to arm a nuclear weapon in case the codes fall into the hands of an airman gone bad.

“Security forces’ level of knowledge, understanding of assigned duties, and response to unusual situations reflected a lack of adequate supervision,” wrote the DTRA team chief.

Security forces leaders rarely visited their airmen on post, and routine exercises “were neither robust nor taken to their logical conclusion,” according to the report.

After reviewing base records, inspectors found “leaders were unengaged [in] the proper supervision of SF airmen.”

“If the leadership is still unengaged after all that has happened with the warheads, the missing ballistic missile fuses and problems with the first inspection, then they’re not fit to have this mission,” Kristensen said. “It’s really frightening.”

Security forces errors made up the majority of the 14-page DTRA inspection report, but inspectors found fault with other parts of operations, including late status reports and major errors in the wing’s personnel reliability program, which dictates who can handle nukes.

While reviewing records, inspectors found one individual cleared to handle nukes had been “diagnosed for alcohol abuse” but was allowed to keep his certification, according to the report."

This calls into question the whole idea that any country can in the long run manage large numbers of nuclear weapons safely. Additionally this stands as a signal of crumbling American security and the institutions supposedly safe guarding Americans from WMDs, in this case their own.

Arctic Future War and Other Choices

There are so many potential conflicts for the Earth's energy supplies that the medias inattention to them borders on criminal. A recent example is the multi-national conference in Greenland to try to divy up the Arctic's resources. It is interesting to see that the American rep was John Negroponte, an American diplomatic hit man if ever there was.
Canada hopes to assert sovereignity through the "Law of the Sea" which has varying interpretations:

"CBC" interpretation:
"Canada is committed to defending and protecting its sovereignty in the waters of the High Arctic as it begins the process of mapping the northern territory with other nations, says the federal minister of natural resources.

Gary Lunn is travelling to Ilulissat, Greenland, on Tuesday to discuss Canada's claim to the northern seabed with officials from Denmark, Norway, the United States and Russia, who are also looking to secure their piece of the Arctic pie.

"There's a lot of co-operation between countries that is happening, but it's important that we have strong presence on the world stage," said Lunn.

The three-day conference is expected to discuss rules, dictated by the UN Law of the Sea Convention, on dividing jurisdiction over the High Arctic waters, one of the most rapidly changing parts of the world due to climate change.

As the ice continues to melt, countries with continental shelves on the Arctic Ocean are increasingly concerned over who controls the territory and its resources.

"It's critically important that it's under our sovereign control so that we set the parameters for the environment and that we make the decisions whether or not even to allow exploration," Lunn said Monday.

Under the UN law, signed by Canada in 2003, the five northern countries may be able to extend their sovereignty beyond the usual 200-nautical-mile limit recognized in international law if the seabed is an extension of the continental shelf.

Canada's claim includes a swath of ocean floor stretching to the North Pole that would be the equivalent in size to the three Prairie provinces combined. Canada has until 2013 to submit its claim on the area, which stretches from the Yukon to the eastern Arctic.

The area in question wouldn't be subject to any sort of overlapping claim with other countries, Lunn said. Canada's territorial disputes in the Arctic, such as the location of the boundary between the Yukon and Alaska and the control of the Northwest Passage, aren't expected to be major topics at the conference.
Firms already after oil, gas reserves

The High Arctic seabed is coveted for its potential oil and gas reserves, not just along the coast of Beaufort Sea but at the North Pole. Estimates put about 25 per cent of the world's remaining oil and gas reserves beneath the Arctic's ocean floor.

Energy firms have already begun exploring the waters off Greenland, while large deposits of gas are known to exist off the islands of the Canadian archipelago, as well as the coasts of the Northwest Territories and Alaska.

Inhospitable conditions, including extreme cold and six months of darkness every year, make the Far North a difficult place for exploration.

"There's an interest in those resources, but more immediate in the area is the fact that there will be more international shipping over the top of the world as the ice starts to melt," the CBC's Margo McDiarmid reported Tuesday from Ottawa.

The nautical journey from China to New York, for example, is 7,000 kilometres shorter if travelled across the Arctic waters over the top of the world rather than through the Panama Canal.

As new passages are established by melting ice, Canada will be increasingly open to international traffic across and around its borders.

"The fear is that there will be more international shipping, more cruise ships, and there needs to be some kind of control, especially for Canada for those ships travelling through its waters," McDiarmid said.

Lunn emphasized that boundaries in the High Arctic must be defined by science, but would not speculate on the possible outcomes of the conference, saying only "we want to reaffirm our commitment on the world stage."

The conference is also expected to address co-operation between the five countries on maritime safety, environmental protection and search and rescue."

