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Cheney & Energy Task Force Plotted Iraq pre911

by ThePete 12:31 pm 2008-07-30
utterz-image
So, as I’ve said recently, I’m slowly catching up on my podcasts. One podcast I don’t like to miss is the audio version of "Bill Moyer’s Journal" on PBS (site: http://www.pbs.org/…rs/journal podcast (audio): http://www.pbs.org/…odcast.xml podcast (video): http://feeds.feedburner.com/bmjvodcast ). I was listening to the episode from June 27, 2008 when Moyers started talking about the war in Iraq. My gut instinct was to assume he was going to go on about how it was all for the oil and run the typical blood-for-oil argument you hear from so many people. Which is pretty much what he started to do. I immediately thought to myself "Yeah, but Bill, where’s your hard evidence?"

That’s a question I’ve asked many times of anti-war folks. Usually I just get the answer "it’s obvious!" or "You really think we’d be in Iraq if there wasn’t oil there?"

Of course, they’re right, but what really connects Cheney to a oil-motivation?

Well, for once, a person quoting the blood-for-oil argument (BOA) actually had some evidence to back it up. The above screencap is part of it. And what’s really messed up about this is that the above screencap comes from a press release dated July 17, *2003* (see the original page here: http://www.judicialwatch.org/…d-pr.shtml ).

Now, maybe I missed it in the cacophony of crap the Bush Administration was puulling at the time (back in July of ‘03 we’d only been in Iraq for four months). Regardless, what Judicial Watch found is downright damning.

If you look at the above cap, you’ll see that they say: "Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, said today that documents turned over by the Commerce Department, under court order as a result of Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.” The documents, which are dated March 2001, are available on the Internet at: www.JudicialWatch.org."

Yeah, that’s right, *before* 911, Cheney was eyeing maps of oilfields in Iraq. Why would Cheney need to know where oil was in Iraq while planning for America’s energy future? Sure, we could give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was just learning as much as he could about "our energy partner in the middle east," or some such crap they might spew to excuse maps being there (and not just say charts of oil output and other less visual aids), but after all that has happened, I can’t imagine that he was doing anything but looking at those maps and thinking "yeah, we gotta secure that shit."

Especially considering the growing concern in 2001 that the world’s peak oil limit might be approaching. "Peak Oil" is the theory that the Earth will produce more and more oil until it begins to run out–production will peak–then, we, as a planet, will start to run out and prices will climb. That last bit sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

I heard about this theory for the first time in 2003, I believe. There was a December 2000 talk given by an oil expert called CJ Campbell, a guy who worked for oil companies, helping them find oil. You’d assume he’d be aware of just how much oil was left on the planet. (You can read a blog post I wrote about it here: http://thepete.com/…o-run-out/ )

So, there Cheney was, just a few months after Campbell’s talk, chatting over energy policy with maps of oil fields in Iraq–before the 911 Attacks, before invading Afghanistan, before invading Iraq.

Am I reading into things? Maybe. But I can’t help but wonder why Cheney and friends would withhold these maps from Judicial Watch when they first asked for them in April of 2001. Check out something else from the above screencapped press release: "Judicial Watch has been seeking these documents under FOIA since April 19, 2001. Judicial Watch was forced to file a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judicial Watch Inc. v. Department of Energy, et al., Civil Action No. 01-0981) when the government failed to comply with the provisions of the FOIA law. U.S. District Court Judge Paul J. Friedman ordered the government to produce the documents on March 5, 2002."

So, in 2002, a judge ruled that effectively Cheney had violated the law by keeping these documents from JW. I wonder why they would have done that.

Shades of things to come.

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by ThePete 12:31 pm 2008-07-30 In TheNews, Politricks, ThePete.Com | Tags , , , , , , | $ |

This is What the End (as we know it) Looks Like

by ThePete 7:59 pm 2008-07-05
drop.io: simple private sharing

So, I grabbed this off of Drudge back on July 1, 2008.

