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It's April 1, so be on the lookout for witless news April Fool news ''stories''. I detest them, not because I get fooled by them, but because they're dumb. Anyhow, I don't think this is a joke:
| The cost of crude oil approached record levels today as markets were unnerved by a Goldman Sachs report predicting a "super spike" in oil prices to $105 (£55.66) a barrel... ...According to the FT, a warning to set up "demand restraint policies" in the transport sector, such as driving bans or shorter working weeks, is contained in a study to be published next month during the annual IEA meeting of energy ministers. |
2005 March 30, Wednesday
If anyone in the LA area wants to get together with yours truly in real-life, I'll be attending a Post-Carbon event in Venice, California on April 10th:
Options and Actions in a Post Carbon Los Angeles
There's going to be a screening of "The End of Suburbia", an excellent documentary on the imminent energy crunch.
Check out the los angeles peak oil site for more info on Peak Oil and further events. They organise some really great events - I've been to a couple, and they're a lot of fun (in spite of the heavy subject matter). I met a Caltech scientist and a robotics specialist at the last one. If you're interested in keeping up to date with future screenings/meetings, etc., be sure to join the various mailing lists on these sites, or log on to meetup.com.
If you're not in the LA area, meetup.com has lists of other peak oil groups in different parts of the country, and in different countries.
2005 March 23, Wednesday
The most important issue of the day isn't Iraq, Bush, or brain-dead women with feeding tubes. It's Peak Oil, and you won't be hearing a WORD about it on state controlled TV. The more you read about this, the scarier it gets.The cheap oil is running out, and biblical volumes of shit are going to hit the global fan. Too bad that most people are suffering from Armageddon Fatigue. I've spoken to individuals who recognise the reality of Peak Oil, but they can't handle the consequences - they curl up into a foetal ball, and mumble words like "ethanol", "hydrogen", and "solar". Sad.
Please note that it's not just crazy left wing Amurka-haters like me who are saying this - it's the likes of Matthew Simmons, a lifelong Republican and colleague of Dick Cheney. Here's a recent interview with the man himself:
| All the big deposits have been found and exploited. There aren’t going to be any dramatic new discoveries and the discovery trends have made this abundantly clear.We are now in a box we should never have gotten into and it has very serious implications. We also see the inevitable issues that follow a major blackout: no water, no sewage, no gasoline. The gasoline issue is very important. Our gasoline stocks are at near all time lows. With the blackout, more than seven hundred thousand barrels per day of refinery capacity were shut down. People were told to boil their water. So what do they do, they go to their electric stove which isn’t working. What then? |
| The US economy is particularly vulnerable to the coming oil shortages. As the most indebted nation in the world, the US is completely dependent on strong economic growth just to pay the interest on its debts. This is as true for individual citizens as it is for corporations and governments. A declining oil/energy supply means the economy can't grow which means individuals, corporations, and governments can't pay off their debts, which means economic anarchy is on the way. Furthermore, unlike nations in Europe, the US has built it's entire infrastructure and way of life under the assumption oil would always be cheap and plentiful. Since that is no longer the case, the US economy is in even more trouble than the economies of nations like the UK, Germany, Spain, and France. So even in the best-case scenario, we're looking at an international financial meltdown and a collapse of the value of US dollar so severe that the Great Depression will look like the "good ole days." |
| As one executive tells me, "even if all the off-limits land were opened for drilling, all the new gas we could bring on-line wouldn't be enough to replace all the production we're losing from older fields. We'd barely keep production flat." For those who wonder where the world will be getting its energy a decade from now, confessions like these only confirm what many have feared for some time: namely, that the cheap, "easy" oil and natural gas that powered industrial growth for a century no longer exist in such easy abundance; and that we may have a lot less time than we thought to replace that system with something cleaner, more sustainable, and far less vulnerable to political upheaval. |
2005 March 21, Monday
Big strong patriotic Florida cops arrest a five year old child. Sure, tell me that America isn't
| A 5-year-old girl was arrested, cuffed and put in back of a police cruiser after an outburst at school where she threw books and boxes, kicked a teacher in the shins, smashed a candy dish, hit an assistant principal in the stomach and drew on the walls. The students were counting jelly beans as part of a math exercise at Fairmount Park Elementary School when the little girl began acting silly. That's when her teacher took away her jelly beans, outraging the child. Minutes later, the 40-pound girl was in the back of a police cruiser, under arrest for battery. Her hands were bound with plastic ties, her ankles in handcuffs. "I don't want to go to jail," she said moments after her arrest Monday. |
2005 March 17, Thursday
Top O' De Mornin':
2005 March 16, Wednesday
Mystery meat:
2005 March 15, Tuesday
More Reich madness: go to Guatemala to do charity work, get frisked by a pig.
| “Guatemala? Why would you want to go there?” The U.S. customs official’s voice dripped with contempt as he grilled my daughter at Toronto airport. Only minutes before, we had bade her a heartfelt farewell as she headed to Guatemala to study Spanish and do volunteer work, full of excitement. The official scowled when Rosie told him she planned to spend four months in Guatemala. He told her to empty her carry-on bag, and examined every item carefully. A female officer frisked her from head to toe. This is how the United States welcomes an 18-year-old woman who wants to experience a developing nation. |
What to make of this? Saddam's Capture: Just Another Bush Lie?