Per Canada.com:

"Conference could mark start of Arctic power struggle
Randy Boswell , Canwest News Service
Published: 5 hours ago

ILULISSAT, Greenland - An Arctic Ocean summit aimed at easing territorial tensions among the five nations bordering the northern sea - including Canada - appeared to evolve Wednesday into something more substantial: a kind of Arctic G-5 with ambitious plans for overseeing polar oil and mineral exploration, maritime security, transportation and environmental regulation.

"The Arctic Ocean stands at the threshold of significant changes," the countries' Ilulissat Declaration stated. "Climate change and the melting of ice have a potential impact on vulnerable ecosystems, the livelihoods of local inhabitants and indigenous communities, and the potential exploitation of natural resources.

"By virtue of their sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction in large areas of the Arctic Ocean, the five coastal states are in a unique position to address these possibilities and challenges."
Norwegian foreign minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, Greenland's Aleqa Hammond, Canada's Minister of Natural Resources Gary Lunn, and American John Negroponte admire the view from their boat Wednesday near Ilulissat in Greenland, ahead of an Arctic Ocean conference.
Norwegian foreign minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, Greenland's Aleqa Hammond, Canada's Minister of Natural Resources Gary Lunn, and American John Negroponte admire the view from their boat Wednesday near Ilulissat in Greenland, ahead of an Arctic Ocean conference.
Jan-Morten Bjoernbakk/AFP/Getty Images
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But the conference, which was organized by Denmark's Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller and also included the U.S., Russia and Norway, could well mark the beginning of an international power struggle over the future governance of the rapidly warming and increasingly accessible polar region.

Chief among the goals laid out in the declaration was to block any "new comprehensive international legal regime to govern the Arctic Ocean" - a clear shot across the bow of some European politicians and other Arctic observers who see the region as a largely unspoiled seascape best governed, like Antarctica, as an international trust.

They have pushed for the adoption of a broader legal framework - perhaps even an "Arctic Treaty" under the auspices of the United Nations - to regulate commercial activity, environmental threats and scientific research in the extreme north.

The summit was initially billed as an attempt to cool the rhetoric between the five polar neighbours following Russia's controversial dive to the North Pole seabed last year, an ongoing Danish-Canadian feud over tiny Hans Island and several other jurisdictional disputes.

And the final declaration did promise "the orderly settlement of any possible overlapping claims."

But in his opening remarks at the conference, Moeller made clear the chief purpose of the gathering by targeting "the assumption by some that there is a need for a new legal regime for the Arctic Ocean. I do not see such a need, as we have international law, we have the Law of the Sea, which already provide us with a comprehensive legal regime."

A proposal is before the European Parliament to adopt an Arctic policy to assert greater influence over environmental protection and other spheres of activity in the polar region.

The Arctic Council - an eight-country coalition of northern nations which includes the five coastal states plus Sweden, Finland, Iceland and various Arctic indigenous peoples - has also been working to develop rules for managing Arctic resources and environmental threats.

While the delegation leaders - including Canada's Minister of Natural Resources, Gary Lunn - expressed a desire to continue working through the Arctic Council and other international bodies on polar issues, they said the new coastal coalition is merited because those nations have unique opportunities and responsibilities.

"We are states that border the Arctic Ocean, and we have a responsibility to ensure that we put in the safeguards to ensure transportation and environmental protection, search and rescue, and so on - that we co-operate," said Lunn, whose ministry is overseeing Arctic seabed research aimed at securing vast extensions to Canada's continental shelf in the polar north.

The five-nation pact also envisions greater co-operation among the coastal nations in search-and-rescue operations, environmental crisis management and the regulation of oil tankers that could soon be routinely cruising through an ice-free Northwest Passage.

"Everybody, of course, wants to avoid a Titanic or an Exxon Valdez in the Arctic Ocean," Moeller said. "New possibilities of transport in and through the region increase the risk of accidents. More cruises than ever before reach even up to Thule (in far northern Greenland). As responsible coastal states we must strive to minimize this risk."

There is one notable hitch in the five-state strategy to rely on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, a treaty designed largely to resolve jurisdictional disputes in coastal regions and govern ocean shipping, as the chief guide to governing Arctic waters.

The most powerful of the five nations at the summit - the United States - hasn't ratified the accord.

John Negroponte, the U.S. deputy secretary of state and head of the American delegation, took pains to express the Bush administration's strong support for signing UNCLOS and predicted U.S. ratification soon.

Adoption of the convention has been blocked by Congress in recent years, largely by conservative legislators concerned about surrendering U.S. power to international legal frameworks.

"We certainly believe it's in the interests of the United States to ratify the Law of the Sea treaty, not the least of which would be for the impact it would have on our Arctic policy, where it's very important," Negroponte told reporters.

Two opposition MPs from northern Canada who attended the conference as observers - the NDP's Western Arctic MP Dennis Bevington and Yukon Liberal MP Larry Bagnell - applauded the agreement reached between the five countries.