Yeah, SUV sales in decline, Hummer my sell the brand, Saudi king says “deal with it.”

If you don’t live in a city or town with exemplary mass transit, it’s time to pick up that skateboard because the end is seriously nigh.

I and many others have been watching this situation get worse and worse since 2000. High oil prices, inflation, and now high food prices all tell us it’s only going to get worse because the causes of our problems (Peak Oil/Middle East wars and inflation) aren’t going away and probably never will.

Just an FYI.

Now go run and hide from your responsibility. ;)

You know you wanna…

by ThePete 7:59 pm 2008-07-05 Website666.Com | Tags , , , , | $ |

Oil Surges to $109 But EVERYTHING Costs More

by ThePete 10:55 am 2008-03-11

Mostly, these days, people are only worried about how the ever-rising oil prices will change the price of gasoline. This is a logical worry, but prices at the pump are just the first step in this new version of trickle down economics. In this case, the costs trickle down a chain-of-use.

Oil costs $109 per barrel today (http://snipurl.com/21io3 ) and that will make gasoline prices higher and then other things made with oil will cost more (like gasoline and plastics). After that, the things that we need oil-related products to get will cost more. These are things like FOOD.

See, you need gasoline and oil to farm the land. You need more to get the food to market. Every step of the way we rely on oil-products and, therefore, every step of the way will get more expensive.

In fact, food prices in the US have already started to climb. The above screencap comes from a March 9, 2008 article from Boston.com (here: http://snipurl.com/21iom ) that reports:

"After nearly two decades of low food inflation, prices for staples such as bread, milk, eggs, and flour are rising sharply, surging in the past year at double-digit rates, according to the Labor Department. Milk prices, for example, increased 26 percent over the year. Egg prices jumped 40 percent.

"Escalating food costs could present a greater problem than soaring oil prices for the national economy because the average household spends three times as much for food as for gasoline. Food accounts for about 13 percent of household spending compared with about 4 percent for gas."

Of course, our gas is already more expensive. Now our food prices are going up. Those are the two most immediately important things to spend money on. This means we’ll spend less on the other things we enjoy in life.

If it gets much worse, we’ll only be spending money on food to keep us alive and fuel, which allows us to get to work. Work gives us money to buy food and fuel and…the circle of life continues!

I’m just glad I’m planning on moving to a city with a good public transit system!
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by ThePete 10:55 am 2008-03-11 In TheNews, TheMoney, ThePete.Com, TheWarnings | Tags , , | $ |

Oil Hits $100 A Barrel

by ThePete 1:03 pm 2008-02-19

The above screencap comes from an AP.org article at Biz.Yahoo.com (find it here: http://biz.yahoo.com/…rices.html ). The article reports some interestingly conflicting news. Mainly it says that oil prices have broken $100 a barrel despite falling demand. This kind of journalism cracks me up. According to a Bloomberg article I found (here: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news ) the *US* demand for oil has dropped a whopping (not) 1.8 percent–this is US demand only, however. So, it’s odd for the AP article to point out that oil prices are rising "despite" falling demand.

The fact of the matter is that there is a finite amount of oil on this planet and since more and more people are born every day it only makes sense that, unless major cultural changes are made, demand for oil will go up and up and up, planet-wide, while supply goes down and down.

OK, so a 1.8 percent of people who were using oil in the US aren’t using it now (which makes no sense in itself), big deal–what about the millions of new people using oil today in China? What about people in other developing nations that are inching their way toward 1st World status?

Of course, the main news here is that the crack-cocaine of American life just got even more expensive. This means that it’ll get more expensive to:

1) fill up your tank
2) heat your home
3) cook
4) buy anything with plastic or petroleum products in it

Yep, things like computers, DVDs, make-up, and just about anything else you use has oil in it. So, as oil prices rise, eventually, that rise in price will trickle down to each of us.

Too bad we can’t, oh, I don’t know–find some *other* way to power our cars, heat our homes or make plastic!