| "I was among the 20 man unit who searched for Saddam for 3 days in the area of Dour near Tikrit, and we found him in a modest home in a small village and not in a hole as announced," Rabeh admitted. "Not in a hole"? You mean Saddam actually stood up and faced American Marines? "WE CAPTURED HIM AFTER FIECE RESISTANCE DURING WHICH A MARINE OF SUDANESE ORGIN WAS KILLED," he said. Uh, oh. This could be trouble. After all, the American version presented Saddam as trembling coward cringing in his spider-hole afraid to face the American warriors. Now, Rabeh is saying that he stood and fought "like a man". This is not the image that the Washington spin-meisters wanted to convey. They wanted to humiliate the deposed tyrant by showing him recoiling from the American ubermenschen. |
2005 March 14, Monday
Must read by Juan Cole about the pseudo-democracy in Iraq:
| The US spiked the Iraqi parliamentary process by putting in a provision that a government has to be formed with a 2/3s majority. This provision is a neo-colonial imposition on Iraq. The Iraqi public was never asked about it. And, it is predictably producing gridlock, as the UIA is forced to try to accommodate a party that should be in the opposition in the British system, the Kurdistan Alliance. Likewise, in France, a simple majority of the National Assembly can dismiss the cabinet. Likewise in India. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the 2/3s super-majority is characteristic of only one nation on earth, i.e. American Iraq. I fear it is functioning in an anti-democratic manner to thwart the will of the majority of Iraqis, who braved great danger to come out and vote. |
| In the weeks after Baghdad fell in April 2003, looters systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from Saddam Hussein's most important weapons installations, including some with high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms, a senior Iraqi official said this week in the government's first extensive comments on the looting... ...The threat posed by these types of facilities was cited by the Bush administration as a reason for invading Iraq, but the installations were left largely unguarded by allied forces in the chaotic months after the invasion. |
2005 March 9, Wednesday
Another great clusterfuck nation article from Kunstler.
Politically correct living at its most extreme!
Almost missed this: the RAF Hercules that crashed in Iraq a few weeks ago was shot down by a missile...
Great: Twisting the Minds of the American People
| These are people like the beauty who commented on the killing of the Italian official and the wounding of the Italian journalist he was escorting to freedom...as follows: "Too bad the US troops didn't shoot her in the head and been done with trouble making people like her . . . Posted by bpb901 March 5." We only have to look at the deranged outpourings on right wing blogs to realize there are millions of Americans who feel exactly the same way as bpb901. He or she is not in any way unusual. Unhinged and demented, yes ; badly in need of urgent mental treatment, certainly ; but out of the ordinary: no. (Bear in mind that The Economist of March 5-11 noted the uncomfortable statistic that "about one in five Americans now suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder".) |
2005 March 8, Tuesday
I'm no fan of the Pope (he IS a conservative) - but check out this humorless rubbish from another lunatic right-winger. It's amazingly unfunny - that's what's really offensive. Good job he's not a hate-filled liberal.
Bring back the sweatshop! Let's get those children into factories, asap!
There are so many ways to end up in jail in the land of the ''free''. How about writing a story about zombies?
Nifty lego x-wing
2005 March 2, Wednesday
Some useful info: Top 16 Biblical Ways to Acquire a Wife
I found out why the traffic for the site spiked in February. In the first 2 weeks (when I didn't update the site), I was getting 12 to 13,000 visitors a day - which is very healthy. In the middle of February, that jumped to 20 to 23,000 visitors a day - this was the result of a big link from a Hungarian site - which linked to the Papal Bowling game. I guess El Papa's health problems were the inspiration. So, hello Hungary.
Eternal thanks to all the emailers who were worried by my absence. I am genuinely moved by your concern. A little personal info that may be of interest: I lost my girlfriend after a long illness in August 2002. We had been together for about 10 years - we were practically common law man and wife. I threw myself into work to occupy my mind. The result was the Gulf War game, my first major online success.
You may find it interesting to know that the emails from concerned readers that I received in the two weeks in February outnumber all the emails, phone calls and/or visits that I received in the TWO VERY LONG YEARS following my girlfriend's death (with the exception of my sister Caragh, who made it her mission to keep me patched together). Let's just say that I can count my two year's worth of contact occasions on one hand. I remember people who had come to our house, ate our food, and drank our drink - who simply disappeared from my life - it was a strange kind of solitary confinement. My biggest task during this time was to kill hours. Lots and lots of hours.
Either it says something about me, or about my ''friends''. Either I'm intolerable, or they're all a bunch of ill-bred, unthinking, selfish cunts.
My money's on the second explanation. It's painful to finally realise (as I have during the last two weeks), that the people that I have known and worked with over the last ten years couldn't be bothered to pick up a phone to find out if I still had a pulse.
You guys did - without ever having met me - that's because you're decent human beings.
Thanks.
Oh yeah - got two interesting emails last week. There might be some small media/book exposure coming my way. I won't say more - that usually jinxes things.
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