Two Canadian experts on polar issues offered contrasting opinions on the outcome of the summit.

University of Calgary political scientist Rob Huebert said the five-country plan to manage the ocean's affairs means "Arctic issues will be dealt with on an ad hoc, piecemeal, bilateral basis. The Arctic is much too complicated to deal with in this manner today."

He said the coming problems require "an Arctic Council with teeth, or each issue will deteriorate on its own."

But University of British Columbia political scientist Michael Byers praised the direction of the grouping he dubbed "the Arctic Ocean 5."

The five-nation summit was "a perfectly appropriate venue to discuss Law of the Sea issues as they relate to the Arctic Ocean seabed. Countries that do not border on the Arctic Ocean simply don't have the same interests or potential disputes with respect to those areas and potential resources."


© Canwest News Service 2008

Remembrance Day Thoughts

There seems to be an unwritten rule in the U.S. that military service makes one an expert on the matters of war and peace. Be that as it may I would like to defer on this Memorial Day to General Smedley Butler, a man ahead of his time:

"-- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.

I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.

I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.

It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

Other Russia Meeting Disrupted By Flying Phallus

In the bad old days meetings of Russian dissidents were routinely disrupted by government goon squads. In new Russia things are different. Meetings are now disrupted by remote controlled flying dildos. Mr. Kasparov was relatively non-plussed as per the National Post:

"I think we have to be thankful for the opposition's demonstration of the level of discourse we need to anticipate," said Mr. Kasparov after the attack. "Also, apparently most of their arguments are located beneath the belt." Someone in the audience shouts, "Finally the political power shows its face!" to which he replied, "Well, if that's its face..."

The American Reality Disconnect

There is a disconnect in the American political contest in regards to world evolution. For instance the increase in petroleum prices, the decline in the U.S. dollar, and impoverishment of America that is starting to resemble Russian collapse. None of these issues are dealt with honestly or straight forwardly in the U.S. A good example is the recent Bush trip to the Mid-East which was by all accounts a huge fiasco, Asia Times Online goes into further detail:

" Bush's Middle East policy in tatters
By M K Bhadrakumar

"They [Arab leaders] have stopped taking their instructions from Islam, they have decided that peace with the Zionists is their strategic option, so damn their decision." - Osama bin Laden, audio message, May 18

Last Tuesday, while United States President George W Bush was setting out from Washington on a five-day tour of the Middle East, Iran's semi-official Fars news agency quoted Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad as hinting that Tehran might consider a cut in oil exports. Of course, Iranian Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari quickly clarified that Tehran was only reviewing its exports

and here, too, a decision was to be taken on a possible increase or decrease.

Neither Ahmadinejad nor Nozari said anything like Iran was reviewing oil output as such (which exceeds 4.2 million barrels per day, the highest level since the 1979 Islamic revolution). But US oil prices went into a tizzy nonetheless and hit a record high of US$126 per barrel by the time Bush landed in the Persian Gulf region.

"Bush was expected to press the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) for an early meet to raise oil production. (OPEC is scheduled to next meet in September to decide on its oil output policy.) Stephen Hadley, the US national security advisor, was on record that Bush would tell Saudi King Abdullah that the oil-exporting countries should regard it to be in their self-interest to "take into account the economic health of their customers who pay these prices". In the event, when they met on Friday, Bush found that the Saudi king was not to be persuaded.

Meanwhile, Nozari was back on stage. He told Fars news agency, "I believe there is no need for an [emergency] OPEC meeting. Why should there be this meeting when oil prices go up? The OPEC members are currently utilizing their full capacity and are supplying the market ... With oil at US$126, it is not wise for those with oil not to supply it." Nozari then added, "I believe it is not that oil is becoming more expensive, but the dollar is becoming cheaper."

It would have been unthinkable five or six years ago that a visiting US president would receive such an open rebuff in the Middle East. Last weekend's exchanges revealed the extent of decline in the US's dominance of the Middle East through the present Bush administration. No doubt, oil lies at the very center of the decline of the American dominion. The cascading rise in oil prices has led to a massive transfer of resources to the energy exporting countries. Iran is one principal beneficiary.

The huge accumulation of wealth enables Iran to exert influence regionally and ensure there is practically nothing the US can do to stop its rise as a regional power. Goldman Sachs in a report on Friday predicted oil would further jump to a level of $140 by July. "The near-term outlook for oil prices continues to be bullish," Goldman said. Investors are flocking to the oil market as a hedge against the fall in the value of the dollar. The Wall Street Journal has reported that at the moment the Iranians hold about 25 million barrels - about twice the quantum of the US's daily imports - of heavy crude in offshore tankers in the Persian Gulf."

Even more interesting is the beginning of the "end of the car dialogue" and the end of American suburbia, exurbia, culture as noted in the Philidephia Inquirer:

"Call it a change of plan.