Of course, we have (even vegetable-based plastic exists: http://www.sony.net/…04/01.html ), but no one wants to talk about those things.
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by ThePete 1:03 pm 2008-02-19 In TheNews, TheBig Business, ThePete.Com, TheWarnings | Tags | $ |

We Shell Out and Shell Oil Rakes in Huge Profits

by ThePete 1:02 am 2008-02-03

The above screencap comes from: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/…/news.html

Haha, dig that pun in the title for this post!

Anyway, so the article is pretty self-explanatory as is the headline. Just because the price of oil goes up it doesn’t mean their profits should go up as well. In fact, unless they’re hiking up prices even more, their profits should be going *down* not up.

See, what is happening here is that Shell is charging us more for their product–but they’ve increased the price of gasoline at a rate that is not commensurate to the price-increase oil has gone through.

In other words, they’re getting greedy.

One of the theories of the Free Market goes like this:

You can charge as much as you like for your product so long as the market will bear it.

Another way to put this is to say: As long as people are buying, your price isn’t too high.

What the Free-Market-thing doesn’t really take into consideration is that sometimes people will buy something they need even if they can’t afford it.

Housing is a good example. Health care is another. So what happens when you can’t afford to buy those things but you need to anyway? You take out a loan.

We know how that goes. The number one reason people declare bankruptcy these days is because of health care costs. Another popular reason? Housing loans. Perhaps you’ve heard of the recent sub-prime mortgage mess?

So, some of us (even those of us who don’t drive SUVs) are paying in excess of $30-$40 (and even $50) to fill our tanks up. A friend of mine who does drive an SUV pays $350 a month on gasoline. That’s a car payment or in some areas of the country a month’s rent.

So, are we going to start taking out loans just to buy gas? I’m not suggesting that–I bet we’re going to end up sacrificing other things instead. That new suit for work, or the new TiVo or better car insurance, health or life insurance, those nice things you want to buy your family and friends on birthdays, nights out with your significant other–that sort of thing.

There are a lot of "little" things we can all sacrifice so that companies like Shell can keep all that cash coming in.

And we’ll have to sacrifice a lot of them just to keep our cars running. What choice do we have?

Of course, companies like Shell *could* reinvest their profits into diversifying their products. They could spend some of those gobs of cash on alternative fuels–solar, wind or hydro power for cars.

They could quite easily do that–What, you don’t think $28 billion would go a long way to developing other power sources for cars?

What about the profits of the other oil companies? What about car companies? Shouldn’t *all* cars be hybrids or better by now?

We consumers can’t change things like this–only the oil and car companies can.

I guess they’re not just greedy but lazy, too.

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by ThePete 1:02 am 2008-02-03 In TheNews, TheMoney, ThePete.Com | Tags , , , , | $ |

Will the High Cost of Oil and Low Value of the Dollar Effect Gadgets?

by ThePete 6:09 am 2007-10-30

ipodoil.jpgIf you’ve been paying attention to the news at all, you’ve probably heard about how expensive the cost of a barrel of oil has gotten–topping $94 as I type this. Another thing you may have learned about on the news (though it is less likely) is that the US dollar is at it’s weakest in a very, very long time. In fact, a quick check of the exchange rates (again, as I type this) at XE.com shows that the USD is still trailing the Canadian dollar by about five cents. Not a lot, but we’re still weaker than the Canadian dollar!

So, what does this mean for gadgets? It could mean nothing, but then again, gadgets do contain a lot of plastic, which is a petroleum product and gadgets do cost money to buy. What this may mean eventually for us is more expensive gadgets. In fact, it’s a little surprising that we haven’t seen at least small price jumps in the years since oil began it’s astronomical rise and the dollar’s long fall. However, there are certain physical laws when it comes to money and they can’t be ignored forever.

Here’s how price jumps will work when they come (and they will):

More…

by ThePete 6:09 am 2007-10-30 TheTech.ThePete.Com | Tags , , , , , | $ |

TheBlurb: "How can one talk about life without saying sometime it's going to end? It makes the value of life all the more precious."
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