Across the nation, the price of gasoline is sending more and more Americans to public transit.

This ridership surge points up three things: (1) These millions of new riders can do it. Most of them always could have. They just didn't. (2): We're not at the end of car culture yet . . . that's a few generations off . . . but (3) it's clear, in not-quite-hindsight, that the U.S. car culture does not work.

Meanwhile, more people are parking the car and hopping on the train or bus. Just ask the people at SEPTA. Director of public affairs Richard Maloney says: "It's been a steady upward curve for the last 18 months, 14 percent growth in that time and 24 percent in the last three years, driven primarily by gasoline prices." Growth is greatest, he says, in regional rail, among suburban communities, and among people with long car commutes.

On the eastern side of the Delaware, New Jersey Transit's Trenton-to-Camden River Line had its best-ever quarter ended in September, averaging a record 7,900 riders a day, and followed that with another record quarter through December. And the Delaware River Port Authority says ridership on the PATCO High-Speed Line is up 7 percent from a year ago.

All of which fits a big national pattern. According to a May 10 New York Times survey, metro Minneapolis, Dallas, Seattle, and San Francisco all are seeing ridership spikes, with big gains both where public transit is long-established (New York, Boston) and where it is comparatively new (Houston, Charlotte, N.C.).

Clarence W. Marsella, chief executive of the Denver Regional Transportation District, told the Times that gasoline prices had brought on a "tipping point" regarding ridership. Maybe so. Or is this just momentary, and once we get used to higher prices, we'll backslide into former habits?I can imagine a reasonable objection: "The car culture doesn't work? The car has made our lives possible! It has made this country great, made contemporary life what it is today. Life without cars - without the unquestioned right to personal mobility at will - is unimaginable. You couldn't have the suburbs without the auto. Didn't Frank Lloyd Wright design his modern suburbs based on the car? And Levittown . . ."

Agreed. All true. Car culture got us where we wanted when we wanted - for five generations. Much has been spectacular, beyond what could have been dreamed 100 years ago.

How, then, can I say that car culture doesn't work? Because the cost to individual and communal life, and to the environment, has been too high. And the bill is just now coming due.

It's not evil, just heedless. People take the opportunities they're given. They have the right. The car symbolizes freedom, rights of passage, career, sexuality. We've created the national road system, bought hundreds of millions of cars, based hundreds of millions of lives on the assumption that Hey, we can just drive. But all that time, we've been burning resources, replacing none. (How much steel have we put back in the ground? How much oil?)

We've basically laid the environment to waste, millions of acres never to return, all because there was no plan B. Roads are good things - but where you build a road, you outrage an environment, and no one ever rectifies it. The sad sprawl of the 1980s and 1990s, when people let towns metastasize into hastily planned and built exurban strips - that worked well, didn't it?

And does anyone think the morning and evening rush is good for us? Individually and as a society? Single drivers (70 percent and more in many metro area traffic jams) in single cars, edging ahead, until sometimes it seems as if the ambient blood pressure is about to blow? (Studies show traffic jams do contribute to stress and high blood pressure. But you knew that.)

And wasteful: The car commute amounts to a willing sacrifice of billions of hours of precious, productive time. U.S. Census figures suggest the average U.S. driver spends 100 hours commuting a year (the standard vacation, 10 work days of eight hours apiece, is only 80 hours). Philadelphia ranks fifth among cities with a long one-way commute (29.4 minutes); New Jersey ranks third among states (28.5 minutes). Traffic jams waste time, and therefore bucks: A 2007 Texas Traffic Institute study said that in 2005, folks wasted an average of 38 hours a year stalled, for grand totals of 4.2 billion hours, 2.9 billion gallons of fuel, and a loss to the economy of $78.2 billion. That's what I call not working. (At least you can work on a train or bus.)

This has wrecked family life for many who live farther and farther from work - and so work farther and farther from home. It has created the commuter suburb, whose residents have little to do with their towns except, just about, the bed where they happen to sleep between commutes. How great is that?

We will all put up with it, as long as we can get where we're going.

I sure did. It's with us for the foreseeable. But no one has to love it. Many are now finding there are other ways. As oil gets scarcer and pricier, people may start to work closer to home, based on resources. They're starting to, it seems. That may benefit cities, with people increasingly opting for "elegant density" and closeness to work and amenities. We should have been doing this all along. We just weren't paying attention.

So, no, we haven't reached the tipping point - we've reached a pocketbook point. When things really tip, we'll discover - gasp - we don't have enough trains and buses for those who need them. (Already, says Maloney, SEPTA "has every available car in service" and is "searching internationally" for more train cars.)

Life will change. The roads will start getting lonely. It's a while off - but worth thinking about. Maybe then we'll make plan "B"."